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First week back after break is a hellscape. It’s all push push push for Winter testing, and Oscar is entirely fucked by the seventh straight day: when Charlotte pulls him aside, mid photosheet, and says go and have a nap, you’ve got a spare minute, Oscar feels like he might actually cry.
He changes out of his race suit — brighter this year, and harder on his tired eyes — and staggers back to his driver’s room. Sits down on the couch, closes his eyes, and waits for sleep to come.
It doesn’t.
He tries his noise-cancelling headphones. Rain sounds are ruined by his recent discovery that it’s actually fried chicken he’s hearing instead of a nice thunderstorm, so he opts for whale sounds instead. That does nothing except for freak him out. A podcast? He’s thinking of that episode he’s gotta do next week after testing. YouTube video? Everything in his suggested is old races, and if Oscar so much as looks at another F1 car right now, he thinks he might throw up. Or explode. A bit of both.
He rolls over. Sits up straight. Flips on his back. On his side. And: fucking nothing. He’s exhausted, more tired than he’s ever been, but so awake. When he checks his phone, forty minutes have passed.
“Fuck,” he swears. “Fuck!”
“Jesus, man. What happened to you?”
Oscar jumps. Lando’s standing in his doorway, arms folded across his chest. He’s dressed in shorts and his McLaren polo, but without all the usual additions — his bracelets, those old festival admissions ties. There’s just his orange Richard Mille watch. Fuck.
“Did you come from photos?”
Lando raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, but I think they need a bit before they call you in. I may have broken the greenscreen.”
Oscar snorts. Scrubs a hand over his face. There’s two-day old stubble there, unfamiliar on his face, and it bites at the soft skin of his palm. He rests his open palm over his eyes, and thumbs at the dip in his cheeks where he knows his purple eyebags reach. They feel heavy on his skin, like that’s the whole source of his tiredness. It’s been a grueling fucking twenty-four hours. “Nice,” he mutters.
“Yeah, alright. Who pissed in your Weet Bix?”
Oscar blinks. “How do you know what Weet Bix is?”
“I spent a week in Perth with Danny,” says Lando. “He eats, like, seven for breakfast. Seriously. And plain.”
“Eugh.”
“Mhm. You didn’t answer my question.”
Oscar presses his hands deeper into his eyes. “Nothing,” he says. “I’m good, I just… I need a nap. Jetlag still fucks me over, and we’ve been going crazy since I landed.”
He hears Lando scoff from the other side of the room. “ Mate. You’ve been in in F1, F2 for how long?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Oscar feels a flush rushing over his face, under his fingers. He’s tired, he’s embarrassed, and when the anger comes riding up, he does nothing to push it back down. “If you’re just gonna make fun of me, you can just piss right off.”
There’s a moment of deep silence. The red subsides, and Oscar realises the words still hanging in the air. He scrambles up, blinking the fuzziness from his eyes frantically. “Fuck, fuck—I didn’t mean that—I didn’t mean to snap.”
But Lando’s looking anything but angry. His eyebrows, buried under the curve of his cap, drop back down to a reasonable position on his face, and his shoulders relax somewhat under that team puffer vest Lando’s been refusing to take off for the current minute. When he speaks, it’s so much softer – like he’s approaching something injured on the side of the road. “Nah, mate. I get it.” And then, even softer: “Shove over, yeah?”
Oscar—blinks. “What?”
Lando’s already moving. He crosses the room in two strong strides, unzips his vest in another and drapes it over the back of the couch, and then stands there, the tops of his sneakers touching Oscar’s bare feet. Arms still folded across his chest, mouth set in a grin, looking like the world owes him something. “Shove over, Piastri. Unless you’re a big manly man who can’t handle a cuddle.”
“No, I’m… what?” Oscar says, bewildered, but Lando’s not listening. He grabs both of Oscar’s ankles and hoists them high in the air – so much so that his hamstrings wheeze – and pivots him, legs to the end of the couch, head pointed toward the other empty cushion, which Lando flops down in. He cradles Oscar’s head with both hands, and gently lets him fall into the seat of his shorts. It happens so fast that Oscar doesn’t even have time to compute it all – reflexes be damned. There’s something hot stirring in Oscar’s gut. He lets his mind file it away as anger, and bites out a “Lando, what the fuck?”
