Work Text:
Lewis is thinking about Fernando.
The desert air has a rough sandpaper tongue and he'd love to be lashed by it, but instead he's in a room of pseudo-light and pseudo-air, answering pseudo-questions from pseudo-writers about the only thing that truly matters in his life.
Or, he would be, if the journos would just ask about the fifth championship he's about to win, and not Fernando freaking Alonso.
“Fernando obviously had some great years in the sport,” one of the journos (short, slightly balding, sweaty, all the same) says. “With different teams. Daniel has just gone to Renault... ever fancy doing something like that?”
Renault. Jesus.
***
As 2008 begins, Lewis supposes that he should be grateful. Fernando disappears from McLaren just as he arrived; in an explosion of light and colour. After everything, it's the indignity of the spectacle that pushes Ron over the edge. It's Lewis having to appear as a witness at the FIA World Motor Sport Council. It's Lewis' loyalty to McLaren in his calm, measured responses. It's Fernando's wild threats to blow the scandal wide open. It's a no-brainer. Ron doesn't care if Fernando throws tables at team members. He cares if he tries to burn down the house.
Lewis can feel Ron's gaze on him as he speaks the loving words. There's no smile – fat chance – but he can feel Ron's desperate affection, and he knows, then, that he'll outlive Fernando in this team that they ruined.
Two years ago, Heikki Kovalainen had had The Call, drafted in to replace an outgoing two-time World Champion departing to bring McLaren his third. This time, he's drafted in to replace an inbound disgrace returning to the safety of his mercurial father figure.
Lewis realises quickly that he has no feelings about Heikki. He's warm and funny, but unthreatening, so why should Lewis care?
***
While Renault tries to keep Fernando like a wasp under a glass, Lewis' performance in Paris is rewarded with a car that sings to him. He tries not to keep an eye on where Fernando is, to observe his moods, knowing that he no longer needs to, but being drawn to it anyway- but Fernando doesn't let anything show. That part of his life is ashes. He feels nothing.
It's just that for Lewis, there are embers still.
***
In Bahrain, they collide. There's a big song and dance made of it; did Alonso brake-test him? The press talk about Hungary 2007 like they understand it. Like it's theirs. Lewis tries to keep the pieces of it from unravelling, calling it a racing incident. If Fernando has a view, he doesn't air it.
Not to the press, anyway.
Lewis finds him in the bar.
“Hey,” he says, sliding into a stool. “Look, I wanted to talk about the incident-”
“It is forgotten,” Fernando says. Measured. Cool. Uncaring. No – not uncaring. That would imply an active effort not to care. He is indifferent. It feels like a hard slap, or a bee sting. Both.
“No, I-”
“Already forgotten.”
“But-” Lewis wants to tell him that he knows Fernando isn't guilty, that his own front wing shattered, that the incident was nothing more than a cruel twist of fate, that he holds no grudges- but Fernando isn't in the mood for that kind of talk, and he doesn't know what else to say.
“I know you didn't brake-test me,” he eventually manages.
“Mm,” Fernando says.
“It was the-”
“I don't mind what it was. One thing, another thing. I didn't brake-test you. Whatever it was, then, I don't think about. It is done.”
“I wasn't expecting you to be nice about it.”
“I'm not being nice,” Fernando says. “It just doesn't matter. You spend an entire year with me and you still don't understand.”
“Nobody likes retiring-”
“It doesn't matter, to retire- to retire from a race you weren't leading, it's not important. It is a thing that happens. I said this to you, and you didn't listen. Winning is all that matters. I don't care if your car broke, or you misjudged, or whatever – it changes nothing. It means nothing.”
“It's like I don't know you,” Lewis says, after a few moments. “This isn't the guy I-”
Fernando's eyes slide across the bar. He waits, baiting Lewis to finish the sentence how he wants to, how he should. Lewis fails. He doesn't end the sentence at all. Fernando smirks an ellipsis, a hefty pause, a weighty conclusion. Coward.
“It is exactly the same guy,” he says. “If I was screaming at you over this, over this tiny thing – I would be an insane man. I would be the man who screams over everything, and nobody would listen to anything he says. If you crash into me and I am leading, I will scream at you. I will break your neck. Then you will see that I am the same as you saw before. You need to check your eyesight, if you think I have changed.”
