Chapter Text
Nico knew it was a bad idea. He knew. But still there was nothing capable of changing his mind.
Retiring from Formula 1 after winning his first championship shocked the world of motorsport, he knew his statement would be the equivalent of the fall of the Crystal Ball in the middle of Times Square, but without any warning, and without being New Year's Eve yet. But he didn’t care.
He had lost so much in the last few years. He lost nights of sleep, time, patience, friends, family dinners, vacation, sanity and the love of his life. “Motorsport takes as much as it gives, Nico”. The words spoken by his father when he was nine years-old would never leave Nico’s mind. They were the truest thing Nico had ever heard and he experienced it himself.
Motorsport takes as much as it gives.
Racing was his life. Racing was everything he knew his whole life. The only thing he thought before sleeping and the first thing he thought after waking up. Until him. Until Lewis Hamilton.
The thing is, racing came with Lewis and it ended with Lewis. Nico could never not associate one without the other. Racing and Lewis were the same for Nico, both in his mind and in his heart. And both were taken away from him. Actually, one of them slowly left him and he didn’t see it coming until it was already lost.
It was a losing game.
Nico likes to think he doesn’t know to which this losing game refers to, but he does. He knows his relationship with racing was something that was in his destiny, he was born for this, it was made to be his life, but he didn’t see Lewis coming. He didn’t prepare himself for Lewis. And he didn’t prepare himself to lose Lewis.
Motorsport takes as much as it gives. Motorsport gave him Lewis and motorsport took Lewis from him.
They were good. They were. Nico knows this. They were best friends, teammates, lovers. They were unstoppable together. On tracks they were the only ones. No one else existed when it came to Rosberg and Hamilton. Out of tracks they also were the only ones. Lewis was the only one. The only one he saw, the brightest star in the sky, a sound louder than a car engine. Lewis was the only thing Nico felt.
Whenever anyone mentioned Lewis’ name he could feel it in his bones, in his organs, deep in his chest and in the back of his mind. Nico thought, for years, Lewis was everything inside him. But how could Lewis be everything inside him? If Lewis was bright and loud, how could he be cold and silent as the feeling Nico felt in the last years while being teammates?
They fell apart. They were miles away from each other even when they were in the same bed. Nico didn’t want to say this outloud, but he knew it was true. He missed Lewis when he was present and he misses him even more now that he no longer is beside him.
There is no point in thinking about all of this.
Nico was back in the paddock for the first time after months, this time as a commentator not as a driver. It felt different, but he thinks he needs some difference in his life now. Or not, since he was still in the F1 world and still was able to enter Mercedes garage, even though he shouldn’t do the last one. Or the first too, he doesn’t know anymore.
The Mercedes crew was running from side to side. The mechanics with tools and car pieces, the engineers concentrated in data and all types of numbers, PR people in their phones and laptops. Nothing changed, it seems. Except it did, and Nico tries to remember himself of this.
Nico sees Toto on the left side of the garage and comes to approach him, trying not to disturb anyone. Toto is tall and serious as ever, leaning against the wall talking to Bono and two mechanics, nodding to whatever they were saying. Nico waits until they leave, trying to concentrate his attention on the questions he needs to ask the drivers for the interview after the qualifying.
“Didn’t see you coming.” Toto’s voice takes Nico out of his thoughts.
“Yeah, didn’t want to disturb your gossip time." Nico joked and Toto laughed giving him a hug.
“Once a bastard, always a bastard, I see.”
“You know me, Toto, I never go too far.”
“So, I didn’t know you would be here this weekend." Toto casually said, making a move to Nico to follow him out of the garage.
“I didn’t know either. It was supposed to be Jenson here, but something came up his family and he couldn’t make it, so Sky gave me a call and here I am.”
“Well, it’s good to see you. We haven’t heard much from you in the last months, even though we live in the same neighborhood. Coffee?"They were in the team facility now and Toto went in the direction of the coffee machine.
“Yes, please. So, uhm, I haven’t been in Monaco that much this year. When I’m not working with Sky, I’m usually traveling, you know, trying to know the places we’ve been during the races that I didn’t have the time to visit properly and stuff.”
“This is a good idea. You can give me a few types for future trips once I retire too." Toto said, giving Nico his coffee on a mug.
“For sure I will, but I’m not sure you will ever retire." Nico said, taking a sip from his coffee, hiding a smile while Toto did the same, also smiling.
“We never know. Your retirement came out of nowhere, so I think I can come up with the same some day.”
"Probably, yeah." Nico wasn’t smiling anymore, his mind taking him to a place he couldn’t quite describe.
Nico fell silent and Toto didn’t say anything more, letting him think about whatever was on his mind. The facility was quiet, about six people were sitting at the tables with their own warm drinks, trying to dissipate the cold weather from outside while still working. The place itself still looked the same and if Nico tried really hard he could see himself sitting alongside Toto, Niki, Bono, James and a Lewis Hamilton that he still knew a few years ago right here in Spa. Nico didn’t let his mind go too far on that memory.
Nico looked back at Toto with an expression that might have given him away on his thoughts because the Mercedes boss gave him a small, but sympathetic smile.
“I know the answer to this question and I don’t know why I’m going to ask you this, but have you talked to Lewis?” Toto asked, lowering his voice so only Nico could hear it.
“No…” Nico looked away, fixing his gaze in the window that showed that it was raining again. “No, I haven’t.”
“I know you don’t want to talk about this and that probably you don't want to do that with me either, but you know you can talk to me if you want. I’ve been there, I know what happened and I will not take sides on any of you. Just… keep in mind that I’m still as much your friend as I am Lewis’.”
“I know, Toto, I just…” Nico tried to look Toto in the eyes, but the feelings he saw in them made him look away again. “I just don’t know what to say."
“You maybe are too deep in your own feelings to acknowledge them now, but when you do I will be here if you need." Toto was an emotional guy, Nico remembered, even if his boss persona didn’t show it quite often.
“I know, thank you, Toto, I will remember this." Nico knows he will remember this.
They talked for a few more minutes until Toto had to come back to the garage and Nico had to take his place in the media pen. He was on his way to join the others commentators and journalists when he saw Lewis running a few meters away from him. A Mercedes jacket over his head to prevent him from getting wet and Angela running by his side with an umbrella and a backpack.
Nico stopped walking, frozen in place, raindrops falling on his face and wetting his cheeks like they were tears.