Everyone in Formula 1 knows your name and most of them have something to say about it. But when rookie sensation Kimi Antonelli arrives in the paddock already convinced you're trouble, one awkward encounter is enough to set off a season full of rumors, rivalries, and unexpected complications. In a world where everyone is watching, the truth is never as simple as it seems.
˙⋆✮ RADIO SILENCE
When a determined engineering intern joins Mercedes and finds herself working alongside rookie driver Kimi Antonelli, what begins as friendship slowly becomes something much harder to ignore.
˙⋆✮ LOST IN TRANSLATION
Your secret plan involved Italian lessons, a heartfelt confession, and absolutely no witnesses. Unfortunately, Kimi Antonelli had other ideas.
˙⋆✮ ONE MORE LAP
You enter a Mercedes fan giveaway for a Silverstone hot lap experience fully expecting never to hear back. Unfortunately for your dignity, you do hear back. And even more unfortunately, the rookie driver assigned to your hot lap turns out to be the one Formula 1 driver you’ve been trying very hard not to have a crush on.
Summary: You enter a Mercedes fan giveaway for a Silverstone hot lap experience fully expecting never to hear back. Unfortunately for your dignity, you do hear back. And even more unfortunately, the rookie driver assigned to your hot lap turns out to be the one Formula 1 driver you’ve been trying very hard not to have a crush on.
Word Count: 5.7k
Warnings: none
Laysha's Notes: sorry this took me a while to get to! this is based on this request by @dessashippr
MASTERLIST
You saw the post at half past eleven on a Tuesday night, scrolling through the Mercedes fan community out of habit more than anything else. It was the kind of forum you checked the way some people checked the weather, reflexively, without really expecting anything to change.
Mercedes Petronas AMG HOT LAP EXPERIENCE — SILVERSTONE GRAND PRIX WEEKEND
Behind-the-scenes paddock access. A full team tour. And for one lucky fan: a passenger hot lap with one of our junior drivers.
You read it twice, then a third time, thumb hovering over the entry link. You weren't the type who won things. You'd entered a dozen contests over the years including raffles, sweepstakes, a radio call-in once that you'd forgotten about within the hour and won exactly nothing. But it cost nothing to enter, and it took less than a minute, so you filled in your name, your email, ticked the box confirming you were a member of the community, and went to bed without thinking about it again.
That was three weeks ago.
The email arrived on a Thursday afternoon while you were microwaving leftover pasta, your phone buzzing against the counter with a notification you almost swiped away without reading. You caught the subject line at the last second.
Congratulations — You've Won the Mercedes Petronas AMG Hot Lap Experience!
You stood very still for a moment, the microwave humming behind you, and read it again to make sure you hadn't misread a word of it. You hadn't. Your name was there. Your entry number was there. There was a phone number to call to confirm your identity and begin arranging travel.
"No," you said out loud, to nobody, because your flatmate was still at work and the only witness to this moment was a bag of frozen peas in the freezer door. "No, that's not… that's fake. That's got to be fake."
You spent the next twenty minutes doing exactly what any sensible person would do: you searched the sender's email domain, cross-referenced it against the team's official website, checked the community forum to see if anyone else had posted about winning, and eventually with your heart hammering somewhere up near your throat you called the number.
A woman with a crisp, professional voice answered on the second ring, said the team's name, and asked for your entry confirmation code like this was the most ordinary phone call in the world.
It was not, for you, an ordinary phone call. Your voice cracked on your own name.
By the time you hung up, you were laughing, and then you weren't laughing, you were sort of gasping, one hand braced on the kitchen counter, and the pasta was forgotten and slightly overcooked and you did not care even slightly.
You called your mother first. She didn't fully understand what Formula 1 was, let alone why you were shrieking about it, but she understood you, and she let you talk in circles for ten minutes before asking, gently, "So you get to meet the driver? The one you like?"
"I don't like him, Mum, I just — I've followed his career, it's not like that—"
"Mm," she said, in the particular tone mothers use when they've already decided something and are simply waiting for you to catch up.
You called your best friend next, and she screamed loudly enough that you had to hold the phone away from your ear, and then she immediately began drafting a list of things you needed to buy, none of which you actually needed, all of which you agreed to anyway because arguing felt like a waste of the good mood.
You did not, notably, mention how long you'd followed him. How you'd watched every junior series race you could find a stream for, back when he was driving in series most people had never heard of, back before anyone outside the paddock knew his name. How you'd felt something close to pride, absurd and one-sided as it was, the first time he stood on a Grand Prix podium. You told yourself it wasn't a crush. It was admiration. It was respect for a quiet, hardworking kid who'd made it to the top of the sport through sheer bloody-minded persistence rather than noise or ego.
You told yourself this several more times over the following two weeks, with decreasing conviction.
—------
The Mercedes Petronas AMG press office sent a schedule, a waiver, a dress code (smart casual, closed-toe shoes, no loose jewellery), and a document confirming that your travel and one night's accommodation near the circuit would be covered. You read every word of it more times than was strictly necessary.
You told yourself you wouldn't get your hopes up about anything beyond the obvious: a hot lap, a photo, maybe a signature if you were lucky and didn't completely embarrass yourself. He was a Formula 1 driver in the middle of a championship battle. He had a media schedule, sponsor commitments, physio, debriefs, a hundred other things pulling at his time. You would get an hour with him if you were fortunate. Maybe less.
That didn't stop you from watching every recent interview clip you could find, not to prepare talking points exactly, just to remind yourself who he actually was, rather than the flattened, half-imagined version you'd built up over years of distant admiration. You noticed things you'd noticed before but filed away properly this time: the way he answered questions slowly, choosing words with visible care, like he didn't trust himself to speak without thinking first. The dry, almost apologetic humour that surfaced when a reporter caught him off guard. The way he went quiet and still whenever a camera lingered too long on his face, like attention was a coat that didn't quite fit him yet.
Your flatmate, tired of hearing about it, eventually banned the subject from the flat after nine p.m., which you respected for approximately four days.
You packed and repacked your bag three times. You bought a new pair of trainers you didn't need because the dress code had made you paranoid your usual ones looked too worn. You lay awake the night before your flight running through a dozen imagined versions of how the day might go, none of which, you would later think, came anywhere close to how it actually unfolded.
The circuit reached you before you reached the circuit.
You felt it from the shuttle bus window, a low mechanical thrum vibrating up through the floor and into the soles of your new trainers, engines somewhere out on track running practice starts, the sound doubling back off grandstands and hospitality units in a way that made the whole world seem to hum. Traffic crawled along roads lined with flags — every team's colours strung up in long fluttering rows, Mercedes Petronas AMG's silver and deep green among them, and you found yourself staring at that particular combination of colours the way you might stare at a familiar face in a crowd.
The campsites had bloomed up overnight in every field bordering the circuit, tents in clusters, barbecue smoke rising thin and grey into a sky that couldn't quite decide whether it wanted to rain. Fans walked in every direction wearing every driver's merchandise, faces painted, flags draped over shoulders like capes, and somewhere in the crowd you spotted no fewer than six people wearing his number.
You didn't say anything about that. You just noticed it, and something in your chest went warm and strange.
The paddock, once you were credentialed through security with a laminated pass on a lanyard that you were fairly sure you would frame later and never admit to, was its own separate world entirely. It smelled like nothing you'd expected and everything you should have: hot rubber, spilled espresso, sunscreen, the faint acrid tang of fuel drifting from somewhere near the garages, and underneath it all, the mineral smell of rain that hadn't fallen yet but was clearly considering it.
Team personnel moved everywhere, at a walking pace just shy of a jog, headsets clipped to belts, tablets tucked under arms, badges swinging. A cluster of mechanics wheeled a tyre trolley past you close enough that you had to step back, and one of them said "sorry, love" without breaking stride. Media crews with enormous cameras stood in loose knots outside hospitality units, waiting for someone important enough to justify the wait. Somewhere above it all, a tannoy voice announced a schedule change for the support race in a tone of practiced, weary cheer.
A young woman in a Mercedes polo shirt found you within minutes of you stepping through the gates, checking a name off a tablet with the brisk efficiency of someone who did this exact task every single race weekend and had long since run out of patience for anyone who wasted her time.
"You must be our competition winner," she said, extending a hand. "I'm Priya, hospitality and guest relations. Welcome to the paddock, how was the journey?"
"Good. Fine. A bit surreal, honestly," you admitted, and she laughed, not unkindly.
"That's the normal reaction. Come on, I'll get you settled before the tour starts."
She walked you through hospitality, a glass-fronted structure humming with quiet, expensive calm, sponsors' logos etched into the windows, drivers' overalls displayed behind glass like museum pieces, and talked you through the schedule for the day. Garage tour first. Lunch. Then, mid-afternoon, the hot lap itself, timed carefully around track sessions and media windows.
"And Kimi's meeting you for the tour," she added, checking her tablet again, "assuming media doesn't run over. Sometimes it does."
Hearing his name said so casually, so functionally, like he was simply an item on a schedule rather than someone you'd watched race in the rain three years ago and thought, quietly, to yourself, that one's going to be special — it did something strange to your stomach.
"Sounds good," you said, in a voice you hoped sounded like a normal person's voice.
Priya glanced at you sideways, the corner of her mouth twitching, and said nothing at all.
—------
He was fifteen minutes late, which Priya assured you was, for a Grand Prix weekend and for an Italian, essentially early.
You were standing just inside the garage, trying very hard to look like someone who belonged there and not like someone counting the seconds, when you saw him come around the side of the building, caramel hair still slightly damp from a shower after the morning session, team polo shirt, a lanyard identical to your own except his had about four times as many access levels printed on it.
He looked younger in person. Not younger than his age, exactly, but softer somehow less like the composed figure in post-race interviews and more like someone who'd simply woken up that morning and put on the clothes his job required of him.
He spotted you and slowed his pace, and for just a second which was brief enough that you might have imagined it, except you didn't think you had something like nerves crossed his face before he schooled it into a polite, careful smile.
"Hi," he said, stopping a respectful distance away and extending a hand. "You're— sorry, I should know this— you're our competition winner?"
"That's me," you said, shaking his hand, which was warm and slightly rougher than you'd expected, calloused in a way that made you think, absurdly, of steering wheels and gear paddles. "Thank you for— I mean, this is— I don't really know what to say, honestly."
"That's alright," he said. "I never really know what to say either."
It was such an unexpectedly honest thing to say that you laughed before you could stop yourself, and he blinked, then smiled properly this time, small and a little surprised at himself.
"I mean it," he added. "People assume because I talk to cameras I'm good at talking. I'm not. I just— I've had practice not saying anything stupid on camera. It's different."
"Well, you're doing fine so far."
"Ask me again in an hour."
You both stood there a beat too long, the kind of silence that isn't quite comfortable yet but isn't unbearable either, and then he gestured toward the garage entrance with a sort of relieved briskness, like he'd been handed a task and was glad to have something to do with his hands.
"Should we start the tour? I was told I'm meant to show you around. I'm not— I'm not always sure how much detail people want, so tell me if I'm being boring."
"I promise I won't find it boring."
"You say that now," he said, and there was the dry humour you'd noticed in interviews, quieter in person, almost private. "Wait until I start explaining tyre degradation."
You did not, in fact, find it boring.
He walked you through slowly, gesturing at things with an ease that only surfaced once he had a subject he actually knew inside and out, and you began to understand, watching him, that his earlier awkwardness had nothing to do with unfriendliness and everything to do with simply not knowing what was expected of him in an unscripted moment. Give him a car to talk about, though, and he relaxed by degrees.
"This is basically where the whole weekend lives," he said, nodding toward the garage floor, where the chassis sat raised on a rig, engineers crouched around it with the unhurried focus of surgeons. "Everything gets stripped down and rebuilt overnight sometimes. People think it's just — bolt the wheels on, done. It's not like that at all."
"How much of it do you actually understand? Like, mechanically."
"More than people expect. Less than the engineers would like." He nodded toward a man frowning at a laptop screen displaying rows of data. "That's Bono, my race engineer. If you want to know anything real about the car, ask him, not me. I just drive it and complain when it doesn't do what I want."
"Do you complain a lot?"
"Constantly," Bono said without looking up, and Kimi made a small wounded noise that made you laugh again.
He showed you the steering wheel display, walking you through what half the buttons did with a patience that made it clear he'd explained this exact thing dozens of times before to dozens of guests and had never once found a shortcut, because he genuinely wanted people to understand it properly. He showed you the pit wall, quiet mid-afternoon, monitors dark, and told you what it was like during a race how loud it got in his helmet, how strange it was that he could hear his engineer's voice perfectly clear over an engine screaming at seventeen thousand revs.
"Does it get lonely?" you asked, without entirely meaning to. "In the car, I mean. During a race."
He considered this for longer than you expected, like it wasn't a question he got asked often, or maybe wasn't one he'd properly asked himself.
"Sometimes," he admitted. "It's just you and the car and a voice in your ear. You can't see anyone's face. You can't really talk to anyone except your engineer, and even then it's mostly numbers and instructions." He paused. "I like it, though. It's the one place where nobody's watching me think. They just see what I do."
You didn't say anything to that, not right away, because it felt like something truer than he'd meant to say out loud, and you didn't want to make him self-conscious about it.
"That's a very poetic way to describe going round in circles very fast," you said instead, gently, and he huffed something that was almost a laugh.
"Don't tell the engineers I said anything poetic. I'll never hear the end of it."
—---------
Lunch was in a corner of hospitality, a plate of pasta you barely tasted because you were too busy trying not to stare at him across the table, and he ate with the brisk efficiency of someone used to eating on a schedule rather than for pleasure, though he did pause halfway through to make a face at his own plate.
"This is very beige," he said. "Nutritionist's orders. I love pasta but I miss it with actual flavour."
"What would you eat if you could eat anything right now?"
"Honestly? My grandmother's cooking. She does this— " he gestured vaguely, searching for a word in Italian that clearly wasn't quite cooperating, " —it doesn't translate well. Very simple. Very good. I haven't had it properly in months."
"You could ask catering to make it."
"I did, once. It wasn't the same. I think it's not really about the food." He shrugged, a little embarrassed at himself for having said something so unguarded, and reached for his water instead of continuing.
You found, over the next twenty minutes, that this was a pattern with him, a genuine thought would surface, unguarded and a little raw, and then he'd catch himself and retreat slightly, as though worried he'd overshared with a stranger. You didn't push. You just let the silences sit there, unhurried, and slowly he seemed to relax into them rather than fill them nervously.
At one point you asked, carefully, trying not to sound like exactly the kind of overinvested fan you were trying not to be, how he was finding the season so far.
"Honestly, tiring," he said. "Good, but tiring. It's a lot of everyone always wants something. An interview, a photo, an opinion. I don't mind giving those things, I just—" He exhaled. "It's nice, today, actually. Nobody wants anything from me except to look at a car with me."
"I want a hot lap out of you," you pointed out. "So technically I want something too."
That earned you the first proper laugh of the day surprised out of him, a little loud, quickly muffled with the back of his hand like he hadn't expected himself to laugh that openly in front of someone he'd just met.
"Fair," he said. "Alright. You've earned that one."
—----
The garage had cleared of most of the morning's crowd by the time you were led toward a side room lined with helmets on shelves, HANS devices hanging from hooks, and a wall of race suits arranged by size.
A mechanic introduced simply as Tomas, forearms permanently smudged with something dark and mechanical fitted you for a helmet with brisk, careful hands, checking the strap twice, tilting your head gently side to side to make sure it sat properly.
"Little tight is good," he said. "Loose is bad. You'll thank me later."
Kimi appeared a few minutes later already half into his own overalls, hair pushed back, looking genuinely, uncomplicatedly happy in a way he hadn't quite been all afternoon. This, you realised, was his actual environment. Everything before had been performance, however gentle. This was simply him.
"Nervous?" he asked, watching you turn your helmet over in your hands.
"Extremely."
"Good. Means you're taking it seriously." He crouched slightly to look you properly in the eye, voice dropping into something more careful. "It'll be loud. Really loud, even with the helmet on. The braking will feel harder than you expect — like something's got hold of your whole body and yanked it forward. If you want me to slow down at any point, just tap my shoulder, twice, hard. I'll feel it even over the engine. Okay?"
"Okay."
"You're allowed to scream," he added, and there was that dry humour again, a small smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. "Everyone does. I won't tell anyone."
"Do you scream?"
"The first time I drove one of these, yes. Don't tell anyone that either."
The car itself, once you were lowered into the passenger seat beside him — a tight, secure fit, the world suddenly reduced to the curve of the cockpit and the tang of race fuel close enough to taste — felt smaller and larger at once. Smaller because there was barely room to move. Larger because the second the engine caught, a shattering, physical roar that you felt in your teeth before you properly heard it, the whole world seemed to expand outward from that sound.
Kimi glanced over once, checked your harness with two firm tugs, and gave you a thumbs up through his visor that you returned, considerably less steadily.
Then he pulled out of the garage, and the world changed entirely.
The pit lane felt fast. The main straight, once he opened the car up properly, felt like something else altogether — a pressure against your chest, the scenery beyond the cockpit smearing into long indistinct streaks of green and grey, the sound swallowing every thought in your head except a single continuous noise that might have been a scream and might have been a laugh, you genuinely couldn't tell which.
Through the corners, the car seemed to compress and stretch in ways that made no physical sense, g-forces hauling your head sideways, your hands gripping the harness straps hard enough that your knuckles ached. Braking into the tighter sections felt exactly like he'd described — something enormous seizing your entire body and dragging it forward, your vision briefly doubling with the force of it.
You were, you realised somewhere around the second lap, laughing continuously, helplessly, the sound swallowed by the engine but still shaking through your chest, and beside you, through the small gap in his visor, you caught the edge of Kimi's expression — focused, utterly calm, and unmistakably, quietly delighted at your reaction, glancing over just slightly more often than the driving strictly required.
By the final lap your throat was raw from noise you hadn't fully controlled, your hands trembling faintly even after he brought the car to a gentle stop back in the garage, engine ticking as it cooled, silence rushing in so suddenly it felt like its own kind of pressure.
Kimi pulled his visor up first, grinning, actually grinning, wide and unguarded, nothing careful about it at all.
"So?" he said. "Verdict?"
"I think I left my stomach somewhere around turn six."
"That's the correct reaction." He was already climbing out, offering you a hand as you unclipped the harness with fingers that weren't entirely steady yet. "You did well. Some people go completely silent. Some people cry. You just laughed the whole way, it was—" He stopped himself, seeming to realise he was about to say something he hadn't quite planned to, and settled instead for, "—it was nice. Driving someone who's actually enjoying it."
You pulled your helmet off, hair static-charged and sticking up in every direction, and he looked at you for a beat too long before glancing away, ears faintly pink, and you decided, charitably, that it was probably just the heat.
You expected that to be the end of it. A hot lap, a photo with the car, a polite goodbye, back on the shuttle bus with a story you'd tell for the rest of your life.
Instead, once you'd both changed back into ordinary clothes and your legs had steadied under you, Kimi lingered by the garage entrance, hands in his pockets, looking faintly uncertain in a way that didn't match the confidence he'd shown behind the wheel.
"Do you—" he started, then stopped, then tried again. "I don't have anything else scheduled until the evening debrief. If you wanted, I could show you a bit more. The rest of the paddock. It's not really part of the— official tour, but." He shrugged, a little helplessly. "I don't mind. If you want."
"I'd like that," you said, probably too quickly, and he seemed relieved enough that you both pretended not to notice.
He showed you the trophy cabinet in the team's hospitality unit, tapping the glass in front of a modest collection of silverware with something between pride and embarrassment. "Not much yet," he said. "Give it time."
"I believe you," you said, and meant it, and he glanced at you sideways like he wasn't quite sure what to do with someone saying something like that so plainly.
He introduced you to a mechanic named Dario who was halfway through rebuilding a gearbox and who, upon hearing you were the competition winner, said something in rapid Italian that made Kimi go faintly red and mutter something back that silenced him, though not before Dario shot you both an unmistakably knowing look.
