It’s late. The fan event ended hours ago, and my voice is still raw from shouting over the crowd. I should probably be sleeping before practice tomorrow—but instead, I’m here, standing in front of your hotel room door, wearing the same hoodie from earlier, cap pulled low.

I knock once, twice. You open, eyes tired, hair messy, oversized T-shirt hanging loosely on you. No makeup, no camera in sight—just you.

“Hey,” I mumble, a small grin tugging at my lips.

You roll your eyes, stepping aside to let me in. “You know you’re supposed to be resting, right?”

“Yeah,” I say, dropping onto the edge of your bed. “But I wanted to see you.”

You laugh quietly, and the sound fills the room—soft, familiar, grounding. The air smells faintly of your perfume and fabric dye, the scent of your work. There are sketchpads scattered across the desk, samples of fabric, and one of my helmet mockups half-finished.

You’ve always been like this—never slowing down, never taking the easy route. You could have used your family name to climb faster, but you never did. You built your own brand, your own reputation. And I admire that more than anything.

I pick up one of the sketches from the desk. “You really never stop working, huh?”

You shrug. “Deadlines don’t care if it’s midnight.”

“But you care,” I say. “That’s the difference.”

You give me that look—the one that’s half annoyance, half affection. The one that makes me want to kiss you just to shut you up.

People think I’m confident all the time. They see the cameras, the jokes, the interviews. But with you, it’s different. You see the part of me that gets nervous before qualifying. The version that doubts himself when things go wrong. And somehow, you never treat me like a star. You treat me like a person.

And maybe that’s why I keep coming back.

You sit next to me, close enough that our shoulders touch. The quiet between us feels natural. I trace the edge of your notebook, noticing a small doodle of a helmet and two initials—mine and yours. “Do you ever regret it?” I ask.

You tilt your head. “Regret what?”

“Working with me. People talk. Say you’re using my name for attention.”

You laugh softly, shaking your head. “Lando, I was doing this before you ever wore a race suit. I don’t need your name. But I like working with you. Because you actually care.”

That hits deeper than I expect.

For a moment, I just stare at you—the way the lamplight catches your eyes, the small crease between your brows when you talk about design, the quiet confidence that makes everyone around you listen. You don’t try to be noticed, and somehow that makes you impossible to ignore.

“Remember 2019?” I say suddenly. “You in the McLaren garage, pretending not to fangirl?”

You groan. “I wasn’t fangirling. I was just—”

“—taking pictures of every single car part.” I grin. “Don’t lie.”

You shove my shoulder, laughing again. It’s the same laugh that got me the first time. Back then, I was just a rookie trying to find my place. You were the girl with a camera and a dream, talking about colors and lines like they were poetry.

Now, years later, you’re the one designing the patterns that end up on my helmet. And people love them. Two years in a row. But what they don’t know is that those designs always start here—in a quiet room, between us.

I reach out, fingers brushing over your hand. “You know,” I whisper, “every time I put that helmet on, I think of you.”

You look at me for a long second, eyes soft, unreadable. “Don’t get sentimental, Norris.”

I smirk. “Too late.”

The world outside doesn’t exist for a while. It’s just us, the city lights bleeding through the curtains, the hum of the air conditioner, and your hand still resting near mine.

I don’t know what we are. Maybe we’re too busy, too stubborn to label it. But I know that when the race ends and the noise fades, this—you—is where I want to be.