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Chapter Text

Lando Norris was getting a new race engineer for 2024. He wasn't entirely sure what to think of that, but it was what it was.  He read the quick sheet of the engineer, and awkwardly fidgeted whilst he waited for this dude to finally show up. It was some ridiculously early hour in the morning, and someone walks up to the door, and now he has to direct them to a sidedoor through the glass. 

A blast of cold air comes from just down the hallway, and the person walks into the foyer, looking slightly awed. He looks at Lando, and Lando stares right back at him. 

"If you are who I think you are, I'm your new engineer." The man is pale, and looks a bit younger than Lando, which really concerns him a little. Most engineers in the industry were a lot older than him. 

Taller, a flop of soft brown hair, caramel eyes. He has to think for a second to place the accent, but it’s a variation of Daniel’s. He has a black leather briefcase slung crossbody. 

A handshake feels a little too formal for their setting, so Lando goes in for a fistbump and dutifully gets one in return. He opens his palm, mimicking an explosion as he pulls away. The man tiredly smiles and Lando realises that he likes that.

“Lando Norris, it’s lovely to meet you.” He puts on a fake accent and puffs out a bit, as though he hadn’t made a fool of himself.

“Oscar Piastri.” The man offers another smile.

Lando had slightly misheard it a little, and of course he had to ask. “Pastry? What are you? French?”

My god, they had sent a French engineer, the probability of the electrics shitting themselves during the race went up by 100%.

“Je ne suis pas français. Io sono Italiano.” Oscar smirked at him as he said it.

Well, that was even worse. Welcome to the big wide world of strategy mistakes and Ferrari incompetence. A look of horror must have crossed his face, because Oscar was properly laughing.

“Don’t worry mate, I’m a happily claimed Australian.” He was properly shit stirring at this point, so Lando didn’t dignify it with an answer, and instead led him further into the building.

They stopped in the proper atrium for Oscar to walk around in a stunned awe. Lando took the more scenic route up to the sim complex, and walked a little slower so Oscar could soak in the light bathed space. They could barely see the dawn spreading across through the glass-paned wall.

The sim complex was a little tight, and Lando watched as Oscar’s fingers flew across the keyboard of the system, not looking down at what he was typing. At least it let him log on. Lando shoved on a pair of headphones, and Oscar reciprocated the action. “Righty-o, you all good to hear me?” His voice was tired, but there was still an undercurrent of excitement. 

“Yes.” Lando liked the little bit of extra flair that his new engineer was putting on his radios. His voice was surprisingly comforting.

“Awesome. What track would you like to do?” 

“Silverstone?”

“Sure.”

It takes a minute for it to load. He can’t see Oscar right now, because he’s sitting behind one of the stupidly large screens. “I’m going to give you softs, low fuel, quali sim.”

The simulator properly loaded in, and the delta flashed up. He did a couple of laps, flying down the straight, when Oscar finally gave his advice. “Try carrying a little more speed in the mid corner.”

Lando sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face. “How do you suggest I do that?”

“Progressive brake a little earlier, and modulate your throttle coming into the corner.” It’s the voice of someone who knows what they are doing. Confident, but not cocky.

Lando tries a lap, taking the advice to heart. He’s surprised when there’s a slight dip in his times. There was something deeply satisfying about seeing the numbers in the green. “Like that?”

He can hear the smile in Oscar’s voice. “Yeah, that’s better.”

“Better? You think you can do it better than me?” Lando is being stupid, but what he doesn’t expect is for Oscar to take him up on the offer.

“Sure. Let me have a crack.” He takes off the heavy headset, and Lando sees him as he stands up, walking towards the door, and hears it when it creaks it open. “You gonna give me a go mate?”

Lando has to blink a few times to actually get it through his head, but he obediently slips out of the cockpit, hands his headset to Oscar, and goes to sit in the engineering chair as Oscar settles himself into the sim.

He fires it up, and Oscar takes a couple of laps to get up to speed, but much to his surprise, Oscar was quite quickly bouncing closer and closer to his times. Within tenths. He can barely decode the information, but he can tell that Oscar isn’t left-foot braking, but he is still absolutely punching in pedal modulations, and it seems to be working very well. Driving it like a downshifting manual.

And when he sees the lines, he can actually see the benefit of them. Oscar finishes the lap, jumps out, and Lando startles when he plops down in the chair next to him.

He looks at his own data. “You get what I meant?” Oscar was quiet. And Lando loves him, seeing the variation in the data makes his mind spin with what more he could do. But having the direct comparison helps a lot, like the visual similarity. It’s not comparing to data to someone else's, in direct competition. It’s friendly, helping him.

Who was Oscar? Someone who clearly knew their shit, because there wouldn’t be many people who could just get in and do it. Sure, it mainly seemed the downshifts and some pedal inputs that were a little out, but the line was bang on. “What have you done before?”

Oscar shrugged. “I know all the theories. I do that lap, and I know what’s wrong with it. I see your lap, and I know what’s wrong with it. I know how to make it ‘perfect,’ but I can’t necessarily make it better myself.”

“Sure you haven’t driven a car before?” Lando really is curious to see if the engineer had properly gotten behind the wheel. Sure, the way he drove was a little odd, but you don’t just get in and go like that.

“I drove here.” He sounds slightly confused at the question, but if Lando heard correctly, there’s a little bit of defence in there as well.

So, Lando has to do a little digging on the character.

—-

Lando and Oscar have to part a certain time of day, but when he was finally released from several rounds of media and fitness, he wandered back up to engineering to try and corner the man again. Daniel was already giving him a hard time about it, because obviously he was that taken with Oscar that he had yapped about it in between shoots.

They’ve just gotten out of hair and makeup when they can slump on a couch whilst the photographers do their lighting setup.

“Daniel, I’m so fucked. My new engineer is hot. And he’s Australian.” He draws out every sentence into a whine.

Daniel gasps in shock horror. “Am I not hot?”

Lando gives him a look up and down, and wrinkles his nose. “No?” They descend into laughter, almost to the point there are tears in their eyes.

“Know where he’s from?”

Lando had to think about it, but he actually hadn’t gotten a state or anything. “No clue.”

Daniel frowned. “Think of the most Australian accent you can.” He gave Lando a second. “Was he more or less of that accent than me?”

He has to think about it for a second, head tipped back a little. “More.” Lando has no clue where this is going.

There was a nod. “Got yourself an eastern boy.”

They were called again, both vaguely dreading the photoshoot, but then again, they knew what they were getting into.

—-

Finally, finally. He gets released from the absolute chaos of a pre-season schedule. Lando goes around to engineering, hoping to run into the man he had been parted with.

He finds Oscar’s office tucked up in an end aisle of the department, an open glassed-in space overlooking the lake. The office doesn’t have a name plate yet, but the desk was littered in papers, several books stacked on the floating bookshelves. He had a plant on his desk.

Oscar himself was sitting at his desk, absolutely attacking the papers in front of him with a red pen. Words and arrows and post-its. A barely legible semi-cursive flew out from beneath his hand. Lando vaguely remembered something about the murderers handwriting, but it fell away when he saw what the annotations were on.

“Why are you writing about the sporting regulations?” Lando could barely make out the tiny print, but it was clearly a pretty good guess, because Oscar’s head comically rose.

“Just thought I should give it another look over.” 

“Why are you writing then?”

“Just gotten used to it over the years now.”

Lando makes a small sound of acknowledgment and flops down into one of the chairs. “Finding it good here?” He’s trying to make conversation.

Oscar pauses, considering the question. “I mean, this is pretty cool. Like number 1 checked off my bucket list.” There’s a small tinge of sadness in his voice as he says it, and it almost has Lando furrowing his brows in confusion.

He spins his chair to look out the window. “I miss the sun though. And a decent beach.”

That would make sense. He’s dressed in a pair of jeans and some collared shirt. It shows off a well-built body. Oscar looks a bit uncomfortable in the long sleeves.

Lando was probably about to suggest a solution to his problems, like a nice beach in the south, but Oscar holds his finger up. “Do not try to convince me that there are any good beaches on this god-forsaken island.” There’s a vague underlay of an indignant laugh. "Take me to France at least."

It sends Lando into a fit of giggles, and Oscar gives him a curved brow. He continues to annotate the rulebook or whatever, and Lando turns his attention to Instagram reels. They sit comfortably, the gentle scratch of a pen against paper.

Lando finally gets jack of sitting there, and gets up to leave. Oscar perks up, and quickly piles the papers into a messy stack, leans over his keyboard, tapping with his mouse until the screen goes dark. He plucks a windbreaker from somewhere. “If you give me a second, I’ll join you.”

Takes a couple of the papers and a laptop in a leather briefcase that doesn’t match at all with his rather informal attire, but he nevertheless carries. Oscar is the one to flash his pass at the scanners, him having attached it to a retractable lead clipped onto a black and white lanyard that Lando can’t quite make the design out on. It’s still pretty neat.

They reach the entrance where they had met that morning.

“You know what, I’m going to give you a dare.” Oscar cocked his head, a silent affirmation. “I win the WDC, you go and jump in the lake.”

He could see Oscar’s lips curl at the challenge. His eyes meet Lando’s steadily. “Deal. But you should know that I hate cold water.”

Lando threw his head back and moaned in frustration. He knew that Oscar knew the MTC lake was not heated in any way, shape or form. A bit of a problem any time of year, but especially during the midst of December.

Oscar properly smiled then, something sharp. His hair almost shone blond when the light dipped lower.

He’d just turned his engineer against himself.

Chapter Text

I 

Testing, Sakhir

Sakhir is sweltering in mid-February. The team touches down and the hotel buzzes with an almost nervous energy whilst they wait for freight to be flown in. There was barely anything they could do until then, so instead, a ridiculously large amount of admin work got completed. Oscar had taken to taking his laptop up to the pool and hoping for something, anything out there that he didn't get splashed on. Or you know, someone catches him around a body of water with a high-end electronic. 

Plenty of emails to send still, and simulations when his computer doesn't feel like it is about to explode below him. Always knew what to do if ever he got cold.

He just about slams it into the concrete when the door opens, and Lando's head pops through. He was slightly embarrassed that he forgot to ask when their drivers were getting in. 

"Come with me, you're getting an upgrade." Lando's almost bouncing on his feet.

The shade he was sitting in had just moved, blasting him with sunlight. He squinted up at Lando. "What do you mean?"

"I got a plus 1. You wanna stay in a palace?" Bouncing around like a puppy.

"Why not?" Seriously, why not, may as well take the chances he's got in this world. The ones that don't bring his value down to cold facts.

---

Lando didn't actually get permission to bring a plus one, but the prince seemed pretty chill last time they met, so, he very much hopes it will be all good.

Turns out, it was all good, so Oscar is now able to access decent internet for the first time in his life, because, according to him, the Australian internet is shit.

Lando still has to do prep leading up to the season, and Oscar starts leaving at ridiculously early times to go and help with car prep because Daniel and Lando came in with the freight. 

He and Daniel do a whole lot of nothing, desperately trying to dodge their trainers. Explore the grounds and religiously use the pool. 

"I think we got a good car this year." Daniel was lying on his back, soaking in what little sun was left. Something had clicked with him in 2023, and after producing some stellar performances, he had elected to stay on with the team.

"I hope so." Lando was still bubbling for something after Sochi. The race where it all fell to shit. After that, he just couldn't do it, he's been waiting for too long, and it eats away at him. "Hope we get a win."

"Me too. Monza all over again."

Lando splashed him. "Not Monza again. I get P1 this time." He's laughing. 

"Wins aren't just something you trade Lando." Daniel keeps on staring up at the darkening sky, a silence falling with it. He flips over, regarding Lando. "Have you confessed to your engineer yet? You brought him along." Daniel did have a point on that. "Very romantic of you to do it in a palace."

"You brought Tom along."

"I was allowed to bring a plus one Lando."

They shut up when Oscar walks into the space, phone in hand. "Wave to my mother, she wants to see you." It's said completely deadpan, and they can hear his mother's laugh. They dutifully wave before Oscar walks back inside, settling in front of a tapestry, head rested against it.

---

Daniel and Oscar definitely hit it off over dinner. Like Daniel is laughing his head off, whilst Oscar stays there and smiles, continually adding in quips that have Daniel doubling over. 

Oscar leaves shortly after. Daniel wonders up to him. "He's from Melbourne, he's 22, has three sisters, and if you fuck this up Lando, you will have a lovely, close-up view of my car floor.”

He walks out as well.

---

Testing goes pretty well, at least, better than last year, where they were quite clearly the slowest on the grid. They pick up the strengths and weaknesses of the car, and try different set-ups for corners and straights.

Lando finds it incredible to see Oscar whirling around the garage, talking with people. It's not a very common sight to see someone so absolutely absorbed in their work. One minute he's tapping away at the screens, the next down near a mechanic, then back at the screens tracing graphs with his eyes.

For the first day, Lando is hoping in for the afternoon session. It's been pushed back a little, but the road still holds the heat from the day, miraging in the red skies. Oscar offers him a smile when he pulls on his helmet and settles himself into the car. Stupidly comfortable they were when it was a little warm and you were allowed to sink into the seat.

"Radio check."

"Loud and clear."

It's a lovely voice to have in his ear, and it's even better when he crosses that line with the black ring and line slashing through it. He can completely allow the car to sing below him, unleash it. 

Oscar talks him through an out-lap and what they are trying to achieve with the run. "First, I want to do a full-lap radio check. Make sure we haven't got any problems."

He reads Hamlet's Act 3 as Lando whizzes around the circuit. Nothing goes wrong, so he leaves the driver to, you know, actually drive. Tests different engine modes, different wings, and different flaps.

Everybody is pretty sure they sit at around the 3rd fastest.

Upgrades were still to come.

II  

R1, Bahrain

Bahrain promises much of the same for the year. Redbull came out of the gate swinging, and there was nothing that any team would be able to throw at them to stop them.

Bar a rogue backmarker deciding their time had come and ascending to a higher plane.

It's a Friday morning, some stupid time when he gets woken up by the most annoying alarm tone he thinks he has ever heard. He somewhat loudly mumbles, "turn that off," and receives a muffled "sorry," from next door.

They're standing in the garage, Oscar nursing a glass of something when Lando finally makes his way in for the first session of the weekend. "That was you this morning?" He hoped it was Oscar in the room next to him.

"It's the most annoying alarm I could find, and I will wake up before it." Oscar seems really tired by this point, digging through his bag. Lando looks at the clock, it's only 2 pm. "I absolutely hate mornings, so I wake up in the worst way so my day can only get better." He pulls out a thick notebook that he opens somewhere in the middle, and sees all his notes from the earlier track-walk. There are some other papers sticking out from earlier in the book, and Lando spots some lap times and corner diagrams.

He pulls a big smile and bats his eyelids. "Any better now?"

Mouth flat, and in a monotone, "No."

Lando opens his mouth, offended. Oscar turns back to the screens but seemingly has a small smirk as he does so. Daniel gives a laugh from across the island. Lando gets called out because now he has to stretch or something. Oscar waves him out.

He comes back for the first session, and the car feels like shit. He ducks off between the sessions, cooling down. He comes back for a second round, and he hasn't seen Oscar, but he's now calling Lando over. 

"Right, we'll be doing some longer runs, but I think I might have fixed our balance issues. Just give it a crack, and we'll see what we can sort out overnight."

He completes his run for FP2, the car isn't excellent, but that's more because he knows he isn't pushing it. Kept on getting caught up in traffic. When he pulls into the garage, he can hear Oscar quietly swearing out Carlos, because his final flying lap had to be aborted.

They ride back together, Oscar sitting in the passenger seat, content to let Lando drive. Oscar doesn't reach for the non-existent passenger brake Lando often tries to push when he's in that seat.

"You enjoyed today?" Lando doesn't take his eyes off the road, but he can see a slight smile take over Oscar's features. 

"Early morning, but yeah, it was nice to be at a track again." He's smiling as he relaxes back into the seat, completely at ease.

But Lando isn't thinking about that. 'Back at a track again.' It must have been something to do with the Australian GP. Maybe he came last year. He certainly knew a couple of students had come from engineering work experience, and it would have to make sense because Daniel said he was from Melbourne.

He drops the subject, and the two of them enjoy the hum of the engine through the cabin.

---

There's the low thrum of bass through the wall, but surprisingly, it lulls Lando off to sleep.

---

Living up to Oscar's promise, the car feels better for FP3. They qualified where they were about expecting for the GP, as the 3rd fastest car, Fernando slipping between them.

He does get quite the fright when he finds a spider in his car, only to have Daniel and Oscar laugh their heads off at him, clearly enjoying the spectacle of Lando jumping away from his car, literally screaming a litany of curses.

---

The sun is long gone when the cars line up on the grid. Lando still finds these moments intriguing when people fly around him, and he knows that, but it feels like the world stays still, the adrenaline rushing through him. Lures him into the cockpit, wanting him to go faster.

Oscar is overlooking the car, rapidly plugging cables into his laptop, watching as data flashes across his screen. He gestures Lando over.

“Should be a two stopper. We’ll see how we go, obviously, just be gentle on your front left.” He skims the screen again. “Looks like it’s all good to go.” He gave the car an almost fond pat.

It’s then that two Alpine mechanics slide past, wheeling equipment towards the gates that Oscar stiffens. Almost stops breathing, like he could just go invisible. They don’t notice him, and Oscar almost sinks in relief.

Lando doesn’t mention it, instead he jumps up into the cockpit, sliding into the seat with a sigh. The moulding feels amazing. Oscar threads his hand through the halo and grasps Lando’s. “Good luck.” It’s only mouthed, but it somehow calms him a little.

The race isn't spectatular by any standards. Daniel retains his qualifing position, Lando moves forward by one spot. It's better than last year, with Daniel DNF'ing and Lando finishing last on the road after 6 pitstops. Much larger improvement.

The low tones of Oscar in his ear is somewhat focussing for Lando, like he can just listen out for that voice and all shall be well. It's calming.

Lando pulls Oscar aside before he leaves. "You did a really good job out there."

"You too."

"Not really. P6 isn't really where we want to be."

Oscar smiles at him. "It's only up from here."

III 

R2, Jeddah

They're sitting in the hospitality room when a member of the media team calls them over. Oscar is gasping a pastry like it's his lifeline, and Lando is chomping down on a protein bar. "Daniel is out for today. We're gonna use you two."

Oscar looks up from his computer, eyes wide, almost a bit of panic in them. Lando isn't entirely sure this entire thing was a good idea either. "What do you need us to do?" Oscar was very quiet, but he seemingly grasped that he might have to do something.

Lando had seen Oscar duck up into the media centres on the first day of testing, long before the cameras started rolling. He knows that Oscar had been shown off to the cameras, but relatively little was shown of him as an engineer for a top team. He went in looking stressed and walked out looking a little less so.

He definitely seemed like the sort of person to be a bit camera-shy.

Oscar steeled himself, and swept the briefcase off the table, placing it by the leg. The admin smiled. "You'll be playing poker. Texas Holdings."

Seriously. They were going to pit him against the least expressive person he had known in his life to play poker with. Then it gets broadcast to the entire world, excellent.

The camera starts rolling.

Oscar takes the deck, quickly separates the lower-value cards and the joker and shuffles the deck in a surprisingly deft move. "You know how to play?"

"Of course."

Oscar smirked, and dealt out 5 cards each.

And of course, he had to win the rounds 8 to 1. 

He's competitive too, fanning out his cards onto the table, presenting them with a smile when he beats Lando, hissing out a little yes when he wins everything. He laughs when Lando slams his cards down on the table. "Nothing. You've given me nothing."

"It can't be nothing. Look here. You've got a king of clubs here, jack of hearts, queen of hearts, 8 of clubs, and ace of hearts. Went for the flush?"

"Yeah."

Oscar lays down a full house. Enough to beat the flush he would have gotten anyway. Lando almost falls off his chair laughing. "You serious." He shrugged again.

"So I think I won 8 to 1. Very fun game to play, it uses up lots of time on the flights and airports. Thank you for watching." Oscar's voice was a little more confident by the end of the video, and he waved to the camera as it stopped rolling.

---

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri play Poker!

Comments | 1.7k

userrame • 3 hours ago

oml i think Lando is in so in love with his race engineer

.^-^. • 34 minutes ago

we got a new ship

upsidasie • 19 minutes ago

his race engineer seems so bland, but he's actually just good at playing poker.

---

This race goes even more shittily. Daniel qualifies well but gets stuck behind a Ferrari, and Lando gets stuck in a procession of Brits, behind a rookie who qualified 11th and had 1 hour of experience on what was one of the hardest tracks on the calendar. Oscar apologies after the race for the shit strategy.

"You know that's not your call. I don't blame you. I will blame you if you tell me to pit at the wrong time though. A la Ferrari." He laughs at the end, thinking about their first meeting.

Oscar completely disregards it, carding a hand through his hair. "I could have done something different in the car set-up to get a bit more out of those tyres though. You wouldn't have gone into that traffic then." He let out a big exhale. "It is what it is. A bad result isn't going to define you."

It's really not his fault. He claps Oscar on the back, you're all good. He knows it. But he still turns away from Lando, towards the garage, probably to help pack up until who knows what time.

He wants to do something with the man, maybe just to help calm him down a little. He's been on edge ever since the video went up. Lando had literally no clue what he would do, but maybe he needed a hug.

A lot of them.

Chapter Text

IV 

R3, Japan

A photographer walks into the garage during their Thursday brief.

Oscar regards the person with an equal amount of fondness and hatred. Lando forces him to sit down and explain what was up with her. So Oscar tells him that she was the head of a different state’s debating team whilst he was captain of Victoria’s team.

Apparently she was a stupidly good closer, and had no qualms absolutely crushing the opposition when they called on her for questions. A bit annoying for Oscar, who couldn’t do any talking from when he opened one.

He managed to pull up a photo, Oscar decked out in a navy suit with silver highlights, shaking hands with the shorter girl, in a deep blue suit with golden accents.  He looks over at the photographer, wrestling with filters, and sure enough, it’s the same person, just with shorter hair.

“Funnily enough, we went to the same uni, and I was assigned as her student counsellor. Got a business student in on our shenanigans, and boom, we completely wrecked the other universities in the area. We also lived together for a while. I got stuck during the holidays and couldn’t get back to Melbourne.”

“Huh.” Lando nodded a little, wondering about the girl. She walks up to them, and quietly speaks to Oscar, like, really quietly. He’s smiling and nodding along. 

She walks over to Oscar, so he turns and starts talking to some of the mechanics about what was going on with the car, shuffling around, handing them tools.

“Good of them for letting you take the leave over here.”

“Doesn’t cost them anymore to fly me back on a Monday. It’s my leave. They don’t give a shit unless I get it done.”

“I suppose.”

Her head snapped up, she noticed that he had listened to the conversation. Lando is currently sitting on the ground, passing a spanner over. A hand gestures, he passes it, and jumps up.

She sticks out a hand. “Good to meet you. I’m Natalie.” Her voice doesn’t have as much of an accent, and it has an almost artificial bubbliness.

Lando takes her hand, then Oscar cuts in. “Why do you always go British when you introduce yourself?”

She turns to Oscar, like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Fuck off.” No heat, but yes, there was the very distinct twang of the Australian accent.

“What are you doing here?” Because why would a friend that Oscar went to uni with, and even lived with show up on his birthday weekend taking leave on a work trip.

She held up a camera, already fitted with a 70-200mm lens. 

—-

Oscar is absolutely flogging himself, it’s Friday morning, early by many standards, and he’s already in hospitality. Rapidly plucking away at the keyboard, plush lip caught between a set of canines. If he could try and get this to work in some shape or form, they might be looking at a very different car.

Being an engineer required three main traits. Curiosity, stubbornness, and an ability to retain the most stupid of information. And also when to reign yourself in when the ‘most efficient’ solution was far from the ‘most ethical.’

He had grappled with that one before.

Oscar is having to do that right now, because the easiest thing to solve all his problems right now is by cheating. But no, morally speaking, that is wrong, and if you got caught the consequences were worse. It’s illegal anyway you do it, but it only matters if you get caught.

He plugs in new numbers, and finally, the computer stops having a meltdown at him. Thank god.

Lando slides into the chair across from him and offers him a protein bar. “I think Jon would rip my head off if I went near the croissants. So I came up with a different offering.”

Oscar gratefully accepts it. “I think I figured out the set-up.” He points to a couple of modifications that look different from when they had been focusing on high-speed during testing. “You’ll have to do what we were practising during our sim sessions. Try releasing the brake a little earlier on the turn in, just make sure you don’t crash.”

“I’m not about to throw the car into the wall for the sake of a couple of tenths.” No, because that would cost many more tenths. Lando understood what he was putting down. ‘This should be the fastest, but keep it clean.’

Oscar kept gently tapping away at his keyboard, presumably transferring the data to the mechanics who could do the set-ups.

—-

Photographers used WHS don’ts as a checklist. He had seen them perched up in trees, unstable platforms, handling electronics in the wet.

They weren’t protective of themselves, they were protective of their equipment.

He’s on a cooldown lap when he sees a photographer snuggled in a tree, lens tracking the movement of his car.

—-

Oscar is on the radio, talking through the next phase of their run plan “Box box for mediums, long run.”

“Lando pit confirm.”

“You’re doing excellently.”

Lando smiles into the balaclava, and pulls up onto his marks. Gets released again.

“Do you know any Japanese?” Just trying to make conversation.

“Anata no denwabangō wa nan-bandesu ka?” He is one cocky motherfucker.

Ok, so Oscar could apparently speak Japanese, and Italian, and French, and - he’s a genius isn’t he?

“What?”

“I said, what is your phone number?” Oh, and his voice has gone all low and hot now.

“Look at the directorate.”

“But I wanted to hear it from your mouth baby.” And that coming out in Oscar’s voice should be downright illegal. It feels like it's gotten another 10 degrees hotter.

“I’ll tell you when I get out. Little birthday present.”

He hears Oscar laugh. “Ok, love you.” He blows a kiss. Who the fuck blows a kiss on live TV? Oscar Piastri apparently.

The final corner is coming up, so he situates his car, and when he passes the line for the second time, there’s a little cheer. It feels like one of the best laps of his life.

—-

Saturday comes around way too quickly for Lando's liking. Quali day. And Oscar's birthday.

Natalie walks into hospitality, dumps a gift bag in front of Oscar. "I nearly had to get an import licence to get these over here." She starts to assemble a camera for the day.

Lando gets bundled off to go and do something with Daniel, but they dodge the responsibility and flop down in Daniel's driver room. "The car feels good."

Daniel nods. "I don't know what our beautiful engineers did, but they have certainly worked their magic."

Lando sticks his head out the door, watching as Tom and Oscar chat over data. "Indeed."

He turns back to Daniel. "It's his birthday today. I have no clue what to get him."

Daniel makes a small noise of affirmation. "Tell him that you've got something for him in Monaco. It'll give you enough time. Did you manage to get a card?"

Lando dug in his bag for a second and produced a card. "You seem to have a lot of experience with this."

Daniel gave him a guilty look, and Lando remembered when he got a birthday present during the winter break. He bit his lip. "Yep. Sorry about that."

They descend into laughter. But he had gotten a very nice birthday present from Daniel that year. "Write on the card, give him that now. Give him your actual phone number."

"You know about that?"

"Everyone knows about that. It's got to be up there with 'Felipe baby.'" Daniel whipped out his phone and pulled up the reel from Instagram. Their entire conversation was aired out for the world to hear. And the comments were really funny. 

We got engineer rizzing driver whilst driving before GTA6

DROP THE PHONE NUMBER LANDO, DON'T LEAVE HIM WAITING

An engineer like this is exactly what Lando needs for this season

How is the McLaren this fast all of a sudden?

Ok, so it's not only me that thinks that Oscar and Lando are really cute together?

Lando followed the instructions. Oscar walked into the room, something in hand. "You want one?" According to the packaging, they were Tim Tams. Daniel immediately snatched one off out of the packet, and Lando plucked one out as well.

He quickly reached to grab the card. "Happy Birthday! I haven't got your present here, but when you come to Monaco you can get it."

Oscar's face lit up, like properly, like the stars at night. "Thank you."

Daniel pushed past him, ducked into his own drivers room, and produced something gift wrapped for Oscar. "Happy Birthday." 

He smiled, "I hope this isn't what I think it is."

"I think you know the answer to that."

"Thank you."

He took the box out to rest it with his briefcase. 


"What did you give him?"

"None of your business, but I'm sure you'll find out one day." 

They heard Jon talking to Oscar through the wall, only to be followed up by 'you want one?' There is gentle rustling of plastic. Jon didn't come in to tell them off.

—-

FP3 goes like a charm, the car humming with satisfaction beneath him. Oscar in his ear, guiding him, encouraging him. Maybe this was what he needed. Someone he trusted to be a sort of navigator of a kind.

Qualifying goes even better. P2, P3. It feels amazing to be up this end of the grid again, free air to unleash the beast he tamed. Free to let it go.

He pulls in behind the boards and pulls himself out of the car. Oscar is there in his industrial headphones massive grin. Lando pulls him into a hug. "Happy early birthday present?"

"Probably the best one you could give me."

Max wanders over to the both of them, gesturing for Lando to go and get weighed. Lando barely sees him and Oscar chatting away, Max looking like he was trying to place the engineer from somewhere else. It's a bit odd, but as they are chatting, Oscar gestures away to something on the car, like a tire or something.

—-

The race goes amazingly. Sure, it's not his first win, but he can be very happy with his second place. It's not a win, but he can feel it starting to simmer below his skin. He can feel it is coming. Soon. Everything is falling into place. Charles comes to chat to Max after the win, but somehow gets sidetracked when he passes Lando and Oscar. 

"I thought I saw you around."

Charles is addressing Oscar. That's really weird. He turns around and starts to chat with Charles, full on, like they were picking up where they had left off. "It's your birthday, correct?"

Oscar nods, and Charles pulls him for a hug. 

Then he's being ushered up to the cooldown room along with Max and Daniel. They show the replays. "That was a good pit call by your engineer." It's Max on Oscar's strategy decision during the safety car. Lando preens a little for Oscar, before they go out onto the podium, champagne glittering in the air as it spreads. Daniel, as per tradition, forces everyone to do a shoey. Everyone on that podium, including Nico Rosberg who was unfortunate enough to get stuck up there with them.

He can spot Oscar, blended up in the McLaren gaggle, phone out, taking a selfie. All smiles. 

He would love to have him up here one day. But that would require a win.

—-

After the podium, Lando and Oscar relax in the hospitality. Natalie walks in, and surrenders a USB stick to the admin. She then walks up to Oscar, dragging him away from Lando.

“Right. Next race. Don’t do anything stupid, stay safe, get in, do your job, fuck off as soon as you can. You know what to do.” Natalie spoke a bit sarcastically, but there was still heart in her words. “I’ll see if I can come in for Silverstone.”

Oscar pulled her in for a hug. “Don’t overwork yourself.”

She gave an indignant huff. “Too late for that. But seriously, don’t do anything stupid.” She smiled, then waved over her shoulder, power in her strides as she threw “Au revoir mon amie,” over her shoulder and walked out. Oscar settles into his chair, pulling a laptop out of his bag, collecting information for the debrief.

Lando wasn’t too far away, but he was startled to all of a sudden have Natalie behind him. She gave him a surprisingly solid hug. “It was lovely to meet you.”

There’s a bit of concern in her eyes as she looks over at Oscar. “Just - let him do his job. I’ve never seen anything that he couldn’t do if he set his mind to it. Give him time.”

She checked the time, and sucked in a quick breath. “I’ve got to get going, I do not want to pay for my own flight. Congratulations on your podium. By the way, the car looks excellent.” Patted him on the arm.

She left, and Lando was probably left with more questions than answers.

He plops down next to Oscar spreading out and resting his head on his shoulder. Oscar shifts, and all of a sudden it's a lot more comfortable.

Lando shifts to look up at him. “Thank you for working your engineering magic.”

Oscar’s eyes flick to him, fingers still going on the keyboard. “Thank you for an awesome birthday present.”

Shaken awake, Lando found that he fell asleep on Oscar. They walk side-to-side to the debrief.

Chapter Text

V 

R4, China

Oscar seemed to be a bundle of nervous energy. Fidgeting around, checking he had everything. Eventually, the pent up energy just gets to him, and he hears a gentle slam against the leather of the seat as Oscar throws his head back. “Should’ve thrown a sickie, this is such a bad idea.”

Then he checks his pockets again. Now, Lando knew that Oscar had a very much ‘fuck it, we ball mentality,' when it came to everything but his passport, phone, and some sort of access to money. Oscar could probably move half-way across the world with what was in his pockets.

In three flights, he had managed to get 5 pairs of nail scissors confiscated.

This time, everything has been purged from his pockets, seeming replaced with a nervous energy. Lando looked up from his phone. "What is such a bad idea?"

"Me, here. Bad combination." His head is tipped back, exposing a long neck and a pulse he could almost see fluttering beneath the skin. He wove his hand around, like he was trying to land on a point. “I could claim it as a home race though.” Oscar felt the swoops and tightness in his abdomen, and it felt horrendous. Stress could make him a prickly and unfocused bitch.

Lando blinked at the sudden influx of information. “You could claim China as a home race?” Seriously, what was the heritage of this dude?

“1/16th, but yeah, I could.”

Lando shook his head a little, and a grin lit up his face when he could combine two cookies in Candy Crush. The seatbelt sign flashed on, but neither moved, already seated. The landing was not overly smooth, with the plane bouncing in the wind.

They get through immigration, ok. Barely. Oscar gets thrown a couple of strays, but a strange, almost confident air settles over him. He doesn’t get anything confiscated either, whereas Lando was pulled up for a pack of mints, and had to surrender them.

He was pretty pissed about that.

Oscar declines going out, so Lando instead invites him over to his hotel room to play Mario Kart. 

What he doesn’t know is that he would lose any dignity, and any right to call himself a driver after 10 minutes playing with Oscar. Seriously, that man was fast. Fucking fast. Then he goes and shrugs it off, saying it’s his sister’s fault that he’s like that.

Lando makes a vow never to play Mario Kart with the Piastri daughters.

What would have been much to the horror of Jon, they get room service, and laugh as the city unfurls itself beneath their balcony window.

“Why were you so nervous getting in here? Natalie seemed to be concerned.” Lando knows there’s a reason, and it seemed almost political at this point.

Oscar turned to face where Lando was on the couch, biting his lip. “My previous work hasn’t been overly conducive to travelling to countries that are not,” he paused for a second, trying to collect the right words. “Militaristically aligned with the west. Not good for any party, especially me.”

So that was a development.

“What have you done then? What’s not ‘conducive?’”

Oscar gave him a smirk. “Classified.”

Lando turned on the puppy eyes. “Really? You must be able to give me a hint.”

“Nope.” He popped the ‘p.’ “Top secret at least. I will not give you a hint.”

Lando throws the closest pillow right at Oscar’s head, and he has pretty good aim. Oscar reciprocates the action with an equally aimed move. Now they’re grappling on the couch, and theoretically, Oscar has got the advantage of physics on his side. He’s got a couple of inches on Lando. 

Land finds it a little embarrassing that, for a world-class athlete, Oscar is to box Lando into the couch, his legs easily trapping his own. Those fucking thighs. He isn’t entirely sure if he wants to use them as a pillow or bite into them.

His fringe hangs off his face when he looks down at Lando. It looks so soft and he just wants to run his hand through it. “Do I win?” Oscar’s voice is a little thick talking to the man below him.

“No?”

“Is it really a competition?” He’s currently straddling Lando, a firm weight across his hips. He unsticks a hand, and on pure instinct, bred out of having multiple siblings, Lando reaches out to tickle the Australian.

“No.” Oscar looks like he’s trying to resist it, before rolling down onto the ground, trying to escape the hands. “No no no no no.” His voice gets progressively higher and breathier as he continues, reduced to a squirming mess beneath Lando.

“Will you tell me?”

“No.” He can’t tell whether or not that’s the actual answer, or Oscar chasing his breath back.

Lando is ready to continue onto round two when Oscar finally catches his breath enough to say something. “Don’t think I won’t remotely shut down your car Norris.”

“You would get so fired so quickly.”

“I can tell you something about my old job then. They’d be happy to take me back. I was bloody good at it.”

—-

Most of the questions thrown at him during Thursday constitute to the double podium in Japan, and their hopes for this weekend.

He has to downplay them, because the MCL38, slow corners, and straights were far from the best of friends. He knows the team is working like headless chooks trying to figure out something. He saw the massive huddle of engineers, headed by Tom, chatting and coming up with numbers and parts and everything in between. Oscar was scrawling it on a whiteboard, and the tyre engineers were trying to figure out what would be the best for them.

The mechanics didn’t have it any easier, trying to assemble the car, putting on some new specs, reacting to the engineers sending through requests for how things would go together.

He trusts that they’ve gotten it right.

—-

Shit goes very wrong during FP1. Because on a circuit where there are long straights, it turns out DRS is rather important. Follow that up with heavy breaking. The DRS shuts down the entire car. 

He deploys it coming down the back straight, and the entire car goes completely dark. It still seemed like the engine and all was running, and when he tentatively flicked the shift, the car responded. Hit the radio button.

“You there?”

Nothing. Not a peep.

Meanwhile, Oscar was on the pitwall as all of Lando’s screens went blank. Not off, but the live data feeds completely die on him. “Lando, do you copy?”

The complete silence has Oscar ripping his headphones out of the jack in the pitwall, and running down the mechanics with the boards. “Get a direction out to him to box. Radio has gone dead.”

They nod, and quickly set up a pitboard, which has Lando steering into the pits. Thank god.

The car is still clearly going. He pulls up onto the box, and the mechanics set upon the car. Oscar is ushering him out of the car, and he barely notices when there’s a red flag flown for a fire, because his engineer withdraws his hand from the car with a hissed expletive. 

“Fucking hot.”

Lando pulled off a glove, and Oscar gratefully took it, removing a small piece of bodywork that he plugged his laptop into. He was shaking his hand when he withdrew it.

“That fucking DRS system. Bane of my fucking life.”

Ok. Things Oscar doesn’t like, DRS.

Lando just blinks when he walks around the car to jump in from the left, starting to examine the steering wheel and radio system. He looks ridiculously squished into the cockpit, but the way he settles into is almost natural.

“I feel like I’m about to break a rib in here.”

“Yeah, you’re taller than me.”

He continues his work, gently speaking under his breath, he’s pretty sure he catches something like ‘you have done this to me before, I will personally write you out of the regulations now that you’ve done it to my driver.’ It’s very loud when they wheel Daniel in, so he can’t hear what he’s saying. Lando thinks it may not be entirely in English, because he sees Oscar snatch his hand from the car a few times, muttering ‘cazzo.’

“Looks like Nico is in the house.” Lando is staring up at the screens, now showing a patch of grass on fire.

Oscar’s head popped up from where it was examining the steering connection. “You know, I always thought of myself as a bit of a Rosberg character. Win a championship, never have to come back to prove you’re the best.”

Lando had to blink to get it through his system. “I’ll retire when I get my first race win.”

“So I don’t need to go jump in the lake?”

“If I win a race, I will join you in the unheated MTC lake in December.”

Oscar jumps out of the car when they get a green flag. There are other people flurrying around the car, and he’s talking with Will, who moved into chassis engineering but was just as capable of fixing the system himself. Those two and a couple of mechanics huddle in the back of the garage and finally give the all-clear for him to get back into it.

He settled back into the car, the seat warm despite the engine not running. It’s the pleasant heat of a heated seat on a cold morning.

The rest of FP1 goes pretty smoothly.

Sprint qualifying goes even better when his lap is reinstated. He can hear the hiss dredged up from hell when Oscar announces his pole.

Floating during the post race interviews, because in damp conditions, he clocked a lap that was over a second compared to second place.

He launches himself into Oscar’s arms away from the cameras, the taller man stumbling a little at the sudden weight and power behind the move. Lando tucked his head into his neck, trying to hide away from the cold air.

“I could kiss you right now. I have no clue how you fixed that.” Lando mumbled it into Oscar’s windbreaker.

Oscar didn’t respond, instead running his hand through Lando’s hair, fluffing the curls up to something resembling that morning, when his curls were perky. “You need an extra layer?”

“Yeah. That’d be nice.”

He produces one that was threaded through the strap on his briefcase, and Lando almost ripped his jacket off to put the hoodie on, then enclosing it with his own jacket. He tucked his nose into the hood, smelling faintly of citrus and mint.

—-

The sprint goes less well. By corner 1, he’s down in 6th, behind Daniel. He can’t get around, and nor is Daniel about to surrender his position. It spins around in his head, around and around. Why did he break late going into that corner, Lewis happily driving it up the inside. Frankly, it’s embarrassing for him.

—-

Quali is ok, and for McLaren, the race is also pretty good. Until Lance took an absolute backshot on Liam, ramming the RB into the back of the McLaren, which had a shit pit strategy for Danny. 

Liam rips into the Canadian during press, Daniel backing him up.

Lando got to pit under that safety car, and was happy to wheel it into second. Oscar is a bit less happy with the unanswered and rather rude radio calls after he requested that Lando start using some engine braking.

They go up to the cooldown room, chatting with Max and Checo. Their mouths fall open at the incident. “Oh my lord, Liam is going to take no prisoners with that man.” Max is completely correct.

He loves the podium yet again, savouring the alcohol that clings to his skin and makes him impervious to anything flying around about sprint. The simple fact is, that car should not have been anywhere near the podium, and here he was, parking it behind Max Verstappen in a Redbull.

Daniel and Oscar are in the garage, examining the damage to the car. “I don’t think Aero made it like that.”

Oscar huffs out a laugh. “They did not.”

“I swear, not even Max would have wanted to have driven this thing. The oversteer was insane.”

“That tends to happen when your diffuser gets ripped out.”

Lando shoved his head into the huddle. The damage was impressive.

“Jesus, Danny. How the fuck did you manage to keep this going?”

“I drove a car with a 40% DNF rate, you think a broken diffuser is going to stop me?” Daniel did have a point before the mechanics set about replacing the floor for transport.

Oscar and himself wandered back to their side of the garage. Lando tries to apologise, but the engineer waves him off with a slight smile. He brushes his hair out of his face. “Listen, it’s fine, you’re under pressure, don’t feel bad about it.”

“But, you know what will be best for the car. You did all the set-up changes. It worked like a charm.”

Oscar pulls a slight grimace. “Yeah, I would’ve been wrong though. Randy said what you did was better on the tires.”

“Oh.” He paused, fidgeting with his hands. “I still shouldn’t talk to you like that though.”

“Come here.” Oscar pulled him into a hug. “You’re the driver, and you made the right choice. Sometimes you will, sometimes you won’t. You’re not bound to my decisions, I’m only here to help you.”

Lando latched on, dragging the man down as they walked out. They sat together in the car. “You gonna come out for drinks?”

Oscar actually seemed to consider it for a second, mouth quirking to the side. “Probably best if I don’t. I can get out tonight and be in my own bed by the next time I sleep.”

It was a somewhat sobering reminder of the stress Oscar had been under. He hadn’t been particularly anywhere for 3 weeks, celebrated a birthday without family, and then got thrust into a sensitive political situation. When he had a proper look at the Aussie, his face was almost paler, freckles standing out more, and the usual sleepless rings that stood out on his skin were becoming racoon-esque. 

He hops out of the car at the hotel, and Lando doesn’t see him, only getting a text.

osc

I’ll see you on Wednesday

19:34

u forgor your hoodie

19:37

osc

Give it back to me when we’re in Monaco.

