Work Text:
Lewis starts saying it in 2015. Sebastian remembers it.
Because the sunlight is too bright, the clicking of the cameras too deafening. He feels the shirt sticking to his back, and prays that the sweat doesn’t seep through the bright red material. His sunglasses slide down the bridge of his nose. He pushes them back up. It takes about ten seconds for them to start sliding down again.
Sebastian tries to breathe. It comes out shaky. He looks into the crowd and tries to focus on at least one face. Any face. But everyone has a camera for a head, a microphone for a body.
Australia feels too much like Jerusalem. Because he’s cutting through a crowd of people with their palms raised to him in salutation, crying out his name. Because he rides the donkey of Scuderia Ferrari, after shooting his last one in the head. And so people whisper and people praise, because Sebastian Vettel is the saviour, the messiah of Ferrari.
He feels more like Hitler.
The stands are red. The car is red. The track is red. Splattered with the blood of five hundred thousand tifosi . The blood gets into his eyes, into his mouth. He tries to wipe it off. The tifosi cheer.
Tifosi.
The word feels foreign on his tongue.
Sebastian feels the low thrum of the driver’s parade bus in the air, the weight of a new army on his back, and the smile of the man next to him. And because Sebastian is a straightforward, honest man, he says the first thing that comes to mind.
“What the hell are you smiling at, Lewis?”
Lewis lets out a low chuckle, eaten up by the roaring of the fans.
“You look like a five-time world champion, man.”
He’s gotten the number wrong.
Sebastian doesn’t know if this is an insult or a compliment.
The sunglasses slip down again. He finally takes them off.
And he’s blinded.
--------------------
There are two Sebastians staring back at him. They’re pale. Lost. Hungry.
One is trapped in the rectangular frame of his sunglasses. Stretched wide and obscene, like a reflection in a funhouse mirror. He’s stuck in a room of black, eyes darker than his surroundings. Sebastian looks away before he gets sucked in too.
That’s not who I am.
The other Sebastian is on a plate of silver, living under a title of bronze. He looks normal, for the most part. But the hues of blue in his eyes are more prominent, the stubble on his chin sharper and blonder. And Sebastian almost dares to say that he looks pretty good. Until he realises that his full face is never truly there, always a part of it blocked out by the greedy Formula One logo.
That’s not who I am either.
So the sunglasses and the trophy remain on the dresser.
He tries to go to sleep.
The screams of the men on the dresser continue on through the night.
--------------------
Lewis appears outside his hotel room after Malaysia, bearing cans of beer and boxes of takeaway Chinese food.
Sebastian lets him in, peering into the corridor to check for pesky paparazzi like he’s done so many times before.
Lewis is sitting on his bed by the time he’s closed the door. He’s getting to work on removing the tape from the boxes. Sebastian opens his minifridge and tosses Lewis a can of Monster Energy before he can begin complaining about the poor selection of beverages at whatever Chinese place he’s so kindly graced his presence with. It falls to the bed beside Lewis, condensation wetting the hem of his too-expensive trousers.
Lewis is fiddling with the remote, punching in numbers for television channels that he doesn’t recognise. He settles on MTV. Trashy rap music floods out of the speakers. A man in shockingly baggy pants gestures at the screen.
And then the controller is snatched out of his hands, and clutched tightly in Sebastian’s sweaty ones. And the television goes black once again because Sebastian doesn’t need bullshit rap to buffer their conversation.
Or rather, their lack of conversation. So they munch on pickled cabbages and tofu and sweet rice quietly, each opting for comfortable company rather than overused small talk.
Lewis breaks the silence first. Talking about whatever new vegan food recipe he’s just chanced upon. Sebastian lets him talk, interrupting only just to offer his views on how meat is clearly superior and how Lewis is definitely missing out.
Lewis only stops to throw a wad of rice at him. It hits his chest and rolls into his lap.
It takes only a second of shocked silence, before salted vegetables are flying into Lewis’ hair. Sebastian relishes in Lewis’ look of pure horror.
