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George Russell spent nearly an entire season figuring out one thing: Kimi Antonelli was not the kind of kid he had initially thought.
To be precise, it was after that night in Abu Dhabi.
Before that, George’s impression of Kimi could be summed up in three words: fast, quiet, and occasionally flashing that disarmingly clean smile in front of the cameras. The most precious gem of the Mercedes junior program, the prodigy Toto Wolff praised to anyone who would listen, the next Italian legend everyone in the paddock was talking about.
Nineteen years old.
George, of course, knew Kimi was nineteen. He knew Kimi’s birthday, his height, every karting accolade, and the fact that Kimi always ordered the exact same pasta in the team restaurant. This information had entered his awareness as naturally as air—no deliberate collection required. Everyone knew these things.
But George had noticed something others hadn’t.
Like the way Kimi looked at him.
It wasn’t admiration. George had seen plenty of admiring gazes—they were usually intense, fleeting, and carried a certain anxious urgency to prove something. Kimi’s gaze was different. It was quiet, like a deep pool of water, coming from some corner George couldn’t locate, landing on him steadily, patiently, unhurriedly.
George first noticed this gaze during the Bahrain pre-season test day. He had just climbed out of the car, removed his helmet, sweat pressing his hair into dark arcs. As he bent down to pull out the drinking tube from the cockpit and casually said something to the engineer, his peripheral vision caught the end of the garage corridor—
Kimi was standing there.
Wearing the team’s dark polo shirt, hands in his pockets, looking at him. Not at the car, not at the lap time data—at him.
In that instant, George felt an extremely faint, almost negligible tingling along his spine. He attributed it to dehydration-induced electrolyte imbalance. It was a reasonable explanation; he even ran through the clinical list of dehydration symptoms in his head right then to convince himself.
Later, these moments became increasingly frequent. Silverstone, Zandvoort, Monza. Kimi would appear behind him, beside him, at a diagonal, at varying distances, but those eyes remained the same—composed, focused, carrying a certain temperature George couldn’t precisely describe in words.
Like a cat observing a half-open door.
George was twenty-eight. He had seen all kinds of people in the F1 paddock and believed he had honed a sharp instinct for distinguishing good from bad intentions. He knew when someone was trying to get close, when someone was trying to use him, and when someone was trying to replace him.
But Kimi Antonelli belonged to none of those categories.
That Italian boy—no, young man—carried a puzzling certainty in his attitude toward him. It was as if George wasn’t someone to be won over, flattered, or surpassed, but something that already belonged to him, just not yet unwrapped.
This feeling made George uneasy.
George disliked things that made him uneasy. He had spent his entire career building perfect self-control—lap times precise to the thousandth of a second on track, watertight media responses off track, and a perpetually neat, respectable, comfortable public image. He was the kind of person who would tidy the hotel room before checkout, the kind who would pause for two seconds before responding to any message, the kind everyone thought “would never lose composure.”
Yet Kimi Antonelli’s gaze made him feel that something was gently, tentatively pressing against the boundaries of the order he had so carefully maintained.
No, not pressing. Caressing.
George decided to ignore it.
He was good at ignoring things. It was the same skill as keeping his room tidy: putting anything that didn’t belong in the order system out of sight.
Abu Dhabi, the team dinner after the season finale.
A private club near Yas Marina, the lights dimmed to an ambiguous amber, champagne constantly bubbling and being refilled. The paddock’s elite had gathered here, elegant and lively, everyone celebrating some kind of victory—whether a race win, a new contract, or simply surviving another season.
George wore a well-tailored black shirt with two buttons undone—just enough to say “I’m relaxed but still respectable.” He held a glass of champagne he had barely touched, moving between different groups, saying the right things, smiling at the right moments, and using perfectly measured self-deprecation to deflect every probing question about “next season’s teammate.”
He did it well. He always did it well.
