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I get mean when I'm nervous like a bad dog
I want to jump into blue water
And I miss riding horses, I miss running fast
I miss riding horses, I miss running fast
I was meant for running fast
I pretended you were mine, It made me calm babe
— Cop Car, Mitski (2020)
Late sunday evening, after a shit race and a shit day and what is starting to feel like a shit week, all Oscar wants to do is dive into his hotel bed and sleep for ten hours straight. Long enough to have his managers wondering whether he’d gone and died, somehow.
It doesn’t help that the McLaren entourage is one of the last to make it to the hotel. They’re late, delayed by the celebration of Lando’s point finish — which Oscar stuck around to watch because he’s a good sport and a decent teammate. Even when he can’t finish a fucking lap —, then press, and then the more-or-less emergency debrief on site to discuss the state of Oscar’s car, damaged chassis and all. He doesn’t even have his phone, for god’s sake. He’d forgotten to charge it fully in the morning, and then it had died at some point during the excruciating hour Oscar spent tossed aside in the garage, waiting for the race to end. All he can do is thank the technicians riding with him and Lando as they exit the van, and make sure his feet are still moving when an assistant sends them towards the elevator on their own. Finally.
Oscar’s head is elsewhere, as it has been since the minute he took his helmet off, and so he doesn’t realize there are more people already inside the elevator until the doors close.
The flash of color out of the corner of his eye turns out to be a couple of managers and Carlos , all clad in Ferrari-red. It takes a lot out of him not to sigh, but he manages. Oscar stands very still, like he won’t be noticed if he just doesn’t move, and if it gets weird he can just pretend he’s already said hello.
Lando is talking to them, politely offering his praise over Charles’ result, which means Oscar doesn’t have to, and it makes him very grateful. The elevator rattles, low music playing from a tiny speaker up above. The damn thing moves so slow. Going up thirty-or-so floors should not take this long.
Oscar is so wrung out and so thirsty, for some reason, envisioning his suite’s shower, AC and minibar every time he blinks. He’s certainly too tired to keep track of the conversation behind him, and he doesn’t know what the fuck is going on when Carlos Sainz suddenly calls out:
“Piastri!” He sounds surprised, and that is because he has quite literally just realized Oscar is also there. Great. Lando absent-mindedly touches his arm and Oscar forces himself to turn around.
“No hard feelings over the crash into T1, ey, Oscar? Easy mistake to make, you know. No one would hold it over a rookie,” he tips his head in Oscar’s direction, knowing smile on his lips like he’s doing him a favor. Inside his pocket, Oscar squeezes his fist into a ball, and nods back. Carlos might want to shake his hand to settle it, but they’re a little too far apart and Oscar has no intentions of moving closer. Lando and a Ferrari employee are the barriers between the two of them, and it will stay that way, thank you very much.
“Sure,” he says, compromising, as there’s no real benefit to arguing his side here. So, sure. Carlos Sainz Jr. can believe whatever gets him to sleep soundly at night. Pull the rookie card, like the word sucks out any of his own accountability, twist it around until it looks like a big neon sign singling Oscar out. Why not?
It’s fine. It’s fine, Oscar holds himself back. It’s not a personal attack. He shouldn’t let it get to his head this much, anyway. The combination of heat and the time he had already spent being more or less patronized by the reporters, poking and prodding him for fighting words after the incident, is probably starting to wear him down. All Oscar needs to do is sit through this elevator ride with his tongue behind his teeth. It is his first year, and Mark has told him time and time again that his goal here is to do his job well and keep his head down. He leans into the elevator wall, barely feeling the chill of the metal through his shirt, and knocks his shoulder into Lando. It’s fine.
