Work Text:
Oliver Bearman has always loved Charles Leclerc.
Not in the way the world did — not like the magazines, the flashbulbs, the fanged gossip. Not even like a fan, though once upon a time he had stuck a Ferrari sticker on his school laptop with the same reverence other kids reserved for saints or comic book heroes.
No, Ollie loved Charles in a way that didn’t fit in words. He loved him with the soft, aching hope of a child who had been waiting at a train station for someone who might never arrive — someone tall, and kind, and steady, with a voice that could pull you back from the edge without needing to raise itself. Someone who might, one day, look at Ollie and say there you are. I’ve been waiting for you too.
He doesn’t remember when it started. That love. That craving. Maybe it had always been there, like milk teeth under the gums, waiting to push through.
All he knows is that the first time he ever saw Charles Leclerc — really saw him, not just as a driver on TV or a name in the clouds, but as something real — something clicked in his chest, softly, like a light coming on in a room that had been dark for years.
And maybe it was stupid. Maybe it was ridiculous. Maybe it was the product of too many long nights at karting circuits with nobody waiting at the finish line, too many races with his name misspelt, too many birthdays where the cake was bought last-minute from Tesco and he blew the candles out alone. But he looked at Charles and thought: I want you to be my dad.
Which was insane. Not because Charles was too young — Ollie didn’t care. Not because it made no sense — Ollie had never needed things to make sense. But because Charles had never signed up for that. He had no idea.
And yet Ollie still loved him that way. Quietly. Hopelessly. Beautifully.
Like this:
When Charles smiled, Ollie stored it away like a pressed flower in a book.
When Charles said his name — “Ollie,” with that particular soft ‘L’ — Ollie repeated it later into his pillow just to feel it again.
When Charles touched his shoulder — brief, casual — Ollie’s whole body memorised the shape of it, carried it for days like the sun on his skin.
And when Charles didn’t text back for three days, Ollie forgave him before he even finished being disappointed.
Because that’s what you did, right? When you loved someone who didn’t know they were the closest thing you had to a father who isn't your biological father?
You waited. You hoped. You made excuses. You curled your love into something small enough to fit in your pocket and carried it around like a secret. Like a treasure.
It started — properly — in Saudi Arabia.
March 2024. Carlos had an appendix emergency. Ollie was called in like a last-minute substitute teacher who’d somehow been handed a nuclear briefcase and told good luck, don’t crash.
He drove the Ferrari.
He still doesn’t believe it, even now. Sometimes he wakes up half-convinced it was a fever dream, or a glitch in the Matrix, or some elaborate prank Max Verstappen would have cooked up in a particularly malevolent mood.
But it was real.
He had the red suit. The seat fitting. The weight of expectation. The trembling thrill in his fingertips.
And then —
Charles.
Standing across the garage with a headset askew, hair a mess, eyes bloodshot and bright all at once. Looking at Ollie like he mattered.
Like he was more than just a backup. Like he was here.
That was the first time Charles truly saw him.
And Ollie, idiot that he is, tried to play it cool. Nodded. Smiled. Made a joke about not knowing which button did what. Charles had laughed, low and tired, and said “I think you’ll do well.”
And Ollie had tucked those five words into his chest like a prayer.
After that, it was easy to fall deeper.
Charles would check in sometimes — small things. A smile in the paddock. A dry comment when Ollie sent a stupid meme. A quick “how was quali?” after a race. A thumbs-up through a helmet visor.
They weren’t close. Not really. But Ollie built an entire cathedral of hope out of those little gestures. He convinced himself that maybe, maybe, Charles felt it too. That father-son shape in the air between them.
It wasn’t about mentorship. It wasn’t about racing. It was about love, in its most unspoken, unreturned form. It was about a boy who had grown up with no blueprint for safety, and a man who carried something in his silence that felt like it could hold Ollie still if he let it.
Sometimes he imagined what it would be like.
If Charles came to one of his birthdays — maybe not even on time, maybe flustered and late with wrapping paper falling apart, but there.
If Charles ever hugged him properly — not a side-pat or an awkward arm, but the real thing, arms around him, chin tucked over his hair, breathing like he meant it.
If Charles ever said, “I’m proud of you, Ollie.” Just once. Just once.
He would’ve cried on the spot. No hesitation.
He loved Charles so much it made his bones ache. In the quiet moments — after the races, when the hotel lights were dim and he couldn’t sleep — he would think about it so hard his chest felt bruised.
It wasn’t even about being chosen.
It was just about being wanted.
And Charles never gave him that.
He was kind. He was warm in the way a blanket is when you sit too far away from it. He replied to texts. He waved from his scooter. He nodded at post-race interviews.
But he never crossed that line. Never pulled Ollie in. Never looked at him like family.
And Ollie never asked. Never said a word. Never hinted.
Because how could he?
How do you say: I want you to be my dad to someone who doesn’t even know you’re missing one?
So he held it all in.
He told jokes instead. Smiled through the longing. Made fun of himself. Called Charles “old man” in press conferences. Sent stupid TikToks. Pretended he didn’t care. Pretended he wasn’t quietly inventing what it would sound like if Charles ever called him kiddo.
He laughed instead of crying. Because that’s what you do when your heart doesn’t fit in your chest and you know nobody’s going to notice.
He was good at it. Practiced.
Besides, he had Kimi now.
And that made everything feel just a little bit more survivable.
He and Kimi had the kind of friendship that didn't make sense on paper. It wasn’t built on common sense or logic or shared interests — though they had some of those — but on something quieter, stranger, almost magnetic. The kind of thing that blooms by accident and stays because the silence between them was always softer than the noise everywhere else.
They lived together in Monaco now — in an apartment that wasn’t too fancy but always smelled faintly of orange peels and motor oil. The dishes were never quite done. The windows fogged up every morning. There were socks in the living room and cereal boxes on top of the fridge. Ollie’s shoes were always in the wrong place. Kimi kept accidentally collecting mugs. No one ever cleaned the balcony.
And still, it felt like home.
The world thought they were dating. All the time. In the paddock, in interviews, online. A never-ending stream of “are you two a thing?” every time they stood too close or sat too comfortably or shared a glance that lingered a bit too long. There was one photo — from Spa, probably, or maybe Zandvoort — where Ollie had fallen asleep on Kimi’s shoulder in the motorhome. Kimi hadn’t moved for forty-five minutes.
That picture was in the Louvre now, probably.
But the truth was simpler than that. And stranger.
They just liked each other.
Kimi was one of maybe three people Ollie actually wanted to talk to, and Ollie was not a talker.
Not really.
Sure, people thought he was. He sounded talkative — all jokes and one-liners and commentary so fast it left journalists dizzy. But that was just adrenaline. Performance. Static between the ears that had to go somewhere.
Real talking? Real words — not noise, not filler, but the kind of things that mattered?
No. That was rare.
He didn’t even talk to Oscar that way. Oscar was too much like him — too quiet, too perceptive, too good at spotting fractures. Their friendship was a quiet parallel. Comfortable. Respectful. But they’d sit next to each other for hours and maybe say six words total, none of them important. It wasn’t awkward. It just was.
But Kimi.
Kimi, with his cryptid logic and cat-like energy and inexplicable obsession with fermented Italian dairy products — Kimi was different.
He had this way of existing that made Ollie feel like he could breathe out. Like he didn’t have to hold the joke all the time. Like he didn’t have to earn his place in every room by being the loudest or the brightest or the funniest.
