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marieshyperf1xations · 20 hours ago

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Hiiii for the prompt requests i’d love hulknussen + fake dating 🤩🙏

taiga!! thank you so much for this request, when it came in I thought I had my eyes opened. fake dating hulknussen is something so dear to me but for some reason it never occured to me to write it myself. have roughly 3k words of kind of fake dating? im not sure if it qualifies or if it's more pre-fake dating but I hope it satisfies the fake dating + pining + feelings realization itch nonetheless <3 this is set vaguely in 2022, so when nico was a reserve at aston and kevin came back to haas to partner mick. it was also before any media knew about them making up after hungary. I felt the very strong desire to turn this into a multi chapter but I really couldnt justify that currently- fake dating is just the kind of trope that really wants a lot of time and space, I think.

As much as they swear up and down that this isn’t the case, GDPA meetings always conclude in a good measure of alcohol. Kevin knows this.

Despite that, he does not expect to find himself sitting in a circle, on the floor of a hotel room, barely two hours after their meeting concluded. With Seb and Lewis and Ricciardo and Hülkenberg, for some godforsaken reason.

He doesn’t know where Mick went. In fact, Kevin doesn’t know where half the grid is.

“It was the stupidest, most insane idea I’d ever heard,” Lewis giggles, remarkably sober between the five of them. Himself, Kevin is a bit buzzed, but all within respectable measures and margins. Not like Seb, who reminds Kevin more and more of his days at Red Bull with how the alcohol softens him up.

“It as a little bit stupid, I will admit,” Seb concedes. “But you have to- have to think about it. No one cares about rainbows on shirt. But that would- people would actually talk about the issues.”

Kevin raises his brows, only half listening, and perhaps only half awake, too. The topic they’ve brought up is too far out of his reach, and with how Lewis’ face falls a little, is too serious for the rest of the group, too.

Then Daniel says, “What, like, if I dated a guy? You want me to PR-stunt that shit?”

“Yeah, exactly,” Seb says, before breaking into a grin. “I’m serious. If I didn’t have a wife and child maybe I would do it.”

Lewis calls his bluff immediately. “No you wouldn’t, shut up.”

“Okay, maybe not. But you- you get my point, no?”

And where Daniel agrees, Kevin’s gaze is drawn to Nico opposite to him for no particular reason. He’s still lounging on the ground sideways, a rum and coke and small bowl of salted peanuts in front of him. Another thing on Kevin’s list of things he’s not sure why they have to be like that, specifically; why Nico is lying on the ground instead of sitting up like everyone else.

God, Kevin is getting sleepy. The sight of Nico makes him sleepy. His eyelids feel heavy, watching him. Maybe he gets why Nico is lying down, even if on his side and awkwardly propped up on his elbows doesn’t seem very comfortable in the long term.

Daniel suggests, “I betcha one of the young’uns would be down for it if you tell them about it. They love that shit.”

Full of disbelief, Nico asks, “Being gay?”

“Nah, mate, I’m talking about the pranks and the, like, espionage aspect of it.”

Suddenly Kevin is listening to a—unusually heated—discussion about how much ‘espionage’ and planning would actually be involved in such an endeavour.

Eventually Lewis says, “But it’s—it’s so cruel, isn’t it? Dating someone just for the sake of a publicity stunt like that. Are you just gonna break up with them by the end, or what?”

“Can’t you just both know about it before?” Kevin asks, his first contribution to the discussion. In all honesty, he hadn’t planned on contributing at all. But he’s gotten sort of invested by now.

Lewis responds, “Mate, you could not pay me enough to put up with the media bullshit. Especially not if I were the first- boyfriend of a driver.”

Daniel shakes his head. “You just gotta find some real attention whore. I’m sure there’s someone who’d do it.”

Still chewing on his peanuts, Nico says, “Or you just go for someone who’s already in the spotlight,” with a shrug.

It casts a silence across the group, startling after that easy flowing discussion. Kevin can basically see the gears turning inside of Sebastian’s head.

Then he says, “Another driver. Yeah.”

He sounds a little bit like he’s just had a realization—albeit a drunken, and probably very-much-not-sound-proof one—and reached enlightenment. What started out as hypothetical musings about something they won’t do, anyway, looks oddly serious on Sebastian’s face now. Kevin watches him with mild interest, the rim of his own glass resting against his bottom lip.

