01. gently brushing the other’s hair out of their face to tuck behind their ear. / do milo pra kiki <3
Italians are known for passion — the kind that spills from their veins like wine, staining everything it touches. Born from poetic views and too much salt from the Mediterranean sea, with tempers that would rival the sun itself, and cheeky tongues that use poetry to fuck someone verbally. Maybe somewhere deep inside her, Kiara thought that she wasn't Italian at all, a deep-rooted belief that she was somehow immune to that cultural behavior that ran hot through the Romans' veins. She had been a calm child, the type that doesn't cry, doesn't trouble their parents, the type of child that waits for help in silence, waiting for an adult to notice the blood on their knees. A prodigy, they said, too smart for her own good. She wasn't passionate, not in the way they thought Italians were; she didn't grow up talking loudly and fighting at every instance. Deep down, she thought herself superior. Too smart for that. Too advanced for the kissed by the sun type of life. Until she met him and learned that she was every bit a fiery as every other Italian. She fought loud, loved hard, and held grudges like family heirlooms, as long as it was for that man.
It was a domino of things that had to fall right into place at the right time to bring them together. Because Kiara had to be born a prodigy, she had to start doing math as an infant, she had to be born into an automotive dynasty, she had to graduate as an engineer at fourteen, and start in Formula One at sixteen. She had to break up with George Russell. She had to do many things just for that one night, that one night where Jonah had introduced them, and she had decided right there and now that she was either going to be going home with that man or she wouldn't go home with anyone else ever again. That night, with a firm grip of a handshake and one name being told her, she discovered more about herself than in the whole 18 years of her life to that point.
Because Kiara Ferrari was raised as a quiet child, a stoic person, someone who wasn't loud and obnoxious, she was work-centered, she was hard-working, she was cold, and hyper-fixated on being the best. She wasn't the type to fall for a boy and become another person. Or so she thought, because by the time she turned 21, she was already married to him, already had a child with him, and already had become every bit of an Italian she could when it came to her husband. She was in all of her glory, the sun of the Mediterranean,
And just maybe the universe had a strange sense of humor — giving the daughter of the Mediterranean sun to a man raised beneath gray skies and borrowed land. Milo came from quiet mountains and stubborn waters, from a place where the wind carried the scent of salt and soil, where men had spent centuries building walls to keep the sea from swallowing their homes. He was born Dutch — from a lineage that learned to bargain with nature instead of fight it, to drain the swamps and claim the impossible, to live below sea level and still look the sky in the eye. With parents who loved him enough to put his dreams above their comfort.
He spoke the way the Dutch build: precisely, efficiently, without waste. He loved the way they painted — subtle shades, deliberate brushstrokes, light caught on ordinary things. There was no need for grand gestures or loud declarations; his devotion lived in the quiet — in a fixed screw, a warm cup of coffee left waiting, a hand reaching for hers in the dark. Even in his reckless behavior, there was a quiet calculation of risks. There was something steady about him, like the canals — calm on the surface, but deep enough to drown in.
Where Kiara burned, Milo endured. Where she sang, he hummed. He came from a people who made beauty out of survival, who learned to hold back the tide, and maybe that’s what he was doing with her all along — holding back the tide. He spent years building himself a fortress in the center of her — a quiet citadel of his own making, untouched by the storms she carried. The type that was capable of enduring even when surrounded by her passion and winds. Never blown away. Never shook. Never torn apart. A castle of sorts that was made to take root.
His touch on her skin, so soft, so tender, was like breathing fresh air after a long day inside. His eyes were like being home, blue like the seas that surrounded Italy, and his hands were like being shown the way back. But Kiara? Kiara had the brown eyes of a cloudy Dutch sky, a smile that always held too many secrets, and that type of breathing that always seemed to be hinting at butterflies in her stomach.
There, in the artificial lights of Monaco, surrounded by French voices that flowed over them like distant rivers, so far from both of their homelands, their eyes remained the same. In the glitter and hum of a world that demanded performance, that insisted on appearances, it was only in each other’s gaze that they found truth. Because at the end of every night, after the speeches, the applause, the engines and champagne, the reality remained simple and undeniable: they were each other’s home.