Chapter Text
Kimi lands and realises he fucked up, basically in that order.
He tries to text Ollie: it doesn't go through. Which could be because his data is screwed somehow, or because he has been blocked. For his own sake he hopes the former. Though "dick" isn't exactly promising on the latter front.
Fuck, this is difficult.
He briefly considers asking George for his phone, but reconsiders swiftly. What if George asks why Kimi needs his phone? Or why Kimi's phone doesn't work? And then he remembers that George is in Monaco, so he would need to text him. Which would reveal that his phone was working. Shit.
What else does he have? GPDA group chat? Nuclear option.
Where does Ollie live? Is he in Monaco? Is he in Britain? Is he on holiday? There is no way of knowing.
Who does Ollie like? He briefly thinks of texting Gabi. Which is a better idea than the GPDA group chat, barely. But Gabi cannot keep his goddamn mouth shut and will start spreading rumours. Then again, Toto is already aware at the very least that he and Ollie spent the night together, so the worst may have already happened.
Esteban! Esteban likes him, is probably definitely gay, would contact Ollie for him, and is, thankfully, discreet. It could be embarrassing, but there is basically no way of contacting a boy who has you blocked that isn't.
Should he even be trying to contact Ollie? It seems like he's screwed up completely. It's kind of creepy to still be trying to talk to him. He was rather... emphatic in his description of Kimi.
Fine. Ollie doesn't want to talk and there is nothing Kimi can do about that. Well, there are things he could do, but there's nothing he should do.
A notification pings on his phone and he grabs it embarrassingly quickly. It's not Ollie.
Toto has sent him an email. The subject line reads Relationship policy and media control in future.
Kimi wants to die.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Relationship policy and media control in future
Dear Kimi,
I trust you are doing well after the recent Grand Prix. Congratulations again on your victory.
It has come to my attention that there may be some inclarity in the Mercedes policy on interpersonal relationships, and that this should be re-clarified as soon as possible. Could we set up a short call this afternoon? I am free between 3:30 and 4:30 CEST.
Best,
Toto
Brilliant.
Here is a short breakdown of that not-actually-that short call:
1: Toto spent thirty full seconds muted by mistake and left his camera off the whole time.
2: Kimi's mum was audible in the background for much longer than he would have liked.
3: While Toto was saying something very serious and important, a motorcycle screamed past and all his words were lost.
3, cont.: Kimi tried to make a joke about Marc Marquez being in town, and Toto didn't get it, which led to a very awkward thirty seconds while Kimi tried to explain it before giving up.
4: Toto attempted to describe the situation he had unwittingly phoned into the middle of without saying the words 'Ollie', 'Bearman' or 'another driver', which led to the phrase "that person, who we both know, who I heard, who was... next to you" being uttered over the course of much longer than it takes to physically say that phrase.
5: Kimi attempted to describe the situation similarly, which led to the phrase 'the person who was with me who was next to me who we both know' coming out of his mouth immediately followed by a cringe. Which he then realised was visible to Toto, which was the exact moment his video chose to freeze.
But somehow the worst part was none of those. It was when Toto asked "Will this be something we have to plan around in future?" and Kimi... didn't know what to say.
He hopes it will. He hopes that, as if by magic, it will all figure itself out and he and Ollie will become an enormous problem for both their teams' PR and travel managers for all the remaining races. Or that most of the Middle East finally pulls their head out of their asses and lets boys kiss their stupid sexy ex-teammates. Or that they will both do a Vettel and retire in the Alps and keep bees together.
But the last word Ollie (electronically) said to him was "dick". And not in a good way.
So instead he says "No. It--it will not happen again, I don't think."
Kimi can't see Toto's face, but from the pause he assumes something akin to sympathy is passing across it. "That is... good," Toto responds. "So it will not be an issue, any of this?"
"No." Kimi wants to be an issue. A no-faking headline-making internet-breaking problem. Straight up. Something which can't be managed or controlled or blocked out of existence. Something which burns and shines and prickles under his skin every moment of the day. Something which matters.
But it takes two queer F1 drivers to make a proper scandal out of it, and Ollie isn't speaking to him.
"Good." Toto sighs. "And you know, Kimi, if there is anything like this happening again, you talk to me or you talk to the PR and we arrange something. You don't need to be sneaking around. It is..." Toto clearly chooses the next word very carefully. "Ill-advised, to be doing that."
