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Chapter Text

There are times when Nico wants to ask, wants to demand an answer, wants to find out. He thinks about it, of ambushing Lewis sometime when they’re alone and put the question to him. All he’d say is did you know? and that would be that, no matter the response, because at least then he would be sure.

He never does it, obviously. It’s not worth the risk.

*

Nico is sixteen when he first realises. He’s just confessed to Lewis about Vivian, to much apparent amusement on the part of his friend, when he recognises the same thrill of not-quite-yet desire settle at watching him that he feels for her. He has no idea what to do with that at the time, so he tries to ignore it and gets back at Lewis for his teasing by maturely beating him about the head with a pillow.

‘Come on, man,’ Lewis laughs, easily snatching the weapon from his hands and pitching it to the other side of the room. ‘Don’t be like that.’

But he’s clearly not counted on the depths Nico’s commitment to pillow-warfare, since there is still plenty in the way of ammunition around. ‘What do you know?’ he asks, armed with a new pillow, and worrying personal revelation already largely gone forgotten. ‘As if you’ve ever been in love.’

Lewis, before answering, steals that one too with some kind of martial arts magic and mounts a halfhearted counteroffensive. ‘As far as you know,’ he says meaningfully, but it’s not very effective. Nico does know and he hasn’t. Then somehow Lewis bounces the pillow on his head and behind him to the floor, and then it’s on.

(Nico wins in the end when Lewis forfeits the fight by shoving him off the bed onto the pile of bedding. Lewis claims victory, but who cares. He cheated.)

*

Over the next few months the knowledge that he has somehow managed to fall in love with two of his childhood friends becomes inescapable. Because no matter how much he tries to tease and reason out which one of them he likes more or better or differently or at all the way that he’s supposed to, there is no difference. Lewis. Vivian. Both.

It’s harder with Lewis: the proximity on the weekends they spend together, the shared hotel rooms with their limited privacy, the casual physicality of their friendship. By then he has lost hope that it’ll pass and only hopes not to give himself away. He endures.

*

One night on a boat on Ibiza, Vivian kisses him. (He considers telling her. He doesn’t. He kisses her back and tries to forget the guilt.)

Lewis laughs at him again when Nico tells him. But Nico has a girlfriend whereas Lewis is married to motorsport. He tells Lewis this too.

*

Nothing changes in the following years. He dates his girlfriend, stays in love with her and with Lewis. He races with Lewis, then without him and then with Lewis again. He and Lewis remain friends; Lewis and Vivian become friendly acquaintances and conspire together against him.

A few times he almost does it. Once after a night out in Monte Carlo with Lewis already fast asleep in the guest room. Several times in a variety of random circumstances because the time seemed right but then wasn’t. Once after a particularly intense race. He always finds a momentarily convincing reason not to in the end.

He finally does tell her not long after the announcement. She takes it well. (He can’t understand why and he doesn’t dare ask.)

*

The difference this time around should have been all that’s at stake now that they’re teammates in Formula 1: the pole positions, the podiums, the wins, the championship. But that’s not it. Somehow, in the intervening years, Nico has become ever more susceptible to Lewis. Somehow, somewhere in the pressure cooker of the tension and the friction and the rest there is a catalyst that corrodes their friendship and turns their rivalry to enmity in year two. Somehow… somehow, Lewis seems to have an instinctive awareness of how to handle him the way he does his cars because it has never seemed that he knew.

Lewis has the measure of him on the track; Lewis has the measure of him off it: Nico loses one title to him, then another.

He wonders, at times, whether all of it is genuinely incidental or if it’s deliberate and just expertly made to look it. He wonders if Lewis knows, and if so when it was he found out. He wonders how even someone like Lewis could be so good at this by accident.

There are times he wants to ask. He never does.

Chapter Text

It happens on an otherwise ordinary evening after an otherwise routine team briefing: there are no storm-in-a-teacup scandals, there have been no violations of the (once again new and improved) rules of engagement, nothing special. The two of them are the last ones out of the room for whatever reason and they end up in shared a taxi back to their hotel. Once there, Nico invites Lewis up to his room for a drink out of professional politeness in the expectation that Lewis will say no and that will be that and he will have done his part for the week in attempting to be civil with him─but to his surprise Lewis accepts instead.

