Take Lewis Hamilton as an example: born in Stevenage, a small town north of London, England. He spent part of his childhood with his mother, and it wasn’t until he was ten that he chose to live with his father to focus on racing. At five, with a remote-controlled car, he was already making a name for himself, and at six, with a small used kart, he kept chasing it.

Years later, after countless hardships and difficulties, a legend emerged. Seven-time world champion, three teams in Formula 1, he now stands among the most remembered and respected names in motorsport history, not only for his skill, but for what he represents.

And it isn’t just him: Senna, Prost, Schumacher, Vettel, and so many others who shaped the sport into what it is today are remembered as symbols of determination, greatness, and pride for their fans and their nations.

For years and years, that was all Kimi Antonelli ever talked about.

You were never close to him, even though you studied at the same school. In fact, the only thing you truly shared was a photo from a recital you both took part in at five years old — the one where you thought it was perfectly appropriate to kiss his cheek and cause a chorus of “awww” around you.

But proximity was never the point.

You didn’t have to be part of his inner circle to know that Kimi Antonelli was in love with motorsport. Anyone who cared to listen had heard him say he would become a legend one day — just like those drivers.

For that reason, during the second-to-last year of high school, you weren’t surprised at all when he told the entire class he was going to Formula 1 the following year.

Kimi had already climbed the other steps. He had already been champion in lower categories more than once. There had been tributes to him on ordinary school days — celebrations of his talent and the pride he brought to both the school and to Italy. But Formula 1… Formula 1 was different.

It was big.

A step closer to the dream he had chased for so long: becoming one of the best.

And at that age, he was already considered a rising promise in the racing world. The golden boy. The next prodigy. It wasn’t just Formula 1, that alone would have been enough, but for Kimi Antonelli?

Kimi Antonelli would begin his first Formula 1 season driving for the Mercedes AMG PETRONAS F1 Team, personally chosen to take the seat of none other than sir Lewis Hamilton himself, a fact that earned him his own Netflix documentary.

So many good things followed that, if the announcements hadn’t been officially published, you wouldn’t have believed them.

Oh — and you had the biggest crush on him.

Having a crush on Kimi Antonelli was hardly absurd. In fact, at school it was the most normal thing in the world. After all, he wasn’t just famous, well-managed, and surprisingly intelligent, he was also kind to everyone and very, very cute. And, perhaps, just perhaps, you had occasionally caught yourself daydreaming about rebellious wavy hair that only behaved under a cap and an easy smile that gave his face that boyish look.

And his hands.

In a completely appropriate way, of course.

But that had only become a thing during the final year, when one of your best friends shoved her phone in your face to show you the photoshoot he had done with George Russell. The focus was very specific: Kimi putting on his helmet, his hands fully on display. You had never noticed them before. Naturally, you were completely normal about it.

Totally normal. Completely normal. Nothing unusual whatsoever. Just a normal boy with long fingers and prominent veins and…

Yeah. Right. Sure.

Now school was over. All of that (cute boys, inappropriate hands, endless books about subjects you never quite mastered) had been left behind. A great relief, if anyone asked you — and yet, now that it was over, you missed it too. Years and years with the same classmates, hearing updates to the same stories, walking through the same hallways had quietly created a sense of attachment.

You hadn’t really wanted it to end.

And some people might have wondered whether that feeling could, at some level, be related to a certain prodigy driver who, by a twist of fate, had studied alongside you since early childhood, but… life is strange. And it does even stranger things, because after everything — after the whole year had passed and Kimi Antonelli had traveled the world and become a rookie with two podiums in his debut season, making history — he ended up spending Christmas in your living room.

Because your sister had done you a great favor: she had said yes to becoming an Antonelli.

It was there, on December twenty-fifth, two thousand and twenty-five, that you discovered your sister was engaged — not to Kimi Antonelli, thankfully, but to one of his older cousins.

You didn’t even know she was dating anyone! That’s what happens when your sister decides to move to another country and forgets to tell you about her dramatic new relationship.

Anyway, you were happy for her all the same. And it happened. So… somewhere between plates that were never empty, constant hugs, and elegant clothes, Kimi Antonelli had his first proper interaction with you.

You stood near the Christmas tree, finishing adjusting the bow on the head of one of your younger cousins, who refused to stay still for more than a second. She kept talking nonstop about how badly she wanted to open the presents, and you had to keep reminding her that it wasn’t time yet.

With an exaggerated pout, she ran off, leaving you behind with a fond laugh lingering on your lips.

Beside you, however, with steps far too deliberate to pass as casual, Kimi Antonelli approached.

“I didn’t know your sister was dating my cousin,” he said, taking a relaxed sip of his drink.

He was talking. To you. As if that made perfect sense. And, well… technically, it did. Aside from a couple of his cousins, you were the only person there who was actually his age.

You smoothed a hand down the skirt of your red dress. Blink. Blink. Blink. An attempt at normalcy. You had to make a double effort not to stare at the ring resting on his index finger like a complete weirdo.

“O-Oh! Yeah. Yes. Well,” you said, a little awkwardly, your gaze drifting toward the couple. They looked comfortable, happy. Your expression softened. “I didn’t know either. But I think they really like each other. From what I can tell.”

What a stupid answer. My God. You sounded like you had never learned how to speak. Kimi didn’t seem to notice, or perhaps he was just too polite to comment on your painfully obvious lack of composure.

“Yeah. I can see that too,” he agreed, his eyes following yours in the same direction. It didn’t last long, though. His attention returned to you. “We studied together.”

Yes, Kimi. We did. I know that. I know that very well.

You nodded, because words suddenly felt unreliable.

“That’s cool. And now we’re family,” he said, sounding so casual about it that it bordered on absurd.

It wasn’t normal. It was the complete opposite of normal. You hadn’t thought about it that way before, but… thinking about it now, he was kind of right.

You were going to faint right there.

Except you didn’t. You did something far more human — far more reasonable and, honestly, surprising: you smiled like a perfectly normal person.

“That’s crazy, right? It’s nice,” you replied.

You were actually quite proud of yourself.

He laughed softly and pointed toward the table with his thumb.

“Should we get dessert before it’s all gone? Maggie was planning to finish everything.”

You, who had fully expected the conversation to end after the first sentence, laughed quietly and followed him to get dessert, still not entirely convinced this was actually happening.

It had been a nice night — you had to admit that. Your sister announced her engagement, your nonna made your favorite dessert, your mother somehow won at karaoke, and two families met for the very first time. And you, somewhat shyly, allowed yourself to laugh until your stomach hurt at the silly things Kimi Antonelli kept saying, as if he were just a boy like any other.

When it came time to open the presents, the festive Christmas evening slowly drew to a close. It ended with him unwrapping the gift his mother had chosen for him — a plush version of himself dressed in his Mercedes race suit — which he immediately declared, laughing, “this one’s going into the collection,” before she handed him the actual present.

Nice. Very nice, actually. Something interesting to tell your friends, something that would absolutely blow their minds. You would see Kimi again at the wedding and… that would be it. A very interesting story to tell. Maybe you’d run into each other at another family event or a school reunion — both unlikely, considering his packed Formula 1 schedule — and life would simply move on from there. You were already happy with the night you’d had.

But the next day, he texted you.

“Okay, I have thoughts about your farm take.”

And the day after, he texted again.

“My mum says you’re exactly like your sister. I don’t agree with her, but that’s not a bad thing. Hear me out…”

And the next day. And the one after that. Always something new. Always a conversation that somehow wandered into unbelievable directions, music tastes, colors, dinosaurs, terrible internet jokes, about how much he knew about Formula 1 or motorsport in general, and that topic could go on forever. You had never imagined Kimi could talk that much.

The messages became so constant they turned into… normal. So normal that you forgot to ask how he had gotten your number, considering you had never given it to him.

Everything had gone completely off script, assuming there had ever been a script to begin with. So far removed from anything you had imagined that, on a random day in the middle of January, you somehow found yourself at his family’s house.

Because he wanted to show you his new helmet. The one he would wear for the entire racing season.

He had actually come back to town just for that.

Ah! You said house? No, no, no. Bedroom. You ended up in his bedroom.

“Wait here, I’ll grab it!” he said, already heading toward the closet.

And you waited, sitting on the bed.

During the three minutes Kimi took to grab the helmet and bring it back to you, you had enough time to look around and understand a little more about him. First, you needed to calm your racing heartbeat and the slight tremor in your hands. Then you noticed all the motorsport posters — and basketball?! — on his walls. There were some books too. Everything was organized in a way that suggested no one really lived there for long.

You knew Kimi didn’t actually live there anymore — he had his own apartment now, or so your sister had said. Somewhere else.

Kimi came back carrying the helmet inside a black case, holding it carefully with both hands. You had never seen a Formula 1 helmet in person before, so you hadn’t realized it was that big.

“Are you ready? I haven’t opened it yet. I don’t even know how it turned out,” he said, placing it on the bed as you stood up.

He hadn’t seen it yet? You frowned.

“Okay… show me,” you said, stepping closer. “I’ve never actually seen one before. It's my first time.”

“Hm, is it?” he asked, looking at you thoughtfully. “Alright. I’ll be gentle. No need to worry. It doesn’t hurt.”

Wait.

You blinked.

Was he saying what you thought he was saying?

The corner of his mouth twitched, like he was barely holding back a laugh, and you immediately covered your face with both hands.

“Oh my God,” you groaned. “You are such a boy. Just open it already!”

And Kimi was laughing. Really laughing. Until he wasn’t anymore, and all that remained was a cheeky grin. He walked back to the bed and unzipped the helmet case.

“You got all flustered. The way your neck turns red when you’re embarrassed is really cute,” he said casually, taking the helmet out of its cover.

Your heart skipped a beat. Your brain didn’t quite manage to process his words, looping instead on a single thought — compliment, compliment, compliment. Much to Kimi’s obvious delight, you turned even redder. Your hands suddenly unsure of where to exist, and for one terrifying second, you forgot entirely how conversations were supposed to work.

Apparently, this was going to be a recurring problem.

You went quiet, didn’t answer, and honestly wouldn’t have been able to. If Kimi noticed, if he had been expecting a response, he didn’t show it. In fact, he picked up the helmet to examine it, now genuinely focused on the object. He turned it from side to side, running his hand along the inside to test the padding before lifting it over his head to look inside it.

