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“According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”
-Plato
Cherries and oranges in the supermarket. Sundown and rosé on the promenade. Red hearts and papaya-coloured roses for Valentine’s day.
Everywhere he goes, Oscar is reminded of them…
He spends all of the winter break hiding at home, locked in his room and staring at the ceiling or crying his heart out to his mom. Most days he feels actually physically sick with it. He barely manages Kim’s assigned workouts and doesn’t gain as much weight as they had planned…
His phone lights up most days with increasingly concerned messages from his friends and family. He guesses that his mother tells them to leave him alone because shortly before Christmas he receives no more texts.
Well, that’s not entirely true, since every night he receives a text from Logan, asking how he is or telling him about his day… Oscar doesn’t answer any of them, he can’t get his fingers to move properly.
But eventually every well runs dry and by mid-January Oscar just can’t cry any more.
He doesn’t feel the same as he did before and probably never will. He’s numb but at the same time angry and disappointed… He wants to curse out the universe and have a really serious conversation with fate for being so cruel to him.
The funny thing is, he had known immediately, when his life had been ruined. Like waiting for the sound of a detonated atomic bomb, seeing the white mushroom cloud at the horizon without feeling the infinite heat scorch away his body.
Oscar had felt the seismic shift in Lando but he hadn’t known what it was from exactly.
Now he knows but he desperately wishes he could forget.
Their soul bond had formed in Singapore but they announced it already a month later in Austin. It had birthed a true media circus. All over Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, the motorsport magazines – hell, even the New York fucking Times wrote an article about it…
Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris: Soulmates!
There had been no escaping it. Not for Oscar, at least.
And sure, Lando is his teammate but is it really any of his business? No. Does he still feel like shit anytime someone asks him about it? Yes, absolutely. What do the journalists do for the rest of the 2023 season? Ask him to give a statement every race weekend…
It is none of his business, is what he says most of the time. He tries to smile and not sound too clipped.
Because it really is none of his business but by the last race of the year he is just irritated and annoyed by it… Lando and Carlos shouldn’t have announced it so soon. They should have done it in Abu Dhabi so all of them would have been spare the constant media frenzy.
Also, so Oscar could have gone home to cry and not have to do it in an anonymous hotel room...
There’s really not much to it on paper: Carlos and Lando are soulmates.
It – a soul bond – happens all the time, to many people around the world. 10% of the population have one. It’s lifechanging to the people involved but the world keeps spinning.
Grass grows taller, trees fall over, the moon renews and renews.
And Oscar? Oscar is just incurably in love with Lando while he misses the other half of himself…
Oscar has taken up reading over the winter break.
The only thing in the house had been his sisters’ romance books and first Oscar had scoffed at them. But then he had taken them up on it after one particularly difficult breakdown over a photo of Lando and Carlos on a boat somewhere, hugging and kissing, after which he had felt more like a shell of a human than a person made of flesh and blood.
He's reading one of them now – or better re-reading… When Lando knocks at his drivers’ room door.
“Hey mate,” He greets with a big smile, not waiting for an invite. He’s practically glowing, skin sun kissed and curls floppy and loose on his head.
Oscar’s treacherous heart does a big leap when Lando’s warm body sinks down onto the couch next to his. He quickly closes his book and puts it away.
“Watcha reading?” Lando asks casually and throws one of the two peanuts in his right hand into his mouth. He offers one to Oscar and when he takes it it’s slightly warm and wet from Lando’s sweaty hands.
“’Song of Archilles’,” He replies and mirrors Lando, throwing the nut into his mouth. He imagines the little particles of Lando’s DNA on it, transferred through his sweat, and how they’ll enter his body. At least a little, miniscule part of Lando inside of him…
“Never heard of it,” Lando shrugs, tipping his head back onto the backrest. There’s a large, blooming hickey on his neck and Oscar tries not to stare at it.
“Wouldn’t have expected that…” Oscar says and finally glues his eyes onto the door instead of Lando. There’s a slight ringing in his left ear.
“How was your winter break?” He asks in a croaky voice, when he realizes that it’s probably normal to inquire after that.
“So hectic…” Lando sighs. “Carlos moved into my flat in Monaco but during the first few weeks there were so many paparazzi we could barely go out.”
