Chapter Text
Daniel is not a good person, he thinks, smoking on the balcony after it happens. Not even close. Nico is curled up in the bed, sleeping, his blonde hair spilled out around his head like a halo. If he was a good man, he’d be back in there, holding Nico… If he was a good man he wouldn’t have done this at all. Daniel doesn’t smoke often, at parties, maybe, and especially not like this, pure tobacco, but he needs the sting of it, the bite, the faint taste of death on it.
The only other driver, since the good old eighties at least, that Daniel remembers smoking like this, a little more than social, is Jules. In the off-season he would sit around lighting cigarette after cigarette after cigarette, like he knew, always with that thousand-yard stare that went straight to Daniel’s bones, daring him to do something, even if he could never quite put his finger on what. Daniel hadn’t carried the coffin. Nico hadn’t either, forever a weeper at funerals, not that he would remember now. No it had been Valtteri, of course, sturdy, concrete Valtteri, sick with duty, just like Seb and Felipe. And Adrian, sick with guilt. And Romain and Jev, sick with, who knows, Frenchness probably. No, Daniel had sat in the pew with Lewis, perverse in his anger, the thought caught in a cycle in his head. Are we sorry now? Are we sorry we raced him so goddamn hard? He’s not Senna. Don’t all of us want to die in the fucking car? Charles had been there, but Daniel’s memory is reconstructed to slot him in, a last minute photo edit. Daniel remembers Charles from the photos but can’t say he even registered his presence.
His cigarette burns out. He lights another, then another. He’s not a good man, not even a little bit, not even at all. He leans out over the horizon with its creeping dawn that reaches to reveal him and throws another butt into the trees below. There’s the sound of bare, padding feet behind him and the soft hum of Nico’s sleepy voice. “I thought you left me.”
Daniel turns. Nico is rubbing his eyes, wearing just his underpants and Daniel’s team shirt, somehow relentlessly baggy on him. In this light, the Toro Rosso design could almost pass for the old Williams shirt. “Nah, Babe. I wouldn’t do that,” Daniel lies, turning on his grin. He wraps his arms around Nico’s waist, pinning him between his body and the balcony rail. His lips hover close to Nico’s ear. “Look at this gorgeous sunrise. Almost as pretty as you.” He kisses Nico’s neck, lets Nico’s head loll back onto his shoulder and open up all the beautiful skin to him. He wants to sink his teeth in, ruin it, but he can’t risk the marks. Marks mean questions. “Come on, back to bed. We can squeeze another round in before I have to send you back to your room.”
–
Nevermind how it happens, no one’s even exactly sure when it happens. It’s Abu Dhabi, 2021, and everything has just erupted into chaos anyway, mouths hanging open in confusion. One moment the Nico that they all know is there, furiously waving his arms, letting the buttons of his navy blue shirt do all that hard work, and then next he’s younger, so much younger, examining the microphone, his hands in horror and amazement. People try to slow the footage down, to isolate the frame and watch the atoms rearranging themselves, but it happens faster than the cameras can pick up, let alone human eyes can perceive. Daniel knows; he isn’t there in the moment, but he watches it himself afterwards.
It’s a solid thirty seconds before Simon Lazenby has the presence of mind to push Nico out of the view of the cameras and Martin Brundle announces an unexpected shift to whatever Ted Kravitz is doing and God bless that man’s ability to improvise, Daniel thinks, turning the television off. They had brought Nico through the paddock with Simon’s suit jacket thrown over his head, Nico shouting in five different languages at them to let him go, to tell him who they were, where he was, what was going on - to call his father. Which someone must have done, eventually. There’s footage of this too, filmed on a journalist’s mobile phone. It does something to Daniel just to watch it, the muffled sobs from under the jacket, how small Nico’s wrist is in Martin’s hand.
Daniel had become aware of the situation when someone had come sprinting into the McLaren motorhome to tell them what had happened. No one quite understood. Daniel thought it was terrorism at first, promptly shoved into Lando’s drivers room with the door locked behind them for their own safety, Lando glaring at him the whole time, huge headphones over his ears just so he didn’t have to listen to him. He never liked the kid. He never bought Daniel’s bullshit. It was a horrible hour and a half.