Except, Carlos has more to say, it turns out. He seems to take Oscar’s easy agreement and follow-up silence as embarrassment, somehow, and takes it upon himself to ease him with a chuckle. “Yeah, you’ll learn. Lando learned,” he gestures, turning to Lando to clamp a hand on his arm and squeeze. Lando just huffs a laugh, grinning at Carlos in the way that makes his eyes curl like crescent moons, but otherwise adds nothing. Carlos trails off for so long Oscar thinks he’s done, too busy with nudging Lando’s side and nodding at him in appreciation, but then he adds: “Give it a little time, he’ll straighten you out, too,”
Oscar blinks, processing, and the fist inside his jacket gets tighter. He might need to check for broken skin in private. It’s just something about the wording, really. And part of it is also the way Carlos isn’t even looking at him as he says it. Oscar smiles stiffly, if only to mask the annoyed huff he pushes out of his nose. He does have a bit of a headache already, webbing around at his temples and hurting his ears, which really just adds insult to injury.
The elevator dings, and the doors slide open, like a kind of salvation Oscar has only subconsciously prayed for. He almost trips himself on the way out, clumsy in his haste, and barely acknowledges the Ferrari employees at the back. Still, Oscar’s eyes lock on it almost robotically as Carlos pats Lando’s back goodbye and leans close to tell him something that’s too quiet to be heard. All Oscar gets from him is a half-assed wave, mind you.
The doors close, taking Sainz away as quickly as he’d appeared, and suddenly there’s just the two McLaren pilots. Not even all the emotional regulation training in the world could stop the sputter that comes out of Oscar’s mouth then.
“What the fuck?” he says, under his breath.
Lando laughs at him, “What?”, and Oscar’s vision swims a little bit. The amusement in Lando’s face warrants a pinprick of hot displeasure down Oscar’s spine. A muscle on the side of his jaw clenches, making his lips twitch and even so Lando just raises his eyebrows at him, ghost of a smile on the lines around his mouth and chin.
It’s— kind of a lot. Oscar’s annoyances meld together, and then it’s difficult to tell where one ends and another begins. He kind of just wants to fight, now. Lando’s shirt is creased on the sleeve where Carlos held him and the sight flares him up further.
Lando was right there. How is it possible that the entire exchange went by unnoticed? Oscar wants to shake him. Maybe kick the closed elevator doors hard enough the metal dents.
Instead, in a burst of emotion, he flails his arms before crossing them tightly. “You’ll straighten me out?” he spits, eyes burning into the curve of Lando’s neck and shoulder. “What the fuck was that about? I’m not your pet , am I?”
Instant regret is a funny thing, in this situation. Lando’s eyebrows crease into the smallest frown, and Oscar vividly mentalizes jumping into the elevator shaft. Maybe if he breaks both his shins they won’t take him back, he thinks very hopefully. His nails clasp into the skin of his forearms and then he’s turning away, hanging his head down. The collar of his shirt, tight and rigid against the front of his neck, suddenly feels like a leash.
“Nevermind. It’s whatever. I shouldn’t have said anything,” he backtracks, rapid-firing. Then, more dejectedly, mostly to himself: “Can you get heatstroke in Belgium?”
Lando’s lips are so dry it makes a sound when he tongues over the skin. He tries to chuckle, but it comes out a bit nervous. “Don’t take him too seriously,” he placates Oscar from a couple steps away, offering him a shrug. “He didn’t mean it like that, I’m sure,”
Oscar feels himself shiver. Lando still looks slightly unsure, like he doesn’t quite get whether he should brush it off or not. Weighing whether Oscar seems to be willing to.
It’s not a secret that they orbitate each other a lot, one way or another. Last week’s tabloid release talking about their ‘own little world’ is not the first piece to speculate on their friendship off the track, and Oscar knows it won’t be the last. But this, right here— uncharacteristically —, is calculating. Lando looks like he’s trying to figure him out, and it makes Oscar almost want to laugh. Borderline hysterical. A little demoralized. Lando’s looking at him now, when he should’ve been looking back in the elevator. Back when, you know— When Carlos was layering Oscar with such thick condescension he’s still a little loopy from it. Lando should’ve been frowning then.
