Chapter Text
Ollie grins down at his phone as they enter the Mercedes motorhome. “Oh my God.”
“What? What is it?” Kimi sidles up beside him, squinting down at the other driver’s screen.
Ollie lets him, brushing shoulders as he passes it over easily. “They’re going to announce it. Nico and Gabi, they’re going to tell everyone that—”
“—Kick Sauber drivers, Gabriel Bortoleto and Nico Hülkenberg, have discovered they have matching soulmarks,” Kimi reads, inspecting the draft Gabi has sent to Ollie. He hands the phone back, brushing their shoulders together again, just because he can. “That is so exciting! When is the post going up?”
“Socmed team is telling them to give it a month,” Ollie responds, as they pile into Kimi’s driver’s room. “They really want to get ahead of any rumours, though. Can’t imagine why. Gabi’s mark is obviously twenty-seven in binary stripes, and—”
“—Nico’s is a very stylised looking number five, obviously.” Kimi completes, falling onto the couch—face-up this time, still in his sweaty race suit. “Ach, what a weekend!”
“Tell me about it.” Ollie also plops himself down on the seat, stretching out his legs as he collapses. He cranes his neck to look at Kimi, and says, “I’m happy for them. I think it’s very inspiring, really, considering couples who aren’t soulmates—”
“—are still illegal in a lot of countries, yes. And not a thing that happens at our level.” Kimi reaches out, poking Ollie’s leg. “Not that Nico and Gabi have to worry about that, right?”
“No,” Ollie admits. “But I’m— I’m just saying— It’s inspiring. I’m inspired. So if there was someone for me, who I wanted, and who also wanted me … but wasn’t my soulmate?” He pokes Kimi’s leg right back. “I’m saying I would not be scared anymore. To— To pursue that. And I’m sorry that I ever was.”
Kimi’s mouth quirks, like he’s fighting a smile. He lounges back, arm on the headrest, turned towards Ollie as he asks, “Oh. So we are going to talk about it, now?”
Ollie, who has needed to talk about it since they both left to their respective hotels last night—which was for the best, they did have a race today, but still—is practically vibrating with anticipation. “Yes. I would very much like that. In fact, I would like to—”
“—go first?” Kimi finishes, to which Ollie enthusiastically bobs his head up and down. He flourishes with his hand. “The floor is yours.”
“God, Kimi.” Ollie’s exhausted from the race. He knows Kimi is too, but when he takes his hand in his, all of that weariness burns away from both of them. “I’m so sorry. I was stupid, I should not have wanted space, I was a coward, I was an idiot, I was—”
“—un crapone, yes, yes.” Kimi leans in, giving Ollie’s hand a pat. “But you were also doing what you thought was best, Ollie. And I, uh… I was not exactly understanding of that, when you told me, so. I am also sorry. There was just… so much, this week, it feels—”
“—like too much to even process,” Ollie rounds out. He grins, raising an eyebrow at Kimi. “Y’know, it was a lot of information. Maybe, to go over it all, we need to—”
“—debrief.” Kimi groans. “Not another one. I have just escaped it at last, and now you want to do it again?”
“Not about the race, this time.” Ollie relaxes back into the cushions, not letting go of Kimi’s hand. “Thank God.”
“Oh, because yours was so terrible. Mr. Pitlane-to-P6.”
“No, because yours was. Mr.—” Ollie cuts himself off.
“—Penalty.” Kimi rolls his eyes. “You can say it, I know I got two. And I have apologised to Charles, just so you know—”
“—and he’s definitely forgiven you, already,” Ollie adds. “And if he hasn’t, well. I’m sure he won’t be waking up with anything on his arm tomorrow, except—”
“—some very angry Dutch, you’re right.” Kimi smiles, despite himself, before going back to a look of exasperation. Exasperation, and acceptance. “You’re right. We should debrief before going further. About—”
“—soulbounds. And soulmates. And love.” Ollie pulls apart, reluctantly freeing his hand so he can count on his fingers. He raises his first. “Okay, so, pair numero uno. Charles and Max. What we learned was that Charles is useless, and that we should never trust Max.”
