Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I’m deeply sorry, but your flight is cancelled,” the flight attendant says to them in lightly accented english, smiling sympathetically. Gabriel’s heart sinks like a coin in a fountain and his hopes of finally drifting off to sleep on a warm, comfy plane fall to the floor.

It’s three fucking AM. Can there be a worse time to deal with this?

Nico stares at the attendant unwaveringly, shoulders tense and jaw set, as if he’s internally willing her to say something along the lines of ‘April Fools’ or ‘Just Kidding’. She doesn’t.

Gabi half-willingly tugs at his wrist like a lost child. Nico’s head turns, but his body doesn’t budge. “Nico… we’ll just catch the next one. Let’s go.”

His teammate only raises an eyebrow. “An explanation would be nice.”

Some of the other people originally just about to board the flight are gathered around too, throwing their own questions into the mix.

“Why are you only telling us this now?!”

“This service is terrible!”

“I’ve been planning this vacation for months!”

They weren’t in a crowd crush, exactly, but Gabi sure feels like they are in one. It’s so much groaning and whining and it’s so, so late. This is pissing him off, to be perfectly frank.

The attendant, which has a badge betraying her name to be Pam, puts on her best soothing expression—a PR-ready smile—and nods lightly. “There is a recently-found issue with the plane engine during checks, and the plane cannot be allowed to fly. We will pay for your next flight in a few hours and a hotel room in selected hotels, so there are no additional costs.” 

She says that as if they’re children in kindergarten, not adults, famous adults with a job to do no less. The people listening beside them are equally unenthused.

The pair begrudgingly turn away from their gate and each take two adjacent seats on the stiff airport chairs lined outside, next to some rumpled-looking tourists bowed over with their head in their hands. Some people passing by on the moving walkways stare inquisitively.

“The sponsor meeting,” exhales Nico, pinching the bridge of his nose wearily. The usually not-too-noticeable lines on his forehead darken, making him look far older than thirty-seven. “Gabi. ‘A few hours’ is a big understatement. We’ll get talked to for ‘not setting a good impression’. The next flight is tomorrow morning, and that means we have to stay the night, which is fucking ridiculous.”

Right now, the pessimistic way his teammate is speaking is really beginning to get under his skin, so Gabriel simply twists and wrings at his fingers to not suddenly lash out. The constant stream of people beside them are so incredibly loud, and the blinding white lights are far too bright. All he wants to do is go straight to sleep, and he’s mad at the world. And at Nico, of course.

But in all fairness, Gabriel’s deathly tired, and he is as Nico would affectionately call him, ‘practically a teenager’. Which is true—to an extent—since he’s twenty years old.

Tired teenager or not regardless, he’s still quite annoyed.

Brows furrowed sharply, Gabriel looks away. “Do we get a hotel room, then? Or do stay here and sulk until tomorrow morning?” 

The dry remark flicks off of his tongue unwillingly, and he kind of regrets it after it leaves his mouth. He has no business antagonizing Nico for being stressed. After all, he is, too.

“I’ll try to get a hotel room,” his teammate says, forking a hand through his hair and blinking at Gabi exhaustedly.

He almost feels a little bad.

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Before long, Nico has magically scouted out a hotel nearby with available rooms. It’s about a 5-minute walk from the airport, which is highly impressive, even Gabriel will admit. Places like these are almost always fully booked.

They’re there at the lobby now, eyes a little wild with the frenzy of a deeply fatigued traveler and completely ready to get their respective rooms and pass the fuck out. For the meanwhile, Gabi hangs back and lets his teammate do the talking for him; he’s grateful for that. It’s a bit too late to make his English skills cooperate with him fully.

The lobby is kind of nice in a way. It’s not made of marble with a sprawling glass chandelier by any means, but it has a few cozy armchairs and some rugs and cheaply-painted walls that make the place look larger than it is. It’s more of a safe space than somewhere to be described as fancy.

He’s kind of caught in a blank daze until Nico shakes him and stares straight into his eyes in a concerned manner, grip tight on his shoulder. “—room?”

Gabriel blinks at him, a little lost. “What?”

“There’s only one room left.” Nico releases him. His voice is kindly but quite obviously exhausted. He continues— “I’ll sleep on the floor. Or the sofa. Don’t worry about it.”

“Come on, Nico. We’re both tired, so there’s no need if we can both fit.” He shakes his head vehemently, convinced that his teammate just can’t see the obvious solution. “Don’t be stupid! We’ll only get a few hours of sleep anyway.”

Nico’s brows knit firmly. It’s clear that he’s unshaken. “I think it’ll be a single bed. Seriously, Gabi. It’s the cheapest room available, and it’s the last one.”

Biting down a sharp retort, he simply scrunches up his nose to signify his distaste. “No, no way…. we’ll figure it out upstairs, then, OK? I just want to get to the room,” he protests hotly, knowing Nico is being far too insistent.

The older man opens his mouth but no sound comes out.

They go up the elevator with a suitcase each dragging behind them lollingly. Gabriel swears he actually nodded off for about half a second during the short ride up, before Nico had caught him lightly with his arm and guided him back upright.

This hotel isn’t a particularly great one by any means. It isn’t a motel, exactly, but it is a budget-hotel designed for airport-goers in a rush. The gray wallpapered patterns on the walls are just a little bumpy, the blue striped carpet a little faded and the displayed photographs a little scratched.

The only particularly striking photo to him is a displayed photo of a Formula One car, showing a halo-less Ferrari doing donuts in a circuit which he can’t name right now. The photo is heavily color-graded to sport a brownish, faded hue although he knows that the image is not that old, like all the others down the long corridor.

Before long, their room’s door crawls to stop beside them. Nico taps their card onto the card-reader and the soft click-click of the handle unlatching and the low hum of air conditioning meets their ears.

Disappointingly, Nico’s completely right. The room is extremely cramped, and the looming alabaster-white walls and the large, open window towards the back make the place feel like those gridded shelves that people display their LEGO minifigure collections in, albeit with cyan curtains provided.

A single-bed is tucked beside the wall shared with their black-tiled bathroom, which sports a tightly designed glass shower cubicle, a small toilet and a sink. Gabriel suddenly realizes with a jolt that Nico is completely correct. There is no way the bed can fit two grown adults of any height or gender, much less for them, who are both exactly six feet tall.

A compact wardrobe and a bedside table have been placed beside the bed, and opposite, a two-person couch and a coffee table await them. This doesn’t leave much room for everything.

There’s barely enough space to open both their suitcases so Gabriel supposes that they’ll not even bother to get clothes for showering and just go straight to sleep.

This place isn’t bad for a budget hotel at all, however. There are some minimalist drawings framed on the walls and everything is completely clean. A kind of blue-brown-white color palette shows across the furnishing, and they have everything they really need. For one person, of course.

“I’m sleeping on the couch,” Nico announces firmly. The slight annoyance from earlier bubbles up again. 

It doesn’t really strike Gabi right to just leave his teammate there, with no space for legroom, all while he occasionally complains about back pain during three-hour plane rides.

Gabriel shakes his head while wheeling his suitcase to one side. “Nico, you’re practically ancient. I can get the couch.”

“No, you’re twenty. You need your sleep, or you’ll be a zombie during the sponsor dinner.”

Gabi stares at him, slack-jawed and bewildered. He’s not in the mood for being patronized right now. “You have back pain.”

“Please don’t argue with me,” replies Nico, tone even as ever with a drip of exasperation. God, he’s pissing me the fuck off.

“I’m not a child!” Gabi makes an adamant face. Nico says nothing in response except for pulling his lip into a line, jaw ticking.

A sudden jolt of anger racks through his mind, and in less than a second, he’s fuming.

“You’re not my fucking dad, old man,” he hisses. His teammate’s face kind of melts into something wounded for a second, like he can’t believe Gabi is saying this to him, before it solidifies into something stern and rock-hard.

Nico glares at him for a moment too long in silence, and now Gabriel has enough time to realize what he’s done.

“Gabriel Bortoleto.” 

He doesn’t even sound that angry, and that’s the worst part.

Gabriel raises his hands in defeat and moves backwards towards the bed. His ears are embarrassingly warm, and maybe, he’s expecting Nico to chew him the fuck out. 

He could persuade him to do almost anything if he’d say Gabi’s full name just like that—like how a parent or a babysitter would, like a thinly veiled warning.

It’s not that big of a deal. It really isn’t, he’s telling himself.

Nico just looks kind of drained now. His face is scarily blank, and Gabriel’s eyes are darting all over his face, unsure of whether to thank him for giving up the only sleeping spot in the whole room, apologize to him, or both. Something akin to fear runs through his veins.

Acting on a little squirming impulse in his chest, he swallows his pride and darts forwards to wrap his arms around his teammate, trying to forget how heated they got earlier. He clings on for too long without signs of pulling away, and he can feel Nico’s arms lift hesitantly, seemingly surprised, before falling softly onto Gabriel’s back. Whatever’s left of own anger dissipates.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, and he means it. “I was stupid, and I… thanks. Thanks for letting me take the bed.” He cringes at how helplessly small he sounded.

When he pulls away, Nico’s face has crumpled, tight frown replaced with something more regretful, more soft, more guilty.

“Gabi, Gabi,” Nico exhales. Gabriel feels like there’s a chance he might cry. He snapped at Nico; Nico who was only trying to be kind, and now he might have ruined whatever coworker-relationship they have built over the past few months.

He sits backwards onto the bed, suddenly cold—the AC must be picking up. “Yes?”

Nico stares at him, again running his fingers through his combed blond hair. “You’re tired.” He flicks on the small lamp on the bedside table and rolls along a tiny spinning-chair—where’d he get that?—across the blue carpet, shutting off the ceiling lights. “You should go to sleep now. Don’t blame yourself for anything. You’re just really tired.” His voice is hollow.

Gabriel blinks, bemused, waiting for a caveat.

But his teammate is serious, so he shuffles backwards, peeling off his hoodie and half-heartedly crawling into his blanket. Once in bed, he realizes just how exhausted he really is, a thick, viscous cloud of deep fatigue immediately filling his mind.

“I’m cold,” he squirms. He can feel his limbs going all jelly-like and beginning to shut down.

Nico blinks, and turns the AC down without comment. By now, Gabi’s brain is slipping up. "Sleep well, Gabriel."

“Boa noite, Nico Hulkenberg,” he vaguely remembers himself whispering. “Desculpe.”

His last memories of the day are of watchful blue eyes, warm hands and hushed promises of morning coffee while the white ceiling slowly trickles away.

That night, Gabriel dreams of ink-black nothing.

Chapter Text

“Wake up, Schlafmütze,” a disembodied voice hums. Fingers ruffle his hair.

Gabi whines, rolling over and covering his face with a pillow. He feels a little like a bear in hibernation.

“Hey,” Nico persists with a hint of amusement. “We can’t miss this flight. Or I’ll leave you here, all alone, if that’s what you’d prefer—”

Sitting up at once, Gabriel wields his pillow and throws it, moderately hard, at Nico’s chest. Nico only laughs loudly in response and hugs the pillow to himself.

With nothing to lean back onto, Gabi groans and stumbles into the small bathroom to brush his teeth and fix his hair.

“Teenagers, am I right?” The shit soundproofing between the thin wall meant that the faint remark was completely heard.

