Now It's a Ribbon 'Round My Neck (And It's Cherry-Colored)
— russonelli wip! 1,475 words
feminization , forced feminization (somewhat) , gender crisis , scent kink
Kimi Antonelli was not a girl. It was a truth he had carried since he was a child topping international karting leaderboards, insisting to asinine British teenagers Andrea really was a boy name in Italy—and that Kimi was, too. Even if he was small, shorter than everyone else. Even if the race suits bunched up at his wrists, his ankles, his features were soft and girlish, his voice never really dropped until he was much older, his hair was long and unkempt.
Kimi Antonelli was a boy because he grew up in locker rooms. He grew up shoulder to shoulder with other boys, he grew up with Axe body spray and aftershave and razor burn and the low, careless way they talked about girls like they were weather, like they were inevitable. Laughed at the right moments, kept his eyes forward when towels snapped and bodies pressed too close, how to make himself take up just enough space to belong without ever being noticed for it. Kissed girls in that lazy, disinterested way all the other boys praised, that same dispassion they chased despite the fact their bodies craved nothing but warmth and would stop at nothing to get it.
Realistically, Kimi knew he was still a boy, even as George Russell stood towering over him. But he didn’t really feel like one.
“You smell a bit… almost like a girl, mate.”
Somewhere in that gray area, that fuzzy headspace where Kimi stayed suspended between the binary of genders, staring at both of them and feeling a sense of disbelonging in the face of it all.
Kimi swallowed. He forced a laugh. It came out wrong. Too light. Too thin. Not quite anchored to his chest the way it should’ve been. “Do I?”
George didn’t miss a beat—of course not. “Did you snog someone or something? Who’s the lucky lady?”
No one was supposed to notice. A small indulgence, something easily swallowed by the array of odors in the sticky club, Kimi had only applied a few spritzes of the perfume tester he had grabbed from some counter in the airport, to which the vendor asked the same question—Who’s the lucky lady? Kimi, of course, had brushed it off, something about how he doesn’t kiss and tell, because he wasn’t a lucky lady. He didn’t feel lucky at all.
The club was too loud to think in straight lines. Kimi huffed a laugh, eyes flicking away as he brought his glass to his lips—some fruity pink cocktail he knew George noticed. It was too sweet—grenadine and fake citrus and something that left a sticky edge on his teeth. The glass was sweating in his palm. Everything here was sweating, actually. The ceiling lights pulsed in soft pinks and blues that made everyone look slightly unreal, like reflections in a helmet visor. Kimi winced a bit, because it really did feel like he was giving himself away.
George leaned in again, too close to Kimi’s neck, sniffing out the two sprays like a bloodhound. He grinned like he’d already had too much to drink—or not nearly enough. “Seriously though,” George said, louder than necessary to be heard over the music, “you smell different. Like… floral.”
“I’m not wearing anything.” A bit too defensive, a bit too high.
George hummed, unconvinced, and leaned in again anyway. Close enough now that Kimi could feel the warmth of him, the clean detergent smell under whatever cologne he used. Kimi didn’t miss the way the fragrance seemed to settle on George’s skin—the masculine sharpness didn’t seem so bad on him. A real man. George sniffed once, then twice. “You’re not even wearing proper deodorant tonight, are you?” George said, amused.
So, what? Kimi wanted to snap at him, tell him to fuck off. So what if Kimi didn’t put any deodorant on? It was all gross, chemically masculine, sharp and headache inducing, clashing with the gentle jasmine top note of his perfume. It wasn’t like he smelled bad—he smelled like flowers and hotel shampoo and clean sweat.
“I forgot,” Kimi replied finally, feigning exasperation. “Why? Do I smell bad?”
George’s expression softened a fraction, but he didn’t back off. He never really did, not when he was curious. “Forgot deodorant?” He clicked his tongue. “That’s not exactly a common oversight, mate.”
Kimi shrugged again, too casual, too practiced. “I was in a rush.”