“Shut up,” is all Lando responds with, and then there’s a hand in Oscar’s hair and fingers digging at his temples and scratching at his scalp, and Oscar – can’t think. Everything smart in his head slips away. The heat in his belly dissipates, and the ache and the burn in his limbs floats off: everything becomes weightless, like it was never really there in the first place, never really hurting.
“It’ll help,” Lando’s saying, so quiet, so far away. “I used to do this with Carlos. He wasn’t any good at flights, either. Just—relax. I’ll get media to fuck off for today, yeah?”
Oscar lets the heaviness of his eyelids win out. He feels his heartbeat slow right down, feels his arms and legs go all wobbly against his will. Somewhere, his brain is protesting, but he’s so tired, and sleep is staring at him, and Oscar lets go.
It should be weird, sleeping with his teammate.
It’s the most comfortable he’s been in years.
Oscar wakes up to Kim, some hours later. There’s a blanket over his legs and a pillow under his head and a sleep well text in his phone with fifty different emojis and thirty exclamations marks. Oscar doesn’t answer it, but he sends back an online game of 8-ball to clear the air, and deliberately sinks a disgusting first move to give Lando the upper hand. They’re even. Nothing’s weird.
And then Lando texts, a week later.
Lando Norris, 8:43am:
cancel ur flight
Oscar Piastri, 9:04am:
What?
If that’s a new strategy to beat me, it’s the worst I’ve ever heard.
Lando Norris, 9:10am:
no u idiot jfc
cancel ur flight. ur flying on my jet
heathrow @ 8:45 tuesday yeah
Oscar Piastri, 9:14am:
Wait, what?
They don’t talk again until Tuesday rolls around. Oscar gets McLaren to cancel his flight and reassures them that yes, he has his own way of getting there, and no, he’s not being stupid and unorganised. He packs his big clam-shell suitcase on Monday night – stuffs it chock full of orange sponsored clothing and a couple of pairs of good jeans, jumpers, sneakers – and zips it shut when he’s done with his toothbrush on Tuesday morning. When he was younger, he used to catch the Piccadilly line in, but these days a surgical facemask and low-pulled cap doesn’t always obscure his identity, and as entitled as it sounds, at six-something in the morning, he’s not really looking to sign fifty different caps and phone cases and school bags. Now, at least, he can afford the cab fare. He locks his quiet apartment and steps out onto the curb, already slicked wet with British morning rain.
“Where to, son?” asks the kindly driver who answers his outstretched arm. Oscar waves off his attempts to fit his suitcase in the back and tells him Heathrow, and then realises he doesn’t even know the fucking terminal.
“Um—just give me a sec, and I’ll ask my friend,” Oscar says, nestled in the backseat. “Sorry. I’m normally… more organised than this.”
The cabbie laughs. “First time flying?”
Oscar tilts his head. “Sort of, yeah,” he says.
Oscar Piastri, 7:04am:
Hey mate
What terminal am I supposed to be at?
Sorry
Lando Norris, 7:06am:
uhhh let me ask my managerrrr
dont be sorry lmao its my bad
terminal 4 is closest I think
Oscar Piastri, 7:07am:
Um
Closest?
Lando Norris, 7:12am:
chill out osc we’ll come get u
i can feel ur stress from here
Lando, strangely, is right. It works out fine. The cabbie drops him at T4 and Oscar pays twice the fare and shakes the bloke’s hand. He sits on the top of his suitcase outside the double glass doors until a gleaming Rolls Royce pulls up – not even ten minutes later. A garishly dressed Lando tumbles out the back door, decked out in a lime bucket hat and a similarly coloured hoodie — Quadrant’s latest merch drop. His hat isn’t pulled low enough on his head, and it stands up a good two centimetres taller than it should. Oscar’s fingers twitch to fix it.