But at some point—after midnight—George found himself leaning against the stone railing of the terrace. The night breeze pressed his shirt against his body. The champagne in his hand had somehow become a third glass of whiskey. His collar was more open, a few strands of hair tousled by the wind, and the carefully managed smile on his face had faded, revealing the alcohol-flushed, languid, relaxed face beneath.
He was staring blankly at the distant sea, unaware that someone had approached.
Until a jacket landed on his shoulders.
George turned his head. Kimi Antonelli stood beside him, close enough to violate normal social etiquette, yet close enough that retreating was impossible—because the railing was behind him. Kimi wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his mid-forearms, revealing clean-lined arms. His curly hair swayed slightly in the wind, and his eyes looked exceptionally deep in the night.
“It’s cold outside,” Kimi said. His English carried an Italian accent, each consonant softened and rounded, as if holding a melting sugar cube.
George blinked. The whiskey had slowed his reaction time by about 0.3 seconds. In that 0.3-second delay, he registered two things: first, Kimi’s jacket carried a warm scent, like cedar mixed with some citrus; second, Kimi was looking at him with the exact gaze he had been trying to ignore.
“I’m not cold,” George said. But his voice was a tone lower than usual, husky from the alcohol, sounding far less convincing than he wanted.
Kimi didn’t reply. He simply tilted his head slightly, his gaze sliding from George’s eyes to his lips, then to the patch of skin at his open collar illuminated by moonlight, before slowly returning.
The whole process took no more than three seconds.
But to George, those three seconds felt like three centuries.
He should have turned and left. He should have smiled, patted Kimi’s shoulder, and said, “Get some rest early, we have a flight tomorrow.” He should have ended this overly intimate moment with an elegant, proper British farewell.
He didn’t.
He did something he would never admit—he pulled Kimi’s jacket tighter around his shoulders.
The corner of Kimi’s mouth twitched, as if a long-awaited hypothesis had finally been confirmed.
“George,” his name sounded different coming from Kimi’s mouth, the stress falling on the wrong syllable, making it sound like “Giorgio”—the Italian version, softer, more intimate, like a form of address only certain people were allowed to use.
George’s heart skipped a beat.
He told himself it was the alcohol.
“You’ve had a lot to drink,” Kimi said again. His gaze fell on the whiskey glass in George’s hand, then returned to his face.
“Not much.”
That was a lie. He had drunk quite a lot—enough for his balance to begin betraying him slightly, enough that he needed to lean against the railing to maintain a decent standing posture.
Kimi took another half-step forward.
Now the distance between them was barely a fist. George could smell the clean scent on Kimi—like the natural, youthful warmth of a body, warm and slightly aggressive.
“I’ll take you back to the hotel,” Kimi said. It wasn’t a question.
George should have refused. He opened his mouth, ready to say a polite and firm “No, thank you,” but Kimi’s hand had already settled on his waist—perfectly naturally, as if that spot had always belonged to that hand.
George closed his mouth.
Later, when he recalled this moment, he would define it as “the beginning of total collapse.” But at that moment, he wasn’t thinking that much. He only felt that the hand was very warm, that he had drunk too much, and that the night wind in Abu Dhabi was colder than he had expected.
They walked through the terrace doors, past the team engineers smoking in the corner, past the retired drivers attacking their third bottle of red wine, past the people still dancing in the hall. George could feel the eyes on them—curious, knowing, or simply blurred by alcohol—but he found he didn’t care as much as he had imagined.
Perhaps because Kimi’s hand remained on his waist. The warmth of that hand passed through the night-chilled fabric of his shirt like a quiet, firm seal.
The team driver took them back to the hotel. George was staying at an old-established hotel near Zayed Port, on the seventh floor with a balcony overlooking the harbor. Kimi followed him in.
George stood in the center of the room, back to Kimi, engaged in a final tug-of-war with his own reason. A voice in his head said: Turn around now, say “Thank you for bringing me back, good night,” and close the door. The voice had the same tone as when he did his post-race TR summary—calm, professional, unquestionable.
“You can go back now,” he said. His voice was calmer than he expected.
There was no response behind him.