Of course, Oscar doesn’t say that. Can’t say that, because he knows to recognize absurd feelings even when it’s vindicating to mull them over. Truthfully, unexplainably, Oscar half wishes Lando would’ve said something. Anything. That he had stuck up for him, somehow, even when Oscar had knowingly decided not to stick up for himself. Lando could’ve cut in with a joke, at least. Saved Oscar from some of the pressure. He’s good at that, like in the solo interviews Oscar is always picking up to read and reread in his downtime. Self-preservation and the suffocating discomfort pull down on him like twin weights on a scale and it's hard to determine who wins that particular dispute, but before it can matter he’s mumbling:
“He sounded like he wanted me in doggy training, that’s what,”
Lando clicks his tongue. “Mate, no,” he tilts his head, light eyes flashing. “He’s just— he’s been racing a long time,”
Oscar perks up. “Do you think the crash was all on me?”
“Not what I said, mate,”
It doesn’t really matter. Oscar is listening, but not really listening. His ears kind of ring. He didn’t know getting this pissed off could mess with your senses, but it makes some sense.
“Carlos told every single journalist in there that I was at fault because of my inexperience,” Oscar barrels through, voice wavering a little bit. It’s a little funny. His outrage boils over into wilder territory, well-aware of how his current combativeness hits a wall in Lando’s pointed confusion. His hands might be shaking, half in effort to keep his voice somewhat down. Still, he won’t stop. “What did he say again? Too optimistic? Might as well have called me fucking stupid—,”
Lando blinks. “Why are you fighting me?”
Oscar tries to laugh, or huff, or shrug, and all he can do is make a pained little sound, all of the above options twisting together inside his stomach. “Hah,” he breathes, wanting to turn away again.
Lando’s figure turns muddy and vague, contours shifting helplessly in and out of focus, and Oscar startles into wondering when the fuck he started crying— because, what? But as he reaches for his eyes he finds nothing, no tears or moisture and that startles him too. His skin is dry to the touch in a way that makes very little sense because he feels like he’s sweating. Oscar’s body is too warm, and then suddenly too cold with a breeze that spears through the corridor. His feet feel slick inside his shoes, little to no grip to support him as he stumbles a step or too backwards. His elbow hits the wall and it hurts, though the scraping feels interestingly wrong.
“Oscar?” Lando sounds far away, moduled, almost. His accent still pokes through, regardless. Oscuh. Oscar quite likes how he says it. It’s gentle and it feels nice to hear, goddamnit. Maybe Oscar is a little tender over the not-finish, still. His eyelids are heavy, and he has half a mind to get his door open before he falls asleep on the carpet.
Lando has a hand on his shoulder now, for some reason. When did he get so close?
“Oscar? Hey—“ he starts again, voice very close to Oscar’s ear and very muffled at the same time. The back of his head thuds against something, not terribly hard but enough to make his eyes pinch closed, and suddenly Oscar slips away — unconscious.
—
There’s an IV drip attached to his arm when he wakes up.
Oscar blinks, then squints at the source of light directly above his head. It takes a couple more blinks to clear the spots from his vision, but when he does Oscar can see the cannula taped securely to the back of his hand, connecting all the way upwards to the fluids bag hanging from a hook on the wall. Huh.
His headache is mostly gone, but he’s oddly lethargic as if he had just tried to sleep off a high fever. It occurs to Oscar he doesn’t know where he is, either. His neck hurts if he tries to twist his head too much, so he doesn’t, but from his peripherals he can make out a papaya jacket thrown over a chair just a couple steps away from him. It doesn’t tell him much, and he doesn’t bother dwelling on it further.
Oscar wobbles in and out of sleep, heavy eyelids still rather troubling, until a woman walks in. She’s wearing a grey uniform which means she’s some kind of doctor, probably, and she’s startled into smiling which means she’s happy to see him alive, probably. The lady tells him something, nodding and gesturing to the door before she turns on her heel and leaves, and Oscar is so not ready for it. The words just sound like mush inside his ears, and so he’s left alone again. None the wiser. He sighs, blinking some more and testing the limits to which his sore neck will allow him to move. His ears work again after a while, picking up an annoyingly consistent beeping noise that seems to come from outside and beside him at the same time. It’s very grating for the first few minutes until it fades into the ambient noise, and it almost makes Oscar wish he was still hearing-less.
