Chapter Text
COTA 2025 (Post Sprint Race)
Heat presses against Max’s throat, right against the collared skin beneath his race suit, the navy beckoning forth the sunlight like a moth to flame. It’s stifling, a constant pressure against his temples, making his head pound and his throat dry. It isn’t the only buildup that he’s feeling, but he keeps his mind from focusing on the mathematics of his situation.
He’s behind in the standings, the entire grand prix yet to come, but already had he been awarded eight points, all that the sprint would give him—a leg up on both McLaren, as both carbon fiber and the tyres flew in the air within Max’s mirrors.
He doesn’t want to dwell on it, the qualifying session staring him right in the face, but for the moment in time, the air con is on full blast, and he’s lying on the floor of his driver’s room. He cannot bring himself to peel off his suit; his limbs are too heavy for that, but he does lift the bottle of electrolytes to his lips, GP’s stubborn face flashing across his mind at the reminder to drink.
The door opens to his right, a flash of orange and white startling him when he’d been expecting the familiar haze of red instead. It shuts behind the man, hazel eyes meeting those of Max’s blue, and for a few moments, Lando doesn’t say anything.
The Brit’s gaze falls to the floor, anger and disappointment and hurt all coiling through his jaw in rapid, raw succession, working down the columns of his throat until it rests upon his collarbones, pooled within the hollow as the well draws deep from his chest. His Adam’s apple bobs, restraint wrought against his tongue, but Max sits against the far wall, legs extended outward on the floor in perfect indifference. The Brit isn’t angry with Max, but the Dutchman faces all kinds of anger like a small child faces their mother, with a tenderness of familiarity and comfort, yet he still remembers how the splits in his knuckles have bled.
Lando stands frozen, just within the threshold of Max’s room, but his eyes have long since gone glassy, seeing without being present at all. Max scoots over, patting the ground beside him, and only then does Lando remember his bodily autonomy to move. The Brit lets himself fall to the floor with a huff, the dramatics teasing a smile out of Max because this is one of his best friends, and who better to have by your side amongst the shattering or making of dreams?
Max wordlessly reaches into the small basket hidden beneath the cot to his left, grabs a packet of crisps, and hands them to Lando without a word. The curly-haired brunette takes them, stuffs half of them in his mouth, before finally, finally, letting Max in.
“It shouldn’t be like this,” Lando says around his mouthful of food, a crumb hanging from his lip as he pulls a knee up, letting his elbow rest atop. He plays with the plastic bag, fingertips curling and crinkling the edges, but Max knows that the anger is just beneath the surface.
He’s the best person to face it, but he lets Lando control the pace.
“I agree, the chips have wronged the world, mate,” Max says, his voice completely void of any teasing or fun, but he looks Lando in the eye as he says it.
Lando lets his jaw tense, feathering the muscle as he knows what Max is doing, but is still living in the stages of refusal to say it. He and Oscar are alike in that way, and honestly, when he’d first seen the uniform in the doorway, he hadn’t been sure which one of them it would be.
“It’s not the fucking crisps, Max,” Lando says, the hurt leaking out into his voice as he tries to place his thoughts, the syllables and consonants forming their places in line as they’ve both done this dance before.
Max nudges their shoulders together, a light gesture that lands heavy, giving the younger driver all the space he needs, with all the time he needs. It takes a few minutes; the air con is the only sound in the room, but Max can practically see it bleed out into the room, just as Lando opens his mouth to speak.
“I don’t know how to do this,” He admits, running a hand through his curls, fingers settling among the ringlets as he settles his grip, tight.
Max gives him a moment to continue, but when he makes no move, Max does the one thing he does best—pressing around the edges while waiting for the dam to burst.
He points to the bag of chips, “You typically eat them one at a time, Lan, right from the bag.”
Lando drops the bag, a scoff flying from his lips, and this is what Max had been waiting for. This is what he knows, what he can handle. He lets Charles have most of the soft moments, trying to get better at them himself, but anger has always been easier for him to stomach. Rage has always been something that crosses his palate and floods his mind with nostalgia more than sweetness ever could.
“Fuck off, you prick,” Lando says, lifting his foot and crushing the remaining snacks within the bag, crumbs flying from beneath his racing boot, and Max watches them puff out of their plastic containment without a word. The Brit’s chest rises and falls with effort, the sound of his breath filling the room, and Max rests his head back against the wall behind him.
