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Kimi commits his first murder when he is ten years old.
It isn’t very dramatic.
His weapon glows against the grassy floor of a clearing in the form of a neon tennis ball, innocently covered in dirt. Kimi doesn’t mind dirt. He had a tendency to consider it a gourmet meal until he was about three, so Kimi doesn’t have the moral standing to consider it gross.
Upon closer inspection, the dirt was actually a nest of some sort, with twigs, and leaves, and speckles of dotted blue shells. Kimi reaches out to grab the ball.
It’s soggy.
The ball doesn’t even bother to roll away when Kimi instantly drops it, thumping against the ground and staring morosely up at him. Kimi wipes his hand against the grass to get rid of the egg residue. The dirt clings to his hand instead. He doesn’t want to get the new pants his grandma gifted him dirty, so he leaves his hand hanging by his side.
It’s not like Kimi knows how to make omelettes or even scrambled eggs, so he’ll just leave the egg stained ball. He has three out of his six tennis balls left anyways.
Wings flap above Kimi, and a crow perches on a branch. It looks down at the broken nest, and then at Kimi, cocking its head.
Kimi stands up. “Sorry. For the nest, I’m sure it took a long time to make.”
The bird keeps staring at him. Kimi wonders if he should try again in English. No, that would be stupid. It’s an Italian crow.
“...I leave you my tennis ball?”
The crow lets out a terrible, terrible sound from the back of its throat and hops forward.
Kimi shuffles back. “Um, I’ll go now. Sorry. Bye.” He steps back, before whipping around to race back to his nonna’s house.
Safe inside, he glances back at the forest. The trees seem just as tall and quiet as ever, but the crow’s shriek still echoes in his ear.
Later that night, he steps out into silky darkness. The trees groan around him, the wind digging under his jacket.
Two chicken eggs are wrapped in his nonna’s scarf that he borrowed. Technically he smashed three. But chicken eggs are bigger. It evens out.
At the scene of the crime, the nest is practically unrecognizable, the bits and pieces torn across the clearing. The tennis ball has been pecked until the yellow fluff is strewn across everywhere. Kimi can barely see the pale blue specks of egg shells against the moonlight.
He sets the eggs down carefully in the center, looking up to where he last saw the bird. I’m sorry he thinks as loudly as he can. I hope these kinda help.
—
“I didn’t mean to.”
Something large burns at the back of his eyes and throat. Kimi swallows it down, the same way his father taught him to after he was knocked into the wall at his first karting competition.
His nonna squeezes his hand before continuing her ministrations, carefully placing another bandaid on top of an oozing cut.
Kimi hasn’t gone outside in two days.
The reason for this unplanned quarantine is visible through the window, perching on a branch like some type of feathery gargoyle. The peck marks across Kimi’s limbs are the only thing that indicate that the crow is not a statue but is in fact a living breathing creature that would stab Kimi if it knew how to wield a knife. Kimi prays every day that it won’t learn.
“I know,” his grandmother murmurs.
“Make him stop,” Kimi pleads.
His grandmother, who taught him how to play bridge and let him chew on marbles, strokes his hair. “She’s just grieving, Kimi. Give her time. It’ll be fine.”
:::
“You suck at FIFA, mate,” Gabriel Bortoleto announces almost nine years later, sprawled on Max Verstappen’s hotel bed as if he’s laid in it all his life. His socks are mismatched.
The 6 - 0 score proves Gabriel’s point. “Shut up.”
Gabriel laughs easily. “No, seriously Antonelli, the plan, what even was it? Run around in circles?”
The plan was in fact, not to lose to Gabriel Bortoleto in a Sauber in FIFA, nor in points. The plan was also not to DNF in the opening fucking lap, and it was definitely not to knock The Max Verstappen out with him.
In Redbull’s home race, no less.
Which was why he stood outside Max’s hotel room which Toto had known, for some odd reason. Stumbled out an apology and held a bag of Kinder chocolates because he had overheard Gabriel tell Ollie once that those were his favorite.
