Chapter Text
Ollie stares down at his phone as they enter the Mercedes motorhome. “Oh my God.”
“What?” Kimi is immediately at his side, struggling to take a peek at the other driver’s screen.
Ollie holds it far above Kimi’s reach, much to his annoyance, as they make it past the staff milling about. It’s only media day, and most of the main events are over, so it’s relatively uncrowded. Relatively uncrowded isn’t good enough, however, and Ollie waits until they’re in a fully empty hallway before showing the messages to Kimi.
“Oh my God,” he echoes. “And he’s sure—”
“—that Nico is his soulmate?” Ollie checks the messages he received from Gabi, not two minutes ago, just to confirm they’re still there. “Come on, Kimi. We know they’ve both got soulmarks as their soulbond. And Gabi’s is—”
“—the number twenty-seven, in binary stripes, I know. It just… seems like a reach, does it not?”
“I don’t think so,” Ollie says, as Kimi pulls them both into his driver’s room. “I think you’re just disappointed because Gabi’s the first of us rookies to find his soulmate.” As much as he tries, Ollie can’t keep his own disappointment out of his voice, and he hopes Kimi doesn’t notice.
Kimi absolutely notices. He doesn’t rise to the bait, though, too exasperated to. “I know, I know. I am happy for Gabi, really, it’s just… it’s unfair, is it not? Isack has that silver thread only he can see, Liam has that cheesy pick-up line on his arm—”
“—Franco has those weird dreams about someone,” Ollie continues, taking a seat on the couch. “Jack has that weird kangaroo that follows him around and hisses at people and bit Pierre that one time—”
“—and now Gabi, with his soulmark, has found his soulmate!” Kimi groans, muffled as he faceplants onto that same couch. “And yet, neither one of us have even discovered our soulbonds! It just feels as if we are—”
“—hopeless,” Ollie finishes, kicking back beside him. “Absolutely, one hundred percent, hopeless.”
“Mm-hmm,” Kimi mumbles. He pulls up his head, both to breathe and so that he can speak properly. “Precisely. Exactly what I was about to say.” He faceplants right back down, groaning into the cushions again.
“I mean, in all fairness, we’re still young,” Ollie tries, but his tone betrays him. He has as much confidence in his own statement as he does in his Haas car this season—which, coming off of his most recent DNF, is shit all.
“Yes, yes, we’re still young.” Kimi waves his hand dismissively, almost colliding with Ollie, who has to dodge backwards to keep from being swatted. “But come on. Most people have noticed at least something by now. Like, a step counter appears on their wrist, or—”
“—they start feeling very cold, and oh, that person over there suddenly feels very warm, or—”
“—they fall asleep, and they stay asleep, not until their one true love appears, and gives them a kiss to wake them up.”
Ollie’s brow furrows. “I thought those ones were made up?”
This time, Kimi’s handwaving almost collides with Ollie on purpose. However, because his face is still smooshed, he misses again. “It’s very real! It happened to my cugino.”
“Sorry, what was that?”
Kimi pulls up off of the couch, looking rumpled and annoyed. Ollie tries to hide his grin as his friend huffs, “I said it’s very real. It is called a Sole, Luna, e Talia soulbond, and sounds wonderful.” He sighs, flipping over and kicking his legs over the side of the couch, then over the backrest—leaving him upside-down, blood rushing to his head.
“Is that, like, the Italian ripoff of Sleeping Beauty?” Ollie relaxes back, poking at Kimi’s ankles. “Also, don’t sit like that, remember what happened last time? You felt all woozy and—”
“—you had to find me something to be sick in, but I wasn’t sick, but you were still worried, I remember.” Instead of flipping back around, Kimi lets his form slither further towards the floor, ankles slipping away from Ollie’s fingers. “And Sleeping Beauty is actually the English ripoff, just so you know.”
“Either way. Sounds more inconvenient than wonderful.”
“Are you kidding me? I would kill for one of those!” Kimi slithers further, until he’s partially on the carpet. “I probably have one of those terrible soulbonds, you know? Like, the one where we can only tell the truth to one another, the ones that are called—?”
“—veratiphiles,” Ollie supplies. Most people only bother learning the names for their own soulbond, but he and Kimi have had nothing but time to think this over. “And mine’s probably worse than yours. I probably have that one, joy buzzers I think it is? Where you—”
“—feel a jolt of pain when you first touch each other? No, no, ours would have to be much worse, we would not be so lucky.” He stares up at upside-down Ollie, and grins despite himself. “We are definitely, without a doubt—”
“—the very worst soulbond to have—”
They lock eyes, Kimi almost off the couch, Ollie leaning back into it, and say it at the same time, in the same exasperated, deadpan voice.