It takes all of three seconds before—
“Fuck, Max, I’m sorry,” Lando mumbles, resting his head in his palms, curls falling across his forehead as he leans forward. His breaths are labored, sobs held back by the simple fact that he can’t break down, not with qualifying right around the corner, but the Brit knows it's a safe space for him to do so if he wishes.
Max lets his head lull to the side, looking at his friend practically curled in a tight ball, “Don’t apologize to me, mate, apologize to the crisps.” The stupid joke gets a pitiful huff of laughter out of his friend, and Max watches as the disappointment slowly ebbs from his shoulders.
“This was easier when it was you and me,” Lando admits somnolently, almost selfishly, a few minutes passing by as the silence had stretched.
“Oof, don’t let Charles hear that,” Max jokes, and Lando rises to the stupid bit, letting a laugh ring through the room.
“You know what I mean, you muppet. The title fight, the–the stupid back and forth. It was easier when it was with you.” Lando goes quiet, fingernails digging into his palms, but this time, he doesn’t need Max’s shitty humor to keep him talking.
“It was easier because it’s you. You’ve already won multiple titles, already danced with fucking Lewis of all people. It would’ve been my first, and it felt like I was going against a fucking giant. But the different teams, different expectations, different standings—everything made the difference. When it was you and I, I had the entire team behind me in support, hell, even Oscar was rooting for me, but now…”
He trails off, throat thick, and Max gives him all the space that he can. “Fuck, Max. It feels like we’re splitting this team apart. Andrea favors Oscar, Zak leans towards me, but even the fucking factory feels completely divided. You either get a smile or a glare when you walk past someone in Papaya, and it’s fucking with my head. I–I—I can’t even look across the fucking garage without Jon giving me a heated glare, and fucking Oscar hasn’t spoken to me all day.”
At that, Lando breaks, shoving his palms against his eyes as he falls against Max’s shoulder, and the Dutchman goes rigid, fully supporting the weight of the Brit against him.
Where Max and Charles were lucky that their relationship bridged across their teams, the McLaren boys hadn’t been so lucky. They’d known the possibility of this, last year had shown that, and they still proceeded to get together, to build a life together. They’re both reaching for the title with the same softness that they instill for one another.
The reality had just smacked both of them in the face.
“I want it so bad, Max,” Lando whispers, and Max is thrown back into the moments back in 2021, when he was willing to die for his first title. He’d driven injured, vision blurred, and head pounding, still fighting Lewis tooth and nail, lap for lap, until he’d claimed the final points in the year, his name going down in history.
He tries not to think about how it would have been to lose, to have his dream shattered before it ever really began.
Lando takes a deep, shuddering breath, “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be a boyfriend and a teammate and a championship rival. I feel like it's fucking eating me alive, and I know that I’m selfish to say that I want this championship more than anything… almost more than I want him.”
Max takes a breath, then another, and waits.
He has lost races, lost points he should’ve had, but never has he lost a championship. Never has he had a teammate so dangerously close to him that he could feel them nipping on his heels. Checo had come near, but even he paled in comparison to what Max had done, the points he had scored, the domination he had claimed during 2023.
But, he knows someone who has–two individuals who have been in something so similar that it tore them to pieces.
Lando sniffs, wipes at his eyes, determination and anger, and want so clearly written in his features that Max knows he’d be willing to do whatever is necessary to win. “Tell me you have a rule–tell me you have something.”
“Not yet,” Max admits, “But give me a week, and I promise you that I will.”
—
Nico Rosberg has been staring at the bedroom wall for the past thirteen minutes.
The shower turns off in the bathroom to his left, a squeaky tap that Lewis had been meaning to get fixed, but had yet to get around to it. He waits for his husband, seated firmly on the bed, elbows resting against his knees, as he lets the cadence of his breath come in slow, even pulls.
The door opens, steam billowing out the top, and Lewis emerges in a pair of silk pajama pants, already brushing his teeth as he preps for bed. Nico had joined him at the resort in Texas, sneaking a few shared nights together before another week of media and madness begins for the Brit. Nico breaths, thinks of his and Max’s phone call just minutes ago, and tries not to let the tightness fill his chest.
“Nic, you alright?” Lewis asks, reaching over to run a hand through Nico’s blonde hair, fingernails scratching lightly at his scalp like he loves, but the weight of the memories turns his touch scalding, poisonous, and Nico flinches away.