“Fuck you,” he shoots back, although there’s no real ferocity behind it. If anything, it was said in a mildly endearing manner. He’d like to think that Nico smiled at that.

After he’s ran all his morning errands, he settles down onto the small couch beside Nico and internally wonders how he managed to fit there, let alone sleep.

Nico seems like he’s been awake for at least half an hour before Gabi woke and he’s changed into a warm, navy sweater with the green team logo on it and a pair of gray sweatpants. Truly a very stereotypical airport outfit.

“I’m sorry I took the bed,” Gabriel says immediately with much thought. He’s not sure what compelled him to: maybe, it was a lingering trace of apprehension from last night.

Nico prods at Gabi’s pillow and raises his eyebrows. “It’s alright. I slept very amazingly.”

“Really?”

“Obviously not. I got a blanket from reception and slept on the floor—but I don’t mind,” Nico quickly adds on. Noticing Gabriel’s mouth fall open to respond, he raises a finger in a shushing gesture to his own mouth. “Shh. Shut up.”

Mock-offended, the Brazilian immediately raises a hand to his chest. “Hey! I haven’t even said anything,” he comments, laughing.

Resting the pillow back against the headrest, Nico chuckles a bit, eyes creasing around the edges. There’s a small touch of silence after that until he breaks the silence. “Anyway, I did make you coffee like I promised.”

And sure enough, there was a warm, second mug of coffee right there on the table, a stirring-spoon set carefully beside it.  

“Trying to change the subject, are we?” Joking aside, Gabi can’t help his lips twitching upwards at the sheer thoughtfulness. “Thank you. Really.”

Nico pats him on the shoulder amicably and doesn’t speak further aside from showing him the plane tickets they were distributed and that they should probably leave as soon as possible.

After Gabriel arranges himself a change in clothes—a gray cotton t-shirt with green pants—they exit the hotel with as high of a spirit that four hours of sleep can possibly grant. Luckily, the airport had done all their cargo transferral for them, and that meant that they could pass right through the baggage check-in.

“I think that I just want to sleep again.” Gabriel exhales out loud once they’re standing in a crowd, waiting for boarding.

“Soon,” promises Nico. Gabi slings an arm around his shoulder, transferring his weight onto him. He leans into Nico’s support a little too much.

“Mmh.”

“Easy now,” Nico warns jokily, half-peeling him off. “My old bones might crack under all that pressure.” His blue eyes are set on Gabriel’s brown, and they’re full of mirth.

They’re smiling now, the tension of last night almost-forgotten. When Nico’s happy, his face kind of twists just in the right way that makes his eyes twinkle. The bright morning sun pours in through the enormously large windows at their boarding gate to catch one side of his teammate’s face.

Luckily for them, Premium Economy is called to board at that very moment. Gabriel pulls away from Nico’s contact, feeling his teammate’s warmth slowly seeping out of his side.

They aren’t exactly sure why they got given premium economy tickets while they had originally paid for business class. But, the airline had promised they’d get the money back, so Gabriel supposes that it isn’t too bad. A plane seat is a plane seat.

Together, they make their way through the jetway that connects from the airport building to the plane and glance out the glass sides towards the large, graceful airplanes arranged throughout the terminal. The sky is bright with morning sunlight, with little wisps of cloud dotting the blue nothingness above them.

The summer sun really is dazzling.

“You know these… airplane tubes,” Nico says all of a sudden. “I can never recall exactly what they’re called.”

“It’s a jet bridge. Or a jetway. Or a Passenger Boarding Bridge.”

“I never knew.” His teammate finds the will to smile at that fact. It’s kind of endearing.

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Premium economy seats, as Gabriel soon realizes, are not that bad. Sure, he enjoys the little half-enclosed cubicles that the business class seats are, but it’s really difficult to talk with the people next to you. Which is great, because usually, the people nearby are strangers. Nico is mostly on Max’s private jet.

It makes for dull flights, though. He flies so often for Formula 1 duties that he’s basically watched every movie available on the catalogs.

The seats Nico and Gabi are allocated are obviously wider and more cushioned than economy. Instead of three people being in a row, there is only an aisle and a window seat. This suits perfectly for the two of them. 

“Which seat do you want, Gabi?” Nico asks him after hauling his own plain-black suitcase up into the overhead compartment.

Gabi doesn’t need to think. “Aisle,” he picks. He knows that Nico likes the window. His teammate had mentioned it once during a media interview for PR that they both had to do.

“Sure,” Nico says, sliding himself into his spot happily. “Suits me.”

Settling down with a satisfied sigh, Gabriel lets all the tension flow out of his legs at being able to sit down. The chair has its padding all in the right places.

There’s a small cushion provided so he crosses his arms with it propped between his chest. It makes him feel safe, so he prefers to sleep with something he can hold. 

“I think I’ll just pass out right now,” he announces to Nico. 

“You’ll miss the safety demo, though,” the German jokes, reaching deeply into his backpack.

Gabi glances at him and rolls his eyes dramatically. “I’m an experienced flyer. Sue me.”

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Nico watches intently as the ground below him dips and swells as the plane ascends, slowly reducing the large buildings into mere specks in the daylight. When he can’t make out the shapes anymore and everything takes on a hazy blue hue, he shuts the blinds and repositions himself into something comfortable enough to sleep in.

Gabi is beside him, eyes closed but seemingly restless. Every fifteen seconds or so, his head droops to the side before he catches himself and arranges himself upright again with a dissatisfied huff.

He notices his unease at once. Nico folds his arms across his chest and studies him caught in this cycle of half-sleep for a moment, until he feels like he’s being far too cruel by just watching him suffer.

“Gabi?” He leans closer and checks on him softly. The Brazilian murmurs something incoherent.

Sighing in defeat, Nico wordlessly coaxes his teammate’s head to rest softly onto his left shoulder. “It’s okay. You can lean on me.”

Then, Gabriel’s head tilts up almost imperceptibly. His eyes open halfway, voice slurry. “Nico…”

“What is it?” He says the words, surprised at how gentle they come out.

The younger man’s hand fists at the fabric of his sweater sleepily. “M’cold.”

Slowly easing Gabriel off his shoulder, Nico apologizes profusely under his breath while he slips off his sweatshirt. It’s not really that chilly, but he doesn’t say anything about it; he knows that sleep makes the body run less warm to save energy.

Gabi clumsily pulls it over himself. Unsurprisingly, it fits him perfectly—a perk of being the same height as each other.

At once, Gabriel collapses back onto Nico’s shoulder like a floppy cat, a bundle of clingy warmth. “Thank you,” he exhales. 

“Comfy?” Nico smiles. He has no idea why his lips tug up so naturally, all on their own.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, old man,” he murmurs in good humor. His eyes flutter shut, a careless arm slung over Nico’s lap as he nuzzles his face a little deeper into the crook of his neck.

In all honesty, Nico doesn’t really mind at all. He doesn’t have the heart to move his teammate, and the way they’re arranged is quite comfortable regardless. 

“I told you you should’ve worn a sweatshirt,” he whispers into the hushed air. Gabriel doesn’t stir.

Wrapped in his clothes, he looks so small and helpless. The rookie had been guarded and tight-shouldered at first, so seeing him all cuddly and comfortable like this is particularly endearing. A primal instinct to keep him safe surges through Nico’s body.

Even though the world expects so much from Gabi, an athlete in one of the most difficult sports in the world, Nico knows that sometimes he needs to be allowed to feel like a child again.

Gabriel is quite intriguing—Nico’s always liked him, though. He can be angry and spitting hot one second, then soft-spoken and apologetic the next, particularly when he realizes that he’s gone too far. He’s a whirlwind of fire and a quiet, homely being all at once.

Gabi’s trust feels nice in his imaginary hands. His heart is a fragile thing to hold, something like a ball made of glass. Right then and there, against the low thrum of wind against metal, Nico makes an unspoken promise to himself that he will do whatever it takes to keep him safe. There was a curling devotion deep inside him that Nico had itching to give since forever; and now, he’d found someone.

He only lasts another half an hour with soft music in his ears before he gives into the light hold of sleep, one arm protectively around Gabi’s droopy form and his cheek resting gently against his friend’s soft curly hair.

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Gabriel wakes up slowly at first, and then all at once in alarm.

What the—

He freezes. His head is snuggled deep into the crook of Nico’s neck and his entire weight is pressed against his side. Warm on his skin, his teammate’s navy blue sweater drapes softly around his body like a whisper. Nico has one arm around his shoulder, holding him close—his gentle breathing barely audible like a calming metronome.

Cheeks warming, Gabi immediately retracts his right hand which had somehow migrated away from his seat to rest on Nico’s lower thigh. He has so many questions. How did he get here? Why is he wearing Nico’s clothes?

He envisions himself, sleepy and cold, asking Nico pathetically to borrow his sweatshirt. Irritation at himself pulses through his body. He’d made his teammate make compromises for him. Again.

Nico is so incredibly close to him, he thinks to himself, lacing his hands together in an attempt at a self-soothing gesture. He doesn’t know what to think of it.

But, Gabriel can’t really bring himself to pull away. Nico’s so warm, and he’s being held so easily and gently that he finds himself leaning unconsciously into the soft touch.

Nico stirs slightly, and it makes Gabriel seize up at once, but it’s a false alarm. His hair ruffles a bit where his teammate’s cheek presses against it.

He’s painfully hyperaware of the physical contact they’re making. It’s been forever since he’s been held like that, after all—memories of Christmas time during his childhood come back, with Home Alone crackling on his TV while his mother hugged him close. Gabriel had leaned flush against her, the scorching sun raised high outside while the movies were full of snow, darkness and hot chocolate.

“Mamãe?”

“Sim, Gabi?”

Seven-year-old Gabriel shifts, head tilted with an innocent question. “Por que não neva aqui no Natal?” Why doesn’t it snow here on Christmas?

Mamãe pauses, as if in deep thought. She responds in accented English. “Because… I don’t know!” She smiles knowingly. “How about you find out? Then you can tell me.”

“Oh, I will, Mama, I will!” Little Gabi promises. “When I get into Formula 1, I will know everything.”

She blinks with warm caramel eyes that believed in him with their whole soul. “I’m sure you will.”

Gabriel Bortoleto, in fact, does not know everything.

He’s usually never one to be sentimental, but he can feel the little pinpricks of water beginning to form in his eyes. The memory rekindled something inside of him that he thought he had lost.

The little Gabi inside of him had slept dormant for years, riddled with the stress of moving from karts to cars and country to country with the heavy pressure of youngfound success. His world was shifting so fast all the time that he never had the chance to just slow down and live.

Right now, with an unmoving and unjudging Nico pressed against him, Gabriel slumps in defeat, fiddling with the sleeves of Nico’s navy blue pullover.

His heartbeat picks up pace. Gabriel takes a deep breath and draws in the scent of where Nico’s neck meets his shoulder—something like a mixture of eucalyptus and freshly rained-on soil. Petrichor, he remembers. I used to think that the word was useless.

All this time, Nico had just been a teammate, a coworker. Maybe now, they’ll have something personal too. Something close.

But, how close?

Gabriel does not have an answer.