Kimi never demanded anything from him. He just… existed next to him. Occasionally handed him orange slices. Occasionally set things on fire by accident. Once built a cardboard throne in the hallway for no reason other than “you deserve to feel like a king, Bearman.”
Sometimes they talked late into the night. About ghosts. About food. About Monaco being a simulation. About how if you stare at Max Verstappen long enough he starts to look like a sleep paralysis demon. About Ollie’s favourite ice cream as a kid. About how Kimi once fought a goose and lost.
And sometimes they didn’t talk at all.
They’d sit on opposite ends of the sofa, Ollie with his knees tucked to his chest and Kimi with a forkful of pickled herring, and the silence between them would be so soft it felt like music.
People kept asking if they were in love. Or in something. Something definable.
But love didn’t have to look like that, Ollie thought.
It could look like mismatched socks drying on the radiator. Like falling asleep during a horror movie with your head in someone’s lap and waking up to find they’d drawn a moustache on you in eyeliner but also brought you a blanket. It could look like someone texting you “take your meds idiot” with a little frog emoji. Like eating cereal at midnight and not needing to say anything because everything worth saying had already been said in the quiet.
Kimi was his best friend.
His weird, beautiful, confusing, wonderful, ride-or-die of a best friend.
And Ollie loved him.
Not in the way that made his heart hurt. Not in the desperate way he loved Charles. Not in the aching, empty, unreturned way.
This was something else. Something safe.
He would’ve taken a bullet for Kimi, but more likely he’d throw himself into traffic to save Kimi from a goose again. He would’ve fought a war for him, but also maybe he’d just fight customer service agents who mispronounced his name on the phone.
He didn’t always understand him. Kimi would sometimes disappear for hours claiming he had to “recharge in a cave” and come back covered in moss. Once he bought thirty rubber ducks and put them all in the bathtub. He had very strict rules about what days were suitable for talking. He’d eat raw garlic like it was popcorn.
But Ollie loved him anyway.
Loved him like you love your first real home after a lifetime of sleeping on couches.
Loved him like you love the first person who doesn’t ask you to be more than you are.
And maybe that wasn’t romantic.
But maybe it didn’t have to be.
It was real.
It was enough.
For a while, it was enough.
Until it wasn’t.
Ollie had fallen asleep on the sofa again, limbs tangled in the wrong places, body tucked into the familiar dent on the left cushion — the one that had definitely seen too many post-race naps and off-season marathons. The television was still on, casting a soft blue glow over the room, but the sound had long since been muted. Cars 3 played quietly on the screen, Lightning McQueen frozen in a blur of pixelated glory, mid-race and heroic as ever.
Ollie had been dreaming. Something golden, something stupidly happy — championships, maybe. Ferrari red and podium champagne and the kind of cheering that shakes your bones from the inside out. He’d been grinning in his sleep, head fuzzy with the echo of anthems, the deep, delicious warmth of having done it.
And then, slowly, he blinked his eyes open.
Still in the living room. Still on the couch.
The red was just the throw blanket.
And the championship was just a dream.
Ollie breathed out softly, a little laugh puffing against the cold air. It was dark still — night clinging to the corners of the room, thick and quiet. The heater buzzed in the corner, and from the television, the still-muted cars zoomed silently on.
And there was Kimi, curled up behind him, clinging like a koala.
Kimi’s arm was slung low around Ollie’s waist, his face pressed into Ollie’s back, breath warm and steady against his hoodie. One of his legs was somehow looped over Ollie’s like they were puzzle pieces, like they’d been sewn together by some sleepy tailor with a twisted sense of humour.
Ollie smiled.
Just a little.
Just for himself.
He pulled Kimi’s arm tighter across his chest, nudged his knuckles into the blanket until it covered more of him, until Kimi was tucked safely beneath it too. Kimi let out a soft, questioning snore. Something between mmm and duck noises.
“You’re ridiculous,” Ollie whispered, not unkindly.
The clock on the wall ticked. Outside, Monaco slept — quiet and glossy and glittered with stars. They were halfway through winter break, halfway to the new season. The air had the kind of chill that crept into bones if you let it. Ollie figured he should probably get up if he wanted to feel his neck tomorrow.
Slowly, gently, he peeled himself out of Kimi’s arms. Kimi mumbled something about “electric soup” and face-planted into the pillow without protest.
Ollie smiled again.
He adjusted the blanket so it draped more over Kimi’s side, smoothing it over the slope of his shoulder, tucking it in the way you do when you’re hoping someone stays warm through the whole night.
Then he sat up straight, stretched like a cat, arms cracking overhead. The room swayed for a moment with the motion, a sleepy, cozy dizziness that smelled like peppermint tea and forgotten popcorn.
He stood.
And then, all at once, his throat tightened.
It started as a squeeze. Nothing dramatic. Just enough to make him pause.
He blinked. Rubbed at his neck absently. Maybe the cold, he thought. Or the way he’d fallen asleep all hunched. Maybe his posture finally killed him. It would be a fitting obituary: Oliver Bearman, killed by spine misalignment and poor sofa ergonomics.
He cleared his throat. It didn’t help.
Still, no big deal. He picked up the water jug from the coffee table, unscrewed the cap, took a long sip.
It didn’t go down right.
He coughed. Frowned. Drank again. Coughed harder.
His chest rattled.
Okay. That was weird.
He padded softly to the balcony door, pushed it open with his elbow. Cold air slapped his face immediately, sharp and clean, December-tinged. He stepped out barefoot, jug still in hand, the floor biting against his soles.
He should clean the balcony tomorrow.
There were leaves on the corner table, probably from when Kimi tried to build a “wind altar.” There were some crushed cereal bits by the railing. And a plastic flamingo someone — Lando, maybe — had left behind after that cursed BBQ.
Ollie wrapped an arm around himself, sipping water again as he stared out at the Monaco skyline, glittering and golden even in the dead of night.
And then—
The second cough came fast. Brutal. Like something ripping.
The water splashed onto his shirt.
He choked.
Bent over double.
The jug hit the balcony tiles with a clunk and rolled toward the glass door.
He tried to breathe — tried — but his throat was full, thick, burning. His vision went white for a second.
And then he saw red.
Blood, bright and fresh and absolutely wrong, splattering against the railing as he coughed again — harder, deeper, something violent moving inside him like claws scraping against bone.
His knees hit the tiles. He curled forward.
“K—Kimi—” he rasped. Barely. Like air was betraying him. “Kimi—”
He stumbled inside, one hand grasping the doorframe, blood already slick on his chin. His breath came in wet, panicked gasps. The living room swayed again, not cozy now, just spinning.
He lurched toward the hallway. Droplets of blood followed him like petals.
The bathroom.
He made it to the sink, fell against it. Gagged.
Coughed again.
And this time — it wasn’t just blood.
It was a petal.
A soft, delicate, rose-pink petal. Perfect in shape. So horribly beautiful.
Another cough. Another.
His lungs burned. He clawed at the edge of the sink, tears in his eyes now, and the sink bowl was painted red and blooming.
“Kimi,” he sobbed, a whisper — a prayer — “please—Kimi—”
He heard movement. A rustle of blankets. A muttered curse in Italian. The shuffle of socks on tile.
And then Kimi was there.
He turned the bathroom light on, blinking against the brightness. Hair tousled. Hoodie half-falling off one shoulder. Sleepy, confused.
“Ollie?” he said, voice soft, concerned, cracking just slightly from sleep.
Then he saw.
The petals. The blood. The way Ollie was shaking.