Objectively, Oscar knows that that’s a shit situation, dehumanizing even, but subjectively he thinks ‘serves you right’…
“Sounds annoying,” He supplies dryly
“Yeah, it was, but we used the time well,” And Lando gives him a cheeky eyebrow wiggle. “Carlos fucked me so good the first time, I could barely walk for two days… Now I know what you were always fussing about.”
Oscar tries not to flinch.
Back when they had been ‘fooling around’ at the start and in the middle of last season Lando had always refused to bottom. He didn’t even want to try.
And Oscar was fine with it, he loved nothing more than Lando fucking him – being so close he could taste him for hours after and feel him for the following days – but now that stings.
Because it hadn’t been fine with Oscar, but now it is with Carlos. Carlos cannot fucking drive straight Sainz Vázquez de Castro bla bla bla…
“Is everything ok?” Lando asks into the opressive silence and he does sound sincere.
“You shouldn’t have announced it so early,” Oscar blurts out in lew of something better to say.
“What?” Lando asks, obviously confused.
“The bond-” Oscar says quickly. “-You should’ve kept it to yourself longer. It’s tradition for a reason, to wait a year… It can still snap, just be a fluke, you know?” He stutters his way through the explanation. He still doesn’t dare look at Lando.
“’A fluke’?” Lando repeats, voice between disbelieve and aggregation. “We know it won’t. It is destined, we both feel it-”
“-Many people say that and it still snaps-” Oscar interrupts, just to get interrupted himself.
“-Ours won’t!” Lando hisses. Speckles of spit his Oscar’s cheek.
He finally turns around to look at Lando. His eyes are narrowed but glossy at the same time. His chest is heaving like he’d been running. Oscar wants to push his ear up to it and listen to the racing of his heart…
“There was so much media…” Oscar croaks out. Him and Lando hadn’t talked during the break. Lando wasn’t one of Oscar’s concerned friends and even when they’d started working in the factory they had barely talked.
“Oh, so that bothered you? Too much media attention for little Oscar Piastri?” Lando scoffs. “Didn’t think you’d be that selfish about it…”
“I don’t have an issue with it,” Oscar says quickly when Lando shifts to get up. He freezes and looks back at Oscar, still angry and agitated. “It’s just that I think- It should be more private, you know? More something for you two to enjoy?”
Lando makes a dismissive huffing sound, then says, “You wouldn’t get it… And if we would have kept it more private than I wouldn’t have told you. ”
And he’s right, Oscar doesn’t get it.
And yes, that does sting.
Tears well up in Oscar’s eyes that Lando will never see because now he is staring at the door. Like he wants to flee…
Oscar’s stomach churns ominously. And he decides for the truth, give it- give him – give them – another chance. One last chance.
“They asked me so much about it,” Oscar says in a small voice. “All the time, everybody asked me… And I- I fucking hate it- Because all I could think about was what we did together all of last season. And now it’s just Carlando, Carlando, Car-”
Lando is out the door before Oscar can finish what he wanted to say. It probably wouldn’t have mattered any way. A bond is a bond and it cannot be broken. And even if it could, Lando doesn’t seem to want him anyway. Not like he begged to fuck him all of last summer at least…
Oscar doesn’t manage to keep food down the rest of the day.
He feels horrible, sick, exhausted, hot and anxious, but with full bodily shaking chills. Kim wants to bring him to a doctor before they leave Bahrain but Oscar won’t have it.
Logan invites him for a movie and room service but they don’t even manage to start a movie because Oscar just can’t stop talking about Lando and Carlos and Carlando... There’s a look in Logan’s eyes, like he thinks Oscar has gone crazy, so Oscar excuses himself quickly after they finished their dinner. Logan calls something after him about ‘if he needs help’ but Oscar doesn’t want to hear…
He doesn’t need a doctor. He needs Lando but Lando is already gone, left on a private jet to Monaco, with Carlos… Posted on both of their Instagram’s at 8:12pm with a warm coloured filter over it.
Just a week later in Saudi Arabia Oscar doesn’t feel much better.
All of his text to Lando haven’t been delivered and he knows he’s blocked him, when he can no longer view Lando’s Instagram from his account.
Oscar is lying on his hotel room bed after his post-race-shower, finishing ‘Song of Archilles’ for the third time. The end takes him apart, as always, but now he can also find a bit of peace in it.
He’s finished the last page but he’s clutching the book still.