“—sparklers.”
Kimi completes his voyage to the floor with a thump, legs somersaulting over his head until he’s sitting back upright. “It would be just our luck—”
“—getting the one soulbond out of the big ten with no outward signs—”
“—except for when you’re already kissing each other, which is useless—”
“—because how are you supposed to even know you’re anime gemellen in the first place—”
“—unless you’re kissing everyone you know—”
“—on the mouth—”
“—like a slut.” Ollie holds up his hands. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but—”
“—it’s like, embarrassing, and you don’t even get a clue before that point!” Kimi concludes.
In unison, both drivers take a deep sigh. Ollie pushes himself forward, grabbing Kimi under his armpits and yanking him back onto the couch like a teddy bear. They end up halfway on top of each other, though neither of them move.
“Dead on, mate,” Ollie says, manoeuvring his hand around Kimi’s shoulder. “We’re definitely sparklers.”
“And we’re definitely hopeless,” Kimi says back, nestling himself into the crook of Ollie’s arm. It’s unfortunately very comfortable, so as much as he wants to slump his way back down, Kimi settles. They both stay like that, content and silent, before he finally says, “If only we could… ask someone. Upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” Ollie repeats. “You mean, on the roof?”
Kimi shakes his head. “No, no, I mean… somebody in charge. Somebody who decided it all, all of our soulbonds. If we could ask them—”
“—then we’d finally be able to find our soulmates,” Ollie agrees. “So… you want to ask… God?”
“No. Not like he has answered me before, anyway,” Kimi mutters. “But there must be someone who can tell us, right? Or someone who can point us in the right direction…” Slowly, a grin slides onto his face as the idea comes to him. “You know, Gabi and Nico aren’t the only soulmate pairing on the grid. There are others—”
“—with more experience, and probably some pretty good advice,” Ollie fills in. “You might just be onto something. I mean, it couldn’t hurt to ask them—”
“—plus, it might give us a clue on how to figure out ours—”
“—if it’s not fucking sparklers—”
“—which it one thousand percent is.” Kimi pulls away from Ollie, albeit reluctantly. “You’re right, though. It could not hurt, could it?” He stands up, immediately missing the other boy’s warmth. “Hm. Who do we do first?”
Ollie ducks his head, pretending he doesn’t also miss the warmth. “Uh, most would still be busy right now, yeah?”
Kimi taps his chin. “I would bet you anything Max has snuck out already, like us, which means—”
“—Charles has definitely snuck out with him,” Ollie adds. “So—”
“—RedBull motorhome?”
“RedBull motorhome,” Ollie confirms. “I mean, they are literally the most famous soulmates on the grid—”
“—so what better place to start?” Kimi stretches, before practically skipping over to the door. “Race you there!”
“Wait, Kimi, No!”
Kimi pauses in the doorframe, looking back to see Ollie lifting himself off the couch, scrambling towards him. He leans opposite Kimi against the doorframe, half a foot taller, which is not something Kimi notices normally. He notices it now, forgetting to breathe as he’s forced to crane his neck to meet Ollie’s eyes, seemingly darker than they’d been before.
“Y— Yes?” Kimi stutters out.
Ollie’s expression breaks into a smirk. “Nothing,” he laughs. “Just didn’t want you to get a head start.” Then before Kimi can process this, the other boy’s nothing more than a splash of Haas red sprinting off down the hallway.
Kimi gasps, kick himself off the door, and curses in Italian all the way to the RedBull motorhome, chasing down Ollie’s cackling form.
He pretends his accelerated heartrate is because of the running.
They arrive, incredibly, at the same time. Ollie, of course, had his unfair advantage—but he also spent most of the sprint laughing himself weak, looking back at Kimi over his shoulder, which evened the playing field in the end. It was at least enough for Kimi to catch him right before the motorhome doors, tackling him through them, straightening up as soon as the confused RedBull staff spotted them.
They’re both red-faced, panting, and on much better behaviour by the time they’re standing in front of Max’s driver’s room, knocking and receiving no answer.
“Maybe they aren’t here,” Ollie hums.
Kimi knocks again, once more to no response. “No, they would be in here,” he mutters. Idly, he tries the door handle, which swings open as if oiled, revealing some red-coloured figure on top of a blue-coloured figure—
“Ah!” Ollie yelps, and the two figures split apart like the magnet poles they resemble. “Sorry, sorry, we’ll come back some other time—”
“—that time being now,” Kimi chimes in, strolling on forward. He turns to Max and Charlies, now a biblically approved distance apart, the former unphased and the latter very phased. And stammering something out in French, that translates roughly to oh fuck, we forgot to lock the door again, fuck fuck fuck.
