Discover Top Posts Tagged with #kimi antonelli

Aug 15

► Starboy - The Weeknd & Daft Punk

PARING: KA12 x Teammate!Reader

WARNINGS: smut 18+ (mdni), age gap (19, 22), oral (f receiving), p in v (unprotected, oops) vocal kimi & reader, cursing, pwp, drunk sex (consensual), fingering, edging

WORD COUNT: 20,3k (sit down for this one!)

SUMMARY: You are meant to be the mentor, coaching Kimi on the ways of Formula 1. Instead, you're the #2 driver, fighting in the same car, for the same points, for the same championship. Every race brought you closer to the edge, ignoring team orders and nearly ending careers.

Hating him was easy.

Wanting him was not.

a/n: some grand prix cut out for the sake of simplicity. this took me fucking forever to write. predicted 1 hour 15 minutes to read so i hope you guys have that spare time on your hands. as this goes on the less proofread it gets, im sorry😞

SILVERSTONE, UK, 2026

Another rainy day in the UK, as it always is. Silverstone was a charming track; one you knew well. Having joined Mercedes 2 years before Kimi, everyone expected you to school him on the ways of F1.

It was embarrassing to admit that he was the one producing the results and not you.

The clouds seemed to hang over you as the garage packed up. The mechanics were working to move the world’s most expensive circus. That’s at least what you felt like. A clown, really.

A 19-year-old, who was still getting familiar with an F1 car, was out here winning races like he’d been racing for years. It felt like pure humiliation. It was expected that you would be the mentor, the guide, but the only thing you could feel when racing the car was pure anger towards him.

Your engineer’s voice echoed as you walked through the paddock, the people racing past as it began to rain.

“Let him through.” He says calmly, instructing you like this wasn’t the race that was going to put you P1 in the Driver’s Championship. Kimi is in your rearview mirrors; he’s swerving all over the place trying to get past you on the straight.

You deliberately block him as you turn into Stowe by parking your car deliberately in the middle of the straight. You hear his car click down a couple revs as he tries to dash down towards you on the inside, but it’s too small of a gap. The mess of silver and teal blends into your vision behind you as you just focus on getting through Vale without causing a collision.

As much as you fucking despised this nineteen-year-old having this insane advantage over you, you had one thing he didn’t: experience. You knew exactly how to make that car as wide as the track was, so he couldn’t get past.

“The car behind has significant pace.” You hear your engineer over the radio. You don’t reply. You go slightly wide into Club, making it easy to pull directly into the middle of the start/finish straight. You couldn’t push that pedal harder and send the numbers up. 200km/h. 300km/h. 350km/h.

The smell of petrol only drives your brain to go faster, to brake later. You imagine the taste of victory, how it could all be yours if you just focused on making Kimi number 2. You could taste the Moët’s bubbles burst on your tongue as you sprayed the podium full of champagne, the confetti falling all around you as you celebrated the win. If only he could have a taste of what you had every single weekend.

Every Sunday you were eating shit.

Every Sunday it was him getting pit stops, him getting priority. He always gets the strategy that puts him in P1. You felt like this team only cared about him, and only him.

On his side, he feels like you’re being a complete arse by not letting him through. He’s clearly faster; he’s clearly more capable of leading. Hamilton only gets closer as you slow him down. Nobody wants to have a battle with Hamilton in Silverstone. Nobody.

You see Kimi desperately pushing the Overtake button on his steering wheel as you go side-to-side into the first corner. You send the steering wheel right as your car turns into the corner with force, slamming the door shut in Kimi’s face.

You can hear the crowds hold their breath as you both barrel for track position. He doesn’t get position for free. That’s your trophy waiting for you on the top step, and Kimi is not allowed to take it just because he’s faster and younger. He needs to earn it.

The world watches as you touch wheels. The hit has your head slamming against the body of your car, and your body reacts faster than your mind as you push the pedals again. He’s on the outside; you’re on the inside. He wants to take you into the second corner.

“Ok, swap positions.” You hear your engineer getting more aggressive over the radio. You just ignore him; you have your hands full trying to keep your own teammate under wraps. You’re fueled by the fact that this win would mean you overtake Kimi in the championship. The taste of sweet, golden victory was shining as the bright orange sun blasted into your eyes.

You use your boost button to gain a bit of time on Kimi; he would’ve used it all on the straight, and therefore he couldn’t catch you into the next corner. You get a slight gap of about +0.4 seconds.

Turning into Chapel, you glide onto the straight, and you realise your fatal mistake. You used every single bit of battery you had left, creating that bit of breathing room between you, and Kimi had been charging his battery for 10 seconds by now. The last time he would’ve used it was on the Start/Finish straight.

He passes you with ease, almost as if he was pulling into a parking space. You watch as his car glides past you and pulls squarely into P1 as your car has absolutely no battery left. The taste of sweet, sweet victory was meant for the Italian boy today.

Kimi was P1, and you sat in P2 as he pulled out a 10-second gap on you. You’re separated by 11 points leaving Silverstone.

When you’d gotten to Parc Fermé and parked next to his Mercedes, you ran up to your team in celebration; they were both bouncing the two of you around. It was a one-two. That’s something you should be proud of, right? Teams like Haas could only dream of a P3, let alone both cars first and second.

When he takes off his helmet, he pats you on the shoulder. “You made me work for that one.” He says with a small grin on his face before walking onto the scale for the mandatory weight check.

You just bite your lip and walk behind him to be weighed. You sure hope he had to work for that one. Hope he broke a little sweat just thinking about you overtaking him in the championship.

You’re sucked back into the real world as someone walks up to you. “Good effort today.” One of the people from the pit crew pats you on the shoulder. Smiling felt painful. “Thanks.” You mutter before going to the motorhome to get something to eat.

The rain falls onto your shoulders as you walk into the building. It’s busy, as always. Everybody is packing up. You feel like you’re late even though the Grand Prix only ended 2 hours ago. Your car is already inside the truck, ready to be transported to Spa, and later, you will be flying with Kimi, Bono, Toto and the rest to Belgium.

Sitting at a table, your engineer slides into the seat opposite you. The food you were eating tasted bland. It was merely fuel for your body rather than anything else. “You ready to look at telemetry?” He asks nicely; you feel so damn annoyed, but you know it’s not his fault you had to listen to team orders. “Yeah.” You say between bites, as the rain falls onto the ground. You see it making little puddles in the paddock from the window.

The computer screen lights up in a spaghetti of lines and numbers. A picture of a track sits in the corner, and you stare at the Wellington straight. If only you hadn’t fucked up there. He drills on about going wide and where you needed to improve, but you couldn’t stop thinking about the position swap. It just seemed like a “fuck you.” Why couldn’t you win? Why didn’t they want you to win?

It’s not that this was for 7th and 8th; it was for a win. One that was costing you in this championship fight. When had the powers become so imbalanced? Was there an opportunity for you to win again, fair and square? Does Bono know why?

These questions swirled in your mind as you “mhm” and “yeah” at your engineer.

“And for the record, I don’t think Toto is very happy you wouldn’t give up position to Kimi.” He says, almost off the hand. “Well, it’s our championship to fight. If I had won, I could’ve been first in the championship today, but you were screaming in my ears, “let him through, let him through!” and you’re not thinking about what I want?” You almost shout at him, your voice getting louder.

“I get it, but Kimi was the faster guy on track today.” He mutters, knowing it’s falling on deaf ears. “I don’t care, at least let me fight for my own damn championship!” You hiss, noticing that everyone in the motorhome has now gone quiet from your outburst.

“It’s not like I’m here because I want to be the number 2 driver; I also want to win, and it’s so frustrating every Sunday having this entire team stopping me!” You’re so mad, you’re positively buzzing with rage. You couldn’t see anything other than your own selfish greed for victory.

You wanted to taste that champagne on a hot Sunday in Abu Dhabi with the fireworks exploding around you as the team screamed at the bottom for the new World Champion. You wanted to throw that trophy into the air and see the entire world celebrate you. The victory you’d dreamed of since a little kid. You were the champion.

“Sorry.” You say quietly, looking down and feeling embarrassed. You were a professional, remember? Didn’t you do this thing called ‘stay calm’?

The hours blended as the sun set; you walked with Toto and Bono to the jet waiting for you at the airport. Kimi was a couple of steps in front of you, his backpack hanging off one shoulder as he was texting someone.

“Try to get some sleep this time, will you?” Toto asks, and you smile. The last time you were on the jet, it was your third time winning. You just stared and touched your own trophy. It felt so precious; you almost felt maternal to it. The pretty embellishments and your own name being written on it, the gold reflecting in your eyes as you stared down at it, you couldn’t help but feel the childish joy enter you, thinking of another win.

“Yeah, yeah.” You laugh a little as you step onto the plane; it will be about an hour and a half before you arrive in Belgium for the most incredible race of the year, Spa-Francorchamps.

SPA, BELGIUM, 2026

“And they fight for track position going up Eau Rouge!” Crofty shouts as Kimi pulls up alongside you. The elevation change going up this corner has your adrenaline pumping unlike any other. It’s lap 7. You’re on old tyres; he’s on old tyres.

Those poor Pirellis are begging for a break as you both look at each other going 350km/h up this hill. The colours of red and yellow flash past you as the barriers become nothing more than a blur.

The pit wall is sweating just watching the two of you scramble once again for track position. You’re side by side going through the fastest corner on any track. There’s only space for one.

Kimi knows you’re a cocky bastard and would never give up P1 even if it means crashing. You’re thirsty for retribution after he overtook you in Silverstone. You’re practically buzzing for a win even though there’s still more than 30 laps left.

Your car is not even blurry in his vision. He can make out the sponsors on your helmet; that’s how close you are. The tyres are less than a millimetre away from touching; they’re softly brushing one another as Kimi is the one to give up first and pull back behind you.

However, he has a slipstream behind you onto the long straight. He knows you’re trigger-happy when it comes to pressing the boost buttons on your steering wheel. You’ll do it even just for +0.2 seconds of speed, without thinking of the consequences.

You’d seemed to have learned now when to push them. As Kimi pushes his, he feels almost joyous seeing you slowly fall behind him in his vision, but then you’re keeping up.

You’re not falling behind. You’re maybe even starting to inch in front of him. The trees ahead on the mountains surrounding Spa become ever closer as he can still see you in his vision. He looks next to himself at least twice every second. You just look straight ahead.

That corner only gets closer, and nobody’s cleanly ahead. You had Eau Rouge? He was going to have Turn 5. He slams the door shut on you going in. You’re left scrambling behind him as you break from his sudden movement.

Fine. If he wanted Turn 5, let Kimi have Turn 5. You’ll get him within the next 10 corners.

The climb up Eau Rouge started having you in a bit of a panic as your battle continued. For over 5 laps you both scraped up the hill. You knew F1 meant risk. You obviously knew that, but fighting so brazenly while your pedal was flat on the floor was starting to become unnerving. Between you and Kimi, someone had to give out.

However, you couldn’t tear your eyes away from the back of his car; then you’d overtake him, then he’d overtake you on the last corner, and you’d catch back up on the straight, and take him again up Eau Rouge.

It was feeling a bit more like an uncoordinated dance rather than racing. You were slowly losing time to the cars behind you. The Ferrari of Hamilton slowly came closer in your rearview mirrors. He was still seconds behind; it wasn’t too bad.

The climb up Eau Rouge came again; it’s a silly adrenaline rush with Kimi right next to you, starting to become unnerving. It was fun for a couple laps, but now something had to give. Kimi’s tyres are struggling; you can see his car slip and slide. Your own car feels fine; sure, the tyres are old, and they’ve served their course, but a couple more laps are possible.

You’re about to overtake Kimi on the last corner when he dives into the pits.

“Push, push, push!” You hear your engineer shout into the radio. You’re giving it your all; now the hill wasn’t so bad that the looming threat of clipping and crashing at 350km/h is gone.

