Work Text:
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
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Toto doesn’t think Susie is beautiful. But who is, when they’re asleep? Sleep is just an all-round experience of drool and sweat and nightmares. And anyone who says that their spouse looks amazing in the chokehold of sleep is a barefaced liar.
She will be more beautiful when she is awake.
The sun is almost painfully bright, so Toto silently thanks his mother for the new drapes she bought as a housewarming gift for him a year back. They’re a hideous pastel pink, but they do their job. For the most part. Several rays of sneaky sunshine peek out from in between the gaps. They land on Susie’s sleeping figure.
Toto tries to get back to his emails.
The sound of children bickering in their room is enough to drive him out of bed. And Susie too, it seems.
And in that moment, when she’s rubbing her eyes and whispering a quiet Guten Morgen and kissing him gently on the cheek, Toto feels nothing.
She looks exactly the same as she did when she was asleep.
There’s a plate of eggs and bacon on the table when he makes his way downstairs, carefully arranged to look like a smiley face. Susie is washing the frying pan.
Toto has numbers and stock values and racing cars on his mind when he stabs his knife into one of the yolks. It runs.
“How do they taste?”
“They taste fine.”
How else are they supposed to taste?
They’re eggs.
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The first thing that Toto notices about Lewis is his height - the man is compact, to put it kindly. Perfectly sized for the coffin that is Formula One.
The second thing he notices is that Lewis isn’t coming over to greet him, like most of the other employees have. Instead, Lewis stays rooted in the corner of the room, talking to another man. He’s swinging his hands in the air. The other man is laughing.
Must be a pretty funny guy.
Toto frowns. It’s only basic etiquette to greet your new team principal, but he’ll let that slide. For now.
Niki appears next to him. “We got a good pair to work with this year, eh? Childhood friends, it seems.”
And Toto watches as the two continue their little idle game of charades in the corner of the room, a sea of silver and turquoise clad men becoming their default audience, trying to decipher what the two are chuckling at.
Lewis lets out a snort.
It’s fascinating. To see that friendship still manages to exist in a sport that’s so individual.
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Toto doesn’t like Nico. Or rather, he can’t seem to figure out how Nico works. Which is probably what makes it so easy to dislike him.
Every man is a piece of machinery. Find the power button, and you’ve got the whole being. The thing is, either Nico doesn’t have one, or Toto just hasn’t found it yet. It’s probably the former. If he had one, Toto would know. Definitely.
But still, he doesn’t get it. The guy laughs at the most mundane things, and yet remains stony in the face of humour.
All of their conversations thus far have consisted of awkward small talk about the cars (initiated by Toto), hesitant laughter (only from Toto), and weird spurts of German (still from Toto).
What team manager doesn’t know how to talk to one of his team members?
He contemplates asking Susie about it, and changes his mind. Work is separate from family, he tells himself.
And if there’s a balance, Toto hasn’t found it yet.
So he watches as she climbs into the Williams car two doors down, and watches as the mechanics remove the blankets with their frostbitten hands. And he wants to tell her to move over to the left of the track so that his own cars can have their own optimum test laps. He can’t remember the last time he’d wished her good luck before a drive.
It takes him awhile to realise that there are still many things left to find in this world.
Lewis and Nico are sitting on the sofa when he walks in. Lewis is sipping something green out of a plastic takeaway cup. Nico holds what appears to be a saucer balancing a cup of black coffee. A lone butter cookie perches on the edge of the plate. They sit in silence, Lewis aimlessly scrolling through his phone, Nico resting his head on the back of the sofa.
It’s shocking, really.
Not that they’re sitting in silence, but that Nico is smiling. He’s smiling to himself, eyes closed firmly shut. Almost like he’s reliving a joke. But Toto hasn’t seen Nico laugh at a joke. Or anything else, to be honest.
Lewis catches Toto’s confused gaze and mouths a single shhh.
And so Toto leaves the room, feeling as though he had interrupted some sort of silent conversation.