“What do you think?” he asked, holding it out to you.

Stepping closer, you took the helmet carefully into your hands. The first thing you noticed was the weight of it. Heavier than you had expected, solid in a way that immediately made you adjust your grip.

You glanced up at Kimi instinctively, as if searching for confirmation that this was normal. Your eyes landed on his neck. Very… different… from a normal neck.

Right.

Neck training.

Mandatory.

Just a neck. But bigger. Nothing unusual.

That long voice message he had once sent you about G-forces. You knew about it, of course.

You swallowed and forced your attention back to the colors, and there were many. A very colorful helmet. Very Kimi.

“Doesn’t this one have stars?” you asked.

He tilted his head to the side.

“Stars?”

“Yeah, stars. Like those on last year’s helmet.”

Kimi raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. You looked up at him, confused.

“You know what my helmet looked like last year?”

Oh. Oops. You had just revealed that you knew an extremely niche detail about an object he used exclusively for work. Haha. So funny. You were very tempted to put the helmet you were holding straight onto your own head and disappear inside it forever, but you didn’t get the chance, because Kimi gently took it from your hands.

“You’re going to help me put it on,” he said.

Wait, what? A sudden flutter settled in your stomach.

“You don’t know how to put it on by yourself?” you asked, instinctively hiding your hands behind your back.

Kimi shrugged and pushed his hair back from his forehead with his free hand.

“I don’t have a balaclava. It’s harder,” he said, as if that explained everything, which it absolutely didn’t. His eyes drifted back to yours, like he couldn’t quite understand what was holding you back.

He adjusted his grip on the helmet and waited.

“Hm… you’re not coming over here?”

“Over there?” you repeated, still rooted to the spot.

Kimi tilted his head, a hint of amusement tugging at his mouth.

“Unless you have magical powers I don’t know about, I think you’ll need to stand a little closer if you’re going to help me adjust the helmet.”

“Right. Okay. I’m coming over,” you said.

“Okay.”

You took a step toward him. Kimi wiggled both eyebrows, a mischievous smile spreading across his lips. You rolled your eyes, glanced away, and threatened to take a step back. He clicked his tongue.

“The three longest steps I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Your arms stayed relaxed at your sides as you looked back at him.

“Could you put the helmet on so I can adjust it, please? You’re talking too much.”

Kimi let out a quiet laugh but lifted the helmet anyway, lowering it carefully over his head before looking back at you through the visor opening.

“You’re very bossy.”

You stepped closer, raising your hands hesitantly toward the sides of the helmet.

“I thought you wanted me to adjust your helmet.”

He tilted his head slightly so you could reach better, but instead of answering right away, his gaze lingered on your face, far too amused for someone supposedly focused on racing equipment.

“Oh, no,” he said softly, his voice muffled behind the helmet. “I just wanted you closer.”

Fuck.

Once again, there were no words in the world that could fully describe what had just happened. You were starting to lose all dignity at an alarming rate. You blinked once, twice, your gaze slipping away from his, even knowing Kimi was still watching you, dropping instead to focus on fastening the helmet strap beneath his chin. Without the balaclava, your fingers brushed softly against his skin.

When that happened, Kimi closed his eyes.

“Done?” he asked, voice low.

“Yes,” you agreed, taking a step back.

Kimi lifted a hand to close the visor and tilted his head slightly, testing the fit. Then he took a step back and turned toward you. Even with his eyes hidden behind the dark visor, you had the distinct feeling he was looking right at you.

“Is it good?”

At one moment, your eyes were on the helmet. You really wanted to say it was beautiful, that you loved it — the colors were vivid and cool. But your eyes had a habit of betraying you, and now they drifted slightly downward… his neck again… his shoulders… the movement of his arm as he lifted his hand to test the tightness of the strap. And his hands themselves. You’d already mentioned the hands, hadn’t you? The rings around his fingers and… well. Yes.

You cleared your throat.

“It looks good,” you managed, swallowing right after.

For one brief moment longer, the two of you stayed like that: the helmet visor lowered, Kimi standing still, and you not quite sure what to do with your own hands. The silence stretched just a little too long, your heartbeat suddenly loud in your ears. You tucked your hair behind your ear, glancing around the room as if searching for something to anchor yourself to — and your bag on the bed became the perfect excuse. You stepped toward it, grateful for the movement. When you looked back at Kimi, he was finishing taking off the helmet, unsuccessfully trying to fix his hair with one hand while holding it with the other.

“Are you leaving already?” he asked, setting the helmet carefully inside its case as he spoke.

“Yeah, I… have to help my mum with a few things.” You shifted the strap of your bag on your shoulder. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t entirely the truth either.

Kimi watched you, his gaze steady enough to make you suddenly aware of yourself. You straightened your posture without meaning to. His hair was a mess, his face slightly flushed from the helmet.

“I’m traveling tonight,” he said suddenly, glancing down as he adjusted the zipper of the case before looking back at you.

“I thought you were staying there until testing started,” you replied, fingers absently brushing the pendant at your neck.

“I was. I am.” He hesitated, one hand resting on top of the helmet case. “But I wanted to come here to see the helmet at home.” A small pause followed as his thumb traced the edge of the case. “I chose the details, so it felt fair that the first time I put it on would be somewhere important.”

For someone who had worn special helmets so many times before, he seemed to consider this new one something particularly meaningful. You still hadn’t decided why that was.

Your gazes met again, and you became fully aware of the soft shiver that ran down your spine. At last, Kimi let the helmet rest and stepped away from it, moving closer to you.

“I guess this is a goodbye, then. For now.” He said, cutting through the growing tension that had nearly become tangible. But there was something hopeful in the way he looked at you. “I’ll be back soon and, well, you can watch me through the pre-season testing cameras if you want.”

A little breathless, you nodded, and a second later remembered to smile.

“Yeah, okay. I will.” you replied, trying to match his enthusiasm.

Kimi let out a laugh, light and melodic, and then did something you would have never, not in a million years, imagined would ever happen to you: he lifted his arms, closed the distance between you, and pulled you into a tight hug, as if you were close friends who had known each other for years and not… Andrea Kimi Antonelli and, well, you.

Your face had never felt so warm before, so close to being mistaken for a fever. When you hugged him back, uncertain, trembling, hesitant, he destroyed whatever remained of your sanity:

“Thanks for coming. I’ll text you when I land.” as if it were unthinkable that you wouldn’t be informed of his safe arrival in another country.

You weren’t entirely sure how you made it to the front door. All you knew was that your heart was beating so loudly it could probably have been heard from the other side of the city.

That night, while Kimi was crossing continents, you stayed home, reading a book in bed, trying to decide whether you should ask your mum to take you to a doctor just to make sure you weren’t experiencing some kind of delusion or if you should look for someone specialized in the supernatural to confirm you hadn’t accidentally slipped into a parallel reality.

You knew there were plenty of movies like that.

There was that one… 16 Wishes, right? The one with Debby Ryan, where her character receives a box of candles on her sixteenth birthday that grant the wishes she had written in a letter as a child. Maybe that was what had happened to you, just by accident.

You set the book aside and threw yourself onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling. For a long moment, you simply lay there, stretched out and thoughtful, thinking that after spending so long liking a boy from afar, hearing him say sweet things to you should have felt like a dream coming true. Especially when the boy in question was him.

So why couldn’t you fully sink into the idea that someone like Kimi Antonelli was deliberately flirting with you because something about you had caught his attention?

The thought made you laugh.

You knew the kind of girls he was surrounded by. Not at school, outside of it. The kind of girls he had access to, the kind of girls other drivers dated. Beautiful women, models, actresses, famous singers. They all wanted to be with guys like them. So it was better to be realistic, because if Kimi Antonelli hadn’t been within the realm of possibility back when he was just a little boy dreaming of becoming a kart driver, how could he possibly be now?

But all of that, that entire spiral of thoughts, was a cliché too. Everything about this whole story felt impossibly unreal anyway.

You let out a childish little whine, pretending to cry as you rolled onto your stomach, burying your face in the pillow.

You remembered his scent.

That scent. God.

At the time, everything had felt so overwhelming that you hadn’t stopped to notice it properly, but your brain had kept it anyway. Even through the frenzy, you could still remember the smell of his cologne: something so unmistakably Kimi that you couldn’t even begin to describe its notes.

Oh, no. I just wanted you closer. Handsome, smug bastard. Pulling off something that smooth without a hint of shame. And you fell for it. Of course you did. Honestly, you’d fall for it again and again and again. He should stop saying things like that. Stop doing things like that.

But really, the most pathetic part of this entire situation was you treating it as if it meant more than it did. Honestly, what an exaggeration. Kimi flirted as naturally as he breathed, and now, as he had already made clear at Christmas, you were family.

Except he still hadn’t seen the finished helmet and had flown all the way there to see it with you. In a place that mattered.

And he hadn’t even needed to be there. It was the middle of his work week. Kimi had made the trip just to spend a single day in his hometown to see the helmet somewhere important, when he could, and probably should, have seen it with his teammate and the staff who would actually help him put it on properly, balaclava and all.

You switched off the bedside lamp and slipped beneath the covers as if you were trying to escape your own thoughts. It felt dangerous. Like a ritual, you whispered, stop thinking, stop thinking, stop thinking, and finally closed your eyes.

Falling asleep that night wasn’t difficult. What was difficult was stopping your brain from deciding to dream about WAGs and magazine covers where you were holding hands with your handsome driver boyfriend.

You liked the dream, of course. You would never admit that out loud.

Kimi really did send a message saying everything was fine. Except he was late. He texted two hours after landing and apologized for it.

Apologized. Right.

He said his mum had been worried sick and that he’d had to send her a photo with his engineer just to prove he was alive. Oh, yes he’d been late texting her too. Which, in all the unnecessary explanations he insisted on giving, basically meant he had texted you right after replying to his own mother.

You knew how much Kimi adored her.

You were trying not to let that go to your head.

The following days passed silently. You didn’t hear from Kimi as often because he had a lot to do: interviews, team videos to film, birthdays coming up that required him to record something thoughtful, photoshoots, and pre-season preparations in general. And you were busy in your own way too. University was coming up. You had to study twice as hard if you wanted to get into that specific one you had dreamed about since you were very young.