You enjoy the sight of having nobody in front of you for about 4 laps. The wind rushing past you is fresh and doesn’t smell of old rubber and petrol. It’s so fresh you can stare at the grandstands as you zone out and enjoy this welcome reprieve.

For Kimi, it’s not so easy. He had undercut Hamilton and was currently between him and Verstappen. Verstappen was 2 seconds behind him, and he was 1.5 seconds behind Hamilton. Eventually, he was going to fight Hamilton, or he’d defend against Verstappen.

What a predicament to find himself in. He’d have to really prove himself. It was all fun and games scrapping with you since he knew your stripes like the back of his hand, since karting days, but the two world champions? The same ones he watched on TV in 2021?

You couldn’t push the car any more than you could. And then Hamilton, who was not that far behind before, was now within a second of you.

His car threatens to zip past you multiple times up the straight, and you try your hardest to defend, but your tyres are so old and tired that Hamilton just passes you. The overtake boost helps him along, but you couldn’t do anything.

“Box this lap.” Your engineer says. You’d have to eat shit; your tyres were finished. You hit your marks as you come into the box. The Mercedes crew was always reliable, and you had an average 2.6-second stop. Just as you had practised before.

You come out just 1 second behind Kimi, and now the fight was back on. Now Verstappen was behind you and catching. You had to decide: defend Verstappen or fight Kimi?

Fighting Kimi would mean Verstappen would catch you anyway, and defending against Verstappen means Kimi slips away. Flying up Eau Rouge again, you get Kimi’s slipstream and begin to get closer to him. Verstappen keeps up, but you will fight that battle when you get there.

Your engines hum together in the song to your uncoordinated dance. Every time the two of you dive into corners, Toto is sitting in the back of the garage hoping you do not rip a tyre or front wing off. You were both in such good positions for a podium.

Kimi was right next to you by the time you had gone onto the start/finish straight. You’re focused on diving into turn one to take Kimi. He defends excellently before you begin the race up the hill.

Your cars begin making the music to your uncoordinated symphony, the sounds of F1 engines being pushed to their limit. For the first time, you look into your mirrors.

Max Verstappen.

Max Verstappen is following you up the hill, in your slipstream, as you’re following Kimi, and you’re now barreling down the straight with the wind gushing past you; it smells like rubber and dirty air off another car, and then you’re three-wide going into turn 5.

Verstappen had caught up, and now you were in a sandwich. Kimi begins turning in on you, and your wheels touch, and your heart momentarily leaves your chest as you feel the car slip out of your control. The car goes sliding as Kimi’s car wiggles all over the corner.

“And Verstappen says, ‘Thank you very much’ as the two Mercedes touch!” Crofty commentates as Verstappen slips between your sliding cars and drives off into the distance. His car becomes nothing but a blur as you spin around, ending your dance with Kimi.

“This whole rivalry must stop, the two of you. You’re being hotheaded and reckless. Hamilton got through due to your old tyres, but you two were so busy fighting each other up Eau Rouge every lap that even Verstappen caught the both of you napping.” Toto scalds the both of you. You sit like little children being shouted at by their parent.

“You two have the fastest cars on this grid, and instead of racing Verstappen, you two were busy wiggling those cars through the corner while he passed you?” Toto crossed his arms; not even Bono looked him in the eyes. Everyone is too scared to look him in the eyes.

Toto always had that aura of a ‘strict but kind’ person. You normally never saw Toto’s strict side. The mere thought of it existing had both you and Kimi toeing the line, and Kimi was a little troublemaker.

However, today you brought out the strict side of Toto Wolff.

“You both were about to crash into one another every 5 seconds. Especially up Eau Rouge. You are two of the most talented drivers on this planet, and you are trying to send yourself to death’s door?” He mocks, moving towards the two of you with narrowed eyes.

There’s a moment of silence before he begins again.

“Instead of racing Verstappen, what were the two of you doing?” He directs it at you and Kimi sitting next to one another; you both stare at one another before looking at Toto.

“Racing,” Kimi says smugly, giving Toto a little attitude. He quickly discovers why nobody dares speak right now. “Racing who? Your teammate.” Toto replies for him. He sucks in a long breath as everybody sits in pure silence.

“You raced her for twenty laps, let not just Verstappen but Hamilton through, Ferrari have overtaken us in the Constructors’, and you have the gall to tell me you were ‘racing’, Kimi?” Toto’s words were cold, but his tone was calm. It had a couple of engineers twitching in their seats.

“I don’t care if you want the win,” He points at you, “Or if you want the win.” He points at Kimi, “We are here to win, and I care that just one of you stands on the top step of the podium.”

“In Monza, I’m expecting two racing drivers, not two dense idiots.” He gives a piercing stare to the two of you and then at the room of engineers, closing the door behind him.

“Are the relations between you and Kimi breaking down?” One of the journalists asks as you stand in the media pen. You nearly rolled your eyes.

“No, we are just focused on racing and fighting for the title; there is no bad blood between us personally.” You lie, because things were certainly breaking down between the two of you.

Kimi seemed to be getting more sponsor deals than you. That was infuriating. Then there were the shared sponsors with Adidas or Petronas that flash in the back of your mind.

Posing. Standing for hours while Kimi mindlessly quips at everything and everyone. It was funny at first, but now it’s just fucking annoying. You want to almost push him the next time he says, “Why do we keep having to do the pictures again? Because you’re not smiling.”

You turned towards him quickly, almost offended. “Because I’m not smiling? If you just stayed quiet, we could be done already!”

“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today…” He says quietly before looking down in embarrassment. He’s experienced your wrath before, and it was not pretty.

In Miami, when you two clipped and ripped off your entire front wing, you nearly wanted to dismantle his car by taking out every individual screw before you arrived in Canada. He was only saved by Toto telling you to calm that temper “or else.”

You’re sucked back into the real world when the journalist asks you another question. “You said there’s no bad blood between you and Kimi, so why has Toto needed to speak to the two of you after the last two races?”

“We’re both competitive drivers.” You respond, watching as another journalist steps in; the camera watches your every move. You know lots of people are watching you, making sure not to miss how your hands were sweating around the microphone so as not to let it become obvious how much you despised him.

“Competitive enough to lose a win?” He follows up, and you look at the camera briefly, pondering what to say.

“That’s your interpretation.” You respond calmly, watching as the second journalist begins speaking. “Has Mercedes chosen a number one driver?”

You just bite your tongue because you know it’s true. Kimi was their little golden boy. He could do no wrong. He was the one to always get the pit stop; he was always the one to be defended by Toto; he always got the brand deals and the girls, and God knows what else, maybe some free gifts from...like skincare brands. That’s right. Yeah.

And maybe some free trainers.

You blink. What the actual fuck is going on in your mind right now?

You look down at the free watch IWC had sent you. Huh. Free. The deals Kimi also gets; you get. Maybe that was incorrect. Maybe you’re just being a facetious prat right now.

You suck in a breath as you’re now walking back from the tense media pen. It’s like being blood in the pool of sharks. The second you put a toe slightly out of line, they’re all over you. The tabloids full of, “Hamilton and Rosberg Part 2?” or “Rivalry at Mercedes?”

“What’d they ask?” He falls into step alongside you, seemingly trying to make small talk, as if that was going to fix a season full of switcheroos and front wings falling off.

“The usual.” You drawl, feeling like you didn’t have the energy to talk about it all again. It was exhausting balancing this fine line, where you started feeling pure hatred for this 19-year-old boy, and then acting like it’s just racing and that’s that.

Cause deep in your heart, it was hate. He was destroying the dream one race at a time. He would taste the Moët under the Abu Dhabi sun, and he would be the one the team screams for at the bottom, celebrating their new World Champion.

He was the crack in your fantasy. It was there, sore and ugly and heartbreaking.

“They asked if you hate me.” He mentions offhand, like he’s hoping you wouldn’t acknowledge it and just brush it under the rug. Your eyebrows raise as you hear it, and you turn towards him.

Your mouth moves faster than your brain; it itches to know what he said. “What did you tell them?”

“Oh, that you don’t.” He says, almost too quickly as well. You bite your bottom lip thinking of it. They must know something to ask him that kind of question. “You lied.” You hiss, staring at him. Your anger momentarily overtakes you, thinking about how you were leading the championship in Miami before he ripped the entire front wing off.

“You are too.”

He then walks off. You can almost hear the steps he’s making, and you stand in the middle of the paddock, lost. Was he going to tell Toto? Had you just admitted you hated him? Kimi knows now. The whole team is going to know now.

There’s a ping from your phone. The Mercedes group. “Dinner in Monza, Thursday, 19:00. “

MONZA, ITALY, 2026

The temple of speed. Your two-week break didn’t go as bad as envisioned. There were no articles talking about your hatred for Kimi. He still messaged you about professional things, and Toto hasn’t ripped your head off yet. So, nobody knows you hate him. He must’ve kept quiet.

Before you knew it, you were inside the circuit surrounded by Ferrari fans, getting ready for your media day and the dinner at 19:00.

“Do you remember what to say to the media? ‘We are competitive, we are just racing, there is nothing between us.’” Your trainer says as you’re doing resistance training on your neck. You’re trying to listen to him, but you’re just thinking about sitting in a hot, cramped room with just other drivers, journalists and Kimi.

You haven’t spoken to Kimi properly since Spa. Professional messages don’t cut it. You used to speak about everything and anything. Cars, relationships, music, other sports, books, you name it. You were unironically good friends before F1.

Tensions are lower in F2. The pressure to perform is much less than in Formula 1. You mess up in F2? Well, bad weekend. You mess up in F1? Grounds for a hearing, intense training and strategy adjustments, and you’re forced to answer to the media.

F1 was slowly becoming a hot, daunting pressure cooker. It was slowly boiling you inside. You’re trapped in the moving circus, and you need to perform to impress.

Then you had Kimi, who seemed like everything was sunshine and rainbows. Smiling, happy, joyful. He was still childish and fun and everything you weren’t. The less he tried, the better he did. You just couldn’t fathom this kind of backwards logic.

Sure, everyone in F1 works hard to get there, but he skips through it, win after win after win, and you’re left with second place and a shitty strategy.

By the time you’d tried to flush all these thoughts out in a steaming hot shower on Wednesday night, your trainer had long since left; it was 1 a.m., and you’d practically be running on fumes through the weekend.

The creeping doubt sets in at this time, as you lay, staring dumbly at the ceiling, not even dreaming anymore. You can’t even see the champagne in your head anymore; you can’t feel the hot desert boiling your skin anymore. The dream was slowly cracking again.

By the time you had fallen asleep, it had been hours. The night sky glittered through your window, and all you could think about was the damn dinner, Kimi and the fact that your dream was slowly slipping through your fingers.

Dinner had arrived. You wore a formal black dress with some silver jewellery. It was a designer you had never heard of, but it seemed expensive by the way the satin felt and how it was stitched. It was possibly even handmade.

You looked at yourself in the mirror. Heels, dress, purse, hair…Well, you’re going to be late if you delay this any longer, so you walk out of the bathroom and towards the door of the hotel room. Italy, as you knew, was famous for food.

Kimi would never shut up about this one tiramisu he ate somewhere in Reggio Emilia. He said it when you were kids already that he would one day take you there to eat it. You know out of all the desserts, his favourite was still stracciatella flavoured gelato, but you’re quite sure tiramisu places a close second.

Every time you’ve ever gone to dinner with Kimi, he’s ordered a tiramisu. He almost licks the bowl clean every time he eats it. He knows that a good tiramisu has some rum- or wine-infused cake, with espresso and a solid dusting of cocoa on the top. You’re already kind of craving it just thinking about it.

