Chapter Text
Deep down Lewis had always known. He had always known that it all would lead to this, that this moment would happen one day.
And of course it would happen here. It was a strange kind of logic that it could be no other place than this so well-known track in Spain.
Lewis had tried so hard to not give Nico an opportunity to approach him, even when he knew he was only pushing back the inevitable.
For such a long time he had thought Nico would be too much of a coward to try to talk to him. He had been the one running away after all in 2016. Because that was what it had been to Lewis, running away. A flight. From competition and rivalry. But above all a flight from what they had been.
In the last few months however he had seen a subtle change in his former rival’s eyes, a certain desperately determined undertone had become noticeable, even in his boring vlogs about his oh so happy life. It almost brought Lewis some sick kind of satisfaction, but that was quickly countered by his fake Instagram and Twitter profiles that he used to keep track of that silent desperation on Nico’s face. Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer, even Lewis understood that he might have taken that one a bit too far.
Especially since March Lewis had had too much time to think about it all. The lack of busy social lives and the looming threat of an unknown disease had pushed people back into their own worlds and heads. Both him and Nico had tried to adapt, both in their own, and as always completely different ways. He had watched everything Nico had put online, every little thing, hating it with whole his heart, yet never able to look away. He had once almost convinced himself that it was the same as watching an inevitable disaster enroll right in front of you, but that wasn’t the truth at all. The truth was the ugly drunk confession he poured out while facetiming Sebastian, a little over three months into the crisis.
‘I can’t seem to live without him Seb, even when I say I hate him, he’s constantly on my mind.’
Seb had sighed, had closed his eyes for what felt like hours before gently saying those words Lewis so dreaded to hear.
‘You’re not over him Lew, in no way. But neither is he over you. Maybe it’s time to talk to him. Call him. Well, call him tomorrow, please don’t call him drunk like this.’
But Lewis hadn’t called. Not even after so many pointed looks from Sebastian, not even after the first race finally went down in Austria. He never had the time, he told himself, but he didn’t make time was probably the more honest reason. His unease grew when the season got past the first races. Nico was doing a lot of press work for Sky, both within the paddock and from home and it would only be a matter of time before they would be in a situation they couldn’t escape from. Even when Lewis wasn’t entirely sure they would both want to escape, maybe that was only him now. Nico seemed rather keen on trying to get closer to him. Lewis knew better than to be suspicious about every little thing the German did, but he couldn’t help thinking that his change of mind about the situation at Ferrari, about Sebastian and even his stance on the whole ‘end racism’ campaign were meant, at least partly, as some kind of peace offering. But even if that was the case, there was simply no way Lewis would accept that offer. Nico and him were done. A distant memory from a long time ago. Even when his heart, his drunk mouth and his best friend told him otherwise.
Damn that shining smile, wavy blond hair and German accent. There was nothing left to salvage because there was nothing left to save. And that should’ve been his first words when the inevitable finally happened on a grey coloured track in Barcelona.
But four years after their last talk in private, his first words weren’t an immediate shutdown of every possible conversation, a condemnation of whatever they once had been to a long gone past. Of course not. Because nothing ever went the way it should go when it came to Nico.
Lewis panicked.
His eyes quickly scanned his surroundings, but he already knew he would not get away from this. Not this time. ‘You can’t run forever’, his mother had told him more than once when he was younger. ‘What’s meant for you will always come around, you can’t hide forever’, he had heard countless times too. But in what sick version of reality Nico was meant for him? That couldn’t be the truth, could it? Surely fate wouldn’t play him like that.
Finally his gaze came back to the man in front of him and he hated how he could still always remember everything about him. The way his hair danced in the wind, in the beginning rain. His hands, never in his pockets, always talking, gesturing. He was wearing a mask, just like Lewis himself, but it didn’t matter, he had dreamed about his face so many broken nights. At least he couldn’t see his smile like this. At least that wouldn’t distract him. It was a small comfort.
In the background he noticed the people around them stopping, openly looking at them, some already pulling their phones out of their pockets and bags. Lewis didn’t know what they were hoping to see, it wasn’t as if they would fight, really fight in public. Not even after everything that led them to this moment. They had always hurt each other the most behind closed doors. But no one knew that. People had of course seen their fallout as teammates, the tension, the anger in cooldown-rooms and press conferences. But that had been only what had happened on the surface. And Lewis would keep it like that. For himself. But maybe even for Nico, too. There were still levels of unfairness that even they would never touch.
