Archive of Our Own

  When Sebastian leaves, he isn’t ready.

  It doesn’t feel that different, really. More beard and less fear, equal smiles and equal passion. The crowd’s roar evaporates into the hot Abu Dhabi air and Sebastian can’t be sure if they’re cheering or crying.

  Probably a little bit of both. 

  He spots a lady in the front row of the stands. She’s wiping her eyes with the edge of a Ferrari flag. The prancing horse flails and runs and falls all at once and disappears into her bag, drowned out in a sea of deep green. 

  “Let’s hear it one more time for Sebastian Vettel!”

  They’re shouting all over again. Some are shouting at him. Some are shouting for him. Some are shouting simply because keeping silent at a moment like this would be uncouth. 

  Sebastian is silent. Something that feels too much like longing is already pulling at his elbow. But it’s far too soon for something like that. 

  So he smiles and sweats and shouts with the crowd. Says ‘thank you’ in a bunch of different languages, butchering the pronunciations of at least half of them, meaning way more than he lets on.

  If he’s crying, they don’t see it. Their faces are already turned away from him, cheering, crying, mourning the death of yet another legend that they’ll only miss but never need. 

  Sebastian cries in front of people in blue, red, and green, hiding behind a pair of sunglasses. And when it’s time to go he hangs back. Steals a little more glory for himself, because he’s greedy like that. 

  He counts the seconds with one hand and shows his teeth for the last time. The ground is cracking below him but he’s already gone. 

  Bathed in blue and red and green but just not enough gold. 

--------------------

  Sebastian doesn’t really know what he’s doing. 

  Ten o’ clock on a gusty December night isn’t really the time to be making strawberry-flavoured waffles, but he’s a grown man, and he’ll do as he pleases. The waffles take five minutes to cook. He’ll remember that. 

  The television in the living room speaks, muffled and out of sync with the picture on the screen. Until Sebastian realises that no one is speaking, and it’s simply the mild hum of the cars going around the track. He hadn’t even realised that there was a race this weekend. According to the tiny graphic in the top right corner of the screen, they’re in Abu Dhabi. 

  Sebastian watches as Max stretches his lead from eight-and-a-half seconds to nine. As Max edges closer to yet another world title. 

  There’s a ringing in his ears. And his hands start to sweat because it’s becoming too loud to be normal and too real to be ignored. Everything is too much and too little. His beard makes his skin itch and he wonders how long it's been since his razors have gone dull. 

  Then sanity and sense return with all the weight of a hazy memory and he’s reaching for the telephone because it’s ringing. He should probably answer it before he chokes on this horrible mental funk he’s found himself swimming in.

  “What took you so long to answer, man?”

  Sebastian considers hanging up. He’s probably going insane. 

  “Lewis?”

  The same trying laughter from all those years ago finds its way down the cord, spilling out of the receiver and twisting itself around Sebastian’s wrist. 

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  Lewis wants Sebastian to go on a trip with him. To Italy. Of all the places in the fucking world, Italy is the first thing on the tip of Lewis’ tongue. 

  Italy, with its stupid prancing horses and reds and greens and whites. With five years of Sebastian’s past life stuffed into the cracks on the pavements. 

  Of course, Sebastian says no, resolute yet nervous, wondering if that’s all it’ll take for Lewis’ voice to be replaced by the harsh wail of a dial tone. But Lewis is still talking. And Sebastian is still breathing. 

  “Why not?”

   Too many reasons. 

  Those reasons empty themselves into the air above him. Like how Sebastian doesn’t really want to go through the trouble of buying tickets, and how a vacation isn’t something he needs at the moment. How the golf clubs in the corner of the room would go forgotten and how the local bar would be one person short. How he still has the sudoku in today’s newspaper to finish. 

  Lewis seems both unimpressed and offended at the fact that Sebastian would pick a sudoku over him. 

  “Come on, man.” 

  Something teeters on the edge of Lewis’ sentence. 

  “It’s been awhile.” 

  And the excuses have already begun rearranging themselves before Sebastian catches up to them. They come out quietly, hopefully, in the form of an unintentionally gruff-sounding yes. 

  Lewis barely has the time to react before Sebastian smells something burning. 

  He’s forgotten the waffles.

  There’s time. A shocking discovery for someone who’s gotten so used to the timelessness of it all. 

  So Sebastian folds his sweaters before placing them into his bag. Wonders if his bag is large enough before unpacking everything and repacking it into a larger bag. Tries his best to forget the fact that the most interaction he’s gotten from Lewis in the past nine years are the yearly Christmas cards that faintly smell like something from his past. 

  Sebastian tries his best to keep them well, even though he knows very well that some of them are missing from the set, possibly thrown away by a careless hand or used as a makeshift coaster. 

  He doesn’t feel too bad. The cards aren’t special. They’re typed out, Good tidings and merry Christmas! in tiny blocky letters, probably mass-produced, with no indication that they’re even meant for him in the first place. Sebastian doesn’t even think Lewis types them himself.

  Sometimes he wonders if Lewis expects anything back. 

  Maybe that’s why Lewis called. 

  Sebastian can’t help feeling just a little guilty. 

  The new bag is too big and the extra space is irking him. He takes everything out and packs it into the first bag. 

  He’ll ask Lewis about it eventually. 

--------------------

  Sebastian hasn’t ever been one to pick an aisle seat. 

  He’s used to private jets, complimentary champagne, and airplane seats that recline until they’re practically horizontal. He doesn’t remember the last time he’s taken a commercial flight, much less sat in economy class. 

  He doesn’t really remember why he’d picked this mode of transport anyway. 

  The window seat would be his first option. Pretty lights and glittering skylines and things of the sort. Comfortable and efficient. 

  (Sebastian can’t remember what sitting in the middle seat is like.)

  He does know that the aisle seat is easily the worst. With its rattling trolleys and poorly-timed toilet-goers threatening to crush his toes at any second. 

  And yet he’s picked the aisle this time, for what reason, he’s not exactly sure. 

  So the trolleys rattle louder and his toes are minutes away from their demise while Sebastian tries to get some sleep. He catches his reflection in the window two seats down. 

  Some would say that he’s let himself go. That wrinkles and eyebags and untrimmed facial hair are the features of a man too lost in the past to care about his future. He finds years of sleepless nights trapped in the lines around his eyes.

  He should probably take care of those. 

--------------------

  Come to think of it, Lewis hasn’t mentioned anything about the trip, other than the fact that it’ll be in Italy. 

  So Sebastian is left there by the baggage claim area, surrounded by the occasional stressed-out businessman and families hugging and greeting each other in mouthfuls of Italian that he can barely pick apart anymore. He hasn’t used that language in awhile. 

  His back is starting to ache. 

  And then Lewis appears like he should. A dramatic spin of horrifyingly purple suitcase and a questionable hoodie-flannel combination that Sebastian can’t even begin to understand. He’s doing a strange brisk-walk towards Sebastian, like a crab that’s trying to swim. 

