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When we get to F1, they would whisper into the quiet air, we'll get an apartment together. A real place. Just us. Just a door we can lock.
And they did. They clawed their way out of the junior categories and into the absolute pinnacle of motorsport. By the end of the 2025 season, the fantasy had materialized into a portfolio of lease documents. They had been together for half a year by then, six months of quiet devotions in motorhomes, of intertwined fingers hidden beneath paddock tables, of stealing breaths in the suffocatingly small spaces the Formula 1 circus allowed them.
The apartment was the next logical step.
Finding it had felt like magic. They had chosen a place that sat higher up along the cliffs of Monaco, a fortress of glass and cool stone that offered a view of the harbor without forcing them to hear the roar of the engines from the streets below. It felt completely detached from the paddock. It was designed to be a sanctuary.
But when the papers were ready, Ollie had hesitated.
Kimi remembered it. The real estate agent had stepped out to take a call, leaving them alone in the empty living room of their prospective home. Ollie had paused. He hadn't signed. He had just stared at the dotted line.
He had been second-guessing.
Kimi had felt the air rush from his lungs, replaced instantly by a deeply offended heat. The anger had flared hot and immediate, a sharp defense mechanism masking a profound, terrifying vulnerability.
Kimi had loved Ollie even before he knew what that word meant. Italian F4. When they briefly shared a podium. Kimi had been small and fast, watching this freckled British kid tear through Kimi’s own home turf, dominating the Italian circuits with a breathtaking brilliance.
Kimi knew they were fated. And he made sure it was fate. It took him years for Oliver Bearman to look at him the same way.
In the end, Ollie relented, as many times as it had been the case before. Kimi Antonelli is the only force that can move an immovable object like Oliver Bearman.
And yet, tonight, as Kimi steps out of the private elevator and the heavy apartment door clicks shut behind him, he finally understands.
Kimi leans his forehead against the cool wood of the door, closing his eyes. He had showered, he had survived the celebratory party with the Mercedes team and the sponsors, but the scent of adrenaline, sweat, and the sticky residue of Moët & Chandon still clung to the strands of his hair.
He opens his eyes and looked down the hallway of the sanctuary they had built.
It is painfully domestic. There, right by the console table, are Ollie’s oversized, scuffed sneakers, kicked off haphazardly so they are half-crushing Kimi’s. A familiar Haas hoodie is draped carelessly over the back of one of the expensive dining chairs. On the massive marble kitchen island they love so much, there is a half-finished 1000-piece puzzle of the Amalfi coast they had started three weeks ago, alongside two unwashed mugs in the sink.
Every corner of the room holds a trace of them. It is the physical proof that they are entirely entwined, that their lives are a shared breath.
But the apartment is dead silent.
Kimi had pole position. Fastest lap. Led every single lap from lights out to the checkered flag. A Grand Slam around the absolute most unforgiving streets in motorsport. As of four hours ago, he was the World Drivers' Championship leader. The youngest in the history of the sport to ever hold the title. He was a boy standing at the absolute top of the world, invincible.
So why does it feel like he is choking?
He strips off his suit jacket, tossing it onto an armchair, and walks barefoot into the living room. The massive windows offer a panoramic view of the Monaco harbor, the sea glittering under the night sky, dotted with the yachts that had celebrated with him when he crossed the finish line.
Kimi finds him on the balcony.
Oliver Bearman is slouched in one of the low rattan chairs, a half-empty glass of sparkling water resting on the table, the condensation dripping down to stain the glass. Ollie isn't looking at the glittering harbor or the brilliant, glowing curve of the Prince’s Palace. He is staring blankly at the glass.
Kimi feels a stubborn knot forming in his throat.
The 2026 season had fractured them slowly.
It had started with so much promise. First the smooth start Australia. Then Ollie had wrestled that Haas to an incredible P5 in China, driving with the kind of precision that had made Kimi fall in love with him in the first place. But then came Suzuka, and the crash that wasn't his fault but had shattered his confidence anyway. Then Miami, where the Haas had shown up without a single upgrade, bleeding time on the straights while the rest of the midfield surged forward. Ollie had driven his heart out for zero points.
And then Montreal. The highly anticipated upgrade.
The engineers had promised downforce. But the upgrade had completely ruined the balance of the car. It had turned the Haas from a difficult machine into an undriveable tractor.
And here, in Monaco, the ultimate driver's track, the cruelty of the machinery had reached its peak. In FP3, Kimi had watched the monitors in the Mercedes garage, his heart stopping as the red flags waved. He had heard Ollie’s voice on the radio, entirely broken: “Sorry guys, it’s the fucking bottoming. I totally lost it on the bump, I’m so sorry.”
And today, just hours ago, while Kimi was uncorking champagne on the podium, Ollie had been sitting in a quiet garage. On lap 51, he had been called into the pits. A pitiful retirement just to save the engine from ripping itself apart, stranded at the back of the grid, a lap down.
