Lipsticksandheartbreaks - Alika

tolerate it ꨄ lewis hamilton

lewis hamilton x fem!reader

warnings: age gap (no specific age, just mentioned), angst, no hea

this is just me projecting my sadness with this song onto one of the drivers, lewis being the best option. there's a chance i may do a part 2 to this eventually, but im pretty content with how it ended for now. i hope you enjoy!

It wasn’t always like this.  

There was a time when you didn’t wake up, clenching your eyes closed in the hopes that it would magically change the outcome once they opened.  

There was a time when you would wake up, Lewis nuzzling his chin into the space where your neck and shoulders collided, peppering the skin with little kisses in the hopes it would wake you from your slumber. 

There was a time when you didn’t have to hold your breath, when your eyes didn’t have to adjust to the lack of light in the room, just to get a small glimpse of the man you loved curled up next to you.  

It was hard to pinpoint the exact moment when it had all changed. Maybe it was at the beginning of the season, maybe it was before that. You couldn’t really be too sure. 

Now, you were lucky to catch a glimpse of him in the morning, lucky to even get the chance to move your eyes across his ink-coloured skin beside you. You were lucky to even get a kiss goodbye in the morning before he left, the sun barely up when he was leaving to go to training, or the factory, or God knows where.  

The words between the both of you were minimal nowadays, it was more like living with a roommate you saw occasionally instead of a lover that you were supposed to be sharing a life with.  

There was a time when Lewis would giggle as he read the words of his books to you in whatever animated voice he could come up with. There was a time when the art he created was a joint effort between the two of you; now, it felt like all he did was tolerate you. 

It was evident neither you, nor Lewis, wanted to touch on the topic. Both of you tiptoed around each other, not wanting to open the door that would push the storm in.  

There isn’t much time spent at the paddock anymore, your career becoming the main focus of your priorities. You still welcomed Lewis home after every Grand Prix, his favourite dinner’s packaged in the fridge, the linens cleaned, and his clothes prepped.  

A battle hero’s welcome, one could call it. 

He always politely thanked you, a gentle kiss to your forehead before he made his way to the office for the remainder of the night. There was a time when he would debrief with you after every race, watching highlight videos on the television while he explained what he did wrong, what he did right, where he could improve and where he got a little too cocky. Now he just did it alone, the door of his office tightly closed, no sound emitting from the room. 

Sugarcoating it to your friends and family was difficult. They understood Lewis’ career took center stage, but they couldn’t understand why he was never around when they came to your shared apartment, why it felt like his presence wasn’t even prominent in the home at all. 

There was no way to explain it, without sounding naïve, without sounding like you were just letting a relationship that was drowning, pull you down with it. 

Everyone suggested different reasons. The season wasn’t going in the way Lewis had hoped. Maybe his age is finally getting to him. Maybe he’s considering retirement and it’s bothering him. Maybe the age difference between the two of you is too much now.  

Maybe he’s fallen out of love. 

You knew the last one was a significant possibility. Lewis was a private person, but he showed his heart on his shoulder, especially at the beginning. Large declarations of love, obnoxious presents, at first, he wanted you to know that he was in love with you, constantly. 

There isn’t a time in the last four months that you can remember where Lewis demonstrated his love for you, quick ‘love you’s’ before the door slammed behind him, a random heart in the middle of the night when he’s halfway across the world; even those had slowly stopped. 

Nowadays he would hum silently when you told him you loved him, he would send a heart back if you sent one to him. He didn’t initiate anything, it just simply felt like he was tolerating it when you expressed your love for him. 

It wasn’t hard to remember the times when Lewis would tell you how much he loved you, how he would show it.  

He would curl up behind you in bed, the unmade sheets wrapped lazily around the two of you as he groaned into your neck, his hands resting around your middle as he eagerly cuddled up to you. 

You could always feel him mumbling words into your neck, but he would never tell you what he was saying. Lewis would just smile and press a tiny kiss to your lips, the kiss heating up as time went on, your bodies moving in sync as he demonstrated his love for you in every way he knew how. 

You weren’t a self-conscious person, you knew you had plenty to offer when it came to your relationship, and when it came to life in itself. You knew your love should be celebrated, celebrated in the way that Lewis used to celebrate it, the way he used to giggle as he wrapped his arms around you from behind, gently swaying to the music coming from his phone as you cooked together. 