Sitting at the table, you see Kimi already scoping out the dessert menu. “Are you going to order some tiramisu?” You ask him in a sweet tone; he just gives you a half smile before shrugging. “I’ll see.” He closes the menu, looks up and down at your dress, frowns, and looks at Toto instead.

So, it was going to be one of those nights.

The first ten minutes of this exchange, well, it was rather awkward. The restaurant on the outside looked a little dingy, and you could hear the music from the outside already. You assumed this place would be a total dive until you got inside.

The second you stepped inside, your eyes were greeted with an extensive bar, filled with all sorts of alcohol. Aperol, whiskey, champagne, the works. There’s a separate room just housing all the wine they have.

There are two people immaculately dressed behind the bar as well, and a giant bottle of Vodka sitting on the black countertops. The red on the backsplash is a stark contrast from the browns and whites of the tables in front of the open kitchen.

Toto rambles on at a couple of engineers, and Kimi’s poking at some bread placed in front of you.

Your eyes wander up to him. Big mistake. He just looks so undeniably good tonight. You feel compelled to ogle him like a complete idiot before you look down. Perhaps it was a bit too quickly that you looked down, noticing as he looked at you due to your quick head movement.

You eat in silence, taking an awkward bite of the bread, and then he finally begins a conversation with you that was not about wine, tiramisu, Toto, or the car. You smile at him, hoping to dissipate some of the awful tension between the two of you since you accidentally told him you (secretly) hated him.

“So, what were you doing over the break?” He asked quietly.

“Well, working out. As usual. Eating healthy and going for long runs.” You shrug, putting the bread down. You try to hide the flush on your cheeks at how flustered this atmosphere was making you.

The candles reflected golden off him.

Golden like the trophies he’s been lifting since he was a kid. Since you began karting together. Gold like the trophy you can see him lifting into the sky as the Moët rains down on him in Abu Dhabi.

You can’t seriously be feeling so pulled towards Kimi. Kimi, who you were going to rip into pieces 2 weeks ago up Eau Rouge.

Just merely thinking about that brings the adrenaline back between you. The way you’re thirsting, salivating even, to get a one-up on him this weekend. Your eyes narrow at the racing driver across from you, the one who’s staring at you with wide eyes and pursed lips. Why were you gazing at him like that?

It almost began making him nervous. Did he say something wrong? No, no. You said something last. He just hummed and nodded at whatever the hell you said you did during the break. He knew you; you’re like a little chatterbox, you love talking, why are you all quiet now? What was going on? And your gaze is still narrowed at him.

The way his silver arrows would be flying down the straight with you on Sunday in Monza. It was scorching inside the cockpit. You were P2, fighting Kimi for the win. You can hear Crofty speaking again in the back of your head as you dive down turn 1.

You pull out, going on the outside around him. The engine purrs as you push down your foot on the throttle, overtaking him into P1 and…

“Sorry, sorry. Is everything okay? Are you like, listening?” Kimi appears back in front of you, in the expensive restaurant, with the waiters coming past with champagne bottles and your food. You zoned out, shaking your head.

“Excuse me, I- uh…got lost in thought.” You ramble quietly; you see Kimi roll his eyes before digging into his pasta. You take an embarrassed sip of champagne, hoping the alcohol rolling down your palate could soften the blow of staring at him like that. Like a lovesick fool!

He doesn’t look up at you for the rest of the night. You don’t speak to anyone besides you; you’re just repeating the same nonsense in your head repeatedly.

You’re slowly becoming a broken record. P2 was breaking you.

“And she dives down into turn 1! After 8 gruelling laps, Kimi Antonelli had to give up that position!” Crofty shouts into the microphone. You’re biting your lip inside your helmet. It’s hot. There’s barely any oxygen left in you.

It’s stuffy. It was difficult to overtake him. You came up right behind him every lap for 8 laps, and Kimi had messed up for the first time ever this season. He went slightly wide. It left a wonderful gap for you to take.

The broken waltz between the two of you seems to continue.

However, just because you’re past doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods yet. He’s hungry for retribution just as you’re thirsty for vengeance. Thirsty for champagne on the top step and a medal around your neck.

You got about 3 laps of breathing room. 3 laps to admit to yourself there was still time. There was always time. So much time in fact that you slowly began zoning out. Gears 1…2-3-4- 5 -4-3-2-1, throttle. Break.

Apex.

Throttle.

The gears shift up on your screen. You hear the engine’s cry behind you. The sound of engineering and technology driving you forward. Lap 9. Lap 10. Lap 11.

Lap 12.

Kimi’s on your tail again, doing exactly what you did. Mount pressure. Slowly but surely. Making sure you know that in the back of your head, if you messed up, he’d say, “thank you, Miss!” and take your position.

Now the controls don’t feel so arbitrary. That overtake button feels like a lifeline you’re slowly becoming too scared to use at the wrong time. You’re holding Kimi up. You’re holding him up, like, a lot.

Lap 13.

“Swap positions.” Your engineer says over the radio. You groan inside of your helmet. You take in an ugly breath of balmy air as Kimi’s car is right behind your right tyre. His wing is so close that if you just brake, he’d hit it.

You’re not swapping positions for the world. It was your turn to experience victory. You will win. You won’t let Kimi take this win again. Remember, what did they say? You’d be teaching Kimi this season. Looks like you’re the one learning right now.

Left.

Right.

Left.

“And Kimi is last on the brakes- who is going to come out? We’ve seen this battle before. She refuses to give up position, and he refuses to back down!” Crofty shouts. Toto is watching this battle from the back of the garage with disgust. Not again. You two race professionally, but you can’t admit that you’re a team.

But Toto doesn’t know that you only get to taste a World Championship once if you’re lucky. Toto doesn’t know that you’ve been dreaming of this since you were 5 years old, and maybe Kimi has been dreaming the same, but you’re willing to be selfish for once and deal with the consequences.

Maybe Toto shouts at you after the race. He shouts at you for everything and anything nowadays anyway. What’s the difference? It’s always that you’re doing something wrong. It’s always that it’s you in the way. You always get shafted.

“Into the Parabolica they go! They are side-to-side; whoever’s in front is going to get a massive slipstream down the straight and- Oh!”

You clip.

Kimi hits your back right tyre.

It sends you both flying into the barriers at 350km/h. You try to brake, but it’s fruitless as the car violently slows into the padded barriers. It takes the little oxygen you had in your lungs. Your car almost slows down in your head as the gravel explodes around you into a sea of dust. It consumes you as the barriers slow you from 350 to 0.

Your head bangs against the side of the sidepod, and the car crumples around you. The boiling heat of the Italian summer wasn’t cooking you anymore. You felt coldness enter your veins, and a strange sinking feeling that it was all falling apart.

It was all ending. That champagne you were so thirsty for? It wasn’t for you. Those points you both wanted? Now you both get 0.

Was it worth not letting him past?

You both were sent to the hospital after your over 50G crashes. It was uncertain whether you’d both race in Azerbaijan. You both experienced mild concussions that had your heads feeling about the size of a boat.

Kimi’s bed was next to yours as you tossed and turned. Every time you opened your eyes, you were greeted with the ugly white floors and the fluorescent bright lights. Every part of you felt like a sore bruise, and the only talking the two of you did was about what was going to happen in the meantime if you couldn’t race.

For Kimi, he watched when you slept, with IVs in your hands and your eyes looking soulless and empty. He’d never thought he’d seen a more heartbreaking scene in his life. You were always filled with something, whether it be anger, determination, happiness, excitement. Seeing you with nothing, well, it was odd.

Your skin looked pale. Very pale. You looked, well, sick, and tired, and like a million things were bothering you, but he couldn’t tell what because you didn’t want to speak to him.

How were you going to race after such a shock, mentally? It had been 2 days, and its effects ring sorely between the two of you. The impact. The way your world was spinning after you’d gotten out. The way you could barely look Kimi in the eyes as he lay across you in a bad condition as well.

The championship no longer stuck in your mind. Kimi’s face no longer featured in your picture of the championship. You imagined nothing about the championship. You wished you could lie on a beach in Reggio Emilia in the 36-degree heat reading a shitty book with some Aperol Spritz, and maybe some tiramisu. The closest you got was a long WhatsApp message from Toto and some water with some electrolytes in it.

You turned over to see Kimi, who was also hooked up to a couple of machines, messing around on his laptop. His hair was a mess from not having brushed it in days, and his eyes looked sore as he was under the lights. Was he really this villain you’d created in your mind?

He just looked like you, sore, tired and broken – he wasn’t just a rival, he was your teammate, your karting buddy, your childhood friend; for the most part. There were still rocky parts of your friendship tainted by racing, by karting and Junior Formula rivalry, or him deliberately flaunting girls in your face, but that was what it was. Childish. Innocent.

In some ways, you were both so young – so full of life that seeing it drained out of both of you had to have been quite jarring. It felt jarring from both your side and Kimi’s side. Just being lethargic and weak had been a strange dream for you. You wondered how much training you’d both missed out on. How healthy the hospital’s meals were. How the damn scratchy “robe” you were wearing made you feel exposed and humiliated.

You were luckily discharged the following morning, Kimi following suit as you both sat in the back of the car, feeling sick and weak. Your bones were so lazy. Your entire body felt like it needed a deep, soothing massage all over it. The blood from the needle permeated through the cotton wad that was taped to your hand.

You stare at it dumbly as you both just sit in the most broken silence you’ve ever experienced.

BAKU, AZERBAIJAN, 2026

The next time you went out onto the track for Free Practice 1, both you and Kimi put in abysmal times. The media were all over you as you both walked in together.

The stories of your crash dominated global news. The rivalry was never so intense before. Admittedly, you began to realise Kimi was just a boy, and you were just a girl. You both hated each other’s guts, but you saw him lying in the hospital, and you just silently pressed your lips together at the image.

Driving, you were extra careful, which unfortunately meant you had to settle for a bad P6 and P8. Toto was not mad about it, though. Since it was “medical”, he would give you a pass.

Your car felt like a hostile environment, thinking every time you pushed down the throttle of the impact from your crash. You thought of the way you hit the sidepod, the headache slowly burning as you weakly pulled yourself out of the car.

Kimi was the first to your car when he got out. The colours of red, white and green all blurred in your vision as you saw him run over to you. You couldn’t hear him properly through the padding of your helmet, but he was there, pulling you out of the car as you both leant on one another to the side of the track, where the Safety Car picked you up.

When you looked back to your cars, there were bits of carbon fibre everywhere. A stray Mercedes logo lay buried in the gravel, as the engines of your cars were ripped open for the world to see. They saw both of you in your greedy glory as you desperately scrapped for position.

Toto would call this a lack of perspective. You kind of need to agree with him on that one. Instead of a one-two, you’re bringing home DNF and DNF to Baku. Kimi got a DNF in his home Grand Prix, because of what?

You watch as the old castle quietly zooms by you in your newly rebuilt car. They practically had to replace everything. Even the screws. Even the little pieces holding your entire car together. It was a complete write-off.

Kimi bought all his mechanics something nice in Baku for rebuilding the car. Now you just felt like a complete dickhead because look at how kind, and funny and damn generous he was. What about your mechanics? They worked just as hard. You should’ve bought them something. You really should’ve.

“You’re slow in the middle sector. Pick up the pace a bit.” Your engineer says calmly over the radio. You try to stop those thoughts of crashing into the wall. Those moments of thinking the worst. Thinking of tyres flying everywhere, thinking of carbon fibre lying on the streets of Baku, just trying to keep it clean.

Kimi’s car appears in front of you; you’re both on out-laps. You stare at the back of his car. Seeing how he turns into the corners, how he exits. It was a crucial part of your strategy during the race, seeing how he approaches and exits. If he’s aggressive into the corners, then if you were in front of him, deliberately being extremely slow and taking a middle line pisses him off.

You learned that back in your karting days already. He just wants to go, and if you manage to park your car in front of him, he’s stuck behind you for an eternity before he manages to overtake.

