Chapter Text
The first thing he smells is lavender. But it's not really lavender; he knows without opening his eyes that there are no real flowers in this room, only some kind of bottled-distilled-concentrated chemical that was made to mimic those purple blossoms. He knows it because the smell is simultaneously too strong and too diluted, holding the shape of lavender without truly capturing its essence. It permeates his senses. It's difficult for him to think.
He wonders why he recognises this scent. He's fairly sure he doesn't know much about flowers. The answer comes in pieces; there was someone, translucent and gentle, who used lavender-scented shampoo, someone whom he loves very much. He doesn't remember their face, doesn't remember their name, but he remembers that he loves them. Why doesn't he remember? He could smell that faint lavender scent every time they came close. He could see that bottle of shampoo whenever he took a shower; he knows its shape, the large curled font of the label. But he has no idea who it belongs to.
The machines around him beep rhythmically. His eyelids are so heavy he cannot even think of opening them. He feels cold metal on his arm, like a needle. He feels a hard casing around his right leg. He can't stop smelling the lavender. Think, think, think . He is so tired. He lets himself go.
It's like he wakes up in increments. First, the sound of the machines, again, droning on and on. Then voices, hushed but urgent. Then the pain, an insistent throb in his calf, his collarbone, his wrists. Finally, he opens his eyes and he sees that he is lying in a hospital bed.
He cannot move for the first few seconds, so he just looks at the shapes of his legs under the blanket, the thin hospital gown around his shoulders. He has a room all to himself, and there are roses on the table, but they are odorless, artificial. He only smells lavender. A television above him, screen blank. So this is where he is.
Turning his head, he sees a man, slumped in a chair, hands clasped like he is praying, even in his sleep. He would be handsome if he didn't look so tired.
“Hey,” he says, but it comes out so hoarse even he can't hear himself. He clears his throat and tries again. “Hey. Wake up. Can you hear me?”
The man stirs and opens his eyes and looks at him. For a moment, he just stares, as if he is still deciding whether or not what he sees is real. Then-
“Lance?” the man says, and now he realises- yes, his name is Lance. He hadn't noticed that he didn't remember his name, but he knows it now.
“Yes,” he says, not knowing how else he should answer, and the man makes this punched-out sound and then there are arms around him and he can feel that the man is shaking, the whole gangly length of him.
“Thank God,” he whispers in Lance's ear, and when he pulls away he sees that the man's eyes are red. He isn't crying now, but he had been earlier, and maybe he is about to again. His voice is accented; French, Lance thinks. “You were in a coma for almost a week. I thought- after Jules, after Michael-”
“What?” He says it because he is confused, but also because he doesn't want this stranger to cry in front of him. He's too tired to comfort him, he doesn't want to have to do that. “What happened? What's going on?”
“You were in a crash.” The man pauses, tilts his head. “Don't you remember? At Spa-”
“Crash?” he asks, and now he begins to panic. He raises his blanket and sees that his leg is in a cast and his torso is bandaged. “Shit. Like a fucking car crash?”
“Hey, you're okay. I'm here, okay?” The man comes close again, and Lance thinks it is for another hug and then he realises that the man is trying to kiss him, and now he really starts to panic and shouts and shoves him away.
“What are you doing?” he spits. “Who the fuck are you? Where's my father?”
The man looks at him like he's been struck. Lance stares back.
“Fucking answer me or get out.”
“Your dad- Lawrence is outside. I'll get him if you want.” The man puts a hand on his knee. “Lance, don't- are you joking? Don't you remember me?”
But Lance is no longer listening. “ Dad! ” he shouts, scrambling away from the man under the covers. He doesn't know where he is, he has been in a car crash, he's scared. The man tries to grab him again but, on instinct, he hooks his arm and twists it in a way that he knows hurts and momentarily paralyses, making the man gasp out in pain and recoil. (He doesn't know how he knows how to do this- someone must have taught him.) But he will not be able to fight him off for long; this much exertion already has pain flaring up all over his body, his limbs growing weak and useless. “ Dad! Help me-”
The door bursts open and another man comes storming in, followed by a much smaller and younger woman who looks just like him. It takes Lance a moment to recognise him; he is so much older, so different than what he remembers, but his eyes, brown and wide, are still the same.