George turned around. Kimi stood by the door, leaning against the closed door with his hands in his pockets, looking at him. The room’s warm yellow lighting cast a soft halo on Kimi’s curls. His expression was calm, but there was something in his eyes—something George had never seen in any pre-race data, any media interview, or any official promo video.
It was a patient, certain, almost reverent longing.
George’s lower back pressed against the edge of the bed.
He suddenly became aware of how he must look right now—shirt hem half-pulled out, collar open, hair a mess, face flushed with alcohol, eyes probably carrying the same unguarded light diluted by drink.
If this were a TR session, his engineer would tell him: Your tires don’t have much left, so, box.
But no one gave him that instruction.
Kimi walked toward him.
His steps were neither fast nor slow, like taking Turn 1 on track—knowing exactly when to apply throttle and when to wait, the rhythm so precise it was unsettling.
George didn’t retreat. His legs hit the bed and stayed there.
Kimi stopped right in front of him; there was almost no distance between them. Kimi was five centimeters shorter than him—George still remembered the official stats even on the edge of hazy consciousness—but at this moment, that height difference gave George no sense of advantage. Because Kimi raised his hand.
That hand landed on George’s collarbone.
The fingertips were warm, with a thin, almost imperceptible layer of calluses—formed by the steering wheel. The hand moved slowly along the contour of his collarbone, as if reading a line of text written in touch. George’s breathing became uneven under that touch.
“You’ve been looking at me like this,” Kimi said. His voice was low, so low it felt like resonance, directly triggering echoes in George’s chest. “In the garage, in the paddock, after every meeting. You thought I didn’t notice.”
George’s throat moved. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do.” Kimi’s fingertips paused at the end of his collarbone, near the shoulder, and pressed lightly. “You always look at me. Then look away. Then look again after a while.”
George opened his mouth. He wanted to say “That’s normal observation between colleagues,” or “I was just assessing your driving habits”—the latter even had some factual basis; he had indeed been observing Kimi’s driving style, except those observation reports had eventually turned into something he didn’t want to admit. But those words circled on his tongue and turned into a pathetic silence.
Because he knew it wasn’t true.
He had been looking at Kimi from the very first day. From that first eye contact on the Bahrain test day. He had been looking, observing, packaging a raw, instinctive gaze with all sorts of dignified excuses. It was like a driver saying he “just went to the P room for a coffee”—everyone knew you didn’t go to the P room for coffee, but no one would call you out, because it would be awkward for everyone.
Kimi’s other hand rose too. Now both hands were on George’s shoulders, his thumbs sliding slowly up the sides of his neck, passing over the pulsing vein, over the tense muscles, and finally stopping at the thin, sensitive skin behind his ear.
George closed his eyes.
“Look at me, George.”
George opened his eyes. They were so close that he could see his own reflection in Kimi’s pupils—a stranger, vulnerable, undefended version of himself.
Kimi kissed him.
A direct kiss carrying the heat of long-suppressed release. Kimi’s lips were softer than George had imagined, but the way he kissed was filled with unyielding certainty—one hand gripping the back of George’s neck, fingers threading into his hair, adjusting their angle to go deeper.
In that kiss, George tasted youth—a passion that hadn’t been worn down by too many disappointments, still whole and complete.
At some point, his hand rose and clutched the front of Kimi’s shirt. The white fabric wrinkled in his fingers, and he could feel the heartbeat beneath it—fast and strong, like an engine that had just completed its out-lap.
George was laid down on the bed.
The process happened so naturally that by the time he realized it, he was already lying on his back on the soft duvet, with Kimi propped above him, curls falling down and brushing against his forehead and cheekbones. The light came from behind Kimi, outlining his silhouette with a golden edge.
George looked up at that young face and suddenly realized one thing—he had had the chance to refuse at every point. On the terrace, in the hall, in the hotel room, at every node that could be called a “boundary.” He hadn’t.
Not only had he not refused, he had—
Kimi lowered his head, lips landing on the side of George’s neck.
George let out an extremely soft, almost inaudible sigh.
That sigh meant: Alright.