Chapter Text

Around a few hours’ drive after they leave the airport, their chauffeur wordlessly drops them off at the place where the sponsor dinner is hosted.

The restaurant they’re at is luxuriously spacious. The second they step in, the warm scent of wood spice greets them, drifting throughout. The floors are made of shiny black tiles, and the walls are decorated with artisanal framed artworks. The staff had pieced together a large rectangular table in the center seemingly made of a nice wood like mahogany.

Waiting patiently, the people sitting on the chairs pause their light conversation to fixate their gazes onto the newly arriving drivers.

Gabriel tugs at his shirt cuff self-consciously to get it to rest just right on his arm. The team had ordered him and Nico to get a change of clothes earlier, deeming their loungewear to be too informal for their liking, and, of course, this meant stopping to change at a service station.

They're both dressed simply but tastefully. Gabriel's midnight-black shirt is half-untucked on one side, paired with dark-blue loose-fit jeans. They’d also instructed him to leave his top two buttons undone and for his sleeves to be pulled up for a quoted ‘smart casual’ look.

Meanwhile, Nico is in a white t-shirt with a green button-up thrown over it and dark-brown chinos that cling to his frame in just the right places.

Their team principal, Jon, rises from a chair positioned exactly at the closer end of the table and pats them both on the shoulder. “Gabi, Nico! I’m glad you can both make it today,” he says, pleased in his more soft-spoken kind of way. “Of course, I had to convince the kitchen to delay the dinner by an hour, but nothing that can’t be done. We’ve already done a lot of the talking.”

Gabriel turns to Nico, puzzled. His teammate hadn’t mentioned a single word about convincing the team to delay the event. Hell, Gabi hadn’t even checked his emails at all. I’ll make sure to thank him later.

They take a seat near the center, where two adjacent chairs have been designated for the both of them. The business representatives begin to bother them at once.

“Gabriel, Nico, I heard that your flight got cancelled,” a green-eyed man in a blazer tells them sympathetically. “Don’t the team have enough money to fly a private jet with how much of it the sponsors give you?” Wow. I forgot that these guys go straight to the bone.

Gabi winces while Nico pieces up a solid response. “Well, it’s only the two of us flying for some PR duties,” he explains, tone cool as ever. “The Sauber charter is for when the team travels all together in between races. We care for the environment, after all.”

“It was quite rough,” Gabriel tries to add humorously. “There was only one hotel room left at the airport. Nico had to sleep on the grou—”

His teammate squeezes him on the knee sharply as if to stop him from saying things the sponsors could pick at, and Gabi’s mouth snaps shut at once. Nico’s hand kind of lingers there, like either he forgot to move it out of the way, expects Gabi to slip up later, or both. The light contact feels like electricity.

Gabriel kind of answers things on autopilot without really thinking. To be fair, since it’s his first year in F1, this is something he’d have to get used to.

Nico's very well-conditioned, business-wise. He talks exactly like he knows he's someone important, and his posture shows that he's not here to mess around. Gabriel, being too tired to speak more, lets his teammate do the talking.

In all honesty, there’s not much to remark about things throughout: just mundane team duties. Except for the food, which was inarguably delicious. The lobster bisque and salmon tartare were very commendable.

The time spent sitting at the table with nothing to do, though, has left Gabriel very exposed to the thoughts sitting in his mind, swirling like stirred coffee.

Sure, Nico was very irritating and patronizing at points, but… sometimes he would be confusingly caring. Like, during the plane ride they shared in warm silence, and the way he’d tucked him in that one night they argued.

Gabriel had never noticed, but it was always there.

Nico would always make sure to fetch him a bottle of water after races, let him copy his notes when he found it hard to focus during meetings, and always try to cheer him up after a difficult weekend. 

However, Gabriel didn't like the way Nico would sometimes act like he was the only adult in the room. His jaw would firm up, ticking around the edges, and his gaze would be set in that extremely infuriating manner that made Gabriel temporarily despise him.

It was undeniable, though. Nico cared about him at least a little bit. Maybe he was like this to everyone, and Gabriel wasn’t special in the slightest, but it sure felt nice. A bit too nice, perhaps.

He wondered what it would be like to get even closer to Nico. Just how much did his teammate care for him? What would happen then? 

While his world mentally collapses beside him and the sponsors chatter on, Nico’s hand on his lap remains: soft, warm and caring.

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During the week and a half that follows, they speak to each other much more sparsely—but Nico never forgets to do things like make him tea or coffee in the mornings, and he never forgets how happier Gabriel seems afterward.

The tea and coffee are something he does usually anyway. It’s just that he's putting more thought into it.

This race weekend was like all the others. Media on Thursday, practice on Friday, qualifying on Saturday, and racing on Sunday.

Kick Sauber's race weekend at Azerbaijan can only really be described as very mediocre, with no points for either of them. Still, Nico doesn't let himself get too crestfallen. Their team and their car had never really been that competitive after all, except for that one time Nico miraculously got his first ever podium at Silverstone.

“We should get drinks,” Gabriel insists after the race.

Nico raises an eyebrow, skeptically amused. “We?” Glancing around at the neon lights of the bars scattered over the tourist streets of Baku, he supposes that it does make a lot of sense to enjoy the nightlife.

“We haven't spent time with each other for a while, Nico,” the rookie says provokingly, nudging him with an elbow. “Come on, old man. Just the two of us.”

“I’ll watch you get drunk and carry you home, more like.” Nico scoffs, but he knows that it’d be better to spend his time bonding with Gabriel instead of sulking in his hotel room. “Really. I’ll come with you, but don’t expect me to drink.”

Gabriel nods, eyes faintly reflecting the colorful lights and grin apparent. “I’ll take what I can get.”

Their shoes patter along the stone-brick pavement while they peer through the different bars for one that looks more trustworthy, which appears to be an impossible task, because all the bars are approximately the same. The air is fresh except for the faint trail of gasoline scent that cars leave whenever they pass by.

Finally, Gabi stops at one that looks perfectly ordinary. “This one. My intuition says.”

They step inside slightly warily, though there’s not that much to comment about the place. There’s a bar counter, as always, along with stools, couches and hazy lights. There’s a tired-looking but still functioning bartender who is pouring a beer for a young woman.

Gabriel picks a couch in the corner with a coffee table perched in front. It’s not all that late for a bar, maybe about nine-thirty, so Nico expects increasingly more people to pour in for the late night.

“I’m going to order something,” Gabi announces.

“Suit yourself,” he says, leaning backwards into the sofa’s soft backing.

Gabriel’s head tilts, eyes glimmering, as if to ask a question. “Nothing for you?”

He laughs. “Like I said, suit yourself.”

However, in about an hour, Nico had caved and gotten himself a mild, citrusy cocktail just because he felt bad for taking up space and not buying anything. Gabi was good company for a while, before he had disappeared off to get some shots.

Personally, Nico would say that the hangover was not worth it. He understood the youthful appeal of getting wasted and having a good time, though.

Gabi’s moving around the dance floor now, swaying to the rhythm with a velvety glass of liquid in his hands. Nico sips at his drink and just watches from the sidelines, zoning out and simply enjoying the music.

“Come on,” a voice drags, and suddenly Gabriel’s right in front of his face. “We’re here to have fun, aren’t we, Nico?”

Gabi extends a hand, and charmed, Nico laughs, following the Brazilian closer into the small throng of people—ranging from full-on spinning around on the floor to simply moving their heads to the beat.

Gabi tips in another large sip to finish his glass and shakily places it onto the countertop. He’s sluggishly vibrating, in a way. It’s slightly worrying. He’s smiling in a permanently dazed manner, and he tilts to one side all of a sudden. Nico catches him immediately although Gabi’s almost just as heavy as him.

Sighing, he waves an arm to summon a bartender. “Water for this one here,” he calls, and before long, a glass arrives.

“Is that for me?” Gabriel mumbles. His footing is unstable. “That’s sweet.”

Nico guides him to sit onto the sofa on the side before passing him the glass. “Yes, that’s for you. Now drink.”

Gabi half-drinks, half-spills the water down his shirt, before glancing down at himself blankly. “Whoops.”

Shrugging, Nico places the cup onto the table. It’s water. It’ll dry.

“Nico…” Gabriel slurs, flopping backwards onto the sofa. He dully reaches an arm out to cup his shoulder.

Taking a small sip of his own drink, Nico blinks, turning. “Yes, Gabi?”

“Why do you do so many things for me?”

His tone is so sincere it kind of twists something in his stomach. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t that.

“I don’t… I don’t know what you're saying,” Nico stalls, running a hand through his hair. Gabriel shuffles closer and the soft back of the old sofa dips slightly under his weight.

“You know what I mean,” Gabriel insists. Absentmindedly, he grabs one of Nico’s hands and begins to fidget with his fingers, bending them here and there. “You’re always so… kind.” Gabi’s smiling now, a faint one that curls up subtly.

He continues, expression curious. “Why do you like me?”

Really, Nico doesn’t have an explanation. It just is, he thinks. It’s just right to care for Gabriel. It’s like the way an older sibling looks out for the younger one, the way friends check in on each other and the way parents would do anything to keep their child safe. It just is, with no explanation.

“I just do those things,” he admits vulnerably. “It just feels right.” Gabi lets go of Nico’s hand, letting it drop. Nico keeps it there, lounging on his teammate’s lap.

Gabriel’s eyes lazily flick up to meet his. He looks like an oversized child. “I know what you are, Nico,” his voice drags. He pokes a finger square into the center of his chest, eyes sparkling with the multicolored lighting.

Nico has no idea where this is going.

“You’re all soft,” Gabi continues, his voice a quiet declaration. “But at first, you're…” He scrunches up his nose before beginning to prod at Nico's cheek. “Now, look at you. You’re all soft.”

Nico takes Gabi's fingers off his face and cradles them, unable to say a word. He isn’t really wrong, and it’s not like it hurts his pride, but… the comment makes Nico feel a bit too vulnerable for his liking. It’s like Gabi is stating something he internally doesn’t want anyone to notice.

“Look,” Gabriel says drunkenly in a voice full of honey. “You’re holding my hand. Look at you. Tão macio.”

Something about the tension that’s rapidly appearing makes Nico drop Gabriel’s hand at once. It’s sweet, but it’s not the right direction. It’s exactly like what he’s worried about.

He can’t tell what’s exactly the thing that makes everything clear. Maybe it’s the undecipherable glint in Gabi's eye. Maybe it’s the adoration that’s radiating from his entire being. Whatever it is, it feels sharp and dangerous.

That’s what getting too attached and falling in love is, after all. Falling. But what if Gabi hits the ground too hard? What if it’s Nico’s fault?

Blind to his thoughts, Gabriel flops onto him in a fit of alcohol-induced fatigue.

“I don’t get you, Gabriel Bortoleto,” Nico says truthfully, head tilted back to stare at the ceiling. Bass thrums around the bar, the people in front of them continuing to dance and the lights flashing colors onto the walls.

Gabi chuckles. “And I don’t get you, either.”

They stop speaking for a little bit, allowing Nico's mind to wander.

Nico’s absently watching a cheesy comedy movie when the pilot announces through the crackling overhead intercom that they’d be landing in a few minutes. The noise makes a tightly latched Gabriel stir against his arm.

