Chapter Text
The first is scribbled on a post-it note.
I promise I won't crash your car.
Bless Elio, sweet Elio, Lotus's rising star, who is letting him - their half-baked third driver - use his car so Nigel can at least attempt a qualy lap. It's a tight fit. Elio's slightly shorter and much lighter and Nigel can already feel the bruises forming where he needs to squeeze all of his long body in the tiny cockpit. He takes the pain though, barely acknowledges it. He cherishes each bump and scratch because this is it. This is his chance. Elio and Lotus have given it to him and he will run with it, all the way to the finish line.
They qualify fourth and eleventh, Elio ahead.
*
The second is written on a piece of napkin.
I promise to remind you to bring your helmet to the track.
They are sitting side by side in the back of the Lotus garage, getting the telling off of the century by Colin. Well, Elio is. Nigel is trying not to laugh, which is not helped by the fact the mechanics are in stitches in the background. Who even forgets their bloody helmet?
He slips the note to Elio, fingers curling around the Italian's to hide it from Colin. He feels Elio take a peek, the napkin still in their shared grasp, trying not to draw attention. It fails. Now Nigel is getting the telling off of the century but it's fine because now Elio is laughing too, eyes bright. It's Nigel's favourite memory of Lotus.
*
He is a cunt. I promise I am never going to do it.
It , of course, is what Peter Warr wants. “Competition between his drivers” - he calls it. Fucking bullshit, that’s what Nigel thinks. He had taken Nigel aside before practice, told him he would give only Elio the new engine. Then he told Nigel not to share his data - to give Elio the challenge.
He is delusional - Nigel fumes, as he pens the note. He is delusional if he thinks this is good for the team and even more if he thinks he can drive a wedge like this between him and Elio. They are no longer the spoiled child of the roman aristocracy and the envious, shy, uppity kid from the Midlands, if they ever even were. It is not going to work.
Elio is not in the garage so Nigel drops the note off with the stack of his telemetries in Elio’s hotel room. He grins when he opens the door to his own and finds a matching stack, sans note but with a Bacio, already waiting for him.
*
I promise I won't forget you. Will you?
It's such a silly thing to write, especially on hotel stationery. Especially about someone like Elio. It's just that Nigel had not realized how much change would scare him, how much he fears that he'll lose Elio together with his seat at Lotus. So, he writes it, before he can think better, even if he knows he is close, too close to confessing something terribly true and terribly dangerous.
He means to post it under Elio's door and then run away, let Elio do with it what he wants, but it turns out he is an even bigger coward than that. He stands in front of the door for a long few moments, gripping the note. Then he gives up, crumples it in his fist and shoves it inside the pocket of his overalls.
*
It takes a lot for Elio to dislike a person and for a while it looks like Senna has managed it. He sure does get on Elio’s nerves. It’s not just that though. There’s this painful look in Elio’s eyes - disappointment, Nigel thinks, but not at the team nor at Senna. Elio blames himself. It’s like the light has been sucked out of him. He is caving in, hollow and self-deprecating. It makes Nigel sick to his core.
I promise I like you better than Senna. - he writes. What a fucking sentence.
"I am grateful for small mercies" - Elio tells him later, brandishing the note with a smile. The haunted look in his eyes has lifted up, banished for a while, and Nigel counts his silly sentence as a not so silly victory.
*
Riccardo makes for a better teammate - not that Elio has not worked his magic on Senna in the end - but now there’s laughter coming from the usually uptight Brabham garage, especially when Ecclesstone trips on a stray soccer ball. Still, the car is a piece of shit (Elio's words) so it’s out of the pan and into the fire, on that front. It does dampen Elio’s spirits a lot, though he does excitedly hug Nigel to congratulate him for his spot at Williams.
“I promise it’s going to get better” - Nigel tells him, giving up on his health for the chance to share a cigarette with the Italian behind the paddock. A quiet moment only for them. Elio takes the last drag, dropping his head to rest on Nigel's shoulder.
“I hope you are right” - he says, peeking up at Nigel with a fond spark in his eyes that Nigel has not seen directed at anybody else but himself since their days at Lotus, when Colin was alive and the world was fine.
“I hope you are right”
*
“There’s some hope if he gets through the night” - the doctors tell them - “but don’t hold on to it.”
It's him, Rosberg and Piquet at the hospital.
Riccardo was there too until the doctors came back with the first round of news and Michele had to take him away in tears. He blames himself, the poor soul, because he should have been the one in the car, not Elio. It's unfair how such an act of kindness can backfire.
They wait.
Keke is running through packets of cigarettes like there’s no tomorrow, stopping only when he has to leave to go get Elio’s father and sister. Piquet punched a door, then yelled at Alain and is now curled in a corner, cradling his hand and pretending he is not crying.
“Look, Elio. You have so many people that love you” - Nigel prays his forehead bowed against the locked door of the operating room, blinking away his own tears - “please, don’t leave us.”
And then: “I promise, if you give me the chance, I’ll never be a coward again. Just please, Elio. Please."