Kimi’s hand slipped under the hem of George’s shirt, the thin calluses from the steering wheel tracing slowly upward along his side, brushing over every rib, as if reading a private code.
“Kimi.” George’s voice was hoarse, mixed with alcohol and desire.
Kimi looked up at him, his eyes questioning but showing no hesitation. George raised a hand to cover his eyes, unwilling to let him see his loss of control. Kimi gently pulled his arm away, interlacing their fingers, palm to palm, his tone firm yet gentle: “Look at me, George.”
George had no choice.
Kimi unbuttoned his shirt one by one. Every inch his fingertips brushed left a light but burning mark. The shirt fell open; the warm yellow light fell on George’s sweat-glistened chest, his breathing already disordered. Kimi lowered his head, kissing his collarbone, his chest, his abdomen with reverent, lingering devotion, as if cherishing a long-lost treasure.
“How can someone be this beautiful,” he murmured, his voice as soft as a dream, the vibration traveling through the skin and making George clutch the sheets.
If someone had told him that “George Russell would one day have his body praised with lips by a nineteen-year-old Italian,” he would have suggested they take a drug test.
Kimi continued downward. His lips moved across George’s chest, over the curve of his ribs, over the vertical line on his abdomen faintly damp with sweat. At every spot, he would pause and linger for a moment in an overly attentive, overly passionate way, as if ensuring every inch of skin received its due attention.
“George.” Kimi called his name. Still that Italian pronunciation—Giorgio. Soft, intimate, like a key sliding into a lock.
George wanted to say something. He wanted to say “Enough” or “Stop” or any word that could let him regain control. But when he opened his mouth, all that came from his throat was a broken, wordless gasp.
Kimi looked at him, the subtle curve at the corner of his mouth appearing again.
Then Kimi began speaking Italian.
Soft. Intimate. Carrying the warmth of ancient Mediterranean nights.
But then—
Kimi stopped.
His lips were still pressed against George’s abdomen, but the fluent Italian suddenly broke. George felt Kimi’s breathing become uneven.
Kimi buried his face in George’s stomach, his curls rubbing against the skin, letting out a muffled mumble blurred by fabric and flesh.
In the haze of desire, George barely registered one fact: Kimi Antonelli, who had been so certain and composed from the start, was trying to say something more explicit, but his mother tongue had betrayed him.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t say it. It was—nervousness.
This realization hit George like a bucket of ice water and a hot water bottle at the same time. Ice water because it interrupted the rhythm of pleasure he was sinking into; hot water bag because—God, this kid gets nervous when trying to talk dirty in his mother tongue.
Kimi mumbled again. This time George caught a word—“bello.” He knew it meant “beautiful” or “pretty.” But when Kimi said it, his voice was so small it was like confessing an unspeakable sin in a confessional.
George couldn’t help letting out a soft laugh.
That laugh made Kimi look up. His face carried a subtle mix of embarrassment and stubbornness. The tips of his ears were red, glowing red, as if sunburned by the Abu Dhabi sun.
“You’re laughing,” Kimi said. There was accusation in his voice, but his lips were still against George’s skin, rendering the accusation completely non-threatening.
“I’m not,” George said. He was lying. He was laughing. Alcohol, desire, and this absurd moment had completely dissolved the defenses he had so carefully maintained.
George Russell, twenty-eight, Mercedes works driver, lying half-naked on a hotel bed being praised in Italian by a boy nine years his junior—and he laughed. If this were a movie script, he would tell the writer to rewrite it.
Kimi narrowed his eyes. Then he did something that cut George’s laughter short—
He lowered his head and put his lips to George’s ear.
Very close. Close enough for George to feel Kimi’s lashes brush his earlobe.
Then, in his smallest, most intimate voice, Kimi said one phrase.
“Il mio gattino.”
George didn’t understand Italian. He didn’t need to.