“Do you need something?” Max asks, not missing a beat. He’s sitting on the couch, his legs now crossed, unbothered.
“And could it not have waited another thirty minutes?” Charles adds, fighting for composure, face the same colour as his SF-25.
“It could—” Ollie answers, unable to look either in the eye.
“—absolutely not have,” Kimi amends, locking gazes with Max. “Wait, thirty minutes?”
“So, what did you need?” Max asks, again, as he beckons Charles back to him. He settles beside him on the couch, this time, rather than right on top of him like before. Kimi, similarly, drags Ollie over along with two chairs, positioning them facing the other pair.
“We have questions,” Kimi says, once they’re all sat down.
“Was it about what you just saw?” Max inquires.
“No!” Ollie cries, before thinking. “Wait, actually—”
“—kind of. Kind of has to do with that.”
“Kind of?” Charles repeats, incredulous. He’s less embarrassed now, in no small part thanks to Max’s arm being thrown around his shoulder, but he still squirms a little. “Wait, they are not asking us about…?”
“I believe they are, schatje,” Max replies. He turns to Kimi and Ollie, far too easily. “It is fine. They would need to know eventually.”
“Know what?” Kimi and Ollie both demand, at the same time.
“They still feel too young,” Charles comments. “To be talking about… sex.”
“What?!” That’s only Ollie that time. Kimi, the traitor, looks entertained.
Max, with his other hand, pats Charles on his own. “I think they can handle it.” He turns to Kimi and Ollie. “Okay, so when one Formula One driver loves another Formula One driver very much—”
Ollie clears his throat, loudly. “We were, uh, actually trying to talk about soulbonds—”
“—you guys’ soulbond, specifically. Like, what it is, how you figured it out—”
“—and not sex—”
“—despite how very funny that would be.”
“Kimi!” That time, it’s both Ollie and Charles.
Max, on the other hand, just laughs. “I had a feeling that wasn’t it. Though, if you’d like me to continue—?”
Kimi’s considering it, if only because he enjoys the way Ollie is mortified at the idea. Unfortunately, Ollie catches the puckish spark in his eye, and cuts him off sharply with, “No, no, we do not want that.”
“Thank God,” Charles sighs, voice still a little strained—but very obviously flushed with relief. “So. What do you two want to learn about soulbonds?”
“And why?” Max’s tone betrays just a hint of his curiosity, but he doesn’t care, eying the two drivers in front of him. “Has something happened?”
Kimi laughs, dryly. “No, that’s the thing—”
“—nothing has happened.” Ollie taps his knee—oops, not his knee, it’s Kimi’s, but whatever. “We don’t even have an inkling what our soulbonds could be. We’ve had no signs, no clues, no nothing—”
“—so we need you to tell us what we are doing wrong!”
Charles purses his lips. “Well, you two are still very young,” he points out. “I do not think that many people your age have found their soulmate, yet.”
“Yes, but they at least know their soulbond,” Ollie counters. “Or they have some suspicions—”
“—but us?” Kimi reaches over, taps Ollie’s knee back as revenge. “We have not noticed anything.”
Max looks between them, specifically down at where they’re tapping each other’s knees—which has evolved into some sort of competition, seeing who can tap the other’s knee the hardest. He then looks down at where his own hand is resting on Charles’ knee. He raises his eyes to his soulmate, who has been mirroring his movements perfectly.
“Really,” Max deadpans. “You haven’t noticed anything.”
“Absolutely nothing,” Charles says.
“Yes!” Ollie replies. “It’s been nothing but a load of normality—”
“—which is why we thought we would come to you guys for help,” Kimi explains. “You two are infamously soulmates! So—”
“—who better to help us? Surely you two would be able to help us figure out our soulbonds—”
“—right?” Kimi’s face morphs, pondering. “Wait, what even is your soulbond?” Both he and Ollie turn to Max and Charles, eyes shining.
Max only shrugs. “Eh, it’s only inscribed.”
“What, like we can’t know, or…?”
“No,” Ollie says, spinning to Kimi. “Inscribed is the one where whatever you draw on yourself gets drawn on your soulmate, too.” He spins back to Max and Charles. “That’s—”
“—basic,” Kimi finishes.
Charles clicks his tongue. “It is sweet! I wake up, and every day, there are lovely little messages on my arms. It is a wonderful way to start the morning!”
“Yeah, but that one is, like, the third most common one, though,” Kimi adds, a little deflated. “And it’s very obvious.”
“It was not for us,” Max says.
“How did you find it, then?” Ollie queries, and Charles’ expression lights up, before he clears his throat.
