Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sun filtered through the blinds at 8am on a more breezy than usual day in July. Ollie turned them upwards ever so slightly so that it didn’t get in the way of his emails, before getting up ten seconds after he’d done that just to shut the window anyway.

At 20 years old, it was weird for Ollie to have his life ‘figured out’—at least for the while. Why is this, you may ask?

From a young age, Ollie had always enjoyed seeing people fall in love. Some people were empathetic, but Ollie wasn’t sure if he’d drawn a line in the sand and just completely catapulted over it.

He was lucky enough to be born into a family where he hadn’t had to experience any divorces or family fights as such, with his mother and father retaining a healthy relationship all of their lives, there were only really his siblings to bother him as such.

It all started to click for him, however, at the age of 13. His aunt Patricia was getting married, and it was his first ever formal wedding that he had to attend. Considering that most of his parents’ friends weren’t immediate family, they’d usually go off to the wedding themselves and Ollie would feel some sense of FOMO at the fact that he’d missed out on all of the canapes that his parents were describing.

The next thing he knew, he was being transported in a limousine to one of those exact venues with his brother Thomas on his left and his sister Madeleine on his right. Honestly, it was a bit surreal, but his mind couldn’t keep rewinding to the point before that.

You see, Patricia was always the ‘cool’ aunt of the family. She was younger than his mother, and she’d always been the one to call their mother out when she felt that her sister was acting slightly out of line. She was the one that would buy each of them ice creams if there was a particularly sad look on their faces, the one to brave the potentially bone breaking activity of a trampoline park with him.

When it came to the point that she’d found the one that she’d actually loved, there was a slight part of Ollie wishing that it wouldn’t last. He already had uncles—it’s not like he particularly wished for an uncle-in-law after all.

As he sat on the left side of the limo, the trees of the countryside blending in with the tint of the interior, he found his mind replaying back to the moments in the reception.

The way his aunt had cried when they were reciting each others’ vows to each other. The look of glee on their faces as Madeleine was tossing petals high into the air as they walked out of the church into their carriage. The look in her eyes when she’d made eye contact with her partner for the first time.

Subconsciously, it reminded him of the moments when he’d trundle downstairs to try and sneak some chocolate up to his room, having to stealthily move behind the walls to avoid his parents’ eyesight. It didn’t matter half the time anyway—they were too busy caught up in each other’s eyes. Nothing that they would do in front of them, although it was far from crossing any lines.

Vaguely, it reminded Ollie of love. A word he wasn’t used to hearing, rather trying to understand.

Eventually, it brought him to the questions that would come once his aunt had initiated a conversation at her wedding. Her and her newly wedded husband had just performed their first dance, before minutes later one of her bridesmaids along with his aunt had started Irish dancing on the wooden floor that resembled the dancefloor.

Her veil was somewhere at the side of the venue—probably near the top table—but even she had switched into more comfortable footwear.

Funnily enough, that’s how the conversation started. “Don’t tell James that I’ve taken my heels off, Ol.” his aunt began, slightly breathless. “I can only do so many hours in those before they begin to give me pain.”

Ollie zipped his lips as a way of keeping the secret between them, and she just ruffled his hair. “Where have Thomas and Madeleine gone?” she inquired.

“I think they said they were going to go to the sweet stand again to see if there was absolutely anything there that was worth it anymore. I’ve eaten a little too much, so I’m just…drowsy? Is that the right word?” Ollie replied.

His aunt giggled, nodding. “Your vocabulary’s about to get more advanced than mine, huh?” she teased. Ollie giggled along with her, before a comfortable silence came over the two.

He thought now was the right time. “Do you think you’re in love, aunty Pat?”

The younger boy had expected her to look taken aback or surprised that someone of his age would be mentioning love—it wasn’t a foreign concept, but she’d always gone on about how high school relationships would never last.

It was the opposite, however. She just nodded and moved her chair a little closer to him. “I think so. Why do you ask, little bear?” she answered, making eye contact with him.

Ollie shrugged, a weird expression on his face. “I don’t really know. You always referred to yourself as somebody who…enjoyed being single, right? Then you’ve met…James, and it’s like something’s changed. I can tell. It’s the way you look at him.” Patricia only nodded as he was speaking, agreeing with every word that came out of his mouth.

“It’s not a bad thing at all, because I’m very happy for you. I think it’s just…fascinating? Is that weird?” he pondered, looking down slightly to cast his gaze away from his aunt.

His aunt made a sound that was close to one of adoration, potentially. What he didn’t expect was the embrace that he felt around his body seconds later, which he found himself unconsciously returning.

“It’s not weird at all, Ollie. You’ve always been really perceptive, empathetic…excuse me, I can’t think of any more words. I think the champagne is getting to me.” she brushed off. “There’s lots of ways that you can tell that people are in love with each other, and it definitely helps when you care about the people that you’re helping.”

“Really?” Ollie pressed.

“Mhm.” his aunt confirmed. “You know, I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without Florence, our wedding planner. She seemed to understand both of us on a personal level and while there were things she couldn’t plan with James, she was always there for me and it was like… a mutual understanding. James isn’t the type of person to need that counselling per se, but especially for me, I think I’ve made such a big step in my life.” she paused slightly, tears welling up. “Like you said, you enjoyed being single. Look how that turned out.”

The chuckle that came after was the slightest bit wet, but her face didn’t show signs of tears after a few seconds. Ollie just smiled up at her, thinking that somewhere, somehow, he’d want to try and do that for as many people as possible. To be that person.

Which is why he found himself where he was, in the midst of Monaco, as a wedding planner like his subconscious 13 year old self at the time would’ve wanted him to do. It was a little weird explaining his career path to people—but once his parents had caught light of it, they’d wanted the best for him and started making changes to their lifestyle for him. For that, he couldn’t be any happier.

There were a couple inquiries in his inbox which he passed onto his boss, a couple which he shared with other wedding planners which he thought specialised in certain things. It was a small boutique, but there was a lot of work that went on behind the scenes considering the location they were based in.

As he was getting his to-do list ready for the day, he heard a voice from the side of his cubicle. “Ollie?” He’d recognise that accent anywhere.

Turning around, sure enough, it was his boss. Esteban Ocon. “Do you mind if we have a word just for two seconds? Or maybe…a bit longer?” Esteban asked. To Ollie, it seemed like more of a request, so he just nodded and said he’d be there once he finished his to-do list. Esteban told him to take his time, and sauntered off in the direction of his office.

Some people in the boutique thought it was weird for Ollie and Esteban to have the relationship that they did, when the truth was—Esteban was the person that had really landed him this job.

Said Frenchman was on a visit to the UK from Monaco, after he’d moved there pretty recently to set up the wedding boutique and to find a less saturated market for wedding planning to take place. Events management may be a…broader term for it.

The college Ollie was studying at was lucky enough to get a personalised class from Esteban when he was in his second year of the course that he was doing to try and further his career. Time flew by, the two of them managed to end up talking and realised that their ideas were in the same boat, and so it was only a matter of time before Ollie considered himself qualified, at least.

He’d been with Esteban for around a year and a half now, and he wouldn’t change it for the world. He likes the commute from his flat in Nice to the wonders of Monaco, the way he reads people’s personal requests as if it’s a purpose for imagery in his head.

After he’d stuck the piece of paper that was his to-do list on his slightly smaller than necessary notice board, he locked his computer and headed to the white door with a red sign that was at the back of the building. He heard the muffler come in! from the inside, and so he did exactly that to see Esteban at the other side of his desk.

“How’s my favourite intern?” Esteban joked. Ollie only huffed in exasperation and sat across from him at his desk.

“That’s your favourite running joke, isn’t it?” Ollie deadpanned, the expression on his face seriously telling. Esteban only winked at him before getting a little more serious.

He tapped a little on his computer as he continued talking. “Yesterday I got a very interesting call out of work hours, and usually I wouldn’t pick those up, as you know. It was somebody that I’ve known for quite a while and I consider for them to be one of my best friends, so like the samaritan I was, I picked up.”

“I picked up, we exchanged pleasantries, you know the deal. Anyway, to cut a long story short, they wanted to arrange a wedding service with me for sometime in 2027, around the winter time of year. December or January time so that it doesn’t get in the way of either of their schedules.” Esteban explained, still clicking away.

This made Ollie think. “Why would anybody want to get married in winter? Willingly? It’s so cold and you’d have to keep most of it inside.” his thoughts broadcast out loud. Esteban hummed as if he was to agree slightly, but then turned to Ollie once he seemed to find what he had been looking for.

“I asked my friend to give me a sort of…let’s say brief, on what he would want to happen. The sort of things that he’d want, the sort of timeframe he’d expect. He told me everything and I thought it was best that we give ourselves 18 months instead of the regular 12 just because these people are…so incredibly busy.” Esteban said, a calm tone to his voice. Ollie didn’t know whether it was alleviating his confusion at all.

“Who even are these people—or person? Are they calling on behalf of someone if they’re your friend?” Ollie asked once again.

“You said you were a fan of Formula 1, right?” Esteban wondered. Ollie nodded, albeit apprehensively. “Then you may recognise the name Charles Leclerc.”

Ollie’s mouth shot wide open. It stayed there for a couple of seconds before he continued. “Charles Le— Este, do you know how serious that is? The privilege that you have? He’d probably want everything to be so perfect considering how highly regarded he is…and he’s from Monaco too.”

He tried his best to leave all of the fangirling behind in his head—fanboying, rather. He just couldn’t explain why Charles would choose their quaint little boutique over people who were perhaps specialised in…celebrity weddings, let’s say. Did Charles want to make a spectacle out of a boutique from his own country? Did he want it to be more private with just his immediate family? All the questions ran round in Ollie’s head, that he’d of course never get to answer.

In the midst of his thoughts, he could see Esteban shaking his head slightly. “I won’t be the one catering to them, Ollie. While I would love to take this on, I specifically mentioned to Charles that I would need two people to work on this, and you know how I am. I don’t get along well with other people.”

Ollie’s mind traced back to when Esteban had walked into work one day, maybe when he shouldn’t have at all. His hair was sticking up all over the place, as if he’d gone back to using gel overnight—the sun was very clearly having effects on him, and some of the only words that Ollie heard from him that day were to never interact with Pierre Gasly.

(Of course, Esteban clarified this after. He still stood on what he said, but he admitted to not getting any work done that day. After one too many conversations at a gala with the other Frenchman, it turned into Esteban creating a fight between him and his girlfriend, he knew that it was his time to leave.

Pierre Gasly didn’t let him leave, from his own accounts, anyway. Ollie has stayed far away.)

Esteban continued. “So, I’ve decided that you’re going to be the one to help service Charles’ wedding.”

The words were like a grenade, as soon as they came out of his boss’ mouth he just sat there like his brain had gone dead, the overtime that it had worked over the years finally catching up to him.

He didn’t have much time to ponder over it, whether fortunately or unfortunately, before an afterthought came to him. “You said that two people would be working on this. Who’s the second one?”

As if comedic timing didn’t exist outside of movies, three knocks at the door interrupted them slightly. Esteban shouted the same as he did to Ollie just minutes ago.

The door opened. In stumbled somebody that Ollie would much rather drink blended fish eyes than be within a 5 mile radius of outside work.

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

He didn’t know how Kimi Antonelli had wormed his way into the company, but he remembers the month vividly. It was June, 6 months after Ollie had been there himself, and Esteban had mentioned that they’d had another young ‘intern’, per se, joining their team.

It wasn’t until a week later that Ollie actually met Kimi for the first time. He was just minding his own business trying to make an invitation that was fit to his client’s brief, before he heard an accent that he could only describe as one that was meant to sneer down on him.

“Surely you should make the font something that makes all of the letters legible?” He turned around his shoulder to see someone that he couldn’t put a name to, leaning on the edge of his chair. Ollie was almost tempted to back away and watch him lose his balance, but he was a nice person.

Before he even got a chance to get a word in, the boy spoke again. “Kimi. Kimi Antonelli. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other soon, no?” he commented, before Esteban shouted across the room, beckoning Kimi away for something unknown.

After all of that, Ollie didn’t even get a chance to defend himself about how his invitation was quite obviously not meant to be right on the first try, but now this new hire comes in here and acts like he knows everything?

He wasn’t going to have it.

Fortunately for him, he didn’t really see Kimi all that much as Ollie had heard that he worked different shifts to Ollie, claiming he worked ‘better at night’, either that or he was exploring venues in the day that even Esteban had to shrug off.

It wasn’t until the end of the summer that Kimi had made…a slight reputation for himself. It could be seen as a good thing, it could be seen as a bad thing. All Ollie knew is that people had different opinions on it.

One day, he was heading to the coffee machine that was in their secluded lounge area, and he overheard his colleagues Luke and Dino talking about Kimi.

“Did you not hear? The first people that he had to plan for literally gave him 5 stars for everything, and they even invited him to be part of the wedding photographs.” Dino commented, sipping tea from his mug. In his peripheral vision, Ollie could see Luke’s eyebrows lift just slightly.

“That’s what you’ve heard?” Luke retorted, surprise to his voice. “I heard that some of his clients feel like his ideas are too outlandish, but it doesn’t even matter at the end of the day because sometimes he’ll just show up to the wedding and get completely drunk after it.”

Dino gasped. “Was that the reason he didn’t come into work for like 3 days straight?” he pondered, to which Luke nodded. “Must’ve been one bad hangover…”

Luke shrugged. “Then again, I overheard Esteban and George talking, and George seems to like Kimi’s…unorthodox style about things sometimes. I think I remember him mentioning something like,” as he put his next words into air quotes, “as long as he gets the job done. He said Kimi had little to no flaws in that area.”

Ollie’s coffee had finally finished, so he didn’t feel the need to stick around for the conversation. Then again, it matched up with the perception of what he’d had of Kimi already. A loose cannon, but then always wanting to be a perfectionist when the time occurred for him.

It was like the Italian was putting on a front, and that’s who Ollie couldn’t get along with. He’d rather be with somebody that was able to be down to earth with him.

Which brought Ollie back to the current moment. Esteban had left the two alone in his office because he believed it to be ‘a good space for the two of them to plan’. “Or even to get to know each other, because you’ll be working together for a while,” he added. Ollie thought that it came across in quite a sly tone.

The two sat in silence for seconds that seemed like hours—before he heard the same grainy voice chirp up from the right of the room. “You know, Leclerc is going to want a big wedding that makes a statement. So you might as well leave this to me.” Kimi opened, his tone arrogant as ever.

Ollie scrunched his nose up in shame. “You think? You don’t think that he’s going to completely disregard his family and instead invite every famous person that he has in his contact book? Let’s get real for a second, here.” he retaliated back. Kimi only chuckled, and Ollie didn’t understand how this was a laughing matter.

“Sure, Bearman.” Kimi rattled out. “Of course you’ll know better because of the six months extra time you’ve had at the company. There’s only so many weddings you can put on before they all become repeats of each other.” he leaned back in his chair, as if the words leaving his lips weren’t directly offending the passion that Ollie had about his job.

He turned to Kimi. “Enlighten me, then. What do you think a wedding is all about, self-proclaimed expert?” it came out as a jeer, exactly as the British boy had intended. Whether fortunately or unfortunately, it didn’t faze Kimi.

“A celebration. Not every wedding has to be a spectacle on such a scale, but everybody has to have fun. The boring shit lasts an hour and then you get onto the reason why everybody has the hen parties, the stag-dos, the atmosphere of it all. Much more different than your idea of being together for a lifetime, or whatever.”

Ollie tilted his head. “So you don’t think it’s important that these people have given themselves to each other for eternity, in the purest form? You don’t think there’s anything special in making these connections?”

“Why should I?” he called back. “They’re the ones who made the connection and made the jump to marriage, so my job is only to provide what they’d want before they then deepen that connection on their honeymoon. You’d think they had much of an idea by love, and that it all didn’t come to them at the reception.”

He decided not to respond. At least not for a little while, because it was clear to him that their visions did not line up at all. Ollie was about affection, Kimi was about complexion—at least in his mind. It’s not that he’s starkly against a huge celebration, either, but everything should be tailored to the specific clients that they get. Maybe that’s where Kimi gets it wrong.

He wouldn’t bother wasting his brain cells on somebody that clearly saw the self-benefit of this job over the benefit of the people that came to the boutique for one reason, and one reason only.

The silence didn’t last long, as the clunk of a chair saw Kimi bring himself closer to Ollie. “No matter how different we are, don’t you think we’ve been chosen for a reason?” Kimi suggested. “We’re going to have to make many compromises, and maybe it’d help if we stopped putting each other down all the time.”

Ollie’s eyebrows raised, a blown away expression donning his face. “Mind you, I wouldn’t even have a problem with you, but then you decided to try and fix my work that wasn’t even finished.” Kimi looked puzzled, before Ollie mentioned “The invitation?”

The other boy smirked. “You don’t like it when somebody corrects you? Tell you when you might, in fact, be the slightest bit wrong?”

“I wasn’t wrong,” Ollie boomed, the statement coming out a little louder than intended. “You’re just poking your nose into everybody’s business because you’re some sort of prodigy that has made a reputation for yourself in a year!”

He was exhausted. Just the sheer sight of Kimi had him wanting to go home to open the 12 pack of cider that he’d bought on the weekend.

Luckily, something was on his side just then, as Esteban told them both that they could leave early for the day, and that Charles would be coming into the boutique sometime when both of their schedules lined up.

“I hope you’ve made some progress in your friendship!” Esteban called as they were both leaving.

Oh, how far from the truth that was.

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

It was Tuesday when Ollie had stumbled in at 12pm that day, reading his emails to see that Esteban and George had sent himself and Kimi a notice that Charles would be dropping in at 3 today.

Ollie found it to be as relieving as it was scary. It was nice to finally have something to assign himself too, considering he’d been much of a free agent yesterday, leaving early that day as well.

Still, there was the fact that he was literally about to plan Charles Leclerc’s wedding. Not only that, he didn’t know who his partner was—and whoever it was, she was pretty lucky. As much as Ollie wished to be in whoever that was’ place, he didn’t want it to get controversial.

He hadn’t seen anything of Kimi since he stepped into work, but he believed it wouldn’t hurt him to at least…debrief with him before the new client came in. After finishing his emails once again, he set off for the other staff area, which is where Kimi was apparently situated.

It was slightly embarrassing how quickly Ollie noticed Kimi given the brown curls that were visible, covering part of his neck. His posture was a little bad, but he seemed to be typing pretty fast. He decided not to waste any time, though, tapping him on the shoulder.

He quickly closed off the tab he was on before turning around to Ollie. “Oh, my wonderful partner.” Kimi said with no glee whatsoever. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Ollie put the snarky remark in the back of his head. “I just thought it would be useful for us to…debrief? As much as our ideas were different, I wouldn’t want us to overlap in front of them.” His tone came off a little nervous, which he internally cringed about. Kimi didn’t bring up anything, thankfully.

“I think it’s pretty simple, eh? You can stick to the reception part and I’ll try and stick to the rest of it. No doubt they’re going to want that sort of wedding, at least that’s what George told me. We’re not going into this completely blind, you know.”

Maybe Este had said something similar to him, but he can’t remember for the life of him. “Right. Okay. You know they’ll be here at—”

“At three, yes, I know. I’m kinda busy with something at the moment, so do you…mind?” He wasn’t sure if it was Kimi’s intention to be rude, but he sure felt the brunt of his speech.

“Yeah, whatever. Just don’t be late.” Ollie finished, and left Kimi to continue with whatever was so important. He didn’t see how anything took priority over a client such as the one they were dealing with, but hey? What did Ollie know?

Sitting back down at his desk, the coffee that he’d made just a bit earlier had gone slightly colder than he’d usually like. He drank it anyway, the sun peeking out of the clouds. The wind wasn’t as bad as it was on Sunday, and so Ollie enjoyed the sound of the waves as the window stayed slightly ajar.

He thought about what was going to happen later. Would he and Kimi clash? Would Charles and his partner not be impressed with the way they displayed their services?

After all, it was just the first meeting. It was more for them to be clear on what the client’s vision was, and then for them to go and conjure up some wedding plan if the client was willing. He’d usually done this alone, but having someone beside him was a mystery.

It was hard to look at the bigger picture. If they were to split up and try to delegate both of their areas, then both parts of the wedding might be starkly different from each other.

That’s when it came together in Ollie’s brain. No matter how much he detested it, he was going to have to work alongside Kimi Antonelli for the foreseeable.

The worst part was, he couldn’t even say no. Not when this big of a project was on a silver platter.

He found himself in one of their consultation rooms at around 2:45pm, 15 minutes before schedule. He wanted to make sure that the temperature was right in the room, that everything was in place, that he had a notebook ready to try and brainstorm what Charles was looking for without actively ignoring him by hiding behind a laptop screen, for example.

Expecting Kimi to turn up any moment, he revelled in the bliss that was peace for the moment. Most of the room was white, with the added touch of red and blue that finished off their brand logo (of course, because Esteban was French!).

The seats were a far cry more comfier than the one he’d usually be sat at if not occupied with a client, and he seemed to have everything prepared. Now all he had to do was wait.

Wait he did—because Kimi came in around 2:55. He looked a little more put together than usual, and Ollie wondered if he’d used any sort of makeup to hide the blemishes that he saw just hours ago.

Not that he was inspecting Kimi.

“You’re cutting it fine.” Ollie commented.

Kimi just eased into the seat next to him. “I’m still here before schedule, huh? There’s nothing wrong with that.” he replied. He did have a point. “Everything looks…weirdly in place.”

Kimi’s head turned all over the room, no longer oblivious to everything that Ollie had attempted to make perfect. “Have you ever heard of a good first impression?” he chided.

“I thought you would’ve…” came a slight mumble from Kimi, but Ollie didn’t find himself catching the end of it. Naturally, he doesn’t really care about any more statements that Kimi has to say towards him.

They sat in silence for longer than Ollie would’ve liked, the ticking of the clock the only thing to accompany the sterile white walls. The sun was still shining, but there was no window, just the accompaniment of the air conditioning in the room to stimulate a breeze.

Not that he had much of a view. The only thing that he could see in his immediate sight was Kimi pulling out his own notebook, trying to look the tiniest bit prepared, as what was next to him was a frosted window for privacy.

Esteban walked into the room shortly before the quiet mood would’ve made the older boy go insane. “They’ve just arrived. Before they come in—I know you’re both professional—but try and remain calm? This isn’t the second coming of Christ.” Esteban told them both, a lopsided smile to his face.

Definitely a weird way to put things, but nonetheless, he nodded. Kimi did the same but with a thumbs up as well, and Esteban just saluted them both before he dashed off. Presumably to meet the people they were meant to plan said wedding for.

“Don’t you think that was a bit weird?” Kimi echoed Ollie's thoughts. For once, he could agree with what the younger one was saying.

“Yeah. You’re right.” Ollie murmured, but that was all he could get out. Esteban stepped back in to return to his formalities, and sure enough, in walked Charles Leclerc.

Standing up, Ollie motioned Kimi to do the same, but as he was doing that—he couldn’t help but notice how Kimi’s face was trying to hide some sort of shock.

It would be rude to whisper to Kimi in front of their clients, but he whipped his head around shortly after—

Okay. He could understand why Kimi was the way that he was.

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

“I presume that Esteban did not tell you two about…me coming here, I suppose? That may be the best way to put it.” came an accent that could only be described as one that Ollie also recognised.

It was only right that sat diagonally from him, opposite Kimi, was Max Verstappen. That Max Verstappen.

Ollie thinks he might as well die. Perhaps he’d let Kimi handle this by himself. He had too much of a big mouth to keep this sort of thing a secret. I mean, come on—

“…you had a partner. I think Ollie is a little more knowledgeable than I am?” Kimi pointed, looking in the direction of said boy. It snapped Ollie out of his slight reverie that he’d been in since Max had walked in, reminding him that he actually had a job to do.

He flushed involuntarily. “Sorry about that,” he started, with a slight pitch to his voice. “My colleague is right. As much as hearing all about…” he gestured to the two opposite them “this…would be great for my fanboy side, on a professional side this definitely isn’t about me. It’s about the two of you, and what you want us to provide. So please don’t feel like you’re walking on eggshells.”

Ollie finished his slight little ramble with a smile, and he saw Charles turn to Max with—well. The whole reason he started this job.

It was quite funny how this had turned out. Maybe a delusional side of Ollie would’ve said that he saw this coming, but there’s only so much you can tell from low quality photos.

Right in front of him, however, was the same look you saw in individuals who had perhaps fallen in love for the first time. Not like he wanted to headcanon them—they were grown men like him, for god’s sake.

There were a lot of personal opinions that he had on the situation, but he’d just keep them to himself for now. The engaged pair had stopped looking at each other and their focus was now on himself and Kimi.

“It was always a dream of mine to get married in Monaco,” Charles began, a wistful look on his face that was quickly shut down, “but obviously that won’t happen. I’m not mad about it by any means, but it does mean that some things have to be done a little differently.”

He continued on quickly, as Max seemed to be nodding on with everything he was saying either way. “We decided mutually that we’d want the actual wedding reception to be held in The Netherlands, so that both of our families had a chance to be there. Then, what you can do in Monaco, you plan in Monaco.” Charles pitched.

“Which is why I think Esteban may have decided that two people would be best for the job.” Max added. “Personally, he seemed extremely fucking overwhelmed based on Charles’ recount, so we hope you two can keep it a little more level-headed than him? Even though it’s his business?”

A less fake laugh couldn’t have come out of Kimi just then. “Ollie and I have known each other for long enough. We’ll both do our absolute best for you, and should you have any problems…well, Ollie is the one that knows more about both of you as we can tell.”

He elicited a slight chuckle from Max, and Charles was just there lapping up the scene. Ollie’s face couldn’t have gone more rigid at that point, as he didn’t feel that was an appropriate joke to make. He’d consider himself flaky to break at that, however.

“Thank you, Kimi. How very kind of you.” Ollie jested, before turning to the couple. “Obviously I know how busy you both are, and it now puts it into a bigger perspective as to why we’d need a little longer to do things. Obviously, most of it can be sorted from our end, perhaps with a phone call here and there. If you want to just direct your attention to my notepad for a second…” he trailed off before flipping to the end of his notebook.

Ollie pointed at the list that he’d made. “I’m unsure if you’ve looked at our website, but these are the standard terms that we’d go about with consulting your wedding. Obviously, some of these timeframes such as deciding a venue as such may take longer due to needing to find a venue in Monaco or potentially further afield. Did you have any inclination of the sort of place you’d want to get eloped in the Netherlands?”

While Charles had moved Ollie’s notebook a little closer to him, as if he was planning a calendar in his head, Max was the one to speak outwardly.

“We want that part of the wedding to be super intimate. We don’t really want…the secret to get out. You know people will speculate, especially with rings and such, but ideally somewhere that’s accessible for my family and Charlie’s. The ones that wouldn’t mind, anyway. Maybe just the close family and the ones that aren’t complete lunatics.” His last sentence seemed a little shaky, but Kimi seemed keen to continue the conversation.

It surprised Ollie a little, because Kimi’s lane definitely wasn’t the more secluded setting of receptions, but he couldn’t get too tied up in those thoughts. It wasn’t long before Charles initiated his own conversation with Ollie.

“Some of these things…the guest list, for example. How would we go about that?” the Monégasque questioned. Ollie beamed at him.