But he still showed up.

Kimi was there — in the messages you read a little too late because of the time difference, in the photos of odd little things he found around the paddock, in the selfies he sent covered in silly filters. And you sent things back too.

The bubble grew so comfortable that, before you realized it, you had settled into it.

With time, he became just… Kimi. Even from the other side of the world. Even knowing he was there, racing in one of the most expensive sports on the planet.

He called you two weeks later.

You were still asleep when you heard your phone ringing. Annoyed, you reached out to grab it and bring it closer to your face to see who could possibly be calling. And then you saw his name on the screen. You almost declined it. If it had been anyone else, you probably would have.

But you answered.

It was a video call. Kimi appeared in all his effortlessly beautiful glory, Mercedes cap on and that constant smile that seemed permanently etched onto his face. You, however, had your camera turned off — and he noticed immediately.

“Ehi, buongiorno! What is happening? Where are you? Why is the camera off?”

You let out an irritated groan.

“I don’t want to talk.”

“My God, your voice… I woke you up?” Kimi asked, his voice softening instantly.

“What do you think?” you muttered.

Kimi let out a laugh and glanced upward, away from the camera, answering someone nearby. It didn’t take more than two seconds before his attention returned to you.

“Okay, doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m about to get in the car for testing, and if I don’t see your face now, I’ll have very bad luck and the car will crash. The fans will know it was your fault.”

“They will? You’re going to tell them?” you asked.

He looked momentarily surprised by your answer. A good kind of surprised.

“You get quite mouthy when the camera’s off, don’t you?” he said, amused. “Let’s see if that attitude survives once I actually see your face. Come on.”

You rubbed your face and sat up in bed, yawning audibly. It took you a moment to fully wake up, running a hand through your hair until it looked at least somewhat presentable.

“You’re very annoying,” you said. A lie, of course.

He dragged his tongue slowly across his lips and nodded in approval. With a long sigh, you finally switched the camera on.

“There she is.” he said, his face lighting up at the sight of you. “I really did wake you up, look at you. Che carina.”

Your face turned red, and you buried it against the pillow beside you. Kimi burst out laughing. He was clearly having far too much fun with your reactions.

“Stop,” you said.

“Stop what?”

“That.”

“I’m literally walking toward the Mercedes motorhome. I can’t stop.”

“Very funny. You know exactly what you’re doing.”

You looked back at his face, brushing the strands of hair away from your eyes only to be met with his smile again. You were starting to suspect this call didn’t actually have any real reason to be happening.

Your stomach flipped.

“Is Kimi talking to someone?” you heard a strong British accent ask from somewhere behind him — somewhere you couldn’t see.

He shot a quick glance toward the voice, but before he could stop whoever it was from approaching, an arm wrapped around Kimi’s shoulders and George Russell’s face suddenly appeared on screen, curious and openly amused.

“Oh! It’s a girl!” he announced. Not to the camera, but to the nearby team members. Then he turned back to Kimi, who quickly lowered the phone, leaving you staring at nothing but a section of his T-shirt. “Your girlfriend?”

“Mate, give me a second. We’ll talk later,” Kimi replied, his tone noticeably different from the confident one you were used to hearing.

He sounded… shy.

“Aaaah, so it is your girlfriend,” George teased.

“She’s not my girlfriend…” Kimi said, uncertainty slipping into his voice.

“Yet,” the voice called from farther away, as if George had already walked off.

The tips of your ears burned red when Kimi lifted the phone back toward his face. And it wasn’t just your ears that were red: Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s entire face was flushed too.

He cleared his throat.

“Sorry about him.”

“Oh, it’s okay.”

“He’s an idiot.”

You laughed.

“He seems nice, though.”

Kimi smiled.

“He is. He just likes to mess with people.”

Your laughter faded into a small smile, almost matching his. Then Kimi glanced away from the phone, finally coming to a stop, clicking his tongue softly.

“I should go. Duty calls.” His attention drifted back to the screen. “Are you going back to sleep?”

You shrugged, letting out a fake sigh of annoyance.

“I don’t know. Someone kind of ruined my peaceful morning.”

“Ah, mi dispiace.” He didn’t sound sorry at all.

“Bye, Kimi,” you said, biting your lower lip to hold back your smile.

He looked at the screen for a second longer.

“Bye, carina,” Kimi said, then ended the call, leaving you with every butterfly in the world fluttering in your stomach.

Five minutes later, he sent another message:

Ah! I forgot to tell you. You and your sister need to stop by my mum’s house later to sort something out for the wedding. I told her I was going to call you, and she asked me to let you know.

You smiled to yourself in your room, your phone resting on your chest, because he had actually had a perfectly legitimate reason to call you and had simply forgotten.

Cute. Cute. Cute. Cute. Ugh, cute.

Somehow, in a way completely beyond your understanding, Kimi had managed to get time off from pre-season testing with only two weeks left before the first Grand Prix of the year just to attend his cousin’s wedding.

Before, you hadn’t realized what that truly meant. Now you did. For a Formula 1 driver, days reserved for family were almost a luxury, yet Kimi talked about it as if it had taken no effort at all to convince the people in the garage — as if being there had always been the obvious choice.

It was incredible.

You didn’t saw him when he arrived, even though you knew exactly when it happened because he had told you. You knew he was having a serious problem with his tie and that “you would be a great help in solving this situation, but he wasn’t going to force anything because you were busy being the bride’s sister” — his words. You knew when he made it to the reception, and just how handsome he looked, because he sent you a photo that nearly made you lose track of all your responsibilities that afternoon.

Only fifteen minutes before leaving the room where your sister was finishing getting ready for the best day of her life did you finally feel panic threaten to swallow you whole.

You stopped. Just… stopped. Your breathing came out uneven, your body refusing to respond the way it should. The anxiety was strong enough to make your stomach ache.

Through the mirror, your sister noticed you. She was already ready — spectacular, so beautiful you wouldn’t even know where to begin describing her — and definitely the person who actually had every reason to be nervous. And she was. Still, the moment she saw the slight tremor in your body, she stood up to help you.

“What is it, shorty?” she asked, cupping your face gently between her perfectly done hands.

Your eyes refocused and met hers.

“I think he’s waiting for me downstairs,” you admitted, biting the inside of your cheek.

The smile she gave you was so sweet it nearly gave you a sugar rush. Her laugh was just as soft, like she couldn’t quite believe that was your problem.

“You’re more nervous than I am, you know that? And it’s my wedding.” She sighed, her fingers brushing affectionately along the side of your face before settling on your shoulders. “Go talk to him before the ceremony starts. Kimi’s just a silly boy. I’ve seen him throw socks at the man I’m about to marry, a grown adult. They’re all ridiculous. Don’t let yourself be intimidated by those idiots.”

You let out a nervous laugh and lifted your hand to touch hers. The smile lingered as you thought about what your sister had said, turning her words over in your mind. Slowly, the smile faded, a small crease forming between your brows as you clearly drifted into thought. The sudden change made your sister’s expression shift into concern.

“What if he hugs me?” you asked, almost in a frightened whisper, as if that alone were something dangerous, something forbidden.

Her expression dropped instantly before she rolled her eyes. The hands resting on your shoulders turned purposeful as she spun you around and started pushing you toward the door. You let out a startled, “Wait! Hey!” but she had already grabbed the handle and pulled it open.

“You’re going to do me a favor and go talk to that boy right now! I need my own panic moment in peace. Go!”

Before you could protest, the door closed in front you with a soft click.

“She’s quite intense, isn’t she?” he said from behind, his voice lightly amused, a hint of laughter tucked into the words.

Oh, no. No. No. Oh my God, no.

You froze, still standing there with your back turned to Kimi.

“How much… um, how much of that conversation did you hear?” you asked, your fists clenched at your sides.

Footsteps. Getting closer. Oh no.

“That last part. The one suggesting there’s a boy you didn’t want to talk to… was that me?”

His voice was so close now. You could feel his presence behind you.

“No. It wasn’t you,” you answered quietly.

“Oh. So there’s another guy I should be worried about, then.”

“No! I mean… no…” You hurried to correct yourself, words tangling together. “It was you. Just… not like that.”

You didn’t see it, but the corner of his mouth curved into an amused smile.

Kimi took another step closer. Close enough now that you could feel the warmth of him at your back. Close enough that your heart felt one beat away from escaping your chest altogether.

“How was it, then?” he asked, more quietly.

You swallowed hard but didn’t answer. Kimi bit his lower lip, thoughtful for a moment, as if weighing a decision, and then he made up his mind. He placed his hands gently at your waist, and you felt electricity rush from your head all the way down to your feet.

“Can I turn you around?” he asked softly. “I want to see you. Your dress.”

You let out a shaky breath, worrying the skin of your upper lip between your teeth before finally nodding.

His fingers tightened slightly at your waist, and you instinctively closed your eyes. Slowly, carefully, Kimi turned you until you were facing him.

Your eyes stayed shut.

He laughed, a boyish sound, tipping his head back for a second in disbelief.

“You’re really not going to look at me?”

“No…”

“That hurts my feelings,” he said lightly. “Do you think I’m ugly?”

“No! No—”

A strand of hair had fallen across your face; he reached up and gently brushed it away from your eyes, his fingers lingering for just a moment longer than necessary.

“Then open your eyes,” he murmured. “Look at me.”

Slowly, you did.

Your knees nearly gave out.

Oh my God, he was beautiful. Truly, unfairly beautiful. His smile, his eyes, the softness of his cheeks. Those stupid eyebrows lifting again just to tease you.

You dropped your gaze almost immediately, but his hand moved to your chin, guiding your face back up until your eyes met his again.

“You’re torturing me,” you whispered.

“Oh, so you do think I’m ugly,” he said, the smile never leaving his face.

“Shut up.”

He laughed softly.

Then silence fell, charged, impossibly fragile as the two of you simply looked at each other.

His gaze flickered briefly to your lips before returning to your eyes.

“I could kiss you right now,” he said quietly.

Your eyes widened.

A beat passed.

“But I won’t.”

You weren’t sure whether you felt relieved or completely, hopelessly doomed — and he noticed.

His hand slipped away from your waist only to find yours instead, his fingers threading gently through yours.