19:38

Chapter Text

VI

R5, Canada

They get some time in between China and Canada. Then on Wednesday, the team finally had their massive debrief. They’re insatiably happy with the work that went into consecutive podiums.

He seeks out Oscar in his office, and finds it a little more worn in, a Tigers scarf hung over his chair, and a couple more books on the shelf. Even got a photo on the wall.

He’s looking at the data from an easier sim session. “Miami is gonna be amazing with these upgrades.”

Oscar nodded. He’s deadpan, but in that way that promises a sort of bloody violence. “Miami is going to be pretty fun.”

—-

Canada is funny for many reasons, but seeing the admin getting Oscar to speak in broken French has to be the funniest thing. There’s a camera rolling next to him.

The admin is giving him things to translate.“Right away.”

Oscar responds right away. “Tout suit.” 

The admin goes to give the all clear for the answer when a certain Monégasque overhears it as well.

Charles then decides to give them an outdoor French pronunciation lesson.

“Oscar, you know it’s actually ‘toute de suite.’ I must talk to Arthur about his lessons, you probably don’t know it goes noun-adjective.”

Oscar blinked a little as the influx of information. He had learnt quite a bit of French from Arthur, but it was more along the lines of here are words, string them together to communicate, not necessarily speak. Or more so he could get to where he was going. And swearing. The most important thing.

He flipped Charles the bird, not rudely, he may have an Italian last name, but he’s 90% sure that wouldn’t placate the Scuderia. “Mange tes morts. Arthur taught me the important stuff.”

The look of horror he gets is priceless, then Charles is on his phone, screaming something down the line, presumably to Arthur. It goes something like this:

“What the fuck did you teach him? He’s a child.”

He waits for a response down the line.

“You shouldn’t be using that type of language either.”

The phone gets violently hung up. He addresses Oscar. “You are still a child. Do not use that type of language.”

“Nique t-“

“Oscar Piastri, if you finish that sentence I will personally deny you entry to Monaco.”

They burst into laughter. Quality content right there. Shame it had to be cut.

—-

Another thing that he finds out about Oscar is apparently he knew both Jack and Liam, and the fact that they were snogging the hell out of each other out the back of RB. Yuki would probably say something, but everyone knew something was up with Pierre.

The three of them were seated outside RB, that was a little unexpected. Lando overhears Jack and Oscar talking about beaches, and to be completely honest, it was much more positive than the one they had, even though he might be talking about a wave dumping him so violently that it drew blood. At that point, he forced himself to walk away, the pure thought already making him swoopy.

Liam tries to pipe up with swimming spots in desaturated flag land (as Oscar had dubbed it), and Jack gently takes his face. “Darling. You are coming to Queensland whether you like it or not. Then you can see what a real beach looks like.” Gently pecks him on the mouth.

Oscar had his phone whipped out, recording the entire thing. Liam looks over to the side, and the look that Oscar gets is downright diabolical. He puts his hands up in surrender. “Fine. No more shenanigans from me. You’re together anyway.” He probably would have said something a wee bit more vulgar, but Liam looked like he was going to tear someone’s face off. Plenty of Spaniards to do that to on track.  

Jack, ever the diplomat, turns to him, leaving a pouting Liam. “And we thank you for that.”

Liam only stuck up two fingers in response.

—-

This was all before the track walk. Oscar and his damned lanky legs could outwalk Lando any day of the week, and somehow, the shorts made it worse. They’re doing the track walk, with Oscar pointing out potential lines and breaking points. The tyre guys are inspecting the tarmac with some suspicion. Daniel circles each corner and chats with Tom about wet lines.

Oscar points out a board. “I reckon to break here.” He runs about 50 metres up the road. Lando thinks he might be fucked when he properly sees Oscar run. “Turn in here? That seems about right.” 

He had to rip his head away from other things (Oscar’s legs) to mentally calculate it. When Lando visualised it, it was about right. “That seems good. We’ll give it a crack tomorrow.”

Oscar shoots him a thumbs up.

—-

FP1 gets rained out. Thanks Jack. So instead of doing work, Daniel opts to duck over to Redbull, dragging Lando along to come and play Minecraft of all things with Max.

It was all good until Daniel got operator permissions, bonded two cats to Max, then named them Jimmy and Sassy. Max kisses him on the cheek at that. “I miss them.”

Those two could be so incredibly lovestruck sometimes. “You just brought me over here to cover for the fact you want to kiss your husband.”

“How could you suggest such a thing?” But Daniel has to pull away from Max to say it.

Lando huffed and walked out of Max’s driver's room. He did not have to deal with more of that shit. They were adorable, and made for each other, and red string and all that stuff, but he drew the line of him being used as an excuse to be able to visit another driver.

He walked back to McLaren under the sheets of rain and plopped into the seat next to Oscar. He had shedded his outer coat at the door. “You think we’re gonna get rain during the race?”

“Yep. Working on that now.” He has multiple applications open on the laptop. He snatches it from beneath Oscar’s fingers and shoves it onto his lap because it's so warm.

“Why don’t you go use the PC’s? I can use this as a personal heater.”

Oscar shrugged, and placed the laptop back on the table, much to the disappointment of Lando. “I’m quite comfortable here. I get a corner, and I can listen to music. If you’re cold,” he pauses for a second. “I don’t have a spare jacket, but you could snuggle? Up to me.”

It was a nice area, so Lando kicked off his shoes and tucks up next to Oscar, who was still fully focused on something Lando couldn’t quite grasp. He had taken over a small corner tucked up in the back of the hospitality, with a rather nice view. His briefcase lay open on the desk, notes jotted down in the notebook next to him.

“What type of music do you like?”

Oscar considered the question for a while. “House. It helps me to focus. Also good for sleep.” 

Huh. That's the base he heard in Bahrain then. They sit like that for another half hour or so. Daniel gives them a soft smile when he walks back in, hair weighed down by the pelting rain. Sappy bastard, like he was any better.

He gets the call for FP2. Goes through the usual preparations with Jon, yapping away at him.

It goes pretty badly— his laps keep on getting interrupted. He ends the day in P20.

It hails.

—-

He hears the gentle clomp of Oscar’s boots down the hotel hallway at quite a later hour. He sticks his head out the door. “You all good?” Oscar quickly said something into his phone, stands in the hallway, hand over the microphone of his mobile. 

Oscar gives a flat smile. “I think so. We’ve done quite a bit, but we’ll see what we get from the MTC as well.” He sounds tired, with a slight clipping of some words.

“Have a good sleep.”

“Yeah, you too. Be well rested for tomorrow, I’m sure you’ll do great.”

Lando retreats back into his own room, Oscar’s words somehow compelling his tired brain to slow down enough to carry him to bed and just pass out.

—-

The car feels so much better during this session than the last. He radios to the pitwall.

“This feels lovely.”

“Why thank you.” And my lord, does Oscar Piastri sound flattered? Maybe he likes it when Lando says nice things about him.

Qualifying goes pretty well, but Lando is a bit more intrigued over the matching times. George, ever the absolute icon he was, does his T on top of the car. He could imagine Oscar whining about 'accuracy' or something like 'if you can go to 4 decimal places, use it.' Stupid engineering brain of his. Merc is ecstatic.

He walks back to Oscar, a dot of orange in the sea of black. “Thank god you fixed it.”

“I didn’t. Base gave you your set-up. Got the ride height a bit higher for tomorrow.”

Lando shook his head. Oscar always seemed to enjoy playing down his work. Beating it down with sharp comments, and an almost inability to properly accept praise. As if Lando could drive the car without him.

—-

It’s strangely intimate to have his engineer stand over him during grid formation with an umbrella whilst Lando double-checks his laces. “The car might not be the best if we get slick conditions, but you’ll have an advantage through the corners if that becomes the case.”

“Obviously you’re on inters, just try and manage them to a point where we will either switch or chuck another couple on. Keep them acceptable, but I’ll tell you if you need to start cooling.”

He hands over the umbrella to Jon, and walks over to another gaggle of engineers, seemingly confirming that everything with the car was all good. He went for a little peer around, only to pause at the Ferrari’s and walk back.

“I’ll get you tyre information on the formation lap.”

Lando slips into the cockpit, and it's beautifully comfortable, the moulded seats always feeling like sinking into his own bed after a triple-header.

Oscar’s voice is a calming presence in his head, informing him that everyone but Haas are on inters. Guides him through a warm-up lap, and leaves him be.

My god that car felt good. It sounded like the engine hummed behind him. He knew it roared, but it was one of those rare occasions where he and the car became the same thing. He didn’t know where the flesh ended and the machine began. They were one and the same. And it was oh-so-beautiful not to have the spray against his helmet, the taunting red lights that all cars flashed on the back.

His heart flutters along with the car and it's just wonderful. It sings to him when he pushes it further. He should be here. He’s allowed to be here. Out in front. Might be Montréal first wins for the McLaren duo.

It almost happened. There’s a safety car, and he gets called in a little late, from the moment he slips at that pit exit and sees the navy blue of the #1 Redbull flies past, he knows he’s not winning this one.

He still chases it down, but really, it’s in vain. He doesn’t feel anything when the papaya in his mirrors changes to black, but he can hear the slight sigh in Oscar’s voice when he informs Lando it is the last lap.

“P2. Great job.”

“Yeah.”

It’s subdued and somewhat crushing.

—-

The podium is one of dual emotions. Max seems elated with his win properly because had to race for that one. He also shows his clear addiction to sim racing. Danny doesn’t care, because under the guise of congratulating Lando, which he does, giving him a look of ‘we’ll talk about this later.’ He wraps his arms around Max’s hips, whispering something into his ear that has Max violently blushing.

Rocks him enough for it to be considered playful, then releases him to be interviewed.

Lando is full of static. Ever since he had a slip and Max slid by him, he knew this wasn’t going to be the race. A hair's width, a call a lap earlier but these were the type of margins they played with. That was every other week in F1. Millimetres could have you careening to the back of the grid. In the time they blinked their eyes, they were 80 metres down the road, and that time could be the difference between pole and the 3rd row.

He hears that dreaded anthem be played again, and genuinely tries to get drowned in the champagne. He’s always those 2 inches shorter. If he stands in the middle, there aren’t many drivers that could match him.

He apologised to Daniel after finding out about the DRS incident. He got waved off. “Not much we could do. Better one of us up there than none.”

There’s an inferno in his veins, and steel in his eyes when he approaches Oscar for the first real time since he dragged himself out of that dreaded car. He’s in the garage, examining footage, fingers on his temples like he’s trying to stamp out a headache.

“Why didn’t you pit me?” He can hear it coming out bitter, and a fire ignites in Oscar’s eyes when he meets Lando’s. It surprises him a little to see something so familiar in the honey-brown. Something he sees in his fellow drivers. It's asking for understanding, but it's afraid to defend itself.

“Everyone was telling me not to pit you.” He’s typing at the keyboard, strokes forming a beautiful sound as his fingers flicked away.

“But I wanted to.”

“It’s not my fault that what you want doesn’t align with the advice I get, Lando. You can’t blame that on me. We know at the same time you do when they come in.”

“Why did you follow that advice?”

“I trusted you to get it done. You’re better than what you give yourself credit for.”

It makes Lando falter a little. He forces out an indignant laugh. “Trust me? To win? Are you fucking insane? Did you even watch Sochi?” Lando is nearly close to tears by that point. “I could have won here. I deserved that win. You didn’t help at all.” 

The fire in Oscar’s eyes dies a little at the words, like he’s hurt that Lando feels like that. “You did deserve that win, but the safety car can giveth, and the safety car can taketh away.” It’s placating, but somehow, it stirs a little more anger out of Lando.

“Like you know anything about that.”

He doesn’t catch the look of hurt or anger that flies across Oscar’s face. Or how he bites his tongue to stop himself from saying 'you don't know that.' Because now he is crying, and like a heat-seeking missile, goes for the warmest thing around. He tucks his head under Oscar’s chin, sobbing into the bit of exposed neck.

“You’re really tired, aren’t you?” Oscar gently rubs his hands through Lando's curls.

“It’s been a long day.”

He guides Lando back to the hospitality unit, handing him over to Jon at the junction of the driver's rooms. “I think he might need to take the stronger stuff tonight. Make sure he gets to sleep.” Jon nods. Daniel sticks his head out the door at the sound. He gives them a look of ‘I can manage it from here.’ So close, yet so far. Oscar trusts that Daniel’s experiences with certain races are more than enough to calm and reassure Lando.

Lando feels Oscar’s hand on his nape. He’s gentle when he talks to Lando, like handling a glass ornament. “We’ve got updates coming up. And remember. It can giveth as much as it can taketh away.”

He has to leave to help pack up the car.

He calls his mother later, talking about everything and nothing. The line echoes a little, the distance more pronounced than ever.

Chapter Text

VII

R6, Miami

Miami is really hot. That's the first thing that Lando registers when they touch down. It's nice not to have to have a massive adjustment to their sleep schedules, with this race only being two hours behind their last.

Oscar sleeps on the plane, and when he arrives at immigration, he gets another set of nail scissors confiscated. Lando replaced them subtly, but he was pretty sure that Oscar knew.

Miami was an odd place. Oscar had equated it to ‘bogan America.’ It tried to capture the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas in a warm, coastal way, and somehow flopped spectacularly. The track wasn’t quite as fun as Las Vegas or COTA either. An odd place, where his competitiveness almost gave way to heatstroke last year. The look he got from Daniel was priceless though. Of all the things to hide in, you hide in broad daylight, in something black.

Thursday goes in a blur of questions about the upgrades, which, of course they are hopeful about. They’d be stupid to intentionally make upgrades that don’t work.

So what happened in Canada? A bit like Sochi, wasn’t it?

Lando has to take a deep breath, trying to clear his head from the sudden headache brewing. He plasters on a fake smile. “Um, well, Sochi was me not listening to the pitwall. Canada was a bit different.”

“Obviously, safety cars affect races, after the race, I can remember my race engineer saying to me after the ‘they can giveth and they can taketh away.’ I’m sure we’ll have one go our way at some point.”

All the other questions go along the same lines.

He filmed content with Daniel, and was surprised with how far he could kick an NFL ball. When Lando questioned how he could do it, all he got was a “Mate, it’s a pointy AFL ball.”

He looked over at Oscar to confirm, who was clearly coming back from the garage (he had paper in his hands), “Yeah, Daniel’s right. Fun game.”

Daniel kicked another, the wind picked it up and blew it towards a huddled group of Alpine employees. “Heads!”

Nobody got a hard ball to the skull at mach fuck.

—-

On Friday, he walks in to Oscar shoved up in the corner of hospitality. He spot Lando. “Can I use your drivers room please?”

That was a little odd. I mean, he wasn’t about to deny entry. “What for?”

Oscar spun his computer around, showing an email with a list of names. Some very, if he’s being exceptionally nice, colourful personalities. “Yeah.” He draws it out like he’s not enthusiastic either. “I could do with the peace and quiet.”

“Of course you can.”

“Thanks.” He quickly stuffed everything away. Lando doesn’t think Oscar has really been in his drivers room beyond shoving a head in.

It’s cozy, and he’s got a hammock up. The TV is playing the current broadcast, which is a replay of the 2023 GP. He wasn’t overly fond of that one.

“Can I use your hammock?”

“Course.”

Oscar climbed into the thing with surprisingly confidence. “I love these things. Have one at home.” He looked pretty happy.

That was the thing, he did look happier bundled up in that. Lando got homesick, but the MTC was technically close to home, and he had Monaco as well. Oscar probably hadn’t been home in a couple of months, probably didn’t have the best of support networks, and it wasn’t as though having his proper home so far away was a choice.

Lando was called to go and do some media. He wasn't overly keen to go and do it. Oscar had the laptop propped up on his chest, smiling at the aircon blasting in the room. He looked a lot more peaceful like that than nearly every other time Lando had seen him before.

He goes and does that media. Then it's FP1. And the car feels dreadful. The steering is so badly biased. He radios back. "The steering feels out. It's hard to turn right."

There's no question or hesitation when he gets a "box, box" come through. Lando jumps out of the car at Oscar's request, and leans back on the bench whilst the mechanics swarm around the front of the car. "Don't worry. Someone," He gave a very pointed look to Lando's lead mechanic. There is nothing unfriendly in it. "Didn't properly align your kingpins."

He's out within 5 minutes. The car feels quite nice, but to be completely honest, he's just struggling to get the lap in. The car feels good. Then Charles decides to pull his best impression of the M25, and cause one hell of a roadblock.

He can see Oscar and Tom talking about something, probably about the updates, because Daniel clocked a lap at least 0.7 a lap better, and they were +0.8 off the Redbull. So maybe half the updates worked.

He's back in the car again, and this time, it sings. He can throw it, properly play with it. Not last year, where it was lap after lap of corrections and a race long wrestle, nothing working. The power was finally with him, and god, did it feel amazing to hear the pride at the end of each session in, "That's P1 Lando." Or even better, during SQ2, the voice of "You're safe." He's a minute away from the end of the session. Oscar turns to the car when he's in the garage, and shoves his head through the halo. "Still P1."

Fuck. This car is absolutely insane.

Until it all goes to shit in SQ3. Because according to that, he was nearly a second faster on the mediums. He goes from P1 to qualifying out of the points. Goals.

Oscar barely talks to him, but he can tell that's a certain amount of anger at himself. Lando claps him on the back. "Gonna put me on softs tommorrow?"

His eyes lighten a little. His voice is only is quiet. "I may be Italian, but I am not Ferrari."

—-

Lap 1 DNF. He walks across the track, cops a $50000 fine, then watches as the VCARB of Liam Lawson defends against a Ferrari and McLaren. It's pretty impressive. Oscar is vaguely interested as it occurs, but is mainly directing the set-up changes as the mechanics swap out parts. Suspension again.

They qualify where they were at the start of the year, but really, he feels like there is something left in it.

—-

On the grid, they’re talking strategy. They know the car is fast, especially on the harder compounds, so their goal is to go forward. Not retain, not defend, but instead to fly through the field. He’s surprised to get something from Oscar. It’s currency. Purple plastic, and he has to explain that it’s an Australian $5.

”You know I’m not really into superstitious stuff, but, you know, good luck or something. For some reason it was always with me when I did exams, and, well, I didn’t do too badly on my degree so maybe it counts for something.” Oscar does that weird little mouth quirk and shrug that he does. 

Lando tucks it into his suit.

He gets his information on the formation lap, and sits there while the rest of the grid forms, hands twitching to get going.

The feeling of unleashing the thing below him is incredible. He doesn’t move forward at the start, but he can see Daniel shoot through the field after Checo attempts to recreate Hungary 21.

“Quick update, Verstappen P1, Leclerc P2, Daniel P3, Sainz P4, Perez P5. Thinking plan B.”

Plan B was the overcut. “Confirm Plan B.”

The pace is good, and he backs off just a little to keep the tyres going for longer. His goal isn’t to overtake, it’s to keep on extending for as long as he can, then overtake.

“Daniel’s in P2, lapping with Redbull. Keep being careful around that blind corner. You’re getting a little oversteer.”

Yeah, turns out that was good advice, because in the next couple of laps, he doesn’t have the marker, and there’s a yellow flag. “Watch out for debris, T14. Verstappen took out the cone.”

He still hasn’t pitted. He sees others peel in, but it doesn’t feel as though it’s quite his time. “Box box.” Oscar’s voice is almost full of wonder as he says it.

“Lando pitlane.”

Safety car flashes up on his steering wheel, and, holy shit. The stop is good, but when he gets out, well. “P1. +27.”

He’s leading a grand prix by nearly 30 seconds. He can’t do this. He’s not meant to be here. He’s just plopped into this situation. “I trusted you to get it done. You’re better than what you give yourself credit for.”

“Safety car will overtake.”

And it does. A Redbull now sits behind him. A Redbull with the Dutchman. Green flashes in his periphery and he sends it as soon as he could. He gets away with it. Genuinely. There’s not a car on his tail. There’s clear air in front and behind.

The car sings, and he lets himself go. Fuck no wins, fuck Redbull. Viva McLaren, and no longer had the safety car taken away.

He has surrendered himself to the less than a ton of carbon and titanium below him when he crosses the finish line. He lets put an ear-splitting shriek of delight, silences his doubters, and dedicates it to his grandmother. He’s sweet like that, you know. There’s pride and tears and a bursting joy.

Fucking Oscar sounds like it’s another day, but his words are still laced with a sort of manic pride. Never has that P1 board been his. Hauls himself onto the car, points a finger to the sky. This is his. His day to shine.

Then the people decend, the cameras come, and the procession. Carlos, Charles, Max, Fernando, Daniel.

He talks into Daniel’s ear, both of their helmets off. “Oscar didn’t tell me where you finished.”

“P13.”

Excuse him, but what the fuck. He blinked a few times. “Our good friend snapped my wing in half after going a little hard on the breaks a little too late.” He gestured at Carlos. “I did always say you were gonna do it though.”

“Of course you did.”

—-

The mechanics crowd-surf him thrown into the air, basking in the American sun. It’s warm, and it’s beautiful.

He gets returned to behind the barriers, does his interviews with a massive grin plastered onto his face. Oscar is lingering on his side of the barriers. Lando approaches, and buries himself into his chest.

“I finally did it.”

Oscar hugs him back, not minding the way  that Lando violently crushed them together. He doesn’t suppose Oscar is the type to hold hands and jump around in a circle, but he clearly has other ideas, because his hands grip Lando’s waist, and he gets lifted and spun. “I’m so fucking proud of you.”

“You were right.”

“You see. I’m always right.”

“No you’re not.”

“Proof?”

“You like fish.”

—-

The sun makes Lando’s skin light up, the light olive shining when the rays hit it. He looks like a god. The people worship when the anthem plays, the sound of the people around him singing. Lando has his head tipped to sky, absorbing everything.

Then the trophies come, and nearly everyone cringes as it gets hurled into the air. Nobody wanted another Hungary. Apparently it had been a very expensive fix.

Champagne then sparkled up into the air, and Oscar could swear he feels it settling on his skin from above. Everyone is joyous.  There’s a small pull of something beneath his skin, and he doesn’t know if he wants to be up there in place of Zak or Lando.

He had made that decision long ago.

Lando spotted him in the throng of papaya , and the smile he got was larger than any other he had shown that day. He smiled back with what he hoped was everything that he felt.

—-

For the first proper time, Oscar accepts his invitation to go out. Lando shows up at the hotel door at least 15 minutes early. He somehow knew that he would be panicking over what to wear. When he gives a polite knock on the door, it’s almost instantly wrenched open.

"I have no clue what to wear."

Lando leant on the door frame. "That's why I'm here."

Oscar looked him up and down, and if Lando was reading the situation correctly, yeah, he was being checked out. I mean, that's the whole idea of his outfit. Emerald silk shirt rolled up, unbuttoned enough, silver necklace, black pants, oxfords. Slutty, very aware of that fact.

Oscar waves him in. The room is a slight bombsight, but in the expected way, like every male in his 20s. He goes through the largest suitcase, next to the carry on one, and that bloody briefcase. He pulls out a slightly rumpled white collared shirt and a pair of close-fitting suit pants. "Right, chuck these on."

He takes the thrown clothes, ducks into the bathroom, and walks out. Definitely not the look Lando was going for, because of course Oscar buttoned the shirt all the way, sleeves down, shirt tucked in. "Close."

" I don't think this is clubbing material Lando." He shook out his legs, the fabric clinging to the muscle in just the right way.

" It's fine. Do you trust me?" Lando walked a bit closer, within arms reach. Oscar shrugged. There was nothing he could do. "Give me your arms." Oscar stuck them out, and Lando unbuttoned the cuffs and rolled up the sleeves a little. Why did men have to look 100% more attractive with their sleeves rolled up?

He then set about unbuttoning the shirt, deft movements undoing the buttons to the point that there’s a bit of pale chest and well-defined pecs. What had he gotten himself into?

He ran his hands down the fabric of the shirt, feeling the soft fabric and the well-defined curves beneath it. Taps him on the chest. “It’ll be perfect once I just do this,” Lando wet his hands under the kitchenette sink, then ran them through Oscar’s soft hair, fluffing up the right parts. He then offered about half a stack of bracelets.

Lando steps back to take in the entire outfit, and god, he’s fucked himself, hook, line and sinker. He wants to rip Oscars’s clothes off himself.

“Don’t say you have no clue. You look amazing.”

—-

They make their way to the club pretty quickly. It's not very far from their hotel, so it's not too hard to slip through the traffic to their location.

It's getting a little crowded at this point, with nearly all the drivers showing up, and a lot of F1 staff from all the teams have come as well. They spread across the littany of available tables.

Oscar doesn't exactly know how he ended up on a table with both Max's, Carlos, Charles and Daniel. Lando walked over with a tray of shots, suprisingly accurate when weaving through the gathering crowd .

Oscar took a shot off the tray and slammed a straight shot of vodka. He heard Lando cheer after the dull thud. He took another one. He instead sips at it this time. It was a Polar Bear. A little more suited to his tastes, and yes, he was aware that he had the drinking habits of a teenage girl, but sue him, chocolate and peppermint taste amazing together.

Lando and Maxie (since when had he start calling Max Verstappen Maxie?), wandered off to go and find Alex and George, who were probably dancing by this point. Charles and Carlos had pissed off together somewhere, and Daniel was having a very fun time up near the DJ's booth. So it was him and Max.

"You gotta tell him at one point."

Oscar blinked at Max and tried to get the 'tell him' through his brain. In the end, he decided he probably wasn’t drunk enough for the conversation, so he promptly bailed up someone to get two butterballs for them. Sucks if Max doesn’t like Irish cream and butterscotch schnapps.

The shots arrived, and Oscar immediately began to sip at his. "I've got to tell who what?"

Max took the other shot. Downed it, and made a small noise of surprise at the taste. A not bad perhaps. He grabbed another. "You gotta tell Lando you were a driver."

"No I don't"

"In junior formula, you’re practically as accomplished as he is. You can't not tell him that."

"I don't see how this makes a difference. People already know. I mean, some of the drivers do. Maybe some of the public."

"You're literally the first champion of F3."

"And?"

"You've driven an F1 car. You've raced like he has. Do you know how good it would be for him to have someone like you, who knows the pressures like you do. You make better friends with racers off the grid than on it. Even you know that.”

" But then there are questions.” It’s drawn out. “I can still support him without him knowing. Besides, he'll find out eventually. I'm not lying to him."

"Then what are you doing? How are you not lying to him?"

Oscar considered the question and squinted into his half-empty shot. "I don't actually know. He thinks I'm a good engineer."

They both took another sip from their glasses, wincing as it burned down their throats. Max sat back and crossed his arms. "You really are a cunt, aren't you?"

"Yeah I suppose.” Oscar mirrored the action. “Serving cunt everyday of the week." He doesn't know where that came from.

Max gave him a look, but continued anyway. "Remember Monza, that overtake you did into Roggia."

"Not my fault you had a shit exit and braked early."

"Still. Dick move."

"You're still salty about that?"

"Yes. Very."

"My god."

They slammed the rest of the shot.

"I'm not going to try and hurt him, I hope you know that." Because, somewhere in Oscar's alcohol induced haze, he knows he loves Lando. Natalie had once told him that it made no matter who you were, it didn't make sense to upset people who you relied on. Competitors, people you couldn't give a fuck about, sure, but never the people whom you cared about. It never made sense to intentionally hurt them, or rile them up. "Fuck. Do I love him?"

"You may be a ruthless motherfucker on track, but you have my blessing, blah, blah, blah. You're capable of love and all that, just have an icy exterior for the big heart." He waved his hand around. They were very drunk, not drunk enough to talk actual in-depth feelings. "Wanna go dance?"

He must have been absolutely wasted by that point, because he agreed. They wove their way onto the dance floor and met up with Lando, George and Alex, who were drunkenly swaying along to the bass.

They joined in and all did an inebriated wave to the music. Clubbing really wasn't his thing, but he was pretty sure he could change his mind if he got to see Lando like this. Smiling with reckless abandon, he still looked like he was coated in champagne from the podium, glitter coating all of them. He was singing, it was the same as some radio message from way back.

Lando loved the look of this Oscar. The one with the out-of-place hair, flushed and smiley. Hair shiny and soft, despite the glitter stuck in it. He looked like he belonged there. He dragged the engineer back to a booth. "You enjoying it?”

Oscar, who was slumped into his seat, head rested on the top, turned his head to see him. "Yeah. I could get used to post-win clubbing."

"So, I must inform you that I will not be retiring." Lando was being stupid at this point, but he felt the need to carry it through. Oscar gave him a fake look of horror.

"Whatever will I do?"

The lights changed to something softer. Écoute Chérie had begun playing softly in the background, and why on Earth had Oscar looked at him like that. Like he wanted to devour Lando, kiss and kiss and never give back. His words were a little slurred, "You can't keep looking at me like that."

Oscar's eyes went wide and fond, brown mixed with gold. "Like what?" His voice was low, and that accent was back. He could’ve rolled in it all day.

"Like you want to-" Lando didn’t know what to do at that moment, so he hooked his hand into the collar of Oscar's shirt and crushed their lips together. It was probably not the right thing to do, but he looked so good under the dancing lights, and he was panicking into the kiss.

Until Oscar moved against him, kissing him back.

Chapter Text

VIII

R7, Imola

Lando will only make this mistake once. Do not let a group of competitive people play Jenga. The drivers were bad enough. Competitive engineers are a problem. The game has been going on for a couple of hours, even to the point that Kas started a livestream of engineers being absolute arseholes to each other. They keep on making the tower look like it’s denying physics, taking out pieces left and right, leaving single blocks on the sides, and occasionally taking layers out all together.

Andrea takes out the bottom layer, Tom saves the entire thing in the most dramatic way possible, Oscar balances the entire tower on the leftmost brick of a layer. Will takes out that layer, earning him a good natured bird, Randy shakes the table intermittently, to the groans of the others who were trying to play.

It goes down when Zak bumps into the table. Nobody knows if it was intentional to get people back on task. Everyone lets out a hiss of displeasure. Lando found it funny just how incredibly focused Oscar had been when he was considering a move, or the preciseness in which he’d wriggle blocks out.  Stupidly competitive.

It’s a nice way to unwind with the team after Miami. There’s pure joy.

He spends as much of his time as he can in Oscar’s office, blowing off duties left, right and centre. Most of the time, Oscar sits there, slowly going about his work, letting out little hisses of happiness or groans when something doesn’t work. Lando keeps on finding the collection of stuff in his office growing. A photo of him and his sisters, and an abstract black and white print.

One caught his eye. Oscar smiling his heart out next to what looked like a plane. He pointed at it. “How’d you pull that? Were you a pilot?”

Oscar let out a small laugh. “No. I’d be stupid if I was.”

Lando disagreed with that statement. Oscar had continued their little competition in the sim, the data helping out Lando a lot. A smoother driver than Lando, Oscar had a proper driving style and was only getting better as he kept on going. He loved to see what Oscar would do when he inputted the really extreme set-ups, testing what would go wrong in the worst of conditions. He would have been an amazing driver. There was a reason fighter pilots and F1 drivers were compared to each other.

“You sure you’re not lying?”

“A lot of people I went to uni with are now pilots.”

So what uni did Oscar go to? He lied when he said he read the sheet on Oscar. He had glanced at it to get a name. Thank god for the search function on gmail, because he soon has it pulled up. Lando skimmed the document to find the degree.

Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering (Honours)

UNSW Canberra

He searched it up. Yeah, the fact that Oscar knew pilots made sense now. “So you weren’t in the military?”

“Fuck no.” Oscar's eyes widened at the mere suggestion. “I took a very cushy civilian defence scholarship. My A-levels to ATAR were enough to get me in.” He paused again. “The military students are practically taught how to be professional arseholes.”

“Huh.” If that was the case, he definitely wasn’t military, because Oscar could be ruthless, but he was the sweetest person Lando knew.

“It was really good though because Australia’s engineering sector has quite the reputation. But I was invited to go along with one of their things when I was on my defence placement, hence the photo.”

That made sense.  Oscar continued to tap away. Eventually, he let out a loud groan and pushed himself away from the keyboard. “Fuck me.” Lando looked up to see him scrubbing his hands over his face. 

“You ok?”

He let in a big breath, and let it out with a sigh. “I can’t get something to work. I know it should but I’m not able to control it and,” he made a throttling motion towards the monitor.

Lando jumped up. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“I don’t need a walk. I need to make this work.”

“We’re going for a walk.”

Oscar narrowed his eyes, but still locked his computer and followed Lando out of the office to walk the grounds. It’s not too cold yet, but the air threatens to turn. He looks up at Oscar, and there is that soft, fond look on his face. Daniel dubbed him ‘heart-eyes.’

—-

Lando wakes up in a room that’s not his with foreign heat next to him. He knows he should be freaked out, but there’s the citrus and mint in the air, the same as a hoodie that he needs to return. The room is pretty dark, the only light leaking from around the blackout curtains. He flips over, and sure enough, his engineer lays beside him.

In the low light, Oscar’s hair glows a caramel, his lashes fanning across pale cheeks. His hand hooked into the pillow, head buried into it. Back up, the sheets have slipped to show his upper back adorned by freckles and with some red marks in the shape of Lando’s nails.

Their legs are still tangled together.

What the fuck did they do? Fuck, probably.

Oscar then stirs, gently cracking his eyes. There’s such a soft look in them that it somehow loosens the constriction that he started to feel snaking around him. They face each other, heads still on the pillows.

“Morning.” His voice is sleep-rough and accented.

“Morning.”

They lay there for a while more, neither daring to bring up what they did. Lando can start to feel the pressure build again.

Lando is the first to break the silence. “I’m sorry I came onto you like that. I was drunk and you looked really good and I probably now have to turn myself into H-“ His head keeps on spinning, but his mouth is stopped by a long finger on his lips.

“Just. Stop. It’s ok-“

He spoke over the finger. “I don’t even know if you like men!” Lando’s a little hysterical at this point, tears threatening to come forth, his lungs starting to constrict.

“We were both sober enough to be lucid when we got back here. We wouldn’t have done it if either of us didn't want it.” He placed a warm hand on Lando’s jaw, gently tracing it. “If you’re concerned, I’m bi.”

He sagged down onto the mattress, all the tension seemingly released through the singular motion over his jaw. Oscar pulls him in closer. It shocks Lando a little. Oscar gave friendly hugs, and may have lifted Lando up in the adrenaline of a race win, but he wasn’t the person for physical touch. He was more of an act of service kinda person. Lando doesn’t know how long he had his head nuzzled into the junction of Oscar’s neck.

If all wins feel like this, he never wants to stop.

—-

He knows the car is good around Imola. He knows he’s good around Imola. Should be a combo that he can look forward to. He also learns that Oscar is 3/16th Italian, so that makes some amount of sense. As much as he has the complexion of a Victorian child, he wasn’t aware of a British last name that was quite like his.

The moment they arrive at the track, he nudges Oscar. “What does it feel like, being on home soil?”

“Nothing but Italian rage.”

Powered by pasta, which, fun fact he had learnt, was Oscar’s favourite dish. He knew an excellent place in Monaco that he would be taking him for a rather late birthday present, among other things.

He’s the one to invite Oscar into his driver's room this time. He made sure he procured a hammock for the proper team hub. Oscar happily clambered up into it, coming and going as he had meetings or needed to chat with other people. Lando was in and out doing marketing and PR.

He finally got some time to plop down next to Daniel, who was rapidly texting away to Max. He could spot Max complaining about some marketing event he was at. 

“What the fuck do I get Oscar? I have a week.” 

Daniel types a final message, and throws his phone face down onto the table, turning his full attention to Lando. “You’re really screwed, aren’t you.”

“Yeah. Well and truly.” He fiddles with his phone. “What did you buy him?”

“I didn’t buy him anything.” Daniel’s being a little bitch now.

“Well you’re fucking helpful, aren’t you.”

“Seriously though. It’s the next race. Take him back to Monaco, spend some quality time together, and go out for dinner. He’d like that.”

Daniel had said it before, and Oscar had never directly said it, but he could see that they sometimes missed home. It was nice to slow down with someone.

“I’ll get him a watch.”

Daniel shook his head slightly in shock. “Where did that come from?”

“He has late vibes. Like, he’s never late, but you just know he’s rolled out of bed 10 minutes before he has to get somewhere.”

“I think that’s a part of who he is.”

—-

FP1 goes… ok. Nothing spectacular. Like always, they sandbag a little during these practices, but not this much. Oscar and Tom mull over the data, figuring out new solutions. They seem to have found a mode adjustment that will work nicely for them.

FP2 goes… better. At least for Daniel. He can just about hear Oscar cursing out Carlos from the other side of the track when he gets impeded. 

“Abort lap, box. Guaranteed to be Carlos in the middle of the track.”

“Woah, don’t need to be so harsh. Confirm box.” It’s said jokingly.

“He’s destroyed a set of race tyres.”

Comments:

lando’s engineer being jealous of carlando?

 \ the power of yaoi is too much for oscar

    \ he and lando are the power of yaoi. did u see them after miami?

highly unprofessional of an engineer to be saying things like that.

 \ you’d be fun at a party

The funniest thing about this is an engineer having beef with a driver not on their team.

Lando peels into the pitlane for a quick change, coming back out for start  practice.

Oscar calls him over when he jumps out of the car. “Don’t worry about where you placed. You’ve got pace. The long runs are good.”

Lando nodded and excused himself from the garage. He could see Oscar chatting away with the strategists, furrow forming between his brows.

—-

FP3 went well, and McLaren got a 2-3 in qualifying. Daniel would’ve been on pole had he got a tow, but he can thank good ol’ Nico for giving it to his other ex-teammate (and husband, but the public doesn’t know about that.)

“Aw shit.” Daniel frowns when he’s called to the stewards about a potential impedance on a Haas. He qualified in P2.

And then he gets a 3-place grid penalty for impeding. So you know, swings and roundabouts. Lando’s now starting in second.

There is a reason that Imola is known as ‘Monaco without the walls.’ Oscar stood at the 14-15 chicane, straight up turned to him and said “I don’t care if you send it up the inside or outside. This is where you’ll get it done.” There was a slight chance of something around T18 if he was feeling particularly brave.

They’re standing on the grid.

“I need you to be really careful with your rears around here. Extend as much as you can, because our deg is the best.”

Lando continues to pull on his gear, quickly chatting with Marc and Jarv. It’s a rhythmic way that he gets ready, Jon eventually handing him his helmet to slip on, then the gloves.

He jumps into the car. Oscar puts his head down near the halo. Lando hasn’t been strapped in, so he reaches up and pats the swoop of Oscar’s voluminous hair. “I got it Osc.”

Despite the fact that he can’t feel the hair beneath his fingers, but he can still see the blush that spreads up his cheekbones. “Don’t go breaking a leg for me. Ok?”

“Sure.”

—-

“If you’ve got any more pace, please pick it up a little.”

Lando feels like he’s having wrestle with the car. It doesn’t quite want him to do what he wants it to. The engine still purrs below him, a taunt that he’s got more in the tank.

“I’m trying. Trust me. I haven’t got anything left.”

“Set base brake bias +3.”

He could imagine the way that Oscar was staring at the screens, trying to monitor everything he could, filtering the advice flying at him through a single signal towards Lando’s transponder. The way he would rub his nails along his hand, a nervous tic.

“15 laps to go. Verstappen +5.7, Leclerc -9.5.”

It seems at this point that the car decides that it’s going to be his friend, and it simply comes alive beneath him. He’s no longer driving the car. The car is driving him.

He doesn’t know where he ends and the car begins, but it doesn’t matter. There’s that voice in his ear and four tyres on the ground.

“10 laps to go. Verstappen +2.9.” The voice in his ear has taken on a hint of excitement.

He’s hunting.

The beep in his ear sounds incredible. The car roars even louder. “Verstappen +0.9.”

The bull is fleeing.

“5 laps to go. Verstappen +0.7.” That’s all it says now. No questions, no suggestions. It’s in awe.

He picks it up. The car vibrates as the revs climb. “Last Lap Lando.”

When he gets to the chicane, there’s an echoing voice in his head saying he needs to send it. 

So he does.

There’s no gearbox in front of him.

T18 comes, and there’s the blur of navy beside him. All he can do is keep his foot as planted onto that throttle as hard as he can.

There’s silence over the radio. He soon hears the dry tones of his engineer. “That was quite the photo finish. Pull up beside Max. Timing is being reviewed.”

He throws the car into the pitlane, sliding out of the car with confusion. Max is his mirror image.

He gets interviewed first, and both McLaren and Redbull show up with their personnel for the podium. It’s decided that Hiroshi will come out with them, because of Daniel’s fourth place making them higher scoring.

Max hoists the first place trophy, but quickly invites Lando up to join him, the trophy grasped between the two of them. Charles looks up at the both of them, fond smiles for their shenanigans.

They’re walking out through the pit complex. Max turns to him, holding both trophies. “Want to cut them in half and give them to the teams?”

“Hell yeah.”

He finds Oscar in the garage, surprisingly enough chatting to a group of people. He turns to Lando, his face lighting up. He whispered into Lando’s ear, voice low and sultry. “That was fucking incredible to see that.”

He didn’t need to touch Lando to spin him around to the team. “Congratulations on your 21.5 points.”

What the fuck Oscar. He sees the thin folder filled with the normal font of the sporting regulations propped on top of his briefcase. The team kept going, disassembling the car.

7.1.  Prizes and points awarded for all positions of Competitors who tie, will be added together and shared equally.

He burst out laughing at Oscar’s personal annotation of ‘Pitlane fistfight/who has a bigger crowbar.’

Oscar slammed it shut, eyes wide. “Don’t take any of that seriously. I’m not violent. I promise. I prefer to settle my arguments by grounding their spirit into the ground.”

Lando smirked. Maybe it would be funny to see Oscar armed with a crowbar doing a gridwalk. He leans into Oscar. “Of course you’re not. You’re my sweet boyfriend. I would like to hear you debate the stewards one day though.”

Daniel, the sly fox, overhears that from where he stands on the other side of the island and lets out a low whistle. 

Lando flips him the bird.

—-

Lando slowly ghosts his fingers over the pale pecs that the sheet barely covers. When he moves it to the middle, there’s a gentle thumping below. He properly places his fingers there, the rhythm comforting.

“Lan.” His voice is muffled by the pillow. “Lando. That tickles.”

“I needed to wake you up somehow.”

Oscar turned over, and buried his face into his pillow. A clear ‘No you didn’t.’

“My flight is leaving in a couple of hours.” Lando says it casually, hoping Oscar might cotton on.

“That’s nice. I’ll give you a kiss goodbye.” His voice is still sleep-rough.

His poor little sleepy cat. They hadn’t spent many mornings together, but he had found that Oscar was so pliant. He desperately did not need to see the world in the morning.

“Your flight is also in a couple of hours.”

“It’s at five.”

“You’re coming to Monaco for a week. Happy Birthday!”

Oscar flipped back over, watching Lando as he sat up on the bed. “But the team-“

“All sorted with Andrea and Rob.”

Oscar shifted, indicating he was about to peel himself out of bed. “Guess I better get up.”

“I suppose. We have got a flight to catch.”

Chapter Text

IX
R8, Monaco, Part 1

Oscar is still knocked out on the flight. He seemed a bit confused as to why they couldn’t drive.

“It’ll be 6 hours Oscar.”

He shrugged. “And? That’s really not that bad.”

“We’ve got a flight anyway.”

Oscar just shoved everything in his suitcase and sat on it to zipper it up.

