#paddock ghosts

Fernando taught Lewis how to play mind games. Lewis taught Fernando the importance of remaining detached from your teammate- something he's slowly beginning to reconsider, because even though Lewis has seven WDCs, he is still miserable, and Fernando refuses to let that happen to himself.

They both have their ghosts. It just so happens that Lewis' ghost is living and breathing in the paddock with a microphone, and Fernando's is re-arranging Russell's sock drawer for shits and giggles. Lewis was what made Fernando reconsider his sexuality. Fernando is what makes Lewis realize he needs to retire. They have always been absolutely rancid about each other, and even a decade and a half later, they are both still asking each other's position on track.

So now i gotta ask—what’s the scene you had in your head that made you want to write the fic? And if you had to choose a favorite detail, what is it?

Honestly, either the beginning scene or the hospital scene...

Because I am evil I will give you the first few lines of the fic instead of the whole scene!

The first thing Sebastian does to welcome Fernando to Aston Martin is inform him that the garage is haunted.  This, in and of itself, is not entirely unexpected. The team lost a driver last season, so of course there will be traces, little bits left behind that can only be cleared with time. He’s been around long enough to know that some of those traces don’t always go away. He’s never seen a ghost, though. He’s seen other shit– papers flying up in the air during a briefing, the little tremor in Leclerc’s hands as he straps into his car, graffiti on the wall of the Red Bull hospitality that says go fuck yourself in Daniel Ricciardo’s handwriting– but he’s never come face-to-face with a live(?), genuine apparition of one of the many, many drivers he’s watched die in his twenty-ish years of racing. When Lance Stroll strides through the door to his driver’s room that first week of testing in Bahrain, Fernando nearly has a heart attack.  “What,” says Lance, eyebrows raised, “This never happen to you before?”

Glad you're enjoying it!

Aha! Kind of? It’s not entirely clear who Pierre is attached to (for reasons that would be spoilers if I said) but just know that I haven’t decided whether or not Esteban can see him. Pierre dies in 2021, so he never becomes Esteban’s teammate, and he mostly hangs around Charles, and Yuki is. Well. Yuki is special.