He'd die for Lando. He wants to die for Lando.
God, just anything, anything to mean as much to Lando as Patroclus did to Archilles… He’d even just be a side piece, a onetime thing or something for Lando to fuck when he feels angry and mean. Hell, he’d let Carlos fuck him if Lando was just standing near, just looking at him…
There’s a harsh knock on the door.
Like Oscar knew that Lando had change, he knows who’s standing behind the door. Noone good. He still opens the door.
Carlos comes in raging like a storm. In mere moments he has pressed Oscar up against the nearest wall and kicked the door to the hallway shut. Noone to hear their argument or Oscar scream, if Carlos actually tries to kill him this time...
He's snarling in his face like a dog, “How fucking dare you!” And he shakes Oscar so harshly his head bangs against the wall. It hurts but Oscar lets him rage. There’s something cathartic in the violence and the pain, like Oscar is finally getting his money’s worth by acquiring a few bruises. If his insides feel raw and red, so should his outsides.
“He is my soulmate, Oscar! Mine, mine, not yours,” Carlos growls and spit lands on Oscar’s face. At least it’s Lando’s soulmates spit, Oscar thinks and then immediately cringes at the thought.
His hands reach up to grip Carlos’s wrists as he tries to take a bit of control back.
“I know,” He says impassively, trying to school his expression into the neutral mask that he knows infuriates Carlos.
“No, no I don’t think you do,” Carlos spits with a mean glare and gives Oscar another shove. “You look at him like you want to eat him, it makes me sick…”
Oscar can and will not deny that. He’s seen and saved many fan edits of himself looking at Lando… And Lando looking back.
He shrugs then answers simply, “If I make you sick, imagine what your breath does to me. Quit mouth-breathing into my face, could ya?”
Carlos shoves him, again, but then retreats, leaving Oscar to smooth out the wrinkles in his hoodie.
“Fucking stay away from him… I mean it. And if you ever make him cry again, I’ll kill you,” Carlos promises, doe eyes dark and flickering like a burning pyre. Oscar has never been scared of Carlos, no matter his shit driving or bitching over the radio, but in this moment, Oscar can see Carlos killing someone.
He doesn’t, instead he rips the door open and leaves.
Oscar doesn’t realize he’s started shaking until he sits down on the bed. His calves are too jittery to hold him up. He’s wearing a hoodie and sweats but he feels too cold. His hands are sweaty and when he feels the spot where the back of his head had hit the wall, there’s a small lump forming. He’ll probably have a killer headache tomorrow.
Emotionally it’s not much better. He feels like laughing and crying, screaming and choking, throwing up and devouring the world whole.
Lando had cried because of him.
It does something to him. The image of Lando running off after their fight last week because it hurt him, because he’s sad that Oscar and him aren’t friendly with each other like before… Maybe he’d cried to Jon because Carlos was busy with his prep over at Ferrari. He must have been red face and snotty and whiny and-
It does something to him. It does something for him… Something scary and ugly and hot curls under Oscar’s skin and before he knows it, he’s run out the door too – feet in socks, no phone, no key card.
Oscar breaks out into grateful sobs when Logan opens the door.
“Oscar?” He gasps and quickly lets him in. “Are you okay?! Where are your shoes?”
But Oscar doesn’t answer. He throws himself onto Logan’s unmade bed and sobs into the sheets that smell like Logan.
Logan seems to hesitate but then settles onto the bed next to Oscar, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Lando again?” He asks in a thick voice and Oscar nods furiously. Logan sighs, shuffles around, then wraps Oscar tightly in his sheets. “This can’t keep going on like this, Oscar… I know it’s so hard and so unlucky that it happened the way that it did but I can see that this isn’t good for you,” He urges but it only serves to enrage Oscar.
“How do you know what’s good for me?!” He wracks out between dry sobs and hugs Logan’s pillow tighter. “He used to come to me- all- all the time to fuck and he didn’t- not one single text during the winter break…”
Logan doesn’t understand it. How could he?
Oscar’s been falling apart for half a year and Logan and him have barely spoken.
Yes, Logan has been lingering at the edges of Oscar’s conscience all the time. Through his read but unanswered texts, from the photo album in his childhood bedroom to the sad indie music he introduced Oscar to when they were 16. Oscar had listened to that a lot lately…
But Logan wasn’t really there so how could he fucking get it?