And foldable boxes of Chinese food are crushed under their grasps as they both grapple for their next weapon, shoving food into each other’s faces, simply because they can.
Sebastian would like to stay in this moment forever, covered in black bean sauce and vegetable juice and clumps of rice that refuse to let go of his hair. Finally, he lays down on the bed and breathes. Lewis lays next to him, smelling equally as herbal.
He allows himself to laugh. Pure and happy and full of emotion, because they’re two grown men, two Formula One World Champions, that were just in, potentially, Malaysia’s biggest food fight of the century.
“Congratulations on your win.”
Sebastian turns to Lewis. He’s gazing at the ceiling, sauce rolling slowly down his cheek. Sebastian wants to wipe it off. Touch the skin where it ran. Feel Lewis living beneath his fingertips.
He doesn’t.
He attempts a reply, and yet nothing seems quite right, so he begins to pick the grains of rice out of his beard.
“Seb.”
Lewis is looking at him. His fingers continue working on the rice.
“You’re gonna be a Ferrari World Champion.”
The fingers stop moving. Sebastian doesn’t want to look at Lewis. He does anyway.
“Thanks.”
His fingers start moving again.
He decides that it’s tough to pull rice out of your beard when you’re smiling.
--------------------
Sebastian wants to believe Lewis.
He wants to take whatever hope Lewis has thrown in his direction, and put in a pretty little flowerpot. Maybe he’ll water it a little. Maybe throw in a little bit of fertiliser just to keep the bugs out.
Maybe at the end of the year, he’ll show up at Lewis’ doorstep with a basket of fruits wrapped in bright red paper. Maybe they’ll enjoy them together.
Instead, Sebastian eats it. Keeps it for himself and hopes that it’ll grow inside him. Hopes that it’ll bear fruits that only he can taste.
He waits for the sweetness to form on his tongue.
And he hopes that whatever Lewis gave him was real.
--------------------
Sebastian starts the 2015 Belgian Grand Prix with hope running through his veins. He sees red disappear before his eyes and appear everywhere around him and feels the strain on his neck as the car shoots forward. He tastes his own sweat in his mouth. He breathes the words of the man at the front of the grid.
You’re gonna be a Ferrari World Champion.
(If you beat Lewis.)
It’s the silent if that presses on the gas pedal.
Sebastian likes racing. He likes being able to get lost on the track. Likes being able to forget what country he’s in and what he was doing the night before or eating for breakfast that morning. Likes being able to remember nothing but the name Scuderia Ferrari and the five hundred modes of the car underneath him.
(Her name is Eva.)
What Sebastian doesn’t like is his tyres exploding underneath him on the second-last lap of the race. And he can’t do anything but drown in his own sweat and misery as Grosjean whooshes on past him, probably crying tears of laughter.
So Sebastian ends the 2015 Belgian Grand Prix in the pitlane with anger running through his veins, sweat stinging his eyes and Lewis’ voice in his ears.
He watches as Grosjean stomps all over his spot on the podium and watches the championship slip through his fingers and onto the floor.
His scream echoes in his helmet.
Lewis is rocking back and forth on his heels. His hands are empty and hanging loosely by his sides. He’s muttering something to himself.
Sebastian looks away from the peephole and opens the door.
“Hey, Seb.”
Sebastian tries to smile.
“Where’s the foo—”
And Lewis is hugging him and his arms are comforting and soft and safe and Sebastian could care less about the lack of crappy Chinese food and the stupid race. He allows himself to breathe Lewis in, allows himself to be suffocated by the sheer concern dripping off Lewis’ crooked smile, allows himself to give in to the tears forming in his eyes because Lewis knows and he knows. That there’s a new World Champion in the room. And it’s not Sebastian.
He feels Lewis’ head buried in the crevice of his neck and feels Lewis smile sear itself into his skin. And they’re both holding each other together, because they might just fall apart if they don’t.
Lewis mumbles something against Sebastian’s skin.