Lewis, of course, notices right away, pulling his hand away far enough, but his gaze is boring into him. “Whoa, Nico, what’s going on?”
He shakes his head, unable to look at Lewis, at the man he loves. The world brings up 2016 all the time; they even joke about it, but Max is asking him to dredge up the memories like long-buried corpses, digging into their graves and exhuming their bones without a care. He’s asking Nico to pick apart the leftover marrow, drinking it down until he burns with the same rage and craze that he had nearly a decade ago.
His voice shakes, “Max asked me to write a rule.”
He had said no, initially, but when Max had explained why he needed it, why the Grid Guide had to have it, Nico understood. He’d been the one to shove himself past the breaking point. He’d been the one to sever off their friendship, their relationship, Lewis following suit and making it public. Nico had been the one to stop eating for weeks on end, leading up to the final push, fucking cereal the only thing he could stomach. He had been the one to break himself, to shatter Lewis in the process, only to walk away from all of it mere hours later.
Give me a few days, he had promised Max, and as Lewis held him as he trembled, he looked at those buried memories, the ones he swore to never upheave, and started digging.
Rule #39: Until The End
When he and Lewis were little, they’d made multiple promises to one another.
If one makes it to F1, so does the other.
They had to race for the same team.
If one wins a championship, so does the other.
They’ll stay best friends forever.
He doesn’t remember meeting Lewis, for their connection is far too important for that. One remembers specific events in more glaring detail, his first kiss, his first win, but remembering Lewis was the same as remembering the feel of being home, the scent of it thick in his head, and never realizing that either was ever really present, but always there.
It was childish wishes that kept those promises alive, and the adult grit of growing pains and dreaming of being an elite driver that killed them at the same time.
When Nico thinks of that year, it's bittersweet in the worst way possible. His name is etched on that damned trophy, well earned and with more blood, sweat, and tears behind it than anything he’d ever done before, but there are some nights he wishes it had never come about. Those were the nights where he and Lewis fought, words slowly becoming more and more vile when they were once filled with softness and gentle love, and he tries to block all the memories of this year from his mind.
All except the win—that will live on in his mind forever. Right in the same space as Lew.
It all had started innocently enough; they’d raced one another for years by this point. Both Nico and Lewis had felt what it was like to win multiple grand prix, to have their name chanted, and to be absolutely and disgustingly adored by their respective teams.
He’d raced alongside legends before, Michael Schumacher in the car beside him for a few years, and Lewis should have been no different. The Brit had already won his first title, and Nico had been left salivating after one of his own, nearly feral beneath the want of that greatness. He tried desperately while at Mercedes, having built his strength at Williams before, and it wasn’t until Lewis joined him that the team skyrocketed.
They battled the terror that was Vettel, trying to break that streak so thoroughly, but the Red Bull wonderkind had been sensational, blasting them both out of the water until Lewis stole it from the German driver in the two years after.
It had started so innocently—Lewis fresh off a back-to-back streak of wins, the Mercedes team becoming a titan amongst the sport, and although he had to beat down the rearing head of jealousy day after day, Nico loved Lewis fiercely, undeniably, wholeheartedly. He had so since they were boys, and would for the rest of his life.
But, he will never deny that 2016 was also the year that Lewis became his greatest enemy.
2016
Australia – Nico takes the first win of the year, Lewis nearly eight seconds back, and when the German driver stands atop the podium, he cannot help the swell of fire that catches in his stomach, cannot contain the way it blazes, the want to consume nearly suffocating. He has half the mind to put it out, stamping down on it until it coughs and sputters beneath his heel, but the ash is already swept up into his lungs, spreading until it consumes every breath.
Lewis looks up at him, a swell of love and pride on his face as they embrace and douse one another with champagne. Nico is all smiles and an even wider grin, but when he glances at Lewis later that night, he sees the stiffness in the Brit’s shoulders, the way he’s already anchored by something Nico has yet to see.
It’s like he had known, standing on the first podium, that this year would belong to Nico.
They just hadn’t known that this would be the one to break them in the process.
Bahrain— He takes it again, a more astonishing drive, Lewis joining him again on the podium, though it's from P3 when he looks up at Nico. There are still smiles on their faces, teeth still blunt, and words still sweet when they whisper to one another during the night. They still travel home together, Mercedes making them pose with their respective trophies, and Nico cannot stop himself from calculating how many points stand between them.