“At some point tonight,” he said, “I’m going to kiss you. And it’ll be a surprise. You won’t see it coming.”

Still holding your hand, he stepped back slightly. His gaze traveled slowly from your head to your feet, and suddenly you became painfully aware of everything: the way you were standing, your dress, your hands, your breathing.

But he looked… awestruck.

Kimi drew in a deep breath and let out a quiet hiss.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “That’s unfair.”

Then he tugged you gently toward the exit.

The wedding was ruined.

Not properly, of course. Everything unfolded exactly as it should: your sister was still the most beautiful woman in the room, and you cried appropriately (excessively, actually) when she finally walked down the aisle. The groom looked at her as if she were the only woman in the universe, exactly as he should, and the ceremony was beautiful.

While you stood at the front, Kimi was beside you, both of you witnessing one of the most important moments in their lives. He looked genuinely moved, repeatedly lifting a finger to his eyes to brush away falling tears, far more discreetly than you.

When it was over, your sister raised the bouquet for photos and was quickly pulled into a kiss that bordered on excessive. Everyone applauded, celebrated, and embraced one another — perfection. It was the most beautiful wedding you had ever attended.

And it would have remained perfect, just as it had been planned from the very beginning, if not for one small interruption: the memory of Kimi’s voice. At some point tonight I’m going to kiss you. And it’ll be a surprise. You won’t see it coming. The words lingered over every quiet moment, impossible to ignore — and having him standing right beside you did nothing to calm the feeling.

Before the two of you walked down to join the reception, you lifted your eyes only to find his already fixed on you. Warmth rushed to your cheeks. He smiled soft, knowing and headed downstairs ahead of you.

The dance began, and you stood beside a pillar with a stolen little dessert in hand, watching the newlyweds spin across the dance floor. Your sister looked so genuinely happy that you couldn’t help the soft smile resting on your face, your head tilted slightly to the side as you watched her.

She deserved to be loved like that — completely, devotedly, breathtakingly. Nothing could have made you happier than seeing her that way.

The music drifted softly through the room, warm and golden, wrapping itself around laughter, clinking glasses, and conversations that overlapped into a comfortable blur. For a moment, you allowed yourself to simply exist there — unnoticed, safe behind the pillar, watching love unfold from a distance.

You took another bite of the dessert, barely tasting it.

At some point tonight.

You exhaled slowly through your nose, eyes still fixed on your sister as she laughed mid-spin, her dress catching the light with every turn.

Focus. This isn’t about you. This is her day.

You cleared your throat, as if that alone could convince you that you were fully present, appreciating what you were supposed to be appreciating: the beautiful solemnity of witnessing a love so strong it had to be made official, announced to the world.

You liked weddings. A lot. You wanted to get married someday too. You just didn’t know when that would happen, obviously — especially considering you didn’t even have a boyfriend who could… you know… propose… or—

Your train of thought derailed completely.

Because somehow, your traitorous brain teamed up with your equally traitorous eyes, and together they landed on Kimi across the reception, laughing with his cousins on the other side of the room.

Kimi stood in the middle of a conversation he seemed deeply invested in. There were animated hand gestures, frequent nodding, a lot of “yeah, yeah, yeah” slipping into the discussion. You could tell he genuinely liked the people around him.

None of that stopped you from noticing other things.

His tie was slightly crooked, apparently still losing its battle. The subtle tension along his jaw whenever he clearly wanted to say something but was politely waiting for the other person to finish. And his eyes.

Which shifted focus the very next second.

Toward you.

When your gazes met, his expression changed instantly — as if he had been waiting for you to notice him. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

Not teasing.

Not smug.

Just… fond.

Your stomach flipped so suddenly you nearly dropped the dessert in your hand. When you lifted your eyes to find him again, Kimi was no longer there.

Oh, no. Oh, no. No.

Your gaze swept across the room, searching instinctively, as if spotting him first might somehow prepare you for whatever he was about to do. Without thinking, you set your plate onto a passing waiter’s tray and turned quickly to keep looking.

Thud.

Your hands collided with something solid — a firm wall of very well-trained muscle belonging unmistakably to driver number twelve. Perfect timing. Almost suspiciously perfect.

Your shoulders pulled inward as you instinctively stepped back, just one step.

But Kimi’s hand closed gently around your elbow before you could go any farther.

“I want to show you something,” he said simply.

“You do? What is it?” you asked, still trying to steady your breathing.

“The maze out back. The garden.”

You blinked. “You want to take me to the maze? Just you and me?”

He laughed softly, like the answer was obvious.

“That’s the idea.”

Oh, no.

You drew in a slow breath, suddenly very aware of how close he was standing.

“You look scared,” he observed, amusement slipping gently into his voice.

“Me? Scared?” you said, a little too loudly. “No. Uh-uh. We should absolutely go to this… this… maze. Just you and me.”

He narrowed his eyes, clearly seconds away from laughing, his teeth catching his lower lip as he tried, and failed, to look serious.

Smug idiot.

Then he took your hand.

Smug. Idiot.

“You’re shaking a little,” he said, tilting his head, thumb brushing lightly over your fingers. “Cold?”

Smug. Idiot. He knew exactly what it was.

“Mm-hmm,” you murmured, barely parting your lips. Words were failing you at the moment.

Oh, God. He was leading you through the crowd, past people giving you that look — the unmistakable one that said they knew exactly what was going on and were fully rooting for it.

“Give me a minute,” he said casually. “I’ll warm you up. We just need somewhere a bit more private.”

Excuse me?! Your grip tightened around his hand, and Kimi laughed immediately.

“Wow, that came out terrible,” he said. “I meant my suit jacket. I’m lending it to you. I swear I’m normal.”

You took a deep breath. A very deep breath. This was actually happening. Andrea Kimi Antonelli was leading you by the hand toward the maze, his intentions suspiciously ambiguous, while your heart felt so tightly squeezed it almost hurt.

You hadn’t known it was possible to be this nervous.

As you passed beneath the archway, your eyes followed the leaves overhead. You had walked through there earlier in the day with your sister, seen the place in daylight — but it felt completely different now. Not just because of the lighting, breathtaking under the night sky, or the stone sculptures that gave everything a faintly mystical atmosphere, but because of the situation. Because of what the moment meant.

Kimi guided you toward the bench. Before either of you sat down, he loosened his tie, slipping it off without looking at you — his gaze fixed on the entrance as if making sure no one would interrupt. Then he turned back to you, tucking the fabric neatly into his pocket.

He smiled.

You blinked.

Oh.

Suddenly, you remembered school. Every time you had sighed when he walked past you in the hallway. All those chaotic mornings when he entered the classroom with his friends — loud, unmistakably boys, always seconds away from announcing something ridiculous.

The corners of your notebooks with his name written at the top. The silly games you and your friends used to play — who are you going to be happy with forever? — and every time it landed on Andrea Kimi Antonelli, you clapped like it was the revelation of the year.

You used to watch him from afar. The boy on the rise. So untouchable. So handsome. So… so many things.

You swallowed hard.

Kimi noticed.

“Hey. What is it?” he asked gently, draping his suit jacket around your shoulders.

His scent was everywhere now, and you needed an extra second just to steady yourself through it. God, you liked that smell.

“I… was thinking,” you admitted.

“Oh no,” Kimi said playfully.

You laughed, and a half-smile tugged at his mouth in response.

Then you looked up at him again. He waited patiently, giving you his full attention, ready to hear whatever you were about to say.

“I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of getting my heart really, really broken.”

“Fair,” he said softly.

You hesitated, gathering courage you weren’t entirely sure you possessed.

“Because I’ve liked you for… for a very long time,” you said, your voice coming out small and fragile. “And if what we’re doing here is just… just this… you need to tell me.”

Your breathing felt uneven. Saying those words had taken everything out of you, and Kimi seemed to understand that. He watched you carefully, like someone choosing his next words with care.

“I don’t want it to be just this,” he said softly. “Really… I don’t.” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “I like you. A lot. I thought maybe I was being obvious, but… maybe not enough. And maybe I arrived a little late compared to you, but… I cannot stop thinking about it.”

His hand lifted, gently catching a single strand of your hair between his fingers, absentmindedly playing with it.

“But?” you asked, already bracing yourself.

Kimi shook his head.

“No but,” he said quietly. “It’s simple for me. I like what we have. I don’t want it to end. I don’t think I could just… go back to before.”

You swallowed.

“But you’ve seen my routine. You know being a driver comes with… things. And being the… girlfriend…” He cleared his throat, suddenly shy. “The girlfriend of a driver, she has to deal with… Well, it comes with things.”

You nodded and stepped closer, closing the distance between you.

“I think… we could try,” you said softly. “Not everything right now. But we can start.”

You looked up at him.

“Okay?”

Kimi lifted his gaze to meet yours. He didn’t answer, but his eyes moved slowly across your face, as if mapping every detail. You didn’t interrupt him — you simply watched, feeling the anxiety begin to creep back in.

And then his lips were on yours.

Just like that. Sudden.

You didn’t even register the moment Kimi leaned in to kiss you.

It didn’t last long. He pulled back just enough to look at you, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Okay,” he finally murmured. “I told you I’d catch you by surprise.”

You laughed. Silly boy. The warmth of his lips still lingered against yours.

He lifted his hands, gently cradling your face just to look at you again — that soft, boyish smile you’d already learned you were helpless against. And then… he wiggled both eyebrows.

“Stop doing that,” you said, sticking your tongue out at him as if your heart wasn’t currently dancing wildly inside your chest.

He rolled his eyes playfully and pulled you closer by your cheeks.

This time, when his lips met yours, his arms slipped around your waist, drawing you in — and you finally… gave in.

Your eyes closed.

So did his.

Your hand found the back of his shirt before you even realized it, fingers curling into the fabric as if you needed something solid to hold onto. He pulled you closer in response, arms tightening around you as the kiss deepened, gently guiding your head to tilt toward his.

Would it be cliché to say it felt like fireworks were going off above you?

“Do you hear that?” he murmured against your lips.

You opened your eyes — only to gasp softly when you saw fireworks bursting across the sky overhead, actual fireworks, bright and undeniable, not just something your overwhelmed heart had invented.

“Oh my God. I thought that was just in my head,” you admitted without thinking.

Kimi pulled a smug little pout.