“It’s completely up to you. Obviously, we don’t specialise in…let’s say grandiose celebrity weddings. It’s up to you if you want the afterparty or equivalent to be a spectacle, or whether you really do invite those that are trusted and want to keep it a secret. As long as the venue we book can accommodate that certain capacity and that you’re able to stick to that.” he explained.

Charles visibly relaxed at Ollie’s question. He leaned in a little further while Max seemed to be laughing at something Kimi had just gone over. “Do you think it’s a little obvious about…Max and I? I can only presume from what Este said that you’re a big fan of F1, and as much as I would love to share him with the world…how do I put this…”

He seemed to ponder on what was right to actually say before asking to borrow Ollie’s pen so he could write something. He slid it back over when he noticed that Kimi was also doodling something on his notebook. What Charles had offered him didn’t need to be a picture, however.

It was just one word, but it was telling enough. Jos.

Ollie swallowed. It might’ve been a question that he’d want to answer in the future, but meeting two of his idols and talking about what is probably the most sensitive topic to one of them was definitely jumping into the deep end.

He tried to answer as honestly as he could. “There are many people that fantasize for their own good, but I think the environment that you’re in, people wouldn’t even guess. If being careful is what you’re after, then I can do that. Kimi likes to make everything a spectacle.” he spoke, perhaps a little too truthfully as Charles had laughed at Ollie’s remark.

“So you know a lot about him?” Charles joked. If only you knew, Ollie thought to himself, deciding to play it off anyway.

“A little bit. We’re not close enough to say what I actually think yet. If I tell you too much, you might cancel the entire process on us.” Ollie exclaimed

Charles raised his hands in surrender, “You’re the only boutique in Monaco! I trust you not to ruin this for me!” he cried. While it was intended to be funny, it also brought Ollie back into the headspace of how serious this was.

He took this as an opportunity, now that the other two had also stopped their conversation, to speak up about the type of ideas that he had.

“I don’t consider myself to specialise in something, but for me, a wedding is about people who are ready to devote themselves to each other for eternity. Of course, there has to be a way to commemorate that for both of you, and as a client you will always be at the forefront of my mind.” Ollie spoke eloquently.

“That being said, the type of venues that I had in mind would be something that were aimed towards a smaller guest list. Of course, you don’t have to follow this if you wanted to have a more public spectacle, but it’s just something to think about.”

Kimi butted in. “Speaking of more public spectacle, while Ollie may not specialise in anything, that sort of environment is something I think I can do well in. A wedding is meant to be about a celebration, and who the fuck cares if you get a little wasted during it? You only live once, after all.”

Ollie smiled curtly, “Of course you must remember that you don’t want to get too drunk on your wedding day so you can actually remember what happens!”

“So then it’ll be our job to book photographers and people that can make your day as memorable if you can’t!” Kimi retaliated back, as something that was intended as indirect but is seen as extremely direct.

He notices that Kimi is looking at him slightly, his eyebrows down in a position that seems to be one of mock anger. If Kimi knew that all he was doing was setting them up right now, then that would be wonderful.

“It’s nice to have more than one big ego other than us in a room at one time, isn’t it, Charles?” Max commented. It caused everyone to look at him, as perhaps it was meant for a whisper. “Did I say that out loud?”

The room fell into quick laughter at Max’s quick remark. It was as if everything was forgotten and they were all already much more relaxed.

Kimi jumped into what would happen over the course of the next 18 months, and how all of it could be subject to change depending on how free the couple were. Ollie followed it up swiftly by mentioning that Esteban would be able to give both of them their contact details as they were leaving, just in case they had any pre-existing questions that they felt they were unable to say in front of either one of them or their partner.

That part seemed a little bit secretive, considering a wedding was meant to be so open, but there was hardly anything to brainstorm in this first meeting.

However, if Ollie ever found out that Charles Leclerc had been messaging Kimi Antonelli behind his back about him, he’s pretty sure that he’d quit his job.

The meeting ran on for a little longer as they finalised when their next meeting would be, which surprisingly, would be in around 2-3 weeks due to the fact that Formula 1 drivers would be on their summer break soon.

Ollie makes sure to give each of them a way to access his version of a ‘portfolio’ online, in case there was anything specifically that interested them that they could bring into the next time they see each other.

Their next pre-planned meeting was to discuss the venue for the reception (if they hadn’t found one already), as well as the one for the afterparty. “If there would be a shortlist that were all nearby for said afterparty, that would be wonderful. Don’t you think it would be a good day out, chéri?”

Max nodded in response before continuing with his own statement. “We definitely look forward to working with the both of you. I’m not the most secretive person in the world, so expect to learn a lot about me. Some of it you don’t want to know.”

“Max, their job is to sell to us, not you put us off them!” Charles complained before they all shook hands.

Minutes later, the bell above the door chimed to signal that the two had left, and Ollie had been positively slouched in his chair ever since.

It hadn’t been long enough for Ollie to forget what Kimi had tried to do, however. “Well done for trying to ruin that for us, dipshit. Who do you think you are?” Ollie spat, anger obvious in his tone.

Kimi looked as if he’d just had the wind taken out of him. “Me? Mate, are you out of your mind? You were the one that butted in after me after I was literally explaining what I was good at!”

“Oh so encouraging people to get drunk is good service? The next thing we’re going to change our name to the Wine Cellar boutique, because all we do is give our clients alcohol and lock them up in a state of mind!”

“Oh wow,” Kimi laughed. “You’re good. You’re really good at spinning things, Bearman.”

The look on Ollie’s face was incredulous. “Do you hear yourself? Why the fuck would I try to spin things when we have two clients that could potentially bring in the best reputation for us?”

“Now you want to think about reputation? Not making yourself look good in front of two people you consider your idols?" Ollie went to speak, but Kimi jolted up immediately. “Don’t even try and lie to me. We can be civil, but I’m not going to have you tear up my job just because you think your angelic ways are the only way things can go around here.”

With that, Kimi and his black shoes walked on out of the consultation room, leaving Ollie encased in its soundproof walls.

He wanted to think of a witty remark, but he really couldn’t. Was it appropriate for him and Kimi to have blown up at each other? It was obvious that they both thought that they were in the right, but how right could either one of them be?

There were two short knocks at the door before George Russell invited himself in. “I just saw Kimi on his way out. Everything okay?” he attempted to clarify.

George wasn’t the higher up that Ollie would really turn to for any confirmation of things, as his office was stationed in the area where Kimi worked, which would explain their closer relationship.

Nonetheless, he was a nice guy, and the fact that he was British brought a sense of home to Ollie. So he couldn’t really lie to him about everything.

“We’ll sort it out. Him and I have never worked together before, so it’s obvious that we’ll have different ideas.” is all he came out with, and he tried his best not to choke it out. There was so much more he wanted to say.

George’s lips upturned slightly. “Well, Esteban chose you two for a reason, so you better practice what you preach. He said both you and Kimi could take the day off tomorrow, he might catch up with you both via text.” he responded.

With that, George didn’t waste any more time and the door clicked shut behind him once again. Begrudgingly, Ollie didn’t waste any more time once he thought the older man was a safe enough distance away, and slipped off to his office where he saw Dino and Luke conversing before he got to his own space.

The sun still hadn’t set, and it may have had an effect—because Ollie was definitely a much more heated person than he was— give or take half an hour ago.

Part of him hoped this wasn’t a ticking timebomb waiting to explode.

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

(“Those two definitely don’t like each other,” Max deadpanned. Him and Charles sat on the sofa of Charles’ Monaco apartment, Leo sat in his dog bed just across from the television.

Charles chuckled. “You’ve given Esteban enough shit over the years. Maybe this is his way of getting back at us, if anything. We were young once, remember.”

Max turned his head to his fiancée, eyes crinkling up when he bored into those green irises.

“They’ll work it out, just like you and I did.” Charles reaffirmed him. “You can tell that they’re two completely different people.”

“Maybe that’s the one difference they have to us, schat.”

There was a huff that came from Charles. “You really didn’t have to be throwing the word ego around in the first meeting.”

“I don’t think that’ll affect their ability to make our wedding the best ever to partying at Jimmy’z, for example.” Max retorted, a calmer tone than usual.

“I wish you wouldn’t discuss the club I used to frequent to be used as something for our wedding, Max Verstappen.”)

Chapter Text

The next two weeks, in fact, were mildly uneventful. He and Kimi didn’t actually see each other that much, considering they were working on a really big project together.

Although they seemed to be doing the same thing, give or take. Ollie found himself acting as Esteban’s personal assistant all week, whereas what he saw of Kimi was that he was following George around. So maybe part of his assumptions rang true.

Of course, they couldn’t go the entire week without seeing each other. It’s like when Mother Nature decides to intervene with his day and just make it rain on his way home from work.

Unfortunately, the intervention was human, and it came in the form of Esteban Ocon. “We’ll be able to get Max and Charles here on the 13th August.” Esteban reminded them, “and I’ve added it to both of your calendars so that you don’t forget.”

“Did they have anything else to say?” Kimi protruded. His tone was unusually flat.

Esteban turned slightly to Kimi, unsure if the question was coming out of the right person’s mouth. “Such as?”

The younger boy shrugged. “About the way the entire thing is being handled? Surely they’d prefer just one wedding planner, no?”

Ollie wasn’t sure if it was meant to be a jab at him or not, but either way, he took it as one and the scowl on his face couldn’t be hidden.

“Any feasible concerns that I can’t take up with them, I would share with them.” Esteban explained calmly. “Therefore, I can’t provide you with an answer to your question, Kimi.”

Kimi only nodded, and it was as if he seemed to withdraw himself from the rest of the conversation. Not that Ollie had any time to think about what that meant about him, as Esteban shot into conversation once again.

“Obviously the thing that they’ll be looking for is a venue. Have you discussed the fact that they’ll need to get wed outside of Monaco? If you didn’t, I will fire you both on the spot.” he beamed. The threat was empty to them, but he knew the Frenchman was completely serious in how he came across.

Ollie nodded. “They mentioned that they wanted to find somewhere in the Netherlands for the reception, so that both sides of the family had equal distances to travel given the entire spectrum of the wedding.”

“Max also mentioned to me that only his immediate family would be attending, and I would assume that Charles said the same?” Kimi poised, posture a little better.

“Yes,” Ollie confirmed. “it was very insightful to be able to talk with them one on one, as a lot of our ideas seemed to overlap.” Esteban motioned as for Ollie to continue. “Well, as you probably know, the ethos that Kimi and I go by is starkly different. While I see a wedding as a celebration of love, my partner views it as a way to get people drunk.”

Kimi’s chair slightly scraped against the floor, his facial expression changing into one of his own frustration. “I do advise you not to take any claims from your personal assistant for the moment, and instead maybe look at the fact that he’s willing to interrupt others to make himself look better.”

“To make the business look better, as a matter of fact, because you’re suddenly deciding to promote alcoholism!”

Kimi scoffed. “As if people don’t have a choice? You think I don’t know that Formula 1 drivers down champagne every single time they get a podium? Surely you would know.”

“This is a wedding! Maybe for once in their life, they want to spend time with their family and not have everything winding up into a competition of who can have the most tequila in an hour! Even so, you’d be the first in line!” Ollie seethed, his tone exasperated.

“Oh, so just because I want to get involved with my clients and form connections doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun at the end of it? Do you have rocks for brains or do you genuinely think that I want to get plastered at every opportunity?” Kimi yelled, tone getting more and more irritated.

“You should tell that to the state of you after the wedding where—”

Ollie was cut off by Esteban taking an unusually loud sip out of his mug. The tension in the room could be cut with a knife, and maybe what Charles and Max were alluding to was slightly correct—were there too many egos in one room?

“Boys,” Esteban coaxed sweetly, “I promised those two that I’d have the best people on the job. You can hate each other after all of this is done, but at least try to be civil with each other. I can’t give you away to them and tell them that every meeting will end up with both of you not showing up to work because of the other.”

Neither of them even questioned him on the last point, because with the way they were going, Ollie could picture a very clear reality where he would avoid the shorter boy next to him, even if it meant not coming into work.

That was a secret he’d keep for now, though. Although he was still slightly disappointed that he couldn’t get his last jab in on Kimi after he’d missed work for a hangover. On more than one occasion.

“I appreciate that the both of you have contrasting ideas, so I think it’s best that you start trying to compromise on some things, hm?” Esteban gestured to them both, with a silent nod in response.

He grinned at that. “As you’ve still got just under a week, I’d like you both to research venues in the area. Ask about capacity, if they’ve ever catered for weddings before and the type of things that they’ve done, anything else that you can’t find on a website or a public piece of information.”

“Of course, you’ll need to discuss it, so I hope I won’t have to intervene for the two of you to schedule a meeting together. We’re all adults here, non?” His smile became a little too wide for Ollie to even consider what would happen if he’d rather keep Kimi at an arm’s length at all times, but it was made clear to him how that would end up if he kept going on.

There was no rebuttal from Kimi, either. He didn’t look as dejected as earlier, but he definitely had the look on his face to say that he wanted to get out of this office as soon as possible.

Maybe Esteban had some mercy on him. “I suggest you both get something to drink and set up something to organise your thoughts. They’ve given you free reign for a reason, remember?”

Everyone got up from their seats, Kimi thanking Esteban for his time, and then wasting absolutely none of that time getting out of the door.

He didn’t even hold the door open for Ollie.

Twat.

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

Coming in to work the Friday after and the first email he read being a meeting invitation for Kimi Antonelli may have been a prelude to how his weekend was going to go, but he decided to ignore it for now.

He couldn’t ignore the invitation, however. It was scheduled for today at 2pm, and Kimi had left a comment along with the meeting request.

“I know you frequent luck at 1:30 most days so you should be here without fail (:”

First of all, weird. How did Kimi know when he went for lunch? As far as he knew, he’d never actually seen Kimi whenever he went for lunch. He probably had the expense to go and eat lunch out at one of the coffee shops that was local to the boutique.

With the implication that Kimi now had spies employed to watch when Ollie went for lunch, the sheer fact of Kimi wanting to find out that information for something as subtle as a meeting made his stomach upset.

Nonetheless, he accepted the invitation, knowing that his day would now include more of his Italian colleague than he’d like to see. He noticed that Esteban had been copied into the request either way, so it was good credibility for both of them. He’d just have to suck it up.

After helping Dino find the right style to go for when designing his client’s RSVPs, he realised the time was getting on and that it was nearing 2pm already. He hadn’t even taken the time to get lunch, because before that, Renée had asked him to run an errand for her that took him a lot longer than expected.

Kimi would just have to suck it up and let Ollie eat lunch during their discussion. Ollie was pretty sure that they’d use one of the more one-to-one consultation rooms and just repurpose that so they could both look at the same thing without getting in each other’s way.

After all, him and Kimi’s relationship was eons away from being able to squish up at one of their desks, like he’d seen Luke and Dino do more often than not.

Heading to the staff lounge to pick up the pasta that he had gotten away with being edible (after burning the last batch), he heated it up in the microwave and made his way to the room that he’d double checked Kimi had put on the meeting.

When he stepped into said room, Kimi’s MacBook was taking up half of the table, and there’d been no attempt to move the chairs around either. You could’ve sworn that he was meant to be working there by himself, but the glass door shutting behind Ollie was a sign that got him to look up.

“You’re late, by the way.” Kimi noted, a bored tone to his voice. Not even a greeting, but Ollie wasn’t even—

It was 2:01pm.

Ollie scoffed lightly. “You’re really going to call me late because I was heating up my lunch?” he said, matching Kimi’s own tone. Said boy doesn’t bother to lift his head as Ollie places his pasta on the table, moving the chair around to where Kimi has shifted to the side. “Speaking of, how the fuck do you know when I go to lunch?”

Kimi stops typing. “Lucky guess? It was just a threat to make you come on time.” is what he decides to respond with after the silence had stood in the air for longer than usual. Far from the witty comebacks he was used to.

“Even so, you still managed to be late. If I got your lunch correctly, how are you only just now here after heating it up?” Kimi clapped back, putting the last part in speech marks.

Ollie sat down next to him, grabbing his laptop case from which he’d set to the side of the room temporarily to move his chair around. “I was helping other people and running errands.”

Kimi only shifted his focus to his own laptop. “I managed to cut my list down to 3, the ones I cut out were because I don’t think they fit the atmosphere they were trying to go for or it was too far away.”

He then clicked on a document that had images and tables all over the page. “This is my evaluation of each of them, with links to the website and other information. All of them have over 100 capacity and are available in the timeframe that we need them for. I’ll add you now so you can check the websites out?”

“Sure,” Ollie replied swiftly. “I’ve done sort of the same thing, however some of my venues are a bit smaller due to the fact that I wanted to be respectful of the direction Charles may have been pointing in.”

“A wedding is between two people, you know. Not just the person you’d get on your knees for.” Kimi said, as Ollie noticed his screen go to his emails. The way he said it was almost like he wanted to get back at Ollie, which seemed like a running theme between the two of them now.

“Real classy,” Ollie responded quickly. “I’d take it from somebody that actually knew how to plan a wedding, not a party.”

“So now you’re just going back on what you said? Is a celebration not a synonym for a party?” Kimi uttered cheekily.

Ollie propped himself up on his elbow. “So you know what the word synonym actually means? Have you been getting good English classes from George after you forget all of it the moment a glass of cider gets into your hands?”

“Think of something original next time,” Kimi turned to him and crinkled his eyes while smiling, which was void of any sincerity. “By the way, your first choice is horrible. I’m not sure how you think that a 50 person capacity would work in any sort of way for the scale of this.”

“Well, that’s why the other venues on my list have a much bigger capacity.” Ollie snapped back.

“Do you think I’m going to read these extensive lists in like 2 minutes? Maybe that’s why I planned a meeting for this rather than just arguing with you over emails.” Kimi said, a frustrated tone to his voice. “Give me a second.”

Ollie sighed. “While you’re looking, I’m not sure if you didn’t hear them when they were here but a club is not the right place for a wedding either. I don’t think they’d be too happy that it’s outside of Monaco either.”

“You don’t think it’s better for the fact it can hold a fuck ton of people?”

“Please stop lying to yourself.” Ollie reprimanded. “Nobody knows that many people, not even celebrities. There’s a reason that they don’t have that many people on their phones.”

Kimi ran his right hand through his curls. “Well, if we’re going to want something for them to choose from, I’m keeping the other venue on my list.”

Ollie tried to speak up and ask why Kimi had picked that (when he knew all along it was the bar), but he didn’t manage to get a word in. “There’s a section on their page which I attached that said they specialise in weddings, so it’s a justified pick unlike the last one.”

The British boy went back to his own list. “Well if you’re solidifying one, then I’ll solidify the manor that’s near the beach.”

“In winter?” Kimi reminded him, as if wanting to get a one-up instead.

Ollie only chuckled. “I’m not going to make them swim, and someone’s probably going to go outside and smoke at some point. At least they have a nice view.”

He watched as Kimi clicked onto the website then, watching his face upturn at something that Ollie could only presume was the fact that the manor was pretty dated, although the interior design definitely didn’t show that for a second.

“I had a third one, but there were a couple mistakes with it. Let me check what you put as your— oh.” Ollie paused. He was sincerely ready to fight his case again, since he thought more than three locations was a complete stretch, but shock came to his face just then.

“Realised my pick was better?” Kimi boasted.

The older boy shook his head. “No…we decided on the same one.” he voiced, as if it wasn’t meant to happen. This caused Kimi’s eyebrows to fly dangerously close to his fringe line.

While he seemed to be refreshing his memory, words came back to him. “Oh, I had a couple issues with this one too, but I just wanted one more so that it would at least try and seem that I wasn’t living up to my…reputation, as you want to put it.”

“Why would that even matter to you?” Ollie questioned, and it was a genuine question. As much as he could do without having the boy plague his workplace, he’s not sure why he’d let other people get to him. He definitely didn’t seem like the type.

Kimi only went back to rapid typing. “Nothing.” he dismissed, and Ollie supposed that was the end of it.

He noticed then that Kimi had made a new document with the three locations that they’d shortlisted, highlighting his and leaving comments in case there was ‘anything extra he wanted to say’.

Ollie could think of about a hundred things to refute why they shouldn’t pick Kimi’s location, but he heeded Esteban’s advice about trying not to bicker with the other boy.

Maybe a compliment wouldn’t go astray? “Isn’t it funny? After all this bickering we did actually end up agreeing on something.” Ollie remarked, a lighter tone glazing his voice.

Kimi scrunched. “If it helps you sleep at night. I’m just glad that we didn’t have to make an executive decision today, otherwise I wouldn’t have left this building until I got what I wanted.”

“Right.” Ollie replied. He would’ve done the exact same, but Kimi doesn’t need the satisfaction of knowing that, because the other would never back down from a fight.

There was silence then. It was 2:30pm, and neither of them really had any tasks left for the day, but as far as Ollie knew, they both weren’t meant to clock out straight after this meeting. “When do you finish?”

“5. I presume I’ll just have to help George do some of his tasks.” Kimi answered. Ollie just nodded. “What about you?”

“I finish at 4, since I’ve been here since 8 this morning. I was thinking of doing some research on caterers in case Charles and Max were to go for one of the first two options.” Ollie spoke.

Silence followed once again, as if Kimi didn’t know how to respond—Ollie even less how to continue. His voice found itself eventually, “You can stay here and help if you want, so that we don’t overlap? Up to you.”

“Okay,” Kimi’s response came faster than he thought. “only because I have to learn to put up with you.”

When Ollie was able to leave the boutique that evening on time, he wasn’t sure whether his prolonged hour with Kimi was actually suffocating or whether he was just made to think that based on his premonitions.

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

The date of the venue decision 'trip' came faster than intended, and before they knew it, Ollie and Kimi shared the back of a minivan with the two that were engaged. They were on their way to Kimi’s location, as his was the furthest geographically.

It was still on the outskirts of Monaco, and the younger boy was certain that it would be something to please both of them.

The trip wasn’t long at all, and they had made it to the front of the building. It was a hotel that was a little higher on a hill so there was a slight outlook onto the beachfront of Monaco, and funnily enough, you could see Ollie’s location from there as well.

It was a white exterior similarly to the boutique, but it had gold writing under the entrance and revolving doors to welcome them in. It was a hotel, but they were able to do weddings and the rooms that were available could be rented out.

They met with the owner shortly after, who brought them into where the wedding would take place. He explained that there was enough space for 150 guests, as they were able to open up their conservatory area to fit two extra tables in comparison to the usual 10 that they’d have. The that were available were circular and they said that they were happy with any material, or could provide their own if need be.

The logistics and costs would be something that both Ollie and Kimi would discuss in their own time if Charles and Max were to pick this location, their aim to try and get the wedding to cost as little as possible. Even if it was for multi-millionaires.

“This was a location that I insisted we check out because of one particular thing that you might have already noticed.” Kimi gestured to the bar, unsurprisingly for Ollie, but he couldn’t deny that the sheer length of it was definitely interesting.

The bar spanned all the way from the start of the room even to be in line with where the space for the dance floor would be reserved. The tables were in a configuration that made getting to the bar a little tricky, but there were a bunch of fridges that were able to stock as much as anyone could ever want.

“I’d also consulted before this, and the owner had mentioned that the entrance was a place to be because nobody would be coming here if they weren’t at the wedding. There’s also a grass bank just outside the conservatory should anyone want some fresh air, but given the weather, I don’t think anyone would last very long out there.” Kimi joked, eliciting laughs out of the older two.

“Ollie,” Charles piped up. “We haven’t heard too much from you. What do you think about this?”

A little taken aback, Ollie decided to be fully honest about what he thought. “I think that it has some very standout features, I just think that it’ll be a little crowded when everything is said and done. I appreciate that the capacity has been stretched to its limits, but there will be a lot of people in one place— given that be during the dinner service, the dancefloor, the bar. If there’s any children, I can’t imagine them having the best time.”

That final sentence seemed to get some sort of a reaction out of Max, pulling out his phone to type something that nobody could seem to decipher in that moment.

The owner came back at that point after attending to business that he had to attend to, so Ollie and Kimi allowed for a private conversation to happen between him and their clients.

Ollie took the time to try and figure out how 10 tables were going to fit in the main area. There’d been one there for display, but there was a different event happening in this exact space which the hotel had needed to get ready for.

Kimi seemed to saunter up next to him. “You know, you really shouldn’t worry about the capacity if they’ve already specified that they can take that capacity already.” It was a bit of a smartass point to make, but a good one at that.

“I was just being honest,” Ollie responded. “It’s a nice place, but going to a hotel that’s been converted for this certain purpose doesn’t seem as glamorous as it does on the tin.”

Kimi exhaled slightly. “You seriously think men who drive cars in circles for a living would care that much about a repurposed function room?”

Ollie only shrugged. “Maybe they wouldn’t, because you seemed to sell the bar to them even more than the owners of the establishment. Well done, I think that’s never been done before.”

“Are you going to come up with something new soon? I’m starting to think that you can’t handle your alcohol.” Kimi muttered.

Ollie turned to him, feistiness bubbling in his voice. “When I stumble into work drunk, I think that’s when I’ll know when someone has—”

“Hello!” Charles exclaimed, bubbly as ever as him and Max walked on over to them. “We think we’re all done here. Should we head to the next place?”

Kimi checked the watch on his wrist. “Yeah, let’s head for that place now. If we get there early we should be able to finish up in time in case you two wanted to get some lunch before the third place.” he clarified curtly, before swinging his heel to turn in the way of the entrance.

Ollie thanked the owner for his time before catching up with Kimi so that he didn’t joyride the car when he least expected that.

Luckily, after Max had taken a couple photos both inside and outside, they joined a bouncy Ollie and a distant Kimi in the minivan.

They set off down the hill, and Ollie’s noise of pain was undeniable when Kimi had knocked knees into him as the van tilted to the left. “Are you asking me to wear knee pads the next time we go out?”

Kimi giggled. “Hopefully there won’t be a next time, Bearman,” keeping his voice quiet. Ollie could only take the opportunity while Kimi’s guard was down to step on his toes, which made him scream a little louder than either of them intended.

The younger boy was very obviously embarrassed, and it took everything in Ollie not to laugh. He felt like a bit of a child again.

“Sorry,” Kimi spoke through the silence. “just bit my tongue.”

The next location saw a woman greet them at the front of the building. The first thing that Ollie noticed was the generous space outside the building that had been decked out with the most beautifully polished wood, as it overlooked the waves that were on the coast.

It was considerably smaller than the last location, but the venue had still stated that they were able to fit 90 people throughout the building.

The woman gave them a tour of the estate, claiming that they also had a bunch of houses that were available to rent just a walk away from this property. In the estate there was a gym and a pool, none of which they would be using today, but rather a unique selling point.

“For weddings we usually spread dinner service out between a couple of different rooms,” the woman explained, “but there will still be time for the top table speeches as such, if that is something you wanted to do. If it was a dealbreaker, then you would have to make some sacrifices to the main room and handle that yourselves.”

She then showed the four around the two locations where they could purchase drinks and other various snacks—one in the second dining room, and one outside which was on the patio area that they’d ever so slightly stumbled across.

Said patio area had heaters and firepits outside, along with cushioned seats and chillers in the middle to keep any bottles cold. There were fairy lights and wood structures that made it all the more enticing, and Ollie could only begin to imagine what it would be like in the night time.

Max and Charles went with the woman to see if there would be anything specific that they could make to their brief, while Ollie and Kimi took the time to add to their notes, or in Ollie’s case, enjoy the scenery.