"Thank you, Toto," Kimi says. He means it. More than likely most other team principals would not be so sanguine about their driver caught in bed with another man, let alone another driver. "I will--I will say, if I need it."
"Alright. Goodbye, Kimi. Have a good evening."
"Goodbye," Kimi says, and clicks Leave meeting.
His room is silent and empty. Coming back here always makes him feel like too much of a child, grown up and not. Out there he's Kimi Antonelli, big shot, F1 driver, adult, old, ready. In here he's Andrea and he gets to fall back into Italian like an old friend's arms and his father ruffles his hair the same way he always has. In here he has the language to fluently talk but his parents never seem to hear him properly, cause they're seeing the kid they got to the seat instead of the adult holding it down. In here he gets to be weak and stupid and young and the only problem is when that feels like the only thing he can be. Nobody's watching. Nobody cares.
His shoulders visibly drop the second he's closed the laptop, his tether to the outside world. Six weeks impromptu break. He could do anything.
Well, not quite anything. He has factory testing for several of those weeks. He's still famous. He should try not to crash his car again, that wasn't good. And his parents want to see him, and he has some old school friends he wants to meet up with.
But other than that.
God, F1 is just like school, complete with holiday homework. Except it's all on the weekends instead of the weekdays. And his commute is longer and by plane instead of bus. Absolutely zero other difference he can think of.
He's even still got boy trouble. His boys are just hotter now.
Kimi makes it four days before he gives up and texts Gabi.
And it wasn't like it was a boring four days or anything either, he does know how to take his mind off of boys he likes, he's not some kind of idiot. He did fun things. Like spend time with his friends who are not Ollie and who do not give a shit about F1 and he only mentioned Ollie like, twice, so it wasn't even a problem. Definitely.
He definitely never scrolled back through their chat or stalked Ollie's Instagram (one post with his brother and his family and his friend Alicia who is definitely just a friend and always will be) (and who isn't prettier than him anyway) or followed the official Haas YouTube channel just to see if they post anything new with him in it. He also did not attempt to watch any videos from that channel and get stymied by his frankly horrible WiFi which he should probably attempt to fix. Not for that reason because he did not do that.
So anyway, he texted Gabi.
He was promptly left on read for about five hours.
Kimi swallows half his throat down and types.
Kimi did not think this through. He needs to test the waters with Gabi first, right? Because what if he is homophobic? And if Kimi lies, Gabi might ask Ollie and Ollie might tell the truth and then Gabi will not know why Kimi lied and he might tell Ollie that Kimi lied and then Ollie will think Kimi is ashamed of him.
Oh, shit.
Kimi can only watch in horror as Gabi leaves the chat.
Eventually, Gabi returns.
Gabi's response is delayed for a few seconds, and then immediate.
One ominous conversation later, Kimi is still blocked and kind of worried about what the hell is going to happen in Miami. Gabriel Bortoleto should have been an absolute last resort even behind the GPDA group chat. At least then only the drivers would know: now some mysterious guy will know more than he should and be able to use that against them later.
Miami is... fine. He wins. That's not fine, that's really fucking good, actually. They've made up a record for him to break, first driver to convert his first three Grand Prix poles into victories, and everyone is talking about it even though it's clearly just something someone pulled out of a spreadsheet because they don't know how else to convey to the world that Toto was right to give him that seat a year ago. George has it worse because everyone is asking him about it too and he didn't even get a trophy.
Still, it's good to get out of the microphones' range and into somewhere he can actually talk to his actual friends. Preferably on a couch. Next to Isack as he bitches about how somehow the Red Bull is going a second faster for Max and a second slower for him. So he can unwind and remember that there are worse things to be driving than a Mercedes-built rocketship and worse things to worry about than if Oscar Piastri is getting too close to stealing the race win.
And then Gabi Bortoleto shoots him a look from across the room, where he's sitting next to none other than Ollie Bearman, who is not shooting him looks because he hasn't looked at him the whole weekend, and Kimi's heart sinks somewhere far too close to his heels.
"Ollie, I think that I left my jacket in Kimi's driver room," Gabi says loud enough he can hear, giving Kimi an all-too-knowing and all-too-obvious wink. "Before the race, and now I have media and can't get it, and you know that you're my best friend, no?"
