Vertonelli my beloved

The first time Kimi steals something from Max’s nest is after Abu Dhabi.

He doesn’t feel as guilty as he should. He’s been feeling numb since he got out the car, the cooldown lap like a dream he can’t quite recall; asking Bono who won. Asking him by how much Lando won. Bono saying two points.

The two points I let up.

The two points I should’ve got for Max.

They ask him how he feels about his finishing position and he says good even though he doesn’t know where he finished.

He spots Max in the media pen and the apology escapes him before he can think it through.

At first Max frowns like he doesn’t know what Kimi means. Then his eyes widen with understanding and he scoffs like it’s all a big joke.

“Don’t apologise, are you silly?” Max asks.

“No, but if I hadn’t-”

“You know what I think about ‘if’s," Max cuts him off.

And yeah, Kimi knows what Max thinks about 'if's but to Kimi treats them like a drug he can't let go of.

Anna taps Max on the elbow, and he leaves an apologetic smile.

At the debrief, both George and Toto tell him not to stress. Tell him that it’s not his fault. He has half a mind to demand whose it is then. Not Max’s who fought tooth and nail and gave everything he got. Not Lando’s who’s just doing his job. Not Charles’ who was trying to overtake the Mclaren rocketship in his shitpile of a Ferrari.

Qatar comes back to him like a slice along his chest.

'He let Norris through'

As if Kimi would give his position up that easily. As if he would ever do that to Max purposefully.

His PR manager tells him to stay off the internet but even at the highest pinnacle of motorsport, he's still a stubborn teenager.

So he spends a good half an hour cooped up in his driver's room, scrolling through twitter and his DMs and reddit and whatever other scrap of fanbase he can find.

Some of them call him a fraud for his mistake. Some call him worse things saying it's not a mistake at all; it was deliberate. Very few speak up for him but he doesn't read those.

His trainer knocks on the door and tells him to get to the car and head back to the hotel.

"Sleep it off," he says.

Kimi says he will and at first, he plans to. But after he's left the Mercedes building, he finds himself inching apprehensively towards Red Bull territory.

He half expects them to throw tomatoes at him but Anna just points down an inconspicuous corridor when she sees him.

"Last door on the left," she tells him.

He opens the door and feels whatever structural integrity left in his being melt away.

Vanilla and cinnamon and something inexplicably warm.

Max.

The omega looks up from his ipad and smiles when his eyes meet Kimi’s. He doesn’t look surprised because at this point, there’s a higher probability of half the teams forgetting to fly in their cars than there is of Kimi not visiting Max’s room during a race weekend.

“Not feeling good?” Maz asks quietly, setting down his iPad.

The irony of Max asking that of Kimi is not lost of him. He hates that Max was sitting there alone, casually reviewing data after losing a championship. He hates himself more for not having that fortitude.

He shakes his head. His eyes stary involuntarily to the nest in the corner.

He never gets in immediately, even though Max has told him to use it as he wishes. He remembers the text highlighted in the middle of his sex education textbook: You must never get into an omega’s nest without their verbal consent.

And he knows, he knows that Max won’t mind but the thought of not asking leaves a sour taste in his mouth. Like he’s the spoiled kid they say he is, doing whatever the fuck he wants. At least if he asks each time, he’ll feel like he deserves it.

“Can I?” he asks as always, pointing a finger at the soft pile of blankets and plushies.

“Sure,” Max replies, as always.

He lets himself fall on the blankets like dead weight. Fleece and wool and minky that probably costs an arm and a leg. They’re all scented and Kimi feels the soft vanilla wrap around his like a hug. He grabs the stuffed animal closest to him; a white bunny with pink ears, holding a small carrot.

He buries his face against its head and lets the smell intoxicate him.

Max. Max. Max. Max.

It’s all he can smell. All he can feel.

It numbs him further. For a moment, he forgets why he’s here. Why he was upset.

He doesn’t see Max looking over with a fond smile before the omega is getting up, grabbing some papers off the table and saying, “I have a debrief but I’ll be back as soon as possible. You can stay as long as you like.”

Kimi has half a mind to ask when Max will be back, but he doesn’t. He’s not in any position to make demands. He watches as the door swings shut.

He lays there cuddling the bunny until his thoughts run wild. He thinks of Montreal and his first podium. He thinks of Imola. Of Interlagos. Of Qatar. When Austria resurfaces like fragments of a fever dream, he nuzzles the stuffed animal again and wills himself to forget.

At some point, his trainer calls and asks why he’s not in his hotel. Kimi doesn’t know how he knows but he’s not going to be that rebellious tonight.