He hates it, hates himself for it, even as Lewis falls asleep on his chest, their hearts beating in sync.
China and Russia are no different. Nico gains two more pieces of the top step, and the sweetness of victory sits on the back of his molars, thick on his tongue; he swallows the split taste of it. Lew doesn’t podium either time, plagued by bad strategy calls and a ruined race that he had fought a young Max Verstappen on.
They still stand side by side, riding home in the same car, but where their shoulders were normally pressed together, now sits a space, the kind that speaks louder than any of the words they ever could. Thirty-six points separate them, and Nico cannot help but obsess over them, counting them on his fingers as he holds onto Lewis during the night. He can’t stop himself, the selfish want within him burning more than his love for the Brit beside him.
He’s a selfish man. He’s an angry man. He’s a Formula One driver; he has to be monstrous in his want.
Lewis slips away from him in the middle of the night, feigning an aching back, but Nico pretends not to see him on the couch the next morning when the coffee starts to brew. The bitterness from it hangs in the air for the rest of the season.
—
Spain looks at the fissures between them, laughs, and then shoves a wedge within, digging it down, down, down, until it sits right against Nico’s heart. The collision isn’t even the worst either of them has been in, yet it sends them both reeling, both bruised with battered bones. Nico takes a minute to pull himself from the car, gravel crunching beneath his race boots, and when he glances at the debris around them, the fractures look awfully similar to his bleeding heart.
He doesn’t look at Lewis as he walks away, can’t, even if he had wanted to.
Toto tries to sit them down, tries to make them look at one another, to remember that they love one another, but the sneer on Lewis’ face says otherwise. When he reaches out to hold Nico that night, it’s with clawed fingers, nails biting into his shoulder, and Nico doesn’t even try to loosen the grip—it’s the only thing left holding them together.
He wants this, he thinks, he wants Lewis to know what it feels like to have to watch his teammate —the person he loves, his biggest opponent —win time and time again, to get everything he’s ever wanted, while Lew cannot do a thing but watch.
Watch as Nico continues to win, watch as their relationship crumbles, watch as they tear one another apart.
They start sleeping in separate rooms, their meals still shared, but they’re tense; no amount of alcohol is enough to fill the gaps in Nico’s memory of Lewis actively choosing to distance himself.
Fine, he thinks, let the battle begin.
A day later, he texts his trainer, asking for more intense workouts, to tighten up the reins on his weight—too much fluctuation limits the car, they’re kilos he can afford to add, not when he needs the extra thousandths of a second. He ignores the nausea and the small, black dots along the edges of his vision. All he can see is the championship, and he’s never wanted anything more.
When Nico’s Monaco qualifying gets destroyed, Lewis takes the podium, and they don’t speak for a week. Canada is no different, a wet race where Nico is plagued by that damn young Max again, and when Lewis cradles the trophy that night instead of Nico, the German is adamant about proving that it means nothing, that they mean nothing. He starts running in the early mornings, not telling his trainer, and he loses another half kilo, just in time for Baku, where he takes the gold home.
They don’t talk about Austria.
Silverstone has always been Lewis’ to win, but it hurts more this year, cuts deep into the blonde’s half-rotten flesh until Nico cannot breathe. Max separates them on the podium, his boyish grin and bright eyes startling to see as he stands between the battle-worn soldiers of Mercedes. Both of their hands are covered in blood, mouths turned down in a grimace that never seems to leave.
Nico tries to feign indifference, picking at his fingernails as Lewis is handed P1. The German driver sprays Max, the young terror surely to be a generational talent in time, and he completely ignores Lewis, though the Brit always makes a show in front of his home crowd.
They’ve stopped sharing a home, Roscoe whining from the front seat as Lewis drives away, but Nico swears that he’s always loved the quiet, though his hands shake when it presses tight against his throat.
Hungary slips away from Nico, Lewis topping the podium, and they don’t even fucking look at one another. Lewis takes Germany, and Nico follows up by stealing Belgium from him. The points continue to shift, the races left dwindling, and Nico keeps pushing himself, the line no longer beneath him.
All he can see is the championship getting closer and closer.