Ollie choked again, fell to his knees, gagging—
A full flower came out this time. Pale red. Almost coral in the light. Fragile. Mottled with blood.
Kimi dropped beside him instantly.
“Oh my goodness—hey, hey, Ollie, breathe—breathe—what the fuck, what is this—”
Ollie couldn’t speak. Could only cry and cough and cry and cough and cry.
Kimi held him up, arms wrapping around his shaking frame, trying to ease him away from the sink, trying not to tremble himself.
Ollie clutched at Kimi’s hoodie, sobbing into it now, the petals still falling, still falling.
“Why’s this happening—” he whispered, voice frayed like torn lace, thin and useless and unraveling between his teeth.
He tried to straighten up.
He wanted to be strong.
But his legs buckled almost instantly, his knees folding beneath him like they weren’t made of bone at all but melting wax, and he stumbled forward with a ragged wheeze, choking again as his chest clenched.
More petals spilled out.
Wet, velvet-soft. A pale shade of red that didn’t belong in his mouth. The kind that should’ve bloomed in spring gardens, not from his lungs. Not like this.
Ollie gasped — staggered — but Kimi was there.
Kimi always was.
He caught him mid-fall, arms wrapping tightly around his ribs, grounding him like a safety belt. One hand cradled the back of Ollie’s head; the other pressed firm against his spine, holding, steadying, anchoring.
“Kimi,” Ollie croaked, but it came out warped, thready.
“I’ve got you—hey, hey, I’ve got you—just breathe, Ollie, you’re okay, you’re okay, stay with me—”
Ollie couldn’t hear him.
Not properly.
The ringing had started — not the annoying, electronic kind but the deep, skull-rattling hum of something wrong, something splitting open beneath the surface. His ears felt full of static. His chest felt full. Not with breath. Not with life.
With petals.
And his vision—
His vision was dimming. Dark at the edges. Fog creeping in around the corners like a storm rolling in from far, far away, except it was inside his head.
Kimi was still saying something. His lips were moving, eyebrows furrowed, eyes wide and so soft in the bathroom light. His voice sounded like it was underwater.
Ollie coughed again.
His whole body jolted with it. Blood spattered onto the white tile. More petals. A handful. Like a bouquet trying to be born in reverse. Ollie whimpered, shaking. His lungs hurt.
He clutched at Kimi’s hoodie like a lifeline, knuckles white.
Why was this happening?
He didn’t—he couldn’t—
This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t right. Hanahaki didn’t happen to people like him. It happened to poets and daydreamers and sad-eyed fools who pined for people they could never have.
He wasn’t in love with anyone.
He wasn’t.
He wasn’t.
His heart didn’t ache for anyone.
He didn’t long, didn’t ache, didn’t hope.
He had Kimi.
He had Kimi.
Kimi, who woke him up when he forgot to set his alarm. Who remembered how he liked his toast. Who stole his hoodies and said they smelled like "fresh boy." Kimi, who held him on the couch when his body stopped obeying gravity, who always reached for his hand in crowds, who curled up behind him like a human space heater and breathed soft into the curve of his neck like it meant something.
He had Kimi.
He shouldn’t be going through this.
His body shouldn’t be betraying him like this. His lungs shouldn’t be blooming grief. His throat shouldn’t be full of petals. He didn’t love anyone enough to deserve this pain.
He didn’t.
He didn’t.
He didn't—
“Kimi,” he choked out, mouth tasting like copper and roses. His eyes were wide, wet, afraid. “Kimi—I don’t—want this—”
And Kimi looked like he was breaking.
He pulled Ollie tighter to him, both arms wrapped around his chest now, voice trembling.
“Shh, shh, I know, I know, I’m here, I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered, lips close to Ollie’s ear. “You’re okay, Ollie, I’ve got you, please—just breathe for me, yeah? Try to—just—breathe.”
But Ollie couldn’t.
Every breath clawed. Every inhale hurt. Every cough felt like it was peeling his ribs apart from the inside out.
A bloom unfurled on the tile beside them. Pale coral. Paper-thin. Blood-speckled.
He wasn’t okay.
And he knew it.
And still—
Still, he clung to Kimi like a drowning man.
Still, he sobbed into Kimi’s shoulder, whispering “I don’t understand, I don’t understand, I don’t—I don’t love anyone, I don’t—”
Kimi was stroking his back now, up and down, slow and steady and soothing like they weren’t on the bathroom floor, like Ollie wasn’t coughing out flowers and blood like a dying fairytale prince.
But Kimi didn’t say you do.
He didn’t say maybe you do and you don’t know it.
He didn’t say maybe you do and they don’t love you back.
He just said, “You don’t have to understand it right now. Just hold on. Please. Just stay with me.”
And Ollie, for all his trembling, for all his panic, for all his disbelief, nodded.
He closed his eyes. Pressed his face into the crook of Kimi’s neck. Inhaled the familiar scent of shampoo and hoodie and winter.
He didn’t understand it.
But he had Kimi.
He had Kimi.
He had Kimi.
He had Kimi.
He had Kimi, and right now that was the only thing he could cling to—the only thread in the universe still tethering him to something real. They were on the bathroom floor, limbs tangled awkwardly, the tile too cold and the night too quiet except for the shallow wheeze of his breathing and the too-loud, too-wet sound of his coughs.
Kimi was cradling him in his lap like it was the most natural thing in the world. His arms wrapped fully around Ollie’s bigger frame, his hand pressed steady between Ollie’s shoulder blades, his chest rising and falling against Ollie’s back like a metronome, like a promise. Kimi didn’t speak. He didn’t tell Ollie to move or to breathe slower or to stop crying. He just held him, quiet and warm and present, like an anchor in the chaos.
Ollie’s coughs had gone soft now, pathetic-sounding little wheezes that rattled in his throat like marbles in a tin can. His nose was bleeding—a thin, slow trickle that painted over his upper lip in streaks of red.
Kimi reached forward, silent, and dabbed gently at it with a tissue. Ollie sniffled, more from habit than need, and blinked slowly, vision still foggy. His eyes stung. His chest ached. His throat felt like it was made of glass, each breath scraping against it.
Then—
Kimi leaned forward and placed a kiss on his forehead.
Soft. Reverent. Barely-there.
And Ollie—
Ollie sighed.
A thin, shaky, broken sound that got caught halfway in his aching throat and came out warped. He winced. Clutched tighter onto Kimi’s sleeve with a trembling hand and leaned his cheek against the crook of Kimi’s neck, trying not to cry again. His body trembled beneath the layers of sweaters and blankets, muscles wrung out and weak.
Another cough wracked his body.
A single petal fluttered out.
Just one.
It landed delicately on the tile, like a leaf descending onto snow. Light pink this time. Not red. A strange shade, almost translucent. Ollie watched it fall, head still tipped sideways against the wall, the tile behind his skull cool and unforgiving. He let his eyes drag upward, slow and heavy, and looked at Kimi.
Kimi, who had tear tracks on his face.
Kimi, whose eyelashes were still wet.
Kimi, who looked wrecked.
Ollie blinked.
He just looked at Ollie like someone was peeling his soul open with a spoon, and he didn’t know how to stop it.
“I need to sleep,” Ollie whispered.
Kimi nodded immediately, too fast, like he’d just been waiting for permission. He leaned in again and kissed Ollie’s forehead once more, this time longer, firmer, more certain, and then gently helped Ollie to his feet.
Ollie staggered.
He nearly fell again.
Another cough came—just one—but it brought with it a raw rasp in his chest that made him whimper softly. Kimi caught him before he tipped sideways. Didn’t let him fall.