“Hey, Piastri,” Lando beams. “Are you ready to elevate your flying experience?”
“I’m ready to go home,” Oscar deadpans, but he wheels his suitcase over all the same. “Where—where do we go?”
Lando’s shaking his head. His grin is infectious: Oscar feels the corners of his mouth turning up. He’s not even sure why. “Bro. Chillax. Did you learn ‘Follow the Leader’ in preschool?”
“Oh, shut up,” Oscar laughs. “I bet you didn’t even go to preschool.”
“Yeah, well. Private tutors teach you the same stuff but without the other thirty shitting kids, so who’s winning?”
Lando leads him around to another building, and straight through those double doors to a woman behind a check-in desk. He spends a minute or two with her, and then tells Oscar to leave his baggage with her. Lando goes winding down a hallway, flashing his passport where he needs to and whatever details he’s got stored on his phone to anyone who needs to see it. Oscar white-knuckles the straps of his backpack, and tries not to look like a lost ten-year-old, or something. Flying first-class is still stupidly insane and incomprehensible: whatever this is is an entirely new ballpark.
A bloke in a Hi-Vis vest takes them through an empty gate and onto the tarmac. There’s a whole fuckoff plane waiting — heaps smaller than the 747s he’s used to but still scarily sizeable considering it’s just for two people, and whatever pilot is flying the thing. He sends off a text to his family group chat and follows Lando and the Hi-Vis dude up the little metal staircase and into the body of the thing. Lando turns around every three seconds as they walk in, jumping from foot to foot, like he’s actually excited to see Oscar’s reaction.
“So,” he says, when Hi-Vis man’s left. “What do you think? Fully sick, yeah?”
And — yeah. Fully sick is probably the best way to describe it. The cabin is impossibly wide – it looks bigger than an aeroplane ever should be without all those rows of cramped seats and tiny TVs and complementary plastic-wrapped brown square blankets. There’s only two leaning leather armchairs either side of the white carpeted aisle – those big beige plush ones, straight out of a Nick Scali catalogue. Behind them is a full fucking couch, throw cushions and all. Cup holders on the sides. There’s a proper flatscreen TV facing opposite, and then behind that… it just keeps going. A lacquered mahogany table. Two more armchairs. A matching wood liquor cabinet attached to the wall. A door to a bathroom. Fifteen-odd great wide porthole windows, framed with those snazzy individual curtains.
“Um,” says Oscar.
“Great, isn’t it?” Lando chirps. He flings off his hat into the closest armchair. “It’s just a hire, obviously – I’m not Max. But it beats commercial flying out of the fuckin’ park, so. Prettttttty cool.”
Oscar’s not even sure what to say. “Um. Yeah.”
Lando gives him a shut up and listen, stay with me look: eyebrows raised and eyes set in a half-baked glare. “You haven’t even heard the best part yet, dude.” He leans forward and presses a little button on the side of the armchair, and then stands back, hands on his hips, smile gleeful. The armchair comes to a soft whirring halt at a complete horizontal angle. “Huh? How good? Don’t need to worry about jetlag troubles on a private jet – this shit is perfect for a good nap.”
Oscar’s chest goes tight. Under his collar, something red is snaking up. Not anger, but embarrassment. He feels his ears burn. “I—what?”
Lando tilts his head. “You good, man?”
Oscar stares. “Lando, what? Did you—did you do this for—for me?”
“Um. Yeah?”
He says it like it’s nothing. Oscar’s heart is racing. “Because—because I said I couldn’t sleep, back in Woking?”
“Yeah? You were run off your feet, man. And I think Zak’d actually fire me if I didn’t take care of the new guy, so.”
“This—this is more than taking care of the new guy, Lando.”
Lando sighs. “Jesus, Oscar. Just—just let people do shit for you, yeah? Sit the fuck down and chill out. It’s not a big deal.”
“It’s embarrassing ,” Oscar protests. “Thanks, mate, but I don’t need… I’m twenty-three,” he finishes, lamely.