That night, he thinks of power buttons and Nico and Lewis. And how Lewis’s lip quirked up when he looked at Nico before returning to his phone.
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It’s only the second race of the season, and Toto is starting to question his abilities. Maybe he should’ve just stuck to being the money guy instead of the racing guy. Then he realises that self-doubt is not on brand for him, and that he should just stick to being the iron-fisted team manager, loving father, and caring husband that he is.
Or was.
Coffee sounds good right about now.
Susie had left early - the only indications being the torn tea bag in the trashcan, and the absence of her shoes in the hallway.
There were times where they’d waited for each other before leaving for the races. But those times wore down to notes on the countertop, scrawling out at the track, see you later in shitty hotel-pen ink . And still, those times continued to wear down to where they are now. No notes. No good morning kisses. Just the not-so-suffocating absence of the human that they share a bed with.
Toto rubs his eyes and waits for the water to boil.
The static over the radio is overwhelming. But under all the static, Toto still manages to pick out the anger, the annoyance, the frustration in Nico’s voice after being told to stay behind. Notices the split second of hesitation when he’s told you are P4, Lewis P3. Hears the muffled pain when he breathes out a shaky thanks guys .
And then they switch the channels, and it’s the voice of the third place podium-sitter in his ears. But rather, it’s not Lewis’ voice, only the angry snarl of his car’s exhausted engine. So Toto listens as the voices over the radio congratulate him, and waits for what should be a happy reply.
“Nico deserved it.”
And the radio is back off again.
It’s appalling. How the press hunger for content, and yet still manage to pick the wrong thing to capitalise on.
The Multi-21 saga will be iconic. It is iconic. Yet while people see nothing but Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber and the fragments of their broken friendship, Toto looks past it all but sees the formation of something better. Something more concrete. Something more worth looking at.
Why look at what’s broken when you can look at what’s new?
And so he sees Lewis’s tired smile on the podium, and how his hands never really seem to grasp the blob of metal shoved into his hands. He sees the jerk of Lewis’ head in the direction of one of the back rooms, and doesn’t know who it’s directed to until he sees Nico tripping over his feet to get there faster.
Through the reaction of the glass, Toto is the intruder once again, as Lewis thrusts the trophy into Nico’s fumbling hands. No words can be made out over the chatter of mechanics and press and literally everyone in the whole world because it’s almost as if everyone is helping to mask this moment. And he sees the gentle shake of Nico’s head and watches as the stupid bronze piece of trash is passed back to its original owner.
And then he sees a tiny smile and an equally sheepish grin and witnesses a kiss pressed at the corner of smiling lips and he can’t help but look away.
Because this is their moment.
So Toto laughs louder and talks more because if they want to be hidden, he’ll help.
Because good things deserve to be protected.
Susie’s luggage is already packed by the time he returns to the hotel room. She’s nowhere to be found. Probably out drinking with the Williams team.
Her bedroom slippers are left forgotten beside the bed. He picks them up and stuffs them into the luggage.
Susie doesn’t like cold floors.
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Toto feels the year moving by past him, faces fading in and out thanks to daily use. He allows himself to stand still, in a world of fast cars and rushed meetings and hurried kisses.
Because it’s the only way to see.
And so he sees.
He sees the way Lewis’ eyes sparkle when a certain German man walks into the room (not Toto). He sees the way that same German man’s phone lights up, and how he tries to suppress a chuckle behind a closed fist. He sees the way his children watch both Susie and himself at the dinner table with guarded eyes, and how every unspoken word means more to them than it does to him.
Then he realises that seeing is nothing without doing .
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There’s a weekend in early January, when colours of silver and blue are left behind him, and he’s abandoned in a field of not-quite-green hills. Along with Susie and the children.
Susie has taken a liking to gardening. It makes sense. Flowers help to replace the forever smell of fuel up their nostrils.
The children are hiding.
And Toto has to find them.
So he counts to ten and lets out a laugh because the space that once held two giggling, fidgety children now holds nothing but chilly Swiss air.
As loud as the children can be, they give no clues as to where they hide, leaving Toto to trudge around in the garden cluelessly.