They boarded, sitting across from each other. Oscar immediately pulled out his laptop and started to click away. Lando pulled out his own tablet and reviewed his own data.

“Did Max get his tyres dirty? He seemed to have a lot of spin coming out of 12.” Lando raises his head, stylus already poised to circle Max’s data.

Oscar’s head had dropped back onto the leather of the seat, clearly asleep. It did make sense, he wasn’t entirely sure of the time that Oscar had collapsed into bed with him, but he wasn’t entirely sure pretty sure it was very early morning.

As much as possible, Oscar liked to stay for the pack up of the garage. 

Instead of working, Lando found himself studying the contours of Oscar’s face, the way his hair mused itself, and how the strands glowed golden in the light.

He felt he had to nudge Oscar when they were coming into land. “Osc. You gotta wake up.”

Oscar woke with a start. He looked quite guilty, but didn’t say anything. Lando remembered the concerned look that Natalie gave him in Japan. Maybe that’s what these few days were about. Distracting Oscar from his work. He wasn’t the only person responsible for the car and set-up.

He loved the way that Oscar’s eyes lit up at the 765LT Spider. Lando had made sure it was specially the one that he had brought to Nice to drive back to Monaco. Oscar slides into it with a certain amount of reverence.

Lando waits outside the car long enough for Oscar to ask him what was taking so long.

“Do you want to drive?” Lando keeps his voice casual. As though he hadn’t already put Oscar onto his insurance. Say what you will, he was protective over his car collection.

“Are you insane?”

“Apparently.”

He hopped out and took the keys from Lando’s outstretched hand. They swap seats. From the moment that the engine purrs, there’s a subtle shift in the way Oscar is. He can’t pinpoint it, but Oscar drives how Lando races. There’s that confidence in the car, innate confidence in himself, the way he gently coaxes the car. 

“What do you think?” Lando leans back into the seat. He finds it funny just how comfortable it is in a car with Oscar. He’d done hot laps with Danny and Carlos - he’d been terrified the entire time. Maybe he should convince PR to let Oscar to do a couple of hot laps with Lando.

“It’s a lovely car.” 

The way Oscar said it was that there was something in it that extended far beyond the mechanics of the car. He could probably dissect the car piece by piece and know what they did, how they worked together. There was something in experiencing how it worked together. 

“You’re the driver, and you made the right choice. Sometimes you will, sometimes you won’t. You’re not bound to my decisions, I’m only here to help you.”

That was the thing. Oscar had never driven the car that he knew inside and out. He had never driven an F1 car.

But when he saw that look of concentration and joy on Oscar’s face as he drove, Lando thought he should’ve.

—-

Oscar had just gotten off a meeting when Lando burst into his office (which had been loaned). “We’re going to the beach.”

He stared up at Lando with wide eyes. “But Lando. I have work to do.”

“No you don’t.” Lando was forceful enough to get Oscar up and moving. “You can do it later. You got swimmers?”

“Yeah.”

“Awesome.”

—-

Turns out Oscar’s swimmers are purple with flamingos on them, but that’s beside the point, cause my god. Those fucking thighs. Lando has to have good legs for his job, sure, but he would like to unhinge his jaw to be able to bite into the leg that Oscar is showing off right now.

To top it off, the he’s wearing a navy linen shirt left even more unbuttoned than what Lando wears it at a club. When it got wet, it showed off the contours of his body, the subtle dips and ridges and faint outline of muscle. That fucking waist. If this is any indication of how the rest of the day is going to go, Oscar will not be getting any work done later.

Lando suns himself whilst Oscar digs into the sand next to him. There’s something different about seeing this carefree engineer happily dig into the sand. He’s seen the flashes of rage, of joy, of annoyance.

“You brought me to a French beach.” Oscar pops his head out of the hole, that despite it nearly being as deep as he is tall, hasn’t collapsed in on itself yet.

“We’re still in Monaco.”

“Monaco is France without the taxes.”

Lando snorted painfully. Oh how he’d love to be that honest on camera. He got up and made his way to the shore, Oscar joined him with a grunt when he hoisted himself up onto his stomach, rolling over and getting up. The ocean simply laps.

“I’ll teach you how to surf when Australia comes around.” Oscar stands calf deep in the water. This beach was a lot better than anything in England, and yet, it was not his own.

Not the same fine sand, or roar that he could hear of a night.

Lando had still made the effort to bring him here. To a French beach, or its tax haven equivalent. He had cared enough to drag Oscar away from work that would consume him. Enough to let Oscar drive his car, silently watching as he lost himself in the hum of the engine and twists of the road.

He dove into the water. And how much warmer was it than home. Lando joined him in the deeper water. They splashed and swum.

It slowly came to orange hour, the sky illuminated in the colours that had brought them together. In the shoulder high water, Oscar wrapped his legs around Lando’s waist and properly clung to him.

“Thank you.” He whispered out to no one in particular, but then Lando’s lips were on his and it’s salty, and they keep on getting shifted by the waves. It’s so right.

Lando pulls back for air, and he looks at Oscar. Like he loves him.

They collide again.

—-

They may have showered together, but Lando had ushered him out after massaging shampoo and conditioner into his hair and rinsing it out, citing that he needed more space to attend to his curls. Oscar loves the smell of the hair products. Vanilla and coconut.

He flops down onto the couch and starts to text Natalie. She almost instantly hits him with a FaceTime.

“If they try and send me overseas again, I’m gonna cry.” The screen shows some rain-slicked windows, and beyond that, the kilometres of runways. She has headphones on, crushing herself into it.

“Working you hard?” Oscar’s lounging on Lando’s couch whilst the owner has a shower.

Natalie produced a piece of paper and wove it in front of the camera. “That’s my itinerary.”

Oscar grimaced at the full page of small font. “You gonna get any time off.”

“One night.”

“Watcha gonna do?”

“Sleep?”

“Good choice.”

Lando walks in, still shaking water from his curls. “Who’s on the phone?”

“Nat.”

“Cool.” He plopped down on top of Oscar, the two of them slotting together so Lando could rest his head on Oscar’s chest. He threaded his hands through Lando’s damp hair, and lightly scrunched it. He’d been given multiple lectures on the curl routine. He started almost immediately dozing.

Natalie watched through the phone with a fond smile.

“God. Spooks. You’re a sappy bitch.” Oscar whines it through the phone when he sees the slight smile on her face.

“Osco, that’s absolute bullshit.”

He stuck his tongue out at her. She flipped him off. “Where are they sending you this time?”

“Seoul.”

Oscar hummed. “Enjoy your singular night off.”

“I will.”

She had to go soon after, eyes lighting up when the flight was finally called.

Lando looked up to Oscar, leaning into the hands gently massaging his scalp. “How’d she get that nickname?”

“Nat’s a sneaky little thing. Once saw her leave a room three times without entering it.” He smiles a little as he says it. That had been quite funny. “Got quite the reputation for sneaking up on people. So she’s Spooks now.”

Lando made a small noise of affirmation, and properly fell asleep. Oscar gently playing with the curls whilst something inconsequential played on the TV.

—-

It’s Wednesday when Charles invites himself and Oscar to play padel. Lando thought this might have been a slightly larger event, but in the end there’s six of them. Charles and Carlos make a team of course. Lovesick puppies they were.

Lando also found Max coming along, moping because Daniel had a media commitment that Lando had weaselled out of (after a knowing smile and waggling eyebrows).

It left Oscar and Arthur to form a team.

This is how Lando found out how Charles and Oscar knew each other. It wasn’t through sheer coincidence, it was through Arthur.

Oscar wasn’t completely shit at padel, but clearly the latent talent of growing up in a city with a Grand Slam hadn’t come to him. He and Arthur had the time of their lives battling it out, the smiles and laughs being of those who had known each other for a long time. They work well together, but both are a little shit.

He and Max do pretty well. But Carlos is an absolute beast at any sport, and Max is, on balance, worse than Charles at padel. Lando doesn’t want to know how much money Max has sink into the game.

Charles and Carlos were of course the winners, and despite the friendly, and to be completely honest, uncompetitive competition, they found themselves kissing fiercely. And they were definitely chatting each other up, but that wasn’t something that Lando wanted to recall.

Arthur and Oscar seemed to be making plans for something. Maybe for Oscar to go and watch Arthur race. They both seem thrilled to see each other again.

They walk back home. Lando nudges Oscar. “I didn’t know you knew Arthur.”

“Fair enough.”

“How did you get to know him?” Lando asks curiously.

“Even engineers don’t come into the sport unknown. I have contacts.” There’s a sharp grin on Oscar’s face as he said it. “But I have done some stuff with Prema, so that’s how we know each other.”

That would make a lot of sense. The Leclerc boys had been raised by their junior team.

—-

They’re back from the restaurant. He had found out that Oscar’s favourite cuisine was Italian and immediately resolved himself to get a reservation for the night.

The food had been amazing, but what had been better was Oscar’s reaction. He was one of those people who genuinely seemed to enjoy the smaller things, as basic as some really good food.

Lando had cracked out the Porsche for the drive there, letting Oscar be the passenger princess this time.

When they leave, Lando floats the idea of going for a drive. Oscar gives a little smile, the light from the street gently illuminating his features. “That’d be nice.”

Lando just lets himself drive it up to the lookout. The lookout where you could view the entirety of Monaco lit up during the night.

They both stare, entranced by the twinkling lights below them.

Lando bends down to extract Oscar’s present from underneath his seat. Oscar watches on curiously.

“Happy Birthday!”

He can see Oscar blush from the dim light of the city. “Thank you.” It’s said quietly.

He took the package with gentle hands, and his nails picked at the tape until it came apart. He saw a McLaren hoodie first. His own that he had given Lando in China. He beamed at Lando, and three things dropped out of it. 

Another hoodie, which Lando explained was from a currently unrealised line of Quadrant. Oscar held it up in the small cabin, and he knew the jumper would fit him immediately. Lando gave him a fond look. Oscar thought it smelt like Lando.

You’ve already gotten a birthday card and I’m not getting you another.
- Lando

It was written on a birthday card, squished between the two hoodies.

A box had tumbled into his lap, which he opened with deft fingers. His eyes widened when he saw the watch nestled in it. “Lando. You can’t give this to me.” His voice was quiet, and kind of in awe. “Yes I can.” He held up his wrist. “We match.”

Oscar put the watch on, Lando admired the dark metal on the pale wrist. He can’t do it for long though, because Oscar leans over the centre console, hooking his hand through Lando’s collar. He crushes them together.

Oscar nips his lip to gain access, and Lando readily allows their tongue to intertwine, battling for dominance. It keeps on going, them battling it out for every inch they can get.

They break apart, chests heaving with their efforts. Pupils blown, hair askew, lips swollen.

Oscar would dare to say they loved each other.

Chapter Text

IX
R8, Monaco, Part 2

Lando did not expect Oscar to have Twitter. Or Instagram. Or a sizeable following on both. His posts about anything and everything stretch back to 2020. 

@oscarpiastri
I got threatened for trying to turn the heater on before the 25th of April.
It’s 10 degrees in here.

And more recently.

@oscarpiastri
I’m 1/16th Chinese. Can I have another home grand prix?
  | @zhouguaynu24
     Do I have authority to approve this?

@oscarpiastri
Also happen to be 3/16th Italian. You know what that means.
  | @danielriccardo
     unexplainable love for the Scuderia?
        | @oscarpiastri
           Was more of an Austrian drinks fan myself

@oscarpiastri
@charlesleclerc Can you help me out this weekend? Trying to trace Monagasque roots
 | @charlesleclerc
    I can adopt you if needed
    | @oscarpiastri
       10am Thursday. Ferrari hospitality.  I want to meet Leo
    | @nicolepiastri
      @yukitsunoda22 I have an opening.

So Charles had adopted his engineer. That was great. F1 had fun with the moment, Ferrari and McLaren admins had an absolute field day.

Randy, Hiroshi, Oscar and Tom accompanied himself and Daniel on the track walk. Oscar carries a small notebook with him, a black cover covered in stickers, cream lined paper and several pieces sticking out at odd angles.

He’s writing in it almost all the time, but today he has it open to earlier in the book, looking down at it before offering advice on breaking and lines.

Whatever is in there is scarily close to his actual ideas, and in a few parts, when he visualises it, it would have to be faster.

There’s a coastal breeze stirring up, and it ruffles Oscar’s hair. He hasn’t cut it in a while and is genuinely considering the possibility of hiding anything that could cut it for a while.

Hiroshi’s talking about tyre deg now, different strategies for different positions. He’s a little tuned out to be completely honest. Oscar nudges Lando with his foot.

He shoots a quick smile towards Oscar before tuning back in, hoping he’ll be one of the people at the front.

—-

Daniel and Lando are in engagements practically all afternoon, celebrating Senna and the launch of their livery.

They flopped down next to each other, posture dreadful as always. “I think these overalls are pretty mint.” Lando has his head thrown back and talks to the ceiling.

“All a ploy to get you into the green and gold mate.”

“Can I have another home race?” Lando picked up on of the glasses on the table and took a sip.

“You might be able to claim Australia by the end of the year.” Daniel makes it exceedingly clear who he’s talking about. Lando spits out half his water, inhaling the other half and breaking out into a coughing fit that has Daniel half-heartedly patting his back. “Seriously. Don’t fuck it up.”

Sophie poked her head around the door and rolled her eyes at the scene of Lando’s shaky inhales, head dropped forward. Daniel sat back, rubbing a soothing circle into his back.

—-

Lando was in the middle of a session, his particular run being over. The camera’s are on the garage, on Oscar as his eyes remain fixed on the data. The banner at the bottom of the screen read, Oscar Piastri-Leclerc, Race Engineer, McLaren. He had to let out a snort at that.

It gets clipped to social media. 

@f1
new name in the papaya garage this weekend

@oscarpiastri
@charlesleclerc You made it official?
   |@charlesleclerc
      Come pick up your passport my child.

Friday isn’t a bad day by any means. Relatively, the Mercs are outperforming them because they run actually tuned engines during practices. 

Daniel’s doing well, but if course he is. If Charles is the crown prince of Monaco, Daniel is still the reigning king. Lando was racing in F2 that year, and the atmosphere of Redemption Day was unlike anything he had ever felt before.

It’s of course a stupidly busy day, testing the high-downforce package. The mechanics are constantly running around with adjustments and the engineering department doesn’t stop.

Lando is already exhausted, the expectations of the mere millimetres required for the circuit. FP2 goes fine.

“Red flag, red flag. Debris at turn 2.”

Lando comes in.

“Am I doing alright?”

“All good. Maybe be a little gentler on the breaks though. You wanna see Leclerc’s lap?”

“That’d be great.”

He and Daniel have a chat after the session, lots of hands moving and complaining about the sun coming out of Tunnel.

—-

P4. Nothing too shabby. He can’t be upset with it. Better than P6 for Max. Daniel made a sound of pure horror when he saw that. Max was the type for frank advice, and that’s what Daniel would have to be on the back of to tonight. He’d be pissed. Better than Checo at least.

As much as people might say that Monaco is a boring race, the qualifying is like nothing else. To Lando, it’s the most important hour of the year. The hour where he earns his money. Nothing compares to getting the lap around here. Nothing hits that racer in him more satisfied than a good lap around Monaco.

The team have given him stern assurances that they can work magic with the P4, and like promote him. Especially given Ferrari’s track record at this particular circuit. Plus the Leclerc curse.

The strategists are already starting to do their jobs, and Oscar and Tom sit huddled together, likely finding in-car adjustments for tomorrow. Lando’s already agreed to keep with Daniel and the Ferrari’s in whatever they decide to do when it comes to tyres.

Lando leaves the paddock relatively early, and Oscar joins him much, much later.

He jumps up onto his dining table as Oscar comes through the door. “Having fun with your work-wife?”

Oscar looks at him, no thoughts behind those eyes. He blinks a few times. “What?”

“You and Tom.”

“Who says we’re work wives?” Oscar’s shifting around the living room now, clearly angling to go have a shower before something to eat.

“Daniel.” He paused. “And I’m inclined to agree.”

Oscar just shook his head. “I’m going to have to tell Tom that one.”

—-

They fall into bed really early by Lando’s standards, or more that Lando had dragged Oscar to bed whilst he was trying to work.

It’s sometime around 10:30, and Lando is tucked into Oscar’s hip because he’s sitting up, laptop perched on his lap. Different analysis still flows in from the MTC, and Oscar really has to look at it all.

Until Lando mumbles something into his hip. Oscar runs a hand through his hair, and Lando repeats it again. “Put it away. I wanna cuddle.”

And who is Oscar to refuse that.

—-

The gridwalk at the Grand Prix du Monaco is like nothing else. It’s the high profile event. It’s also the event where people want it the least, all the drivers trying to settle themselves for one of the most mentally exhausting things they are faced with.

He kind of appreciates the way that Oscar walks him out to the grid, keeping his brief short and sweet. Jon and him go through their entire routine almost silently, Lando slowly shifting into the right place. Oscar is doing other duties, notably going between the two cars and confirming different things with different people.

He’s settled into the car, and ready for it to do it’s job. He’s ready to do his, hit the exhilaration of a millimetre perfect lap. The adrenaline of it.

Oscar is all business. “Radio check.”

“Loud and clear Osco.”

“Top four are on mediums, the four behind you are on hards. 15 seconds to formation lap.”

Oscar expertly guides him through the formation lap, and it’s in the quiet moments before the lights flash off. Only an idling Mercedes engine for company. It’s almost lonely.

But he gets the launch he needs, and there’s a little scuffle ahead and a lot of smoke, and Carlos is off in Turn 4.  Daniel is absolutely going at Charles up ahead. The lap keeps on going, and when he’s in the tunnel, the radio a little cracked, there’s the slightly awed voice of Oscar. “Red flag. Keep the delta positive.”

When Lando sees the three seperate incidents of lap 1, he sees why Oscar had a slight amount of awe in his voice. That was a fucking massive crash. Four cars taken out in two incidents, because, of course, the French civil war continued.

He knew enough to know that the restart would take a while, but he was more invested in the starting grid. Daniel using his floor as a medieval weapon may have guaranteed Lando a podium.

“Any word on the restart grid.”

Oscar picks up a piece of paper with very little regard. Flat smile. “Congratulations, it’s a P4!”

“But Carlos-“

“I know. But segments only count as timing and not as position indicators. The last car never finished sector 1, and thus never could return to the pits.” He sighed and pulled out his copy of the regs. Pointed at Article 57.3. Practically a get out of jail free card. 

Oscar turned back to the data and left Lando to go and find Jon, who had a few ideas about how to fill in the time. When they got a concrete restart time, Oscar called him back over to give a few tips.

They walked back out to the grid together.

Oscar had jokingly procured a crowbar from the mechanics. He would jokingly spin it when walking between the cars, the car on the other side of track between them being Carlos.

The Ferrari driver regarded the engineer with a certain amount of fear as he darted between each car, planning with the strategists. 

He came back to Lando.

“You can stop psyching Carlos out now.” Lando sits on the very edge of the track, Jon still handing him gear. Oscar regards him with a slight smirk.

“Have you decided if you want to stay as rear-guard on the front pack or not?” Oscar’s voice is all business, clearly his mind was on all the possibilities that could stem out from that.

“I’ll stick with the front.”

“Ok.”

Oscar seems to tune out at that point a little. All wide brown eyes and furrowed eyebrows. Lando keeps on pulling on his gear, the routine of it calming. Lando doesn’t exactly know what Jon is yapping about, but that’s kind of the point. Oscar barely notices as Lando slips past him to get seated. “Yeah, I can work with that.”

Lando looks up at him through the flipped visor. “Nothing else before I go out?”

“Good luck and don’t crash?”

“Advice taken.”

Oscar only raised a brow at that and walked back to the pitwall with the rest of the crew.

“Welcome to McLaren airlines. This is your co-pilot speaking. Please ensure all loose items are stowed away, steering wheels connected and belts are secured. You hearing me all good?” Oscar’s voice comes across the radio, light and dry.

“You really think you could call yourself a copilot? You haven’t driven one for these things before.” (Little did he know)

“I’m going to take that as a loud and clear from you. Formation lap in 30 seconds.”

Lando could listen to Oscar’s voice all day. The different accent from different settings, the way his voice registered at different tones, different inflection. He loved it most when it was dry, low, and accented.

He talks Lando through the formation lap, his voice all business. 

“Good luck.”

The lights flash off not long after.

—-

“This is boring as shit.” Lando groans through the radio somewhere around Lap 60. He doing a decent job. Everyone could speed up, but what’s the point? You’d need a ramp to overtake here.

“Going around one of the most storied tracks in history?” Oscar’s voice is dry in his ear, a different tone to when he gives Lando information.

“What was the F2 pole time?”

The radio fell silent.

“You’re going as fast as F2.” Oscar has a sigh in his voice as he says it. He almost sounds a little sad.

“Not the spectacle you were looking for?”

“Not that.” His tone shifted. An instruction. “Keep your wheelspin minimal coming out of Mirabeau.”

“I want to sleep. Need you to sing to me.”

“Sing what?” Oscar has no clue why Lando is trying to sing at what is known to be one of the most mentally demanding racetracks in the world.

“Love Story. Taylor Swift. I’ll start.”

Lando was actually a very good singer.
“Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone
I'll be waiting, all there's left to do is run
You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess
It's a love story, baby, just say,”

“That’s the chorus Lando.” He is being petty today, isn’t he.

“Just fucking say it.”

The international feed caught the moment Oscar Piastri raised his arms in exasperation and whispered “Yes.” It then cut to Lando Norris brushing the wall in Tabac.

“I’m not going to talk until you cross that finish line.”

True to his word, the radio fell silent.

Lando frowned. He’s pretty sure he’s around the last lap. “Can I go for fastest lap?”

“If you can beat a time set on 50 lap younger mediums, go for your life.” Snippy.

“You’re no fun Osc.”

He didn’t respond. Lando didn’t try and set it. The checked flag flew. “That’s P4. Literally nothing else we could have done today.”

Lando parks it in parc ferme, and finds Oscar trying to navigate the throng of people to go and congratulate the podium sitters.

He throws himself into Oscar. “You know you could’ve done something to get revenge for ruining my race tyres. Set the grid as it was at the end of Lap 1.” He whispered loudly to cut over the crowd. 

Oscar turned to him, smiling with a hint of mischief in his eyes. “I do value my job.”

“You looked very hot with that crowbar.”

He shook his head, the both of them going to find Daniel. He’s up congratulating Charles, who either is, or just was crying. Lando goes up to hug Charles, who just holds onto him and is clearly so very close to floating. 

Daniel and Oscar are slightly to the side. Daniel clearly makes a joke that has Oscar visibly offended, and he laughs his head off. Oscar scrubs his hands over his face before rejoining Lando and Charles.

“That was a lovely drive.”

Charles now has his helmet and gloves off, and pulls Oscar in for a quick hug. “You’ll come out with us, right?”

“Of course.” 

They’re swallowed up by the crowds once again. Lando somehow managed to drag Oscar out again. “I’m gonna duck home and get changed, but I’ll be back for the debrief and photos. Tell Andrea I haven’t fucked off.”

Oscar gave him a thumbs up and walked off.

—-

They go off with what seems like the entirety of McLaren and Ferrari piled into the club. It’s a good night when the alcohol flows, even more conversation flows, and Lando gets a lot of blackmail on Charles. Most notably of him dancing.

He gets the gist that Oscar will be attending Le Mans next weekend to watch Arthur. Oscar’s never been the most social of clubbers, that’s what Lando has found in his singular session with him, so he didn’t have the heart to drag Oscar out when he was clearly happy enough to chat with anyone who came to him.

They do leave relatively early though. 

Showering together, Lando does actually allow Oscar to do his curls his time, and hums lowly as Oscar works in product. Lando directs him what to do, and he will do it, savouring the feeling below his fingers.

They fall into bed, and unlike nearly every other night they’ve done this, Lando was the one to fall asleep first, head tucked into Oscar’s chest, their legs tangled together. He gently ran his hands through Lando’s curls. He knew just how tiring Monaco could be from personal experience, let alone a full-length race in an F1 car.

He’s also the first one to wake the next morning, with Lando tucked up into his back, leg hiked up around his waist. His skin glows in the soft light, curl lightening, features soft.

There was one particular thing he wanted to do before Lando got up and he had to leave, so Oscar slipped out of bed as quietly as he could and padded over to his suitcase, which was slightly overflowing. It didn’t take too much rummaging to find his hoodie that Lando had joking returned to him.

He took it and tucked it up with the rest of Lando’s hoodies, before slipping back under the covers and falling back asleep almost instantly, lulled by the dull beating of Lando’s heart.

Chapter Text

X
R9, Spaingasm

Lando gets several videos of Oscar expertly slurring French. As much as Charles may have poked at Oscar that day in Canada, he was nigh on fluent.

At least he’s enjoying his time with Arthur.

Lando spends a whole lot of time doing nothing. He plays a lot of Tarkov with Max, does his normal prep and goes out with Charles and Carlos. Playing padel.

He gets invited to Max’s and Daniel’s to play FIFA. They eat out of the prepared food sent to them by their trainers, and spent half the night lounging around, Jimmy and Sassy finding residence on anyone who was still enough. They still favour Max, who pats them in the middle of the game when they tap him.

Max Verstappen could be about as blunt as a dense brick to the face. He wanted to have his piece on the Lando and his engineer situation. Nearly every driver had their piece on that situation. From Danny to Nico and everyone in between. Max places his drink down, all of them having a break from their intensive gaming session. They were a little plastered as well. “Mate. You just gotta get railed.”

Lando’s too far gone to even deny the fact they had fucked. “What if I were doing the railing?”

Daniel gave him the biggest wide-eyed stare, then burst into laughter, all of them going down into gasping lumps on the couch. “Don’t pretend as though you haven’t gotten it before.” Daniel says it between wheezes.

“I’m serious. Sometimes I’m doing the railing.” Lando’s drunkenly indignant.

Max was the first to recover, picking up his drink again (he was two G&T’s in), and took another sip. He derails the entire conversation. “You confessed yet?”

“You fuckin’ serious?” Lando was still a little breathless.

“Yes.”

“No. I’m not going to do that when we’re so-“ He paused, trying to drag the right word from his head.

“Busy?” Daniel supplied.

“That’ll do.”

Max piped up again. “You gotta stop being busy at some point. I’m not even in your garage and I can see it.”

Lando’s eyes went wide. He’s too drunk. “Shiiiiiiiitt.”

Max handed him another drink and booted up another game. It wasn’t talked about again.

—-

As much as he’d like to go back to the MTC, he’s stuck doing media in Calais. Daniel traded this engagement for the one that he covered in the week leading up to Monaco. Swings and roundabouts. But it does mean that he can’t use the nice sim, and his schedule is off, attending meetings in UTC, not CET.

Oscar just about has a conniption when he sees Lando’s set-up, which is fine for casual sim-racing, but perhaps wouldn’t be the most representative compared the MTC sim. Somehow he feels like there would be a massive data breach if he asked to use Max’s.

He and Oscar still chat, both in large meetings, one-on-one sessions, and in a personal WhatsApp chat, but nobody knew about that. He sends a stray message to Oscar at 2am, when he shouldn’t be up at that time, and is absolutely mortified to get a message back almost immediately.

He hits the FaceTime button. Oscar answers, and Lando’s immediately on him, because there’s the unmistakable night-lighting of the MTC in the background. The warm night-lighting of the areas not supposed to be operational. “Oscar,” he paused. “Why are you still at the MTC?”

“Why are you still up?”

“I’m an adult, at home.”

“I’m an adult as well.”

“It is three in the morning, and you are at work. There is a difference.”

Oscar looks defeated over the phone. “I have work to do?” He says it quietly, unconvincingly. Lando knows he does, but so did every engineer who was currently being normal and sleeping.

“Listen, I know that’s not bullshit, but why are you there?” Lando’s softened his voice a little, trying not to play into the rather hilarious coincidence.

Oscar’s head dropped a little. He mumbled out, “I can’t sleep well right now.”

“Hm?”

“I think I slept with someone for two weeks and now I’m having trouble sleeping by myself.” His voice was even quieter. 

“Me too.”

Lando doesn’t know how it came out, but he missed his big hot water bottle in bed. He missed being able to feel another heartbeat or the gentle sound of even breathing. He missed the sun casting Oscar’s hair golden or how his accent would come back thick, all open vowels and low tone.

Oscar gives him a sleepy smile. Lando offers his advice. “How about you go home, have a shower, and give me a call when you’re ready.”

“That sounds good.”

He hung up. 

It must have nearly been three for Lando when he got a callback. Oscar must have been wearing a shirt for convenience when they were together, because he’s currently topless, pale collarbones shining in the blue light. His face is smushed against the pillow, the phone lying on its side.

Lando neglects to tell Oscar that the shirt that he’s currently in was one that Oscar must’ve left behind. It’s just the right fit for Lando, the way he sometimes wants to drown himself in clothing. He wants to drown in this particular piece because it still has hints of Oscar’s laundry detergent and the citrus notes from him.

They don’t talk at all, content just to have the gentle presence of the other in the room with them. The both of them are asleep within minutes.

—-

At least Spain removed the fuck-arse chicane. Still a boring arse track, but good to see how the car performed. A testing track for a reason.

He barely sees Oscar at all on Thursday. Back-to-back engagements taking their toll, and the track’s previous status as a testing ground keeps the engineers stupidly busy as they attempt to figure out the best run-plans and settings. 

They still get their track-walk in, Oscar referring to that black notebook almost constantly. Lines, him asking about curbs, evolution, series that were racing there that weekend. It takes almost an hour, but it’s probably his favourite hour of the day.

Carlos and Fernando are the princes of this track, and Lando awkwardly endears himself to the crowd through a broken Spanish lesson relieved by Carlos for Lando. Fernando later plonks himself in McLaren’s hospitality, and doesn’t move for a long while. He chats with some staff, and eventually Tom walks in, and the two of them have a long conversation.

Makes sense, Tom was Nando’s old engineer.

What he does not expect is for Oscar Piastri to walk in and throw himself next the two-time world champion, and for him to not react, but instead ruffle Oscar’s hair, seamlessly integrating him into the conversation.

What the fuck.

Lando and Daniel are required to talk at a sponsor event, and they’re still going at it when they come back, almost an hour later. El Padre really got some dad lore to tell, because he’s gesturing along with the story he’s telling. Mark Webber then walks through the door, coming over to tap Fernando on the shoulder.

“We going to go and have dinner?”

“Of course.”

It was then that Mark’s eyes landed on Oscar. And all of a sudden he’s being straight-jacketed by the ex-driver. Oscar doesn’t seem to mind that much, but after a while, he squirmed a little. “Mark. You’re squishing me.”

Mark relinquished his hold, then holding Oscar at arms length. “It’s been too fucking long. You have a phone right?” Oscar had the shame to look sheepish.

“You’re coming to dinner with us.”

Oscar blinked a few times, looked at Tom to try and rescue him, but instead only got a clap on the back with an, “I’ll sort it.” Mark and Nando held hands, Oscar awkwardly standing off to the side.

So that’s how he found out that indeed, early 2010’s photos where Fernando and Mark looked like they were jumping each other was actually because they were. The matching rings are an indication of that. It’s also how he inferred that Oscar knew the both of them. Quite well by the looks of it.

—-

Lando was waiting to hear the telltale footsteps to come down the hallway, the sound of water in the pipes to cease before ducking out of his room and down the bland hall to Oscar’s. He knocked on the door, and after a moment, it was wrenched open, revealing Oscar in a semi-dressed state. He wrestled the shirt over his torso, and Lando almost wanted to rip it back off to count the moles.

He lent against the wall. “How was dinner?”

Oscar was knelt next to his suitcase organising (a word Lando used lightly) his clothes. He nodded a little. “Dinner was nice.”

Lando squirmed a little, but asked the question that had been stewing since that afternoon. “How do you know Nando and Mark?”

The Australian froze, seemingly having to think. He was still faced away from Lando, folding up the formal clothing that he brought to every round. “The Australian Motorsport community is pretty small. Like I know some of the Ferrari guys because of one mechanic.” He paused, and when Lando didn’t say anything, wanting more explanation, he continued. “I raced RC cars as a kid, and well, I was pretty good at it. You make friends with people across every discipline.”

“That’s how you know Jack and Liam?” Everything started to fall into place a little more.

“I guess, yeah.” Oscar finally turned around and flopped onto the couch. Lando joined him.

“You were good at racing?” Lando dropped his voice, slowly starting his effort to box Oscar into the pillows, straddling his thighs. He slowly dipped his head down to press kisses to the junction of Oscar’s neck.

“I was. Yeah.” He tipped his head up, allowing Lando better access.

The next morning, Lando had to put his athletics to good use to prevent Jon from finding him naked in his engineer’s hotel room.

—-

TRANSCRIPT
F1 
S2024, EP54, Spain Practice 1

“McLaren is looking very happy with this pace.” The broadcast switches to the pitwall. All the engineers have their eyes on the data coming through. Norris goes purple first sector, Piastri has a slight quirk to his mouth.

“Norris’ engineer seems impressed with this. You know, Piastri has impressed around here before, of course with-“ Crofty’s commentary get’s cut off with a rather smooth interjection from Karun.

“Well any engineer is going to enjoy coming here. It’s a testing track. McLaren are doing an excellent job, we even saw them make gains before their upgrades, and that comes down to no small part on those trackside engineers.”

“It does seem like they are using this as an opportunity to test everything.”

The broadcast cuts to the final sector, following the papaya car. The graphics show purple, purple, green. “And that is a mighty lap from Norris. That’s going to be a hard task to beat.”

—-

FP2 goes nicely for him, Oscar is still insistent on more improvements. Right now it’s probably going to be a 6 way battle for pole, because during the debrief, Daniel was tearing out his hair trying to explain just how utterly shit the car was for him.

It leaves a couple of unknown questions. Clearly the MCL liked a smoother line around here. Rob and the army of people left in the room were throwing around ideas like hot potatoes trying to fix the problem.

The debrief ended, Daniel and Lando going off to have their own chat. Daniel regarded to Lando, “I mean, I can have a shit weekend, but I know I’m not that shit consistently.”

Lando huffed. Sometimes you just had an off weekend. It was particularly crushing when your teammate did well.

—-

Lando’s scrolling on his phone ahead of FP3. He was the most consistent runner yesterday, always topping or within a tenth. Oscar has taken his usual perch, gaining Lando’s opinion on what the car felt like through every corner. There’s a couple of data markers that he clarified. Lando watches the swoop of the fringe as he leans forward, the quick flick of his fingers as he notes down Lando’s words.

A whooping sound floods the space. Lando’s almost instantly up and off, pausing at the door for Oscar to follow. Oscar’s taking his time though. He gives the alarm an offended look, then one that’s almost stubborn when it doesn’t shut up from the first. Lando’s genuinely concerned that he’s not going to budge, but Oscar and slams his laptop closed with a frightening amount of power and stalks through the now slightly hazy building, letting Lando go first.

And yeah, the hospitality building is on fire. Oscar seems slightly entranced by the flames coming out somewhere near the electrics of the building. That fucking engineer in him sometimes needed to be put down. 

He seemed utterly unfazed by the whole episode. Lando’s missing his shoes and literally everything he needed to prepare. He’s a little more fazed. 

Other teams are nice enough to share. Daniel, of course, ends up going to Redbull. They have no chance of getting him to do anything now.

Oscar and all the staff who generally held out on going into the garage left, and Lando and Kim found themselves in with George. 

Because of course it had to be George.

So warm-up became competitive. Who had the better reflexes? George. Barely. Who could turn themselves into a pretzel? Lando only suggested that to, a) win, and b) maybe make him pull something.

For a lanky giraffe, George gave it a good crack, much to the absolute horror of his trainer. Lando still wins that one by some margin though. They sit down together, Lando still wondering if he’s allowed to go back and get his shoes.

George gives himself one final stretch. “How are things going with you and your… engineer?”

Lando slaps him in the arm. Not hard. “Who told you about that?”

“Lando. I have eyes. I can see.”

Lando has to bite his tongue to prevent himself from saying, “clearly you’re blind around corners.” He doesn’t, because that would be mean, and it’s not like FP3 has any really effect on the weekend. So instead he just groans.

“Very insightful mate.”

“Insightful yourself. How are things with Alex?”

George turned a bright shade of red. Then he composed himself yet again. The absolute bitch. “But seriously.”

Lando felt a small smile form. “It’s good. Really good.”

George seemed a little more relaxed at the admission. “That’s good.” He paused shifting a little, trying to figure out how he could say his next thing. “I just.” He paused again. “Be careful. I don’t know.” George ran a hand through his hair. “He seems like the type of person who could go missing very quickly.”

—-

It was definitely a three way fight for pole. Plus Max of course. He wasn’t quite aware of what Checo was off doing. He feels good about today. The car is happy, his garage is happy, and he’s going to be fucking ecstatic if he goes home with a tyre.

It’s easy to get through to Q3. He doesn’t even think he had to finish his final laps in any session. Oscar’s voice always happily informing him of “Box, you’re safe.”

A good qualifying lap is always a religious experience. The car working with you, going where it has to be. It’s brilliant. The only aim is speed. Nothing else to worry about. If anyone did anything wrong, it was on them. His chest is heaving when he sees the checkered flag. Session ended.

He’s raising his finger to the radio button to ask, it must have been good though, he can feel a certainty thrumming through him. He doesn’t even hit that. There’s cheering in the background, which, that must be pretty good. “P1 Lando! That’s P1. Congratulations!”

That’s amongst the happiest he’s heard Oscar. “Fuck yeah!”

Being the car in the middle of the boards is never going to get old. The interviewers are very complimentary of his efforts, and, he’s blushing, isn’t he?

As soon as media is done, Oscar is at his arm.

“You choose what we do tonight baby.” 

He can’t blame the flaming blush on being straight out of the car.

—-

Oscar is gentle with him in the morning. And Lando’s come to the realisation that asking to get railed in the middle of a race weekend was not a good idea. Oscar agreed.

Their routine is good. The chats on the grid, the radio checks. It comes and goes, Oscar ensuring that everything is as good as it can be for Lando. He’s guided through the formation lap by the same one that guided him through last night. Nothing could go wrong now. He’s on pole.

It’s been 3 years since he’s seen this. Free air, on the proper side of the track. 3 years since he’s had the front row seats to the red lights.

And it all goes to absolute and utter shit.

There’s a little too much wheelspin, so he has to deal with Verstappen no, but Verstappen has the inside line, so he has to deal with that, and fucking Russell, the first corner merchant, sweeps through the line he should’ve been on and out into the front. P3 by T2. Good job Lando.

—-

The worst thing about running in, what was it right now, P4? He’s just pitted and the car feels fucking excellent. But no, he’s not in fully in clean air because the pit windows didn’t line up, and now he’s stuck behind Russell.

So he can’t use all of this excellent feeling car to his advantage, and he’s starting to get a little messy. Daniel must have this experience. Both in Jeddah and the countless other times he’s been blocked by a Mercedes rear wing. Lando had watched that Top Gear interview as an up and coming racer.

But eventually. Finally, he gets a good run out and the DRS launches him towards it. By T3, he’s in P3. The boards to the sides are simply a colourful blur.

“3.3 to Verstappen. He’s complaining of rear graining. You got this.”

“How far to first?”

“4.9 to Alonso. Worry about Verstappen first. 10 laps to go.”

Alonso? How the fuck did he drag a tractor to P1? Did he take some shortcuts or something? Perhaps over some crops?

His dash tells him 6 laps when Lando finally gets the DRS beep. Nothing is even going to compare to the rush. 4 laps, and he’s past.

“1.4 to Alonso. 3 laps to go.”

He can see that fucking tractor. Not a car, a tractor, as it flees across the finish line.

“And it’s been 11 years since Alonso has seen the checkered flag. At this circuit, in front of his home crowd, he will see the flag first once again. In the first win for Aston Martin, the rookie will take the checkered flag, Fernando Alonso wins the Spanish Grand Prix!”

He can hear the roar over the engine of the car. And it won’t stop. It doesn’t stop. He can barely hear Oscar over the din. “That’s P2. Great job today.”

Lando doesn’t respond. 

He pulls up behind the green car, a Redbull on the other side. And, oh right, Fernando and Mark have just outed themselves on international television. They share a chaste kiss and a hug before El Padre jumps onto the top of his car, channels his Telephonica days, and does a classic celebration. He then launches himself at the mechanics with the grace of a 20-something year old.

Lando walks over to his little box, fiddling with gloves and helmets and HANS devices. Apart from Oscar, he can barely see anybody in papaya, though that might have something to do with the sea of ocean green in front of him.

Oscar’s there as well, watching the scene with a wide smile on his face as he shares a few words with Mark. Nando finally gets lowered to the ground (on the right side of the barriers for the first time) he comes over to them, gives Oscar a hug that has him stumbling when he’s released and instantly goes back to talking with Mark.

Lando barely process what Max is saying to him before he’s dragged away for his interview.

Oscar finally comes over to him. Rubs a soothing circle into his back, monotonous, but it burns, because Oscar shouldn’t be stuck with a driver who can’t get off the line first. An engineer who was willing to be at work all hours of the night, unrelentingly fixing every little thing he could. He shouldn’t be stuck with Lando as a driver. Oscar shouldn’t be putting his time into a person who sometimes felt like he would unravel at the seams, spilling everything out for the world to see.

Lando gives him a sad smile. Oscar shoots back a look full of such adoration that almost has Lando reeling back. He doesn’t deserve his place here, in a car, least of all the hand on his back.

He’s being dragged away for an interview he desperately doesn’t want to do. 

Oscar caught his wrist and pulled. Max can wait another 10 seconds. He leaned up close to Lando and whispered “You deserve to be up there as much as anyone else. You’re allowed to fight from the front.”

He went off to his interview.

—-

There’s a lot of words thrown around during the debrief. 

Clutch procedure.
Wheelspin.
Operating windows.
Outlaps.
Launch control.
Throttle programs.
Engine modes.

A lot of them thrown around by Oscar. The clipped words with nothing but pure logic and reasoning thrumming behind it. Nothing is said about lines, defence or attack. Lando didn’t need to lay his heart out on the table to be observed. Not the doubt or fear or the fact that he lost out for the team today. When someone starts to talk about the start, his engineer would lightly interject, perfectly steering the conversation away.

He’s never been more grateful for it in his life.

Chapter Text

XI

R10, Austria

Oscar wasn’t pushing to drive from Spain to Austria (17 hours), but he still had a small complaint about the ‘logistics’ of a season. Because wouldn’t it make too much sense to pair Zandvoort and Spa, or Imola, Monza and Monaco? Engineers did seemingly have an innate desire for efficiency. Oscar flew with the rest of the team back to England. Lando played poker on Air Max. When Daniel joking suggested to the party (Charles, Carlos, Max and himself) to play strip poker, they somehow were hauled onto the train.

He’s fucking horrendous at poker. See: Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri play Poker!

Charles made a bet on all his clothes that, if he lost, he’d be left stark, and if he won, he’d get to choose who would be stuck with nothing.

He lost the round.

Oscar would’ve been smart enough to start with betting socks. He’d would’ve only lost one.

—-

The majority of the trackside team floods in on a Wednesday morning. Jon drags Lando on a hike instead. The mountains have some good trails around, and the views are stunning. He wished he had the forethought to bring a camera.

He’s back on a Thursday. The first thing, the track walk.

Oscar has got that black book out again. It’s open further in and Lando can see some numbers and diagrams dotting the page. The numbers look oddly like lap times, but surely they can’t be, because they were about 15 seconds slower than what they should be. Lower categories type slower.