“Dad,” he croaks out, “Chloe,” and that is all he manages before all of a sudden he is nauseous and cannot stay awake anymore. His unconscious body hits the bed before he even sees their reactions.
“Amnesia,” the doctor says, “caused by trauma to the skull sustained during the crash, worsened by the high G-forces.” Chloe smiles at him and jokes about how clichéd it is, straight out of a book, and he barely has time to laugh before his father snaps at them to take this seriously. But Lance smiles at Chloe anyway; he agrees, it is unbelievably clichéd.
There is nothing they can do about the amnesia. “You just have to wait,” the doctor says, and he can tell his father is fuming so he reaches over and puts a hand on his in an attempt to calm him. “Unfortunately, it may be permanent. We can recommend an extremely good psychotherapist to help ease the transition along, but-”
At that point, Lance stops hearing what the doctor is saying because his father has begun to shout and the sound of it makes his head spin. He closes his eyes and puts his head in his hands, waiting for it to be over.
He remembers next to nothing. Well, he remembers some things, some very random facts and a few important things from his childhood- like his family's faces, who they are (thank fuck he remembers that). He knows most general knowledge, like NFL rules and how to cook spaghetti and how to park a car, but has no memory attached to these facts. He knows all the Formula 1 world champions from when he was three to around age twelve. (Schumacher for five years in a row, Fernando Alonso twice, then Raikkonen, Hamilton, Button. Still got it.) But other than that- not much.
The doctors ask him questions like he's an idiot, but he answers them anyway because his father looks so worried. They tell him what happened; he had a crash while driving in Formula 1 ( driving in Formula 1! he laughs when they first say it, but stops when he sees that everyone is staring at him), and a piece of debris had struck his helmet. He had broken his collarbone and fractured his right calf. Both of his wrists, which he had apparently also broken before in a separate accident- Jesus Christ , he thinks to himself- had also received trauma, and although they were mostly fine they would be weak for a couple of weeks.
The man from earlier had sat by his bed for all six days of his coma, blatantly ignoring visiting hours and trying to bribe nurses into letting him stay. (He had succeeded.) His name, Lance learns, is Esteban Ocon. He is a fellow Formula 1 driver and also, apparently, his boyfriend.
“Boyfriend,” he'd said, staring blankly at Esteban.
“Yes.” Esteban had tried to smile at him. “For two and a half years now.”
Esteban comes to see him every day. He brings things from his apartment- one time, it is a necklace that Esteban bought for him during a trip to Bali. Another, it is bread, a loaf of dark, dense bread filled with nuts, still warm from the oven. “Your favourite,” Esteban tells him, as Lance chews it and contemplates its husky, rich taste. “I buy one for you every week.”
But Lance has nothing to say in return; he doesn't remember it. None of these offerings hold any meaning to him. He sits there silently, not looking at this stranger who claims to be his partner, and finally Esteban leaves, saying that he would come back the next day.
These visits always make him exhausted, and afterwards he always has to sleep for a very long time, trying to forget instead of remember, hoping that he won't come the next day, that tomorrow he will finally be able to rest and not be reminded of everything he is lacking in. But Esteban comes, still, and with each item he shows Lance he feels less complete, not more.
He sleeps for sixteen hours a day. When he wakes up, it is for checkups, or talk to his family, or to meet with his physical therapists.
He does the exercises prescribed to him, but he is so nauseous all the time that he can hardly eat and he is so pathetically weak all the time. “It will get better,” Chloe tells him as he throws his breakfast up into a garbage can. (She is so much older now, so mature, but he knows her. He will always know his sister.) “You'll recover. It takes time.”
But while it takes time, it hurts . He is always in pain, from his leg, his wrists, his collarbone. He sleeps so much because he can hardly do anything else. He can't keep his food down. He has been confined to his bed for days. And all the while, he aches all over, a sour, throbbing pain that shoots up his spine with every movement.
His only relief comes during the race weekend. Esteban is away for those three, four days, and finally he has a break, finally there isn't someone who's constantly waiting for him to remember, who prioritizes his memory over his health, who waits for his lost lover to miraculously reappear.