Gabi blinks, groggy, before his face changes color slightly when he notices Nico watching him curiously. The German man offers him a tentative half-smile.

“Aren’t you a cuddlebug?” he teases. Alongside the low vibration of the plane cabin, Nico can feel him freeze up against his arm.

Gabriel rips himself off at once, evidently attempting to mask his panic. “Was I bothering you?” He asks at once, face flushed and hair flattened on one side from sleep.

“No,” answers Nico sincerely. He returns to examining the movie he’s put on. The female lead is flirting very obviously with the male lead, while he hilariously does not catch any of the hints whatsoever and is just trying to eat his lunch.

“Oh, OK.” Gabi still seems a little tense, but he relaxes a little. He self-consciously ruffles at the flat side of his hair to fix the asymmetry.

With a barely concealed smile, Nico continues to peruse the movie while Gabriel stares at the navy sweater he’s wearing—the one that belongs to Nico—like it personally kicked his puppy. At the end, the Brazilian appears to opt for not taking it off.

“We’re going to land, by the way,” provides Nico against the silence. The sudden urge to provoke Gabi further pops up again. “You’re also very sweet when you’re sleepy.”

“Fuck you,” he grumbles, raising him a half-hearted middle finger.

Without sparing him a glance, the blond pats him on the head with an amused chuckle. “Love you too, cuddlebug.”

Gabriel pales. Nico doesn’t notice.

But now, Nico thinks he notices.

After a moment of silence, Gabi’s head lolls to the side to catch onto Nico’s shoulder, bringing him back into reality. He has a distinguishable alcohol scent all over him.

Nico freezes. “We’re leaving. You’re really drunk.” He pries Gabriel's body off of his—since when did they get so close?.

“But I want to stay,” he groans unwillingly. “With you.”

“You’ll still be with me, Gabi.”

Even ignoring his teammate’s mental incapacitation, Nico himself wants to leave. He doesn’t want to be here anymore. He wants to be on his own, processing what he thinks he might be starting to see.

Their drinks are finished, anyway.

A steady, stabilizing arm around his teammate’s shoulder, Nico guides them up to hobble out of the bar, the bartender giving him a sympathetic nod. They pass through a few groups of people, some of them as dazed as Gabi is, before they pass through the door separating them from the outdoors.

At once, the music dies down into a quiet throb outside, replaced by the rush of occasional cars and the chatter of people along the street.

Easing Gabriel down onto a bench, Nico taps at his phone to call an Uber.

Gabi’s gaze never leaves him. It follows and tracks his movements like a curious cat, lazily flicking to Nico’s eyes, body, and legs with seemingly no pattern.

They wait like this, in uncomfortable silence, until a black car pulls up on the pavement beside them and they pile in.

The Brazilian’s eyes are dull and fixated onto his among the darkness.

Nico doesn’t find this creepy, exactly, but it’s definitely slightly unnerving.

“My head hurts,” Gabriel says in a small voice. He clutches at the side of his face, groaning slightly, and Nico immediately feels a pang of pity.

Gabriel isn’t even old enough to drink in America.

Reaching across the middle seat, Nico instinctively holds one of Gabi’s hands and runs his fingers across the bumps of his knuckles. Although he can't help it, giving Gabriel more affection than what was necessary makes him feel bad, too.

The younger man’s eyes flick down, as if surprised, and then move up again with surprising softness.

Is Nico leading him on by accident? Is that why Gabi looks at him like that?

One thing is apparent, though, no matter how much it breaks Nico’s heart. Whatever this is—whatever they have—cannot continue, for the sake of Gabriel Bortoleto.

Maybe this was the last night he had to say goodbye.

──────────────────

Everything’s warm and fuzzy and swirly. The edges of Gabriel’s vision are blurred, and a dull throb is punching into the side of his skull.

Even through the fray, he can’t take his eyes off Nico. He just can’t. It’s something he refuses to explain to himself, even, but something deeper draws his gaze there.

His vision is vignetted with a yellowy hue: it’s almost like he’s drifting through a dream.

Sweet, sweet Nico. That’s all Gabi wants right now.

He can feel a gentle thumb brushing against his knucklebones, and it’s such a warm and loving touch that he can’t help but keen towards it. His soupy mess of a brain swirls even more. Nico, Nico, Nico.

“Not long now,” his teammate says gently. Gabriel nods, enamored by the way his voice vibrates just right.

When the Uber slows to a stop, he still can’t concentrate. The ground shifts below his feet, and immediately, Nico is right beside him, arm over his shoulder. Gabriel leans into it subconsciously.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, vaguely aware of how debilitated he is right now. The stony pavement tips in every direction at once, and in his delirium, all that matters in the world is Nico.

Over the past week or two, even though they constantly saw each other, Gabriel had missed him. He missed the way he smiled when they were alone, and he also missed his touch.

They make their way side by side to the hotel the team is staying at. Nico speaks to the receptionist in words that slip right through his mind like water through a sieve.

After an elevator ride and a bit more wobbly walking, Nico opens a door, and Gabriel finds his hotel room laid out in front of him.

“I guess this is where I leave you be,” Nico says, standing stiffly in the doorway and facing Gabi. There’s a strange twist to his expression—is it meant to be regretful?

“Yeah,” he responds. Gabi’s a little unstable on his feet, so he utilizes the shoe cabinet for support.

Nico, after one lingering glance, begins to turn away. It makes something in Gabriel’s stomach hurt.

He reaches out before his teammate faces away completely and hugs him as tightly as he can. Nico’s so warm. If Gabi could choose a way to die, it’d be to dissolve into Nico’s arms right here, right now. 

Nico's neck smells like eucalyptus and petrichor with a small hint of citrus.

When they pull away, Gabriel cups his teammate’s face in his hands. 

“Can you please… stay with me?” He asks, searching his face for an expression.

“I’m not sure if I can,” Nico says softly after a pause. His blue eyes are still full of affection, but something inside them shatters just like broken seaglass.

Gabi draws his hands back dejectedly and sags a little. “Okay, then.”

“Just one more… one more thing,” adds Nico. His voice cracks a little. Guiding Gabriel’s head downwards, he hesitates before kissing him lightly on the forehead.

It was nothing more than that—it was merely just a soft touch that came into existence for one moment and left for the next.

Gabi shudders into the gentle hands on his cheek. The world was just the two of them, only if for a moment.

God, Nico made him weak.

When he turns his gaze back up, his teammate's expression is a mixture of anxious and loving. It's a sharp contrast to how he usually presented himself: level-headed and confident.

“Doce Nico,” Gabriel whispers mostly to himself. “Doce, macio Nico.”

His teammate swallows, his silhouette surrounded by the lights of the hotel corridor. “I should go now.”

“I’ll see you around, then.” His voice slurs with the promise. “We can… get drinks another night.”

Nico blinks too quickly for a second, rounded gaze flicking away to the side. “Yes. Another night.” He exhales softly. “Goodbye, Gabriel.”

When the door shuts, Nico disappears, leaving Gabi all alone without the person he thinks he's in love with.

Chapter Text

As it turns out, Gabriel doesn’t get to see Nico again the next day, as he’s already set off on an early morning private jet trip with Max Verstappen.

That’s fine, though. He doesn’t want Nico to see him right now, anyway, with the absolutely abysmal state he’s in.

At least, he has Fernando.

Gabriel doesn’t think that Fernando’s noticed the full extent of his hangover so far. It’s only been around ten minutes since the start of their coach journey, after all.

Fernando is currently sitting next to him, thumbing through some TikToks that are far too ridiculous for someone of his age and caliber: Fernando Alonso—two-time champion of the world and the oldest F1 driver in fifty years—is scrolling through Italian brainrot.

Three years ago, when Gabriel’s career had began to falter, Fernando had saw the fire in his eyes and his quiet passion for racing and had taken him into his management company A14. Having Fernando as his manager is a big reason in why he’s in Formula 1 now.

Gabriel’s head suddenly begins to spin and throb while his hands find the armrests, his vision temporarily giving out into darkness. Gabi waits this out before reaching beneath him into his backpack for his little box of painkillers.

Taking two of them with a generous gulp of cold water, he remains there, knuckle white against the armrest while his skull continues to hammer. Well, that’s great, isn’t it?

Fernando is watching him closely. The older man narrows his eyes playfully, switching his phone off. “You have a headache?”

“Sadly.”

“Had too much fun partying, huh,” Fernando jokes, nudging his shoulder. “That’s on you, no?”

“Nico would’ve been a bit kinder,” Gabriel says. He rolls his eyes. “Anyway. Not my proudest moment.”

Fernando hums skeptically. “Sure.” Then, they fall back into silence.

The bus rattles slightly when it moves. It doesn’t really feel fair to not thank Nico for his help yesterday, so Gabriel flicks through his phone to find Nico’s contact. They’ve never really messaged each other properly. They didn’t need to.

Gabi vaguely remembers only the key details, like how he’d drank too much in too little time and how Nico had gotten him home in one piece. Apart from that, there’s not much else that comes to mind.

He stares at the blank input box and hesitates, the cursor flickering menacingly.

Gabi can’t think of anything to write. ‘I’m sorry for last night’ is too tacky and unspecific. ‘I’m sorry for bothering you last night’ is mildly self-deprecating, which Nico would hate.

Defeated, he slips the phone in his pocket and decides to simply watch the countryside while the coach rattles on.

──────────────────

The memories come back slowly in chunks like a slow-loading video game: the lights flashing in the pub, the atmosphere of looseness and liquor, and finally, Nico.

If Gabriel’s mind were a room, then Nico Hulkenberg would be sitting in the corner of it, slowly sipping his stupid citrus cocktail drink. He’d watch Gabi’s every move and remind him to take his medicine whenever his headaches come back like an annoying gatecrasher.

Gabriel smiles at the thought.

“Something’s up with you, Gabi,” Fernando comments off-handedly once they’re settled on their private jet, eating their dinner. The sky is beginning to dim, and through the small windows, it’s a halo of fire.

Gabriel rolls some spaghetti bolognese around his fork conversationally. “I don’t know what you mean,” he says, eyes flicking up to meet Fernando’s and tilting his head innocently.

“You keep smiling to yourself.” Fernando makes some undecipherable hand movements.

“Oh, so I’m not allowed to smile,” he shoots back sarcastically. Gabi raises his chin as a challenge, but internally he knows exactly what this is about.

Yes, he keeps thinking about Nico. So what?

“Oh, so you hooked up with a cute girl last night or something,” Fernando says, eyebrows waggling up and down. “Didn’t you go partying? That explains everything.”

Gabriel almost fucking chokes in disgust. “What the actual fuck?! No! No way!” He feigns wiping his mouth to hide his face, caught extremely off-guard. 

The older man laughs, the kind that he makes whenever he’s super pleased with himself. “I thought that it was a fair thing to say.”

“Never make that facial expression ever again, Nando. The eyebrows? I will kill you.” Gabriel quips, embarrassed, trying to shift the trajectory of this conversation. “Has anybody told you that you’re way too straightforward sometimes?”

However, Fernando is still undeterred. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, then?” 

He’s not letting it go, is he? Gabi is so overwhelmingly grateful for his complexion right now. He has the kind of skin tone that doesn’t form a blush. 

Gabriel rolls his eyes. “Nothing. Nothing’s going on.”