Max had smiled, his icy eyes warm. Said that it was nothing, just racing, that this stuff happens. That this was nothing compared to the bullshit that Max used to pull back when he was a rookie. Invited Kimi to come in, and play FIFA with him and Gabriel. Claimed that he was only decent at FIFA and promptly beat both Kimi and Gabriel three games in a row like it was nothing, just another track record being set. Announced that he was taking a shit, showering, and heading to bed but they should hang around in the meantime, play some more FIFA. Get to know each other. Get fucking thrashed by the Brazilian boy in a backmarker while Kimi perches on the edge of Max’s bed like a pile of undone laundry.
Needless to say: not part of the fucking plan.
“Kimi?” Gabriel nudges Kimi with his foot.
God. P8 in a Sauber and Brazilian. Kimi already hears the Senna comparisons, the stupid green and orange infographics littering Kimi’s Instagram page. Kimi used to report them after last year’s F2 season ended. That was before he got too busy figuring out a car that genuinely wants him to be Senna, a legend or dead depending on the weekend’s horoscope.
“Hellooooo,” Gabriel waves his hand in front of Kimi’s face.
Kimi brushes him off. “No, there’s no plan. I just suck, Gabriel.”
Max faintly singing in the shower seems to make the silence even louder.
Gabriel flops against him, bony arms jabbing into him. “I’m sorry about your race, mate.”
The controller in Kimi’s hands sneers at him, so he puts it to the side. He shrugs. “Yeah.” Gabriel’s skinny shoulder digs into his bicep. “Thanks,” Kimi adds a second later to not be rude.
Gabriel hums, apparently as obsessed with continuing this conversation as his mentor is with trapping Kimi behind DRS trains. “I get it, you know. DNFs suck. Especially when it’s so early in the race.”
Gabriel is dragging a hideous neon green tractor to points as a rookie. Sauber probably actively celebrates any result that’s not a DNF. Kimi has been gifted a man made miracle of a car that has tires on the verge of exploding and a legacy to fill and he is ruining everything because he can’t score a single point in fucking FIFA.
“I don’t think our situations are comparable, mate,” Kimi says instead, trying to keep his voice even.
Bored, the television displaying Kimi’s loss fades into a screensaver.
Gabriel leans back, controller forgotten, long legs stretched out in front of him. It’s a miracle how he contorts himself into the car, mismatched socks and all. “Your problem, you know what it is?”
Kimi might have some ideas. “What?”
Gabriel’s eyes sparkle. “It’s that I’m a better driver than you.”
Kimi will send this fuckass car merchant (everyone knows that the Invicta was a rocketship last year, rookie of the year his ass) wanna be Senna but is Nasr at best nepo baby into the wall the second the next race begins, penalties be damned.
“Woah, you look like you’re going to murder me with Max’s console,” Gabriel, the ever observant, has the audacity to laugh.
Honesty may be the best policy, PR training can go to hell. “I am considering it.”
Gabriel laughs again, shoving his shoulder. “Ollie was right, you are funny. Relax, I have a point.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
Gabriel ignores him. “Helmut called me a B-class driver.”
That does catch Kimi’s attention. “Are you implying I’m a, what, C-class driver?”
“Shut up, will you.” Gabriel gets up, pacing around the room. “He called me a B-class driver, and it sucked. And I crashed. And I didn’t get any points until now. But I don’t think I am a B-class driver. I think that I’m the best driver on the grid, and that is what will make me the best.”
“You’re just repeating what Max has said in the past,” Kimi says. He’s too polite to add: and that’s the point.
“Well yes. And he was correct.”
“About himself.”
Gabriel points at him. “Aha! My point, you have just proved. When you go on track, you think wow these are amazing drivers I can’t believe I’m driving with them.” Gabriel flaps his hand around as he attempts an Italian accent.
Kimi raises an eyebrow at Gabriel. “And you don’t? You talk about Max every time a mic is shoved under your mouth.”