He’s gesturing to lines with his hands, making movements that Lando is trying to interpret, but personally, he’s having trouble trying to focus. He desperately had to hide the scissors from Oscar, because the way the wind is ruffling his hair right now makes him want to sink his hands into the volume. Play with it. Daniel side-eyes him from his current conversation with Tom and Hiroshi.

“Get a room.” Daniel mouthed.

“Me? I’ll get a room next to yours.” It’s mouthed back, and they gave each other stupid looks until Tom raised his eyebrows and cleared his throat.

Lando turned his attention back to Oscar. “What’s your favourite track? Mine is Silverstone.”

Oscar’s head snapped up towards him, clearly interrupted from thought. “Silverstone and Suzuka are really cool from an engineering perspective. Australia is home. Obviously.” There was a pause, and he seemingly had to take a second. “Spa is my favourite track, but I think this is my favourite scenery wise.” Oscar was currently eyeballing the distance between the track limit and the edge of the gravel pit.

“Why here?” Lando’s looking up, trying to plot a course through the sector from their vantage point.

Oscar gestured around, beyond the track. “Positively ripe country for musicals, isn’t it?”

He blinked a couple of times. Oscar knew about musicals. It seemed to be completely at odds with literally everything else about him. Then again, he had once admitted that he had comprehensive knowledge of K-Pop.

“The hills are alive with-“ Holy shit. First time he had heard Oscar Piastri sing. And he had quite a nice voice as well.

There was a loud sound that sounded like a Bluetooth connecting to a speaker. Some fans had started to get seated for the F3 practice. It started to blast its music immediately.

“TU TU DU DU, MAX VERSTAPPEN.”

Oscar let out a short laugh. He deadpanned, “The hills are alive with Max Verstappen.” He pulls out his phone and takes a photo of the curb.

Lando half expects the Redbull contingent to come flying down the track speeding on scooter.

—-

Friday marked the start of the competitive weekend.

Oscar has got a pair of headphones on as he taps away. His briefcase is propped against his thigh. The engineers always come earlier than the drivers. He doesn’t notice as Lando slips in opposite to him. “What are you watching?”

Oscar startled a little and shifted a side off his head. Lando repeated his question. “The news.” He turned his laptop around. In the corner, true to his words, a clear broadcast was playing. It’s not the white and red of the BBC. It’s a blue and black. Drawn out vowels and low tone. It’s reporting on the weather.

And it’s going to be a foggy morning in Canberra - top of 9 on Sunday , not going to be getting much warmer there for the week. Onto Melbourne now. Early showers, should clear up by the afternoon. 13 looking like the highest you’re going to get.

“You watching the -“ He doesn’t know what it’s called.

“ABC?” Oscar offered

“Yeah. That?”

Oscar nodded. Lando must admit, it was a little strange. “Why?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Got into a habit?” He’s a little defensive, but he continued anyway, like he had to explain his actions. “Like, during COVID, I got stuck in student accommodation cause I couldn’t get back to Melbourne - it was a bit of a clusterfuck - but because Spook’s parents were overseas, she offered for me to use like, a wing of the house -“

“A wing of the house?”

“It was a 5 bedroom 3 bathroom for a 3 person household. Anyway.” He sped up for that. “They had a wing of the house and because she knew me she was all good with it. I don’t know, she’d have it on for some noise around the place.” He stopped. “I dunno. It’s nice to know what’s going on. Maybe I use it for the same reason.”

If Lando had a really good look, he’s pretty sure he’d be able to properly get a  reading on Oscar. And it was there, in the slightly guarded and dull eyes, the blueish tinge to his under eyes, the closed posture. “Go and call someone. Your work is going to be here when you get back.”

Oscar’s eyebrows furrowed. “No, I can’t just -“

He shuffled closer to Oscar, gently resting their heads together across the table. Lando was firm. “You can. You’re not going to do anyone any favours if you’re burnt out.”

Oscar pulled back. “You confuse me Norris.” He still gently closed the computer and slid out of the area.

Lando stole the laptop and brought up some tracers to review from last year. Hopefully he wouldn’t flip the bird on the car this year. About 10 minutes later, Oscar flopped into the opposite seat. “I hate you.” He theatrically shivered. “Making me talk to people. Ghastly.”

His eyes seemed to have gained a little sparkle.

—-

McLaren has got a new front wing. Not sure why they insist on introducing parts on a sprint weekend, but maybe it holds a little luck for them now. Miami had been far from a disaster class.

Except for ninth in SQ, or the DNF, or Daniel’s 13th place. Ok, maybe the point doesn’t perfectly stand. He still got a victory out of it. He out drove the Redbull.

It leaves him with fluro green paint shedding off the car as Oscar makes him jump through the hoops of testing. A continuous speed test. Long running on the mediums. By the time he’s allowed to get to his actual prep, the short track is full and he gets mildly impeded a couple of times.

His time is pretty shit, and the field is compacted within an inch of it’s life. He’s concerned what this means for the two qualifyings of the weekend, and if the aero department screwed the wing. Oscar doesn’t seem concerned because, “Daniel came 2nd.”

“The wing is behaving as expected. And now you have spikes on it too.”

—-

Oscar was already in the garage when he slipped in.

“I don’t expect track limits be so much of an issue, but turn 7 seemed to have it’s gravel pit a little further out, so be careful there. Also final turn. Make sure no snaps there.” Oscar informs him of his opinion of the track, head buried in his phone. Lando’s half worried he’s addicted to the thing. He knows it’s just WhatsApp. All the staff were in like, 100 groups contributing to anything and everything. “You’ll be all good. Car’s fast.”

Bullshit. “I came 13th in FP1.”

Oscar waved him off. “Daniel came second. Potato potato. You’re driving the same car.”

One way to raise a man’s confidence.

—-

“Box. You’re safe.” Oscar’s voice sings through his head.

It has to be the most glorious thing you can heard as a driver.

SQ1, SQ2. All the cars are working hard today. The spread is tiny. No room for mistakes.

Oscar must have gotten the call from the strategists, because his hand flips to a go gesture which had Lando peeling down the pit lane to wait in traffic. Very fun.

There’s not much time to put in a lap, hoping someone is kind enough to give you a tow. It’s a lovely and terrifying circuit to drive, with the circuit twisting up and down hills, the elevation swooping. It’s more roller coaster than driving a car.

He crossed the line with barely any time left and everyone else got out of his way as he zipped around. Careful at T7. The gravel is a constant reminder of what not to do. Where not to go. True to Oscar’s word, the car does feel good. The checkered flag greets him the next time around.

Oscar’s voice announces his position. “That is P2. We can work with that.” He can hear the vague smile in his voice. Oscar always preferred the races to quali.

“Awesome.”

—-

Oscar was very clear in his instructions. “The only way you are going to get by Max is doing it as early as you can. You should be ok if you get into free air.”

Lando nodded. Oscar left the grid, earlier than normal whilst Lando shrugged on his race suit and fiddled with his earpieces. He could do something with this today. He wiggled into the cockpit. “Radio check.”

“That’s my line.” Oscar voice had a fun ring in it.

“Loud and clear my dear.”

“Everyone is on mediums. Do your own formation lap.” He’s joking, Lando knows.

He makes a loud sound of offence. “You wouldn’t.”

There’s a long time with nothing said. The lights go out. Still nothing. “Lift into 2.”

“I knew you would do it for me.”

“Just doing it for the job mate.”

The start gets aborted due to some photographers ignoring WHS. Oscar gives a different speech this time.

—-

Fucking rookie move. Impressively shit. Overtake for the lead and invite two cars through the door. He’s lost quite easy points. Max sailed up the road. It doesn’t bode well for the rest of the weekend. And Daniel.

And yes, he knows he’s entitled to overtake Lando, but geez, no need to embarrass him. 10 laps, with DRS and he wasn’t able to make a dent. And yes, he had two strikes, and yes, he knew that throwing it into every corner wasn’t going to make a scrap of difference, and really hurt him in the end but god. He wants to scream.

Lando smiles for the photos, says the right things during interviews, gives his feeling on set-up and really wants to sleep.

He’s a bit done, and there’s still quali.

—-

He’s cooled off from the sprint. Literally. Jon found himself preparing an ice bath. Figuratively as well.

Oscar pulled him aside after the debrief. A flood of personnel had just left the meeting room, presumably working hard to convert his and Daniel’s advice into actual gains. Oscar should probably be going off as well.

He instead holds out his arms, gesturing for Lando to slot into them. That was new, especially at work. Lando walked straight in them, resting his face on Oscar’s shoulder. He smelt nice. The hug was nice. It was needed.

“I was a little stupid out there, wasn’t I?” Lando said it into Oscar’s shoulder.

Oscar huffed a little, rubbing a circle into his back. “You were, yeah.” He squeezed a little tighter, holding him at arms length. “But you know what not to do next time.”

And that was precisely what he liked about Oscar. He made his mistakes but always had something to take out of it. Always improved. Never tried to make the same mistake twice. Lando appreciated it.

—-

Q1 and Q2 are always the most nerve racking. You’ve always got something to loose if you fuck them up. Bin it? You’re probably out. Deleted lap? Better hope you had a good banker. Luckily he sails through them. Q3 is where you had everything to play with. Nothing to loose but your car.

If his eyes dart up to the bench he can see Oscar’s mouth moving. His first mechanic, Leo stands just outside the garage. Something is said, and the beast roars to life below him. Oscar’s hand flies up, a restraining gesture.

And it stays there. The screens are lifted, people wait to present his tyres to the world. Oscar’s hand twists to a thumbs up, and Leo’s gesturing him to come out, and finally he’s allowed to floor it.

Do what he’s supposed to do.

—-

His heart is hammering when he passes under the checkered flag. “You’re P2. Lovely work out there.” Oscar does seem genuinely impressed by the effort, but there’s a tiny amount of disappointment. It’s the second front row he’s gotten this weekend.

“Where’s Daniel?”

“P7.” The radio fell silent, leaving Lando to process it. “Got done by track limits.”

Shit. That might make his job harder. Both of them. No one to help up the front, and Daniel will have to divebomb to oblivion to make up for the sting.

“What was the delta?”

There was a long pause. There must have been a little interference, because there was the slight bass from a song. “Point five eight two.” There’s a sigh in Oscar’s voice. They were practically locked in with the set-up they had.

“The hills are indeed alive with Max Verstappen.”

Yeah. They were fucked.

—-

Oscar’s on the grid with him longer this time. Lando watches as he does a couple of laps, still avoidant of the Alpine cars, snooping around at tyres and set-ups.

“Same advice as yesterday. Get in front of Max as soon as you can. Don’t worry about George or Carlos - they don’t have the pace.” He stands just off to the side as  Lando joins them before the national anthem, covering them both with an umbrella. “You’ll be able to hold onto it, if you can get into free air.”

Oscar hands the umbrella fully to Lando. “Go up there, look pretty, then win this thing.”

Lando has an impressive blush as he runs through last preparations, which has Jon rolling his eyes. Oscar must’ve had a sixth sense for when his radio went live, because he instantly jumps onto it. “Radio check.”

“I’m not going to talk to you.” Lando responds petulantly.

“That’s good.” Oscar says sarcastically. “Lucky for you, you’ll be driving the car today.” His tones shift to something professional. “Though seriously, loud and clear?”

“Loud and clear.”

—-

“Conserve through sector 2. We don’t want to be caught out by a safety car.” The radio must be a little unsteady. There was a lot of static. “Go — Red C-4, Verstappen -26.7, Russell +15.3.”

This is pretty fucking boring. There’s nothing to do but navigate through a couple of backmarkers. Doesn’t even matter if he fucks that, he’s got plenty of time.

Not that he’s one to give up. It’s just unrealistic. “Verstappen pitting now.” Lando continues to do what he needs to do, snaking around and around. It really is pretty track. He’s careful not to let the car drift coming out of the final corner. He’s on two strikes.

Halfway down the straight, something navy flashes out of the pits. Probably Perez. He flicks his eyes down to the dash, blinking. That’s one thing that’s terrifying. In the moment it takes him to blink, he’s lost 80 metres. VER +1.1.

He’s about to radio back , “What the fuck is wrong with my dash?” Oscar cuts through on the next straight, thank you, don’t interrupt his braking. “Mode A-6. Verstappen +1.0. Fucking go for it.”

There we go.

—-

Lando knows he’s desperate. He looks desperate to literally anybody. Casual viewers, hardcore fans, the telemetry. Oscar has unchained him and let loose. No having to save for a safety car, the win was right in front of him.

The mistakes from the both of them pile up. Max moving under breaking. Lando straying where he shouldn’t go. He’d tuned out Oscar’s calming voice, probably talking about something useful. It only came on the straights but fuck.

Then it all goes to shit.

He collides with Verstappen as he cuts across the front of him in the corner. The car shudders from the impact and there’s definitely wing damage, but he can see that the #1 has a puncture. He’s come out best.

Lando drives around the front of Verstappen’s car before getting shunted forwards by a hit from the back. He checks his mirrors and that’s his back left gone.

They both rejoin the track, and of course Verstappen is now forcing him off the track into the grass. There’s a reason he’s got more world titles than Lando has wins.

—-

The normally green things on Oscar’s screen switch turn to amber, then red, and there’s about 5 people in his ear at once. There’s damage. Not race ending, not yet.

He just needs a second to blink.

—-

There’s a rhythmic thumping of something as he starts to go back to the pits. His heart is pounding much faster than that. It’s a puncture at best . Oscar’s voice is now more insistent. “Lando. You need to slow down. There is significant damage.”

The voice in his ear only spurs him to speed up. It’s almost painful how the car is travelling, the floor bouncing. He’s slowly loosing the back end of the car, the entire thing sliding across the tarmac. It’s horrible. He’s only really got two people to blame at the moment. “I want to retire this fucking thing.”

Oscar’s voice is soft, talking to a wounded animal. It could be him or the car. “Box to retire.”

—-

He’s vibrating. Probably because the car is, but that’s beside the point. He’s fucked up, Max has fucked up, and Lando feels like he’s a wee bit shit at his job.

He ripped himself out of the car, and the only thing that was keeping him from storming out of the garage was that Daniel was going on a rampage. A one-handed manoeuvre against Carlos had the entire garage lowly whistling.

Jon’s handing him a bottle and something to eat. He really doesn’t want to eat, but he forces it down anyway.

Then he’s being dragged away to do media. Still absolutely shot with adrenaline, he says a lot of things he shouldn’t (Anya looked like she was having a heart attack the entire time). He’d have to apologise to her later.

The only pause he has to the absolute flurry of questions levelled at him was when the commentary got a bit louder. An overtake.

Daniel feigned an overtake, forcing George onto a weird line and comprised the entirety of sector 2. One shit exit from the Merc, Daniel gaining DRS later, and the papaya car reclaimed what would have been his if the track limits call hadn’t been made.

The race isn’t quite over yet, but George hasn’t got enough left to attack back. Max walks into the pen, face downturned, and takes a post next to Lando. He’s DNF’ed as well. The journalist releases him, and by moment he’s out of the media pen, he feels himself unraveling.

It hurts. Of course a DNF hurts when he mere centimetres away from winning. But there’s the additional hurt. He’s tired, still a little sick, and the 3-odd kilometres of additional jostling aches. It’s all a bit shit, really.

Most of the crew must be crowded around park fermé by now. A low cheer rumbled through the paddock. Jon was jogging to keep up with him fleeing to his drivers room.

He burst through the door and flopped down onto the couch. Normally this would be a good idea, and for the majority of this case it was. Except for his face. It hit something, eliciting a soft ‘oof.’ It sounded awfully similar to Oscar.

Lando lifted his head with a groan. It was definitely Oscar. He’d clearly hitched his laptop out of the way to prevent Lando from smashing his head on it. “Max got a 10 second converted into a 5-place.”

“Good.”

Oscar was soft and warm, so Lando lowered his head back down. There was a comforting hand running through his flattened curls. “Just thought you’d want to know. I’ll see you in debrief, ok?”

Lando nodded into his stomach, and Oscar slowly disengaged, careful not to jostle him too much. He heard some low murmurs from the door between Jon and Oscar. He wanted to scream. He instead chucked the broadcast on. George, Carlos, and Daniel were all grimacing at the incident.

“That one was rough, any idea who they pinned it on?” Daniel sat back in the chair, scrutinising the scene.

“It’d have to be Max. It does look like an illegal move there.” George was the first to answer.

Those three made quite the bunch, he would admit. The rules encyclopaedia, the overtaking textbook and the strategy maestro.

—-

As much as Lando hated the stinging of champagne in his eyes, he’d rather have that than the stretch of sore muscles, further into his routine because they started early. It fucking hurts, and he wants to curl up in a ball and never move again. He doesn’t want Jon’s calming voice. He didn’t deserve Oscar’s words, Lando’s snippiness towards him. But if he doesn’t move, he can’t move forward. He can’t go home.

The team could go home. He could go home.

There’s the strains of the same anthem he had to endure almost three years ago. The shots linger on Danny. A couple cut to others in the crowd. A Ferrari mechanic, head tipped up to the sky, hands clasped behind his back. A Mercedes developer with a slight smile playing at his lips. Oscar, his mouth moving slightly, mouthing words.

Small fish in a big ocean.

His own, McLaren’s plays. Hordes of personnel start singing. It sounds like Miami. The few faces from earlier are lost amongst the crowd.

The four on the podium drowned each other in the sparkling alcohol, Daniel eventually fulfilling his tradition.

—-

They were walking through the airport. Straight to the UK. Straight home. “It’s good to go home.” He nudged Oscar. “Right? Then we get a break.” Lando was in high spirits. He could always look forward to next weekend.

There was an ever so slight tension that overtook Oscar as he said it. Lando disregarded it until they sat down, facing Oscar, him slipping his little red passport into a dedicated pocket.

He reached across the isle, grasping one of Oscar’s small hands in his, gently rubbing over the knuckles in a soothing motion. Oscar still hadn’t said anything, averting his eyes a little. “It’s not home for you, is it?” He’s quiet.

Oscar turned away a little. “I don’t really know.” His voice was steady, but it still told of a fleeting dream pursued to the other side of the world. The blue passport, embossed with a golden coat of arms grasped in his hand was testimony to that. At the end of a race stint, Oscar never went home. He went halfway across the world from it. It was the dream that didn’t even leave him with the same stars at night.

Chapter Text

XII
R11, Great Britain, Part 1

Oscar didn’t come in until about midday on the Tuesday. Lando’s schedule didn’t allow him to go and see the man until about 2 when they were debriefing about the incident. So Lando had to go do a gym session just after he’d seen Oscar walk in through a side entrance, hair particularly mussed, briefcase slung over his shoulder and a phone clamped between his ear and shoulder as he scanned himself in. Still didn’t use a normal lanyard.

He likes the workout, but that’s only because of the stupid endorphins. He’s pretty sure Jon has yapped about endorphins before. In reality, he feels shit whilst doing it, and will probably feel shit tomorrow, but that doesn’t matter, he doesn’t need to drive a car tomorrow anyway.

Finally, finally, he can go. Lando walks upstairs quietly making his way past the piles of engineers slowly making their ways through the mounds of data. Oscar stood up when Lando slipped into his office, sliding the door back into place.

He sarcastically offered a hand. They had never been this formal. “Lando Norris, congratulations on using medieval tactics to mortally wound an opponent.”

He then realised why they had never done a proper handshake. Oscar’s hands were definitely on the smaller side, with slender fingers. Lando’s tended towards the freakishly large bear paws category. They settled for Oscar grasping his thumb instead, which almost left them in stitches before their meeting had properly begun.

They took their usual seats. Lando sprawled on of the chairs facing Oscar’s desk, Oscar with his socked feet up on the desk. “You think I should go back to uni over summer? I reckon I could get four modules done in two weeks.”

That’s how Oscar opened the meeting. “Excuse me?”

“I’m four modules off having a double major in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering.” He shifted in his seat, crossing his legs at the ankles. “I mean, it’s majority fluid mechanics. I can do that shit in my sleep. Absolutely hated doing thermodynamics though.”

“Are you sure you can do four modules in 2 weeks?” Lando knows barely anything about uni, but if Ollie’s final week was anything to go by, he wasn’t that hopeful. Let alone trying to do engineering.

“Absolutely not. But you have got to set goals somehow.”

After their little sidetracking, they finally transition into talking about the qualifying sessions. That goes pretty well. Oscar was very happy with what he had produced. It wasn’t necessarily a case of him being slow, it was a case of Max being too fast.

Then they talk about the dreaded sprint. Oscar’s instructions, Lando’s partial ignorance of those instructions and the killing of his tyres whilst in DRS. And the ever more dreaded overtake. Oscar actually knows what he’s talking about, clearly. He knows exactly how Lando left the door open, Max slipping back through. What he would’ve done to Max and Daniel, and exactly what Daniel did to him. It’s slightly fascinating.

Will was quite knowledgeable when it came to things like racecraft and strategy, but Oscar was on a different level. He knew exactly what was being done.

Then came the race. “You know, tyre management, lines, pace, all very good. Lovely job.” He checked them off with his fingers, having already gone through a lot of the data during the initial debrief, and more would be looked at at a larger one tomorrow, when there were more staff on hand.

He preened at the compliments, but knew there was a ‘but.’

And here it came. Oscar’s legs came off the desk and he brought himself towards it, leaning onto it with his elbows. “Listen. I know I said to you that you’re the driver, so whatever you say goes, but don’t do that again.”

Lando sat there, eyebrows furrowed. “Don’t do what again? Collide with Max? Cause you know I can’t guarantee that.”

Oscar let out a sigh and let his head fall into his hands. He was pretty quiet, an almost fond exasperation bled through his tone. “Not that. It was just that if you slowed down a little, you would have been on for a fifth place. Instead, you felt like shit after and it felt like I had to watch a child flatline.”

That’s a little graphic.

—-

Wednesday comes with a brief instead. What the fuck we doing in Silverstone?

Tyres, track condition, the fact that they’d have 6 rookies running around during FP1. And the weather.

It’s not looking good.

They’re talking about the laps they got out of the sim, and when the crossover point should be. Oscar and Tom have got pieces of paper, scrawling out figure after figure. There’s not a calculator in sight.

“I don’t think I’ve done this type of math since 5th grade. You have to move the decimal place, right?” Oscar stared at the piece of paper, dumbfounded. His result couldn’t be a lap of 10 minutes. Tom peaked over at the sheet. His eyes narrowed.

“You don’t move it.”

“Ah.” Oscar started again, moving with terrifying speed. “That look right?” His result for 70% fuel spat out a crossover time of 1:23.814.

Tom scrutinised the work again. “Looks good enough.” He shook his head. “Why didn’t we put this through a computer?”

“Felt like we needed to test our inner mathematicians?” Oscar’s voice has that adorable lilt towards the end of sentences.

“I hated math.” Tom sounds forlorn.

“Me too.” 

They both rejoined the meeting with their findings. 110% of a dry laptime was often seen as the usual crossover from slicks to inters. “I reckon we could go to about 105 if it was really gonna bucket.” Daniel was the one to speak up. “The car was fucking amazing in Canada on them. We were easily the fastest.”

Lando raised a hand. “I second that. If there’s enough water not to damage them I think we could afford to go a little early.” He then added, as though reminding the team of the clusterfuck of Canada. “We were absolutely the best on those tyres. We just have to make sure we get them on and off at the right time.”

Rob nodded, and the tyre guys were already noting the comments. Oscar and Tom were already chatting about minor set-up alterations for wet weather.

All together, the team were pretty confident in the car this weekend. It should be fast, they should be fast.

Imagine the scenes of a home victory.

—-

Lando’s early on the Thursday, because he has about a billion things to do.

Home races and all that.

Whenever he’s here, trying to deal with everything he’s got, even spread out across three drivers, it makes him appreciate what Daniel does. The only Australian on the grid dealing with a few thousand less people.

He trudges in from the trenches (the paddock). Someone follows him into the hospitality building and walks past him. 

Natalie is not dressed for the weather. She’s in pair of loose fitting shorts and a short woollen coat over short sleeves. But she’s come from the depths of inland Australian winters, which, according to Oscar, were surprisingly cold.

“How’s my favourite Mexican?” Natalie’s voice was full of joking sarcasm as she dropped herself next to to the pair of Australians.

Daniel snorted, turning it into a cough to disguise it. Oscar looked back at her flatly. “I didn’t think stuck-up bitches asked the masses questions like that.”

She smiled sweetly at Oscar. “I’m great, thank you for your concern.” He rolls his eyes but still pulls her in for a hug. They sit next to each other, the three of them talking about something.

She finally gets up and goes over the espresso machine, which nobody really knows how to use, but she confidently pulled up and started operated it. Lando wandered over.

She had her hands on a jug, carefully angling it in relation to the wand, watching as the temperature went up. “Hi Lando.”

Fuck. “How are you?”

She turned the steam off and poured the milk into the cups deftly. Like she’d done it a million times before. “Tired. Got in yesterday.”

A gentle swirl and flick had one cup done, and she quickly did the same with the other. Natalie picked them up and transferred them to Oscar and Daniel, the latter groaning a little when he took a sip.

He’d heard a couple of rants from Daniel on how global coffee culture generally wasn’t as good as Australia, and everytime he went to Melbourne he couldn’t help but agree.

She came back over to him. “Congratulations on your first win though. It was a good watch.”

“You watched that?”

“The fuck would I be doing here if I didn’t watch F1? 6am on a Monday morning baby. I was definitely late for a meeting. You want a coffee?”

“Mocha?”

Barely two minutes later, he gets one of the best of his life.

—-

The trackwalk is normal, with the crowd cheering as they go past, engineers inspecting the track, and Oscar with that bloody notebook. Once again, it’s opened to earlier in the pages, and he refers to it when he recommends a line.

Daniel and Lando try to inspect the wet lines. He kind of hopes it rains a little. He’s never had any luck in it, but if they can get it right they could storm to victory.

”I fucking love this track.” Lando says it loud enough to be heard by some in the grandstands, who cheer.

“Spa is my favourite, but Silverstone is a close second.” The crowd lighthearted booed him.

—-

Lando doesn’t really know why the hotel is so cold. But it is. And he can’t sleep.

bob
what’s ur room no????
23:41

oscah
we’re not doing that again.
23:43

bob
im fuckijb cold
i think the ac is broken
23:43

oscah
you kill me
23:44
814
23:46

Lando grabbed his toothbrush, burritos himself in a blanket and takes the stairs down a story. Oscar wrenched the door open as soon as he knocked. His hair is ruffled and it almost looked like he was dragged out of a deep sleep.

There’s the telltale blue light from on the table. He pushed past Oscar to slam his laptop shut. Lando had the curtesy to ensure it was plugged in before flopping onto the bed and wiggling under the covers.

Oscar watched the entire escapade from the doorway. He gently pointed out that, “I was working.”

“At 12? You’ll be more fresh in the morning anyway. Come to bed.” Lando threw out his arms dramatically, bathed in the warm light of the hotel. His arms dropped, and he pouted when Oscar wasn’t right there. He buried himself further under the covers.

But then Oscar got moving, flicking off the lights. 

He plopped onto the mattress, turned away from Lando, curled up a little. Lando instinctively started to gently brush at the base of Oscar’s fringe, the Aussie making soft sound when he’d do it, leaning into the touch.

Oscar shifted again, pressing further into the pillow. His tired words were muffled by it. “I need a cuddle.”

Lando didn’t say anything, but he slung a leg over Oscar’s ankles and dragged him in closer so they were spooning. He continued to run his fingers through the soft hair.

“Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

The silence stretched out. He’s pretty sure that Oscar is asleep when there’s a quiet voice. He thought this is what he heard.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know why I’m back.” He shook a little. “I could’ve left and never looked back. But I love it too much. And here I am, fucking up left, right and centre.”

Back? How could Oscar be back?

Lando’s hand froze. A small bubble of laughter rose through him, erupting. “Darling. None of us have a fucking clue what we’re doing. All of us are fucking it up all the time.” 

He can feel Oscar press back further into him as the shakes slowly subside. His breaths even out and as he gently falls down into sleep. Lando follows him.

—-

He’s well-rested on Friday, waking up with his nose pressed into eucalyptus scented hair. Oscar stretches and rolls over, scrambling to stay on the bed. Lando hauls him back on the mattress, Oscar colliding into him.

Lando pulls him in tighter, their foreheads touching. One last cuddle before they should probably be getting up for the day. “We’re gonna make this a good day, ok?” Lando smiled.

“Yeah. We are.”

—-

FP1 is a little chaotic. There’s six rookies running around, and its raining. The mechanics and engineers aren’t too upset about it given the forecast for Sunday.

He saw Oscar bodily drag Natalie out of electrics, then he saw her go back in and start chatting to Pat (their senior electrical engineer). 

The laps feel good. It’s better than last year. And the inters. The inters feel amazing.

He’s pretty sure he’s set a good lap. It confirmed by Oscar in his ears with a, “You’re the fastest this session.”

He also wrecked a set of softs because, surprise, surprise, a rookie made a mistake. Said mistake was going slow smack-bang in the middle of the racing line. He’s forced off into the grass to avoid raming into the back of the Frenchman.

“No damage. Do not box, pitlane closed. Go to starting grid.”

“Why is the pitlane closed?”

“Daniel’s hydraulics shat themselves. He’s parked in the entrance.”

That’s not good.

—-

The team is very happy with how the car is going, at least, his side of a garage. Daniel’s is currently dissecting an engine after it turned out to be a fuel injector shutting his car down. Lando always watches when the beasts are uncloaked, the aero giving way to the power beneath it.

The engineers are stuck in a debrief until about 30 minutes before the next sessions, their changes coming through at a steady rate. Lando and Daniel are called to give their opinions, and yeah, the car feels good. He gives a soft smile at Oscar as he notes Lando’s comments through on the car behaviour, writing the comments down on one side and what’s doing it on the other. There’s a couple of question marks.

He gets to change helmets for FP2. Lando was just exploding when he had the idea for the gif set helmet, and was just about exploding when he got the seperate helmets, and just about exploded when he put the second one on. He’s grinning like an idiot under here.

The long run pace feels good too, and everyone is happy with a one-two to finish the day.

—-

Liam rocked up in McLaren and dragged Oscar away after the debrief.

Why they sat on the top level of Redbull, and not in VCARB or McLaren, he has no clue. It seemed like a bad idea. But hey, it was Liam. He’s pretty sure they knew of each other before they had even left for Europe as teenagers.

“The car’s gone to shit. I have no clue how it got that bad but it’s gone off a cliff.” Liam mimed a bomb dropping.

“Shit like that happens. I’m sure it’s one part that doesn’t quite fit. If the upgrades don’t work together the car is a bitch to drive.”

“And it’s bringing more understeer into the car which is ridiculous. If we have a chance of surviving with Max, we need fucking oversteer, but no, that’s too easy.” He slammed his head against the seat.

“How are things with you and Lando?” Liam’s only teasing, and he starts laughing when Oscar blushes violently.

“Good. It’s going good. I think he’s happy to be home.” Oscar redirects. “You and Jack?”

“We’re going to Queensland over summer.”

“Huh. Good restaurant in Mooloolaba if you’re in the south. Rice Boi. 10/10.”

They lounged by the pool, as though they was trying to soak in the tepid sunlight bathing the space. “Mate, Silverstone does not treat you nicely. I feel like the higher you climb in this sport, the shitter it gets at Silverstone for you. If you were in F1, there’d be the wildest scenes to keep you from that podium.”

Oscar hung his head back. It probably would happen. “Don’t even remind me of that mess.”

“It’s revenge for the cricket.”

“Do the poms hate us that much?”

“Probably.“

—-

He’s early on Saturday as well, but that’s a for a completely different reason.

Lando managed to talk the Auto arm of McLaren into somehow allowing his engineer take a hypercar out for a spin. They didn’t seem all that concerned. That concerned him a little.

A while before FP3, 20 minutes or so before he has to go and fulfil his fan engagements giving them a spin in a Merc, (they’re providing the cars the weekend) Lando and Oscar find themselves standing at the start of the start of the Silverstone pitlane, their test car parked in front of them.

As far as Oscar knows, he’s getting a hot lap himself.

He stares at Lando when he slips into the passenger seat. The window is down and Lando looks at him expectingly. “Am I even allowed to drive one of these things?”

“You wouldn’t be standing there if you couldn’t. I want to see you drive this.”

Lando could see Oscar process it. Blinking and shaking his head before walking around the rear of the car to seat himself in the drivers seat. His fingers flexed on the wheel has he situated himself in the car, eyeing the controls. 

“So I can just… floor it?”

“Yes. That’s the point you mup-“

Lando hadn’t noticed the gentle flex of fingers around the wheel. Oscar had floored it, the McLaren 750S lighting up around him as he peeled out of the pits. “Holy shit. This is fast.” He murmured as he flew down the straight.

This seemed like it could have been the place where he could’ve told Lando. Spill out his guts whilst flying around in a sports car. Show what he could still do. The engine roared behind him. Lando sat stock still in the seat, swaying with the car. His hands were gripping the seat with such force that veins on his forearms were showing.

His left foot so desperately wants to take its place upon the brake, but as much as Lando looks to be scared witless with Oscar properly behind the wheel, he’s carefully scrutinising him. The slight smile, the way his hands grip the steering wheel slightly lower. He places his foot on the rest and drives the rest of the lap to the tune of, “Fuck. Osc. You gotta slow down. Fuck. How much time did you do in the sim?” 

When they get out, the both of them are shaking. Lando from something akin to fear. Oscar from the adrenaline. Lando folds himself over the top if the car. “Fucking hell. I don’t know if I never want you to drive with me in the car or if I trust you with my entire garage.”

“Preferably the latter.”

—-

Mercedes are back. Because he is in P3. Untouchable until now, he now must contend. Redbull and Ferrari have been nowhere near them, and the latter would be liable to keep one of their drivers on slicks during a hurricane.

The car has felt excellent, so its not a matter for them going backwards. He’s cruising around, doing laps on some tyres from yesterday, experimenting with dry and wet lines.

“It’s kinda lonely out here.” 

Oscar radios back. “Carlos is on track.” There’s mock disdain, but the two had become friends since a flight delay forced them to lay foot to foot on an airport lounge. Weird places, airports.

“I’ll try to catch up with him.”

Oscar made a shocked sound, then leaned into it. “Go go go.”

Lando giggles into the aether, but he does catch up to Carlos. He waves, Carlos flips him off. Such is life.

They love each other though. He did hear the Carlando radio later that day.

—-

The car still feels good. It’s fast. There are now others hunting for the pole, but he’s confident. He wants the roar again. The roar when he jumped Max at the line, the sound overriding everything in the car. 

He can stand on the top step of the podium now, hear his anthem, make the country proud. He can give this to the team, prove they were right for taking him, and prove that the piles of declined offers actually meant something.

The entire time goes like a charm. Q1. It makes him either appreciate just how shit the Redbull is right now, or how much people can struggle alongside the others.

Q2 is fine, they were supposed to get out, obviously. There’s the break between. “You think you can put my wing up a half a click?”

Hr can see Oscar shift on his chair, inputting the change into some horrendously complex system. “We can afford to do that.”

Then he’s out and going. The laps feel good, but he’s not entirely sure if he’s there. “That’s P3. We know what we’re gonna do tomorrow.”

“Who’s in front?”

“P1 George, P2 Lewis.”

“Viva Britannia.” 

—-

By the time he’s left the debrief, nearly all the guests have cleared out. Natalie sits at one if the tables, giving the sky a flat gaze. 

Natalie has the exact type of lanyard that Oscar has. The same design, the same retracter. They’re sitting down in hospitality, Lando reviewing his own data. She almost asleep on the table at her laptop. Despite the fact that her hair looks properly brown, there’s hits of auburn under the lights. There’s a strong wave pattern to through it, clearly cared for.

“How do you get that volume?”

She came to. “What? My hair?” Lando nodded. She continued. “You use a diffuser when you dry you hair after putting in product?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t dry down on your hair, try and get it underneath if you get what I mean.”

“Makes sense.”

They lapse into silence. Lando fidgets a little. He gathers himself to ask the question about the lanyards. “You and Oscar have matching lanyards.”

Her eyes flick down to her bag, where she showed surprise at the black lead hanging out. Natalie tugged it out and placed it on the table. He finally got a good enough look at the pattern. A repetition of the coat of arms.

The pass itself, white with a photo, A-B-C-D printed below. Nothing identifying. It’s slightly terrifying. She slipped it off the table. “I graduate in October. Finish my time and stay with Signals.” She stuffed it back into her bag.

“Did Oscar work in… Signals?”

Natalie huffed out a small laugh. “No, I don’t really know too much about it. I mean, I know he was in development with GWEO for his 4 month stint.” Lando fixed her with a blank stare. “Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance.” She paused, eyes flicking as she tried to remember the other. “He was with broader Defence development for another 8. They really wanted to keep him, but he’d done his time and pissed off to the Motherland.”

She leaned in a little. Lowered her voice. “I’d sell my morals to Lockhead if I could be fucked to do it. I don’t blame him for getting out.” She has the pass out again, threading the retractable lead around her finger. “You sell your soul for decent pay and stable work. And we’re part of the group that get actual satisfaction out of our work. Let alone corporate.”

“It’s sometimes the best work you’re ever going to do. And more often it eats away at you. Oscar got out to do something he really loves.”

Lando listened to the entire thing in a sharp silence, the entirety of the world moving around them whilst they sat there. “And you? What do you want to do?”

She shrugged. “I grew up in it. It’s what I can do well.”

Oscar finally was released from the debrief, walking out and meeting the both of them. “You gonna come to dinner?”

Natalie stood up, shoving her laptop into her bag and started to follow Oscar out. Something bubbled with Lando. Possession, perhaps? But he found himself wrapping Oscar’s wrist to pull him in for a quick peck on the cheek and whispering, “I’ll be in your room when you get back.”

Natalie watched the entire thing with a shit-eating grin on her face. She almost was laughing. Now, he knew Australian had a thing with being straight forward, but he wasn’t expecting what came out of her mouth. “I’m not fucking your boyfriend, nor have I fucked him. I’m Ace.”

Lando blinked a few times. “I’m going to go get my arse whooped in pool. I will have him home by 11 Mr Norris.”

—-

Surely enough, Oscar slips into his room just as the clock flicks to 23:00.

Chapter Text

XII
R11, Great Britain, Part 2

The morning of the British GP opened like any good day. Cloud. Cold. Damp.

Lando joined Oscar and Natalie over breakfast (Oscar was required to be at the track earlier and Lando wanted a sleep-in). It’s avocado on toast with eggs and fruit this morning. Oscar’s stuck into a bowl of something, probably overnight oats, head buried in his laptop. He struck up another conversation with the girl. 

“What part of Australia are you from? Sydney? You don’t have quite the same accent as Oscar.”

She smiled. “Definitely not a Sydneysider. I’m from Canberra.”

“That’s… the capital. Right?”

“Sure is. Any questions?”

Lando frowned. Maybe it wouldn’t be bad to explore a little. May as well see where Oscar lived for a couple of years. “When’s the best time to go?”

“Autumn. Plenty of festivals. Looks really pretty as well. Winter is freezing, Spring is hell on earth, and Summer is summer. The wattle is at least pretty when spring comes though.” Natalie closed her eyes. A smile ghosting over her face.

“What’s it like?”

“We’re all dicks, depressed and out of tune with the country. Open invitation though.” Very frank now.

Oscar made his intervention, head snapping up from his laptop. “Way to sell a city Spooks.”

Her voice changed to cool professionalism. “We have excellent art galleries and cool architecture. Except for the high court. If I could I would -“ She held up a finger. “I don’t want to loose my security clearance.”

Oscar rolled his eyes. 

She backhanded him on the arm.

—-

The day passes in a whirl of normal procedure. Drivers brief, team brief. 

“We’re looking at rain. Be fast out there hm?”

Daniel and Lando salute Andrea.

The driver parade, where every wave has a cheer erupting. They love him. He could bundle himself in it forever.

Pre-race. Blast country music, fistbump his mechanics. Chill out. Go for a lap. Looking all like normal. No gearbox failures for him.

Out of the car. Chat with Jarv, chat with Oscar, chat with Leo, chat with Jon. Inspect the car. The rounded flanks that hides the beast below. He was the one privileged enough to tame it.

He can do this.

Oscar does his usual dip into the halo, Lando running his gloves hand through the strands.

—-

“Radio check.”

“Loud and Clear my dear.”

That was their stupid little thing now.

Jarv is the one to run him through the tyre allocations. Oscar cuts him at the end of the information, perhaps jealous of their banter.

“I learnt your national anthem so I can sing it later. Can you make it for a papaya car instead of a Merc?”

He breaks into a smile. “I’ll give it my best shot.” 

“Atta boy.” Fond. “Formation lap starting in 30 seconds.”

—-

The start is… not good. Max slips by, a mirror to last year. He wouldn’t have gotten the same earth-shattering roar had he overtaken the cars in front, but the engine roars good enough for him. Pull it through, drive like it’s an old friend.

He knows this.

It’s repetitive, soothing.

He goes back past Max.

A little drizzle comes down, and the car seems to feed off of it. It’s like nothing he’s ever felt. He’s on the knife’s edge. He lives for this.

Slips in front.

Russell. Hamilton. Free air at home. A McLaren backing him up. 

God, does this feel good. “We’re going to survive this pocket of rain and keep going. Leclerc and Perez reporting too dry for inters.”

The car purrs below him. The neck strain is nothing new as he doesn’t lift, weaving through Maggots, Becketts, Chapel. There’s a McLaren backing him up, and they’ll fly away together.

Daniel slides a little behind him. “Sainz and Verstappen pitting for inters.”

Come back around. “Box for inters.”

The Mercedes follow him in. Daniel’s not going to be happy about that one. He knows how shit that track is getting. 

The track is a little shit. Too dry for inters and too wet for slicks. “Try and find water where you can. Keep them cool.”

Then.

“Russell has retired with mechanical issues.”

But Hamilton is closing in. And as soon as the inters go on, they need to come off. 

“We need to box.”

“What tyres do you think are best? Hamilton is on soft.”

He doesn’t fucking know. Maybe stick with the leader? Have a tyre delta? Aren’t there people who can tell him this?

“I don’t know. Softs?” His voice must come across as almost exasperated on the radio.

“Box Box.”

“Lando pitlane.”

Pull in. Slow down. Overshoot the pitbox.

Wait? Oscar’s straight on him. It would’ve been a good stop had the team not had to move. “Launch map on, launch map on.”

The light goes green and he’s off again. Lewis has passed him and the tyres feel good. He’s not entirely sure why they put him on the softs, but here he is. They’re fine. The numbers on his dash tick down.

The Mercedes gets a little bigger, sliding in and out of reach until it well and truly slips far, far away. He can’t keep these tyres in the dirty air. The radio is quiet.

He drops back. He won’t mount a challenge for Hamilton. The problem is getting larger in his mirrors. The navy.

He’s done this before. Hooked his claws into second. He did it last year. He’s going to do it again.

The car helps. The car likes him. The Italian tyres do not.

So corner after corner, he throws it in with precision, yanks it out with precision, keeps his foot planted, slams doors left and right. He’s playing a dangerous game, but he’d rather it blow up in his face at home. 

“Final lap.”

Throw it into Copse, weave it through the middle. Around and around, and, thank fuck. It’s over. He’s allowed to breathe.

“That’s P2. You’ve done well.” Oscar sounds disappointed. He knows it’s not at him. “Silver H-12. Boards are in the pitlane.”