"I know that you're a weasel," Ollie says fondly. "Where's his driver room?"
"Why do you ask me and not Kimi? He is right there." Gabi gestures to Kimi; Kimi waves to Ollie; Ollie deathglares Gabi. Mexican standoff. "There is a reason?"
"No, there's no reason." The grit in Ollie's teeth could ruin a good set of tires.
"Because if there was a reason, you could say to me, Gabi I do not want to talk to Kimi, he did this and this and this, and I would say, Ollie that is a good reason you do not have to go to his room I will get him to do it alone instead. But there is no reason, so we are not doing that."
Ollie looks confused. Gabi looks triumphant. Kimi looks between them.
Ollie sighs and says "Okay. Kimi, where to?" He makes direct and constant eye contact like he's forgotten how and is trying to pretend to do it properly, and keeps his tone such that he sounds like a vaguely exasperated father.
"Um," Kimi says, very eloquently, feeling like a deer in headlights. "I, uh. This way."
He gets up, leaving Isack to turn his rant onto a very unreceptive Liam, and opens the door.
There follows five very awkward minutes of looking at the floor and trying to push open the same doors as each other and making absolutely completely certain that they have not gone the wrong way because that would be extremely embarrassing. (If they end up taking a completely unnecessary detour through Ferrari, no they didn't.)
Kimi stops outside his door, and Ollie walks on past him a bit before realising he's stopped.
"Oh, this is--"
"Yeah, it's this one--"
"--oh, right, sorry, ok--"
"--it's fine--"
In a tumbling mass of sentence fragments which die away like a fire from kindling not given any proper wood, they enter the room. Ollie sees the jacket immediately, walks inside, gets it, and makes to leave.
Kimi instantly realises Gabi's guy's plan and steps in after him, letting the door swing closed behind him.
The driver's room door clicks shut and does not click open again when Ollie tries the handle immediately. Because all he wants is to get away from you, Kimi's brain volunteers. He tells it to shut up.
"I think the lock, it is broken," Kimi says. "It was... sticking before, I had made the door stay open, and then someone closed it." Someone being him.
Ollie sighs. "So we're stuck in here."
"It seems like it."
Ollie groans and sinks into a chair. Lower than he had intended, because Kimi likes his chairs ridiculously soft. "How rich is Mercedes again? They can't get a goddamn locksmith in to fix it?"
"Cost cap is a bitch," Kimi says, and smiles tentatively.
It wasn't even a good joke, but it still hurts a little when Ollie refuses to laugh. Instead he looks around like a point-and-click adventure game protagonist, looking for something to use to get out of the room. There is nothing, Kimi knows, thanks to the valiant efforts of That Guy Gabi Knows. The access TGGK has would be more than a little scary if Gabi hadn't reassured Kimi in no uncertain terms that he would never ever use it for evil.
(Gabi's reassurances are never reassuring. Never.)
"Do you have a credit card or something? I heard you can use those to get locks." Ollie pulls out his phone and begins texting someone or other, deliberately not looking Kimi in the eyes in a way that almost tears him open right there and then. "I'm just--the team might wonder where I am, and someone needs to know where we are."
"The signal is crap here," Kimi says: TGGK thought of everything, it seems. They are, no doubt about it, going to be stuck in a room together for a long while.
Ollie flips his phone around and shows it to Kimi: No Service. Kimi's phone is showing the same. Ollie sighs again. "No credit card?"
Kimi shakes his head. "Not in here. Not that I know about."
"Shit. Do we--we definitely have media, don't we. And nobody knows where the fuck we are except Gabi, and he's in media right now as well. Shit," Ollie says, about as annoyed as he gets, which is not very. When you can be as angry as you've ever been in the confines of a carbon-fibre box and yet still have to successfully pilot it at two hundred miles an hour, your threshold for something that deserves proper yelling and freaking out raises just a tad. Besides, they have a valid excuse for not doing media. There are precious few of those.
If there had been a window, Ollie would have clearly already climbed out and back to the press. Judging by where his eyes are, where his hands are, the way his leg is bouncing with nerves and jitters.
"That's what it is, that's what is happening," Kimi says. If he didn't know that it was planned he would also be annoyed. "Should we talk?"
"Talk about what?" Ollie asks, voice just betraying a little impatience.
I have some ideas, Kimi thinks.