Toto and the others keep telling you to stop doing it, but just because you crashed doesn’t mean you forgot about winning. Every practice was a chance to refine skills, to, well, practice. Feel the car again. Get into the rhythm.

“Traffic ahead.” You hear your engineer say over the radio. His voice is slightly static as you push the throttle down, pull force down the last corner and onto the endlessly long straight. It goes on forever. You pass a couple cars. That must’ve been the traffic ahead.

You push that steering wheel to the left quickly, feeling the entire car jerk to the left. Oof, those new upgrades were intense. You slip coming out of the corner, your wheels catching some spin as you go down the short straight.

Kimi is still ahead of you, darting down the turn, and you can hear his car hum in front of you. You inch closer, getting a nice tow behind him due to his slipstream. Sector 1 flashes purple on your display. Small wins. Small wins…

Your car squirms through the next couple corners, but it is nothing you can’t refine over the weekend. Sure, your confidence got knocked down a couple pegs due to the crash, but you’d get it back.

Nothing was going to break your confidence from here.

You’re now following Kimi into the castle; he’s right in front of you. This was where you were losing time.

The car just seems to slow from here. It’s almost like you can’t get past the mental block of a super narrow and tight racetrack. This is where you were losing time; you knew it. You didn’t need telemetry or data to tell you this.

As you exit the castle section, Kimi seems to be pulling away. How he manages to find time and grip everywhere where you can’t be is fascinating. Even copying what he does doesn’t work for you.

He goes slightly wider; you do too. You bang your back wheel on the exit. He brakes later; you attempt to do the same. You don’t seem to be as quick. He’s pulling away even more.

Sector 2, +0,4 seconds.

You slide through the rest of the corners quickly, beginning to catch up with him. You’re now barreling towards the final corner.

Kimi slows in front of you, kind of dramatically as he did when you were karting. He used to do it when defending. He has absolutely no reason to now – it’s just practice. You wanted to lift off the throttle. Almost.

However, you intentionally don’t. You decide to pile on the pressure and only go faster towards him; he just goes slower. There you’re stuck between a concrete wall, going at 280km/h and there are two silver arrows into the last corner. Only space for one.

Your front wings brush softly against each other in some weird ballet move between the two of you, delicate and humiliating. Kimi’s car speeds off in front of you, and you waste no time following down the 2,2km straight to the finish line.

Sector 3, -0,2.

Final time: 1 minute 44.223. Faster than Kimi.

Despite the brush, the tow he gave you put you as P1 for FP2.

“What the hell was that?” You speak over the radio, your tone clearly annoyed; your engineer replies calmly. “Box, we have some damage.”

Once you climb out of the car as you pull into the garage, your hands are shaking from the adrenaline. Your mind is curling. You were leading. You had pace for once. Pace to beat him. He nearly took it away again. Just like every single win this season.

Kimi gets out of the car, walking to the back of the garage. You see him take off his helmet and you waste absolutely no time going over to him.

“What the fuck was that? I was right behind you, and you brake like a complete idiot!?” You shout; he acts like he’s not hearing you.

“I’m not trying to do anything! It’s your own fault you’re following me like a damn fly!” He shouts down the hallway. The garage has gone quiet, watching your heated exchange. “Are you trying to kill us? Because you’re getting close!” He doesn’t look at you; he’s breathing heavily as he walks down the hallway. You’re also gasping for air as your gaze narrows at him.

“Don’t act stupid here. You knew I was there.” Your tone turns from desperate to cunning; you can’t help but maybe get a couple stabs in. Maybe finally give him a taste of what you’ve been dealing with for weeks.

He spins around quickly, and you nearly walk into him. Everyone is quiet; they’re still watching. Every mechanic is staring; every engineer watches in curious horror. Toto? Hopefully not nearby.

“You always want a tow, you want to be right in my slipstream, you are on my gearbox every second of practice or qualifying. Then you are surprised when I defend!” He shouts back, and your heart is contracting meanly.

“Defend? You call that defending? Were you seriously trying to put me in the wall again – “

“I didn’t touch you!”

“Yes, you did! Just like Monza!” You yell, almost at the top of your voice. He goes quiet. He’s still breathing hard; you can hear it in the silence, which only grew by the second. He’s staring at you with rage. It’s burning; it’s somehow stealing the oxygen right out of your own lungs, and something ugly flashes across his face.

His tone gets colder, his voice calmer. “Don’t you dare blame Monza on me. You refused to give position. You were the one who refused.”

“Because I refuse to be number two!” You yell at him again, “Every damn time I have to move because golden boy needs a clear track- “

“Golden boy?” He lets out a short, humourless laugh. “Is this what it’s about? Your little desire for wins? For a title? You think I get those for free?” He scoffs.

“The entire team absolutely does, yes. They will fall to your feet if something goes wrong. I must just, I don’t know, ‘figure it out’” You huff, your chest rising and falling rapidly at how angry you’re getting.

He only gets closer. The gap between the two of you decreases between the tyre racks. His eyes are dark, and he’s got that ugly look on his face again.

“You crashed. You put me out of my home race. We lay in hospital for two entire days, because what, you didn’t want to give up position? Because you’re a little greedy fool who wants everything for herself?”

“I didn’t get us into hospital all by myself- “

“You clipped me!” He shouts. “You saw me going around the outside; you did that on purpose!”

“You wouldn’t fucking move! I gave you space!” His skin is flushing red now, and he just hisses at you.

The silence that follows is thick. Nobody speaks. You can see the scars on his hands from drips and IVs that are still healing. They’re scabby and bloody. You both blink at each other like idiots in the silence, unsure of what to say next.

Your heart is contracting meanly in your chest, as if it has grown about 5 times since this argument started. Your back aches from the tall posture you’ve been holding in pure anger, the way your muscles have been painfully contracting the entire time.

Kimi’s voice is scratchy as he says it, “You said you hated me.”

Your stomach drops. You’d forgotten all about it. It was weeks ago now, but clearly, it had a bigger impact on him than you would’ve assumed. “I- “

“In the paddock. After the media. You said I was lying, after I told them that you weren’t.” His nostrils flare. “So, what is it? Do you hate me? Do you hate that I am faster, maybe better than you?”

His question digs into your heart like a sore knife. Your eyes want to well with tears at it. Your throat is so tight you can barely speak.

He waits a couple more seconds before stepping back.

“Figure it out.”

You were both feeling raw going into qualifying. Toto had caught wind of your rather passionate fight in the garage and gave you both a stern warning about letting it happen again. When you left the room on Friday night, you had dreams of champagne and Kimi with a DNF in Abu Dhabi.

You couldn’t hate him anymore than you could now. You were shaking in your own bed thinking about his words. The way you’d never, ever seen him so angry.

The team kept the two of you apart during qualifying and sent you out one-by-one as you set times. You’d come in the pits, and he’d go out. You’d both qualified well, now having forgotten all about your fear of smashing into the wall, and now you’re determined to just park your car ahead of his.

There were articles everywhere about your rivalry. On Sunday morning, you were swarmed with press leaving your hotel about what was going on between you and Kimi. You hid behind some sunglasses to hide your teary eyes.

At the track, you sat in your chair at the back of the garage and listened to some music. Hopefully it would calm your racing heart as you watched the mechanics do some final adjustments on the car. Nobody dared mention the argument on Friday. Not even yourself. The last person to say anything was Toto, and that was that.

You sat on the grid for a while; you just wished you could get more sleep, and the heat to die down a little. It was about 29 degrees, and you already felt like you were sweating in the car. You hadn’t slept properly since the argument on Friday. Some champagne would be well deserved right now.

“Box, box.” Your engineer quips over the radio. “Copy.” You had responded before you could even process what you were agreeing to. Today, strategy was what was going to separate the two of you. You were on the undercut, as discussed, as you’d demonstrated stellar pace all weekend and you were ahead of Kimi by far.

You hit your marks, and the pit crew once again did a perfect job, just as they practised. The one thing you can depend on with Mercedes is obsessive perfection. Everything is obsessively perfect from the management to the telemetry to the pit crew. They were a team of reliable people.

You enjoy fresh air for a long time. The majority of the Grand Prix. The scrap on Friday with Kimi was miles away in your mind. The only thing you thought of was finally winning. Finally tasting champagne on the top step today.

Lap 43.

“Gap to Kimi, 4 seconds.”

You sigh internally. You know what this means. You have 51 laps in total, and you were so sure that you’d win this one. Kimi has 8 laps to catch and overtake you. You know he wants to. He wants to rub in what he said.

“Do you hate that I am faster, that I am better than you?” His words echo in your head. You shake your head, going down the straight.

You wanted to rub it in yourself. A win would just rub salt into his wound. You think of Toto telling you to keep your head afloat. You’re drowning in the sea of insecurity. Scratch that, you’re suffocating in it.

Kimi’s words ripped your heart apart. It almost felt like a small, coordinated attack he’d thought of on the spot. How he managed all the time to be calm and collected, having the World Championship fight on his shoulders, was confusing. Must he feel the pressure somewhere? There’s no way this didn’t matter to him.

There’s no way it didn’t matter more to him than it did to you – you desperately wanted a World Championship, just like he did. He spoke about being a World Champion when you were kids already, let alone now when he can practically taste the victory on his tongue.

That car every Sunday sings a symphony to the World Championship fight. It rings in your mind as you begin dreaming about overtaking Kimi into the hairpin at Yas Marina, the world watching you as you come around the final corner and make this whole journey worth it. The gruelling, sore, heartbreaking journey.

Your shoulders ache, your neck is barely supporting the weight of your head. Your muscles scream in tiredness as you yank the car left, right, left, right.

“ANT, +2.5 seconds.” You read the screen on your steering wheel as it flashes to garner your attention. He’s coming. You can’t stop this. You cannot stop him.

You couldn’t stop him before, but maybe, just maybe, you can try to now. You wouldn’t let this go without a scrap. If you lose, what does it say about your skills as an F1 driver? A kid, 3 years younger than you, driving the same car, has been beating your ass for an entire season. You’ve been hearing everyone’s negative monologue for hours. From Toto to Bono, to Kimi himself, to even yourself.

There’s just that little bit of hope that speaks quietly in your mind, small, broken and quiet, that tells you that you can do this. That you’re not driving this car because Toto didn’t see talent in you. He saw millions, and millions in you. He saw every near miss you always seem to pull off; he sees how, even reluctantly, you’re mostly a team player, and you’re always trying so hard, even when the rivalry is corroding you from the inside.

That’s what makes that little voice so powerful. Believing, just for once, you’d be better than him. Into the first corner, you lead. Lap 45. Your car slips coming out of the corner; you correct it quickly. Your eyes dart down to the screen, ANT +1.9.

You check your mirrors going into the second corner. He is, in fact, in your mirrors now. The track between you narrows in every single corner. Every single breath you take, his car only lurches closer to yours. The mess of silver and teal is slowly coming up to you.

Lap 49. Two laps. Kimi wants to take this home. Extend his lead from 11 points to about 20 in Monza. You’ve been neck-and-neck the entire season. The gap has only narrowed; you’ve been chipping off slowly, and he could breathe easy knowing that you both lay like complete idiots in Italy getting no points.

You didn’t get closer. But now, you’re again narrowing points. You get closer, closer, closer every single Grand Prix, and that’s what he hates about you. You’ve always been consistent. You’ve had 3 DNFs over your entire career. You never finish out of the top 10.

He’s only feeling more nervous seeing your car pull out in front of him, the gap slowly becoming larger. He brakes later; his car slides. You’re escaping his grasp.

You go wide on the last corner, and there he is.

He’s within a second for the overtake boost. He presses it like a trigger-happy child. He can’t wait to glide past you, seeing your visor through the halo of his own car and looking at it. His front wing is behind your rear wing going down the straight.