There’s several theories on what happened: experimental weapons technology gone awry, somehow; localised mini-wormhole; aliens, obviously. Then the World Health Organization comes out and says it has identified a number of cases of what they’re calling “temporal dysplasia” since 2017, of which Nico is the first high-profile case. The afflicted visibly regress in age and usually claim to have no memory of the time between the onset and their regression point. They have not identified a probable cause or any viable treatments. Prognosis is unknown. Nico’s regression point is October 28th, 2001. He has just stepped down from the third-place podium at his last ever karting race. He is sixteen years old.
That’s all Daniel hears about it for a long while, that Nico is back home with his parents, trying different experimental treatments to bring him back to the present.
–
The next time Nico Rosberg registers in Daniel’s consciousness, it’s because he bumps into him on the trackside at Bahrain. It’s more than a year later and Nico’s body is seventeen now. His mind too, Daniel supposes, taking in Nico’s lanky form. He’s got a drive in F3, apparently, but that doesn’t really interest Daniel. He’s more focused on Nico’s physical appearance. It’s not that he’s especially smaller than he was as a man in his thirties, more that he doesn’t seem quite at home in himself. He moves his limbs like they’re longer than he is anticipating. There’s puppy fat in his face again, that makes Daniel want to pinch his cheeks, see if it hurts, which is exactly what he does.
“NIIIIICO-OH,” he calls, scooping him into a hug like they’ve ever had that kind of relationship. Nico wouldn’t know, so it doesn’t matter. Nico squeals, giggling, his mouth stretched wide with a grin. Daniel can’t recall ever having seen Nico in red before and it doesn’t suit him, the Prema gear sallowing his complexion.
Nico acts like this isn’t the first time he’s meeting Daniel. It’s fascinating really, how easily he’s able to fake it, Daniel’s almost impressed. “Danny Ric! Nice to see you man!” He gives Daniel a fist bump and that kilowatt smile. His hair is styled differently to how Daniel imagined it would be - still with the sweeping boyband bangs that Daniel remembers from the photographs, but shorter in the back, a more modern take on the same idea. Daniel has to admit he’s intrigued, but it’s more of a drive by than anything. He has things to do, people to talk to, trying to win back a seat in F1. “Let’s hang out sometime, get coffee or something?”
“Yeah, sure kid.” Daniel ruffles Nico’s hair, purposefully disturbing the careful style. “Good luck in the race. See you around.”
–
Nico wins and no one is sure if they’re surprised or not. Daniel’s at a bar, one of these licensed ones that has no energy that the Bahraini government insists upon. He’s sitting with Nico, not that one, Hulkenberg. Max had been with them briefly, before being carried off somewhere else by a wave of Red Bull crew and all his little grid-friends - Charles and Carlos and, Daniel can’t help but roll his eyes, Lando. Being with Nico is more sedate than it used to be now he’s a fucking father, of all things.
“Rosberg wiped the floor with them,” Nico muses, mulling over a beer. Heineken is fine, but you’d think they could get something half decent out here for all the gaudiness of wealth on display. “Absolutely wild. One year of karting and he can drive something twenty years more advanced. He was always a data nerd, but still,” Nico whistles.
Daniel’s bored, pushing ice around his empty glass with a straw. “C’mon man. You used to be fun. Let’s go out, get a couple of girls or something.”
Nico shakes his head. “I’m not like that anymore. I grew up.” He places his empty beer bottle on the table, looking at Daniel with the heaviness of pity in his eyes. “I think I’m gonna head to bed. Got a flight tomorrow.” And then he does, like a rude little bitch. Daniel wants to shriek and throw things - none of his conversations this week have been fruitful and he can feel himself curdling like milk left out of the fridge.
He orders another drink. A cocktail, something outrageously decadent and vibrantly green in the glass, something they’d draw as a glass of poison in a Disney film. No one approaches him; no one is interested in him anymore, just another has-been, another never-made-it, another disappointment. How fucking dare they. Daniel’s anger makes him draw his lips tight, his mouth a shrewd, cruel line. He contemplates his drink, the tumbler heavy in his hand, like a desk weight he could brain someone with.