Sebastian holds Lewis a little tighter.
“You’re still gonna be a Ferrari World Champion.”
He might just be in love.
--------------------
The plane is cold. Sebastian sticks his hands into his pockets and rubs his fingers together.
He looks out of the window and sees nothing but black sky, and the occasional blink of red from the tip of the plane’s wing. The lights that were once flashing around them had disappeared hours ago and yet stars still blur his vision.
He thinks of the bronze trophy being tossed around in his luggage. He wonders if it’s made of real bronze. Wonders if Lewis’ is made of real gold. Wonders if it’s getting dented in the luggage.
He hopes that it isn’t.
There’s a bluish glow coming from the seat opposite him. Lewis is tapping at his phone, the soft glow being the only source of light apart from the glaring toilet sign behind him.
Lewis catches his gaze and raises his eyebrows. He looks at the floor. Sebastian follows suit.
Lewis’ shoes are off, tucked neatly underneath his chair. Toes clad in white socks wiggle indignantly at him.
Sebastian rolls his eyes and looks back out the window.
His reflection laughs back at him.
Lewis deserves it.
(You’re still gonna be a Ferrari World Champion.)
--------------------
Sometime over winter break, Sebastian gets on another plane and finds himself in Kensington.
He stops at a Chinese restaurant to get some food. Chicken in black bean sauce for himself. Pickled cabbages and tofu for Lewis.
He looks for the address Lewis had sent him and shows it to the taxi driver. The man grunts and tells him not to spill the food. Sebastian obliges.
The cold air bites at his knuckles and he wonders if he should’ve brought gloves.
The bell doesn’t make any noise when he presses it. He waits a second or so, then presses it again.
And then he hears something like I heard you the first time from the other side of the door, and suddenly Lewis is standing in the doorway, arms wide open in greeting.
It smells like something familiar. is the first thought that materialises in Sebastian’s mind.
Roscoe sits comfortably at Lewis’ feet, one of his chubby paws laying across Lewis’ foot. He’s chewing something. It squeaks. Sebastian recognises it as the toy he’d gotten for Roscoe last year.
There’s trashy rap music floating down from upstairs.
Lewis is picking at his vegetables and complaining about some fashion show he’d been forced to go to. Sebastian retaliates with smiles and wheezing laughter and whiny statements about the long flight.
The chicken tastes especially good today.
He notices a shelf above Lewis’ head. It’s crammed with books bearing cringey, yet motivational titles like How to be the Best You and A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom and The Art of Being Vegan.
Something shiny catches his eye, and there, on the lowest shelf, are the trophies. Three world titles, standing there sheepishly and strikingly, competing for the little bit of sunlight that shines through the curtains. They’re surrounded by more books. The occasional medal.
The three musketeers against an army of strangers.
Sebastian can’t help but think that Lewis hadn’t really thought out the placement. They were too close to each other, bases just barely touching. No space to breathe.
No space for another.
Sebastian is out on the driveway of Lewis’ house two days later. He only figures out what Lewis’ house smells like when it’s shrinking in the rearview mirror of the taxi.
Once Sebastian gets home, he goes straight to his room. The four trophies watch him from their home on the top shelf. They’re a little closer to the left, Sebastian realises. Not quite centred. An empty space next to the most recent one.
He wipes the dust off that empty space and takes a step back.
And decides against centering them.
The four soldiers and their missing compatriot.
--------------------
The 2016 season is a lie. Or rather, it’s a series of lies, all sewn together with his own saliva, forming a quilt that he wraps himself in. Wraps Lewis in.
Because by the time Hungary rolls around, neither of them are at the top of the championship standings. The trophy already clasped in the hands of Lewis’ less favoured German.
But still, week after week, he tastes it in the air before Lewis says it. The horrifying recline of the waves before a tsunami. Because Lewis still says it, whether his mouth is full of cabbage or Monster Energy or air.
Because in Lewis’ eyes, Sebastian is still the Ferrari World Champion.