"What did he say?" you asked.
"Nothing," Kimi said, too quickly.
"Kimi."
"He said I usually finish these tours in twenty minutes," he admitted, not quite meeting your eyes. "We've been out here two hours."
"Is that bad?"
"No," he said, and then, quieter, almost to himself, "no, I don't think it's bad at all."
You wandered past the team truck, where a mechanic was cataloguing spare parts with the focus of a librarian; past a wall where photos from every race of the season were pinned in careful rows, Kimi pointing out ones that had gone particularly well or particularly badly with equal, easy honesty; past a quiet corner of the paddock where the noise of the wider circuit fell away almost entirely and it was just the two of you, walking slowly, in no particular hurry to be anywhere else.
"Can I ask you something?" you said, somewhere in that quiet stretch.
"You can ask."
"Why does the awkwardness go away when you're talking about the car, or the team, but come straight back the second it's just conversation?"
He was quiet for a while, long enough that you wondered if you'd overstepped, and then he said, carefully, "I've always found it easier to be sure of things I understand completely. A car, I understand completely. A person—" He gestured vaguely, a small helpless motion. "I don't always know what's expected of me. I say the wrong thing, or I don't say anything at all, and then it's worse."
"You haven't said anything wrong all day."
"Give it time," he said, echoing your earlier words back at you, and you both laughed, and something in the space between you eased another fraction.
Priya found you both near the hospitality unit as the light outside had started turning gold with early evening, her expression somewhere between amused and faintly exasperated as she checked her tablet.
"There you are," she said. "I was starting to think we'd lost our winner. And you—" she pointed at Kimi, "—Marco's been asking where you've got to. Debrief's in forty minutes."
"I know," Kimi said, not sounding remotely sorry about it.
"Mm," Priya said, exactly the way your mother had said it on the phone weeks earlier, and you decided you would think about that later, when you weren't quite so distracted by the way Kimi was looking faintly, helplessly pleased with himself.
Marco, who you'd gathered by now this was the team's press officer, appeared shortly after with the harried expression of a man whose carefully planned schedule had somehow stretched itself by several hours without his input, glancing between you and Kimi with an expression that suggested he understood exactly why, even if he wasn't going to say so out loud.
"We do need you for debrief soon," he told Kimi, not unkindly. "Toto's waiting."
"I know," Kimi said again, and then, to you, quieter: "I have to go in a minute."
"I figured."
"I didn't want to," he said, and then looked faintly startled at his own honesty, the way he had all day whenever something true slipped out before he'd properly decided to say it.
You walked the last stretch back toward the paddock exit together, slower than either of you needed to, the golden evening light stretching long shadows across the tarmac, distant engine noise from the support race still rolling faintly through the air like weather.
"Thank you," you said, when you reached the gate, meaning it more than the words could probably carry. "For today. Genuinely. I don't think I'll ever– this isn't the kind of thing that happens to people like me."
"I don't think there's a specific kind of person this is supposed to happen to," he said. "It happened. That's enough, isn't it?"
"I suppose."
You stood there a beat too long, the way you had at the very start of the day, except the silence now felt entirely different not awkward exactly, just full, weighted with something neither of you had quite named yet.
"I should say goodbye properly," you said eventually, holding out your hand the way you had that morning, "since I doubt I'll—"
"Wait," he said.
You waited.
He looked, for a moment, exactly like he had before the first word he'd ever spoken to you — nervous, visibly working up to something, hands shoved deep into his pockets like he needed somewhere to put them.
"I don't—" he started, then stopped, exhaled, tried again. "I don't usually do this. I want to say that first, because I don't want you to think I do this with every — with anyone who wins a competition." A faint, self-deprecating huff. "I don't. I've never wanted to, before today."
"Kimi—"
"I'd like to see you again," he said, in a rush now, like if he didn't get it all out at once he might lose his nerve entirely. "Not not like this. Not a tour, not a schedule. Just you. If you wanted that. I don't know how it would work, with the season, I travel a lot, I know that's but I'd like to try, if you'd let me."
You felt something in your chest go very warm and very still all at once.
"Are you asking me on a date?" you said, partly to buy yourself a second to process it, partly because you wanted to hear him say it properly.
He went slightly pink, glanced away, then made himself look back at you anyway, which felt like the bravest thing you'd seen him do all day, braver somehow than a hundred and eighty miles an hour down a straight.
"Would it be alright," he said, carefully, like he'd been rehearsing the exact words, "if I took you on a date sometime?"
You didn't answer immediately, not because you were unsure, but because you wanted to hold the moment a beat longer, this ordinary, extraordinary boy standing in front of you with his hands in his pockets and his ears gone faintly red, looking more nervous asking this question than he had looked driving a car at ludicrous speed an hour earlier.
"Yes," you said. "I'd like that. A lot."
The smile that broke across his face then was nothing like the careful, camera-ready one from the morning. It was wide and a little disbelieving and entirely unguarded, and you thought, quietly, that you would remember that exact expression for a very long time.
"Okay," he said, like he needed to hear himself confirm it. "Okay. Good."
He asked for your number, fumbling slightly with his phone in a way that felt endearing rather than smooth, and you gave it to him, and he saved it immediately with a small, private smile like he wanted to make sure it was real before he let himself believe it.
"I'll text you," he said. "Properly. Not just— I mean, I'll actually plan something. I'm not very good at it, I'll warn you now, but I'll try."
"I believe you," you said again, and he ducked his head, pleased and a little shy about it, the same way he had been in the trophy room hours earlier.
Marco called his name from somewhere behind you, gently insistent, and Kimi glanced back, then at you, clearly reluctant to be the one to end this.
"I have to—"
"I know. Go."
He hesitated one more second, like he wanted to say something else and hadn't quite decided what, and then, simply, quietly: "Thank you for laughing the whole way round. Nobody's ever done that before."
Then he was walking backward for a few steps, still looking at you, before he turned properly and jogged back toward the garages, and you stood at the gate with your pass still around your neck and your phone now holding a new contact and the whole gold-lit evening settling warm around you.
The shuttle bus back to the hotel was quieter than the one that morning, most passengers scrolling through photos of their day, comparing notes on which driver they'd glimpsed and where. You sat by the window with your phone in your lap, not checking it exactly, just aware of its presence, the way you might be aware of a held breath.
The message came through just after nine that evening, while you were repacking your bag for the flight home.
Debrief ran long. Sorry. Today was good. Better than good. I meant what I said — I'll actually plan something properly, give me a few days to sort my schedule. Thank you for today.
You read it four times before you let yourself reply, and even then you deleted your first two attempts for sounding either too casual or entirely deranged with enthusiasm.
Today was one of the best days of my life. I'm serious. Thank you for asking.
The reply came almost immediately, like he'd been waiting, phone in hand, the exact way you had been.
I'm glad it was you who won. I don't say things like that easily. But I mean it.
You sat on the edge of the hotel bed for a long moment after that, phone held loosely in both hands, feeling something settle in your chest that felt less like the end of an extraordinary day and much more, unmistakably, like the very beginning of something else.
Outside, faint and distant, you could still hear engines somewhere on the circuit, the last stretches of evening track action winding down into the ordinary quiet of a race weekend settling toward night. You thought about the roar of that hot lap, the warmth of his hand steadying yours as he'd helped you out of the car, the particular, unguarded way he'd smiled when you said yes.
You didn't know yet what shape this would take how a rookie driver's punishing travel schedule and your very ordinary life might fit together, what a first date with someone whose face occasionally appeared on billboards might actually look like. You didn't need to know yet. For tonight, it was enough to have the message glowing on your phone screen, and the quiet, steady certainty that this wasn't goodbye at all.
It was, very simply, a beginning.
laysha's notes: lmk if you guys like it!! also lmk if you'd like to see a part 2 of this storyy
Summary: You enter a Mercedes fan giveaway for a Silverstone hot lap experience fully expecting never to hear back. Unfortunately for your dignity, you do hear back. And even more unfortunately, the rookie driver assigned to your hot lap turns out to be the one Formula 1 driver you’ve been trying very hard not to have a crush on.
Word Count: 5.7k
Warnings: none
Laysha's Notes: sorry this took me a while to get to! this is based on this request by @dessashippr
MASTERLIST
You saw the post at half past eleven on a Tuesday night, scrolling through the Mercedes fan community out of habit more than anything else. It was the kind of forum you checked the way some people checked the weather, reflexively, without really expecting anything to change.
Mercedes Petronas AMG HOT LAP EXPERIENCE — SILVERSTONE GRAND PRIX WEEKEND
Behind-the-scenes paddock access. A full team tour. And for one lucky fan: a passenger hot lap with one of our junior drivers.
You read it twice, then a third time, thumb hovering over the entry link. You weren't the type who won things. You'd entered a dozen contests over the years including raffles, sweepstakes, a radio call-in once that you'd forgotten about within the hour and won exactly nothing. But it cost nothing to enter, and it took less than a minute, so you filled in your name, your email, ticked the box confirming you were a member of the community, and went to bed without thinking about it again.
That was three weeks ago.
The email arrived on a Thursday afternoon while you were microwaving leftover pasta, your phone buzzing against the counter with a notification you almost swiped away without reading. You caught the subject line at the last second.
Congratulations — You've Won the Mercedes Petronas AMG Hot Lap Experience!
You stood very still for a moment, the microwave humming behind you, and read it again to make sure you hadn't misread a word of it. You hadn't. Your name was there. Your entry number was there. There was a phone number to call to confirm your identity and begin arranging travel.
"No," you said out loud, to nobody, because your flatmate was still at work and the only witness to this moment was a bag of frozen peas in the freezer door. "No, that's not… that's fake. That's got to be fake."
You spent the next twenty minutes doing exactly what any sensible person would do: you searched the sender's email domain, cross-referenced it against the team's official website, checked the community forum to see if anyone else had posted about winning, and eventually with your heart hammering somewhere up near your throat you called the number.
A woman with a crisp, professional voice answered on the second ring, said the team's name, and asked for your entry confirmation code like this was the most ordinary phone call in the world.
It was not, for you, an ordinary phone call. Your voice cracked on your own name.
By the time you hung up, you were laughing, and then you weren't laughing, you were sort of gasping, one hand braced on the kitchen counter, and the pasta was forgotten and slightly overcooked and you did not care even slightly.
You called your mother first. She didn't fully understand what Formula 1 was, let alone why you were shrieking about it, but she understood you, and she let you talk in circles for ten minutes before asking, gently, "So you get to meet the driver? The one you like?"
"I don't like him, Mum, I just — I've followed his career, it's not like that—"
"Mm," she said, in the particular tone mothers use when they've already decided something and are simply waiting for you to catch up.
You called your best friend next, and she screamed loudly enough that you had to hold the phone away from your ear, and then she immediately began drafting a list of things you needed to buy, none of which you actually needed, all of which you agreed to anyway because arguing felt like a waste of the good mood.
You did not, notably, mention how long you'd followed him. How you'd watched every junior series race you could find a stream for, back when he was driving in series most people had never heard of, back before anyone outside the paddock knew his name. How you'd felt something close to pride, absurd and one-sided as it was, the first time he stood on a Grand Prix podium. You told yourself it wasn't a crush. It was admiration. It was respect for a quiet, hardworking kid who'd made it to the top of the sport through sheer bloody-minded persistence rather than noise or ego.
You told yourself this several more times over the following two weeks, with decreasing conviction.
—------
The Mercedes Petronas AMG press office sent a schedule, a waiver, a dress code (smart casual, closed-toe shoes, no loose jewellery), and a document confirming that your travel and one night's accommodation near the circuit would be covered. You read every word of it more times than was strictly necessary.
You told yourself you wouldn't get your hopes up about anything beyond the obvious: a hot lap, a photo, maybe a signature if you were lucky and didn't completely embarrass yourself. He was a Formula 1 driver in the middle of a championship battle. He had a media schedule, sponsor commitments, physio, debriefs, a hundred other things pulling at his time. You would get an hour with him if you were fortunate. Maybe less.
That didn't stop you from watching every recent interview clip you could find, not to prepare talking points exactly, just to remind yourself who he actually was, rather than the flattened, half-imagined version you'd built up over years of distant admiration. You noticed things you'd noticed before but filed away properly this time: the way he answered questions slowly, choosing words with visible care, like he didn't trust himself to speak without thinking first. The dry, almost apologetic humour that surfaced when a reporter caught him off guard. The way he went quiet and still whenever a camera lingered too long on his face, like attention was a coat that didn't quite fit him yet.
Your flatmate, tired of hearing about it, eventually banned the subject from the flat after nine p.m., which you respected for approximately four days.
You packed and repacked your bag three times. You bought a new pair of trainers you didn't need because the dress code had made you paranoid your usual ones looked too worn. You lay awake the night before your flight running through a dozen imagined versions of how the day might go, none of which, you would later think, came anywhere close to how it actually unfolded.
The circuit reached you before you reached the circuit.
You felt it from the shuttle bus window, a low mechanical thrum vibrating up through the floor and into the soles of your new trainers, engines somewhere out on track running practice starts, the sound doubling back off grandstands and hospitality units in a way that made the whole world seem to hum. Traffic crawled along roads lined with flags — every team's colours strung up in long fluttering rows, Mercedes Petronas AMG's silver and deep green among them, and you found yourself staring at that particular combination of colours the way you might stare at a familiar face in a crowd.
The campsites had bloomed up overnight in every field bordering the circuit, tents in clusters, barbecue smoke rising thin and grey into a sky that couldn't quite decide whether it wanted to rain. Fans walked in every direction wearing every driver's merchandise, faces painted, flags draped over shoulders like capes, and somewhere in the crowd you spotted no fewer than six people wearing his number.
You didn't say anything about that. You just noticed it, and something in your chest went warm and strange.
The paddock, once you were credentialed through security with a laminated pass on a lanyard that you were fairly sure you would frame later and never admit to, was its own separate world entirely. It smelled like nothing you'd expected and everything you should have: hot rubber, spilled espresso, sunscreen, the faint acrid tang of fuel drifting from somewhere near the garages, and underneath it all, the mineral smell of rain that hadn't fallen yet but was clearly considering it.
Team personnel moved everywhere, at a walking pace just shy of a jog, headsets clipped to belts, tablets tucked under arms, badges swinging. A cluster of mechanics wheeled a tyre trolley past you close enough that you had to step back, and one of them said "sorry, love" without breaking stride. Media crews with enormous cameras stood in loose knots outside hospitality units, waiting for someone important enough to justify the wait. Somewhere above it all, a tannoy voice announced a schedule change for the support race in a tone of practiced, weary cheer.
A young woman in a Mercedes polo shirt found you within minutes of you stepping through the gates, checking a name off a tablet with the brisk efficiency of someone who did this exact task every single race weekend and had long since run out of patience for anyone who wasted her time.
"You must be our competition winner," she said, extending a hand. "I'm Priya, hospitality and guest relations. Welcome to the paddock, how was the journey?"
"Good. Fine. A bit surreal, honestly," you admitted, and she laughed, not unkindly.
"That's the normal reaction. Come on, I'll get you settled before the tour starts."
She walked you through hospitality, a glass-fronted structure humming with quiet, expensive calm, sponsors' logos etched into the windows, drivers' overalls displayed behind glass like museum pieces, and talked you through the schedule for the day. Garage tour first. Lunch. Then, mid-afternoon, the hot lap itself, timed carefully around track sessions and media windows.
"And Kimi's meeting you for the tour," she added, checking her tablet again, "assuming media doesn't run over. Sometimes it does."
Hearing his name said so casually, so functionally, like he was simply an item on a schedule rather than someone you'd watched race in the rain three years ago and thought, quietly, to yourself, that one's going to be special — it did something strange to your stomach.
"Sounds good," you said, in a voice you hoped sounded like a normal person's voice.
Priya glanced at you sideways, the corner of her mouth twitching, and said nothing at all.
—------
He was fifteen minutes late, which Priya assured you was, for a Grand Prix weekend and for an Italian, essentially early.
You were standing just inside the garage, trying very hard to look like someone who belonged there and not like someone counting the seconds, when you saw him come around the side of the building, caramel hair still slightly damp from a shower after the morning session, team polo shirt, a lanyard identical to your own except his had about four times as many access levels printed on it.
He looked younger in person. Not younger than his age, exactly, but softer somehow less like the composed figure in post-race interviews and more like someone who'd simply woken up that morning and put on the clothes his job required of him.
He spotted you and slowed his pace, and for just a second which was brief enough that you might have imagined it, except you didn't think you had something like nerves crossed his face before he schooled it into a polite, careful smile.
"Hi," he said, stopping a respectful distance away and extending a hand. "You're— sorry, I should know this— you're our competition winner?"
"That's me," you said, shaking his hand, which was warm and slightly rougher than you'd expected, calloused in a way that made you think, absurdly, of steering wheels and gear paddles. "Thank you for— I mean, this is— I don't really know what to say, honestly."
"That's alright," he said. "I never really know what to say either."
It was such an unexpectedly honest thing to say that you laughed before you could stop yourself, and he blinked, then smiled properly this time, small and a little surprised at himself.
"I mean it," he added. "People assume because I talk to cameras I'm good at talking. I'm not. I just— I've had practice not saying anything stupid on camera. It's different."
"Well, you're doing fine so far."
"Ask me again in an hour."
You both stood there a beat too long, the kind of silence that isn't quite comfortable yet but isn't unbearable either, and then he gestured toward the garage entrance with a sort of relieved briskness, like he'd been handed a task and was glad to have something to do with his hands.
"Should we start the tour? I was told I'm meant to show you around. I'm not— I'm not always sure how much detail people want, so tell me if I'm being boring."
"I promise I won't find it boring."
"You say that now," he said, and there was the dry humour you'd noticed in interviews, quieter in person, almost private. "Wait until I start explaining tyre degradation."
You did not, in fact, find it boring.
He walked you through slowly, gesturing at things with an ease that only surfaced once he had a subject he actually knew inside and out, and you began to understand, watching him, that his earlier awkwardness had nothing to do with unfriendliness and everything to do with simply not knowing what was expected of him in an unscripted moment. Give him a car to talk about, though, and he relaxed by degrees.
"This is basically where the whole weekend lives," he said, nodding toward the garage floor, where the chassis sat raised on a rig, engineers crouched around it with the unhurried focus of surgeons. "Everything gets stripped down and rebuilt overnight sometimes. People think it's just — bolt the wheels on, done. It's not like that at all."
"How much of it do you actually understand? Like, mechanically."
"More than people expect. Less than the engineers would like." He nodded toward a man frowning at a laptop screen displaying rows of data. "That's Bono, my race engineer. If you want to know anything real about the car, ask him, not me. I just drive it and complain when it doesn't do what I want."
"Do you complain a lot?"
"Constantly," Bono said without looking up, and Kimi made a small wounded noise that made you laugh again.
He showed you the steering wheel display, walking you through what half the buttons did with a patience that made it clear he'd explained this exact thing dozens of times before to dozens of guests and had never once found a shortcut, because he genuinely wanted people to understand it properly. He showed you the pit wall, quiet mid-afternoon, monitors dark, and told you what it was like during a race how loud it got in his helmet, how strange it was that he could hear his engineer's voice perfectly clear over an engine screaming at seventeen thousand revs.
"Does it get lonely?" you asked, without entirely meaning to. "In the car, I mean. During a race."
He considered this for longer than you expected, like it wasn't a question he got asked often, or maybe wasn't one he'd properly asked himself.
"Sometimes," he admitted. "It's just you and the car and a voice in your ear. You can't see anyone's face. You can't really talk to anyone except your engineer, and even then it's mostly numbers and instructions." He paused. "I like it, though. It's the one place where nobody's watching me think. They just see what I do."
You didn't say anything to that, not right away, because it felt like something truer than he'd meant to say out loud, and you didn't want to make him self-conscious about it.