He proceeded to the pitlane, quietly jumps out of the car and methodically took his safety gear off. It’s his form of control right now.

His stuff sounds on the stand, his hands pressing into it, trying to ground himself. Just breathe. Please breathe.

Lewis patted him on the back. He flinched. Max patted him on the back. He flinched. They know he shouldn’t be here. He should’ve really been P3. Maybe he didn’t deserve the podium. Maybe that should’ve been the Australian bundeling him in his arms.

George jump around Lewis like a puppy, shrouded in the flag. Toto is there, his dad is there. At least he’s lost to one of the best.

Daniel’s eyes hold much more understanding than he expected. The podium stripping of a decade ago and the bevy of 4th places since then.

That was the curse of Albert Park. None of their own country were to place on the podium.

There are some papaya clad personnel lingering, and the both of them go over (Daniel has a word with Max, and shrugs at whatever he said). There’s pats on the back, ruffles of the hair. Oscar is further back in the crowd.  

He mouthed, “I’m proud of you.”

—-

The podium is still amazing. Of course he’s happy to be on the podium at home. Better than going from P2 to a DSQ later that night.

If he closes his eyes, he could imagine the anthem was for him. But it’s not. The German one plays after. He’s sandwiched by the greats.

He gets a trophy, but it’s not the golden one that still shines in the weak English sun. 

Nothing about this is for him. It is for his country, the marquee of the sport that stands next to him, that shares a flag and some sound that means something, and nothing more.

He sprays champagne like everyone else. Not the fountains he perfected. Not like the one he hoped to do before the car in front disappeared all together.

Lando Norris shouldn’t be standing up here. The men he is sandwiched between have more wins between them then he has races to his name, more championships than he has wins.

He’s the odd one out.

It was supposed to be him. It was supposed to be for the sea of papaya now standing to the side, replaced by the black and silver of the powerhouse. They still chant for him.

He has the opportunity to stand in front of people and represent them, do it for at home. Look at what we can do. He could have done that from the top step, but of all the things to come second to.

He overshot some lines and got the wrong coloured tyres. 

It all sounds rather stupid when he puts it like that.

All his troubles sound stupid when they’re put like that.

—-

The fans still scream their names when they come out on the stage. The interviewers help them along.

“Now Lando, we know you had that pretty famous radio message with your engineer. The important question is, did he get your number.”

“I did give it to him.” The crowd cheered. “But he’s lying when he says he can speak Japanese. That’s all he knows.” The crowd laughed.

“And you Daniel? Do you know anything of Oscar’s escapades?”

“Of course. I finally have someone to side with me in sporting debate.” The crowd jokingly booed Daniel, who gave them a winning smile before flipping them off, much to their delight.

The Riccardo charm would never fail to work. 

Eventually, they get to their ritualistic shoey. Same as last year. Daniel pours the beer into Oscar’s shoes that were jokingly offered up. He thrust it into the air. “If Silverstone doesn’t hate me next year, you’re not getting one.”

Their audience went wild. Daniel offered the shoe to Lando, who attempted to refuse until the crowd chanted. “Do it, do it, do it.”

Drinking beer out of your boyfriends shoe. Kinky, probably.

How they end up drinking Polish beer out of Oscar’s shoe? He doesn’t know. Doesn’t know how they got beer either. Especially Polish beer, but he supposed it was for the better, given that it was probably made illegal to drink Guinness out of a shoe.

Oscar didn’t seem to mind, even said he preferred to drive barefoot. Lando thinks that’s a little odd, because outside of F1 (where he really needs the feeling), he absolutely despises it. Daniel’s the same though, so he might be able to chalk it ip to some Aussie thing.

It’s good that his afternoon has been crammed with so many things that he couldn’t stop to think. Media, post-race cooldown. No debrief, that had been delayed until Wednesday because of the large amount of family members. Fanstage, the sea of fluro green and papaya not caring. Not scrutinising his every action.

He couldn’t think until he hit the floor of hospitality, his movements through it automatic. He sees Natalie and Oscar exchange a hug before parting ways (he also ruffled her hair with caused her face to scrunch and bat away his hands)

His drivers room is familiar. There’s the hammock, which he would climb into if he had the energy, but the floor is more appealing. Not even the couch.

Daniel is tetchy and a bit pissed, and the only way they are about to drag him away from Max is by blowing up Redbull. It’s understandable though. He’d be pissed if he was in Daniel’s position.

The floor of his drivers room is comfortable enough to curl up on and cry. Jon has stolen his phone after a singular look on Twitter which had a barely glued together Lando become an ‘I’ve shattered into a billion pieces’ Lando.

That was the biggest case of ‘that’s just the car’ ever

That’s who you want taking the fight to Max?

Jon generally left him alone during these moments, happy to allow Lando to run his course before having a chat.

Gently sobs rack his body, quieter than what he wanted the scream at. It’s horrible, and it’s so cold. He couldn’t fucking do it. It was only the car that kept him in front of Max. If anything, it should’ve been Daniel. He was more screwed by the team.

Someone else had a different idea. Through his scrambled thoughts, he can hear something moving, then a presence. Soft hands are on his jaw, coaxing his head from where it’s tucked into his knees.  Their hands are warm, a small point of contact spreading through his body.

“Lando, look at me.” He knows that voice to well. It’s gone soft and accented. Lando refuses. “You gotta look at me hun.”

He cracks his eyes a little. Oscar’s pupils are blown in the dim light, and for the first time, he spots gold and orange veining the caramel brown. His hands are soothing, wiping away the residual salt across Lando’s cheekbones.

“Can you breathe with me?” Lando nods, movement small. Oscar counts, “1-2-3-4. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7.  1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.”

Breathe in until 4
Hold until 7
Breathe out until 8

The rhythm is stilted, and by the fourth repetition, tears are rolling again, and he’s all out of sync with the counting and-

Oscar pushed between his knees so they were sitting flush, legs hooked over Lando’s. What was his was Lando’s, and what was Lando’s was his. His voice was quiet, but somehow enough to cut through the fog of every comment whirling around. “You cannot blame yourself for that. You did brilliantly.” Oscar wrapped his arms around Lando’s torso, a mirror to what his legs instinctively did when Oscar took his current place.

“If you want someone to blame, please blame me. Don’t go doing this to yourself.”

“But you only relay the decisions.” It’s broken by sobs.

“And I did a shit job at getting the information they needed for it.” His voice is calm and calculated. 

“And I was shit at giving it to you.”

“You were driving in the wet at breakneck speeds. People were going off everywhere. That’s not being shit, that’s called self-preservation. We had enough information to make the right decision and we didn’t.”

Another round of sobs crashed over him. Oscar invited him to rest his head on his shoulder, which he took up. The muscle was relaxed and soft. “I just. I really really wanted to do it at home.”

The hands were soft in his hair. “Of course you did. Anyone would.”

They sat there for who knows how long, Oscar’s hands in his hair, his gentle inhales and exhales, his warmth seeping into Lando’s bones.

Lando is tired and pliant when Oscar suggests making the drive back to Woking tonight. Of course he doesn’t want to spend another night in a hotel, and he says so.

Oscar looks a little conflicted as he says it, but he still gives an invite for Lando to come home with him.

—-

It’s not a bad drive, Oscar drives a lot more, you know, normal, when there are road rules in play.

He cruised on the highway, yapping about anything. Lando listens, and he learns.

Apparently Natalie is going the Netherlands for a week. Oscar had played cricket in the hallway of a government building. The waves that dumped him as he was surfing. Or a joint Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber yacht party he attended. The long nights suffering, staring at a whiteboard, hoping for a concept to click. 

The excitement of the opportunity to work with something he loved. The same things here could hear from his backyard as a kid. Finding something else along the way.

It blurred together like the smeared raindrops on the windshield.

—-

One of Oscar’s slender fingers pokes him awake. It’s not raining anymore, and there’s the faint glow of streetlights outside the car. 23:04, the car reads.

He stumbled out with Oscar, him going up to unlock the door. Lights flicker on from inside the house. He comes back else to retrieve suitcases whilst Lando stands awkwardly at the bonnet.

“You gonna come up?”

Lando made his way to the door. Oscar had stashed their luggage at the foot of the stairs. “You want tea?”

Lando nodded, so Oscar led him through to the surprisingly well stocked kitchen. He found his way onto a bar stool as Oscar boiled the jug. “I have peppermint, english breakfast, chamomile and chai.”

“Could I have the peppermint? White.”

Oscar nodded, pulling a mug down and deftly unwrapping the teabag.

He jumped up to sit on the counter, kicking his feet. “I don’t know. You didn’t really want to spend another night at the hotel, I don’t know where you live when you’re in England, so I thought.” He raised his hands off his thighs, almost in a da ta fashion.

“It’s nice.”

Oscar shrugged. “I’d rather it be in Australia.”

—-

Oscar knows his curl routine. The way they fit into the surprisingly generous shower, he gently massages shampoo into his scalp. Does it again. Combs through conditioner. Scrunch it.

Scrunch dry it. Leave-in conditioner. Curl cream, mousse, diffuse, dry, hairspray, oil. It’s all routine, it’s all so domestic as Oscar does it, the feeling of his slim fingers wrangling the curls. 

They fall into bed together, sheets soothing on his skin, duvet, or rather, doona (as Oscar called it) a comforting weight. Oscar messes around with something before falling into bed. 

Music floats through the space. Oscar had once mentioned on a long flight that it would help him sleep sometimes. 

He seeks the warmth of body beside him, as it does for him. They found each other in the middle, limbs blindly entangling.

The song talks of forbidden love, love left behind, love that can’t be had.

Lando cracks his eyes to meet Oscar’s, the gentle light of a clock making them visible. They’re vulnerable in the midnight hour, asking for more than love or support.

They’re asking for understanding. Something he can’t pinpoint.

Oh, when you’re all alone
I will reach for you

Lando blinks at him, a silent conformation. 

When you’re feeling low
I will be there too

Oscar’s lips collided with his with surprising force. It’s like the first they shared. It’s not done after the high of a victory, alcohol thrumming through their veins. It’s the low of a lost one. It’s Oscar’s vow.

—-

Oscar knows there’s going to be questions in the morning, when Lando can see some of the things he has, notably, his helmet collection. The trophy balanced on the bookshelf. And if Lando ever actually looked at the same notebook he still used. Remnants of a life he left to view it from the other side.

Just wait until summer break. Tell him then.

Chapter Text

XIII

R12, Hungary

Oscar made breakfast for him in the morning. Lando wandered around the ground floor, taking in the hoodie splayed over the lounge, the papers on the coffee table. 

The books not yet stashed away. 6 helmets spread out between the shelves. All of the designs were familiar.

Two in a Redbull design, one older than the other.
One that looked like Guaynu’s design.
One that was definitely Liam’s.
Fernando Alonso.
One that he had no clue who it was from.

Contacts indeed.

He could feel Oscar’s smile from the kitchen. Small, proud.  The clinking of dishes called him back to the peninsula. He sat down on one side, Oscar jumped up onto the bench. They ate in silence, because the pancakes were surprisingly good.

Not that he had had no faith, but Oscar definitely didn’t seem like the cooking type.

“So, I’m thinking of going to Greece for the break and was wondering if you wanted to- I dunno. You wanna come? We’ll probably make a stop in Paris to pick Keegan up.”

Oscar’s eyes widened, then turned apologetic. “I’m going back to Australia to finish my degree.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not running away. I’ll be back.” Oscar said it fondly, offended by the suggestion he was leaving.

Lando broke into a smile. “Of course you’re not.”

—-

They spent the next couple of days lounging around. Oscar would study whilst Lando hung off his arm, asking questions on the content. He didn’t mind, it actually helped to understand the content better.

It was a familiar routine, Lando dragging Oscar away from his PC to go and do something, even dragging him back to the MTC to access the gym there.

Then they were pitched into several days of meetings. What went well, what went shit. They sat side by side in most, Oscar nudging his foot if he needed to pay attention or were talking about things he’d rather not remember.

They did a couple of sim sessions. Oscar hopped in for a couple of memorable laps around Spa, where he set a time faster than Lando, who then (with Oscar’s blessing), forced him through a lap on full steering lock, a super oversteery car, and one that had so much downforce Oscar planted his foot and could not move it.

It was fun. It was nice. It was exactly what he needed. He was going to go one better in Hungary.

—-

So, it was probably a good thing that the contingent of engineers hadn’t come into the paddock on the Wednesday. The team there had spammed the WhatsApp group with videos of the hospitality unit roof flying off.

Whoops?

Oscar was going to take it as a good omen. Last time they had had an issue with it, they bagged a pole. He was not going to argue with it again.

Anyway, it was to say that Hungary was putting on a very good impression of a Melbourne summer, flipping between storms, heatwaves and actually decent weather. 

He thought it was a horrible idea to have adjoining rooms, but that was what the team had given them. Lando ensured he went to bed at a reasonable time before going back to his own room.

Thunder cracked through the room. Oscar must’ve been ripped from a pretty deep sleep, he wasn’t upset though, he loved storms. Loved how they swept through any time of the day, cooling everything. It reminded him of summer holidays.

Of course, he got up to open the curtains, the layout of the room allowed him to look out the windows from the vantage point of his bed where he watched forked lightening race across the sky. He propped himself up on the bed and smiled. The rain distorted the lightening, the pounding against the pane a comfortable deafness.

It flashed black-white-black-what the fuck was that figure? He let out a low sound of surprise before he realised it looked oddly like the Silverstone spectacle of Lando Norris burritoed in a blanket.

“Lando?”

He plonked himself on the end of the bed and flopped up to use Oscar’s thighs as a pillow. Lando curled up a little tighter at the next flash as the inevitable clap of thunder echoed through. Oscar offered a hand for now, Lando crushing his fingers as he jolted.

“Do you not like thunderstorms?”

Oscar felt the shaking of Lando’s head. “I had a bad run-in with one when I was on a horse.”

He made a small noise of conformation and dragged Lando up to use his chest as a pillow, stroking his hair. No wonder he was afraid. Oscar went for the distraction technique. “Do you know how to count how far away it is?”

“No.”

Oscar waited until the next fork appeared in the sky. “One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand.” The sound cracked through the room, pulling another surprised jolt from Lando. “It’s four kilometres away.”

Lando relaxed at that information, melting against Oscar. The thunder continued for a while, Lando gently counted under his breath, the actions becoming somewhat calming.

Sometime in the early morning the storm had passed, the thrum of the rain gone and the thunder a gentle rumble. Oscar flipped down a side of his sheet, and Lando instinctively slipped underneath, burrowing into the side of Oscar. 

They woke up like that the next day, Oscar gently rubbing Lando’s back as he came to.

—-

On Thursday, he got grilled by the media about Silverstone. He rephrased, “We’ve had plenty of debriefs, we know what went wrong, we’ve got new processes,” about 100 times.

Daniel was also getting blasted, the media desperately trying to get a rise out of him. He was unflappable when he wanted to be though.

Oscar didn’t have his notebook flipped to the start. He was writing down new information as he and Daniel explained their ideas and examined the tarmac. It was oppressively hot, the track miraging. He was a little concerned about how tyre life was going to be. 

The engineers weren’t too worried, it was going to cool-down over the weekend. Oscar had some sort of heat reader with him, and shrugged when the readings were coming in at 60c. 

Because that wasn’t hot at all.

They went into their briefing later. Their engineers said it would take a bit of testing, not to expect perfect results tomorrow, but that there would be quite a bit to find.

—-

McLaren was hosting a barbecue for the trackside crew on the Thursday night. Nestled in the Hungarian countryside, their location had panoramic views of the rolling grassland around them. The evening had taken the edge off the heat, so the 100 or so staff mingled on the balcony. Lando went through his entire suitcase before he settled on a necklace, white knitted top and cream trousers. Oscar was in a pair of formal shorts and a collared shirt. 

Danny and Lando gave speeches, photos were taken, games were played. He and Lando got roped into a really competitive game of Monopoly, with Lando winning off the back of Alex’s ‘tricks,’ which Oscar would call ‘cheating.’ Danny was playing blackjack with some of the mechanics, and was is somehow doing really well.

Then again, this was the same man who pranked Optus customers with a straight face.

The music was playing, the wine was flowing. Lando pulled him up to dance. He wasn’t particularly prone to that, but fuck it. The team knew anyway. There had been no comments. Oscar could probably recall every clause of his contract and code of conduct. None of them had anything about relationships bar the usual, don’t harass anyone.

How the hell did I fall in love this time?
And honestly I can’t believe I get to call you mine.

The song came to a slow halt. Lando placed his hands to dip Oscar back, which he went with, before snapping him back up, their lips coming back up to meet in a chaste kiss. The team cheered, and Oscar probably couldn’t be any happier in that moment. He may be nearly 14000km from home, but he had a family here. Lando was grinning like an idiot beside him. I can’t believe I get to call you mine indeed.

—-

Friday is fucking hot. He’s still not wearing short sleeves, something Oscar gives him shit about. A lot of photographers get images of them coming into the paddock, Oscar always dressed for summer, and Lando bundled up in 3 layers.

Ok, so turns out the engineers were right. The car felt a little shit, but it’s also done up in fluro green and rakes, so that might just be hindering his ability to get a decent lap in a little. He clocks in at the middle of Formula A, Daniel trailing by a couple of hundredths.

The debrief is happy. Lando is still getting a little understeer through the second sector, twitches, and how the pedals are working. Daniel goes through a couple of laps, comments on lines and telemetry, gives his recommendations.

They sit in the garage together, chatting about stupid things they had done. Lando’s was that he and Carlos has one set-up a slip n’ slide down the atrium in the MTC. Oscar started a nerf war against a whole heap of ADF cadets, and proceeded not to do too badly because they couldn’t leave base.

He’s allowed to go for it during FP2. The car feels excellent. There’s always an odd feeling when a driver just knows that everything comes together. It’s one of those days. “Target a 21.1.”

He responds with a 21 flat. The car is good enough to do that. Oscar radios back, “show off.”

Lando smiles into his helmet, “just showing off your work.”

His eyes flick up the screen the next time he sees one. Oscar is shown on it, with a blush that could barely pass in the heat. The session ends with him in P1. The debrief is long though, with Daniel still struggling with some issues. And the engineers are certain that there is even more to be extracted by the car. It’s quite late by the time they get to go.

Lando goes out for a game of Padel with Carlos, which he looses spectacularly. 

It’s pretty late when he gets back. He cleans himself up before barging into Oscar’s room, ready to demand cuddles. 

Oscar’s laptop was open, the owner on the phone. “I reckon to play around with some of in the in-car settings,” he paused whilst the other person spoke, “Yeah. That should be good. Send it back to me when you’re done. Thank you.” Oscar placed the phone screen down and with surprising speed, boxed Lando up against the bed.

He’s kissing all the skin he can get to. He pulled back, pupils dilated. “You don’t get to say shit like that. You do not discredit yourself to the car.”

“What?” He tipped his head back to give Oscar better access.

“You showcase your talent. Not my work.” His words were firm.

But not true. Lando was useless without a car or a team to back him up. “My talent is fucking useless without a-“

Oscar cut him off, pressing a firm kiss to his lips, stealing the rest of the words. His weight was warm against Lando’s hips. “None of that. We work together.”

—-

Thank god Oscar had the sense to nip at his collarbones instead. He can wear a normal shirt. A turtleneck would’ve been a little on the nose.

Apparently the sim team had made some quite impressive improvements overnight for both Daniel and himself. Oscar and Jarv were going through a pile of papers detailing the set-up changes tested, sending through the ones they thought best of to the mechanics to change before their next session. 

Lando must’ve been staring, because Daniel’s voice snaps him out of it. “You fucked last night.”

He nearly spat out his breakfast. “No?” Great job Lando. Caught guilty.

Daniel gave the biggest shit-eating grin. “There’s no shame in it. I mean, Max and I-“

“Too much information.” He plugged his ears. “Woah. You did not need to say that.”

“At least I need to say it for it to be known. You have got to have a little bit of decency. Stop trying to undress the poor man with your eyes.”

Lando rolled his eyes. Daniel laughed.

—-

Whatever the fuck the engineers had pulled had worked a treat. 1-2 in practice, 1-2 in qualifying.

A small party was held in the garage, because sue them, they haven’t had a front-row lockout since 2012. It runs until decently late, until Tom, in his eternal wisdom (and role of head of human performance) sends everyone back to the hotel to sleep.

They end up in Lando’s room tonight, duvet kicked off, Oscar encircling Lando with his arms, using his pecs as a pillow. Lando tugs at the soft hair, eliciting pleased sounds from the man below. It’s quiet and domestic, and oh how Lando wishes he could have this forever.

—-

“Is it gonna be a papaya 1-2 today?” Lando asks him as they walk into the paddock, Oscar falling into step beside him, briefcase slung over his shoulder. 

“Bar any damage, we have a pretty good delta.”

“Mint.”

They get separated by the requirements of a race weekend until the time comes to fire up for the final time. Oscar’s hands give a thumbs up when he gets the call from Randy.

—-

Lando reports a throttle issue as they’re going through their recon lap. Right at the front of the grid, cables draining out of the car, Oscar desperately tries to track down the fault with the launch system. Leo has his arm shoved down to the shoulder into the pedal box fiddling with a physical component. Doormat (yes, everyone knew his name was Evan but the nickname for their senior trackside electrical engineer had a long story), is directing what part has to be replaced before the launch map could be re-installed. 

He finally gets the go-ahead to reinstall the system. 10 minutes to the formation lap. Lando is chatting with the mechanics and doing last minute stretches. Oscar is currently threatening the laptop with a sacrifice to the Danube if it doesn’t get a move on. 99% at 5 minutes to go, and. And, 100%. 

Lando is already settling himself into the car when he goes over to disconnect. “We’ve got it up and running again. There should be no issues, but there might be a little lag. You’ll be all good though.”

Lando’s cheeks crinkle as he smiles. “It’ll be all good.”

Oscar runs back to the pitwall and patches himself in. “Loud and clear?”

“Loud and clear my dear.”

—-

Daniel gets the inside line in T1, and takes the lead. That’s fine. Lando didn’t force him into the wall. The problem is that Lando got pushed off track by Max. He’s on the radio instantly.

Oscar would call it complaining, but Lando is in the right. “We know. Just keep driving.”

He’s already contacted someone who can get up to the stewards. Oscar then patches in to Max-GP radio. They’re chatting about the penalty versus just giving it back. Max is resistant to giving the position back, but eventually it’s in motion.

He should get the engineers together for a stitch n’ bitch.

—-

The mood is looking good. They’re in a strong position, running away from the rest of the field. His late Friday night was put to good use, his McLaren’s phone bill probably run up by a couple too many calls back to the sim engineers.

Daniel’s controlling brilliantly, bar from a little run-in with Ocon. It’d be a big win here today for him, surpassing Mark to become the driver with the most wins from Australia. The team really wants that. He and Lando had jokingly made the agreement of ‘whoever leads at turn 1 wins,’ shook on it, both of them visibly crossing fingers behind their backs.

—-

So, the plan is to get Daniel to use the last of his tyres whilst Lando covers Lewis.

He thinks it bullshit that they’ve pulled the plug on Lando’s stint this early, especially risking the eventuality of Lando undercutting his own teammate. That would be one nightmare from all perspectives.

The gap to Lewis is 28 seconds, and Oscar informs Lando to pit on lap 45. Daniel does two laps at full pace, then finally gets his call. There’s a plan to re-establish the order, and he’s the one to execute it. 

“Daniel has just pitted, he’s going to come out behind you. We’d like to re-establish the order at your convenience.”

Lando is racing at a pace of knots. Daniel has a small slide, and the dirty air is doing nothing to help him get into a position for the swap.

He informs Lando to save his tyres. 
No response.

Tom informs Daniel that they don’t want Lando to loose time.
No response.

Then Andrea is in his ear, along with all the other voices bouncing around. “Oscar, you have got to make the swap happen.”

“Can I ask him to swap positions?”

“That is not within our racing guidelines. Imagine the PR?”

Oscar thinks it best if he could say the words. Or better yet if he were to redirect the radio to Andrea to just say the damned words but no, that’s going against ‘team spirit’ and ‘racing guidelines.’ They’re called guidelines for a reason.

So he’s stuck emotionally blackmailing his boyfriend on international TV. 

He must cut a pretty depressed figure at the moment. Tom kept on shooting him glances between trying to figure out how to save Daniel’s tyres.

He took a breath. First things first, get a response.

“Lando, radio check please.” Curt and professional.

“Yes, loud and clear.” Sarcastic. Fair enough.

Hiroshi is in his ear, giving him something to go off.

“Okay, save the tyres in T4 and T11 please.”

Lando sets a personal best. Oscar lets his head drop.

“We need you to save tyres, and we want to let Daniel through.” Professional, he will say.

“Um, well you should have boxed him first then, surely?”

And would you look at that, common sense prevailed from someone wrapped up in their own little world.

“Doesn't matter.”

Yes, it does.

“It does. For me, maybe.”

Of course it fucking does.

Fuck the PR of ripping away a well-earned victory, the PR disaster are the current words spilling from his lips. Measured, logical. He hates the way it’s rammed down his throat, how he has to take the information and spin it. The pleas, the promises.

He hates that his brain is wired to take it in and make it into something believable. That people feed him the information, and he can manipulate it.

He hates that he’s trained it over years, the competitive flair of debating igniting something within him. Here’s the information, here’s your stance, crush the opposition with logic and convince your audience that you were right all along. 

Lando is resistent, and of course he is. Oscar would be concerned if he wasn’t getting resisted.

—-

MCLAREN RADIO TRANSCRIPT
F1 
S2024, EP73, Hungary Race

L58, Oscar Piastri: Lando we still think you're using the tyres too much, T4, T11, and the rears exit Turn 6, Turn 9. Daniel’s 3.5, I know you'll do the right thing.

Do the right thing? What the fuck is he yapping on about? Wouldn’t the right thing at the point be to man up to the mistake and bear the brunt of Daniel’s disappointment?

L59, OP: Turn 4, Turn 11. It's gonna get boring.

It’s getting fucking boring for him, Hiroshi in his ear, with messages to relay. And yes, he’s prepared to pester Lando for the rest of the race. He hates it, but he will.

L61, OP: Okay Lando, 10 laps to go. We think both cars are using tyres too much. Just remember every Sunday morning meeting we have.

Yes, the dreaded Sunday morning brief, brought to you by caffeine. The plans they made, the fun they had, pulling pranks and cracking jokes like they were fireworks on New Year’s. 

Lando Norris: Yep, tell him to catch up then please.

At this point, the engineer in him kind of wants to radio to Lando to, ‘give the fucking position back and race for it.’ The team wouldn’t stop him.

The racer says ‘the team made a mistake, use it.’ 

But he’s an engineer now. His view is much wider than the narrow view from out a visor.

They finally waterboard something from Daniel, a simple “Are we doing the swap?”

L64, OP: Lando, he can't catch you up. You've proved your point and it really doesn't matter.

Yes, you’ve proved this point for the last 3 years.

LN: He's on much quicker tyres. I mean, I would have tried to undercut anyway, if I didn't I would have gotten...

If Oscar could’ve, he would’ve slammed his head back then. They should’ve just stuck to the plan, not worried about Lewis. He’s 13 seconds behind anyway. Daniel’s not going slow, Lando is tearing away from him, using the free air to his advantage.

OP: We did this stop sequence for the good of the team.

Yeah, the team fucked up today.

LN: Yeah and I'm fighting for this championship.

As it stands, 42 points away. Close enough.

OP: I'm trying to protect you, mate. I'm trying to protect you.

How he hates himself. The way he can pluck himself out, leaving his words behind. He’s talking to a friend, how a normal engineer-pilot combination occurs. Not the way that Oscar and Lando have done it. Fucking ‘mate.’

The nights spent together.
The fears spilt.
Aspirations voiced.
The love.

He can leave the words empty.

L66, OP: Lando, there are five laps to go. The way to win a championship is not by yourself. You're going to need Daniel and you're going to need the team.

What a fucking sentence. It feels like a good close on a speech, full of pitfalls and flawed logic, gently smoothed out.

It’s a high, and he despises it with every fibre in his body.

Lando doesn’t say anything.

—-

Daniel finally talks again. The first time in a couple laps. It comes over Oscar’s feed.

L67, Daniel Riccardo: The longer we leave this, the riskier it gets.

Fair enough, Max tried to recreate Monza 21’.

Tom Stallard: Don't worry about Lando, we're managing it.

No Daniel, we are not managing this in any way, shape, or form.

—-

OP: If there's a safety car now, it makes this very awkward. Please do it now.

And the final blow. The hard fact. The winning sentence. ‘It.’ What a word. 

Oscar watches as the tracer doesn’t max out along the straight, and the responders of Lando and Daniel switch.

Oscar had done his job.

It’s the first time he doesn’t feel good about it.

L68, LN: Yeah you don't need to say anything.

He doesn’t. Andrea shoots him a look before slinging out an arm and pulling him into a side-hug. 

Oscar doesn’t know how he feels about that, but right now, any gesture of support was appreciated.

L70, LN: Well done, good 1-2, good load of points. Congrats to you all. Well deserved.

Lando’s voice is flat. Oscar hates it. He says something automatically, really, he wants to scream.

1-2 in the race.

—-

When it’s all said and done, Oscar wants to cry, mainly so he can have a nice long nap. It always tired you out. Instead, he settled for slipping his headphones onto his neck. He takes a breath instead of bursting into tears.

Tom pats him on the back. “He’s not going to hold it against you.”

Oscar let out an incredulous laugh. He’s being silly. Of course Lando’s not. Any racer gets higher than a kite when in the car. They take and bite into any scrap they can claw onto, whether granted by the enemy, their other half, or mistakenly by their god.

He’d have done exactly the same thing, preying on his teammates crash to swoop in a championship that was never really supposed to be his.

“I know he won’t. It still doesn’t feel good though.”

“Of course it doesn’t. I got to deal with Fernando in the Honda era. You all get a bit weird in the car.”

Oscar stretched against the railing, combatting the tension he had settled in. “I suppose we do.”

—-

Oscar goes through the data points whilst the team crowds around parc ferme. He cuts a solitary figure at the pitwall. He’s using a couple of the screens around, but he kept one on the broadcast, tuning his headphones into that. Daniel is flat, despite jumping Mark in race wins to become the Australian with the most wins, Lando sounded devastated and angry.

Lewis is the only person happy to be there.

Lando lashed out in the cooldown room. All biting words muddled by anger and adrenaline. Daniel and Lando stand flat mouthed on the podium. Oscar has the decency to stand for the national anthems. 

He watched as Daniel jokingly held his trophy still whilst Lando smashed his champagne to the ground. He’s glad he wasn’t the one chosen to go up today. They all soaked each other, though Lando gave Daniel the cold shoulder as he fulfilled his ritual.

Oscar turns to back to the pitwall. Prepared his notes for the debrief. Daniel claps him on the back.

Lando is clearly upset, and that would generally be his sign to go and sit quietly with him, his quiet support in the room, or a hug. He feels it’s not right to subject Lando to any more of the same voice that twisted a story so easily. He does his required speaking in the debrief.

Nobody is happy, and everyone who was a part of the decision knows just how much they fucked up. Daniel and Lando sit next to each other, whispering about something. He caught “Baku.”

It’s good that they don’t hold it against each other, but Lando and Daniel have been working with one another for long enough to know that Daniel was a calm motherfucker on the radio. He wasn’t demanding, he was just confused. The team had barely heard a peep out of him in the 15 laps. 

It was clear he didn’t want a win like that either.

—-

He doesn’t stay too much longer, but he doesn’t expect to be yanked into the Aston Martin motorhome either. Fernando Alonso scrutinised him.

“McLaren fucked up, hm?” 

“That’s one way to put it.”

Nando shot him a wry smile. “I know Lando, I know you. You will be ok.”

Oscar huffed and leant back. “You sure?”

“I fought on track with my husband. Daniel and Max have made it work for long enough.”

“But I’m not a pilot.”

“Even better. You’re there for the highs and smooth out the lows. Give Lando time. He’ll be ok.” Nando ruffled his hair. Oscar leaned into it a little. “And peque, give Mark a call later.”

“I gave him one last week.”

“He has already complained to me that you’re not contacting him. You have always been the favourite.”

—-

Oscar and a good half of the trackside team elect to go straight to Belgium. It’s a quick turn around, and he’s on a plane across the continent by 11. He saw that Lando and Daniel got a little celebration in with Alex, which is good.

He wanted to call, but he wasn’t sure how that would go. It couldn’t be the warm hug he desperately wanted, he wouldn’t be able to see the understanding he so desperately craved. 

Understanding he needed.

A text wouldn’t mean anything.

So he didn’t call at all.

Chapter Text

XIV
R13, Belgium

Oscar doesn’t know when he fell asleep, but he’s slept at the table in his hotel room. Annotated papers on fluid mechanics were piled to a side, and his laptop stayed on the same page he fell asleep trying to read. It was batshit boring. He had taken to pity study.

Not his finest moment, but he had been given Monday off. May as well not think about what happened yesterday. He’s being smart with his time.

It’s the gentle knocking that got him awake, and the distinctive voice of Mark Webber that had him going towards the door. Oscar must look like a mess, dressed in a shirt that barely hits his upper thighs and loose shorts, hoping that he might sleep in the bed sitting a few metres away. 

“I swear to god Oscar. I can break down this door-“

Oscar yanked it open. Mark stepped back in surprise at the sudden appearance of his protégé. Table creased cheek and all. “You didn’t call. I trust that Nando told you.”

Nando did tell him, Oscar just preferred to ignore the request at the behest of that he didn’t want to do it, and instead spent the day rotting away doing something constructive. “It’s just that, you know, stuff happened and-“

“Everyone knows about the clusterfuck. Fucking Kimi knows about the clusterfuck. We’re getting brunch then Fernando wants to go play a game of padel. No buts. You still have a day off.”

Oscar huffed, but still took 10 minutes to make himself presentable for the public. Shower, clean teeth, fluff up his hair. Some graphic t-shirt and a pair of shorts that were likely a tad too short, but he’s playing sport so he really couldn’t give a fuck. Probably wouldn’t give a fuck when if he wasn’t. Mark kept on waiting at the door.

When he came up, he was looked up and down. “You look less dead.”

Oscar raised an eyebrow. “Thank you,” he said sarcastically.

—-

He will admit that it was nice not to have to think about F1 for a while. They hole themselves up in a small cafe whilst Nando and Mark reveal even more of the shenanigans to him. 

Apparently after the 2012 season, nearly the entire grid found themselves in a German field around a bonfire. It very nearly became a forest fire after Kimi decided to teach them how to make Molotov cocktails. 

Oscar responded with that one time that he biked 3k’s back to his hotel in Spielberg. At 1am. Drunk. Mark just about spat out his coffee. Nando chuckled ominously.

“What are you gonna do? It was 5 years ago. Ground me?”

“I wouldn’t underestimate my power.”

And that’s the thing. He would not underestimate Fernando Alonso. He would find a way to ground a grown man in a different team for a dubious decision made 5 years ago.

The tennis was nice to play. Nando obviously won the entire thing, but as much as the Australian Open did nothing for his padel skills, clearly a little latent talent in tennis had transferred over. It was good to get out and use the muscles wound so tight from a day of pity study. He didn’t like to waste time.

—-

Oscar can feel a pair of eyes on him when he whipped out his phone. They were off him pretty quickly.

bob
im in 734
20:34

Oscar takes a long look at the text to consider it. It was the first for a few days, so hell, why not. He can leave if it gets too much. So he finds the lifts and finds himself would down the bland hallway, footsteps echoing through the space. Knocked on the door. A polite little rapt.

Lando collided into him with force, kissing the sounds that fell from his lips. Pulled him into the room and threw him down on the bed, desperately trying to strip the shirt from Oscar’s torso. He’s everywhere he can be, Oscar’s hands instinctively coming up to stabilise the weight crushing him into the bed.

It’s everything and too much. It’s making up for something. An apology perhaps.

“Get the fucking shirt off.” Lando’s words were low and desperate as he pulled back just enough for Oscar to wiggle out of the offending fabric. Lando threw it in the general direction of the door before settling his eyes on the miles of milky skin.

He set himself to memorising it again. Running his hands over the ribs, feeling the soft muscle move as Oscar squirmed from the sensations. Mapped the freckles and moles, desperate to find the heat in his body and the light in his eyes.

Oscar’s eyes don’t have the usual spark. They’re dulled and closed off, like he doesn’t know how to reach out. His hands haven’t moved from their position on his waist, where they automatically flew to right Lando.

“I’m sorry.” The apology was muttered into the air, and Lando stole the rest before Oscar could continue.

He rested their foreheads together. “You don’t say that. Listen - I know it wasn’t you. You say the words, but really, it isn’t you making the decisions, right?”

“No, but-“ Lando stole the words again.

“You were doing your job and I was doing mine. You don’t have to apologise for that. I’m sorry I didn’t reach out when you needed it. You always do it for me and I couldn’t do it for you.”

He could see it that day, the change in his voice, the way Oscar held himself after, said what needed to be said for the team, and left. The difference between the voice that was in his head, pushing his buttons, and the one speaking them, trying desperately to soften the blow.

The one who was aware of what they were doing, eaten up by what he was being asked to do.

He ran his thumbs over Oscar’s cheekbones. “Neither of us deserved that.”

Finally Oscar moved, rolling himself and Lando to the side, facing each other. His hand rubbed gentle circles into Lando’s back. “We’re going to be ok?” Tentative, like reaching out a hand for the first time.

Lando nuzzled closer to Oscar, basking in the heat and body holding him. “We’re going to be all good.”

—-

Lando finds him tucked between the racks of tyres and aero equipment. Probably where he shouldn’t be, but each member of the team had a spot they had claimed. That was Oscar’s. It wasn’t as though the wet tyres got any use.

This is generally what they did. They all had a pretty good sense of what set-ups should be good, but often before their debrief, the team would disperse to sort out the finer details and other scenarios.

He’s currently trying to calculate the overtaking opportunities with a medium-downforce set-up. What would happen if it rained? What would happen in a dry quali-wet race, or vice versa.

It’s all a little fuzzy.

“We going to the debrief?”

“Yeah yeah. Give me a minute.” He closed his laptop and hauled himself up using the racks, following Lando through the labyrinth of poorly lit temporary corridors. They hit the engineer’s room, more chairs awkwardly stacked in, a projector with weather forecasts showing, and a whiteboard already covered in all sorts of numbers relating to physical components.

Rob opened up the meeting, handing over to Amelia to explain their ideal technical running for Friday. What had to be done, what could be put if they needed to. 

“Are we biasing towards quali or race?” Daniel lent back in his chair, curious.

“I think we’re going to go for the race. Forecasts are predicting of dry race and mixed quali. We either place on the high, get a better quali and hope like hell it’s a wet race, or we get picked off like last year.” Rob voiced the general opinion of the team.

“If we are looking at a medium in mixed, how much do you think we would loose compared to other high-downforce teams?” Lando was now the questioning one. Spa wasn’t a track that you wanted to kneecap yourself at either.

“We think we’d probably be going from front-row territory to the third.”

Lando nodded, taking in the option. He always preferred to bias a little towards quali. “If you guys really think the race is gonna be dry then we have to go with that. Last year was hell.”

Rob nodded, directing his attention the the aero engineers. “Can you guys sort the highest downforce we can get from our medium components?” He then turned to the mechanical one. “Confirm the our baseline settings for wet/dry. Electrics, Can you check the car systems again? I’d rather we not have another Hungary.”

The teams shifted to work together, usual teams splitting into their disciplines. Their usual race teams split up, with Tom technically being a part of Aero, Jarv actually being an electrical engineer, and Oscar going to join the rest of the mechanical team.

That was one thing about the team that always intrigued Lando. Except for the specific trackside aero or electrical teams, the race and performance teams were about 20 different engineers with disciplines in everything from automotive to nuclear.

Daniel and himself had to leave because there was of course a quick meeting with PR that turned into full blown F1 hospitality trip. At least he had to deal with kids and not sponsors. Kids he could deal with. It was fun almost getting beaten by a child though. More enjoy than yapping about targets and getting paraded around he supposed.

He doesn’t get any time to think after that either, with Lando, Daniel, Oscar, Tom, Hiroshi, and, for a little surprise, Andrea going for the trackwalk. Or more, because Spa was quite long and they still had a schedule, track cycle.

So they set out on Dutch style bikes, stopping at the corners, talking about drainage and gears and all sorts of stuff. Oscar nose wrinkled adorably when he was told that the Kemmel DRS was shorted by 100 metres. He keeps on pulling out the notebook, flipping between pages, recommending lines and taking notes on what Lando himself said.

There’s not that much more to do for the day then, and staff slowly trickle out of the paddock. He and Oscar make their own ways back to the hotel, but he finds Oscar in his room, working over dinner. Oversized shirt, which Lando thought he must have been freezing in, and a new addition, a pair of blue-light glasses. He’s eating pasta (of course), and Lando joins him, eating his pre-approved meal.

It’s nice, the way they don’t really have to speak. Oscar tapped away at his laptop whilst Lando scrolls Netflix before starting the re-watch Beef. At some point, he dragged Oscar into bed where they conked out wrapped in each other’s arms.

—-

There was stirring in the paddock that this could be the race where Max was forced into taking an engine penalty. That could be massive for Lando. There had been stirrings since Ferrari’s clusterfuck of Canada that Lando, fucking Lando, could be the one to take the challenge to Max. He would like to nope out at the mere suggestion, but he also has enough competition in him to want to give it a crack.

It was a Maxiel field day on Friday. The team knew they were going to be pretty good around here, especially given their slightly slippery set-up. Redbull had gone full downforce. Flat-out in Pouhon type set-up.

Max was half a second up from Daniel in FP1, which had everyone a little concerned. During the debrief though, their attitude was that, “if you could stay on the back of him, we’ve got the better straight line and DRS.”

Daniel and Lando were inclined to agree. Lando himself had driven the entire race last year, getting passed like he was standing still. He’d rather have the opportunity to overtake this year.

They talk of their experience around the track, the way there’s quite significant bouncing, and the fact the car feels like it’s under steering and go off. A couple of hours later, the engineers form a huddle in the back of the garage, hiding away from the cameras, and more importantly, Nico Rosberg. A couple of last flourishes were added before Lando was released to inspect the car. 

Oscar appeared at his side, yapping about some tweak he made. “I’ll need you to check your mirrors when you hop in though, they might be in a little too far.” He nodded and notes to check it.

“I reckon I could tell you what a lap around here would be.”

Lando smirked, still admiring the curves of the side pods. “Sure.”

“You really like Spa, don’t you?”

“Fucking love it.”

He proved it later, when Lando was on a race sim. Oscar commentated a lap perfectly, gears and breaking and throttle inputs bang on. It was sweet, the way he would ensure that as much as possible, he knew what Lando was doing beyond how it affected the car. The way he could sometime plop himself in Lando’s shoes.

The laps are going well, and whatever work Oscar did in the few hours in between sessions was working a treat. The laps come well, at he’s at a strong race-pace. Both cars are. By the end of the session, he’s taken P1, which he celebrated with a little “Mint.” Daniel slipped in behind at P2, Max sticking to the back of him in P3.

The team is happy with the progress, but Oscar informs him that there’s still more to be found. They haven’t cleared Redbull as much as they’d like. It was probably going to be a late night for the trackside team, and a later one back at base. It became even more important when the announcement came. One WhatsApp group, jumping to another, to another two, spreading through the paddock like a bushfire.