  He’s smiling. 

  “Hey, Seb.”

  There’s a ringing somewhere between Sebastian’s ears. He tries to smile with his lips closed but they’re cracking and nothing but inexplicable joy is seeping out. 

  “Hello, Lewis.”

  His back aches some more. 

  Lewis has efficiently forgotten to mention that this was a road trip. 

  That they would be working their way across Italy in a silver, second-hand Fiat 500. That he has a full weeklong itinerary planned out, and Sebastian would have no choice but to go with it. 

  So Lewis signs the car rental papers and Sebastian takes his time to inspect the poor car. 

  The leather on the seats is cracking. There’s a scratch in the paint above the gas tank.

  He decides it’s mediocre at best. 

  The situation is different. Fragile and beautiful, tense and uncharted. Decorated with the soft hum of Italian music over the radio, the mechanical whir of the engine underneath them. 

  Lewis hasn’t stopped talking. Desperate attempts to counter the edging silence, filling the gaps with talk of designer coats and vertical farming and the four new charities he’s just donated to. 

  Sebastian wonders if he’s scared of the silence too.

  Milan is pretty. With its cathedrals and marble arches, fashion and glamour under the soles of every pedestrian. There’s a Christmas tree in the middle of the piazza. Two men are hanging silver and red baubles on the lower branches. 

  You’d think that they were staying here for at least a day. 

  But Lewis’ itinerary is less forgiving. 

  They’re out of the city in a little over an hour, Sebastian watching as Lewis tries to keep his eyes ahead. 

--------------------

  When Lewis asks him what he’s been doing, Sebastian doesn’t know how to answer. 

  They’re twenty minutes past the sign that told them they were out of Milan. Ten minutes since Lewis had finally stopped talking. Two minutes since Sebastian had considered restarting the conversation. 

  He waits for Lewis to forget the question. 

  But Lewis is staring at him, one hand on the steering wheel, the other on the volume dial, lowering the music to let Sebastian speak. 

  Sebastian doesn’t know how to speak. He plucks at a painful hangnail on the side of his thumb and feels very, very cold. 

  Telling Lewis he’d been spending his days playing golf and eating burnt waffles and enjoying all the perks of becoming a social recluse sounds equally as pathetic as it is. Nothing really becomes of a man who spends his days hiding from what he could’ve been.

  He feels Lewis staring at him but he looks straight ahead. Because he’s not as straightforward as he used to be, and not as honest as he’d like.

  And in the quickly dimming light, Lewis pats Sebastian on the shoulder and smiles. 

  “Don’t worry, man. I’ve been doing nothing too.”

  And between the gaps of his teeth, Sebastian realises that Lewis isn’t honest either. 

  He wonders if he’s still a world champion. 

  The silence is absolutely terrifying. Paired with glaring streetlights that reveal more than they should. 

  Like the concerned glances Lewis keeps throwing in his direction. Like Lewis’ fingers drumming out a pattern on the steering wheel.

  Sebastian feels it echoing in his skull. And with the ringing, it’s too much. They start a strange, wooden tango to the time of the Italian song on the radio. 

  (The lyrics are decipherable in incoherent bits and pieces.)

  It isn’t a conscious decision when he breaks the silence, but a clumsy one. A fumbling excuse of a sentence, haphazardly tailored to fix the tension in the air.

  “I’m considering growing out the beard.”

  Lewis frowns, and Sebastian feels like he should’ve choked on his saliva before saying that.

  But then Lewis lets out a wheeze and his frown falls away to reveal a relieved smile that appears only when they pass under the watchful gaze of the streetlights. Lewis’ laugh comes from somewhere in the back of his throat and Sebastian stores it in his pocket. 

  “Do elaborate.”

  By the time they arrive, Cinque Terre is asleep. 

  By the time they arrive, Sebastian is exhausted. 

  The conversation in the car had petered out, abrupt but not entirely unwanted. The silence was a little more manageable than before. 

  The hotel is tiny. There’s a small Italian man at the counter who greets Sebastian. He smiles in return. 

  They part ways when they’re outside their rooms. Lewis not making any move to invite himself into Sebastian’s, Sebastian having no intention of entering Lewis’. 

  It’s better this way. 

  And Lewis is squeezing Sebastian’s left shoulder and saying goodnight, Seb under his breath like he’s keeping a secret that he still doesn’t know.

  And Sebastian can feel Lewis’ hand through the material of his sweatshirt and it’s only a matter of choice because Lewis is standing here in front of him. After nine years that saw him reeking of uncertainty and hopelessness. 

  But Lewis is letting go, so Sebastian does too. 

  “Goodnight, Lewis.”

--------------------

  Sebastian finds himself thinking of Lewis between fragments of broken sleep. 

  Maybe the mattress is uncomfortable. Maybe the sheets are too thin. 

  Maybe Sebastian already has Lewis’ laugh burned into the undersides of his eyelids, and maybe he’s trying too hard to remember what being close to Lewis was like. 

  What it was like before Lewis became nothing more than a rivalry that had worn out. Nothing more than a yellowing card under a cup of coffee. 

  There’s a part of his brain that tells him that Lewis once existed in conversations overlaid by trashy music and takeout boxes and handfuls of World Champions. That he’d once existed in the same world as Lewis, and that they’d breathed the same polluted air, laughed under the same gray sky. 

  Sebastian can’t see the sunlight yet. 

  He closes his eyes and ignores the ringing. 

  Before realising that it’s not there at all. 

  Cinque Terre is prettier in the day, even though they’ve chosen the wrong season to visit it in. 

  From his hotel room window, the buildings are colourful, in a washed-out, imperfect way. In a pink building to the left, a lady with curlers in her hair waters the plants lining the windowsill, trying to get the flowers to turn towards the sky in the cold December weather. 

  Someone is whistling in the street below. A motorcycle backfires in the distance. 

  Sebastian can’t quite figure out what model it is. 

  He pulls one of his many packed sweaters over his head and walks out the door. 

  Breakfast comes in the form of a strawberry gelato. Lewis settles for some type of coconut sorbet. 

  Sebastian thinks it looks disgusting. 

  Lewis offers him some and tells him that it’s good for his complexion.

  Sebastian would rather keep his wrinkles. 

  Lunch comes after Sebastian has sufficiently sweated through his sweater. 

  (Maybe that’s why they call it a sweater.)

  It had been a long hike up the hill, with Sebastian stopping for far too many water breaks and Lewis pretending to be exhausted too. Just for the sake of it. 

  But behind the sweat and the complaints and the exhaustion, Sebastian is smiling wider than he has in the past nine years. Whether it’s with adrenaline or delirium, he’s not sure. 

  He’ll settle for happiness. 

  Their lunch is simple. Pesto pasta and a paper bag full of breadsticks from a restaurant at the bottom of the hill. 