“No. Not when I’m on track. I just think that these are people to beat. Why do you care so much about their race? Screw them.”
Kimi doesn’t answer this, half out of a lack of answer and half because back in sixth grade when Kimi was karting in Italy, a lanky Brazilian boy who would eventually drive in F1 seemed personally offended that Kimi was finishing his literature assignment. Why not do some extra free laps instead? Why even bother with homework if you’ll be an F1 driver in eight years? Well, because his mother asked him to. And also: what if. What if there is a difference between wrangling an understeering racecar and being born with gills instead of lungs. What if a personal vendetta against books is stupid, and so is thinking that his struggle for points is equivalent to a struggle for a championship.
“For someone who looks up to Max, you have a very different mentality.” Gabriel frowns and flops back onto the bed, feet waving in air. “You should focus on yourself more.”
“Your socks are dumb as fuck, mate.”
“You are dumb as fuck, mate.”
Kimi stares at his hands. They’ve gotten more calloused since he started in Formula One. They feel a decade older than Kimi, or maybe Kimi is a decade younger than his hands. “Gabriel, I can’t. I can’t mess this up for myself. I can’t– it was a stupid mistake. It wasn’t even an F1 mistake, it was an F2 mistake.”
Max’s shower squeals to a stop. Kimi feels the bed shift as Gabriel rolls onto his knees, casually throwing an arm over Kimi’s shoulder.
“Don’t be so in your head, we’ll have plenty more stupid DNFs together. We will knock out Hamilton, Fernando, and Max in one go next weekend. Now let me beat you 7 - 0.”
Gabi smiles at him, large dark eyes sparkling like the boba tea drinks Maggie is obsessed with.
“...At least let it be 7 - 1 this time.”
:::
“He can’t keep beating me like this,” Kimi announces into his grandmother’s phone that always smells of dust and sometimes wheezes out responses. Kimi is eleven years old, and he now knows the proper kart set up for a rainy track, that his grandma’s ziti no longer tastes the same as it did when he was nine, and that crows are in fact evil.
The phone hums in sympathy. His father, on the other end, stays quiet.
Kimi continues. “I’ve been trying so hard to help it. I left out pumpkin seeds for the crow to eat. It kept attacking me, so I left out flax seeds and clothing scraps for it. And yet it still tries to hurt me, why? It’s not fair!”
His jaw clicks shut after his outburst. He takes a long, deep breath.
The phone croaks out a sigh of sympathy. His father, one centimeter and also fifty kilometers away from Kimi, doesn’t chastise him. Instead, he tells a story.
Once upon a time, there was a little boy who lived on a decently sized farm. Or a decently sized boy on a little farm, whatever, it’s not important. All the animals on the farm loved the little boy, and he loved them back just as much. He would feed them, cuddle them, and nurse them back to health when they were sick.
One day, the boy is walking back home. He decides to take a shortcut that he’s never taken before back home. He is older now, he shouldn’t be taking an extra fifteen minutes just because he’s scared of some shrubbery.
While walking through the shortcut, he runs into a crow. That has no legs. And has scales. And has fangs. Like a viper. But it’s a crow.
“Hello,” the crow-not-viper says. “I am dying.”
“I’ve never seen a crow that looks like a viper before,” the boy says.
“Wow, that’s quite rude to comment on someone’s appearance like that. You haven’t seen much of the world, have you.” The snake–sorry, the crow flops around. But like, in a way that indicates imminent death. Like Jack Doohan in his Alpine. Who is Jack Doohan? You’ll understand when you’re older. “Besides, I have bigger things to worry about than the nature of my existence. Like how my existence will no longer have a nature. Because I’m about to die.”
“Oh.” The boy feels a little embarrassed. “Let me help you then.”
The boy rushes forward, wrapping the crow into his arms as if it was one of his farm animals that love him dearly and would never hurt him, until the crow warms up, until the crow can breathe again, until the crow that might not even be a crow, with its beady eyes and poisonous fangs—
Kimi can’t quite remember what the end of the story is.