"That's a very poetic way to describe going round in circles very fast," you said instead, gently, and he huffed something that was almost a laugh.
"Don't tell the engineers I said anything poetic. I'll never hear the end of it."
—---------
Lunch was in a corner of hospitality, a plate of pasta you barely tasted because you were too busy trying not to stare at him across the table, and he ate with the brisk efficiency of someone used to eating on a schedule rather than for pleasure, though he did pause halfway through to make a face at his own plate.
"This is very beige," he said. "Nutritionist's orders. I love pasta but I miss it with actual flavour."
"What would you eat if you could eat anything right now?"
"Honestly? My grandmother's cooking. She does this— " he gestured vaguely, searching for a word in Italian that clearly wasn't quite cooperating, " —it doesn't translate well. Very simple. Very good. I haven't had it properly in months."
"You could ask catering to make it."
"I did, once. It wasn't the same. I think it's not really about the food." He shrugged, a little embarrassed at himself for having said something so unguarded, and reached for his water instead of continuing.
You found, over the next twenty minutes, that this was a pattern with him, a genuine thought would surface, unguarded and a little raw, and then he'd catch himself and retreat slightly, as though worried he'd overshared with a stranger. You didn't push. You just let the silences sit there, unhurried, and slowly he seemed to relax into them rather than fill them nervously.
At one point you asked, carefully, trying not to sound like exactly the kind of overinvested fan you were trying not to be, how he was finding the season so far.
"Honestly, tiring," he said. "Good, but tiring. It's a lot of everyone always wants something. An interview, a photo, an opinion. I don't mind giving those things, I just—" He exhaled. "It's nice, today, actually. Nobody wants anything from me except to look at a car with me."
"I want a hot lap out of you," you pointed out. "So technically I want something too."
That earned you the first proper laugh of the day surprised out of him, a little loud, quickly muffled with the back of his hand like he hadn't expected himself to laugh that openly in front of someone he'd just met.
"Fair," he said. "Alright. You've earned that one."
—----
The garage had cleared of most of the morning's crowd by the time you were led toward a side room lined with helmets on shelves, HANS devices hanging from hooks, and a wall of race suits arranged by size.
A mechanic introduced simply as Tomas, forearms permanently smudged with something dark and mechanical fitted you for a helmet with brisk, careful hands, checking the strap twice, tilting your head gently side to side to make sure it sat properly.
"Little tight is good," he said. "Loose is bad. You'll thank me later."
Kimi appeared a few minutes later already half into his own overalls, hair pushed back, looking genuinely, uncomplicatedly happy in a way he hadn't quite been all afternoon. This, you realised, was his actual environment. Everything before had been performance, however gentle. This was simply him.
"Nervous?" he asked, watching you turn your helmet over in your hands.
"Extremely."
"Good. Means you're taking it seriously." He crouched slightly to look you properly in the eye, voice dropping into something more careful. "It'll be loud. Really loud, even with the helmet on. The braking will feel harder than you expect — like something's got hold of your whole body and yanked it forward. If you want me to slow down at any point, just tap my shoulder, twice, hard. I'll feel it even over the engine. Okay?"
"Okay."
"You're allowed to scream," he added, and there was that dry humour again, a small smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. "Everyone does. I won't tell anyone."
"Do you scream?"
"The first time I drove one of these, yes. Don't tell anyone that either."
The car itself, once you were lowered into the passenger seat beside him — a tight, secure fit, the world suddenly reduced to the curve of the cockpit and the tang of race fuel close enough to taste — felt smaller and larger at once. Smaller because there was barely room to move. Larger because the second the engine caught, a shattering, physical roar that you felt in your teeth before you properly heard it, the whole world seemed to expand outward from that sound.
Kimi glanced over once, checked your harness with two firm tugs, and gave you a thumbs up through his visor that you returned, considerably less steadily.
Then he pulled out of the garage, and the world changed entirely.
The pit lane felt fast. The main straight, once he opened the car up properly, felt like something else altogether — a pressure against your chest, the scenery beyond the cockpit smearing into long indistinct streaks of green and grey, the sound swallowing every thought in your head except a single continuous noise that might have been a scream and might have been a laugh, you genuinely couldn't tell which.
Through the corners, the car seemed to compress and stretch in ways that made no physical sense, g-forces hauling your head sideways, your hands gripping the harness straps hard enough that your knuckles ached. Braking into the tighter sections felt exactly like he'd described — something enormous seizing your entire body and dragging it forward, your vision briefly doubling with the force of it.
You were, you realised somewhere around the second lap, laughing continuously, helplessly, the sound swallowed by the engine but still shaking through your chest, and beside you, through the small gap in his visor, you caught the edge of Kimi's expression — focused, utterly calm, and unmistakably, quietly delighted at your reaction, glancing over just slightly more often than the driving strictly required.
By the final lap your throat was raw from noise you hadn't fully controlled, your hands trembling faintly even after he brought the car to a gentle stop back in the garage, engine ticking as it cooled, silence rushing in so suddenly it felt like its own kind of pressure.
Kimi pulled his visor up first, grinning, actually grinning, wide and unguarded, nothing careful about it at all.
"So?" he said. "Verdict?"
"I think I left my stomach somewhere around turn six."
"That's the correct reaction." He was already climbing out, offering you a hand as you unclipped the harness with fingers that weren't entirely steady yet. "You did well. Some people go completely silent. Some people cry. You just laughed the whole way, it was—" He stopped himself, seeming to realise he was about to say something he hadn't quite planned to, and settled instead for, "—it was nice. Driving someone who's actually enjoying it."
You pulled your helmet off, hair static-charged and sticking up in every direction, and he looked at you for a beat too long before glancing away, ears faintly pink, and you decided, charitably, that it was probably just the heat.
You expected that to be the end of it. A hot lap, a photo with the car, a polite goodbye, back on the shuttle bus with a story you'd tell for the rest of your life.
Instead, once you'd both changed back into ordinary clothes and your legs had steadied under you, Kimi lingered by the garage entrance, hands in his pockets, looking faintly uncertain in a way that didn't match the confidence he'd shown behind the wheel.
"Do you—" he started, then stopped, then tried again. "I don't have anything else scheduled until the evening debrief. If you wanted, I could show you a bit more. The rest of the paddock. It's not really part of the— official tour, but." He shrugged, a little helplessly. "I don't mind. If you want."
"I'd like that," you said, probably too quickly, and he seemed relieved enough that you both pretended not to notice.
He showed you the trophy cabinet in the team's hospitality unit, tapping the glass in front of a modest collection of silverware with something between pride and embarrassment. "Not much yet," he said. "Give it time."
"I believe you," you said, and meant it, and he glanced at you sideways like he wasn't quite sure what to do with someone saying something like that so plainly.
He introduced you to a mechanic named Dario who was halfway through rebuilding a gearbox and who, upon hearing you were the competition winner, said something in rapid Italian that made Kimi go faintly red and mutter something back that silenced him, though not before Dario shot you both an unmistakably knowing look.
"What did he say?" you asked.
"Nothing," Kimi said, too quickly.
"Kimi."
"He said I usually finish these tours in twenty minutes," he admitted, not quite meeting your eyes. "We've been out here two hours."
"Is that bad?"
"No," he said, and then, quieter, almost to himself, "no, I don't think it's bad at all."
You wandered past the team truck, where a mechanic was cataloguing spare parts with the focus of a librarian; past a wall where photos from every race of the season were pinned in careful rows, Kimi pointing out ones that had gone particularly well or particularly badly with equal, easy honesty; past a quiet corner of the paddock where the noise of the wider circuit fell away almost entirely and it was just the two of you, walking slowly, in no particular hurry to be anywhere else.
"Can I ask you something?" you said, somewhere in that quiet stretch.
"You can ask."
"Why does the awkwardness go away when you're talking about the car, or the team, but come straight back the second it's just conversation?"
He was quiet for a while, long enough that you wondered if you'd overstepped, and then he said, carefully, "I've always found it easier to be sure of things I understand completely. A car, I understand completely. A person—" He gestured vaguely, a small helpless motion. "I don't always know what's expected of me. I say the wrong thing, or I don't say anything at all, and then it's worse."
"You haven't said anything wrong all day."
"Give it time," he said, echoing your earlier words back at you, and you both laughed, and something in the space between you eased another fraction.
Priya found you both near the hospitality unit as the light outside had started turning gold with early evening, her expression somewhere between amused and faintly exasperated as she checked her tablet.
"There you are," she said. "I was starting to think we'd lost our winner. And you—" she pointed at Kimi, "—Marco's been asking where you've got to. Debrief's in forty minutes."
"I know," Kimi said, not sounding remotely sorry about it.
"Mm," Priya said, exactly the way your mother had said it on the phone weeks earlier, and you decided you would think about that later, when you weren't quite so distracted by the way Kimi was looking faintly, helplessly pleased with himself.
Marco, who you'd gathered by now this was the team's press officer, appeared shortly after with the harried expression of a man whose carefully planned schedule had somehow stretched itself by several hours without his input, glancing between you and Kimi with an expression that suggested he understood exactly why, even if he wasn't going to say so out loud.
"We do need you for debrief soon," he told Kimi, not unkindly. "Toto's waiting."
"I know," Kimi said again, and then, to you, quieter: "I have to go in a minute."
"I figured."
"I didn't want to," he said, and then looked faintly startled at his own honesty, the way he had all day whenever something true slipped out before he'd properly decided to say it.
You walked the last stretch back toward the paddock exit together, slower than either of you needed to, the golden evening light stretching long shadows across the tarmac, distant engine noise from the support race still rolling faintly through the air like weather.
"Thank you," you said, when you reached the gate, meaning it more than the words could probably carry. "For today. Genuinely. I don't think I'll ever– this isn't the kind of thing that happens to people like me."
"I don't think there's a specific kind of person this is supposed to happen to," he said. "It happened. That's enough, isn't it?"
"I suppose."
You stood there a beat too long, the way you had at the very start of the day, except the silence now felt entirely different not awkward exactly, just full, weighted with something neither of you had quite named yet.
"I should say goodbye properly," you said eventually, holding out your hand the way you had that morning, "since I doubt I'll—"
"Wait," he said.
You waited.
He looked, for a moment, exactly like he had before the first word he'd ever spoken to you — nervous, visibly working up to something, hands shoved deep into his pockets like he needed somewhere to put them.
"I don't—" he started, then stopped, exhaled, tried again. "I don't usually do this. I want to say that first, because I don't want you to think I do this with every — with anyone who wins a competition." A faint, self-deprecating huff. "I don't. I've never wanted to, before today."
"Kimi—"
"I'd like to see you again," he said, in a rush now, like if he didn't get it all out at once he might lose his nerve entirely. "Not not like this. Not a tour, not a schedule. Just you. If you wanted that. I don't know how it would work, with the season, I travel a lot, I know that's but I'd like to try, if you'd let me."
You felt something in your chest go very warm and very still all at once.
"Are you asking me on a date?" you said, partly to buy yourself a second to process it, partly because you wanted to hear him say it properly.
He went slightly pink, glanced away, then made himself look back at you anyway, which felt like the bravest thing you'd seen him do all day, braver somehow than a hundred and eighty miles an hour down a straight.
"Would it be alright," he said, carefully, like he'd been rehearsing the exact words, "if I took you on a date sometime?"
You didn't answer immediately, not because you were unsure, but because you wanted to hold the moment a beat longer, this ordinary, extraordinary boy standing in front of you with his hands in his pockets and his ears gone faintly red, looking more nervous asking this question than he had looked driving a car at ludicrous speed an hour earlier.
"Yes," you said. "I'd like that. A lot."
The smile that broke across his face then was nothing like the careful, camera-ready one from the morning. It was wide and a little disbelieving and entirely unguarded, and you thought, quietly, that you would remember that exact expression for a very long time.
"Okay," he said, like he needed to hear himself confirm it. "Okay. Good."
He asked for your number, fumbling slightly with his phone in a way that felt endearing rather than smooth, and you gave it to him, and he saved it immediately with a small, private smile like he wanted to make sure it was real before he let himself believe it.
"I'll text you," he said. "Properly. Not just— I mean, I'll actually plan something. I'm not very good at it, I'll warn you now, but I'll try."
"I believe you," you said again, and he ducked his head, pleased and a little shy about it, the same way he had been in the trophy room hours earlier.
Marco called his name from somewhere behind you, gently insistent, and Kimi glanced back, then at you, clearly reluctant to be the one to end this.
"I have to—"
"I know. Go."
He hesitated one more second, like he wanted to say something else and hadn't quite decided what, and then, simply, quietly: "Thank you for laughing the whole way round. Nobody's ever done that before."
Then he was walking backward for a few steps, still looking at you, before he turned properly and jogged back toward the garages, and you stood at the gate with your pass still around your neck and your phone now holding a new contact and the whole gold-lit evening settling warm around you.
The shuttle bus back to the hotel was quieter than the one that morning, most passengers scrolling through photos of their day, comparing notes on which driver they'd glimpsed and where. You sat by the window with your phone in your lap, not checking it exactly, just aware of its presence, the way you might be aware of a held breath.
The message came through just after nine that evening, while you were repacking your bag for the flight home.
Debrief ran long. Sorry. Today was good. Better than good. I meant what I said — I'll actually plan something properly, give me a few days to sort my schedule. Thank you for today.
You read it four times before you let yourself reply, and even then you deleted your first two attempts for sounding either too casual or entirely deranged with enthusiasm.
Today was one of the best days of my life. I'm serious. Thank you for asking.
The reply came almost immediately, like he'd been waiting, phone in hand, the exact way you had been.
I'm glad it was you who won. I don't say things like that easily. But I mean it.
You sat on the edge of the hotel bed for a long moment after that, phone held loosely in both hands, feeling something settle in your chest that felt less like the end of an extraordinary day and much more, unmistakably, like the very beginning of something else.
Outside, faint and distant, you could still hear engines somewhere on the circuit, the last stretches of evening track action winding down into the ordinary quiet of a race weekend settling toward night. You thought about the roar of that hot lap, the warmth of his hand steadying yours as he'd helped you out of the car, the particular, unguarded way he'd smiled when you said yes.
You didn't know yet what shape this would take how a rookie driver's punishing travel schedule and your very ordinary life might fit together, what a first date with someone whose face occasionally appeared on billboards might actually look like. You didn't need to know yet. For tonight, it was enough to have the message glowing on your phone screen, and the quiet, steady certainty that this wasn't goodbye at all.
It was, very simply, a beginning.
laysha's notes: lmk if you guys like it!! also lmk if you'd like to see a part 2 of this storyy
I wanted to ask if you could write a Kimi Antonelli x reader fanfic where the reader is a professional tennis player. I can't get this thought out of my head after Kimi appeared at Wimbledon. I think they could meet somewhere on the courts in Italy (since we know Kimi loves playing tennis). At first they were just friends, and then they started dating. She always supports Kimi, and he supports her. Something like that.
I really love your fanfics! Thank you for your work!
It's totally fine if you’re not comfortable with it, sorry for bothering you!
pic is from pinterest and isnt mine!
your anchor
ki. antonelli x reader
you never expected that your tennis friend, kimi, was actually an f1 driver let alone become your supportive and loving boyfriend.
taglist (tw) : tennis, pda, friends to lovers troupe, kimi antonelli x fem!reader, reader can speak italian,
the first time kimi saw you, you were yelling at yourself in italian.
“no, no, no,” you groaned, bouncing the tennis ball against the clay court before catching it again. “again.”
you hadn’t noticed the teenage boy waiting patiently by the gate, tennis racquet hanging loosely in one hand. he was supposed to have the court after you, but instead of interrupting, he simply watched as you practised the same serve over and over.
the next one landed perfectly.
“finally,” you muttered, pumping a fist.
a quiet clap echoed behind you.
you turned, cheeks warming slightly.
“sorry,” he smiled sheepishly. “i’ve been waiting for my booking… but that serve was really good.”
you laughed, slinging your racquet bag over your shoulder. “how long have you been standing there?”
“…long enough.”
“you could’ve told me.”
“you looked focus.”
there was something awkwardly charming about him. you took a good look at him, his curls were messy from the italian heat, an oversized hoodie despite the weather, and the kindest smile you’d ever seen.
“i’m y/n.” you let out
“kimi.”
he glanced towards the court before looking back at you. “…do you maybe… want to hit for a bit? only if you’re not busy.”
you blinked. “you want to play with me?”
he shrugged. “i mean… i’ve always wanted to see if i could return a professional’s serve.”
you laughed. “you’re going to regret saying that.”
—
he regretted it after the fourth ace flew past him.
“that’s unfair,” kimi complained dramatically, resting his racquet against his shoulder.
“you asked.”
“i thought i’d at least touch the ball.”
“you did.”
“once.”
“twice.”
“that second one doesn’t count.”
you couldn’t stop smiling. he wasn’t anywhere near professional level, but he was surprisingly good. he was quick on his feet, competitive enough to make every point entertaining, and somehow managed to make losing look funny.
by the time the sun began to set over the courts, you’d completely forgotten you’d only just met him.
“same time next week?” he asked casually, trying very hard to sound like he didn’t care about the answer.
you pretended to think. “…depends.”
his face fell.
“on whether you give me your number.”
he dropped his racket, took out his phone and let you dial yours in.
“i’ll be here.” you smiled.
—
what were to be a week turned into once a week. once a week soon became became twice.
sometimes you’d play or sometimes you’d simply sit on the benches with cold bottles of water, talking about everything except your careers.
he told you he raced cars.
you assumed it was karting.
you told him tennis had been your entire life since you were five.
he listened intently to every story about every injury, every loss and every comeback.
he somehow remembered all of it.
—
it wasn’t until months later that you walked into the club café and nearly dropped your coffee.
the television above the counter showed a formula 2 podium. standing on the top step was.. “…kimi?”
your coach looked over. “you know antonelli?”
“that’s… that’s the kimi i play tennis with.”
your coach nearly choked on his espresso. “the kimi antonelli?”
“…there’s another one?”
—
when you confronted him the following weekend, he looked impossibly guilty.
“you race formula 1?”
“…yeah.”
“you couldn’t have mentioned that?”
he rubbed the back of his neck. “i mentioned i did racing and i liked that you didn’t know.”
you stared at him for a few seconds before exhaling. “…that’s actually fair.”
he smiled. “you’re not mad?”
“i’m slightly offended i found out from a television. i’m suprised that i never noticed.. perhaps i’ll start watching f1.”
“you’ll support me right?.” he grinned
“depends.”
—
the friendship between you and kimi began to grow. he’d send you messages before every tournament.
good luck. don’t overthink.
you would heart his message and keep his words in mind the entire match.
and before every race you’d text him.
don’t crash. wouldnt want my favourite mercedes driver hurt xx
his reply were always immediate.
i’ll try.
—
the first grand prix you attended felt surreal. kimi had personally invited you to watch him, how sweet!
standing in the mercedes garage, headphones resting around your neck, you watched mechanics rush around while cameras pointed everywhere. you were sorta clueless as you had just began watching f1.
kimi spotted you almost instantly and his entire face lit up. forgetting there were photographers everywhere, he jogged straight over and wrapped you in the biggest hug. “you’re actually here.”
“how could i say no to you?”
he pulled away just enough to grin at you. “now i’m definitely getting points.”
“don’t blame me if you don’t.”
“too late.” he’d say and youd nudge him slightly in response.
—
a month later, he flew across europe just to watch one of your matches. he arrived wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his curls, hoping nobody would notice him.
it lasted approximately seven minutes.
the cameras found him almost immediately.
the broadcast kept cutting back to him clapping after every point you won while he would just turn away, desperately trying to hide his face. he made sure he celebrated all of them like he’d just won a race himself.
after you won the match, exhausted and still catching your breath, your eyes searched the stands automatically.
and there he was already standing, smiling so proudly it made your chest ache while he joined the crowd in applause.