Max Verstappen has a 10-place grid penalty for taking a new engine.

—-

He dragged Oscar away from the dreaded laptop at some ridiculously late hour, after several phone calls filled with words he barely knew caught up with him. He wanted a cuddle, wanted to be held. Clingy, he’s aware, but he wanted that man in his arms. It was always easier to sleep when there was the cadence of another breath to attach himself to.

Oscar goes unwillingly. He can feel he’s close, willing to push himself too far to find a solution. There was blood in the water, and he wanted to make the most of the opportunity.

But it’s always easier when there’s the gentle thump of a heart and the cycle of inhale-exhale-inhale. Lando laid his head on Oscar’s chest, curling around the rest of him. He drifted off soon after.

—-

It must have been the rigidity of the usually soft muscle that alerted him that something was up. If it wasn’t that, it could have been the erratic heartbeat or soft whimpers falling from his lips. Lando tried to wake him up, whispering into the darkened room. “Osc? You ok darling?” He didn’t get a response. Lando escalated to poking him in the ribs. 

Oscar awoke with a yelp and a tensing movement that would have his shoulders  hurting for days. His eyes were massive, darting around in the low light. When they finally found Lando, his body finally allowed the tension to be gone. It was slightly devastating, watching as Oscar fuelled in on himself and tucked up to Lando, burying his nose into his shoulder, taking shuddering gasps.

Lando threaded his fingers through Oscar’s hair, pulling and musing the thick strands, earning himself small moans from the man trying to carve out his chest. “Did you have a nightmare?” He questioned gently. Oscar nodded. “Do you want to talk about it?” The body tensed below him, the heartbeat growing faster. Eventually, Oscar shook his head. 

His words were barely more than a breath. “I want to go to sleep.”

He brought Oscar closer, gently wrapping the younger the best he could. He was back asleep soon after.

—-

He’s had a terrible night sleep, and even worse, the rain came. The forests and topography did its job, leaving the circuit flowing in a whole different sense and the broadcasts with nothing to broadcast. He sits in an emergency meeting, looking at forecasts and radars, discussing components and settings. It’s not an ideal Saturday morning. 

Oscar loved Spa, but the everyone knew what rain could do. Sure, Daniel had nearly stood up to the RB19 last year, but it was also a circuit where things went wrong quickly, and badly. He couldn’t quite shake the edges of the nightmare, only the grief and guilt that lingered after it. And the profound loneliness that clawed at him, only alleviated by the strong body encasing his.

Everyone’s worst suspicions are confirmed during the 10 minutes of running they get. Max is untouchable. Daniel came in at second best, nearly 1.5 seconds behind. As much as he liked to stay optimistic about performance, there was no way in hell they were making that up. 

And then fucking Alpine had to also slot into the mix. He wants nothing to do with them, not since a simple, “I’m not continuing” conjured a shitstorm that started with an awkward sim session and ended with scissors on his pass in some Parisian office.

Not something he particularly wanted to get involved with again. 

Lando just about threw his briefcase off his lap, replacing the weight with himself. Well, Lando wasn’t sitting on him, but it was close enough. His head rested on Oscar’s shoulder, eyes on the same tracer he was trying to get information out of. “Try getting your peak breaking higher into T1.”

There was a gentle sound of conformation in his ear. “I reckon we’re gonna have to start on inters, but there might be a chance for slicks in Q3.”

“Believing in me to get to Q3, are we Piastri?”

“It might be a long shot, but I think you’ve got it in you.” Oscar booped him on the nose.

“Wow. Thank you. I’m honoured.”

—-

Qualifying was long, but the both of them get into Q3 easily enough. Inters change to slicks for the new session. Their medium downforce set-up is doing nothing to help them, but it’s nigh on confirmed there’s no rain tomorrow. Their race-pace was good, and the dry conditions could let them shine.

The car is fine. And he’s fine. It’s all fine. No matter how much Spa might be beloved, he’s not its biggest fan. One too many close calls. If he had to choose someone who was Spa’s biggest fan, it was Oscar. And he wasn’t even on the grid.

“And strat 2 please.” Oscar’s voice cut through the low drone.

“Strat 2 baby.” He drew out the ‘y,’ turning the dial into the correct position. 7 kilometres of speed and flat-taken corners. This is what he was meant to do. And he does it well.

And it’s a good lap. “That’s P5,” Oscar started, “You’ll be starting P4.” 

It’s nothing spectacular, but Rob hit the nail on the head with his prediction. Daniel apparently slotted in just behind him. Max was levels in front, backed up by Charles. Clearly the high-downforce had done its job. McLaren isn’t concerned though. There’s always tomorrow.

—-

The team had dinner together, spreading out across hospitality. It’s their last time together as a little unit of 100 odd for a couple of weeks. Lando and Daniel chat with their mechanics, he can see Andrea and Oscar joking about something. There’s something nice about these events. It doesn’t matter if an intern was chatting with Zak, they were all in it together. Everyone in the circus of F1 was together. There was a reason everything didn’t fall to shit in Spain.

Lando and Oscar left together, and they’d come back tomorrow together. But for now, Oscar collapsed into bed the moment he stumbled into the hotel room. Lando followed him, creating a pile of limbs only for them.

—-

The morning goes in a blur of meetings and briefs and last minute touch ups. Oscar singlehandedly goes through every base setting, every original line, every wet line, corner, and set-up adjustments whilst Lando finished up his pre-race PR and warm-up. 

Then comes the grid. The set-up is a little different this time. During Silverstone, Lewis, George and Lando were all stood in front of the drivers, with the FIA staff stood after them. It seemed like the entirety of trackside teams spawned onto the tarmac. The poms went first. Here, Belgium technically had no registered drivers, but the leaders of the WDC were both Belgian.

Max and Lando stood side-by-side, in the middle, the line formed in such as way that they were pushed out a little, stage centre.

The anthem is much better than last year at least. He’d been lounging around, using it as an excuse not to study. Oscar had just muted the TV.

It plays, and the grid is back in a flurry of action. He gets his precious few moments with Lando, murmured reminders and soft touches. Enough not to be noticed by the cameras.

Then he’s back at the pitwall, Jarv walking Lando through who has what tyres, passing back to Oscar. The notes and plans formulated, and he passed it on, the car getting itself ready to go.

”Loud and clear?”

”Loud and clear my dear.”

And those two words were the most beautiful he’d heard in a while.

The garage is always silent during a race start. Too much could go wrong. All lines went dead. 

But you know when the beasts were unleashed. It wasn’t just the roar that seeped through noise canceling headphones, it was the physical shake of the ground. Everyone sat tense through the first corner, the broadcast not yet catching up. He made a promise not to talk that much this time, not wanting to test newly healed wounds. It was purely business. He kind of hated it.

All the tracers were normal, all the tiles monitoring car functions remained green. That was a good sign. There was an anomaly the tracer that Oscar tried to nut out, but 10 seconds later, it was revealed that Lando had gone a little too wide into La Source. Daniel had jumped to 4th, and was dogging Lewis for 3rd. 

Maybe they had gotten it wrong. 100 metres less of DRS was proving to be a problem. Except for Max. 

But come on. It was Max Verstappen in a Redbull. It’s like saying Micheal Schumacher in a Ferrari or Lewis Hamilton in a Mercedes. It’s fucking meant to be. No shame in it. There was a joke that if you came second last year, you won the race. There was no outdoing the beast.

One round of pit stops goes. There’s murmurs on the radio of the fabled one stopper. A lot of pilots discussed it before discarding it. They’d be stupid to risk it all. All expect for George Russell, who is adamant that he’s going to do it. All the best to him, Oscar thinks. He’s either gonna be a genius or go down in a blazing glory.

He and Lando discuss the option. Theoretically, the tyres could make it through, perhaps in clean air, but Lando doesn’t have that. So instead he keeps Lando updated, and he’s growing restless. Oscar lets the strategists do their jobs, but they’re not able to find Lando the same gap that worked well for Daniel. 

In the end, both papayas peel into the pits. George goes on with his one stop, his radio exploding with a range of lines and settings to help him to keep it. There’s definite target times. Daniel nearly bowls over front jack, who gives the cameras a thumbs up and muttered that he’s be owed a few nice bottles of wine. He gets an apology over the radio, and later, a very nice selection of Margaret Valley vintages.

He’s flying around in a net 3rd - scratch that, the garage exploded into cheers as he pulled a brilliant move on Charles in the car with less downforce. Daniel’s flying around in a net 2nd.

Nobody is counting on George’s tyres as the laps tick down. Max and Lando get into a little scuffle, but the pass was made cleanly on Kemmel. There’s a small sigh that echoed through the garage. Nothing anyone could do once they were stuck in the dirty air.

“Last lap.”

Daniel closed in further, George slowly Lewis down to keep himself in the lead. It lets the Honey Badger do what it did best. 2 tenths back? No problem. Precision bombed the inside coming into the Bus-Stop. Stole second place from under the nose of Lewis. Bloody brilliant shit. He had to suppose that he’d gotten tired of seeing the back of a Mercedes for so long. 2016 still haunted him.

Charles, Max, and Lando sprinted in not long after, all of them crowded into a tiny time-frame. “And it’s P6.”

He could heard Lando’s sigh from a mile away. He could see the defeat and bone crushing tiredness etched into his face during media, Oscar not having the time to pull him aside, the only people having that privilege being Anya, to talk him through the race, and Jon, who hurriedly pushed a water bottle into his hands and took in some comments. He looks devastated, as though the opportunity had slipped away. He hadn’t been good enough.

He finally got a hold of Lando after the general debrief. The team wasn’t that concerned about their normal one, as long as some information was out there, it could all wait until Wednesday. Everyone wanted to get home in some capacity. 

Oscar found Lando in his driver’s room, freshly showered, clad in a pair of comfy pants and Oscar’s own hoodie. His eyes kept on twitching towards the phone left laid, face down on the table.

He sat on into, gently taking Lando’s massive hands in his, rubbing over the knuckles. “Don’t worry what the phone says,” he paused, letting Lando snap out of his trance. “I’m proud of you.”

The look he gets is heartbreaking. His eyes are beautiful, like the sea glass he sometimes found at the beach as a kid, but they’re red-rimmed, and even worse, they’re apologetic. He took a deep breath. “I failed the team today.”

Oscar’s head cocked to the side. Lando hadn’t seen that. He continued, “I failed you, I failed-“

“I don’t care.” His voice came out surprisingly flat, like he was voicing a fact. And he realised it was true. Oscar couldn’t give a flying fuck about Lando’s results. He cared about the man getting them. Oscar broke into a small smile. “I don’t care how you go Landers. I’m always going to be proud of you.”

You’re one of the 20. You pushed where I pulled back. Of course I’m proud of you.

He could see the shy smile twitching on Lando’s lips. “I feel like I need a good cry after that one,” he admitted sighing.

Oscar was the next one to break into a small smile. “It wasn’t your finest race, I’ll give you that much.” His arms flung open for Lando to walk in. They slotted together nicely, Oscar slightly rocking Lando as he half laughed, half sobbed into his shoulder. “If you still want to go for it, we’ve still got time. You’ve got 51 points in it.”

Lando held on tightly, laughing once again. “Of course I want to go for it, you muppet. I want us to go for it.”

Oscar pushed him to arms length away, hands on his shoulders. “Us? Hm?” Teasing.

Why the fuck did this man make him feel like he was having his first crush all over again. His face split into a grin. “Us. Of course.” He brought Oscar to him, crushing them together. “We are going to go out tonight and then go to bed, and then we’re gonna crush it. Then you can go and get more fancy letters after your name and I can get a proper tan.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

—-

The next story to tear the paddock lead to McLaren nearly blowing a top. They’d won the Belgian GP. George’s strategy made him a genius until the lack of an in-lap brought him crashing down to Earth. He’d have to feel sorry for the poor dude. He did spectacularly. Had to feel sorry for Mercedes though, especially the awkward ways the trophies were shuffled around. 

1st to McLaren, they gave the second back, and the 3rd was shuffled over the Ferrari in an odd gesture. They procured more champagne and Daniel used his shoes to do a showy on the balcony of McLaren, the team not caring for the sticky bubbles raining down.

—-

They went out to the club with Daniel and Max. A winning celebration. Charles and Carlos tagged along. To be completely honest, Lando probably would’ve rather joined George’s commiseration evening, and that was definitely saying something. George’s evening was probably going to consist of Alex kissing him until he was in a state to sleep or to yap it out. But there was no use wallowing. Zandvoort would be good. He would make it good.

This is more a ‘show his face’ kinda visit, but Oscar seemed to be enjoying it enough. Daniel drags him up to guide the club through the Nutbush, which Lando participated in, mainly because Daniel said he had to learn it before Australia.

Something about traditions.

Oscar had mentioned the bay 13 beer snakes in the same conversation. Lando has no clue what they were, and he’s not sure if he wanted to either. It garnered a laugh from Daniel.

He sipped at a whiskey, the good shit. Lando nursed a cocktail of some description. It was a good pick. Daniel was two Bloody Mary’s in. Max. Nobody knew how far Max was in, but he was about one G&T away from buying the half bottle of vodka and pouring it down Daniel’s throat.

The lights were on in that house, but it had been abandoned long ago.

Daniel’s accent slowly slipped into something stronger as the alcohol washed away the need for professionalism. The same thing had happened that fateful night in Miami, Lando ending up surprised with just how strong Oscar’s was without the need of blending in.

He and Oscar stayed long enough for Max to get to the point where he did get that bottle of vodka and ensured that Daniel drunk all of it. No idea what would happen to them over the next couple of hours, but Lando knows they’ve gone further and been fine.

It’s still relatively early when they leave the thumping bass and coloured lights behind. Spa isn’t too cold during mid-July, and Lando wants to take a walk anyway. The streets are quiet - his watch tells him it’s 1am. Oscar’s shoes click against the footpath.

It was the only pair he had left, after surrendering his pair of trainers to Danny. Oscar was right in assuming that thongs - flip flops (God, Oscar and Daniel had done a number on his vocabulary) - were not appropriate for a high-end club. So he wore dress shoes instead.

It was peaceful to walk back, side-by-side, the warmth radiating from Oscar seeping through to Lando. They set a fast pace, making quick work before the warmth by his side vanished. He got a few steps before turning around to find Oscar frozen. He went back and tugged on his wrist.

Oscar’s hands slowly came up to cup his face, holding it like porcelain. Like the porcelain of the trophy you convinced me to give up. His eyes were warm and large in the low light, reflecting Lando back at himself. He started the kiss, leaning up into Oscar. Oscar leant down, deepening it, their small gasps leaking into the summer air.

Lando was also the one to end it, slowly drawing back, leaving Oscar’s hair mused from where he grabbed onto it, and his lips swollen. “I know why you did what you did. You’re were doing your job, and I can’t blame you for that. And yeah, it hurt. It really did.” His voice trailed off at the admission. He brought his hands to rest on Oscar’s chest, that underneath the skin he loved to mark, the muscle he used as a pillow, or the ribs he always poked to wake him up. Underneath was a heart he had come to love.

“But it hurt more because you weren’t there after.” Oscar’s eyes widened further. Lando’s were downcast, trying to form the words. “It hurt because,” he trembled a little, thinking of the few days alone, stewing on his shunning of Daniel, the team, the way Oscar hadn’t talked to him. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he didn’t want to hurt Lando any more than what he thought he had. “It hurt because neither of us was there when we needed each other. It hurt because I love you.”

Oscar’s arms flew to clutch him. Not hold. Clutch. Like he was afraid that Lando would simply disappear if he let go. There was nothing gentle in the hold. “I didn’t even know what to do. I just… did it? You don’t even think, you just do. You know what I mean.” 

And of course Lando knew what he meant. There was a reason he was a driver.

“I don’t care how you have to do your job. I care that you talk to me no matter what happens. Ok?”

Oscar nodded. “Ok.”

—-

They showered together, properly washing away the day, and fell into bed together. They ended up talking about summer break.

“We are going back to England, we are going to do these debriefs. We are going to work on development, then you are going to go have the time of your life in Greece, I will get another post-nominal and all shall be well.” Oscar brushed a curl back from Lando’s forehead, and quickly found himself messaging his scalp.

Lando buried himself further into his shoulder, the sound from his lips either a wordless conformation or sigh of contentment. He lent into the touch until Oscar could feel him finally slipping under. He placed a kiss to Lando’s temple. “I love you too.”

All should better be fucking well.

Chapter Text

summer break, pt. 1

Plot twist. All goes well

Who is he kidding? From the moment Lando set eyes on the broadcast playing on his screen, it went to hell in a handbasket.

—-

The entire team flies back on Monday. They’re free for a while. The majority of the team gets a hard two weeks of shutdown, their entire operation becoming a corpse until it gets revived with concerning vigour.

They’ve got a week before they flatline. Their deadline for the FIA was Sunday, 23:59. 

His schedule seemed flipped between corporate and technical duties like a light switch. Wednesday, full Spa debrief, component performance. Thursday, Half year debrief 2024 development brief. Friday, full driver development meeting, 2025 development brief. Saturday, another technical performance meeting. Sunday was the lockdown.

Gather FIA documents and financial records, and do a general sweep for anything else. By the end of the day, their laptops are rendered useless and the entirety of the F1 technical division have the majority of their building access restricted. A lot of corporate too. Automotive and PR were free to go about their business.

The Spa debrief goes pretty well. There’s a lot to learn from the weekend. Everyone throws in their opinion, turning into a massive debate over calculations and biases. Their troubles in dirty air come up a lot. Why is it such an issue? Is it fundamental? Is it settings? Are they tyres? Can they fix it this year?

One answer is no, they can’t, it’s fundamental. The next question, they hope Pirellis will be nice.

They talk about any differences they could’ve had in strategy, perhaps getting Lando into clear air, but as much as they looked at other options, it didn’t seem to be possible. They also chatted about the one-stopper. Could it be done? Would have the same thing happened to them?

Maybe? Nobody is overly clear on that because nobody wants to commit Spygate II to figure it out.

Lando goes off to do a stupid amount of PR. Part 1 of 100. Oscar goes down to the components guys. He has a basic grasp on what they do, his mechanical knowledge covering material properties in a rather hectic module that had him ready to tear out his hair. They’re nearly exploding over the way they put together a rear wing, the compression at high speeds allowing for origami-esque movement at the edge. 

They’re fucking proud of this thing. Oscar’s captivated that they made it whilst still adhering to load testing. Sure, they’ve poked around in the grey area, but that’s what they should be doing. That’s engineering. Pushing the boundaries until they fall over or someone stops you. It’s a brilliant piece of ingenuity, and it should come in handy. They’re also looking at Aero’s designs for a new floor and front wing, but they haven’t yet been in part simulation. 

He chatted to them about getting weight in and out of certain parts of the car, which might be feasible. Oscar promised to get them a list of areas where they could settle it a little. The car seemed to still have inherent understeer, something that both Danny and Lando wanted out. Personally, when he had been in the sim, he used it to his advantage, preferring the smoother drive. They needed to find out where it was worst though before they could target it this year, and better yet, next.

That’s what the Friday meeting was about.

When Lando traipsed into his office, he was significantly happier than when he looked at the debrief. “What’s up with you?” Oscar glanced up from his work.“You never look this happy after PR.”

“We collaborated with Battersea and-“ Lando trailed off at the blank look on Oscar’s face. “Animal rescue?”

Oh. Yeah, that made sense. In Australia, they had the RSPCA. “Anyway, they brought puppies. And they were cute and snuggly. Do you think I should get one?” Lando’s excitement flooded into his words. He looked down at himself, seemingly only realising that he was covered in fur. “You have a lint roller?”

He fumbled around in his desk for a second, producing a massive roll of duct tape. “There’s the lint roller.” Oscar turned back to his monitor, his eyes flicking to see the forlorn look on Lando’s face. He laughed, gesturing for Lando to come around the desk.

“You’re useless sometimes,” Oscar said affectionately, “Come here.” He got a small section wrapped around his fingers and gently patted the fur off of Lando’s shirt. It was a quiet moment only for them.

—-

They were in bed later that night when Lando asked, “Why do you have duct tape in your office?”

Oscar flipped over in the darkened room, snuggling into Lando’s shoulder. His words were slightly muffled. “I’m a good engineer. Which engineer doesn’t have duct tape in their office?”

—-

Lando knew that Oscar was hard to get out of bed, but he had never quite expected it to be quite as bad as on race weekends. They'd be due in for a meeting at 9, he might get up at 7:30, it was a 20-minute drive into the MTC from his apartment. 

Oscar would still be starfishing on the bed at 8, or worse, scrolling Instagram. His addiction knew no height. And he was dramatic when Lando also got up in the morning, all dramatic remarks and hand on his forehead like he was in the depths of disease. 

Really, it was fucking adorable. Annoying, occasionally, but mainly adorable. He was pliant, affectionate, and really wanted nothing more than to bask in the sunlit bed with his boyfriend. They could make their mornings slow sometimes, soft kisses and more cuddles.

They walked into their half-yearly meeting 10 minutes late, both of them underdressed for the more formal occasion.

—-

That meeting went well. It was mainly the uppers yapping on about how their targets were being blown out of the water. They were not expecting to be fighting for so many wins. Human performance? Off the charts. The drivers were doing well, the mechanics were doing well, the rest of the trackside team as well. Metrics had been going up. 

Oscar thought they were probably teetering on that edge of 'when metrics become targets they fail to be useful metrics.' Sure, he ate well, worked out, and loved sleep, but it didn't mean he hadn't been toeing the line of burnout for quite some time.

Then came the technical debrief. Nobody had expected the Miami upgrade to be that good. Neither had anyone expected Redbull to self-implode and Ferrari to bring performance with the drawback of turning their car into a trampoline, then committing strategies so egregious that McLaren had jumped them.

They talk about all the good races that they had and the data collected from those, all the testing and as much as that was supposed to be his wheelhouse, the data engineers were much better at packaging it up for a less technical audience.

And comes the bad part. The mess made of Daniel's strategy in China and Miami, Lando's strategy mess of Spa and Canada. Set-up issues in Spain, the crash of Austria, the entirety of Silverstone, and of course, the ultimate 'how can we make a good thing sour,' of Hungary.

Lando gripped Oscar's hand underneath the table with surprising ferocity. He wishes he could have hugged him, but they had already probably pushed a little too far. It might have been ok around the trackside team, with a group of people they knew inside and out, but much beyond that, he hated that they had to be careful.

The team had of course apologised profusely over the entire incident to all involved. Yeah, they get it, strategy fucked up in the heat of battle. There were so few instances where it had to go down that way, and all of them only came down to the pit crew not being able to get the tyres off within 7 seconds.

It happened, and they were lucky enough to be able to put it behind them. It was still prominent in the public eye, but both Daniel and Lando had taken to simply ignoring anything to do with it.

But all in all, it's a good meeting. It promises better things coming up. Lando and Daniel get dragged down into the dungeons (they apparently have to go have extensive physical tests done to track performance - this was their big mid-season one). Oscar is stuck in another meeting, making sense of almost 6 months of driver notes on car performance to work out what is going to be fixed in their updates this year, and what they can incorporate for next year.

Once that is done, he goes to the gym, because, you know, health. Lando finally found him, the same look in his eye after a particularly good race as he was on the squat rack, because, bite him, he likes having good legs. He supposed it was still left over from training when he was an active driver.

From the moment that they're settled at home, Lando is on him. Trailing kisses up and down his flanks, down around his hips and thighs. "Why do you get such good legs?"

Oscar was about to retort with something sarcastic, or straight up tell Lando, that 'old habits die hard. I did leg training for F3, I still do.' He didn't get to because Lando, the bastard, anticipated it and tweaked his nipple, leading to a gasp and him arching into the touch.

They had an excellent night.

—-

Technically, they really didn't need to go in on Friday morning, because it was a scheduled meeting between only Oscar and Lando, but appearances still mattered, so they came in.

For most of the meeting, Lando was a little brat. Oscar is actually trying to match up marked data points with comments made by Lando. He's doing a pretty good job, starting to find fixable patterns. But when he now asks Lando questions, he blows them off with the practised ease of a politician. He kind of hates it, because he can do the same thing.

"Are you ok with the amount of inherent understeer in the car?" He glanced down at the copious comments on it. "I reckon we could try and force it to be more neutral next year." 

"I don't really care. What does Daniel think?" Lando crossed his arms, defiant.

"I don't know what Daniel thinks because I'm your engineer."

His mouth curled into a small smirk as Oscar said 'your.' Lando could be more than a little possessive at times, and he's half sure Lando nearly short-circuited hearing it come from Oscar himself. "I love hearing you call yourself mine." His voice went dark as he leaned over the table. 

"We are in a glass-walled office right now." Perhaps Oscar would have liked the thrill of doing it in an office, but not when there were this many people around. Lando flopped back into his seat, huffing. "We can do something about this," he circled Lando's figure, "tonight."

"Why not now?" He whined, "I have a room here."

Oscar crumpled the paper under his hand and threw it at Lando. "Do you want the understeer or not?"

Lando threw it back, way off target, but Oscar still had the reflexes to catch it one-handed. "A bit less would be nice."

—-

Tom and Oscar deliver their findings to the concept team, who are already halfway through chassis development. Both of them had the conclusion that there had to be a slightly different weight distribution to aid with rear grip, something they had had a little trouble with. Also ideas on how to fix their slow cornering, full of observations from the drivers themselves. Oscar did his best to translate the sometimes very sensation-filled comments into engineering terms.

That was apparently one of his strengths. 

They chat for a while, finding out what the big chances for change were. The development team are certain they can weed out several of the car's foundational issues through a proper evolution.

He delivered the good news to Lando that night, who really couldn't give a shit, given Oscar's earlier promise of what they were going to do tonight.

—-

The technical meeting on Saturday wasn't long. It was mainly looking at the forecasts for Zandvoort and Monza, establishing a list of potential set-ups along with their components, and confirming engine allocations for the rest of the season. They'd be taking a new one in Monza, leaving one for more the back-end of the season. They were quite confident for these races. Danny having a particular affinity for Monza and Lando being strong around Zandvoort. 

Lando took this day as one final session with Jon before he was off in Greece.

Oscar completed his lockup that afternoon so he wouldn't have to come back the next day, hoping to dedicate the majority of it to study. The rhythm came pretty naturally, filing away documents before ensuring that cabinets and draws were locked. It was for security, but also to prove to the FIA that they couldn't have done any work if all blueprints were locked away, the computers that could handle CFD were unplugged and the laptops that were connected to technical servers were surrendered.

—-

It was their final night before Oscar was going back to Australia. Lando absolutely hated it, but he supposed Oscar still would have to pack. There were winter clothes he'd have to pull from somewhere.

He made sure to get Italian that night, because he is a very attentive boyfriend. The look he got as Oscar had the alfredo was absolutely worth it. They watched Interstellar together, Oscar explaining some of the concepts to Lando, who hummed along in response. It seemed so right to have Oscar curled up on the lounge, gently trying to explain the concept of an Einstein-Rosen bridge to him.

Lando wasn't even really paying attention, letting the soft words crash over his head whilst he observed the pattern of Oscar's hair, or his blown eyes, the gentle way he shifted to get comfortable, muscles flexing. The warmth that enveloped him as they laid on the lounge, Oscar's back to his chest. The way he tipped his head back to look at Lando, gaze full of love.

"You didn't get any of that, did you?" His words weren't harsh. 

"No," Lando admitted. "I was too busy admiring you." At his words, a small blush creeped up Oscar's neck and high on his cheekbones. He lent down and pressed a light kiss to Oscar's lips. It was languid and perfect. Nothing between them, them against the world.

He didn't remember the end of the movie, only the warm arms around him and the distinct move from couch to mattress. In the soft light of the next morning, he was surrounded by a touch he wasn't sure he could live without.

—-

Oscar buried himself in Astrodynamics work on Sunday, hoping to get as much done as he could before he went back to Australia for the exams and any additional work they decreed he do.

Lando had been streaming for most of the day with Max. Oscar had been making a mental note of what he had to pack, because, lo and behold, he had to be at the airport at 8am tomorrow and still hadn’t packed. That was 12 hours away.

Really, all he needed was a puffer jacket. His plain one. Not the McLaren one. He had to at least be a little subtle, but the thing was, he knew he was going to get about a billion invitations out for coffee. That’s how a city like Canberra works. He knew the drama with the radio hosts for god's sake. Half the city probably knew that he was dating Lando.

But he had a more important thing to do tonight. Summer break had come, and he had made a promise. To what, he had no clue. But he had made it. He wouldn’t like to call it a ‘coming clean’ or ‘admission,’ it was simply him telling Lando about himself.

What he did. Who he is.

It’s not something big. Oscar’s determined to keep it that way. Yes, he’s the first champion of modern F3, has driven an F2 car and tested for F1. And he gave it up. Why? He sometimes could convince himself there was some selfless reason, but really, he didn’t know.

Maybe he wanted to know what it was like from both sides. 

Maybe he just didn’t want to do it anymore.

So he’s just going to sit Lando down and say it. Take whatever comes his way. He can’t imagine Lando getting too upset. Especially given that he’s being upfront about it. It is getting late, so he thinks he might just go and fetch him.

Lando’s office set-up in the UK is a little different than Monaco and decidedly less sound-proof. He can hear his comments on whatever is going on, and what sounded strangely like commentary. Motorsport commentary.

He had said that it was going to be a bit of a mucking around stream, playing games here and there, maybe a few video reactions, but holy shit. Shit, shit, shit. He knows some of his overtakes were featured on things like these.

And there’s that deep-set panic as he hears it, hand on the doorknob, head inching around the door to ask Lando when he is coming. That is a brilliant move from Piastri on Fewtrell and Pourchiare there. I don’t think we’ve seen anything like that since Kimi Räikkönen a couple of years back. I think that’s the race-winning move.

He still has a good chance of winning this championship.

Max paused the video the minute it played, recognising what he had just done. To cover, he started complaining about said overtake (Max was under a blue flag), along with another car Oscar was actually racing at the time. Three wide into Roggia, and he didn’t kill anyone, he came out on top. Oscar must’ve made a small sound of something, because Lando is whipping around, looking at him, then the on-screen overtake graphic. His eyes narrow, eyebrows drawn. The confusion is evident. He turns back to the computer. “Chat… I have to go.”

He clicked off the Discord call. Turned to Oscar, who stayed silent, before turning to the monitor. Let out a little huff. Oscar can feel the sharp, panicky feeling dragging him under. It’s horrible. It claws at him as Lando opens Google. He tightens his grip on the door.

Fuck you fate. 

10 fucking seconds earlier, and maybe this could go down a very different way. But he’s stuck here, the louder click of the enter key echoing like a sentence. He’s frozen, and can barely breathe, panic claws at his throat. He knows he was completely and utterly fucked.

Standings Formula 3 2019

1. O. Piastri

His points tally. The first win in Spielberg, the ones in Spa and Monza. The podiums in Hungary and Silverstone. Winning the entire thing.

Lando laughed. Properly laughed. Threw his arms up and let them fall. He could see the vague shock and panic starting to take him over.

He could see Lando trying to match the Oscar from 5 years ago to the one standing in his office doorway. To be completely honest, not much had changed. Sure, he’s gotten taller and a bit broader, grown out his hair a little, and lost the youthful streak of his face, but it’s clear. The teen, dressed in the black suit with yellow highlights of the Renault academy was undeniably the same engineer that stood behind him, hair soft, in an oversized grey T-shirt.

I'm so sorry you had to find out like this. I swear it shouldn't have been this way.

He could see as Lando squeezed his eyes shut, desperately trying to connect the dots that Oscar left out in the open. Trying to deny it. Oscar stayed frozen, unsure of the reaction. But he got it soon enough.

His eyes, usually bright and animated were dead flat, coloured like the rips he learnt to spot as a child. The current drew you in and spat you out the back. There was the ghost of a disbelieving smile on his face, mouth open a little as he tried to form words. When they came, they were dangerously joyful. “What. The. Fuck?”

Chapter Text

summer break, pt.2

The next minutes pass in a blur of words. Lando has no clue what he’s saying, but they still spill like blood gushing from a wound.

He knows the signs had been there since the very first day. People didn’t just get in and drive like that. 

His mention of Prema.

An Australian doesn’t get into the car from the left. They used right-hand drives as well. Only someone that had spent a significant amount of time around karts would do that.

His hate of DRS. 

The A-levels.

Arthur, Liam, Jack, he’d seen a few conversations between Oscar and Guaynu. What seemed like half the reserves. Knowing Max, having half the grid trying to place him. Mark and Fernando. Danny. Fucking Daniel Riccardo knew Oscar. 

That night in Silverstone.

The notebook.

The fucking notebook. Those were F3 lap times. That was his fucking experience wrapped up with a neat little bow.

And the suspended belief came crashing down. Of course Oscar had something, no normal person could walk into a sim and do what he did.

So he stares at Oscar, watching the way he’s gripping onto the wood, face drawn. And he can see the same person in the photo as the one right in front of him.

Oscar doesn’t move, and neither does he, the two of them suspended in a small bubble. 

And can slowly feel the panic building, a wave forming over his head. But it doesn’t crash yet, not whilst his anger holds it up.

Because Oscar lied to him. Nearly every time Oscar lied to him.

“Well?” He demands, “Are you going to say anything?” He knows he’s edging close to hysteria, everything he knows crumbling in his fingers.

Oscar seems genuinely confused at the demand, eyes narrowing. “You want me to deny it? Or defend that I did it? Because I’m not going to do either.”

Oh, he hates that Oscar isn’t going to make this a fight. That would make it so, so much easier.

Lando wagged a finger at him. “You don’t get to play these games with me. Not with me. Not now.”

“What am I supposed to say? ‘Oh no! That’s not me,’ or ‘I’m so sorry I won the same thing you did.’” His voice got stronger, and it enraged Lando. Oscar spoke with the same certainty that all of them on the grid had. “Or. No. I won it when everyone was together in the harder cars. Not split across two series. Is that what you’re upset about? That I’ve done the same you have? Because I will not apologise for winning.”

“I don’t need your fucking apology on that.  I’m the one who gets to race in the end.” There’s a kind of bloody victory in that. That no matter what happens, he’s the one that clawed his way up in to history books.

Oscar tipped his chin back. “And who lets you race? Hm? Who does that work?”

And this is where Lando starts the dangerous spin. He can’t correct it, and he doesn’t think he’s going to regain any traction. “And that’s the fucking point, isn’t it? The team.” He’s surprised with the amount of venom he says it with.

“I don’t need you and your bloody work. I only need the car. I fucking dare you not to show up to Zandvoort. Watch what I can do.” He speaks as though trying to expell something. Something rotten and raw. He doesn’t want to be defined by the fastest car .He wants to be the fastest driver. He has to do that without Oscar.

Oscar raised an eyebrow, scrutinising Lando. “I’ll be showing up to Zandvoort,” he declares matter of factly. “Monza, maybe not. I’ll put in the leave app if you want.” He shrugs, nonchalantly. You must be shitting him.

He glosses over it, continuing with his earlier rant. “‘We’re gonna get Lando a driving coach, but we gotta make it subtle. He’s not living up to our expectations. So we’re gonna find some ex-driver to come in under the guise of being an engineer.” He’s agitated, he feels like he should be pacing, but instead, he’s still glued to his chair, hands cutting into his desk.

Oscar let out an offended snort. “Ah yes,” he says sarcastically, “I was definitely on McLaren’s payroll when I was developing advanced weapons systems.”

Lando half cut him off. “But they knew. Didn’t they.”

Oscar pursed his lips. He looks slightly distraught. His words were quiet. “Of course they knew.” The silence stretched between them. He never knew his PC was that loud, the gentle whirring of the fans may as well been hurricane force winds.“HR wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t know.”

Lando’s mouth tightened, and he could feel the faint stinging around his eyes. His cheeks were wet. “How many people?”

His shrug is blurry through the tears.  “A lot.” He can vaguely see Oscar trying to reach put to him. Comfort him.  The wave became a barrel, slowly crushing around him. Lando places a finger up to stop him, turning away. “You don’t - No.”

Oscar aborted the movement. Retreated back to the doorway. “Why does it really matter though?”

He let out a hysterical laugh. “Why does it matter?” A smile ghosted on his face. He doesn’t know why. He’s insane. “Oscar,” Oscah, “you’ve lied to me for months.”

“I’ve never lied to you,” he starts, somewhat sheepishly. “And I swear, I was just about to tell you.” There’s sincerity in the words. He can almost believe its true.

Never lied? What sort of pure, idealistic bullshit is this?

But he never has, a small part of his brain supplies. He’s never told to fill truth, but neither has he lied.

Oh, how he hates that.

A bitter laugh bubbled up. “Like hell you were,” he grumbled. He got fucking angry meeting Oscar’s eyes again. He looked sincere. There was that plea for understanding that had been there since the beginning. That plea not the answer questions that Lando knew were nigh on unanswerable.

“Though Lando,” he has to squeeze his eyes shut. Oscar’s talking like all the debriefs, gently probing Lando’s calls, trying gain a better understanding of why they were made. “Why does it matter so much to you?”

Why does it matter? Lando doesn’t know, but there’s something ugly twisting inside, wreathing. There’s so many layers stacked in his head. Betrayal, anger, love, understanding. It all falls under passion, doesn’t it? He’s like this because he cares. His mind stretched to try and pinpoint it, his thoughts absolutely incoherent.

But when it forms one, it comes with frightening clarity, like the stars on a dead ocean. Because, in another life, we could’ve been the ones racing each other. I could’ve taken you under my wing and taught you all that I know. We might’ve made history together. Now you’ll be no more than a tiny footnote despite holding my heart.

It matters because I love you.

He wheels himself back to anger. Oscar lets the silence stretch until the time runs out. He’s not getting an answer to that question.

Lando feels the need to strike something, the calm nature of Oscar’s answers and logic of his questions rubbing everything the wrong way. He springs up from his seat, it hitting the shelving with a sharp sound. 

He can finally pace.

“Well, you know,” he starts viciously, “you weren’t a good enough driver. You aren’t good enough as an engineer.”

That was way too harsh. He overstepped something there.

And that might have been the comment that broke Oscar. He doesn’t know what he wants, but it certainly wasn’t the icy rage, then the guilt, then the steely resolve that flashes across his face.

He surprisingly fast when he wants to be. Lando almost has to run to keep up with him. Oscar grabs his keys and phone from their spot on the sideboard. All very fast until his hand rests on the doorknob, like he doesn’t know what to do next.

Lando wants him to leave, and he wants Oscar to hold him as he cries. Wants him to kiss the tears from his cheeks.

His shoulders are slumped, head cocked and he doesn’t even turn to Lando as he speaks. He could imagine the furrow of his brows like he’s parsing data, desperately trying to figure it out. “You don’t know that,” he whispered, voice wavering, “nobody knows that.” His voice changed, an amount of certainty bleeding in. “I don’t know that.” He takes a shuddering breath, almost squaring his shoulders. “But I have made my decisions on that, and I stand by them. You’re not above me Lando.”

Oscar slipped through the door like water through his hands. Like all those quiet nights spent in hotels, sneaking around to cuddle and watch a movie.

It’s worse that it’s not dramatic. Not angry. Oscar faced it like everything else. Logic and compassion.

Why had he done it? Done all of it? Quit and hide it?

It makes it infinitely harder to hate him when Lando dealt the killing blow.

The wave crashes over him, drowning him. He doesn’t try to fight it. He lets his eyes fall closed, trying to block out the world. He can’t breathe, the gasps coming in a staccato rhythm. There’s hands dragging him downwards, but none of them are warm and soft. They’re cold and demanding, rough as he slides down the wall.

And he can hear it, his rapid, fluttery pulse. He can feel it when he gasps in, pounding against his rib cage. There’s the pulsing tremors that wrack him. 

It’s never been this bad. He’s never not had a person there to sit with him. Hold him, run their fingers through his hair, whisper sweet nothings into his ear.

He swears there’s the ghosts of Oscar’s words around him. He swears there’s warm hands on his. Smaller than his, but still gently rubbing over his knuckles. He swears there’s warm hands everywhere, gently rubbing him, easing the layers of everything out with each pass. That when he opens his eyes, they’re going to be met with warm brown ones, coloured like melting honey, shot through with the sunset.

The world tips when it’s the cold white of his paint that stares back at him. The wave engulfs him, dragging him further and further out until he sinks below the surface.

It’s almost calm here.

—-

Thoughts come to him, unbidden, rough around the edges as he tries to break the surface.

He loved Oscar.

That doesn’t sound right.

He loves Oscar?

Lando doesn’t know.

Is it love or loved?

Chapter Text

summer break, pt. 3

The plane was delayed to allow for forecast fog. It’s still foggy when he touches down, the mountains hidden behind the shroud of vapours.

Heathrow to Changi had perhaps been the most peaceful flight he’d ever had. He got business-class seats and barely used any of the amenities. A shame. Half of his time was spent staring down at the layers of cloud. He’s not really into the whole coherent thought thing yet.

The memories of the previous night were a little blurry after he left. But he must’ve gotten home, finished packing, driven out to Heathrow, gotten through security and hauled himself onto a plane. That has to explain how, according to the flight map, he’s roughly over Baku, doing 800kph.

There’s enough left in him to drag out his laptop to start the final module. It’s a specific unit on fluid dynamics, that, if he’s being completely honest, is more attuned to aircraft.

Not necessarily upside-down wings attached to specially made V6s. 

It’s easy shit anyway.

—-

Canberra is a university city that just so happens to cop it from the media for its brain-dead FIFO workers. The beating heart of Australian bureaucracy.

He kind of loves it and kind of hates it.

But of course, he’s barely stood on home soil when a small number of invites for coffee or drinks hit the inboxes of different accounts. It’s like one person saw him in the glassed-off international terminal, probably heading to their Melbourne 9am meeting, and somehow transferred that information to everyone else.

Nat arranged that he could use her car whilst she was doing a module that required some time at the big campus in Sydney.

The Merc is a nice drive. Good power, good pickup, and very comfortable. The roads are familiar, most of the traffic flooding in the other direction. 40-60-80, stop here, turn here.

He takes the slightly more scenic route, not that it means much. The lake is also shrouded in a thick layer of fog, obscuring everything from the classical architecture of the library to the brutalist of the high court. 

It clings in the valleys.

The house is a big one, even for the three people who used to live in it. Spook’s parents had taken a 6 year diplomatic posting to Denmark just as she ended school. She’d downright refused to go, citing the lucrative scholarship she’d been accepted onto uni on. Her parents threw her the keys and told her not to host raves, then fucked off.

It actually worked out better for the both of them right now. He let himself in, the keys to the house being with the keys to car.

As expected, a Border Collie sits at the entrance, waiting patiently. The dog spins around, her claws scrapping on the polished timber of the entrance. He drops down on a knee and flings his arms open. “Hug.”

She stops, coming to a stop in front of Oscar and resting her head on his shoulder. He hears a little whine. “Did you miss me?” Jazz wagged her tail.

He ventured further into the familiar house, first taking in the state of the fridge, which was decently stocked, and also had chemicals and a concerning amount of film.

Not much had changed in his 7-month escapade to England. The only addition really seemed to be a couple more cat toys. One was stretched on by the window in the strengthening sun and the other was curled up underneath the heating vent. He took pity and turned it on. It was freezing in here anyway.

The office situated on the top floor (the main entrance, dining room, and kitchen were all situated on a mezzanine) was all in order, or at least as in order something could be for engineering major in their final year. That was to say an absolute bombsite.