It wasn’t too long before Kimi spoke either way. “You know, that woman practically did my job for me. Who would want to go to a wedding where everybody wasn’t in the same room?”

“That’s only for the dinner service, if you were paying attention,” Ollie chided. “There’s a bunch of separate rooms that can still be used as rooms for people to socialise in during the wedding, so it never feels like anyone is forced to interact with perhaps…people they don’t know.”

“So tell me, Mr. know-it-all about love,” Kimi began. “you’ve never seen anyone fall in love at a wedding before?”

Ollie tilted his head in confusion. “Is that not what a wedding is for—”

“Let’s use a little common sense here.” Kimi briskly cut him off. “Someone that isn’t the two that are getting married, perhaps?”

He didn’t even know Kimi’s brain was that advanced when it came to love. “No, I’ve never really thought about the possibility of that. Why? Does it interest you?”

Kimi turned his nose up. “I’ll stick to the planning part.” Involuntarily, it made Ollie chuckle, and the back of his ears went completely red when he realised what he’d just done.

Luckily, he didn’t have time to think about it, because he’d gotten up once he’d seen Charles and Max head towards where they were sitting, opening the patio door to sit across from them seconds later.

“Is there anything else to say about this place?” Max deadpanned.

Ollie started. “Well, I don’t think I have to explain how gorgeous where we’re actually sat is, and at night it’s even better. If you’re looking for something that’s a little more relaxed and you want to spend time re-connecting with every single guest you’ve invited, then I’d recommend it. There’s even space around the patio to have a little dance if you wish.”

Max turned to Kimi then, body language asking him for his opinion. “Well, what I will say is that it’s a lot different based on the pictures I saw.”

For a moment, Ollie thought that he was going to say something positive, but then he essentially repeated what he’d just said to Ollie in private. “As much as I value the party side of a wedding, I still think that everyone should be celebrating together. Most of them will be adults, I think they can choose who they want to interact with and who they don’t.”

Charles giggled. “That’s not the way for some people, it might seem.” Both Ollie and Kimi looked at him like he’d just grown a head, but Max was slapping him on the shoulder in delight.

Probably an inside joke, Ollie thought to himself. They went back inside where the woman showed them the upstairs area where they could access the toilets and a place for storage if they ever needed to put anything there.

She gave them a business card on their way out, and he noticed Kimi trying not to laugh when Ollie had almost hit his head on the frame that was separating the estate from the entrance.

Instant karma was a thing, and Kimi actually did hit his head on the top of the minivan when they jumped back in.

They didn’t have to go far to their final destination, although it was down a secluded road that many people didn’t go down unless they were going to this venue specifically.

It was reminiscent of one of those really fancy houses with gates that had to be operated to let guests in, just without the guests—keep the really fancy walkway, though. There was greenery surrounding the minivan all the way, and by the time they’d made it out of the car, they had to walk up a couple of steps to get to the actual venue.

They walked through a brick archway to find themselves at the back of a house that all four of them could only assume was the venue. Before they could turn around to see if they’d missed the front entrance, somebody was suddenly walking up to them from a door that opened at the side.

“Hello!” came the voice of a brunette woman who had just stepped out of the door and was currently making their way down to them. “Sorry about the confusing directions, we don’t actually use the front door all that often. I’m Bella.”

They all shook her hand before following her inside from the door she’d just exited. “We’ll be going back outside in a second, but I just wanted to show you inside because I think it’d be great for your dinner service.”

She led them into a room which was slightly longer than the first one they’d seen in the hotel, complete with turquoise wallpaper and a bunch of chairs already moved out of the way.

“We’re actually having a wedding here in a couple days time, which is why we’re already in the process of setting things up. It really does depend on the capacity, but usually we can fit around 120 people in here. The table organisation is more rectangular rather than circled, but you still get to talk to the people close to you.” she explained, taking them to another part of the room.

“This part of the room can be good for the wedded couple’s table, as well as a stage for any important announcements, and then there’s a little area here which you can fill in if need be. The other end of the room is where our kitchens are.”

Max spoke up. “Does this all include catering, or would we need to order that separately?” It was a question that both Ollie and Kimi had really forgotten to question, considering none of the other venues had mentioned in-house catering.

She nodded. “Our chef, Yuki, is the best guy ever. He specialises in Asian cuisine, but we can organise a tasting if you’re interested and you can actually meet the guy. You wouldn’t expect him to be a chef at first glance, trust me.”

Everybody nodded as she showed them a place for toilets and another room in case people wanted to space away from everyone. Then, they were led back outside.

“Is that all for the venue?” Kimi voiced, tone slightly concerned. Ollie echoed those same concerns, but Bella shook her head and led them to a part of the garden that was slightly hidden by the rest of the estate.

“Of course, we have all of our rooms, but for our wedding hires we have this—” motioning to a big white gazebo that could now be seen. “There’s also this lawn here for taking pictures, but of course, you’ll have lots of opportunities to do that…”

Her speech trailed off in Ollie’s brain, because he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He turned to Kimi, whispering, “You don’t think a gazebo in winter would work, do you?”

It was another rare occasion where Kimi nodded his head. “Potentially. Especially if people love the interior, they wouldn’t want to just…come out here.”

They noticed that Charles and Max were then following their host on, to which they tailed on behind. She pointed out that the gazebo had a zip to keep any cold air from getting in, before turning to the interior, which was…

“That’s it?” Ollie deadpanned. Disappointment was an understatement—because it was completely empty.

However, Bella only chuckled. “Like I told you, we are setting up for a wedding, and everything can’t be done at once. It’s not completely empty, anyway. There’s a table just in the corner to the left there. I think it’d be best if I show you more there.”

Without any more objection, they all found themselves sitting down. The table was circular, similar to that in the hotel, with only a white cloth hiding what was underneath. Bella explained that they didn’t put the chair covers on yet because they didn’t want them to get spoiled for whatever reason.

She opened her iPad which she’d been holding for a while, and found herself scrolling through photos—which looked a lot more promising.

“We’ve only done this sort of project once, so we didn’t want to put any pictures on our website until we knew that it was a complete success. As you can see,” she pointed to the big photo, “the tables are organised well enough with a big enough space so people can get in and out freely.” she beamed, her tone surprisingly calm given their initial reactions.

Bella directed their attention to a stand. “That there would be turned into a bar. Of course, it’s nowhere near as glamorous as the one inside, but we don’t think that conversations should be had at a bar in a wedding. You get your drinks and go, and there’s plenty of tables to do your socialising.”

That was something Ollie could get on board with, for once. He could picture Kimi’s scowl in his mind.

She continued explaining about how they were plug sockets both outside and in so that the place could be heated, along with any necessities that may need charging that guests bring with them.

“There’s also toilets just past the dance floor so that people don’t have to venture inside, and they’re all completely separate from each other so there’ll be no awkward standing around in suits and dresses.” she pointed out, a little chuckle to herself. “Been there before.”

Ollie posed another question. “Would this affect the capacity that we would’ve been told, then?”

“In some ways, yes.” Bella confirmed confidently. “The numbers for dinner service would probably stay at say, 120, but any other guests that can attend after that can ramp up to around 500, both outside and inside.”

It was a number that seemed to impress Charles, Max and Kimi—Ollie noticing how each of them had different expressions in response to that number. His facial expression was the only one that didn’t change, with Bella displaying nothing but an eye smile.

She got up then, and everyone else followed soon after. “We’ve got our actual wedding clients in at 2 so if you have any questions, then now’s the time to ask them. If there’s anything that you’d want specifically customised, then that can be arranged should you book your slot with us.” she told them masterfully.

Kimi and Ollie both shook their heads, while Charles had decided he had something he had to say. The two went to wait at the exit of the gazebo for them, both looking at each other with…pensive expressions, to say the least.

“I don’t think this place is good because of the gazebo.” Kimi mentioned, his tone shushed.

Ollie could only nod in agreement. “There’s got to be a reason they’ve only done it once. I mean, I was almost sold because of the in-house catering, but other than that…”

“Of course you’re thinking about the food.” Kimi blurted. Ollie took personal offence.

“You could probably tell my response to that, so I’m not even going to say it.” Ollie responded, turning his face away from Kimi. There’s a little chuckle, and he decides that he’s hearing things.

He glances round expectantly, but Kimi is looking at the floor—was he hearing things?

It didn’t matter, however, as the engaged couple were walking back towards them. Weirdly, their expressions were very different from the ones that Kimi and himself were previously wearing, but they returned the smile nonetheless.

They opened the zip and walked out, with Bella saying a see you soon instead of a goodbye. Ollie found it a little weird, but they were on the move before they knew it.

“So,” Ollie started expectantly, “do you think you’ve made a final decision yet? Will you need some more time when we get back?” He looked over slightly, and Kimi’s expression was also like he wanted the two men to give an answer as soon as they could.

Charles shook his head. “Probably the second part, but only for a little bit. We’ll have our decision by the end of the day. Maxie took a bunch of photos, so that’ll definitely help.”

“You haven’t looked online?” Ollie questioned.

“Personal judgement is better,” Max discussed, “because half the shit you see online is clearly fabricated. Which is why we talked to so many people about questions that you might not have.

Kimi sat back. “You’d make a much better partner. Do you want Ollie’s job? Take a weight off my shoulders, at least…”

Ollie nudged him in the shoulder. “Do you want to keep your job, Antonelli?”

Kimi mocked feign terror just then. “Oh no, my colleague of the same level is threatening me with getting fired, whatever will I dooo…”

There was a surprising howl that came from the other side of the van. At least some people were charmed by Kimi’s comedic antics.

Ollie wondered if there was an ethical way to push Kimi head first out the window.

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

The conversation wasn’t long when they eventually made it back to the boutique. Esteban was able to hear before Ollie and Kimi were, but when they walked in again, Ollie was unable to interpret what the smile on his boss’ face actually read as.

“So,” Max stated. “Charles and I both thought that all of the venues had their strong points, and there were definitely ones that we felt stronger about.”

“This is way too dramatic for me,” Charles complained, an easy smile on his face. “We decided to go for the third location!”

The third location?

He looked at Kimi—and sure enough—he was wearing the exact same veil of shock that Ollie was finding very hard to try and hide.

“Before you say anything,” the Dutchman exclaimed, “we thought it’d be the best because of the catering and how friendly people seemed to be. It seemed like there was a place for people to have fun while also retaining the…fancy side of a wedding, perhaps? I don’t know. Everything just lined up for me.”

Charles nodded. “I quite like the second one for it’ outside area, but with the gazebo you can basically replicate that. With our own decorations, it’ll hardly be any different. Even though we do plan to have our wedding in winter,” he stated, and Ollie noticed the two looking at each other.

Their hands seemed to be rather inconspicuously glued together under the table, which he decided not to comment on in the interest of still keeping his professionalism.

Attempting to recreate how fake Kimi was with his laugh just moments ago, he smiled—but it never reached his eyes. “That’s a great choice. Is there anything in particular that you’d like for us to speak to the venue about before we proceed with anything else?” Ollie questioned.

Both of them shook their heads, while Kimi was writing something down on his phone. That was far from professional. “Kimi,” he uttered quietly, but not quiet enough to drown out the others that were staring directly at them. “you do know we have notebooks for writing?”

Kimi stopped writing then, putting his phone away. “I know, Oliver, but it was quite a short notice. In case you’d like me to forget everything.”

He could only sigh and turn back to the other two. The older of the two had a weird smirk on his face.

“Can you two ever go a day without bickering?” Max asked cheerily, while Charles’ expression echoed what his fiancée was saying. “Is there no sort of company intervention when you’re so tired of the other person, or do you just bicker for the sake of it?”

Well, he hadn’t expected that.

Neither had Kimi, apparently, who had started to go into a coughing fit as a result of his words. Ollie could faintly feel the tips of his ears heating up, to which he stood up and turned the air conditioning on a little higher.

They didn’t choose to speak until at least one of them had regained their sanity, Ollie sitting down with a sheepish expression. “Um…” he stammered, taking a while to think of the right words to say. “We’re both very opinionated, so it may come across as…bickering. Yeah.”

Kimi didn’t seem to have anything to add. “So the very obvious bash to Kimi’s toes is bickering too?” Charles recounted, and Ollie’s ears were seriously red this time. Was Kimi’s cover up not good enough? “I knew Kimi didn’t bite his tongue whatsoever.” he added, and great, Charles Leclerc could read minds now.

“Okay!” Ollie shouted, a little louder than usual to try and command some energy back into the room. To save his own skin, and perhaps now, Kimi’s. “Now that you’ve decided the venue, we can start discussing photographers, DJs, all that other stuff…”

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

It was around 3:30pm when the couple left the boutique. There had been a lot of discussions around all of the local people within the area, but there was so much discussion and no actual executive decision making being made.

Max and Charles informed the two of them that they’d let Esteban know when they were next available to look at their options, or if by some miracle, had found a suitable fit for themselves otherwise.

This meant that a lot of Ollie’s work would involve trying to look for these sorts of people to fill in the positions that they still had missing. He would have to start looking further afield, potentially just outside Monaco and then venturing further into other countries if he actually needed to.

Around half an hour later, he’d noticed that the time was around 4pm. Ollie had actually forgotten that he was in the proximity of Kimi still until the slight shuffling of feet and the chair to the right of him moving outwards indicated that his colleague was getting up.

His laptop stayed on the table, but he inched closer towards the door as he turned around to Ollie. “Are you going to sit there and work your ass off all day or are you actually going to get some food?” he quizzed the other.

They’d had time to get a quick bite to eat earlier, but it was nothing substantial. Nonetheless, Ollie did actually want to get some of the extra work done so he wouldn’t need to frantically try and come up with things if Charles and Max were to ring a little earlier than they intended.

Right as he was about to decline, his stomach betrayed him and made the quietest noise of discontent. It was slightly embarrassing, as Ollie could already feel the red flush threatening to take over his cheeks.

Despite that, however, he still remained headstrong. “I’ll be alright, thanks. I’d rather get this all done in one night,” the British boy clarified.

Kimi shrugged, “Suit yourself.” and then let the door shut behind him as Ollie had some time to sit around with his thoughts for longer than usual.

He’d shivered a little more than usual, but then he remembered it was because he’d turned on the air conditioning after the altercation he’d had with Kimi and the other two that was…a little more awkward than he would ever want to feel, to say the least.

Turning the air conditioning off, he sat down and attempted to conjure together his thoughts on what he was actually meant to be working on.

Weirdly enough, it took him a while to get settled, because he started thinking about how Charles and Max had been able to pick up on this so-called ‘bickering’ between Kimi and himself.

If it was noticeable to them, then the things that they said to each other in private may be something entirely different to bickering. The truth was, neither of them knew anything much about the other, and so had to resort to these shallow jabs against each other.

Ollie was Kimi as somebody who was a party animal, while Kimi may have regarded Ollie as something close to the opposite—a perfectionist, a suck-up if he thought about his words from the other day.

It got him thinking about how it would actually be if there was a day where he and Kimi were actually able to work in harmony, if they were calm with each other and there were no tussles between the two of them.

However, his thoughts may have spiralled a little too far, and he decided to shove them right in the deepest darkest parts of his mind where nobody could access them.

After all, that would involve him and Kimi actually opening up to each other, and the thought of that when the other guy was basically his mortal enemy at the moment was—

Ew. No thank you.

Ollie resumed his work at that point, flipping to the back of his notebook to look at some of the past businesses or people that they’d gotten in touch with to provide musical services for the wedding.

It was a little more finicky to get people to agree or to find somebody that may be willing to attend the reception in The Netherlands as well, considering most of them were local. If you were near Monaco, you didn’t exactly have a reason to leave.

Once he’d found the appropriate contact details, Ollie got down to emailing some of these people to see if they would be available on the dates when Max and Charles had discussed having their wedding.

He found himself doing this for longer than intended, because he couldn’t exactly get started on the guest list due to the fact that Charles had said to him that he and Max would have it with them within the week.

Relaying back to the first private conversation that himself and Charles had, he definitely wouldn’t like to be a fly on the wall in that situation. Thank god there was marriage counselling before all of this went down.

He found himself in a ‘zone’, being able to copy and paste his emails much faster being a more efficient way of getting things done. He’d lost track of time before he heard the door click open again.

It must be Esteban, Ollie thought. As he lifted his head to say his greetings to his boss, he saw the frame of Kimi Antonelli stepping out of the way of the door with his laptop case and something else in hand.

Said boy set the package down on the table, before leaving his laptop case at the side. “What’s that?” Ollie chimed in. By the looks of it, he probably knew what it was, he just couldn’t understand why it was there and why Kimi hadn’t kept it with him.

“What do you think it is?” Kimi uttered roughly. Sitting back where his laptop was in front of him, he continued. “It’s a chicken baguette. If you want to eat it, go ahead, I’ll have it later if you don’t want it. It was just very obvious that you were hungry and I’m not that shit of a human being to let someone starve themselves, essentially.”

His brain vaguely registers that after a couple of seconds, Kimi launches into another conversation, but he’s slightly frozen in shock as he has one hand on the baguette.

Why would Kimi go out of his way to get him food, especially since Kimi had seen before that Ollie was completely capable of making his own food? It looked shop-bought as well, which means that he’d spent money.

The gesture hit a little too closely to Ollie’s heart than he would’ve liked.

Whether fortunately or unfortunately, the veil was lifted from Ollie’s eyes as a scream caught his attention. “Ollie!” Kimi yelled, bringing his focus back to where he was currently sat. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

The British boy could only shake his head, as words seemed to be failing him for the moment.

“I was just asking if there was a document that you’d been working on that you wanted help with.” Kimi stated, tone surprisingly calm.

“Yeah, let me add you to it now.” Ollie exclaimed. “I’ve just been sending a bunch of emails for the DJs and other people in that area, so you can do whatever you want.”

There was only a slight nod from Kimi before he got to work himself.

Ollie moved the baguette, and a pen rolled slightly further than he’d want it to.

Way to be subtle.

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

A while had passed, and Ollie wasn’t exactly paying attention to the time anymore. After a bunch of emails and flipping through his notebook, he thinks he’s all done for the day, clearing the back pages out of his emails so that he looks the tiniest bit organised.

His head involuntarily turned to Kimi— who looked like he was about to make out with his computer screen if he got any closer. He’d noticed his eyes flailing open and shut, as if trying to keep himself awake.

It was after he’d turned on the lamp around 15 minutes ago, as the weather outside was becoming a little more overcast than they’d like for this time of year, so it wasn’t like it could go unnoticed.

“I forgot to say thank you for the baguette,” Ollie announced, breaking the silence that was unusually comfortable between the two of them. “it was a nice thought. Doesn’t mean you’re not a shit person, though.”

The comment seemed to have woken Kimi up, as he sat upright all of a sudden. His tone definitely showed so as well. “You’re telling me that if somebody gave you free food you wouldn’t be indebted to them for life?” Kimi flailed, his speech in disbelief.

“That sounds like you want me to be indebted to you for life, and I don’t think I’ll go along with that, thank you.” Ollie confirmed, and Kimi just scoffed.

“You’re welcome, by the way. You don’t have to do the same…just lay off on the drinking jokes, maybe.” He didn’t continue after that, Ollie noticing that he was making some edits to his part of the document.

It had Ollie sit and ponder for a second. It was obvious that Kimi didn’t want to talk about it, but he didn’t want to press on it either. His mind relayed to his thoughts from earlier, and that was enough to redirect his focus to the document as best he could.

Kimi had taken on the responsibility of trying to do some background research about the in-house caterer that the venue the engaged couple had chosen provided. It would help set them up for an extravagant tasting that the two would then be able to decide on.

He also took note of the cocktails section that Kimi had made just underneath it, but decided to at least honour what Kimi had said for the time being. His stomach would definitely be telling him to do that.

The time was nearing six in the evening, and Ollie remembered that he was allowed to leave at five today. After making a mental note to message Esteban to see if anything could be done about if he’d get paid differently (which he knew he probably would), he reached for the pen and decided to make a mark off the emails that he’d spoken to.

Only Kimi had decided to reach for the pen at the same time too, and now Kimi’s hand lay on top of his, as the feeling of cool metal below him became foreign as he felt the warmth radiating from the other’s hand.

He barely had time to register what had happened before Kimi snatched his hand back like he’d just placed it on a scolding hot stove instead. “Sorry— go ahead. My bad. Sorry about that.”

Ollie wasn’t even in the position to be embarrassed, and yet the touch of Kimi’s hand over his seemed to linger like a phantom. “It’s fine,” Ollie brushed off, but his tone was far from stable. After a few messy scrawls on his page, he placed the pen closer to Kimi so that he could directly reach for it.

“Thank you,” the other breathed quietly, and he scooped up the pen into his hand quicker than he’d seen anyone do it before. It was as if he’d become more alert in the past thirty seconds—and equally, Ollie had too.

Luckily, he had the excuse of being able to clock out. After standing up and pushing his chair in, he noticed that he couldn’t hear the scraping of a pen across paper anymore, and Kimi was staring up at him.

“Where are you going?” he asked. Weird, Ollie thought again.

He pointed to the door sheepishly. “I was meant to leave an hour ago…but…I got too into it, I guess?” The grin that overtook his face after was a little bashful, but Kimi’s reaction only morphed into one of shock.

Nonetheless, he nodded soon after. “See you soon?” he supplied nervously, and Ollie was surprised that there was no jab at how ‘perfectionist’ Ollie was leaving after he was supposed to. Or maybe that was just his brain filling in the blank for him, because there’d been a severe lack of it over the time he’d been in this consultation room.

“Yeah. Tomorrow?” Ollie gestured, with Kimi responding that he wouldn’t be here for long anyway. Nodding, Ollie reached for the door handle and pushed it open. “Bye, Kimi.”

“Night, Ollie.” Kimi murmured before getting straight on with his work once again.

Once he’d dashed through the building, Ollie let out a big breath of relief that he didn’t know he was holding in. Relief?—something echoed at the back of his mind, but he decided to pay it no notice.

What he did remember was that he was basically obliged to see Kimi tomorrow now, even if their schedules didn’t align.

Unexpectedly, that wasn’t even the worst part of Ollie’s evening, as by the time he was climbing into bed, some neuron in his brain decided to tell him that now was the moment that Esteban was on holiday and wasn’t doing anything for the next three days.

Lovely.

Chapter Text

Charles and Max had just sent their guest list through to them for the wedding, along with the exact date that they planned to have the wedding on.

While it was a relief for some people, it certainly wasn’t a relief for a certain Kimi Antonelli. He was stationed around all of the people that were skilled in coding, graphic design—all of the people that basically knew how to use a computer for more than checking emails.

It’s something that many people didn’t think about when they saw him for the first time, eye to eye. You could say that is how Ollie Bearman sees him as, just somebody who enjoys throwing parties and dealing with the consequences of it three days later.

The same shallow judgement could be put onto the British boy for the things that he’d seen and heard, but he wasn’t letting it infringe on his mind now.

Right now, he was deciding whether or not red and blue were too bold to go on a wedding invitation, and whether or not the couple would like that.

It wasn’t fun when the clients you had just told you to ‘do whatever’, but Kimi had done his own research and he thinks that considering it fits with the branding of the boutique, there might be a subtle way to insert their team colours into the invitation and blame it on something else.

He’d found out that Charles had a dog and Max had two cats and a dog, so in some way shape or form, the pets would have to be on the invitation to make it look like they actually cared about the people they were throwing this wedding for.

These invitations in particular were just ‘save the date’ invitations—letting people know when the wedding was. The actual invitations would be sent out around eight weeks before, due to the fact that there was a sheer amount of people to get around and there also being the fact that they weren’t attending a reception, perhaps.

He was thinking about whether or not it would be better to directly use calligraphy on the piece of card that he was planning to print this onto, or whether or not some font would do the job, when he heard a cough from just above him. Clearly somebody is trying to get his attention.

What he saw next he couldn’t have exactly prepared for, because Ollie Bearman was there with a look of neutrality on his face, as if he’d rather be anywhere else but within a foot of Kimi at the moment.

“Can I help you?” Kimi asked, tone sarcastic. The other only responded with a fake smile before grabbing a spare chair that had been left at the side of his office, bringing it closer to where Kimi was sitting.

“I was told that I need to help you with the invitations, so here I am.” Ollie told him, shuffling his seat closer to the computer screen. If he knocked his water over, Kimi would be absolutely livid.

He figured that there was no easy way out of this, however, so he just had to sigh and continue with what he was doing—only the fact that there was a lanky British boy behind him made the situation much less bearable than it was before.

“Do you know what any of this is?” Kimi pondered, as he clicked to cut around the image of a border with some lavender leaves that he’d found online.

Ollie shook his head. “That’s what you’re for,” he chuckled, “but I’d like to think that I have taste in what a good invitation should be like. Did you already have a vision in mind?”

He refused to turn around to see the look on Ollie’s face, only continuing to decipher what he was doing by motioning to the different areas of his screen.

“Well, I was thinking that the actual invitation should be acrylic with some gold writing perhaps, but I haven’t been working too much on that and rather on the ‘save the dates'. There’s some cream card that I found the other day that I think would go well with the subtle touches of red and blue, you know, to represent their teams.”

He clicked to put the border in on the screen, using shortcuts to make sure it stayed in the shape of the size of the card. “It’s a day for them, not a day about Formula 1, so that’s probably the only thing I was going to do compared to that. Considering this is only being sent for those going to the reception, it needs to be perfect.” Kimi emphasised.

He was debating whether or not to recolour the lavenders that were on the page when he realised that Ollie didn’t have any immediate response. He wondered if the other was on his phone or perhaps falling asleep, but he didn’t exactly want to look back at him if he could prevent not doing so.

“Have you got anything to say?” Kimi interjected over the silence that had come over them, the only thing interrupting it being the faint clicks of mice and keyboards from the people on the desks next to him.

“I’m not really sure what to say,” Ollie admitted. “It looks like a good idea and I think it needs to be straight to the point, so it’s solid.” With how Ollie had been acting recently, he’d really expect criticism to come flying his way, but it was weirdly unsettling how the older boy had nothing bad to say.

Turning back suddenly, he saw that Ollie wasn’t doing any of the actions that his brain had provided for him earlier, but instead, his eyes were fixed on the screen as if he was in a trance. As soon as he’d realised that Kimi had turned back, however, he just blinked his eyes one or two times and his expression went back to the same one not long ago.

Kimi had to suppress the giggle that was threatening to leave him. “Thanks,” Kimi acknowledged, “maybe you can be nice when you feel like it.”

He heard a sigh from behind him as he turned around, deciding to recolour the lavenders to green in the end. “If you really wanted a suggestion, then you should put the red and the blue somewhere subtly in the middle and not on their names, because they’ll recognise the implication as too much, I think. If you’re going to make that green as well, add some other plants around it. Poppies and bluebells might be a subtle way to insert colour in there, too.”

Kimi couldn’t argue with any of his reasoning, so instead just nodded and put them on his notepad that he’d been using for any of the ideas that he’d been conjuring up.

The while that they were sitting there turned into a comfortable silence, which Kimi was surprised about. There would only be a slight interruption when Ollie had something to add that he thought might make the invitation look a little more aesthetically pleasing, or when Kimi asked for Ollie’s opinion on whether or not something was too bold or not.

It was all happening seamlessly, and the invitation was starting to come together. Kimi was still stuck with the same dilemma, however, as he was unsure whether to find a font from the internet or try and calligraph something from somebody that worked as part of the boutique.