Together, they moved to the bedroom. Quietly. Slowly. The night felt suspended, as if it were holding its breath with them.
Kimi laid Ollie down onto the mattress like he was made of porcelain, like he’d shatter if placed wrong. He fixed the duvet, pulled it up to Ollie’s waist, and then paused.
“Sit up just a bit,” Kimi murmured, voice gentle. “I don’t want you to… choke. On anything.”
Ollie obeyed.
Kimi grabbed a few pillows and slid them behind Ollie’s back, helping him lean upright just enough. Ollie grunted weakly, fingers twisting in the edge of the blanket. His body felt sore. Not in a muscular way—in a heartbreaking way. The kind of ache that lived in his ribs and lungs and somewhere unnameable behind his chest.
Kimi turned, reaching for the water on the nightstand.
But Ollie caught his hand.
Kimi froze.
Ollie’s hand was trembling where it touched his.
“I don’t wanna die,” Ollie whispered.
Barely a sound. Barely a breath.
Kimi turned back.
His face shifted like something inside him cracked.
His eyes went glassy again.
“You’re not going to,” Kimi said quickly, like it was a spell, like saying it fast enough would make it true. “You’re not leaving. I’m not letting you.”
Ollie just stared at him. Pale and tired and afraid in the low light of their bedroom, in the middle of winter, in Monaco where nothing bad was supposed to happen because the water sparkled and the streets were gold.
But the petals didn’t care.
Kimi cupped his cheek. Pressed his forehead to Ollie’s for a moment like he could pass strength through skin.
Then he turned away for just a second, fetched the water and some meds from the drawer, unscrewed the cap with steady fingers, and held it up.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Slow sips.”
Ollie nodded, lips parted.
Kimi guided the glass to his mouth.
Ollie drank.
He winced. Swallowed around the burning ache in his throat. The water hurt, but not as much as the silence did.
He leaned his head against Kimi’s shoulder when it was done.
And Kimi held him again, arms around him in the dark, like Ollie was the most precious thing he’d ever been asked to protect.
Time passed—minutes, maybe. An hour? More? The night was soft and dense, muffled by winter outside the windows and the duvet pulled high around them, and it felt like they were in a snow globe that no one had shaken in a while. Just stillness. Just trembling limbs and cold toes and the occasional sound of Ollie breathing through the wreckage in his lungs.
Kimi hadn’t let go.
Not once.
He was curled around Ollie like a barrier, his arms a circle of stubborn devotion, chin resting lightly atop Ollie’s curls. One of his hands absentmindedly rubbed at Ollie’s fingers, back and forth, soothing but anxious, like if he stopped then Ollie might disappear.
Ollie couldn’t sleep. His eyes were half-closed, unfocused, trained somewhere over Kimi’s shoulder, watching the faint orange glow from the hallway. Every few seconds, he’d flinch or cough, but it was quieter now—petalless. Still painful, still terrifying, but no longer bleeding at the edges.
He shifted slightly, and Kimi shifted with him.
There was a soft buzz.
Kimi had his phone in one hand, the screen dimmed low. He was scrolling. No volume, just quiet, gentle swipes.
“Are you—” Ollie rasped, “watching TikToks?”
Kimi hummed. “Ducks,” he whispered.
Ollie blinked, dry-eyed and dazed. “…What.”
“Ducks,” Kimi repeated, a little firmer. “You like ducks.”
“You like ducks.”
Kimi shrugged with one shoulder. “You like when I talk about them.”
Ollie blinked again. And yeah. That was true. Because Kimi talked about ducks with the same intensity that Ollie talked about cars, or Oscar talked about mushrooms, or Charles talked about heartbreak. Loudly. Passionately. With weird trivia. Like the fact mallards sometimes have curly tails. Or how ducklings imprint on the first moving thing they see. Or that a duck’s quack actually can echo.
Kimi whispered, “This one’s wearing shoes,” and tilted the screen slightly.
Ollie didn’t laugh.
But he smiled. Barely.
Kimi noticed.
There was silence again, and then—
“…Is this,” Kimi asked softly, the phone now stilled, “because of me?”
Ollie frowned.
Kimi’s voice was so quiet it was almost nothing. “The hanahaki. Is it me?”
Ollie’s heart stuttered. His brows knit. “Kimi.”
“I’m just—” Kimi hesitated. “I just want to make sure. I love you, Ollie. So much. So if it’s—if something’s twisted in the way I’ve shown it, if you thought for a second that I don’t—”
“No,” Ollie interrupted, voice hoarse. “No. You do. You love me anyway. So it can’t be you.”
The finality in his voice was sharp.
Kimi exhaled. Something like a shudder.
And he held Ollie’s trembling hands even tighter.
“Okay,” Kimi whispered. “Good. I just wanted to be sure you know. I love you. Every version of you. Even coughing-up-blood-at-3AM you.”
Ollie let out something between a huff and a sob.
Then Kimi leaned back a little, nose brushing Ollie’s cheek, breath warm.
“If it’s not me,” Kimi whispered, “then who? Could be someone platonic, right? Doesn’t always have to be romantic. Could be someone you trusted. Someone you miss.”
Ollie stared.
His chest gave one, slow pulse of discomfort, and he could feel the edge of something again in his lungs. Not a petal, not quite. Just pressure. Heat.
His brain tumbled back.
Back, back, back—to Jeddah, 2024.
He’d been 18.
Wide-eyed. Raw. Rookie fire still fresh in his blood.
He remembered the sun too hot and the air too dry and the way Charles Leclerc had looked at him the first time like he’d recognized something—maybe hunger, maybe desperation, maybe something too familiar to name. A casual exchange about qualifying setup. Charles had smiled that soft smile of his that always looked a little sad around the corners. Ollie had gone to bed that night feeling like maybe—maybe—he’d found someone who understood what it was like to ache at that intensity. Who could be a mentor. Or a dad figure, he’d thought, stupidly.
It had never happened.
It didn’t even nearly happen.
And now—
Now it was almost 2026, and Charles existed like a comet in his life. Bright, fast, gone.
They spoke in phases. Weeks of silence. The occasional DM about a strategy clip or a funny race meme. A comment here, a wave there.
Nothing stayed.
And Ollie thought he’d been over it.
He was over it.
Wasn’t he?
But there, lying in bed next to Kimi—held, safe, aching—he felt that phantom weight return. That disappointment that had calcified in his chest and festered.
It hadn’t been love.
But it had been longing.
And maybe that was close enough.
His throat constricted.
“I thought I was over it,” he said out loud, not quite realizing the words had escaped until he heard his own voice.
Kimi didn’t ask.
Just waited.
And Ollie, slow and shivering, let his gaze drop to the blanket between them and whispered—
“Charles.”
Kimi didn’t move.
He was quiet for a moment. His thumb still stroking Ollie’s palm. Then, a breath. A nod.
“Okay,” Kimi said softly. “Okay.”
The silence that followed was soft and sacred, stitched together with the quiet hum of Kimi’s phone screen going dim and the way Ollie’s breathing sounded like it had to claw its way out of his lungs just to exist. They were still lying in the half-dark, tangled together beneath the duvet, but Ollie felt like his whole chest had been turned inside out and laid bare across the bedsheets.
A few minutes passed. The kind that didn’t tick on a clock but pooled in the hollows of the room. The kind that left everything trembling and too full.
Then—
“Was it from Jeddah?” Kimi asked.
His voice wasn’t accusing. Just… gentle. Careful. Knowing.