“Hey, you are not taking this seriously!” Kimi chides, much too fondly for it have any effect. “No, no, we learned that soulmates are often obsessed with each other, before they even know about their bond. They share interests, pay attention to the other’s lives, and—”
“—they know each other, like no one else does. Think that sums it up, pretty well.” Ollie raises a second finger to join the first. “Pair numero due. Lando and Oscar. We learned that sometimes, being soulmates means you share everything with another person. Your socks, your clothes, your life—”
“—your salad, your stink bombs, your hoodies,” Kimi lists. At that last addition, he becomes very glad that Ollie’s hoodie is no longer here in his driver’s room. Instead, it’s back in his hotel room, where he fell asleep wearing it after their ‘fight’ on the phone two days prior. Like any normal person would. “It’s about making excuses to stay, to be in the same room, to spend any amount of time together. And, uh… maybe also to have casual sex?”
“Okay, now who’s not taking this seriously?” Ollie teases, bumping Kimi’s leg with his own. He keeps it there, pressing their thighs together.
“Fine, fine. Onto pair numero tre.” Kimi gestures, and Ollie dutifully holds up a third finger. “George and Alex. From them, I learned that you can tell your soulmate anything. That they are someone you trust, someone who feels safe, someone who—”
“—will always love you for who you are, will support you through everything.”
Kimi shuffles closer, taking Ollie’s hands by the wrist. He gently peels back a fourth finger, and prompts, “And pair numero quattro?”
Ollie breathes deep. “Trio numero quattro,” he corrects. “And from them, we learned that we need to fight Yuki and Pierre—” Kimi smacks him on the shoulder. “—I mean we learned that Yuki and Pierre are not so sweet as they seem. And maybe Esteban wasn’t, either. They are messy and they fought, and they have broken up. Even though they’re soulmates.”
“But they still care for each other, despite all of that.” Kimi lays a head on that same shoulder he previously smacked. “Because you can be mad at your soulmate, and still love them through it. You can still wish the best for them.” He turns his face, grinning up at Ollie.
Ollie grins right back, feeling warm inside. And outside, especially on his face. “Finally,” he announces, “pair numero cinque. Gabi and Nico.” He raises the final finger, and tilts his now open palm towards Kimi, who raises his own hand and interlocks it with Ollie’s. “We learned—”
“—that you do not need a soulbond to have all that,” Kimi concludes. “You can know someone, without writing appearing on your wrist. You can want to spend every moment with someone, without your socks ending up in their laundry. You can—”
“—have someone who you feel no shame talking to, who brings colour into your life. Without it being literal.” Ollie rests his head on Kimi’s, their sweaty, helmet-mussed curls mixing. “You can care about someone so much it scares you. So much you can never stay angry at them, not truly angry. And you really don’t need to be remote-hickeying them for that. You can—”
“—be someone’s other half. Be what completes them. Love someone, and have them love you back—”
“—no soulbonds required. No silver string, no prophetic dreams, no terrible evil mini kangaroo—”
“—none of that shit matters. Because—”
“—love is worth it.” Ollie lowers his voice to a whisper. “So… we’re in agreement? We’re doing this?”
And Kimi has been very, very patient, alright? He has been a saint, a true saint, so.
He’s pretty sure he’s earned it as he kicks off of the floor, launching himself so he’s straddling Ollie’s lap. One of his knees is nestled between the other boy and the armrest, the other still on the opposite side, and Ollie gasps as he’s suddenly being pushed into the couch—shocked, but certainly not complaining. Their hands are still linked, their foreheads are touching, and their breaths are mingling where they meet in the middle.
“Seriously, Ollie?” Kimi pants. “When have we not been in agreement?”
Ollie stares up at him with pupils darker than Kimi’s ever seen them. “I could, uh… I could think of a time.”
Kimi uses his free hand to grab a fistful of Haas race suit. “Ollie?”
“Yes?” Ollie squeaks out.
“Shut up.”
“How about you—”
Ollie’s sentence is cut off as Kimi yanks at the fabric under his grip, colliding their lips together. No, not cut off— It’s completed by the kiss, tied together with a bow, signed off with a full stop. Just like everything else in his life, with this wonderful other boy.
He wracks his brain enough away from the pure adrenaline in his veins to regain motor function in his arms—which immediately shoot upwards, cupping Kimi’s jawline, his race suit, his hips. Any and all parts of him that Ollie can reach.
Kimi moves his own hands to rake desperately through Ollie’s hair, as he sighs into his mouth. His eyes are fluttered shut, but he can feel Ollie smile against him, can feel his own smile tugging the ends of his lips. They’re both grinning their heads off, and giggling, and still kissing despite that, and everything is just perfect—
The first pop makes them freeze in their tracks.