"D'ya want me to compliment you?" Ollie blurts, only a little facetiously.
"I wouldn't say no?" Kimi shrugs his shoulders in the same vein.
"Shame, cause I'm tired and not really in the mood. I'd rather, quite honestly, rip Gabi a new one right here and right now."
"Is not his fault the lock is broken."
"Is his fault I was even in here in the first place." Ollie looks around again. "I want to snoop through everything in here."
As Ollie gets up and starts rummaging through some drawers somewhere, Kimi feels something relax in his chest and something else nastier and pettier clench, hard. This is good. This is normal. Ollie is acting like his friend and not like a guy he broke the heart of completely six weeks ago. Probably he did not care that much at all about it. Probably it's not even on his mind.
Probably he has it shoved into some deep dark recess of his mind labelled "do not go if you ever want to race in Qatar again" like a dangerous kind of cave and has successfully managed to push it down.
That should give Kimi hope that it's possible, but somehow it makes him want to vomit instead. There are feelings in his head, real ones. There is no such thing in Ollie's head.
"Mate," Ollie says, half-laughing, holding up a Labubu keychain, "what the fuck is this?"
"Sponsor gift," Kimi says automatically, trying to take it from Ollie. "They thought it was a good idea, and I did not object, and it sort of--it became like a talisman." Ollie evades him, dancing just over the sofa, scrambling backwards over it.
"You mean this--murderous baby is the reason you're winning everything?"
"She is not a murderous baby," Kimi huff-cries, taking another swipe at the Labubu. Ollie yanks it away as if Kimi's a cat. "Her name is Danica."
"Like Danica Patrick?" That surprises Ollie enough for Kimi to briefly grab it out of his hands, though he quickly responds with a yo-yo recapture. "You named your Labubu after Danica fricking Patrick? Not even after me?"
"Oliver is a stupid name for a doll," Kimi says, giving up on the Labubu momentarily. "Is there no contact method with the world?"
Ollie checks his phone again, Labubu forgotten in his jacket. "Ooh, wait, I have a bar! I have service!"
"Call someone, quickly, before it goes away!" Kimi practically grabs the phone from him, their fingers brushing dangerously as they both go for the call button next to someone-saved-as-'from work'. It sends a frankly embarrassing burst of energy through Kimi's arm.
Half an hour, an on-call locksmith, and a good bit of yelling through the door later, the door swings open in front of them to reveal several harassed-looking PR personnel, an on-call locksmith and a nearly physical sense of anxiety standing in front of them. Everyone starts talking at once.
"Ollie?" says someone in a Haas uniform. "You're meant to be in a debrief meeting right now, and it's been a while. It might actually be over now. I know this wasn't your fault but you do really need to come with me right now."
Harried does not begin to cover how the Mercedes person sent for Kimi looks. He hasn't met her before actually, but he definitely had press obligations he is not meeting, so it was probably a "whoever's free" sort of situation rather than one where they especially cared who came. She's got a headset on and says quickly into it "Yeah, I've got him, he's okay." Then she turns to him and says "We need to go, right now."
Both drivers stand there for about a second before their respective people physically grab their arms and move them away.
"You are hopeless, Kimi," Gabi says later, sighing down the line of a nine pm phone call. "You seriously did not talk at all? You--a Labubu? That was what you thought of talking about?"
"It was not me who started talking about it," Kimi says, but there is no defense. "He just found the Labubu."
"You have a Labubu in your driver room? I am sorry, mate, I cannot help you anymore. I am sorry. You are just--this is beyond. I am sorry." Kimi pictures Gabi holding up his hands as if in surrender.
"Sponsor gift. Besides it, what do I do now? I am still blocked, I checked, but it was all--it seemed so normal when we were in the driver room. Like old times, like back at Prema, when it was all, like, nothing."
"I made this easy for you, and you failed it even then. You did not even get unblocked. I can't do anything else."
There's a knock at Kimi's hotel room door. One tap, almost tentative, and then another slightly louder.
"Oh my god," Gabi whispers. "Is that him?"
"Shhh, I don't know!" Kimi whispers back. "I need to hang up now, goodbye."
"If it is like, Toto or something, that would--" Kimi ends the call immediately, not even wanting to consider that possibility, and scrambles from his bed in a frankly embarrassing way, yanking the door open.