“Do you feel good?” Logan asks gently. “Have you felt good since- since Austin? Does this obsession with Lando help you grow as a person? It doesn’t seem that way… You only seem more hurt. Your mother-” But before he can continue, Oscar rears up and shoves him – hard.
Logan falls off the bed with a sickening thud that makes Oscar flinch.
“Fuck,” He curses and immediately gets up on his knees to look over the edge of the bed to see if Logan is okay.
Logan lies on the floor, holding his hip and staring up at Oscar with wide disbelieving eyes. There are a few horrible moments of silence and Oscar feels flooded with agony.
It tears at him like a rough wind, cutting from the skin down to his bones. It drags at him from all sides, leaving him reeling for air. He’s never felt pain like this.
Why had he done that? Logan was just helping him, like always, and here he is hurting him...
“Logan, I’m so-”
“-No, Oscar! What the fuck,” Logan curses and his face switches from sad to angry in the blink of an eye. He jumps up and it’s Oscar’s turn to fall back. Logan is looming over him, face red and eyes wide.
Maybe he’ll punch Oscar. He’d deserve it.
“You don’t get to fricking push me around, when I was trying to help you! I know you’re- like- mentally unwell because of Lando but this is too fare, mate. Get a grip or get the fuck away from me,” He hisses and there is a disgust in his tone that makes Oscar cringe further into the sheets that are still surrounding him.
“I’m sorry…” He stutters out but can’t meet Logan’s eyes while he says it. He’s never ever pushed someone like that in his life… And he’d never do it to Logan. Not Logan. “It’s just- Lando was everything to me? We were sleeping together basically all of last year and I thought- I did so many things to please him, to make it right, to make him like me… And now where at the same team but he hates me and so does Carlos, but he always has. And I feel like shit all the time but I don’t know what to do-”
A gentle hand on his knee stops his rambling.
“I’ve been listening to you talking and gushing about Lando for five fucking long years… I’ve had enough. I’m done with you and your Lando obsession.”
Oscar looks up in shock.
“I’ve had a shit half year too, you know,” Logan affirms and there is that muted kind of sadness in his voice that hits Oscar to his core. It sounds like Logan has just gotten used to the pain that Oscar keeps fighting against.
“They barely gave me a contract… I had to bed- beg James to give me one more chance and I’m ruining that too. And you barely even texted me back or asked how I’m doing… It was so tough. And I had to do it alone, without you, without being close to family. They had me stay in Grove all winter – over Christmas too…” Logan seems to deflate and sits down onto the bed with Oscar.
“I don’t want to listen to you talk about him anymore when it destroys you and me both,” Logan says resolutely but not like he wants to hurt Oscar.
Oscar slowly nods. There are tears in both of their eyes, he realizes.
It's been a long half year, for both of them.
Suddenly, that agony from a few moments ago is back and Oscar balls into himself. And then he passes out.
Oscar comes back to himself with a sigh. There’s something wet, heavy feeling laying on his chest. It takes a moment until he realizes that the shaking thing is Logan’s head. He’s crying silently into Oscar’s chest as he clutches his right shoulder.
Oscar can feel it too – the burn of their soul mark.
He’s only ever seen them in pictures and documentaries. Noone close to him has ever had a soulmate so he never got to ask to see one with his own eyes. They look like palm sized circles in most cases, for some they are a little more oval or elongated. His at least feels like a perfect circle.
That agonizing feeling from before he passed out is there and he realizes that feeling is not his own but Logan’s. Logan feels this suffocating agony – has been all while they had been talking.
Oscar wants to touch Logan but at the same time he’s not sure if he really does want that or if he’s allowed after what he did a few minutes ago…
Oscar has to take a deep breath to collect himself and comb through what he’s feeling.
He isn’t surprised – and that surprises him. Feeling Logan like this, through their separate and collective emotions, feels as natural as breathing. Like he’s grown back a hand he’s been missing for the past 22 years of his life. It feels sore and over-exerted, like he still needs to practice moving it, but he can reach out and feel what Logan does.
There are sparks of confusion and joy and hate and love but it’s all overlayed with this throbbing anguish and shame...
In the middle of that sea of emotion Oscar finds himself surprisingly calm.
He’s not one shred disappointed or angry, not in pain himself, save for the soul mark settling into his skin. Instead, it feels like his pain is slowly leeching out of him. It’s replaced with calm and assurance.