“Oscar,” says Lando, exasperated. “It’s three in the morning at Miami. Having a good fucking nap with your teammate is not weird, it’s just practical.” His face is set in a stubborn line. “Come on, ” he reiterates. “You’re tired. You’ll be more tired if you don’t sleep, and then you’ll drop out in Q1 and Zak’ll kill you, and you’ll have to retire prematurely and go work on a farm in Australia, racing cows in tractors, or whatever.”
Oscar shakes his head, but he can’t keep his lips from twisting up in a smile. “You’re a wanker,” he says, but sits down on the armchair all the same.
Lando sits on his own while the plane takes off, and then stands up when the pilot announces over the intercom that they’re good to wander if they want. He does something funny with the panel on the wall, and the plane darkens, window shades drawing closed all of their own accord. “Couch or armchair?”
Oscar goes red. “Uh—armchair?”
It’s probably the wrong answer. As Lando toes off his sneakers and climbs in around Oscar in his reclined seat, Oscar discovers there is zero room leftover. Lando’s pressed up against the wall. His thigh is touching Oscar’s from his hip to his knee. Lando shuffles down a bit, and tucks his head into the crook of Oscar’s shoulder. Awkwardly, Oscar pulls his arm around Lando’s own shoulders. Lando wiggles, and presses his knee into the back of Oscar’s, intertwines their ankles. Splays a warm hand out over his stomach. When Oscar opens his mouth to say something, to check in, to comment on their proximity, Lando raises his head and rolls his eyes.
“You’re thinking too much,” he says. “Are you good? Comfy?”
“Um,” says Oscar. “Yeah, but—”
Lando presses a finger to his lips — his lips. Oscar goes very still.
“No buts, then,” he says, dropping his head back to Oscar’s chest. “Go to sleep. I want a 1-2 in Miami.”
Oscar blinks up at the curved ceiling of the aircraft. What the fuck is happening, he thinks. This is insane.
Only — it’s not. It’s just as comfortable as the first time they’d napped together, weeks ago. Lando is a pleasant feeling on his chest. Even with the added weight, Oscar feels so light.
They both pack in a solid seven hours. It’s pretty fucking good.
After the plane, Oscar stops trying to defend his own stupid honour, or whatever. Quits the it’s weird pretence and starts rolling with the fact that he actually enjoys hanging out with Lando. Enjoys sleeping with him.
They hang together in Lando’s driver room. It’s a mirror image of Oscar’s own, but lived-in: where Oscar’s been afraid of making his mark, Lando doesn’t seem to give a shit, and it’s relaxing. He’s got deodorant cans left out on the desk, unlaced boots on the floor. Three different half-drunk water bottles, two without caps. A big, fuck off Quadrant flag strung up over his window. Old merch — McLaren and his own — strewn under the desk, over the back of the chair, piled on the windowsill. It feels human. It’s too easy to relax.
Lando’s got a sizeable couch set up to face his desk, and he props his laptop there on race weekends and curls up with Oscar – under a blanket if they’re in the European winter, under the chill of the air-conditioning if they’re in Asia. As it turns out, Lando’s got absolutely horrible taste in TV – he unironically likes South Park and those stupid drama shows like Manifest and Riverdale, which Oscar firmly refuses to watch, so they compromise for some far-removed reality show instead. Even if he’s held hostage, Oscar is not admitting how many seasons of Love Island they’ve gotten through together during the on-season.
“Wait, pause it,” says Lando. They’ve got his laptop hooked up to the fifteen dollar JBHIFI mouse Oscar’d snagged last time he was in Australia. It’s the epitome of laziness, scrolling through Netflix with a mouse so he doesn’t have to move his arms from where they are under the covers, but Oscar’s too comfortable to care. He wiggles the cursor to wake it, and clicks. On screen, Sophie from Cork freezes in her hair-toss. Former manicurist turned influencer Abbee-Rose is staring daggers into her back. “I’m confused. I thought Sophie and Callum had a spark! What’s she doing with that Tom bloke?”
“Making drama,” Oscar answers. “I’m pretty sure they get paid to do that, mate.”
“Well, yeah, but it’s the principle of the thing, isn’t it? Callum basically confessed his love for her last night. Like, I swear they were five seconds from proposing.”