“I can ask Vicky if you want her to do something fancy. She bought all these new pens recently and she’s been wanting to do something with them, so we might as well please her if you’re willing to do that.”

Kimi’s face contorted a little. “Appreciate that, but I think I’d rather it be a little simple? Monochrome, perhaps? I think we could get away with a little glitter here or there, but it is really only for the title and then the bit where it says ‘venue’. I don’t know.”

Both of them were stuck in a limbo of not knowing what to do. Kimi thought that all of the fancy fonts had some issue where the lines didn’t match up onto the other, or were just a little too curly considering the recipients of this invitation.

Suddenly, an idea came to Kimi’s head. “Would you mind getting her to do a sample of the words that we want to put on here?” he asked the other hopefully. “If it’s better than any of this I can find, then we might as well go with it. Once one is finished, then they can just be copied.”

Ollie nodded, leaving without a response and forcing Kimi to stare at his screen in anticipation. It would be great if they could get this locked down now, but it also wasn’t the worst thing if something were to go wrong.

While Ollie was off running his errand, he heard a notification that popped up on his computer screen, clicking on it to view who it was from.

It was from George, and he was requesting a video call with him since he was working from home today. Kimi messaged back saying that he’d find a private working room to go to, which was met quickly with a thumbs up.

Before he got up, he remembered that Ollie would be expecting him if Vicky was really able to finish her task that quickly, so he wrote something on a sticky note that he’d flipped around on the side of his computer, and headed off to take his video call with George, laptop in hand.

When he comes back from said meeting, his sticky note has been responded to with a sample of calligraphy by the side and a bear that looks like it was drawn by a 5 year old attached to the bottom.

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

The next day, Ollie gets the final product of what Kimi has worked on, and it looks great. He’s managed to add the calligraphy into the card and he said that they should be done processing within the week. There’s some sort of process in that which Ollie doesn’t understand, but he’ll work with what he has.

He’d been in conversations with a florist that was local to organise two bouquets for each of the groom. It was something they’d requested to do as much of this wedding wasn’t to standard tradition anyway, so Ollie saw no problem with it.

He’d just sent his next email to go back and forth with the florist when he received a notification from George to both himself and Kimi that there was a car waiting outside for them to go and book the venue that Max and Charles had decided on.

Now that they had the guest list, as well as those that they wanted to attend the afterparty, it was pretty simple to go ahead with booking the venue. They’d also plan to inquire about other things while they were there such as booking a hotel block and the tasting menu that they were discussing between themselves the other day.

Ollie made his way to the car briskly, expecting to have to wait for Kimi to get in the car himself, but shock soon arrived as he realised the other was sitting doing that exact action for him.

He didn’t decide to broadcast his thoughts to the other, other politely exchanging greetings and sitting across from him. The car set off not long after, and it was a little awkward when they didn’t have conversation that was being aided by others.

He found himself looking out the window, staring at the seat directly in front of him instead of turning to Kimi and initiating any sort of conversation, trying to type on his phone to occupy himself. They definitely still weren’t the best of friends, and if neither of them were keen on trying to keep that up outside of work, then that said a lot.

The car drive wasn’t long, and they were back at the location that they’d visited just a couple of days prior. They made their way to the same entrance as last time, albeit a little weird, and knocked on the door. The same girl came into their viewpoints once again.

“Hello!” Bella exclaimed, excitedly. “It’s nice to see you two again. Do you need anything?” It was obvious that their company hadn’t done any of the work for them.

“Afternoon,” Ollie greeted, “we were just here to inquire about booking your premises for the wedding? We have an exact date and a guest list that we’re ready to discuss if you are.”

She nodded rapidly. “Follow me, I’ll take you to the office. I’ll follow you in just a second, there’s just a lot of preparations going on here at the moment for something else!”

Giving them space to enter the estate, Kimi shut the door behind him as Bella took them upstairs to a room that was resemblant of a study. “There should be another chair in the room just opposite, if one of you would like to grab one.” she offered.

Kimi thanked her quickly and seemed to take her up on the offer as soon as she walked off, leaving Ollie to take the chair that was already in the room. He took his jacket off, as he felt a little warm. These rooms must be particularly good at insulating heat.

Said boy’s chair that he’d brought in from the other room looked a lot more uncomfortable, so Ollie was glad that he hadn’t rushed to take that offer. It was hard to hide the chuckle that came from his mouth as Kimi’s face switched into one of discomfort as he sat down.

“What are you laughing at?” Kimi jabbed at him.

“What do you think?” Ollie replied gleefully. That stopped the conversation quickly, and maybe he didn’t want to know Kimi’s response, but was saved by Bella making her way back into the room.

She sat down hastily and began typing into the computer that was atop the wooden desk. “Sorry about that…we’re actually planning for a wedding that’s in two days and it’s also quite a grand spectacle, considering the reception isn’t far away from here either, so it’s a little busy. It’s all fine though.”

The conversation went pretty robotically from then on. Bella would ask a question, they’d give an answer. Within a couple of minutes they’d provided how many guests would be there and how many would be at the afterparty (350 was a huge number), the date that they’d want the wedding on and what sort of time they’d get to the venue by.

“That’s all the basic stuff then. Is there anything else you guys need to ask or is that something you’d like to handle at a later date?” she inquired.

Kimi responded quickly. “Yes, actually. You did mention in-house catering? Do you think there’d be an opportunity for us to be able to organise a tasting menu for the couple, or at least try and give some of our own opinions?”

Bella laughed. “You could just say you want free food.” It was obviously a joke—one that had Ollie chuckling especially since he wasn’t the one that asked the question. He noticed Kimi’s death glare from next to him. “If you’ll excuse me, I think Yuki is in today. I can see if he’s available now.”

Both of them nodded, and she left the room once again. Once she was gone, Kimi spoke up to him for the first time in the day. “You think you’re so funny, huh?” he blurted out, and his accent was extremely prominent at that time, which prompted Ollie to laugh even more. As any normal person would.

“You were the one that asked the question,” Ollie reminded him, still chuckling. “I’m sorry, but you have to admit it’s a little funny.”

Kimi’s ignorance of the statement to move on to a completely new topic said enough. “Is there anything else we need to ask her right now?”

“Well, we’d need to ask her about hotel blocks. For the people that live in and around Monaco it shouldn’t be too hard, but for those who are flying overseas it’s definitely something we need to look into.” Kimi raised his eyebrows and nodded in what seemed like an impressive way. Ollie thought nothing of it.

“You know,” Ollie started, “it’d be really funny if we planned this entire wedding and then they just didn’t make sure to invite us like people usually do at the end. To think that would be my only saving grace after having to spend a prolonged amount of time with you.” he drawled.

It was just natural for the jabs at Kimi to fly out like they’d never flown out before, and he didn’t realise he’d actually come out with what he said before his hand went straight to his mouth. Fortunately, Kimi’s expression didn’t seem too offended, as he just returned a tight-lipped smile.

“Likewise, Bearman. Likewise.” he spoke curtly. Perhaps feigning shock (even if it was real!) was the sort of thing that Ollie needed to do to prevent a chain of expletives coming his way.

They heard the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs again, presuming that Bella couldn’t be far away. “He’ll be ready in about half an hour,” Bella informed them, “so if there’s anything else you need to discuss we can do that now.”

“Actually,” Ollie began, “do you happen to know of any hotels in the areas that are big enough so that we could block rooms out for the wedding if need be? It’s on quite a big scale with people travelling internationally, so maybe even one near the airport would do the job.

Bella nodded. “I know of some that are near Nice in general, I’ll do some research for you and send them over. Were you looking for fancy? Budget? Anything special for the grooms or will they be going their own ways?”

Kimi and Ollie looked at each other, as they did not know what Charles and Max planned to do after. “I can give them a call if you don’t mind me stepping out for a second,” Kimi suggested. There was agreement from both of them pretty quickly, and Kimi trod away in the direction of where he got his chair from.

As he was out of earshot, Bella continued searching, although she made conversation easily with him. “Do you two not like each other that much? You two never seem to be in good spirits when I’ve seen you.” she mentioned, as if she’d been doing observations of the two the entire time.

Involuntarily, Ollie’s face scrunched up. “Is this a professional thing to ask?” he responded defensively, but even that wasn’t going to shake her.

“Come on,” Bella insisted. “the way he looks at you is far from professional.”

Ollie’s eyes widened. “Pardon?” He felt the back of his ears going a little red as that was mentioned.

“I mean, how he literally gave you a death glare earlier. I don’t think anybody would do that if they weren’t actively trying to stay civil with them, that’s for sure.” she explained, and of course, it was the most simple thing ever. Why did his mind even go back there..?

He let out a breath of relief that he didn’t know he was holding. “Right…well, he and I have never collaborated on any sort of project before, even inside the workplace. So I’m unsure of how to be acting and when not to cross boundaries.” he decided on replying.

Bella hummed in response. “Okay. I see. So all the bickering that I could hear as I was coming up the stairs wasn’t my imagination..?” Before Ollie could even think about getting a response out, she’d turned her computer monitor around to face him. “What do you think of this place? Spacious, slightly high end, they do little packages…”

From then, all train of thought was lost as he was focused on his job. At some point, he thinks Kimi joined them back in the room, but he was too busy discussing the numbers and the different types of rooms that would need to be booked.

He definitely didn’t want to be booking a chain hotel, so their options were limited. There were ones that included breakfast and ones that didn’t, others that allowed earlier check-ins and ones that were later, some that did discounts if there was a mass booking from companies such as their own.

There were a bunch that Ollie was able to note down on his phone, as Kimi had been doing in their private consultation room not too long ago, making a mental note to himself that he’d search them up when he got back to work as a way to occupy himself.

It was about then that he was reminded that Kimi had actually come back to the room while he was invested in doing what he was supposed to. “Hypocrite much?” is all he said, and Ollie turned to him expectantly—head titled in confusion. “Your phone?”

That was the moment it clicked. “I didn’t exactly have the time to grab a notebook, as when I received that notification I came as quickly as I could.” Ollie disregarded his jab as much as possible, even though he’d slammed Kimi for the exact same thing in front of the engaged couple not too long ago.

“Don’t you think it’s a little unprofessional? Show a little respect, perhaps?” Kimi teased. Ollie was burning, both on the inside and on the outside. Seriously, there’d be steam coming out of his ears if he was a cartoon character or any sort of equivalent.

“You’re funny, Antonelli.” is all he could manage to spit out, before turning back to Bella who had—the weirdest smile on her face?

She coughed suddenly. “Sorry, sorry. It’s just, you two would be so great for the marketing team. Seeing you two bicker all day is probably what would give some people meaning to their day.” she exclaimed, as if she hadn’t just made the two of them entirely confused.

“Let me not get off track, however. If we continue looking…”

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

Ollie’s notes on his phone had never been more full, and even after slandering him, Kimi had adopted the same process. They were heading downstairs at that moment to go and meet the caterer and see if there was anything that he could do for the two of them.

There was a lot of setting up going on in the dining room that they passed through. He thinks he remembers seeing a tray of golden forks, somebody trying to figure out which glass was different from the rest, tables being reorganised at one end of the room that seemed almost impossible to navigate.

Thank god that isn’t anything we have to worry about, he thought to himself. They were led out of the dining room shortly after into a room that looked as if it should be only accessible by staff of the venue, only to figure out that it was the kitchen.

It was relatively clean for the moment, considering that nobody was meant to be ‘eating’ from the kitchen, per se. Although, there was one other body in the room, what Ollie could only presume to be the chef.

Bella called across the room then. “Yuki! Is now a good time?”

The chef turned around then with a smile on his face, making his way over to them. When he’d emerged from behind the various different cookers, he was a lot shorter than Ollie had expected him to be.

Shaking both of their hands, he introduced himself. “Hello, I am Yuki Tsunoda. I’m not here all the time but they always seem to call me in when they most need me, so here I am.” he exclaimed kindly.

It was obvious to Ollie that Yuki was Japanese—if the last name wasn’t a dead giveaway as it was. His chef whites were uncharacteristically clean, but that was probably because he wasn’t working with much. “I was just making some lunch for the guys who are working here, so I’m pretty glad that you came along because I needed an excuse to work on something. Most of it is almost done, some of the cold stuff is in the fridge. It’ll be with you in a second.” he rambled on.

He mentioned that they were welcome to stay if they wanted to, so they took him up on the offer as they watched Yuki work his magic to plate up some of the dishes that he was competent enough to make.

Based on the way he was cooking, Ollie is pretty sure that he might be competent enough to make anything, but that was never his brief. Only his clients.

“I do make a lot more, so if there’s any specific requests, then I’d have to deal with that separately. At least it gives you a little bit to work with, I guess.” he clarified. “Bella, did you get the dietary requirements?”

Bella gestured to the two next to her, to which Ollie responded. “A document of all of them should’ve been emailed to the main email of this place.” She seemed to remember just then.

“There’s a printer in the next room, so I’ll try and get it from there. Thanks for reminding me!” she replied earnestly, the door to the kitchen slamming shut as she made her way down the hallway.

As Ollie and Kimi had nothing else to do but watch Yuki make portions that were small enough to be deemed tasting, conversation filled the room once again. “Are you two good friends or something? I don’t usually see many wedding planner duos, if that’s even a thing.”

It was comical how both Ollie and Kimi seemed to laugh awkwardly. Was this a running trend with everyone that met them nowadays, or..?

“We’re only colleagues, I hate to disappoint.” Ollie beamed. “Our company wanted two of their best workers to bring this all together, and I’m starting to understand why after being in the process of it for so long.” he lamented, hoping to pull away from himself and Kimi as the discussion topic.

Yuki’s eyebrows disappeared behind his fringe. “Really? You two seem like you’d be the type to be close…you have chemistry. I think it’s your looks,” he observed, and then interrupted himself promptly as he went to get something from the oven.

“I don’t know, though.” Yuki continued as he was checking the temperature of the food. “On paper, you seem like you’d get along well. Is there some sort of drift between you?”

The plan failed, apparently.

Kimi was the one to respond after that. “From what we knew of each other before we started working together, we had pretty bad impressions. So it’s only natural to carry those over.” he said calmly, as if they weren’t throwing jabs at each other for the first week straight. It still happened, even today, so why he was trying to play it off was a little confusing.

Yuki only nodded, and based on their mostly unenthusiastic responses, he decided not to question them further. It was then that Bella came back in and handed the sheet of paper that she’d just printed out to Yuki, the other running into a room adjacent to the kitchen. Probably to pin it up or something.

There wasn’t much waiting to do when Yuki came back from the room, as most of the food that he had on hand had been prepared. There were five saucer plates that he was almost done with, and Bella gave her the job of transporting each and every one as Yuki was finishing.

“Please don’t mind how messy some of these look.” he prefaced. “If there was more of a warning, then I might’ve tried to make them look prettier, but desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“Don’t worry at all.” Ollie replied reassuringly. “If you weren’t ready, then we’d obviously have to come when all of our schedules aligned. Probably within the week, because after that…everything gets a little hectic.”

Yuki laughed. “Tell me about it.”

All five plates were then on the counter that Ollie and Kimi were sitting by, with Bella next to Kimi as she’d decided that she wanted to evaluate, in her own words. Ollie didn’t know what she meant at all.

What happened next could only be described as a sensation for their taste buds. Each dish incorporated different textures and flavours that you could tell were inspired from different cuisines, some more prominent than others. It seemed a little like fine dining to them, but given that these portions would have to be expanded on, Ollie could only begin to wonder what would pair with it.

“The pork is really good,” he mumbled in between bites. “it’s probably my favourite. They’re all really good though, I would genuinely kill for your skills. My mother taught me how to cook and I almost set pasta on fire.”

Kimi blurted out laughing.

“What?” Ollie yelled in disbelief, even though Kimi was still laughing with his head down.

“Nothing, nothing…” he spluttered, still laughing while he took a bite of the one dessert that Yuki had made as well. It was a lychee panna cotta, which didn’t sit well for him in terms of texture, but the taste of it was to die for. “That one’s my favourite.” Kimi added.

Yuki smirked. “You’ve got a sweet tooth?” Ollie watched as Kimi’s cheeks slightly flushed over in real time. The bright lights of the kitchen definitely weren’t helping his case.

“I guess you could say that…I really shouldn’t, given that I’m trying to keep my physique in shape, but some things are just so much better than chicken and broccoli.” he discussed. Yuki nodded in agreement.

Ollie moved to the dish in the middle, what he thought was duck. “I think that they’d like this one.” he offered, referring to Charles and Max. “You said this was red wine sauce? Yeah, that’s the one.” Yuki had nodded in response, and given how much alcohol he’d seen the two drink, maybe there was some semblance there.

He didn’t want to appease Kimi’s wedding style at the same time, however, so he promptly shut up after that. He noticed that Bella had taken a bite out of something while they weren’t looking, but it wasn’t worth bringing up.

Soon enough, they were saying their goodbyes and heading out of the building that they’d walked into just an hour ago, before she spotted something in the distance. “Oh! The gazebo. It’s changed a lot since you’ve last been here. Let me show you.”

The way she spoke didn’t exactly leave much room for argument, so Ollie and Kimi just kept their heads down while Bella led them down the cobbled path towards the gazebo. The zip was open, as it was a particularly sunny day, and nobody was inside, but the interior had definitely changed.

There was a royal purple banner with white writing on it at the forefront of the room, along with an easel at the front of the room which displayed the table layout. On inspection, each of these tables had the usual placards which displayed where each person was meant to sit.

The top table was just behind them at the corner of the gazebo, presumably because it was next to the speaker and the microphone. It was still elevated from the rest, and it was clear that they’d been given the comfiest chairs in the building.

The dance floor space looked a lot more inviting. There was no DJ set at the head of the room just yet, but there was a clearly marked area and a good space from the tables so that people were still able to get to the toilets that were just behind it.

He’d noticed that Bella and Kimi had both made their way slightly forward, as to their right was the makeshift bar that had been mentioned the visit before. The fridges were now full with beverages and Ollie could only presume Bella was talking to Kimi on where the storage of the rest were, based on the way she was pointing.

There were a couple of barstools by the bar, but not too many as he overheard something about getting in the way, which was more than reasonable. As he walked over, he noticed many of the chairs didn’t have much decoration and apart from the banner, there wasn’t actually much decoration.

“…the taps should be all linked up, but we usually test that on the day before in case we need to run into the cellar and grab more. The morning of, as well, actually.” Bella finished before she noticed Ollie in her peripheral vision. “I was just explaining to Kimi about where we keep our kegs.” she explained.

Typical, he thought, but didn’t say out loud this time. “Nice.” Ollie responded. “You’re not all done with the decorations in here, are you?”

Bella looked around the room, before her eyes trained back on the two, and her face contorted into one of shock. “About that…”

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

That’s how Kimi and Ollie found themselves roped into putting up decorations for this wedding that—well, had been planned by their company, surprisingly.

Nonetheless, it didn’t take away from the shock (and perhaps the betrayal) on their faces when Bella had mentioned that she’d called Esteban and he’d agreed to them doing this, saying that they had ‘minimal tasks’ to do if they came back anyway.

Kimi was beginning to wonder why he ran this business, but he didn’t dwell on it too much.

Right now, he was tying bows to the back of chairs that went along with the purple and gold colour scheme that this couple had selected, all the while Ollie was on a ladder hanging up fairy lights and blowing up the occasional balloon.

One thing they could both agree on is why Esteban had agreed to rope them into this. “This wasn’t what I read on the job description.” Kimi joked, and it got a laugh out of Ollie that he expected to be just a chuckle. There were a lot of things shocking him today. Even the fact that he was the first one in the car this morning.

“In a way, I guess it’s good practice?” Ollie mentioned from the side of the room he was decorating. “You never know when we might have to do this, like, ever.” It was a good point, but Kimi was never the type to want to do manual labour. He’d much rather just focus on himself and then pick up slack in the other mental areas, thank you very much.

Kimi sighed. “You say that now, but you’re tall and you can reach up to the point where you can just stick a bunch of pins in the side of a gazebo. I have to put effort into getting on my knees to tie these.”

“It’s effort to get on your knees? Are your bones that frail?” Ollie returned quickly, and Kimi had walked straight into that one.

“When I hex you to fall off that ladder, don’t say I didn’t warn you. You’re lucky the pins aren’t in your hand right now.” Kimi threatened, just as Ollie was stepping off the ladder himself to grab a handful more of them.

There was a moment of silence before Ollie spoke up once again. “I mean, in a way, it’s time consuming to have to go up and down to get these pins all the time,” as Kimi heard another one being stabbed into the wall, “but it sorta reminds me of back home before I came here.”

Kimi paused what he was doing for a second. He usually wasn’t the best at sentimental conversations. “Ah, I see.” he responded, with no clear intent to really continue the conversation.

Ollie spoke up anyway. “It reminds me of Christmas time when I was a little too short to reach up to where I am now, so my father would climb the ladder and do the exact same thing while I was at the bottom just unravelling the lights. My little brother and sister usually took full control of the tree, so I had no say apart from the one bauble that my parents got made for me one year.”

Kimi exhaled slowly. “Do you ever regret leaving home then? The UK?” he questioned, curiosity getting the better of him. He looked behind him for a short moment and watched how Ollie shrugged before he answered.

“I know they’re always there if I need to call them, but for the first 3 months or so when I wasn’t really close with anyone, it was hard.” Ollie admitted. “I was basically just a lost puppy to Esteban—while he’d technically scouted me, I didn’t exactly know certain flourishes or anything about the brand that he ran.”

He continued on. “It was weird as well, because you know how we’re split up into two sides based on job roles?” he asked, which Kimi hummed to in response. “Those on your side would always talk about those of us on the other side, because I walked in on so many conversations that I probably shouldn’t have. Not to say we’re not the same, but when I was new it was like…why are you even talking about me?”

Kimi nodded. Not that he could empathise with him, because it had never happened to him purely because he’d only really gotten to experience wedding planning for what it was after he’d proved his proficiency in graphic design. Not to say that he didn’t give a reputation to himself, however.

“Kimi?” Ollie’s voice broke him out of his thoughts. He’d looked behind him again when he noticed that the taller boy had moved his ladder along. “I was just asking what you thought about everything when you joined. There’s not much between us, you know.”

Is this what forced proximity did to some people?

Nonetheless, Kimi didn’t see a reason not to respond to his co-worker. “I was kind of hyper focused on what they gave me to do, which was all the graphic design for all of the people that didn’t have a clue. Working from briefs, all the stuff that you’d expect that we haven’t really been given the luxury of this time, so to say.”

“Obviously, I’m from Italy, so my situation is a little different. I haven’t told my family with…this, what I’m working on, because,” he paused suddenly.

At least Ollie was able to use context clues. “Due to the fact that it’s a gay wedding?”

“Yeah.” Kimi deadpanned. “My sister’s too young to understand, so it’s not like I have somebody to explain it to, especially when she hasn’t been brought up in that sort of environment. That and she’d definitely tell my parents.

Ollie made a noise of interest. “How come you didn’t shy away from it then? Given your family has…traditional views, surely you wouldn’t want to upset them?”

“No,” Kimi started while shaking his head. “I gave up on that a long time ago. Not to say that I wouldn’t try to please my family on any occasion, but they’ve kept secrets from me and I’ve kept secrets from them. It’s like we tell each other what we want to hear, which is part of the reason why I moved away so young. Esteban and George too, of course.”

“Life has a weird way of working.” Ollie lamented.

Kimi chuckled. “You’ve said one thing right today, Ollie.”

They’d been working for whoever knew how long before they got any sign of life that there were still people here. “I’m so sorry!” came Bella’s voice as she bolted into the gazebo. “We were so focused on setting up the dining room that I totally forgot about you two.”

She looked around the room just then, and her face went from one of dread to one that was impressed. “You’ve done a fine job though, I must say. The aesthetics team will be really happy that you’ve taken time away from their jobs.”

Kimi and Ollie just stood awkwardly next to each other, as Ollie had finished the fairy lights as far as they would go and was now helping Kimi tie the bows. “All in a day’s work!” exclaimed Ollie, which was surprising given how Kimi thinks he could drop dead. His shoulders, at least.

Bella clapped. “I’ll tell your boss to pay you double whatever you would’ve got. Seriously, it’s no mean feat.” She checked her watch just then. “If you want, you can finish the table you’re on or you can just head off now. I can appreciate that the clouds are starting to set in a bit.”

“Oh! Before I go,” she turned around as she was about to walk away. “do you think you could record something for media? Your faces don’t have to appear in it, but it’d be nice. If you can’t think of anything, seriously just look for anything that’s trending. You guys are a little younger than me though, so hopefully there’s something to work with there!”

Once she’d said goodbye and left the walled gazebo once and for all, Kimi and Ollie had to look at each other, as if what the woman had been saying was something of total blasphemy to the both of them.

Silently, they both agreed to finish the bows first, as there were still about 4 tables for the others to tackle, and perhaps the top table too. They didn’t know what to do about that, so just stuck with what they knew. The tables were still quite bare in terms of cutlery and stuff like that.

Kimi silently thanked whoever was looking down on him that he didn’t have to do that, because getting that pedantic about what fork went on the left or the right might have sent him to his breaking point.

It didn’t take them long to finish the table, perhaps around 10 minutes. It was the first time that they’d really checked the time after being in there, and it was now 7pm. It was still light, but you couldn’t deny that the weather was taking a turn for the worst.

They didn’t spend much time on the media task either—in fact, it could’ve been completed in a shorter time, if it wasn’t for them bickering.

Ollie wanted to do something silly and trending, but Kimi just wanted to settle for something plain that got the point across so that they were finally able to go home. In the way, you can say that they were polar opposites of the exact styles that they prided themselves on.

“Can you get out of my shot?” Kimi screamed, as he attempted to take what was an ambient moving shot of the gazebo with all of the fairy lights turned on, while Ollie was talking to the camera in the background.

As professional as ever, Ollie only stuck his tongue out and told Kimi to film his shot somewhere else.

Maybe out of spite, the British boy didn’t move for the entirety of the time until he was done finishing his video. Which took around 30 minutes once he’d sat down to finish all the final edits, so it was very clear that Kimi’s own was going to be rushed.

Once Kimi had finally gotten the shots that he needed, he found a trending audio that was being used by many of the same businesses and used that one to try and make his seem like it was in a better light in comparison to theirs.

“Can you tell Esteban that he can send our projects to that girl?” Kimi mentioned offhandedly.

“What a lovely way to come back from holiday for him,” Ollie noted.

Kimi scrunched his nose. “I got made to do this and help decorate somebody else’s wedding. It probably won’t be that hard for him—to send two videos.”

“Touché.” Ollie kept his phone out to call whoever was on the reception desk at the boutique to get them back there safely, rather than have to walk the entire thing when the sun was threatening to set.

It was undeniable that the weather was getting a little colder, too. Even though the sun was still out, there was a slight chill in the breeze that would’ve been welcome earlier, but right about now it just made matters worse. Kimi could hear Ollie shivering next to him, and part of him wanted to stay unaffected to make him feel guilty about ruining his video.

Well, not ruining. Time wasting rather.

The car came about 10 minutes after, as they had to find somebody that was available to drive them, as neither Kimi or Ollie used a car because they were so close to their workplace half of the time.

When they got into the vehicle, it was definitely the slightest bit warmer than outside, but there was a slight heat coming from the ventilation system which both of them seemed to be thankful for.