“Hmm,” muses Fernando sagely. He sips at his canned beer, expression humorously serene.

Trying to hold in his laugh, Gabriel’s lips lift at his mentor’s ridiculous actions. “Shut the fuck up, sensei.”

Fernando slaps a hand to his chest, dramatically offended but smiling. “All I said was ‘hmm’, Gabi!”

“Just… leave it, okay,” Gabriel says after some silence. He takes another bite of his increasingly-cooling pasta—an excuse to escape his mentor’s prying look. “There’s no hookup involved. And, it could very well change up my career.”

“Career, huh? Slims things down a little bit.” As he speaks, Fernando’s eyes narrow teasingly. “Although there’s a bunch of cute girls around the paddock.”

Gabi raises an amused eyebrow.

“I wouldn’t call him cute, exactly.” 

A pause.

I wouldn’t call him cute, exactly.

The words slipped out long before Gabriel realizes his glaring mistake.

Fernando’s eyes widen a little bit, realizing the weight of what was just said, while heat rushes to the crook of Gabi’s neck.

He blinks. “Oh,” Fernando corrects himself blankly, “I guess there are a lot of… not cute guys, too.”

Gabriel’s voice is gone.

Across the table, the older man’s expression has quickly morphed into something serious. He reaches out, holding Gabi’s hand and running his fingers across the lines of his palm, seemingly thinking of the right thing to say.

“You don’t have to be worried around me, cariño,” Fernando says, the look in his eyes soft. There’s no insistence in them anymore. No pressure.

Focusing his sight down, Gabriel stares at where his mentor is cradling his open palm. He’s not about to cry, not even close—more so stunned at how abruptly the atmosphere changed.

“I don’t even know what I am,” Gabi offers weakly. “I’m still figuring things out. I’ve had girlfriends.”

“That’s okay,” Fernando reassures him. “Just know that I’m not against things like that at all. You know, I drove during the 2010s. Do you remember how incredibly gay the grid was?”

“No,” Gabi answers. His eyebrows knit in confusion. There were gay drivers? 

Rolling his eyes, Fernando sighs. “Of course. There was this weird triangle going on with Lewis, Seb and Nico. Maybe Mark, too. It was ridiculous.”

Oh.

Gabriel laughs, the tension in his shoulders loosening just a little bit. “That is fucking hilarious. I think my childhood might be ruined.”

“Well, sorry,” he apologizes not very apologetically. Fernando’s eyes sparkle a bit at the thought of his younger years. “I have a lot of crazy stories. Or tea, as the TikTok people call it. Want to hear them, Gabi?”

Gabriel folds his arms and leans back, grinning like he’d just learned some sort of divine secret. “Absolutely.”

──────────────────

The circuit is incredibly quiet compared to how race weekends usually are. Instead of the hustle and bustle of enthusiastic commuters, everything is replaced by the relaxing silence of having almost nobody around.

Gabriel follows his team to the very makeshift paddock—they’d split up with Fernando and Aston Martin not too long ago.

His shoes tap against the asphalt. There’s already two cars on track, blazing with Ferrari red. The wind rushes through Gabi’s hair whenever they rip past. The air smells like gasoline and hot rubber.

Once they’re entering the little building designated for Kick Sauber, there’s nobody in sight except for some paddock staff.

Gabi paces around the place with slight agitation, not entirely sure what he’s looking for. He peers into some offices with computer-lined desks, finds a break room with a coffee machine tucked in the corner, and explores the plain-white corridors. They lead to his small drivers’ room, where Gabriel lazily sets down his suitcase and backpack.

He still has the itch to walk around, however, so he makes his way upstairs.

Gabriel finds him through a doorway.

Nico is lounging on a small couch in the sitting room. He’s facing away from the door and scrolling through his phone. Decked out with a team shirt and cap, his posture is relaxed, one leg lazily crossed over the other. Earbuds on, Nico doesn’t seem to register Gabriel’s presence.

Everyone else doesn’t pay him much notice. However, Gabriel finds himself subconsciously wandering over to join him on the couch.

That is, until team principal Jonathan Wheatley taps him on the shoulder.

Jon gives him a polite smile. “We’re running a little bit late, remember?” He reminds him kindly. “It’ll probably be best if you get ready for the briefing.”

Turning around, Gabriel nods, but Jon’s already gone to speak with some Pirelli representatives. He sighs. After all, they hadn’t arrived for long, fresh out of about nine or ten hours of consecutive traveling, so this is a mildly irritating outcome.

At least their testing slot wasn’t today. He’d have some more time to recover from a mixture of headaches and jetlag.

Making his way up to his drivers’ room, Gabriel clicks open his luggage and examines the contents.

It’s mostly team gear, if he is totally honest. He puts on a standard black-and-green team shirt and a pair of jeans, flinging his hoodie and sweatpants over a swivel-chair.

Before he leaves, something else catches his eye—the navy blue pullover that he’d forgotten to give back to Nico. It’s soft and has the team logo on it, but he hesitates anyway.

Gabi holds his breath and slips it on. He tries not to overthink it.

Most of Nico’s scent has faded off, anyway. Nobody else would think anything of it except for him; and Nico, he supposes.

He sits by his desk in silence afterward and takes out some more of his things. Gabriel’s head still hurts a little bit, but he doesn’t take medication for it this time—he can’t afford to be too tired during the aforementioned briefing. He’d healed up a lot anyway over the course of traveling.

Knock, knock.

Gabi jumps. The door pulling open from the other side, it reveals Nico Hulkenberg right behind it.

“We should go,” says Nico plainly. Gabriel is too startled to respond.

His eyes flick down and rest on the sweater—the one that doesn’t belong to Gabi—for a bit too long. Nico’s jaw clenches, an almost-imperceptible flicker of recognition running through his expression.

Heat crawls up the side of his jaw into his ears. Gabi glances at himself self-consciously—Nico had noticed.

Hastily stuffing a notepad in his pocket, he’s still a bit jolted by his teammate’s sudden appearance. “Hello to you, too,” he tries to joke. 

While the rest of his face is set in stone, Nico’s gaze darts around uncertainly.

“You don’t know where the briefing is, right?” he asks. His voice is toneless. It’s not exactly business neutral, but something much more subdued and empty. Resigned, perhaps. 

There’s almost no glint in his eye, nothing that shows they’re anything more than acquaintances; but, Gabriel had slowly learned how to read his micro-expressions. He can see that the distant look in those blue eyes are a little less frosted than Nico would ever admit.

Not even that long ago, they were quite stiff with each other. It took a few months of PR and occasional conversation to warm up, so he supposes this is the act Nico is putting up.

“No,” Gabi admits. He stands from his chair. “Can you lead me?”

Following closely behind, Nico takes him outside and then into a general building. There are some corridors with plain-white walls, and they snake through them before slowing to a stop by a wooden door with ‘Meeting Room 1’ engraved at eye level.

The meeting room in question is nothing abnormal—it’s just an average one, indistinguishable from the other paddocks. It has office chairs and a long rectangular table set in the middle. Aston Martin are present as well, mingling with the Kick Sauber staff.

When they sit down, the Pirelli representatives speak about the tyres they're testing: mundane things about the way they're supposed to give feedback and the scheduling for their testing time. It’s incredibly dull, to say the least. But, Gabi hangs on by a small thread for forty-five minutes and makes it all the way to the end.

Gabriel tries to find Nico as they’re leaving; but, he’s disappeared off somewhere. Trying not to be too disappointed, Gabi trudges back to the motorhome by himself.

Fernando catches up to him and falls into step. “You okay?” He asks.

“The meeting was boring,” says Gabi truthfully. He sticks his tongue out.

He pats Gabriel on the back. “Fair enough.”

That’s all the words they manage to exchange before Fernando turns away into the Aston Martin motorhome.

He heads into his own building, greeted by the sight of Nico drinking from a chilled water bottle, chatting with an older team member Gabi can’t quite remember the name of. 

It stings a little bit. Usually, he’d be the one speaking with Nico after events, and usually, Nico would at least try to find him first. Still, Gabi has no right to be stingy about it.

He grabs his own water from the cooler—he can feel Nico glance at him in his peripheral vision, but when Gabriel tries to catch his gaze, it’s already gone.

He plops down onto a two-person armchair, drinking, not trying to be too obtrusive. 

Nico presence is light and watchful. Undistracted, but not speaking too loudly. His arms are crossed casually and his short sleeves ride up a bit to show the shape of his biceps. Guiltily staring, Gabriel notices the way his sharp jaw curves up, tense, and the way the lighting catches him just right.

Nico’s eyes snap towards him. Gabi rapidly looks away, caught red-handed. 

His gaze immediately comes to a stop on the figure of Fernando Alonso lingering in their doorway.

“I think you spilled a bit of water,” the Spaniard says happily. “You’re that excited to see me, huh?”

“Hi,” says Gabi, cheeks burning. “Aren’t you supposed to be with Aston Martin?”

“Oh, no, I’m not busy,” Fernando replies, entering further and joining Gabriel on the loveseat. He leans with two arms looped over the backrest like he owns the place. “I might as well spend some time with you.”

“You make it sound like we are dating, Nando.”

He tilts his head, eyes twinkling. “That’s just a normal, happy thing to say, cariño. Or do you have no friends?”

Gabi yelps, nudging him hard. “I do, thank you very much.”

“Of course, mi amor. Corazón. Mi vida,” cooes Fernando. He sounds identical to a pet owner talking to their dog. 

Although he’s scrunching his nose up, Gabriel can’t help but smile. “You shouldn’t be calling people half your age ‘my love’, Fernando Alonso.”

“Well, you’re spiky today,” Fernando says amusedly. “You’re practically my son, mijo. I can say many things.”

“I’m not being spiky! I’m very round.”

Gabriel’s defense is so ridiculous that Fernando begins to laugh. Nico, a few meters away, gives them a cursory glance which betrays nothing. 

He’s trying to decipher Nico’s expression now, but it doesn’t seem to work. There’s something complicated in it that Gabriel can’t really point out. Not completely, anyway.

Fernando says something about spiky cacti and asks a question, but he isn’t really listening.

“What? Of course, of course,” Gabriel answers quickly after skipping two beats.

“Did you hear me? Do you think I should grow the eh… cactuses in my apartment?” 

Gabriel blinks, only just registering the words. “Oh, yeah… I guess they don’t need that much watering,” he answers, attention snapping back.

Eyebrows knitting, Fernando studies his expression. “Are you sure nothing’s up with you?” His suspicious gaze turns to Nico, not far away, and back to Gabriel.

“No. Absolutely nothing,” he defends. “Also, it’s not cactuses. It’s cacti for whatever reason.”

Fernando sighs and makes a vague gesture to follow him. “Let’s go outside. Maybe the fresh air will do you some good.”

Once outside, Fernando keeps going, until they reach the Aston Martin area of the paddock. It’s not far at all—Kick Sauber are directly adjacent to them.

His manager turns inside the motorhome. I thought he wanted fresh air. But, Gabi resolves that he can’t do much except for follow him into what’s probably going to be an interrogation.

To Gabriel’s surprise, his manager opts for a very mundane question. “Did you listen during the briefing?”

Gabi blinks. He was expecting anything but small-talk, really. “I did. Kind of.”