  (According to Lewis, it’s rated five stars on Google.)

  And so they eat when they’re at the top of the hill, staining their teeth with green, staining their hands with laughter. Sebastian finds himself telling Lewis about his newfound love for knitting and beaches and his aisle seat escapade. Lewis doesn’t question it. 

  Rather, he laughs and agrees that aisle seats are the least ideal of the bunch and that window seats are the way to go. 

  They do their best to people-watch between mouthfuls of salted breadsticks, looking down from their perch, squinting at the tiny figures below, before realising that both of their eyes are failing them, and that they should both invest in glasses. 

  It’s in the air now. The drunken lilt of two men who really should be acting their age. But still they sit, cross-legged, peering into the lives of others, smiling at the sun that shines blindingly back. 

  Sebastian almost thanks Lewis. 

  For what, he’s not entirely sure. 

  It’s a fickle thing, really. Dancing quietly on the tip of his tongue, following the curve of his spine, a gentle nudge that something should be said. 

  That he knows what should be said. 

  But he doesn’t. 

  So he lets it pass. Lets the feeling move past them and into someone else’s head, picking up the conversation where Lewis had left it hanging. 

   Thank you, Lewis. 

  It catches wind and shows promise, before stumbling and falling over the side of the hill. 

  Dinner doesn’t come when it’s supposed to. 

  Actually, it doesn’t come at all. 

  Lewis labels it a light supper, a suitable excuse for Sebastian to roll his eyes. Then again, Lewis isn’t wrong. 

  Their ‘light supper’ comes in the form of honey-nut granola bars for Lewis and packets of beef jerky for Sebastian. Their first dinner in Italy is spent, neither in Cinque Terre nor a major city, but in a scratched Fiat on an empty expressway. 

  An Italian version of Silent Night is playing. It’s escaping through the windows, leaving a trail of wailing catholic music behind them. 

  (Lewis had insisted on leaving the windows down. “Fresh air is good for the troubled soul, Seb” and other kinds of psychological bullshit.)

  And as they continue, pushing their little silver car slowly through Italy, Sebastian finds that he still doesn’t know anything.

  That he doesn’t know what’s ahead, or what could’ve been left behind, or why Lewis is here, next to him, humming to Christmas carols with a mouth full of granola. 

  For a second, Lewis stops humming. 

  And meets Sebastian’s stare halfway. 

  And then he’s chuckling and shaking his head, returning his gaze to the road ahead of them, pitch black in the night. 

  That night, Sebastian learns nothing new, except how to sing Silent Night in Italian. 

  Sebastian wakes with his eyes still closed and his palms still sweaty. He wakes, shielded from the world by the skin of his eyelids.

  When he opens his eyes, the sun is still barely up. Orangey-pink on the edge of the horizon, not quite ready to start another day. 

  Everything is pretty much the same as it'd been before he’d fallen asleep, halfway through Lewis’ story about some vegan restaurant that didn’t quite meet his expectations. But Lewis must’ve pulled over sometime in the night, for they’re now stationary along the side of the road. 

  The music is still playing. 

  Someone is still humming. 

  “Lewis, why aren’t you asleep?”

  Sebastian hears himself through the echo in his bones, his eyes still smudged with exhaustion. 

  There’s silence for more than two seconds. Maybe Lewis didn’t hear him. 

  It’s an in-between. A temporary state of consciousness that Sebastian takes for granted. He finds himself dozing off again. 

  Lewis probably didn’t hear him. 

  “Go to sleep, Lew― ”

  “Seb, did you miss me?”

  Sebastian stops breathing for a moment. 

  He scrambles to find an excuse but there’s nothing there. He’s slipping and no one knows it. 

  Maybe Lewis knows. 

  So he forces his brain to work again and he keeps his eyes closed. He feels guilt pressing on the back of his neck and welcomes the ringing in his head. 

  He’s honest when he opens his mouth and a liar when he speaks. 

  “Maybe.”

--------------------

  There’s something about Florence that just sits right with Sebastian. 

  And knowing Sebastian, it’s probably the architecture. Marbled domes and modern glassware, each trying its best to outdo the other without trying too hard, overlaid in a way that wouldn’t be too much, arbitrarily beautiful.

  He can’t help it, really. 

  Sebastian ends up smiling, yet again, despite himself and the ache in his jaw. At the group of tourists, clamouring to keep up with their guide. At the rowdy day-drinkers, spilling their drinks to hide their sorrows. At the children, tossing coins at the feet of Neptune. 

  At Lewis, who’s still there. 

  Nursing a dented can of Monster Energy, sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose, not daring to slip down. 

  Lewis, who’s both frazzled and calm, desperately trying to find a pedestrian way to reach the cathedral he’d pronounced in an absolutely horrendous Italian accent, laughing through the offended looks the locals had turned their way. 

  Sebastian had plucked the laughter from the sky and worn it around his wrist. 

  Lewis is frowning now, squinting at the tiny scrollable map on his phone, trying to figure out which direction they should be walking in. He’s doing an awkward spinning motion. Sebastian would be lying if he said it wasn’t a little funny. 

  “Do you remember which street we came from?”

  Sebastian has no idea.

  But he finds himself nodding and beckoning for Lewis to follow him, hanging more than he remembers in the crack of his lips, letting go of less than he should with every puff of hot air. 

  Lewis doesn’t follow immediately. 

  And for a moment, Sebastian finds a tear in the perfect painting. 

  But he doesn’t get to see what’s behind it because Lewis is sewing it shut and smiling with his eyes and his teeth and the unbounding, unrelenting trust that Sebastian knows the way. 

  The trust that drips off the edges of Lewis’ cheekbones and frames his shadow on the ground, meeting Sebastian’s where they overlap.

  “Lead the way, Seb.”

  There is no tear in the painting. 

  They end up at the cathedral just over two hours later. 

  (Sebastian had conveniently taken them on a loop around the thing.)

  Lewis is still smiling.

  While getting into the car, Lewis mentions that he had a surprise for Sebastian. 

  “You’re gonna love it, man.”

  “What type of surprise?”

  Lewis slams the door shut.

  “You’ll see.”

  It’s amusing that Sebastian had gotten the contents of this surprise completely wrong. He’d imagined something more sophisticated. Something that said yes, this is a surprise from Lewis Hamilton, you’re welcome, be honoured. Something Lewis would present with more than a sheepish smile that disappeared if you weren’t looking for it. 

  And yet, it’s stopped at the smile, nothing more, nothing less. 

  Sebastian thinks it’s beautiful. 

  The beach just an hour after sunset, holding the deepening blue of the sky at arm’s length, allowing the tide to take just a little more. The signs of life come in the form of silhouettes somewhere further down the shore. Two figures folding their deckchairs and packing away their picnic basket. A smaller figure dancing along the edge of the water, running away when it dares to come closer. 

