Work Text:
Spa, 2001
It’s already late when there’s a tentative knock at the door. Michael answers it without much thought. He’s surprised to see Eddie standing there, sunglasses still on, hair ruffled, a despondent line to his shoulders. Michael stares at him for a moment, aware of a flicker of imbalance, because Eddie doesn’t knock on doors hesitantly; he bangs on them and occasionally kicks them for good measure.
Michael pulls the door wide and leans against it. “The hero of the hour.”
“Shut up, all right?” Eddie shoves past without waiting for an invitation. Now that’s more like him, rude and abrupt and just walking in and taking what he wants.
Raising his eyebrows, Michael pulls a face at the empty corridor, gives a mental shrug, and closes the door. He turns, hooks his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans, and watches as Eddie paces the hotel room. It’s like he’s measuring the space, crossing from one side to the other then checking the distance between the foot of the bed and the bathroom. He goes to the window, looks out into the blankness of night. He switches on the bedside lamp. Switches it off again. Finally he goes over to the sofa and sits. He sinks into the seat, pulls the cushion from behind him, tosses it onto the floor. He sits forward, studies the coffee table in front of him.
“Got anything to drink?”
Michael nods; a wasted gesture, since Eddie is looking around again, fidgeting. “There’s coffee,” Michael says. “Tea.”
Eddie glances at him, bright blue eyes flashing above the sunglasses, and scowls. “Fuck that. A proper drink. Don’t tell me you’ve cleared out the mini-bar already. Or maybe you did. Maybe this place stocks itty-bitty bottles of champagne for when the world champion stays here.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Michael goes over to the polished wooden cabinets and opens the mini-bar, rattling through the miniatures in search of something Eddie might find palatable. He takes out a bottle of cheap blended whisky and pours it into a glass. No ice, no mixer, no water. He carries it across to the coffee table and sets it down, nudging it towards Eddie. Curious, Michael says, “I suppose you finished everything in your room and this is why you feel the need to raid mine?”
“This isn’t a raid.” Eddie toys with his drink but doesn’t lift the glass to his lips. He pushes it around on the table then drops back into the embrace of the sofa and rests his right ankle on his left knee. He stretches one arm along the back of the couch. The pose should look relaxed and casual, but it isn’t.
“Thanks,” Eddie says a second later, nodding at the drink. He tries to smile. “Always knew you’d make an excellent housemaid.”
Michael refuses to rise to the bait. He leans over the back of an armchair. “What is it, Eddie?”
“What’s what? Can’t a man come and have a drink with his old teammate now?” The tone is belligerent, defensive, Eddie’s accent more pronounced than usual. His right foot jumps up and down on the fulcrum of his knee. “Maybe I wanted to congratulate you on your win.”
“Maybe.” Michael knows this is far from the truth. He edges around the chair and sits down. “Try your whisky.”
“Yeah. Cheers.” Eddie picks up the glass, folds a hand around it, but still makes no effort to drink.
Michael studies him across the table. “Big accident today.”
“Yeah.” Eddie stares into the glass, agitates the whisky. “But unlike you in Hockenheim, I didn’t take the restart.”
“Is that what’s bothering you?”
“Christ, no. The Jaguar is like... it’s like driving a sack of shit. That’s what it is. A sack of fucking shit. I should be grateful I couldn’t restart.” Eddie passes a hand over his face, scrubs at his hair. The action dislodges his sunglasses, and he adjusts them, pushes them back into place, hiding his eyes.
Michael’s patience is beginning to wear thin. He has a habit of thinking too much, and for all Eddie’s bluster and bombast, he thinks too much, too. At Ferrari, they were always blunt with one another, blunt to the point of rudeness, and it seemed to work. It was a stark contrast to the way the rest of the team treated him. Ferrari still pussyfoots around him, and Rubens is a perfectly adequate number two driver who will never, ever challenge him—and yet Michael misses the relationship he had with Eddie, misses the dissonance and the aggravation and the challenge.
And maybe Eddie misses it, too. Maybe Jaguar don’t know how to deal with him, so they’re handling him with kid gloves. Their mistake. Eddie likes to get down and dirty. Michael knows that all too well. Eddie isn’t breakable and won’t thank you for thinking that he is.
“Look,” says Michael, “I don’t get paid enough to be both your analyst and the number one Ferrari driver.”
That raises a chuckle. “My analyst? Fuck that.”
“You don’t want me to get inside your head?” Michael ducks a little, gestures with his hands, making a stirring motion. “Mix things up in there, try to make some sense out of it all?”