“Lando, Callum’s been on three dates with Jessica F. Last episode, he kept talking about her cozzies at the pool.”
“ Cozzies ?”
“Swimmers. Whatever. Point is, everything’s one big love triangle — have you not been watching this show?”
“I guess I just had more faith in the power of love.” Lando actually sounds upset, and Oscar tries to bite down his laugh. He pats his shoulder underneath the blanket and loops his ankle over Lando’s socked feet in what he hopes is a comforting gesture, and presses play on the episode.
As it turns out, being this close to Lando is doing less of the comforting thing and more of the making-Oscar-tired thing. He feels all at ease, strangely still. As Sophie insults Abbee-Rose’s cocktail dress, Oscar lets his eyes close — for just a second.
A moment later, he jerks awake. There’s a tanned arm reaching around him, and the light through the window has dimmed. On-screen, a blurry Callum is making out with an entirely new girl. “Shit, sorry, Osc,” Lando’s whispering. “Go back to sleep, yeah?”
“Wh,” says Oscar, intelligently. He blinks, hard, and tries to clear the fuzzy stuff from his vision. Lando’s hand is by his side, and it takes him a moment too long to figure out Lando’s fixing the blanket around them. “What?”
But Lando’s shaking his head. “C’mon, dumbass. Back to sleep.”
Lando shifts Oscar: slides one hand around his waist, slotting his fingers into the dips of his ribcage and tugging him close to his own chest, and pulls softly at his head with his other hand until Oscar acquiesces, drops it to rest on Lando’s collarbones. It feels incredible, being this close to Lando. His heart’s singing, pulse excited under his skin. He hums, content, and then remembers where they are. “FP1?”
Somewhere, Lando might be laughing. “I know. You’ve got ages. I’ll wake you up, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Oscar echoes, into his chest. Sleep reaches forward to claim him again — or is that Lando, stroking slow circles on the nape of his neck, down his waist? It’s blissful. Oscar’s pretty sure he says something else, but his lips are moving far away from his brain, and he doesn’t dwell on it — just shuffles a little bit closer, and lets the world drift away.
He gets fastest lap in FP1, and later, P3 for sprint qualis. When Tom asks him what he thinks he did differently in their afternoon debrief, Oscar has to bite his cheeks to stop himself from returning Lando’s smile. He comes up with some underbaked half-truth: something something right headspace.
“We’ll have to keep your spirits up for sprint and race qualis, then,” says Tom.
“For sure,” says Oscar, and grins at teammate.
They go home for the summer break. Lando to Monaco on his private jet, and Oscar back to Australia. Normally, he’d stay in his London flat — get in the sim, visit a museum, sleep in and play FIFA for far too long — but his Mum’s getting antsy, so he flies straight from their race to Melbourne. It’s a fucking horrific flight: they stop over in Singapore, but Oscar redeyes it straight to Australia, and by the time they touchtown, he’s exhausted. Lando’s plane — Lando — had been the perfect jet-lag cure, and without it, Oscar feels entirely fucked.
Mum picks him up from the airport and Oscar’s so tired that he’s properly trembling the whole way back. Grandma’s come up just to see him, though, and all his sisters pester him the second he gets in, so a nap or a good sleep gets pushed out of the question for a few more hours. He almost falls asleep giving them all their souvenirs from race destinations, and again into the potato and leek soup his Mum cooks up for dinner.
“Tired, are you, love?”
“Yeah, sorry, Mum.” He gives her his best smile, and she catches his face in her hands. “I’m good, I promise. Just jet lagged.”
She pinches his cheek and heaves a big sigh. “That excuse won’t work tomorrow night — you’re on dish duty.” She laughs, waves her tea towel at him. “Go on upstairs, love. We’ve got your bed all made up. See if you can get some sleep.” Her brow furrows. “You have been sleeping okay, right? They work you too hard, McLaren.”
Oscar snorts. “I need to be working harder , Mum.” He rubs the back of his neck, and feels the heat creeping up there. “I—I’m sleeping fine. Um. Really good, actually.”