  Someone’s forgotten sandcastle protected by a circle of washed-up seashells. 

  Sebastian tastes salt on the tip of his tongue and sees nothing but the present, stretching away from him, caving in on him, giving him shelter while holding him down. He feels nothing but mirth, and lives in nothing but this gifted reality. 

  And in the growing darkness, Sebastian finds forgotten familiarity in the look that Lewis is giving him, seemingly unnoticed out of the corner of his eye. 

  So he turns to face Lewis, because there’s something behind Lewis’ eyes that deserves more attention. But in less than a second, that something is gone, firmly replaced by unmistakable worry. 

  “Seb, are you alright?”

  Sebastian only realises that he’s crying when he starts breathing again. 

  There is a part of him that wants to push the emotion back into the past where it’d stayed for so long, yet he finds that it’s been overthrown by his own conscience.

  He says the first thing that comes to mind. 

  “It’s beautiful, Lewis.”

  Lewis doesn’t need to say anything in return. Sebastian wants to say more, but saves it for a rainy day. 

  They stand, with sand in their shoes, piecing everything back together on a beach in Florence. 

  The water reaches the seashells and knocks at the castle walls. They begin to give.

--------------------

  Sebastian is only chased in his dreams. 

  Only chased when he’s fallen and vulnerable, by things he can hear but never see. It’s always the same. Always the echo of something from the times when his smile lines were only skin deep, always running because he has to. 

  (He doesn’t have to, but he does it anyway.)

  (It feels right.)

  Tonight, Sebastian is running again. Tonight, he hears radio static and fireworks and V12 engines. Tonight, he runs faster. 

  He tastes the sweat on his upper lip and finds footing in the darkness.  

  There isn’t any direction, because there never is. Because dreams, traume as the Germans like to put it, are trauma in the highest form. 

  Sebastian is always running from the same few things. From the moments that could’ve been and the chances he should’ve reached for. 

  And then, for the first time, Sebastian hears something else. It’s not new, but it’s welcome, a rasping chuckle that shouldn’t be heard over the roar of the engines. 

  It’s in front of him somewhere. 

  And suddenly, he’s chasing it down.

  When Sebastian wakes up, the windows are foggy. He looks for his face and finds it, white and chalky in the scratched glass, the aftermath of a nightmare wearing thin across his features. 

  They’re stopped on the side of the road for the second night in a row, on a part where the streetlights don’t reach. The car is left whirring but the radio is silent. It’s four in the morning and too early to be both awake and sober. 

  And Sebastian doesn’t quite know what to do with himself, because Lewis is sleeping. 

  Lewis, breathing neither shallow nor heavy, balancing his breaths on the shadows that dare to touch his skin. It’s unclear whether he’s having a good dream or a bad one, the impassive mask that he wears slipping no more than the part of his lips. 

  Sebastian can’t help but think that Lewis looks different. Because he’s not bathed in light like he usually is, no nine time world champion, and not present in the way that would make you stare for longer than three seconds, but simply there . 

  Nothing but a man in the cracked driver’s seat of a silver Fiat 500, passing the night like everyone else, waiting for the sun to rise and illuminate his eyes once again. 

--------------------

  They’ve been on the road for about an hour now. Which means that it’s been an hour since Lewis had yawned through the silence in the car, cracking his knuckles and tossing a bleary good morning into Sebastian’s lap. 

  Sebastian had tossed a strawberry granola bar back at Lewis. 

  And then they were hurtling down some numbered autostrada through the rest of Tuscany.

  (Sebastian still has no idea what their next stop is, but that’s alright.)

  They’re trying a different radio station today, after Sebastian had finally admitted he’s sick of not understanding the music and Lewis agreeing way too readily. There’s heavy synth flowing out of the speakers now. Some bells and acoustic guitar and lyrics that Sebastian understands because it’s in English. The punchy kick of a snare drum that makes Lewis tap his finger against the steering wheel. 

  Behind it all, Sebastian breathes nostalgia. He wonders if Lewis does too. 

  “Lewis?”

  Lewis keeps the car just under ninety kilometres per hour. Sebastian wishes he’d drive faster. 

  “Yeah?”

  Sebastian thinks of the empty shelf in his room. 

  “What did you do with your trophies?”

  Lewis is trying his hardest not to look too shocked. Evidently, it’s not working. Sebastian struggles to contain his amusement for fear of ruining this very serious moment. 

  It’s a question made out of genuine curiosity, because Sebastian is genuinely curious. 

  There had been no doubt when he’d done it, taking down the four globs of World Champion gold from his shelf, wiping them down with non-World Champion material before arranging them at the back of an antique cupboard he’d won in an auction, next to a red Ferrari cap and a RedBull windbreaker and a model Aston Martin. Sebastian hasn’t opened that cupboard since. It’s starting to feel like a waste of space. 

  He’d wiped the shelf for the first few weeks after that day, refusing to let dust anywhere near it. Then he started to forget for a day or two, always remembering after increasing long periods of time, guilt finding its way under his fingernails. And then he’d forgotten for a month, and since the dust had already begun to accumulate, he’d left it that way,

   A part of him hopes that Lewis had done the same.

  And Lewis looks like he’s about to answer when the car slows, choking through the exhaust pipes and letting out the last bits of hot air before stopping on the highway, twelve minutes away from the petrol station they were working towards. 

  There are two and a half beats of stunned silence before Lewis speaks.

  “It broke down.”

  “Well, no shit, Lewis.”

  Sebastian had imagined that a trip to Italy with Lewis would be painful. An explosion in slow-motion, shards of forgetfully remembered smiles digging into his palms, bits of bleeding chances and wasted memories. He’d known that it would be tiring, spending every minute trying to find his way into a new conversation topic. 

  Sebastian is both wrong and right. 

  The trip isn’t tiring. At least, not in the aspect that he’d imagined. Because after all, Sebastian had done none of the work, but let Lewis carry it all. The conversations, the meals, and the activities had all spawned from Lewis’ mind and Sebastian had to do nothing but allow it to happen. 

  (And for this, he’s very grateful.)

  The trip is tiring in the sense that they’ve spent forty minutes pushing a tiny silver car down the side of the highway, sweating under their jackets, cold December air turning the tips of their ears red. The tow truck service was unavailable. Something about spending the holidays with the family. 

  Sebastian is growing increasingly irritable. Lewis is growing increasingly optimistic. So Sebastian grumbles as Lewis fuels the air with stories of his niece, occasionally interrupted with cliche motivational statements like we’re doing great man, almost there!  

  He lets his hands blister and considers putting on his gloves. He provides Lewis with barely attentive hums, and realises that he finds comfort in the fact that for the past four days, they’ve been tiptoeing around each other, flat-footed people who choose to stand on their toes, refusing to address anything that requires more than a second thought.