“I'm no longer important to you,” Lewis says. “I'm not your rival.”
“You are leading the championship,” Fernando says. “I am nowhere. Why do you need me to be your rival?”
***
Fernando doesn't do nowhere. Something had to give. In hindsight, of course Singapore was fixed. That kind of luck would be supernatural. But then, of course the viewing public is always prepared to give Fernando that kind of spiritual indulgence. He's Fernando, after all.
The truth doesn't come out until years later, when it's revealed that Fernando and Flavio, one supernova of misguided arrogance, incinerated Nelson Piquet Jr.
It all makes Lewis wonder if he would've caved. If, like Piquet Jr, he'd have accepted that the team's name was worth more than his. He wonders whether without Ron's unyielding presence, he'd have accepted anything to keep the ground under him, and he feels sad that Nelson was all alone. He wonders whether Fernando looks at Flavio the way he looks at Ron. If they share that feeling Lewis has whenever he sees Ron, the memory of being 12 and meeting his version of Father Christmas. Can I please have a drive in your race team one day?, he'd said, and Ron had gift-wrapped it for him. Taken the entire new McLaren team out to Finland in winter 2007, to meet reindeers and eat gingerbread and reflect on wishes granted, on the power of unswerving faith, childhood belief.
He wonders whether Flavio is like that for Fernando; a myth, a comfort, a saviour. Or whether Flavio is simply Fernando writ large, Fernando consumed by the power of belief rather than guided by it and in awe of it. Whether what Flavio is to Fernando is, in fact, the knowledge that he can blackmail, and cheat, and lie, and tear the throat out of anyone who gets in his way, and Flavio will always be there to cheer him on. Someone who will watch Fernando tear his own team to shreds, and chuck him under the chin. Someone he birthed in violence and delights in the violence he continues to create. Someone as irrationally proud of chaos as Fernando is. Ron could never be that person. But Flavio- Flavio is its living manifestation.
Piquet Jr didn't stand a chance.
Lewis wins the title in 2008, on the final corner of the final lap of the final race. He barely has a moment to himself, as the bulbs creak and explode, as the champagne sizzles on his gooseflesh, as the press clamour for his attention – just to sit in the being of it, the being of being knighted. He collapses into it. He recalls Fernando in 2005, or 2006, one of them – a triumphant yell, a crazed scream of unworldly celebration, and he knows his tears are pale and small by comparison.
Fernando never comes to see him. He hadn't been expecting him to, but it's a loss, all the same. They end the season with that one conversation in the bar as their only moment of knowing one another as they had before. It's not enough. It will never be enough.
It will have to be enough.
Lewis does wonder if, like Piquet Jr, he would've caved. He finds out in Australia 2009.
***
Deprived of Fernando, Lewis has to become Fernando. Or so Australia seems in his head. A stupendous fuck-up.
Trulli runs wide under the safety car, and Lewis passes him.
“Lewis, you need to allow the Toyota through. Allow the Toyota through now.”
“OK.”
He doesn't even question it. McLaren hopes that the stewards won't realise they instructed Lewis to display his throat, and that they'll penalise Trulli for biting it. That as long as the stewards don't listen to the radio, they'll agree that Trulli should've handed the position back, and disqualify him. They must know that they're doomed, and so Lewis is told to cover the team's arse. He's done that before, and before, and before. It rolls off his tongue. Just like it did for Piquet Jr.
“No,” he says. “Nobody told me to let Trulli past. He cut the chicane and jumped me.”
He simply doesn't think about the interview he'd given, maybe 75 minutes before, in the dying moments of adrenaline. Where the opposite statement had also just rolled off his tongue, because it was the truth. And because Lewis prides himself on telling the truth. He isn't a liar. He isn't a dishonest person.
The FIA reviews the interview footage, then requests the radio transmissions. Survival instinct kicks in as surely as Lewis' hands shaking around the porcelain rim of the sink, as surely as his wide eyes in the bathroom mirror as he heaves for breath. He knows what he has to succumb to to get him through this.