The good thing about not contributing much to conversations such as this is that it always leaves him blissfully out of the trouble. Whatever Sebastian is cooking up now will probably end up Lewis’ problem. Maybe Daniel’s, if Seb feels really daring. But Kev? He’s conveniently out of the picture.

“I mean, doesn’t have to be a driver,” Nico says. “People date media personnel or managers all the time.”

To which Lewis says, “Yeah, no, that’s an awful idea. Your first gay relationship can’t also have problematic, uh, workplace relations or anything like that. It’s gotta be- clean.”

Kevin wrinkles his nose. Lewis is scarily aware of every little thing like that, at all times. Like the media and PR training they all had to do was done a hundred times extra for him, chipping away at his exterior until it was silky smooth and unattackable.

Nico rolls his eyes. “Okay then. You and Seb date.”

There’s a mix of laughter from Daniel and Kevin and Nico himself while Lewis pats Seb on the shoulder as if to say, if I could I would. But Seb just shrugs with a grin and mentions Hanna again, which—fair enough, really. It’s not exactly ‘clean’ to leave a child and wife behind for your fake-boyfriend.

“Okay,” Kevin says, more matter of fact than he would have been ten minutes ago. With half a smile he asks, “Who on the grid is- is single? Who can we put up to this?”

As it turns out, they’re not as in the know as they thought they’d be. There are the obvious ones, the children and wedding rings. At some point Daniel suggests that since both Lewis and Fernando have that ever-looming ‘mystery’ status attached to them in the dating department they should be the ones to date. It earns him a mean glare from Lewis, and one too-amused Hülkenberg to tap him on the arm approvingly.

Seb returns to their circle from getting them another round of drinks mixed and asks for a list to catch him up. Daniel has only Lando and Fernando outside of them to show for it—Kevin, Nico and Lewis as part of the group. But then to each he has an addendum, like Lando being a slut and Fernando too evil and that he’s pretty sure that Lewis is only saying he’s single without that actually being the case. It’s a rather crude accusation to make, in Kevin’s opinion.

He hasn’t even realized who it leaves on the list until he feels a pair of eyes on him, unwavering. Nico has abandoned his half empty bowl and drink to watch Kevin silently, looking a little lost in thought. Returning Nico’s stare takes longer than it should to snap Nico out of his stupor, and only earns Kevin a mild smile. Clearly trying to patch his weird behaviour over while Nico looks back over to Daniel.

“So, what do you say, guys?” Daniel asks with a boisterous grin. “Wanna take one for the team?”

“What?” Kevin asks, slowly catching up. And when Nico still hasn’t said anything, he adds with laughter, “Yeah, sure. Of course.” Lewis joins into his laugh, making Kevin feel strangely proud of himself. He’s a fun guy to hang around with, as little as it happens. It feels nice to get along with him.

Then Seb announces, “I’m texting Britta,” with a shit-eating smile.

Lewis leans into his space to see for himself, matching none of the overwhelmed feeling Kevin is experiencing. Where Kevin stutters out a “What?” Lewis laughs, “You aren’t actually,” before colliding with Sebastian’s shoulder.

Daniel says, “This will be great.”

“Oh my God,” from Lewis, reaching for Sebastian’s phone. “She’s going to eat you in the morning, man.”

“What,” Seb defends, “It’s funny. She’ll get it, don’t worry.”

Kevin smiles around his glass awkwardly. The joke is perhaps a bit too much at his expense, but if Nico won’t make a big deal out of it neither will he. And, given his slightly tipsy state, it might even be funny.

Because it is a silly thought to think of dating Nico. Even sillier to think of the reactions it would garner, when so many people seem to still believe they hate each other. Kevin doesn’t think anyone outside of the closer circle of the drivers has picked up on them breaking their silence after so long.

Not that they’re close, but they—they talk. Mainly in situations like this, where they don’t talk to each other specifically. No one runs away from groups because they included Kevin anymore, that sort of thing.

When their eyes meet, Nico smiles, almost dopily so. Kevin huffs with amusement and gets one of Nico’s signature duck faces in return. Like he’s blowing him a clumsy kiss.

Daniel picks up on it. “Look at you guys, you’re ready to go.”

