Chapter Text
Your perception of reality is a fragile glass ball. You've been carrying it in your hands for years, trying not to drop it. Sometimes cracks appear in it - strange dreams, inexplicable déjà vu, fleeting, crazy thoughts. But you patch them up with the tape of rationalization and move on. And then an earthquake strikes. And the ball shatters into pieces.
Oscar Piastri stood in the middle of the room and looked at the shards of his glass ball. They were everywhere. On the carpet with its tacky pattern. On the crumpled sheet. On his own lips, which were still burning.
He was really fucking stunned. It wasn't a figure of speech. It was a medical fact. His brain, which had been issuing clear, panicked "Fuck" commands just seconds ago, was now producing a single, repetitive thought: Are they really kissing?
He ran his tongue over his lips. The taste. Foreign. Familiar and completely foreign. Mint. Whiskey. Lando. Three ingredients that blended into a cocktail called "The End of the World."
This is not a dream. Dreams don't have this level of tactile clarity. Dreams don't feel the texture of his T-shirt beneath your fingers. Dreams don't hear his ragged breathing against your mouth. Dreams don't feel his hand trembling on the back of your head, whether from laughter or something else.
No. It was reality. A boring, predictable reality where you eat oatmeal for breakfast, listen to briefings, and suppress the urge to touch your partner. But now a wild, uninvited guest named "What If" has barged into this reality.
Lando pulled away. Abruptly. As if he'd been electrocuted too. His eyes were as round as racing wheels. They held the same fucking universe as Oscar's, only with a touch of Norrisian chaos.
He looked at Oscar. Oscar looked at him. The silence hung between them, thick as the smog over Shanghai. You could cut it with a knife. You could choke on it.
And then Lando Norris, the master of turning the apocalypse into a comedy show, found his way out. His brain seemed to reboot into its usual mode.
"Well," he began hoarsely, his lips twitching in an attempt at a grin. "Is this a new method of fighting for a seat on the team? Because, man, I'm not going down without a fight."
Oscar didn't respond. He couldn't. His speech center was paralyzed. He just stood there, watching Lando try to plug the hole in the sinking ship with his idiotic joke.
The joke hung in the air, unpicked by anyone, and slowly fell to the floor, where it joined the shards of the glass ball.
Lando's face twitched. His grin faltered. There was something uncertain, almost frightened, in his eyes. He ran a hand through his hair, looking away.
"Fuck," he muttered, his bravado gone. Then, as if fleeing an explosion that was about to happen, he turned and hurried into the bathroom. The door slammed shut with a deafening, final click.
Click. Like turning off the TV at the most exciting moment of a movie.
And Oscar was left alone. Alone in the center of the room, in the midst of a silence that was louder than any Formula 1 engine.
His body began to tremble. A small, unpleasant trembling. Like an engine idling in icy weather. Slowly, very slowly, he crouched down and then sat on the floor. His forehead rested on his knees.
Thoughts. There weren't just a lot of them. It was a hurricane. A tornado of debris that swirled through his mind, uprooting everything that had been built over the past few months.
He kissed me back.
Voluntarily. Without coercion. His hand grabbed the back of my head.
He ran away.
He ran to the bathroom, leaving behind an idiotic joke. He was scared. Or regretful. Or just didn't know what to do. Just like you.
What will happen now?
Fuck knows. Absolutely, unconditionally, fuck knows.
Oscar raised his head and stared at the bathroom door. There was no sound coming from inside. No water, no toothbrush. Nothing. Just silence. Lando was just sitting there. Or standing there. Or maybe he was looking at his reflection in the mirror with the same expression of awe that Oscar was feeling.
Oscar imagined him there. Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, his eyes wide, running his hand over his lips, trying to erase the taste. The taste of Oscar. The image was both a torture and a sweet poison.