His father is, as always, excellent.
Anthony contacts Max Mosley in a rage.
“The radio transmissions, yes, they show what really happened. Lewis was instructed to let Trulli through. He was then told to lie to cover up his team's mistake. He was stupid, yes, but he did it to protect the people who gave him his shot when he was a kid. He's loyal, he's- misguided. They took advantage of his good nature.”
And so on and so forth.
“He may leave the sport because of this.”
That part was never true. But, somewhat ironically, it has to become true, because the words are put into Lewis' mouth. He agrees that this incident made him consider leaving for good. He can see, in his peripheral vision and in his dreams, Fernando smirking.
Dave Ryan is suspended, and then sacked. Lewis apologises, publicly, and then throws him right under the wheels of the bus.
They go from spygate to liegate, and McLaren are once again summoned to Paris. Like cats, they escape again.
He expects Fernando to shoot him a knowing glance, to seek him out, perhaps to express pride at what he's done. What he's done, or what Lewis has become unaided, Lewis can't tell which as he's heaving his guts out in the bathroom every morning. But Fernando is silent, and so Lewis tries to find him within.
He gives a press conference, tells the truth even though his voice shakes. The truth. His truth. Same thing? He apologises, over and over again.
He sees Fernando, a little while afterwards. He meets his eyes this time. Lewis finds disappointment there. There, or inside himself. Same thing?
***
“No, Daniel has made the right move for him, that's great – I did that with Mercedes and I don't want to do it again!”
Ask me about the fifth championship, he pleads internally. Ask me about my chances, so that I can lie to your faces and claim uncertainty when I know, in my bones, that this is mine and always will be. That I deserve it, and so it will be. They don't ask about that.
“You've always been coy about whether or not you'd go to Ferrari,” they push on. “Partnering Sebastian, that could be a new challenge...?”
Ferrari. Christ on a titting bike.
***
Fernando doesn't need Flavio after all. Having turned another team inside out via Paris, he disposes of him. Flavio and Pat are forced out in an effort to save the team. That leaves Fernando with little to fight for, and having drained Renault of all its life, he goes to feed elsewhere. He takes to his new team, and he wraps it around his knuckles. His first race in blood-red is apt, as he wipes the floor with the rest of the grid. Italian hearts are his. It's a new feasting ground.
As Fernando's fortunes rise, so do Lewis'. And just as fortunes rise, so does heat.
***
In Valencia, having spent laps battling with Fernando and exhausted by it, Lewis has an uncharacteristic moment of hesitation. He's faced with the safety car, and the decision whether or not to overtake it doesn't come easily. By the time he's made his mind up to pass it, a second at most, the safety car has passed the pit exit line. He gains a free stop whilst Fernando falls down the order.
McLaren warns Lewis of the possibility of a penalty, but he's already on it. In second, he begins to pressure Vettel, pulling away from the rest of the field. By the time the stewards award the drive-through penalty, he has enough of a cushion that it makes no difference to his result. Second is his. Fernando can only manage 8th.
Ferrari uses a lot of big words. Scandal. Injustice. Fernando complains that he is more penalised for following the rules than Lewis is for breaking them, which Lewis can't help but think is the fear that's inspired his life's work. It's when Fernando claims that a bottle has been launched onto the track by a Spanish fan, in disgust, that he really breaks out into a grin. Fernando is back.
“All the kids here, even they know you cannot overtake the safety car,” Fernando bleats.
“Sour grapes,” Lewis shrugs.
Touchpaper. Lit.
***
The text message beeps. It's a cute sound. The words, not so much.
When the stewards go your way, you are very cool. When they do not, you are sick to the stomach. You are a coward. I stand by what I say, always.
What are you talking about, man? Calm down.
You know what I am talking about. You have confidence when the stewards are behind you. When they are not, you grovel to everyone to save yourself. Your daddy has to come and rescue you.
Like Flavio did for you?
Go fuck yourself.
Right back at you.
Ten minutes later, Lewis brings himself to send a follow-up text.
Don't you wish we could solve this like we did in Brazil?
It takes a while for Fernando to respond.