‘Here,’ Nico says to him later, the first word passed between them after his invitation.

Lewis looks up at him and actually genuinely smiles. ‘Thanks,’ he says, taking the glass and drinking.

Nico sits and drinks too, watching Lewis watch him. He wonders if he should try to make conversation. He wonders what he would say, idly considers the old standby (did you know? it could be the end of this peaceful interlude). He wonders what Lewis is thinking. If he’s just as lost in thought.

‘Look at us,’ Lewis says, his tone and his accompanying laugh both wistful and wryly amused. ‘Almost looks like we can get along like proper adults.’

What a ringing endorsement for the two of them, Nico thinks. But he clinks their glasses together as if in celebration of this milestone of collegial camaraderie. ‘To us,’ he proclaims.

Lewis tips his glass in salutation, smiles again. Then adopts a conspiratorial mock-pensive look Nico hasn’t had directed at him for years and asks, ‘What do you think Toto would say if he saw this?’

‘Well… I can’t quite decide between “Oh thank God, finally” and “Oh God, what now?”, you know.’ He shrugs. ‘I don’t think our track record so far inspires much confidence.’

‘Yeah’, Lewis agrees sadly. He takes one, two, three of his dainty sips in quick succession. (Nico used to tease him endlessly about those.)

Wow, okay. So much for making conversation, then. That went nowhere fast. Apparently even actually talking is still a bridge too far these days. How depressing. He finds he honestly has no idea what to even say to Lewis. How are the dogs? It sounds ridiculous and dismissive even in his own mind. How are things with you? or How are your other famous friends? ─why not come right out and admit it, say I don’t think I even know you anymore? It seems like it shouldn’t be possible to be so estranged from someone who’s a close colleague and who lives in the apartment below yours. And yet.

Oh. And yet, he thinks of adding after his hypothetical (just to find out what would happen), somehow I’m still in love with you.

A few minutes pass in the silence, which could charitably be described as something approaching amicable, as they both go on drinking. He’s done before Lewis is, of course. Always is. He spends a couple of moments contemplating his empty glass and whether or not he wants to get up for a refill. Watches Lewis make no progress on the last dregs of his drink and studiously avoid looking back at him.

He decides he does need that next drink as soon as possible. He’ll bring the whole bottle back, it’ll seem polite. If Lewis ever finishes this one, which by now is looking kind of questionable, but whatever. It’s the thought and all that, and besides, at this rate he’ll either need to keep drinking or find a way to graciously end this hopeless little interlude and make Lewis leave.

‘Why can’t we be friends, Nico?’ Lewis asks suddenly, while Nico is on his way back. He said it quietly, curiously, and still not looking at him but at the now empty glass in his hands. It’s an honest question, asked in good faith and by the real Lewis, divested of the larger-than-life theatrical figure he cuts in public and all his layers of armour.

Nico stops behind his chair and leans on it, bottle dangling loosely over the seat. ‘Because…’ he begins, but hesitates and halts. He knows what he means to say─the common platitudes passed on in the media and on the internet─but he’s not sure now if he wants to. ‘Well, you know what they say,’ he hedges, saying what he means by not saying anything at all the way Lewis does sometimes.

Lewis stretches forward to set his glass on the table, then doesn’t move back. It looks as though he’s leaned in on the space Nico occupied earlier, like he’s attempting to have an intimate conversation with an echo. ‘We were teammates in karting, too,’ he says. ‘And we were friends then. We could still be friends three years ago. We were friends three years ago.’

‘It’s different,’ Nico counters. ‘We’re fighting for championships now, not….’ He trails off, uncertain of what to contrast “championships” with.

‘Is it?’

Of course it is, he thinks. How could it not? What could even make Lewis doubt this? What the hell is he thinking.

‘Because the way I remember…. Actually, you know what, never mind.’

And Nico’s curious, but not curious enough to want to ask. Instead, he knocks back the drink that apparently kicked off this whole conversation, that had kind of gone forgotten as they talked, and finally sits back down. He pours them both another glass, not sparingly.

‘Thanks,’ Lewis mutters.