It is Ollie, and the shock of it makes Kimi stare just a little.
He's not in team kit. He's wearing something plainer, a shirt that Kimi sort of always thought brought out his eyes, and dark jeans. His hair is rumpled and slightly wet like he came from the shower, and he's breathing a little harder than normal. From exercise?
Distantly, Kimi remembers that Haas are staying at a hotel about a quarter-mile away. Did he--did Ollie run that? In jeans?
"Hi," Kimi says, after what was definitely too long a pause.
"Hi," Ollie replies, looking Kimi up and down. Kimi follows his gaze and winces: he's not exactly looking his best in a random too-big Mercedes shirt and grey sweatpants. And he couldn't be bothered to do all the curl stuff after the race, so his hair's going insane as well. Brilliant.
"How are you?" Kimi says automatically, English-class conversational programming still hard to escape.
"I'm alright, actually. The humidity here is crazy, it just--it absolutely saps the life out of you." Ollie seems to remember he didn't come over to talk about the weather. "Right, well, uh, the reason I came was I accidentally took Danica, and I didn't see you all day, and I didn't want you to miss her for Canada. So, yeah. I brought her over." He pulls the Labubu in question out of his jeans pocket and passes her, carefully, to Kimi, hands lingering just a little close.
Kimi can only stare, first at the doll and then at the man returning it to him. It takes basically everything he has not just to pull him down and kiss him right there.
"Thank you," he says instead, hoping his tone gets at least some of that across. "That--you are very kind, Ollie. Thanks." Kimi turns around, leaving the door open, and puts Danica on his bedside table.
"No problem, Kimi," Ollie says, and it looks like he wants to say something else but he bites it back. "Yeah, it was nothing. Goodnight."
Ollie starts walking away, and adrenaline pulses through Kimi's every vein and artery, every capillary right down to the tiny ones in his fingertips. His pulse echoes in his head along with now or never now or never now or never and almost without thinking, almost dreamlike, he reaches out.
Touches Ollie's shoulder, and then catches up to him, and then holds it properly.
"Ollie, wait," tumbles out of his mouth, and Ollie turns to him and then he stops talking because there is such an expression of shock on his face, beautiful surprise as though Kimi has given him some kind of gift he's not sure how he feels about yet, that Kimi can't quite believe it. "I--I didn't mean it," he stutters out. The meaning is clear.
"You... didn't mean it? You didn't mean to do it?" Ollie is confused, speaking slowly, maintaining eye contact as though Kimi is a complicated maths problem he can't think how to figure out. "You didn't mean to... kiss me?" His face is hurt, so hurt. Kimi needs to fix it. Ollie still hasn't moved his shoulder out of Kimi's grip.
"No. I meant that. I didn't mean to ignore you for so long, it was just... I was on a flight and I didn't know what to say and then the social media team, they were there, and I couldn't, and then I fell asleep--"
"Kimi."
"--and I know I shouldn't have waited so long for it--"
"Kimi."
"--I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, I--"
Ollie takes Kimi's hand, carefully removes it from his shoulder, and puts it directly over Kimi's mouth. Kimi splutters into it.
"I'm sorry," are the next words out of his mouth, and it makes Kimi splutter even more. How could Ollie be sorry for his screwup? "I shouldn't have just blocked you. And I shouldn't have called you a dick. You're really not, at all. Otherwise I wouldn't have to go this far to get you to stop apologising."
Kimi sniffle-laughs into his hand.
"Kimi, I really, really like you. Not just as a friend. I"--he checks either side of them for anyone who might tell: there is nobody--"as a... I mean, if you want to be my boyfriend then as a boyfriend, but if not, then I guess... I just want to be as close to you as I can." He releases his grip on Kimi's hand and lets it fall.
"I do," Kimi says, like they're getting married, and jesus that's an image in his head he likes way too much. "I want to be your boyfriend. I want to date."
He wants more than that. He wants crumpled white sheets, bed-messy hair, Italian sunrise streaming in through net curtains; tomato sauce boiling over on the stove, laughing while chopping vegetables, food sweeter somehow; full bathroom cabinets and two toothbrushes, two razors, two lives. But you don't tell a boy that on the first date. He has to keep something of himself Ollie doesn't know, there's already precious little.
Besides, right now, all he wants is Ollie's lips on his. And, well. All he has to do for that is lean up.
FIN