His eyes burn too much for him to watch the broadcast, but someone (he can't recall who) puts on a radio broadcast of the race, and he closes his eyes and listens. “This Lando guy sounds like a riot,” he says to the room, although he's not sure who is with him and can't open his eyes to check. But he's sure someone is listening; he is never alone these days.
“He is,” says a voice, and it's his father. “You like him a lot. And he's a good driver.”
“Sounds like I would,” he replies, as the commentator starts shouting about Lando attempting a divebomb on some guy called Verstappen. For two weeks, that was life.
One day he wakes up and sees another man sitting by his bed. Many people have sat with him; Lawrence and Chloe, obviously, Esteban, his doctors, his trainer, but this man is new. He has a scruffy beard and a straight, regal nose, like a Roman emperor. He smiles at Lance the moment he sees that he is awake.
Lance knows who this man is, of course. “Fernando,” he says, and sees the surprise and relief on his face.
“You know me?”
“I watched you on TV.” He grins at Fernando, receives a smile in return. “I get the feeling we know each other better now, but- I can't remember that. I just know I know you. You're familiar.”
“I am your teammate. Have been for two, three years. I'm not sure if your father told you.”
“He's been trying not to tell me too much. Doctor says he shouldn't overwhelm me. I'm very fragile, apparently.” He also isn't allowed his phone, or to look at a screen for too long. It's extremely annoying.
“Well- that's fair. You're like a mummy, covered in bandages.” Lance rolls his eyes at him. “But we don't have to talk about this if you don't want to. I'm sure you have enough people asking you how you are, how you feel.”
“Oh, yeah. Constantly. ”
“You are lucky today, because I don't intend to give a shit how you feel.”
Just as he says this, the door opens again, and another man walks in. Lance is immediately guarded, but Fernando soothes him with a hand raised in the air, like he's telling a guard dog to stand down.
The man doesn't even wait for Lance to say anything, just sees that he is awake and makes a beeline for him to clap his shoulder, gently enough that he doesn't jostle Lance's healing collarbone.
“Checo,” the man introduces himself, without any preamble. “I'm very glad you're okay, Lancito. You had us all worried.”
Fernando has a brutal, ruthless air around him, but Checo carries himself with the thoughtfulness of a father. “Nice to meet you, Checo,” Lance says, meaning it, and Checo finds a stool from somewhere and sits next to Fernando and they talk.
They talk about racing; the one thing they all have in common, apparently. (Actually, more like Fernando and Checo talk while Lance listens because he knows nothing, but that doesn't bother him much. He's relieved not to have to provide any opinions, actually- in the hospital, he is always being asked about what he's eaten, how his leg feels, rate the pain from one to ten. Finally, he can just sit and listen and not think.) They get right into business; in this conversation, Lance learns about the new regulations for the F1 cars in 2026, rule changes, all the recent racing drama.
It shocks Lance, at first, the way they talk to him; they act as if nothing has happened, as if he has not lost their memory. They act as if he has known them for years (he probably has, but Lance doesn't actually know). But even through their mannerisms, the way they look at him, he can tell that they are two people that care for him a lot.
“I don't know who these people are anymore,” Lance reminds them when they start talking about two drivers who have begun an on-track war over the championship, but he is shushed.
“Doesn’t matter,” Fernando says. “I know you're desperate for some mental stimulation. There's nothing more mentally stimulating than the misguided war between two extremely arrogant drivers.”
After listening and being caught up on the gossip for ten minutes, Lance has to admit that he's hooked. He makes Fernando promise to update him about all the off-track drama the next time he comes (Checo has lost his seat for reasons they haven't gotten into, and Lance doesn't want to prod).
They leave three hours later (although it feels far too soon), with a promise to come back “with some real food. No wonder why you are throwing everything up, this is inedible.” Checo kisses his forehead, and after the Esteban incident Lance should really mind more than he does but Checo does it so mindlessly and chastely that he can't even find it in himself to push him away.
He'd been a little too exhausted by the end to keep up with the conversation, but he finds that he likes Fernando and Checo- they don't mention his amnesia, and whenever there's a gap in his knowledge they fill him in matter-of-factly without acknowledging the problem. This is the first time that someone has visited him and he hopes that they come back.
