Chapter Text
Gabriel walked into the university auditorium like a zombie.
His body was there — impeccably dressed in a light-blue button-up and fancy pants, hair a bit messy with unruly curls — but his mind was still stuck in that grease-stained garage on the other side of town. The contrast was already violent in person, but inside his head, it felt even worse. There, the AC smelled like synthetic lavender and freshly cleaned carpet. People spoke softly, typing on MacBooks and iPads, talking about stock market updates or which bars and parties they were planning to hit later.
No one there smelled like motor oil. No one there had rough hands or looked at him like he was a loose bolt that needed tightening.
He climbed the steps of the lecture hall, spotting Oliver’s perfectly-disheveled brown hair in their usual row, third from the top, left corner, strategically placed to see the professor without being the first to get called on.
"You’re alive," Ollie said, eyes still glued to his phone the moment Gabriel sat beside him. "I was about to call the police or the morgue. You vanished from the party last night like Cinderella, man."
Gabriel let his backpack drop to the floor with a dull thud and collapsed into the chair. Every muscle in his body felt tight, the result of sleeping crooked on a stranger’s couch and the stress of being in a car with Nico Hülkenberg, even if only for a few minutes.
"Cinderella had it easy," Gabriel muttered, rubbing his face. "Her carriage turned into a pumpkin. Mine turned into a two-ton paperweight in the middle of a storm."
Ollie finally looked at him, the casual amusement on his face shifting to genuine concern as he took in Gabriel’s dark circles.
"What? Did you crash your car?" Oliver lowered his voice, leaning closer. "Man, why didn’t you call me? I would’ve picked you up. Or sent my dad’s driver. Literally anything."
"It was two in the morning, Ollie. And I was in the middle of nowhere, near that sketchy convenience store off the highway exit," Gabriel explained, opening his notebook with zero intention of writing anything. "And I didn’t crash it. It… died. A fuse."
He said that last word with a particular bitterness. A damn fuse.
"So what did you do? Sleep in the car?"
Gabriel hesitated. Saying it out loud made the whole thing feel like a fever dream.
"No. I called one of my dad’s old contacts. A mechanic."
"At two a.m.? Seriously?"
"Yeah. His name’s Nico," Gabriel said, and the strange feeling returned, a heaviness in his chest that wasn’t entirely bad. "He picked me up with a tow truck. And… well, the rain was insane, the car had to stay in the shop, and no Uber was accepting that ride back."
Oliver’s eyes slowly widened, like he was watching a horror movie reflected in Gabriel’s pupils.
"Don’t tell me you—"
"I slept at his place," Gabriel confessed quickly, ripping the band-aid off. "In the back of the shop."
"Gabi!" Oliver burst out, loud enough to make two girls in the row in front turn around. He lowered his voice, hissing, "Have you lost your fucking mind? You slept in some random mechanic’s house? You could’ve woken up missing a kidney!"
Gabriel rolled his eyes, though he’d thought the exact same thing a few hours earlier.
"He’s not a stranger, technically. He’s my dad’s friend. And he didn’t steal my kidneys, Ollie. He gave me coffee, a blanket, and…" Gabriel blushed as he remembered Nico’s very technical inspection of his waist, "…dry clothes."
Oliver leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, studying him with pure skepticism.
"Dry clothes. Mm-hmm. And how much did he charge for this luxury babysitting service? Bet the tow cost more than the repair."
Gabriel bit his bottom lip. This was the part Oliver would never fully get, not someone whose solution to every problem was swiping his dad’s black card.
"He didn’t want money," Gabriel said.
"What do you mean he didn’t want money? What is he, the Holy Mary of wrenches?"
"He said I owed him a night of sleep," Gabriel explained, waving his pen. "So… we made a deal. The accounting in his shop is a disaster. He wants me to organize the financial and administrative stuff. Four hours of work in exchange for the rescue."
Oliver blinked. Once. Twice. Then he let out an incredulous laugh, shaking his head.
"Hold on. Let me get this straight. You, Gabriel Bortoleto, straight-A student, are gonna spend your free nights doing taxes for some grumpy mechanic in a shop in the middle of nowhere… for free?"
"It’s not free, it’s a trade," Gabriel corrected, defensive. "And it’s about honor, Ollie. I woke the guy up in the middle of the night. He helped me. I don’t wanna be the rich kid who throws money at problems and runs away. I wanna be useful."
"You are useful! You make spreadsheets for my dad that no one else understands!" Oliver shot back, but stopped when he saw the stubborn determination in Gabriel’s eyes.
He knew that look. It was the same look Gabriel had when he decided he was getting an A+ on an impossibly hard exam. Oliver sighed, defeated.
"You’re insane. Completely insane," Oliver declared, though there was a small smile tugging at his lips. "But… what’s he like? This Nico guy. For you to agree to become his night accountant, he must be at least interesting."