Ollie blinked slow, throat already aching from effort and memory.
Kimi already knew, of course. Kimi had always known. Had known about Ollie’s obsession with Ferrari since day one—how he’d named his first kart Tifosa, how he’d begged to watch Ferrari documentaries before he was even old enough to understand tire strategy, how he kept Charles’ 2019 Monza pole lap on his phone like it was scripture.
But obsession was one thing.
A bond strong enough to rot his lungs from the inside?
That was something else entirely.
Ollie nodded. Once.
And then again, like it hurt less if he repeated it. “Yeah. Jeddah.”
He didn’t want to keep talking. But words were rolling out now like loose bolts. Unspooling quietly, one at a time.
“I thought I was over it,” he whispered.
But even as he said it, the lie curdled on his tongue.
He’d never been over it.
Because Ollie craved love from places it didn’t belong. Always had.
Ferrari—an institution of glory and heartbreak and unreachable dreams.
Italy—a country he didn't belong to but once called his soul.
Charles—a man who’d barely known his name but had once offered a smile warm enough to scorch Ollie’s hopes into a new shape.
Oscar, too—Oscar, who was quieter with his affections but still held a presence Ollie orbited like a second moon. Who had always looked a bit too much like home.
And Kimi.
Kimi, who was the only one—the only one—who had ever given it all back.
No hesitation. No halfway.
Kimi, who saw every inch of him and still chose him.
Ollie’s voice cracked. “But I think I always knew I wouldn’t be.”
Kimi shifted beside him, silent. Listening. Taking it in like he was collecting broken glass and arranging it into a mosaic.
“I always…” Ollie tried again, eyes burning. “I always wanted love from the wrong places. Places that didn’t want me back.”
His fingers curled into Kimi’s shirt. Held tight.
“But the only person who’s ever given it back,” he whispered, “all of it—without me having to ask—is you.”
Kimi didn’t speak. Just swallowed thickly and pressed his forehead to Ollie’s hair.
“I don’t want this to kill you,” Kimi said into the crown of his curls, voice strained, cracking like old porcelain. “This—this thing—it’s wrong. It’s cruel.”
“I know,” Ollie breathed.
“I’d tear it out of you if I could.”
“I know.”
“I’d take it,” Kimi said, voice rising. “If I could, I would—I’d cough the flowers for you, Ollie, I’d—bleed it out for you—”
“You are,” Ollie said, and it broke something between them, sharp and gentle all at once. “You are.”
And Kimi’s hands found his again.
And Ollie—Ollie let go.
Not of Kimi.
Of the lie.
The one that said he’d be fine. That this wasn’t hurting him. That he wasn’t still carrying all that yearning for something that had never belonged to him in the first place.
Because now it was hurting too loud to ignore.
And the only thing he wanted was to survive it.
It sat heavy in the space between them—too honest, too raw, like exposed nerve endings. Ollie could feel the thrum of Kimi’s pulse through his fingers, still locked tightly with his own, still warm and trembling and alive.
They didn’t speak for a while. The air in the room felt saturated with things that could never be unsaid.
Then, finally, Kimi whispered, “So what… what are we gonna do now?”
His voice was a whisper tucked behind a breath. Afraid to be too loud. Afraid that saying it would make it worse.
Ollie blinked slowly, lashes still damp. He coughed, soft and hoarse, like something was permanently stuck inside him now. A ghost of a flower. A memory of longing with nowhere to go.
He sighed, throat raw. “I could get the surgery.”
Kimi pulled back instantly—just enough to look him in the eye. His frown was sharp and immediate. “No. No, Ollie, no—you know what that does.”
Ollie did know. Everyone knew. Hanahaki surgery wasn’t just a removal. It was a severing. An extraction of everything tangled up in the root of that love—the memories, the feelings, the grief, the hope. Sometimes you woke up and couldn’t even remember why you cried the night before. Sometimes it took more than just the pain. It took parts of you.
Kimi’s voice was low. Fierce. “That could destroy your feelings. Your emotions. Your self.”
“I’m not telling him,” Ollie said, blinking hard. “I’m not. I won’t. I’m not—I’m not admitting it to Charles.”
“Ollie—”
“No.”
Kimi shook his head. “Then you’re not getting surgery. And you’re not dying. Those are the rules. I don’t make them, but those are the rules.”
Ollie laughed, a bitter thing, and coughed again, pressing a hand to his sternum. “Charles doesn’t feel anything for me. He’s—he probably thinks I’m just some weird kid who stares at him too long when we’re in the paddock.”
Kimi didn’t flinch. He reached up, gently wiping under Ollie’s nose again, catching a smear of blood and something that might’ve been the edge of another petal.
Kimi’s voice was quiet, but sure. “Even if he doesn’t… he’s not cruel. He wouldn’t want you to be in pain like this.”
Ollie didn’t respond. His lips parted, but no sound came out.
“Charles might be a bit… emotionally repressed,” Kimi said, soft and sardonic, “but he’s not heartless.”
Ollie’s brows furrowed like he wanted to argue.
But he couldn’t.
Because he knew that too. Knew it in the way Charles always knelt to tie a child’s shoelaces at the fan zone. The way he always remembered the birthdays of every junior Ferrari academy driver. The way he once sent Ollie a book on racecraft after seeing his DNF in the F2 sprint race and added a sticky note with “It gets better. We all learn.” in slanted, thoughtful handwriting.
Kimi rubbed circles into the back of Ollie’s hand. “He’d want to know. If you were suffering like this. Even if he didn’t… feel the same.”
Ollie looked at him, eyes glassy and exhausted. “So what? I call him and go, ‘Hey, I’m coughing blood and petals because I accidentally loved you too hard for two years. Wanna fix that real quick?’”
Kimi shrugged, the barest twitch of his shoulder. “Maybe not like that.”
Ollie sniffled. A little laugh escaped, half-choked. “I can’t do it, Kimi.”
“You don’t have to do it alone,” Kimi said. “I’ll help you. However you want to do it. I’ll be there.”
And Ollie—trembling, bone-weary, cracked in places he hadn’t even known could fracture—felt it hit him like a sudden summer downpour. Not the pain this time. Not the petals. Just the softness.
That unbearable softness of being loved.
Ollie blinked slowly, swallowed around the raw edge of his throat. “We could… maybe call Charles in the morning.”
Kimi’s eyebrows arched in immediate challenge, sharp as ever. “Why not now?”
Ollie wrinkled his nose. “It’s midnight, Kimi.”
Kimi squinted over his shoulder toward the wall clock above the door. “Actually,” he said, mildly vindicated, “it’s 3:47.”
Ollie groaned and flopped back into the pillows like gravity had quadrupled in the last ten seconds. “Charles probably wakes up at, like, noon during the break. He’ll murder us.”
“I’m not waiting,” Kimi said with brutal finality, already rising.
Ollie barely had time to process before Kimi swept out of the room in socked feet and came back in thirty seconds later like a man on a mission, holding Ollie’s phone aloft like it was a weapon in a sacred quest. Kimi sat at the edge of the bed, tapped in the passcode with muscle memory, and scrolled until he hit the contact he was hunting for.
“Charles Leclerc,” Kimi read aloud, lifting his brows. “Ferrari car and red heart emoji. Real subtle, Bearman.”
Ollie flushed crimson. “Don’t read my contacts!”
Kimi ignored him entirely. “I’ll talk. If you don’t want to.”
Ollie reached out, catching the edge of the tissue box before he even tried answering. His nose was still bleeding faintly, and everything in his chest felt heavy, waterlogged, a garden growing too fast.