Because he picks up what Sebastian doesn’t believe in, and throws it back in his face.
Sebastian tries it in the drivers briefing room before Hungary.
Lewis is silent. Not upset, just bored. Mindlessly scrolling through something that should be Instagram.
“Lewis.”
Lewis doesn’t look up, but offers a non-committal hum in his direction.
“You’re gonna be the World Champion this year.”
The scrolling stops. Lewis’ thumb hovers over what looks like an ad for new shoes.
They don’t look very good.
And then a breath, masked by a grin, escapes Lewis’ lips and it flows through Sebastian’s being and he can breathe all over again.
“Thanks, man.”
Sebastian wants to think that he’s gotten it right. That this is how it should feel when you say something you believe in. But he feels exactly the same and he wants to tell Lewis to stop smiling because Lewis is smiling at an illusion.
And because Sebastian is a straightforward, honest man, he says the first thing that comes to mind.
“Those shoes are ugly.”
Lewis wins the Hungarian Grand Prix.
And so Sebastian gifts him claps and pained congratulations . He doesn’t tell Lewis that he’s going to be a world champion, because Lewis already knows that.
Sebastian doesn’t know it.
Lewis is going to be the World Champion.
He chews it up and spits it out. It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.
Some part of Sebastian is grateful that he didn’t say it to Lewis again. Because Lewis’ hotel room door is cold and stoic against Sebastian’s knuckles. Because Lewis opens the door with the dramatic flair of a man so beaten down that he can barely stand.
And Sebastian can do nothing but pass tiny pieces of comfort wrapped in tissue paper to the weeping man who’s just gotten his fourth championship title ripped away from him under the watch of the Singaporean streetlights.
Nico Rosberg wins the 2016 World Championship.
--------------------
Lewis Hamilton is on the other side of his door.
He’s framed by naked trees, their branches reaching out but not quite managing to touch him. The snow around his feet is smushed, like he’s been pacing on the spot for the past few minutes or so. A cloud of hot air escapes his lips.
A splotch of heat against a cold canvas.
Sebastian decides that he should probably stop looking through the peephole and invite Lewis in.
Lewis calls his house quaint. Sebastian tells him to shut up.
It’s past nine when they’re back in the cold again. And Lewis is whistling some sort of horrible off-key tune that only the most tone-deaf people could manage to produce.
Sebastian skips to it, in a way that only the most rhythmless people can.
They hear the bells and the jaunty jingle of the merry-go-round before they see the lights.
And when they do see the lights, Lewis lets out a whoop and Sebastian is smiling before he can tell himself not to.
So they run from shops selling chestnuts to stalls displaying handmade baubles to bars making warm glühwein . They laugh and scald their hands trying not to spill it as they sheer away from people who stare at them, hopefully not long enough to recognise them from the latest racing magazine.
And the sound of the merry-go-round gets louder and louder as they stumble their way towards it, trying to get on before it starts moving again. The glühwein cups have been forgotten in a nearby trash can, Sebastian’s hands returning to their familiar cold. He rubs them together, trying to return them to the warmth they were encased in seconds ago.
They barely make it on before the merry-go-round starts to spin. Sebastian hops on a red horse, ignoring the confused looks from the children around him. He sticks his tongue out at one of them.
Lewis sits atop a purple horse beside him. He’s gazing up at the ceiling and Sebastian would like to steal this moment in his hands and keep it forever, because there’s nothing in Lewis’ eyes but pure childish wonder.
Sebastian looks at the ceiling of the merry-go-round, painted with reds and greens and whites and a million little horses and children. And he feels like he’s looking through a kaleidoscope because it’s spinning all around him and raining colour and it’s in his eyes and his ears and his mouth.
One face brings him back to earth.
And the music is slowing and the fatigued horses no longer jump as high as they used to.
They jump off the merry-go-round and disappear into the crowd.