  If Lewis is tired, he doesn’t show it. Instead, Sebastian feels the need to search for something to carry the weight of the conversation. He thinks of the golf clubs in the corner of his living room in the corner of his mind.

   That’ll do.   

  He winds up explaining what he’s really been doing for the past few years, elaborate explanations for each of the different golf clubs, and how to read the ground. He explains this with constant reminders that he isn’t very good at golf, reminders that Lewis takes with a pssh dropping out of the corner of his mouth. He finds himself offering to teach Lewis the next time Lewis is in Heppenheim, and finds Lewis agreeing before his breaths can catch up. 

  And then the yellow logo of a Shell petrol station appears just over twenty metres away and Sebastian finds his cracked lips twisting themselves into a smile. 

  They’re whooping before they can stop themselves. 

  Some part of Sebastian is happy that Lewis’ itinerary isn’t going to plan. At least just for a day. 

  They’re sitting on the steps outside the gas station, the wind leaving Sebastian’s knuckles a bruised shade of red. He can barely feel the croissant he’s holding. 

  Sebastian ends up pulling a pair of grey gloves out of his pocket. They’re faded between the fingers, darkened around the fingertips. The seams are beginning to unravel. The words that once sat so strikingly on their cuffs pathetically reduced to Hep nheim Christm s Mar k t 201. 

  At least they still fit. 

  Lewis is watching him again. Sebastian doesn’t need to look up to know. 

  He does anyway. And the expression Lewis has is expected, but still stress-inducing nonetheless. 

  It’s strange. A weird, undecipherable combination of faces knit together by countless media interviews. Lewis somehow manages to look like he wants to laugh and cry at the same time. 

  “What?”

  “Your gloves, they―” Lewis’ breaths come shaky and irregular. Sebastian wonders if the cold has maybe gotten to him. “Ah, nevermind.”

  The look is replaced quickly and efficiently by a default smile.

  “Where do you wanna go, Seb?”

  Sebastian doesn’t know why he’d answered. Doesn’t know why he hadn’t said no, it’s okay, you decide. Doesn’t know why it’d been the first thing off the tip of his tongue, other than a rather mannerless spray of croissant flakes. 

  Doesn’t know why he’d nodded when Lewis had tensed and asked if he was sure. 

  But they’re already on the way there, sixteen minutes away, according to the GPS, and Sebastian doesn’t know if he’s ready. 

  Despite popular belief, Sebastian doesn’t hate the Mugello circuit. But then again, there aren’t many things to hate about it. 

  Everything is nicely set. Chicanes and straights put together in exactly the right places, interesting enough to force some on-track drama. 

  (Some part of him wishes that he’d won that battle with Daniel. The Aston Martin should’ve been quicker.)

  There’s nothing about Mugello that Sebastian hates. 

  It’s the past. Obvious opportunities that just happened to become even more obvious at this track. He’d had them land in his open palms, but he’d always forgotten to close them. And when they’d slipped away he’d blamed the track for being too slippery. Or the car for being too slow. Or whichever driver happened to be within a five metre radius. 

  Sebastian has no one to blame now. 

  They’re in the parking lot. Staring at the white pit building through their frosty windshield. Waiting for nothing to happen. 

  Lewis doesn’t ask Sebastian if he wants to get out of the car. He doesn’t say hey, remember when I almost lost the lead on the 54th lap of the 2022 Tuscan Grand Prix? He doesn’t remind Sebastian of the red, or the green, or the gold. 

  The white pit building stays white and Sebastian wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans.

  He cracks his neck like he’s preparing to do something significant. 

  But what’s significant is a far cry from what it once was, and so he’s painted with less flair than a four-time world champion deserves. It’s pathetic and it’s weak, but all other versions of himself have since been erased, so he speaks to allow his voice to break just a little more. 

  “Can you call me a World Champion?”

  To Sebastian’s surprise, Lewis doesn’t sigh. There’s no shock, no disgust, no initial confusion. And Sebastian can only watch as Lewis struggles to find a way to let go of his request without dropping it onto the floor. 

  The air is stagnant and stretched out between them. 

  Sebastian almost considers begging. 

  But then Lewis is turning towards him, towards Sebastian Vettel, and he’ll be crowned a World Champion again, in the passenger seat of a little silver car.

  So Sebastian waits for the trophy to be passed into his hands. He waits for the streamers and the confetti and the glory. He waits to feel the past once more. 

  He’s waiting but nothing is happening. 

  And when Lewis watches him with nothing but disappointment and pity, Sebastian knows that he’s failed. 

  Lewis’ words barely make it past the ringing and the sweat. 

  “I really thought you would’ve learnt to say it yourself by now.”

  They’d parked the car outside a little roadside motel with a pink neon sign. Lewis had almost gone up the curb. Sebastian hadn’t commented on it. 

  They’d made their way through the main door, Lewis two steps ahead, Sebastian two steps behind. 

  They’d said their goodnights to each other with nods that barely breached the distance between the two doors of their rooms.

  Sebastian ends up sitting on the side of the bed, with the curve in his spine that he’d gained in the past few years keeping him upright. He’d look out the window but the blinds are moth-eaten. He’d sleep but he can’t bring himself to. 

  He’s too busy picking up the pieces of the past. Pieces of Lewis that he thought he’d already thrown away. 

  He thought he’d thrown them into that cupboard, along with his trophies. 

  But somehow they’re still there on the shelf. Living in bits of his memory. 

  Like the last day he’d breathed fuel-tainted Abu Dhabi air, crying behind his sunglasses, full of failed emotion and longing. Telling himself to leave when he was so ready to stay. 

  And then he’d listened and left. He’d gone into his green motorhome and packed up his things because he had no one left to say goodbye to. All the mechanics had thanked him over the radio, and he’d thanked them back. All the fans had each received a slice of his smile. All the drivers had raced with a #dankeSeb sticker on their helmets and that was all he needed. 

  There was no one left but one. And that one person hadn’t bothered to knock on the door before letting himself in. 

  “Are you already leaving?”

  “Not yet. Maybe in the next ten minutes. I still have some things to pack.”

  Sebastian had placed the third place Abu Dhabi trophy into his luggage. It was slightly dented when he’d gotten back home.

  “No, Seb.”

  It was the crack in Lewis’ voice that had made Sebastian turn around. Lewis was still standing by the door. The aching light from the single fluorescent tube overhead had made his eyes look strangely wet. 

  Sebastian had taken a minute to realise that it wasn’t the light. 

  “Are you already leaving?” A pause. “For good?”

  And something had pulled at the back of Sebastian’s mind. A nagging feeling. A reminder that Lewis had held with so much wasted faith. 

  “I have to, Lew―”

  But Lewis was already shaking his head, and words were leaving his lips in incoherent bits and pieces that Sebastian wasn’t able to decipher. They came in waves, things like Seb, I thought you were better than this and how can you just leave and you know you’re not ready. 