The image of Nico flashed instantly in Gabriel’s mind. The smell of tobacco, those sharp blue eyes, the rough-but-protective way he turned on the truck heater, the strong arm holding the car key. "Interesting" was way too weak of a word.
"He’s…" Gabriel searched for the right term, twirling the pen between his fingers. "Intense. He’s nothing like the people we know. He doesn’t sugarcoat shit. He tells me I’m a terrible driver and that my car is a clunker. To my face."
"And you liked that?" Oliver raised an eyebrow, suggestive.
"I didn’t like it. I just…" Gabriel froze, feeling his face heat under the fluorescent lights. "I just think it’ll be good professional experience. Learning to deal with difficult clients. Crisis management and all…"
"Crisis management," Oliver repeated. "Sure. Keep pretending it’s that. But if this guy makes you carry tires or you show up here all bruised, I’m personally firing you."
The professor walked in at that moment, slapping a folder onto the desk and cutting the conversation short. Gabriel opened his notebook to the right page, relieved to escape further interrogation, but his mind didn’t focus on the board.
He looked at the clock. Ten hours until he could go back to the shop. And, to his total horror, he realized he was counting the minutes.
The rest of the day dragged by in a haze of air-conditioning and gray carpet.
Aventum Group’s building was a monument to corporate efficiency and transparency, glass walls, polished white desks, and a silence broken only by the soft clacking of keyboards and the hum of printers. It was Gabriel’s natural habitat. He knew exactly how to move there. How to smile at the receptionist, how to prepare the weekly performance report Oliver’s father demanded, how to look busy even when his mind was miles away.
But that afternoon, the "glass box" — Nico’s disgusted nickname for it — felt too tight. While reviewing a spending projection spreadsheet for the next quarter, he caught himself staring at the pale reflection of his own face in the dark screen beside him. He looked exactly like always, the prodigy intern, well-dressed, focused. And yet he felt like a fraud.
Under the desk, his foot tapped nervously against the carpeted floor.
His mind kept betraying him. Every ten minutes, instead of numbers, flashes from the night before. The warm orange glow of Nico’s kitchen light. The rough texture of the towel he’d been lent. The way the mechanic held the pack of underwear and looked at his waist with a kind of clinical practicality that — for some stupid, humiliating reason — made Gabriel’s stomach twist.
It was ridiculous. He was surrounded by junior executives in Italian suits and imported cologne, people who spoke his language. Why the hell was he thinking about a man who smelled like cigarette smoke and diesel and probably shaved with a razor blade?
"Gabriel?"
His supervisor’s voice snapped him back. He straightened immediately in his ergonomic chair.
"Yes, Mrs. Roffer?"
"You’re very distracted today," she said, not scolding, more like a patronizing motherly comment. "Did you finish reviewing the contracts?"
"Yes. I just sent them to your email," he replied automatically, efficiency as self-defense.
"Wonderful. You’re a machine, kid. Don’t know what we would do without you," she said, giving his shoulder two light pats before walking away, her floral perfume clinging heavily to the stale office air.
Gabriel sighed. A machine. Nico had said cars don’t die for no reason, the problem is usually between the seat and the steering wheel. Gabriel kind of felt like that now. A perfectly tuned engine running on nothing.
He looked at the clock in the corner of the screen. 5:45 p.m. Technically the workday was over, but company culture said no one left before six if they wanted to be taken seriously. He opened the anonymous tab and, feeling like a criminal, typed: Scorpions discography. He spent the last fifteen minutes of work reading album names, trying to remember which poster he’d seen hanging in Nico’s room. He didn’t want to show up completely clueless if the topic came up again. Classic Gabriel, trying to control the uncontrollable.
When the clock finally hit 6:00 p.m., Gabriel was the first to stand. He packed his laptop, turned off the monitor, and grabbed his phone.
His fingers hovered over the message icon. Nico’s number was saved there with no profile picture, just the default gray silhouette. The status under it simply said "do not disturb." Gabriel would bet that status had been there since 2015. He had to text. It was the polite thing to do. Professional. He typed, deleted, typed again.
"Hello, Nico. This is Gabriel. I’m leaving the office now."
Too stiff. Too robotic. Deleted.
"Sup. I’m heading over to pay my debt."
Too forced. He didn’t say "sup." Deleted.
He took a breath, watching the panoramic elevator glide down the side of the building as the city lit up for the evening. He decided to be himself, practical and polite. He typed quickly before courage evaporated.
"Hi, Nico. I’m leaving my internship now. I should get there around 7 p.m., traffic permitting. Does that time work for you?"
He sent it. Watched the screen. Waiting for the double blue check marks. Nothing. Just one gray check.
He walked toward the elevator, phone burning in his hand. As the elevator descended twenty floors, the phone buzzed. Gabriel unlocked it too fast.