So much so that Kimi didn’t feel like he was stepping on eggshells as they were in the car this morning. After all, they were both tired, and staying at work until 8 wasn’t like them, unless they had an actual wedding.

They arrived back at the boutique in no time, and Kimi noticed that it was a lot dimmer than usual. Still, he went inside and made sure all of his electronics were switched off before grabbing his coat from the coat rack adjacent to the staff lounge before heading to the front.

As he was leaving, however, he could hear incessant rattling from the other side of the boutique where he wasn’t usually accustomed to. He thought something might’ve fallen on the floor—someone? He’d just heard a groan of frustration. Or anger. Or both.

Part of him thought to leave whoever it was to it, but he was no less than a nosy person, so he decided to go and check it out.

It wasn’t until he saw tufts of brown hair that looked very similar to one of someone that he’d been seeing a lot of recently when he realised he made a mistake.

Kimi inched closer, and the look on Ollie’s face could only be described as completely distressed. “What’s up?” he mentioned, trying to sound cool about the entire thing.

Ollie looked around sheepishly, but the look of discomfort stayed on his face. “Hypothetically…if you left your jacket with your apartment key at the venue, what do you think you’d do then?”

It took everything in Kimi not to absolutely facepalm. Faceplant, even—who the fuck even does that?

“I literally left it in that office when you were going to get that fucking chair! I’m just so frustrated and I don’t know what I’m going to do.” Ollie sounded slightly desperate, and it made Kimi feel a little bad. There was obviously an easy fix, and he didn’t know why Ollie hadn’t thought of it just yet.

“You could just ask to borrow somebody’s car from the workplace and then bring it straight back here? If they didn’t mind you driving it, that is.” Kimi suggested.

Ollie paled. He didn’t respond at all, which was weird for him, since he always either had some sort of witty response or that it was the rare occasion in which he actually agreed with him.

After a while, words left his mouth. “No. I—I can’t do that. It’s not the right time to explain either. Sorry.” The words came out like they were being forced up, broken up by the slight pauses in his voice. Kimi didn’t know how to feel.

He tried to think of a solution, because otherwise Ollie would most likely resort to spending time on the sofas in the staff lounge, and whilst they were good for a break they were horrible if you even thought about laying down on them.

If Ollie couldn’t drive and he couldn’t be bothered to drive back to the venue either…

There was one other solution.

The Kimi from a few weeks ago wouldn’t have gone through with it.

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

The door clicked open to Kimi’s flat. “Are you sure? Seriously, I don’t mind sleeping on the sofa at all. I’ll call Esteban to get some pillows for me.” Ollie uttered timidly.

“You’re here now.” Kimi cut him off, tone firm. “I’ve only got my own bed, though, so you will have to sleep on a sofa. I can provide you with a blanket and shit like that, though.”

Ollie went straight down on the sofa, and it was like all of the worries left his body as he sank down. Sort of like a deflating balloon.

“You can go do what you need. I just need 5.” Ollie clarified, before leaning his head to the side of Kimi’s sofa as a way of resting his head.

Said boy just took in the sight, even though his neck looked seriously uncomfortable, and just went to have a shower and get changed into something decent. He’d never had any guests around, and he’s sure that Ollie wouldn’t want to see him topless—even though he wouldn’t be walking directly into his bedroom.

This was definitely a situation he’d put himself into.

The shower was probably the quickest he’d taken in his life, and he’d taken his clothes in with him instead of making the trip between his bedroom and his bathroom to get changed like he usually would.

Making his way out, he remembered that Ollie would definitely need a change of clothes, underwear, because he wouldn’t want to be sleeping in his work uniform all night. Especially if he was wearing it the next day—the thought freaked Kimi out. He was a slight germophobe.

As he walked into his bedroom with that in mind, he decided on probably the biggest clothes that he owned would be a squeeze on Ollie. He wasn’t sure if the other was just lanky or if he actually had some muscle, but the only thing oversized that he really owned was hoodies.

Luckily, Kimi found one that seemed a little bigger from his usual size right at the bottom of his drawer, and pulled out the first pair of shorts that he saw. If they were too tight, well—that was Ollie’s problem for being built like a fucking tree.

He made his way out to the lounge, where he saw that Ollie had taken his shoes off. They weren’t near him, but instead placed by where all of his shoes were just in front of the door, a little bit to the left. One was on the rail, the other was hanging slightly off.

Kimi’s stomach did a weird turn that made him feel like he was going to be sick. He looked away.

The other boy hadn’t moved much. “Hey,” Kimi called, to get his attention. “these are the biggest clothes I own, so feel free to take a shower or whatever or you can just…head to the bathroom to get changed. Go down the hallway and it’s the first door on the left.”

Ollie opened his eyes slowly, as if he’d already become accustomed to his space on the couch. Nodding, he grabbed everything and made his way into the bathroom as Kimi heard the door click shut not long after.

He decided that it was his time to crash on the sofa after that.

Not even a month ago, he knew of, but didn’t exactly care about Ollie Bearman.

At the current moment, he’s still pretty sure that he has a dislike for him, but even then—he didn’t know where to thread the line. Ollie had respected his boundaries after he’d mentioned them, and he’d obviously felt sorry for the other boy when he’d reacted the way he did about the car.

It was best not to push, anyway. Maybe there was hope for their relationship to at least be civil. Kimi had gotten him free food, allowing him to stay at his flat…

Seriously thinking about it, Ollie had a lot to be indebted to him for.

He sat there for a few minutes before getting up to quench his thirst. He hadn’t had anything since Yuki had offered both him and Ollie a drink after they’d finished tasting, but he decided that a cup of ice water would do the trick.

Opening the freezer and coming to the realisation that he’d need to make more ice from his moulds soon, he got some of the little spheres and popped them into a glass. As he grabbed the jug of water that he’d left overnight in his fridge, he heard the door click open and footsteps coming down the hallway.

He turned around to see Ollie about to go to the sofa, as if he was treading around the house trying to steal. Maybe his footsteps were just quiet, actually. Let’s not make assumptions, Kimi.

“Do you want a glass?” Kimi questioned. “I’m just having some water.”

Ollie seemed to be stuck in place. Kimi wasn’t sure why, but the other boy was just staring him dead in the face. Did he have something on his face? “Ollie?” he repeated.

Shaking his head, Ollie’s hair went a little astray because it was still damp. There were curls hanging over from his usually clear forehead, which made Kimi laugh a little inside.

“Sure. Sorry, my brain is just severely lagging behind.” he responded, and Kimi could understand that. Grabbing a second glass, it would have to make do with a little less ice. He hoped Ollie wouldn’t care.

He set it down on the small coffee table that he had in his lounge slash kitchen. It was an open plan, after all. Hell, you might as well call it the dining room at the same time.

Kimi didn’t sit down, because something came to his mind just then. Going to the corner of his living room and opening a box, he found the neatly folded blanket that his mother had given him one Christmas. Crocheted it, she did.

He put it at the end of the couch. “Whenever you’re ready to go to sleep. If you’re insistent on staying up, I have Netflix and stuff. I would stay with you, but I’m hesitant that you deserve a good night’s sleep after making…that big of a mistake.”

Ollie chuckled. “You can stay if you want,” he suggested, as if it wasn’t the owner of the home that he was talking to. “I was just going to catch up on some episodes of Beyond the Bar, since you mentioned you have Netflix.”

“Sure,” Kimi agreed. “I don’t usually go to sleep this early, let me just grab my water. Use my account or whatever, nobody else is on it.” He went to grab his water while Ollie figured out how to get onto Netflix.

Kimi had joined him by the time he reached the show he was looking for, and clicked on Episode 3. “I’ve only just started watching it, but it’s really good. I promise.” Ollie urged. Kimi could only shrug.

“We’ll see,” he replied.

Before they knew it, they’d been through three episodes and it was nearing midnight. Time really did get away from them, but Kimi wouldn’t have noticed if Netflix didn’t politely remind him. Are you still watching?

It was taunting, really. He remembers Ollie putting the blanket over the both of them when they were in the middle of the fourth episode, and there was suddenly a heavy weight on his shoulder. He didn’t remember the blanket being this heavy.

“I’m gonna head to bed, do you still want to—” Kimi began, but he was cut off abruptly because of the sight next to him. It wasn’t a heavy blanket, but a heavy person.

Ollie had fallen asleep, not that Kimi had noticed, and had the slightest bit of a rest on his shoulder. It wasn’t a full shoulder rest like it was in movies, for example, but more Ollie was holding on for dear life and his neck was about to give out.

Kimi froze in place. This is not how he expected the evening to go whatsoever, and it quite literally freaked him out. If he made one wrong move, Ollie would go tumbling down and he’d have to deal with the repercussions of whatever this was.

It didn’t help that the boy seemed to be in a deep sleep. His breaths were deep and slow, and if he was any closer, Kimi thinks the hairs on his body might be standing up. Luckily, there wasn’t enough proximity for that. Was that normal for everyone?

He got up slowly, keeping his hand where his shoulder was as he twisted around his body quite awkwardly to face the sofa. Slowly but surely, he guided Ollie’s head so that it could be at least the slightest bit against the armrest. Kimi wasn’t sitting totally by it, but there was a little bit of height to it.

As if it wasn’t common sense, he went to his bedroom as quietly as possible to grab a pillow. He’d just have to try not to toss and turn in his bed tonight, as one pillow was not for the week. Kimi wasn’t happy with sacrificing two, though.

He placed the pillow slightly above Ollie, hoping that the other would lift his head so that it’d slide down eventually, so much so that it’d slide into the gap that Ollie sort of had his head nestled in. It was a weird position.

Instinctively, his brain decided to provide that for once, Ollie wasn’t being overly hostile towards him. He was more peaceful—his eyelashes were long, as if they’d been sculpted by the likes of Aphrodite, and there was no worry on his face like there was earlier. No longer pale, just asleep.

When Kimi thinks that he’s feeling the ghost of a breath on his neck, that's when he suddenly snaps out of it. Maybe the forced proximity is really getting to him, or there’s actually a ghost in his house possessing him.

He always believed in ghosts, mind you.

Taking one last look at Ollie and the cup of ice water which just had the melted ice—water—left in it, he made his way to his own bedroom and got straight under the covers.

Needless to say, it wasn’t a normal sleep. He went to sleep at the right time, but his thoughts were jumbled at what had just happened over the past couple of hours.

At least he didn’t snore.

Chapter Text

When Ollie receives a confirmation from the musician that he’d managed to book for the reception, it was after a week of back and forth texting that had given him grey hairs at the end of it.

The musician that they’d booked for that didn’t even want to do the afterparty, but Kimi said he’d sort that out eventually.

Which is why Ollie can’t find himself going up to Kimi and checking how he’s doing, if he needs any help or just…anything, really.

It was as if he’d had a one night stand with the boy instead, and now Ollie couldn’t bear to look at him in any context. For god’s sake, all he did was sleep on the Italian’s sofa.

The night that he spent there drew a little too many blurred lines between watching Netflix as co-workers to waking up the next morning, in your co-worker’s clothes about to steal some of his underwear.

Ollie didn’t know how to give it back. Not even the clothes—he’d washed them, but they sat on the counter in the kitchen which he used as his space for everything. His spare keys, the letters that he’d get in the mail, his smart speaker.

Kimi’s clothes.

It was like they were a constant reminder and Ollie couldn’t get rid of them, even if he wanted to. The conversation didn’t come naturally, the bickering couldn’t come naturally because Ollie was too much of a coward to do so much as initiate.

So he went to private rooms to work whenever he could. Most of them were on Kimi’s side of the office, and nine times out of ten the other was not working as diligently as he should be.

Which is why he’d try to tag along with Esteban as he was going to see George, or vice versa—it was just a little harder to get George to go back in the direction that he’d just come from. Usually, he tells him some gossip that makes George walk with him nonetheless.

It was his weak spot, after all.

Now, Ollie is on the phone with Charles talking about all of the more official roles during the wedding. They’d discussed guest lists, but they still needed to narrow down the officiant, best man and such. The list is endless, but everyone plays a part somehow.

As the reception was intimate, Charles seemed keen to have his own set of ‘bridesmaids’, if you will. “Max doesn’t have that many friends so I think one will be enough for him,” the Monégasque joked lightly. Ollie chuckled along, as if that would keep his mind off of last week’s events.

“Did you say that Max would sort out the music for the afterparty?” Ollie questioned. He was double checking because he thinks he remembers Charles mentioning something over the phone a month ago about Max being friends with a couple of DJs.

It was September now, and the season had resumed after the summer break. It was the week in between Monza and Baku, so it was obvious that the calls were few and far between. Charles had let him know that he had a bit of free time today, so he was trying to squeeze as much information out of the man as he could.

At this point, it was as if the blind were leading the blind.

“Yes,” Charles confirmed. “going to all these parties that you have all these wins for gets you in touch with quite a few famous people, but I’m not sure how big of a spectacle he would want to make that.”

Ollie just hummed as he put that down in his notes that he’d made just for himself. There was one that Kimi and himself shared, but it was mainly him putting in the notes from his notebook. Kimi carried around his MacBook, but half the time, there was barely anything to show for it.

He seemed to get lost in his own thoughts then. “Ollie?” Charles’ inquisitive tone brought him out of his haze.

The younger boy cleared his throat. “Yeah? Sorry, it’s been a busy week.” It was a half-lie. If ‘this week’ went back to 7 days ago, even though they were mid-week currently…sure.

Ollie had used a couple of his days off just the day after he’d stayed over at Kimi’s purely because of the fact he didn’t feel like coming into work. He deems it a little better than staying off work due to being hungover— Kimi would clap back at that, his mind provides. Not that it’s any helpful to what he’s currently facing.

He hears a noise over the line. “Is Kimi not around? I know I talk to you more often than I do to him, but usually, he’s having his own conversation with Max. I can usually hear that in the background.” Charles pondered.

Ollie bites his lip. “He’s not with me at the moment. I’m in a room by myself because it was pretty cold where my desk was.”

“It’s sunny outside, Oliver.”

“I’m cold-blooded.” he lied straight out of his teeth. If Charles picked up on it, he didn’t question it. “Did you know if yourself and Max wanted to do a music ban list of any sort?” he steered the conversation elsewhere.

There’s a groan from the other line, but then Ollie can hear some ruckus in the background. “Sorry, Max has just come down from the sim.” he told Ollie quickly. “No, chéri, I’m talking to Ollie. I’m telling him how you don’t want to hear the words ‘du du du du Max Verstappen’ on the happiest day of your life, okay?”

The line went silent for a quick moment.

“What do you mean the happiest moment of your life was your first championship win? I can’t say that yet!”

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

Fast forward a month—more or less, at least—and he finds himself talking to a photographer during the weekend of the Mexico Grand Prix. The man’s name is Mark, and he’s apparently a very close friend of Ocon’s.

It’s one of those conversations where you’re unsure of what to provide for your client because of the lack of communication, especially this week. It’d only really come up on Ollie’s agenda just now, and he couldn’t exactly ask for Kimi’s help on it for two reasons.

He was still avoiding the boy, even though it has been around a month and a half now. Their conversations are limited to greetings and apologies, and even Kimi doesn’t want to ask about his own clothes.

The other two are professional racing drivers, and his one phone call with Max had lasted two minutes before Max had kindly told him to fuck off because he needed to sleep. That conversation was never picked back up, and Ollie to this day will not know if he wants Sweet Caroline played at his wedding or not.

Naturally, this seemed like the next best thing to work on. The guy was a Monaco local, but the issue was more so finding the space to actually be able to take the photos that they so desired.

Of course, at the venue they’d booked it wouldn’t be a problem, but they were holding an events week and they wouldn’t have time to fit Charles and Max in until right before their triple header to finish off the season.

That was out of the cards.

Ollie feels like he’s looked through every location that’s in the Monégasque vicinity when he was searching for venues for the actual afterparty to take place. It’s almost 1pm, he hasn’t had lunch, and the sun is in such a position next to the window that even the window being wide open isn’t helping him.

Is the wind even blowing today?

He’s about to give up before he hears the shift of his mug getting removed from the table. He looks up, and he instantly regrets it, but it’s not like he could’ve ignored it after he hears the words that comes out of the person’s mouth.

“Tea? Coffee?” Kimi asks simply. Ollie finds himself slumping over at his desk and grumbling before looking up at Kimi again, a glint of uncertainty in his eyes as he looks down back at him.

Ollie gets up from his chair. He notices the two mugs in Kimi’s hands. “I’ll come with you.” he responds, before Kimi is leading the way to the coffee machine while Ollie breaks off to boil the kettle.

(He knows he can just get hot water from the coffee machine, but he’s never liked the taste of it.)

When his tea is perfected, he doesn’t expect Kimi to still be by the coffee machine as he passes by. Sure, it’s only five steps away, but he only thought that the other was doing it to be a gentleman.

“Can I help you?” Ollie questions, his tone slightly more chiselled than he would’ve wanted. It takes effect on Kimi’s expression immediately, as his dazed look soon turns into one of neutrality.

It’s as if he was staring into Ollie as if the other was a black hole—personified. “You can, actually.” Kimi starts taking a sip from his coffee. He thinks it’s a mocha. “I think you need my help too, though.”

Just like that, he sees Kimi walking back in the direction of his desk, and he’s only slightly apprehensive about how this is about to go down.

If only you changed slightly to extremely. His steps are light, as if he doesn’t want to go back to the exact place where he spends most of his days, but he notices the mug on the table as the Italian has gone off to find his own chair.

He has exactly nine seconds to sit down and exhale as if someone up in the sky had done something to personally wrong him before he can see Kimi in his vision again. He’s wheeling a chair in and out of the desks, careful to not knock anything over.

Ollie can barely see him get the attention of Dino next to him, who’s mouth is open for all of two seconds before he turns around and the wheels of his chair disappear. Likely to talk to Luke.

That’s all he can focus on before the other starts speaking. “We can take photos anywhere.” Kimi points to Ollie’s screen before grabbing his mouth and closing the tab that was a Google search for venues near me. He’s about to question how Kimi came to gain this knowledge, but then sees the tab directly left of it re-open as the Squarespace page of the photographer that he’d gotten in contact with.

“Is that all you came to do?” His tone was slightly hopeful, but a part of his brain knew that wouldn’t be the end of their conversation. His frontal lobe wasn’t fully developed yet, but he thinks that he has a pretty good read on certain situations.

“We’re meant to be partners, Bearman.” he draws out. “Partners, yet we haven’t spoken to each other in a month and a half and I’m starting to think that letting anyone, because of you, into my apartment is a mistake. Is it something I did?”

It comes off as more vulnerable than Ollie would’ve expected, but the words hit him like a missile. If that was even possible. If Kimi has been thinking that he’s done something because of the way that Ollie’s acted, then maybe he’ll have to look at the way he treats social situations after all.

His tone is immediately apologetic. “No, seriously, it’s nothing you did,” Ollie reassures him, waving his hands in front of him for emphasis. The table wobbles a little next to him, his cup of tea threatening to spill over the edge.

“It’s just…a little awkward, for me?” The question came out timidly, but then the floodgates opened for all of the things that Ollie had bottled up. “We’re not even the best of friends—I was practically sure I hated you at one point and I’m pretty sure the feeling was reciprocated. Then, instead of leaving me to sleep on these shitty company sofas…”

The mug goes into his hand faster than the speed of lightning. The sip is long and drawn out. “You know the rest, at least. It’s not to say I didn’t expect the generosity—well, maybe not—but still!” Ollie breathes out exasperatedly. “Sorry. I can’t really get my words out. I hope you get what I’m trying to say.”

The other’s only sign of movement is slow nodding. His face doesn’t show any sort of emotion, as if he’s expectant for Ollie to say something else. It’s like treading on eggshells, if that was even possible for someone you were meant to be collaborating with and had been for 3 months prior.

“I understand you,” Kimi exclaims sharply. “I mean, I guess you can say I was a little awkward about the entire thing too, but I guess it was mostly just self-doubt. I didn’t really get any note by the time you left in the morning but then I walked into work later and you avoided me, so I really thought it was something I did, is all.”

Ollie thinks he’s about to be physically sick. “No!” He’s close to drawing his hands down his face as that definitely comes out more amplified than he would’ve preferred. “No, once again, just me. I didn’t have anything to write on and I know I should’ve come to you, but part of me was like…how do I make it up to you?”

“You’ve given me free food, taken me back to your apartment…and I’m just here being a little cowardly about it all.” Ollie admits, and he sees the cogs in Kimi’s head turning as he rambles on. “I didn’t want to talk to you while I was literally wearing things that had come from your own wardrobe. It feels like you have to cross a line. It’s quite intimate.”

He also realises how wrong that sounds for the both of them, and Ollie just nervously chuckles while he watches the balls of Kimi’s cheeks flush red in embarrassment.

At the end of it all, they both just laugh at each other anyway, and Ollie thinks he wouldn’t mind hearing Kimi laugh with him rather than at him.

“Transparency from now on though, I promise.” Ollie promises.

Kimi grins. “I’ll hold you to that, mate. Now, look at what I found. It’s a little road trip, but…”

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

Said road trip took them to somewhere that was a little further afield from Monaco, but their definition of a road trip was usually anything over 30 minutes. The less than an hour drive to Cannes was more than enough for it to qualify, in Ollie’s eyes.

They were by themselves once again, as Charles and Max were forced to have to cancel on them, essentially. Max was needed for some essential testing as they were adding their final upgrades to the car, and it was something non-negotiable. Charles didn’t want to go without him, so it was just the two wedding planners.

The journey there was considerably pleasant when you think about the car journeys that they’ve subjected themselves to recently. From bickering to not talking, the small talk that they made while the car was bumping along the roads was enough to keep Ollie from not going insane.

Since it was just the two of them going, the photographer had suggested this place because he was pretty close to it as well (he actually worked nearer Nice rather than Monaco), and he said it was a great place for a more natural backdrop rather than one that you have to make yourself.

Ollie didn’t have a fucking clue what any of that could mean, but as long as it got some good photos for the wedding, then he didn’t really care.

The photographer also had some samples that he was able to share, which would probably be their best bet. That combined with the photos that he would apparently take today would be enough to send to the engaged couple to see if it warranted something that was to their high standards.

The car came to a stop outside a historic looking building. It wasn’t as big as the places that Ollie was looking at, and in retrospect, maybe he didn’t need a big building to take photos. You could take photos about anywhere, but given that a wedding is such a closed space then it’d definitely be better to try and simulate that as much as you can.

The door slams shut on Kimi’s side, and Ollie remembers that he actually has to get out of the vehicle too. There’s only one other car at the place, and he can only presume that it’s the person that they were there to meet.

Checking his watch, Kimi realised that they were a little bit later than they actually should’ve been. “Should we just head inside and see if we can find him? You’ve got his number, haven’t you?” he suggested quickly.

Ollie nodded in response. “Lead the way.” he gestured simply, and they soon made their way into the building. It didn’t look like complete ruins, but it was clear that its age was showing on the outside.

The interior was a lot more plain than Ollie had expected. Weirdly enough, it had reminded him of those community halls that the schools in his area would book out for proms and events, a huge communal area for people to spend their time. Although, maybe huge was an overstatement just this once.

It wasn’t hard to spot the other person that was in the building. Their footsteps weren’t exactly quiet due to the type of shoes that they had to wear, so the photographer with shaggy blonde hair turned around almost immediately.

His face brightened up. “Ollie and Kimi?” he inquired, walking over to them briskly.

“Indeed.” Ollie stated. “It’s nice to meet you finally.” There were handshakes between the three of them before they headed over to what the other man seemed to be setting up.

“I just wanted to set up something to try and make the photos as natural and as close as possible to what you’d want them to be, essentially.” Mark explained. “There’s not really any outside scenery as far as I’m concerned, and I’m pretty sure the wedded couple would want a lot of photos to remember their day. Which is why you essentially have to be my stand-ins!”

Ollie and Kimi looked at each other nervously. “So…what does being a stand-in involve?” Ollie questioned tentatively.

“It’s nothing major, seriously. It’ll take like 10 minutes, because I do want to get the right shots and make sure that everything’s perfect, but obviously it wouldn’t be this prepared on the wedding day. I’d do all the editing and then send them off to you.” he specified, tapping some things on the laptop that he’d brought with him.

He heard a noise from the camera, and his face seemed to approve of what was going on. “Do you two mind going to stand in front of the camera now, please?” Ollie and Kimi moved quickly against the wall of the building. The sun was shining down from the east. “That’s great, thank you…don’t look awkward! You can stand a little closer.”

Reluctantly, Ollie shuffled his feet closer to Kimi. He didn’t want to be in touching boundary. Prevention was necessary. “Is there anything you’d like us to do?” he asked Mark.

The other seemed laser focused on whatever was going on in his camera’s screen. “Just stay where you are for a second, if that’s alright. I’m just making sure I have the right angle, zoom, all that technical stuff.” he replied firmly.

Kimi seemed to nod as if he was following along with what the photographer was doing himself. It seemed a little unconscious, which made Ollie giggle inside.

There was a noise of satisfaction that came directly across from them then. “We should be good to go,” Mark noted. “Is there anything you two aren’t comfortable with or are you happy to do whatever?”

This was Ollie’s chance to speak up and tell him about the fact that he did not want to step any closer to his colleague. “I—”

“Do whatever you need to do, man.” Kimi’s voice raised from the right of him. “You need to get the most authentic photos possible, am I right?” There was a look from over the camera and a thumbs up sent to Kimi soon after.

Ollie couldn’t let it show on his face, but it was hard not to. One slight glance to Kimi was all it took for his polite resolve to fade, and it was clear that Kimi had noticed. His face changed about three times in a couple of seconds.

“Hold on, Ollie, I think you’ve got something there.” Kimi spoke, tiptoeing a little to try and reach for the other side of Ollie’s shoulder.

Then he heard a whisper. “Mate, I’ve looked at this guy’s photos, and they’re no joke. Just go along with it.” The hairs on the back of Ollie’s neck stood up slightly—and he’s not sure if it was because of the fact that what Kimi said was true, or the action itself. His subconscious decided to go with the former for now.

Kimi brushed the side of his shoulder, and Ollie felt another crack in his facial expression coming on, but then he soon remembered that Kimi had acted like there was something on Ollie’s shoulder. “Got it.” he uttered simply. “Sorry about that.”

The way Kimi spoke to the photographer was extremely diplomatic, and he may just be falling for the charms that Kimi failed to show in front of him. Or with him. He’s not sure what switch flipped in his head today.

Nonetheless, Mark seemed to get on with his work. The first photo was tame, just the two of them smiling next to each other. He’d asked them to stand a little closer together for the second set of photos, for them to look at each other for the next time the shutters went off.

It took everything in Ollie not to giggle incredulously at what was actually happening, especially when the only thing he could do was look Kimi dead in the eyes.

Once the shutters had finished and Mark had gone to click on his laptop, presumably to find the best photo, he nudged the Italian. “A little bit of height could do you some good, Antonelli.” he remarked snidely.

Kimi only scowled in response, but he didn’t have much to say as they were back to the photo taking not long after. “Can one of you put the arm round the other’s shoulder? I know the height difference makes it a little more difficult…oh, that’s perfect, Kimi! Stay right there for me.” Mark directed.

The reason he’d cut himself off slightly right after is because Ollie didn’t exactly have the time to do anything before he felt a hand snake around his waist. It took everything in him not to shiver at the unexpected touch. It was odd, because he was pretty sure the sun was getting more intense.