“Am I really that good at kissing?”

You rolled your eyes, ready with a comeback, but he kissed you again between a laugh before you could say a word. A warm, tender kiss — full of affection and the quiet promise of a happily-ever-after that had once felt unreal in childhood but somehow now belonged to you.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli might one day be remembered as one of Formula One’s next great legends. But there, on an ordinary night wrapped inside an extraordinary day, he was just your boy.

MELBOURNE, MEDIA DAY (Australian GP) — 2026.

No one knew you were there yet. Not even him.

All you knew was that the past few days had been chaotic — managing to secure paddock access much later than you should have, with tickets nearly sold out, scrambling to find a hotel and a last-minute flight, and still having to adjust to the completely unhinged time zone of that country.

It was a lot.

Even so, on the morning of media day, you had already landed — and after only a few hours of sleep, you were in an Uber on your way to the circuit, your anxiety growing with every turn the car made.

You kept wondering what Kimi would say. Would he be surprised? Would he be annoyed? How were you even supposed to introduce yourself? Were you his friend? Someone he knew? Or… could you actually say what you really were?

Had anyone in the garage even heard about you yet?

You had absolutely no idea.

When you stepped out of the car and thanked the driver goodbye, your stomach very nearly filed an official complaint.

You knew he was in the cafeteria having lunch, and you also knew you’d have to get past security to reach the Mercedes facilities. That part scared you too, because if you weren’t welcomed there, a very real possibility, your entire surprise plan would fall apart on the spot.

Still, you made it through the turnstiles with your paddock pass and suddenly… you were there.

There was so much to take in. So many colors, so much movement: drivers walking past toward their motorhomes dressed in their team merch, others stopped for interviews, surrounded by journalists carefully kept at a distance by security. The place buzzed with energy, crowded and alive in a way that made everything feel bigger than you had imagined.

For a few seconds, you fidgeted with the strap of your bag, turning slowly in place as you looked around, completely lost. There were no signs pointing toward the cafeteria or the Mercedes area, but you figured you’d just keep searching.

That was the problem with doing things without a plan.

A security guard approached, clearly noticing your confusion, stopping at a polite distance.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

You blinked, startled, then quickly held up your access pass.

“I’m looking for the Mercedes facilities. I…” you said, glancing around uncertainly. “I’m… acquainted with Kimi Antonelli.”

Ah, yes. Very convincing. Excellent delivery. Truly flawless.

Of course, he looked at you suspiciously, one eyebrow lifting. Maybe you should show him the photos on your phone? Would he even believe them? With AI these days, you doubted it.

“Yeah, alright. Sure. This way,” he said, already gesturing for you to follow him in the opposite direction.

“Hey! I am telling the truth!” you protested, hurrying after him.

He didn’t even spare you another glance, simply continuing forward while making sure you stayed close behind him.

For nearly an hour, they left you waiting in the public paddock courtyard — without your phone, without your bag, completely alone while they carried out the standard security check. Apparently, showing up at the paddock with a specific driver’s name on your lips qualified as a crime of the highest order and had to be handled with maximum seriousness.

On one hand, you were oddly relieved it meant Kimi was safe. On the other, it was incredibly frustrating to stand there unable to send him even a single message to explain the mess you had somehow gotten yourself into. At last, you were pulled out of your momentary trance when you felt a light poke just behind your ear.

“I think you let them take this,” a familiar voice said right behind you, your bag swinging lightly in his hand.

With an enormous, inevitable smile, you jumped up from the bench and threw yourself into his arms. Kimi let out a warm, surprised laugh as he hugged you back, dropping your bag onto the table beside him.

“What are you doing here?!” he asked, pulling back just enough to cup your face in his hands, as if he needed to make sure you were actually real.

But you didn’t say anything. You were too busy looking down at him — at the team kit, at the sight of him standing there in his Mercedes colors, dizzy from that unmistakable scent you were no longer satisfied experiencing only through the sweatshirt you had stolen from him.

You hugged him again, hiding your face in the curve of his neck.

“You’re so handsome. This feels like a dream,” you murmured, and he laughed softly once more.

Kimi gently ran a hand through your hair, resting his head lightly against yours.

“I wanted to surprise you,” you admitted, “but security didn’t believe me. Not even when I answered your favorite sock color.”

“That’s a very strange question. What kind of interrogation was that?” he said, amused.

You laughed and pressed a quick kiss to his chin.

“Thank you for coming to get me.”

He pressed a soft kiss to your forehead before pulling back, lacing your fingers together and picking up your bag so he could carry it himself, slinging it over his shoulder.

“Always.”

“Now let’s get you somewhere actually decent. It’s ridiculously hot out here.” He glanced at you, already guiding you forward. “And after media day, I’m having a word with that security guy. Nobody leaves my girlfriend waiting.”

Girlfriend.

Okay.

Hehe.

Nobody, except Peter Bonnington.

Bono to everyone. Legend to you.

He sits down beside you during Thursday setup without preamble, like the two of you have been doing this for years, and you nearly spill your coffee directly onto your keyboard. The garage smells of hot rubber and carbon fiber and machine oil, and the noise is constant,  a low industrial hum layered beneath the sharp bite of pneumatic tools and rapid engineering conversations that flow in a language you've been studying your entire life but have never had the chance to speak out loud. You've been here four hours and you've already catalogued twelve things you've done wrong.

"Nervous?" Bono asks.

"Is it that obvious?"

"A little."

"A little?"

"You looked like you were considering a career change during the briefing."

Your face burns. You've been in Formula 1 for less than a day and you're already being read like a transparent piece of telemetry data. Bono chuckles a dry, measured sound that tells you he finds this mildly amusing and also entirely unsurprising and nudges his laptop toward you. The screen shows a sector trace, smooth curves and sharp peaks in competing colours.

"Look at Sector Two," he says.

You blink. "What?"

"Telemetry. Go on, then."

"You're trusting me with that?"

He raises an eyebrow with the patience of a man who has spent a career explaining complex things to people who claim they don't understand when what they really mean is that they're afraid to try. "You're here to learn, aren't you?"

And just like that with the garage roaring around you and your hands still trembling slightly from the shock of actually being here everything changes.

The months that follow are the hardest and most exhilarating of your life.

Bono teaches you everything. Not in a linear, textbook way, but in the way that people who truly love their work teach— through observation, through question, through the kind of patient repetition that doesn't feel like patience because he genuinely enjoys the conversation. He explains how tire degradation reads differently across temperature ranges, how a strategy call made fifteen laps out requires accounting for variables that haven't happened yet, how calm and decisiveness during a safety car period are not opposites but the same thing. He walks you through radio protocols and debriefs, through the language of understeering entry and late braking points, through the way a lap time tells a complete story if you know how to listen.

Some nights the two of you are the last ones left in the engineering office. The rest of the building has gone dark and quiet, and you sit surrounded by the glow of multiple monitors while Bono drinks terrible coffee and you take notes until your hand cramps. The traces on the screens become familiar. The data stops looking like noise and starts looking like a conversation.

"You know," Bono says one evening, leaning back in his chair and studying a report you've written while you hover somewhere between exhaustion and pride, "you're genuinely good at this."

You nearly drop your pen. "Really?"

"Really." He says it without ceremony, the way he delivers most important things, and somehow that makes it more powerful, not less.

The pride that blooms in your chest after that stays there for days.

Not everyone is Bono, though. Around the paddock, a nickname takes hold. Not unkindly just casually, the way paddock shorthand always works, but it follows you from Barcelona to Baku to Suzuka like a shadow you can't shake.

Bono's intern. His assistant. His shadow.

You hear it in the hospitality unit. You hear it from mechanics who don't mean anything by it. You hear it from journalists who've jotted it in some notebook as a quick identifier, a way to place you without having to learn your name. And every time, something twists in your chest, a small, sharp thing. Because you don't want to be anyone's shadow. You want to be an engineer. A real one. Someone who belongs here because of what she can do, not because of who vouched for her.

So you work harder. Earlier mornings, later nights, extra analysis reports that nobody asked for but that you produce anyway because the only way to earn a reputation in Formula 1 is to accumulate evidence of competence. You review data other people have already reviewed and look for things they might have missed. You stay late when your body is begging you to sleep. You push, and push, and push, and tell yourself that one day someone will look at your work and not see Bono's shadow. They will see just you.

You're so focused on proving yourself that you almost don't notice the pattern forming.

You first meet Kimi Antonelli properly on a Friday afternoon after practice, though meeting implies intention, and what actually happens is a collision.

You're carrying three laptops, a stack of papers, and the last remnants of your dignity when you walk directly into him as he rounds a corridor corner. The papers explode outward in a spectacular arc. They settle across the floor in a radius that can only be described as humiliating. You immediately drop to your knees to collect them, face already burning.

"Oh God. I'm so sorry."

"No, that was my fault." He's crouching too, reaching for the nearest sheet. His voice is calm, not the practiced calm of someone performing composure, but the natural calm of someone who doesn't experience most situations as urgent. His hands find the same page yours do. Your fingers bump. Both of you freeze.

An awkward half-second of mutual withdrawal.

"Sorry."

"Sorry."

The simultaneous response makes you laugh before you can help it a short, surprised sound that you immediately try to rein in, because you're talking to Mercedes' rookie driver and you've just scattered your paperwork across his feet. But Kimi's grin appears instantly, wide and unguarded in a way that makes him look less like a Formula 1 driver and more like a nineteen-year-old who's just walked into someone in a corridor.

He collects a few more sheets and holds them out to you.

"I'm Kimi."

"I know."

The words leave your mouth before you can intercept them. His smile widens.

"Good," he says, like that's exactly the right answer, and goes back to the garage.

After that, he keeps appearing.

At first you assume it's coincidence. You're both based in the same paddock, working for the same team; of course your paths cross. Then you start noticing patterns. Kimi suddenly needs to visit engineering meetings he has no obvious reason to attend. Needs clarification on telemetry data from Bono and it’s always delivered via the route that passes your desk. Needs a second coffee, and then somehow needs a third coffee, and both times ends up leaning against the workstation beside yours. You give him a look the fourth time he materialises with a mug in hand.

"You're here a lot."

He looks impressively innocent for someone who clearly isn't. "I work here."

"You drive the car."

"Still counts."