Susie is pulling weeds down by the fence. She doesn’t look up.
Toto peeks behind bushes of buttercups and behind pots of bellflowers. And finds nothing hidden there but a dead starling.
Its head is bent back at an awkward angle, body firmly tucked beneath bluish wings. A small patch of darkness amidst the yellows and the purples and the reds.
Toto looks over at Susie. She wipes the sweat from her forehead and twists her fingers into the weeds. The sunlight dwindles behind her, teetering on the fine line between afternoon and evening.
It’s been awhile. Since her beauty has astounded him. Since he’s wanted to kiss every inch of her sun-kissed skin until she’s the first taste on the tip of his tongue.
He chooses not to tell her about the bird. The soil will eat it up eventually.
He continues his search.
Seeking but not searching. Searching but not finding.
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Lewis and Nico never cease to amaze Toto. How they manage to hop from death glares to soft kisses in what should be more than a split second.
It could just be that they’re very forgiving people.
This doesn’t seem like the right hypothesis.
It’s almost like they have a perfect idea of where the line between the race track and the outside world starts and ends.
Maybe there is no line.
Toto only starts doubting this in Monaco.
It doesn’t take much. Because one botched qualifying session, one beaten up silver car, and dozens of yellow flags are enough, it seems. To coax the monster of a lie past Lewis’ unsmiling lips.
It’s convincing, Toto will give him that. It’s believable. For the average Formula One amateur.
And thanks to Lewis’ fantastic choice of words, Toto now answers the same question over and over again.
“How will you work with two drivers that are no longer friends?”
Toto shakes his head and feeds the animals what they’re longing for.
He doesn’t address the possibility that they could still be friends, because why would he?
The press are collectors who don’t know what they’re collecting.
Susie isn’t back yet. So Toto paces irritably around the lobby of the hotel and tries not to look too lost when some people from the paddock smile and wave at him.
She hasn’t replied to any of his messages. He sighs and makes his way over to the sofa at the far end of the lobby, and is unpleasantly surprised by how uncomfortable it is. Who knew furniture could be so deceiving?
A sudden movement catches his eye and Toto sees a man sprinting towards the lifts. Towards another man who either doesn’t acknowledge or doesn’t see him. The second man is sipping a green smoothie. He gets into the lift going upwards. And all too quickly, the lift doors are closing and the first man wedges a foot between the doors and slips between the tiny gap and behind the wall of metal.
The lift goes to the second floor, stops, and comes back down to the first.
It’s empty when the doors open.
There are bruises on Lewis’ neck the next day.
Toto passes him a team jacket and helps him turn the collar upwards.
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There’s a table at a fancy restaurant waiting for them. Susie is making her way down the stairs, smiling softly at the children.
Not so much at Toto.
Her earrings reflect light that forms stars on the ceiling.
He smiles.
“You look wonderful.” Susie nods and kisses Rosa and Benedict goodbye and tells them not to stay up too late or there will be no more phones or iPads for them that week.
Toto gets up and kisses her cheek, guiding her towards the door.
“I love you so much.”
Susie slips on her shoes and climbs into the car.
She only speaks once they’ve backed out of the driveway.
“I wish you wouldn’t lie to me in front of the children.”
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Toto wishes the Hungarian Grand Prix never happened. It’s an all too-real fever dream. From the second Lewis caught fire in the qualifying lap, down to the moment when the same man refused to let his teammate pass. The team mate he’s been fucking for God knows how long.
Team orders are only orders if the subjects listen to them. In this case, team orders are nothing more than a couple of naggy men whining in Lewis’ ears.
Toto would love to be angry. He would love to throw chairs and punch walls and shout at Lewis for depriving Nico of a few more points. A few more points that would make the championship a reality instead of a fruitless dream. Because let Nico pass was given in perfect British English, a language Lewis should be very fluent in by now.
Instead, Toto does nothing but claps Lewis on the back, tells Nico next time, mate , and recites yes, we are very pleased with our results this weekend to the idiots who shove microphones into his face.