—
the media figured it out eventually. i mean, they always did.
the headlines appeared overnight. “formula one’s rising star dating tennis’ golden girl.”
instead your camera rolls were full of blurry photos of kimi asleep on flights, you asleep in airport lounges, terrible selfies after a match together and a video of him insisting he could beat you at tennis one day.
VIDEO CLIP :
“i got two points today.”
“because i let you.”
“that still counts.”
“no.”
“yes.”
“absolutely not.”
“you’re a sore winner.”
“you’re just sore.”
“emotionally.”
—
however being together wasn’t always easy. there were weeks where your schedules meant facetime became your only date. there were times where he’d call from a hotel balcony overlooking a race circuit and other times you’d answer from the players’ lounge at a tournament.
“how was practice?”
“good.”
“nah ah your lying.”
“…my shoulder hurts.”
he frowned immediately. “did you tell your physio?”
“…”
“y/n.”
“…maybe.”
he sighed. “please look after yourself.”
you smiled softly. “only if you promise the same.”
“…that’s harder.”
“kimi.”
“…okay.”
—
you both understood eachother in a way that nobody else really could. you both experienced pressure, bad matches/races and constant travelling and the feeling that you both were never good enough.
after difficult races, you’d remind him that one result didn’t erase his talent and after difficult matches, he’d remind you exactly the same thing.
you had became each other’s safe place.
—
years after meeting on that little clay court in italy, you found yourselves back there during the off-season.
the club hadn’t changed much.
ofcourse, the benches were older and nets had been replaced but it still felt exactly the same.
kimi bounced a tennis ball before serving and it landed nowhere near the service box.
you burst into laughter. “i thought you would beat me one day.”
he pointed his racquet at you. “just you wait.”
“it’s been 2 years already. i can wait.”
“best of three?”
“you’re way too confident.”
“i’ve been practising.”
you raised an eyebrow. “without me?”
“…maybe.”
“ah the pain!” you joke
he laughed, walking over until he was standing right in front of you. “does this mean you’re refusing to play because you are afraid of me?”
“…i didn’t say that.”
“good.” he leaned down, pressing a quick kiss to your forehead. “because i’m definitely winning today.”
you smiled up at him. “you’ve been saying that since the day we met.”
“…one day it’ll be true.”
“keep dreaming, andrea.”
he grinned. “i don’t have to.”
he gently took your hand, intertwining your fingers before leading you back onto the court where everything had started.
you stared at the italian boy infront of you: his curls were slightly messy, he somehow was beating the italian heat with a hoodie on and a toothy grin was visible on his face. it was just like how you had first met him except you had no idea this boy would become your safe place.
I wanted to ask if you could write a Kimi Antonelli x reader fanfic where the reader is a professional tennis player. I can't get this thought out of my head after Kimi appeared at Wimbledon. I think they could meet somewhere on the courts in Italy (since we know Kimi loves playing tennis). At first they were just friends, and then they started dating. She always supports Kimi, and he supports her. Something like that.
I really love your fanfics! Thank you for your work!
It's totally fine if you’re not comfortable with it, sorry for bothering you!
pic is from pinterest and isnt mine!
your anchor
ki. antonelli x reader
you never expected that your tennis friend, kimi, was actually an f1 driver let alone become your supportive and loving boyfriend.
taglist (tw) : tennis, pda, friends to lovers troupe, kimi antonelli x fem!reader, reader can speak italian,
the first time kimi saw you, you were yelling at yourself in italian.
“no, no, no,” you groaned, bouncing the tennis ball against the clay court before catching it again. “again.”
you hadn’t noticed the teenage boy waiting patiently by the gate, tennis racquet hanging loosely in one hand. he was supposed to have the court after you, but instead of interrupting, he simply watched as you practised the same serve over and over.
the next one landed perfectly.
“finally,” you muttered, pumping a fist.
a quiet clap echoed behind you.
you turned, cheeks warming slightly.
“sorry,” he smiled sheepishly. “i’ve been waiting for my booking… but that serve was really good.”
you laughed, slinging your racquet bag over your shoulder. “how long have you been standing there?”
“…long enough.”
“you could’ve told me.”
“you looked focus.”
there was something awkwardly charming about him. you took a good look at him, his curls were messy from the italian heat, an oversized hoodie despite the weather, and the kindest smile you’d ever seen.
“i’m y/n.” you let out
“kimi.”
he glanced towards the court before looking back at you. “…do you maybe… want to hit for a bit? only if you’re not busy.”
you blinked. “you want to play with me?”
he shrugged. “i mean… i’ve always wanted to see if i could return a professional’s serve.”
you laughed. “you’re going to regret saying that.”
—
he regretted it after the fourth ace flew past him.
“that’s unfair,” kimi complained dramatically, resting his racquet against his shoulder.
“you asked.”
“i thought i’d at least touch the ball.”
“you did.”
“once.”
“twice.”
“that second one doesn’t count.”
you couldn’t stop smiling. he wasn’t anywhere near professional level, but he was surprisingly good. he was quick on his feet, competitive enough to make every point entertaining, and somehow managed to make losing look funny.
by the time the sun began to set over the courts, you’d completely forgotten you’d only just met him.
“same time next week?” he asked casually, trying very hard to sound like he didn’t care about the answer.
you pretended to think. “…depends.”
his face fell.
“on whether you give me your number.”
he dropped his racket, took out his phone and let you dial yours in.
“i’ll be here.” you smiled.
—
what were to be a week turned into once a week. once a week soon became became twice.
sometimes you’d play or sometimes you’d simply sit on the benches with cold bottles of water, talking about everything except your careers.
he told you he raced cars.
you assumed it was karting.
you told him tennis had been your entire life since you were five.
he listened intently to every story about every injury, every loss and every comeback.
he somehow remembered all of it.
—
it wasn’t until months later that you walked into the club café and nearly dropped your coffee.
the television above the counter showed a formula 2 podium. standing on the top step was.. “…kimi?”
your coach looked over. “you know antonelli?”
“that’s… that’s the kimi i play tennis with.”
your coach nearly choked on his espresso. “the kimi antonelli?”
“…there’s another one?”
—
when you confronted him the following weekend, he looked impossibly guilty.
“you race formula 1?”
“…yeah.”
“you couldn’t have mentioned that?”
he rubbed the back of his neck. “i mentioned i did racing and i liked that you didn’t know.”
you stared at him for a few seconds before exhaling. “…that’s actually fair.”
he smiled. “you’re not mad?”
“i’m slightly offended i found out from a television. i’m suprised that i never noticed.. perhaps i’ll start watching f1.”
“you’ll support me right?.” he grinned
“depends.”
—
the friendship between you and kimi began to grow. he’d send you messages before every tournament.
good luck. don’t overthink.
you would heart his message and keep his words in mind the entire match.
and before every race you’d text him.
don’t crash. wouldnt want my favourite mercedes driver hurt xx
his reply were always immediate.
i’ll try.
—
the first grand prix you attended felt surreal. kimi had personally invited you to watch him, how sweet!
standing in the mercedes garage, headphones resting around your neck, you watched mechanics rush around while cameras pointed everywhere. you were sorta clueless as you had just began watching f1.
kimi spotted you almost instantly and his entire face lit up. forgetting there were photographers everywhere, he jogged straight over and wrapped you in the biggest hug. “you’re actually here.”
“how could i say no to you?”
he pulled away just enough to grin at you. “now i’m definitely getting points.”
“don’t blame me if you don’t.”
“too late.” he’d say and youd nudge him slightly in response.
—
a month later, he flew across europe just to watch one of your matches. he arrived wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his curls, hoping nobody would notice him.
it lasted approximately seven minutes.
the cameras found him almost immediately.
the broadcast kept cutting back to him clapping after every point you won while he would just turn away, desperately trying to hide his face. he made sure he celebrated all of them like he’d just won a race himself.
after you won the match, exhausted and still catching your breath, your eyes searched the stands automatically.
and there he was already standing, smiling so proudly it made your chest ache while he joined the crowd in applause.
—
the media figured it out eventually. i mean, they always did.
the headlines appeared overnight. “formula one’s rising star dating tennis’ golden girl.”
instead your camera rolls were full of blurry photos of kimi asleep on flights, you asleep in airport lounges, terrible selfies after a match together and a video of him insisting he could beat you at tennis one day.
VIDEO CLIP :
“i got two points today.”
“because i let you.”
“that still counts.”
“no.”
“yes.”
“absolutely not.”
“you’re a sore winner.”
“you’re just sore.”
“emotionally.”
—
however being together wasn’t always easy. there were weeks where your schedules meant facetime became your only date. there were times where he’d call from a hotel balcony overlooking a race circuit and other times you’d answer from the players’ lounge at a tournament.
“how was practice?”
“good.”
“nah ah your lying.”
“…my shoulder hurts.”
he frowned immediately. “did you tell your physio?”
“…”
“y/n.”
“…maybe.”
he sighed. “please look after yourself.”
you smiled softly. “only if you promise the same.”
“…that’s harder.”
“kimi.”
“…okay.”
—
you both understood eachother in a way that nobody else really could. you both experienced pressure, bad matches/races and constant travelling and the feeling that you both were never good enough.
after difficult races, you’d remind him that one result didn’t erase his talent and after difficult matches, he’d remind you exactly the same thing.
you had became each other’s safe place.
—
years after meeting on that little clay court in italy, you found yourselves back there during the off-season.
the club hadn’t changed much.
ofcourse, the benches were older and nets had been replaced but it still felt exactly the same.
kimi bounced a tennis ball before serving and it landed nowhere near the service box.
you burst into laughter. “i thought you would beat me one day.”
he pointed his racquet at you. “just you wait.”
“it’s been 2 years already. i can wait.”
“best of three?”
“you’re way too confident.”
“i’ve been practising.”
you raised an eyebrow. “without me?”
“…maybe.”
“ah the pain!” you joke
he laughed, walking over until he was standing right in front of you. “does this mean you’re refusing to play because you are afraid of me?”
“…i didn’t say that.”
“good.” he leaned down, pressing a quick kiss to your forehead. “because i’m definitely winning today.”
you smiled up at him. “you’ve been saying that since the day we met.”
“…one day it’ll be true.”
“keep dreaming, andrea.”
he grinned. “i don’t have to.”
he gently took your hand, intertwining your fingers before leading you back onto the court where everything had started.
you stared at the italian boy infront of you: his curls were slightly messy, he somehow was beating the italian heat with a hoodie on and a toothy grin was visible on his face. it was just like how you had first met him except you had no idea this boy would become your safe place.
I wanted to ask if you could write a Kimi Antonelli x reader fanfic where the reader is a professional tennis player. I can't get this thought out of my head after Kimi appeared at Wimbledon. I think they could meet somewhere on the courts in Italy (since we know Kimi loves playing tennis). At first they were just friends, and then they started dating. She always supports Kimi, and he supports her. Something like that.
I really love your fanfics! Thank you for your work!
It's totally fine if you’re not comfortable with it, sorry for bothering you!
pic is from pinterest and isnt mine!
your anchor
ki. antonelli x reader
you never expected that your tennis friend, kimi, was actually an f1 driver let alone become your supportive and loving boyfriend.
taglist (tw) : tennis, pda, friends to lovers troupe, kimi antonelli x fem!reader, reader can speak italian,
the first time kimi saw you, you were yelling at yourself in italian.
“no, no, no,” you groaned, bouncing the tennis ball against the clay court before catching it again. “again.”
you hadn’t noticed the teenage boy waiting patiently by the gate, tennis racquet hanging loosely in one hand. he was supposed to have the court after you, but instead of interrupting, he simply watched as you practised the same serve over and over.
the next one landed perfectly.
“finally,” you muttered, pumping a fist.
a quiet clap echoed behind you.
you turned, cheeks warming slightly.
“sorry,” he smiled sheepishly. “i’ve been waiting for my booking… but that serve was really good.”
you laughed, slinging your racquet bag over your shoulder. “how long have you been standing there?”
“…long enough.”
“you could’ve told me.”
“you looked focus.”
there was something awkwardly charming about him. you took a good look at him, his curls were messy from the italian heat, an oversized hoodie despite the weather, and the kindest smile you’d ever seen.
“i’m y/n.” you let out
“kimi.”
he glanced towards the court before looking back at you. “…do you maybe… want to hit for a bit? only if you’re not busy.”
you blinked. “you want to play with me?”
he shrugged. “i mean… i’ve always wanted to see if i could return a professional’s serve.”
you laughed. “you’re going to regret saying that.”
—
he regretted it after the fourth ace flew past him.
“that’s unfair,” kimi complained dramatically, resting his racquet against his shoulder.
“you asked.”
“i thought i’d at least touch the ball.”
“you did.”
“once.”
“twice.”
“that second one doesn’t count.”
you couldn’t stop smiling. he wasn’t anywhere near professional level, but he was surprisingly good. he was quick on his feet, competitive enough to make every point entertaining, and somehow managed to make losing look funny.
by the time the sun began to set over the courts, you’d completely forgotten you’d only just met him.
“same time next week?” he asked casually, trying very hard to sound like he didn’t care about the answer.
you pretended to think. “…depends.”
his face fell.
“on whether you give me your number.”
he dropped his racket, took out his phone and let you dial yours in.
“i’ll be here.” you smiled.
—
what were to be a week turned into once a week. once a week soon became became twice.
sometimes you’d play or sometimes you’d simply sit on the benches with cold bottles of water, talking about everything except your careers.
he told you he raced cars.
you assumed it was karting.
you told him tennis had been your entire life since you were five.
he listened intently to every story about every injury, every loss and every comeback.
he somehow remembered all of it.
—
it wasn’t until months later that you walked into the club café and nearly dropped your coffee.
the television above the counter showed a formula 2 podium. standing on the top step was.. “…kimi?”
your coach looked over. “you know antonelli?”
“that’s… that’s the kimi i play tennis with.”
your coach nearly choked on his espresso. “the kimi antonelli?”
“…there’s another one?”
—
when you confronted him the following weekend, he looked impossibly guilty.
“you race formula 1?”
“…yeah.”
“you couldn’t have mentioned that?”
he rubbed the back of his neck. “i mentioned i did racing and i liked that you didn’t know.”
you stared at him for a few seconds before exhaling. “…that’s actually fair.”
he smiled. “you’re not mad?”
“i’m slightly offended i found out from a television. i’m suprised that i never noticed.. perhaps i’ll start watching f1.”
“you’ll support me right?.” he grinned
“depends.”
—
the friendship between you and kimi began to grow. he’d send you messages before every tournament.
good luck. don’t overthink.
you would heart his message and keep his words in mind the entire match.
and before every race you’d text him.
don’t crash. wouldnt want my favourite mercedes driver hurt xx
his reply were always immediate.
i’ll try.
—
the first grand prix you attended felt surreal. kimi had personally invited you to watch him, how sweet!
standing in the mercedes garage, headphones resting around your neck, you watched mechanics rush around while cameras pointed everywhere. you were sorta clueless as you had just began watching f1.
kimi spotted you almost instantly and his entire face lit up. forgetting there were photographers everywhere, he jogged straight over and wrapped you in the biggest hug. “you’re actually here.”
“how could i say no to you?”
he pulled away just enough to grin at you. “now i’m definitely getting points.”
“don’t blame me if you don’t.”
“too late.” he’d say and youd nudge him slightly in response.
—
a month later, he flew across europe just to watch one of your matches. he arrived wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his curls, hoping nobody would notice him.
it lasted approximately seven minutes.
the cameras found him almost immediately.
the broadcast kept cutting back to him clapping after every point you won while he would just turn away, desperately trying to hide his face. he made sure he celebrated all of them like he’d just won a race himself.
after you won the match, exhausted and still catching your breath, your eyes searched the stands automatically.
and there he was already standing, smiling so proudly it made your chest ache while he joined the crowd in applause.
—
the media figured it out eventually. i mean, they always did.
the headlines appeared overnight. “formula one’s rising star dating tennis’ golden girl.”
instead your camera rolls were full of blurry photos of kimi asleep on flights, you asleep in airport lounges, terrible selfies after a match together and a video of him insisting he could beat you at tennis one day.
VIDEO CLIP :
“i got two points today.”
“because i let you.”
“that still counts.”
“no.”
“yes.”
“absolutely not.”
“you’re a sore winner.”
“you’re just sore.”
“emotionally.”
—
however being together wasn’t always easy. there were weeks where your schedules meant facetime became your only date. there were times where he’d call from a hotel balcony overlooking a race circuit and other times you’d answer from the players’ lounge at a tournament.
“how was practice?”
“good.”
“nah ah your lying.”
“…my shoulder hurts.”
he frowned immediately. “did you tell your physio?”
“…”
“y/n.”
“…maybe.”
he sighed. “please look after yourself.”
you smiled softly. “only if you promise the same.”
“…that’s harder.”
“kimi.”
“…okay.”
—
you both understood eachother in a way that nobody else really could. you both experienced pressure, bad matches/races and constant travelling and the feeling that you both were never good enough.
after difficult races, you’d remind him that one result didn’t erase his talent and after difficult matches, he’d remind you exactly the same thing.
you had became each other’s safe place.
—
years after meeting on that little clay court in italy, you found yourselves back there during the off-season.
the club hadn’t changed much.
ofcourse, the benches were older and nets had been replaced but it still felt exactly the same.
kimi bounced a tennis ball before serving and it landed nowhere near the service box.
you burst into laughter. “i thought you would beat me one day.”
he pointed his racquet at you. “just you wait.”
“it’s been 2 years already. i can wait.”
“best of three?”
“you’re way too confident.”
“i’ve been practising.”
you raised an eyebrow. “without me?”
“…maybe.”
“ah the pain!” you joke
he laughed, walking over until he was standing right in front of you. “does this mean you’re refusing to play because you are afraid of me?”
“…i didn’t say that.”
“good.” he leaned down, pressing a quick kiss to your forehead. “because i’m definitely winning today.”
you smiled up at him. “you’ve been saying that since the day we met.”
“…one day it’ll be true.”
“keep dreaming, andrea.”
he grinned. “i don’t have to.”
he gently took your hand, intertwining your fingers before leading you back onto the court where everything had started.
you stared at the italian boy infront of you: his curls were slightly messy, he somehow was beating the italian heat with a hoodie on and a toothy grin was visible on his face. it was just like how you had first met him except you had no idea this boy would become your safe place.
Summary: You enter a Mercedes fan giveaway for a Silverstone hot lap experience fully expecting never to hear back. Unfortunately for your dignity, you do hear back. And even more unfortunately, the rookie driver assigned to your hot lap turns out to be the one Formula 1 driver you’ve been trying very hard not to have a crush on.
Word Count: 5.7k
Warnings: none
Laysha's Notes: sorry this took me a while to get to! this is based on this request by @dessashippr
MASTERLIST
You saw the post at half past eleven on a Tuesday night, scrolling through the Mercedes fan community out of habit more than anything else. It was the kind of forum you checked the way some people checked the weather, reflexively, without really expecting anything to change.
Mercedes Petronas AMG HOT LAP EXPERIENCE — SILVERSTONE GRAND PRIX WEEKEND
Behind-the-scenes paddock access. A full team tour. And for one lucky fan: a passenger hot lap with one of our junior drivers.
You read it twice, then a third time, thumb hovering over the entry link. You weren't the type who won things. You'd entered a dozen contests over the years including raffles, sweepstakes, a radio call-in once that you'd forgotten about within the hour and won exactly nothing. But it cost nothing to enter, and it took less than a minute, so you filled in your name, your email, ticked the box confirming you were a member of the community, and went to bed without thinking about it again.
That was three weeks ago.
The email arrived on a Thursday afternoon while you were microwaving leftover pasta, your phone buzzing against the counter with a notification you almost swiped away without reading. You caught the subject line at the last second.
Congratulations — You've Won the Mercedes Petronas AMG Hot Lap Experience!
You stood very still for a moment, the microwave humming behind you, and read it again to make sure you hadn't misread a word of it. You hadn't. Your name was there. Your entry number was there. There was a phone number to call to confirm your identity and begin arranging travel.