In the following weeks, Nico takes Monza and Singapore, the heat stifling, but that isn’t why his throat feels tight, why he can barely breathe. Lewis takes to the media, trashing them, so readily as he speaks out—
“We were never friends,” and Nico doesn’t respond, can’t.
His lips stay sealed about Lewis, even as microphone after microphone is shoved in his face.
When Lewis DNFs in Malaysia, Nico almost rejoices, more points tilting his way, and he’s almost completely stopped consuming enough calories by this time. He wins Japan, just misses out in Austin, and before they know it, three races remain.
He sits down with his side of the garage, sees what he can do to continue to cut weight—his helmets remain unpainted, barebones to shed precious milligrams, and his cheeks have finally hollowed out enough that Toto sits him down and forces him to eat.
The food comes right back up, nausea his constant companion, but as he reaches for a box of Wheaties, he manages to keep them down—though the association to Lewis nearly fucking kills him.
Lewis takes Mexico and Brazil, earning an honorary citizenship at the latter, and Nico is forced to stand secondary to him at both, the silverware in his hands doing little to stifle the fire that’s consumed him, the burn already blistered and boiled against his skin.
They don’t look at one another, don’t spray one another with champagne, but when it comes down to Abu Dhabi, everyone is staring at them, waiting to see what they’ll say.
—
Fireworks crack in Nico’s ears, a celebration of a race lost but a championship won.
He finishes right on the heels of Lewis, less than a half second combined, and the photo finish of the two Mercedes is the one that hangs above Toto’s desk to this day.
He cannot stop smiling, his joy too infectious, that every time the curl of his lips starts to drift, it gets brought back in an instant, a lifelong dream finally fulfilled. His chest is tight with elation, the kind that curls along the bases of his lungs, pulling tight until he finally, finally begins to weep—it's on top of the car that he beat Lewis in when it finally happens. His race boots slip a few centimeters, his team fighting to right his balance as champagne and cheers and happiness and all he ever wanted help him to stand tall.
It isn’t until he’s finally alone in his hotel room that Lewis’s absence becomes jarringly apparent. The past few months, that shadowed space had become far more of a comfort than Nico would have ever been willing to admit. It settles along his sounders, the high of the night finally palatable, when he notices how thin his hands are.
Tendons and veins protrude grossly; the hue of his skin is only flushed from the alcohol, but the pale, ghastly patches can be seen along his throat, in the lines of his jaw. The dark circles haven’t left his eyes since Hungary, and he can feel the bone-aching fatigue that presses against his spine.
He barely notices Lewis’ absence—that shadow had been present for far too long, the comfort of it far too easy on his shoulders as the high of the night finally can be swallowed with a half bottle of whiskey.
Nico doesn’t call, doesn’t text, doesn’t reach across the space where a Lewis’ body had always been, but the night curls on, a title sitting alongside his name; he’s never felt more alone.
He runs a hand over the ribs that peek out from his skin, not sickly, not near enough to warrant raised eyebrows and hushed whispers of concern—it’s instead the kind of jarring ache that one would have to feel. Lewis had long since stopped, fingertips no longer tracing rivers and tracks along his skin, the ones where light kisses would be pressed against his shoulder, the hollow of his throat.
He feels like a ghost more than anything, the fleeting memory of Lew by his side so disgustingly haunting that even as his eyelids flutter from the weight of exhaustion, he swears he can feel him, can smell the faint remnants of his cologne.
When Nico startles awake, just mere hours later, sweat clings to his skin, blonde bangs plastered to his forehead, but still, Lewis is nowhere to be found.
That next morning, when a reporter shoves his way to Nico’s side and asks him his next thoughts for the season, there’s only one option.
—
“You’re retiring?”
The voice echoes around the room, haunting him, and Nico has half a mind to try and blink himself awake. This isn’t a dream, he realizes, not as the door to their, his home, slams open, hinges screaming beneath the force as it's slammed shut.
Nico looks up, looks at Lewis as if seeing him for the first time. Maybe he is, the new golden age of retirement pressing peace against his skin, though it catches on the hollows of his cheeks, on the curve of his stomach, as he has yet to try any food besides that cereal.
“Is this a joke?!” Lewis spews, arms open wide, a full wingspan of a scorned angel’s expanse, and Nico is left sitting dumb at the feet of his past lover’s mercy.
The storm in Lewis’ eyes thunders on, burls of swirling rage crashing against the shore as he stares Nico down, but no part of the German hasn’t already been flayed open, no part of him that hasn’t been left measured and found wanting.
