Chapter Text
After a long, rainy, generally miserable weekend at Spa, Lewis was finally back in Monaco, enjoying some much-needed downtime before he set out to enjoy the rest of his Summer Break. He hadn’t made any set plans – he rarely did, nowadays – unsure about how he’d be feeling and not wanting to have to back out of commitments if he just wasn’t feeling up to them.
A few days of relaxing in Monaco with Roscoe, then he’d figure out how to spend the rest of his downtime.
As if on cue, his phone screen lit up, and Lewis smiled slightly when he saw who the message was from.
———
Charles Leclerc
Are you in Monaco?
Lewis Hamilton
I am.
Not sure how long I’m staying, but a few days at least.
Charles Leclerc
Good.
———
It was suspicious, but not unlike the Monegasque driver.
Lewis knew that Charles, like most of the younger drivers on the grid, had elaborate plans for the Summer Break, luxe destinations which included Sardinia, Corsica, and (of course) Ibiza. Others, Lewis had heard, were returning home to visit family and friends – like Lando, who had very excitedly detailed what seemed like a years worth of plans for his trip home to London.
They reminded Lewis of himself, at their age, though he didn’t begrudge the way things were now.
It was nice, he thought, to slow down and take sometime for himself, to figure out what he wanted, instead of just launching himself into the next adventure without pausing to breathe.
Still, he wasn’t exactly surprised when someone – Charles, undoubtedly – was pounding on his door less than half an hour later, startling Roscoe out of a deep sleep. The British Bulldog merely glowered at Lewis from when he was lounging on his well-appointed dog bed, clearly unimpressed that his nap had been interrupted.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Lewis called as he heaved himself up from the couch, grumbling under his breath about impatient children and spoiled dogs as he made his way to the door.
It was, in fact, Charles at his door, takeaway bags in hand – however, Carlos and Pierre were behind him, each holding what looked to be their own takeaway. Carlos, at least, had the decency to look mildly sheepish at the intrusion, while his teammate and the Frenchman just bustled their way past Lewis like they owned the place.
“Hello, Lewis, may we come in, please, thank-you so much for having us,” Lewis intoned drily as they filtered past.
“Leave the door unlocked – Lando will be here soon,” Charles called over his shoulder from where he was already setting out his takeaway at the table. Pierre, for his part, had vanished into the kitchen, while Carlos had set his own takeaway down rather hastily once spotting Roscoe and was now crouched down cooing over the bulldog.
As if Roscoe needed more attention.
Lewis sighed.
“Did you at least bring me food?” he asked grumpily.
“Lando has it – he is closer to that vegan place you like, with the asparagus pancakes?” Charles responded absently, busy sorting out his and his teammate’s food, since Carlos was absolutely enamoured by Roscoe, apparently.
If Lando actually brought the kimchi and asparagus pancakes Lewis figured he could forgive the unannounced intrusion, especially if they still came with that gochujang sauce they’d had last time Lewis had been there.
“Asparagus pancakes?” Pierre questioned with a wrinkled nose as he reappeared, balancing his own takeaway and several empty glasses, along with a very full pitcher of water. The entire thing looked like a disaster waiting to happen, so Lewis finally jumped into the fray.
Which was why he didn’t notice Lando until not only the younger Brit, but also Oscar, Max, and Daniel were in his apartment, arms also laden with take-away from various restaurants. By that point, it was too late to turn them away, especially because Lando did, in fact, have the kimchi and asparagus pancakes with the gochujang sauce.
It was bold – or hopeful – to assume that would be the end of it. As it was, his place was practically bursting at the seams, the younger drivers bickering profusely while Daniel egged them on and Carlos observed quietly from across the room with Roscoe.
He should have just locked the door while he had the chance.
Then, George and Alex practically tumbled through the door, already bickering about something, Ghanyu, Lance and Logan hot on their heels, the latter trio looking slightly terrified where they were hovering just inside the still open doorway, eyes wide.
“Charles, did you invite the entire grid to my house?” Lewis asked incredulously as Mick, Esteban, and Yuki appeared behind the trio still lingering in the doorway.
“Charles said that you knew?” Mick interjected unhelpfully from somewhere in the hallway.