"No," you said out loud, to nobody, because your flatmate was still at work and the only witness to this moment was a bag of frozen peas in the freezer door. "No, that's not… that's fake. That's got to be fake."
You spent the next twenty minutes doing exactly what any sensible person would do: you searched the sender's email domain, cross-referenced it against the team's official website, checked the community forum to see if anyone else had posted about winning, and eventually with your heart hammering somewhere up near your throat you called the number.
A woman with a crisp, professional voice answered on the second ring, said the team's name, and asked for your entry confirmation code like this was the most ordinary phone call in the world.
It was not, for you, an ordinary phone call. Your voice cracked on your own name.
By the time you hung up, you were laughing, and then you weren't laughing, you were sort of gasping, one hand braced on the kitchen counter, and the pasta was forgotten and slightly overcooked and you did not care even slightly.
You called your mother first. She didn't fully understand what Formula 1 was, let alone why you were shrieking about it, but she understood you, and she let you talk in circles for ten minutes before asking, gently, "So you get to meet the driver? The one you like?"
"I don't like him, Mum, I just — I've followed his career, it's not like that—"
"Mm," she said, in the particular tone mothers use when they've already decided something and are simply waiting for you to catch up.
You called your best friend next, and she screamed loudly enough that you had to hold the phone away from your ear, and then she immediately began drafting a list of things you needed to buy, none of which you actually needed, all of which you agreed to anyway because arguing felt like a waste of the good mood.
You did not, notably, mention how long you'd followed him. How you'd watched every junior series race you could find a stream for, back when he was driving in series most people had never heard of, back before anyone outside the paddock knew his name. How you'd felt something close to pride, absurd and one-sided as it was, the first time he stood on a Grand Prix podium. You told yourself it wasn't a crush. It was admiration. It was respect for a quiet, hardworking kid who'd made it to the top of the sport through sheer bloody-minded persistence rather than noise or ego.
You told yourself this several more times over the following two weeks, with decreasing conviction.
—------
The Mercedes Petronas AMG press office sent a schedule, a waiver, a dress code (smart casual, closed-toe shoes, no loose jewellery), and a document confirming that your travel and one night's accommodation near the circuit would be covered. You read every word of it more times than was strictly necessary.
You told yourself you wouldn't get your hopes up about anything beyond the obvious: a hot lap, a photo, maybe a signature if you were lucky and didn't completely embarrass yourself. He was a Formula 1 driver in the middle of a championship battle. He had a media schedule, sponsor commitments, physio, debriefs, a hundred other things pulling at his time. You would get an hour with him if you were fortunate. Maybe less.
That didn't stop you from watching every recent interview clip you could find, not to prepare talking points exactly, just to remind yourself who he actually was, rather than the flattened, half-imagined version you'd built up over years of distant admiration. You noticed things you'd noticed before but filed away properly this time: the way he answered questions slowly, choosing words with visible care, like he didn't trust himself to speak without thinking first. The dry, almost apologetic humour that surfaced when a reporter caught him off guard. The way he went quiet and still whenever a camera lingered too long on his face, like attention was a coat that didn't quite fit him yet.
Your flatmate, tired of hearing about it, eventually banned the subject from the flat after nine p.m., which you respected for approximately four days.
You packed and repacked your bag three times. You bought a new pair of trainers you didn't need because the dress code had made you paranoid your usual ones looked too worn. You lay awake the night before your flight running through a dozen imagined versions of how the day might go, none of which, you would later think, came anywhere close to how it actually unfolded.
The circuit reached you before you reached the circuit.
You felt it from the shuttle bus window, a low mechanical thrum vibrating up through the floor and into the soles of your new trainers, engines somewhere out on track running practice starts, the sound doubling back off grandstands and hospitality units in a way that made the whole world seem to hum. Traffic crawled along roads lined with flags — every team's colours strung up in long fluttering rows, Mercedes Petronas AMG's silver and deep green among them, and you found yourself staring at that particular combination of colours the way you might stare at a familiar face in a crowd.
The campsites had bloomed up overnight in every field bordering the circuit, tents in clusters, barbecue smoke rising thin and grey into a sky that couldn't quite decide whether it wanted to rain. Fans walked in every direction wearing every driver's merchandise, faces painted, flags draped over shoulders like capes, and somewhere in the crowd you spotted no fewer than six people wearing his number.
You didn't say anything about that. You just noticed it, and something in your chest went warm and strange.
The paddock, once you were credentialed through security with a laminated pass on a lanyard that you were fairly sure you would frame later and never admit to, was its own separate world entirely. It smelled like nothing you'd expected and everything you should have: hot rubber, spilled espresso, sunscreen, the faint acrid tang of fuel drifting from somewhere near the garages, and underneath it all, the mineral smell of rain that hadn't fallen yet but was clearly considering it.
Team personnel moved everywhere, at a walking pace just shy of a jog, headsets clipped to belts, tablets tucked under arms, badges swinging. A cluster of mechanics wheeled a tyre trolley past you close enough that you had to step back, and one of them said "sorry, love" without breaking stride. Media crews with enormous cameras stood in loose knots outside hospitality units, waiting for someone important enough to justify the wait. Somewhere above it all, a tannoy voice announced a schedule change for the support race in a tone of practiced, weary cheer.
A young woman in a Mercedes polo shirt found you within minutes of you stepping through the gates, checking a name off a tablet with the brisk efficiency of someone who did this exact task every single race weekend and had long since run out of patience for anyone who wasted her time.
"You must be our competition winner," she said, extending a hand. "I'm Priya, hospitality and guest relations. Welcome to the paddock, how was the journey?"
"Good. Fine. A bit surreal, honestly," you admitted, and she laughed, not unkindly.
"That's the normal reaction. Come on, I'll get you settled before the tour starts."
She walked you through hospitality, a glass-fronted structure humming with quiet, expensive calm, sponsors' logos etched into the windows, drivers' overalls displayed behind glass like museum pieces, and talked you through the schedule for the day. Garage tour first. Lunch. Then, mid-afternoon, the hot lap itself, timed carefully around track sessions and media windows.
"And Kimi's meeting you for the tour," she added, checking her tablet again, "assuming media doesn't run over. Sometimes it does."
Hearing his name said so casually, so functionally, like he was simply an item on a schedule rather than someone you'd watched race in the rain three years ago and thought, quietly, to yourself, that one's going to be special — it did something strange to your stomach.
"Sounds good," you said, in a voice you hoped sounded like a normal person's voice.
Priya glanced at you sideways, the corner of her mouth twitching, and said nothing at all.
—------
He was fifteen minutes late, which Priya assured you was, for a Grand Prix weekend and for an Italian, essentially early.
You were standing just inside the garage, trying very hard to look like someone who belonged there and not like someone counting the seconds, when you saw him come around the side of the building, caramel hair still slightly damp from a shower after the morning session, team polo shirt, a lanyard identical to your own except his had about four times as many access levels printed on it.
He looked younger in person. Not younger than his age, exactly, but softer somehow less like the composed figure in post-race interviews and more like someone who'd simply woken up that morning and put on the clothes his job required of him.
He spotted you and slowed his pace, and for just a second which was brief enough that you might have imagined it, except you didn't think you had something like nerves crossed his face before he schooled it into a polite, careful smile.
"Hi," he said, stopping a respectful distance away and extending a hand. "You're— sorry, I should know this— you're our competition winner?"
"That's me," you said, shaking his hand, which was warm and slightly rougher than you'd expected, calloused in a way that made you think, absurdly, of steering wheels and gear paddles. "Thank you for— I mean, this is— I don't really know what to say, honestly."
"That's alright," he said. "I never really know what to say either."
It was such an unexpectedly honest thing to say that you laughed before you could stop yourself, and he blinked, then smiled properly this time, small and a little surprised at himself.
"I mean it," he added. "People assume because I talk to cameras I'm good at talking. I'm not. I just— I've had practice not saying anything stupid on camera. It's different."
"Well, you're doing fine so far."
"Ask me again in an hour."
You both stood there a beat too long, the kind of silence that isn't quite comfortable yet but isn't unbearable either, and then he gestured toward the garage entrance with a sort of relieved briskness, like he'd been handed a task and was glad to have something to do with his hands.
"Should we start the tour? I was told I'm meant to show you around. I'm not— I'm not always sure how much detail people want, so tell me if I'm being boring."
"I promise I won't find it boring."
"You say that now," he said, and there was the dry humour you'd noticed in interviews, quieter in person, almost private. "Wait until I start explaining tyre degradation."
You did not, in fact, find it boring.
He walked you through slowly, gesturing at things with an ease that only surfaced once he had a subject he actually knew inside and out, and you began to understand, watching him, that his earlier awkwardness had nothing to do with unfriendliness and everything to do with simply not knowing what was expected of him in an unscripted moment. Give him a car to talk about, though, and he relaxed by degrees.
"This is basically where the whole weekend lives," he said, nodding toward the garage floor, where the chassis sat raised on a rig, engineers crouched around it with the unhurried focus of surgeons. "Everything gets stripped down and rebuilt overnight sometimes. People think it's just — bolt the wheels on, done. It's not like that at all."
"How much of it do you actually understand? Like, mechanically."
"More than people expect. Less than the engineers would like." He nodded toward a man frowning at a laptop screen displaying rows of data. "That's Bono, my race engineer. If you want to know anything real about the car, ask him, not me. I just drive it and complain when it doesn't do what I want."
"Do you complain a lot?"
"Constantly," Bono said without looking up, and Kimi made a small wounded noise that made you laugh again.
He showed you the steering wheel display, walking you through what half the buttons did with a patience that made it clear he'd explained this exact thing dozens of times before to dozens of guests and had never once found a shortcut, because he genuinely wanted people to understand it properly. He showed you the pit wall, quiet mid-afternoon, monitors dark, and told you what it was like during a race how loud it got in his helmet, how strange it was that he could hear his engineer's voice perfectly clear over an engine screaming at seventeen thousand revs.
"Does it get lonely?" you asked, without entirely meaning to. "In the car, I mean. During a race."
He considered this for longer than you expected, like it wasn't a question he got asked often, or maybe wasn't one he'd properly asked himself.
"Sometimes," he admitted. "It's just you and the car and a voice in your ear. You can't see anyone's face. You can't really talk to anyone except your engineer, and even then it's mostly numbers and instructions." He paused. "I like it, though. It's the one place where nobody's watching me think. They just see what I do."
You didn't say anything to that, not right away, because it felt like something truer than he'd meant to say out loud, and you didn't want to make him self-conscious about it.
"That's a very poetic way to describe going round in circles very fast," you said instead, gently, and he huffed something that was almost a laugh.
"Don't tell the engineers I said anything poetic. I'll never hear the end of it."
—---------
Lunch was in a corner of hospitality, a plate of pasta you barely tasted because you were too busy trying not to stare at him across the table, and he ate with the brisk efficiency of someone used to eating on a schedule rather than for pleasure, though he did pause halfway through to make a face at his own plate.
"This is very beige," he said. "Nutritionist's orders. I love pasta but I miss it with actual flavour."
"What would you eat if you could eat anything right now?"
"Honestly? My grandmother's cooking. She does this— " he gestured vaguely, searching for a word in Italian that clearly wasn't quite cooperating, " —it doesn't translate well. Very simple. Very good. I haven't had it properly in months."
"You could ask catering to make it."
"I did, once. It wasn't the same. I think it's not really about the food." He shrugged, a little embarrassed at himself for having said something so unguarded, and reached for his water instead of continuing.
You found, over the next twenty minutes, that this was a pattern with him, a genuine thought would surface, unguarded and a little raw, and then he'd catch himself and retreat slightly, as though worried he'd overshared with a stranger. You didn't push. You just let the silences sit there, unhurried, and slowly he seemed to relax into them rather than fill them nervously.
At one point you asked, carefully, trying not to sound like exactly the kind of overinvested fan you were trying not to be, how he was finding the season so far.
"Honestly, tiring," he said. "Good, but tiring. It's a lot of everyone always wants something. An interview, a photo, an opinion. I don't mind giving those things, I just—" He exhaled. "It's nice, today, actually. Nobody wants anything from me except to look at a car with me."
"I want a hot lap out of you," you pointed out. "So technically I want something too."
That earned you the first proper laugh of the day surprised out of him, a little loud, quickly muffled with the back of his hand like he hadn't expected himself to laugh that openly in front of someone he'd just met.
"Fair," he said. "Alright. You've earned that one."
—----
The garage had cleared of most of the morning's crowd by the time you were led toward a side room lined with helmets on shelves, HANS devices hanging from hooks, and a wall of race suits arranged by size.
A mechanic introduced simply as Tomas, forearms permanently smudged with something dark and mechanical fitted you for a helmet with brisk, careful hands, checking the strap twice, tilting your head gently side to side to make sure it sat properly.
"Little tight is good," he said. "Loose is bad. You'll thank me later."
Kimi appeared a few minutes later already half into his own overalls, hair pushed back, looking genuinely, uncomplicatedly happy in a way he hadn't quite been all afternoon. This, you realised, was his actual environment. Everything before had been performance, however gentle. This was simply him.
"Nervous?" he asked, watching you turn your helmet over in your hands.
"Extremely."
"Good. Means you're taking it seriously." He crouched slightly to look you properly in the eye, voice dropping into something more careful. "It'll be loud. Really loud, even with the helmet on. The braking will feel harder than you expect — like something's got hold of your whole body and yanked it forward. If you want me to slow down at any point, just tap my shoulder, twice, hard. I'll feel it even over the engine. Okay?"
"Okay."
"You're allowed to scream," he added, and there was that dry humour again, a small smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. "Everyone does. I won't tell anyone."
"Do you scream?"
"The first time I drove one of these, yes. Don't tell anyone that either."
The car itself, once you were lowered into the passenger seat beside him — a tight, secure fit, the world suddenly reduced to the curve of the cockpit and the tang of race fuel close enough to taste — felt smaller and larger at once. Smaller because there was barely room to move. Larger because the second the engine caught, a shattering, physical roar that you felt in your teeth before you properly heard it, the whole world seemed to expand outward from that sound.
Kimi glanced over once, checked your harness with two firm tugs, and gave you a thumbs up through his visor that you returned, considerably less steadily.
Then he pulled out of the garage, and the world changed entirely.
The pit lane felt fast. The main straight, once he opened the car up properly, felt like something else altogether — a pressure against your chest, the scenery beyond the cockpit smearing into long indistinct streaks of green and grey, the sound swallowing every thought in your head except a single continuous noise that might have been a scream and might have been a laugh, you genuinely couldn't tell which.
Through the corners, the car seemed to compress and stretch in ways that made no physical sense, g-forces hauling your head sideways, your hands gripping the harness straps hard enough that your knuckles ached. Braking into the tighter sections felt exactly like he'd described — something enormous seizing your entire body and dragging it forward, your vision briefly doubling with the force of it.
You were, you realised somewhere around the second lap, laughing continuously, helplessly, the sound swallowed by the engine but still shaking through your chest, and beside you, through the small gap in his visor, you caught the edge of Kimi's expression — focused, utterly calm, and unmistakably, quietly delighted at your reaction, glancing over just slightly more often than the driving strictly required.
By the final lap your throat was raw from noise you hadn't fully controlled, your hands trembling faintly even after he brought the car to a gentle stop back in the garage, engine ticking as it cooled, silence rushing in so suddenly it felt like its own kind of pressure.
Kimi pulled his visor up first, grinning, actually grinning, wide and unguarded, nothing careful about it at all.
"So?" he said. "Verdict?"
"I think I left my stomach somewhere around turn six."
"That's the correct reaction." He was already climbing out, offering you a hand as you unclipped the harness with fingers that weren't entirely steady yet. "You did well. Some people go completely silent. Some people cry. You just laughed the whole way, it was—" He stopped himself, seeming to realise he was about to say something he hadn't quite planned to, and settled instead for, "—it was nice. Driving someone who's actually enjoying it."
You pulled your helmet off, hair static-charged and sticking up in every direction, and he looked at you for a beat too long before glancing away, ears faintly pink, and you decided, charitably, that it was probably just the heat.
You expected that to be the end of it. A hot lap, a photo with the car, a polite goodbye, back on the shuttle bus with a story you'd tell for the rest of your life.
Instead, once you'd both changed back into ordinary clothes and your legs had steadied under you, Kimi lingered by the garage entrance, hands in his pockets, looking faintly uncertain in a way that didn't match the confidence he'd shown behind the wheel.
"Do you—" he started, then stopped, then tried again. "I don't have anything else scheduled until the evening debrief. If you wanted, I could show you a bit more. The rest of the paddock. It's not really part of the— official tour, but." He shrugged, a little helplessly. "I don't mind. If you want."
"I'd like that," you said, probably too quickly, and he seemed relieved enough that you both pretended not to notice.
He showed you the trophy cabinet in the team's hospitality unit, tapping the glass in front of a modest collection of silverware with something between pride and embarrassment. "Not much yet," he said. "Give it time."
"I believe you," you said, and meant it, and he glanced at you sideways like he wasn't quite sure what to do with someone saying something like that so plainly.
He introduced you to a mechanic named Dario who was halfway through rebuilding a gearbox and who, upon hearing you were the competition winner, said something in rapid Italian that made Kimi go faintly red and mutter something back that silenced him, though not before Dario shot you both an unmistakably knowing look.
"What did he say?" you asked.
"Nothing," Kimi said, too quickly.
"Kimi."
"He said I usually finish these tours in twenty minutes," he admitted, not quite meeting your eyes. "We've been out here two hours."
"Is that bad?"
"No," he said, and then, quieter, almost to himself, "no, I don't think it's bad at all."
You wandered past the team truck, where a mechanic was cataloguing spare parts with the focus of a librarian; past a wall where photos from every race of the season were pinned in careful rows, Kimi pointing out ones that had gone particularly well or particularly badly with equal, easy honesty; past a quiet corner of the paddock where the noise of the wider circuit fell away almost entirely and it was just the two of you, walking slowly, in no particular hurry to be anywhere else.
"Can I ask you something?" you said, somewhere in that quiet stretch.
"You can ask."
"Why does the awkwardness go away when you're talking about the car, or the team, but come straight back the second it's just conversation?"
He was quiet for a while, long enough that you wondered if you'd overstepped, and then he said, carefully, "I've always found it easier to be sure of things I understand completely. A car, I understand completely. A person—" He gestured vaguely, a small helpless motion. "I don't always know what's expected of me. I say the wrong thing, or I don't say anything at all, and then it's worse."
"You haven't said anything wrong all day."
"Give it time," he said, echoing your earlier words back at you, and you both laughed, and something in the space between you eased another fraction.
Priya found you both near the hospitality unit as the light outside had started turning gold with early evening, her expression somewhere between amused and faintly exasperated as she checked her tablet.
"There you are," she said. "I was starting to think we'd lost our winner. And you—" she pointed at Kimi, "—Marco's been asking where you've got to. Debrief's in forty minutes."
"I know," Kimi said, not sounding remotely sorry about it.
"Mm," Priya said, exactly the way your mother had said it on the phone weeks earlier, and you decided you would think about that later, when you weren't quite so distracted by the way Kimi was looking faintly, helplessly pleased with himself.
Marco, who you'd gathered by now this was the team's press officer, appeared shortly after with the harried expression of a man whose carefully planned schedule had somehow stretched itself by several hours without his input, glancing between you and Kimi with an expression that suggested he understood exactly why, even if he wasn't going to say so out loud.
"We do need you for debrief soon," he told Kimi, not unkindly. "Toto's waiting."
"I know," Kimi said again, and then, to you, quieter: "I have to go in a minute."
"I figured."
"I didn't want to," he said, and then looked faintly startled at his own honesty, the way he had all day whenever something true slipped out before he'd properly decided to say it.
You walked the last stretch back toward the paddock exit together, slower than either of you needed to, the golden evening light stretching long shadows across the tarmac, distant engine noise from the support race still rolling faintly through the air like weather.