Daniel doesn’t notice anyone sliding into Nico’s vacant seat until Valtteri clears his throat. Daniel takes a swig of his drink, eyes Valtteri, doesn’t bother to alter his expression. Valtteri has never been an auspicious presence for him.
“Don’t be like that. No one likes you when you’re bitchy.” Valtteri pushes his hair behind his ear. If Daniel’s being honest, he doesn’t like the mullet and the moustache look. It makes Valtteri seem dated, puts him in mind of Mansell, or Keke Rosberg, or God forbid a NASCAR driver, and therefore fat. Daniel liked him best in the early Mercedes days, cheekbones so sharp they could cut and that wide-eyed expression the constant hunger gave him. Daniel’s never found anything sexier than hunger, but then Daniel’s always wanted to see Valtteri struggling. “How are you doing?”
“Fine. Yeah, fine, whatever.” Daniel glowers. Valtteri seems happy at Alfa Romeo, which doesn’t sit right with him. If you can’t win then what’s the point in playing? But then if you can’t play at all isn’t that even worse? He sinks low in his chair. There’s no point performing for Valtteri, never has been.
“You don’t seem very fine.” Valtteri hasn’t bothered to change out of his team gear. He leans forward and plunks Daniel’s drink from his hand, takes a sip. His nose scrunches in disgust. “What did they put in this? It’s so sweet.” This is the thing about Valtteri, all of their silly media play aside, he has always seen something in Daniel that no one else could quite reach. Sometimes he thinks it’s not really there at all, that Valtteri’s completely delusional, acting like he knows Daniel just because they were lower-formula rivals. It’s bullshit.
“Yeah well, no seat. Can’t win without a seat.” He puts his glass down on the table. Despite himself, his lips are beginning to unfurl, unable to keep the frown in place.
“Hmm. Yes, I suppose so.” Valtteri’s teasing him, his brows knitted together in mock seriousness. He can only hold it for a moment until it collapses into that easy charm that he’s got going on these days. “There are other series. Formula E? Indycar?”
“Pssh. I’d rather slit my wrists than drive in Formula E and you know it.” In spite of himself, Daniel chuckles - chuckles until it’s a cackle and Valtteri laughs like he’s in on the joke. Daniel wipes at the edges of his eyes. “Are Alfa gonna bin Zhou? He’s not got a contract yet, right?” Valtteri tenses, the ghost of a frown beneath his bristling moustache. Daniel can’t fathom why he gives a shit about the kid. He’s mediocre at best, but the cash flow might keep him around a couple more seasons. Valtteri shakes his head more aggressively than he has to, so Daniel cries off that line of approach. “Haas, then. Hulk’s a stop gap, not a real option.” God, look at him now, pursuing a seat at Haas. Pathetic.
“I’m just saying maybe you should consider something else,” Valtteri says, leaning back into the chair, biting his bottom lip, contemplative. “You’re not- We’re not getting any younger. Not like Rosberg, anyway… I heard that Red Bull are sniffing around him, maybe fast track him if he can win the season. Ferrari too, but they’ve not got the room. They just don’t want Red Bull to get him.”
“Not Mercedes? Why? Lewis tell ‘em he’ll walk?” Daniel pinches the bridge of his nose, takes a deep breath. “He fucking had his turn. And now he’s like two, another rookie. What’s the point?”
“Ready made champion. You don’t need to have faith he can do it - he already has.” Valtteri folds his hands in front of his face, fingers lacing together. He gazes at the glass table top, Nico’s empty bottle of Heineken, then across at Daniel. “Seriously though, take the time off, enjoy it. Let me and Tiffy have you over for dinner sometime.”
That makes Daniel snort. Does Valtteri think they’re friends? They haven’t ever been friends, not even back in Formula Renault. The fact that he knew Tiffany before Valtteri was entirely coincidental, but no, Valtteri’s an adopted Australian now. Daniel wants to roll his eyes all the way up to God and demand his media persona back. “You unicorn hunting me? Like I knew you guys were freaky but for real?”
Valtteri gives Daniel the finger and gets up, stretches his shoulders all the way out, bones clicking audibly. Christ, he is getting old. “Just think about it is all I’m saying.” He takes off, presumably back to his room.
That’s when Daniel decides he’s going to fuck Rosberg.