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It first happens during qualifying. You’re hit with a rush of nausea that has you slowing down on the back straight. Going slower and slower until you’re way off the racing line and crawling along.
A concerned voice then crackles to life and echoes around your skull, “Nico, you okay? Is there something wrong with the car?”, but you can only glare out of the small window of your visor with watering eyes as a blur of red screams past.
That’s when you see them.
Numbers trail behind the car like a streamer, stark white against the backdrop of the sky. There and gone so fast you can’t possibly recall their order. You stare after them, swallowing back the sickness, and before you know it, you’re rolling back onto the track to chase them down.
The guys in the garage are as sick of drama as you are at this point, and the voice continues to fill your head until you assure them you’re fine, you’re good, just felt a little ill.
They seem to accept that.
“Alright,” they level at you, not sounding too happy, “there’s a chance we might get penalised for holding up Raikkonen, so exceptional laps from here on out, Nico.”
You don’t mention the floating numbers.
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The next time it happens your feet are planted firmly on the ground and not on a pair of pedals but the sudden wave of ‘something’ still makes it feel like the world is rushing past your head, bringing you to your knees.
Luckily, you’re alone in your hotel room and there’s no one around to see you crawl towards the bed. You prop yourself up against it and swear you can feel the dread surrounding whatever this is seeping into you.
Your phone sits abandoned in the middle of the floor, still replaying your earlier qualifying, and while you’d convinced yourself it wasn’t truly there, only an unlikely reflection off your visor, the video has told you otherwise. Watching yourself slow to a halt, whilst circling from high up above, you're hit with the same sense of discomfort. The numbers are smaller but undoubtedly there.
You kick out and your phone spins away to rest under a table. Your hands shake as you reach above your head, grasp the bedcover and pull it fully over yourself until darkness blankets you instead.
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After that, they appear all over the place.
Your team starts to look at you weird when you don’t meet their eyes. Instead, the space above their heads appears so much more interesting. They don’t comment on it, too worried that the pressure is getting to you before the end prize is safely theirs, but they are clearly aware there's a problem.
It figures.
You try not to let it affect your race. The numbers are just another piece of the terrifying puzzle you have to juggle in order to win but you’re not kidding anyone. Especially when you come second to your teammate and you’re fighting back tears that have nothing to do with losing.
Congratulating him on camera comes off as curt and angry unlike the truth.
And as you’re slinking away from the media, a flash of Ferrari red catches your attention. They both had a good race today but Kimi is still quick to steal himself away, something you’ve always wondered about but never questioned. Only now, it’s not his mood that distracts you.
The shine off the numbers above his head is almost blinding.
If he notices your wide-eyed stare, following him across the paddock, he gives no indication.
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You’ve never resented your fans before but when they crowd you now, holding out pictures of yourself, you want to push them away. Twice, you’ve almost parroted their numbers in silver pen instead of your signature and still they smile at you, not knowing how close they came to learning impossible knowledge.
It used to be that you could clamber out of the car and speak to your friends about anything but those days have passed and you’re left with fewer options lately. You get a flash of your younger self hanging off your father’s legs and want nothing more than to return to that moment. You want the luxury of tears right now, to be able to cling to someone solid and feel taken care of, but it seems you’re on your own.
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You’ve seen higher numbers and you’ve seen lower numbers but you’ve never seen numbers brighter than the ones that float above Kimi’s head whenever he’s near.
Like right now, as you and your fellow drivers are paraded around the track like objects, a mere means to an end, Kimi shines purest of them all.
The numbers don’t count down as you watch, but if you glance away or blink they read a fraction lower. Your eyes often sting from your efforts to keep the numbers at their highest and your eyes are on fire by the time you’ve placed yourself at Kimi’s side.
You can’t see his eyes through his sunglasses so instead you find yourself desperately searching for a glimpse of numbers above your own head in their reflection. There are no numbers just the image of a scared little boy with dark shadows under his eyes. You must look particularly pathetic because even Kimi melts at the sight of you and surrenders his full attention.
“You keep looking at me.”
It’s not an accusation but, man, what do you say to that.
You swallow once, twice, and then say, “I think I’m going crazy.”
And instead of reacting, Kimi takes off his hat and runs a hand through his hair. The numbers act as an object in the foreground and the writing on his hat gets obscured into illegibility and you want to cry. How is this happening?
He notices your shifted gaze and brings the cap slowly back to his head. He seems ready to say something but you flee before he can start judging you and before the tears of frustration start to fall.
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They seat you beside each other at the next conference, which is better than you in the back row, because you don’t think you could glare through the spotlights and the numbers with a polite face.
Kimi keeps glancing at you, even when you’re not talking, but that might be because you’re making such a conscious effort not to look at him, even when he’s mumbling his way through an answer.
After a while his arm carefully and oh-so-purposefully presses against yours and you hope to god that he can’t feel you shaking through the connection.