"Thank you," you said, when you reached the gate, meaning it more than the words could probably carry. "For today. Genuinely. I don't think I'll ever– this isn't the kind of thing that happens to people like me."
"I don't think there's a specific kind of person this is supposed to happen to," he said. "It happened. That's enough, isn't it?"
"I suppose."
You stood there a beat too long, the way you had at the very start of the day, except the silence now felt entirely different not awkward exactly, just full, weighted with something neither of you had quite named yet.
"I should say goodbye properly," you said eventually, holding out your hand the way you had that morning, "since I doubt I'll—"
"Wait," he said.
You waited.
He looked, for a moment, exactly like he had before the first word he'd ever spoken to you — nervous, visibly working up to something, hands shoved deep into his pockets like he needed somewhere to put them.
"I don't—" he started, then stopped, exhaled, tried again. "I don't usually do this. I want to say that first, because I don't want you to think I do this with every — with anyone who wins a competition." A faint, self-deprecating huff. "I don't. I've never wanted to, before today."
"Kimi—"
"I'd like to see you again," he said, in a rush now, like if he didn't get it all out at once he might lose his nerve entirely. "Not not like this. Not a tour, not a schedule. Just you. If you wanted that. I don't know how it would work, with the season, I travel a lot, I know that's but I'd like to try, if you'd let me."
You felt something in your chest go very warm and very still all at once.
"Are you asking me on a date?" you said, partly to buy yourself a second to process it, partly because you wanted to hear him say it properly.
He went slightly pink, glanced away, then made himself look back at you anyway, which felt like the bravest thing you'd seen him do all day, braver somehow than a hundred and eighty miles an hour down a straight.
"Would it be alright," he said, carefully, like he'd been rehearsing the exact words, "if I took you on a date sometime?"
You didn't answer immediately, not because you were unsure, but because you wanted to hold the moment a beat longer, this ordinary, extraordinary boy standing in front of you with his hands in his pockets and his ears gone faintly red, looking more nervous asking this question than he had looked driving a car at ludicrous speed an hour earlier.
"Yes," you said. "I'd like that. A lot."
The smile that broke across his face then was nothing like the careful, camera-ready one from the morning. It was wide and a little disbelieving and entirely unguarded, and you thought, quietly, that you would remember that exact expression for a very long time.
"Okay," he said, like he needed to hear himself confirm it. "Okay. Good."
He asked for your number, fumbling slightly with his phone in a way that felt endearing rather than smooth, and you gave it to him, and he saved it immediately with a small, private smile like he wanted to make sure it was real before he let himself believe it.
"I'll text you," he said. "Properly. Not just— I mean, I'll actually plan something. I'm not very good at it, I'll warn you now, but I'll try."
"I believe you," you said again, and he ducked his head, pleased and a little shy about it, the same way he had been in the trophy room hours earlier.
Marco called his name from somewhere behind you, gently insistent, and Kimi glanced back, then at you, clearly reluctant to be the one to end this.
"I have to—"
"I know. Go."
He hesitated one more second, like he wanted to say something else and hadn't quite decided what, and then, simply, quietly: "Thank you for laughing the whole way round. Nobody's ever done that before."
Then he was walking backward for a few steps, still looking at you, before he turned properly and jogged back toward the garages, and you stood at the gate with your pass still around your neck and your phone now holding a new contact and the whole gold-lit evening settling warm around you.
The shuttle bus back to the hotel was quieter than the one that morning, most passengers scrolling through photos of their day, comparing notes on which driver they'd glimpsed and where. You sat by the window with your phone in your lap, not checking it exactly, just aware of its presence, the way you might be aware of a held breath.
The message came through just after nine that evening, while you were repacking your bag for the flight home.
Debrief ran long. Sorry. Today was good. Better than good. I meant what I said — I'll actually plan something properly, give me a few days to sort my schedule. Thank you for today.
You read it four times before you let yourself reply, and even then you deleted your first two attempts for sounding either too casual or entirely deranged with enthusiasm.
Today was one of the best days of my life. I'm serious. Thank you for asking.
The reply came almost immediately, like he'd been waiting, phone in hand, the exact way you had been.
I'm glad it was you who won. I don't say things like that easily. But I mean it.
You sat on the edge of the hotel bed for a long moment after that, phone held loosely in both hands, feeling something settle in your chest that felt less like the end of an extraordinary day and much more, unmistakably, like the very beginning of something else.
Outside, faint and distant, you could still hear engines somewhere on the circuit, the last stretches of evening track action winding down into the ordinary quiet of a race weekend settling toward night. You thought about the roar of that hot lap, the warmth of his hand steadying yours as he'd helped you out of the car, the particular, unguarded way he'd smiled when you said yes.
You didn't know yet what shape this would take how a rookie driver's punishing travel schedule and your very ordinary life might fit together, what a first date with someone whose face occasionally appeared on billboards might actually look like. You didn't need to know yet. For tonight, it was enough to have the message glowing on your phone screen, and the quiet, steady certainty that this wasn't goodbye at all.
It was, very simply, a beginning.
laysha's notes: lmk if you guys like it!! also lmk if you'd like to see a part 2 of this storyy
Everyone in Formula 1 knows your name and most of them have something to say about it. But when rookie sensation Kimi Antonelli arrives in the paddock already convinced you're trouble, one awkward encounter is enough to set off a season full of rumors, rivalries, and unexpected complications. In a world where everyone is watching, the truth is never as simple as it seems.
˙⋆✮ RADIO SILENCE
When a determined engineering intern joins Mercedes and finds herself working alongside rookie driver Kimi Antonelli, what begins as friendship slowly becomes something much harder to ignore.
˙⋆✮ LOST IN TRANSLATION
Your secret plan involved Italian lessons, a heartfelt confession, and absolutely no witnesses. Unfortunately, Kimi Antonelli had other ideas.
˙⋆✮ ONE MORE LAP
You enter a Mercedes fan giveaway for a Silverstone hot lap experience fully expecting never to hear back. Unfortunately for your dignity, you do hear back. And even more unfortunately, the rookie driver assigned to your hot lap turns out to be the one Formula 1 driver you’ve been trying very hard not to have a crush on.
Summary: You enter a Mercedes fan giveaway for a Silverstone hot lap experience fully expecting never to hear back. Unfortunately for your dignity, you do hear back. And even more unfortunately, the rookie driver assigned to your hot lap turns out to be the one Formula 1 driver you’ve been trying very hard not to have a crush on.
Word Count: 5.7k
Warnings: none
Laysha's Notes: sorry this took me a while to get to! this is based on this request by @dessashippr
MASTERLIST
You saw the post at half past eleven on a Tuesday night, scrolling through the Mercedes fan community out of habit more than anything else. It was the kind of forum you checked the way some people checked the weather, reflexively, without really expecting anything to change.
Mercedes Petronas AMG HOT LAP EXPERIENCE — SILVERSTONE GRAND PRIX WEEKEND
Behind-the-scenes paddock access. A full team tour. And for one lucky fan: a passenger hot lap with one of our junior drivers.
You read it twice, then a third time, thumb hovering over the entry link. You weren't the type who won things. You'd entered a dozen contests over the years including raffles, sweepstakes, a radio call-in once that you'd forgotten about within the hour and won exactly nothing. But it cost nothing to enter, and it took less than a minute, so you filled in your name, your email, ticked the box confirming you were a member of the community, and went to bed without thinking about it again.
That was three weeks ago.
The email arrived on a Thursday afternoon while you were microwaving leftover pasta, your phone buzzing against the counter with a notification you almost swiped away without reading. You caught the subject line at the last second.
Congratulations — You've Won the Mercedes Petronas AMG Hot Lap Experience!
You stood very still for a moment, the microwave humming behind you, and read it again to make sure you hadn't misread a word of it. You hadn't. Your name was there. Your entry number was there. There was a phone number to call to confirm your identity and begin arranging travel.
"No," you said out loud, to nobody, because your flatmate was still at work and the only witness to this moment was a bag of frozen peas in the freezer door. "No, that's not… that's fake. That's got to be fake."
You spent the next twenty minutes doing exactly what any sensible person would do: you searched the sender's email domain, cross-referenced it against the team's official website, checked the community forum to see if anyone else had posted about winning, and eventually with your heart hammering somewhere up near your throat you called the number.
A woman with a crisp, professional voice answered on the second ring, said the team's name, and asked for your entry confirmation code like this was the most ordinary phone call in the world.
It was not, for you, an ordinary phone call. Your voice cracked on your own name.
By the time you hung up, you were laughing, and then you weren't laughing, you were sort of gasping, one hand braced on the kitchen counter, and the pasta was forgotten and slightly overcooked and you did not care even slightly.
You called your mother first. She didn't fully understand what Formula 1 was, let alone why you were shrieking about it, but she understood you, and she let you talk in circles for ten minutes before asking, gently, "So you get to meet the driver? The one you like?"
"I don't like him, Mum, I just — I've followed his career, it's not like that—"
"Mm," she said, in the particular tone mothers use when they've already decided something and are simply waiting for you to catch up.
You called your best friend next, and she screamed loudly enough that you had to hold the phone away from your ear, and then she immediately began drafting a list of things you needed to buy, none of which you actually needed, all of which you agreed to anyway because arguing felt like a waste of the good mood.
You did not, notably, mention how long you'd followed him. How you'd watched every junior series race you could find a stream for, back when he was driving in series most people had never heard of, back before anyone outside the paddock knew his name. How you'd felt something close to pride, absurd and one-sided as it was, the first time he stood on a Grand Prix podium. You told yourself it wasn't a crush. It was admiration. It was respect for a quiet, hardworking kid who'd made it to the top of the sport through sheer bloody-minded persistence rather than noise or ego.
You told yourself this several more times over the following two weeks, with decreasing conviction.
—------
The Mercedes Petronas AMG press office sent a schedule, a waiver, a dress code (smart casual, closed-toe shoes, no loose jewellery), and a document confirming that your travel and one night's accommodation near the circuit would be covered. You read every word of it more times than was strictly necessary.
You told yourself you wouldn't get your hopes up about anything beyond the obvious: a hot lap, a photo, maybe a signature if you were lucky and didn't completely embarrass yourself. He was a Formula 1 driver in the middle of a championship battle. He had a media schedule, sponsor commitments, physio, debriefs, a hundred other things pulling at his time. You would get an hour with him if you were fortunate. Maybe less.
That didn't stop you from watching every recent interview clip you could find, not to prepare talking points exactly, just to remind yourself who he actually was, rather than the flattened, half-imagined version you'd built up over years of distant admiration. You noticed things you'd noticed before but filed away properly this time: the way he answered questions slowly, choosing words with visible care, like he didn't trust himself to speak without thinking first. The dry, almost apologetic humour that surfaced when a reporter caught him off guard. The way he went quiet and still whenever a camera lingered too long on his face, like attention was a coat that didn't quite fit him yet.
Your flatmate, tired of hearing about it, eventually banned the subject from the flat after nine p.m., which you respected for approximately four days.
You packed and repacked your bag three times. You bought a new pair of trainers you didn't need because the dress code had made you paranoid your usual ones looked too worn. You lay awake the night before your flight running through a dozen imagined versions of how the day might go, none of which, you would later think, came anywhere close to how it actually unfolded.
The circuit reached you before you reached the circuit.
You felt it from the shuttle bus window, a low mechanical thrum vibrating up through the floor and into the soles of your new trainers, engines somewhere out on track running practice starts, the sound doubling back off grandstands and hospitality units in a way that made the whole world seem to hum. Traffic crawled along roads lined with flags — every team's colours strung up in long fluttering rows, Mercedes Petronas AMG's silver and deep green among them, and you found yourself staring at that particular combination of colours the way you might stare at a familiar face in a crowd.
The campsites had bloomed up overnight in every field bordering the circuit, tents in clusters, barbecue smoke rising thin and grey into a sky that couldn't quite decide whether it wanted to rain. Fans walked in every direction wearing every driver's merchandise, faces painted, flags draped over shoulders like capes, and somewhere in the crowd you spotted no fewer than six people wearing his number.
You didn't say anything about that. You just noticed it, and something in your chest went warm and strange.
The paddock, once you were credentialed through security with a laminated pass on a lanyard that you were fairly sure you would frame later and never admit to, was its own separate world entirely. It smelled like nothing you'd expected and everything you should have: hot rubber, spilled espresso, sunscreen, the faint acrid tang of fuel drifting from somewhere near the garages, and underneath it all, the mineral smell of rain that hadn't fallen yet but was clearly considering it.
Team personnel moved everywhere, at a walking pace just shy of a jog, headsets clipped to belts, tablets tucked under arms, badges swinging. A cluster of mechanics wheeled a tyre trolley past you close enough that you had to step back, and one of them said "sorry, love" without breaking stride. Media crews with enormous cameras stood in loose knots outside hospitality units, waiting for someone important enough to justify the wait. Somewhere above it all, a tannoy voice announced a schedule change for the support race in a tone of practiced, weary cheer.
A young woman in a Mercedes polo shirt found you within minutes of you stepping through the gates, checking a name off a tablet with the brisk efficiency of someone who did this exact task every single race weekend and had long since run out of patience for anyone who wasted her time.
"You must be our competition winner," she said, extending a hand. "I'm Priya, hospitality and guest relations. Welcome to the paddock, how was the journey?"
"Good. Fine. A bit surreal, honestly," you admitted, and she laughed, not unkindly.
"That's the normal reaction. Come on, I'll get you settled before the tour starts."
She walked you through hospitality, a glass-fronted structure humming with quiet, expensive calm, sponsors' logos etched into the windows, drivers' overalls displayed behind glass like museum pieces, and talked you through the schedule for the day. Garage tour first. Lunch. Then, mid-afternoon, the hot lap itself, timed carefully around track sessions and media windows.
"And Kimi's meeting you for the tour," she added, checking her tablet again, "assuming media doesn't run over. Sometimes it does."
Hearing his name said so casually, so functionally, like he was simply an item on a schedule rather than someone you'd watched race in the rain three years ago and thought, quietly, to yourself, that one's going to be special — it did something strange to your stomach.
"Sounds good," you said, in a voice you hoped sounded like a normal person's voice.
Priya glanced at you sideways, the corner of her mouth twitching, and said nothing at all.
—------
He was fifteen minutes late, which Priya assured you was, for a Grand Prix weekend and for an Italian, essentially early.
You were standing just inside the garage, trying very hard to look like someone who belonged there and not like someone counting the seconds, when you saw him come around the side of the building, caramel hair still slightly damp from a shower after the morning session, team polo shirt, a lanyard identical to your own except his had about four times as many access levels printed on it.
He looked younger in person. Not younger than his age, exactly, but softer somehow less like the composed figure in post-race interviews and more like someone who'd simply woken up that morning and put on the clothes his job required of him.
He spotted you and slowed his pace, and for just a second which was brief enough that you might have imagined it, except you didn't think you had something like nerves crossed his face before he schooled it into a polite, careful smile.
"Hi," he said, stopping a respectful distance away and extending a hand. "You're— sorry, I should know this— you're our competition winner?"
"That's me," you said, shaking his hand, which was warm and slightly rougher than you'd expected, calloused in a way that made you think, absurdly, of steering wheels and gear paddles. "Thank you for— I mean, this is— I don't really know what to say, honestly."
"That's alright," he said. "I never really know what to say either."
It was such an unexpectedly honest thing to say that you laughed before you could stop yourself, and he blinked, then smiled properly this time, small and a little surprised at himself.
"I mean it," he added. "People assume because I talk to cameras I'm good at talking. I'm not. I just— I've had practice not saying anything stupid on camera. It's different."
"Well, you're doing fine so far."
"Ask me again in an hour."
You both stood there a beat too long, the kind of silence that isn't quite comfortable yet but isn't unbearable either, and then he gestured toward the garage entrance with a sort of relieved briskness, like he'd been handed a task and was glad to have something to do with his hands.
"Should we start the tour? I was told I'm meant to show you around. I'm not— I'm not always sure how much detail people want, so tell me if I'm being boring."
"I promise I won't find it boring."
"You say that now," he said, and there was the dry humour you'd noticed in interviews, quieter in person, almost private. "Wait until I start explaining tyre degradation."
You did not, in fact, find it boring.
He walked you through slowly, gesturing at things with an ease that only surfaced once he had a subject he actually knew inside and out, and you began to understand, watching him, that his earlier awkwardness had nothing to do with unfriendliness and everything to do with simply not knowing what was expected of him in an unscripted moment. Give him a car to talk about, though, and he relaxed by degrees.
"This is basically where the whole weekend lives," he said, nodding toward the garage floor, where the chassis sat raised on a rig, engineers crouched around it with the unhurried focus of surgeons. "Everything gets stripped down and rebuilt overnight sometimes. People think it's just — bolt the wheels on, done. It's not like that at all."
"How much of it do you actually understand? Like, mechanically."
"More than people expect. Less than the engineers would like." He nodded toward a man frowning at a laptop screen displaying rows of data. "That's Bono, my race engineer. If you want to know anything real about the car, ask him, not me. I just drive it and complain when it doesn't do what I want."
"Do you complain a lot?"
"Constantly," Bono said without looking up, and Kimi made a small wounded noise that made you laugh again.
He showed you the steering wheel display, walking you through what half the buttons did with a patience that made it clear he'd explained this exact thing dozens of times before to dozens of guests and had never once found a shortcut, because he genuinely wanted people to understand it properly. He showed you the pit wall, quiet mid-afternoon, monitors dark, and told you what it was like during a race how loud it got in his helmet, how strange it was that he could hear his engineer's voice perfectly clear over an engine screaming at seventeen thousand revs.
"Does it get lonely?" you asked, without entirely meaning to. "In the car, I mean. During a race."
He considered this for longer than you expected, like it wasn't a question he got asked often, or maybe wasn't one he'd properly asked himself.
"Sometimes," he admitted. "It's just you and the car and a voice in your ear. You can't see anyone's face. You can't really talk to anyone except your engineer, and even then it's mostly numbers and instructions." He paused. "I like it, though. It's the one place where nobody's watching me think. They just see what I do."
You didn't say anything to that, not right away, because it felt like something truer than he'd meant to say out loud, and you didn't want to make him self-conscious about it.
"That's a very poetic way to describe going round in circles very fast," you said instead, gently, and he huffed something that was almost a laugh.
"Don't tell the engineers I said anything poetic. I'll never hear the end of it."
—---------
Lunch was in a corner of hospitality, a plate of pasta you barely tasted because you were too busy trying not to stare at him across the table, and he ate with the brisk efficiency of someone used to eating on a schedule rather than for pleasure, though he did pause halfway through to make a face at his own plate.
"This is very beige," he said. "Nutritionist's orders. I love pasta but I miss it with actual flavour."
"What would you eat if you could eat anything right now?"
"Honestly? My grandmother's cooking. She does this— " he gestured vaguely, searching for a word in Italian that clearly wasn't quite cooperating, " —it doesn't translate well. Very simple. Very good. I haven't had it properly in months."
"You could ask catering to make it."
"I did, once. It wasn't the same. I think it's not really about the food." He shrugged, a little embarrassed at himself for having said something so unguarded, and reached for his water instead of continuing.
You found, over the next twenty minutes, that this was a pattern with him, a genuine thought would surface, unguarded and a little raw, and then he'd catch himself and retreat slightly, as though worried he'd overshared with a stranger. You didn't push. You just let the silences sit there, unhurried, and slowly he seemed to relax into them rather than fill them nervously.
At one point you asked, carefully, trying not to sound like exactly the kind of overinvested fan you were trying not to be, how he was finding the season so far.
"Honestly, tiring," he said. "Good, but tiring. It's a lot of everyone always wants something. An interview, a photo, an opinion. I don't mind giving those things, I just—" He exhaled. "It's nice, today, actually. Nobody wants anything from me except to look at a car with me."
"I want a hot lap out of you," you pointed out. "So technically I want something too."