Unfortunately, you always somehow had the upper hand on him during these moments. Your car is practically as wide as the entire straight. You’re smack bang in the middle. He has no space behind you, and for the first time ever, he thinks he has to brake on a straight.

Through the narrow corners of Baku, he tries again. He tries to clip you, deliberately. He’s getting dirty, and he doesn’t like it. “I like her because she always manages to keep it clean.” Toto’s words from when Kimi was in F2 ring in his ears. It was your first meeting with Toto and Bono, and he’d praised your driving ability. Naturally, Kimi was the first to know about how much Toto liked your driving style.

Well, Kimi finds out through the Castle section why you’re so good. He just can’t overtake you. But he’s right there behind you, charging up his battery for the longest straight on the calendar.

You both take the final corner within +0.4 seconds of one another. It was a given that he would overtake you within the final lap for the win. However, you’d since learned from your mistakes in Silverstone, and you get a magnificent boost after Kimi has used all his. You activated it slightly later, so you still had boost down the straight to stop him.

You both bang wheels in many corners. Your head bobbles around as the only thing you can think about is giving your exhausted body a rest when you are done. You momentarily close your eyes on a short straight to reward your body with some oxygen and to calm your racing heart.

“If you could keep him under wraps until the finish line, you will win.” That voice reminds you, and right now, the win doesn’t seem so far away. You smile quietly through the castle section, admiring it at 150km/h for the last time this season, before racing off into the city again.

Kimi’s weaving behind you; he’s aggressive. You’d already banged one another twice on this lap alone, and you just assume he’s doing it to damage your confidence. But something has changed – you’re not nervous, you’re not scared. You’re just racing now. Who cares if he’s busy swearing at you in his car? You’re ahead, and you have the upper hand.

You’re in Kimi’s position. Feeling exactly what Kimi feels in P1 and being on top of the world.

You exit the final corner and execute your strategy again, but this time, Kimi comes alongside you, and then your stomach drops.

The chequered flag looks like a blur of black and white as you both come over the line, looking at each other’s visor. There’s no clear winner.

“And they’ve crossed the line at the same time!” Crofty’s voice echoes through the stadium. Thousands of fans hold their breath for the FIA’s decision.

“We’re checking, we’re checking. Hold tight.” The radio goes silent after that. You drive slowly around Baku, waiting for any sign of who won. Time stretches. It takes forever. You’re nearly around the entire track when your engineer comes over the radio.

“P1. Confirmed, you won by four thousandths.”

You laugh nervously into the radio; you feel pure relief wash over you. Your heart finally stops beating so quickly.

You finally beat him.

In Parc Fermé, you stare at the scoring board. +000.4. It was close. You smile at it as you see Kimi walk out of the car and take off his helmet. “Four thousandths. You are lucky.” He raises his eyebrow at you before walking off to drink water. You frown at him before getting weighed.

On the top step of the podium, you drink that bottle of Moët that has been waiting for you. The crisp flavours of alcohol and bubbles curl on your tongue under the autumn sun, as Kimi and Hamilton spray each other with champagne.

LAS VEGAS, USA, 2026

You walk through the lavish hotel lobby. It is decked out with gold trimmings, marble floors, red carpets, the works. You knew Vegas was extra, but this is next level. You admire the sparkling lights of the other hotels on the strip as you get checked in. The staff had already taken your luggage, and you’re standing with Kimi, looking around.

“Looks, eh…better than where we stayed in Baku.” You say sarcastically; he laughs before running his hands through his curly hair. “Eh, yeah. I’d say so.” He walks off, cutting off your small talk.

It’s yet again Wednesday night. You had vigorous training with your trainer this morning, and you’d flown into Vegas straight after. Safe to say, you’re exhausted. The time here is 11 hours behind, and you’re feeling jet-lagged. Your eyes want to close, but it’s not even 5 pm yet.

You try to stay awake by reviewing paperwork and turning on all the lights in the room, but you end up face-first into the desk, getting a crappy night’s sleep anyway.

By Thursday evening, you were running on caffeine and dreams of winning this weekend.

“Another one?!” You groan as you read the text message on the Mercedes group. Yet another dinner on a Thursday night. You’re luckily just downstairs in the casino of the Wynn this time. Some fancy celebrity chef restaurant…

The next message you get is from Kimi, about 30 seconds later. “Meet me downstairs for an Aperol? Toto wants to talk with you.”

You groan again. Of course, Toto wants to talk to you.

You scratch through your bag to find something to wear. You land on a ruffled baby blue dress. Well, looks like this is what you’re going to go out in.

“Are you guys already there?” You message back.

He responds when you’re busy throwing your hair around a curling iron and putting on some makeup.

“Yep, don’t rush. We’re just going to hang here until dinner starts.” His text lights up your screen; you don’t even read it before continuing to get ready.

You’re practically running out the door, having put on any random pair of sandals. You press the button on the elevator to go down, sucking in a breath. What was Toto going to scald you about now?

When you heard the elevator ding, you let the doors open into the lobby again. There was this slow jazz playing, but that wasn’t doing anything to calm your experience. Your phone vibrates in your hand as you’re walking through the lobby trying to find the bar they are in.

You eventually find them sitting at a table outside. You try your best to put on a nice smile for Kimi and Toto, but the best you can manage is a tired acknowledgement.

“Sorry. Couldn’t find you guys.” You begin pulling out your own chair before Kimi tsk-tsks at you.

“Not that difficult. Right by the door. I sent you a message.”

When you look down at your phone, he’s right. The next message after telling you not to rush was where they were. Aren’t you working like a robot today?

“Didn’t see it.” You sit down; Toto gives you a sharp gaze before both drink their Aperol Spritz. There’s this awkward silence that overcomes the table, seeing the two of them look at each other, almost asking the silent question of ‘Should we tell her?’

“What?” You ask.

“Nothing, nothing.” Kimi takes another swig of the bright orange coloured liquid. You’re sitting between the two of them, tension rising, with no idea what’s going on.

“So, we need to talk,” Toto says. Your stomach already drops. You know what this is about. It was going to be about your rivalry. About the fact you said you hated him. About crashing into him. About how you’ve been running like a robot for the last 2 months.

“I’m not going to repeat myself about the crashing. You know the deal. You both nearly ended each other’s careers right then and there. The public fighting? It stops. Immediately. We do not need to entertain the media further.”

He looks between the two of you.

“For the rest of the season,” His voice is calm but firm, “There will no longer be team orders. Whoever’s fastest wins. No preferential strategy. You race one another. ”

Your shoulders drop as you finally feel the relief of Kimi being chosen over you being destroyed in a matter of seconds. Suddenly, this was no longer a rivalry about who the team cares more about, but rather who can outscore the other.

“Serious?” You ask, almost in disbelief now that the information has set in. “Completely. The team supports the two of you equally from now on.”

“So, no more orders?” Kimi asks, with his voice lower than normal. You look at him. “No more orders.” As you both look at each other, nobody smiles, but something has just shifted.

The dinner table is already full of engineers and sponsors when you arrive. You’re seated next to one another again. The air between the two of you was less sharp, more careful as you both remained somewhat respectful towards one another. No icy glares or underhanded comments.

Then the champagne came out.

After about 20 minutes, you’re both livelier and chattier than normal. The effects of alcohol on an empty stomach. Both your cheeks are slightly flushed, and your pupils dilated.

“Remember when we both spun at the same time on the same corner in karting?” You begin to laugh before he even gets to the end of his question. “You seriously still remember that?” You ask within a fit of giggles as you down the rest of your champagne.

“Slow down, girl. Nobody is stealing the champagne.” He rolls his eyes dramatically before grabbing the bottle in its holder behind him and pouring you more. “You were such an idiot in your karting days.” Your condescending tone leaks through every single word.

“Well, I must’ve been on the right track.” He shrugs. You just smile at him again. Since when was he so chatty as well?

The conversation stays light. F2 days. Terrible breakfasts in hotels. When you both got food poisoning during the F2 race in Hungary. Nothing about crashes, or championships, or Mercedes. Just reminiscing on what you were before this toxic rivalry.

It leaves a bittersweet taste in your mouth as you leave dinner quietly. The party was picking up, but you needed to rest before tomorrow’s practice sessions.

Your heels dig into your feet, and you’d been jumping around for hours. You weren’t exactly drunk, but the world had brighter colours and your feet moved on their own accord without your acknowledgement.

The elevator doors are closing when Kimi’s hand stops them. He steps in, with his collar undone and cheeks slightly flushed from drinking. The doors close as you watch him press the buttons on the control panel.

“Floor?” He asks.

“Same as you.”

The soft jazz music of the lobby begins fading, and it’s just the two of you inside of this metal box.

The numbers begin ticking up as you stand there, awkwardly looking at one another. You bite your lip, waiting for him to say something. “You know, you should be glad Toto saved your ass.” He whispers. It makes your insides curl at his bratty statement.

“Saved my ass? Saved our asses.” You shoot back, but there’s no real heat in it. The champagne softened all the edges.

He gazes towards you, and when you finally focus on him, his eyes are darker than usual. With a strange heat inside of them. They’re unfocused, gazing at your mouth for a second too long.

The stupid and the inevitable happened.

One second, there’s a comfortable distance between the two of you, and the next, his mouth is on yours. Exploring, warm, curious. Champagne and adrenaline linger on his tongue. It wasn’t soft, it wasn’t demanding – it was messy. Messy in the way all first kisses somehow are.

Your back hits the mirrored wall with a thud, as his hand moves to block you in. His other hand cupping your jaw. You’re expecting him to do something. Realise this was stupid, realise this was wrong, but he never went away. His lips remain on yours, incessant and eager to somehow get the secrets to spill out of them.

Your hand fists his shirt, grabbing the flimsy material and pulling him closer. He accidentally makes a low sound, one almost not audible. The heat rises between you, making your head spin and hurt from the mere alleviation of all this tension.

Ding.

You both break apart like two embarrassed teenagers. You’re both panting for air as the doors open. When you look at his lips, your lipstick is smeared all over them, and his chest rises and falls violently. Nobody moves. You sit paralysed, staring at the empty floor in front of you.

“Bad idea.” His voice is quiet and wrecked.

“Terrible.” You swallow, pulse still in your ears and throbbing in your throat. Nobody moves. You’re both just sitting in this awful silence that stretches on for eternity. What had you just done?

The doors begin to close, and you both decide to make your exit. You part ways, going down the hall to your respective rooms. You begin wiping off your smeared lipstick and the lingering taste of champagne, and regret swirls in your mouth.

A mere 3 points separate the two of you. The season was ending, but there was still hope for the championship. You’d fight down to the last lap, on the last corner, if you had to.

You’d lined up P1 after a stellar qualifying. You and Kimi were once again separated by thousandths. +0.007 was the difference between the two of you after qualifying. Of course, you had other people to worry about, namely Hamilton, who had also snuck up to P3 in the championship by this point, after your double DNF in Monza.

The car revs to life underneath you on the grid. It was time. Time to show the world that you can win against Kimi again. If you win, you’d be in P1 of the championship. Kimi had it all to lose today.

After your incident in the elevator, you wondered whether you’d started pulling on his heartstrings, but you see him plastered to your gearbox as you’re doing the formation lap. Well, no kind words were going to fix the soreness between you now.

Once you get to the grid, you sit smelling the fumes from the petrol and the rubber of your tyres. The back markers take forever to get around the final corner. You roll your eyes as Stroll takes a stroll around the final corner.

The lights come on. You push the pedal to send your car into its wonderful symphony.

1 light.

You can do this.

2 lights.

You will do this.

3 lights.

You deserve to be here.

4 lights.

It’s on.

5 lights…

“Oh! What a start from P1! Antonelli’s left scrambling with Verstappen, as he goes onto the outside, and overtakes Antonelli for P2! Hamilton and Leclerc are looking for a way past the young Italian, but he manages to keep it clean…”

Crofty’s voice rings through the strip. Under the sparkling night lights, your confidence is back. You’re stepping on those pedals, hitting the apex of every single corner; you remembered how much talent you had.