Still seated at the dinner table, his sisters whip their heads around in alarming unison. Oscar takes that as his immediate cue to leave — kisses Gran on the cheek and avoids all possible eye contact with his siblings, and makes for the stairs. He’ll deal with that conversation when he feels fucking human again.
His room is made up. It’s not really his room anymore. It hasn’t been, not since he was fourteen, when he packed his bags and moved hemispheres for a far-off shot. It’d be wrong to make them keep a skeleton room up just for the four weeks a year he can come and stay in it again, but it doesn’t stop the lonely feeling the spare room douses him in. He kicks off his trackies and hoodie and pulls back the beige sheets. Plugs in his charger and climbs in, phone in hand. He types in his phone, and waits for his international roaming to kick in.
Lando’s messages are the first to come through.
Lando Norris, 8:52pm:
you landed ok?
Lando Norris, 10:01pm:
i stalked ur flight apparently u did make it down under safely. good
Lando Norris, 11:45pm:
[1 Attached Image]
Oscar opens it. It’s a blurry shot of the Monte Carlo horizon from the view of some bar. All the edges are shrouded in blue and purple lighting — it bleeds out over the water and catches on the white sails of the yachts in the harbour. There’s some familiar faces in the background, a couple of Lando’s mates and a few of the other Monaco-based drivers — Max, maybe, is leaning over the balcony. Lando’s face is peeking out in the corner, beaming up at the camera through his eyelashes. He looks healthier on break. Rejuvenated. His curls are perfect and his skin’s all deep and tanned, as if one day in the sun has already changed him. Oscar rolls over on his side, grinning, and texts back an antagonistic Nice to see you outside for once. The message goes blue, and then his phone freezes, screen darkening with a call.
“Lando?”
“The fuck do you mean, ‘nice to see you outside?’ I’m offended, Oscar.”
Oscar laughs. He drops the phone next to him on a half-muted speakerphone, and curls his hands up underneath his chin. “I’m just saying. Jon’s a gossip: I know you skip half your morning runs.”
“I’m firing him,” says Lando. “What absolute bullshit. I still get my runs in, just in an… inside environment.”
“Hence: no going outside.”
“Shut the fuck up, I’m literally outside right now!”
Sure enough, Oscar can hear a low thumping in the background — faintly muted house music. Cheap bass, too many lyrics. There’s a shout, and then a cheer, and Lando swears. The noise grows smaller.
Oscar frowns towards his phone, as if Lando can see it. “Where are you?”
“Worried, Osc?” The noise seems to fade out completely. “I’m just leaving the party. Just this stupid middle-of-the-day thing.”
“Oh.” Oscar sits up a little. “I can hang up, Lando.”
“No— no! ” Lando’s reply comes through feverish. Oscar can almost picture him: an open, aghast mouth, eyebrows crumpled together, mouth set in a tiny, indignant line. “Don’t you dare. I just got you on the phone, man.”
“Oh,” Oscar says. “Sorry, but I’m not gonna be much fun. Twenty-two hour flight and all. Probably’ll fall asleep in a couple of minutes.”
There’s the distant sound of a car unlocking, and then an all-too familiar rev. “Nah, that’s good,” comes Lando’s reply. “I like being there when you sleep.”
Oscar hears his words, and expects to feel… weirded out, or something. It’s kind of an odd statement, but he feels nothing but warmth across his abdomen, underneath his ribcage.
“Yeah,” he whispers. And then, heart pounding: “I—I miss you.”
Lando’s silent for a long moment, and for a terrifying minute, Oscar holds his breath, scared he’s fucked it all up. His phone crackles with Lando’s bluetooth connection. It’s hard to hear him in the car — even a six-hundred thousand dollar McLaren doesn’t have a good phone connection — but faintly, Oscar hears the I miss you too.
“I’d kill to be there,” comes Lando’s more audible reply. “What time is it?”
Blearily, Oscar taps his screen. “Just after midnight,” he groans. “Fuck, I’m tired. I gotta get up at a good hour if I wanna cure this jet lag, too.”