He remembered that kiss again. Not his own, impulsive and furious. But the one in return. The one that was... what? Not so furious. More... exploring? Surprised? But definitely not repulsive.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
He fell back into that mantra. It was the only thing that could describe the magnitude of the disaster.
What now? Go out and say "I'm sorry, I was drunk"? Pretend nothing happened? Start a new fight, this time for real?
And the race? In a few hours, they'll get into their cars and pretend they're a team. They'll be partners. There won't be anything between them but healthy competition and friendly banter.
Healthy competition. Oscar snorted. The sound was bitter and lonely. Friendly teasing. Yes, but the "teasing" was on the level of exchanging saliva.
He heard the toilet flushing in the bathroom. Just like that. For the noise. To fill the void. Then again. His heart started beating faster. Lando was getting out. He was going to get out. And say something. Or not say anything.
Oscar jumped to his feet. He wasn't ready. He didn't know what expression to make. He didn't know what words to say. He was naked and helpless in the face of this new, crazy reality.
He stood there like an idiot, staring at the door, waiting. Waiting for the continuation of this strange, obscene, beautiful, and terrible movie, in which he was both the protagonist and the audience in his own hell.
The door wouldn't open.
Oscar Piastri was left alone with his pile of thoughts. A mountain of fragments. And a quiet, haunting question: what if this is just the beginning?
Waiting is not a pause. It is an active process of self-destruction. Every second is a poison needle that pierces your brain and injects a new dose of paranoia. Oscar waited. He stood there like a fool, staring at the bathroom door until his legs went numb and his back ached.
In the end, his system gave out. The exhaustion from lack of sleep, the whiskey, the adrenaline from the fight and the kiss, and the fucking uncertainty all mixed together into a cocktail that shut down his engines. He slumped down on his bed. The springs squealed in protest.
You need to tell someone. It was an ancient reflex. When something happens that doesn't make sense, you call a friend and dump all this shit on them to help you make sense of it. But who?
Oscar scrolled through his contact list in his head. Father? Nice try. "Hi, Dad. Yes, I'm fine. No, the car is fine. I just kissed my teammate. Yes, Lando. No, not on the cheek." Mother? Even worse.
Friends? What friends? In his pursuit of Lando, in this two-month marathon of self-torture, Oscar didn't notice other people. He was like a zombie with tunnel vision, seeing only one goal, and everything else was a blurred background. He had friends, teammates, but no one he could call at four in the morning and say, "Fuck, I just ate Norris's tongue, what should I do?"
Calling someone and imposing his problems... No. Piastri can handle it on his own. He's always handled it on his own. The breakdowns on the track, the media pressure, and his own demons. He can handle this too. He'll just bury it deep, stomp on it, sprinkle it with the sand of normalcy, and pretend it never happened. It's a tried-and-true strategy. It's never failed him. Except for the fact that she drove him to a nervous breakdown and a kiss with his partner.
He sat staring at the wall, trying to come up with a plan. The "Fuck it" plan. The "Pretend it was an accident, like a sneeze" plan. The "Call a taxi, drive to the airport, catch the first flight to Australia, and become a hermit" plan.
Then the bathroom door creaked.
Oscar froze. Time slowed down. He could feel every neuron in his brain standing at attention.
Lando came out of the bathroom. He was wet. His hair was ruffled and dripping, as if he had put his head under the faucet to cool down his overheating processor. His T-shirt was also wet around the chest, transparent, and sticking to him. He looked like he had just been pulled out of a pool after a failed dive.
But the most important thing was his face. It was still surprised. His eyes were still round, but now they had a new expression: embarrassment. Lando Norris. Embarrassed. It was a rare sight, like a Haas victory in a race. He avoided Oscar's gaze, looking somewhere near his left ear.
He walked a couple of steps, stopped, scratched the back of his head. The air in the room was thick again, like a pureed soup.
Lando opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. He seemed to be going through all the possible phrases in his head, from "Let's fight" to "Let's date," and they all seemed equally idiotic to him.