It’s swiftly followed by many, many others, a resounding chorus of pop, pop, pop, that crackles like an open flame all around them. It’s like champagne bottles on the podium, but over and over and over again, and both of them open their eyes in alarm to see—
“Oh, holy fuck, are you—”
“—fucking kidding me? Fucking seriously?”
Surrounding them on all sides, illuminating the driver’s room with golden bursts of dancing light, is their very own fireworks show. A series of sparkles whistling, exploding, and sizzling in the air. As soon as one blast fizzles out, two launch out of nothingness to take its place, showering them with more incandescent confetti.
“This is, without a doubt, one thousand percent—”
“—so fucking bullshit!” Kimi leans back, disentangling his hands from Ollie’s hair, letting them instead fall onto his shoulders. “What did I say? What did I fucking say? I knew it, I knew that we had the fucking—”
“—very worst soulbond to have, the only one out of the top ten not to have an outward sign, the only one that doesn’t give you a clue.” Ollie’s hold tightens on the Nomex covering Kimi’s hips, but he doesn’t move his hands. He’s actually resolved never to move them ever again, if he can help it. “Of course. Of fucking course. We’re—”
“—sparklers,” they both say, together, in the same deadpan, exasperated voice. It’s at that moment a comedically timed spark flies up the space between them, erupting in a cascade of magical, shimmering glitter that rains down on their unimpressed faces.
“I mean, it’s actually quite insulting,” Kimi grunts, reaching up and brushing some wayward scintillation out of Ollie’s fringe. “We go through all of that. All of that—”
“—development. Going around to everyone, asking what their soulbonds are,” Ollie carries on, thumbing away a bright particle from Kimi’s waist. “Getting caught in a spiral. Thinking, oh, I can’t like him like I do. He’s probably not my soulmate! Just for—”
“—us to learn a beautiful, powerful, inspiring message,” Kimi spits out, “that we can be together all the same. That love is more powerful than what the universe wants. That we make our own soulbonds. Do you know how ready I was—”
“—to tell people that the fucking sentence thing was our soulbond?” Ollie shakes his head as around them the pops grow more and more infrequent, like thunder in a dying storm. “It's literally the perfect cover. Because everybody already thinks that, plus—”
“—it’s not like anyone can disprove it. There are so many cases of odd, unexplainable soulbonds, ours would have slipped right through the cracks! But no.” Kimi lists forward, resting his head on Ollie’s shoulder, mumbling into his race suit. “I feel like we have been—”
“—robbed,” Ollie mutters. “Completely robbed. How is this satisfying? How does this make sense? We could’ve just made out that first day, and been done with it. We didn’t need to—”
“—realise anything!” Kimi gripes, as the last of the embers fade down to darkness. He pulls his face back, scrunching his nose. “Why didn’t we just make out, that first day?”
Ollie can’t help but find Kimi’s grumpy face adorable, like he always has. He lets himself enjoy it now, his expression softening as he does. “Maybe we… needed the journey? We needed to see what it was like to be soulmates, before we were ready to be soulmates? And—”
“—if we had figured it out that first day, we would never have been able to help Gabi and Nico!” Kimi chirps, back to smiling. “Okay, okay, so maybe it makes sense. At least they are not soulmates, which still proves—”
“—that soulbonds are stupid, and people should be free to love who they love.” Ollie breaks his earlier rule, and lowers his hand a little, pinching Kimi on the ass. The yelp and flush he gets in return makes it worth it. “And they are soulmates, remember, la mia favilla?”
Kimi, despite his heartbeat skyrocketing at Ollie’s— At Ollie’s everything, he manages to stutter, “Y-Yes, I know, I know.” He exhales, long and slow. They should really get out of their race suits, and go back to their hotels. They should really be doing anything else.
But instead they stay like that for a while, just letting their brains catch up, letting their pulses slow down to a healthy rate. Kimi’s stomach, especially, needs a break after all the backflips it’s done in the past twenty-four hours.
Now, though, it seems to have settled finally.
“Ollie?” Kimi asks. The room seems so much darker now, and the moment so much more intimate. “We should really—”
“—go. Get out of our disgusting fireproofs, have a shower, get back to our rooms so we can begin packing—”
“—for the second half of the double header. Absolutely. You are correct. We should do that.” He stares at Ollie, feels the heat of his face, his hands, his heart. “Or. Just maybe. We could—”
“—make the whole room explode again?” Ollie finishes, voice hopeful.
And Kimi, full of so much pure joy, can only laugh. He leans down, and whispers right into Ollie’s lips, “Took the words right out of my mouth.”
And then, well.
It’s nothing but fireworks from there.