There is nothing left for Toto to pack up. His office is empty. But the two men outside are enough of a reason to keep him waiting in the room.
He should be back at the hotel by now. Susie will be worried.
No she won’t.
Lewis had come over ten minutes ago, earbuds dangling around his neck. Nico had smiled. Offered him a place on the sofa. Lewis had declined.
And then Lewis launches into a long spiel of I’m so sorry, buddy and we both tried really hard and you drove really well but I couldn’t help it because I climbed my way up from the back.
To which Nico nods.
And smiles.
“It’s nothing, man.”
Lewis smiles back.
Toto wants to bash their heads together because this amount of happiness shouldn’t be legal. At least not from the two that were just grappling over a third place win.
Their goodbye is chaste. Unfinished. Lewis running off with a ringing phone in one hand, waving haphazardly with the other. Nico grinning a little too big and waving back.
And finally, Toto thinks that it’s okay for him to leave.
Until a scream echoes through the corridors. It’s not the loudness but the pure unadultered desperation behind it that makes him put his things down for the second time that evening. When he turns, Nico has his head clutched in his hands, hunched over in pain, anything but the calm and collected man he was just minutes ago. And it’s almost as if it never happened, because suddenly Nico is no longer bent over, and his hands are down by his sides, his face is a picture of utmost calm.
Nico plucks his phone off the sofa, gives it a tiny dusting-off, and walks out the door.
Toto doesn’t know what’s real anymore.
That night, Toto looks at Susie for the first time.
Two years ago, Toto would’ve marveled at many things. Her hair, splayed across the pillow, streaks of blonde against a stark white background. Her hands, fingers interlaced, beneath her chin, praying to a false God. Her lips, soft and waiting for Toto to kiss them cherry red.
Toto chooses to look at her instead. Not what she’s made of.
Because dark eye circles and laboured breaths and fluttering eyelashes are worth more than trivial beauty.
Because beauty isn’t radiance further brightened by a glimmering sunrise or a thousand stars dancing in the night sky.
Because beauty is the ability to live, and living is fucking exhausting .
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Booing is overused in general. Perhaps something more tasteful, like a couple of tomatoes or rotten eggs. Maybe even the rare banana peel. But that would require eating the banana first.
Either way, Toto doesn’t think that indulging in one of his driver’s miseries is on the criteria for becoming Formula One Team Principal of the Year.
So he lets the jeering of four hundred thousand Belgians resonate deep within his bones and offers Nico what he hopes is a reassuring grin. It’s not like he can see it anyway. The man is probably too blinded by his own ambition to see clearly.
Too blind to see relationships crumbling like cookies (made of butter) before his very eyes.
The booing only gets louder once a certain name rolls off Nico’s tongue.
Disciplinary measures will be put in place is what Niki had mumbled after the German stumbled off the stage. Drunk, on the high of his own adrenaline rather than the champagne.
The trip that Nico takes to one of the back rooms isn’t exactly surprising to Toto at this point. Comfort from rivals? lovers? fuckbuddies? is still comfort.
Yet, Toto feels a tap on his shoulder and its Lewis, sunglasses on, backpack slung across one shoulder, ready to call it a day, muttering something like gotta take it easy or going back early or something of the sort.
And then he’s out the front door, leaving Toto stranded in a cage of glass and annoyed employees.
Toto thinks of the man patiently waiting in the back room. He chooses to do nothing about it.
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How does one even initiate a conversation?
Toto types in ‘easy conversation topics’ into the search bar.
101 Amazing Conversation Topics for Easy Flowing Talks sounds suitable.
Yet, what’s your favourite animal? and how do you like your eggs done? don’t really seem like suitable conversation starters in this scenario.
His finger hovers over option number 77. Talk about recent happenings. At first glance, this seemed the most simple, but hey, Lewis just got his second world championship would be an absolutely terrible conversation starter.