:::
“Do you know how stories end?” Toto Wolff stands outside his empty office. The Mercedes logo glows above his head like a halo.
A visiting engineer from the factory turns into the hallway, sees them both, and promptly turns right back around without skipping a beat.
Kimi knows better than to answer. Math isn’t his strongest suit, but there’s a formula to how Toto gives his talks. He starts with a thesis, a rhetorical question, then gets sidetracked to a tangent, and then a tangent of the tangent that ends up sliding back to the thesis. A couple of metaphors, a few anecdotes of anecdotes, a sprinkle of an occasional proverb. He once glimpsed a couple of mechanics playing bingo in the middle of a meeting. Oh shit, Toto’s mentioned 2021 again, that’s a bingo.
“Stories end,” Toto continues seriously, as if he was one of those motivational instagram accounts that Kimi followed when he was twelve, “with new beginnings.”
Kimi needs to clear out his following list. “Are you talking about Hamilton leaving?”
Toto nods sagely. “No.”
“Right.”
“This is about you and your journey. Kimi, how do you think the team is doing?”
“Um, the team? Like the whole team or–”
Toto continues on as if Kimi hadn’t spoken. “It is difficult for teams to adjust after losing a big asset. Many teams, Benetton, Lotus, have all had immense success within Formula One, but it took just a few wrong decisions at the wrong time by key personnel to end their journey.”
Toto pauses and stares past Kimi, either judging the empty storm inside Kimi’s head right now, or brainstorming a future conversation with Bono.
“Er, I know Schumacher–”
“Of course,” Toto interrupts loudly as soon as Kimi starts, “I have not allowed myself to think of us in that scenario. Abu Dhabi 2021 was abysmal, but we must continue to move forward. We need to prevent the worst case scenario, not imagine ourselves in it. And due to the work that each and every single one of us has put in, we aim to be in the battle next year.”
Kimi nods, electing to simply stare at the space between Toto’s eyes and stay quiet during the rest of his quarter season one-on-one.
“Mercedes is not an idea or a concept. It is the people that work there. Kimi, what steps have you taken to be a real contender next year?”
Kimi waits for Toto to continue his monologue.
Toto raises an eyebrow at him.
“Oh!” Kimi yelps, dragging his brain back to the cockpit and firing up the engine. “Um, steps to be a contender?”
Toto nods, his frown lines deepening.
“Um!” Fuck. “Uh, I’ve been practicing a lot on the simulator.” Shit. “And uh, I’ve spoken a lot to Bono, and the mechanics, you know, going over the races, trying to get their feedback.”
Toto looks grave, as if he wants to grab Kimi by the collar and place him in the corner so he can defuse a ticking time bomb by drawing out every circuit from memory. Fuckshit.
“And uh, I’ve been talking to Max. A lot.” A bloom of warmth spreads in Kimi’s chest. “He’s actually been so helpful. He helps me with understanding how the track works, and what he’s done in the past. I definitely understand why he’s a four time world champion.”
Toto’s eyes narrow. “Yes. Max, of course. And do you think that Mercedes is capable of challenging Max next year?”
Kimi takes a second to inhale deeply, until the ground feels solid under his feet again. “Well. Max is always going to be a threat, even if their car is not as good next year. George has been doing a good job catching up to him, so I would say yes, definitely. Mercedes can challenge him.”
Toto presses his lips together, letting out a solemn hum in response.
The floor has a small dent in it. Kimi nudges it with his foot.
“Kimi.” Toto waits to continue until Kimi loses his staring contest with the floor.
“Max is a generational talent. In driving skills and mentality. I think one of my biggest regrets was not capitalizing on him back when he first entered Formula One. I hope that I have not made the same mistake this time around.”
A thank you and an apology battle on Kimi’s tongue, and he gulps them both down.
