Chapter Text
January 7th, 2008. Felipe's POV.
Felipe stumbled into his hotel room, his own furious, hoarse shouts still ringing in his ears.
Forza Ferrari? Forza niente! I was nothing but loyal, to you I have always been loyal – I could have taken that win at Interlagos, you, me, Kimi and everybody knows it. It would have been easy for me. I did what I did for the team, for you, I did it off my own back and this is my payment? No, you take him and see what you get. Did you know how badly he wanted that McLaren seat, how much he'd dreamed of it? He fucked it up because he couldn't put his ego aside – how do you think he will treat you? You want that 'world owes me' shit? You have it, take it. Don't ever expect me back now that I know what loyalty is to you. Vaffanculo!
There had been more, much more than that – a two hour meeting had consisted of one hour of talk and one hour of raised voices and vicious insults being flung to the point where Jean and Nicolas had held up their hands, tried to calm him. The words, the oaths and rage that had poured from his mouth in a torrent were careless, driven by high emotion – he may even regret some of them in a few days' time. After all, drivers were supposed to conduct themselves better than he just had.
But how, how in God's name was he supposed to conduct himself with anything but outrage when, to pour salt right into that stab wound in his back, he had been there. Him, the reason for all this, sat there at the table obviously at the behest of Jean and not of his own volition, because the few times Felipe deigned him with a glance he appeared to be trying to shrink into himself and disappear.
Felipe wished he would.
He was wryly glad that "El Nano" wasn't already decked out in a Ferrari shirt, or else he might've done something really stupid.
So here he was, leaning heavily against the wall of his hotel room, the shock fading, reality sinking in.
No team, no manager. No available seats. No backup plan. No hope for a 2008 season.
He felt as though all the blood had drained out if him, and here he sagged, shaking, sweating, pale.
Abandoned. Dumped. Dropped. Fucking betrayed.
His throat started to tighten, stomach churning, and he barely managed to collapse at the toilet bowl before throwing up.
He remained there until he was merely dry heaving and his head had stopped spinning so terribly. He slumped back onto his haunches with a thud and sagged against the wall like a wet towel, eyes glazed, breath rattling from him. With all the sluggishness of a drunk, his fingers curled around the bottom of his Ferrari shirt and peeled it off, grimacing a little when his eyes caught a flash of the prancing horse logo. He didn't want the accursed thing on him, not anywhere near him, and all he would reserve for that shirt was use as a towel, wiping his mouth clean before throwing it aside.
What am I supposed to do? Little thought passed through his mind as he dragged himself to his feet, flushing the toilet and filling a glass with water, but that question kept popping up as much as he tried to push it away. What the hell am I supposed to do? Again there it was, while he swilled the water around his mouth and spat it into the basin, once, twice.
Felipe did not have an answer. And it terrified him. The white porcelain before him offered him nothing, nothing at all, so he drank the remainder of the water, set the glass down and shuffled away, back to the bedroom. The nausea had faded, not quite into nothing but enough to just let it sit there in his empty stomach and dully throbbing head, so he settled on the corner of his bed.
This was the part he was truly afraid of, sitting there, just sitting there on the end of the bed and not having the adequate presence of mind to do anything but. Staring down at his hands, this was when it could all finally sink in, and hearing nothing at all but his own hoarse breathing, this, finally, was when he lost it.
His vision blurred, he heard himself choke, and as he pushed his hands into his hair he hunched over and sobbed his heart out.
It was around half an hour before silence had fallen in Felipe's room. He had pushed himself up the bed, body leaden and utterly, utterly wrung out, and propped himself up against the headboard, dividing his thoughts between the progress of the rivulets of water occasionally tracking down the window to his right and nothing at all, if he could help it. He wanted another glass of water but didn't want to have to go and get it. He wanted a solution to his 'unfortunate situation', as Jean had almost laughably put it, to drop into his lap. Perhaps in the way of a phone call from one of the other teams with a lucrative contract and the promise of a formidable car. Perhaps for his ex-team to knock on the door, present him with a sizeable cake and to tell him that it was all an elaborate prank. Perhaps...
When he failed to think of anything else that could fix it all, he did his best to stop thinking altogether. And it sort of worked – until there was a knock at his door. For a moment he actually wondered if Jean and Nicolas might be at the door with that big slab of Madeira and icing, all smiles.
Swiftly he shook himself out of that thought, that distant hope, scrubbing his hands over his face. He felt like hell; almost certainly looked like it, and he wasn't sure if he wanted anyone else to see him, whoever it might be at the door. Who could it be, though?
The press can't know about this already, can they?
That thought briefly caused a fresh wave of nausea to rise in him, and he twisted his hand into the bedcovers beneath him as he silently chastised himself for such paranoia. Paparazzi couldn't just wander into the hotel, and precious few knew that he was even in the country – the meeting had been booked at short notice. Probably should have heard alarm bells from that, he thought bitterly.
Finally, when another knock sounded, Felipe pulled himself up and shuffled towards the door with the intention of looking through the peephole before jumping to any more conclusions. He was around five steps away when a voice came from the other side of the door.
That unmistakeable fucking Spanish accent.
"Felipe? Are you there?"
Felipe froze in his tracks. His blank expression transformed, and all that rage that he'd thought was spent before his team suddenly came rushing back to the surface.