There are exercises he must do, to build up strength in his legs. The fractured bone is now mostly healed but he needs to learn to walk again; he clings to two metal bars on either sides of him and hauls himself forward, biting his lip so he doesn't cry out in pain. Lawrence wanted to be here, but Lance doesn't want his father to see him like this, so he purposefully chose a day where he was away on a business trip to start the therapy.
“Don't just use your arms,” Henry says. He crouches down and takes his leg to move it with his hands, simulating the gait Lance should be working towards. “The point of the exercise is to train your legs . I know you're a big strong athlete with insane upper body strength, but-”
“Ha, ha,” Lance grits out through the pain. He has seen himself in the mirror; he didn't know how he looked before, but even as he was discovering himself for the first time, he hadn't felt surprised. Like this was all information he already knows, he was just rereading an old book whose story he couldn't recall clearly. He knew, instinctively, what exercises he had to go through to build up all the muscle he sees on his body; he knew without translating the meaning of the tattoo in Hebrew on his ribs. Fortune favours the bold , he'd said to himself out loud, the first time he saw it.
These exercises are gruelling, but they are his last step before being sent home. He hates this hospital, hates that stupid lavender scent that clouds all his senses, hates the fact that he cannot lock the door and anyone can come in anytime they want. He wants a place where he can cocoon up for days, where he can finally be alone and choose where and when he wants to see people.
But he won't have this at home either. He lives with Esteban, and then there will be a stranger in his house, trying to control everything he does. And so he dreads going home as well.
He knows that he should be kinder to Esteban, but he can't bring himself to. Whenever he looks at Lance, it's not with the amusement or friendship Fernando and Checo look at him with, or Lawrence's concern and support. It's with terrible, unimaginable, foolish hope. Hope that he will magically regain his memories, and then he will have to love Esteban back and things can go back to normal. But the problem is Lance has no idea what normal is; it's not something he wants. He can adjust to his new life and re-learn everything. Esteban doesn't really care about that; he only wants his boyfriend back.
“The doctor said I may never remember,” he snaps at Esteban one day, when he tries to touch his hand. “You know what that means? I might never remember you. I might never love you.”
Esteban draws back immediately, then looks down at his lap. “I'm sorry,” he said, “but I need to try. I love you.”
“I don't know who you are ,” Lance says, harsher than he intended. Esteban winces, but he can't bring himself to feel bad about it. He's just so fucking exhausted. “And I know I used to love you, but I don't anymore. Sorry but it's not my fault. So stop dreaming of miracles.”
“I care about you, Lance. So even if you've given up on yourself-”
“ Given up on myself? ” He laughs, drily. “You're only here because you want me to remember. You don't care about me making the most of what I have left. If anything, you've given up on me.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” This is the first flash of anger he has seen from Esteban, but at the same time, he looks a little like a kicked puppy. “Lance, you're being ridiculous. I don't even know what you want me to do.”
“Fine,” Lance says, “then I'll make it fucking clear what I want you to do. I never want to see you again. Got it? Go back to your life and leave me the fuck alone. I mean it. That's what I want.”
Esteban stands up, the chair scraping noisily across the floor. “That's what you want?” he says. “I'm the one who cares about you the most and you don't want to see me?”
“You don't care about me, you just want someone to love you,” Lance hisses. “And I'm never going to do that. So, yeah, I don't want to see you.”
“Fine,” Esteban says. “You'll never have to fucking see me again.”
He grabs the bag that he had left sitting against a wall and rummages in it for a second, then throws something at Lance. Lance automatically holds his hands up to shield himself, but it only bounces onto his legs gently, settling on the bed. It's something soft wrapped in brown paper, about the size of his fist.
“Have a nice life,” Esteban says. He leaves the room and slams the door behind him.
Lance stares at the door for a while, then finally gathers the courage to open the package, like it might blow up in his face.
It's a muffin. It's a fucking chocolate muffin, topped with chunks of dark chocolate and melty and gooey in the middle. Lance eats it with his fingers, hatefully; it's fucking delicious. He balls up the wrapping and chucks it against the wall, watching it bounce off uselessly.
He waits and waits, filled with anticipation and dread, but Esteban doesn't come to see him again.
His father brings a laptop one day and shows him full recordings of his races. Lance sits and watches himself drive for hours on end, from different angles, on different tracks- all his triumphs, all his mistakes, all his regrets. When he watches these clips he hardly registers that it is himself driving the car. He only sees a helmet and a number on the front wing.