And in that cold, cold forest of people, Sebastian sees no one but Lewis. And feels no one but Lewis because suddenly Lewis’ hands are in his hair and his nose is against Sebastian’s and the taste of glühwein is strong and potent and shared between their lips. The world melts away and maybe, just maybe, Sebastian isn’t as cold as he thought he was.
Sebastian can’t remember the last time he’s slept in the guest room. Doesn’t know if he ever has. But the sun is surprisingly inviting and the sheets are still as warm as he remembered, and it feels new because the walls are blank and free for him to draw on.
The sheepish sounds of water running in the bathroom keep him awake. He sits up.
Lewis’ luggage has found itself a comfortable home in the corner of the room, wide open but everything is neatly packed inside, unlike the mess that they both stumbled into the previous night, breathing nothing but the one another’s smiles, blood singing in their veins.
He hears the water running and comes to the realisation that this room smells a lot like Lewis’ house.
Sebastian goes to make some eggs.
The sound of a luggage squeaking against hard wooden floors forces Sebastian to look up from the plate. The eggs are suddenly less interesting.
Lewis is standing by the door, phone in one hand, staring expectantly at him. He grips the handle of his luggage a little too tightly with the other.
Sebastian decides that the right protocol after a night like that would be to offer a hug. He regrets this decision when Lewis responds with only one arm slung across Sebastian’s back like a sling.
The other hand stays holding the luggage.
It’s awkward when they let go, Sebastian coughing in a painful attempt to cut through the tension.
He opens the door.
His hands are freezing.
“Bye, Lewis.”
And then he waits, because Lewis opens his mouth and it’s almost as if he’s about to say something.
And he does.
“Bye, World Champion.”
So Lewis is going down the driveway, waving with his phone at Sebastian, luggage leaving deep tracks in the snow.
He goes straight to his room after Lewis is gone.
Walls clad in memories and childhood and Germany and Sebastian Vettel welcome him.
He looks at the shelf with the four trophies on it.
And wipes away the new specks of dust forming in the place of the missing trophy.
He only notices them when he turns around.
They’re on one of his pillows, displayed carefully, almost like you would see in a giftshop window. They’re a silken charcoal grey, cuffs adorned with the words Heppenheim Christmas Market 2016 .
He tries the gloves on.
They’re the perfect size.
--------------------
Sebastian Vettel hasn’t been angry in a long time.
He wasn’t angry when his tyres exploded in 2015 Belgium.
He wasn’t angry when Lewis brake-tested him in 2017 Azerbaijan.
Hell, he wasn’t even angry when Lewis tapped him on his elbow and said something that sounded an awful lot like, “Yeah, about that thing in the Christmas market—”
(Because Sebastian had seen it coming and all the it’s alright s he’d practiced in the mirror didn’t go to waste.)
Sebastian Vettel is angry when he’s in the bright, dripping heat of 2017 Italy.
The season had started off alright. Maybe better than alright. Maybe brilliant, even. Because Sebastian was hopping around from country to country, from race to race, with the championship title glued to his too-sweaty palms.
And when Lewis called him a Ferrari World Champion, Sebastian no longer crawled under his skin to hide from everything that he didn't believe in.
Because he might just have believed Lewis.
So he tore away the skin covering his eyes, because he wanted to see, and because he wanted to be blinded by the sheer possibility that maybe he’ll fill that empty space on his shelf with a new glob of metal.
Monza is red. The stands are red. The track is red.
And so Sebastian bathes in the blood of the tifosi , the brethren that he’s never met. The distant family that lifts him up towards the title. He wonders if they’ll be there to cushion his fall.
But maybe he won’t fall, and maybe the glue holding the championship to his palms won’t wear off over time.
He’s wrong.
Sebastian Vettel falls in front of the whole world, crumpling to his knees on that podium in Italy. Feet only touching the top step when they’re asked to take a photo. Feet only touching the ground because he’s weighed down by the repulsive weight of the third place trophy .
Lewis not only receives the gold trophy on that podium, but the title as well.
People in red cheer. They would’ve cheered louder if he was higher up.