No. You are terrible in bed.
The thought of Fernando's face when he tells the press, oh yeah, we're in touch and everything's cool now, almost makes Lewis laugh as he says it. Later, he succumbs to it, because Fernando is truly wound up.
“When you put your whole heart and passion into it you are not always correct with what you say”? You are such a cunt. Passion makes you right. Passion makes you see things as they are meant to be. You think passion is a mistake. You apologise for doing what needs to be done, saying what needs to be said. This is why you are terrible in bed. I am ashamed I ever came with your hand around me.
You're so sweet, 'Nando.
***
Kicking Felipe Massa brings them together.
Hockenheim 2010 is a ride. Lewis isn't in the press conference, but he's not the only driver watching the journalists attempt to eviscerate Fernando for relying on team orders to get the win.
“Where will this victory rank in your career? Is it up there with Singapore 2008?” glances off.
The next one hits.
“The reality is that you couldn't beat him on the track so you had to get the team to do it for you.”
“That's your opinion.”
“I'm asking you. Is that not your opinion?”
Fernando is a Venus flytrap. “No.”
“He had to give you this win, didn't he Fernando?”
His jaw rolls, and he summons from within the audacious defiance which was branded on him at birth. “No.”
If Germany is Fernando's blow, Singapore is Lewis'. He collides with Felipe, breaks his front wing and earns himself a drive-through penalty. The post-race interviews aren't enough for Felipe to get it out of his system, so he comes to find Lewis during his. His touch is hostile-chummy, and it electrifies the dormant adrenaline coursing through Lewis' entire body. He swings around and has to throw water on the instinct to break Felipe's front nose.
“Don't touch me again man,” he says, his voice dark, his jaw curled. Felipe isn't looking at him as he departs, which enrages Lewis more than it should. He's small fry, he tells himself. He doesn't count. Still, when he turns back to the astonished reporter, he has to chew on the straw of his drinks bottle to bring himself back under control.
He gets him where it hurts, though. When he arrives in Japan, his eyes find Felipe's, and he knows that Felipe is wondering whether it's true that his career is going off a cliff.
That was cold, Fernando texts.
Lewis imagines that he approves. He doesn't dare ask to find out.
***
Nobody likes being beaten. Nobody likes being beaten over and over again. Nobody likes being beaten over and over again by the same person. Especially when that person is Sebastian Vettel, prima donna and supreme cunt.
Lewis and Fernando are beaten in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
The only year that Lewis is happy about is 2013.
***
Moving to Mercedes is a long-term no brainer, but a short term catastrophe. McLaren seems to be on the up, and Mercedes – despite the best efforts of the sport's greatest driver – just... doesn't. But Lewis knows a long game when he sees one. He got into F1 on a long game. He doesn't expect anyone to understand. Well. With maybe one exception.
They catch up in Abu Dhabi. The title was decided long ago, and despite the heat of the desert there's no heat in the battles. Everything feels eerily calm. Lewis wonders, not for the first time, if he and Fernando have mellowed. Fernando is sipping something that looks like sludge and smells like lake water on a dog, and Lewis has to force himself not to look at it.
“I admired what you did, you know,” Fernando says. His compliments are given off-handedly, as if it physically pains him to do it, but at the same time, he watches you to make sure you're suitably hashtag blessed. Lewis, fortunately, is. He can't help but be, most of the time.
“I know it was a massive risk,” he says. “But I just had a feeling. That this could be right place, right time.”
Fernando nods. He hasn't had much luck on that front.
“I called you a coward many times, but it was not the act of a coward.”
That compliment, though – that one doesn't stick.
“I never agreed with you.”
“That doesn't matter. It was true. Maybe it still is true, I don't know. But what you did was brave, even if you aren't.”
Lewis shakes his head. “Thank God I don't base my self-worth on what you think of me,” he says. “It's never enough.”
“I liked that you fired your dad, also.”
“Don't.”
“No?”
“No.”
“It was brave.”
“Fernando-”
“Oh, we cannot discuss your daddy issues, I see-”
“I. Do not. Have. Daddy issues.”
“Only someone who has them speaks with full stops between words like that.”