Because of the way Kimi said it—the low, trembling tone, like uttering a sacred vow in a cathedral—it bypassed his cerebral cortex and struck a primitive, instinctive spot at the base of his spine. Those syllables spread like electricity along his nerve endings, raising goosebumps across every inch of his skin, drawing from deep in his throat a sound he had never heard from himself before—somewhere between a sigh and a whimper, fragile and mortifying.
George’s body lost all control in that instant. His back arched, his fingers dug into Kimi’s shoulders, nails leaving crescent marks. Sweat slid from his temples, down the curve of his neck, gathering in the hollow of his collarbone into a single trembling drop.
Kimi kissed him again. Starting from behind the ear, along the jawline, past the corner of his mouth, and finally onto his lips. This kiss was different from the first—slower, deeper, carrying an almost careful tenderness, as if Kimi were handling something he had waited far too long to finally obtain.
In the gaps between kisses, George barely regained a sliver of awareness. He remembered the phrase Kimi had said earlier—those four syllables, that strange, soft pronunciation.
“What did you say?” George’s voice was hoarse, unlike his own.
Kimi didn’t answer immediately. He buried his face in the crook of George’s neck, curls brushing against his chin and earlobe. The sensation reminded George of some small, warm animal.
“I said,” Kimi’s voice came out muffled from his neck, “‘Il mio amato.’”
George’s eyebrow twitched.
He didn’t understand Italian. But he could hear the difference. “Gattino” and “amato”—the pronunciations were completely different. What Kimi said the first time and the second time were definitely not the same.
But George no longer had the strength to pursue it.
His body felt like an overtightened string finally released; all the tension slowly, wave by wave, unraveled between Kimi’s lips and fingers. Sweat made his skin slick and hypersensitive; every touch was amplified into something almost unbearable. His mind had been dismantled into fragments—only sensation remained: the temperature of Kimi’s lips, the pressure of his fingers, the rhythm of his breathing, the ticklish tingle when his curls brushed the skin.
In his daze, he thought, What’s the worst a kid could say?
Let him say it.
George closed his eyes and surrendered himself to that dismantled, weightless feeling.
Kimi Antonelli was a greedy person.
This was no secret. Anyone who had seen his karting data could tell you—his overtaking count was twice the average of drivers in the same category, and his obsession with every position bordered on the pathological. Toto Wolff had once half-jokingly said in an interview: “Kimi’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t want to win; it’s that he wants everything.”
He should have known that Kimi’s greed extended far beyond the track. This boy who wanted everything would only crave more after getting a taste. His fingertips tentatively crossed boundaries, his eyes soft like a cat that knew it wouldn’t be refused.
Fuck, George cursed inwardly.
He really couldn’t bear to stop him.
“George.” Kimi called him again and again, his voice laced with satisfied amusement.
George tugged at his curls. “You’ve had enough.”
“Not enough.” Kimi was perfectly justified. He leaned down to press against George’s sensitive hip bone and whispered Italian in a pleading tone.
George’s defenses completely collapsed. In a hoarse voice, he said, “Say it.”
Kimi propped himself beside him, the warm light outlining the young man’s handsome profile. He leaned close to his ear and, in a voice soaked with desire, said slowly and clearly: “Dimmi che mi ami.”
George understood “ami.” He was being asked to say “I love you.”
This realization made George’s body stiffen for a moment.
Not because he didn’t want to say it. But because—he had never said those words to anyone. It wasn’t that he had never loved, but he had never, in a moment like this, been looked at with such eyes and asked to speak those three words.
George was a man who guarded everything fiercely. He guarded his career, his public image, his emotions, his heart. He kept everything meticulously organized—including love. Especially love. Love was the one thing that could not be casually handed over, because once spoken, it could never be taken back.
Kimi looked at him. Those eyes held no urgency, no coercion, only quiet, patient waiting. Like waiting for the right moment to exit a corner on track—he knew it would come, so he simply waited.
Kimi leaned down and placed a kiss at the corner of George’s mouth. Light as a feather.
Another. On the corner of his eye.
Another. On his forehead.