He wants to drown in their blood.
Monza is red. The podium is red. His trophy is red.
Everything is red.
Sebastian doesn’t bother looking through the peephole when the knocks on the door echo through his hotel room.
He doesn’t even bother trying to open the door.
But the knocks echo through his skull and drill at his brain and so he gives in and opens it.
Lewis is walking in with a hey, champ before Sebastian can tell him to get out.
He doesn’t bother checking the corridor. Lewis won’t be staying long anyway.
Sebastian turns and watches as Lewis raids his minibar for a can of Monster Energy. There aren’t any.
And his blood is boiling and his hands are shaking and his hands are cold but he forgets to breathe before thinking.
He feels the venom forming in his mouth and feels the words frothing at his lips.
“Stop calling me a fucking world champion.”
Lewis stops messing up his minibar. He turns his head away from the cold blasts of air from the tiny fridge. His lips are chapped.
“What?”
And Sebastian wants to scream and cry and tell Lewis to stop calling him a world champion because he’s only just started to believe it and Lewis is already taking it away from him because he’s a selfish piece of shit that feeds him with lies only to steal them for himself.
And since he’s a straightforward, honest man, he does exactly that.
It’s beautiful, like watching a time lapse of a plant wilting, curling up on itself, wasting away.
Lewis is falling. Falling over his feet to get out of the room because you’re a fucking monster, man .
Sebastian happens to like this nickname more than the past one.
His hands are absolutely freezing when he shuts the door.
--------------------
Sebastian crawls through the rest of the 2017 season in his bright red racecar. (Her name is Gina.)
He spends his mornings trying to brush the taste of winning and trophies and champagne into his teeth and spends his evenings trying to brush it all out again.
He manages to breathe through the horrifyingly awkward podiums and manages to smile for photos that he’ll never look at again.
And throughout the season, Sebastian operates with the knowledge of two things:
- He wants to win the championship.
- He won’t win the championship.
Two things that he’s able to believe.
Sebastian doesn’t know whether this is a good thing or not.
--------------------
The plane is cold.
Sebastian looks out of the window and misses the overly glitzy Parisian lights, even though the sole blinking red light at the end of the wing is enough to make his eyes hurt.
He looks away from the window.
The seat across him is empty.
The blanket still silently sits in its plastic packaging, waiting for someone to put it to use.
The only source of light is the toilet sign.
He thinks of the silver in his luggage.
Thinks of a golden designer jacket in a room of tailored suits, thinks of smiles and tubular golden trophies passed into wanting hands, thinks of Lewis’ smile slicing through a room of clapping people.
Thinks of Lewis’ smile slicing through him.
Sebastian tries to piece himself back together but he’s thirty thousand feet above the earth.
Neither here nor there.
He wishes someone would open the plane door and allow him to disintegrate into the night sky.
--------------------
Sebastian stays in Germany for winter break.
He watches as the dust collects on the shelf, and makes no move to wipe it off.
--------------------
The 2018 Chinese Grand Prix is probably the best place to do this.
Because Sebastian had spent the last two hundred and twenty-four days living in a pit full of misery and hopelessness, surrounding himself with an air of paper-thin nonchalance.
Because he hasn’t heard the one sentence that he’d hated hearing the most, and yet still finds himself looking for it around every chicane, and every hotel corridor.
Because he hasn’t eaten takeout Chinese food in a long time.
And so he prays to God that the bag in his hands won’t slip and tumble to the floor when he taps the door with his other.
It opens all too quickly.
Lewis is staring at him, but in a way that one would stare at a kindergartener’s drawing — amused, impressed, and yet utterly confused.
“Hey, man.”
“I brought Chinese.”
And that’s all it takes for Lewis to let him in.
The room isn’t quiet. Because, of course, there’s some shitty music video playing on the television including girls with unproportionally large butts and men in gold chains throwing up gang signs.
Sebastian sets the boxes carefully on the table.
Lewis’ bed is too private. Too personal for them to stain with sauce and rice and cabbage.