“As drivers, you and George are treated differently. There are only twenty of you in the world, and you are all competition.” Toto sinks his hand onto Kimi’s shoulder.
Max had squeezed his shoulder in passing after the British GP, on the way to the Sauber motorhome. “Don’t worry,” he had said. “You are a rookie, it’s only natural that you aren’t prepared for different scenarios. Rain means cold tires and low visibility, which of course makes it difficult to have a proper restart. You are of course welcome to discuss the race with me.”
Toto continues, “You have not been fighting Max; next year, this will not be the case. And he will no longer be kind.”
Kimi had drafted out ten different text messages that he never sent to Max. He makes a mental note to delete every single one of them. “I understand.”
Toto takes his hand off Kimi’s shoulder. “I chose you to be in Formula One because I believe that you have the potential to be the greatest of this new generation. But it is your responsibility to see it through. Tell me, Kimi, how will your story end?”
:::
“You are the greatest, Kimi!” Giovanni wraps his arm around Kimi, shoving his armpit in Kimi’s face. “Formula one, baby!”
It’s the same way Gio did when they were kids and their parents were long time friends and Kimi’s had only two options. Either hide in the attic with the rats and the moths or play with the gangly kid with a bowl cut who lit ants on fire with a magnifying glass. Gio’s breath smelled like garlic then, it smells like onion now. Kimi’s mother used to hide the ladder to the attic. But Kimi’s turned eighteen, and has accepted that sometimes an oniony armpit will assault his nose.
Kimi plasters on his media smile. He's been practicing in the mirror as soon as he signed the contract to drive for Mercedes next year. “I’m guessing you saw the news?” He tries to wriggle away from Giovanni’s arm, cracking a more genuine smile at a few classmates who meandered up to congratulate him from a distance.
Giovanni grabs onto Kimi’s shoulder and pushes him away from view. “Jeez, give him some air! This is the new Lewis Hamilton we’re talking about. We don’t want you fake clout chasers around.”
New Aryton Senna, actually. Kimi digresses.
Leo, who Kimi plays soccer with sometimes during lunch hour, goes to dap him up but shrinks away at Gio’s glare. Kimi returns a strained smile. Hopefully Kimi can eat at his normal table without this nonsense.
“Gio, stop being weird,” Kimi says. There isn’t a single eye that’s not on them. On him actually, because Gio could be a fly buzzing around Kimi and taking shelter in his ear and no one else would be the wiser. It’s the classic pet goldfish’s dilemma: do a little spin for everyone watching, or jump out the window.
“Kimi!”
Kimi’s head snaps to the direction of the voice. “Ari!” Congrats are in order for only stuttering once.
“Congratulations.” Ari stands across the desk and doesn’t move. There are two flower barrettes in her hair, silver and blue.
“Stay away from him because I am weird and creepy and unable to get a hint,” Gio probably says. Kimi barely remembers to close his mouth, before realizing that he should say something and stop thinking about all the times Ari looked at him.
There have been perhaps three instances.
The first was when she dropped her pencil next to his desk, and he handed it back. Their fingers were on the verge of brushing. She had glimpsed his abysmal math test results, and offered to go over every missed question with him. He tried not to be distracted by her barrettes. Three weeks later, he had found a pink flower barrette on the ground after school, and raced after her to give it back. He was thirty minutes late for practice.
The third time was after a local race was held for the European karting championship. Everyone remembers Kimi winning the race, the local newspapers hailing him as the new pride of the nation, the national newspapers gifting him a small section on page twelve, next to an ad for Tide cleaner.
No one remembers what happened right after. Kimi, breathing in victory that smelled like rubber burning and a failed literature report. Ari, outside the track, scrambling to her feet and explaining that this part of town was great for star gazing, for a science assignment that Kimi had forgotten they had due.