That earned you the first proper laugh of the day surprised out of him, a little loud, quickly muffled with the back of his hand like he hadn't expected himself to laugh that openly in front of someone he'd just met.
"Fair," he said. "Alright. You've earned that one."
—----
The garage had cleared of most of the morning's crowd by the time you were led toward a side room lined with helmets on shelves, HANS devices hanging from hooks, and a wall of race suits arranged by size.
A mechanic introduced simply as Tomas, forearms permanently smudged with something dark and mechanical fitted you for a helmet with brisk, careful hands, checking the strap twice, tilting your head gently side to side to make sure it sat properly.
"Little tight is good," he said. "Loose is bad. You'll thank me later."
Kimi appeared a few minutes later already half into his own overalls, hair pushed back, looking genuinely, uncomplicatedly happy in a way he hadn't quite been all afternoon. This, you realised, was his actual environment. Everything before had been performance, however gentle. This was simply him.
"Nervous?" he asked, watching you turn your helmet over in your hands.
"Extremely."
"Good. Means you're taking it seriously." He crouched slightly to look you properly in the eye, voice dropping into something more careful. "It'll be loud. Really loud, even with the helmet on. The braking will feel harder than you expect — like something's got hold of your whole body and yanked it forward. If you want me to slow down at any point, just tap my shoulder, twice, hard. I'll feel it even over the engine. Okay?"
"Okay."
"You're allowed to scream," he added, and there was that dry humour again, a small smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. "Everyone does. I won't tell anyone."
"Do you scream?"
"The first time I drove one of these, yes. Don't tell anyone that either."
The car itself, once you were lowered into the passenger seat beside him — a tight, secure fit, the world suddenly reduced to the curve of the cockpit and the tang of race fuel close enough to taste — felt smaller and larger at once. Smaller because there was barely room to move. Larger because the second the engine caught, a shattering, physical roar that you felt in your teeth before you properly heard it, the whole world seemed to expand outward from that sound.
Kimi glanced over once, checked your harness with two firm tugs, and gave you a thumbs up through his visor that you returned, considerably less steadily.
Then he pulled out of the garage, and the world changed entirely.
The pit lane felt fast. The main straight, once he opened the car up properly, felt like something else altogether — a pressure against your chest, the scenery beyond the cockpit smearing into long indistinct streaks of green and grey, the sound swallowing every thought in your head except a single continuous noise that might have been a scream and might have been a laugh, you genuinely couldn't tell which.
Through the corners, the car seemed to compress and stretch in ways that made no physical sense, g-forces hauling your head sideways, your hands gripping the harness straps hard enough that your knuckles ached. Braking into the tighter sections felt exactly like he'd described — something enormous seizing your entire body and dragging it forward, your vision briefly doubling with the force of it.
You were, you realised somewhere around the second lap, laughing continuously, helplessly, the sound swallowed by the engine but still shaking through your chest, and beside you, through the small gap in his visor, you caught the edge of Kimi's expression — focused, utterly calm, and unmistakably, quietly delighted at your reaction, glancing over just slightly more often than the driving strictly required.
By the final lap your throat was raw from noise you hadn't fully controlled, your hands trembling faintly even after he brought the car to a gentle stop back in the garage, engine ticking as it cooled, silence rushing in so suddenly it felt like its own kind of pressure.
Kimi pulled his visor up first, grinning, actually grinning, wide and unguarded, nothing careful about it at all.
"So?" he said. "Verdict?"
"I think I left my stomach somewhere around turn six."
"That's the correct reaction." He was already climbing out, offering you a hand as you unclipped the harness with fingers that weren't entirely steady yet. "You did well. Some people go completely silent. Some people cry. You just laughed the whole way, it was—" He stopped himself, seeming to realise he was about to say something he hadn't quite planned to, and settled instead for, "—it was nice. Driving someone who's actually enjoying it."
You pulled your helmet off, hair static-charged and sticking up in every direction, and he looked at you for a beat too long before glancing away, ears faintly pink, and you decided, charitably, that it was probably just the heat.
You expected that to be the end of it. A hot lap, a photo with the car, a polite goodbye, back on the shuttle bus with a story you'd tell for the rest of your life.
Instead, once you'd both changed back into ordinary clothes and your legs had steadied under you, Kimi lingered by the garage entrance, hands in his pockets, looking faintly uncertain in a way that didn't match the confidence he'd shown behind the wheel.
"Do you—" he started, then stopped, then tried again. "I don't have anything else scheduled until the evening debrief. If you wanted, I could show you a bit more. The rest of the paddock. It's not really part of the— official tour, but." He shrugged, a little helplessly. "I don't mind. If you want."
"I'd like that," you said, probably too quickly, and he seemed relieved enough that you both pretended not to notice.
He showed you the trophy cabinet in the team's hospitality unit, tapping the glass in front of a modest collection of silverware with something between pride and embarrassment. "Not much yet," he said. "Give it time."
"I believe you," you said, and meant it, and he glanced at you sideways like he wasn't quite sure what to do with someone saying something like that so plainly.
He introduced you to a mechanic named Dario who was halfway through rebuilding a gearbox and who, upon hearing you were the competition winner, said something in rapid Italian that made Kimi go faintly red and mutter something back that silenced him, though not before Dario shot you both an unmistakably knowing look.
"What did he say?" you asked.
"Nothing," Kimi said, too quickly.
"Kimi."
"He said I usually finish these tours in twenty minutes," he admitted, not quite meeting your eyes. "We've been out here two hours."
"Is that bad?"
"No," he said, and then, quieter, almost to himself, "no, I don't think it's bad at all."
You wandered past the team truck, where a mechanic was cataloguing spare parts with the focus of a librarian; past a wall where photos from every race of the season were pinned in careful rows, Kimi pointing out ones that had gone particularly well or particularly badly with equal, easy honesty; past a quiet corner of the paddock where the noise of the wider circuit fell away almost entirely and it was just the two of you, walking slowly, in no particular hurry to be anywhere else.
"Can I ask you something?" you said, somewhere in that quiet stretch.
"You can ask."
"Why does the awkwardness go away when you're talking about the car, or the team, but come straight back the second it's just conversation?"
He was quiet for a while, long enough that you wondered if you'd overstepped, and then he said, carefully, "I've always found it easier to be sure of things I understand completely. A car, I understand completely. A person—" He gestured vaguely, a small helpless motion. "I don't always know what's expected of me. I say the wrong thing, or I don't say anything at all, and then it's worse."
"You haven't said anything wrong all day."
"Give it time," he said, echoing your earlier words back at you, and you both laughed, and something in the space between you eased another fraction.
Priya found you both near the hospitality unit as the light outside had started turning gold with early evening, her expression somewhere between amused and faintly exasperated as she checked her tablet.
"There you are," she said. "I was starting to think we'd lost our winner. And you—" she pointed at Kimi, "—Marco's been asking where you've got to. Debrief's in forty minutes."
"I know," Kimi said, not sounding remotely sorry about it.
"Mm," Priya said, exactly the way your mother had said it on the phone weeks earlier, and you decided you would think about that later, when you weren't quite so distracted by the way Kimi was looking faintly, helplessly pleased with himself.
Marco, who you'd gathered by now this was the team's press officer, appeared shortly after with the harried expression of a man whose carefully planned schedule had somehow stretched itself by several hours without his input, glancing between you and Kimi with an expression that suggested he understood exactly why, even if he wasn't going to say so out loud.
"We do need you for debrief soon," he told Kimi, not unkindly. "Toto's waiting."
"I know," Kimi said again, and then, to you, quieter: "I have to go in a minute."
"I figured."
"I didn't want to," he said, and then looked faintly startled at his own honesty, the way he had all day whenever something true slipped out before he'd properly decided to say it.
You walked the last stretch back toward the paddock exit together, slower than either of you needed to, the golden evening light stretching long shadows across the tarmac, distant engine noise from the support race still rolling faintly through the air like weather.
"Thank you," you said, when you reached the gate, meaning it more than the words could probably carry. "For today. Genuinely. I don't think I'll ever– this isn't the kind of thing that happens to people like me."
"I don't think there's a specific kind of person this is supposed to happen to," he said. "It happened. That's enough, isn't it?"
"I suppose."
You stood there a beat too long, the way you had at the very start of the day, except the silence now felt entirely different not awkward exactly, just full, weighted with something neither of you had quite named yet.
"I should say goodbye properly," you said eventually, holding out your hand the way you had that morning, "since I doubt I'll—"
"Wait," he said.
You waited.
He looked, for a moment, exactly like he had before the first word he'd ever spoken to you — nervous, visibly working up to something, hands shoved deep into his pockets like he needed somewhere to put them.
"I don't—" he started, then stopped, exhaled, tried again. "I don't usually do this. I want to say that first, because I don't want you to think I do this with every — with anyone who wins a competition." A faint, self-deprecating huff. "I don't. I've never wanted to, before today."
"Kimi—"
"I'd like to see you again," he said, in a rush now, like if he didn't get it all out at once he might lose his nerve entirely. "Not not like this. Not a tour, not a schedule. Just you. If you wanted that. I don't know how it would work, with the season, I travel a lot, I know that's but I'd like to try, if you'd let me."
You felt something in your chest go very warm and very still all at once.
"Are you asking me on a date?" you said, partly to buy yourself a second to process it, partly because you wanted to hear him say it properly.
He went slightly pink, glanced away, then made himself look back at you anyway, which felt like the bravest thing you'd seen him do all day, braver somehow than a hundred and eighty miles an hour down a straight.
"Would it be alright," he said, carefully, like he'd been rehearsing the exact words, "if I took you on a date sometime?"
You didn't answer immediately, not because you were unsure, but because you wanted to hold the moment a beat longer, this ordinary, extraordinary boy standing in front of you with his hands in his pockets and his ears gone faintly red, looking more nervous asking this question than he had looked driving a car at ludicrous speed an hour earlier.
"Yes," you said. "I'd like that. A lot."
The smile that broke across his face then was nothing like the careful, camera-ready one from the morning. It was wide and a little disbelieving and entirely unguarded, and you thought, quietly, that you would remember that exact expression for a very long time.
"Okay," he said, like he needed to hear himself confirm it. "Okay. Good."
He asked for your number, fumbling slightly with his phone in a way that felt endearing rather than smooth, and you gave it to him, and he saved it immediately with a small, private smile like he wanted to make sure it was real before he let himself believe it.
"I'll text you," he said. "Properly. Not just— I mean, I'll actually plan something. I'm not very good at it, I'll warn you now, but I'll try."
"I believe you," you said again, and he ducked his head, pleased and a little shy about it, the same way he had been in the trophy room hours earlier.
Marco called his name from somewhere behind you, gently insistent, and Kimi glanced back, then at you, clearly reluctant to be the one to end this.
"I have to—"
"I know. Go."
He hesitated one more second, like he wanted to say something else and hadn't quite decided what, and then, simply, quietly: "Thank you for laughing the whole way round. Nobody's ever done that before."
Then he was walking backward for a few steps, still looking at you, before he turned properly and jogged back toward the garages, and you stood at the gate with your pass still around your neck and your phone now holding a new contact and the whole gold-lit evening settling warm around you.
The shuttle bus back to the hotel was quieter than the one that morning, most passengers scrolling through photos of their day, comparing notes on which driver they'd glimpsed and where. You sat by the window with your phone in your lap, not checking it exactly, just aware of its presence, the way you might be aware of a held breath.
The message came through just after nine that evening, while you were repacking your bag for the flight home.
Debrief ran long. Sorry. Today was good. Better than good. I meant what I said — I'll actually plan something properly, give me a few days to sort my schedule. Thank you for today.
You read it four times before you let yourself reply, and even then you deleted your first two attempts for sounding either too casual or entirely deranged with enthusiasm.
Today was one of the best days of my life. I'm serious. Thank you for asking.
The reply came almost immediately, like he'd been waiting, phone in hand, the exact way you had been.
I'm glad it was you who won. I don't say things like that easily. But I mean it.
You sat on the edge of the hotel bed for a long moment after that, phone held loosely in both hands, feeling something settle in your chest that felt less like the end of an extraordinary day and much more, unmistakably, like the very beginning of something else.
Outside, faint and distant, you could still hear engines somewhere on the circuit, the last stretches of evening track action winding down into the ordinary quiet of a race weekend settling toward night. You thought about the roar of that hot lap, the warmth of his hand steadying yours as he'd helped you out of the car, the particular, unguarded way he'd smiled when you said yes.
You didn't know yet what shape this would take how a rookie driver's punishing travel schedule and your very ordinary life might fit together, what a first date with someone whose face occasionally appeared on billboards might actually look like. You didn't need to know yet. For tonight, it was enough to have the message glowing on your phone screen, and the quiet, steady certainty that this wasn't goodbye at all.
It was, very simply, a beginning.
laysha's notes: lmk if you guys like it!! also lmk if you'd like to see a part 2 of this storyy
Summary: You enter a Mercedes fan giveaway for a Silverstone hot lap experience fully expecting never to hear back. Unfortunately for your dignity, you do hear back. And even more unfortunately, the rookie driver assigned to your hot lap turns out to be the one Formula 1 driver you’ve been trying very hard not to have a crush on.
Word Count: 5.7k
Warnings: none
Laysha's Notes: sorry this took me a while to get to! this is based on this request by @dessashippr
MASTERLIST
You saw the post at half past eleven on a Tuesday night, scrolling through the Mercedes fan community out of habit more than anything else. It was the kind of forum you checked the way some people checked the weather, reflexively, without really expecting anything to change.
Mercedes Petronas AMG HOT LAP EXPERIENCE — SILVERSTONE GRAND PRIX WEEKEND
Behind-the-scenes paddock access. A full team tour. And for one lucky fan: a passenger hot lap with one of our junior drivers.
You read it twice, then a third time, thumb hovering over the entry link. You weren't the type who won things. You'd entered a dozen contests over the years including raffles, sweepstakes, a radio call-in once that you'd forgotten about within the hour and won exactly nothing. But it cost nothing to enter, and it took less than a minute, so you filled in your name, your email, ticked the box confirming you were a member of the community, and went to bed without thinking about it again.
That was three weeks ago.
The email arrived on a Thursday afternoon while you were microwaving leftover pasta, your phone buzzing against the counter with a notification you almost swiped away without reading. You caught the subject line at the last second.
Congratulations — You've Won the Mercedes Petronas AMG Hot Lap Experience!
You stood very still for a moment, the microwave humming behind you, and read it again to make sure you hadn't misread a word of it. You hadn't. Your name was there. Your entry number was there. There was a phone number to call to confirm your identity and begin arranging travel.
"No," you said out loud, to nobody, because your flatmate was still at work and the only witness to this moment was a bag of frozen peas in the freezer door. "No, that's not… that's fake. That's got to be fake."
You spent the next twenty minutes doing exactly what any sensible person would do: you searched the sender's email domain, cross-referenced it against the team's official website, checked the community forum to see if anyone else had posted about winning, and eventually with your heart hammering somewhere up near your throat you called the number.
A woman with a crisp, professional voice answered on the second ring, said the team's name, and asked for your entry confirmation code like this was the most ordinary phone call in the world.
It was not, for you, an ordinary phone call. Your voice cracked on your own name.
By the time you hung up, you were laughing, and then you weren't laughing, you were sort of gasping, one hand braced on the kitchen counter, and the pasta was forgotten and slightly overcooked and you did not care even slightly.
You called your mother first. She didn't fully understand what Formula 1 was, let alone why you were shrieking about it, but she understood you, and she let you talk in circles for ten minutes before asking, gently, "So you get to meet the driver? The one you like?"
"I don't like him, Mum, I just — I've followed his career, it's not like that—"
"Mm," she said, in the particular tone mothers use when they've already decided something and are simply waiting for you to catch up.
You called your best friend next, and she screamed loudly enough that you had to hold the phone away from your ear, and then she immediately began drafting a list of things you needed to buy, none of which you actually needed, all of which you agreed to anyway because arguing felt like a waste of the good mood.
You did not, notably, mention how long you'd followed him. How you'd watched every junior series race you could find a stream for, back when he was driving in series most people had never heard of, back before anyone outside the paddock knew his name. How you'd felt something close to pride, absurd and one-sided as it was, the first time he stood on a Grand Prix podium. You told yourself it wasn't a crush. It was admiration. It was respect for a quiet, hardworking kid who'd made it to the top of the sport through sheer bloody-minded persistence rather than noise or ego.
You told yourself this several more times over the following two weeks, with decreasing conviction.
—------
The Mercedes Petronas AMG press office sent a schedule, a waiver, a dress code (smart casual, closed-toe shoes, no loose jewellery), and a document confirming that your travel and one night's accommodation near the circuit would be covered. You read every word of it more times than was strictly necessary.
You told yourself you wouldn't get your hopes up about anything beyond the obvious: a hot lap, a photo, maybe a signature if you were lucky and didn't completely embarrass yourself. He was a Formula 1 driver in the middle of a championship battle. He had a media schedule, sponsor commitments, physio, debriefs, a hundred other things pulling at his time. You would get an hour with him if you were fortunate. Maybe less.
That didn't stop you from watching every recent interview clip you could find, not to prepare talking points exactly, just to remind yourself who he actually was, rather than the flattened, half-imagined version you'd built up over years of distant admiration. You noticed things you'd noticed before but filed away properly this time: the way he answered questions slowly, choosing words with visible care, like he didn't trust himself to speak without thinking first. The dry, almost apologetic humour that surfaced when a reporter caught him off guard. The way he went quiet and still whenever a camera lingered too long on his face, like attention was a coat that didn't quite fit him yet.
Your flatmate, tired of hearing about it, eventually banned the subject from the flat after nine p.m., which you respected for approximately four days.
You packed and repacked your bag three times. You bought a new pair of trainers you didn't need because the dress code had made you paranoid your usual ones looked too worn. You lay awake the night before your flight running through a dozen imagined versions of how the day might go, none of which, you would later think, came anywhere close to how it actually unfolded.
The circuit reached you before you reached the circuit.
You felt it from the shuttle bus window, a low mechanical thrum vibrating up through the floor and into the soles of your new trainers, engines somewhere out on track running practice starts, the sound doubling back off grandstands and hospitality units in a way that made the whole world seem to hum. Traffic crawled along roads lined with flags — every team's colours strung up in long fluttering rows, Mercedes Petronas AMG's silver and deep green among them, and you found yourself staring at that particular combination of colours the way you might stare at a familiar face in a crowd.
The campsites had bloomed up overnight in every field bordering the circuit, tents in clusters, barbecue smoke rising thin and grey into a sky that couldn't quite decide whether it wanted to rain. Fans walked in every direction wearing every driver's merchandise, faces painted, flags draped over shoulders like capes, and somewhere in the crowd you spotted no fewer than six people wearing his number.
You didn't say anything about that. You just noticed it, and something in your chest went warm and strange.
The paddock, once you were credentialed through security with a laminated pass on a lanyard that you were fairly sure you would frame later and never admit to, was its own separate world entirely. It smelled like nothing you'd expected and everything you should have: hot rubber, spilled espresso, sunscreen, the faint acrid tang of fuel drifting from somewhere near the garages, and underneath it all, the mineral smell of rain that hadn't fallen yet but was clearly considering it.
Team personnel moved everywhere, at a walking pace just shy of a jog, headsets clipped to belts, tablets tucked under arms, badges swinging. A cluster of mechanics wheeled a tyre trolley past you close enough that you had to step back, and one of them said "sorry, love" without breaking stride. Media crews with enormous cameras stood in loose knots outside hospitality units, waiting for someone important enough to justify the wait. Somewhere above it all, a tannoy voice announced a schedule change for the support race in a tone of practiced, weary cheer.
A young woman in a Mercedes polo shirt found you within minutes of you stepping through the gates, checking a name off a tablet with the brisk efficiency of someone who did this exact task every single race weekend and had long since run out of patience for anyone who wasted her time.
"You must be our competition winner," she said, extending a hand. "I'm Priya, hospitality and guest relations. Welcome to the paddock, how was the journey?"
