5 Works by softbottas
Listing Works
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Summary
“I just couldn’t do it again,” Nico says, and it’s barely a whisper. He doesn’t say because each season took something I didn’t get back. Doesn’t say it felt like returning to the same cliff, convinced the ground would eventually learn to hold him.
Lewis stares at him, chest rising and falling. For a moment, it looks like he’s going to argue. Like he’s going to tear into that sentence and pull it apart until it means something else. Like he’s going to demand an explanation that leads somewhere other than here.
“I know you’re tired,” Lewis says, voice tight. “I know this sport takes everything.” He gestures vaguely between them, encompassing the years, the circuits, the fights that never quite ended when the engines shut off.
“But don’t sit there and tell me you didn’t know that when we got into it.”
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OR: After Nico retires, Lewis shows up to have a conversation that’s been years overdue, only to learn that some decisions aren’t undone by understanding them. It’s not about blame or reconciliation, but about the cost of staying, and the quiet finality of choosing yourself.
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“The crowd was brutal.”
Lewis smiles without his eyes. “Didn’t hear a thing.”
Nico says nothing. But he knows better. He’s known better since they were kids and Lewis took every karting loss like it was a death. Since the days Lewis would lie next to him in the dark and whisper, I have to win, I have to, it’s the only way they’ll let me in.
Since Nico realized that losing cost Lewis far more than it ever cost him.
“I didn’t come to fight,” Nico says.
Lewis finally laughs, sharp and low. “Sure you did. That’s the only reason you ever speak to me.”
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OR: Nico wins, but it’s like breaking the tape at the finish line and realizing you left something important behind at the start.
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Lewis doesn’t smile. He just looks at him. Really looks at him.
“Seriously. What’s going on with you?”
Nico grips his glass tighter. His knuckles go white against the curve of it, but he doesn’t drink.
He could tell him. About the way his hands shake sometimes. He could tell him that some nights, he stares at the ceiling of his hotel room and wonders if he’s made a mistake by staying. If he’s stuck in something he doesn’t know how to walk away from.
But he won’t.OR: A story about knowing someone so well you start losing pieces of yourself in them. About the weight of a championship, a career, a life spent measuring yourself against one person. About wondering who you are without it all. About what it means to stop fighting, and what it means to choose.
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""I didn’t leave because of you," Nico says finally, because Lewis deserves to hear it, even if it won’t change anything.
Lewis stays quiet for a long time.
Then, softly, he whispers, “Didn’t you?”
A silence falls between them, thick, unbreakable.
Lewis holds his gaze, waiting. Nico looks back at him, sees the question in his eyes. The one he won’t answer.
Then, slowly, Nico looks away. It feels like defeat."OR: They have spent years avoiding each other, avoiding this. But in Monaco, some things are impossible to outrun.
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Summary
Lewis goes for a midnight walk in Monaco and runs into a certain someone.