He just turned to look at Kimi, as if trying to telepathically ask him what the fuck he was doing. The other just stared at him with a look that could only be described as completely ignorant to everything that was happening around them.

Then the camera shutter went off once again.

Mark had them turn back the other way, and at some point he thought that Kimi’s waist could’ve just been used as a belt contrary to the one that Ollie was actually wearing. That’s how they stayed for the majority of the photos, and not once did Ollie think to reciprocate and slide an arm around Kimi’s shoulder.

It might make the photos retain a little more authenticity than the first ones they were taking, but Ollie would like to think that he’s a pretty good actor. Even if the only thing that he can think of is the fact that Kimi’s fingertips will sometimes squeeze the right side of his body, his face does a good job at not showing it.

After what seems like forever, Mark peeps his head over the top of the camera again. “I think we’ve got a good set here. I would ask you to try and pretend the camera isn’t there so I could take some candids, as it were, but I think at least one of you is more than done with the flash of a camera today. Am I right?” he asks rhetorically.

He doesn’t mention a name, but Ollie’s almost certain that it’s directed towards him. Therefore, he decides not to add fuel to the fire and just thank the other for what he’s done.

“Will we get to look at the photos now?” Kimi chimed in. It was a valid question, but Ollie wants nothing more than to use the photos for confetti for a birthday party. They’d look much better chopped up, in his opinion.

Mark looked at his laptop quickly before turning back to them. “If you’re happy to see them without edits, then come around. I’ll send better, printed photos and digital ones to emails that you have if that’s something you’d be interested in.” he told them both.

The suggestion roamed around in the air while Kimi bounded up to the laptop to see the photos that had been taken. Ollie felt like he’d get extreme FOMO if he didn’t look at them himself, either. So he took Mark’s left side as the right was pre-occupied.

Said photos in question weren’t as cheap as Ollie had actually expected them to be. As much as he may have despised the task at hand, neither he nor Kimi were exactly awkward when it came to the camera.

The first few photos, as he’d predicted, looked the tiniest bit manufactured. Manufactured in the way that Ollie and Kimi stare at the camera as if the other isn’t in frame, edited in instead. It makes sense to him that the both of them would do that, anyway.

When they get on to the photos that contain the more intimate poses (if that’s even the right terminology to use in this sort of situation), Ollie finds himself gasping ever so slightly. Not so that it’s noticeable by the other two, but these photos are crafted in such a way that Ollie doesn’t find them believable.

The photos of them looking at each other have Ollie looking down at Kimi with a smile that he didn’t even comprehend being on his face at the time, Kimi looking up at him with an emotion that the both of them would refuse to name at this point in time. Or so, Ollie thinks.

Nothing really softens the blow as where Ollie was looking at himself on the left side of the last photos, they’re soon replaced with the ones where Kimi had held Ollie’s waist like it was something that he’d been sworn to for his entire life. Like an emotionally constipated bodyguard.

Weirdly enough, as Ollie’s staring at the photos and taking them in as Mark flips through every single cut that he’d managed to take, it looks…natural?

He puts it down to his acting. He’s relaxed in front of the camera, even if he shoves the evidence to the back of his mind that one of the photos had his eyes flitting down to where Kimi had wrapped his arm around him.

The same can be said for Kimi, except for the fact that in every single photo, he looks the tiniest bit happier than Ollie. As if they weren’t put there as part of a task, as if the photos meant something to him.

He’d never hear his own inner thoughts broadcast by the other, however, as a quick look in the other’s direction just saw him nodding. He wasn’t pointing at the photos, his face wasn’t as expressive as he thought it’d be. Rather, blank.

Not that he’d want the photos to mean something to Kimi, as that would unwrap a whole other train of thought that would eventually derail and end up in something worse than Apartment Gate. That’s what he’s decided to call it, at least.

“You guys don’t have much to say?” Mark takes note of both of them being weirdly silent. Ollie’s unsure if he’s stunned or speechless—don’t they both mean the same thing anyway? Why is he even feeling this way due to a couple of professionally taken photos?

Kimi piped up soon after, as if he had to be reminded to speak. “You’re really talented, Mark.” he compliments the other man easily. “To get people such as Ollie and myself to look normal on camera and not hindered by something such as our height difference is no mean feat.”

With the way that sentence was going, Ollie had half expected the other to make a jab at him. Something more along the lines of “to look like we actually enjoy each other’s company”, but if he spoke up about that then he’d probably have the older of the three questioning his morals about why he started this photography gig in the first place.

Mark clapped his hands together. “That’s great, then. I’ll send the edits over to you once I’m done, and if there’s any way that I would be able to get in contact with your clients then that’d be great too.” he rounded his sentence off.

Ollie smiled, shaking Mark’s hand one last time. They bid their goodbyes before making their way back outside, realising that their car wasn’t there. A quick phone call was all it took to find out that their driver had gone to the fast-food place just down the street, and that he’d be with them in ten minutes at most.

“Hey,” Kimi nudged him. “that guy actually made it look like we didn’t refuse each other’s company for an entire month and a half not that long ago. Can you believe it?” The question didn’t even come out as a jab—in fact, it was probably a nicer way of saying what Ollie had thought in his head previously.

He just nods at Kimi’s statement. “I think he should change his job status to a magician, not a photographer.” he added quickly. The sun was definitely beating down on them now, and Ollie was regretting wearing such tight jeans today. It didn’t help that they were black, either.

As if to add insult to injury, Kimi piped up one final time. “What would you do if he came out before our driver got here and asked us to take some photos outside?”

He couldn’t read the tone of what Kimi was trying to ask, but all he does know is that their driver showed up not long after and not one mention of a photo was made after they’d gone ten minutes down the road.

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

There’d been a couple of phone calls here and there as far as communication between the two wedding planners and the engaged couple had gone, but the first time that they’re able to all come together and sit in a room together again is the first week of the winter break.

Neither of them won the championship, so neither of them have anything to boast or smile about—thankfully, they are smiling. The weather has gotten much colder and the nights are drawing in, so pulling the duo in around 12pm is more than ideal for this time of year.

One of the conversations that they’d had over the phone is when Ollie and Kimi had sent both of them the samples that Mark had given to them when they’d met up with him in that historical building.

They’d decided to keep him for their wedding, but then word got around that Mark had made them take photos, which Ollie definitely didn’t share. Needless to say, Max and Kimi both had mouths that were too big to actually censor some of the things that they weren’t meant to see, and now Ollie’s first and only stint at modelling is next to a 5’8 Italian boy.

That aside, the meeting currently was more of a meeting to round up and make sure that everything was in order in the run-up to the wedding. Their music was sorted and the music ban list was more than extensive, with every single song related to Formula 1 being banned as well as the entirety of Taylor Swift’s discography. To this day, Ollie can’t think of why Max has such a vendetta towards her.

They’d managed to get in touch with the venue and sort out lighting for whatever reasons. Weddings were quite a common thing there, so it wasn’t a big deal. They were also able to get in touch with Mark and sort out spaces where he could keep all of his photography bits that neither of them knew the specifics of, even after he’d explained them.

Around halfway through the meeting, they’d gotten onto the topic of when they did the tasting with Yuki at said venue. Kimi had made sure to mention it before, but there was never actually any opportunity to discuss in person. The dietary requirements had been sorted as there were limited options for those that were vegan, but at least there was still some option.

Charles and Max had decided they still didn’t want to make any firm decisions until they knew, so Ollie made sure to ring up the venue and ask when they were available for the engaged couple to come in by themselves now that both him and Kimi had specifics on when the both of them were free.

These were not normal people's schedules at all, but they had to make do.

Ollie and Kimi had actually been using their shared document for once, where one was speaking a lot about something, the other would take the laptop that they had brought into the room to type something on. Bringing two laptops in would be unnecessary and rude, so at least they could have some interaction with the people opposite them.

Speaking of, Ollie had also made a list of things they needed to cover, and they were on the last point. “So…we wanted to talk to you both about pre-marital counselling.” he began. “It’s obviously completely optional and you should only feel like you should do it if you need to.”

“It won’t be by us, it’ll actually be by people in this company that are trained in that area. I would just tell you to suck it up and Ollie would probably tell you about his family history.” Kimi quipped. Ollie could only widen his eyes slightly in response, but it was a gesture that wasn’t missed by the two sat across the table.

Charles spoke next. “Do you know what the counselling would include? Has it been beneficial for others in the past?”

Ollie had a little time to think while Kimi ran on gas. “If I’m being completely honest, in my time here I’ve only ever had one client that’s wanted to go through with the pre-marital counselling, and considering they were one of my first clients and there’s been no bad reception ever since then, it might be a pointer that it does actually do something.”

“Picture this,” Kimi went on. “If Ollie and I were getting married in six months time, there’d be stuff that we’d want to discuss. The type of people that we are would be one of the things that they specify in the pre-marital counselling. The type of goals you have, any sort of religious beliefs that may come between you, what careers you want to pursue in the future. Think long-term.”

“Not sure why you had to use us as an example…but it’ll do, thank you Kimi.” Ollie smiled sweetly with a smile that he knew didn’t reach his eyes, but Kimi returned the exact same action back. “It’s also a good option to see if you’re thinking about having children in the future, any sort of financial issues…although I’m sure that wouldn’t be a topic of discussion that you’d have for long. You already live together too, of course.”

Max hummed a little at the final remark that came out of Ollie’s mouth, usually a sign that he was going to bring something up. “What about the times that Charles and I would have to be apart? You know that I have my own apartment in Monaco and it’s what I use for my streams and my sim rig that I’ve got too. Would that be something to discuss?”

“If you feel like it could be a possible detriment to you, whether short term or long term actually, it might be best to bring it up with them so you can have a good natured conversation about how to tackle that obstacle.” Ollie replied eloquently.

“Picture this,” Kimi repeated. “If Ollie and I didn’t live together before marriage, then that would be something to think about. Now that you two live together but you also have to be apart at times, it’s important how you manage that and how when you retire eventually, how that would work then.”

“Why do you have to keep using us as an example? Can’t you just say Esteban and George or somebody else?” Ollie vented frustratedly.

The only thing that came from Kimi was a giggle, as well as a laugh from Max. Clearly entertained.

“You don’t think it’s realistic?” Kimi questioned lightly. Ollie didn’t understand what he meant by that, but he didn’t want to read into the implications either. So he just moved on and set his sights on Charles.

Said man seemed to be pretty relaxed for a serious conversation. “Charles? Anything to say?” he prodded.

Charles shook his head. “I don’t think that it’s something that Max and I need, as we’ve been able to deal with our problems quite diplomatically in the past. Anything is possible once you’ve been rivals for over ten years at this point.”

“You’re never going to let go of the term ‘rivals’ even though we’re engaged, huh?” Max responded, his tone uneven. Charles only looked at him with a soft smile, and said something that neither Kimi or him could comprehend. It was a mumble, after all.

Just as Ollie thought he was done with all of his points and that they could stop with what they’d been doing, Max made a comment one last time.

“So let’s say that when Charles and I get married, we’re struggling about how our pets are going to co-exist together. Kimi, can you provide an example of if that’s appropriate to bring up to the specialist?” he asked, with a smirk on his face—as if he knew what he was doing.

Great.

Kimi went on a ramble straight after. “For example, if Ollie had a dog that was severely ugly and I didn’t want it anywhere near me…”

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

A week later is when Ollie will see Charles again—but without Max—for the first time. They’d booked tuxedo fittings without each other, a testament to them not seeing how they dress until they see each other on their wedding day for the first time.

To make things fair, Kimi is going to handle all of the work back at the boutique while Ollie accompanies Charles. They could’ve very easily had one of their family members come with them rather than them, but Charles had decided that he couldn’t handle his mother crying for a second time this week.

It was Wednesday.

He met Charles just outside the shop, the Monégasque waving him over as the car had dropped him off just on the other side of the street. “Have you been waiting long?” Ollie asked once he’d finally made it within conversation distance.

“Non, not at all.” Charles reassured him. “I’m glad you’re here. You might be able to give me an honest opinion as to whether or not I look like shit.”

Ollie suddenly felt extremely pressured. “You know the entire part of my job is to make you happy, not to make sure that you’re sad and depressed about yourself?”

“Ferrari do that already.” Charles told him quickly. Part of Ollie wanted to laugh, but it was dangerously close to the truth that he could do nothing else apart from screw his lips into a tight line.

They entered the store then, where they spoke to the receptionist and waited on two of the five chairs that made up the waiting room in the reception area. The shop wasn’t anything grand, and there wasn’t much on display, but they were here to do the measurements and pick out a colour that they might like.

Within minutes, Charles was called into the area where he was to get his measurements done, which left Ollie in the waiting room. He didn’t want to intrude on that sort of thing, so he just went on his phone and scrolled on whatever seemed interesting while he waited.

A productive way to spend his work hours, of course.

There was a song coming from the radio that played faintly in the background, the only other sound being the occasional click of a mouse from the receptionist at the front desk. He took the time to check in on his family soon after he’d gotten bored of his social media apps, reprimanding Madeleine for being on her phone while she was in school.

Not that she would take that advice to heart, whoever it came from. God help his parents.

The guy who was doing the measurements asked Ollie if he’d like to come in and join them now that the measurements were done, as he had to run off and grab the fabrics that he’d left in their other location on the other side of Monaco. He agreed, and found Charles staring at a rack of tuxedos that were just in front of him.

“Everything alright?” Ollie said cheerily. Charles only nodded, his eyes not straying away from the tuxedos that were there.

“It all feels a bit surreal, really.” Charles exclaimed, turning to Ollie and sitting on the stool that was in the changing room just across from them. “You know, Max and I could’ve been together a long time ago if it wasn’t for me.”

Ollie sat on a sofa that was conveniently directly across from the changing room, the curtain out of the way so he could still see Charles. “News to me.” he replied simply. “Why, because he liked you for a long time? Didn’t you tell us you’d been together for almost two years now?”

“Oui,” Charles confirmed, “we could’ve been together around three years before that, however.”

Ollie urged Charles to go on, and from then on he seemed to ramble with no chance of stopping. “You see, Max and I had always been rivals, always been respectful of each other. We knew that when we were racing against each other, there was always a good race on the cards considering that my car wasn’t absolutely shit. We got closer than we could’ve imagined in 2020, however.”

“It was a weird time for all of us, so our text messages just seemed to go back and forth. I initiated it myself, actually, because Max was never talking to us online. I felt like I needed to reach out and check on him, in a way. Simple conversations about the weather turned into conversations about what he was having for dinner, his cats, everything about him that you know today.”

Charles sighed, as if it was programmed to happen. “Which is why I don’t exactly forgive myself for what I did the year after. Force of habit, perhaps.”

“Was it when you and—” Ollie tried to continue the conversation casually, afraid to overstep any boundaries.

He was suddenly cut off by a nod of approval and more speech from the other man, however. “Yes. When I got into a relationship with Lucille, which when I look back on it…felt more like a PR relationship than anything.” Charles murmured solemnly.

He looked down at the floor slightly—a brief silence overtaking them—before he met Ollie’s line of sight once again. “'I’m not sure how much you know about my past relationships, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that some were better than others. My first relationship was cute but it would never last with how dedicated I was to my career. My second relationship was only really for the sex, but even that wasn’t pleasurable to me for long. How long even was that?”

It seemed like more of a question to himself, but Ollie’s thoughts betrayed him and the answer came spilling out anyway. “3 months.” he reminded the other, his eyes widening when he realised what he’d just responded to.

“At least you know.” Charles chuckled lightly, and he didn’t seem at all offended due to the fact that Ollie had remembered such intricate details about his relationships. “Back to Lucille, however…”

Charles went on a tirade about how they never actually lived together and how Lucille would only show up at the races that he was renowned for or was looking to do well at. If Charles managed to put it on pole on Saturday, Lucille would show up the next day.

“I was so confused by her because I had wanted to initiate the connection and she had wanted to further it, but I think looking back on it, neither of us were that interested in each other. We just let it go on and played the perfect couple because people were lapping it up.” he admitted, as if some truth serum was forcing all of the words to spill out fast.

Ollie nodded half-heartedly. His curiosity got the better of his actions, though. “Where did this leave Max?” he questioned timidly.

“Exactly,” Charles responded cryptically, and Ollie didn’t exactly know what to think. He wasn’t sure if he was meant to continue the conversation with his own statement.

Charles began speaking after the silence had become too painful for both of them, perhaps. “The texts between Max and I became less frequent, and the time that we had to talk to each other was minimal because he was in his own title fight all while there’d been rumours that had come out over the season that he’d slept with a woman much older than him, then a man…”

“None of them were initiated by him though, no?” Ollie wanted to clarify. Charles nodded to shine light on his suspicions. “You two were talking to each other non-stop when you had podiums together, though.”

“That’s the only time we ever did get to talk, and it was easy because all we talked about was racing.” Charles informed him. “Never about the conversation we’d had about seeing the Monaco sunset together, not about my personal affairs with the current girlfriend I’d had or the boy he’d apparently slept with. It never really occurred to me until I broke up with Lucille that Max sleeping with a boy actually affected me so much.”

“That’s when I realised.” Charles mentioned.

It was pretty obvious what he’d realised.

“What happened after that?” Ollie questioned, the tone of complete interest coming through thickly in his voice. It seemed as if he was overstepping a personal boundary—but considering Charles had already opened up to him this much, then it only seemed right to get the full story.

Charles smiled slightly. “It reminded me of the time when we’d always talk to each other again. Except for the fact that we visited each other when we were both in Monaco. I think there was that one clip surrounding the internet for a while because I’d knocked on the door to his apartment one day while he was streaming.” the older man remembers.

Ollie laughs hysterically, because he does remember that day. “I’m not sure how anybody was able to make out it was you, but a lot of people just had delusions, I think.”

“Max forgot to shut his door.” Charles put it straight. The sheer simplicity of it all had Ollie giggling again, and it had Charles doing the same action as well.

He settled down soon after, as did Ollie. “That’s when I realised that the feeling that I’d been feeling for Max while I’d shared those podiums with him while I was with Lucille…was something completely different than the ‘love’ I was meant to feel for her.” Charles said. The tone read off as if it was the easiest thing to come out with in the world, and Ollie could only be envious.

“It took you a year after that?” Ollie posed simply.

“Unfortunately.” Charles replied quickly, but there was no regret in his voice.

That quickly changed, however. He saw Charles’ eyes grow a little sadder, his posture shrinking down on himself.

“Sorry, the entire reason I brought this up…you know how these past relationships have never worked for me, Max is the first man that I’ve been with and I’ve never wanted him to feel like an experiment, of sorts. For crying out loud, we’re engaged. Maybe it’s the marriage doubts that people experience?” he seemed to suggest, as if the entire timeline of the last five years was coming back to haunt him.

Truly, Ollie tried his best to understand him. “So you think that the problems in your past relationships could come back up with Max, even after you’re married?”

Charles seemed oddly deflated. “I’m not saying they will, of course not. You know what they say about the honeymoon phase or whatever, though. I feel that we’re expected to provide more for each other when we’re married and considering the career that the both of us have, I might completely crumble under the pressure and do something that he’d absolutely never want me to do.”

“That’s why it’s important for you two to talk about it, either with a counsellor or without. You never know, Max might be having different doubts about himself too. Plus, you’ve lasted all this time together. I don’t think settling it with a ring would worsen your perceptions of each other all too much.” Ollie advised calmly.

He doesn’t know where the words came from, but he did know that everything he said was completely honest. He wasn’t much of a relationship expert, but his entire job was about making people fall in love.

On the first day he’d met Charles and Max, they were already ignoring himself and Kimi (for worse or for better), and they were already looking at each other like lovesick idiots that had just got together.

Sometimes, the spark doesn’t go away, it just gets deeper. Ollie thinks that’s what he’s seeing with Max and Charles.

Charles flashes a smile that seems purely genuine at the end of it. “Thanks, Ollie. I do think we need to talk about it, of course I want to talk about it with him. He means everything to me. I just wanted to make sure that I had a separate opinion on it first. I value yours a lot, you know.”

Ollie couldn’t think of a response by the time they heard the creaking of the front door and the old man apologising for where he’d been, calling it lousy preparation.

As he watches as Charles goes through the different colours, hearing a funny remark about how Max mentioned to him that it’d be funny if they went for red and blue suits, he thinks they’ll stay together for longer than Charles may have his doubts around him for.

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

Ollie pulls Kimi aside at work the next day once he comes back from his own tuxedo fitting with Max. They go into one of the private rooms, which are soundproof for a reason, before they both find themselves sitting across from each other.

“If Max and Charles decided not to go ahead with the pre-marital counselling, I think it’s good that they still have somebody from the company looking out for them, at least.” Ollie pleads. “I learnt about a lot of things while the owner had to go and do something.”

Kimi raised his eyebrows. “What about exactly?”

Ollie was there for about five minutes explaining everything that Charles had told him. Kimi’s facial expressions change a lot throughout the time that he's delegated to telling the story, but in the end, he looks weirdly pleased.

“Is now the time to say that Max had the same sort of thing to say to me? A completely different topic, though. Kept going on about how he was scared that his racing life would get in the way of his personal life.” Kimi added.

Now Ollie was interested. “Any more to add?”

“They’d already been in arguments about it previously and it’s usually Max who starts them but then it’s also Max that diffuses them because he doesn’t feel that Charles should have to apologise because it was him that caused the mess in the first place.”

To Ollie, this was all just seeming like nerves. They were nervous about the concept of marriage as a whole, but when it actually came to each other, they’d go to the ends of the earth if that was even possible. So he relayed his thoughts to Kimi, and the other boy seemed to agree.

“I agree with you about the counselling thing, there or in between.” Kimi mentioned. “I mean, at the end of the day, I’m surprised that we didn’t need any counseling after your head almost blew off in that meeting just a week ago.”

He wouldn’t say his head almost blew off, he thinks Kimi is laying it on a little too thick there. He’s slightly right, though. “Whatever.” Ollie mumbles, brushing it off. “We weren’t the focus, they were. Everything around this should be about us.”

Kimi’s face sharpened. “You think I don’t know that already?” he exclaimed.

Ollie thought if what he was about to say was right to say or not. The way Kimi was looking at him made it seem as if he was being interrogated, however, so it came out regardless.

“We all know what you have a reputation for, Kimi. You enjoy weddings because you throw the parties and then once your clients are happy…I won’t mention what happens next. Reputations don’t come around for a reason. You’ve done this shit more than once.”

Kimi sighs deeply. “You think just because I have a reputation means that I’m going to stay like that forever? Nobody is there when I’m planning the intricate details of the wedding such as the ones you’ve been taking force with this entire time. I do that shit too, but everyone seems to forget because I enjoy letting loose every now and again?” he rambles.

Ollie shrugs. “I know why I’m in this job, and it’s to help people achieve love in its purest form. People that know that they want to spend their lives together, I—we’re the ones that are meant to make that happen, and I’ll do everything in my power to make sure it goes right.”

“As do I.”

“When you speak to our clients like you’re their long time pal that you met at a bar, there can be a different impression. Just saying, that's all.” Ollie reminds him.

Kimi’s face twists into one of disbelief. “Do you hear yourself? Are you trying to micro-manage the fuck out of me just because you’re all friendly with Esteban?”

Ollie looks a little taken aback. “Excuse you? You think that I’d really exploit my position in this company all because I’m a little friendlier with the boss than some other people. You’re reaching new lows every single day.”

It’s a little diminishing to see their relationship turn out this way, Ollie has to admit. Just when he thought they were making progress just a couple of weeks ago when they were getting their photos taken, a few words from the both of them sends that all crumbling down.

It really does remind him that they’re only just colleagues. Ollie doesn’t exactly want to lose his job, and the way Kimi’s speaking, he could be on his way to losing his.

“What’s a new low to you if it’s the truth?” Kimi challenges.

Oh, he does not want to go there.

“Okay. Let’s discuss your drinking problem then.” Ollie snaps, breaking out with the words that he’d previously withheld earlier.

“Problem?” Kimi fumes with anger. It’s highly obvious. “I enjoy a drink. For you to say it’s a problem is borderline manipulative, Bearman.”

Ollie pulls out his phone to find his texts with one of his colleagues. He forgets her name, she’s just saved as ‘Maybe:’ in his phone. It was hard to miss when Kimi’s newfound reputation was going around the company like it was in real time, however.

His tone is ever so robotic. “Did you see the way Kimi Antonelli stumbled into work today? I heard from one of my friends who was at the gig that he was at the bar all night, and when the bartender refused to serve him, he got really aggressive and said that he couldn’t decline him service at his own wedding that he’d planned.”

Looking up at Kimi then, the other boy was no longer angry. Just extremely shocked, and if he squints hard enough, there’s a gloss over his eyes that’s barely noticeable.

That doesn’t last for long, however, as Kimi takes a deep inhale and looks towards Ollie. “You choose to believe unverified facts over my words, that are completely true?”

Ollie shrugs. “I’m just saying. Your reputation proceeds you. If you did something to try and squash it, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation whatsoever.”

Kimi laughed. “Okay, Ollie. Okay.” He laughed again. “So if I told everybody in this company that you couldn’t be fucked to get behind a wheel and drive five minutes down the road to grab your apartment keys just for me to be ever so generous to let you in, would that start a reputation for you?”

Oh.

Ollie had the wind knocked out of him, and he was struggling to find the words to say. Not because he didn’t have the words to say, he did—he just remembered the entire ordeal like it was nothing.

What had been generosity from Kimi had turned into complete spite, and he wasn’t planning on letting go anytime soon. “Let’s think about that…huh. Either you wanted to see me at my most vulnerable or your mother ran over a curb when you were eight years old and that scarred you permanently for life.”

His tone was far from forgiving, and that’s what pushed Ollie over the edge. “Do you even know what you’re talking about?” he screamed.

Even then, he still couldn’t find the words he wanted to say. He just sat there, inhaling and exhaling deeply as if he’d just ran a marathon.

Kimi and Ollie knew each other’s weak spots, that much was clear.

“Might I remind you that you were the one that decided to bring up my drinking problem.” Kimi sneered.

“You said that I was using Esteban to get to a higher position in the company!”

"So? You could be sucking him off for all I know, even though Esteban was most likely the reason that both of us got this job. You have no reason to stay that attached, no?” Kimi’s tone was almost teasing.

Ollie just laughed at how insanely stupid Kimi sounded for making up scenarios in his head. “Just like how you can’t stay away from a tray of shots when it comes your way. Everyone’s like—’No! Kimi! We bought shots for all of us!’—and then you’re there 3 Jaegerbombs down already. Is that accurate?”

Kimi went silent. Ollie broke it immediately. “Oh sorry, I just thought we were making up a load of bullshit now. Unless it’s true?”

“You don’t know shit about me, Bearman. So don’t act like you do. We’re not friends and we never will be, so I hope you’ve enjoyed my generosity while you’ve had it.” Kimi yelled sharply, before rising from his chair and exiting through the door he walked through only a few minutes ago.

It was hard for Ollie’s face to be serious. In fact, he didn’t know what emotion he was feeling.

Shame? Laughter? Sadness? Anger?

He sat there, the air conditioning being turned off reminding him of how suffocating these rooms could be if you had nothing to do by yourself. If you needed to detox, perhaps.

In a way, Kimi was right. They were never friends, they crossed each other’s boundaries, and now both of them were paying the price for it.