How much you deserved to drink champagne on the top step and not crash into your teammate and spend the night staring at the lights of your hotel room. The insecurity that has been infecting your blood the entirety of the season begins dissolving by the fountain of the Bellagio.

Racing past fountains, and lights, and millions of fans, you smile at the thought of it never being over. You wanted to take this moment and put it in a small glass bottle and display it on your shelf at home.

You were back.

LAP 24.

Half race distance. You’d just pitted and come out behind Kimi, who got the undercut once again to correct the mistake he made against Verstappen on the opening lap. You’re currently running P2 and P3.

“Gap is +1.4” Your engineer speaks over the radio calmly. You bite your lip, pressing the battery boost button down the straight to hopefully work through the turbulent air off Kimi’s car. Suddenly, you’re in his position. How he feels when you just want to be let through by your teammate without such a fuss.

Weren’t you being a pain in the ass the whole season? However, Kimi wasn’t going to make it easy for you, just like how you never made it easy for him.

The next time you race down the strip, you’re on +1.2 seconds. At the end, +1.0 seconds. If you keep the gap exactly like that, you’d get an overtake boost.

You begin focusing intensely on just maintaining the gap. Your tyres are newer; you now have more pace than him, it should be easy?

Rounding the final corner, you feel the car lurch you forward onto the straight. Tyres are 3 laps old. You’re already +0.4 a lap faster than Kimi, and your tyres weren’t even warm.

You’re now the hunter and not the prey.

Every part of the track feels like a prime opportunity to admire the back of Kimi’s car. You haven’t overtaken him; you’re just planning on giving him as much pressure as possible. Parking your front wing into places where it shouldn’t be and giving Kimi a mini heart attack every single time because he assumed he drove over it and got a puncture.

“Check the tyres!” He shouts over the radio.

“Tyres are a-okay, Kimi.”

“Are you sure!?”

“Yep. No punctures.” His engineer clarifies for him. He breathes out a long sigh of relief.

Every time you go side-by-side on the straight, you slowly lift off the throttle a bit so you’re both taking up space, then once you reach the corner letting him go in front.

Now you’re playing the same games he was.

“Can someone tell her to stop doing this?!” Kimi shouts over his radio. He’s getting frustrated; he’s getting worried you clip and send both of you into the concrete walls of Las Vegas. He couldn’t even stomach the thought of another double DNF, and possibly even letting Hamilton into P2 of the championship.

“Overtake him or stay behind. Don’t play games.” Your engineer scalds you over the radio.

“Shut up, I know what to do.” You send back to your engineer. You know Toto is going to be up your ass for these theatrics you’re displaying here, but you can’t help but get a bit giddy on the thought of sending the entire team spiralling. It is Vegas after all; what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?

I mean, you’re not like…crashing or anything.

You laugh at the way Kimi’s car wobbles into the final corner, and you dive past him. “And she says thank you very much! She’s up into P2!” Crofty says; you can hear his voice echoing through your helmet. What speakers did they have installed in Vegas? You’d heard of Hamilton and Leclerc’s battle, a battle with Leclerc and Hadjar. You’re practically watching this Grand Prix from above.

Verstappen is forced to pit on Lap 33. His tyres are, in fact, toast. Which means your strategy worked. Now you must bring it home.

LAP 45

“And the two Mercedes are neck-and-neck, once again, fighting down the straight! We’ve seen epic battles from the two of them this season, and we’re getting another!”

Kimi’s now +0.4 seconds behind you. He caught up. He’s always been good at managing the tyres; you, not so much. They’re practically limping due to the fact you were pushing so hard to build a gap out in front. Didn’t work out too well for you.

He tries the inside, then the outside, then the inside again. You unfortunately make your car as wide as the track, and he struggles to get past.

You’re sweating at the thought of losing this win. You are provisionally P1 in the championship. You’d be leading. It was in your grasp.

That straight is now no longer a bunch of pretty lights sparkling above you; it’s become Kimi’s hunting ground to get P1.

Your hands are shaking, and inhaling the fumes of hot rubber is making you lightheaded. He’s pressed the overtake boost, and is coming alongside you when…

“Oh! Is that Hamilton into the barriers? It is!”

“Yellow flag. Yellow flag. Safety car will be out now.” Your engineer says over the radio. You feel a welcome wave of relief as Kimi slots into P2 behind you. Maybe the race finishes under safety car. You hope daftly for it. It would guarantee your win.

You drive past where Hamilton has crashed his car. There are bits of carbon fibre everywhere. 5 laps remain; you know 1 or 2 laps of racing are most likely.

That’s all you must do.

The safety car drives around in front of you for 4 laps. On lap 49/50, it goes into the pits. The field is bunched up behind you. Kimi’s warming his tyres like crazy; however, there’s someone behind Kimi that you’re becoming more worried about.

Verstappen.

He pitted when the safety car came out. His tyres have been warming for 3 laps and are newer than both yours and Kimi’s. Should you or Kimi let him through, he has a decent chance of a win.

You decide to wait until the last minute to release the brake and press the throttle.

While you take one last look at the track around you, you take a much-needed breath of air before sending it right by the finish line.

Kimi was expecting this, keeping to your side the entire time. Kimi’s right behind you and catching. You stare at the giant sphere as you throttle past it. You can hear nothing but the sound of 3 engines behind you.

Left mirror? Kimi.

Right mirror? Verstappen.

You’re sandwiched between the two of them coming to turn 11. They’re side by side when…

Your brakes freeze up. Your tyres explode into smoke. Fuck. You locked up, going wide, but then you look to your left to make sure you wouldn’t hit anyone.

“Both Mercedes have locked up! Verstappen goes through as the two of them scrabble to get back to the podium positions!”

P2. P3.

“We saw drama in this race, but it’s going to be a delight for Red Bull today, as Max Verstappen wins the Las Vegas Grand Prix!”

The after-party inside of an exclusive club in Vegas feels dry. The alcohol makes you feel more reckless than anything else. You’d been drinking champagne and vodka all night. It was ticking close to 3 am.

You’d spoken to about 4 guys, all of whom tried to get you to sleep with them. Toto also phoned you, but you put the phone down. By the time the alcohol had reached “it’s now tasting like water” stage, you knew you needed to stop.

You got a final drink before going up onto the rooftop balcony of the building.

You sat in silence as you stared at the track being packed up. Barriers coming down, signage being taken off, and the ominous Wynn logo hanging over the strip. You had to somehow get to the Wynn, yet you’re about 2km away, drunk and tired.

If only you could just find a way.

“I heard you might be here.” You hear a familiar voice behind you. One you know very well.

“You found me, Kimi.” You answer, turning around. He stands by the entrance to the roof and leans against the doorframe. “Yeah, you’re not exactly subtle when it took you 5 days to get up the steps.”

“They keep moving around. It’s also extremely difficult not to fall when drunk.” You roll your eyes, tasting the alcohol on your tongue. Even though you had a disappointing race, your mind was blissfully blank.

“Come on, it’s not so bad.” He laughs, walking up to you. You looked different when you were drunk. Not so convoluted. More open, you laugh at everything, your cheeks are glazed pink. You’re more friendly, sociable. It was a common side effect of getting drunk, but he wishes you just weren’t so serious all the time.

All the time you look like you’re thinking of races, and strategy, and telemetry, where you needed to improve. Your life was totally sucked in by racing. Hell, you didn’t even have a boyfriend; that’s how focused you were. He never heard of boys; he never heard of relationships.

He truly had to wonder if you’d been single your entire life?

Kimi – on the other hand, had plenty of girlfriends, both in school and within the paddock. He’d dated plenty of people, older than him, younger than him or same age as him (note to Kimi: don’t date people you’re in class with), but you?

I mean, what do you know?

“So, can I like…ask you something?” He smiles kindly, leaning against the railing next to you. You don’t really look relaxed when he does so.

“Do you remember Thursday night?” You’re left biting your lips at the thought of it. The taste of regret, the way you had grabbed him. The way you were left panting and secretly wanting more.

“Of course.” You reply without much thought; he twitches, standing next to you on the railings.

“Well, do you regret it?” His voice disappears under the noise of the Strip; it reflects his embarrassment at the fact that he’d drunkenly kissed his teammate in an elevator.

“No…” The alcohol made you more honest than you’d like to admit. “Well- I mean, you know…” You look up at him; you never really stuttered over words. “I guess I should feel a bit guilty, but not really.” He lets out a short breath against the railing, leaning his elbows against it.

“Well, good, ‘cause I don’t either.” He admits. He admits it too confidently. Too confidently for normal, sober, I-care-about-my-reputation-and-relationships Kimi. He must’ve been drinking too.

The silence isn’t very awkward, not like how it was in the elevator. It felt kind of brainless and comfortable. You’re both slightly closer than normal. You’re both looking at each other differently than normal.

He glances towards the bright lights. The people dismantling the track.

“What are you doing so far from the hotel, completely drunk?” He asks, almost mockingly.

“You are also completely drunk and far from the hotel.” You pipe back; however, his stupid comment somehow made a blush crawl up your cheeks.

“Well, you know, I could make my way back.” His voice drips with confidence, almost acting like he was more capable than you.

“I could at least get, like, an Uber.” You drink the last of your champagne, watching as he looks back over the Strip.

“The driver is downstairs, you know? He could drop us off.” He shrugs. You nod; how else were you going to get to the Wynn anyway?

The door hadn’t even clicked shut before you slammed Kimi against it. Everything made a loud noise, the door creaking, and he was gasping at your dominance.

His back made an ugly sound as he hit the door, but you didn’t fucking care. He deserved it. He deserved some pain. His face contorted into a strange, pleasured expression and his eyes flashed with heat.

“God, you’re a nightmare.” You whisper into his ear, slowly moving to breathe right behind his ear. Your lips brush the sensitive skin as you feel him squirm beneath you.

“Yet, you can’t resist.” He smirks, grabbing your flesh beneath him. You’re still wearing your team kit. A short-sleeved Mercedes shirt and some matching shorts.

A loud gasp exits your lungs as he flips the roles, pushing you onto the wall next to the door. You had barely any time to protest as his lips are on yours, demanding and biting. He’s not biting softly; he’s gouging you hard enough that you’re wondering if he’s part vampire.

You’re tasting copper as he angrily begins lashing his tongue at you. You could barely keep up at his desperate and angry kiss. It was all teeth and pent-up passion between the two of you.

His hands cupped your ass as he pushed you up the wall, forcing your legs to wrap around his waist as you only got closer. Bodies touching, hands wandering. Your eyes closed, tiredly as you reached up to play with his curls.

He lets go for air, and you’re both gasping. His cheeks are flushed with blotches of pink, and his hands catch the elastic of your shorts.

“You’re so fucking infuriating.” You hiss at him, still tasting blood in your mouth and feeling him drop your shorts to the floor.

He manhandles you by your hair, setting your feet on the ground and turning you around, pressing your face against the cold wall.

“You can think about that while you take it, that okay with you, honey?” He bites your neck as he speaks softly into your ear. His tone is deceiving and soft, but his words are not.

You can only focus on the dark heat pooling between your legs like sin and the way his mouth is sucking and biting your skin. He wasn’t gentle with it; he’s making sure there are marks and bites all over you. Your neck aches at the way he has it bent against the wall, and you’re all sweaty from partying all night.

You were such a mess, yet Kimi couldn’t wait to have you. You were so attractive, especially after a Grand Prix, all tired and exhausted and gorgeous, with flushed cheeks and your lungs gasping for air.

But this is pretty close too. Your cheeks flushed from drinking all night and having your mouth contorted into an ‘O’ as he bites your neck.