"Good. Fine. A bit surreal, honestly," you admitted, and she laughed, not unkindly.
"That's the normal reaction. Come on, I'll get you settled before the tour starts."
She walked you through hospitality, a glass-fronted structure humming with quiet, expensive calm, sponsors' logos etched into the windows, drivers' overalls displayed behind glass like museum pieces, and talked you through the schedule for the day. Garage tour first. Lunch. Then, mid-afternoon, the hot lap itself, timed carefully around track sessions and media windows.
"And Kimi's meeting you for the tour," she added, checking her tablet again, "assuming media doesn't run over. Sometimes it does."
Hearing his name said so casually, so functionally, like he was simply an item on a schedule rather than someone you'd watched race in the rain three years ago and thought, quietly, to yourself, that one's going to be special — it did something strange to your stomach.
"Sounds good," you said, in a voice you hoped sounded like a normal person's voice.
Priya glanced at you sideways, the corner of her mouth twitching, and said nothing at all.
—------
He was fifteen minutes late, which Priya assured you was, for a Grand Prix weekend and for an Italian, essentially early.
You were standing just inside the garage, trying very hard to look like someone who belonged there and not like someone counting the seconds, when you saw him come around the side of the building, caramel hair still slightly damp from a shower after the morning session, team polo shirt, a lanyard identical to your own except his had about four times as many access levels printed on it.
He looked younger in person. Not younger than his age, exactly, but softer somehow less like the composed figure in post-race interviews and more like someone who'd simply woken up that morning and put on the clothes his job required of him.
He spotted you and slowed his pace, and for just a second which was brief enough that you might have imagined it, except you didn't think you had something like nerves crossed his face before he schooled it into a polite, careful smile.
"Hi," he said, stopping a respectful distance away and extending a hand. "You're— sorry, I should know this— you're our competition winner?"
"That's me," you said, shaking his hand, which was warm and slightly rougher than you'd expected, calloused in a way that made you think, absurdly, of steering wheels and gear paddles. "Thank you for— I mean, this is— I don't really know what to say, honestly."
"That's alright," he said. "I never really know what to say either."
It was such an unexpectedly honest thing to say that you laughed before you could stop yourself, and he blinked, then smiled properly this time, small and a little surprised at himself.
"I mean it," he added. "People assume because I talk to cameras I'm good at talking. I'm not. I just— I've had practice not saying anything stupid on camera. It's different."
"Well, you're doing fine so far."
"Ask me again in an hour."
You both stood there a beat too long, the kind of silence that isn't quite comfortable yet but isn't unbearable either, and then he gestured toward the garage entrance with a sort of relieved briskness, like he'd been handed a task and was glad to have something to do with his hands.
"Should we start the tour? I was told I'm meant to show you around. I'm not— I'm not always sure how much detail people want, so tell me if I'm being boring."
"I promise I won't find it boring."
"You say that now," he said, and there was the dry humour you'd noticed in interviews, quieter in person, almost private. "Wait until I start explaining tyre degradation."
You did not, in fact, find it boring.
He walked you through slowly, gesturing at things with an ease that only surfaced once he had a subject he actually knew inside and out, and you began to understand, watching him, that his earlier awkwardness had nothing to do with unfriendliness and everything to do with simply not knowing what was expected of him in an unscripted moment. Give him a car to talk about, though, and he relaxed by degrees.
"This is basically where the whole weekend lives," he said, nodding toward the garage floor, where the chassis sat raised on a rig, engineers crouched around it with the unhurried focus of surgeons. "Everything gets stripped down and rebuilt overnight sometimes. People think it's just — bolt the wheels on, done. It's not like that at all."
"How much of it do you actually understand? Like, mechanically."
"More than people expect. Less than the engineers would like." He nodded toward a man frowning at a laptop screen displaying rows of data. "That's Bono, my race engineer. If you want to know anything real about the car, ask him, not me. I just drive it and complain when it doesn't do what I want."
"Do you complain a lot?"
"Constantly," Bono said without looking up, and Kimi made a small wounded noise that made you laugh again.
He showed you the steering wheel display, walking you through what half the buttons did with a patience that made it clear he'd explained this exact thing dozens of times before to dozens of guests and had never once found a shortcut, because he genuinely wanted people to understand it properly. He showed you the pit wall, quiet mid-afternoon, monitors dark, and told you what it was like during a race how loud it got in his helmet, how strange it was that he could hear his engineer's voice perfectly clear over an engine screaming at seventeen thousand revs.
"Does it get lonely?" you asked, without entirely meaning to. "In the car, I mean. During a race."
He considered this for longer than you expected, like it wasn't a question he got asked often, or maybe wasn't one he'd properly asked himself.
"Sometimes," he admitted. "It's just you and the car and a voice in your ear. You can't see anyone's face. You can't really talk to anyone except your engineer, and even then it's mostly numbers and instructions." He paused. "I like it, though. It's the one place where nobody's watching me think. They just see what I do."
You didn't say anything to that, not right away, because it felt like something truer than he'd meant to say out loud, and you didn't want to make him self-conscious about it.
"That's a very poetic way to describe going round in circles very fast," you said instead, gently, and he huffed something that was almost a laugh.
"Don't tell the engineers I said anything poetic. I'll never hear the end of it."
—---------
Lunch was in a corner of hospitality, a plate of pasta you barely tasted because you were too busy trying not to stare at him across the table, and he ate with the brisk efficiency of someone used to eating on a schedule rather than for pleasure, though he did pause halfway through to make a face at his own plate.
"This is very beige," he said. "Nutritionist's orders. I love pasta but I miss it with actual flavour."
"What would you eat if you could eat anything right now?"
"Honestly? My grandmother's cooking. She does this— " he gestured vaguely, searching for a word in Italian that clearly wasn't quite cooperating, " —it doesn't translate well. Very simple. Very good. I haven't had it properly in months."
"You could ask catering to make it."
"I did, once. It wasn't the same. I think it's not really about the food." He shrugged, a little embarrassed at himself for having said something so unguarded, and reached for his water instead of continuing.
You found, over the next twenty minutes, that this was a pattern with him, a genuine thought would surface, unguarded and a little raw, and then he'd catch himself and retreat slightly, as though worried he'd overshared with a stranger. You didn't push. You just let the silences sit there, unhurried, and slowly he seemed to relax into them rather than fill them nervously.
At one point you asked, carefully, trying not to sound like exactly the kind of overinvested fan you were trying not to be, how he was finding the season so far.
"Honestly, tiring," he said. "Good, but tiring. It's a lot of everyone always wants something. An interview, a photo, an opinion. I don't mind giving those things, I just—" He exhaled. "It's nice, today, actually. Nobody wants anything from me except to look at a car with me."
"I want a hot lap out of you," you pointed out. "So technically I want something too."
That earned you the first proper laugh of the day surprised out of him, a little loud, quickly muffled with the back of his hand like he hadn't expected himself to laugh that openly in front of someone he'd just met.
"Fair," he said. "Alright. You've earned that one."
—----
The garage had cleared of most of the morning's crowd by the time you were led toward a side room lined with helmets on shelves, HANS devices hanging from hooks, and a wall of race suits arranged by size.
A mechanic introduced simply as Tomas, forearms permanently smudged with something dark and mechanical fitted you for a helmet with brisk, careful hands, checking the strap twice, tilting your head gently side to side to make sure it sat properly.
"Little tight is good," he said. "Loose is bad. You'll thank me later."
Kimi appeared a few minutes later already half into his own overalls, hair pushed back, looking genuinely, uncomplicatedly happy in a way he hadn't quite been all afternoon. This, you realised, was his actual environment. Everything before had been performance, however gentle. This was simply him.
"Nervous?" he asked, watching you turn your helmet over in your hands.
"Extremely."
"Good. Means you're taking it seriously." He crouched slightly to look you properly in the eye, voice dropping into something more careful. "It'll be loud. Really loud, even with the helmet on. The braking will feel harder than you expect — like something's got hold of your whole body and yanked it forward. If you want me to slow down at any point, just tap my shoulder, twice, hard. I'll feel it even over the engine. Okay?"
"Okay."
"You're allowed to scream," he added, and there was that dry humour again, a small smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. "Everyone does. I won't tell anyone."
"Do you scream?"
"The first time I drove one of these, yes. Don't tell anyone that either."
The car itself, once you were lowered into the passenger seat beside him — a tight, secure fit, the world suddenly reduced to the curve of the cockpit and the tang of race fuel close enough to taste — felt smaller and larger at once. Smaller because there was barely room to move. Larger because the second the engine caught, a shattering, physical roar that you felt in your teeth before you properly heard it, the whole world seemed to expand outward from that sound.
Kimi glanced over once, checked your harness with two firm tugs, and gave you a thumbs up through his visor that you returned, considerably less steadily.
Then he pulled out of the garage, and the world changed entirely.
The pit lane felt fast. The main straight, once he opened the car up properly, felt like something else altogether — a pressure against your chest, the scenery beyond the cockpit smearing into long indistinct streaks of green and grey, the sound swallowing every thought in your head except a single continuous noise that might have been a scream and might have been a laugh, you genuinely couldn't tell which.
Through the corners, the car seemed to compress and stretch in ways that made no physical sense, g-forces hauling your head sideways, your hands gripping the harness straps hard enough that your knuckles ached. Braking into the tighter sections felt exactly like he'd described — something enormous seizing your entire body and dragging it forward, your vision briefly doubling with the force of it.
You were, you realised somewhere around the second lap, laughing continuously, helplessly, the sound swallowed by the engine but still shaking through your chest, and beside you, through the small gap in his visor, you caught the edge of Kimi's expression — focused, utterly calm, and unmistakably, quietly delighted at your reaction, glancing over just slightly more often than the driving strictly required.
By the final lap your throat was raw from noise you hadn't fully controlled, your hands trembling faintly even after he brought the car to a gentle stop back in the garage, engine ticking as it cooled, silence rushing in so suddenly it felt like its own kind of pressure.
Kimi pulled his visor up first, grinning, actually grinning, wide and unguarded, nothing careful about it at all.
"So?" he said. "Verdict?"
"I think I left my stomach somewhere around turn six."
"That's the correct reaction." He was already climbing out, offering you a hand as you unclipped the harness with fingers that weren't entirely steady yet. "You did well. Some people go completely silent. Some people cry. You just laughed the whole way, it was—" He stopped himself, seeming to realise he was about to say something he hadn't quite planned to, and settled instead for, "—it was nice. Driving someone who's actually enjoying it."
You pulled your helmet off, hair static-charged and sticking up in every direction, and he looked at you for a beat too long before glancing away, ears faintly pink, and you decided, charitably, that it was probably just the heat.
You expected that to be the end of it. A hot lap, a photo with the car, a polite goodbye, back on the shuttle bus with a story you'd tell for the rest of your life.
Instead, once you'd both changed back into ordinary clothes and your legs had steadied under you, Kimi lingered by the garage entrance, hands in his pockets, looking faintly uncertain in a way that didn't match the confidence he'd shown behind the wheel.
"Do you—" he started, then stopped, then tried again. "I don't have anything else scheduled until the evening debrief. If you wanted, I could show you a bit more. The rest of the paddock. It's not really part of the— official tour, but." He shrugged, a little helplessly. "I don't mind. If you want."
"I'd like that," you said, probably too quickly, and he seemed relieved enough that you both pretended not to notice.
He showed you the trophy cabinet in the team's hospitality unit, tapping the glass in front of a modest collection of silverware with something between pride and embarrassment. "Not much yet," he said. "Give it time."
"I believe you," you said, and meant it, and he glanced at you sideways like he wasn't quite sure what to do with someone saying something like that so plainly.
He introduced you to a mechanic named Dario who was halfway through rebuilding a gearbox and who, upon hearing you were the competition winner, said something in rapid Italian that made Kimi go faintly red and mutter something back that silenced him, though not before Dario shot you both an unmistakably knowing look.
"What did he say?" you asked.
"Nothing," Kimi said, too quickly.
"Kimi."
"He said I usually finish these tours in twenty minutes," he admitted, not quite meeting your eyes. "We've been out here two hours."
"Is that bad?"
"No," he said, and then, quieter, almost to himself, "no, I don't think it's bad at all."
You wandered past the team truck, where a mechanic was cataloguing spare parts with the focus of a librarian; past a wall where photos from every race of the season were pinned in careful rows, Kimi pointing out ones that had gone particularly well or particularly badly with equal, easy honesty; past a quiet corner of the paddock where the noise of the wider circuit fell away almost entirely and it was just the two of you, walking slowly, in no particular hurry to be anywhere else.
"Can I ask you something?" you said, somewhere in that quiet stretch.
"You can ask."
"Why does the awkwardness go away when you're talking about the car, or the team, but come straight back the second it's just conversation?"
He was quiet for a while, long enough that you wondered if you'd overstepped, and then he said, carefully, "I've always found it easier to be sure of things I understand completely. A car, I understand completely. A person—" He gestured vaguely, a small helpless motion. "I don't always know what's expected of me. I say the wrong thing, or I don't say anything at all, and then it's worse."
"You haven't said anything wrong all day."
"Give it time," he said, echoing your earlier words back at you, and you both laughed, and something in the space between you eased another fraction.
Priya found you both near the hospitality unit as the light outside had started turning gold with early evening, her expression somewhere between amused and faintly exasperated as she checked her tablet.
"There you are," she said. "I was starting to think we'd lost our winner. And you—" she pointed at Kimi, "—Marco's been asking where you've got to. Debrief's in forty minutes."
"I know," Kimi said, not sounding remotely sorry about it.
"Mm," Priya said, exactly the way your mother had said it on the phone weeks earlier, and you decided you would think about that later, when you weren't quite so distracted by the way Kimi was looking faintly, helplessly pleased with himself.
Marco, who you'd gathered by now this was the team's press officer, appeared shortly after with the harried expression of a man whose carefully planned schedule had somehow stretched itself by several hours without his input, glancing between you and Kimi with an expression that suggested he understood exactly why, even if he wasn't going to say so out loud.
"We do need you for debrief soon," he told Kimi, not unkindly. "Toto's waiting."
"I know," Kimi said again, and then, to you, quieter: "I have to go in a minute."
"I figured."
"I didn't want to," he said, and then looked faintly startled at his own honesty, the way he had all day whenever something true slipped out before he'd properly decided to say it.
You walked the last stretch back toward the paddock exit together, slower than either of you needed to, the golden evening light stretching long shadows across the tarmac, distant engine noise from the support race still rolling faintly through the air like weather.
"Thank you," you said, when you reached the gate, meaning it more than the words could probably carry. "For today. Genuinely. I don't think I'll ever– this isn't the kind of thing that happens to people like me."
"I don't think there's a specific kind of person this is supposed to happen to," he said. "It happened. That's enough, isn't it?"
"I suppose."
You stood there a beat too long, the way you had at the very start of the day, except the silence now felt entirely different not awkward exactly, just full, weighted with something neither of you had quite named yet.
"I should say goodbye properly," you said eventually, holding out your hand the way you had that morning, "since I doubt I'll—"
"Wait," he said.
You waited.
He looked, for a moment, exactly like he had before the first word he'd ever spoken to you — nervous, visibly working up to something, hands shoved deep into his pockets like he needed somewhere to put them.
"I don't—" he started, then stopped, exhaled, tried again. "I don't usually do this. I want to say that first, because I don't want you to think I do this with every — with anyone who wins a competition." A faint, self-deprecating huff. "I don't. I've never wanted to, before today."
"Kimi—"
"I'd like to see you again," he said, in a rush now, like if he didn't get it all out at once he might lose his nerve entirely. "Not not like this. Not a tour, not a schedule. Just you. If you wanted that. I don't know how it would work, with the season, I travel a lot, I know that's but I'd like to try, if you'd let me."
You felt something in your chest go very warm and very still all at once.
"Are you asking me on a date?" you said, partly to buy yourself a second to process it, partly because you wanted to hear him say it properly.
He went slightly pink, glanced away, then made himself look back at you anyway, which felt like the bravest thing you'd seen him do all day, braver somehow than a hundred and eighty miles an hour down a straight.
"Would it be alright," he said, carefully, like he'd been rehearsing the exact words, "if I took you on a date sometime?"
You didn't answer immediately, not because you were unsure, but because you wanted to hold the moment a beat longer, this ordinary, extraordinary boy standing in front of you with his hands in his pockets and his ears gone faintly red, looking more nervous asking this question than he had looked driving a car at ludicrous speed an hour earlier.
"Yes," you said. "I'd like that. A lot."
The smile that broke across his face then was nothing like the careful, camera-ready one from the morning. It was wide and a little disbelieving and entirely unguarded, and you thought, quietly, that you would remember that exact expression for a very long time.
"Okay," he said, like he needed to hear himself confirm it. "Okay. Good."
He asked for your number, fumbling slightly with his phone in a way that felt endearing rather than smooth, and you gave it to him, and he saved it immediately with a small, private smile like he wanted to make sure it was real before he let himself believe it.
"I'll text you," he said. "Properly. Not just— I mean, I'll actually plan something. I'm not very good at it, I'll warn you now, but I'll try."
"I believe you," you said again, and he ducked his head, pleased and a little shy about it, the same way he had been in the trophy room hours earlier.
Marco called his name from somewhere behind you, gently insistent, and Kimi glanced back, then at you, clearly reluctant to be the one to end this.
"I have to—"
"I know. Go."
He hesitated one more second, like he wanted to say something else and hadn't quite decided what, and then, simply, quietly: "Thank you for laughing the whole way round. Nobody's ever done that before."
Then he was walking backward for a few steps, still looking at you, before he turned properly and jogged back toward the garages, and you stood at the gate with your pass still around your neck and your phone now holding a new contact and the whole gold-lit evening settling warm around you.
The shuttle bus back to the hotel was quieter than the one that morning, most passengers scrolling through photos of their day, comparing notes on which driver they'd glimpsed and where. You sat by the window with your phone in your lap, not checking it exactly, just aware of its presence, the way you might be aware of a held breath.
The message came through just after nine that evening, while you were repacking your bag for the flight home.
Debrief ran long. Sorry. Today was good. Better than good. I meant what I said — I'll actually plan something properly, give me a few days to sort my schedule. Thank you for today.
You read it four times before you let yourself reply, and even then you deleted your first two attempts for sounding either too casual or entirely deranged with enthusiasm.
Today was one of the best days of my life. I'm serious. Thank you for asking.
The reply came almost immediately, like he'd been waiting, phone in hand, the exact way you had been.
I'm glad it was you who won. I don't say things like that easily. But I mean it.
You sat on the edge of the hotel bed for a long moment after that, phone held loosely in both hands, feeling something settle in your chest that felt less like the end of an extraordinary day and much more, unmistakably, like the very beginning of something else.
Outside, faint and distant, you could still hear engines somewhere on the circuit, the last stretches of evening track action winding down into the ordinary quiet of a race weekend settling toward night. You thought about the roar of that hot lap, the warmth of his hand steadying yours as he'd helped you out of the car, the particular, unguarded way he'd smiled when you said yes.
You didn't know yet what shape this would take how a rookie driver's punishing travel schedule and your very ordinary life might fit together, what a first date with someone whose face occasionally appeared on billboards might actually look like. You didn't need to know yet. For tonight, it was enough to have the message glowing on your phone screen, and the quiet, steady certainty that this wasn't goodbye at all.
It was, very simply, a beginning.
laysha's notes: lmk if you guys like it!! also lmk if you'd like to see a part 2 of this storyy
hi hi so on The Mercedes WhatsApp they released a hot lap experience w media smth idk can you do smth w reader getting that at Silverstone and being a huge fan of Kimi and he takes her on a hot lap and around The paddock xx so kinda slow burn but it’s not like straight i like you kiss it’s can I take you on a date first kinda thing. Tysm I had to request sowmthing else Cus I loved the last one xx
oo a slow burn!! it's gonna take me a while to write this but i've just started it <3
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