“I don’t think we have to kiss if it’s pretend,” Kevin notes.

Unhelpfully, Seb says, “Well, you could. If you wanted.”

And then Lewis says, “But then it’s no longer pretend. If you want to, it’s no longer pretend.”

Except it doesn’t matter what the others are saying, because Kevin is still caught up on you could and if you wanted. Which he doesn’t. But he could.

It has—obviously—never occurred to him to kiss another driver. To kiss a driver like Hülkenberg. It hasn’t even occurred to Kevin to kiss a man. Never thought about it.

Now with everyone around him talking about that specifically, he- he thinks about it. In abstract concepts, can’t envision it. Just pushes the knowledge that he could from one side of his head to the other. He could. Nico could.

He wonders what it would be like. It’s so outside of his usual area of experience that he comes up blank. Tries to think of what it feels like to kiss girls and then put Nico’s face to it, but it just confuses him more, leaves him flustered and with his face heating up not just from the alcohol.

Kevin is torn out of his thoughts when he hears, “Sure, I’ll give Magnussen a kiss.”

“What?” from Lewis.

And at the same time, a “What?” out of Kevin’s mouth, too.

Nico throws his head back with laughter. It’s clearly very funny to him. Kevin doesn’t think it’s that funny—he can see Lewis’s face is serious, too, before it slowly gives way for exasperated humour.

Seb prompts, “Well, go on then,” gesturing at Kevin. Nico is still lying on his side, grinning wide.

Kevin’s head is still reeling with Nico’s words, with Seb’s. You could, if you wanted to. And Kevin didn’t think he wanted to, but apparently Nico does, and—

“Come on, man, that’s not funny,” Lewis placates. “We’re not children at school, tryna—heckle people into something.”

It makes Kevin relax momentarily. Not that he actually thought Nico was going to come up and kiss him. Just—he’s relaxed now. They’re switching topic, moving away from ‘Kevin and Nico, make-out interlude.’

With a grin, Daniel says, “With Seb you never know, man.”

And then the topic is over. Kevin doesn’t have to hear another thing about it, nor does he think about it himself.

They lose Nico at some point and then Daniel, and suddenly Mick is back and then the night is over without Kevin even saying goodbye to any of the people in that circle. The way more pressing story of the evening lies in one of the younger guys forgetting that this is, technically, still a work event, with semi-professional behaviour expected. Which does not include getting completely hammered. (Only a little bit.)

Similarly, Kevin does not expect to find himself in an office of Aston Martin’s hospitality barely a week later. He looks out of place in his Haas outfit, Britta and Seb and Nico all clad in Aston Martin’s disgustingly rich green.

All he can think of is we were drunk.

Britta says, “I mean, look, it’s not a completely useless idea,” and Kevin just thinks drunk.

“There would have to be lots of planning involved, and way too many things to consider so that it doesn’t all- blow up in our faces.”

Drunk. Shitfaced.

Seb asks how long it would take. What the timeline is from some hints dropped here and there to a hard launch to letting it fizzle out again because they’re, you know, not actually together. Seb is halfway to asking if they’ll have to kiss over podiums and wins before realizing his mistake.

There are stuttered words and awkward glances at Nico and Kev from Britta.

Nico says, “It works well with us because no one cares about us.”

She winces, but then nods with a quiet apology. “It’s just- you’re a reserve. And Kevin, you know this, it’s like this for a lot of drivers in the midfield, really! You guys don’t get super long contracts! So it’s just-”

Sighing, Kevin says, “We don’t know if I’ll still be racing next year at all. Yeah, I got it.”

Seb begins, “But that does make it easy. You can just go back to your life-” and then he seems to realize he walked into the same trap again, before scrambling to add, “If that is what happens. We don’t even know, anyway.”

“Right, yeah, I got it,” Kevin repeats, arms crossed in front of his chest defensively. It sounds more and more like certain people in this room think it’s an actually good idea they should go through with.

Kevin looks at Nico, really looks at him. Looks at his stupidly perfect hair and the Aston team kit that stretches across his shoulders and chest. At the stubble he never manages to keep at the same length, sometimes a bit too short and sometimes a bit too long.

And Kevin is supposed to be dating that. All of that.

What a ridiculous notion. There’s no way they’ll convince anyone of it.