The lights from the track had made it pretty difficult to see the stars, but he sat down in the grass next to her anyway and asked her to spare some of her time and explain the stars. Like why they only have five points and why they bothered guiding past sailors home. Why they disappear when there’s another light closer and brighter than them. Her cheeks were extremely flushed in the cold night. She settled closer to him and explained star dust, that they make up humans and planets and how they're all going somewhere no one knows until all Kimi could see was the dark space between the stars and her hands, pale and cold.
The winter formal is coming up in a few weeks. Kimi feels the question spread across his tongue like molten butter, warm and inviting and suffocating. His throat is dry. He swallows. “Thank you,” is all he can manage.
:::
Mercedes signs Kimi for their junior program when he turns twelve, which means he must face his arch nemesis now. This means he is either going to teach that crow how to drive and beat it in a race, or somehow make peace.
“Crows don’t have thumbs, sweetie,” his nonna points out.
It’s a great point, and he tells her so. “I guess I gotta make peace somehow. It’s been two years.”
His grandmother sighs. “Good luck Kimi. I know you’ll do the right thing.”
Which is why for the first time in two years, Kimi stands in the clearing with a pile of pumpkin seeds in front of him. The crow stands opposite him, like one of those western films. At least it hasn’t attacked Kimi yet. That’s progress.
Kimi takes a couple of seeds and plops them in his mouth. “See? Not poisoned.”
The crow hops forward. It looks down at the seeds, gives them a cursory peck.
Kimi presses back a smile.
The bird stops and gives Kimi a look. Kimi, despite over two long years of knowing this crow, is still not well versed in interpreting bird expressions. Luckily, the bird letting out a raucous battle cry and charging at Kimi gives a pretty decent hint.
“Goddammit,” Kimi snaps, stumbling backwards. His hands shoot up to protect his face.
The crow rips through his skin, before flying away to gear itself up for another divebomb.
Kimi scrambles to his feet to run far away from the cursed bird, weaving between trees and bushes. The sound of flapping wings reverberates in Kimi’s cranium.
The trees breakaway to a road. Kimi slows down and stops to catch his breath on the other side.
Caw.
Kimi looks up to see the stupid crow that might actually just be a curse from God flying right at him. He braces for impact.
A truck rumbles past them both, causing Kimi to stagger from the momentum. When he straightens back up, the crow is nowhere to be found, but there’s a small black lump on the side of the road.
“Oh shit,” Kimi says out loud, and immediately thanks God that his nonna isn’t around to hear him. He takes a cursory glance down the road. Nothing. He rushes over to kneel next to the crow.
It’s dead.
Its eyes stare blankly up at the sky. Kimi reaches out to gently grasp the bird; it seems to have shrunk to half its size in death.
A soft breeze scratches at Kimi’s eyes. Kimi carefully picks the bird up and wraps it in his shirt. His arms sting. He slowly makes his way back to the original clearing where the crow first encountered him. Kimi sets the crow down dead center. He’s not entirely sure how eulogies go, so he just makes a quick prayer, that the bird is forgiven for its sins and it forgives Kimi for his sins.
Gentle rain starts pattering down, small specks soaking Kimi’s shirt and mixing with his blood and sweat.
:::
“Kimi! How are you doing?” George floats into the room as if he were made out of bricks.
They saw each other about an hour ago and had the exact same exchange. Back then, George’s eyes had crinkled when he had seen Kimi and handed him a warm coffee, with a splash of cream and two sugars. Now, George has his lips peeled back to show off his teeth, eyes burrowing unblinkingly into Kimi.
Kimi stares back. In fear. “Um.”
A short burst of sound erupts from George’s throat. “Wow. Long day then, huh?”
The clock in the corner of the room solemnly shows the time to be 10:30. In the AM. “Uh. Yes.” Kimi exchanges a look with the door. Why was their marketing team late? He shifts in his seat.
“Huh, wow. I’m sorry to hear that mate,” George settles down in the chair next to him.
Kimi risks a glance back at George. He’s still staring, with those freaky blue eyes. Kimi tries not to count the other’s teeth.
Silence stretches languidly and spins around a couple of times before collapsing from vertigo.