“I need more time to think,” he whispered, clutching the tissues.
Kimi turned fully toward him now. His expression wasn’t angry, just firm. “No. This is Hanahaki, Ollie. The speed at which it worsens is unpredictable. I’m not risking it. I’m not risking you.”
“But I—” Ollie began, voice catching. “I don’t want to do this on the phone. Or through a stupid text. I just— I want to talk to him. Face to face. Like a human being.”
There was a moment of quiet.
Then Kimi nodded. Once.
“Okay.”
He reached over, grabbed the tissue box from Ollie’s lap and gently set it on the bedside table. Then he got up again, wandered over to Ollie’s closet like this was just a normal school morning and they weren’t actively navigating life-or-death flower vomit o’clock.
“What are you doing?” Ollie croaked, blinking after him.
“Picking clothes,” Kimi replied, holding up a hoodie like a proud mother hen. “If we’re going to confront someone about emotionally repressed unrequited love, you cannot do it in soup-stained pajamas.”
Ollie dropped his face into his hands with a long, muffled whine. “Kimi, we are not leaving. It’s still dark outside.”
Kimi turned, glancing at the barely-there sliver of pre-dawn light spilling pale blue through the curtains. “Technically, it’s early morning.” He raised his brows. “And no, we’re not leaving.”
Ollie sighed in deep relief.
Then—
“We’re calling Charles and asking him to come here.”
Ollie snapped his head up. “What?!”
Kimi was already scrolling through Ollie’s phone again. “I have the number. I have zero shame. I have parental energy. Don’t test me.”
“Kimi—”
“You wanted to do it face-to-face,” Kimi said, not even glancing up as he clicked Charles’ contact and hovered over the call button. “So we’re bringing the face to you.”
And just like that, Kimi pressed “Call.”
It didn’t even ring twice.
“Hello?” Charles' voice came through, low but alert. Too alert. Not groggy. Not sleep-stained. Not the way someone sounds when they’ve been dragged from slumber at 4 a.m. “What’s wrong?”
Ollie froze.
Oh no.
Oh no no no.
His stomach coiled, tight and cold. He felt it like a slap. Charles already sounds worried.
It was worse like this—infinitely worse. Because being unloved from the shadows was tolerable. Manageable. He could live with worshipping Charles quietly, from behind the curtains of respect and distance. But this—waking him up, dragging him into Ollie’s mess, asking for a kindness Charles never owed him—this was unbearable.
He hated this.
He hated himself for this.
“It’s Kimi,” Kimi said, sitting straighter, voice steady.
“Oh. Hey, Kimi,” Charles said quickly. “Is everyone okay? Is Ollie okay?”
Kimi didn’t answer at first. Then: “No.”
And Ollie wanted to bury himself in the mattress, in the floor, in the earth. He wanted to become dust and never have to hear Charles say anything again because it was too much.
Kimi looked at Ollie, then back down at the phone. “Are you in Monaco right now?”
“Yes,” Charles said without pause. “Why? What’s wrong?”
Ollie flinched as he heard something hiss—fabric? zippers?—and realized Charles was probably already standing. Getting dressed. Putting on shoes. A cold sweat prickled down his back.
Kimi glanced over his shoulder and held out a clean T-shirt, Ollie’s softest one, the white one with the fading Ferrari logo from a merch drop two years ago. Ollie took it and changed slowly, fumbling to yank off his pajama shirt with trembling hands.
“It’s Ollie,” Kimi said at last. “He’s not feeling well. It would be… cool if you could come over.”
The line was quiet for a second.
Then: “Of course,” Charles said immediately, and there was another shuffle—keys, maybe. “But what’s wrong with him?”
Kimi looked at Ollie.
Ollie looked down.
Kimi didn’t flinch. “Hanahaki.”
A pause.
A beat.
A sharp groan.
And Ollie’s heart dropped out of his chest.
Oh no. He’s annoyed. I’ve annoyed him. He’s pissed. This is what I get. I shouldn’t have—
But then—
“I’ll be over soon,” Charles said, like it was simple. Like it was nothing. Like he was just running an errand and not being called into a deeply personal crisis at 4 a.m. by a boy who once called him a “race dad” in a half-joking Instagram caption and then deleted it three minutes later in a spiral of embarrassment.
“I’ll drop the location,” Kimi said.
“No need,” Charles replied. “I remember from BBQ night.”
And just like that, he hung up.
Ollie sat on the bed, shirt half on, heart thundering like a badly tuned engine. He stared at his lap, fingers curled into the hem of the Ferrari logo on his chest, trying to stop the sick, sticky burn crawling up his throat again.
He looked at Kimi. “I think I’m gonna puke a daisy.”
Kimi handed him a bin with all the calm of someone passing a bag of chips. “Try not to stain the new shirt.”
“Helpful,” Ollie mumbled, as he gagged softly, the taste of earth and shame curling at the edges of his tongue.
Kimi crouched beside him again, brushing back curls damp with sweat and whispered, “You’re not annoying him. He’s coming because he wants to.”
Ollie shook his head.
“He is,” Kimi said firmly. “He’s not obligated to show up for anyone. He chose to.”
And Ollie—flower-stained, shaking, eyes wide and terrified—could only whisper, “What if he leaves when he finds out it’s about him?”
Kimi, crouched at his side like an immovable mountain of unwavering loyalty, stared at him for half a second. Then, calmly and without even pretending to sugarcoat it, he replied:
“He’s not gonna let you die. This is not a fucking horror movie. And Charles is not the villain.”
Ollie blinked at him.
“I am,” he said, voice cracking halfway through. “I’m the villain. Because he’s gonna hate me after he saves me. Because who the hell gets hanahaki over someone who never asked for it? I didn’t even try to fall for him. I just—I just wanted him to see me. And now I’m making it his problem.”
Kimi gave him a look. A very flat, very unimpressed, very Kimi look.
“That’s literally not how it works.”
Ollie flopped backward like a fainting goat and hit his head into the fortress of pillows he’d stacked earlier in protest of the world. The floral cough that followed sounded like defeat and garden mulch. Kimi reached out without even looking and passed the tissue box again.
“But what if—” cough cough wheeze “—he doesn’t feel the same?” Ollie rasped. “What if he’s just… kind? What if he thinks I’m a weird gremlin child who got too attached and now he’s stuck with a floral lung baby he doesn’t even—”
Kimi cut him off. “Then we figure it out. Together.”
“Great,” Ollie wheezed, “that’s so comforting, Kimi, thank you, wow, I’m definitely not dying anymore.”
Kimi didn’t even blink. “Charles would help us somehow. Even if he doesn’t feel the same. He wouldn’t let you get surgery alone. He wouldn’t let you die.”
Ollie sighed, long and shuddery, and wiped his nose. A single white petal fluttered to the carpet.
“Heavens, this is pathetic,” he muttered.
Kimi said. “Shut up and rest.”
Ollie closed his eyes, head tilted against the pillow mountain. For a few long minutes, everything went quiet—except for the soft whistle of his breathing and the occasional crinkle of tissue paper. And somewhere in that dark, aching stillness, his mind drifted.
Back to Jeddah.
Back to 2024.
To the first time he’d met Charles in person, with sweaty palms and a media badge too big for his neck. To the moment Charles smiled at him like he recognized something. Like he saw him.
Like a kid waiting for a dad who’d never come home, Ollie had latched on to that one smile for a year.
They’d talked in phases. Messages in bursts. Nothing close. Nothing consistent. But Ollie wanted it. More than anything.