A lie, technically. Or at least a simplification. He’d stood in the hotel bathroom earlier that evening longer than he meant to, staring at the row of things lined up on the counter—labels in English, stark white fonts on dark bottles, shapes and colors that all promised versions of himself that felt slightly wrong when he imagined them on his skin. Nauseating scents, red-blooded manly odors that made his sinuses sting a bit. He’d looked at them and felt nothing but distance. Like none of them were meant for skin like his. Soft, smooth skin, full of dull edges.
“Do I smell bad?” Kimi repeated, a bit more desperate. He kicked himself for it. Do you like it? Does it suit me? He could feel it now, the perfume he’d barely thought about earlier. Not strong—he hadn’t meant for it to be strong—but persistent in a way he hadn’t anticipated. It lingered at the edge of everything: his collar, his wrists, the place where his hair brushed his neck, overgrown and curly.
George shook his head. “Nah, not bad.” Then, like he couldn’t help himself, George’s mouth curled again. “Just… weird. Soft. Bit feminine.”
Kimi’s fingers tightened around the glass. Stop saying that. He could’ve at least grabbed one of the fragrances marketed as unisex—not the soft pink bottle covered in begonias.
George tilted his head, studying him like he was something mildly fascinating under a lab light. “No, seriously. You smell like a girl.”
“No way,” Kimi sputtered, jaw flexing. He took another sip of his drink just to have something to do with his mouth, sweet and cloying and suddenly unbearable. The bass from the speakers thudded through the floor, through his ribs, like it was trying to rearrange him.
“I swear. You walk past and it’s like—” he snapped his fingers, searching for words, “—flowers. Shampoo. All that. Like you’ve just nicked something out of a girl’s bathroom.”
But George wasn’t done. “You do realise,” he added, “most blokes don’t go out smelling like that.”
“Why does it matter?” Was it getting warmer in here? Kimi fought the urge to press the cool edges of his glass to his flushed cheeks, trying to keep his expression light.
“Oh, it matters,” George said immediately, far too quick, far too amused again. He gestured at him loosely, like presenting evidence to an audience only he could see. “You walk in here, tiny thing, soft face, smelling like that… you can’t really blame people for thinking it.”
“I’m not a girl,” Kimi snapped, and there was something tighter in it now, something less practiced. Something desperate and adolescent and frightened.
Eyes flicking over Kimi, George hummed again. “Could’ve fooled me, mate.”
It was clear George enjoyed the shape of the silence he made, grinning lazily. Kimi just stared at him, jaw tight enough to ache. He could feel it—the way his face held itself too still, the way his throat tightened around anything that might come out wrong. Around anything that might betray how much he hated the softness George kept pointing at, as if it was something newly discovered instead of something he had spent his whole life trying to manage.
“It’s fascinating, though,” George continued, ignoring Kimi’s visible discomfort entirely now. He tilted his head. “Did you steal it from a girlfriend?”
Kimi felt heat climb his neck. “I haven’t stolen anyone’s anything.”
George hummed. “No? Shame. Would’ve made more sense.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
But George just shrugged, like it was obvious. Like Kimi was the one missing something simple. “It means,” he said, voice dipping slightly so it got lost under the bass for everyone else but stayed perfectly clear for Kimi, “you don’t smell like the rest of us.”
The rest of us. As if there was a rulebook. As if there was a correct way to exist in your own skin and Kimi had somehow wandered out of it. The binary of it all. Kimi Antonelli was not a girl because he just wasn’t. That wasn’t how the world worked.
“You’d leave that scent everywhere, yeah?” he added, almost absently. “Like perfume on a pillow. That sort of thing.”
“That’s disgusting,” Kimi said automatically, throat tight—but it didn’t land like anger, or even frustration. More like panic.
“You didn’t even choose something subtle,” George went on, voice lighter again, slipping back into that dangerous playful tone. “That’s the funny bit. You went for full… I don’t know. Girl perfume.”
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
gummygunk
romaincrisis