“Um. How was your meeting with Toto?”
“Great!” George answers a bit too quickly. A bit too loudly. “It was good.”
Another long silence crawls by.
“So, Kimi. Kimi Antonelli. You have any plans for summer break?” George leans back, crossing one leg over the other.
“Oh,” Kimi wracks his brain for the last phone call with his mother where she dumped a week’s itinerary onto him in one minute. “Um, nothing fully set yet. I think spending time with family, mostly.”
“Ah family, lovely. It must be nice to be able to relax, you know.”
Maybe this was media day practice for George. Or for his post career move as a reporter. “Yeah… um, how about yourself?”
A wry smile crosses George’s face. “Oh. Yeah, I’d love to get some time off, relax, but you know. Probably practice, training, more practice. Shooting for P3 and all. A couple of podiums and wins aren’t enough. For me, at least.”
A moon with a stomach-sized crater is slowly gaping inside Kimi’s abdomen. “Oh.”
George laughs, thin and reedy. “Oh, I didn’t mean to demoralize you, Kimi. It’s normal that you’re taking the time off, most rookies find the big leagues to be a bit too much.” George stares at the Mercedes logo displayed on the monitor, as if it will tell him the winning cars of the next five years. “In fact, you know who else is taking a nice long break?”
The moon orbits into Kimi’s throat. “...Who?”
“Toto!” George grins. “Yep. Yachting in Sardinia. Of course, with Max.”
“...Max?” Like Max Verstappen Max?
“Mhm. Yep. Just a nice time chatting with him, probably getting his input on my– on our future contracts.”
“But– Max’s contract. Toto, he’d have to– I mean we’ve signed– He signed me– Did he tell you–”
“Let’s be realistic, Antonelli, it’s Max. Your own father would probably sell you for half a crumpet to have Max.” George lets out another one of those laughs that sounds like a dog choking on a piece of metal. He looks angry, or at least as angry as George Russell can get, which means he looks tired.
“Oh.” Kimi’s shoelaces are undone. He hopes that the media team won’t come in now, at least not until after he’s tied them up.
“C’mon now Kimi,” George’s voice softens. “It’s just the name of the game. We’re all dogs, you know, trying to find the next best thing and eating each other up. Trust me on this.”
George wouldn’t taste good, Kimi would rather not cannibalize his teammate. Or Max Verstappen.
“Besides, it’ll be okay, kid,” George gets up to leave. On the way, he pauses and rests his hand on Kimi’s shoulder, pressing down. “Toto’s invested too much into you. If anything, it’ll be me who leaves. Sunk cost fallacies and all.”
“I don’t think– I think that we’re both assets.”
George presses his lips together in a smile. “Sure. Thanks Kimi. Anyways,” George continues as if Kimi hadn’t spoken. “I’m leaving. You can tell the media team that they took too long, whenever they get here. They can go complain to Toto or whatever.” A slight smile slices across his face. “Good luck with qualifying later. Spa can be, uh, slippery.”
:::
Gabi’s made it to Q2, is Kimi’s first thought when he walks through the parc ferme. A water droplet lands on his cheek. He hopes it won’t affect the qualifying too much, but the ground still appears dry. It’s not like it would matter much to him anyways.
Maybe he should wish that a downpour starts instead.
Lewis Hamilton glows in front of him in red, edges slightly blurred. His hands brace against the railing. He’s staring into the mess of people, where different journalists roam around to eat anyone involved in Q1.
Kimi pauses. There’s no way to get around Lewis without disturbing him. Kimi turns around to go back the way he came from.
“Kimi?”
Shit, Lewis is looking right at him. Kimi offers an awkward wave. “Hey.”
A slight smile breaks Lewis’s grimace. “Hey yourself. You got out in Q1?”
Kimi winces. “Yeah. Too aggressive in the corners, I think. The front wing felt off. Should’ve done better.”