The bluetooth crackles, and then cuts. When Lando speaks, everything’s a lot clearer: he must’ve parked. There’s the jangling of keys, and slow echoing footsteps: Lando’s probably in his garage. Oscar’s seen photos from his Instagram, from the Internet. “Can’t sleep?”
“Mmm.”
“We can stay on call, if that helps.”
Oscar closes his eyes. “Lando,” he says, soft. “I—we can’t—”
“What?” Lando interrupts. “I thought we got past this.”
“It’s not that, it’s.” Oscar holds his head in his hands. “Lando.”
There’s a point of no return, Oscar feels like saying. We are at a point of no return. He’s not stupid. He knows what this is — the quickening of his pulse, the… cuddling. He’s fallen right into it. There’s a point where the warmth in his chest is going to take over, want more. The more this happens, the closer that corner gets. He can’t be just teammates. He’s not going to be able to keep that up. He’s not going to go back.
He says none of it.
“Oscar,” says Lando. Like he knows anyway. “Later, okay?” He breathes deeply, and sighs loud enough for his phone to pick it up, and then launches into a quiet and slow retelling of his day.
Oscar’s out in ten minutes.
They call every night he’s in Australia.
Later doesn’t come. Mid-season break starts and stops, and they’re thrown into race after race. Stella’s got upgrades for the car, and they workshop those tirelessly, on the sim and in the wind tunnel and on the track. When the European winter grey returns, McLaren’s more consistent than they’ve ever been. Lando and his maiden wins are so close Oscar can taste it, can almost feel the weight of the trophy in his hands, and there’s an insane buzz in the air with the prospect of it all.
Azerbaijan rolls around, and the win feels like it’s sitting just beyond the horizon. Free practice and qualis are beautiful. Sure, they’re still behind Max, but Lando’s starting P2 and Oscar right behind him, Checo and the Ferraris biting at their heels.
Oscar’s never been more excited, never been more terrified. Lando hugs him before they start gearing up — throws one arm around his shoulder and the other in his too-long hair, buries his face in the crook of Oscar’s neck. Oscar holds him for a moment too long. When they pull apart, there’s a mutual understanding in the air: twin shared smiles. Head down first, their later second.
He risks another smile to Lando in their garages before his engineers swarm his chassis, and then he’s pulling his helmet down over his balaclava and moving the steering into place and checking the radio and, and. He drives out into the sun, ecstatic. Everything feels good on the formation lap. He pulls into P3, and feels his heartbeat tick up something fast under the sleeves of his gloves. This is it.
The lights go up — and count down. Five. Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
Oscar releases the clutch and presses the throttle to the floor.
The world falls away. He slides back into racing like it’s a second skin: the roar of the engine screams in his ears, and the acrid stench of rubber swallows the air, and Oscar welcomes it all. He’s adrenaline focused, charging full fucking speed ahead. He takes the inside line on Turn 1, ducks ahead of a sneaking Aston Martin — Alonso. Rides right up to Turn 2, and jerks the whole thing around to the straight. It’s good. He feels fucking good. Max and Lando go chasing up ahead, and Oscar loses pace on the turns, but he’s still ahead of Ferrari, Aston Martin.
And then on the third lap, his radio crackles.
“Oscar, we’ve got a red flag up ahead. Careful of Turns 7 and 8. There’s debris on the track.”
“What’s happened?” Oscar slows. Eases off. Fuck, he doesn’t say. It’s too early for a tire change, at least, not one that’ll help keep his pace. “Everyone good?” There’s no reply. Something bites from the inside of his chest. “Tom? Everyone good?”
The radio sparks. “It’s Lando. Come into the pit lane, Oscar.”
Oscar tightens his grip on the wheel. “He’s okay?”
“We’re… still waiting on a reply.”
Oscar’s mouth goes dry. He turns the corner.
There’s orange in the barriers. There’s so much he can’t see, this low in the MCL38, but Oscar can see the colours, see the shape of his teammate’s car. It’s on its side, wheels to the track. There’s chunks of carbon fibre over the road. Oscar looks away from the crash at the last minute, and narrowly misses an orange and black piece — Lando’s front wing, he realises.