Kimi slides the glass door open. The night air is warm, smelling of salt and the lingering, ghostly scent of burnt Pirelli rubber from the streets below.
"Ollie," Kimi breathes, stepping out onto the terrace.
He doesn't know what to do with his hands. He wants to touch him, wants to pull Ollie into his chest and crush him there until the world stopped spinning, but the memory of their argument this morning still hangs between them like a physical barrier.
It had started over breakfast.
This morning, Kimi, vibrating with the nervous energy of a pole sitter, had pulled up the telemetry data from FP3 and qualifying on his iPad. He had seen where the Haas was losing time through Casino Square, the VF-26 looked like it was driving on ice, the rear end completely unmanageable.
Kimi had meant well. He always meant well.
He had leaned over the kitchen island, pointing out the throttle trace, suggesting a different differential setting, a slight change in how Ollie was attacking the kerbs.
"I don't need a telemetry discussion right now, Kimi," Ollie had murmured, the exhaustion already evident in the dark circles beneath his eyes before the race had even begun.
"I'm just showing you where the time is," Kimi had fired back, his own stubbornness flaring. "You're overdriving the entry. The car is unstable, yes, but if you shift the bias-”
“I don’t need another engineer, Kimi!” Ollie had shouted, pushing away from the kitchen island, his eyes bright with frustration. “I have a whole data team telling me how bad I am. I don’t need my boyfriend pulling up telemetry over breakfast to tell me how I’m losing a tenth through the Swimming Pool!”
“I’m not telling you that you’re bad!” Kimi had fired back, deeply offended, the tablet glowing between them. “I am telling you that you are overdriving a broken car! The Montreal floor is stalling over the bumps. If you adjust your deployment bias just slightly, you can prevent the rear from snapping! I am trying to help you!”
“I don’t want you to help me! I just want you to be here with me! Just be my boyfriend, Kimi. For fuck's sake, just for five minutes, stop being the next Senna and just be Kimi.”
The words had stung. They still sting.
To Kimi, there is no separation. Racing isn't just what they do. It is the very core of their language. It was how they met, how they understood the world. Kimi doesn't know how to love someone without trying to give them every advantage, every piece of knowledge, every weapon he had to conquer the grid.
He fiercely, stubbornly knows that Oliver Bearman is a generational talent. It makes Kimi physically sick to watch Ollie’s brilliance get buried under the telemetry of a failed engineering.
Ollie finally looks up. His eyes are red-rimmed, the dark circles under them looking bruised in the moonlight.
"Light hurts my head," Ollie murmurs, his voice flat, devoid of its usual warmth. He looks back down at his hands, his fingers interlaced, knuckles white. "Congratulations, by the way. Grand Slam. That's... that's incredible, Kimi. I'm really proud of you."
The words are genuine, but they lack any underlying energy. It is a statement of fact, delivered by a ghost.
Kimi feels a hard lump form in his throat. He walks closer, his feet making no sound on the hardwood floor. He stops right in front of Ollie, the distance between Kimi’s knees and Ollie’s bent head merely inches.
"Thank you," Kimi whispers. He hesitates, hands hovering over Ollie's shoulders before he gently let them rest there. He feels the tension immediately, the rigid lines of Ollie's muscles pulled tight as wire. "I'm sorry I took so long. Toto wouldn't let me leave until I did the sponsor toasts."
"It's fine. It's your night. You should have stayed longer." Ollie lets out a short, humorless breath that was meant to be a laugh but comes out sounding like a cough.
Kimi frowns, sliding his hands from Ollie's shoulders up to his neck, his thumbs pressing gently into the base of Ollie's skull, trying to massage the tension away. "I wanted to come home. To you."
Ollie looks up. His curls were a messy, tangled halo around his face, damp with the residual sweat of a race that had ended far too early for him. The contrast between them in this exact moment was violent. Kimi, smelling of victory, his skin flushed with the adrenaline of a flawless, historic drive. And Ollie, wearing the ash of defeat, smelling of the bitter edge of a burning power unit that had forced him to retire.
Ollie looks at him, really looks at him, and the corner of his mouth twitches in a sad, broken half-smile.
"You look so sad for a boy at the top of the world," Ollie murmurs, his voice barely above a whisper.
Kimi exhales, a shaky, fractured sound. He sinks down, dropping to his knees on the wooden decking of the balcony so he is eye-level with Ollie.
"It’s cold up there," Kimi says, his accent softening the edges of the words. "When you're not there with me."
Ollie looks away. "You’re going to be up there for a long time, Kimi. You better get used to it."
"Don't."
Then it’s just quiet. A sigh.
“I feel like I'm forgetting how to drive." Ollie breathes out, defeated.
"Don't say that," Kimi interrupts sharply, his palm sliding to Ollie’s jaw. "Never say that. You are brilliant. You are one of the most naturally gifted drivers on that grid, and anyone with a brain in the paddock knows it."