You narrow your eyes. He grins, entirely unconcerned, and steals the energy drink sitting beside your keyboard.

Friendship grows the way important things usually do: without ceremony, without declaration, simply one small thing after another until you turn around and find it's become something substantial. Shared coffees in the hospitality unit before sessions, the ones where neither of you needs to fill the quiet because the quiet is already comfortable. Complaints about jet lag in airport terminals where you're both too tired to be interesting. Jokes on the team radio that Bono tolerates with visible restraint.

One weekend in Singapore, Kimi steals your energy drink.

The next weekend in Austin, you hide every biscuit in the team catering area. He spends forty minutes conducting a methodical search of the hospitality unit while you watch from behind a laptop and say nothing. Bono solves the mystery in approximately six seconds.

"You two are exhausting."

"I didn't do anything," Kimi says.

Bono looks at you. You look back with perfect composure. Kimi looks between the two of you and points.

"It was her."

"Circumstantial," you say pleasantly, and Kimi makes a noise of profound injustice.

Bono sighs in a way that suggests he's reconsidering every professional choice that led him to this moment.

In Belgium, the rain comes down so hard that the race is delayed for hours. The paddock becomes strangely still not quiet exactly, Formula 1 never quite manages quiet, but slower, the usual urgency replaced by something that resembles waiting. You and Kimi end up in the Mercedes hospitality unit, watching water sheet down the windows. The conversation drifts. From strategy to family to the places you've each spent the most time in the world, and then somehow to the question that earns you a look.

"What did you want to be when you were little?"

"Exactly this," you say. "Motorsport engineer. That was always the plan."

He laughs. Not unkindly just more surprised. "Seriously? You never went through a phase wanting to be something else? Astronaut, footballer, anything?"

"Not really."

"What kind of child decides on motorsport engineering?"

"The weird kind."

He studies you for a moment. The rain makes the windows run with silver light, and outside the paddock staff are moving quickly between units under umbrellas, radio chatter crackles from somewhere, someone is arguing about tire compounds. But inside this space the conversation feels separate from all of it, a small warm pocket of normalcy in the machinery of the season.

"I think that's pretty cool," Kimi says.

Something in your stomach does something it shouldn't. You ignore it with the focused determination you normally reserve for sector analysis.

The first time Kimi sees you crack happens in Monza.

A strategy review. One of the senior engineers who is a man with fifteen years on you who treats meetings like territories to be defended, dismisses your analysis mid-sentence. Doesn't look at the data. Doesn't engage with the methodology. Simply talks over you the way some people have been talking over people like you for decades, smooth and habitual and utterly unconscious of what it costs the person on the receiving end. The meeting moves on. The discussion continues. You stay seated and keep your face neutral and later, when you're alone in the garage reviewing telemetry with your headset around your neck and the engineers mostly gone home, you're still trying to convince yourself it doesn't matter.

It matters. You know it matters. The anger has nowhere to go.

"Hey."

Kimi appears in the garage doorway the way he always does quietly, without announcement, like he was just passing and happened to notice the light. You don't look up.

"Hi."

"You're upset."

"I'm fine."

"Liar."

You look at him then, because the word is delivered too gently to ignore. He's leaning against the wall with his arms loose at his sides, watching you with an expression that you've come to understand means he's going to wait you out. Kimi is constitutionally patient in a way that should be annoying and somehow isn't.

"It's stupid," you say.

"Tell me anyway."

So you do. The whole thing  the meeting, the dismissal, the specific way the engineer had looked directly through your data as if the numbers hadn't come from a person who'd spent the previous night verifying them three times. The constant calculation of how much harder you have to work to be taken half as seriously. The fear that lives underneath all of it, the quiet background hum of what if I'm only here because Bono said so.

When you finish there's silence. Not uncomfortable because Kimi never seems to find silence uncomfortable. He thinks before he speaks, which is such a rare quality in the paddock that you noticed it about him weeks ago.

"They're wrong," he says finally.

You laugh, short and bitter. "You don't know that."

"I do."

"How?"

"Because I've watched you." He says it simply, without drama, as if it's a statement of fact no different from a lap time. "I see how many hours you put in. I see the way you approach problems. I see how much you care about getting it right." A pause, then quieter: "Someone who's only here because of someone else doesn't work the way you work."

Your throat tightens. You look back at the screen.

"Thank you," you manage.

He nods once, like it was obvious, and sits down at the workstation beside yours to wait until you're ready to leave. Neither of you speaks again for twenty minutes. Neither of you needs to.

That night, lying in your hotel room in the dark with the air conditioning making a sound like white noise, you replay the conversation. Again. And again. And again, until you make yourself stop, because there's a line you've drawn very carefully around what Kimi Antonelli is and isn't to you, and replaying his words for the fourth time at midnight feels dangerously close to that line.

You've started looking for him, you realize. Looking for his face when you enter the debriefs. Looking for his name on your phone screen after long sessions. Looking for the specific weight of his shoulder pressed briefly against yours in crowded corridors.

Which is dangerous. Friendship is safe. Friendship is a structure you know how to maintain.

You go to sleep telling yourself to be sensible.

It works for approximately three hours.

By the time the European leg gives way to the flyaways, Bono has already started buying three coffees.

Not two. Not four. Three. One for himself, one for you, and one for the person who has no reason to be in the engineering office at eight-fifteen on a Friday morning but arrives anyway with uncanny regularity.

You and Kimi are both staring at the third cup when Bono looks between you with the expression of a man who has won too many races to have patience left for obliviousness.

"You've developed a migration pattern," he says. "The two of you. Like birds."

Kimi looks offended. "What does that mean?"

"It means every time I look up from my work, you're standing next to her."

"That's not— I have legitimate reasons to—"

"You literally walked in here this morning carrying her favourite pastry." Bono gestures toward the almond croissant sitting on the desk beside you. "Without being asked. On a Friday. Before eight o'clock."

Both of you look at the croissant. There is a long pause.

"...oh," Kimi says.

The corner of Bono's mouth twitches in a way that suggests he is trying very hard not to smile and failing.

You both look determinedly at your laptops.

The pastry, for the record, is excellent.

It continues like this with the mutual pretending, the careful not-noticing of a thing that both of you have already noticed. You save him a seat during debriefs without consciously deciding to. He brings your coffee when his own appears, two cups instead of one, knowing you take it with oat milk and one sugar. You know the specific playlist he listens to before qualifying. He knows which snacks survive long race weekends without losing their appeal and quietly stocks the desk beside yours with them during the pressure weekends. The lines between friendship and something else smudge, and neither of you examines them too closely because neither of you knows what to do if you look.

The final stretch of the season arrives like a change in the weather  sudden and impossible to ignore.

Pressure builds. Championship positions tighten. Every race feels heavier than the last, each weekend carrying the accumulated weight of the ones before it. Mercedes needs results. Kimi needs points. The engineers need perfect execution, and perfect execution requires hours of preparation that you've been giving freely all season, only now the hours are longer and the margins for error are thinner and something in you has been running hot for months without any real opportunity to cool down.

You stop sleeping properly. Not in a dramatic way but there's no single night where you decide rest is optional, just a gradual erosion, an hour here and an hour there, late nights in the engineering office that blur into early mornings in the garage. You start skipping meals during the most intense race weekends, not because you're trying to but because you get to mealtimes and realize you've missed them. You tell yourself you'll recover after the season. After this race. After the next deadline. The list is always moving, always just out of reach, and you're always almost there.

Nobody notices. Or rather, everyone is too occupied with their own version of the same exhaustion to notice yours. Bono is deep in pre-race preparation. The team is focused. Kimi has a car to drive and a championship campaign to manage. You are very good at appearing fine when you're not fine. It's a skill you've spent most of your career developing.

Race day arrives with the specific quality of tension that exists before something changes. You can feel it in the air in the garage  that charged, almost electric pressure of important things converging. You sit at your station on the pit wall beside Bono with your headset on and your screens live, watching the data scroll, watching the formation lap begin. The cars move onto the circuit in that beautiful choreography of warming tires and precise spacing. Engines at full voice. The smell of racing fuel.

Everything is normal until, very suddenly, it isn't.

A few corners into the race, contact. Car to car, at speed, and then a chain reaction. The impacts happen so fast they almost seem simultaneous, carbon fiber scattering across the tarmac in every direction. A car's front wing gone. A rear section crumpled. The violence of it is physics made visible: all that momentum meeting all that resistance in a fraction of a second.

The pit wall goes silent.

Then the radios erupt.

Engineers calling drivers. Drivers reporting in. Marshals responding. The safety team deploying. Red flags. Nobody knows yet who's hurt, nobody knows the extent, and in the uncertain silence between the last radio crackle and the first medical update, your brain does something you've been keeping it from doing for months.

It thinks about everything at once.

The crash, replaying. The debris. The yellow flags. The medical car accelerating toward the incident with its orange lights painting the walls. And beneath that: months of pressure, unexamined and accumulated. Every report rewritten three times. Every meeting where you held your voice steady and your expression neutral. Every night you stayed late because leaving felt like giving up. Every fear you buried under work because work was the only container that felt safe.

The knot in your chest pulls taut its the one you've been carrying so long you stopped noticing it.

You stand up. You don't decide to. Your body does it.

Nobody looks up. Every eye on the pit wall is fixed on the incident screens, the telemetry, the radio channels. You remove your headset. You turn. You walk quietly, deliberately, the way you walk when you don't want to seem like you're hurrying and then you're past the garage, past the team rooms, into a corridor that leads to a section of the building that is mercifully empty during the race. An engineering room with the door unlocked, a forgotten monitor casting pale light across the far wall.

You lock the door behind you. Sink to the floor with your back against it.

And finally, properly, completely you break.

Your hands shake so badly you can barely hold them still. You press them against your knees and focus on the physical pressure but it doesn't help, the trembling is coming from somewhere too deep to reach from the outside. Your chest is wrapped in something that has no physical cause — tight, constrictive, making every breath come too shallow and too fast. The crash keeps replaying. The medical lights. The uncertainty. And underneath that, all the things you haven't let yourself think — the months of accumulated fear, the constant weight of trying to belong somewhere that wasn't built with you in mind, the sheer, bone-deep exhaustion of performing competence for an audience that might still vote you off the stage.