Some would say it’s paying the price for being much too obvious about the way they would bicker at each other. Kimi wasn’t exactly bickering at him that night, though. He was just…suggesting.

How could someone be that insensitive, though? How could he—

Remorse leaves his brain for all of a couple seconds. Then it comes flooding in.

Was this something he actually wanted to reverse?

Chapter Text

Kimi paced around his apartment. He’d taken a couple days off, and he was coming to the end of that stint. Realistically, he would’ve liked to have said that he did productive activities, but none of that occurred.

He took a brief trip back to Italy to say hi to his family (he really only went for his little sister), played video games and went on walks which clearly avoided the boutique so that it didn’t seem like his days off were for…nothing.

By now, the new Formula 1 season had started. Kimi had found out from his dad when he went there, and the reaction that he got when he received the news was neither one of sadness nor happiness. In fact, Kimi didn’t know exactly how to feel.

He knew that the new F1 season was most of what his dad would try to bring up, considering being a part of the ‘tifosi’ was apparently a second religion in Italy. However, if Kimi heard the name of the two clients he was literally trying to wed one more time, he thinks that he would spiral eventually.

They aren’t even the causes, really. It’s moreso his colleague who happens to be painfully British and particularly picky with his words. Kimi had never been in the position to find himself basically wounded after verbal battles, but every now and then, his mind trails back to the final conversation before he submitted his request for leave the day after.

Ollie started it. Kimi continued it. It kept on going, as if one of them had to get a better dig in on the other. What came of it was both of them being hurt, and the last look he saw on the British boy’s face before he left the room was one of indifference.

As if he didn’t care about what he’d said—but at the same time—as if the bickering that had happened between them wasn’t a joke. While Ollie may have gone too far, Kimi also feels like there may be a line that he might’ve crossed. Maybe even previously.

The cycle repeats so much in his head that he can’t even go to get a glass of water without thinking of the time that Ollie slept on his sofa, waking up the next morning to see cushions scattered and the blanket neatly folded on top of the box that it came out of.

Kimi would never admit it, but a smile rose to his face as if it were a force of habit, and then they’d both ignored each other straight after.

It always seemed to get worse before it could get better. Right now, however, Kimi doesn’t know if it can get any better. It might just be that they’ve hit rock bottom forever, and neither of them have the tools to climb their way out.

He does what any normal person would do, and lean into the stereotypes that were placed on him. He grabs a cider that he’d grabbed from the store the other day and takes a seat on his sofa. He checks the time. 9pm.

The sun set long ago, but he remembers that the days will be getting much longer by the end of this month. Almost reminiscent of the first time he and Ollie met each other in July. They knew things about each other, but they didn’t really know each other.

In a way, that was still true. Kimi’s conflicted as to whether he wants that statement to be false.

The thought is drowned by the quick sip he takes of his cider. His face scrunches up in disgust. Checking the bottle, he realises that he grabbed the pear flavour instead of the berry flavour that he usually liked.

Putting it to the side, he thinks that he’ll go back to it eventually. The TV stares at him blankly, as if tempting him to turn it on so that his mind can get a break. He doesn’t give in to that, he doesn’t know if it would help either way.

Picking up his phone, he’s reminded that George messaged him earlier today, just to check in on him. George is usually the one that will handle all of the leave requests, so it was only natural for him to respond to Kimi in the end, because they’ve always had a close relationship.

Although Esteban was the reason that he got this job, his and George’s relationship had definitely been the best thing to come out of it—and he’s forever grateful for that.

The other acts as if he’s an older brother to him. It’s clear that he enjoys what he does, and Kimi thinks that’s what drew him to the older man so fast. He’s British too, his brain unhelpfully supplies, and there’s another wash of cider down his throat.

It reminds him that he and Ollie haven’t even exchanged phone numbers. The only time they’ve talked is through communication via work meetings, computers as such. It’s all a little futile, how they go back to the same things.

Kimi wonders if Ollie is feeling the same as him. Thinks about the ways in which he smiles at Charles with eyes like stars, and then turns to him and those sparkles disappear.

He doesn’t even realise that he looked at Ollie’s eyes before today, but it was inevitable that anyone would be drawn into them. His eyes pierced into you, the most gorgeous shade of cocoa brown that Kimi often found it hard to look away, or found himself getting flushed involuntarily.

The first time it happened, he pushed that thought to the back of his mind and then willed it never to happen again. The older boy would unintentionally fight back by staring at him angrily, excitedly, staring at other people with pure interest.

All in all, he can only help but wonder. He seems to be doing a lot of that lately.

He sets a reminder on his phone to call in sick tomorrow, pray that George picks up the phone, and see if he can get him to catch Esteban to arrange a meeting between them.

He’s not in bed long after, his phone by his side, the cider—now warm—forgotten on the coffee table that he and Ollie had drunk water like it was wine.

After all, you’d expect him to be tired. Sleep doesn’t come easily, as he stares at the ceiling, hoping that it’ll have some of the answers for him.

Hoping that someone would have answers for him.

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

He should expect it the first day he walks into the boutique again. He gets a couple hours to settle down before he’s getting tapped on the shoulder by someone.

It’s not intentional to look expectant and hope that it’s somebody, but when it’s Doriane, his face doesn’t make that much of a difference.

Or so he thinks. “Disappointed to see me or what?” Doriane shouts teasingly, and Kimi can only laugh it off.

“Can you be nice to me?” Kimi pleads. “I’ve just come back from my days off, I feel a little fragile right now.”

She shakes her head nonetheless. Doriane had been one of the people to help him during his early days in the boutique, and he’s forever grateful for that. While they don’t talk as much because she’s very focused on developing things within the company rather than the planning, he’s always appreciative when he does see her.

“Okay, okay. I was just coming to tell you that Este said that he can see you in 10 minutes. Says he got a message from George.” she comments. Kimi just gives her a thumbs up as she walks away to her desk a couple of meters away.

He’s unsure of how to feel as he knocks on his boss’ office door, but the cheery ‘Come in!’ from the other side of the door calms his nerves a little. Esteban looks over from the side of his computer once the door clicks shut, as if there’s a smile permanently on his face.

As Kimi’s walking towards him, he begins the conversation. “Why did you need to see me?” Esteban inquired, as Kimi’s chair scraped against the floor a little. He sat down against the plush seat, the chair a reminder of who he’d first seen when he walked in here a little over half a year ago.

“Well, it’s about Ollie.” Kimi noted, and he continued even after seeing Esteban’s facial expression not move an inch. “We’ve said some pretty nasty things about each other. I don’t know if I’ll ever be comfortable working alongside him as my partner. There’s just so much tension and when I feel like things are getting better, they’ll always get worse.”

Esteban nodded. “I would bore you with the ‘and why do you feel that way?’ talk, but it’s hard for me to do that because I won’t lie to you—I’ve heard basically the same thing from our friend Oliver too. Well, more friendly to me, that’s for sure. I’ll give you the same advice that I gave him though, and it’s to just talk about it.”

“You don’t think we’ve tried? Every time we talk, it’s like it all comes out purely based on instinct.”

“So what if it doesn’t?” Esteban presses. He moved his chair a little way from his computer so that his words could be fully conveyed to the person sitting across from him. “I’ve known you and Ollie for around the same amount of time. Don’t ask me why now, but I’ll tell you when the time’s right. There’s one thing about you both that hinders your personality in the wrong ways when it applies. You’re both stubborn as anything.”

Kimi nodded hesitantly. He knew he was stubborn, but he never really recalled Ollie to be as stubborn as he was. If it was stubborn as to who got the last laugh in their arguments, sure..? He was a little confused, nonetheless.

“You look confused.” Esteban exclaimed, still smiling. Kimi nodded more vigorously this time, and Esteban continued to explain. “You’re stubborn in different ways. Ollie is stubborn in the way to which he absolutely detests change. Haven’t you seen how most of his weddings are about upholding tradition?”

If that wasn’t obvious. “Yes,” Kimi responded flatly.

“We’re starting somewhere, then.” Esteban remarked joyfully. “Once something is set in stone, he’ll stick to that routine, and he doesn’t exactly like for it to be interrupted. Which is why when I added you to the picture, along with the fact that he’s probably feeling the pressure of planning a wedding for somebody that he’d consider his idol, you can imagine how he feels.”

“That doesn’t explain the reason why he needs to jab at me so often, though.” Kimi rebuts swiftly.

Esteban only gives him a pointed look. “Let me move on to you. Of course, I see you a lot less than George does nowadays, but from the first day I met you, you were always very stubborn in what you believed in, and not many people could change your mind.” Esteban says calmly.

Kimi tilts his head slightly, motioning for the Frenchman to continue. “Let’s take this for example,” He leans back in his chair. “When you got this so-called reputation for throwing parties and being a bit of a misfit, you’d think that you would try and stop it and correct your ways. Rather, you just embraced it and almost let it become a part of your personality, and so that’s what people will perceive you as.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Kimi speaks back annoyingly, although he doesn’t intend it to come out that way.

Esteban only chuckles. “Of course, and it’s not a bad thing. Now put you and Ollie in the same room as each other. One of them hates change, and the other one hates people who go against his own fundamentals. In a way, it’s like your two magnets and you’ve got that premonition in your head that you’re never going to break that force between you, because it’s the way you are.”

Kimi’s seriously quite scared about how well Esteban is laying it all out for him. Still, he’s a little confused as to how he’s meant to fix this. He voices these concerns out loud. “Well, it’s not like I’m going to do so willingly.” he spits, and the scowl on his face is obvious.

“As would Ollie.” Esteban laments simply. “Be honest with me though, Kimi, is there no part of you that thinks you and Ollie have worked well on just one occasion?” The question is a little cryptic, and Kimi is slightly stunned. “What I mean is—if you spend so much time with someone, I feel like you’ll eventually warm up to them. It just takes a little bit of push and pull, but both of you are pushing against each other.”

“You’re asking for Ollie and I to go from not speaking to each other to becoming friends within the time that we’re working on this? After everything that’s happened in 6 months?” Kimi blurts out incredulously.

His boss nods. “Exactly that.” There’s a pause for a while before he speaks again. “As I’ve been…accustomed to some of the choice words you two have used towards each other thanks to Ollie, I’ll ask you one thing. How does bickering with Ollie actually effect you? Do you get a rise out of it?” he questions sincerely.

For a while, Kimi does nothing but think. His first response would be that it’s just natural to use them against him. Ollie had always had that information about him, and he only had so little to grip at until Ollie slowly but surely revealed himself.

He thinks back to how Ollie had respected him when he’d mentioned about his relationship with alcohol, which brings him back to this morning where he’d seen the warm bottle of cider on his coffee table, sat there, a water ring around the bottom where he’d forgotten to put a coaster before he went to sleep. Which was minimal, at best.

He thinks back to when he’d bickered with Ollie and he’d stepped on his toes in retaliation. The lie came out of his mouth like it was what he’d been programmed to say—that he bit his tongue—when in reality, the laugh threatening to break out on Ollie’s face would’ve been too special to ruin by admitting what the older boy had actually done to him.

He pushed it to the back of his mind, but as many things do, it all starts resurfacing. How minorly pissed off Ollie had looked once he’d made Charles laugh in the minivan. The comfortable silence between them when they were going to meet the photographer, how Ollie stared out of the window without a care in the world.

What was going on?

“You seem deep in thought.” Esteban observed. “I’ll be back in a second, I’ve just got to go and speak with Doriane about something on the website.” He got up and briskly walked across the room to shut the door right after.

Esteban shutting the door couldn’t shut the door on his thoughts, however, as they kept piling up. Some of them he didn’t want to admit, so he just resorted to staring at the table in front of him in case that would have any of the answers for him.

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

“Ollie,” Esteban spoke as he was about to cross from the staff lounge back to his desk. “you wouldn’t mind running into my office and grabbing the purple folder on the shelves just left of where I sit? I’ve got to be in a meeting with George and I’m already running late.” Esteban exclaimed hurriedly.

Ollie beamed. “No problem, I’ll get it for you now. Is it up high?” to which his boss responded that it was. Giving him a thumbs up on the way, not even beginning to question why he couldn’t take the few steps back to his office, Ollie made his way there.

Esteban always made sure that his office door was shut behind him, so Ollie walked in with his face to the ground, shutting the door behind him. Obviously nobody was in there, so he wasn’t sure why he didn’t just look straight in.

He turned around from the now shut door, walking towards his right, when he saw a figure sat in the chair across from where his boss’ desk was, and boy…could he recognise the back of that head from anywhere.

Ollie stopped in his tracks. “What are you doing here?” he cried, to which the other boy became aware of his presence. His head shot around, his face more than perplexed.

“What are you doing here? I’m waiting for Esteban to get back.” Kimi jeered exasperatedly.

“For him to get back? He’s literally going to a meeting with George!” Ollie exclaimed, furious that Kimi was lying to me.

Kimi’s face went into a new phase of confusion. “He told me he was going to help Doriane with something on—” he was cut off then, because they heard a lock click into place. There definitely wasn’t a lock on their side of the door.

A muffled voice came. “Bonsoir,” the muffled voice said—and it was recognisable to the both of them that it was clearly their boss. “I’m afraid I might have lied to you both. I know it might seem a little childish, but the both of you! Think about what I said, okay? If it’s not solved by the time I come back then I’m sending you both to a desert island.”

There was silence after Esteban had said his little spiel, and in an attempt to free himself from what was now a very suffocating environment, Ollie tried in some way to pick the lock. Nothing. It’s not like they could exactly rummage their boss’ drawers to get out too, because he knew the both of them were in there.

Except if I pinned it on Kimi, he thought absentmindedly.

“I’m presuming you talked to Esteban too?” Kimi’s voice cut through the silence that had come over them like a veil. He never turned around to glance at the boy’s face, just staring at the door that he’d been using to try and remove himself from this situation.

Ollie’s voice came out gratingly. “Of course I did. I don’t know how I’m able to work with you…if we keep…ending up like this.” he responded truthfully.

Kimi’s deep exhale was a sign that he might be trying to keep something in. He can only begin to guess what Esteban had said to him, before he piped up again. “Come over here. I think we need to have a conversation.” Kimi seethed.

As much as Ollie didn’t want to, he’d heard what his boss had said. If Kimi was trying to initiate something, then maybe it was because he had to say something. Reluctantly, he made his way over to the table, where he found that the other boy hadn’t turned around from where he was staring at the table.

There was no other place to sit, so Ollie just decided to sit on the chair that Esteban would usually sit in. His computer was black—and once again—no sign of a key to get them both out of here. What a shame.

Even so, he still couldn’t bring himself to meet Kimi’s eyes once he’d sat down. There was something so fragile between the both of them that they both knew, but neither of them wanted to touch it with a ten foot pole.

It wasn’t hard to not notice him when he looked up and met his eyeline directly, however. “Tell me about why you can’t drive a car.” Kimi murmured. It would be quiet anywhere else, but in a room where it was just the two of them, it was clear as day.

He’d expected Kimi to be the one that would say something about the whole situation—why did it have to start with him? “In the nicest way possible,” Kimi’s voice cut through again. “You start our arguments more often than not.”

Ollie scrunched his nose a little. “Why would I tell you about this, knowing it doesn’t have anything to do with…us?”

“I’ll tell you about why I didn’t want you to mention anything about my drinking.” he spoke clearly. The statement rang through the room like a resounding gong, and it wasn’t something that Ollie could blatantly turn an eye to. So, with his head slightly more fixed on, he nodded.

“It’s not anything dramatic like you might want, but I was involved in a car crash. It's completely my fault too.” Ollie breathed out. The wounds weren’t fresh, but they weren’t exactly scabbed over either.

Kimi looked at him expectantly, as if needing him to continue, but there was an underlying tone to his expression which Ollie couldn’t work out. Nonetheless, he kept on going. “I was one of those people that you might’ve hated when you went to college. I started getting driving lessons from my father before the age of 17 in the field that one of my uncles owned, and learned a bunch of stuff there. As soon as I turned 17 I think I passed my test within like a week.” Ollie recounted.

“Of course, it felt like the best thing in the world. Being able to have my own freedom, driving to see my then friends at the time, it was everything I’d ever wanted. The only problem with me and my driving is that I’d drive really fast on roads I didn’t know. I went to visit one of my friends who lived like two hours away from me, and their road system was really confusing.” he explained.

It was hard to say the next words. “Next thing I know I’ve gone into the wrong lane, I’m running amber lights, even though that was totally legal.” he laughs wetly. “Long story short, on one of those occasions I was in a lane which I thought was meant to go straight on, but the other cars came straight towards me. I’m sure you can imagine what happens next.”

He hasn’t been able to tell what’s to come from Kimi's expression, because he’s looking down at the tables. There’s only a certain amount of people that know this about him—not even the friends that he’s made as part of his job like Dino and Luke know anything about this. Only his immediate family.

“Somehow,” Ollie began shakily. “I didn’t get my license taken off me there and then. It was a shitty first car that I’d bought, so it went to the scraps immediately. Never stepped foot in a car after that, though. Doesn’t help being in Monaco when everything’s so different from the UK as well.”

“Is that one of the reasons why you came to Monaco?” Kimi asked timidly. He noticed how the Italian’s voice had definitely become a lot more reclused than it usually would.

Ollie shook his head. “Esteban was lucky enough to help me. He knows what happened, but I would never do it for pity or anything to try and get him to employ me. I found that before all this had happened, when I met him, he was the only one that really allowed me to go after my dreams—which is, well, this. If he’d never had done that I think I might’ve been stuck in a rut trying to figure out if I could get a degree that would be anything close to this.”

He looked up to see Kimi staring right back at him. The sight scared him, at first, but he noticed how Kimi was fidgeting by drumming his fingers on the table, and his lip was slightly red from where he’d been biting it, supposedly. “I’m sorry about that.” Kimi said simply. “For what I said, if that wasn’t clear,” he added.

Ollie smiled weakly. “It’s fine. It’s not like you knew…and I guess there aren't a lot of things I know about you by the tone of voice.” he attempted to joke.

Luckily, Kimi laughed. “It shouldn’t surprise you too much by now, anyway, but I guess I’ve got to do the part of my trade-off with you now. Or whatever.” He stopped drumming his fingers on the table to clasp them together, looking up at Ollie with what the British boy thinks are already tears forming in his eyes.

“Me and my dad never got along. We still don’t.” Kimi began timidly. “I saw him briefly when I went home to Italy after we’d had our…argument, and I instantly just went the other way. He’s part of the reason why I had such a problem when it came to drinking. I’d like to think I’m getting a little better, at least recently…”

He trailed off slightly and Ollie wasn’t sure whether or not to urge him to continue, but he did anyway. “On nights when I was younger I’d come home and he would just be there on the sofa drinking. He’s such an alcoholic. It would get to the point where when I’d wake up in the morning, my mother would have to tell us to put our shoes on just in case we stepped on any broken glass that she’d missed.”

“Did they fight?” Ollie questioned, as if the story wasn’t telling enough.

Surprisingly, Kimi shook his head. “My mother wouldn’t still be with my father now if they fought. He just got very angry, and usually he took that anger out on me and my little sister rather than my mother. I felt defenceless at points, and I wanted to stand up for my sister too. Which is why I ended up underage drinking a lot.” Kimi recounted slowly.

“I would go out and come home so that I’d be able to shout at my father or just completely ignore him altogether, because things didn’t affect me like they did when I was sober. Sometimes he’d get angrier and I’d just walk straight back out and sleep at a friends’ place, or if I had the sensibility to, I’d just walk up to my room and lock it.”

Ollie gulped a little. “Have…has it gotten better?”

Kimi chuckled. “I wish. Obviously my sister and my mother still have to keep up with him, and based on what Maggie says, I don’t think so, but he’s gotten less aggressive towards her. I never knew the reason why he was so hostile towards us, but I can only imagine because it diverts his wife’s attention from him because she has to be a mother.” he theorises. “Maggie’s my sister, by the way.”

Ollie nods slowly, and he notices the tears that welled up in Kimi’s eyes even more than before, even if he was able to keep his voice relatively stable. It pulls on his heartstrings in a terrifying way. Neither he or Kimi knew much about each other, yet they’d gone to these sorts of lengths to tear each other down.

Forget this entire ordeal that Esteban set up being childish—it can be said that they were both being childish towards each other. That’s something he needed to accept.

“I’m sorry.” Ollie replied genuinely. “I don’t know how to apologise enough times, I mean—I’ve never experienced anything like that, so to hear it that way is…” He can’t find the words to say, as any words that he wants to say get jumbled up in his brain.

Kimi sighs, looking up at him slightly. He wipes away the tears that never spilt—not that Ollie noticed, anyway—the rims of his eyes red from the altercation. “Well, ‘sfine. At the end of the day, I think we both said things about each other that were malicious.” he reasoned.

“An eye for an eye?” Ollie said, trying to lighten up the mood. Kimi just smiles, but it doesn’t necessarily reach his eyes.

He was never expecting a conversation between them to magically fix things, and to be completely honest, it still hasn’t. Kimi and Ollie can only sit there in silence, their gazes flitting back and forth between the walls of the room and each other. Neither of them realise it, but they do so just because they don’t know what to say.

“What now?” Ollie breaks the silence after what seems like forever, but in reality what’s probably only a minute. The question is so absurd that both of them look at each other and end up breaking out into giggles. “I—What am I meant to say?” he blurts out.

“It was just a little funny, you have to admit.” Kimi responds. If there’s any way to break the awkwardness, it would be to bicker with him, but there’s some serious boundaries that have been set there. “Well, we can tell Este that it worked.”

Ollie shrugged. “How the fuck do we even explain that?” he shouted slightly, expression turning into one of bewilderment. “Yeah we sorted things out by telling each other our traumas. Is that too much to ask?”

“You know, as long as it got us to work together, I don’t think he would exactly object to it.” Kimi voiced. Ollie could only agree, knowing his boss all too well.

He feels the need to wrap up the conversation so they can go and tell Esteban themselves, because if he’s being completely honest, he feels a little tired of being in this room. It’s getting a little stuffy.

Kimi speaks just then. “Um… do we just start, getting along now?” he asks shyly. “I’m just saying! We had a lot of premonitions against each other and it’s almost like we should just…restart and forget about everything. Re-introduce ourselves, perhaps.” he suggests.

Ollie feels like he’s back at high school when he and his friends had fought and they’d often make up and shake hands again, trying not to make the situation as serious as it might’ve gotten. It reminds him of those days, when he wasn’t concerned about planning someone’s wedding.

What wasn’t a thing back then was the boy in front of him, who had probably made him feel every single emotion he was capable of feeling within the time that they’d worked together, and after all of that, he was still asking to be friends.

After all, Ollie didn’t see any reason to decline. It would be funny if Kimi was pleading like his life depending on it, but it seemed more like a mutual understanding than a chance to get back at each other.

For once.

“If that’s what you want.” Ollie replied easily. “Why don’t you tell me about your sister?”

Kimi’s face melted into a smile almost immediately. “Before I say all the nice things, she is the worst when it comes to stealing snacks…”

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

The next couple of months blend together in sort of a haze, for both Ollie and Kimi. There’s the little things that they have to get ready, such as getting the tuxedos actually rented and to sort out which people haven’t sent back their RSVPs which Charles and Max got done privately.

Right now, they’re having a meeting with the engaged couple to discuss how far they actually are in the process. There’s been the boring stuff brought up, such as the marriage license that the two have also decided they’ll sort privately due to the fact that it is more concerned with Dutch laws and other things like that.

They’d all gone together to the venue not long ago, when there was a break in Charles and Max’s schedule, to go and decide the tasting menu and finalise it once and for all. Charles had been very vocal on the sort of cocktails that he wanted, and Kimi made sure to give his own opinion. Ollie and Max just stood back and laughed at it all.

It was quite fun to watch Kimi get on with what he was doing when he was in his element. He’d never noticed it before, but Kimi would unconsciously stick out his tongue when he was working on something more meticulous than usual. Something that required precision, such as the exact mixing of a cocktail.

Yuki was looking at them with a puzzled look on his face, but he thinks back to when Bella had had a little too many tasters of the cocktail, and thought that if she drank any more that she’d be drinking too much to be working.

The simple joys of life though, right?

They’d also arranged for their wedding cake to be made and delivered at the same time. It wasn’t anything extravagant, nothing about their careers—just something that was personal to Max and Charles. When Ollie had seen the picture reference of what the cake was going to look like, his heart couldn’t stop swelling up.

It reminded him why he loved this job, all before he got caught up in the arguments with Kimi and the generality of how busy planning this wedding was going to be. He enjoyed people that fell in love—and there’s a side to him that’s a hopeless romantic that hopes that one day, it’ll happen to him.

There’s not a chance that he’ll be planning his own wedding, however. Maybe he’d get Kimi to do it for him. That’s just an offhanded thought, however, and it soon fades into his memory as days go by.

Currently, they were discussing if there was anything specific that they wanted to leave in the gift bags that would first greet guests when they sat down at the table for dinner service. Ollie recounted that he’d once had a couple of chocolates in a woven bag. Despite being a wedding planner, Ollie had learned that Kimi had never attended a wedding himself.

(“Is that why you enjoy throwing parties so much?” Ollie had quizzed him one day.

Kimi only leered at him before his face eased up. “No, but I’m Italian. Everybody loves to go out and party, and the demographic of Italian teenage boys is not exactly something you’d want to surround yourself with, let’s just say that.” It seemed far too sophisticated for his personality.

“Worse than where I’m from?”

Kimi grimaced. “I wouldn’t be able to tell you. Never experienced it myself, but based on the recounts that I’ve heard from other people…” the sentence died down and both of them laughed as if they didn’t have a care in the world.)

Charles had a lot to say about all of the intricate details that he wanted in his wedding, and he noticed that Max would just nod and smile when the Monégasque man would mention something that neither Ollie or Kimi could think about paying for in their wildest dreams.

Oh how it would be to be rich and famous.

“Throw a couple chocolates in, I guess.” Max added offhandedly when Charles was done with the rest of his suggestions. “People will like us more than they already do.”

Charles gasped. “You think people don’t like us?”

“Of course not, schat, but I think your idea of specifically painting Lando’s gift bag silver when he’d won the championship last year would make us the recipients of choice words all season long, and you know it.” Max reminded him.

Charles giggled then, and as if it was infectious, the Dutchman did the same. It was the same look that Ollie had seen almost a year ago now, and that was also something that he was jealous of when it came to them.

Kimi typed some things into his computer (which he’d actually remembered to bring this time!). “Ooookay…now that that’s all done, there’s only a small list of things which we have to go through right now. Ol, do you have them?” he asked.

Ollie beamed. “Yeah, sorry, it’s on the back page here somewhere…here we go.” He said as he opened up his notebook. “Whether or not you both want to do any extra rentals such as a photobooth on top of the extra things that you already have…the other things I think are more personal to you. Vows and that.”

When Ollie looked up from where he was reading from, he noticed that Charles and Max were staring at the two of them with an expression that could only be defined as completely and utterly confused. Charles moreso than Max—but it was to be noted that the other man definitely had an eyebrow scrunched in puzzlement.

“Do I have something on my face?” Ollie asked kindly.

“Turn to me,” Kimi ordered quickly, and it was second nature to turn towards him. “No, I don’t think so…” he confirmed, to which Ollie smiled. Unfortunately, Charles and Max were even more confused. Disgusted, even?