“How is it that every conversation we have, I wonder why I haven't hit you?”
“And now we cycle back to coward.”
“Do you even like me?” Lewis regrets it the moment it leaves his lips, but he can't swallow it back down. “All you seem to do is try and make me feel like shit, and-”
Fernando sighs. “I will always ask this, until you understand. Why does it matter to you?”
***
“Ferrari isn't where I am right now. I'm with Mercedes, they're my team. I'm really proud of what we've done together and I just want to keep doing that with them. So, no, I'm not thinking about Ferrari.”
There's a small cough, someone shifts. Eventually, someone pipes up, and asks the stupidest question yet.
“Would you rule out a return to McLaren? Daniel did consider it...”
***
Lewis isn't stupid enough to think that Fernando's move, at the end of the 2014, back to McLaren is anything like his own move to Mercedes. He's aware of the bitter irony: the same impulse that drove him to Renault in 2008 is driving him back to the team where he created that problem in the first place. Nobody else really wants Fernando. He's too difficult. He isn't a team player. He's a harbinger of chaos. Lewis knows that he's bleeding from the stomach and trying to hide it. He doesn't rub it in. He hasn't been there, and for the grace of God, etc.
The McLaren years are, he thinks, something karmic.
***
The news of Fernando's retirement breaks mid-summer. Lewis sees it, reads it over and over. He watches the sentimental video that Fernando uploads. He feels nothing. He says nothing. There's nothing to be said. He doesn't even text him, because- well. What would be the point? Everything Lewis feels, Fernando knows. They exchange pleasantries, as normal, throughout the 2018 season. He senses Fernando watching him, en route to a championship three beyond he himself could manage. He wonders whether Fernando thinks about what might have been, had he done 2007 differently. Had he won that championship. Whether Lewis would've been the one thrown to the scrapheap, struggling to salvage a career in a dying Renault, in an almost Ferrari, in a already-pronounced McLaren.
***
In reality, and not for want of trying to tell him, Fernando isn't thinking about Lewis at all.
They meet at the airport out to Abu Dhabi. Always, and forever, Abu fucking Dhabi.
Fernando smiles at him in the departure lounge. They don't usually see each other in Nice Airport, and he can tell from Lewis' eyebrows that he's surprised. But he comes over, nonetheless.
“Fuck,” he says, sitting down beside him. Then, charmingly, he bolts around. “Is it OK if I sit here?”
“But you are sitting there,” Fernando says.
“Right, yes, but-”
“It's fine.”
“OK.”
A heady silence. Fernando knows, of course, that Lewis will fill it. Usually with nonsense.
“You here to catch a plane?”
Fernando looks at him. “No,” he says. “I am here on vacation. I love the shops and the night life. Also there is a great climate here in this airport.”
“Alright, shut up, I-”
“You are trying to make small talk,” Fernando says. “Why, I don't know. We know each other very well after all these years.”
“Do you want to grab a drink?”
“I will miss my flight.”
“Oh.” Lewis pauses, a moment. Then, “fuck it. Catch my plane with me. We'll drink to your last one. It'll be water, I don't drink now, but-”
“You are very depressing,” Fernando says. “But OK.”
***
He stands and admires the plane. It is really extremely red. It is ridiculous. Fernando loves it.
“Did you ask for it to be that colour?”
“Yes,” Lewis says, climbing aboard. “Don't give me shit about the seats.”
“What's wrong with the seats?”
“Nothing's wrong with them, they're just- they have. They're initialled. Because, you know, it looked cool, and-”
Lewis thinks he's blushing now, over his adorable little monogrammed bourgeoisie seats. But this, this is nothing. Fernando has come in behind him, and spotted the double bed all set up, presumably in case Lewis had wanted to catch some shut-eye en route. Not that Fernando's going to let it go that easily.
“Ah,” he says. “Now I see.”
Lewis looks between him and the pillows, and is almost literally struck dumb. His mouth wobbles adorably. Eventually, he realises that he can't come up with words, and makes a guttural frustrated sound. Fernando pounces.
“I see why you invite me for this drink. You miss the old days. You want to rekindle the fire with a romantic moment. And so you invite me onto your porn plane.”