He pushes your shirt out of the way as you both walk hand in hand to the bed. You climb on first, before he climbs over you.

“Say you hate me again.” He murmurs, yanking you underneath him and wrapping your legs around his waist again. This time, you get enough leverage to grind against his hard length.

“H-hah, I told you- you need to- " His voice stutters; he’s already feeling the effects of how you’re teasingly moving underneath him. You pull his hair, and you hear a choked moan escape his throat.

“You don’t tell me what to do.” You push him off you, climbing on top of him underneath you. You look at how he’s flushed underneath you, biting his lips like crazy. His lips are all puffy from your kisses, and you move down to begin kissing and biting his neck.

You claw at his shoulders, digging your nails into his Mercedes shirt. You want to rip it off him, but you’re not an animal, so it bunches under your fingers instead and stretches over his chest.

His breath speeds up as you make bites all over his neck. “I hate how much this is turning me on.” He admits quietly; you just let out a deep chuckle before pulling on his hair. “Is that so?” You smile, seeing his blown-out eyes and rising and falling chest.

His lips capture yours again as you begin pulling up his shirt. His hands tangle in your hair as you pull it off. You throw it on the floor behind you as you admire his body.

You saw the small scars from all the injuries from Monza. The scratches on his arms from the crash, or the bruise still lingering on his bicep. You bite your lip, looking at the small purple mark.

“You like it?” He asks smugly, his face pulled into a grin. You roll your eyes, “Duh.” You return to the warmth of his mouth as you begin to pull and scratch at each other again.

His neck is dotted with little marks, and you let go only to add more. His hips stutter up again, earning another soft moan from him. “O-oh, you’re-“ you cut him off, kissing him again and pushing down the shorts of his team kit.

His head is spinning; he’s never had so much hate and passion blended together in his whole life. His body’s buzzing with the need to be inside of you right now; it’s practically screaming at him.

His hands push you down onto the bed, so that you’re underneath him once again. Your words die on your tongue as he wastes no time tangling your tongue with his again.

He’s fuelled by adrenaline in this moment, exactly like how he is when he’s thirsting for a win, exactly how he feels when he so desperately wants to overtake you on the track, and you keep blocking him.

Just the thought of how you drove today makes him tangle his hands in your hair and pull, pull hard and sorely. He’s flushed just hearing your dreamy sounds, the way you’re playing with his necklaces, pulling at them and clawing at his shoulders.

You bite your bottom lip, which by now was already red and dripping blood into your mouth from his biting antics earlier. You whine as he makes your neck bloom with little marks.

“You’re so fucking annoying…” he grunts between kissing your neck. His voice is low, and his eyes are glassy; they’re clouded with desire, but it seems to go deeper - it looks like lust.

They’re full of that intense, corroding desire to completely consume you whole and take your body. His blown-out pupils stare at you with want. He stares at your face, which he hated to see all season, but now he just wanted to stare at your pretty little lips and pink ears from blushing so much.

You both share a tender moment in silence, just staring at one another. It was filled with nothing but your heavy breathing and intense, lustful gazes at one another.

Something snaps in him as he ruins the perfect little moment you’d just had by diving in to kiss you again. He tastes the copper still lingering in his mouth, and it has his head spinning in pure desire.

His hands pull down your panties, making you suck in a sharp breath. You feel the air slowly swirling around your sensitive cunt, as he stares down at you.

“Ah, gorgeous.” He says sweetly, taking your hand, giving it a small squeeze. “Tell me if it is too much, ok?” He gives you a little knowing grin before diving between your legs. He plants a little kiss on the inside of your exposed thigh first. Then he looks it over his shoulder.

He starts stalling when he goes to make a little mark on the one thigh, and then the other, and to softly touch and admire the creamy skin around him. “Do something!” You whine, hands digging into his hair.

“Sorry, sorry.” He flushes pink, from his cheeks to his ears, before giving you a little kitten lick over your cunt.

You shiver at the contact; it was soft, exploring even. You look down at him; he’s paused. He’s looking intensely at your legs, between them, at your body. His eyes are half open, gazing so lovingly at you.

You’d momentarily thought of your F2 days, the way he used to look like that - soft, dreamy. Prema was so broke that year that for most of the season you and Kimi slept in the same hotel room.

You’d hear him mumbling in sleep, or when you’re pretending to be asleep to move some hair out of your face, or tell you goodnight even when you’re sleeping. It’s all swirling in your heart. That was so long ago. He must’ve really liked you.

So this kind of domestic intimacy was much missed between the two of you. It was never rivalry and hate before. It had melted you over this weekend - you had officially succumbed to Kimi Antonelli under the sparking lights of Las Vegas on a Monday morning at 4 am.

Your staring gets interrupted when he dives between your legs and captures your clit right between his lips.

“God- Oh my God, you’re-“ You whimper, pulling his hair. Your hips threaten to buck into his face at the way he’s now sucking and licking you. It only causes you to feel the darkening sensation more, the way it’s starting to spread from between your legs to into your stomach and thighs.

Kimi’s totally focused on your reactions, the way your hips stutter when he deliberately puts more suction or the way your hands pull his hair when something felt really good. He was solely focused on you and your reaction, despite feeling burning hate for you the entire season. The relief of it all being over; you no longer had to be a bitch to him.

He undoubtedly loved the way the tension melted between the two of you over the weekend. Sure, the championship fight was still on for the last race in Abu Dhabi, but all he cared about in this moment was hearing your moans get louder, making your eyes roll back, feeling your hands wander around his neck and hair.

You eventually bite your bottom lip to muffle the lewd sounds coming from you. Every aching moment from Kimi beneath you only turned you on more, coiling pleasure in your stomach tighter and tighter.

He poked and licked every single crevice of your pussy. From top to bottom, he couldn’t stop. He’d squeeze your thighs, which were clamped around his head by now, and his one hand softly rubbed against your entrance, feeling the way your slick fell out.

You couldn’t stop the moans bubbling up in your throat - the fact that you were only getting closer. His ring finger prodded in you first, having you clenching and shaking.

His mouth was covered in your wetness as he opened his eyes tiredly to look at you. He couldn’t see much, but you were resting on your back, with your hand covering your mouth and the other reaching down, pushing him deeper.

He could only feel himself get more turned on at the raw image, the image of you, sorely in pleasure. It was something he’d never seen before.

His hand reached up between your legs, ring finger curled up into you, brushing against a sensitive bundle of nerves. You seize up, legs definitely trapping him now. A loud moan exits your throat before you could even stop it.

His mouth was doing terrible things to your insides as his middle finger joins his ring finger inside you. A feeling so good, it hurts.

“You like that, huh?” He lets go of your clit with a lewd pop; the sound has you crinkling your eyes closed, before the tension dissipates as he deliberately curls up into your g-spot.

Your hips cause you to begin grinding against his fingers, feeling the electric spasms everywhere. Your stomach only coiled tighter as he watched your face with an odd curiosity

He was determined to see what expression you’d make when you came. He wanted to see how your eyes would be screwed shut, or the way your mouth draws blood from your hand from biting it so hard, or even just the dreamy sound you could make…

It was all making him drill his fingers into you, hearing your babbled attempts at telling him you’re close. He doesn’t need you to tell him; you’re practically dripping all over his hands anyway.

“You just think about this next time we’re racing, sweetheart.” He whispers into your ear, causing you to shiver; he’s now facing you. Your hands begin to claw at his exposed shoulders.

“Think about how this felt.” He bites the outside of your ear, feeling you clench around his fingers.

“Think about how you’ll be taking it after every Grand Prix.” You shiver at his words, legs desperately curling around anything you could find as you only inch closer, closer, the heat in your stomach only becoming stronger…

He deliberately slows down the pace of his fingers, causing your pleasurable high to begin tapering off.

“No- no…nonono-“ you babble, scratching his shoulders as he pulls his fingers out, leaving your pleasure tumbling to zero and making you all frustrated.

“What the hell?!! I was so close…” You whine, darting a hand down to continue what he’s not finished. His hand quickly grabs your wrist before it could even reach your cunt.

“Nuh-uh.” He grabs both your hands and traps them under his grip. You were starting to remember why you hated him. In this moment, you absolutely fucking remembered.

You whine in displeasure because now, your slick is running everywhere; you were about to come, and now he was being a total ass and edging you.

He uses his other hand to push down his own shorts, as you gaze at the hickeys on his neck and scratches on his shoulders.

His body was full of marks now. Whether indirectly from crashing the cars, or directly from your nails and lips, you couldn’t help but feel a little giddy high, seeing your evidence all over him. It made you feel a little territorial, or possessive.

The aching waves of pleasure pounded in you. The alcohol brimming in you made you feel restless. Like you needed him to do something soon.

Your legs are clasping around him before he can even get his underwear off, you taking the initiative to begin grinding against him already.

“Oh- oh… Don’t do that, honey.” He whispers into your ear, slightly whiny as his hips threaten to keep up.

He believes you’re going to behave now, so he lets go of your hands, and you grasp onto his shoulders. The soft relief from the sexual frustration he had just caused you was already making your head spin. The only thing you could think of was Kimi taking that darn underwear off and finally giving you what you wanted.

“S-so good…“ He whines, your legs snaking around his waist as he pushes into you. You’re clawing his shoulders, holding onto anything to ground the waves emitting from your body.

Your breaths morph into erratic gasps, almost as if every time he pulls out, he takes out your air with him as well.

“Honey, breathe.” He says quietly. His voice is strained; you can hear the pleasure wrapping around his words. Your eyes are unfocused; the only things you’re seeing are Kimi’s necklaces dangling between you and all that glorious tanned skin.

Eventually, you calm down to a point that you’re not actively gasping for air, and he begins moving again.

You wish you could tell him anything - that it was the best feeling ever, that he was doing so good- but everything gets drowned out by the cries leaving your throat.

He just looks down at you, seeing the composed, professional, and confident driver he’s always known, getting lost in a pleasure she’d never seen before.

Your eyes are blown out, focused intensely on his neck, staring at the marks on his neck, and pulling at his necklaces. His head spins with yours - the feeling of being buried inside you just so overwhelming.

It was warm. It felt like belonging. It felt better than any high with any other girl, ever. It was you after all. The girl who’d seen everything. His worst moments fighting inside the garage to holding golden trophies as a kid in a kart.

It had his heart flooding with some unknown feeling; it wasn’t unwelcome, but he couldn’t explain why now he wanted to be careful with you, make sure you’re having a good time, not just clawing at you and being rough.

“Taking it so good…” He whispers from above you; your eyes just roll back at his sweet nothing. He watches as your hands grab his arms. They snake around his, and your skin too; it burns.

It burns like hell around him. It feels like he’s doing something terribly wrong - dabbling in something he shouldn’t- but the way you feel, the way you’re crying in pleasure, clenching around him, it’s all the sweetest temptation. The forbidden fruit is always the sweetest, right?

“K-Kimi-“ You babble, grabbing onto his shoulders and digging your nails into his shoulders. He winces at the slight pain, but it only seems to amplify his pleasure. He knows you need to finish first - he needs to be a gentleman after all.

“God- Tesoro, you’re so good f’me-“ He whimpers, now babbling into your ears. You only feel it edging you towards that pleasure you were about to have before; that putrid heat that was coiling inside you was coming. It was intense, overwhelming.

It was rubbing off onto him, the way you sounded so delicate as you moaned, or the way you thought you’d hurt him when you scratched and rubbed his shoulders after.

Something changed in that moment; it seemed he let himself go, freed himself from those mental shackles of being gentle, and kind, and soft with you. His hips stuttered hard into your own, and then he threw caution to the wind.

He was hitting spots that had your entire body shaking, your hands trembling, your eyes seeing the night sky like never before. You couldn’t tear your gaze away from his neck, dotted with bites, and his lips red from kissing you.