  And that’s where Lewis was wrong. Because Sebastian wasn’t ready, but he hadn’t known it at the time. So he’d smiled without his eyes and laughed and told Lewis he was full of shit. That he’s leaving because his time has run out and he’s alright with that. That it’s fine if he isn’t more than a past champion, because he’ll never be a champion again at this rate. That Lewis should just let it happen. 

  Maybe that’s what did it. Maybe that was where he’d stopped and shut the door on Lewis. Maybe that was the moment he’d fallen and never gotten back up. 

  He doesn’t remember it all. But Lewis had looked back at him before letting himself out the door.

  And it was nothing but the same pity he’d seen in the car at Mugello. 

  They hadn’t spoken since. 

  It’s 2:45 in the morning when someone knocks on Sebastian’s door. Sebastian opens it because he hardly equates staring at the ceiling to sleeping. 

  The motel hallway is dark, dimly lit by shell-shaped lights that do a good job of illuminating the peeling beige wallpaper. And Lewis. Shifting his weight from foot to foot. Hand raised like he was just about to knock again. 

  “Hey, Seb.”

  Sebastian can’t see Lewis’ face. 

  “Can I come in?”

  Sebastian learns that Lewis is here because he hadn’t been able to sleep too. And they wind up laughing, disjointed, at the fact that sleep is no longer a given thing, delirious yet alive. 

  They talk carefully, with caution because the situation is fragile, two people sitting on opposite ends of the bed because there’s nowhere else to sit.

  They make plans for the next few days, Lewis telling Sebastian what’s on the itinerary, Sebastian agreeing when the plans sound particularly enjoyable. 

  Neither address what happened at Mugello. 

  Neither hold their laughter in longer than it needs to. 

  And then the air is still once again, filled with the weight of their own breathing, and Sebastian almost wants to kiss Lewis. 

  He doesn’t know why. Or how. Or what it’s made out of.

  Because right now, it could be made out of anything. 

  But Sebastian ends up smiling with the lines around his eyes and nothing less. He ends up swallowing his words and drinking in air. 

  “We should get some sleep, Lewis.”

  So the bedside lamps are switched off and the pillows are fluffed. Lewis is told to stay on his side of the bed, and Sebastian knows that he’ll stay on his.

  And in the darkness, they’re living in more ways than one. In quiet smiles during long car rides, in songs on Italian radio stations that they’d both known all the lyrics to. In past champions and in dreams that never came true. 

  Sebastian lays with his back to Lewis and his face turned towards tomorrow. 

  There is no sound but the buzzing of the neon sign outside.

  And then he hears it. So soft it would have almost been unheard if he wanted to, gentle in the trying voice that is Lewis’. 

  “Goodnight, World Champion.”

  It’s stored and placed somewhere between his lips. 

  Sebastian runs tonight.

  Tonight, Sebastian runs from the cold and the greedy. They seem to be shouting but he can’t hear it. They grab at his elbows but he’s already pulling away. 

  And then he’s stumbling, and falling, and maybe it’ll all end here. 

  But something in front of him is catching him. Pulling him up by his arms and dragging him along. 

  And they’re running, side by side, until the voices are no more. 

--------------------

  Today is different. Cold and immaculate Italy but on a different end of the colour chart. 

  Today there are no bright purples, pinks or greens for Sebastian to smile at. 

  The prettiness seems to have gotten redundant. 

  He wakes up to an empty half of a sunken motel bed, and looks past the moth-eaten blinds to the grey sky outside. The buzzing from the neon sign has stopped, indication that it’s been turned off and rendered useless during the day. A woman is trying to get her things into her car below. Thunder booms somewhere in the distance. 

   It’s probably going to rain. 

  And even though there’s nothing for Sebastian to smile at, he smiles anyway. 

  As Sebastian had predicted, it had begun to rain. 

  Beaten, unshapely droplets on the car as it finds its way back onto the expressway, blurring the vision of the road ahead, turning the windows a cold silvery-gray to match the car. 

  And Lewis is singing. Off-key and not as autotuned as he had sounded in that one Christina Aguilera song, but still singing nonetheless. Rhythm is no issue, harmonies are overrated, so Sebastian ends up whistling to the song too. 

  (It’s strangely catchy, despite some really terrible lyrics.)

  Then the song is ending, abrupt and unannounced like most songs these days. 

  There’s a grin pulling the corner of Lewis’ mouth upwards.

  “We’re almost there, Seb.”

  Sebastian couldn’t care less. He isn’t in a rush. 

  The winery is small. Hidden from public knowledge except for those who make an effort to look for it. 

  (“Wine-tasting is mandatory in Italy, man.”)

  Sebastian spends the next three hours working his way through more than twenty glasses of wine. 

  He loses his head around the twelfth glass. Lewis had started tripping over his feet on the eighth.

  By the time they leave, they’re giddy with oblivion, filled to the brim with reds and whites and rosés that really shouldn’t have had as large of an impact on them as they did. (But Sebastian had downed the first glass, and Lewis had kindly followed suit.)

  When they leave, it’s still raining. Heavier than before and tapping on Sebastian’s skull like it’s trying to find something that should be inside it. Hitting the ground around them in little puddles that have just begun to form. 

  The rain leaves a bitter, welcome sting in the air, percussion for a lonely man’s march.

  And Sebastian doesn’t quite know why he does it, a strange realisation that’s becoming too frequent to be normal, but he’s tilting his face towards the falling rain. It’s falling and it’s running between his eyelashes and down the bridge of his nose and past the cracks of his lips, through the blurriness and the senselessness and the lines around his eyes. 

  He looks down into the puddle that he’s just stepped into, and his face, watery and twisted, grins back at him with no malice. His thinning hair is sticking to his brow but he makes no move to push it back. His beard is growing out. 

  He almost forgets Lewis is there. So he’s looking for Lewis, through the rain that just won’t stop and the wine that flows through both of their veins in equal percentages. 

  Lewis is there. Four puddles away, rain running off his waterproof windbreaker, droplets dripping from his ears. He’s neither looking at the sky, nor at the ground, but straight at Sebastian. And as predictable as Lewis can be, this look is not one Sebastian has ever seen. 

  It’s flimsy, Sebastian can see that. Held together by twenty glasses of wine and reminders to swirl the glass, please in a strong Italian accent. It’s hopeful and hopeless, a merge between a winner and a loser, child-like whimsy but with none of the naïveté. 

  And somewhere in Lewis’ eyes Sebastian finds a nighttime sky. The slowing jingle of a merry-go-round. Warm mugs of glühwein against frostbitten palms. Smiling into each other's smiles. Kaleidoscopic and committed to a memory that he hasn’t yet accessed. 

  Lewis is looking straight at Sebastian but Sebastian doesn’t see him.