The next person to come in is Lando, somehow, panting a little like he’d rushed here. The doctor from before is right behind him, but she stops at the threshold to give him space as Lando crowds in close to the bed.
“Hey,” is all he says, biting his lip, as he takes one step back.
Oscar squints some more, awfully confused. “Are we at a hospital?”
That makes Lando scoff, lightly knocking his knuckles against Oscar’s IV-bound arm. “Nah, mate,” he looks back at the doctor and shrugs. She laughs, and excuses herself shortly after. “Hotel infirmary, or something,”
“Ah,” Oscar concedes, eyes trailing up and down the pale walls, then inevitably gravitating back to Lando. He’s already looking at him, so their gazes cross. Lando sways in place, back and forth, strangely hesitant. Oscar’s brain is still cotton, anyway. He couldn’t figure this one out on his own if he tried.
Lando glances back to check if they’re still alone, then gives him a tentative smile. “You gave me quite a scare, there,”
Oscar puffs out air, as if to say tell me about it. He scared himself, honestly. He slowly starts to remember the sequence of events, starting from the end. Oscar doesn’t think he has fainted since he was about five, back in kindergarten when he’d get nosebleeds from staying out in the cracking sun for too long.
“Listen, in the elevator—” Lando starts, inching closer to the edge of the mattress so he’s hovering over Oscar’s field of vision, when Oscar cuts him off with a groan. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Ugh. Even his inner voice is a little sheepish. The last few pieces of the memory puzzle come back to him in Ferrari-red flashes, and it's far from pleasant. Oscar is not a hundred percent aware, still, but he’s pretty sure his cheeks are heating up now.
Lando just shushes him and brushes his protest away with a wave of his hand. He pets the top of his hair and Oscar leans into it, just a little.
“Sorry I didn’t say anything,” he says carefully, still touching him. “Didn’t think you needed defending, honestly,”
“I don’t,” Oscar grunts, a bit pathetic from his infirmary bed.
Lando studies his face, looking and watching and looking, then something seems to click in place as a smile stretches slowly across his lips. “But you wanted it,” he quips. It’s not a question.
Oscar holds the urge to roll his eyes. He knows it’s not enough to save face. “Maybe,” he says, which might just be worse.
“Oscar,” Lando chides through the stupid smile, getting larger by the second.
“Don’t make fun of me,” Oscar pointedly looks at the ceiling, “I’m dying,”
Lando scoffs. “You’re not dying,” he motions towards the open door, “The nurse said you’re dehydrated,”
“Ah,” Oscar considers the news, thinking back to his hallway meltdown with a hot twinge of embarrassment slicing up his insides. “Is that right?”
“Yeah, mate,” Lando snorts, nudging his hand, “No wonder you were, like, tweaking,”
Oscar glares and takes his hand away but Lando chases after it, intertwining their fingers and squeezing the arch of Oscar’s hand.
There’s quiet, a longer one, then Lando’s blurting out. “I don’t— I don’t think you’re like a pet,” he gets it out quickly, scanning Oscar’s face with a wild, haunted look like he had really been worrying about it all this time. “And I don’t think I’m gonna fix you, or anything. You don’t need it, mate,”
Oscar sputters so hard his temples hurt, and he has to reel himself back in. “Okay,” he giggles, terribly fond.
“Seriously,” Lando insists, waving their joined hands a little.
Oscar raises his eyebrows, grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. It’s so easy to laugh in Lando’s presence, when you’re not delirious with sickness. “I believe you, mate,” he hums, except Lando still looks spooked, so he doubles down: “I do. I was spiraling, a little bit. But that was the sick talking. I do not think Carlos Sainz is out to get me. He’s not real and he can’t hurt me,”
Lando is nodding along until the last part, when he realizes he’s being teased, then he shoves Oscar’s shoulder, apologizing profusely when Oscar fake-hisses in response. Oscar can only laugh. He sniffles and chuckles and giggles, free from the shackles of dehydration-induced emotional misery, until the nurse comes to tell them to take it easy and banishes Lando to a different room. Lando complains all the way through, still somewhat laughing, but obeys, and it is only then that he lets Oscar’s hand go.