The bedroom on the ground floor was unchanged, except for the swan-shaped towel placed on the bed, a note tucked into the pleats written with such sarcasm. Enjoy your stay!

Oscar throws whatever’s in his suitcase into the wardrobe and does laps around, reacquainting himself with the space. Plush carpet, deep timber flooring, pale walls. It really hadn’t changed.

For the first time in a long time, he doesn’t feel inclined to work or study. It’s much more appealing to curl up in front of the window with one of the cats. So that’s what he does, fetching a blanket from the lounge as he wanders over to the window and settles down. The grey tabby, Sasha, almost immediately flops herself into his stomach. He’s out like a light.

The torti, Tessa was curled up on his chest. They’re heavy motherfuckers so don’t look it, but they are. He goes for his phone, snapping a photo to send to Lando - he wants to kick something.

How’s he doing? Probably not well, but Oscar feels like a 0.5 of a cat isn’t going to help him. He and Lando had said some pretty horrific things to each other, Lando needing answers to questions Oscar hadn’t even asked himself, and Oscar reverting back to the logic of the situation, shutting down to prevent more hurt.

He all of a sudden really wants to leave, gently annoying Tess until she jumped off at her own volition, allowing him to stalk off to the kitchen to fish for keys.

The right keys are on a hook like they always were, left side of the pantry. Bulky keys for a bulky car. Oscar generally disliked driving diesel cars, they never had the same pick-up as a petrol, but he wasn’t about to drag what was practically a nigh on track car off-road. A Discovery was more appropriate for that.

It’s not like it's a bad drive either. He must’ve had a decent nap because the roads are significantly clearer. The arboretum is barren under the harsh winter sun.

Eventually, he reaches the road he’s been itching to get at. Skinny, fast, and windy. It’s almost subconsciously that he straightens it out that little bit more, taking the racing line within the lane, that little bit of recklessness urging him not to lift as much for corners or crests.

It’s great to lose himself in. There’s some gentle music playing that Oscar idly hums along to. There’s nothing but him and the car that rumbles below him. 

The valley he’s following dips a little deeper before it winds back up onto the ridge of the mountains, the road eventually turning to dirt. It requires a little more brainpower to deal with, not wanting to fuck the suspension with a particularly bad pothole.

It’s all a blur of olive green leaves and bleached tree trunks when he chooses a trail and goes down, sliding the shifter into manual and pulling it back until he doesn’t really have to use the pedals, only focusing on wrangling the car down the twists and hairpins and over the mounds made for drainage. 

Off-roading is a very different discipline to anything he’s done. But Oscar has desperately needed to break from walking perfectly cambered tracks. The switch to cliff on one side and a rockwall on the other is jarring, but feels necessary. The bottom of the valley comes to a small flat, creek almost creating low-lying islands.

Maybe a swim would do him good; but he’s not that stupid, there’d be snow in it right now. He settles for kicking up in the drivers seat, legs up over the centre console, watching the wildlife. There’s a couple of roos around, and a cacophony of noise coming from Cockatoos if he’s heard it right.

There’s no coverage out here. No more stupid invitations or work emails, probably reminding them of lockdown protocols, no Whatsapp, no messages or anything. It’s cozy in the cabin, and it’s nothing like a McLaren 765LT or their car in Bahrain. But it still reminds him of it.

The questions come unbidded. 

Why did I quit?

Well, his mind helpfully suggested, you wanted to know more. 

And wouldn’t have I found that out by continuing?

You know every piece on that car, you know what is does, you can look at a few strings of data and know exactly what it was doing. It’s not a bad thing you wanted to see something from the other side.

You came back because you loved it. Not under the pressure of constant politics and adrenaline rushes that felt like falling off a cliff when you came down. Not when your entire value came down to some time and arbitrary points. Still competitive, just not in the same way.

So, he quit because he wanted to. Not because of some ceiling in skill or otherwise, Oscar just wanted something different. Something driving couldn’t give him. Peace and quiet and really, the ability to sink his hands in and understand.

That’s all he really wanted. To understand the world around him, to pick something apart until he knew how it went together. And that was fine.

The road back up is no easier, the engine producing a quiet roar as if forces itself up onto the ridge in the increasing darkness. On the way back, he cruised at a solid 20 over the speed limit, watching as the stars whipped past, slowly getting less and less as he made his way back towards the city, then into the north.

Aranda was a leafy suburb nestled into the foot of Black Mountain. When he gets back from his little trip, Oscar chucks a puffer on and goes for a walk around the block with Jazz, the Collie happily trotting along at his heel as the streetlights above were partially blocked by the trees.

Maybe that’s what he could do one day; walk up the mountain. Once he was back, he fed himself plus the animals, chucked on the nightly news over whatever reality program was on.

Eventually, when the tendrils of sleep slowly tested him, for the first time in a while, he let himself drag himself to bed. There wasn’t numbers to look balance or reduce, and there was a certain peace with that. It’s not quite as easy to fall asleep without something warm that insists on using him as a pillow, but he’s dragged under anyway.

—-

There’s a cat curled up next to his head, purring like an engine, one that somehow weaselled her way under the doona to curl up against his ribs. The dog tilted her snout to give him the biggest eyes ever.

“You’re in this for food, aren’t you?” Oscar asked, eyes fixed on Jazz’s.

Her tail thumped a few times. “You’re useless,” he groaned, but still slid out to fill bowls for the three of them. The timber was freezing underfoot. 

His phone had blown up with at least another dozen invitations, so he ignored that in favour of actually doing what he was here to do, and study.

Oscar reckoned he had two, maybe three days to go of content. Turns out it became a lot easier when he worked with aerodynamic components all the time and had access to quite literal experts in the field as his colleagues.

So the next few days are spent brushing up on content and finishing up the final assessment for the degree. Perhaps he could go back to get a Masters at some point, but given the fact that there were only 4 modules of difference between his mechanical engineering and the aeronautical he was getting, it ended up being a good solution.

He spent much of Friday packaging everything up. He’s got a 10am Monday morning meeting with one of the professors that he really can’t blow off, hence doing his prep now.

—-

Oscar mainly lounged around on the weekend, probably playing an unreasonable amount of Mario Kart. He didn't want to particularly go out to anything, so he didn't. Pretty easy. Spooks had a Switch, but were all the customisations open? No. So he practically spedrun the game so he could then play in the online lobbies and destroy everyone else.

The cats gave him a weird look when he nearly implanted a joycon into the ceiling.

He went and watered the plants after that one.

—-

The university was an odd one, he’d give it that. A remote campus UNSW that happened to be a part of a military base and taught cadets. Pity the majority of them were pricks.

The main campus building was a massive brutalist thing with a highly updated interior that forced him to walk through too many hallways teeming with uniformed students before hitting the office he was supposed to be going to.

The door was open, so he gave a polite knock. The professor inside looked up from his desk, beckoning him in and standing to grip his hand in a firm handshake. “Oscar.”

“Pat.” The professor gestured for him to be seated, straightening up his glasses and rearranging himself on the chair. Oscar sunk into the leather of the seat. 

You got three types of lecturers at this university. Military, and they made sure you knew of it, superiority complexes that would crumble with the lightest push; the chill dudes, engineers and technicians that could strip a fighter jet down to its bolts, and with a team of four, have it up and running within an hour; and professors like Patrick, their military training shown in a hatred for ironing.

Apparently, that middle point had attracted some scrutiny on his CV. Technical ADF staff had a good rep, and that had carried over to Australian GSG.

“So I’ve already had a look through the first three modules, and you’re looking at HD, D, D,” he read from the screen. “I’ll have to get it moderated, but you’ll be fine.”

Oscar nodded, pulling the rest of the final module from his briefcase tucked neatly at the base of the chair.

“Excellent.” He had a quick flip through the folder, eyes scrutinising the work. He seemed to be happy enough.

“My work is looking all good?” Oscar questioned. He’d rather not drag it on any longer than what this had to.

“Considering your lowest grade on your original degree was a pass in Meteorology that had a 94% fail rate; You’ll be getting your confirmation by next week.”

“That’s good. I don’t exactly think McLaren would be thrilled if I didn’t.”

“Of course.” He took a long pause, considering his next words. “It’s good to see my students actually using their skills. You were highly rated in the APS. I see a few too many of you go into contracting and corporate.”

“And the US defence industrial complex?”

“They build our planes. Not complaining if people go there.”

He let out a short laugh, and the two of them talked for a while, sharing stories back and forth until someone finally realised the time.

“Oh, you’re staying with Natalie Kay, aren’t you?”

“How do you know?”

“I asked what she was doing with her pets when she went to Sydney. She said you had to come back to get this sorted. I can put two and two together. I need to move that Wednesday meeting forward to 9.”

Oscar shook his head, taking in the information. “Will do.”

“Awesome. Thank you, and I’ll be back with your confirmation shortly.”

—-

Natalie came back on Tuesday, exploding into the house and promptly passing out for a good 10 hours. Not too graceful.

She was up the next morning before Oscar, giving his choice of a Quadrant hoodie a raised eyebrow.

“Oh shut up. It’s warm.”

She gave a sarcastic hum, and it really fucking annoyed him.

“What can you say about this?” Oscar whined. “You’ve never had a relationship.”

She looked up, smirking. “Coaches don’t play.”

“Touché.”

She sprawled there and he stood in the doorway of his bedroom, both staring at each other.

“What the fuck are you going to do about it?” She burst after a while. “I know you thought about joining the AAD and never showing your face again.”

He groaned.

“You wouldn’t enjoy Antarctica. The water is much too cold.” 

“You’re a lot of help, aren’t you," he replied sarcastically.

Natalie stretched out like a cat, flipping and settling cross-legged and leaning back on her hands. “Can you maintain a professional relationship whilst leaving your romantic one unhealed?” She paused, thinking. “Or do you realise that you were both dicks to each other and move on together?”

Would it be possible for Oscar just to go back and continue like nothing happened? He wouldn’t. A race engineer and a pilot considered each other as brothers at the very least. The only point of contact for a driver. Trust was paramount. That had been broken, and it would have to be built for them to work together again. Oscar desperately wants to make it work, because it was never supposed to be like this.

“I’d like to move on, but I don’t know if Lando will. And it’s going to take time and effort. Because he hurt me too.”

“You weren’t a good enough driver. You aren’t good enough as an engineer.” Lando's words formed in the back of his skull.

Oscar had always been a very certain person. Self-confident, not cocky. But shit like that still hurts, skimming over invisible wounds.

“You hurt each other. But you at least need to properly talk to him about what happened. Both of you have said what you’ve said and whether or not the intent was there, it still matters. You know that Lando was hurting and lashed out, but that doesn’t lessen what he said. Likewise, somewhere Lando knows that you weren’t malicious in keeping your secret, but it doesn’t negate that you did it. I know you hate talking emotions but you gotta do talk.”

Oscar sighed and dropped his head in his hands. “And if he doesn’t want to talk?”

“Keep on doing your job,” Nat stated. “Give him the best car you can, and build that professional trust again. And if it doesn’t work, you do that to prove something for yourself.”

What the fuck would that be? Productive revenge?

“By the way, Patrick said he wanted to meet you at 9,” Oscar added.

She checked her watch and groaned, walking out the door in a pair of Ugg boots and hair still in a messy bun.

—-

The confirmation came through on the Wednesday as well.

It’s not too often that he makes a properly impulsive decision, but walking out of the RSPCA with an orange tabby cat named Papaya was not what he was expecting as a self-given gift for getting another degree.

Maybe she’d travel with the team, who knew. At least she was from Australia. With the right vaccinations, she’d be able to go overseas and come back with relatively little effort. He’d have a pet monopoly come  Melbourne, at least, if proper biosecurity measures were upheld.

She was a snuggly little thing, apprehensive but easily swayed with treats. And ok with travel. That was crucial. 

Natalie had been absolutely astounded when he walked in, new cat carrier in hand, Papaya curled up inside. “You got a cat.”

“I got a fucking cat.”

Luckily, Jazz lived in a household of cats, so she was more interested than murderous, and the other two looked at her and went, huh, ok. She’s not staying though.

Oscar coaxed her up onto the bed that night using treats, and woke up the next morning with a massive lump, purring like a V6. He could barely breathe. A perfect choice, until he found she had the habit of putting the weight of the universe onto one paw and pressing into his pecs.

—-

@oscarpiastri
caption: winter break ft. the ex-roomie
attached:
[1] Screen-lit shot. Oscar sits with a thumbs up, tastefully bad angle.
[2] Collie giving him full-forced puppy dog eyes from on the floor.
[3] (Video) Spinning Sasha on the floor Audio: Cat purring
[4] 0.5 of Tessa on his chest
[5] Mountain trail. It looks cold.
[6] Screenshot of confirmation email.
[7] Orange fur 
[8] French pastries
[9] (Video) Ski fields, Natalie sitting on her skis as she rocketed down the slop, coming to a neat stop by sliding her skis out to stop and flopping to the side. Audio: Screaming then laughing when stopped
[10] Photo out of the plane
[11] (Video) Taken in the cabin of the car. Frame shakes a bit, clearly in the bush Natalie seems unperturbed. Audio: Shit, shit, shit, shit, nevermind, all good.
[12] Patting a kangaroo
[13] Lying on the ground at the mountain summit

—-

When the systems came back online at 00:00 UTC, he logged on at a comfortable 10am. There was a singular email in his inbox.

Zandvoort Interview 
The email had a calendar attachment and went something along the lines of blah blah blah, you’re required for an interview on the Thursday of Zandvoort for a segment on race engineering to be published on the Monza weekend.

Oh shit. But he added it into his calendar, a red block squeezed between the others. His time was up and he’d have to face the music at some point. The rumbling of the social media couldn’t be ignored forever. Fuck it. If he was going to be outed, it would be on his terms.

Oscar took the time to do the expected update to his email block, the B.Eng (AeroAv) going behind the B.Eng (Mech)(Hons.).

He pulled up the HR Portal, navigating to the leave application forms. He’d actually never actually had to do this. Never particularly wanted to either.

Employee name: Oscar Piastri
Employee number: 164252581
Department: Technical
Division: Engineering (Trackside)
Position: Senior Race Engineer (LN)
Grade: 4(1)

Leave Type: Annual
Date Start: 26 Aug 2024
Date End: 06 Sep 2024
Total Days: 10

Oh, how he’s going to be dragged into some executive’s office over this. Rob, Peter, Andrea, fuck. Could be Zak.

They didn’t really need him there. Surely Will could cover for a weekend, hell, Andrea had done race engineering before. How’d that be? Oscar would definitely pay to watch that.

Missing Monza would be a bit more than sticking it to Lando. It would give the people time, hopefully, the race was exciting to distract away from what would inevitably be shown. Give it two weeks to die down. 

They could drag his cold, dead body into Italy for all he cared.

Chapter Text

XV
R14, Netherlands

Oscar and Papaya get back to the UK in one piece. The one day he has before going to work is spent taking care of the cat, making sure everything was in place. He spent several hours trying to figure out how to make a cat tree, because Oscar decided that would be a good use of his time. 

And tried to train her to walk on a leash, which right now included her spinning around in circles on the tile of his kitchen. He took a video of her being a pathetic wet noodle and posts it on Insta, not thinking about what a public figure + cat does to the internet.

Checking his emails on the first day, PR now wanted to use his cat as a team mascot, which who was he to deny? She seemed to have developed a dependence to him, meowing like crazy whenever he'd come home and spending more time trying to claw up onto his shoulder than asleep. He kinda didn't want to leave her for anymore than the hours he would be doing at work.

So yeah, he'd like to be able to bring her along. His own WAG.

The next few days go in a blur of technical meetings and actually technical work. Oscar really enjoyed doing the work, the massive rooms they could take out with whiteboards, everyone chucking in ideas and correcting incorrect assumptions.

Then, the big day came; their drivers finally came back to work. Oscar isn't looking forward to that, but he's not going to try and chuck a sickie to get out of it either. He has standards. He at least needs to set the boundary that he was not going to allow it to change their working relationship if he could help it.

When they had their mandatory engineer-driver meeting on Lando’s first day back, it seemed that they had the same idea. They were going to make this a very private dislike.

It was all very professional, none of them throwing papers at each other or feet up on the desk. Oscar didn't even feel the compulsion to spin in his chair. It was just fact after fact, technical questions, a lot of keyboard clicking and scratching pens.

Eventually, Lando finally broke the persona of the perfectly professional driver and leant back in his chair, observing the hunch of Oscar's shoulders as he scribbled in his notebook, black ink over-inscribed with red for comments and solutions. "How do I know you're not going to fuck me over again Oscar?"

His head snapped up at the cool, almost accusatory tone. Oscar levelled his own deadpan gaze. "I’m going to do my best for the team. I'm competitive. Being a driver and all that," he added sarcastically.

Lando let out a huff and started to get up. Oscar placed down his pen with a dull thunk, his eyes flicking out towards the broader division beyond the glass walls of his office. The intent was clear. We keep this under wraps. 

“You have got to get over yourself Lando,” he hissed. “I am not going to fuck over the car for the sake of being petty. And I hope you’re not going to drive shit to prove a point. If you don’t trust me as a person, trust me as a professional. I'm fucking good at my job and you know that.”

The stare he was fixed with was one of hatred, but also of grudging respect. "I want the base set-up to be oversteery. Control stability through in-car adjustments. That's what I'll need."

Oscar noted the exact words down with a nod. "I'll see what I can do.".

Yes, he does get dragged into Andrea's office over his leave stunt. So he explains the whole interview thing and how he'd rather not have a camera shoved in his face for the weekend. Leaves out how it allows him to be a bit of a dick whilst also letting Lando have what he wants. Andrea narrowed his eyes at that, a little suspicious of what else was behind it, but signed the documents anyway. 

There's sim sessions and technical briefings and planning meetings, and it's all so horrendously normal.

—-

He has to show up to the track early on a Thursday. The interview was tucked between the general brief for the weekend and the gridwalk, followed by the car technical briefing. Oscar didn't need anything else on his plate, but if the calendar invite came up on his work email, McLaren had unfortunately cleared it.

The normal briefing went fine, just a whole heap of blank looks from technical staff when they were talking about corporate or hospitality, and a whole heap of blank stares from corporate when they talked technical.

The media centre was tucked up by the pitlane entrance of the paddock. He hadn't ever had much of a reason to come here, bar a couple of commentaries he did in F3 and his request at the start of the season to please try and keep his previous affiliations under wraps.

So he has to steel himself going in, where there's a little stage prep and a microphone shoved into his hands before Crofty talks him through it and giving him an encouraging smile. If he could talk about it once, he could talk about it again.

—-

part 1: Peter Bonnington
part 2: Gianpiero Lambiase
part 3: Ricki Adami

Transcript #81
Oscar Piastri f/ Monza, ep1. part 4

(Muffled speaking, Oscar comes into frame and sits down in the studio)

White title card comes up in the corner.
Oscar Piastri
Senior Race Engineer, McLaren

David Croft: What's it like to be back amongst the action Oscar?

Oscar Piastri: Back? Who says I'm back?

DC: I think your racing record says that.

OP: Yes, yes, the racing record. What am I supposed to say? I'm back bitches? 

DC: That seems rather appropriate. 

Cuts to a montage of junior racing series and stylised tweets.

DC: So, 2018 Formula Eurocup champion, 2019 FIA F3 champion. All done as a rookie. What's it like on the other side of the operation?

OP: It's very different working on the technical side of the garage to the racing side. From a team aspect, the people you are working with have exactly aligned goals. Our only job is to make that car cross the line in the best position. Whether that be technical or human performance, or from strategy or other's misfortunes. Everything done on the pitwall is done for the best of the team. As a driver, you of course want what's best for the team, they're the people who give you the opportunity to drive, but you want what's best for you and your chances. 

DC: You think you could've gone 3-for-3 of the junior ranks, get F2 in your first season?

OP: (laughs) I reckon. Not that junior championships really matter. It's all about if you can get to where you want to be and if you can do well there. I made my choice to become an engineer instead, and hey, I'm still one of 20, just on the other side.

DC: Speaking of which, you're the youngest ever race engineer, how's that feel?

OP: Special. I never intended to particularly come back into this industry. It was a bit more on a whim that I decided to poke around job vacancies one late night whilst waiting for a GP to start actually.

DC: Lots of late nights for Australians watching F1.

OP: Yeah. I think it was some ridiculous time on a Monday morning - 3am for Qatar I think it was. So, a pretty miserable day at work, but it was worth it to watch the race. I found a race engineering vacancy at McLaren and decided to give it a crack. No harm in trying, really, I thought ‘Let's see how far this degree can get me,' and yeah, I never expected anything to come from that, let alone a job. It's pretty cool to be the youngest to do it. I'm probably one of the first engineers who is younger than the driver they're engineering.

DC: And working with Lando?

OP: It's great. I couldn't have asked for any other driver. You know, like any race engineer and a driver have to be close, things just don't work if you're not. I've found that we work very well together. I do my best to give him the best car I can do within my capacity and he drives it to his capabilities. I enjoy working with him, and I hope he enjoys working with me.

DC: You’ve been compared to Kimi Raikkonen a couple of times. Do you think your previous experience has helped you with radio communication at all?

OP: I think so. You know, as a race engineer, you have to play technical support and physiologist. I’d like to think I was a pretty calm and level-headed driver, that if my engineer properly told me to do something I’d do it, but if you interview Pedro, ask him that - he’ll give me an unbiased review, and I hope part of that carries over in how I deal with Lando now. F3 and F1 are very different series, but the communication basis remains the same; you only say what is needed. Everyone can be a bit reckless at times, at it's part of our jobs to help tamp that. Sometimes it works out. China, for example, I suggested more engine braking and that would’ve been the wrong call. But there are other times in the car when you really do need to listen - I look at… Austria. It’s totally understandable that you’re very hyped up and all, but I did put out the radio call to slow down, which we had a look at it and estimated that we would’ve come out with a P6. It’s about trying to balance information and just letting them get on with their jobs.

DC: Any comments on what happened in Hungary?

OP: Ummm. Yeah. Sure. I'm not a strategist, so I'm only going to be giving my opinion. As a driver, obviously, your scope is about as large as whatever you can see out of your visor. You're going to take anything you can. It's all about you, and that's completely understandable, hell, I had some mid-race strategy spats with Pedro when I was a driver. As someone on the pitwall, you're not immune from emotions either. The garage is a very high-tension and emotional place as well. You have to figure out a lot in a very short amount of time and sometimes it is a matter of getting something done. It was an absolute cluster[beep], and I don't know the amount of debriefs we've had over it, but there's a mutual understanding that things happen in those split seconds. Everyone is all good.

DC: You think your experience as a driver has helped you in your role?

OP: Definitely. It's very different working on the technical side of the garage to the racing side. There's certainly a reason why quite a couple of team principals have had a little racing experience. There are lots of little things, like sometimes knowing the exact faults that either Daniel or Lando are describing, because I've had the same problems myself and now, with a lot more technical knowledge, I know how I would fix it. From a team aspect, the people you are working with have exactly aligned goals which makes your life easier. So yeah, I think it has.

DC: Well, I think that's all we've got time for. Thank you very much for your time. 

OP: It was a pleasure.

—-

There's a weird feeling of lightness when he walks out of the studio. After everything had died down over it. It would be out there. Oscar was a good driver, and probably would've made it. They could know him as that, but also as an engineer who had made it. 

Lando is also there when he walks out. There's a weird mix of hurt and anger on his face. He storms into the space, almost pushing Oscar into the wall with how fast he went in. 

—-

The trackwalk is pretty miserable. Lando refuses to acknowledge him. He doesn't have any personal notes on Zandvoort so it's more of a discussion between Daniel and Lando, with him and Tom looking at curbs and camber and whatever. 

It's pretty miserable that Lando really isn't letting him do his, you know, job on this thing and talk through corners from a technical perspective but the wind. It's sandy and windy and god does he wish he wore long pants because it's surprisingly painful when sand blasts bare skin at what feels like mach-speed.

There seems to be a determination in Lando. He's walking with a newfound determination. Everytime that he makes a gesture or bends down to get another view, it's all done with a calculation or line in mind. He's not himself, not as carefree and happy to talk about other things. Hell, that's even passing onto Daniel.

Oscar would have to say that Lando seems determined that everything, every movement, every word, at least to him, is going to mean something this weekend. Like he's not going to accept anything but winning.

—-

He doesn’t sleep much. There’s a cat purring like a jet engine curled into his side. Oscar had made the decision to at least try to sleep at some point around 2.

Lando’s demands kept ping-ponging around in his head. I need this and that and this again. He never knew just how much a good cuddle and someone actually caring for him could make a difference.

Oscar ran a gentle hand through Papaya’s fur, which had her uncurling and through her flank against his side with a huff. The purring resumed at a different cadence which eventually lulled him under for a short, but relatively successful night sleep, only plagued by nightmares that he could never quite catch.

—-

Friday mornings are always the most relaxing they get, at least as an engineer. The strategists were doing their thing, the mechanics were doing their things on the cars, practice pitstops and what not. The race and performance crew holed themselves up in their briefing room, primarily yapping about running schedules, and even that was generous.

Sometimes they took to doing pub quizzes to make themselves look busy from the outside. Oscar was their reigning question answerer. "There are 6 capitals in the world that start with 'C,' name them all."

"Copenhagen."

"Cairo."

"Canberra."

"Colombo."

"Cape Town."

There was a long silence, which was only punctuated by 20-odd people trying to be the quickest and least suspicious to their phones to get the final one. "Caracas."

Everyone jumped up to Andrea's voice, who waved them down and plopped in at the back of the room. Rob gulped a little, under direct scrutiny of his boss. "Right, a group of crows is called?"

—-

The car feels really good flying around in FP1. 

“Suggest line alternation at T13. Take a bit more bank.”

“Whatever you say Oscar,” he sighed. 

The next lap, when he comes back around, Lando knows he’s being petty, but he goes right up to the line. It feels stupid shifty. He doesn’t get a response for a hot second.

“Lando,” Oscar groaned, clearly not impressed with his stunt.

“What?” He hissed, hoping for a rise.

“Don’t be an idiot. I thought we weren’t going to do this.” The radio crackled to normal noise, clearly Oscar taking a deep breath. “Now, I’d appreciate it if you weren’t trying to spin yourself into the barriers.”

“Oh,” Lando drew out. “I’m now an idiot for listening to you, am I?”

The silence was loud, the roar of the engine more pronounced. A resigned voice came over the radio. “Box box.”

—-

They should be happy in the debrief. Lando's team has nailed the car set-up for short runs practically off the bat, Daniel's had a little trouble with his, and the rear grip was a little low. He knows what has to be done to fix it though, which is diligently noted down in about 5 ways by 10 different people.

Lando still wants more out of the car. He can brush that little bit more of performance with the tips of his fingertips, but there's not enough of a hold to consistently stay there. He reports his findings, questions are asked, weather regarded, more plans in place for the potential of double stacks and the like.

The only thing that makes it slightly bearable is the fact that he can go and eat stroopwafels for media afterwards.

—-

Oscar knows there is a little missing in the long-run performance. It's there, he might just have to brute force it out.

They're in the middle of FP2. Lando is in the garage, car hooked up to all sorts of wires and airboxes. It looks rather like the car has been suspended. It always looks like that, pushing them off to become sleek machines that had a singular goal. Win.

There's a bit of information he has to give Lando right now, hooked up through the encrypted systems. Lap targets, fuel load, track conditions, running through the cor-

“You need to shut up right now," Lando snapped. "Stop doing your… soli? Solilo?”

“Soliloquies?" Oscar questioned like he always did. "That’s when a character talks directly to an audience. I would monologue.”

“Well... stop fucking monologuing then.”

“I’m not here reading Shakespeare Lando. You need this information for your job.”

Lando didn't respond, and Oscar finished his usual work. The strategists gave him the signal that it was nearly time. It took a flick of his hands to ready the car, holding it flat to restrain the idling engine. Only the twist of his hand was enough to send it off racing.

—-

They have a good feeling. That can be dangerous. Lando flew through FP1 with a P1, Tom did a lot of the work between FP1 and 2 to get Daniel closer up to speed. Their long runs are going well. Lando wants more though. He's not happy about a +0.2. 

They're still having trouble with rear grip. Lando's describing the lap, very blasé and all. He can't be fucked to use nice, technical language, he's too tired. Half the staff look at him blankly, whilst the other half hesitantly write or voice record his findings.

There's a recording going on Oscar's laptop; it's probably going to be slightly crackly because he's writing next to the microphone. Translated comments to solutions. He must've started to write in shorthand at this point. 

Daniel gives his opinion, grateful for his engineer's earlier effort. It's all said perfectly. Lando has always been a little jealous of the way that he could speak, almost like the perfect communication between what was actually happening and what he needed to achieve. 

Rob wraps up their debrief early, and everyone shuffles out pretty quickly after.

He and Oscar are the two last people left in the room. There's the gentle thump of a notebook closing and click of a laptop that gets stashed away in his briefcase. "I'll do what I can tonight," Oscar said, tiredness lacing every word.

Lando kind of wants to say something. He doesn't know what, but he's never quite seen Oscar like this. Sure, Lando had seen him off his feet tired, but there had always been a little shine, a little spark, especially when presented with a problem or when Lando would drag him away to sleep or some other shenanigans. They look dead. 

—-

He works later than he should after an already late dinner with the team. A couple of calls back and forth to the MTC sim crew, them getting slightly more and more concerned with the time. Oscar goes to bed at one point. Late night, he's pretty sure, not early morning, which was a large improvement.

Nightmares come champagne-tinted, hazed with mid-summer sun. Cold porcelain slick with alcohol and confetti. Emptiness and pride. Harsh words, pointed comments. Rocked boats and ruffled feathers, late-night considerations and decisions. 

He wakes with a start, muscles tensing at the sudden movement. Everything slips away, leaving a deep and empty pit. There’s nobody that tried to wake him up or play with his hair. Nobody that he can bury himself into or to wrap around him. Papaya snuggles into his arms somehow, placing her head onto the hollow of his neck. 

Oscar probably gets her fur wet when he cries.

The room is completely dark and oppressively silent. It’s profoundly lonely.

He gets up when the clock strikes 4:33 am.

—-

Oscar looks absolutely wrecked when he walks in on Saturday. Briefcase slung over his shoulder, cat securely held to his chest. Lando doesn’t think he’s ever seen eyes that are dead. His under-eyes are purplish and he only gives a flat-mouthed smile in greeting before walking into the engineering room, bypassing Lando altogether.

Well, fuck you too Oscar Piastri.

—-

FP3 is a bit of a disaster. Not on their end. But there's a crash then the entire thing practically gets rained out. Not too much time to gather any data or even push. Lando opts to stay in the car for a while. It's cold outside, warm here. He strips off his helmet shoves it onto the sidepod and watches whatever laps he wants to. 

At one point, after Oscar has told him that their starting time has been delayed again he hops out and stalks out, hoping to hit up a conversation with someone. 

It ends up being Charles, surprisingly. He gives Lando a quick look over and narrows his eyes. "You have not been sleeping?"

He shrugged. Truth was, he had, just not well. He could get a full 8 hours, though it was usually broken and poor anyway, the type that would leave someone more drained than they started. It seems to be pure desperation and spite that's keeping him going now. "Sure."

Charles let out a quiet sigh and patted him on the back. "I like a competition tomorrow. Sleepy Lando is not good competition."

"But you want to win?" Lando questioned.

"Of course, but if I can not, I would like a fight."

He shot a tired smile at Charles. "I'll try my best then."

—-

They really don't have a debrief, because they did a grand total of 16 laps between the two of them, so the engineers were free to yap at the back of the garage. Oscar is propped up on a stack of comfortably warm tyres with his cat in his lap and he must've slipped off because there's a firm hand shaking him awake a good half an hour before quali. 

He has his time for the last-minute adjustments before Lando saunters in, then he has time for his long soliloquy, about track temperatures, wind, weather, and more technical aspects. Lando doesn't say anything until he asks if his mirror can be out half a turn wider. 

It can. It's done.

Oscar's the one to let the car out onto the track in the end.

—-

God, how he wanted to prove a fucking point, make everything single movement of this car count for something. Prove that it's not just the car. Both to Twitter and to Oscar. He'd outdrive every part of this car, go faster than what the computers say he could. 

The lap feels amazing, and he hates to say that the car beneath just sings. He can push it that little bit further, break later, get on the throttle earlier. He can push it and push it, blurs of colours streaking from outside the halo.

Oscar’s voice is quiet in his ear, nothing more than a quiet drone of instructions he knows and occasional weather updates. 

The process is routine, his laps are good. Everytime he’s called back into the garage, it comes with the promise that he’s moving forward in the session.

"This will be your final timed lap. Make it count."

And shit, Lando is pretty sure he does. There's always a feeling in the car. Every driver knows what a good lap feels like, and it’s a chase to replicate it over and over. Being good did matter, your peaks did, but consistency really was key. Find the perfect lap and nail it as many times as you can. It's like stretching a muscle.

He can feel it. Lando knows this is a good lap.

"And that's pole," Oscar announces, "by.. 0.352." He's tired, Lando can hear that, but there's a hint of infectious joy that the garage always gets when something goes right. Probably a bit of self-satisfaction in there as well. He hates that part of this could be attributed to Oscar.

Lando screams into his radio, eardrums be damned.

—- 

There are a lot of questions on the driver's parade. The broadcasters seem to be intent on getting an answer to the question 'is he going to keep it at T1.' Lando can't answer that, because he doesn't fucking know. He's obviously not going to just let it happen though.

The debriefs earlier were surprisingly tense, a lot of conversations about wind and grip and starting procedure that had his head in quickly. There was an F1A race earlier and he can see half of them watching the start of that over and over, eyes taking in the conditions.

He can't worry about that right now, if there was one thing that Oscar had shown him this weekend, it was that he hadn't purposely fucked over the car. Lando slides into it and lets himself take it around to the grid, gets out again, lets Mike and his team do their job whilst he stands off to the side, doing his usual preparation whilst Jon stands over him with an umbrella.

It's slightly odd not to have Oscar join him on the gridwalk. He's apparently not even on the pitwall today, opting to sit at the large bank of computers they find themselves at during red flags. He tries to not let it affect him. It's surprisingly lonely when he doesn't get slender fingers around his gloved hand or pat soft hair.

But soon enough, legs go up into the halo, and he's plugged into the car, the joyous voice of Jarv informing him of tyre choices and weather. A soft voice comes over next, still clear and ringing. "Radio check Lando, radio check."

"Loud and clear Oscar."

They sit in silence for a while. "Formation lap to begin in 10 seconds."

Oscar speaks in such a way that Lando has heard on the jets. Air traffic control to a pilot. Informative, helpful, clear. Li-co here, weave here, 4 burnouts. 

"Last car on the grid. Good luck," he can hear the slight curve of a smile in Oscar's voice. 

—-

He looses it off fucking pole. Wheelspin. They seriously need to fix that, but, apparently, it was a baked-in flaw. Max doesn't stick around, he's in front by the first corner. Look at Lando go.

Though he feels like there should be a bit more to it than that, because it's not Daniel behind him, it's Charles. The laps tick down, and to be honest, he really couldn't give a shit, he's just driving the car right now. Oscar tells him to stick to Max instead of worrying about Charles, and Lando knows the car is more than capable of nicely tagging along, sitting in that happy 1-second range. 

Fuck it, he's not going to win a race by languishing in P2 at pace 4 is he? He ticks it up a little more, a bit more road here, a little more curb there. Pace 5, up to pace 6, up to pace 7.

“DRS to Verstappen next lap; projected overtake in 3 laps,” Oscar informed him.

It’s surprisingly accurate. He overtakes Max just about on the line at the end of three laps. Verstappen doesn’t put up a fight, which he’s not entirely sure about. Lando kind of wishes he did, but is also happy that he’s the one that sailed past. And now he’s overtaken for the lead.

It’s easy from here, building out his lead. He can drive at a comfortable pace, around a 6, and still be building his lead. It’s sunny, not oppressively hot, maybe a little windy, but all together a pleasant drive. Colours blur beyond the halo and it’s only the droPitstops come and go, he’s still in the lead, doesn’t even need to overtake to slip back into P1 and the laps tick down - and you know what - fuck it. “Could I go for the fastest lap?”

“Confirm, you can go for the fastest lap.”

“P1 Lando! Lovely work. Fastest lap and driver of the day,” Oscar’s words are congratulatory and joyful, though there's a stilted quality to them like he’s reading from an internal script. He sounds tired.

“Simply lovely, huh?”

Looking back on it, he really shouldn’t have said that. He was as high as a kite and soaring. He’d beaten his rival at his home race, he’d driven a brilliant race once he got in front, he’d taken the fastest lap. The team was ecstatic. He’d proven himself to the world. It may have been partly the car, but it was also him. He did this for himself.

What did he prove to Oscar? He had no idea. The fact that he could do it without the perfect car - if you were out in front by 22 seconds in a perfect one, you would still win if it was more shit. There was another thought that wormed its way in, like this entire weekend, his performance was some sort of fucked up apology for the way Lando had responded when Oscar finally laid himself out. It was shoved down quickly.

He had chatted to some of the grid about it. Two things had stuck out to him. Charles and Daniel. Apparently, Prema hadn’t been all that upset. Disappointed, perhaps, but happy that one of their own would be pursuing something that they might find joy and success in. Daniel had painted a very different picture of his split with Renault. Late-night meetings, stony faces and hissed comments.

He continues his obligatory post-race comments, thank you’s and dedications and whatever else.

Lando has won another race. Not through a well-timed safety car. Pace. He'd won a race on pure pace. Oh, how this feels so, so good. 

It's Charles and Max that pull up alongside him. He's curious as to what happened with Daniel, but it only serves his point. It was him. It plays like a broken record, but it really was.

They look depressed when he walks in. They look worried, scared maybe. They look at Lando like he's a threat. He takes his place in the centre and makes small talk with them, commenting on the close calls and strategies. Max congratulates him, but it's a little hollow. Max liked winning, yes, but he enjoyed the fight just as much. He hadn't gotten one. Lando flew by.

Jon comes up on the podium with him. Not Oscar. No. He wasn't about to give credit to the car this weekend. Jon was his trainer. This was for Lando, not for the team, it wasn't just the car, it was for him.

Champagne showers always tastes better from the top step. It always felt the best to walk away with the biggest trophy. There's photos to be taken with the team. One in particular stands out. His garage stands in a circle, a photographer in the middle. Lando holds the trophy, Jon holds the constructors. Oscar stands on the other side, a small smile playing on his face.

He really fucking hates that. 

—-

Once the celebrations are over and done with, the debriefs done, Oscar thinks it might be time to crack the news. Lando is probably done and showered now, washed off the champagne-infused sweat leaving his skin soft and curls bouncy. He gives a gentle knock at the door.

“Come in.”

He sidled into the room. “You did a good job today,” Oscar said softly, a letter clutched in his grip.

Lando stared back at him, gaze empty. Perhaps he’s thinking about what all of this meant and what he had done. He didn’t respond.

Oscar placed down the latter in front of Lando, who snatched it up and tore open the thirded paper in such a way that Oscar was surprised that he didn't tear it in half all together.

He jumped to add a little context. "I'm taking Monza off. If you find you no longer want me as your race engineer after that, I will resign and be out of your hair as soon as I can."

All Lando could muster was a slow nod, like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "I've got to be at Schiphol in," Oscar checked his watch, not unkindly, he did have to get going, "2 hours. Good luck next week, don't break a leg."

Leaving the room felt like a massive weight had been taken off his shoulders. For the first time in a long time, he had nothing to do, and could fuck off.

Left instructions with the team not to contact him between 9pm and 9am AEST, lest they get a very grumpy him on the phone.

Chapter Text

XVI
R15, Italy

His flights go well enough. Thank god McLaren lets them connect their personal flier points when they fly, because he's managed to fly 16000 odd kilometers without paying a cent.

Should he have gone back home to Melbourne, probably. Yeah, he really should've. But he's on holidays, so he's going on a holiday. White sandy beaches, a little colder than summer, but with a lot less people. That's really nice.

The worst part of the trip is always the last bit, most namely in this scenario, 2 hours on the Bruce highway, which makes him want to scream because of the roadworks, the shitty drivers, the shitty drivers, and more - you get the point.

Oscar doesn't like slow drivers or anyone who drives like an idiot. It's hell.

However, the villa he has got is not. That’s very nice, thank you very much. It’s got a view of the Pacific Ocean and is a 15 minute ride into town. Got an internet connection, fuck all  coverage and is overall perfect for him to curl up into a little ball, and fall asleep to the waves.

Which he does, because travel is exhausting. 

—-

It’s tepid sunlight when he wakes up, slow and dragging. The ocean glints in the distance, inviting, and he hopes, warm. But first, he's got to get groceries. He's not entirely sure what they would've thought of him walking out, but he's sending an import quantity of Tim Tams back to the UK whether or not anyone cares.

Oscar isn't entirely sure what to do with his time and it seems like a waste to sleep it away.

So he makes the short walk down to the beach. Unlike the main beach, it's unsheltered, east facing, meaning the full wrath of the Pacific Ocean bears down upon it.

Maybe he'd go for a swim later. 

It still being early spring and not school holidays comes with the very nice advantage of it not being too busy. There's tons of national parks around, beaches to be swum, restaurants to try. He's looking forward to that last one. 

Of course, he is aware that a day will be spent replaying Pokemon Shield because why wouldn't he, and a new game he had gotten, Melatonin. Time that he could spent lazing around, getting over the deep-rooted exhaustion and himself, too far under to get nightmares about whatever the fuck he was actually getting them about.

A strong sun and salted winds was what woke him up every morning, much nicer than the closed blinds and oppressively warm lights of hotel rooms. He hasn't felt this good in years.

---

@unofficalf1news • 1/08/24, 15:03pm

where tf is lando's engineer???? like, isn't this supposed to be an important weekend? and he doesn't show up. idc if you're on your deathbed Mr Piastri, you gotta be here.

---

There's something off this weekend. He can feel it right from the start of the weekend, walking into a paddock mid-morning on Thursday. The camera's still flicker at him, crowds swell and chatter. McLaren isn't quite as popular in Italy, but Danny is. Both of them sign as much as they can, shouting in a language Lando can barely understand, but has Daniel laughing and snapping back at them, much to the crowd's delight.

The media is unrelenting before he even slips into the car for the first time. They expect to be good here. They have new engines lined up and they know the Mercedes powertrain is good. Monza is a fast circuit, the MCL38 likes fast circuits. They should have a good top speed. "I still think Ferrari are the favourites here."

Daniel is a little concerned about the updates to the curbs when they go on the trackwalk. It does take away from a little bit of the challenge and charm of the circuit, but there should be no more launching of championship rivals over one another anymore. Not that it didn't work out for him then. Might not now; he'd rather not have the close up view of the Redbull floor, it would do fuck-all in terms of helping development, unlike last year.

---

@norr1s • 30/08/24, 11:34am

hungary was so fucking disgusting. its one thing to emotionally blackmail someone on live tv when they are in that situation, and really, put them in that situation, and seriously, piastri needed to be fired over half the shit he said, but like???? he's been a driver, and he says that? piastri knows what it's like on in teh fucking cockpit of a car and still says that shit. yeah, he needs to be fired but he's also a sociopath.

---

That's rough. Didn't look pretty. Oscar has never had particularly big shunts, to be completely honest, he got away with a lot of shit. Like a lot a lot. Austria comes to mind, where he sailed out in front after a good start, contact that he should've gotten a DNF from and left everyone else in the trenches whilst he drove his own race.