You cry. You don't mean to but you do, messy and silent, the tears coming in waves that make the monitor blur. You pull your knees to your chest and tell yourself this is temporary, you'll get it together in a minute, you just need a minute, and the minute passes and you still can't get there.

Outside, the race is being red-flagged. The session suspended. The marshals clearing the circuit. The drivers are safe but you don't know that yet.

You're still sitting on the floor.

Kimi knows something is wrong before he can name it.

He's focused on the restart, on the instructions coming through his earpiece, on the conversation with his engineer about tire strategy. But somewhere in the peripheral awareness that drivers develop over years of needing to process multiple inputs simultaneously, something doesn't feel right. A small, insistent wrongness. He looks toward the pit wall during a break in the radio traffic.

Your seat is empty.

He tells himself you've stepped back into the garage. Tells himself you're helping somewhere, that Bono's sent you to cross-check something. The restart goes ahead. He drives. He concentrates. But the wrongness doesn't leave.

When the race ends and the garage fills with the particular controlled chaos of post-race activity with all the engineers gathering data, mechanics beginning the car breakdown, media requests filtering through the coordinator Kimi moves through it all looking for you.

You're not at your station. Not in the engineering office. Not in hospitality.

He finds Bono between interview commitments, still holding a tablet and frowning at it.

"Have you seen her?"

The question makes Bono look up, and something in Kimi's face makes him set the tablet down. "No. Not since before the crash." A pause, and then Bono's expression shifts into something that looks like the beginning of concern. "I assumed she was with you."

"She's not."

They look at each other. The garage moves around them.

Kimi starts searching.

He checks methodically, the way he approaches anything that matters not frantically, not yet, but with the kind of absolute focus that makes the search feel urgent even when it looks calm. The team rooms. The media area. The engineers' corridor. Engineering office one, two, three. All empty. Each closed door that opens onto nothing tightens something in his chest. He tells himself he's overreacting. He tells himself you're fine. He produces a list of logical explanations and works through it the way you'd work through a troubleshooting sequence, eliminating each in turn, and by the time the list is exhausted, the certainty has settled in him like weight.

Something is wrong.

He turns a corner in a quieter section of the building and stops.

A closed door. A faint rectangle of light at the threshold.

Kimi stands there for a moment, just looking at it. Then he knocks, quietly.

Nothing.

He knocks again.

Then barely audible through the door, the kind of sound you try to make when you don't want anyone to hear you making it a breath. Broken. Too uneven to mistake.

He closes his eyes for just a second.

"Hey." His voice comes out soft, lower than usual. "It's me."

Silence. Then, thin and controlled: "I'm fine."

The words sound nothing like fine. They sound like the performance of fine, which is its own kind of telling. He leans his shoulder against the door.

"You don't sound fine."

"I'm okay." A pause. "Really. You can go back."

"No."

"Kimi—"

"No." The word is gentle. Not aggressive. Just certain. "You don't have to be fine."

Longer silence this time. He waits. He's good at waiting.

"I look ridiculous," you say finally, and the voice is wrecked enough that something cracks open quietly in his chest.

"You know," he says, "I once put a Mercedes Formula 1 car into a gravel trap on live television during a race I was leading." He pauses. "In front of several million people. In qualifying the week before, I'd already set a lap time that was later found to be a measurement error, and the on-screen graphic said I'd done something impossible for about forty-five seconds before anyone fixed it." Another pause. "I don't think you're winning the embarrassment competition."

Quiet. And then something that is almost a laugh.

The door unlocks.

He steps inside carefully, like entering a space that belongs to someone else. The room is dim, just the forgotten monitor throwing pale light across the floor and the wall, and you're sitting with your back against the far wall, knees drawn up, face streaked with tears you haven't bothered to wipe away. Your hands rest on your thighs, trembling slightly. You look at him the way people look at someone they're too exhausted to be embarrassed in front of anymore  exhausted and resigned and grateful in some complicated, unspoken way.

Kimi doesn't say anything. He crosses to where you're sitting, lowers himself to the floor beside you not so close as to crowd, but close enough for the warmth of proximity to be something and stays there.

"You can leave," you say.

"No."

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

You don't argue after that. Something in the certainty of it, the unconditionality, takes the argument away.

He waits. The room hums. Outside, muffled and distant, the paddock continues its business radios, announcements, the mechanical sounds of the post-race sequence. In here the sounds are just the monitor and your uneven breathing, and then gradually, as the minutes pass, Kimi's breathing, slow and deliberate, like a frequency he's offering for you to match.

"Look at me," he says, after a while.

You do.

"Good." His voice is very quiet. "Can you take a breath with me?"

You try. It comes out fractured too quick, too thin, catching somewhere in the middle.

"That's okay."

He breathes again. Slow. Steady. Not making a production of it, just doing it, like a signal available to your nervous system if it wants to follow. Again. And again. Patient in a way that doesn't feel like performance, like this is simply how long things take and he has no preference otherwise.

Somewhere in the fourth or fifth breath, yours begins to follow.

Not completely. But enough. The tightness in your chest starts to loosen. The shaking in your hands doesn't stop but slows. You breathe in, and breathe out, and breathe in again, and though nothing is fixed it becomes survivable the space between manageable and impossible closing by small degrees.

"I thought someone was hurt," you say, eventually, when your voice is steady enough to carry words without breaking apart. "During the crash. The radios, the medical car I couldn't stop thinking about everything that could happen."

"I know." His voice is even, but not dismissive. "It's dangerous. People don't always say that out loud, but it is."

"I know it's dangerous. I've always known, theoretically. But seeing it—" You stop. Try again. "It made all of it real in a way it wasn't before. And then I couldn't stop thinking about everything else. All the ways things could go wrong. All the ways I'm probably not good enough for this job and I'm going to fail and—"

"Stop."

The word is quiet but firm.

"That's not what's happening," Kimi says. "You're exhausted, and you just watched something frightening, and your brain is telling you stories that exhausted brains tell. That's not the same as truth."

You're quiet for a moment. "How do you know the difference?"

"Most of the time you don't. You just wait and see which one's still there when the rest wears off." He pauses. "In my experience, the fear sticks around. The thing about not being good enough usually doesn't."

You look at him. He's looking straight ahead, at the opposite wall, profile lit by the pale monitor glow.

"I still get scared," he says, unprompted. "Not at every race. But sometimes especially after incidents, after a bad restart, after anything that reminds you what you're actually doing the fear is real."

"Really?" You weren't expecting this.

"Of course." A brief, quiet laugh. "We're not robots. Fear means you understand what's at stake." He glances at you. "That's not weakness. That's just paying attention."

You sit with that for a moment. Something in the tightness of your chest releases further.

"I was scared too," Kimi says.

"During the crash?"

"No." His gaze meets yours and holds it. "When I couldn't find you."

The room goes completely still.

You stare at him. His expression doesn't change, doesn't shift toward deflection, doesn't offer you an easier interpretation. He just holds your gaze and lets the statement exist.

"I checked everywhere." His voice is barely above the ambient hum. "For a while I thought something had happened." A brief pause. "I was more scared than I've been in a long time."

Something opens in your chest — something warm and frightening and large. You don't have a word for it that isn't the word you've been carefully not using for months.

"You don't have to carry everything alone," he says. "You know that, right?"

Fresh tears come, but different this time  not from panic, not from despair, but from the specific relief of being seen. Being found. Having someone sit down on a floor in a dark room and refuse to leave.

"I know," you say. "I'm starting to."

He nudges your shoulder gently  just his shoulder against yours, brief and certain.

Neither of you says anything else. It's enough

Outside, the paddock finishes its business. The session results are confirmed. The cars go back to the trucks. The debrief begins. The season moves forward.

But inside that small room, the thing between you shifts into something neither of you can pretend is just friendship anymore.

The weeks that follow are strange in a good way, which is a new kind of strange.

You stop pretending you're invincible. Not all at once  it's not like there's a single moment of revelation but gradually, like a held breath slowly released. You start telling Bono when you're struggling before it becomes a crisis. You stop skipping meals. You allow yourself, once, to sleep until seven-thirty when the alarm goes at six, and the world does not end.

Three days after the race weekend, Bono appears beside your desk with two coffees and sets one down in front of you without comment.

"Next time," he says, "tell me."

You freeze. He meets your eyes and you understand that he knows not everything, probably, but enough. Kimi clearly said something, and Kimi clearly said it in exactly the way you'd have wanted him to if you could have chosen: enough for someone to check on you, not enough to make it public.

"I'm sorry."

Bono shakes his head immediately. "Don't. You don't apologize for struggling." He leans against the edge of the desk and considers the ceiling for a moment. "You know what I've learned, working with the people I've worked with? Even the strongest people hit the wall eventually. The ones who recover are the ones who let someone help them up." He shrugs. "You're allowed to be human."

The lump in your throat returns with interest.

"Thank you," you manage.

He nods once, picks up his coffee, and goes back to work, because Bono expresses care through action and then moves on, and you've come to understand that this is one of the things you like most about him.

Recovery is quiet and unglamorous and messy, which is to say it's completely unlike anything Formula 1 broadcasts would suggest but entirely consistent with how real things actually work. Some race weekends are fine. Some are difficult. Some mornings you're completely okay and some mornings the knot in your chest comes back and you have to talk yourself out of it the way you've been learning to , acknowledging it, breathing through it, calling someone or texting someone or going for a walk around the paddock until the circuit gets loud enough to drown out your own head.

The person you call most often is Kimi.

This happens without discussion. Without any kind of formal negotiation or naming. You text him after stressful meetings and he responds immediately, even if it's the middle of a press commitment. He texts you after difficult practice sessions with the specific quality of message that means I know you've been watching the data and I wanted you to know I'm fine before you have to ask. You celebrate each other's small victories. You sit with each other through the quiet miseries of hard weeks. Somewhere in the accumulated hours of this, he becomes your safe place in a way that no physical location has ever quite managed  not a room or a city but a person, someone the world feels slightly more navigable around.

You understand that this is not a small thing. You try not to think about what it means.

By Singapore, the paddock has noticed.

The first rumor finds you through one of the senior mechanics, a good-natured man who delivers the information with the satisfied energy of someone who thinks he's sharing something you don't already know.

"You and Antonelli finally making it official?"