Each kiss was accompanied by an Italian syllable, those syllables linking together into a sentence George didn’t understand. But he didn’t need to—the texture of those kisses was enough: soft, warm, carrying an almost heartbreaking sincerity.
Kimi was using the softest lips to pry out that “ti amo” from his tightly guarded lover.
Kimi Antonelli had known exactly what he was doing from the very beginning. He knew George had been looking at him. He knew George wouldn’t refuse him. He knew George would yield step by step until he had nowhere left to retreat.
He knew George loved him.
He was simply waiting for George to say it out loud.
“Ti amo.”
The pronunciation was perfect—a smooth, rounded “ti amo” with every vowel and consonant in place. He had practiced this phrase in his mind countless times—while watching Kimi make that impossible overtake on track, while watching Kimi answer reporters with a smile in press conferences, while watching Kimi walk toward him in the Abu Dhabi night.
He had known the meaning of these words long ago; he had simply never spoken them.
Kimi froze for a moment.
Then he smiled.
It was the smile of a nineteen-year-old boy hearing the person he loved most say “I love you”—pure, unrestrained, carrying an almost heartbreaking joy.
“George,” he said while kissing the corner of George’s mouth, his voice sticky and sweet like honey, “say it again.”
George, dazed from the kisses, asked, “Say what?”
“What you just said.”
George played dumb. “I didn’t say anything.”
Kimi said nothing. He simply pressed his lips to the corner of George’s mouth without kissing, just resting there, his breath brushing against George’s skin with every exhale—like a dog sitting by the table, begging with its eyes. It didn’t bark or make a fuss, but that quiet itself was the most unbearable plea.
George bit his lower lip.
“Ti amo,” he said, his voice so soft it was almost afraid of being stolen, “Andrea.”
Kimi’s heart slammed against his ribcage.
Andrea. His real name, not Kimi, not Antonelli, not “kid” or “rookie.” Andrea—the name only his mother called him.
George had called him by that name.
Epilogue
At three in the morning, George lay on the sweat-soaked sheets, consciousness drifting between half-dream and half-wakefulness. Kimi lay beside him, one hand resting on his waist, fingertips unconsciously drawing circles there. The curtains weren’t fully closed, letting a sliver of moonlight leak in and draw a silver-white line on the floor.
Kimi thought George was already asleep.
In an extremely gentle, almost self-muttering voice, he said something in Italian. It was long, longer than any previous sentence. George didn’t understand most of it, but he caught a few words—
“ogni notte”—every night.
“sognare”—dream.
“grazie”—thank you.
The last one was—“Dio”—God.
Kimi was praying to God.
George kept his eyes closed, maintaining the even breathing of sleep. In that instant, his heart was filled with an emotion too vast to bear.
Kimi was making a wish to God: he wanted to be the kid who could hear those words every night.
George thought that, in the end, Kimi would always get everything he wanted.
It was enviable, and for obvious, perfectly natural reasons.
But Kimi didn’t care about any of that. He didn’t care if it was enviable, if it was natural, what the paddock would say, or what their relationship would become when they woke up tomorrow.
He simply breathed quietly beside George, his hand resting on George’s waist, like a child who had finally received the Christmas gift he wanted most—content, needing nothing else.
And in this moment at three in the morning, beside this boy, George felt something he had forgotten how long it had been since he last felt it—peace.
Like returning to a place he had never been to but had always belonged to.
George turned over to face Kimi. Moonlight fell on Kimi’s face, illuminating his peaceful sleeping features—brows slightly furrowed, lips slightly parted, curls scattered across the pillow.
George reached out and gently smoothed the tiny wrinkle between Kimi’s brows with his fingertip.
“Ti amo.” he said. His voice was so soft it was almost inaudible.
Then he closed his eyes.
In the final fragments of consciousness that night, he heard Kimi let out a muffled, contented murmur in his sleep—like a small animal confirming the presence of a warm body beside it.
The corner of George’s mouth curved up in that moment.
He also made a wish to God—though he wasn’t entirely sure he believed in God’s existence.
He hoped every night would be a continuation of this story.