Nico is gripping the glass of beer a little too tightly. Droplets of condensation run down his fingers while his other hand fiddles with the bottle cap, running along jagged edges, up and down man-made ridges. Judging from the design, it’s probably a Guinness.
The grip on the glass only loosens momentarily, as Nico grabs the bottle of beer in front of him, emptying the rest of the contents into the glass. It is, indeed, a Guinness. Black liquid threatens to spill over the rim, it's only barrier being a flimsy layer of foam.
It’s dark in the bar. Toto wishes it were darker. He finds no joy in seeing bartenders snicker and giggle over the man sitting beside him. A glare shuts them up.
Behind him, Mercedes employees whoop and cheer, probably on their twentieth game of beer pong or darts or pool. They laugh and sigh in all the right moments, sing and wail when the time permits, all while praising their king, who rests on a throne of empty beer cans and race cars and the dreams of everyone around him.
Nico takes a sip of the beer, getting to the alcohol through the thin layer of white bubbles that coat his top lip.
Toto continues scrolling through conversation topics.
It’s past one when Toto finally gets tired of not talking to Nico. Who knew that silence would be more tiring than conversation?
Lewis had left over two hours ago, claiming that he would like an early night in and that the party never stops, guys.
The halls are empty, and for that, Toto is grateful. Because being publicly known as a dishevelled, semi-drunk team manager is not something he would want to have to deal with in the near future.
He reaches for the hotel keycard in his wallet, fingers fumbling and failing to pry open the stupidly tiny pocket that he shoved it into this morning.
And he’s still fumbling when a blonde lady stumbles out of a room a few doors down. Her makeup is smeared around her eyes, making her look like a weird variation of Jack Sparrow. Her left sleeve just barely manages to stay on her shoulder, falling and being pushed back up every few seconds. Her heels dangle from fingers that show off hot-pink claws. And through the whole mess that she is, there’s a sort of reckless abandon in her eyes, like she’s freefalling into a canyon, like she’s running through a barren desert, like she’s just fucked the 2014 Formula One World Champion.
Toto finally gets the keycard out by the time she staggers past him.
Room 467.
Toto hopes that he’s got the room number wrong.
He checks the check-in details when he gets back inside.
And is disappointed when it’s correct.
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Sometime during winter break, Toto reads on a terrible gossip/magazine type website that food cooked by your loved ones tastes better.
So the next morning, Toto descends the creaky wooden stairs with a spring in his step. The plate of eggs and bacon sits on the countertop, waiting for someone to claim it. The frying pan is already washed and on the drying rack.
He takes his time to arrange his food into a smiley face, only stopping when he realises that the children are staring at him.
He starts with the edges this time, cutting off a small piece of the egg white, and a tiny piece of bacon. They form a strange little skewer-type-thing on his fork.
The perfect bite.
Bracing himself for the ‘feeling of euphoria that should wash over your body’, he takes a deep breath and puts it in his mouth.
He chews.
And to his utmost surprise, it still tastes like eggs. Oh yes, and bacon. But nothing else.
Toto has half a mind to sue the company that wrote that stupid article.
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Susie isn’t asleep yet. The hotel room is a comfortable pitch black, save for the soft glow of their respective phone screens on their respective faces.
They probably look like corpses, nein , vampires. Monsters dressed in the skin of those who walk among them, starved for success.
Toto happens to think that Susie would look good as a vampire. Don’t all vampires look good?
She’s scrolling through Instagram, stopping only to double tap each of the posts as they float on by.
He returns to his phone and finally dares to look up lewis hamilton nico rosberg. It’s more impressive, really, rather than shocking when hundreds of articles pop up, flaunting titles like JEALOUS TEAMMATE THROWS CAP AT NEW WORLD CHAMPION or HAMILTON GAINS A TITLE AND LOSES A FRIEND or CHILDHOOD FRIENDS TO WORST ENEMIES: THE STORY OF HAMILTON AND ROSBERG , all less than a day old . And honestly, it’s a little much.
Toto has, thus far, remained impartial. (Or at least, tried to.)