It reminds him of the evening before, when he’d tried to imagine kissing Nico. They—probably?—won’t actually have to do it, Kevin thinks. But it’ll already be strange walking around with the knowledge that people think they do. That they think Kevin knows what Nico tastes like, what his face and his hair and his clothes feel like underneath Kevin’s hands.

But Seb seems so hopeful. Wide eyed and talking about the good it could do, and then spins something about marketability, about how Nico and Kevin will benefit from it, too. Britta keeps looking between the two, waiting, unsure, and maybe she looks a bit curious, too.

When Kevin meets Nico’s eyes there’s some sort of mutual agreement happening between them, the kind Kevin would struggle putting into words. And then he sees Nico shrug, say his signature, unbothered, “Yeah, sure,” and hears himself follow suit.

Britta tells them that dating another driver is a first for any PR rep. And, rationally, Kevin knew this going in. But he is still surprised when there is simply stunned silence.

Because how do they start not-dating?

A girlfriend simply gets brought along, hand-in-hand, one Thursday or Friday in the paddock. The idea of walking in for qualifying next week holding Nico’s hand is a laughable one.

They get a crash course about the ‘basics’, that they’ll need to post some vague things that Kevin wouldn’t have even thought to post under normal circumstances. He’s not on his socials much. Britta tells him that will have to change for this to work.

She also tells them they have no chemistry. Took one look at them, sitting next to each other at her table with their cups of coffee in front of them, and decreed that there are many things she can make work, but not this. Not convincing people that two men with the emotional expression of a rock are in love with each other.

By the end they have a list of things they need to work through and a timeline to go with it. It starts with pictures on planes location tagged as Denmark and turns into pictures of two cups of hot chocolate instead of just the one.

It’s learning each other’s preferences, just a bit—Britta tells them three days of hanging out at Kevin’s place and putting some effort in should do it without sacrificing too much of their time. To move from barely acquaintances to a little bit more than acquaintances. Enough to convince people they could be dating.

Nico makes a joke that part of those ‘get to know me’ endeavours have to include making out with each other. He’s the only one who laughs. Kevin doesn’t get how his life has turned around so quickly that he’s thought about kissing Nico Hülkenberg on so many different occasions within the past twenty-four hours.

He’s thinking about it again, now. Thinking about Nico coming over, about sharing hot chocolate and letting a movie play in the background while they talk. Wonders what Nico is like, if he’s the kind who keeps complaining and commenting on movies. Or if he’s quiet, like Kevin.

That’s the sort of thing they’re supposed to know about each other, as boyfriend and boyfriend. That’s the sort of thing Kevin will know, soon.

It’s a thought that makes him unusually nervous.

And then his eyes are brought down to Nico’s lips again and he’s reminded of a memory, old, so old, from when he was younger. One that’s been buried deep and forgotten.

Twenty-two and in his first season. Wearing shitty McLaren merch like they were the best clothes anyone could have given him.

He’d been a little bit less familiar with everything back then, obviously. Took a wrong turn and rounded the corner to a tall figure pressing a woman to the wall of the building, hidden and almost private.

Of course, Kevin backed up, not a stranger to what he was witnessing. But then Nico had looked up, and Kevin remembers how long the image had stuck with him. Of that young Nico with his hair so messy and his lips puffy and wet from kissing.

It stuck with him for longer than it should have, for reasons he could never identify. But then he forgot it, forgot about it until-

Now Kevin can’t help but wonder if Nico still looks the same after. Now Kevin thinks that it’s a bit funny, even, that he has this image for himself, that he knows this. Something that is so undoubtedly reserved for Nico’s partner.

Maybe most surprisingly, a part of Kevin whispers, do it.

do it do it do it.

Like it’s an actual option. That they could spend three days getting to know each other and by the end Kevin will know if Nico still looks the same. If he flushes at the attention. What the real thing looks and feels like, not just the pretending kind that Nico was talking about. That Kevin will be able to answer all those questions he had about how Nico might feel underneath Kevin’s hands and lips.

What a ridiculous notion. Almost as ridiculous as pretending to date Nico Hülkenberg.

#oh fuck me this is brilliant #the dynamic between them is chefs kiss #if you ever want to write a sequel to this rest assured I'll eat it tf up #hulknussen #f1 rpf #f1 fic rec #haasbands

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