He remembered Charles laughing once. Not over the radio. Not in an interview. Just laughing, with his head tilted back and his hand on Ollie’s shoulder in the paddock. A sound that lived in Ollie’s lungs like pollen.
And maybe he’d been wrong to hold onto it. Maybe he’d stitched it into something it wasn’t. But it felt real. It felt like warmth.
A ding.
Ollie’s eyes opened.
Then—
Ding dong.
The doorbell echoed through the apartment, bright and loud and immediate.
Ollie sat bolt upright, a noise somewhere between a gasp and a dying leaf escaping his lips.
Kimi stood slowly.
“It’s him,” Ollie croaked.
Kimi looked at him. “I'm gonna answer, okay?”
Ollie nodded, eyes wide.
Hands shaking.
Kimi squeezed his arm gently, then walked toward the door.
Ollie, still in the middle of his tragic little flower-infested pillow nest, cocooned in a comforter and tried very, very hard not to spontaneously combust the second he heard voices in the hallway.
They were muffled. Muted. Half-sentences and something that might have been Charles going “non, non, Max—je vais bien, putain—” but it was hard to say. It was either that or a ghost. An extremely Monegasque ghost. Equally likely.
Ollie clutched the comforter tighter and stared at the doorway like it might turn into a portal to the underworld at any moment.
It didn’t.
Instead, Max Verstappen walked in.
Ollie’s soul immediately tried to eject itself from his body.
“What—” he rasped.
“Nope,” Max said, already storming across the room like a dad on a mission. He was holding a cardboard box—probably full of medical supplies or tissues or emotional damage—and set it down on the side table with military precision. “Don’t speak. That makes the throat worse.”
Max's hand landed on Ollie’s forehead with the gentleness of a man who had once broken up a fight with a single glare.
“Goodness,” Max muttered, eyes scanning Ollie’s death-bed-worthy face. “Hanahaki’s the worst.”
Ollie blinked at him, wide-eyed, confused, miserable, and vaguely damp.
“You—” he tried again, then swallowed. “You… had it?”
Max didn’t look up. He was already digging through the box, pulling out a bottle of water and something that looked like cough syrup but was probably laced with healing energy and rage.
“That’s how Charles admitted he loved me,” Max said, so casually Ollie nearly threw up a flower and his feelings. “Stubborn idiot had to watch me cough up half a rosebush on the carpet to come to his senses.”
Ollie made a soft noise that could’ve been a same but was mostly just the sound of his heart splintering with wistful dread. Because this wasn’t going to go the same way. This wasn’t a happy ending story. This was a Greek tragedy. A slow, floral death over a man who probably saw Ollie as a weird, twitchy intern who stared too long at spreadsheets and once cried over a GoPro video of a Ferrari launch.
“We can fix this,” Max said, patting Ollie’s head like he was the world’s saddest dog. “You’ll be okay.”
Ollie nodded. Mostly because it hurt to speak and also because Max's presence always felt like being hugged and screamed at simultaneously.
Then Kimi appeared in the doorway again, nodding faintly, and behind him—
Charles.
Charles Leclerc.
Looking… mildly drunk.
Not messy, but sort of soft around the edges. Hair tousled. Sweater half-tucked. Red-cheeked. Blinking like the hallway lights had personally offended him.
Ollie had never seen Charles drunk in person.
He’d imagined it—like in distant dreams where Charles might sing off-key in a kitchen and call Ollie son or fall asleep on a couch with a kitten on his chest—but this was different. This was Charles here. Charles warm and flushed and real.
“Oh mon dieu,” Charles muttered as soon as he saw Ollie. “Ollie, mon bébé, qu’est-ce que tu as fait—”
Max reached out and grabbed Charles’ arm just before Charles could trip over the corner of the rug and die tragically two feet from the bed.
“Okay, sit,” Max said, steering him like a mildly drunk shopping cart.
“You said I could walk in fine!”
“You nearly faceplanted into the fucking wall, Charles.”
“I tripped once!”
“You tripped three times. In five minutes. Also, you tried to find your car keys and opened the fridge.”
“I was looking for my shoes!”
“I hope you understand that's not exactly helping your case.”
Charles plopped onto the edge of Ollie’s bed with the gravity of a man who had emotionally combusted six times tonight and was still ticking.
Kimi stood in the corner with arms crossed, watching like a wise owl who knew this was going to spiral into chaos but was powerless to stop it.
“Charles has been drunk for two weeks,” Max muttered, almost to himself.
Charles blinked at him, then looked at Ollie again with wide, very concerned eyes. “Ollie,” he said, soft and slurred with something that was either heartbreak or too much Bordeaux, “mon cœur. Are you okay? What’s hurting? Are you bleeding inside? Why didn’t you tell me, I would’ve made you soup—Kimi, did you not tell me sooner because you hate me?”
“I told you now,” Kimi said.
“Two weeks, Max.”
“That’s not related,” Max said. “You were drunk for two weeks. This is completely unrelated.”
“I was celebrating!”
Max turned to Ollie. “He’s been drunk since Abu Dhabi.”
“I won the championship!” Charles whined. “I was celebrating in style!”
“With an entire vineyard?”
“Shut up, Max, you drank half of it!”
“That was one bottle.”
“You drank it out of a trophy!”
“That’s not the point—”
“Anyway,” Charles huffed, turning back to Ollie, expression crumpling like tissue paper. “Oliver, Ollie, mon ange, who did this to you? Who—who did you fall in love with who doesn’t love you back?”
Ollie stared. Charles looked devastated. Absolutely wrecked.
He was also extremely close. Knees brushing the side of Ollie’s bed, eyes huge and soft and glowing in the lamplight.
“I swear,” Charles whispered, “I will find them and have words.”
Ollie’s mouth opened in a silent scream.
Charles’ gaze drifted to Kimi.
He squinted.
“Kimi?”
Kimi raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“You didn’t—?” Charles waved vaguely. “You didn’t emotionally destroy Ollie, did you?”
“No,” Kimi said, absolutely unfazed.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Charles leaned closer to Ollie. “Mon bébé, if it is Kimi, you can tell me. I promise I won’t get mad.”
“It’s not Kimi,” Ollie croaked, voice a whisper from the underworld.
Charles gasped. “You spoke!”
Max groaned. “He’s not supposed to speak—”
“But he spoke!” Charles reached out and cupped Ollie’s face like he was made of glass and stars. “You poor thing. You need tea. You need love. Max, go make tea—no, wait, Kimi, you make tea, Max will just burn things—”
“Kimi’s not a servant,” Max grumbled.
“I’m the only one who knows where the honey is,” Kimi said, and walked off toward the kitchen.
Ollie was going to die.
And it wasn’t going to be because of hanahaki.
It was going to be from secondhand embarrassment.
Kimi had retreated to the kitchen in search of tea, murmuring something about chamomile and mug options, which Charles barely registered as he squinted suspiciously at the now-vacated door.
“Are you sure it’s not Kimi?” Charles asked, his eyes narrowed as if Ollie were withholding state secrets. “Because if it is, I will deal with him—”
“It’s not Kimi,” Ollie said, or tried to say. The moment the words left his mouth, he doubled over, hacking up a storm that sounded like a dying accordion and ended with an almost melodic splatter into the bucket Charles had kindly placed in his lap.
Charles winced, leaned in, and held the bucket with both hands like it was a sacred offering, concern painting his whole face in bold, clumsy strokes. He looked like he might burst into tears on Ollie’s behalf.