  Because Sebastian is already crossing the gap to Lewis. He’s filling his sneakers with puddle water, rain seeping into his hands and under his fingernails, and finally the last puddle is stepped into and Lewis’ arms are wide open and they’re hugging. And it’s the first time in nine years Sebastian has ever held anyone this close, and he’s breathing into the dampness of Lewis’ windbreaker and smiling and crying with his wine-addled brain, and saying thank you, thank you, thank you. 

  Because there’s nothing else he can say. 

  Unlike the carol, the night isn’t silent. 

  Just like the night before, Sebastian finds background music in the form of the buzzing neon sign outside, along with the leftovers of the rain falling slowly off the roof onto the road below. 

  Ever so often, the buzzing flickers and dies. Ever so often, the droplets take more than three seconds to form. 

  And Sebastian is left there, with his back against a cheap motel bedsheet, moonlight finding its way through the holes in the blinds, holding his breaths in his chest for fear that they might be stolen from him. 

  But Lewis is still there, snoring more than he is breathing, no longer treading the line of sleeplessness but choosing to stay anyway. 

  So Sebastian shuts his eyes and sees no images. The buzzing is starting again and the droplets are forming in the same irregular fashion. 

  Sebastian doesn’t flinch when it does. He doesn’t bother holding his breath. He breathes for everyone and no one. He lives under closed eyelids that flutter once, twice, and fall still. 

  And finally, Sebastian Vettel goes to sleep. 

--------------------

  It’s the sixth day. A shocking discovery for someone who’d tried his best to count the seconds when they’d first left Milan. 

  (Sebastian had lost count around the third hour.)

  The expressway is crowded today. Not jam-packed, but with a significant increase in the number of cars. People are probably heading home for Christmas.

  Sebastian cracks his knuckles. Lewis tries his best to remember where they’re headed. Michael Buble whines about snow over the radio. 

  “They call it an agriturismo. ’’

  Lewis is rolling the r s far too much, and Sebastian funds temporary relief in the knowledge that he’s still able to correct Lewis with the correct pronunciation. 

  The word eventually comes rolling off Lewis’ tongue in an unnatural staccato, something less like agriturismo and more like eh-gree-tourist-mow. 

  But despite the horrible pronunciation, Lewis seems pleased enough at his absolute mastery of the word, so Sebastian smiles at his hands and at Lewis and stops there. 

  Michael Buble gets too whiny after a while, so the rejected Italian radio station returns in all its former glory.

  The agriturismo is quaint. A polite word that Sebastian has learnt to love over his empty years. 

  Peeling wood and brown paint scrape his knuckles when he knocks the door. And he’s barely made his way through the first knock when it swings wide open, revealing two old, smiling Italians. 

  They’re fumbling with the items in their hands and the words in their mouths and Sebastian can’t help but laugh and let a buongiorno, signore e signora escape his lips in a puff of breath.

  A breath that the couple takes too little time to warm towards because they’re speaking quickly and fluently and Sebastian can’t catch up. He’s looking to Lewis for guidance but Lewis is more lost than he is, so he lets them grab his hands and they smile, with tear-stricken eyes, because to them he is grande Sebastian!, nothing more and nothing less. 

   To them, he is a champion.

  Bottles of wine and plastic-wrapped baskets are pushed towards them, and they’re invited in and shown to their rooms. 

  And almost as quickly as they appeared, the couple leave Sebastian and Lewis with aging smiles that, of course, only pull upwards. 

  Sebastian doesn’t expect much from a little farmhouse along the outskirts of Rome, but the place is surprising in the most unexpected ways. 

  There are stone wells, unusable, but still a pleasant sight nonetheless. Rows of tiny purplish-blue flowers that Lewis takes pictures of with his purplish-blue iPhone. And chickens, which Sebastian takes a liking to.

  The couple make themselves scarce, only ever appearing to place two plates of freshly-baked scones in front of them, or in the form of timid peeks behind brown-painted doorways. 

  And the sun is disappearing, over the tops of the trees and behind the field of sheep, leaving the sky ruined in ribbons of white and orange and blue. Sebastian and Lewis have found their way onto the porch, carrying paper plates piled high with pasta arrabiata, unopened bottles of beer waiting on the step below them. 

  They talk about the chickens, and the flowers, and the scones that they’d had for tea. 

  When Sebastian talks, he talks with his mouth full. When Sebastian laughs, his lips are stained red. 

  He wonders if Lewis minds. What’s considered rude and unethical behaviour in Germany would probably be thought the same in England. 

  But Lewis is laughing along with him with the same tomato-stained smile, and the same sunset-stained eyes, and Sebastian finds that this indeed does exist. 

  That there is no painting. No imagined reality that Sebastian would rather be living in. No extended version of a hazy daydream. 

  But real. Potent and tangible, in it’s smiles and suns and silver cars. 

  And then he realises. 

  That Sebastian Vettel, man of the moment, has been living in an escapist fantasy. 

  That he’d been holding the past for so long that he’d forgotten to hold the present. That he’d been holding back the future because he hadn’t nailed the past. 

  That he’d forgotten how to exist. 

  And Lewis, busying himself by trying to fit five pieces of penne onto his fork, had given it back to him. Dramatic spins and beaches and hope that Sebastian never ever managed to get used to. 

  Because Sebastian Vettel is afraid. Something that he’ll never admit. Something that he’ll never say to anyone. 

  But he says it to Lewis, on a wooden porch in a tiny farmhouse, nine kilometres north of Rome. He says it and everything else, on a shiny golden platter. That he’d been living in the past. That he’d been jealous of anyone he couldn’t be. That he’d been operating in a strange blinded daze for the past nine years.

  That he’d been missing the sport and missing the cars and missing the people.

  That he’d been missing Lewis. 

  And there’s nothing left by the end of it. Nothing left to lie about, nothing left to hide. Sebastian faces Lewis with no tears in his eyes, and cracks his lips in an attempt to smile. 

  And then Lewis is looking up, having successfully strung five pieces of penne onto his fork, and he’s speaking, slowly, softly. 

  Sebastian makes sure to hear the words this time.

  “We’ll figure it out, champ.” A pause for Sebastian to catch up. An equally cracked smile. “We’ll be alright.’’

  And somehow, under the torn streaks of sky, Sebastian knows that that’s enough. 

  They’ve left the agriturismo with hugs exchanged and smiles pressed into the palms of the couple that waved until they’d become small and miniature in the rear-view mirror of the Fiat. 

  Sebastian happened to like the pair.

--------------------

  Somewhere, under a starless Roman sky, hidden by the shadows that leak from the cracks in the pavements, Sebastian chooses to exist. 

  Not in any universe other than this one. 

  Not in any universe where Lewis isn’t walking beside him, elbowing him every so often to get him to look in at a cheese shop or an antique map shop or one of those stands that sell little overpriced models of the Colosseum. 

  (Sebastian had bought one of those when Lewis wasn’t looking. Maybe he’ll sneak it into his luggage tomorrow morning.)