He ends up doing his nails during the red flag because there was quite literally nothing to do except battle his cat away when she tries to paw at him whilst he's taking scissors to his cuticles. Oscar would rather not stab himself in the nailbed.

Eventually, he gives into Papaya's whims, nudging her onto the floor when she gets spun around until she gets jack of that and blows him off with a huff. She was a sassy cat. He watched the rest of the session with a rather bored eye. Grip and traction and what have you, where steering was made and corrected and evened out. 

McLaren's set-up seems to be decent. Fast, but with room for improvement. It seems a little jumpy and loose. Not the easiest to fix, but not impossible. It always happened on low downforce circuits, but there was plenty they could do to fix it. It's not like they call him after this session either.

"We gonna go for a walk? I think we should go walkies." Papaya chirped up at him. Taking that as a yes, she got harnessed up and they quickly left, making use of the comfortable temperature whilst it lasted. He had an idea for this - and sue him, he was getting dessert before dinner, but frozen yoghourt seemed like a good idea and there was a place not too far away with a very good reputation.

Oscar must look like an absolute idiot, sitting on the sand, wearing a cat like a scarf and eating a cup of fro-yo, but at this point, he doesn't care. He just wants someone to talk to.

---

Statement from McLaren Racing

Lando Norris' senior race engineer, Oscar Piastri, will not be attending the Italian Grand Prix. Lando will be engineered by Andrew Jarvis trackside and Will Joseph at the MTC.

---

"Is everything... ok, between you and Oscar?" Daniel questioned, finding Lando lazing about before FP1.

"Sure," he replied dismissively, not bothering to try and cover it up.

"Don't play this game," Daniel said coolly. "What's wrong?"

"Well, he's not fucking here, is he."

Daniel gave a small raise of the eyebrows. He knew exactly who Lando was whining about. "And why would that be? Oscar doesn't seem like the person who would do that."

"Because I was a dick to him," Lando sniffed. "He hid a secret from me for the season."

"That he was an F3 driver?" Daniel asked, perching on the edge of Lando's couch. It went through Lando for a large loop, that one. He knew that somehow, Daniel and Oscar were closer than usual, but he had chalked that up to a bond over nationalities rather than prior personal connection. "He was a Renault academy driver Lando. Oscar was my protégé as much as he was Mark's."

He has to pause there. There were certainly signs, but there was never the big moment of this person knowing this one because of x. 

"What happened?"

"I don't know all of what happened."

Lando huffed. He was half certain he wanted this conversation to continue, to find out what part of all Daniel was really talking about or if he wanted to shove a neat little lid on that box and shove it out of his head.

The decision was made for him, with Jon knocking on his door and kicking Daniel out to go do his personalised torture.

Once Danny has been shooed away, Lando is forced into the same thing he does every week. Jon stands in front of him, holding the resistance band that he's currently tugging back on, twisting at his waist. "You'll be fine without Oscar, Lando."

He almost goes to stop mid-set, which was met with a harsh eye. "It's just been a while. I kinda got used to him, you know?"

Jon gave a nod. "You'll both be better for this break. I think you both needed it."

"Yeah, maybe," he responded, not entirely convinced of that merit.

They probably didn't even need to leave then, not with poor Kimi binning it into the wall a few minutes in. Merc probably needed to be shot over that clusterfuck of a decision - Lando isn't entirely sure how comfortable he would've been with his first public F1 outing being Silverstone. 

He couldn't deny the car was fast. But the performance was just out of reach, like skimming the top shelf. Lando can jump high enough, sure, but not all the time. It got tiring to keep doing it eventually. He does his job, pressing the flag button every time the car does something odd, commiting what the laps feel like to memory.

---

@papayaaass • 1/09/24, 14:05pm

so we're just going to sit here and let a cocky ass engineer say that he was 'more calm' as a driver and then bring up fucking austria? are we serious? lando was fighting for his life out there and all piastri could bring to the table was a 'slow down??' are you serious? It's absolutely laughable that he genuinely thinks lando would actually listen. to him. I sure as hell wouldn't. His voice annoys me.

---

He's watching his absolute idiot of a cat track some birds out the window, eyes wide, bum up, tail lashing. What Oscar doesn't expect is the pounce into the very solid pane of glass that echoes off the walls in a resounding thump. He chose a clumsy cat. 

Falling off of seats, common. Undershooting jumps, common. Overshooting jumps, once. Once too many after he was winded, rolling to the side to try and get his breath back whilst she nuzzled at his face in sorry (which was not helping with his winded issue.)

"Right. Who do we think is going to win this weekend?" 

Papaya kept her paw stuck up during the entire opening sequence, pink tongue stuck out a little as if mocking his question. Oscar frowned at her, she fluffed up in response and gracefully - a word he had never used to describe her before - jumped off the cabinet and stalked off. "You're a little shit. You know that?" 

She stuck her head around the corner, which was enough prompting him to go and chase her down, scooping her up and cradling her like a child. "You're my big fluffy baby, aren't you?" He pressed a kiss between her eyes, which had her making a tiny chirping sound.

Oscar deposited his now zoomie-less cat onto the lounge whilst he went and procured a glass of wine and the remnants of that platter he had for dinner because he was going to enjoy this session to its fullest. He's slightly tipsy and has got a purring cat crushing him when his brain starts to hop into that engineer mode. Judging the way the car grips and where the drivers dare to judge it. Some cars suffer on entry and some on exit, but Oscar is completely numb to it at this point, not really caring all that much. It wasn't like he was going to be doing anything about it this weekend. He was up to shorting his phone to prove a point. 

It's not the most enthralling of a free practice, and he found himself dozing in the weird in between, not awake enough, not asleep enough. He hoped Lando was doing well. Of course he would be. Lando was back with the team he'd had for 5-odd years. Not the random tack on of him that only came in when the team finally came good. 

---

@l4ndoooo • 1/08/24, 14:05 pm

so lando, a driver that speaks so much for mental health, is stuck with an engineer who calls him an idiot? are you absolutely serious mclaren? imo piastri needs to at the very least needs to be switched to a different role where he doesn't have direct access to lando. probably needs to be taken off trackside all together.

↳ @iamsp33d • 1/08/24, 14:11pm

GP called his driver a child on main, that might be a bit more than an engineer asking their driver to keep it out of the wall

---

FP2 is barely any change for Lando. He clocks a lap 3 thousands off the fastest, but his long runs? Inconsistent, maybe. Certainly worse than Daniel's. He'd given a half-hearted attempt at a few lap descriptions, and to the team's credit, they had fixed it, but with that brought a whole load of new and improved issues that were practically the same thing in different fonts.

Trusting the car seems to be the full-time job, not driving the bloody thing. It's pretty miserable. He could walk back into the debrief and spill all the problems again, setting them up with more work and questions than answers. Then some balance issues would be fixed and others would be created in a horrible game of cat and mouse. There’s not a curved eyebrow to keep him on track or prompt him for more in this debrief. Lando keeps his comments to a minimum, enough so they’re not going to poke around more than usual. He could live with it, learn enough to pull himself together for at least a qualifying session.

---

@landothreewins • 31/08/24, 04:33pm

Piastri is McLaren's biggest pity purchase istg. You're saying that's the best they could find? An engineer fresh out of university who happened to win F3? Seriously dude, I feel so sorry for the others in that engineering team, because he sure as hell is not doing that work.

---

He chucks on the first team hoodie that his hands land on. It's a little big, swimming in the way that he loves. It was Oscar's, not that anyone would really know that anymore, he'd been wearing it for long enough that no one would shoot him an odd look anymore. If he really stuffed his face into the fabric, there was of course the smell of his colognes, the faint traces of curling products. Under those tones, there was still a subtle scent of eucalyptus and nutmeg, probably from that day they were so tired they fell asleep on their clean washing after Spa. It's surprisingly grounding, or enough for him to be bothered to get to the track.

FP3 doesn't really go any better. The car is ok. Enough for him to pull it together for a lap or two, but not much more. It's a little too unpredictable for him, the car not gripping. It's not that it wasn't, it was that it wasn't doing it where he expected it. He'd make an estimation, and sometimes it was right, and sometimes he'd be doing massive corrections. When he could wrangle it, the car was doing fine, he was clocking laps close to Daniel, who had been fine with set-up from the start of the weekend.

He comes in at P5 for the session, which is fine, they weren't running with their new engines yet, they were kept specifically for qualifying and the race. There's nothing to say about the car, because there's too many corrections to talk about. Lando knows what is happening lap-to-lap, knows the car like it's an extension of him, but it's too much to say, and feelings don't translate all that well into engineering and technicalities.

Lando goes into qualifying with the hope that he can bring together 3 laps, that's all he needed. 1 lap to get into Q2, 1 to get into Q3, and fuck, he could get away without one in Q3. Ideally the third lap would be reserved for something better than 10th.

The 2 mandatory laps fly past. A P1, a P2.

The third? P1. Holy motherfucking shit.

He genuinely has no clue how he pulls it, coming away with a miniature tyre and a ring out of that mess. He got fucking pole, pulled it together for a short spin and left the car shaking. 

Not that the media picks up that it's not from excitement, it was a little bit from sheer terror and confusion on how he brought it together.

The team is ecstatic; it's their second 1-2 in qualifying this year. Wait 12 years, then 2 come around in quick succession. Go figure. The media yap on about his chances, which he has to downplay. He also has to downplay the clusterfuck of the statistic which some people like to bring up more than needed.

Lando is about ready to start bashing his head into the table. He can't articulate quite what it is. The car was fine during the short runs, but there was a little bit of something during the long runs. Maybe Daniel was different in the way that he was driving or some other change had fixed it for him. He's half sure that describing the car as 'loose' isn't going to help anyone. He just can't trust it during breaking. It's fine to push through it on a fast-lap, but not when the car is heavier and he has to do it for 53 laps. 

So he stumbles through descriptions of laps, descriptions of particular movements he flagged in the cockpit. It's all a little too much to be honest. He's pretty sure the team must've cottoned on to it, because they shifted a little, pivoting to Daniel, who was essentially giving the thumbs up to the settings.  Lando just fiddles with his pen, a little unsure on what to do at this point.

God, how he fucking hates Oscar. Doesn't know if it's him or the fact that he's not here. Not here so Lando can't just dump a truckload of information and watch as he unpicks the challenge word by word, fingers twitching like they might be holding a wheel.

It’s almost automatic that he walks into the tyre racks in search of something. ldeally Oscar, but fuck, he didn’t even know where on earth he was. Not here at least.

The tyres are warm where he’s wiggled between the half-empty racks, the covers embroidered with initials and whatnot. It’s surprisingly cozy, and he kind of understands why Oscar would hold himself up here. God, he wishes Oscar was right here, so he could get a gentle hand in his hair and solutions to the stupid little problem of the car don’t go very well for me.

He genuinely considers texting Oscar… something. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? How do you apologise for flaying someone after they laid their heart on the line, after you shun them for protecting themselves? 

The answer, he didn’t.

He sleeps fine that night, the stress of the day weighing heavily enough on him to send him off to sleep instead. It's not the best sleep for him in terms of mental capacity. He's more tired when he wakes up than when he went to sleep, but at least the muscles were happier than yesterday, some of the tension bled out of them.

Everything is still a little off this morning, stuck in meetings and drivers rooms whilst Daniel and him talk about how, ideally, they'd want this race to play out.

"Monza 21' baby," Daniel laughed.

"You want Max to crush me instead of Lewis?" Lando deadpanned.

Daniel snorted. "1-2 you idiot. Me 1, you 2."

"Or..." Lando countered, "food for thought. Me 1, you 2."

"Whatever you say mate."

Then it was the big team briefing. They were confident that it would go well. All sorts of words and numbers were thrown about, ones he could probably dredge up in his sleep. Target lamps, pit windows, what have you. None of his problems could probably be fixed now, given the cars were tightly locked up in parc férme. He's a bit on his own now.

Sometime between the grid parade and the start of the race, Oscar's whole info dump must've come out, because Daniel is scoffing at the TV, a clear indication that he wasn't  impressed with the entire stunt. Oh, how Lando is going to hate the media when he inevitably gets questioned over the entire mess. 

The gridwalk isn't what it should've been. It wasn't like it should've been in Zandvoort either, but at least then it was Oscar in his ear instead of Jarv. Don't get him wrong, he loves Jarv, but it's not quite the same.

---

@n0rris • 1/09/24, 12:34pm

rejoice! for piastri must've drowned himself in the north sea after lando's win!

---

Oscar sat back on the sand, watching the moonlight be rippled by the churning waves. It was a pleasantly cool evening. Yeah sure, just for you random twitter user, I shall walk into that water and let myself drown. Wrong ocean, right idea.

Sleeping on a beach seems like a really bad idea. So he’s not going to do that. The clock slips past 11, the usual green and gold of Rolex probably starting the formation lap now.

The cicadas are a loud scream, the ocean a low roar, the sand holds a little residual heat, or enough to sink back into and watch the stars he has not seen in too long. If he closes his eyes he’s somewhere else entirely different.

Stark white in the darkness of his room, reviewing potential contracts. Redbull, Mercedes, maybe something from McLaren, fuck, even an offer from Ferrari. Nothing particularly looked good, each having stumbled into their own golden boy, not really looking to gain an F2 driver that was about to break a very one-sided contract.

Thoughts swirled around, but one kept on cropping up. The little, stupid, responsible part of his brain that wondered what all of this was actually for, the part that wondered what happened if it all didn’t work out. The words form with all the thought in the world and none at all. “What if I just… didn’t?”

“Didn’t do what Oscar?” Mark’s sighed reply echoed over the phone.

“What if I just fucked off? Didn’t do F2. I know the universities here are still taking applications, what if… I don’t know, will I become an engineer?”

The silence stretched out. Mark’s voice wavered. “It must be some ridiculous time over there, Oscar. You need to sleep on this.”

Something steeled within him, a small furrow forming between his brows. “No no, put my notification into Renault and draft something for Prema.” Oscar was nothing if not quick when there was something he wanted. A small smile curved on his lips, a certain peace washing over him, a laugh bubbling up. “I’m done Mark. I’m done.”

And he was, waking up the next morning to a neatly written statement for Prema and his inbox flooded with emails from Renault.

Much the same like now, as he walks off the beach to 100s of WhatsApp messages and a missed call. It’s well after midnight, the air starting to gain a little bit of an edge as he makes the wander back.

It's pretty dark outside, the roads rather unlit. Not like that's a problem, the moon and a little residual light doing their jobs

“Oh, you want a cuddle, don’t you?”

She made the most pathetic chirp in his arms, which he had to say was a yes. Oscar goes to bed, windows open and liner flapping in the breeze sometime around 1am. There's a warm cat tucked next to him, radiating heat through the thin sheet. He's over 16000 km from where he's living and nearly 1500 km to what he really considered home to be, but it's warm here, and he's comfortable. 

---

@wecanbeworldchampions • 2/09/24, 01:02 am

god, what happened to Lando there? that car looked undrivable by the end of the race.

---

Lando fucks it off pole. Not so badly, he made it to T4 this time. Of all the people to be overtaken by here, the Honey Badger isn't at all embarrassing. He is talking about the same driver that dummied his world champion teammate and fucked off into the distance. Fair play Daniel, a little too close, but fair play.

Charles also slipped by him in that mess. Pole to 3rd. Very classy.

Everything feels a little off. The car is just a little off, balance not quite where he'd like it, he can't push it into the corners correctly. The best he can do is just to drive it. He loves Jarv, but Lando is only used to his cheerful voice at the start of a race. Lando misses his quiet and calm Australian in his ear, the only tether to whatever was going on outside his little pocket of the world.

The world has been tilted just a little, but enough to be way too off putting. The car isn't quite there, slipping a little. He could barely register confusion when VER dropped off his dashboard, the voice in his ear telling him that a brake failure had taken his rival out of the race. He should be running in at least a fucking podium position right now, not P7. 

And it just keeps on slipping through his fingers. He finishes in P10. A tidy 1 point made.

He wants to peel his skin away with the rest of the suit. The media will circle like vultures, the team will want answers. He’s done a shit job, especially given the fact that he’s hearing the Australian national anthem from where he’s curled up in the garage, dodging Sophie like his life is dependent on it.

Media, as usual, is crap. He dodges the questions about Oscar with the grace of a long-serving politician. The team celebrations are a little better, the debriefs are… uncomfortable. Just a lot of fidgeting and spun pens with a promise to review it back at base. He just wants to go back to England at this point. Maybe get some Hawaiian Pizza to really rub in his displeasure. When they’re getting ready to leave, Daniel gives him a look before gathering him into a bearhug. Lando was surprised with just how much he needed that. "Listen, I'm not gonna go out tonight, do you just want to come chill with Max and I?"

He couldn't quite get that through his head. Daniel had won, and he wasn't going out. That was like the opposite of Daniel Riccardo. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"You're going to go back to the hotel room and mope, so you're being voluntold. A bad result when your teammate does well doesn't define you, Lando. Come on. I think Max needs some cheering up too."

Lando nodded. "Yeah, ok. That might be nice."

"Right answer," Daniel said, winking.

It ends up being the right answer, the three of them spread out over Daniel's excessive suite. Max was about 3 gin and tonics in, playing Forza on a controller, still destroying his competition. The language was certainly not child friendly either. Daniel sat next to him, trying to even out the competition by being a general menace. Walking in front of the TV, head rubs, jostling. It's all horrendously domestic. Max conks himself out pretty early, sprawled out on the lounge. He and Daniel started up a game of blinds, which he's losing in. Apparently, he was interested in picking up where they left off and having a chat about Oscar.

"Renault wasn't good when I was there, and I think Oscar could see that too. Both Nico and I wanted to get him out of there, and fuck, for the three stuck there now, I don't even know what's going on with Flavio." He and Lando laid down their cards, Danny giving a respectful nod when Lando's straight outdid his double pairs. He picked them up and shuffled them again, dealing them with a deft hand. "We both got out before it was too late. I'd hate to be there now. I remember the shit that went down, because academy drivers just don't do that."

"But other teams? A lot of them would probably want a champion in their academy," Lando questioned.

"Yes, and no. I think a lot of decent teams had just stumbled into their rising star," he gestured to Lando, before ticking names off his fingers, "Yourself, Charles, George. Redbull had Max. Not too many normal academies outside of the big teams. There's no use putting a driver through your academy if you can't use them at the other end, and I don't think Oscar really wanted to go to any other series."

Lando paused, chucking out three cards hoping to get better than a pair of queens. Daniel gave him three cards back. He got three of a kind. Daniel won with a full house.

"I don't really know the whole story, but the kid was put under a lot of pressure. I think at one point they tried to drag it into the courts, but Mark shut that down pretty quickly," he sighed, collected the cards before sliding them over to Lando, who shuffled them on instinct and delete them. "It sucked, because he's a bloody good driver, but you could see that by the end of getting out of that shitfight he was done. Then he just fell off the face of the earth from everyone but maybe Mark and Nando."

"Why'd he come back then?"

Daniel groaned and slammed down his cards. "Fucked if I know. I mean, I know he applied but have no clue why he did it."

"You knew he applied? Seriously, Daniel?" Lando whined.

"They drew me for for the interview panel," he shot back, "because McLaren didn't even know that Oscar was a driver until I flagged it, then I had to go and fucking, raise conflict of interest and whatever," he finished, waving his hand. "I think that helped his chances, but don't just put it down to that. He's got his head screwed on the right way," Daniel paused then sighed, "You've just got to be a bit gentle with him, because nobody knows anything but that it wasn't pretty. The fucking media is going to tear into this and if I were him, I wouldn't want anybody anywhere near it.

"I'm not trying to say he was right in hiding it, I'm just trying to say that there is more to it than a simple secret. People have their reasons, and you've probably been a dick and he's probably been a dick back, but I'm begging you to move past it, because he looked miserable in Zandvoort and you do too. Ok?"

"Ok," he whispered. Daniel pulled him into a hug. Lando needed it a lot. "You did well today. Your onboards were not pretty." Daniel clapped Lando on the back, a clear indication that they were done for the night. It was quite late. "I've given you one fuck-up for free, next time, you see the floor of my car."

His room is on the next floor. Hotel hallways are always an odd place, and it's silent when he stalks the short distance to the lifts, the irritating jazz music still gently playing at the stupid o'clock it was. When he managed to stick his keycard into the lock, the first thing he did was to flop onto the bed, sending him back up with a small bounce. The bed was a mess, a couple of clothes haphazardly strewn about from where he’d decided to change into something cooler that morning. He couldn’t be bothered to push them off.

Lando fished for his phone, one thing on his mind; call Oscar. It was apparently 8am for Australia right now. Maybe he’d pick up. Fuck, he just wanted to hear his voice right now, let it curl around him and out him to sleep.w. Hope It rang out with the robotic sound. Lando hangs up fast enough not to have to hear the voicemail greeting, because it was mainly them giggling like idiots.

He fell asleep with his phone on his chest and Oscar's hoodie tightly clutched in his hand.

Chapter Text

XVII
R16, Baku

So maybe he had thought about this before he came. He definitely did. Made sure his hair was actually parted correctly and wore a pair or boots instead. Why? No idea. Probably something Hattie said and totally not because he wore them out once and Lando said he liked them. He doesn’t know why he’s bothering to be honest.

Monza was a mess, and Oscar was in the wrong. He shouldn’t have made the choice to leave like he did. The hit wouldn’t have been too hard to take and yet he had scuttled away when Lando needed him the most. He had really managed to fuck it up big time.

Cameras are pointed his way when he walks into the paddock - which - what the fuck. He intentionally came in with a few drivers on each side — or they had more kidnapped him.

So that’s how he ended up in a gaggle of Liam, Guanyu, and Jack. They’d threatened to carry him in surfboard style if he did not cooperate and walk. But more cameras were pointing at him. He’s not that interesting. Focus on the drivers please.

But if there are going to be cameras on him, he may as well have his moment. Shoulders back, keep the conversation flowing. Laugh. These people are your friends.

Yeah I know people.

Some reporters are annoying enough to ask questions about his admittedly suspicious absence from Monza and, you know, the fact that it was directly correlated to the fact that Sky had fucked him over. McLaren had sent him one email on the topic, a polite version of ‘do not speak to anyone else lest we lock you out of the MTC.’

Jack and Liam drop him off at hospitality - which then makes him think about the fact that they were the ones that suggested they all walk down together and maybe it was a slight protection thing. He’d have to thank them at one point for that.

—-

Lando wasn't sure how he was going to feel about the whole seeing-Oscar-for-the-first-time-in-a-new-light-after-everything was going to go, but he did not expect to trip over a tyre rack in the process. Flat on his arse on the floor because, holy shit, Oscar looks like Lando felt after the summer break. Better.

Hair a little bit longer, copper strands amongst the faded blond. Stood a little taller, like months of tension had been uncoiled from his frame, and yet, he was back with a small smile like he was going to do it all over again. And fuck - he's tanned. With freckles, or, more of them at least.

He had always loved Oscar's freckles. Loved the way that Oscar laughed that one time when Lando went searching for them, kissing as many as he would find. When he was done, both of them glowing, Lando had laid next to him and yapped into the void. "Fuck," he whined, "I wish you had more."

Oscar had sighed and thrown and arm around Lando. "Wait until I have to get I have to get them cut out."

"I'll kiss the scars as well."

But then Oscar is looking at him, concern in his eye. He offers an arm. Lando grips him around the wrist, and there's force behind the movement that helps him up. They collide into a hug, Lando's arms slotting around Oscar's waist, Oscar's hands on his nape, funnelling his senses towards the light touch there. Soft fingertips, slender fingers snaking into his hair. His skin tinged with it, the slight pressure on his jaw from Oscar's other hand heavenly. He found himself melting into the touch, tucking his head under Oscar's chin, grateful for the embrace. He needed it too much.

Oh my fucking god I missed you so much. Lando held on tighter, if that was even possible.

Oh, that's nice, Oscar's pressing a kiss into his hair, and - he said that aloud didn't he? He must've, because Oscar's murmuring, "I missed you too," into the crown of his hair and looking at him with stupid heart eyes. They stayed there for who knows how long, both melting into each other. Lando will admit, it got uncomfortable after a while, not for them, Oscar hadn't made any move to break it off, and he could've stayed there all day, but the eyes that had politely averted themselves at the start were staring with concern now.

They broke apart. “You’ve got a conference in 10 minutes,” Oscar said.

“Memorised my timetable, have you?”

“Kinda my job.”

Lando stuck his tongue out. “Touché.”

—-

The day passes in a blur of conferences where his Monza performance - or flop really - was scrutinised within an inch of its life. Funnily enough, Lando wasn’t proud of it either. If only journalists had any amount of decency, they’d see it too. But decency seems to have gone out the window recently.

It’s a lot of ‘looking forward,’ and ‘putting a bad weekend behind him.’ On the bright side, he made up a point to Max. Better than loosing points. He says so. A lot a lot. They also talk about a lack of Oscar, which he shuts down. Personal reasons.

Then he has to do McLaren media with Daniel, which is easy. Mainly because they sit on the edge of the track and try not to be blown away whilst screaming lyrics into a microphone. Daniel wins — because of course he does. He’s not known for his hour long roadtrips with a sing along for nothing.

From that, it goes to the grid cycle. Baku is a long track and they do not have much time, hence the bikes. Every couple of corners they pause. Tom and Daniel are talking about something, but Oscar is talking about entry speeds and break phasing.

Not many people would be able to pull off speaking about lateral breaking and a ‘flick’ of the wrist whilst looking objectively pretty, but here Oscar is. The low sun halos through his hair, switching the brown to a blond, and well… he just has a nice shape. Sue him. And the laugh when Daniel nearly goes over his handlebars. High, clear, unrestrained laughter with a hint of teeth.

Fuck he loves the teeth.

They stand at T20, a non-existent corner really. “If you get a good exit out of 16 you’ll be fine. Divebomb down the inside and boom. Overtake. Three if you’re ballsy. Or,” he shoves a thumb over his shoulder and talks about Daniel as if he’s a cryptid, “him.”

The day ends a little later than normal for them, but the team makes sure to take the time to have a dinner together, holed up little groups telling each other stories or laughing over dropped bolts on the floor or who had to recode half a launch program before Sunday. It’s nice, and everything feels normal again.

—-

Friday comes along too fast, and all of a sudden he’s in Baku. Not his best friend, not his best track. But he’s here, and driving. The initial set-up is fine, its not even slow at all. Just, feels that way a little. On the straight it doesn’t feel like he’s flying, it feels like he’s glued to the ground — and bottoming. Never fun. Especially when his back isn’t in the best of shape.

“Car feels a little too heavy down the straight,” he tells Oscar. “And I’m bottoming a bit coming off the hill.”

“Would you like to finish this run or box now?” Oscar radios back, concern in his voice, but also a little distracted, like he himself was trying to place it.

“I’ll finish the run, but I think we might need some bigger changes.”

“Copy. Tell me if you need to box.”

Lando does the rest of his prescribed run before coming in and jumping out almost immediately. His mechanics swam the car. Oscar had already done his job, coming up with some small changes that they could at least try within the session,

He goes back out, and the bottoming is gone now. It was nice to no long thunk his way up the hill.

But it still feels slow, like something is holding him back from actually flying. He comes out a P4, four tenths off the pace, and Daniel comes home a P6. Room for improvement.

They make it a shorter debrief, discussing weather and downforce. Lando has some things to say.

“I want lower downforce. The car just feels really… heavy down the straight? That’s the best way I can describe it,” Lando sighed, trying to find the right words. “I don’t think it warrants wing changes but I think maybe flap. Maybe beam as well. Just feels sluggish, that’s all.”

The team looks over to Daniel for his opinion.

“I’m comfortable with my current load. Maybe shave a bit off the front but I’d prefer the breaking power.”

Everyone looks up to Rob. “We can easily run a split set-up for FP2. We know this isn’t a quali reliant circuit.”

FP2 is an absolutely shit session for him. P17 in a representative session is not a good omen in any sense. There’s an almost constant looming of oversteer he’s having to catch, over, and over. Oscar suggests a few things to try with his breaks before calling him in before a long-run. “Do you want a bit less wing to balance out less downforce on the back,” he asks.

“Sure. Why not. It’s just not working at all.”

It’s a little better, but the session is interrupted by red flags and people sure enjoy impeding him.

So, P17. Daniel improved to a P5.

Not great for him.

Oscar pats him on the head and sends him on his way with a smoothie and a promise that the sim drivers can do their jobs. Lando leaves watching him and Jarv pelt pieces of paper at each other whilst shouting back solutions to one another. Whatever worked for them.

The simplicity of having Oscar back was beautiful. He wasn’t drowning like last weekend. He wasn’t flying either. But he was ok.

—-

Someone tried to involuntarily make Lando into a passenger. Socmed did. Because what do you do if your race engineer also happened to be an ex-Formula driver; shove them in a car with their driver. Who notoriously didn’t like being a passenger.

Oscar treats the outlap like an actual outlap — Pirelli road softs and all. Then he decides to floor it down the straight. Lando’s hand flew to the little handle in the door, knowing he was going to have to fucking hold on for dear life to stay upright. He breaks a lot later than — in Lando’s humble opinion — he should into T1, gets a huge snap of oversteer, and nearly brushes the barriers. He screams. Oscar laughs. Lando resumes gripping onto the door as an anchor.

"Someone told me that door was a bit dodgy," Oscar quiped before breaking hard and throwing into the car into T2. He gave a quiet shriek and ripped his hand away, gripping into the side of the seat as Oscar tipped his head back and laughed again, still accelerating. A bit of a madlad.

“Eyes on the road Oscar.” He breaks for T3, seemingly more interested on the dash, before flicking them into T4. “EYES ON THE FUCKING ROAD.”

Lando’s composure hasn’t gone anywhere at all. No sir.

Oscar works through the castle section with frightening ease, right foot working the accelerator and left on the break - a big no-no in conventional driving but essential in karting and every catagory after. Hands lower on the wheel, steering like someone who knew what they were doing. Lando supposed he did. Oscar yaps on about the car and the specs all whilst he swallows down very masculine sounds. He didn’t want to scream — at all.

Oscar pushes the car too close to the barriers at T7. Lando squeaks. Oscar looks over at him, a devilish grin on his face.

“Don’t you dare fucking say—”

“I’m not stupid.”

Lando has to laugh at that.

Through the castle section, around the back and spat out onto the straight. Of course Oscar drifts it in 16, riding the curb, before flooring it. These cars can go as fast as and F1 car, and Lando is fucking terrified to see the speedometer at 350km/h, not too far off what he’d be going in an hour and a half. And Oscar goes again. He’s not sure he’s ever been thrown around this much in a car before. Oscar doesn’t drive for niceties, clearly, all hard breaking and V-shaped corners.

Eventually, socmed takes pity on him for once and calls them back in. Oscar slips out with a twinkle in his eye. Lando’s pretty sure he’s never looked better, more himself than slightly flushed with adrenaline and a proper smile on his face. He has to grip onto the car for dear life not to flop into a pile. He’s been broken. Oscar’s talking to the camera.

"Well, thank you so much for joining us for 2 laps around Baku. I've got to get going but," Oscar threw the keys to him in a high arc, "Lando can finish this up for us."

By reflex, he caught the damned keys. Fuck you too Mr. Piastri.

Lando fixes Qas with a stare - or more the camera. “So that was a hot lap with my race engineer. I hope you enjoyed my suffering.” He gives a little wave in goodbye to the camera, and promptly focuses on not collapsing.

Oscar would not be getting the keys to the Miura.

—-

The final practice session is pretty routine. There’s a yellow flag here and there but for the most part, normal.

McLaren come out as a P3, P4 pair. To be honest, Charles was driving around like he was trying to avoid a fire and had history behind him. Knowing Mercedes, their pace was going to go to shit. So they had a chance. The car feels pretty good. It’s mainly the external factors that are making worse. The heat and wind are more concerning than how well he’s going or the lines he’s taking.

There’s a lot to be talked about in the debrief. Performance is still in the car - the engines not quite tuned yet, but he knows there’s more. Both of them do. You wouldn’t think Daniel was the analytical, technical speaker he was, but he translated Lando’s “I can’t trust the rear in 16. Feels like ice when there’s a tailwind,” into something much more informational. It’s good both of them were feeling it. They could suffer together.

The problem was, the tailwind worked very nicely on the straight. Swings and roundabouts. Engineers mutter about weight distribution and wing angles. Oscar duly notes it down in Lando’s original words.

“Hey. You’ll do great, kay?”

“I’ll try my best Osco.”

—-

Well… qualifying went to shit. One banker that was really a bit shit, a second lap deleted for track limits and boxed on the third because he wasn’t going to make it.

Oscar sounds haunted giving the instructions — like he was the one out there fucking it up.

He has to take a couple of deep breaths to prevent him from punching something. Probably the steering wheel. Hopefully not a person. The cameras have seemingly converged on the garage, trying to get the shot of him coming out a P17. Oscar's voice has changed, it's a lot clearer, for one, which means the encrypted line has been plugged in, and for two, its gone from broadcast voice to Lando voice.

His head is all scrambled up with the thump of curve and feeling of a slide, of blinking yellows and slow moving cars and it’s a fucking mess.

"You're ok. I promise. Just take a breath for me," he says, steadiness in his voice bleeding through Lando's panic. If he looks up, Oscar's eyes are on him, one hand toying with the cable on his headphones, and the other flicking around the radio control panel. He's speaking right now but not to Lando. "Take another breath," he does, and the panic that has wound tight slightly subsides, "Like that. That's good. Sophie will have a chat to you before media, ok. This wasn't your fault."

His words calmed Lando enough to at least get his seatbelts off, slipping out of his car under the scrutiny of a lens and the garage. He got out on the wrong side, nearly barrelling into the engineers that were already going to analyse the shit out of whatever went wrong.

Fingers caught around his wrist, pulling him towards the wall in the garage. That was Oscar. His touch soothed more than his words, calming in the barely concealed panic. He points to the screen, clearly not indicating to give it more than a cursery glance, more just to look like he's looking. "It's going to be all good," he whispers, thumb swiping once against his knuckles. Lando gives a small nod, and Oscar's lips quirk up before giving his hand a final squeeze and letting go.

The warmth lingers for his entire grilling in media.

Then he gets a hug later. Just as they were leaving.

—-

At the hotel, Lando bailed him up. “Do you wanna, I don’t know… play some Mario Kart with me?”

He looked slightly shocked at the question - but not in a bad way. “I’m just saying no now. I… still have a lot of work to do,” Oscar finished unconvincingly. He has to take the time to remind himself that he probably does have work and that they both need the space.

Lando could’ve used the company. Maybe because he was a little cool, and Oscar ran warm, or if it was that he could’ve used Oscar to tire himself out by screaming over some stupid game. Instead, he’s lying here watching golf highlights. It’s some ridiculous time of night. He should’ve been asleep hours ago. He flickes open WhatsApp. Oscar is somehow also online.

bob

why r u still online??

croissant

Lando you are literally the athlete here. It’s nearly 2.

bob

can’t sleep

too worried

croissant

I’m sorting it. You shall be fine

Now bed.

bob

fineeeeeeee

gn

croissant

Goodnight Lando

—-

He’s starting 15th. Better than the 17th he qualified in. The team elected not to take a new engine and everything else because ‘why would we?’ It’s bad enough starting from the pit lane - its worse if you’re starting behind 3 others.

It’s a bit of a pain for the team to be so split like this, to the point that there’s one mechanic almost acting as a runner between the two cars. Didn’t want anything on the airwaves, they were fair game. Oscar has a clipboard with a piece of blank paper on it. It’s increasingly getting covered in dots.

“It’s all about surviving the first lap. We can go from there. Your long runs were great.” Oscar speaks more like he’s trying to reassure himself rather than Lando. He catches Oscar by the arm, looking at him whilst stuffing cables into his suit.

“No kamikaze into the polesitter a la your 2019 Austria?” He teased.

Oscar tensed at the mention of his F3 season, but settled his face into a smirk. “You have to start from P3 to do that.”

“I’ll go for 12 places better next week.”

“You should be going for 15 places better next week,” Oscar huffed.

“Demanding.”

“Believing.”

He could keep at this for hours. It was easy, natural to bicker with Oscar; but there was a clock rapidly ticking down. He was handed over to Jon, who made him stretch, not drop balls, and had better encouragement than Oscar’s ‘objective: survive.’

Lando gets himself seated and comfortable, pats Oscar’s hair for good luck, and settles himself. He knew his absolutely horrendous statistics - but it was time to change that. Besides, he had reasoned - it was hard to overtake if you were already at the front.

Jarv walks him through tyre strategy - he was on the alternate one, hoping to make use of a late-race safety car. Run it long, you can’t burn up tyres. Easy.

“Radio check,” Oscar chirps.

“Loud and clear,” he pauses, thinking for a second, “dear.”

He can almost feel the smile on Oscar’s face from the garage. He sounds the happiest Lando has heard in a while. He could nearly sleep on Oscar’s calming voice talking him through the formation lap, and it’s what he needs at this start. Smooth, incident free.

He does get that. And for the first time this season, he makes up a place on the first lap. And another. And another. 3 in 1. He’ll take that.

Lando slowly picks through the crowds until he’s sitting a comfortable P8 behind Albon on the same strategy. The tires are a little cooked and if he can just keep going he will be ok. Albon pits, Perez behind.

“Can you hold Perez through sector 2 without loosing time?”

“Tires are overheating a little. I can do that.”

“No full throttle from 7 to 16. Let him go on the straight.”

“Copy.”

The tires do come back to him a little during his sector back-up. He can see the viseral frustration in the way that Checo is driving, but he’s doing a job for Daniel and the team. To be honest, they probably fucked the pitstop timing and were using Lando as a cover, but Oscar’s instructions could be dual wielded.

The rest of the race goes pretty smoothly. A later pitstop and he’s cruising P7. All in all, a decent race. He will loose… 2 points to Max.

“Gap,” he asks.

“1.0”

“Gap behind you muppet,” Lando snarks.

“3.4 boofhead.”

“Wow.”

“Shut up and drive the car,” Oscar giggles.

P7 is ok. P7 is fine.

Then everything goes to shit — and not for him. Having enough of a gap — Max pitted for softs, chucking him out in P7, and Lando now in P6.

“Virtual safety car Lando. Virtual safety car. Sainz and Perez crash T3. Watch for debris.”

And now P4.

Holy shit. He did it. Actually made up points when it should’ve been championship over.

“And that’s P4. Awesome, awesome job out there today.” Oscar sounds genuinely happy - not the tense thing he was during Zandvoort.

“Thank you to everyone that has given us this car for the weekend and we’ll do it even better next weekend. Thank you.”

Oscar keeps chatting during the cooldown lap and as Lando parks it in parc fermé.

“Oscar, I’m um… stuck,” Lando says it in such a way that seems like a child waking their parents up because they’ve had a bad dream at stupid o’clock.

“What do you mean stuck?”

“Cables everywhere.”

There’s the loud sound of interference, and he’s clearly running off the small radio that clips onto the back of all the team members. “I’m just getting down to parc fermé now.”

Lando watches as Oscar politely pushes off the President of the FIA, exchanges a few words with Daniel and serenely glides on as though he hadn’t barged through an off limits area. Lando looks up for him, and Oscar pops into view, looking into the cockpit and tutting. “All of this shouldn’t happen if there was an emergency.”

“I just didn’t want to damage anything.”

“Fair.”

It’s a bit of an awkward process for Oscar to be able to get access to the cockpit and slowly start unwinding the cables each other. Radio, drinks, vitals, seatbelts. It was well known that Oscar was tied for the smallest hands in the garage and it was a little easier to do some fiddly things if he had the time. He disconnects the radio from the car with a final flourish. “You’re free!”

Lando almost falls face-first when he lifts himself out of the cockpit. Oscar steadies him with a gentle hand on his waist. “Be proud of that drive. We’re leading the WCC,” Oscar whispers before handing him over to Sophie for media.

—-

This felt so much better, for once, everybody was happy.

He was proud with 5 seconds off the podium. He could be proud with that. It was George in front, and in P3 with what Oscar described as ‘pulling a Bradbury.’ Whatever that meant. Oh, and they’re leading the WCC. First time since like, forever, or like, a decade or something. It’s monumental. They’d fucking done it.

Oscar empties a bottle of champagne over Lando - Lando sprays one back in his face. It’s been so long since he’s seen Oscar like this, free, eyes sparkling, mouth open as he laughs with the team. He’s happy. Lando is as well. They escape together, both soaked through with French wine and elation.

“You did a fucking amazing job out there.” Oscar’s hand is warm on his arm, counteracting the rapidly cooling Trento over his skin.

“You did a pretty good job bringing it all together.” Lando ducked his head.

“Pretty good? You offend me Norris.”

He shouldn’t want to snog Oscar after he calls him by his last name. But god, he would do it.

“Pretty good, Piastri.”

Oscar lets a little giggle, opening his arms. An invitation that Lando happily accepts. Oscar is warm, he is warm, and they’re soaking in the sunset in the land of fire. “So,” Oscar asks, “do you want me to stay on as your engineer?”

Lando buried his face into Oscar’s shoulder. “Yes,” he said stubbornly.

“Well that’s good. I wasn’t planning on leaving.”

—-

They end up on the same flight out of Baku — sitting next to each other actually. Oscar is not doing work for once, but he has his laptop open, watching what looks like Inception. Lando’s been reviewing data. There’s only so much of that that can be done before he starts to get a really nasty headache, glasses or not.

He probably should sleep. There’s a 4 hour actual time difference between Azerbaijan and Singapore, but everything for them is actually moving back an hour. So, to be completely honest, syncing his sleep schedule isn’t a major concern. That’ll be in Singapore when he’s getting blasted with sunlight at 10 am in the morning, thinking it was in the middle of the night. He didn’t close his blinds once and he’d never make that mistake again.

Lando taps Oscar on the arm. “Would you mind if I?” He gestured to Oscar’s arm, the unsaid I would like to use you as a pillow passing between them.

Oscar shifts to open himself up a little more. Shifts to make it a lot more comfortable for him. “Come on,” he whispered. Lando gently lowers himself, feeling the familiar contours beneath him. It feels natural to be tucked in the crook of his neck. “Comfortable?”

“Yeah.”

They sat in a heavy silence. Every unsaid thing stirred between them building to the point where Oscar was the first one to speak up. “I’m sorry.” He fidgeted, and eventually pressed pause and turned to Lando. His head ended up on Oscar’s chest instead. “It was a dick move to go away twice and I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about everyth-”

“Oscar. You don’t need to be sorry. By what Daniel told me, you had your… reasons.”

His head ducked down. “You don’t want to know the half of it.”

The silence took over again. The seatbeat light dinged on, and with some hesitation, Lando sat up into his own seat. He stared up at the ceiling, not wanting to see Oscar’s face when he dropped the question. “Can we… I don’t know, start over?”

“I don’t want to start over,” Oscar admitted quietly. Lando is pretty sure they’re both observing the reflective pattern in the light above them. “I want you - and its going to take time but I’m willing to wait. It’s just going to take some time. I don’t think we completely fucked it.”

Lando lets out a humoured huff. Maybe they hadn’t. They knew each other too well to willingly throw it out the window. He wasn’t one for taking his time - it went against every instinct in his body, and must be the same for Oscar - but if it meant being able to fix and understand, he might just be up for it. “Well then. Can I invite you on a 2 am dinner date?”

He can hear the smile on Oscar’s voice. “You can invite me on a 2am dinner date. Wednesday work?”

“Wednesday works.”