Fernando hums, drumming his fingers against a free table. “You can tell me anything, you know,” he says, taking a seat on a chair. His suddenly serious demeanor makes Gabi believe him with all his heart.

He swallows. Gabriel’s always trusted Fernando, after all. “Yeah, I know. But, I think I’ve already told you a lot on that plane. What more do you want?”

Leaning closer, Fernando stares intently at the sweatshirt Gabriel is wearing. The older driver exhales slowly, before making eye contact again. “It’s Hulkenberg, isn’t it?” 

It’s not a statement, but rather a question that they both know the answer to.

Gabriel freezes.

“You know,” Fernando continues, voice soft and sympathetic. It’s reminiscent of a tone someone would use with a lost child. “Nico. Nico Hulkenberg.”

“I know who he is,” Gabi snaps, but it’s not out of anger at all. On second thought, maybe he is a bit angry—at himself—for being read so fucking easily like a kindergartener’s book.

“Take your time.” Fernando steeples his fingers together.

Gabriel sighs sharply, tracing circles into the wood. “How do you know?”

His manager wordlessly reaches across the table to pinch at one of his sleeves. Sure enough, there's a small, green 27 on his shoulder which Gabriel had never noticed. Nico's driver number.

“Cariño, you're wearing his clothes,” Fernando points out. “If you were dating someone else, I know you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing Nico’s clothes.”

Gabriel puts his head face-down on the table, groaning, increasingly irritated with himself.

Merciless as always, Fernando doesn’t stop speaking. “You also keep looking at him. Like, during meetings and especially he’s speaking. Then you get distracted and—”

“Okay, I think that’s enough,” Gabriel interrupts, face warming. How many more people have noticed?

Winking badly, Fernando slides back into his seat. “I’m very happy for you both though. Although he is a little old for you.”

“He’s not— I’m not dating him, Nando.” Gabriel manages to hold eye contact. This is literally public humiliation.

“Oh, yeah?” He makes an infuriating face. “So you have a situationship? Oh, boy troubles.”

Gabi groans loudly and scrunches his face up. “Why are you speaking to me like I’m a teenage girl?”

In an unbothered manner, Fernando scratches the back of his neck. “In my world, you are, mijo. You are basically my child—that’s why I care about you. Now, tell me more. I need to know by you are sad and spiky.”

──────────────────

Not long after Gabriel left, Rob—the person Nico had made conversation with—disappears off to do some of his engineer work.

Nico resolves to go outside and get some fresh air. After all, there’s not much else that requires doing, and he’s in the moody headspace reserved for pacing around.

Rob was a very ordinary man. He had seemingly no hobbies, a wife, and two kids. Nico hadn’t wanted to speak to him in particular. But, he was a distraction. A distraction from Gabriel.

Nico’s legs carry him along the asphalt and gravel as he heaves in some heavy breaths of fresh air.

Then, faint voices begin to reach his ears. Nico immediately pauses.

“You’re still figuring things out. It’s just young adulthood.” It’s undoubtedly Fernando Alonso, strong Spanish accent and all.

“I know,” Gabriel’s voice says. “What do you think?”

“About Nico?” There’s a short pause.

Locating the sound to come from a nearby window, Nico gets as close as he can get away with while being out of sight. He feels terrible for eavesdropping, but this conversation feels far too important to miss.

It’s about him, after all. Shame trickles into the tips of his ears, but Nico remains there guiltily.

“Yeah,” replies Gabi. His voice is scratched with honesty. “What do you think about Nico?”

“He didn’t really look like he wanted to speak with you earlier.” Fernando ponders out loud, much too concisely as always. “Did you two argue?”

“No, we didn’t fight,” says Gabi, distressed. There’s a slight amount of annoyance in his tone with a dark undertone of worry. “He… oh, merda. He’s probably been ignoring me all day. I think I might have done something wrong, but I’m so confused, Fernando.”

Nico’s heart seizes up. He starts to turn away, walking as fast as he can in the opposite direction back into the Sauber motorhome. He lets the pitter-patter of his shoes against the ground distract him as he weaves through the building to get to his room.

Kicking aggressively at an empty bottle on the floor, Nico angrily stands there for a minute. What can he even do at this point? No matter what he says, what he does; he’s going to hurt Gabi.

Nico cares too much about Gabi.

During the flight to Italy, amidst drinking wine with Max and Carlos and playing poker with Lewis, he’d had this seething feeling underneath his skin that he just couldn’t rub off.

Everything was undeniable. Gabriel had looked at Nico that drunken night like he was every star in the sky. 

Gabriel stared at Nico like he saw something in him that nobody else knew—something quiet and loving. But, Nico knew that what Gabi wanted could never happen, just because he just didn’t love him the same.

Crucially, the age gap just would’ve never been right, either. A thirty-seven-year-old veteran with a twenty-year-old rookie was too far of a jump in his book.

What did Nico Hulkenberg do, then? He decided, that night, to distance himself… all to spare his favorite person the pain of heartbreak.

Gabriel was drunk that night—really drunk. Nico took the time to bring him to their hotel, and after he said goodbye and kissed Gabi on the forehead, he’d taken a long, long shower with scalding water. He had stayed in there for over an hour, trying to scrub the itchy feeling of discomfort off his skin.

But, the decision was made. This was all he could do to cushion the fall.

Whenever he sees Gabi—the fiery rookie with a knack for sarcasm—Nico wants to approach. He wants to speak to him and do all these little things for him. Nico wants to see Gabriel’s smile whenever he makes him coffee in the morning and whenever he brings him water after a dull meeting.

Right now, he’s forcing himself to turn his back. Today, the rookie’s presence was loud. He joked with Fernando with a blinding smile, gestures confident, dressed in clothes that weren’t his own. Nico could sense Gabi’s gaze constantly sneaking in his direction and it took everything for him to not look back.

It’s true. He’s always had a soft spot for Gabriel Bortoleto.

But, that’s exactly why he doesn’t want him to get hurt—Gabi is starting to fly too close to the sun. In the Greek myth, if Daedalus had never made his son those wings, he would not have fallen from the sky and become just a scatter of feathers and blood on the water surface.

Sinking into his desk chair, he rubs at his face with his hands, agitated. His heart hurts. If he could, Nico would hold Gabriel close and tell him that he’s his favorite person. He wants to tell him, over and over, how much he cares.

But he can’t, because Gabriel is in love with Nico and Nico will break his heart. The higher they go, the harder they will hit the fucking ground.

“Are you okay?” Rob speaks from the doorway in a very generic pitying tone. Nico thinks that he might want to smash Rob’s face in, but that’s unfair, so he pauses to compose himself.

“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” he replies a little too harshly. Rob shrugs, doesn’t appear to think anything of it, and leaves.

More footsteps appear and Gabriel passes by. Nico tries his best not to look at him, guilt pooling in his stomach. 

The rookie gives him a long glance in his peripheral vision before fading out of sight.

The ghost of Gabriel’s eyes linger on Nico, and like the night after Baku, he feels terrible. He’s so angry at the world.

It’s not the first time. During his days at Haas, he’d spent almost every day with his teammate Kevin. They’d go out drinking, travel, and they would click. Whenever they needed to share a hotel room, neither of them minded to sleep in the same bed.

But, Kevin had the wrong impression of them. One night, right before his official exit from F1, he confessed everything. Kevin Magnussen told Nico how much he loved him and how dearly he hoped Nico would love him back.

Oh, Nico did love him back. It was just like with Gabi—the wrong kind of love.

He will never forget the look in Magnussen’s eyes. They were broken, horrified and there was a shine of glassy betrayal. Kevin had yelled at him: an angry, incoherent ramble about the sheer cruelty of leading people on, and that day, he had lost his best friend.

Nico will never let that happen ever again.

Chapter Text

Trying to get a good feel for the track, Gabriel eases the car around the circuit. He can see Nico far behind him through the side mirrors.

The 2026 tyres are smaller—that's the main thing about them. There’s not a dramatic difference to the current ones otherwise.

Once the layout of the circuit has ingrained itself into his muscle memory, Gabi focuses more on how his allocated mediums feel, pushing the extent of their grip and mentally noting down how far they let him go.

A radio message crackles into his ears. “Light rain in two minutes,” his race engineer says into his earpiece.

“Okay, thanks,” Gabriel replies while making his way down the straight section.

Gabi raises his eyebrows inside his helmet as he feels small raindrops begin to roll past his visor. The team said ‘light rain,’ right? Surely, it wouldn’t matter too much that he was on slicks. Extra rain practice. I’ll take it.

There's a slowly mounting sheen of moistness on the tarmac surface—the midday sun gives the track a clingfilm-like appearance.

Continuing to drive, Gabriel adjusts his car’s little snaps across the circuit, carefully making sure he hits the curb just right.

“The rain is getting worse,” the team radios in again as Gabi is weaving his way through a tricky chicane. “Do you want to box?”

“Busy right now,” he mumbles back. Annoyed at the inconvenient timing, Gabriel messes up his alignment slightly. The car wavers.

That's fine. He tries his best to retain focus and snap back onto the racing line, but his slick tyres slip under him, and his turn entrance is compromised.

He hits the brakes too late and too hard.

The snap of oversteer alongside a lock-up sends the car violently spinning across the wet track into the gravel trap. The spin sprays mist into the damp air. 

Tensing up, Gabriel braces every muscle for an impact that never comes.

His car is brought to a gradual stop. 

Once the displaced dust settles, he’s slamming the radio button and fucking fuming. “Merda! You don’t radio during a chicane, you fucking idiots! I thought this was supposed to be basic training, no?” He jabs, seething. “It’s really not that hard to shut up during braking zones!”

Nico’s car, smugly on inters, cruises by. Gabriel angrily tries to start the engine. Even though nothing’s broken, he’s still stuck in the gravel. “I’m beached. Porra.”

“Switch off and leave the car when safe, Gabi,” his race engineer says too calmly. 

Hissing out some more curse words, he detaches the steering wheel and clambers out of the halo.

The yellow flags wave while Nico passes by again.

──────────────────

“Gabriel, what the fuck happened?” Nico storms into the motorhome, expression dark. It's one of the first things he's hearing from Nico in days.

“I spun,” Gabi answers bitterly.

His eyes narrow. “You have to be more careful. And what were you thinking, not slowing down in the rain? You were on slicks. Even an eleven-year-old would have more common sense than that!” He slams his green gloves loudly onto the table Gabi is sitting at. “It’s Pirelli testing, not sprint qualifying.”

Rolling his eyes, Gabriel squeezes the bridge of his nose irritatedly. Wow, he's being a bastard. “Fucking hell. Can you shut up? The team radioed me during a busy sector, and I lost my focus.”

“Yeah, okay. You were still going too fast. You could’ve crashed, Gabi, and the cars are expensive. You’re lucky you ended up in the gravel and not with a broken hand.”

Gabriel gets up from his seat at once and glares at him squarely in the eye. “I said, can you shut up?” He says stiffly, stepping away.

“Watch your tone,” Nico warns. “You were the one being dangerous and—”

Chin up, Gabi scoffs. “I know you’re only mad because you care.”

Nico stares at him, chest heaving. His expression fades, and so does his half-finished sentence.