“My- wh- excuse me?”
“Porn plane. This is a plane where pornography happens. I'm surprised the bed isn't round. Where is the mirror on the ceiling?”
“I'm not afraid to kick you out onto the tarmac,” Lewis says. “Shut up, man. It's for me to sleep. It's not- I don't have a porn plane.”
“Are the pillows monogrammed too?”
“No!”
“I'm going to have a look.”
“Don't you dare.”
Fernando dares.
***
Once Fernando has tested out the bed (the pillows are disappointingly un-monogrammed), he has no desire to leave it, so he doesn't. He takes off his shoes (but not the socks, this he does remember about Lewis) and takes his drink with the air of a pampered sheikh. Lewis rolls his eyes at him.
“I'll just sit over here in the seat, shall I,” he says.
“I would invite you to sit on the bed with me, but I think you will blush and splutter.”
“I can sit on a bed with you without being overcome by the urge to mount you, believe it or not,” Lewis says. He pauses before he says mount. It's a fraction, but Fernando is trained to tell the difference between fractions. He smiles, wolfy. As if to prove himself, Lewis throws himself on the bed beside him. He huffs an irritated breath, and knocks back his water. After a few moments, they make eye contact. It's enough just to laugh.
***
“You lasted longer than I thought,” Lewis says.
“That is because, unlike you, I am good in bed.”
“No,” Lewis says. “At McLaren.”
“Hm,” Fernando says. “I wanted to make it work. I felt I owed them that much.”
“Will you miss it?”
“McLaren? Yes. I will be driving my car very slowly down the roads at home, in the wrong gear, and I will phone my former engineer and I will shout at him. It will make me happy.”
“No, you idiot. F1.”
“I know what you meant.”
“You never answer directly,” Lewis says. “You once said that of me.”
“Yes,” Fernando says. “And you said it depends on the question. Maybe it is the same for me.”
“What question would I have to ask, to get you to answer?”
Fernando twists his face. “There are maybe two.”
“Two? Only two questions in the world that you'd answer for me?”
“Not in the whole world. In the whole world maybe thousands. Two that matter.”
“OK.”
“OK.”
“OK. Tell me what they are.”
Fernando narrows his eyes at him. Lewis seems to understand that it's a test, and holds his gaze. Fine.
“OK. Number one,” he says. “What do you feel like now it's the end?”
Lewis blinks in apparent surprise. It's a disappointment of sorts that he's surprised – he should know that it's only now that Fernando can be so honest, can lay out the past before another for frank inspection. Until the moment of the end, you must dress up the truth so that your name shines. When the time comes, you must see it as it really is, or you will not go on and the future will never realise itself. Maybe it's only an old man that can ever see this. Lewis is not yet that old, however much he'd like to be.
“What do you feel like now it's the end?”
“Like me,” Fernando says. “You are a Catholic.”
“Yes. Oh God, you're not dying, are you?”
“What?”
“Oh, OK. Sorry. It got a bit- last rites.”
“Lewis, if I were dying, I would not be sitting here on your plane drinking mineral water. I would have retired from this shit and gone to somewhere where I would win many trophies and get laid.”
“OK, yes, fine. Sorry. You were saying. About Catholics.”
“So you are familiar with the idea that a man, who is dead and who is destined for heaven, is nonetheless still a man, and must be purified. And that there is a weighing up, of the things he has done. The more sins he has committed, the longer he must stay to become clean again.”
“Purgatory,” Lewis says.
“Yes. That is what we are taught. And then we have the modern idea that it is to be tortured. To continue to do the same thing, or suffer in the same way, until a decision is made as to where you will go. To Heaven or to Hell.”
“Right. You know we drive racing cars, right?”
“You mock this, and yet you do it yourself. I bet you have asked God for many things before Abu Dhabi. The same God you swore at in 2016, when you said a higher power was conspiring against you.”
“Alright,” Lewis says. “Go on.”