In the end, he muttered something. The words came out quiet, squeezed, as if they had been squeezed out of a tube of dried toothpaste.
"So cool -" he began, then stopped with a cough. "Uh ... I've never fucking kissed a woman like that."
Oscar stopped breathing. His lungs froze somewhere in the middle of a breath. He stared at Lando, trying to decipher this strange signal from an alien planet.
"That's so cool... I've never kissed a woman like that."
Oscar mentally broke down the phrase, like an engineer analyzing telemetry after an accident.
"That's cool": A positive assessment. Praise. It seems. Or is it sarcasm? No, Lando is rarely sarcastic at such moments. He's more straightforward, like hitting your finger with a hammer.
"Even with women": A comparative analysis. He compared kissing Oscar to kissing women. This placed Oscar in the same category as "women." On the one hand, it was flattering. On the other hand, it was slightly offensive. The "women" category was large and diverse, and he was simply placed there as another exhibit.
"I haven't kissed": Denial of previous experience. His experience of kissing "women" was deemed inadequate compared to this particular kiss.
Bottom line: is this some kind of praise? Praise in the style of Lando Norris. Rude, uncouth, slightly homophobic, but generally ... positive? As if you were told: "Your fries are better than my grandmother's, and she's been fucking cooking them all her life."
Oscar remained silent. He didn't know what to say. "Thank you"? It would sound like "I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I look forward to working with you again." "You too"? It would be more appropriate for exchanging compliments after a haircut.
Lando, seeing that there was no answer, blushed. Yes, he blushed. A slight blush appeared on his cheeks under his light stubble.
"Well," he shook his head, spraying water around him. "It was... yes. Fuck."
He turned and walked quickly toward his suitcase, pretending to be suddenly very interested in a pack of clean socks.
Oscar watched him, and something inside him turned over. All the horror, all the panic, all the "fuck fuck fuck" began to slowly recede, giving way to a new, strange feeling. It was like... relief? Mixed with wild, inappropriate joy.
Lando didn't run away screaming "pervert!" He didn't punch him. He didn't pretend nothing had happened. He came out. He was wet, embarrassed, and gave the most stupid, most awkward compliment in human history.
He was still sitting on the bed, not moving. But now he was looking not into the void, but at Lando's back, who was picking his socks with incredible diligence, as if the fate of the universe depended on it.
And Oscar Piastri, for the first time in the last half hour, smiled a little. It was a crooked, uncertain, and deathly afraid smile. But it was there.
Fuck. It was really just getting started.
The silence in the room was not just a lack of sound. It was a separate entity. It was alive, breathing, and pulsating. It hung between them like a cracked chandelier, ready to collapse and shatter everything at any moment. Oscar was sitting on the bed, and Lando was standing by his suitcase.
Every second stretched out into an eternity. Oscar could hear the neurons in his own brain creaking. They were creaking like unlubricated bearings in an old race car, trying to come up with a solution. Should he run? Should he pretend it was a hallucination? Perhaps he was still dreaming, and this was a particularly twisted form of a nightmare, where his most shameful desires were being fulfilled in the most awkward way possible.
Lando finished putting his socks away. He lined them up in a neat row, as if he were preparing them for a parade. He took a deep breath, raised his head, and stared at the wall across from him, as if trying to read the patterns on the wallpaper for a way out of this situation.
Then he turned around abruptly. The movement was so sudden that Oscar winced. Lando paced around the room. Two steps this way, two steps that way. His wet hair whipped across his forehead. He looked like a tiger in a cage, accidentally locked in the same cage as an antelope, and he couldn't decide whether to eat it or offer to play poker.
He stopped, put his hands on his hips, and exhaled. Then he looked straight at Oscar. His gaze was wild, determined, and terrifyingly uncertain.
"So, fuck," he blurted out, his voice hoarse and loud, breaking the fragile silence. "Do you want to, like, do it again?"