His pace was that of a rabid dog now - just mindlessly messing up your insides. Your mind was just as much of a mess as your body; it was buzzed with alcohol, tongue tasting like Prosecco and remnants of Kimi.

You yank his hair, watching as his eyes roll back behind his gorgeous lashes and his mouth hangs open.

That crude visual had you close. Kimi is above you, desperately trying not to finish all up inside you, but your legs are clutched around his waist and not letting him go.

“Tesoro- you-you need to- ah…” his words trail off as he grabs your legs, trying to pull them off of his waist, but you’re so close that just the mere movement of them up has you descending into pleasure.

The new angle hit a spot. Hit a very sensitive spot. Your head lulled back as your body wracked beneath him, the long-awaited relief of finally coming overtaking your body and having your vision go blurry.

Your orgasm only triggered his own, having him clawing at your delicate shoulders and hair as he emptied inside you.

“F-fuck, baby…” You hear him whimper on top of you, and then he quietly deflates. He doesn’t collapse, but rather tiredly falls on top of you, and begins to cradle you. You’re fresh off both your highs, and lying tiredly in one another’s arms.

There’s a comfortable silence that surrounds you, as you bask in the glow. The feeling of lying in his arms, enjoying the heat of him everywhere.

Kimi’s lips on your cheek, then your hair, and your nose, and your mouth, and everywhere near him that he can.

His Italian accent is even more pronounced than you’re both tired. “I’m gonna go get some tissues, just stay here, ok?” He gives you a soft kiss on the lips, wincing as he pulls out. You feel the air curl around your over-sensitive cunt once again.

He comes back, cleaning you up and grabbing some water out of the mini fridge. You see him try and find your shorts somewhere in the room, or at the very least your panties.

“By the door.” You speak quietly, voice hoarse. You see him walk off, and when he comes back, he is busy flipping them right side out.

“What were they doing all the way there?” He asks as he puts them on, over your practically dead legs. You just giggle.

“You took them off; you should know.” You smile and begin to paw at him when he walks on the side of the bed to get the water bottle.

“Uh, uh. Sit up, drink some water.” He puts the open lid by your mouth, forcing you to have to drink some water. You take a couple sips before pushing the bottle away.

Once he’s screwed on the cap, he undoes the sheets, and you both climb in; you immediately curl around him, desperate to be touching him.

“This doesn’t mean anything.” He says quietly, gently moving some hair out of your face. You hum, tiredly closing your eyes against his shoulder.

“Y-yeah.” You stutter.

Silence. This time, not as comfortable as before.

“Do you still hate me?” You turn your head to look at him, his vulnerable question having you bite your lip.

“I don’t know.” You admit, “It’s more complicated now.”

He doesn’t answer. The silence stretches for a long time as he thinks; his eyes are dark in the light from the lamp next to him.

“Yeah.” He just says after a while. Your eyes droop, Kimi’s hands softly caressing you.

Then your alarm went off.

It ripped through you, bright and early as it hit exactly 05:00.

It was Monday morning! Time to get up! Your heart feels like it catapulted out of your body as you try to reach the nightstand to turn it off, the sound grating against your ears.

“Real smooth, honey.” He rolls his eyes. You just growl at him, before wondering if now you had to get up, or if you could at least get 30 minutes of sleep.

ABU DHABI, UAE, 2026

In the mess between the Grand Prixs, you’d snuck into each other’s rooms multiple times. You’d also accidentally run late together. The team, well, you hoped they didn’t notice. Kimi, on the other hand, watched as everyone was staring at your terrible poker face and nervous energy as if you’d done something terrible.

You’d also accidentally been caught inside of another elevator in Qatar, luckily just a stranger and not a staff member. You’d sent him a message right afterwards simply saying, “Never again🫣”

Kimi knew that was a lie.

He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled. Everything was somehow way simpler when you hated him. He never had to worry about hiding and lying so much in his life. Hatred, well, it was clean, simple, easy. You hated him. He hated you back. Simple.

This absolutely was not.

He had to act like he was totally normal with you, after you’d snuck into his room, woke up next to him, and proceeded to act like he was a total stranger during the day. He could think about how you sounded last night and then scrap with you for ten thousandths on track.

He wanted the title as much as you did. He also wanted you not to be terribly distraught if he took it. The two desires sat staring at each other in his mind, opposing weights mocking him.

He wanted to send you something last night. He never did.

Today, he knew, would be going to war again. If he was lucky, you’d end up in the same bed together, acting like it was fine and everything was okay. But only if he was lucky.

3 points separate you going into Abu Dhabi. All that mattered was parking your car in front of his at the end of this 58-lap-long race. It was an eternity you dreamed of overcoming. Today, you could make history, or Kimi could. You could both be the youngest World Champion ever – surpassing Vettel.

You lined up on the starting grid P2 today – behind Hamilton. But most importantly, in front of Kimi, who was P3.

The lights flashed red, and you momentarily thought of your inner child. The girl who just wanted to win a world championship, smiling under the sun of Abu Dhabi holding her golden trophy. You’d won 6 times since your first win in Melbourne this season. You were hoping to make it a spectacular 7th.

You know it would break Kimi’s heart finishing P2, but something was telling you that you just needed to throw caution to the wind today and just do it.

“It’s lights out, and away we go for the last time this season!”

Kimi is trying up the inside on the very first corner. You shut the door on him immediately; you imagined a clip, sending you into the barriers and ending your championship right there. Your insecurity has you wobbling off the throttle, and Kimi behind you looking as desperate as ever for a quick pass on you.

However, you try and keep your mind as blissfully blank as possible. Sure – you couldn’t think of anything going into this Grand Prix, but you tried to think as little as possible, ignore as much of the stakes as you can.

Kimi’s still right behind you though, and you desperately wanted him gone. Right now – he seemed much more like an annoying fly than your teammate, or the man you’re secretly now dating.

Really. You thought about Kimi outside of his car way too much.

You’re thinking of it right now. Inside of the car. Inside of the Grand Prix that meant everything to you. You were racing the man you had an intense rivalry with for the entire year in front of 62 million people. You were counting on your speed, your craft, your talent right now to take you first over the finish line today – and what were you doing?

Daydreaming.

Zoning out.

Sure. Hamilton had now pulled a 3-second gap on you by lap 7, but it was nothing to worry about. All you had to do was get in front of Kimi. Just today. Bring your exhausted mind and body past the finish line.

Your lovesick brain wanted to just have this Grand Prix over with – and you’d never really felt that. Except, perhaps once.

It was a rainy day in Reggio Emilia. It was the karting finale. The championship once again went between you and Kimi. You lined up P2 and P3.

After a bad start, Kimi had overtaken you. Being yourself, you were totally enraged with his ability to keep calm under pressure. Before the Junior Formulas, you were described as a hothead. You saw nothing but pure fury as you raced; eventually, you did overtake him, and you won your first championship.

Judging by how it is going, you were doing better than before. You’d say that it would be a rather boring, cushy Grand Prix. There had been a couple this season where you just coasted to a finish, and you desperately wanted that.

“Oh! Is that Lawson into the barriers? It is!”

On Lap 36, a safety car comes out. Bunching everyone together. You were right behind Hamilton, who had older tyres than you, and in front of Kimi, who had newer tyres than you. He had a good chance to spring past you if you couldn’t spring past Hamilton.

The suffocating atmosphere from Spa and Silverstone came to mind – the way their corners haunted you. Eau Rouge, having Kimi right next to you at 350km/h, wondering if he had a death wish for driving so erratically.

You wondered yourself how you could handle it – but it was earlier in the season. You had a fresher, happier mindset, not one soiled with thoughts of the next time you could be together or messaging him at night. Not one desperate for victory, not one tiredly clinging onto a dream shattered all the way back in Monza already.

Exhausted. That’s how you felt.

Terribly, terribly tired. So tired, in fact, that you wondered when it’d be over. When you’d finally be able to just leave the circus behind.

2026 took everything out of you. The intense rivalry that spanned an entire season with your teammate, having Toto yell at you more than ever, having the entire team conspiring and making rumours, (the latest now being why you and Kimi were so close, was it that obvious?) and then in general travelling around, time zones, get lagged, living out of suitcases, not having seen your dog in forever.

Can it just be over?!

“Restart in 2 laps. You got this.” Your engineer’s excited tone carries over the radio. You bite your lip as you stare at the safety car, thinking of every way you could possibly fuck this up.

Did you say you were going to have a blank mind during this Grand Prix? No, you weren’t. You absolutely fucking weren’t.

The safety car peeled off you and into the pits. You knew now was the time. Now or never.

As soon as you passed the finish line, you floored it, feeling your car lurch you back and into your seat as the engine roared behind you. Kimi’s alongside you into turn one, running wheel-to-wheel for the last three corners before…

Turn 8.

He pulled a cheeky move down the inside, and you watched his car coast past yours. You almost felt like screaming from inside the cockpit. From Kimi’s side, he’s grinning in his car. Sure, he feels bad – he knows you wanted this as bad as he did, and there was no way in hell he could win the championship, and you’d be happy. No way.

You got lost in his dirty air as he peeled away. Your championship hopes diminished in front of your eyes. The water brimmed inside of your eyes. It was over.

Lap 52.

The final lap. You were going to fight until the last corner of the last lap if you damn near had to, and it was needed. You were +0.4 seconds behind him. Every corner you tried some sort of antic on him. Diving down the inside, where he then came back with the old switcheroo.

Going around him, but he just cleanly cut you off.

He weaved down the long straight, once, twice; he couldn’t do it anymore. You had overtake boost, and just like in Silverstone, you overtook him into the corner.

The tears brimming against your helmet began evaporating as the lights began to get colour again. The fireworks were getting ready to explode into the sky; you were ready for them. The smile was coming back to your face.

The line only inched ever closer; the happiness only bloomed inside of you. The sweet, sweet taste of victory, well, it was yours as you rounded the final corner.

P1.

The chequered flag waved as you passed the line. You were the Champion of the World. The radio exploded into noise; the entire Mercedes garage was shouting. Toto was in your headset.

You didn’t scream, not really. Just a tired, deflated sigh, a shaky voice. You thanked the team, and you couldn’t stop to think about how, just like that, it was all over.

In Parc Fermé, Kimi waited for you. Helmet lying abandoned on a table, his skin flushed. You both stood, looking at each other. The noise of the crowd began to drown out between you.

You felt like a kid again – the kid at the karting track in Reggio Emilia looking at the heartbroken boy. You felt like crying again, staring at him. Thinking of how, even after all this time, you were both still here for your love of racing, for your friendship, for everything.

He’s the first to embrace you. “Congratulations.” His voice slightly deadpanned, you look down. “You deserve it.”

You pulled back enough from the hug to look at him; the silence told you something. The rivalry had simmered, but something far more dangerous remained, waiting for next season.

“Thanks.” You managed, the words almost feeling like choking. Your throat felt all clammed up.

After the podiums, and the fireworks, and the champagne, and the trophies, and the interviews, and the team celebrations, you found yourselves staring out at the dock again by the marina. The water reflected the fireworks, still going off after hours.

“So, what happens now?” He said, filling the silence between the two of you. The fireworks burst into colours again, and you watched another round of them bloom and fade.

“I don’t know.” You sighed, “But I don’t want to hate you anymore.”

He turned to face you; his face was highlighted by the lights of the fireworks. You saw a side of him he never shows the world – a vulnerable one. The nervous, childish Kimi.

He looks down at your hands, still mindlessly fidgeting with your Mercedes kit. He takes your hand, lacing your fingers with his.

Nothing else needed to be said. You stood together, at the end of the most intense season of your lives, the championship trophy having your name on it, and the complicated future waiting in front of you.

If you read to the end, thank you so much. This took me an entire month to write. I had so many things happening, and I’m utterly exhausted from everything. I will try work out a schedule for posting. I hope you enjoyed💕

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