Lewis sighed, part of him wanting so badly to just disappear from this moment, from this place, but a small voice in his head that sounds an awful lot like a certain German colleague screamed at him to stay. To talk. To at least behave as the grownup he had become. What had happened in 2016 could possibly be blamed on still youthful emotions, on a certain sharpness, an edge everyone had expected him to lose in the years that followed. But the emotions that were currently threatening to break down his so carefully constructed walls might not be youthful anymore, they were just as sharp and just as overwhelming.
He should probably say something. But at least Nico seemed speechless too, now that they were actually standing together even with the required distance between them.
He should probably at least look his former teammate in the eyes, but he had never been so scared of looking. Eyes on the lights, foot on the throttle, hands around the steering wheel of the fastest cars in the world he had never felt this fear.
What would he see in those so well-known eyes? What if it was a reflection of the memories he had pushed so far back they had become like butterflies trapped in amber. So real, yet unreachable. So seemingly alive and yet so something alive from a distant past. Not meant to be here if not for the person that trapped them. And he had kept those memories, no matter how much he had grown to hate the man they revolved around. He had kept them, and cherished them in the short moments of clarity before pouring the drink that would be the one too many.
Nico was about to say something, to break the silence and make this real. Lewis saw it in the way he took a slightly deeper breath and looked up for the first time, trying to catch Lewis’s eyes.
This time Lewis let him and he instantly wished he hadn’t. Because those eyes had always haunted his dreams and thoughts filled with a blazing fire, a harsh gaze, a judging, challenging look. It were those eyes that had looked at him like that when they were still racing together, fuelling the fire in his own heart and the hate he fell into when he stumbled over the remnants of their shared history.
Only know did he realize that perhaps the hate he had seen for all those years, the hate he had seen here in 2016 could be nothing more than a reflection of his own eyes, a mirror in which he saw his own, sometimes downright egoistic soul. Maybe, when he hadn’t let his vision get clouded with competition and learned rivalry he had seen what he saw now for the first time. Nico’s eyes, still so beautiful, were only filled with pain and regret and there certainly was no fire blazing, ready to destroy him.
Lewis’s world stopped spinning.
‘Lewis?’ Oh how he hated how his name now sounded so uncertain, so questioning in that familiar German accent. That accent he had gotten used to once to associate with happiness and lightness.
Nico was still looking at him, hurt, regret, sadness and sometimes, if Lewis pretended hard enough, just the smallest slivers of nostalgia and anger. It caught him off guard how Nico was just letting it all be seen, for the first time in what must be years there was only one wall between them, the one Lewis had built so carefully with the excuse of protecting himself and his career from pain. But it had mostly functioned to keep those confusing feelings that came with a certain sky-like blue in someone’s eyes out. It was only now that he realized that he hadn’t built this wall to show his strength against something ready to come for him, he had been nothing but the coward he made Nico out to be, hiding behind that high wall and telling himself it was okay because Nico was doing the same. Sebastian had called it childish once and Lewis had huffed and changed the topic. It was okay, they were both doing it. It didn’t hurt the team, they still got their trophies, so what was there to change? Until now. Because now Nico wasn’t hiding anymore.
‘Lewis.’ The second time he sounded a bit more sure of himself even when it was still spoken softly, as if not meant for anybody’s ears but his.
Lewis tried to look away, he truly did, but it was as if he was being held hostage by the hurt in Nico’s eyes. The sadness in his voice. The hurt and sadness that he put there, at least for the biggest part.
It took him an enormous amount of courage to find his voice. So when he finally reacted to his rival’s presence and spoke his name he was already exhausted.
‘Nico.’
A soft blue spark of hope appeared in the German’s eyes.
‘Lewis, I feel like I should ask you how you’re doing, it is what I ask everyone I meet here again. But is that really what we’ve come to? After all this time Lewis, is there anything more here than ordinary questions and remarks about the weather?’
Nico stopped abruptly and Lewis wondered how much of this Nico had really meant to say, but a part of him understood. If you have nothing left to lose, why not lay it all open? He wished he had been so brave.
‘Nico’, much further than his name proved to be difficult.
‘Nico.’
Oh how familiar that sound still was, how well it fitted, how nice it felt to speak it.