Perhaps it’s his touch that gives you the confidence but, while the focus is on someone else, you reach for one of the pads they always lay out for you and risk one, quick glance at the space above Kimi’s head. You print the numbers out in thin, sketchy lines and push the pad towards him. You give him just long enough to read it and frown and then you tug it away. Only, he surprises you by catching your wrist and stealing back the pad.
He frowns at it once more before sliding it into his pocket, and you can feel the panic rising in you until he settles into his chair and the solid warmth of his arm is back against yours.
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It becomes a coping mechanism.
Whenever the burden weighs too heavy, you scribble down the latest number and leave it somewhere Kimi will find it. They’re innocuous enough that no one bats an eye if they never make it to him but just getting the numbers out of your system helps.
Keeping him updated shares the responsibility.
Sometimes you hand them directly to him and that catches the attention of a few people. You wonder how many times Vettel has accused you of slipping Kimi your phone number and cringe.
If only he knew the truth.
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It goes on for months. All the way up into late November where it hits its culmination.
Kimi stalks into your room like you invited him in. You make a passing grab at his arm but since you’re avoiding looking at him these days you miss completely, and he approaches the bed whilst pulling fistfuls of paper out of his pockets.
He drops them carelessly on top of the covers, hand after hand, and you see your own handwriting staring back on various hotel stationary, beermats, napkins, and even a corner from a sheet of telemetry. You don’t remember writing so many but after the first, the floodgates must have opened for you, letting the meagre relief flow over you both.
All this time, Kimi has wordlessly accepted each one and the gratitude forces you to meet his eyes.
“They’re always lower,” he says, sounding neither here or there.
You nod.
“Do you know what they mean?”
And while you have a pretty good idea what the numbers mean, it offers you no comfort to say it out loud. Only the day before, you saw a small boy waving a red bull cap in the crowd with a string of numbers above his head you could count up to, no problem, and the implication is enough to bring a lump to your throat even now.
There’s no way you can voice your suspicions here. Not when his pale stare makes you feel so small.
“And when it hits zero…”
He trails off, reaching for one of the scraps that just so happens to be the latest and the lowest and you shrug.
The room settles into an overall quiet with only the soft scrape of Kimi’s fingers against paper to cut through it until, eventually, he speaks up again.
“What does it say now?”
You flinch because all day you’ve been trying not to look at him and now you can’t help but inch ever higher. It’s the last thing you want to subject yourself to and you fight the urge. Without realising you’ve even moved, your hands find themselves wrapped up in the front of his shirt and you cling to him like you’re that little boy again. He barely reacts at all.
You bury your face into his neck, mainly because he seems to be allowing it, but also because it’s one of the few places where you can’t see the numbers mocking you. His arms don’t come up to shelter you like your father’s would and the security he provides is nowhere near the same but it’s all you have, and as you’re trying to crawl into the other man’s skin, you can’t help but admire Kimi’s unwavering calm.
It’s strange, you’ve never even hugged before and having Kimi’s pulse flutter delicately against your lips seems like too intimate a shift in your relationship. But you don’t care. You want to take everything he’s willing to give you. You want touch. You want comfort. You want anything that reminds you of life and not a fucking countdown to death.
Because that’s all it could be, you’ve decided. The feeling of dread you get every time you glimpse a number is proof enough and, while you’ve never tracked down any of the numbered people, too scared shitless of the outcome, you’re pretty sure Kimi’s clock has been ticking over right before your very eyes.
He puts up with the contact far longer than you ever would have guessed he was capable but eventually he tries to step away. You don’t let him though. Using his momentum, you walk him backwards until his knees collide with the bedstead and you both tumble into the pit of numbers. Several scraps are catapulted into the air and rain down on your back and it seems you’ll never be able to fully escape their crushing weight.
Kimi hisses when your elbows and knees brush, press and pinch him all over but he still continues to take it even as you’re now bracketing his hips and your hair is tickling his face.
“I’m sorry,” you tell him again and again, maybe over your inability to cope right now or maybe over the bigger picture here. You don’t think it matters when you repeat it once more.
A shiver runs through you when his hand gently drifts up to cup the back of your neck. It neither pushes nor pulls, just rests, and it gives you enough courage to move out of his immediate space and run your eyes over his face.
His skin is red in select patches, a problem he’s had all his life and it makes him appear infinitely younger. He clears his throat and licks his lips but says nothing. Without his sunglasses, he doesn’t know where to look. You can’t tell if he’s as scared as you are.
In the mirror to your right, you can see the inverted number only has six digits now and you duck back down to press a kiss onto his body for every time you blink and it flickers lower. He grunts and shifts uncomfortably for the first few but soon settles, even leaning into it, accepting comfort for something he doesn’t even understand.
In the end, it’s all you can offer him as he slowly dies under your hands and mouth.