You tried to push the negative thoughts away, the thoughts of leaving, of packing up your bags and leaving in the middle of the weekend while he was away. You considered it, time and time again. The suitcases staring at you from the closet, telling you to open them, pack them, and leave. 

Every weekend the temptation grew stronger and stronger. The urge to walk away, to preserve your dignity, sat heavy on your shoulders.  

Every time when you thought you had decided, thought you had made the decision to pull the dagger out and walk away; an invisible force pulled you back. Told you that the season was slowly coming to its end, that the old Lewis would come back to you when the season was up, he was just stressed out and things were hard. 

He never talked about his problems with you. He would debrief with you, sure. He would tell you about the problems in the race, but he would never tell you about his internal problems.  

It’s how you constantly justified his behaviour, and his actions... or lack thereof.  

Your mind always went back to those thoughts when you considered leaving. It always made you think about the fact that he was probably struggling, that he just wasn’t able to talk to you about it and that you leaving would probably make things worse. 

It was the invisible but obvious force, that, you knew. 

Lewis didn’t know about these thoughts. At least he never showed that he knew. The bags were always tucked away in the back of the closet when he returned home, like they were never sitting in front of the open door. Everything was back in their rightful place, as if the thought of leaving had never crossed your mind.  

One of your favourite moments with him happened just before the beginning of the season. You were cuddled up on the couch, the remnants of a ‘Game of Thrones’ episode playing on the television, Lewis’ hand gently creating shapes on the visible skin of your back.  

“Do you ever feel like you’re too old, or like... too wise for me? Like someone closer to your age would be better?” 

You felt him huff against your neck, a small laugh falling from his lips before he pressed a kiss to the spot his lips were before shaking his head. 

“Are you calling me old, my love?” 

Immediately shaking your head with a tiny laugh, you slapped his chest with a gleam in your eyes. “You know what I meant, Lew...” 

Rolling you over, he leaned over you as he pushed a lock of his own unruly hair behind his ear. “I rarely think about the fact you’re younger than me. It doesn’t affect the way in which I love you, half the time I forget that you’re younger than me. I definitely don’t think I’m wiser, that’s for sure. It’s pretty obvious who has all the wisdom between the two of us.” 

The night ended with you below him, the sheets rustling, as if all the love he had for you could be encaptured in the way his eyes connected with yours. You had never felt that kind of raw love before, had never felt like everything you had done had led to that exact moment. 

Trying to convince yourself that everything happening now was all in your mind was easy. The comments that your friends made, that maybe he didn’t love you anymore; was easy enough to ignore when you considered the fact that he did still reply to your messages, that he still came home every Sunday, that he still sometimes pressed a kiss to your forehead before leaving in the morning.  

But then sometimes you let your mind reel, and reel, and reel. Lewis was there, but was he really there? 

The conversation almost happened, after Spa. Lewis was exhausted coming into your shared apartment, his bags dropping down at the front door. You were wrapped up in one of his Mercedes sweaters, his racing number engraved on the sleeves; even if he was there physically and not mentally, you had still made him your everything, you had made him your mural, had dedicated the sky to him. 

The pictures on the walls still showed a love between the two of you that wasn’t obvious anymore. The picture of you wrapped around him after the end of the 2020 season. The pictures of the both of you cuddled around each other at his family Christmas, the collage of his nephews wrapped in your arms. There were hundreds of photos that showed how life used to be. 

Your mind came back to the present when Lewis crossed the path in front of you. 

Like always, he went to press a gentle kiss to the crown of your head, the exhaustion prevalent on his face. As he was walking towards his office, you felt the words bubble out of your mouth before you could control them. 

“Did you want to watch this with me? I feel like we haven’t really spent much time together lately.” 

The words stopped him in his tracks, you could practically see the wheels turning in his head as his body turned in your direction. It felt like his face was mocking you with its fake sympathy as he gently shook his head, his curls moving with the direction. 

“I’m just too tired. I have to go watch highlights in my office. Maybe later.” 

It was always ‘maybe later’, or ‘maybe tomorrow’, or ‘I’m sorry we can’t celebrate our anniversary this year, I just don’t have time this weekend, maybe next weekend’.  