The defeated look in those blue eyes embeds itself into Gabriel’s short-term memory as he whips around into the glaring white corridor. He can feel Nico’s gaze trained onto his back.

I guess I’m right, then.

──────────────────

Singapore is a bustling metropolis of a city. The air is heavy and drooping with tropical humidity, and the lights of its numerous skyscrapers twinkle against the dark skyline.

Gabriel treks along the asphalt, taking in the atmosphere and scenery of Marina Bay. He’s listening to music in one ear while he silently traverses the track. 

While Gabriel had decided that he’d rather walk and sightsee, the very sporty drivers like Carlos, Valtteri, Ollie and some others had opted to bike around instead. They rip past occasionally with a nod and a wave.

As he walks, his subconscious focus is simple: don’t think about Nico Hulkenberg.

It’s obviously not that easy. Again, he’d barely spoken to Nico in the past week. Again, Nico hadn’t left his mind.

Gabi had bumped into Nico a few times by the coffee machines in the mornings and afternoons simply because their schedules were so deeply intertwined. Every time, Nico would meet his gaze, give him a half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes and walk away without saying a word.

He can’t help the increasing feeling that he’s now a stranger to his own teammate.

“See, I don’t know what’s going on,” Gabi’s telling Fernando, propping himself up on a table inside the Aston Martin motorhome.

Tapping at his cheek, Fernando appears to ponder this. “Have you maybe remembered that he’s German?”

“Ha-ha, very funny.” Gabriel’s unimpressed. “What a comedian.”

“No, no, I’m serious,” Fernando insists. “I knew many Germans in my time. They all had something strange about them.”

Skeptical but interested, Gabriel leans forward. “Yeah? Elaborate.”

“So, example one: Nico Rosberg. He was very guarded and repressed,” explains Fernando. “Then, we have Sebastian Vettel. He smiled a lot but didn’t really know how to love. I told you about them, remember?”

Gabi nods. He can’t help but smirk a little at the recent memory of Fernando explaining the romantic dynamics of the 2010s to him with shameless vocabulary. “Fine, well, then what?”

Fernando laughs in a very Fernando-like way. “I guess the thing about them is that you have to look carefully.”

Although his advice is shady at best, Fernando’s right in the fact that there’s always something in Nico Hulkenberg’s expression. 

Gabriel’s eyes sneak over his shoulder, his gaze flitting past Liam chatting with Isack and Fernando speaking with Lance. 

Nico’s walking maybe ten paces away from him. His hands are in his pockets.

The city lights illuminate his teammate's face. There’s a hint of awe and wonder underneath the glass cast over it, electric with the childlike serenity invisible to the naked eye.

Gabriel’s mind flits to other memories away from Fernando.

Gabi runs up to Nico’s car after the race. Silverstone circuit smells like petrichor and motor oil as Nico jumps down, eyes gleaming through the open visor of his helmet.

“You are a legend, honestly,” Gabriel beams. He grabs Nico’s helmet with both hands, shaking it in pure joy and staring into the face half-hidden inside. “A Formula 1 podium. Absolutely insane.”

Seemingly surprised, Nico’s gaze softens at the praise. “Thank you, Gabi.”

Gabi doesn’t hesitate and wraps him in a hug. The helmet is cold against his cheek, and Nico's race suit is damp with rain, but he doesn’t care.

“I did not think that a podium was possible with that car of ours,” Gabriel quips happily after pulling away.

Smiling, Nico nods. There are creases around his eyes.

Another memory takes him away from Silverstone, and now he’s in Austria.

Gabi is sitting on the floor of the Stake Sauber garage, propped up against a wall and drying race-fresh sweat out of his hair with a towel.

Passing by, Nico joins him on the ground and hands him a bottle of water.

“Thank you,” Gabriel says, putting on his cap.

“Congratulations on your first F1 points, by the way.” Nico drinks from his own bottle.

Gabi glances sideways, a little taken aback—Nico usually wasn’t one to praise. “Today’s for the team, not for me. Double-points finish and all that. Plus, it’s just four points.”

“But, it’s your first four points,” defends Nico with a half-smile. “What I’m saying is: well done.”

Finally, Gabriel’s mind falls onto many months back, in Australia.

On his debut F1 race, Gabi had crashed. Although he was fine, his car wasn’t, and neither was his ego. He won F2, after all—the statistical champion out of all the other rookies. 

Gabriel currently feels like shit. He’s dirt streaked on a white carpet.

His teammate Nico probably hates him. He’s a veteran in the sport, keeping expressions like a mask a doctor would wear: distant, professional and clinical. He speaks like someone who masked his uncertainty with sureness, a vulnerability lined with icy walls.

Gabriel had tried to speak with him, joke with him, and befriend him, but all old Nico would do was keep everybody at arm’s length.

He recalls a lighthearted interview onstage before the race. It was a fun concept—a challenge of memorizing slang from both their generations. Gabriel had teased Nico, laughed constantly, and hit his leg with a microphone, but the German was never really emotionally there. His lips had smiled while his eyes were hidden behind his dark sunglasses.

Gabi perches on a chair on his side of the garage. The TV feed of the race flickers on, and the checkered flag falls. P7 for Hulkenberg. 

Nico had achieved more points in one race than the entire Sauber team did in 2024, and the garage erupts into cheer. However, Gabriel remains still.

Gabi shivers despite the characteristic Singaporean heat. He’d spent months chiseling away at Nico’s exterior, but at what cost? What had he done to lose it all?

──────────────────

Although it’s well into nighttime, the temperature inside the cockpit is still swelteringly hot. Gabriel can feel sweat clinging to his skin and hair inside the race suit while he battles the compressive g-forces in every corner, neck straining and breathing heavily.

He’d been eliminated in Q1 during qualifying. That was very disappointing, and Gabi had blamed it on the yellow flags during his last push lap; but, the Williams double-disqualification had pretty much compensated for it.

Gabriel also had a very terrible race start, to put it bluntly. Now, he’s just trying to catch up to the Alpine car stubbornly in front of him. Its pink-and-blue livery streaks along the track under the chrome shine of Singaporean floodlights.

It’s only lap thirty out of sixty-two anyway. If he really focuses, he might get some more points for the team.

The radio makes noise. “Colapinto is two seconds in front. I repeat, two seconds.”

“When can we catch him?” Gabi asks, breath ragged from the physical exertion. The temperature is upwards of sixty degrees Celsius in the cockpit.

“Five to ten laps if you push,” the intercom says.

Five to ten laps. I can do that. Gabriel maneuvers around a corner, breathing heavily. “Okay. Pushing.”

Just like trying to clock a fast lap in qualifying, he tries to brake as late as his car allows him to. Gabi doesn’t rush it—he gets a feel for the limits of the car first and closes the interval steadily. A burst of exhilaration runs through his brain whenever he gets the racing line just right and passes the wall with a few centimeters to spare.

Franco Colapinto appears to begin faltering—a trade-off of his older and harder tyres. His car seems to slip as he turns, and Colapinto brakes increasingly earlier to compensate for the lost grip. Within five laps of gritty determination, Gabriel is comfortably within DRS range.

They’re so close that there’s a likely chance the international race broadcast is set onto them. It’s about time he makes a move.

He tails Franco, waiting for an inevitable mistake like a tiger about to strike. Gabriel clenches his teeth while he deploys his DRS.

The distance wanes. 0.8 seconds fall to 0.3, and when they’re going into the next turn, Gabi pushes the car as far as he dares and brakes as late as he can. 

He dives down the inside—an aggressive move at best.

Just before he thinks he might’ve made the overtake, Colapinto’s car clips the back of his, hard, and sends Gabriel spinning out at a ridiculous speed with no time to react.

The lights glare into his face as the car loses balance and hurtles towards the wall. The spectators gasp, the wheels squeal, but Gabi hears none of it. He feels nothing except for the sinking pitfall feeling of a mistake.

Gabriel slams into the barriers sideways.

──────────────────

“Yellow flag, yellow flag—disregard, there’s a safety car. I repeat, a safety car.”

Nico slows down towards the speed trap, brows furrowed. “What happened?”

The radio crackles again. “Bortoleto, turn seven. Collision with Colapinto.”

He doesn’t speak throughout the chicane, but something akin to deathly panic starts to crawl into his skin. It’s an unwelcome parasite. Depending on where Gabi hit turn seven, there could be very different outcomes.

If he was safe in the run-off zone, there likely wouldn’t be a safety car—Gabriel must have hit the wall. 

Nico’s skin feels hot as he hits the radio button. “Is he—are they okay? Can you tell me now?”

“Colapinto's still driving with a broken front wing,” his earpiece responds. “But for Gabi, we can't say.”

The circuit is dark and sleek against the glow of both artificial and natural moonlight. The engine of his car revs, radiating seething warmth against his back. Nico’s practically melting in his race suit. That doesn’t help with his mounting nervousness.

Making his way up turn five and six, Nico clenches his jaw and continues grimly.

Then, he reaches turn seven. Ocon’s shining red Haas falls away from sight and Nico sees the wreckage.

There’s a green Sauber unmoving by the wall along the outside, a small trace of coolant smoke rising from the engine. A large piece of an Alpine front wing lies gleaming in the center of the track. The rest of the debris is green and black and scattered all over the racing line.

Although the halo and cockpit are intact, the car is crumpled violently like carbon-fiber origami.

The image is gone after a split second, and Gabi is reduced to nothing but a memory that’s etched deep into his mind.

“I saw him,” Nico reports shakily to his race engineer, trying to hide the extent of his concern. “It looked bad. Is he okay?”

“We will let you know.”

Infuriated, Nico lets out a hiss. He hates how jittery he's feeling. “I’m asking again, is he okay? Is he talking?”

“He will need assistance to get out of the car. That is all I know.”

Assistance? Nico’s dire worrying doesn’t quell as he slows behind Ocon in line with the safety car. “So he’s… unresponsive?” His voice comes out a little wavery.

The radio pauses for a moment.

“Gabi is awake. Don’t overthink it, Nico. Focus on the road.”

Under the dull rhythm of the safety car, Nico is driving mostly on autopilot anyway. There’s not much to focus on. 

When he weaves past turn seven again, the chassis of the Sauber is being hauled away with a crane, and Gabriel is gone.

The rookie is probably in pain somewhere—maybe even in hospital if he needed a lot of help to get out of the car. Most drivers could easily walk out of a serious crash, with how advanced safety technology is in modern F1.

Nico grips his steering wheel hard. He’s half-sure that his knuckles are white beneath his gloves.

“You’re only mad because you care,” jabs Gabi, glare fiery and challenging, as if he’s daring Nico to say otherwise. His gaze searches Nico’s for a split-second, and then he turns around and stalks down the corridor of the motorhome.

Nico watches him go. Gabriel walks like he knows he’s won—like he knows Nico’s eyes are following him. He walks like he knows he’s right.

That fucking rookie, always throwing his weight around just because he can.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Nico really does care.

Anger fading, Nico defeatedly picks up his racing gloves from the table. He’ll pace around a bit before returning to his drivers’ room to avoid the risk of running into Gabriel. He wants to get that out of his system anyway.

After making his way down the corridor himself, he sees instantly that Gabriel’s door is firmly closed. Nico pauses outside and briefly considers apologizing—he has no right berating his teammate on a small driving mistake, after all. But, being the coward he is, he doesn’t.