Still, he waits. Waits for Lewis to calm, waits for him to find reason in the decision, but the prowling man in front of Nico does neither of those things. He slams a palm against the nightstand, neither of them flinching from the force, but Nico still waits for more to come. They’d torn one another to bits in the past few months, yet here he stands with more meat dangling from his bleached skeleton, unsurprised that Lewis still tries to snap for more.
“You didn’t tell me,” Lewis finally concedes, more defeated with being the last one to know than he’d like to admit, but it already shows throughout all of him.
He forgets that Nico knows him—knows every crevice and valley, every emotion and thought. He forgets that Nico already knows what Lewis would say.
“I’m done,” Nico says, no waver or whisper in his voice. He says it will be his full chest, breath not stuttered or gasped, and Lewis has half a mind to be afraid.
Lewis opens his mouth, shuts it just as quickly, teeth clicking beneath the restraint, but Nico knows that it was going to be the why.
He pushes his hair back, clearing the spare bangs from his eyes before he pins Lewis with a stare. He’d faced this giant of a man on the track, had housed him and loved him and lost him in the same span of time. There was no room for ego here, no room for the swell of a racing titan that had been and would be.
It was just Nico and Lewis, nothing more, nothing less.
“Do you remember when we made those promises as boys?” Nico asks, gaze unwavering on Lewis’ face as the recollection flashes through the man’s eyes, yet he does not speak. Nico barrels on, “Do you remember when we promised that when one of us won the championship, the other would as well, names intertwined and engraved in that trophy for all of time. The sport would have to have us etched within its history. We refused to give it a choice.”
He stands from his seat at the dining table, the very one they had shared dinner upon for years— the very one Lewis fucked him on the very first night of owning the hollowed home around them.
“I lived up to that promise, Lewis,” Nico says, nearly spitting the word but not letting it land on the hardwoods beneath. He lets it dangle from his fingertips, finally, the puppet holding its own strings.
“I stood by your side as you won, title after title, yet when it came my time to reign, you made me take it with bloody hands and an even bloodier heart.” Nico stands toe to toe with the man he loves, with the man he destroyed himself for, and does not waver.
“You made me break myself. You made me become a monster because that is the only way you’d ever let me win, wasn’t it? That’s the only way you’d ever lose to me, isn’t it? It was never going to be a promise on sweet lips where we held one another close; it was always going to end with one of us breaking, with one of us becoming something we swore we’d never become.”
Nico takes a breath, the words bubbling through his chest, all the anger and torment from the last few months boiling over and letting the flame beneath ignite everything within him.
“But I wasn’t the one who broke us. I never sneered at your name in the media. I never pushed you away when you ached after a loss. I only thought about beating you, but never about leaving you. I broke myself for this, for the championship, but you’re the one who ripped us apart.”
“Nico—“ Lewis says, anger trying to find purchase on the floor between them, but the blonde is quick to swipe it away, to rush a hand through the emotion and churn it into nothing.
Nico makes sure that Lewis is looking at him, "Congratulations, Lewis, you’ve once again become the sole priority of Mercedes. Go out and win as many championships as you want—“
He grabs his keys, already having moved all of his belongings into an apartment across Monaco, and when he looks back at Lewis over his shoulder, he cannot help but add, “But this one? This one will always be mine.”
—
2017 passes, then 2018, then the next year, the next going by even quicker as the grid is scattered.
It’s 2021 when Nico finds himself presenting for SkySports Abu Dhabi, though there’s no microphone in his hand as he walks. The Dutch flag has been flying for an hour now, though Nico has long since abandoned his reporting duties, instead favoring the slow steps in the opposite direction of the crowd now chanting Max’s name.
He’d been there, sitting next to Jenson when Lewis had answered that question, the one asking him if he was a better driver than the year they’d fought for the title.
“And teammate,” Lewis had answered, eyes glancing just once toward the camera, as if knowing Nico had been watching.
His steps are sure, almost as strong as they were the day that he’d walked out, but the fragments of them are suddenly back in his hands, jagged edges pressing deep into the scars along his palms. When he sees Lewis perched on the back wall of the Mercedes motorhome, eyes closed, he feels those wounds tear open, torment suddenly free-bleeding all over again.