Ollie closes his eyes, leaning his cheek into Kimi's left hand, letting the weight of his head rests against the support. "The engine was cooking," he said, the words spilling out of him now, the dam finally breaking. "They told me to save it. The temperatures were spiking, and the telemetry was showing failure. We had to retire to save the allocation. It was... Kimi, it was humiliating."
Kimi takes a deep breath, fighting the instinct to immediately jump into a technical defense of Ollie's driving.
He wants to pull up the data right now. He wants to show Ollie exactly how he was braking later than everyone else, carrying more speed despite the lack of downforce. He wants to prove to Ollie, mathematically, that the deficit was indeed the machine, not the man.
But he remembers Ollie's cracked voice from the morning. Their argument.
Kimi swallows his pride. He swallows his desperate ego to fix the problem with logic and numbers.
He sits next to Ollie on the chair.
"Oh, amore mio, I’m sorry," Kimi says softly, looking up into Ollie's eyes. "I know I messed up this morning.. And I'm sorry."
Ollie shakes his head slowly, reaching to run his fingers through Kimi's dark, messy hair. The touch hesitant at first, then grounded, as if anchoring himself to Kimi's physical presence. "You didn't mess up. You care, and you want to fix it. I know that. I wasn't fair either. I shouldn't have yelled."
"I just hate seeing you like this," Kimi admits, his voice raw. He leans forward, resting his forehead against Ollie's sternum, right over his heart. He can hear the steady, rhythmic thud of it beneath the cotton t-shirt. "It kills me, Ollie. It absolutely kills me. I'm leading the race and all I can think about is where you are on the track. If you're okay. If the car is behaving. When Bono said you were retiring… I couldn't focus."
Ollie's breath hitches. His arms come down, wrapping securely around Kimi's waist, holding him tight. "You shouldn't be thinking about me when you're driving. You're fighting for a World Championship."
"You think I can just turn it off?" Kimi pulls back slightly, looking up with burning eyes.
"You think my brain compartmentalizes you? If you are hurting, I am bleeding. I tried to help with the data because if I can just fix the car, I can fix your pain. I can stop you from looking at yourself like... like you're not a miracle."
Ollie stares at him, his mouth slightly parted, the bitterness slowly draining away, replaced by tenderness. The intensity of Andrea Kimi Antonelli was something that terrified his rivals, but for Ollie, it was a fire that kept him warm in the coldest moments of his life.
"I'm sorry," Kimi whispers again, his gaze dropping to Ollie's lips before rising back to his eyes. "I know being a good boyfriend doesn't mean being your coach. I'm still learning how to separate them. Because to me, racing is us."
Ollie’s hands move to Kimi's cheeks, his thumbs tracing the sharp line of his jaw. "Racing is what we do, Kimi. It's not all of who we are."
"It feels like it sometimes," Kimi admits quietly, his voice muffled against Ollie’s hoodie. He turns his head, resting his cheek against Ollie's chest, listening to the steady, rapid beating of his heart. "I just want to fix it," his voice quiet, stripped of all its usual confidence.
"You don't have to fix my car, Kimi," Ollie says softly, to Kimi’s hair, "I just need you to hold me when I get out of it."
Kimi lifts his head. He looked at the boy he love the golden curls, the freckles, the beautiful, exhausted eyes.
"I can do that," Kimi whispers. "I promise you, I can do that."
He pulls Ollie down into a kiss. It was slow and deeply apologetic. It is Kimi pouring every ounce of his love, his respect, and his devotion into the touch, trying to communicate everything he couldn't say.
When they finally breaks apart, resting their foreheads together, the Monaco night felt a little less overwhelming.
"You won Monaco," Ollie whispers, a faint, genuine smile finally touching his lips. His thumb brushes over Kimi’s jawline. "A Grand Slam. It's... it's unbelievable, Kimi. I am so proud of you."
Kimi shakes his head slightly, his eyes never leaving Ollie's. "The trophy is on the kitchen counter. It is very heavy. But right now, it does not matter to me."
"It should," Ollie insists softly. "You earned it. You're leading the World Championship."
"I don't care about being at the top of the world," Kimi says, his voice resolute.
He presses a soft kiss to the corner of Ollie's mouth. "Tomorrow, if you want, we don't talk about cars at all. We will turn our phones off. Tomorrow, I am just Kimi. Just yours."
Ollie lets out a wet laugh, his shoulders finally dropping from their defensive posture. He leans down, resting his cheek against the top of Kimi’s head, his arms wrapping tight around Kimi’s shoulders.
"Just Kimi," Ollie echoes quietly into the night air. "I'd like that."
The champagne would eventually dry, the Grand Prix circus would pack up and move to the next city, and the brutal reality of the 2026 season would inevitably resume.
But for tonight, the world is turned off. And finally, Kimi Antonelli feels like he had actually won.