“I feel that ever since 2007, I have been in a place that is somewhere between the old and new ideas. I have tried to cleanse myself of what happened, because like everyone I fear what comes next. I fear pain, heat, suffering. I am only human. But it is in my nature, what I am. To compete, to win. To do what it is necessary. To refuse to apologise- even though it is wrong to have such pride. So I think that I have been in that place, perhaps for a decade, trying to see if I can become pure again. If I ever was pure.”
“OK,” Lewis says. Fernando thinks that he's trying not to move, not to break the spell.
“And so there is the other meaning. The limbo. Every team I have gone to, the same story. The same ending. Around and around. Nothing that I do makes it different. It will only end when I walk away. That is how I feel now it's the end. A little sad, of course. But mostly happy, because now I am choosing to end it. I may be pure, or I may be not pure, but at least I know what I am.”
“Fuck,” Lewis says. “You could've just said you couldn't pootle around the grid anymore. I would've accepted that.”
“This is the one question I said I would answer honestly. Yes, I do not want to... I do not know what is a pootle, but I do not want to be last. I want to win again. Le Mans reminded me of just how much. I think the future is good.”
“It'll be weird without you.”
They drink to that, without thinking to do it.
“What was the second question?” Lewis says.
“Hm,” Fernando says. “This one is trickier.”
“OK. Hit me.”
“The second question, you will not like it. Ahhhh, you will not like it.”
“Fernando.”
“Maybe I will not tell it.”
“Fernando.”
“You will get very awkward, and it will be very sad for me to see you like that, for we both know you are a coward and cannot take things easily.”
“Just tell me what the fucking question is, before I throw you out of my plane. And no, no parachute.”
“OK. I do not like heights. I will tell you. The second question... it is, “will you kiss me?””
Lewis blinks, twice. Three times. He's struggling with the pronouns. “Wait. Will I kiss you? No- will. Wait, I have to ask you-”
“It is very simple. You just repeat the question. Do not think about the kiss, or you will not be able to speak at all, because you are so excited.” His smile is turning mocking, and he knows that this will do it, as nothing else will.
“Fuck you. You- fucking. Will you kiss me?”
“If you want me to.”
“I- you- you just told me to ask- and you don't- you're asking me to-”
“I am hoping, that just once, just once, you will not be a coward, and-”
Lewis just once (or thrice, or more – Fernando knows deep down that he would lose sense of his fingers counting how many times Lewis is brave) is not a coward. They are somewhere over the Mediterranean Sea, and they are kissing. Italy glows white beneath the wings of the plane, and the sea curls its black fingers in the breeze, but they know nothing of it, because the world is their lips together, and there it ends.
When Lewis leans back into the bed, Fernando follows, but it isn't as it was 11 years ago. They sink together, gentle and slow, and the kissing intensifies. Nobody moves to remove clothing. There is also this, and the sly touch of fingers against each other's. Fernando moves his hands upwards, heart-shaping Lewis' chin, and then runs his fingers through his hair.
“I like it,” he says. “It's better.”
“It is better,” Lewis says. He parts his thighs and lets Fernando rest between them, lets Fernando dip his face into his neck and run his kisses there, up and up until they touch his earlobe. He runs his hands up Fernando's back and marvels that someone so much shorter than him can take up so much room above him.
“Fuck,” he murmurs. “That's so good.”
“Touch me,” Fernando mutters back. It's then that Lewis realises how little he's actually touched Fernando. It was one night, in an anonymous hotel room, cloaked in grief and embarrassment at the way their year had turned out, united in fighting off the demons, united in being naked with them and sharing pleasure. One night, one man. And eleven years have gone by without a single other one coming between them. It's always been him, and Fernando. Perhaps it always will be. Perhaps it's not about attraction to men, but about the cosmic force that is the two of them together, for good or for bad.
Fernando bites his inner arm, hard.
“Fuck you!” Lewis exclaims. Moment over. “That's it.”
He uses his martial arts to manoeuvre his leg between Fernando's, to give him the leverage he needs. Fernando won't press down with a kneecap in his balls, so Lewis can push his deadweight up, and he does, up and over. Fernando goes down with an intrigued oof, and so for good measure, Lewis grabs his hands and holds them down above his head.
They look at each other, and then, satisfied, Fernando raises his chin for Lewis to kiss.