It felt like you were begging him for a spot in his life, like you were an inconvenience that he didn’t want to put the effort into anymore. By now, you weren’t even begging for a line in the story, but a line in the footnotes of his life. A minuscule part, something that he couldn’t even try to give you.  

Lewis made it clear he felt bad after he bailed on your anniversary. He spent hundreds of dollars on you, basically begging you for forgiveness and emphasizing things would be different soon, he promised. 

He was right, things were different. Not in a good way. Maybe that was the point when things really started going downhill. It was still hard to pinpoint it. 

Making yourself scarce when Lewis was home was easy. Your friends were always looking for you to go for lunch, or dinner, or out for drinks. Spending your time at work was always an easy escape, allowing the never-ending flow of work to occupy your thoughts as you went above and beyond. 

If Lewis noticed that you were avoiding him, avoiding your home; he didn’t say anything. He never said anything. 

Spending the weekends at home was therapeutic, your arms wrapped in another one of Lewis’ oversized sweaters. The smell of his cologne wafting up your noise as you pressed the sleeve to your face, the unshed tears refusing to leave your eyes. You wouldn’t cry, not again. 

You knew you would cry, again. You always let the tears fall when you scrolled back up in your conversation with Lewis to when things first started, when he was animated, when he overshared, when he sent you photos of George, of Mick, when he forwarded you along videos of Roscoe when Roscoe was away with him.  

Back when your love was celebrated, when it didn’t feel like Lewis was just tolerating it, tolerating you, tolerating your love. 

Jealousy reared its ugly head every weekend as well. Whenever you saw an Instagram story, or a twitter post, whenever you saw that Lewis was out with his friends, or his team, or his crew. You knew it wasn’t fair to be jealous, that it wasn’t fair to compare yourself to the people that Lewis spent 5/7 days a week with, that it was hard for him to say ‘no’ to them. 

It didn’t change how much it hurt, how much it made your heart ache to know that you truly were something that could be put on the backburner. He was always out building other worlds, but where were you?  

Where were you every time he was out with his friends after a race? Where were you every time he was celebrating a win, or celebrating a pole in qualifying? Where were you every time he went live on Instagram? 

Where was his love for you when you sat looking at the suitcases in the closet, again? 

Gone. 

It was time to accept the truth, that his love for you was gone. That he didn’t celebrate his love for you like he once did, that he didn’t celebrate you, like he once did.  

He tolerated it, and he tolerated you. Tolerating something and celebrating it were too obviously different things. It had never been more evident. 

The bags didn’t stare at you anymore as they laid open on the bedroom floor, your clothes finding themselves folded and inside each of them, your portion of the closet emptying out as the bags grew heavier and heavier. The bags under your eyes growing darker alongside them. 

You couldn’t leave without saying anything to him, couldn’t allow him to come home to an empty home. It was obvious he didn’t deserve an explanation, and you didn’t plan on giving him one. But he deserved a goodbye.  

It was clear the presence of the suitcases registered in Lewis’ mind the moment his eyes found them as the front door closed. He immediately looked at you, the most emotion you’d seen in months shining in his eyes. 

“What’s going on?” 

The shake in his hands was visible as he asked the question, his own bags falling gently beside your own as he stared at you.  

“I can’t do this anymore. I can’t beg for a place in your life anymore, Lew. I’m sorry.” 

The resignation was evident in his eyes, but there was no fight in them as he sat on the couch opposite you. It almost hurt to know that he wasn’t going to argue, wasn’t going to ask you to stay, to not break free and leave the both of you in ruins. It almost hurt, but you knew it would be the case.  

“I’m sorry.” 

He didn’t try to stop you as you went towards your bags, he didn’t look up from his ink-stained hands as the click of the lock sounded. He didn’t try to say anything more as the suitcases rolled out the door. 

You didn’t see the tears gather in his eyes and then fall down his cheeks as the door closed behind you, the longing on his face as he debated with himself internally if he should run after you. Beg you to stay. It was so plain to see now, you were younger, and wiser, and he didn’t deserve you anymore. 

Lewis knew the truth. You deserved someone who would celebrate you, celebrate your love. Not someone who could only tolerate it when their own life was falling apart. He didn’t deserve you, not anymore.  

i really hope you guys liked this!! im really not too sure if i'll make a part 2, but if there's a lot of demand for one i will. thank you for all the love. also i read this like 4 times so if there's any mistakes im sorry lol

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