One of the articles has the original video attached. He considers for about two seconds and clicks on it, even though he’s done a brilliant job of not doing so for the past few hours.
And so it starts with the familiar cooldown room. A place he’s seen a thousand times but has never actually entered. In any country.
The camera pans to Nico, and his entire virtual presence is just enough to make Toto pause the video.
The man is angry, there’s no doubt about that. Even someone with the lowest emotional awareness could see it. Yet it’s not just anger written all over Nico’s being. He’s sitting, faux nonchalant, one leg comfortably resting on the other - the posture of someone who’s been through too much, making it seem like it’s been too little. His hand props his head up, saving it from sinking under the weight of too many thoughts, too many emotions.
Toto presses play.
And then Lewis appears, and before Toto even gets the chance to fully analyse him, the cap is flying across the room into Nico’s lap.
He pauses the video again.
Lewis isn’t looking at Nico. It was nothing but a casual flick. Almost like how one would throw an empty drink can into a dustbin.
Maybe Lewis should’ve looked before he’d thrown it all away.
The video continues playing. The cap is, once again, sailing through the air. Past Lewis, presumably onto the floor.
Neither Nico nor Lewis move to pick it up.
And the video ends.
Toto looks over at Susie.
Her phone still illuminates her face, but she’s already asleep, succumbing to the exhaustion that runs through her veins. He switches the phone off, the sudden darkness jarring to the eye, and pulls the blanket up to her chin.
It gets cold at night.
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Toto doesn’t realise it until the first race of 2016, when Nico is apologising for pushing Lewis out wide off the track.
Nico’s gaze is hard. Stony. Uninterested. And he’s speaking but nothing leaves his mouth because he’s not speaking to anyone. Nico could’ve been asleep, and yet there would still probably be more emotion than this. An apology full of air.
Lewis sits there and takes it. Nodding and saying mm in all the right places and offering his own apology at the end. It doesn’t take long for Toto to identify that they’re sporting the same look. Bored, mundane and completely artificial.
A Mexican showdown between two men, each trying to scare the other off with the care that had managed to vanish in the short span of two years.
And after they’ve both left, Toto still isn’t sure who won.
He’ll bet on neither.
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They both take on new looks as the season goes by. Toto witnesses the masks of boredom give way to corpses of betrayal and longing and wistful energy. Which rot away to clean skeletons, belonging to men that no longer drag their emotions behind their cars as they race.
Lewis and Nico race like drivers for the first time in years.
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Abu Dhabi.
When breaks to small back rooms are long gone and are nothing more than memories waiting to be forgotten.
When ghostly laughter no longer floats through the air and snorts are left for others to earn.
When green smoothies and cups of black coffee are thrown away before they’re drunk.
And so Toto watches as Lewis tries to crush all of Nico’s dreams on the racetrack of the final race of the season, narrowly missing them every single time.
Toto knows that Lewis will never manage to stamp out whatever burns in Nico. Simply because Nico is a mess of false moods and failed emotion, and Lewis lives on the constant high of success.
That day, Nico wins the championship.
And when Toto sees him back in the garage, he’s already gone. Too pleased with his own work, or rather, too disappointed that it’s over.
A man with no dreams left to dream is a man with no life left to live.
So he congratulates the guy and offers a small clap on the back.
Nico smiles.
“Thanks for being a good team principal.”
And he starts to walk away, before turning back around.
“ Danke.”
Lewis is nowhere to be found.
Nico disappears shortly after.
Toto doesn’t blame him.
A man with no dreams left to dream is a man with no life left to live.
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Switzerland is cold in December. Buttercups and bluebells have long since left them, starlings have escaped to a warmer life in the west.
Toto is up early. He fries the eggs in the pan, making sure that the yolk is still runny and that the edges are crisp. The bacon sizzles. It’s probably done.
He scrapes everything onto a plate and arranges it into a smiley face.
Susie is at the kitchen table when he places it in front of her.
She smiles, cuts a small piece, and takes a bite.
“How does it taste?”
“Pretty good.”
She offers him a bite.
It does taste pretty good.