He goes to put the bunny down and finds that he can’t. He wants Max to be here but he also understands that a debrief like that can be long. And this bunny smells so much like him. Vanilla. Cinnamon. Soft like Max's hair when he doesn't gel it down.

The idea comes to him first as an intrusive thought, then as a plan.

He could just... take the bunny. He knows Max has a separate nest at home and this is just the one they assemble and disassemble for races so it's not like he'll miss it during winter break.

Before logic can reason him out of it, Kimi grabs the bunny and inches towards the door. The hallway is empty. He peaks around the corner. The common area is deserted as well.

He takes a deep breath, squishes the plushie against his chest, and makes a run for it.

The second time Kimi steals something from Max’s nest is during winter break.

Max invites him and Ollie for a COD session at his apartment. Or well, 'invited' might not be the right word. Ollie messages him 'When can we come over to game? :(' each day at seven pm sharp for a whole week until Max replies with an exasperated Toto sticker and says 'Fine. You can come over tomorrow. ¬_¬'

He's sure Max means around five in the evening but they show up before lunch and Max just stares at them silently in the doorway before letting them through.

Kimi's feeling much better than he had at the end of the season. Being back at home and fooling around with his friends helping him forget. About his season. About Max's season. About the slight intertwining of the two.

So when Max hands him a console and tells him he's going to beat his ass, Kimi smiles.

Max does, in the end, beat both their asses. Which is more a testament to his and Ollie's lack of talent because he knows Max is a renowned flopper at COD.

Max, because he has no other option, orders them lunch and Ollie leaves a little bit after that. On his way out, he jokes that this is a nice way to cut down on food cost; show up at Max's place and wait till he feeds them.

Max rolls his eyes and says, "I'm not your mother."

"How mad will you be if I started calling you 'mama'?" Ollie asks innocently from the hallway and Kimi feels his cheeks heat up.

"This mad," Max says and slams the door in his face. They both hear Ollie cackle from outside.

Kimi hangs around for much longer. They play Minecraft on a split screen and he turns on friendly fire and whacks Max's character. Max whacks him on the head in real life for his efforts.

After a while, Max says he has a zoom meeting and Kimi just wanders around the apartment aimlessly as Max talks with his team. He probs around Max's trophy cabinet, tries on one of his special edition helmets, plays with a cat.

Max's cats like him fairly well. Except for Sassy but Sassy doesn't like anyone apart from Max.

Eventually, he sneaks into Max's bedroom and his attention is instantly caught by the nest on the king-sized bed.

It's much larger than the cramped one in his driver's room. More blankets. More plushies. More thought put into it. Every inch of the apartment has a trace of Max's scent but this room in particular feels infused by it. It makes Kimi's alpha rumble quietly.

"You can take a nap if you want."

Kimi spins around to find Max leaning against the doorway, arms crossed and a fond smile on his face.

"You wouldn't mind?" Kimi asks, pointing at the bed. He knows he's blushing furiously.

"Not at all, go ahead."

It's the only invitation Kimi needs.

He jumps into the nest and wraps the closest blanket around himself. Max laughs and leaves him to it.

He grabs another plushie, Jimmy the lion, and rubs it lightly against his scent gland, his whole body melting into the nest. He used to wonder if it bothered Max to have someone else's scent in his nest. But he never got around to asking and now it feels a bit too late.

He brings another blanket closer and buries his nose against it. Breathes in like it's his first breath on earth.

Kimi doesn't know when he falls asleep, only that it's dark outside when he wakes up. He sits up groggily and blinks his eyes a few times.

Jimmy is curled up and fast asleep by is feet, purring softly in the otherwise silent room.

He looks at the bedside table. 18:23. He should probably leave before Max has to order him dinner as well.

He untangles himself from the nest and hauls himself to his feet, one of the blankets dragging along with him. It's the one he'd wrapped around himself as he fell asleep.

He looks down at it. Fleece and soft and dark grey. Probably available in bulk in any homeware store.

Kimi still has the bunny he stole. It's centrepiece in his bed. He brings this blanket up to his nose and breaths in. His entire mind goes fuzzy with warmth.

Deliriously, he wanders what it would be like to hug Max and nuzzle the omega's neck, to breathe the scent in from the source.

He bunches the blanket up in his arms and sneaks out of the bedroom. He finds Max on the sim, talking with his team. He looks up when Kimi peeks from the doorway, blanket hidden behind his back and praying that Max won't try to show him out.