When he does, Fernando hums, and slides a hand into Lewis' sweatpants. The initial cupping that Lewis remembers, that agonising moment of waiting for a verdict, doesn't come. He slides his hand in as smoothly and gently as if it's his own, and his touch is warm and welcoming. And as Lewis kisses down his neck, Fernando's fingers mirror. Softer kisses, softer strokes. A nip and he squeezes.
“I want to-” Lewis says.
“I already am,” Fernando says.
“What? How can you be-? No, fucking- seriously, how many hands have you actually got? We need to investigate this.”
“No,” Fernando says. “Not now.”
“Fernando,” Lewis says. “Let me give you a freaking handjob.”
There's a pause. Fernando looks at him, really, truly, looks. And then he nods. Lewis doesn't have to slap his hip, to make him move upwards to let him get at it. He doesn't have to wait until Fernando is so far gone that he doesn't care where the orgasm comes from as long as it comes. Fernando nods. And so, as he always does, Lewis pushes his luck.
“Naked,” he says.
“What?” Fernando says.
“I want- we should be naked.”
“There is a pilot ten feet away-”
“Who will see a whole lot if he comes out here anyway, won't he? It's not going to make a difference. I'd just pay him off. Stop being a coward.”
A beat.
“Do you want to come, or not?”
“I want,” Fernando says.
“Then get naked.”
***
Somewhere over the glittering jewel of Italy, or Greece, or Turkey, or who the fuck knows, Lewis' geography isn't exactly shit hot (Russia is close to Monaco, right?), they lie together side by side. The darkness without is not within, because under the dim cabin lights their eyes glitter and their skin pulses light. They are looking at each other as their hands work, as Lewis strokes Fernando and Fernando strokes Lewis, and with the other hand that is free they have made a fist, which will get them through it, one way or another. Lewis' eyes keep fluttering closed but he forces them open, forces himself to see what he couldn't 11 years ago because Fernando was face down and furious.
Their stamina has, at least, improved.
Lewis senses, through Fernando's quaking hips and the tension he's bringing to their one closed hand, that he's holding off. That he's waiting. And for once, it isn't competition. It isn't about who comes first, or who lasts longest. It's because he wants to see, and keep seeing, and to savour what he's doing to another human being. The reduction of another human being to its base elements, who but for his hand would be upright in a chair mulling over the title fight, anxious and unsatisfied, tense and whole. Who, but for his hand, would be intact. He wants the destruction, but he wants to see it even more.
And what Fernando wants, sometimes, the gods provide.
Lewis isn't loud during sex. It isn't his thing. But Fernando is different. He wrings something out from the bottom of his soul. So when he comes, he comes eyes open, agonisingly tense, every single muscle petrified until he can no longer cope with the pressure of having to be, having to know, having to see. So he loses himself in it, a temporary madness, and when Fernando joins him there it's the second greatest thing he knows how to do.
They sleep in the sky. The land passes by, untroubled. Everything is just as it should be.
***
“McLaren isn't what I'm interested in right now. It's all about Mercedes for me. I'm not interested in any other teams – Renault, Ferrari, McLaren. I'm all about the now.”
“Lewis, what are your feelings on saying goodbye to Fernando?”
Lewis looks across at Fernando. All lights are on them both. The world is watching. But they've already said their goodbyes, a few days earlier. And Lewis can't help remembering it.
“It's a huge loss to the sport,” Lewis says, eventually. “I know we'll see him winning wherever he goes next, but it shouldn't be this way. Someone like that, that talented- should've won more titles. It's sad. I'm sad.”
“2007 would've been a nice one to win,” Fernando shoots back, and the moment of tension dissolves in a heartbeat.
***
“What question would you ask me?” Lewis says. His chin is propped up on his hand. They're sailing above countries where being naked with another man is really, really illegal. “Even if you don't think I'd answer.”
Fernando pauses, thinking. “Many questions.”
“The most important one, right now. Go.”
“OK.” Fernando says. “OK. I have one. Do you ever wish we had not met? Was it worth it, to know me, everything we've been through?”
Lewis smiles, and opens his mouth to speak.