He watches himself spin off into the gravel after his front wing touches the back of a Ferrari. He laughs, and turns to his father. “Not exactly brilliant, am I,” he says.
“Don't say that,” his father says immediately, and Lance stops and frowns. “You are. You are brilliant, don't let anyone else say otherwise.”
“Dad,” he says, because this reaction is so out of character for his father. “It's fine. That was a stupid move, it was a joke.”
Lawrence stays silent, then nods at the screen. “Watch.”
“I'm not being serious, Dad. What's wrong?”
But his father doesn't say anything else, and when he leaves to go to the bathroom Lance exits the replay and googles himself. By the time Lawrence returns, he is halfway through a video highlighting every mistake he has ever made, his background, his flaws, his aggression and weakness and irresponsibility and arrogance and stupidity and Lawrence slams the laptop shut and takes it out of the room. “They're wrong, son,” Lawrence says, and Lance puts on the most emotionless face he can and nods. “They don't mean anything. You are the most special person I know, okay? Nothing's going to change that.”
But Lance has seen, and that night he tells the nurse that his pain has gotten worse just so that she will give him more pain meds and his mind finally shuts the fuck up and allows himself to go to sleep.
It disturbs him. He saw that he shoved Henry, his trainer who has only wanted to help him, just because he was upset over a race. He saw that other drivers didn't actually like him, unlike what he has been led to believe, or even respect him. He searches for a single thing he's contributed to the sport and comes up empty.
The next day, he talks to Fernando. He's the only one from his team, other than Henry, that he's in contact with right now. He cannot trust Chloe with this. “Tell me,” he says, “what do you think of me? What does the team think of me?”
Fernando is silent for a long while before he speaks, like he is considering the right thing to say. “We are aware of what people say about you,” he says finally, “but I think it's all bullshit. You try harder than anyone else I know. I can say that, at least.”
“Yeah, but-” He sighs. “It's like I keep fucking up. I don't know why, I get the feeling that I screw everything up. It looks like- it looks like I don't care.”
“You do care,” Fernando responds immediately. “Maybe not for media, or interviews, but- I know that you care a lot. Too much, even.”
Lance doesn't fully believe it. He sees the interviews he gives and he looks like a privileged kid that couldn't give a shit. “You're sure?”
“I’m sure. And, for the record, you would still be an asshole regardless of how you drive on track.”
“Okay, so fuck you,” Lance says and attempts to kick Fernando with his good leg while he cackles.
Fernando stands and comes over to kiss him on the cheek, bristly with his stubble- it surprises him. “I need to go, but I'll be back,” he promises. “Get some rest, Lancito. I will see you soon. I will bring some other drivers, if you like.”
Lance shakes his head. He barely has enough of a social battery to get through his discussions with doctors and family; Fernando is nice to talk to, but the days are far too long here, even with his limited conversations. “It's okay. Dad wants me to get back to the paddock as soon as I can, so.”
“Good,” Fernando says, but he sounds surprised. Lance had been surprised too; even his doctors said that he should take it slow, but his father seemed really excited to see him back at races. “They'll be happy to see you, I know that.”
“Maybe,” Lance says, then hugs Fernando's torso. Fernando says nothing, only threads his fingers through his hair gently.
“Home sweet home,” Chloe announces as she unlocks the front door. It's a large house, but homey and comfortable. Still, Lance peeks into it like it may swallow him whole.
Immaculately cleaned, not a speck of dust in sight. Everything is lined up neatly on shelves or on tables; there is a vase of lemons on the kitchen counter. A vase of fucking lemons. Jesus , Lance thinks, and continues exploring.
He walks slowly, occasionally stopping to lean against couches and tables. He walks pretty well now, his limp barely visible, but he needs a crutch some of the time and he can't go long distances. But this is good now- it means that while he waits for the pain to subside and his breathing to return to normal, he is forced to survey the house and commit it to memory.
There are some unusual gaps in his belongings- bookshelves half-empty, an unfilled corner of his closet standing out like a missing tooth. “Did I spend a lot of time here?” he calls out to Chloe.