There aren’t words, not as Nico closes the distance, and not as Lewis suddenly opens his eyes, finding the blonde in an instant, their souls saying hello for the first time in years.
He sees the set of Lewis’ jaw, as if Nico were the last thing that he needs right now, but no one has known him better—no one ever will.
He steps right to Lewis’ side, sliding down the same wall until they’re shoulder to shoulder, a breath of space between them. The acrid smell of gunpowder fills the air, the cries and cheers of Red Bull riding atop it, but Nico doesn’t say a word.
“It hurts a little less this time,” Lewis admits, picking at the gravel beneath them, and Nico hums his agreement, eyes still fixed forward on the Mercedes stars on the walls.
“Would you do it again?” Lewis asks, peeking over the wall that they’d built between themselves, the structure more rubble and ruin than anything, but it still takes an effort for Nico to think back to those days, for him to relive them.
He thinks for a moment, silence settling, and he lets his sins come crashing back, as if his absolution had never mattered—maybe it didn’t, for what was a God’s forgiveness when he sat in the presence of the only light he’d ever held.
The memories come quick, sharp, gutting, but he breathes through it, through them, and remembers who and what he had to become for the win.
It was more beast than man, ribs protruding from anger and spite alone, soul left to starve as he ripped apart any pieces of happiness for the gluttonous glory he drank down.
He stares at that version of himself, and knows without a doubt, without a single cell—
“Yes.”
He watches as Lewis flinches, at the recoil of muscle beneath skin, and he aches for himself, for Lewis, for them.
It’s everything and nothing, salvation and damnation—an admittance without apology.
He’d kept to the promise he and Lewis had sworn.
Nico swallows, running his hands over the fractures they stand upon, but he isn’t afraid. He’s known life both with and without Lewis. He’s survived it once, barely, and assures himself that he could do it again if needed.
“You would've done the same if you were in my shoes,” Nico assesses, no room for argument because they both know the truth behind it. “I had to become the worst version of myself, of a racer, to take the win that year. You would’ve hated me if I gave any less, if I hadn’t fought you.”
Lewis pins him with a stare, “I don’t hate you now?” He asks, to which Nico shrugs. He’d thought as much, but he wasn’t the one to answer that.
“Was it worth it?” Lewis says instead, knowing that Nico had already asked himself that very question year after year.
“I don’t know,” he answers truthfully because there are still nights when he lies sleepless, still nights when he wakes reaching for a body when he knows there won’t be one. “Was it worth it for you?”
Lewis doesn’t look at him, though Nico could never miss the way that tears drip onto the man’s face, rivers of saltwater and sorrow speaking more than words ever could.
The blonde reaches out, their arms brushing, and slowly, so achingly slow, intertwines their fingers. Calloused brush, warmth settles, and it’s like stepping into a home all over again. Heartbeats pulse within their arteries, thrumming softly beneath their skin, each starling and slowing until their rhythms match, a cleansing breath shared between them.
—-
They ease back into it, into them, and it’s like dusting off an old coat, one with patches and torn stitching, battered and a bit stiff until it settles on your shoulders.
You’re left wondering why you took it off in the first place.
Half a decade goes by, soft moments of recollection and peace sitting between them, but the scars shine on their skin—both verbal and physical sparring with the man he loves is a testament more to their ability to come back, stronger, but the stiffness between them will always lurk. A reminder of how close they’d come to never finding their way back.
He looks at Max’s texts, the slow stream of conversation infiltrating the pockets of calm that he’d sewn with bloody thread and sealed shut with a kiss of chaos.
He looks at Max’s question: How does one survive this? How does one survive the one person you’re supposed to beat, while still being able to love them all the same?
Nico takes a sip of tea, determined to ignore the shake of his fingertips, the memories aching against the sides of his skull, for the answer is simple:
You don’t.
Rule #39: Until The End
For the greatness you’ve dreamed of, for the glory of it all, you have to want it above everything and everyone else. There’s no room for restraint or hesitation. To be the best, to demand what you want, you have to learn how to bleed for it, how to hold yourself upon that knife’s edge and walk upon the blade with a smile on your face.
For in the end, there can only be one champion, and it’s always going to be who wanted it above everything else.
—
It’s Oscar that comes to Max next, right after the disaster that was Mexico, and the Dutchman slides the notebook to him, the rule sinking into the Aussie’s skin, and he leaves without another word.