"Have a nice nap?" Max asks, muting his mic.

"Yes, your nest is..." heaven on earth "so good."

Max laughs and asks, "Are you staying for dinner?"

He's tempted to but he has a blanket to steal. "No, I need to get back for... a meeting."

"Alright then, get home safe."

His heart beats loudly in his ears as he rushes through the silent hallways, beelining to the door. He spots Sassy watching from her cat tree, eyes unimpressed.

He shrugs in apology, like it can't be helped.

When he gets back home, he puts the blanket beside the bunny, the same way he lines up the trophies on his shelves.

The third time, is during Bahrain testing.

He's on a high from how good the car feels beneath him. He knows it's too early to say how the season will go but he's confident. Something he hasn't been in a long time.

Max asks him if he wants to come to his driver's room casually in the middle of the paddock, Kimi still holding his helmet and balaclava. He says yes so quickly and loudly that a few heads turn their way.

The nest in his driver's room is just as Kimi remembers. Same blankets, same plushies, minus one bunny.

He wanders if Max chooses the stuff for this nest himself or if there's a Red Bull employee tasked with making sure he never runs out of nesting supplies.

Either way, Kimi is grateful as he sinks into the gentle embrace of fabric.

This time, Max joins him. He lets Kimi rest his head against his side as he scrolls aimlessly on his phone. Kimi busies himself with a loose thread in the hem of Max's t-shirt.

Max pauses his scrolling randomly to show Kimi a particularly funny meme or to scratch lightly at his hair. When he pokes Kimi's cheek, Kimi tickles his side, making the omega giggle and squirm.

It's nice. It's warm. Kimi thinks that he could stay like this forever.

But soon, someone comes to find Max, saying something about a marketing video and Max has to leave with a small smile.

He knows someone from Mercedes will look for him too so he makes to leave. And this time, the urge to take something comes reflexively, without guilt.

He lets his eyes roam the nest until they fall on a plushie in the corner. A capibara.

He grabs it and nuzzles it softly. It's more vanilla than it is cinnamon and it smells happy. Like Max was laughing or smiling when he scented it.

He doesn't even think twice before he's hiding it in his large Mercedes jacket and almost running across the paddock.

After that, it almost becomes a routine. Anytime Max isn't around as he leaves the nest, he takes something. Another blanket, this time wool. A panda plushie. A baby elephant plushie. A Jimmy the Lion plushie.

His brand makes them, Kimi reasons as he places the lion amidst his ever-growing collection, he can get one more.

One time, when his trainer comes to oversee his workout, he asks where all the omega-scented things are from and when he explains with tomato-bright cheeks, he laughs until he's crying.

But that hardly deters him and by Canada, he has a total of four blankets and six plushies.

In Miami, he noticed that the bunny and capibara have been replaced so it's probably a Red Bull employee who maintains the nesting supplies.

In Canada, he finally hugs Max in his driver's room like he's wanted to all along. And he feels better than all the plushies Kimi has ever stolen. He nuzzles Max's neck, slowly and gently so that he can move away if he wants to. He doesn't.

Kimi smells vanilla and cinnamon and the faintest remains of champagne. Champagne he sprayed on Max on the podium.

Max arms tighten around him and Kimi wants to melt until no one can separate him.

He stays in Max's nest until the lights come on in the paddock and the Red Bull motorhome is about to be cleared out. Max stays with him the entire time and Kimi feels it as a greater victory than the P1 trophy sitting in his own room.

It does mean that he doesn't get the chance to steal anything but that hardly matters when Max pats him on the head from time to time and tells him he drove well.

At one point, he purrs happily and immediately blushes from embarrassment. Max just laughs.

He almost claws at the walls when his trainer tells him to get back to the hotel. Only Max's promise of letting him stay over for a day or two before Monaco gets him to leave.

But he still glares at anyone who comes close for the rest of the night because his clothes smell like Max and he doesn't want anyone else ruining them.

The next day, when he wakes up, there's a small box on the table in his hotel room, along with his diet-approved breakfast.

On the top of the box, there's a note.

You drove well. Keep it up.

Messy handwriting and written in all caps. He knows whom it's from before he opens the lid and is hit with vanilla and cinnamon. Inside, is a plushie. A white, round cat with splotches of brown and black.

He can smell the happiness radiating in its scent and he wonders when Max scented it. It makes his heart skip a beat when he thinks it might have been yesterday, after he left.

On one of the ears, there's another note tied with a string. He feels his smile widen as he reads it.

And stop stealing my stuff you little thief. Next time just ask.