You nearly inhale your coffee. "We're friends."

"Yeah, sure." The grin is extremely unconvinced.

You find Kimi immediately, because apparently your response to awkward conversations is now to walk directly toward the person the awkward conversation was about.

He's talking to two of the aerodynamics engineers outside the garage. He sees your face and reads it with the ease of someone who's been reading your expressions all season.

"What happened?"

"People think we're dating."

There's a pause. Then Kimi's expression does something complicated a very brief, rapidly suppressed series of micro-movements that might be surprise and something else, something warmer, before settling into a carefully maintained neutrality. He clears his throat.

"We're not."

"I know we're not."

"Right."

"I told him that."

"Good."

Another pause. The aerodynamics engineers have quietly absented themselves.

"Why are you smiling?" you demand.

"I'm not."

"You absolutely are."

"I'm really not."

He's definitely smiling. It breaks into something genuine and slightly helpless before he can stop it, and the sound he makes settles somewhere inconvenient in your chest.

You walk away before either of you has to figure out what your face is doing.

The rumours don't stop. They multiply, the way paddock gossip always does, fed by small observations that are individually meaningless and collectively impossible to ignore. The coffee. The reserved seats. The way you leave a debrief at the same time and always seem to end up going in the same direction without either of you apparently suggesting it. People who've spent their careers in motorsport people who are professionally observant start watching the two of you with the knowing expressions of an audience who can see the act before the performers have rehearsed it.

One evening after a debrief, Bono achieves what can only be described as a precision interception. You're both still in the room. Bono has the expression of a man who has been patient for a remarkably long time and has decided patience has served its purpose.

"Question," he says.

Kimi's eyes narrow. "No."

"I haven't asked it yet."

"You were going to."

"When," Bono says, ignoring him completely, "are you two planning on being honest about the obvious?"

Your laptop very nearly leaves your hands. Kimi turns a color you haven't seen on him before a specific mortified red that starts at his collar and moves upward.

"Peter."

"First names. Interesting."

"Peter."

"Also interesting that you're looking at her instead of me while you say that."

You are already moving toward the door. You can feel the heat in your own face. Behind you, Bono's voice follows you into the corridor:

"I'm just asking the question that literally everyone in this paddock is thinking—"

You take the corner quickly and keep walking. His laughter finds you anyway, dry and deeply, privately pleased.

The season continues. Race after race, weekend after weekend, and your feelings grow in direct proportion to your attempts to contain them.

You fall in love with things you have no business cataloguing. The way Kimi thanks each mechanic individually after difficult races not a general acknowledgment to the group, but specific, named, personal. The way he remembers details from conversations months ago the name of your hometown, the specific thing you said once about a telemetry trace, the preference for oat milk not soy. The way he positions himself in crowded paddock areas so that he's between you and the press crowds, not obstructively, not obviously, just present. The way he asks, on the long weekends, whether you've eaten, whether you've slept, the question phrased casually enough that you could brush it off but asked often enough that you know it's not casual.

You understand, lying awake in another hotel room in another timezone, that you've been in love with him for a while. You've just been refusing to sit still long enough to look at it directly.

Because admitting it makes it real. And real things can break.

Abu Dhabi arrives with the particular quality of finality that only season endings carry the knowledge that this specific configuration of people and pressure and weather and circumstance will never exist again exactly like this. The last race of the year. The finish line.

You spend most of Friday carrying two things in your chest simultaneously: the knowledge that Mercedes has scheduled a meeting with you after the race weekend, and the knowledge that you have absolutely no idea what the meeting means. Permanent contract. Extended internship. Polite thanks and a firm goodbye. All three feel equally plausible and all three are completely different futures.

You don't tell Kimi about the meeting. You tell yourself it's because you don't want to jinx it. This is partially true. The rest of the truth is that the meeting feels like the kind of thing whose significance you can only carry alone, because if you tell him and it's bad news, you don't want to see the disappointment on his face.

Race day in Abu Dhabi is everything that final races always are: too many moving parts, too much history, the season compressing itself into one last ninety minutes. You sit at your station and you do your job — strategy calls, telemetry, the constant radio traffic — and then the checkered flag falls and the season ends and the paddock exhales, collectively, like a held breath the whole team has been holding since February.

The meeting happens Monday morning.

Twenty-two minutes. You count every one.

The department head has a contract in front of him when you come in and doesn't build to it he slides it across the table before you've fully sat down, and your eyes find the Mercedes logo in the corner and your brain stops processing language for several seconds. A permanent position. Full engineering contract. Your name printed on the cover page above the role you've been working toward since you were eight years old watching races on a laptop in your bedroom.

"You've earned this," the department head says.

The words reach you from a slight distance, like sound traveling through water.

You sign it with hands that won't quite stop shaking.

When you walk out of that conference room, you're holding the contract in both hands. Your face hurts from smiling. Your eyes are full of tears that keep threatening to spill over, and you let them, because the corridor is quiet and you've earned a moment of being privately overwhelmed.

You know exactly who you want to tell first.

You find him near the garage, still half-dressed in race gear, talking to a cluster of engineers with the characteristic ease of someone who has never found large groups difficult. He sees your face before he finishes his sentence. His expression changes a quick, complete shift, like a signal received and understood and he excuses himself from the conversation before anyone has to ask him to.

"What happened?"

You hold up the contract.

He looks at it. Looks at the logo. Reads enough.

"Oh my God."

You nod, because your voice is genuinely not available right now.

His grin appears  the real one, te wide and helpless one that you've spent the whole season trying not to catalogue and then his arms are around you, sudden and certain, pulling you in. You press your face against his shoulder and you're both laughing, the particular laughter that lives at the threshold between joy and relief, and neither of you moves to end it.

The world is very large and very good.

Then you register the complete silence around you and pull back enough to look.

The garage is watching. Every mechanic, every engineer, every team member still present watching. And Bono, standing to one side with his arms folded, wearing the expression of a man who has been waiting for something for a very long time and is enormously satisfied to have finally seen it.

You and Kimi step apart simultaneously. Both of you turn approximately the same shade of red.

The garage erupts. Applause, someone's sharp whistle, at least two people who have been here long enough to not care whether this is professional and Bono, who begins clapping with the deliberate, measured cadence of someone who has entirely won something.

You consider, briefly, faking your own death.

The celebration that evening is the best kind: genuine, long, the particular warmth of a group of people who have spent a season under collective pressure and can finally put it down. Music. Laughter. Food someone ordered that turned out to be exactly right. The stars over Abu Dhabi come out early, and the marina lights begin to reflect on the water while the party continues on the other side of the glass.

Eventually, you slip away.

Not because you're unhappy, quite the opposite actually. Because the  happiness is so large that you need a moment outside it, a quiet space to let it settle before it becomes fully real. You find a balcony overlooking the water, the city spread across both banks, the lights running gold and white across the surface. The air is warm. The party is a muffled distance away. You lean against the railing and breathe, and feel, with the particular fullness of a thing that actually came true, everything you've worked for.

"I figured you'd be here."

You smile before you turn around.

Kimi steps out through the glass door and joins you at the railing, his shoulder settling against yours with the comfortable ease of a thing that has happened so many times it's become its own language. You stand together looking at the water. The silence is easy. It's always easy now.

"You did it," he says, after a while.

"We did it." You mean the team, the season, the whole accumulated weight of a year together. "Bono did it. Everyone—"

"No." His voice is gentle. "You. You did it."

Your throat tightens in the way that's become familiar by now — that specific tightness that happens when something matters too much for casual response.

"Kimi?"

"Hm."

"Thank you. For finding me." You don't need to specify when. He knows.

His expression changes and softens into something that carries the memory of that room, that floor, that breathing. "You don't have to thank me for that."

"I do. You stayed."

He looks at you. "I'll always stay."

The words land before he can walk them back. The air between you changes. You both feel it, the specific quality of a moment that is also a threshold, that can be stepped through or stepped away from.

Kimi laughs, once, and it's the nervous laugh the one you've heard precisely twice before, a rarity in someone so constitutionally at ease, and the fact of its rarity makes it significant. "I wasn't planning to do this tonight."

Your heart is loud in your ears. The marina lights blur into streaks. "Do what?"

He turns to look at you. His eyes hold yours and don't look away, and neither do yours, and the moment stretches into something that feels like its own small eternity.

"Fall in love with someone," he says, quietly, "and then spend months pretending I hadn't."

The breath leaves you.

"I kept trying to be reasonable about it," he continues, and his voice is careful in the way voices are careful when they're carrying something real. "I told myself it was  proximity, or friendship, or just that I was imagining the whole thing. But then you'd do something." He shakes his head slightly. "Say something. Look at me in the middle of a debrief and I'd lose my entire train of thought." A pause. "I'm a Formula 1 driver. I'm not supposed to lose my train of thought."

A sound escapes you half laugh, half something more fragile.

"I've been falling in love with you all season," you say, before fear can finish calculating the risk. "I thought I was the only one. I thought I was imagining it too."

He looks at you. Something in his face the careful steadiness of it relaxes into something more open, more human, more relieved than you've ever seen him look in front of cameras.

"You weren't."

"No?"

"No."

Tears fill your eyes and you let them. You've been letting things be real more often lately. It turns out the world doesn't break when you do.

When he kisses you it's gentle, unhurried, tentative in the way of first things a beginning rather than an arrival. His hand finds yours on the railing. The city moves below you, the season behind you, the whole next year ahead.

From somewhere across the paddock, a radio crackles. Somewhere in the garage, engineers are still reviewing the race. The trucks are being loaded. Formula 1 moves forward, as it always does, indifferent to the small private revolutions happening in its margins.

But here, on this balcony, with the water bright below and your hand in his the silence says everything that needed saying.

You think about that first day in the garage. The coffee spilled. The laptop you were afraid to open. The nickname you spent a year outrunning. Bono, nudging data toward you like an invitation: you're here to learn, aren't you?

You learned more than telemetry.

You learned that proving yourself is a long game, and the people who matter will be there when you do. You learned that fear doesn't disqualify you it means you understand the stakes. You learned that the bravest thing you did all season wasn't staying on the pit wall through the scariest parts of the job. It was unlocking a door when someone knocked.

"Hey," Kimi says, very softly.

You look at him.

"You belong here."

You know, this time, that it's true.