Eddie laughs outright. “You really want to help? Now you tell me. Shit, Mike, you fucked with my head often enough in the past.”
The laughter fades, and Eddie takes a swig of his whisky. A long silence follows. Michael leans forward, rests his elbows on his knees, steeples his fingers. He knows what’s eating at Eddie, but unless Eddie wants to talk about it, there’s no point in pushing. Still, one more prod won’t hurt.
“Burti’s accident wasn’t your fault.”
Eddie sits up as if electrified. “I know that. I’m not—I... It was a racing accident. Incident. Whatever.” He pauses, takes a swift breath. “Like you and Burti in Germany. It just happened. That’s racing. That’s life. Shit happens.”
Michael looks at him. “It’s how you deal with the shit that’s important.”
“I know that, too.” The glass bangs down, half finished, onto the table. “Goddamn. Fuck it.” Eddie’s voice is tight and small. He presses the back of his hand across his forehead. “Shit.”
Now they’re almost at the heart of it, and Michael waits, sitting very still.
“Fuck,” Eddie says again. “Fucking bollocks.” He drops his hand and leans his head back to stare at the ceiling. “It’s not the accident, all right? It’s what happened after. When I got out of the car and went across the gravel. When—”
“When the marshals were just a little delayed,” Michael continues for him. “They were caught out. Like everyone else. Everyone except you. You went straight to him, checked if he was okay—”
“Like I was some kind of fucking doctor. What was I thinking?”
“And then you started pulling at the tyres, trying to get him out. You were trying to do the job of three men. You were telling the marshals what to do. Giving orders. Taking charge. Rescuing a colleague.”
Eddie reaches up and takes off his sunglasses. “I don’t even like the bastard. I mean, he’s okay and all, but y’know, he’s one of those forgettable types. I won’t forget him now. That kind of pisses me off, you know?”
“Yes.”
“And what pisses me off even more,” Eddie’s voice rises, the accent sharpening further, “is when I got back to the pits, everyone called me a hero. In the paddock, too. A hero. I don’t get that. Why am I a hero? I did what anyone would do.”
Michael gives a soft snort. “I’m not sure anyone would do what you did.”
“Really.” Eddie sits up straight, folds the sunglasses, and puts them beside the half-empty glass. His eyes carry shadows beneath them, inside them; tension and doubt, anger and longing. “What if it were you? What if you’d taken him out at Blanchimont instead of me—would you have done the same thing?”
It would be easy to lie, but Michael decides upon the truth. He holds Eddie’s gaze and says, “No.”
Eddie looks genuinely surprised. “Why not?”
“Because...” Michael pauses. Because that’s the difference between you and me. Because I have to put myself first, and though you like to pretend you’re a greedy hedonist, you’re not. Because for all the time you complain about someone, at least part of you cares enough to notice them in the first place. He shrugs. “Just because.”
“God, you really are a cold bastard,” Eddie says, but there’s no heat in it, no judgement. He retrieves the glass and finishes the whisky. “It just feels wrong to be called a hero when I didn’t do anything all that special.”
“So...” Michael prompts.
“So I wanted to ask how you feel about it. About being called a hero when you’re not one.” Eddie puts the empty glass down again and looks at him, direct and unwavering. “You know. Four world championships. That’s not something that happens very often. So you get called a hero, but you’re not. Not really. I know you, Mike. You’re not a fucking hero.”
“No,” says Michael, very softly. “I’m not.”
“So,” Eddie says again after a brief pause, “how do you deal with it?”
Michael stands up. It’s too abrupt; he tries to cover his reaction. “I need a drink.” Belatedly he turns back, gestures at Eddie’s glass. “Another?” His hand trembles a little.
Eddie stares, realisation slow to dawn. “I upset you. Shit. My big mouth.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Michael takes the glass, opens the mini-bar, and pours out another whisky. For himself he mixes a vodka-tonic, heavy on the spirit. His hands are steady now. “It doesn’t matter,” he repeats, carrying the drinks back to the coffee table and sitting down again. “That’s how you deal with it. Tell yourself it doesn’t matter. Tell yourself they can call you whatever they want. One day I’m a hero, the next day I’m a monster. As long as you know the truth.”
“As long as I know...?” Eddie frowns, looks confused for a heartbeat. “Are you saying... no. No way. Can’t be.” His expression clears and he laughs. “I get you. As long as I know the truth about myself, right?”
“Right,” says Michael, and forces a smile. He lifts his glass. “To not being a hero.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Eddie raises his whisky and clinks it against Michael’s glass. “Cheers.”