  Sebastian doesn’t think that this universe is particularly bad. Because he’d caught his reflection in a passing taxi, stretched long and blurred, moving away from him. Because Lewis’ reflection had appeared next to him and crossed its eyes and pulled some sort of face that his mother would scold him for. Then his reflection had cracked right through the middle of the glass and disappeared, and he’d told Lewis to stop it but he’d laughed anyway. 

  Lewis had typed in the itinerary: spend the night liberally. Some of his positive thinking bullshit that hasn’t worn off yet. 

  And so they spend the night liberally, tripping over uneven pieces of stone in the ground, buying cones of gelato that they regret almost immediately (they’re very cold), taking a selfie in front of Trevi Fountain that finds its way onto Lewis’ Instagram page. 

  (The lighting is bad but it still gets a ton of likes in the first minute. Lewis tries to convince Sebastian to get an Instagram account. Sebastian politely declines with a fuck that.)

  And they’re walking along with their half-licked cones of gelato when they hear it. 

  Distant, but maybe only drowned out by the buzz of the crowd and that one kid that just won’t stop crying. Slowing, but starting up again with a mechanical whir. Familiar, but in a different key. 

  They hear a merry-go-round. It’s faint but unmistakable, the sound of bells over multiple speakers, maybe less than a few hundred metres away. Present, cutting through the wind that freezes the tips of their ears. 

  Sebastian is looking at Lewis before he can tell himself not to. Lewis is looking at Sebastian through eyes that hold more than just the past. 

  They’re stuck, in the middle of tourists and shop-owners and children that won’t stop crying. Holding their breaths even though they haven’t drowned yet. Waiting for nothing to happen. 

  But something does happen, because Lewis is taking Sebastian’s hand in the growing darkness with a well, what are you waiting for?, and he’s dragging him along through the crowd and past the cold and under the leafless trees to the lights, and the warmth, and the bells of the merry-go-round.

  And Sebastian simply has to do nothing. But live. 

  It’d been drunken. 

  A blinding, stumbling act under the night that carried on breathing behind them. A blinding, stumbling act on the pavement back to their hotel, silence punctuated by sober minds that had forgotten they were sober. 

  Sebastian remembers Lewis’ arm over his shoulder, and the weight had pressed into his shoulder and his back and forced out a smile that toed the line between ecstatic and absolutely insane. And something in the air had shifted, because sometime on the way back, Lewis had begun whistling the tune of Silent Night, albeit in the wrong timing and definitely more upbeat than it should be. 

  But Sebastian had found stupid, jumbled Italian spilling out of his mouth, and they were walking down the street, a drunken mess of sobriety when it’d happened. 

  Blinding, stumbling, smiling into each other’s smiles, words and melody lost on the tip of their tongues, cracked and chaste, gentle and glorious, a jumble of emotions disappearing and reappearing where their lips had met. 

  And Sebastian had pulled away first and laughed, guttural and human, and told the starless Roman night sky to stop looking. 

--------------------

  When Sebastian wakes up, it doesn’t feel like the last day. 

  He wakes up like he does every other day, sleep still pulling his eyes shut, groggy and incomplete, wanting to go back to sleep but already too awake to do so. 

  He opens his eyes to the sound of the joints in his shoulders popping, and the itch of an untrimmed beard on his chin. 

  But this isn’t like every other day, because there’s someone by the little hotel minibar humming while stirring his tea, and the metal spoon is clinking against the porcelain of the teacup in a three-beat rhythm that has Sebastian twisting the curve of his lips into a good morning, Lewis . That has Lewis’ smile loud and prominent in the way his words tilt when he says good morning, Seb. 

  A cup of tea on a matching white saucer is placed on the bedside table. 

  Sebastian can’t seem to thank Lewis enough. 

  The last day isn’t spent like how anyone else would spend it. Anyone normal would make the most of it, probably by cashing in the hours at tourist attractions or local restaurants. 

  Sebastian does think that they made the most of their last day. Because it’s being spent in their room, packing up little souvenirs, only leaving to grab takeout from the Chinese restaurant downstairs and to get a gift for Lewis’ niece. 

  Their last day is spent on the carpeted floor of their hotel room, working their way through takeout boxes, flipping through channels on the hotel room television that neither of them are actually watching. 

  And time moves slow and easy in their four walls, so Sebastian lives slow and easy even though it’s grey and cold outside. 

  And since he probably won’t get another chance, Sebastian speaks, straightforward and honest.

  “I don’t want this trip to end.”

  And when Lewis looks up, it’s the same. Eyes made of championship gold, dented but polished, honest, even in the artificial light.

  “Me too, man.’’

--------------------

  The trip ends, despite the fact that neither Sebastian nor Lewis express any desire for it to. It ends when they get their suitcases out of the trunk of the silver Fiat 500. Lewis patting it on the hood like a dog, Sebastian offering more than a glance back at it. 

  (Maybe it’s a little more than mediocre.)

  The trip at the gates, when Sebastian turns to Lewis and smiles, bearded and dripping in mirth, holding his arms open for a hug, because they’ve gotten to that level and Sebastian is alright with that. 

  And Lewis is hugging Sebastian back equally as tight, and thanking him, even though it’s been and should have been the other way around. 

  But there are still questions that have yet to be answered, so Sebastian is grabbing Lewis’ arm before he turns away, and the words are leaving his lips in nervous bits and pieces. 

  “Wait,” A moment to gather his dignity. A minute to remember how to speak. “Why did you call in the first place?”

  It’s a stupid question. Idiotic and irrelevant on many levels, but Sebastian would be lying if he said he wasn’t more than a little curious. 

  And then a grin, hovering in the blasts of heated airport air. 

  “Isn’t it obvious?’’ 

  Sebastian still feels like an absolute idiot because it really isn’t. 

  “I missed you.”

  And Lewis is gone, with a dramatic spin of his purple luggage, and a wave back in Sebastian’s direction that Sebastian catches in the air and places on the little shelf in his mind. 

--------------------

  It’s ten o’clock on a chilly December morning, and Sebastian is making strawberry-flavoured waffles. Five minutes to cook and they’ll be done. 

  Five minutes are enough for him to blow off all the dust on the surfaces. 

  Five minutes are enough for Sebastian to make sure that the four pieces of gold stand proudly on his shelf, next to a tiny pile of Christmas cards that Sebastian had made an effort to find.

  (There’d been one in his mailbox two days after he’d returned. It’d been typed in tiny blocky letters, seasons greetings and things of the sort. But this one had a little asterisk at the bottom, with the words get your golf clubs ready, I’m coming to Heppenheim attached in the same blocky font.)

  So Sebastian shifts the waffles onto a plate before they get the chance to burn, and opens the door the second he hears a knock. 

  Because he’s greeted with the same hey, World Champion, and the same trying laugh that had found its way down the phone cord.

  And he finds it still. Living in bits of his past, his present, and his future.