Lewis nods, eyes pitying. “It’s alright. The weather makes Spa hard. You’re a rookie, it’s not like this was unexpected.”
On the big screen displaying qualifying: Gabriel, Ollie, and Isack set lap times for Q2.
This time, Kimi nearly coughs when he tries to gulp down the lump in his throat. “Yeah.” He drifts a little bit closer to Lewis anyways. “I’m, uh, sorry about your lap. I feel like the race control can be really inconsistent…”
Kimi trails off when he realizes Lewis is staring past him. Probably talking to God on his two way personal hotline.
Lewis blinks, his eyes losing focus on the divine. “Ah, sorry Kimi. I just,” he grimaces. “I’m not used to. Being here. This soon.”
“Oh.”
A dry chuckle rasps its way out of Lewis’s mouth. “I’m not ready,” he confesses. “To go down there. I know we have to, but I just needed a moment.”
“I think I’m too used to it,” Kimi admits quietly.
“Come again?” Lewis’s brow creases.
Kimi permits himself a second to look down at the media pen. Take it all in. The cameras. The questions. The hunger. Then he looks back at Lewis.
Lewis holds Kimi’s gaze. Why haven’t you filled my footsteps yet? Why are you instead tap dancing around them, tripping over them because you are Kimi Antonelli and you don’t want to remember what happened to the little boy with his viper crow and you never learned how to ask the girl to the dance and the footprints I left behind are actually moonsized craters on Jupiter.
“Kimi.” Lewis’s voice is just a brush of sound. “You okay.”
Kimi breathes in. There is a water droplet caught in his lashes and he can’t quite blink it away, can’t quite make Lewis out in front of him. Lewis with his bright rossa corsa fireproof, with his century old eyes that talk to God and Senna, with his red chariot fueled with blood and a missing wheel.
“Kimi, hey,” and oh, Lewis is squeezing Kimi’s shoulder hard enough to keep him upright. “You’re doing good.” Lewis gives him a smile that doesn’t quite meet his eyes.
Kimi’s voice is caught in his throat. He wants to explain. That he braked too late and tripped over his lap, that he lost against Gabriel Bortoleto in a Sauber in FIFA, that he is just Kimi Antonelli and the Kimi Antonelli and quite frankly he doesn’t know what the hell is going on half the time so please. Please don’t ask him what he thought of qualifying. Don’t ask him about his plans for Sunday. Because the car is the car, and Kimi still presses on the gas even though his voice has disappeared.
“When I was your age,” Lewis’s hand was so warm, “I think I was too focused on being fine. You know, for the media. For the team. For myself.” His hand slips away from Kimi’s shoulder. “I hope you can be more honest than I was.”
By the time Kimi has picked up his voice from where it lies next to Senna’s grave, Lewis has already left, red fireproof weaving away between the crowd to the media pen.
Kimi doesn’t realize that he’s left their alcove until he runs into Bono, who is staring at the afterimage of Lewis.
“Ah, Kimi, did you see Lewis? He looked upset. I mean, makes sense, I can’t believe they deleted his laptime, to be honest I don’t know what Ferrari is even doing– Kimi, are you okay?”
Someday Kimi will stand at the top of the podium, like Lewis Hamilton, and grandstands he hid in as a child will be roaring his name like it’s holy. Children will ask him to sign their caps with giddy, lip bitten smiles. Rookies will nervously satellite around him until he beckons them closer with a smile. His name will be the foundation of cities, and when he raises that trophy high, all anyone will see is the future, looking back.
Today, he’s bone tired and he can’t see through the water in his eyes.
“I’m fine.” The words spill out like a confession. Kimi takes a deep breath, air pooling into his lungs until it crawls up his throat and threatens to spillover into his eyes. He doesn’t breathe out until he pushes past Bono, past the engineers, the drivers, the reporters back into his motorhome. Kimi exhales. The wrapper of the protein bar he ate earlier is still crumpled on the small desk. The Mercedes logo, slightly crooked, hangs on the wall.
He cries.