“How have you been?”
Sebastian hates that question. It’s the obligatory greeting of someone trying, and failing, to find any sort of similarity between the two parties, resorting to a question that’s too open-ended for Sebastian to summarise any part of his answer.
So he doesn’t.
And in between mouthfuls of cabbage and chicken, he tells Lewis how his last few months have been absolute shit, and how he wishes that he were Lewis because champagne on the top step every week doesn’t really sound like a bad idea if you have a weird looking trophy given to you at the end, and how he has to change the radio station every single time someone starts rapping, and how his hands were always cold and oh, thank you for the gloves by the way , and how good the Chinese takeout tastes because he hasn’t allowed himself to eat more than a mouthful before throwing it all up.
Lewis takes it all in.
When Sebastian is finally done, he turns off the television and that god-awful music video disappears.
And he’s coming round to Sebastian’s side of the table, and he’s suddenly so close that it’s impossible not to feel comfortable and his arms are around Sebastian’s and he’s smiling and Sebastian is smiling and he whispers I missed you, Ferrari World Champion against Sebastian’s lips and Sebastian’s hands are warm for the first time in a year.
--------------------
Sebastian asks him the question during a particularly boring driver’s briefing.
“Why do you call me a Ferrari world champion when I haven’t won anything yet?”
Lewis laughs and then covers it up as a cough when several other drivers turn to look at him.
His voice is nothing more than a breeze, floating past Sebastian’s ears.
“Because I think that you’re capable of much more than you believe you are. And so someone needs to say it to you, or else you’ll never say it to yourself. Because that’s the only way you’ll ever be a world champion.”
Sebastian thinks that makes sense.
But there’s one question he has regarding that whole statement.
“Did you get that from How to be the Best You ?”
Lewis has a major coughing fit.
--------------------
Lewis’ words are a chronic ringing in his ears.
Sebastian hears them before he goes to bed, lets them appear in his dreams, then contemplates them all over again when he wakes up.
He sees them displayed on that messy bookshelf in Lewis’ house when he visits during winter break. All five of them now taking up two shelves instead of one. But they’re still there, squeezed in between stacks of books that now have to be laid on their sides instead of standing vertically.
And Lewis’ words are still there, spilling over gold edges, running down the walls and through the books and onto the rugs.
When he leaves on a plane back to Heppenheim, Sebastian looks at his hands. They’re wrapped in silken soft grey fabric, and dripping with the weight of whatever Lewis had said months before.
And so Sebastian Vettel goes home, gets a cloth, and soaks it in whatever coats his hands.
He wipes the empty space on the shelf for the first time in a year.
--------------------
The 2019 season is rough. Uneven. No footholds for Sebastian to latch onto.
And through his entire winless streak, Sebastian’s hands shake. They tremble against the steering wheel because he’s terrified. That maybe what he believes in won’t come true.
He wonders if Lewis’ words have any substance.
But then thinks of the gold on Lewis’ shelves and the fact that even though his hands are shaking, they’re warm.
So he tries to find a grip somewhere. Anywhere.
The win in Singapore is a consolation prize, a sort of participation gift for the man who believed that maybe he would win this year. To cut him some slack.
Sebastian laps it all up. So he lives on into the night, top-step champagne burning sweeter down his throat, Lewis burning kisses into his skin.
Sebastian watches as Lewis receives his sixth ugly gold trophy over a screen.
And maybe, he finally thinks of Lewis as a world champion.
And maybe, he’s alright with that.
--------------------
Sebastian’s phone blows up when the news is released to the public.
He decides to disappear for a little, his last text being a phone number.
The landline sings its horrible tune minutes later.
He knows who it is before he hears the breathing on the other side of the phone.
He hears the smile before Lewis even speaks.
“You’re still gonna be a Fe—”
Sebastian looks at his hands and waits.
“You’re still gonna be a world champion, you do realise this right?”
Sebastian breathes in. He breathes out. He smiles.
“Yeah, I do.”