"The gate will be open. Bring food. I’m not cooking."
Gabriel let out a short laugh in the empty elevator. No "hello," no "good night," no "fine." Just instructions. Direct, blunt, functional. Exactly like the man himself.
Putting his phone away, that strange anxiety in his chest shifted into expectation. He slung his backpack over his shoulder and stepped out of the mirrored building. For the first time all day, he felt like he was going somewhere real.
Gabriel stopped at a fast-food place on the way. Not his usual kind of meal — his body was a temple of organic salads and lean proteins — but something told him Nico wouldn’t react well to salmon poke or a green juice.
He ordered two double burgers, two large fries, and sodas. The smell of salt and grease filled the immaculate interior of his car, and weirdly, made his mouth water in a way it hadn’t in years. While driving toward the industrial zone, he unbuttoned the top of his shirt, feeling the air grow heavier as he left the polished city center behind.
When he arrived at the shop, the gate was indeed slightly open. Gabriel parked, got out, shoved the heavy metal aside with his shoulder, careful not to dirty his shirt, and stepped inside. Loud music filled the garage. Rock You Like a Hurricane blasted from old speakers, echoing off steel walls.
Gabriel saw Nico immediately and his feet stopped listening to his brain.
The Opala that had been covered the night before was now lifted on the hydraulic platform. Nico stood under it, working on the suspension. He’d ditched the leather vest. He was wearing only a white tank top — now gray with sweat and grease — clinging to his body like a second skin. Gabriel froze, gripping the paper bags of food as his eyes traced the shape of the German man.
Nico’s arms were raised over his head, handling a huge wrench with a casual kind of strength. His biceps were tense, veins standing out under his pale skin like a map. There were black oil smudges on his forearms and a long streak of grease down the side of his neck, disappearing dangerously into the collar of the tank top.
It was a primitive sight. Dirty. And, to Gabriel’s absolute despair, the hottest thing he had seen in months.
Nico turned the wrench with a grunt of effort, the sound escaping his rough throat and mixing with the guitar solo. Gabriel swallowed hard, the collar of his shirt suddenly too tight even with the top button undone.
As if sensing eyes on him, Nico stopped. He lowered his arms, took a deep breath, and turned his head. His blue eyes found Gabriel standing by the entrance, small in his office clothes. Nico didn’t smile. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, only getting dirtier, and walked over to the panel to lower the music’s volume.
"You’re late," Nico said, his voice echoing in the garage. He didn’t sound annoyed, just… hungry.
"Traffic..." Gabriel said, his voice coming out a bit higher than he’d like. He walked to the only clear worktable, the one not covered in disassembled parts. "I brought burgers. I figured…"
Nico approached. His presence radiated literal heat. Gabriel’s clean smell crashed violently against Nico’s mixture of sweat, metal, and grease.
"Burgers work," Nico muttered, stopping dangerously close.
He looked at the bags of food, then slowly dragged his eyes upward shamelessly over Gabriel's clothes. Italian leather shoes. Perfectly tailored pants. Designer belt. His gaze stopped at the undone button of Gabriel’s shirt, where his warm, bronzed skin peeked through, slightly flushed.
Gabriel felt blood rush to his ears under that intense inspection. He felt stripped, despite being overdressed.
"You come here to work, or to attend a shareholder meeting, Bortoleto?" Nico drawled, a slow, dangerous smirk forming.
"Like I said in the text, I came straight from the office," Gabriel replied, trying to stand tall even though his knees felt unsteady. "I didn’t have time to go home."
Nico stepped even closer, invading his space. He raised his grease-stained hand, and Gabriel’s breath caught, thinking he’d touch him. But Nico only reached for the paper bag Gabriel held against his chest. His fingers brushed Gabriel’s shirt, leaving — intentionally or not — a small black fingerprint right over Gabriel’s heart.
"You’re gonna ruin your doll clothes," Nico murmured. He pulled the bag from Gabriel’s hands, eyes locked on his, challenging. "Things get dirty around here, Gabriel. It’s inevitable."
There was a double meaning in the air. Gabriel looked down at the black smudge on his spotless shirt. He should have been horrified. He should have been thinking about detergent. Instead, a shiver shot down his spine. It felt like Nico had marked him.
"I don’t mind," Gabriel said, holding his gaze, surprising even himself. "I know how to wash my own clothes."
Nico’s eyebrows rose, amused by the small rebellion. His smirk widened into something almost predatory, but approving.
"We’ll see," the German said, turning away and walking toward the small sink in the corner. "Come on. Let’s eat before it gets cold. Then I’ll show you the size of the disaster you agreed to fix."
While Nico washed his hands with thick industrial soap, scrubbing his strong forearms under the water, Gabriel stood there, fingertips grazing the grease mark on his chest, trying — and failing — to steady his breathing. Jesus… things had just gotten even more complicated.