She sticks her head through the doorframe. She had been dumping his luggage in the foyer (“I'm not unpacking for you though, you man-child,” she'd said before he could even ask). “Well, you travelled a lot- but most of the time you were here. Or in Switzerland. You have an apartment in Geneva, too, by the way.”
“Hmm.” He ponders the empty space at the bottom of his closet for a while longer- waiting for a pair of shoes to be lined up next to the others- before he realises: Esteban must have lived here. He must have moved out before Lance came back, leaving behind all that space.
Once he realises this, he quickly shuts the closet and goes back into the living room to find Chloe. He doesn't want to think about this right now. “Wanna get some lunch?” he asks.
Afterwards, he goes through all the drawers, all the cupboards in the house, mentally cataloguing the location of all his necessities. He puts his newly prescribed meds in the cabinet above the bathroom sink, figures out where he keeps his plates and utensils, unearths the television remote from deep within the couch cushions. The whole house is neat, not a single thing out of place; instinctively he knows that he must have a cleaner or housekeeper, because no way he's this tidy.
It's all pretty standard stuff. The house is bland and uninteresting to him; it's spacious, comfortable, but there's nothing unique about it other than his trophies and awards from racing. He figures he could walk down the street and find an identical house, probably, with identical belongings and furnishings. That is, until he finds a huge binder in the bottom drawer of his desk, fat with notes and crammed full of papers.
He sets it on the tabletop with a heavy thump and looks through it. Immediately he understands what it is; it's a scrapbook of sorts, starting from when he was fifteen or something, in his junior Prema team. It's haphazard, slapdash, but there's an approximate timeline he is able to follow.
First few pages: him in a white Williams Racing suit, him on the podium, him with a man much older than he was at the time. That must have been his teammate. Newspaper clippings, printouts of articles about himself. Narcissistic much , he thinks, smirking.
The next few pages are more personal. He finds a little plastic baggie of Polaroid pictures and flicks through them. Most are of other people, some of which he recognises (his father, Felipe Massa, a commentator giving the camera a thumbs-up). There are notes that fall out from where they were pressed between the pages, all addressed to him with comments on the car or setups. He replaces them carefully and moves on.
Himself in Prema red, Williams white, Alpine pink, then finally lush Aston Martin green. Checo, making a face at the camera, his daughter in his arms. Sebastian Vettel holding him in a headlock, both of them laughing. (He has met Seb once, and it has been one of his favourite visits so far- Seb was so kind, making little jokes that startle him into laughter, bringing him flowers, but he never came back to visit him again.) Lance searches his memory for even the dullest recollection of these events, but comes up empty. They slip away from him like a song whose tune he can't quite catch in his head.
He reaches the end of the binder fifteen minutes later and is about to replace it when he notices a second book, buried deeper in. Pulling it out of the drawer, he reads the word scribbled on its cover- a single, unmistakable word. A name. Esteban.
The first picture is of the two of them, himself fourteen at the most, eating ice cream by the track. This shocks him; he hadn't known that they were friends for so long. There are pictures of him in Racing Point and Esteban in Renault, the two of them on the podium together, Esteban's arm around his waist. Then a series of photographs of him and Esteban talking after a race- he is smiling so wide, making a large gesture with his hands while laughing about something. In the pictures, Esteban is wearing a helmet that conceals most of his face, but his eyes, visible through the open visor, never leave Lance's face. He looks like he's smiling too.
Then, there is Esteban, lying on his back on a yacht with his face turned away from the camera. Another picture of Lance crossing his legs into Esteban's lap, grinning. A CD, for some reason, is clipped in its protective covering between two pages; Lance pops it into the player sitting on a bookshelf and a moment later, an old French song starts crooning through the speakers.
Je ne peux pas travailler, je ne peux pas déjeuner, je veux seulement l'oublier- et puis, je fume. Lance laughs at the irony of it.
There are notes, or messages, printed out and stapled together. Some are long, sprawling messages, talking about anything from movies to cars to just everyday life. Some are short, just a couple of sentences. He finds a bright yellow sticky note that reads, simply: Sorry Lancey, had to go. Getting groceries. Call me if u want anything? The casualness of it, the way they had settled into each other's lives, makes Lance feel sick. He shuts the book and tucks it back into the drawer, not wanting to even look at it.