Nico steps into his own room and almost trips on something lying on the floor.

He leans down, picking it up carefully. It’s the dark blue sweater he’d lent to Gabi all those weeks ago. It’s precisely folded and smells of laundry and nothing else, most likely freshly washed. Something about the gesture makes his heart fracture slightly.

Still, that doesn’t shatter Nico’s promise to himself—he will never let Gabriel become another Kevin Magnussen.

──────────────────

The second after Nico gets out of his car, takes off his helmet, and gets himself weighed, he treads brusquely away from the garage and straight towards the paddock’s medical center. Nobody stops him from leaving—if they do, then they don’t show it.

It doesn’t help that he’s already in a terrible mood. Nico had spun out close to the end of the race as well, with Colapinto’s early braking to blame, placing the Sauber team at a saddening P19 and DNF. Colapinto. Again.

Nico just needs to know what happened to Gabi. The medical center will have answers, like whether Gabriel’s critically in hospital or simply resting in the small paddock patient room.

Picking up an ice pack on the way, he loops it around the neck, trying to ignore the burning of the cool sting on hot skin. Nico’s still breathing too fast. His heartbeat hasn’t yet completely recovered from the race.

His expression feels heavy and sullen as he cuts through the dark throngs of people and arrives outside the medical center. When Nico enters the brightly lit waiting room, he stops immediately in his tracks.

“Coming to see Gabi?”

Fernando Alonso is leaning casually against a wall, arms crossed, Aston Martin cap casting a lazy shadow over his face. His gaze is fixed onto Nico.

“Of course,” Nico hums with a drip of impatience. He paces back and forth. “He’s here, right? Not in hospital or anything.”

Fernando shakes his head. “He’s here,” he says.

He lets out a sharp breath. Okay, so it’s not super serious. “Great. Can we see him?”

“I got told to wait.” Teeth showing to form a wolfish grin, Fernando steps away from the wall and pats Nico’s shoulder. “How about we go and sit? No point in standing around.”

“Sure,” he agrees hesitantly. Trying to keep himself composed, Nico follows Fernando and sits by him on a stiff couch characteristic of waiting rooms. He makes sure to leave some distance between them, not daring to be too close.

Nico’s instincts are setting off alarm bells in his mind. He doesn’t know exactly what part of Fernando’s expression betrays this, but an interrogation feels imminent.

It’s likely due to a combination of Fernando and Gabi’s almost father-son dynamic and the older driver’s knowledge of the situation with Nico, clear from that conversation he’d half-eavesdropped on back in tyre testing. Basically, the Spaniard’s protectiveness of the rookie spells doom for Nico.

Fernando doesn’t bother much with small talk. “He’s fractured his wrist, before you ask.”

“Oh, that’s not too bad,” Nico says, relieved. “I was worried about him.”

Raising an eyebrow, slow and surgical, Fernando eyes up his expression. “I’m going to be straightforward,” says the Spaniard. His tone is measured and careful. “What’s the deal between you and Gabriel?”

Nico freezes, taken aback.

“Me and Gabriel?” He stalls, trying to find an appropriate answer. “We’re teammates.”

“Good job, Hulkenberg,” Fernando says flatly. “Tell me something I don’t know, will you?”

A sullen pause.

Fernando sighs. “I’ll help—he likes you, a lot.”

Not wanting to meet the older driver’s penetrating gaze, Nico glances to the side. “Okay, then. So do I.”

“Romantically?”

“Obviously not,” answers Nico, eyes narrowing. He’s not holding back with those questions, huh? 

Fernando’s eyes dart over his face suspiciously, as if he’s searching for just how honest Nico is being.

“I just care about him,” he defends himself. “Like you.” 

The Aston Martin driver watches him intently for a second longer.

“You’re not lying,” Fernando says finally. His tone of voice has lost most of its interrogative briskness, and now he just sounds more like a tired parent. “Nico. You know how he feels, right?

Not meeting his eyes, Nico curls a hand through his blond hair. “I think I do,” he mutters. It’s more in a remorseful than a bitter sense.

“Just… don’t you dare hurt him.” 

The voice coming from Fernando’s mouth is wary and honest, like a threat tinged with the raw vulnerability of a confession.

Less firmly this time, Fernando continues. “Don’t hurt him. Okay?”

The waiting room is quiet. There’s just the two of them around. Nico and Fernando have a lot more in common than at first glance: they’re both greatly experienced in F1, returned to the sport after a multi-year hiatus, and most of all, they both love Gabriel like a younger brother.

Nico’s mouth opens. He’s about to say something more until a lady with a clipboard suddenly approaches them both.

“Mr. Alonso, you can see him now,” she says, gesturing for him to follow her into the medical room.

Fernando gives him a cursory glance. Then, they both fade from view, disappearing through a door leading away from the sitting area.

“I promise I’m trying not to,” Nico says sadly to nobody in particular. “On my life, Fernando. On my life.”

With that, he’s left alone.

──────────────────

After about five minutes of silence, Nico had resigned to do his post-race interview—it’s better to quickly get it done before the media people go scavenging for him, or worse, give him a hefty fine.

Nico’s in the media pen now. The TV is flickering, filled with the broadcast of some sports commentators hosting a post-race discussion. He sips on some water while waiting his turn and tries not to think of Gabi too much—but, the television doesn’t give him any chance.

“Look at Bortoleto and Colapinto there,” one of them says. Replayed racing footage of them appears onto the feed, showing a Sauber almost in line with an Alpine, gaining time with DRS. Nico hadn’t seen the actual crash video yet, so he focuses on the screen. 

The cars battle wheel-to-wheel—the speedometer in one corner betrays their speed to be three hundred and twenty kilometers per hour. In a very ambitious move, Gabriel brakes incredibly late and divebombs harshly down the inside. 

Colapinto doesn’t slow down in time. As a result, the Alpine front wing collides into the chassis of the Sauber and sends it into a slow yet skidding spin.

Nico winces as Gabi slams painfully into the exit wall of turn seven. The diagonal point of contact crushes the car, and the tyres rubbing against the track surface fill the air with an ugly gray smoke. Gabriel’s helmet jerks to one side on impact and then stills.

His stomach drops. It’s still a bad collision, albeit at a medium-speed corner, because Gabriel had carried most of his straight-line speed almost directly into the wall. Diagonal crashes also have a big risk of breaking knuckles or wrists, which was the case according to Fernando.

Switching back the footage, the commentators continue their analysis in a semi-professional tone. “The collision was considered a racing incident by the FIA. What do you think?”

“I personally thought that Bortoleto was slightly ahead at the apex, but he could have been penalized for erratic driving and—”

“Nico, are you ready?” Jon asks. His eyes are kind despite their team’s difficult weekend. After all, he’s in P19 and Gabi is incapacitated in the medical room. Not so great.

Nico abruptly stands to follow his team principal. He tries to keep his stride confident, traversing the media pen through the chit-chat of reporters and team members, hoping that he won’t accidentally insult Franco Colapinto on live TV.

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By the time he’s back in the medical center, it’s past eleven o’clock—over half an hour after the race had ended.

Nico’s not really supposed to be here while Gabriel’s asleep. The clipboard nurse was reluctant, but after seeing Nico’s name at the top of the visitors’ list and his quiet desperation, she’d caved.

“I’ll leave you here,” the nurse tells him as they both stand by Gabi’s door. Then, she disappears.

He opens the door cautiously with a slight squeak.

Shutting the door carefully behind him, the lights from the hallway disappear at once and leaves the only reliable light source inside as the small yellowish lamp on the desk. The rest of the room is dark except for the edges seeping through the curtains.

Nico’s eyes take a second to adjust. Then, he really sees him.

Gabriel’s fast asleep on a plain white single bed, dark curls messy over his eyebrows, expression peaceful.

Nico’s gaze falls onto the freshly wrapped cast by his left wrist—Gabi’s fractured arm is suspended in the air with some sort of medical sling, and his head is slumped aside, facing the entrance. There’s a white sheet cast over him.

The room is small and sparingly furnished. In one corner, there’s a stretcher propped against a wall and a pile of first aid kits, and on the other, there are some of Gabi’s things: a race suit flung aside, a water bottle and a helmet. The cool wind of an air conditioner tickles Nico’s neck.

In silence, he pulls up a small stool to sit beside Gabriel.

“Gabi,” Nico whispers at the bedside. It feels wrong to be this close.

He pauses before reaching out gently. Hesitating, he runs his fingers lightly through Gabriel’s dark hair. The rookie exhales underneath his touch.

Nico strokes a hand across Gabi’s head, slipping his fingertips between individual locks of his curly hair, almost lovingly so. He’s scared to breathe. Gabriel is fine. He’s okay. He’s not in pain.

Noticing a box of painkillers loosely slipping out of Gabi’s palm, Nico silently relocates it to a bedside table with his free hand.

The quietness is quite nice. The only thing that breaks it is the unhurried rhythm of synchronized breathing.

Gabriel’s head stirs in the dark. “I knew you would visit, old man,” he mutters sleepily, eyes mostly closed and glazed over. It makes Nico retract his touch and freeze immediately.

Right after he properly registers the words, his teammate’s head slumps back over and there’s no evidence that he was ever awake.

Nico breathes out. There’s a lot more breath in his lungs than he had expected.

Not exactly sure what’s compelling him to, Nico cups Gabi’s free hand into his own, stroking at his knuckles. The gesture feels timid—something special in the way a child would care for their imaginary friend.

“I’m sorry, you know,” murmurs Nico, tracing circles onto the back of Gabriel’s hand with the pad of his thumb.

He stares at Gabi’s half-dark figure, the faint lamp at his bedside giving his face a warm glow. The Brazilian’s chest rises and falls. He doesn’t stir again.

Softly, words continue to slip out of Nico’s mouth. “Gabi, I’m sorry,” he confesses. “It’s all my fault. I’m just trying to fix everything I’ve done. I don’t know why I shouted at you.”

Gabriel shifts in his sleep, subconsciously moving slightly closer to Nico. The German driver watches him closely, heartbeat pounding in his chest.

Nico leans down. Before he begins to regret it, he plants a light kiss on the side of Gabi’s head, on the tender spot above his left ear. He doesn’t let go of the hand.

“You were right that day,” says Nico painfully. “I do care about you.”

“I’m always right, old man,” Gabi might have joked back if he was awake.

But Gabriel Bortoleto isn’t. He’s asleep, drugged on painkillers and wrapped in bandages, full of peace through the muted pain.

Nico remains by the bedside like he’s fulfilling a promise he didn’t know he had. 

Is what he’s trying to do even worth it? Nico wants to give up on everything—he wants to tell his teammate well done after races, congratulate him after qualifying sessions and joke with him every day. 

There’s a knotted ball of devotion tucked painfully into his stomach and Nico wants nothing more than to knit Gabi a sweater—to unravel the strands, one by one, and mold them into the shape of love.

Ten minutes pass. Then, fifteen. 

Finally, he kisses Gabriel’s hair again, runs his thumb over his cheek, and stands up.

When Nico steps outside the door of the patient room, he swears he can see Gabriel’s hand reach out slightly for a person who isn’t there.