“Can you move?” Esteban griped, hand snaking out to jab at Lance’s side. The Canadian yelped and stumbled further inside, leaving an opening for Esteban and Mick to push through the group still lingering uncomfortably in the doorway, clearly unsure of their welcome.
“Come in,” Lewis said with a small sigh and a reassuring smile. Admittedly, he didn’t know Lance, Logan, or Yuki as well as he probably should have, but he knew that – each in their own way – they were important to the others who had already invaded him home with a startling level of comfort.
At least they’d all brought their own food – Lewis was relatively certain that his kitchen was near – if not completely – empty, so he didn’t have to worry about what to feed them.
Just about how the hell they’d all ended up here in the first place.
“Max? Charles?” Lewis demanded as he rounded on the duo, the pair looking decidedly guilty. “Care to explain?”
“We’re barely ever all available at the same time –”
“And it was so much fun after Baku last year –”
“Don’t forget Abu Dhabi!”
“So, we thought we’d organize another get-together before we all head off on Summer Break –”
“You said you asked!”
Lewis pinched his nose as several voices overlapped all at once – decidedly not just Max and Charles – as half the men – no, children – in the room tried to explain themselves in quick succession.
“So, you actually did invite the entire grid to my house without telling me?”
Silence, and then –
“Checo couldn’t make it because he was on the first flight back to Mexico to see his kids,” Max shared, entirely unhelpfully, from his half of the chair he and Charles were inexplicably sharing.
“Sebastian said that coming to Monaco once a year was more than enough for him,” Mick contributed from the floor space he had commandeered, already digging into his own lunch.
“Apparently Valtteri had some cycling thing to do with Tiffany?” Zhou added from where he was still hovering somewhat nervously between the door and the couch.
“Fernando outright refused to be involved in – and I quote – “this chaos”,” Lance contributed from his place at Ghanyu’s side.
“Nico and Kevin just never answered my messages,” Charles concluded grumpily, earning himself a consolatory pat on the head from Max.
“So, in summary, they did, in fact, invite the entire grid to your house,” Daniel surmised from where he was happily munching away at his own lunch, wedged between Lando and Yuki on the couch.
“And also Seb,” Yuki reminded everyone, as if Lewis had somehow missed that little fun tidbit of information.
Lewis suppose that he could – very easily – get mad. Could kick everyone out and lock the door and ignore the entire lot of them for the entirety of Summer Break. That would – probably, maybe – teach at least of few of them manners… But he didn’t want to.
Because somewhere between inviting Max back to his motorhome in 2015 and cuddling with Oscar on his driver’s room couch just this past weekend, he’d accepted that these boys were his. Maybe not Daniel or Carlos – they were old enough to fend for themselves, probably – but the rest of them had unwittingly wormed their way into his heart and taken up residence there. Even the younger drivers who’d taken up refuge with other mentors – from Lance with Fernando, to Logan with Alex, or Yuki with Pierre – were impossible to turn away, especially now that he’d let them all into his space and had seen first-hand just how desperately they were hoping to be accepted.
He was, however, going to kill Seb and Valtteri for not telling him about this.
Lewis sighed.
“I want a spot on the couch,” he declared. “And you’re all in charge of cleaning up after yourselves, yeah?”
There was a chorus of agreements, various accents and phrasings bleeding together as smiles broke out across the room. Lando scrambled up off the couch to make room for Lewis, moving to lean against Carlos where the Spaniard was still sitting on the floor next to a bewildered Roscoe.
A short while later, sitting in the living room of his home in Monaco – which, he now realized, was entirely too small for the family he had somehow acquired – Lewis Hamilton could readily admit that he had no idea how he had ended up with not one, not two, but several of what Sebastian, Toto, and half the responsible adults in his life insisted on calling his Grid Kids.
He’d spent years insisting that they weren’t his, but he also couldn’t seem to convince anybody else to take them back. Which, as Lewis pondered his current reality, probably had to do with the fact that he’d entirely stopped trying to give them back to anybody, because he liked having them around.
“Lewis, can we watch Cars?”
“No – let’s watch Fast and the Furious!”
“I say we watch Ford vs Ferrari.”
“I asked first! Lewis!”
As the late afternoon sun filtered through the windows of his Monaco home, the sounds of his accidental grid family bickering washing over him, Lewis just tipped his head back and laughed, feeling a sense of peace he’d never quite experienced before.