“It was many years ago,” he tells them. “I was not really thinking of my soulmate, far too focused on racing—I had, of course, noticed a few scribbles on my arm here and there, but I had only thought it was my own doing. Until one day…”
“What happened?” Kimi asks.
“Something more than scribbles turns up.” As if to prove a point, Charles pulls his up sleeve—there’s nothing on there currently except a crudely-scrawled message in Dutch, punctuated with many a crudely-scrawled love heart, but he gestures to his whole forearm. “Not just doodles, but data. Line after line of notes, detailing lap times, where time is being lost, what sectors need to be looked at again. And I thought to myself, who is doing this? They are my soulmate, no? And I realised I only knew one person who was so crazy—”
“Nee, nee!” Max protests, pointing a finger at Charles. “That is not how you knew! Tell them the real reason!”
Charles stumbles over his words a little, face returning to its previous reddish shade. “Oh, I, uh— I could also tell from his way of writing, because I had seen it before, many times—”
“This weirdo had all of my lap times, and sector times, memorised!” Max interrupts, as Charles becomes progressively more flustered beside him. “He immediately recognised all of numbers, and rushed over to me!’
Kimi leans forward in his seat. “To confess his love, yes? To tell you—”
“—that you’re his soulmate and want to be together forever?” Ollie finishes.
Max laughs. “Nee! He rushes into the garage—”
“We really don’t need to tell them this,” Charles tries. “And I caught you still writing things down, with a permanent marker, all because you could not find any paper—”
“—and he starts telling me that my notes are wrong! That I should be focussing on this turn, not that one, and this lap time was actually— Anyway, it is not until his arms are shoved in my face do I realise what is happening.”
“I realised, too,” Charles says, nodding away the heat in his face. “And well— As they say, the rest is history.” He wheels around to Kimi and Ollie, waving his hands in front of him. “So you see? All it takes is a little bit of patience, and waiting, and eventually you will figure it out!”
“Yeah,” Kimi whines, “and for your soulmate to write something on your arm—”
“—when you’re already obsessed with each other.”
Max laughs again. Charles makes an offended noise next to him, but he shrugs at that, saying, “What can I say? They are right. We only figured it out because we knew so much about each other, schatje.”
Charles sighs, so fondly it almost elicits an eyeroll out of Kimi. “I suppose so. Though to be fair, it also shows Max and I were already close, no?” He winks at the two younger drivers. “Perhaps your soulmates are closer than you think.”
“Or maybe you need to write shit on your arms,” Max suggests, “and see if someone comes running to you.”
“See, now that is advice!” Kimi exclaims, turning to Ollie. “I mean, finding some markers is not hard, and then—”
“—we can write our numbers on them! Cheers, Max.”
Charles looks between them, blankly, before shaking his head. “Why do I even bother?”
“Do not worry, your advice was good too,” Max coos, giving his soulmate a kiss on the cheek before looking back at Kimi and Ollie. “Here, keep this. I have others.” He grabs a marker from a nearby table, likely the very same responsible for the text on Charles’ arm, and hands it over. “Now run along. Me and my very pretty piece of paper have business to finish.”
Kimi gags, but happily accepts the markers. At once, Ollie is trying to wrestle them off of him, demanding to be able to communicate with his soulmate first. They say their thanks and goodbyes between pushing elbows, and run out of the RedBull motorhome in a similar fashion as to how they’d entered—except this time, Kimi is the one being chased, their voices fading as they move further away.
“Just wait your turn! I will only write something—”
“—that takes way too long, hand it over, Kimi, I have been waiting for longer than you—”
“—because you are so old! Max handed it to me—”
“—because you were closer!”
Once they’re finally scattered to the wind, Max and Charles are left with matching wry smiles on the couch, in relative, blissful peace.
“Do you think the marker will actually help them, mon chéri?” Charles wonders, aloud.
“Oh, not at all,” Max admits, tugging Charles back over towards him. “But it got them out of the room, didn’t it?”
“Sneaky,” Charles admonishes.
“You saw them. They do not need our help!” Max tugs at him again, and Charles goes easily, climbing back onto his soulmate’s lap.
“Yes, yes. Do you think they’ll realise…?” Charles becomes distracted as Max trails a hand down his chest.
“They have to. They are as oblivious as we were. Now—” His hands reach Charles’ waist, curling over his hips, reaching further and behind. “—where we were?”
Charles chuckles as he meets Max’s lips, pushing him into the couch, picking up where they’d left off. Until Charles pulls off suddenly, and as lovely as the whine Max lets out sounds, he manages to stand up and walk over to the damned door.
He clicks it locked, double checks, and then returns to his soulmate where he’s grinning on the couch.