Max, sitting cross-legged on the other side of the bed and watching with the kind of expression you wear when witnessing a multi-car pile-up in real time, reached out to push Ollie’s hair off his clammy forehead. “Those flowers aren’t romance-based,” Max muttered grimly, frowning into the bucket. “So it’s probably not Kimi.”
Charles leaned closer, nose practically in the bouquet of guilt and phlegm. “Yeah… these are definitely platonic. Parental. I’ve seen these before. Oscar used to cough these up for me.”
Ollie’s head snapped toward him so fast it knocked the bucket against Charles’ knees. “Oscar?!”
Charles blinked like a baby owl. “Yes?”
Ollie’s mouth fell open. “Oscar saw you as a parental figure?”
“Yes, mon chou. But the idiot thought it was unrequited. Thought I didn’t see him as a child figure despite him being, ya know, Oscar,” Charles said, both fond and exasperated, like he was recounting the time Oscar put dish soap in the dishwasher and nearly flooded the apartment.
Ollie gaped. “I didn’t—no one told me this was canon!”
Max groaned into his palms. “There are way too many people in this world coughing up petals over Charles because he’s incapable of saying ‘I love you’ unless he’s drunk or hasn’t slept in seventy-two hours and hallucinating Sebastian Vettel.”
Charles flapped a hand. “It’s just two people—”
“Two people is too many, Charles,” Max said. “No one should be the subject of two different hanahaki incidents unless they’re a Disney prince or some shit.”
“I didn’t ask for this,” Charles muttered.
Ollie, pale and trembling and with a suspicious peony petal stuck to his cheek, blinked at Charles. “But—why did you see Oscar as a son?”
Charles gave him a look so baffled it bordered on insulted. “Because I love him, obviously.”
“That’s not an answer,” Ollie rasped.
“It is!” Charles gestured wildly with his hands, knocking over a tissue box. “Sometimes… sometimes love just is, mon chou. It doesn’t need a reason. You don’t need to qualify it or earn it or submit an application. You just—are.”
Ollie stared at him. Something in his chest felt cracked open and vulnerable and shaking loose like a pinata full of bees. His voice was barely a whisper. “Charles… you’re the reason I got hanahaki.”
Everything stopped.
Charles blinked. Max sighed.
“That’s three people,” Max said flatly. “Three people traumatised by Charles Leclerc-Verstappen’s emotional constipation.”
Ollie flushed. “I’m sorry…”
Charles made a noise somewhere between a whimper and a swear in French. “Why,” he asked, voice cracking, “why does everyone around me think I don’t love them back? Why do all of you think I’m some emotionally barren glacier of a man? I brought Max soup every day when he had the flu!”
“You also yelled at me for crying during Finding Nemo. A man can only take so many mixed signals,” Max said.
“In my defence, it was the fourth time we watched it!”
Ollie tugged the comforter up to his chin again, still reeling. “Do you… do you see me as a son too?”
Charles blinked at him like a drunk deer in headlights. “Obviously!” he exclaimed, flailing so hard he nearly smacked Max in the face. “I was going to drive here drunk the moment I got the call from Kimi. Obviously, I see you as my son!”
Max looked over. “Yeah, that’s why I had to drive him. Because he was halfway out the door with one shoe on and no keys screaming about ‘mon bébé souffre!’”
“I was calm—”
“You were trying to hotwire my car with a wine opener.”
“I WAS PANICKING!”
Ollie blinked fast, lips trembling. “I thought… I thought you just saw me like an intern or something…”
Charles made a sound like he’d just been stabbed in the chest. Like someone had run him through with a cursed sword made of teen insecurity and unspoken love and Charles Leclerc’s own tragic inability to emote like a normal person unless he was off his tits on Beaujolais.
“What the fuck, Ollie.”
Ollie flinched, shoulders curling like a paper fortune teller folding in on itself. “I—just thought—I mean, you don’t always text back and we’re kinda on and off with communication and stuff and I didn’t want to assume—”
Charles slapped a hand over his own heart like he’d just been insulted by a beloved childhood cartoon character. “We have BBQ nights once a month! We literally—grill meat and vegetables and fight over who gets to control the music! You have come to my house with Lando, Kimi and Oscar to discuss taking Mercedes down in prank wars—”
“I thought that was just…” Ollie’s voice cracked as he coughed into the comforter, his cheeks flushed with fever and the existential crisis of having misread the only semi-functional father figure he’d ever known. “I thought it was just like… a fun friend thing. Y’know? I mostly hang out with Oscar and Kimi anyway—”
“Because you’re a feral gremlin and those two are your fellow dumpster raccoons,” Max muttered under his breath. Charles elbowed him but with the strength that was only show.
Charles was already diving back in, affronted and wounded and so deeply French. “Mon dieu, Ollie, I literally have your name and Oscar’s stitched into my race suit.”
Ollie blinked. “You—what?”
Charles pointed an accusatory finger at his own chest. “On the inside lining. Right under my heart. Oscar on the left, you on the right. You think I did that for fun? I had to fight my PR team and make up some story about motivation and legacy—legacy, Ollie!”
Max, who had been dutifully trying not to get choked up at the genuinely heart-melting declaration, raised an eyebrow. “Wait. Why isn’t my name on there?”
“Because I only do that for people I respect as a driver and a human.”
“Wow,” Max said flatly, hand over heart. “So brave of you to be this rude in front of a sick child.”
“Max, you have four World Championships and no soul,” Charles replied primly, wiping a stray peony petal off Ollie’s chin. “You’ll survive.”
Max rolled his eyes, but the grin tugging at his mouth betrayed him. “You’re lucky I love you.”
“You’re lucky I love you,” Charles shot back before turning back to Ollie, who had gone suspiciously quiet.
Ollie felt overwhelmed, eyes glassy and mouth slightly open like he couldn’t quite figure out how to be a person anymore. “I didn’t know,” he whispered, voice so thin it barely existed. “I really didn’t know.”
“Well, now you do, mon trésor,” Charles said softly, brushing sweat-damp curls away from Ollie’s forehead. “And you’re not allowed to die. Max and I already did the emotional trauma arc. We’re done with character development for the year.”
“I do respect you as a driver, by the way,” Max muttered behind them.
“Trop tard,” Charles singsonged, wrapping an arm around Ollie’s cocooned shoulders. “You mocked my emotional stitching system. No embroidery for you.”
Max pouted. “What if I get hanahaki again?”
Charles didn’t even blink. “Then I’ll hold your bucket too. But still no embroidery.”
Max groaned and flopped backward dramatically onto the bed, narrowly missing Ollie’s feet. “This household is built on emotional bias.”
“Correct,” Charles said serenely.
Ollie coughed one last time—dry, thank heavens—and looked at both of them with something new blooming behind his eyes. Not flowers this time. Something softer. Warmer. Safer.
Maybe he wasn’t just an intern.
Maybe he was someone worth driving through Monaco drunk for. Someone worth stitching into a race suit. Someone worth holding a vomit bucket for while crying a little and calling him mon bébé in front of the entire cursed apartment.
“…I think I feel a bit better,” Ollie mumbled, voice hoarse but genuine.
Charles smiled so wide it nearly broke his face. “Of course you do, mon chéri. Love is the best medicine.”
“I thought it was tea,” came Kimi’s voice as he re-entered the room with a tray of exactly four mismatched mugs and what might’ve been a sprig of rosemary shoved into one of them.
“Tea and love,” Charles amended.
Max threw a pillow at both of them.
And for the first time in three hours, Ollie Bearman actually laughed.