The words hung in the air, awkward and naked, like newborn chicks that had fallen from their nest.
Oscar froze. His processor froze again. The question was so broad, so abstract, that it could be interpreted in any way.
Anything else?"
Oscar's brain immediately started generating options like a crazy online shopping catalog.
To sit in this deathly silence? Not really, no. But if Lando was there... hell, even that seemed like a privilege right now. To sit and just breathe with him in the same room, while the world crumbled outside.
Another fight? Well, it was fun. It was cathartic. It was an outlet for all the pent-up rage and tension. I could pound on his shoulders again, feel the heat of his skin through the fabric of his shirt, hear him laugh...
Another whiskey? Bad idea. Very bad. Whiskey led them here. To this. To this madness.
But the main option, the one that flashed like a neon sign in his mind, was:
Should I kiss Norris again?
Oh, yes. Oh, yes indeed. His entire being, every cell, every nerve that he had spent the past few months suppressing, roared in unison: "YES! YES, DAMN IT, YES!"
It would be a logical continuation. Like the second episode of a series that you start watching right after the first one. Like the second round in qualifying. You've already paved the way and got a feel for the track, now you need to solidify your results.
Oscar's thoughts, a frenzied kaleidoscope of fear, hope, and lust, were interrupted by Lando's addition. He saw that Oscar didn't understand. He saw the confusion on his face. And he clarified.
"Well," he shook his head, blushing again. "I mean... To kiss."
That's it. No more questions. No more ambiguities. No more "like" or "something else." It was a direct request. As clear as a hammer hitting your thumb.
The information entered Oscar's brain. It took 0.3 seconds to process it. The logical chains he had built over the years to keep himself in check collapsed like a house of cards. Fears, doubts, and professional ethics were swept away by a single, clear thought:
One hundred percent yes.
It wasn't even a decision. It was a fact. Like the law of gravity. Like the fact that the sun rises in the east. Oscar Piastri wanted to kiss Lando Norris again. One hundred percent.
He didn't say it out loud. Words were unnecessary noise. Instead, he got up from the bed. Slowly. His legs felt like jelly, but they carried him forward.
Lando didn't move. He stood with his hands still on his hips, but his posture was no longer confident; it was frozen. He looked at Oscar, and in his eyes was the same realization, the same all-consuming clarity, mixed with a wild, animalistic fear.
Oscar came close. They were facing each other. He could count every eyelash on his eyes. He could see the water drops on his temples. He could feel his warmth.
"Yes," Oscar said quietly. And it wasn't just a word. It was the key he inserted into the lock to open the door to a new, crazy reality.
He raised his hand. Slowly. Giving Lando time to back off, push him away, say "stop, this is a mistake."
But Lando didn't back down. He just closed his eyes, as if he was preparing for a blow. Or a miracle.
Oscar touched his cheek. The skin was cool from the water, but there was heat beneath it. He ran his finger along the cheekbone, along the jawline. It was no longer a fit of rage. It was exploration. Exploring a territory that he had only viewed from afar for so long.
He leaned in. More slowly than the first time. Enjoying the moment of anticipation. The taste of anticipation was sweeter than the kiss itself.
Their lips met again.
And this kiss was different. Not a collision. Not an accident. It was a... landing. It was as if his personal race car, which had been flying at breakneck speed for two months, had finally found its course and smoothly entered a turn. All the vibrations, the roar of the engine, and the tension subsided, replaced by a smooth, confident forward motion.
Oscar felt everything. The texture of his lips. The way he responded to his movements. The way his hand reached up again and clutched at his shirt, pulling him closer. The way his breath was coming in short bursts.
It was one hundred percent. One hundred percent fear. One hundred percent madness. One hundred percent right.
And somewhere in the back of his mind, in the corner that hadn't yet been consumed by the storm, Oscar thought, "Fuck. This is real now."