It’s not his first witnessed crash — they’d have a bang up every other weekend in F2. Even worse in his younger years. It’s one of the first things you learn as a driver, putting all feelings aside. You can’t stop the car just to check on someone, can’t give up a race because your teammate’s crashed out, because — a friend’s in the walls.
And yet. And yet. He drives back to the pitlane spun out, distracted. Like a goddamn teenager.
“Is he okay,” is the first thing he says when he pits, when his crew slide the car into his garage. “Is he out?”
Tom’s there, headphones around his neck, pencil by his ear. “He’s out,” he confirms. And then: “Medical’s with him.”
“I—he needs medical?”
Kim pushes through. “Jon’s with him,” he says. “He passed out. We’re pretty sure it’s just a concussion. Nothing looks bad.”
Oscar’s heart is pounding. “Can I see him,” he says. It’s not a question, but Tom shakes his head like it is.
“We’ve gotta get you back out there, mate. Lando’s car’s off the track. You’ll be back in ten.” He breathes out, sharp. “You good, Oscar? We need you focused. You’re starting P2.”
“Okay,” Oscar thinks he says. They usher him back to the car, and then he’s back out on the track, visor pulled down, car humming again. They start back up, and he drags himself through the turns. Switches his mind off. Blinks, and the 51 laps are done, and Tom’s on his radio telling him that’s P6, Oscar. He doesn’t even feel the radiating disappointment. Just drives it back to parc fermé.
They’re not impressed with him. He tells the media that, and his team reinforce it in debrief. Oscar digs his nails into his skin underneath his fireproofs and says sorry, it won’t happen again. He takes shaky notes of whatever Stella’s saying. Gives clipped feedback on the car in shorter and shorter answers, until Stella cuts a frustrated hand through the air and tells him to go.
He goes straight for the Medical Centre. The nurse takes one look at his orange race suit, bunched up around his waist, and points down the hall. Oscar doesn’t run, but it’s close. He pulls back the blue plastic curtain.
Lando’s propped up in bed. He’s got those thin, white waffle-knit blankets bunched around his shoulders, and too many pillows behind his back. The lights are all off.
Lando blinks up at him, and grins. “Hi, Osc.”
Oscar lets out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding. “Hey,” he chokes out. “You okay?”
Lando wrinkles his nose. “Been better,” he mumbles. “Bit out of it, sorry. Concussion, an’ all.” He blinks, and then grimaces, like that movement pains him. “Where’d you place?”
Oscar bites the inside of his cheek. “P6,” he says. Lando’s face drops. “Yeah, I know. Got chewed out already.”
“That can’t happen again,” Lando tells him, alarmingly direct for someone lying in a hospital bed. “Oscar. You had a solid shot at podium.”
“Yeah,” he whispers. “I was—distracted.”
“Oscar. ”
Something burns behind his eyes. “I know,” he says. “It won’t happen again. Rookie mistake.”
Lando stares at him. His eyes are wide and wobbly, pupils shot to shit — probably a mix of the concussion and whatever low-dose painkillers they’ve got him on. Oscar’s fingers itch by his side to crawl in beside him. Lando follows his movement, and grins. Dips his head toward the seat next to his bed. “C’mere, dumbass,” he calls, and Oscar answers. Crosses the room in two strides, and shuffles the chair as close as it’ll go.
Lando’s thin fingers reach out of his blankets and wrap around his wrist. “Forget the race for now. Stay?”
“Yeah,” Oscar murmurs. “I’ll stay.” Carefully, he brushes Lando’s curls off his face, tucks them back where they won’t be matted by sweat. Everything else falls away — a consequence for after. “Go to sleep, yeah?”
“Mm,” says Lando, but wriggles down in his bed. Closes his eyes. Smiles, all soft. “That’s my line, Piastri.”
Oscar laughs. “Use it again, later,” he says. He takes Lando’s hand back. Tangles their fingers together. “Sleep well. I’ll be here when you wake up.”