‘Yeah, sure.’ He drinks half that one in another single go as well. ‘I used to think it was because we knew each other too well, you know?’ he ventures, without elaborating. He no longer thinks that, but then he’s not really wondered what happened to their friendship in a long time.

No reaction. Oh, well. Not as if he was looking forward to explaining the particulars. ‘Lewis?’

‘Hmm.’

‘What do you think it is?’

Weirdly, it turns out that question is what it takes to make Lewis actually bother to look at him again, brow furrowed as if he’d not expected the question in turn. ‘Me? I don’t know. I don’t understand it.’

‘Oh,’ Nico says. He’s not sure what else to say to that, so it’s easier to just say nothing.

Another few moments pass wherein neither of them speak and they both drink. ‘What did you mean?’ Lewis asks then. ‘About us knowing each other too well?’

‘I meant like how could we ever have an ordinary rivalry when there’s so much at stake and we know each other so well that it’s so easy for us both to….’ He shrugs, by way of explanation. Hardly the height of eloquence, but it sounds adequate. And his argument seems better served without the addition of how he off-and-on suspects Lewis of doing it all deliberately.

‘Maybe,’ Lewis allows. ‘And why would you think we no longer know each other like that?’

God, how? ‘How the fuck do you just do that?’ Nico can’t stop himself from asking. ‘How is that your first guess.’

Predictably, there’s no response from Lewis other than a shrug at first. ‘I don’t know,’ he says eventually. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

‘No? But never mind, whatever. Forget it.’

Lewis does thankfully drop it, because that was another argument waiting to happen. ‘So why is it, if you actually want to say?’

‘I don’t.’

Lewis makes a noise of acquiescence and drains the generous remainder of his brandy, then busies himself with the bottle. Nico follows his example and tips his glass, which is obligingly refilled. Lewis puts the bottle away still uncorked. Nico pointedly grabs it back to stuff the cork in properly. ‘It’s not that hard.’

‘Sorry,’ says Lewis. ‘Whatever.’

It’s back again to silence after that, all apparent avenues of conversation in the matter expended. Nico sighs, decides to bite the bullet. And why not, at this point? It’s basically a formality now; he has the answer already, he’s pretty certain. Let Lewis find out, be done with this. ‘You don’t know, do you?’

Lewis frowns. ‘What?’

‘I always kind of thought you did, you know. But I guess not.’

‘What are you talking about, man? Know what?’

Well. Here goes nothing. ‘Do you remember when I first told you about Vivian?’

A nod. ‘Yeah, course I do. As I recall,’ Lewis goes on, laughter creeping back into his voice, ‘you then hit me with your pillow. Pillows, actually, plural. Unprovoked.’

‘It was provoked!’ Nico protests, though this is rather beside the point. ‘And you know it was. You deserved that pillow-strike. But. Anyway. When you were laughing like that─you know, before I hit you with the first pillow entirely deservedly─there was something I noticed. About myself.’ He stops there a moment.

Lewis is laughing silently behind his hand, which is oddly cute but kind of weird.

‘About my reaction to you, that it was the same as my reaction to her. It’s when I first noticed that I was in love with you. As well. And I still am, too. ’

‘Oh.’ Lewis seems to hesitate, holding onto his glass like a teacup. ‘Okay. But I don’t understand why you would’ve thought I knew that.’

Nico shrugs unhappily. ‘Because you were so good at it. At winding me up, catching me out, whatever. I don’t know.’

‘You mean manipulating you.’

‘Yes. I do.’

‘Well,’ Lewis says carefully, ‘I can tell you that I didn’t know. And that, if I had, I still wouldn’t have done something like that. But…’

‘She knows,’ Nico confirms before Lewis gets the words out. ‘I told her when you were announced for the team. She was fine with it, I guess. Why?’

Lewis entirely fails to answer, but sets his glass on the table with a loud tick and slides from his chair. ‘What are you doing?’ Nico asks, though he’s not stupid so he has some idea of what this will turn out to be.

A few seconds later, Lewis has positioned himself in front of him, arms resting on his thighs, and is looking up at him with wide eyes and a sly smile. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he asks, because of course he would. Nico wishes the chair had some loose pillows available just for that.

No matter that a moment after that, Lewis finally kisses him or how soft his lips are or the taste of liquor on his mouth or any of the other million good things.