Max coughed. Charles shook his head after that. “Did something happen?” he uttered briefly.

Kimi and Ollie found themselves turning to each other, now matching the expression that the engaged couple had. “What do you mean, exactly?” Kimi retorted.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Charles began, “but last time we had a meeting together in person, you two wanted to rip each other’s heads off. I don’t know if I was able to notice it at the tasting, but…what is all of this?” he squeaked a little at the end, and Max laughed, although returned to his more serious expression very quickly.

Ollie snorted. It wasn’t very professional of him either, but Kimi just had a smile on his face—that was more of a smirk, now that Ollie looked at it, rather.

“I see what you mean.” Kimi exclaimed, as Ollie was trying his best to grasp onto what Kimi was trying to get at. “Ollie and I just realised that we should save the bickering for outside the job.” It was a simple explanation, and it helped Ollie gauge what the younger boy was going at.

It wasn’t enough for Charles Leclerc, however. “Non, I refuse. You called him a nickname.”

Ollie shrugged. “I call him Kim? It’s easier than saying the last syllable.”

Charles face planted. Max was seconds behind him, but instead to rub his fiancée’s back. “Get me out of here.” Charles mumbled, and the other three could only laugh.

Kimi took the time to inch slightly closer to Ollie, whispering in his ear as he did so. “Isn’t it fun to confuse people now?” he sneered, but there was never any malice to his voice.

Ollie tried his best to respond in a composed manner, but Kimi’s breath fanned over the lobe of his ear and he tried to suppress the shiver that came over him just then. He resorted to nodding, wondering if the room got a little hotter just then. They were coming into summer…

After Charles seemed to regain his composure, Ollie hit them with the question of if they’d want to book any of the services that the boutique could provide for them. Unsurprisingly, they said yes to all of them, and Kimi spent a lot of time typing and figuring out who he’d need to call to arrange certain services.

Their talks came to an end around a quarter of an hour later, and it felt uncustomary to shake hands with the both of them now. Charles would always go in with a side hug for the both of them, and Max would smile, sometimes dapping them up as an action of his gratitude.

Kimi got used to it very quickly, while Ollie fell into the posh British stereotype that he didn’t want to get pinned on him whatsoever.

It would be their last personal meeting with the two for a while, with a plethora of the next meetings being virtually. When they’d left minutes after, Ollie could only exhale. It made Kimi turn his head towards him.

“Is talking to your idols really that stressful?” he teased lightly. Ollie just groaned, slumping further into his chair.

It wasn’t to show how he felt at all, really. “We’ve just done so much for this wedding that I can’t believe that it’s almost coming to an end. Of course, we’ll be really stagnant for the next few months because they’ll be doing their own things. I think I heard Charles say something about dropping hints.”

“Don’t you just have his phone number?” Kimi said back. “You could just call him.”

The suggestion was more than futile to Ollie. “Why would I call him to ask him if he practically wants to out himself? Have you gone insane?” he exclaimed in protest, to which Kimi held his hands up in surrender.

“Okay, okay! I just thought he could be a pioneer for the sport.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be seen like that, I’m not sure.” Ollie bargained. “One thing for sure is that he loves Max though, and it’s been the constant thing through every meeting we’ve had with them.”

Kimi nodded. “I like how you pay attention to the little things, Ollie. That’s something a lot of people should learn from you.”

The compliment was unexpected, and Ollie’s heart swooped a little dangerously than he’d like in his chest. It didn’t help that the facial expression that Kimi was wearing was one that was close to delight, and he didn’t know exactly how to feel about himself at that moment.

“I’m not good at taking compliments,” Ollie replied honestly, “but thank you. If it’s any worth, I think you’re extremely dedicated when it comes to your job. Other people may not look at you that way, but I can see how much you try. You don’t have to try hard to get recognised, seriously.”

Kimi seemed to preen under the compliment that Ollie had given him, a stark contrast to how he’d felt. The other boy brushed some stray curls behind his ear. “If you say so…” he murmured, with an expression on his face that was sweeter than Ollie would’ve expected.

He ignores the ringing in his ears and the voices in his head all for a moment, as neither of them leave the conference room as early as they once used to. They enjoy each other’s company, albeit in silence, their breaths the only thing heard now that the air conditioning is off.

Actually, he thinks he remembers Esteban mentioning something about the air conditioning being broken. This place might be more stuffy than his office.

“Do you want to go somewhere that has working air conditioning?” Ollie posed.

“I thought you’d never ask!” Kimi cried gleefully.

The little things.

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

Like he’d thought once before, the days started to blend into each other once again. Now that Kimi and Ollie had no reason to work on anything that was going towards the drivers’ wedding, they found themselves on crazy little side quests that they would’ve never thought of.

Ollie thinks that he was getting paid to run and grab tea and coffee for everyone one day. The next day, he’s with Kimi, learning how to do calligraphy because it was something that he’d taken up.

“You know, if the internet suddenly goes down one day, it’s a good skill to have.” he reasoned. Ollie couldn’t argue, but he could never get his own letters to match with the slope and curve of others. He was always jealous of the people in this job and what they can do, even if his own was one of the most pivotal.

They also find themselves running errands for their boss a lot more—and by them, it does mean that Kimi is often accompanying him. After Esteban had come back that one day to see the boys no longer with pensive expressions, he’d clapped his hands together in glee and given them the rest of the day off.

Of course, they had a lot more holiday to use during this period when they weren’t actively focused on a task, but they still found their things to do. They would make flyers for the boutique that would eventually spread worldwide, as the business wanted to venture outside of Monaco and onto bigger and greater things.

There was a lot more stress on virtual planning, as it is arguably out of the way to come to Monaco for in person meetings, so Ollie and Kimi spend their time in talks with companies in and around the area on how they can increase their online presence.

His mind briefly casts back to the time when Bella had made them make media posts for the venue that they were holding Charles and Max’s wedding at. He’d never actually checked which one that they’d uploaded. A shame.

He can’t be bothered to go and find it, even if he has more time on his hands than he usually would. He’s just come back from an errand where Esteban had asked him to make an order with a local pizza company to celebrate the boutique’s 6th anniversary that was coming up soon, sometime around November.

Nonetheless, Kimi ends up coming with him, and the Italian boy scrunches up his nose at some of the menu items.

He relays the information to Esteban later on in the day. “Seriously, you shouldn’t have sent me to get pizza with an Italian. I felt bad for the owners, because he was giving them the dirtiest looks imaginable. I wouldn’t like to be on their end.” he’d remembered saying.

Speaking of, him and Kimi’s relationship had only gotten better since their talk with the engaged couple. However, in a way, it’d also made Ollie spiral just the tiniest bit more.

Now that Charles had brought it up, it was impossible to notice the slight things that Kimi would do that he swore were never replicated with anyone at any time. The other would squeeze his neck sometimes when he’d visit him at his desk, pulling up a chair as if it was second nature.

“Whatcha doing?” Kimi would say cheekily, and Ollie never found it in him to dismiss Kimi and tell him to go and do something else, even if what he was working on had a strict deadline.

Half the time, it was irrelevant, so Ollie would eventually forget about the task. He didn’t want to think that his work ethic was slipping, just that his mind betrayed him and viewed Kimi as the higher priority as to what he actually wanted to do with his time at work.

The nickname that came from Kimi’s lips that one day didn’t stop either. It had started before that, but he doesn’t remember a time when Kimi had said ‘Ollie’ or ‘Oliver’. Of course, many other people had used that nickname with him, but the way it sounded in Kimi’s accent did something to him.

He wasn’t sure what. Blame Italians. Not this one, though. He’d quite like to keep him.

Ollie didn’t find it in himself to be touchy, so he’d usually just try and include Kimi in as much as he could. If he was working on something for Luke or Dino that he was struggling with, he’d always ask for Kimi’s opinion before he continued with anything.

It got to a point that he’d had to pin Kimi’s messages on his work chat with him, because they got so lost in between Ollie sending messages to people around the area asking if they could arrange a meeting with Esteban on how to market within the area, that Ollie had missed notifications from Kimi asking if he’d wanted to go to lunch with him that day.

He’d never been for lunch with Kimi, and to this day, still hasn’t. Fuck Brenda or whoever it was that owned the dog grooming clinic just on the German border. She didn’t even have any useful information!

In amongst all of these tasks and his alarmingly growing fondness of his Italian colleague, the virtual meeting that they’d mentioned had come around sooner rather than later. Max was in Milton Keynes while Charles was in Maranello, so it was quite an awkward time for the both of them.

Weirdly enough, Ollie and Kimi seemed to be more busy with their own errands. It took up so much of that day, and he didn’t think that neither of them wanted them to end.

At least he hopes.

“So, thank you both for finding time in your very busy schedules to join us today.” Ollie started. “I’m going to get the boring stuff out of the way first, which involves all of the stuff surrounding your reception in the Netherlands…”

Usually, Esteban would be the one to go through all of this, but since there were two of them, they’d each managed to cover different bases as well as checking in with both of the grooms to make sure that they were okay with what was going ahead and what was happening.

That’s why Charles’ name would show up in Ollie’s call logs more often than not, and he can only imagine the same for Kimi.

It’s a pretty boring spiel, but they get it all over and done with in the end. The reception is to take place around a week before the wedding to allow time for family members to celebrate and then head down to Monaco for the actual celebration, if you will.

“Everything has been paid to all of the vendors that we’ve requested, as well as all of the extra services that we’ve received payments from. We just wanted to finalise with you that there weren’t any outstanding RSVPs or guests that you’d forgotten to invite. We noticed that you’re 3 short.” Kimi explained.

Charles spoke next. “1 of them is probably from my side of the family…my aunt. She never responds to anything, I’ll give her a call and let you know by e-mail when I can.” he apologised sincerely. Ollie and Kimi brushed it off.

“The other two are spare because they ended up declining our RSVPs and we forgot to mention it, so…we were wondering…” Max started, but trailed off towards the end. “Charles, can you help me out here?” His face seemed to be particularly distressed, and Charles laughed through their laptop speakers. It was ironic the way his face lit up.

“Sure. What Max wanted to say is that we’d like to invite you two to the wedding as well!” Charles announced gleefully.

Ollie was stunned. Judging by the fact that he saw Kimi’s face in the monitor too, he was also particularly shocked.

You see, at the start of this entire ordeal, Esteban had always told them ‘not to expect to be invited’ unlike their other clients, because those weddings were on a much smaller scale and this may be more of a public event.

The fact that they’ve been invited to a wedding they’ve planned wouldn’t usually hit them as hard, but in this particular case, it does. Ollie is speechless.

“Charles and I both feel like you two helped us out so much. Not only with the preparations, but with some of the counselling and talks that we had up to the wedding.” Max’s voice cut through the silence.

Charles could be seen nodding from his screen. “We managed to talk with each other and we both think that you two are very alike minded, you’re very similar to each other and you might not realise it.” he exclaimed cryptically. “You both give such great advice and I feel like it would be a disservice of me to not extend an invitation—to us, rather.”

The words weren’t exactly forming in Ollie’s mouth, so he’s eternally grateful that Kimi was able to speak for the both of them temporarily. “It’s an honour. Seriously. Of course we’ll be there, it’ll be great to see you celebrate your special day together. I’m sure it means a lot to Ollie as well.” Kimi threw in before he finished, which put him straight on the hot seat. Thanks Kimi.

“Agreed. I don’t really have the words to thank you at the moment but my camera roll will probably be filled by the end of the day so think of that as something that you’ll remember that I’m doing. I definitely won’t miss it for the world.” he voiced enthusiastically.

The engaged couple’s faces had big smiles over them, seeming as if they did the right thing. “So, do you guys have anything else that you want to cover? Or will it just be in jumbled up phone calls where we can hear you both anyway?” Charles quizzed.

Well. They did spend a lot of their time together nowadays.

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

Time flies, and before they know it, they’re a week away from the wedding. Max and Charles had called them both yesterday to tell them that they were flying to the Netherlands for the reception, and that they’d try and send them photos so it looked good if they had to do any promotion.

Kimi and Ollie tried to reassure them as best as they could that it wasn’t necessary, but Charles seemed to shut them both up. Kimi hadn’t had the opportunity to talk to Charles as much, but he seemed very stubborn when it came to the things that he cared about.

That was something the both of them shared as a common trait. In a way, it could be detrimental, but Kimi thinks that they make it work.

Given that it’s a week before the wedding—they’re back to the colder doom and gloom of January. Summer had flown by, his relationship with Ollie had gotten better and better, and they’d shared shitty (in his opinion) pizza on the Monaco shore while they celebrated the anniversary of the boutique.

Kimi doesn’t forget that night easily. He remembers them opening their own pizza boxes, which soon turned into them sharing from each other, Ollie giggling at him when he had a little too much tomato sauce around his face. He wiped it off himself and there was no cliché, but there’s moments like this where he thinks Ollie just allows himself to let go.

He didn’t really get to see a glimpse of it before, given how tense the energy between them was. However, as they’ve opened up to each other, Kimi finds it hard to believe that he could ever hate Ollie in the beginning.

The other boy is witty without being too pushy, wears his heart completely on his sleeve, and finds almost everything funny. Kimi could be doing the stupidest shit ever on his laptop that was definitely unrelated to any type of work that he had to do, and Ollie would still find a way to snicker at it.

Things like that made Kimi’s day, but he never went and thought about it like that. Instead, it was as if he had an archive for every single one of Ollie’s reactions, trying to co-ordinate which things he did brought out which reactions.

It was slightly concerning when he thought too deeply about it, but they were just two friends enjoying each other’s company after what had been a gruelling 6 months of not actually getting to find out about each other.

Ollie had asked about his sister, Kimi had asked about the other’s own siblings. Remembering what Charles said in one of their last virtual meetings—Ollie and him definitely had a lot more in common than anyone would’ve ever thought if they met them.

At this moment in time, Kimi was packing up his stuff ready to go home. It was 5pm, so he wasn’t exactly leaving late, but it wasn’t the earliest that he’d ever left the boutique. He hears some shuffling from the other side of the room as he’s making his way to the door.

It surprises him when he hears a shout from that side of the room just then. “Kimi!” a voice calls out, that’s all too recognisable. He turns around to see Ollie beckoning him over from where his desk is, almost reminiscent of the time where he’d lost his house key.

“Is everything alright? You haven’t lost your keys again, have you?” Kimi exclaimed, while the thought was still fresh. Ollie chuckled, although it sounded a little nervous.

“No, not at all. I was just going to ask if you…wanted to celebrate?” he pondered. When Kimi tilted his head in confusion, he decided to re-phrase. “What I mean is that…you always did so much for me when we weren’t the best of friends, so I was thinking I’d treat you a little bit. You can come over to mind and we can order takeout…of course, if that’s something you’d like to do! You don’t have to do it at all, and I was just thinking, but if you’ve got other plans then I really don’t care I promise—”

Ollie’s ramble was cut off by Kimi’s quick answer. “I’ll come.” The silence lingered over them for merely a second before Kimi spoke again. “What time should I be there?” he asked.

“Around 8? Unless you want to stay for longer, then I’d say come a little earlier. I don’t want you missing out on beauty sleep.” Ollie suggested, the tone in his voice less hurried.

“Eight is fine. Just ping me your location.” Kimi reminded him. They’d exchanged phone numbers not long ago, and while there weren’t many texts there due to using their work chats more often than not, sometimes they phoned each other. It was soothing.

Ollie gave him a thumbs up, shouting ‘See you later!’ as the bell chimed over Kimi’s head to signal he was leaving.

Now, there was just the task of figuring out what the fuck he should actually wear. Did it even matter? They were ordering takeout, for god’s sake…

╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮╰☆╮

It wasn’t long before Kimi showed up at Ollie’s apartment block. He had to climb a couple of flights of stairs, but he’d buzzed outside to let Ollie know he was here.

The outfit he was wearing was a little simple. A black jacket with one of those tank tops that was probably meant for summer and one that he’s also probably worn to bed at some point. With a belt and jeans, it doesn’t look horrible though.

He knocks when he gets there, and Ollie opens up to door. His eyes widen slightly. “Aren’t you cold wearing that?” he asks, obviously spotting what Kimi was wearing underneath the jacket.

He himself was wearing a white turtleneck jumper, with a pair of baggier jeans than him that were also a little washed. The seams were slightly worn, but the white shoes that Ollie had made it look stylish.

“No, I’m fine. The jacket is warm enough, and I’ve got no reason to take it off, so I’ll just keep it on.” Kimi reassured him. Ollie only nodded and welcomed him in.

“It’s not much, but it’s enough. Everything is very ‘open plan’ here—that’s what I’ve realised, at least. My bathroom is actually just attached to my kitchen,” Ollie lamented, before leading Kimi to said toilet. It was a little smaller than where he lived, but Ollie had definitely made it cosier.

There was a hand-woven blanket draped across the sofa, across from the TV that was also slightly smaller than the one Kimi had. His kitchen was bigger, though, with a full stove to cook on instead of two induction hobs, along with a washing machine and a dishwasher underneath.

A lamp at the side of the room lit up the entire place, with no need to turn on any main lights. There was a plant on the window behind the sofa, and a rug that splayed across the living room that matched well with the beige interior that Ollie had created.

“It’s lovely. It looks a lot more homely than my place, I can’t lie. My place is just very modern.” Kimi admits.

Ollie chuckles. “Hey, but if you like it, then there’s no reason to fix what isn’t broken.” He sits on the sofa and pulls out something from the drawer that the lamp is perched atop. “What takeout do you want? I have a bunch of menus here because I don’t trust the shit online.”

They spent the next few minutes delving through the menu, trying to figure out what was enough but at the same time, what would be too expensive, even though they didn’t have a budget.

In the end, they got a bunch of things to share, and the delivery would take about 20 minutes. “I never knew looking for a takeaway could be so tiring,” Kimi said out loud, and Ollie just giggled.

“You know, when there’s so much choice…I used to stick to my usual order all the time when I was at home but I think being in Monaco has widened my taste palette a lot more.” Ollie explained. Kimi said that he agreed.

They had a little time to lounge around before, in which Ollie offered Kimi a drink. He went to get a Diet Coke for himself when Kimi said he’d have one of the same, so it was a little reminiscent of when Ollie came over to Kimi’s place—without the awkward clothes changing and tension between them.

Ollie kept him occupied with Formula 1 and how that was going (even though he’d been subject to it in work, not that he minded though) while Kimi was talking about how his sister was trying to get him to listen to more music.

“She violated me, I’m telling you!” Kimi yelled in disbelief. “She looked at my Spotify and she was like ‘why is your music taste the most NPC music taste ever?’ and I just sat there like…why the fuck am I an NPC for listening to music that is popular?”

Ollie giggled. “Do you want me to put some of my music on the TV while we wait for the takeaway to arrive?” he asked. Kimi nodded, and so Ollie loaded up his Spotify that his mother had put on the TV for him when he was settling in.

“I have to pay for Premium every month otherwise I get these ads that are so annoying. Please tell me you do the same.” Ollie recalled an anecdote.

Kimi just grimaced. “Well…”

That was the end of that conversation.

He went onto his playlist that he’d made for the winter this year, and shuffled some songs. It was interesting to see what songs Kimi reacted kindly to and others that he didn’t like as much.

More upbeat songs were his vibe, as he seemed to enjoy ‘Cupid’ by Rose Gray and ‘Delete’ by Ninajirachi. He liked some of the smoother songs too such as ‘Close Up’ by Olivia Dean, but there were others that he was cringing a little at.

“You’re trying to tell me that you don’t like when a song is a little vocal heavy?” Ollie quizzed. Kimi shrugged.

“It’s just—there’s not much else to enjoy other than the vocals! I want something that is just a little catchy…”

How this guy was a wedding planner, Kimi would never understand. ‘I’m Not In Love’ by Kelsey Lu shuffled on after, and Kimi seemed more than soothed listening to it. It was more than 6 minutes long, but it seemed to be undoubtedly his favourite.

The delivery arrived not soon after, if the buzzer to Ollie’s apartment going off again was a sign. There was a huge bag full of Chinese food, and Ollie said that they could eat it on the sofa because it was comfier.

They ate in a silence that had occurred a lot with them more recently, but most of them were comfortable instead of the tension that they were used to. He heard the soft hums coming from Ollie as he tried something new that he didn’t know he liked.

Their fingers were a little greasy, but Ollie made sure to grab some tissues when it was clear that it was becoming all a bit much. Kimi avoided the food with a bunch of sauce because he did not want to get his white tank top dirty.

Even if it was re-used, recycled…it worked. That’s all that mattered to him.

By the time they were finished, Kimi found it hard to move, so he was eternally thankful for Ollie as he collected all of the rubbish and took it to the compact bin in his kitchen. He seemed to remind himself that he needed to take it out soon, if his scrunch of the nose was anything to say.

He made his way back over soon after. “I’m not sure how else to accommodate you. I asked you to come over here to celebrate, and all we’ve done is drink Diet Coke and eat Chinese.” Ollie said apologetically.

Kimi only tapped his shoulder to reassure him. “Seriously, you inviting me here and paying for all of this is enough. You’ve got me a resume to use against my sister now.” he reminded him once again. Ollie giggled, and Kimi noticed the slight blush that went all the way to his ears.

It wasn’t intended as a compliment, but the way Ollie’s eyes turned into crescents was something that wouldn’t be leaving his memory anytime soon.

“You know…I think it’s a little weird. How we’ve basically come full circle, huh?" Enemies to friends.” Ollie reminisced. Kimi took a sip of his drink and looked back at Ollie, and the sight that hit him next isn’t really one that he could’ve prepared himself for.

Ollie was just staring at him as if he’d just built the Eiffel Tower right in front of him and put a banner across it that said that Ferrari would win the WDC. It was weird—but he didn’t know what kind of weird—as those chocolate brown eyes stared at him. He didn’t know how to respond.

There was something weird pulling at his heartstrings as if he should lean closer, but he did everything he could not to make it look like he was staring for too long, or rather, what he was staring at for too long.

He coughed slightly. Ollie blinked. “Is everything alright? You’re not choking, are you?” he asked concerningly, lifting Kimi’s chin to check that he wasn’t burning up.

He might as well be, though.

“No, no…everything’s fine. Peachy.” Kimi stammered. Ollie just smiled and went back to sitting on the sofa, watching as he changed the Spotify app to the series that they were watching on Netflix at Kimi’s place.

“Do you know where we were up to in the series?” Ollie asked. Kimi shook his head, and Ollie planted his head in his hands in a way that was unusually endearing. He turned to him again. “You’re fine with watching this, right?” he asked.

Kimi tucked a curl behind his ear, as if he didn’t know it was there the entire time. “Go ahead. I’m happy to watch whatever you want to, Ollie.” he replied sincerely.

The next hour became a blur in Kimi’s life as Ollie was so engrossed in the drama once again. He tried to follow along, but all sanity left his head the moment he could feel Ollie’s breath mingling with his own, even unintentionally.

It was hard to focus on the series while Ollie was making reactions at everything that happened, and Kimi had to stop for a moment and think.

He thinks back to the time where he and Ollie went on multiple car rides together, and how he was so steadfast at agreeing with Kimi on some things—such as the final venue where they disagreed, when he offered to help with the invitations.

Well—not offered—they weren’t that friendly then. When there was no criticism that came Kimi’s way for the first time, when he first felt that there was no real malice between him and Ollie.

How Ollie had looked at him, albeit neutrally, and said that his work was good. How he’d tried to erase the smile on his face after, how Kimi had tried (and failed miserably) to suppress the giggle that came after that.

His mind was jumbled. It stays jumbled as Ollie talks to him about a scene that’s on the TV. “Hey, don’t you think they’re a little like us?” he questions.

Said characters on the screen are holding hands while walking down the street, one of them bent over in laughter as the other one is laughing as well, but seems to be holding their composure a lot better. There’s no distance between them, and the backdrop of lights behind them looks as if their faces are lit up because of each other.

His heart pounds in his chest. “You make me laugh all the time.” he avoids, but Ollie agrees with him and goes back to watching the TV. It’s just then that Kimi looks down and realises that his and Ollie’s pinky fingers are just merely touching, and all of his senses are alert.

Has Ollie noticed this entire time? Why hasn’t he moved his hand away?

Kimi feels himself get rooted to the spot for the next half an hour, his gaze as trained as Ollie’s is on the movie as he switches to the next episode, not even responding as much when Ollie asks if he wants another drink. He says no, so Ollie stays with him.

Maybe that was the wrong decision, for his own mental health. The whole situation was slightly mental. That was a word that Ollie liked to use.

Not the time!, he thought absentmindedly.

By the time the second episode they’d watched had finished, Kimi checked his watch. It was just nearing half ten. “Hey, I should probably go…it’s getting late. I know no one’s waiting on me, but my skincare routine is.” he joked lightly. It wasn’t exactly the reason—but he thinks that Ollie doesn’t need to hear the real reason yet.

After all, who stays over somebody’s house until 11pm if they haven’t been invited to stay the night? It seems a little greedy.

“Oh, okay.” Ollie’s voice was a little less gleeful than it had been the entire night, but that soon returned. “It’s been fun having you over. We should do this more often! I’ve killed two birds with one stone tonight.”

He was right—Ollie had bought him food and well—not given him a place to sleep, but an enjoyable (and confusing) night nonetheless. “Of course you have.” Kimi said sweetly, before getting up from the sofa and taking his jacket off a little because of how hot it was while he was sitting down.

He slips it back around his shoulders before he realises that Ollie is stunned on the sofa, looking straight towards the direction that Kimi’s jacket had come off on his left arm. “You okay?”

Ollie spluttered. “Ah—yeah. I’m fine. Like, soooo fine. I’ve actually never been better in my life.”

Kimi chuckled. “Okay.” he answered softly, as he made his way to the front door. He turned around as Ollie stood there to watch him out.

Ollie spoke first. “Hug it out?” he expressed. He’d clearly been learning from Charles at the boutique, so Kimi just nodded, and it was resemblant of a hug that you’d get from someone that you knew gave good hugs. Ironically, a ‘bear’ hug, if that was even possible.

He smelled faintly of the candle that had been lit on the table in the middle of the room, the smell of the shore that was filling the room. Of course, he was a lot taller than Kimi, but it made Ollie bend down to place his head on his shoulder.

It was more comforting than he’d expected.

They came away soon after, and Kimi noticed how Ollie was a little jumpy, and both of the tips of his ears were a shade of crimson red now. “Will I see you before the wedding?” he asked, a hopeful tone to his voice.

Kimi tries to push it down. “Maybe. I’ll have to give you a phone call.” he says easily.

Ollie nods. “I’ll be waiting for it. See you soon, Kim!” he shouts cheerily as Kimi makes his way out of the door and descends down the stairs.

On his way home, he doesn’t think about much. The breeze in his hair is a lot colder than the one he’d gone through to get to Ollie’s apartment, and when he’s gotten to his flat and through his door—

He collapses right outside the door. Hand on his head as if he were flaming up, it quickly spread to the rest of his body. His cheeks were on fire as he remembered how his and Ollie’s knees had knocked briefly as Ollie filled his plate, about how there’d been something there.

Something that he didn’t think he knew too well, but was probably inevitable from the start. As if they were fated.

It hits him like a truck. If there was ever a time to believe in a cupid, it was now, because it took him a while to get there, but Kimi might’ve doubted that the cupid shot the wrong one down.

But no—he was slowly, but surely, falling in love with Oliver Bearman.