He’s with Logan, Logan is with him.
Logan starts moving on his chest then, fighting to sit himself up and he has to lean himself onto Oscar in the process. His arms seem too weak to get him really up and off of Oscar though, so he shifts himself over to the right side and lays down on his stomach.
There’s soggy spot where he’d cried into Oscar’s shirt.
Oscar wants to ask if Logan had passed out too, if it’s this fundamental of a shift for him too, if he feels himself better now too… But he knows the answer.
“I’m sorry I’m not him,” Logan brings out raggedly and his eyes mirror his emotion. He’s still in pain, still ashamed, still sad.
“No, no, Logan…” Oscar tries to sooth him quickly but Logan flinches away from the hand Oscar tries to put on his back. Oscar himself hisses too; the movement having jostled his fresh bond mark.
“You don’t need to lie, Oscar,” Logan mumbles, hiding his face away. “I can feel now when you do it…”
“I do love you, Logan,” Oscar says firmly.
He thinks of all the years they’ve spend together. It’s easy to love Logan, always has been. So easy in fact, that he had just forgotten he was doing it at all.
“But you love him too…” Logan sniffles and when he turns back to Oscar there are fat, pearly tears descending his cheeks.
Oscar doesn’t physically reach out again but he scoots over and presses the length of their bodies together. Their faces are so close together that they breath the same air – like it should be.
While Oscar can controllably weave through their shared emotions, Logan seems to be having trouble with it. When Oscar tries to push some of his calmer emotions over to Logan, he starts crying even harder. Panick floods Oscar and Logan half-laughs, half-yells at that.
When Oscar tries to move back, give Logan space both mentally and physically, he starts clinging to him.
It’s confusing and exhausting.
They play emotional soul bond tug of war like that for Oscar doesn’t know how long… At last, it seems to exhaust Logan from crying to the point of speech.
“Here he is, Logan Sargeant, second choice once again, even for the universe…” Logan hiccups. Then he speaks the dreaded, “You should leave.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone like this,” Oscar says carefully and tries to meet Logan’s eyes. Logan looks back but reluctantly… They’re still holding each other.
“Can we for once do what I want, though?” Logan says in utter fatigue.
Oscar wants to do nothing more than give Logan everything he wants. Not only because they’re connected now but because he sees clear as day how that he’s neglected one of his longest and closest friends.
But leaving Logan alone like this… It doesn’t feel like a good idea. So he proposes, “Maybe- Can I stay on the couch? Please, Logan-”
“-Fine! I’m exhausted anyway,” Logan sighs and turn in Oscar’s arms. “You can stay in the bed…”
Oscar hesitantly curls around Logan. He should probably put out the lights but he can’t let go of Logan.
Their emotions calm down a bit but there’s still this tidal movement to Logan’s.
After a few moments he speaks up, “Not all soulmates love each other… Maybe we can, like, try and stop? Live our lives separately.”
“I can’t stop loving you, Logan, I’ve done it since we were kids,” Oscar sighs and rubs his lips again Logan’s t-shirt clad nape. He’d like to kiss him but he doesn’t want to overstep. “But we’ll figure something out that we can both live with.”
Oscar truly feels that way, he realizes. Of course, he’d like to be close to Logan all his life but if that’s not what he wants he’ll let him go. All he wants is for him to be happy. And then Oscar will be happy too.
“If you loved me as much as you say, you wouldn’t have fallen for Lando like you did,” Logan bites out and it stings.
Oscar is beyond confused by everything, especially his own feelings, but he’s found at least some clarity in their shared bond.
“It’s a different kind of love, I think…” He tries to pull Logan even closer. “I love you because you’re a part of me and I- love Lando because he’s not,” He tries to explain without getting choked up.
Now that he knows Logan is his soul mate it doesn’t feel right to say he loves anyone other than him. He feels like a hypocrite for it. But it is the truth. He still loves Lando in that burning and all-consuming way.
Logan makes a humming sound. He must understand, since he can feel what Oscar does, but it doesn’t change his pain.
“I know I’ve given you no reason to trust me in the last half year... But I’ll make it right. I’ll be a better soulmate to you then I was a friend,” Oscar whispers into Logan’s neck and there’s this beautiful blooming feeling of warmth and hope and love that Oscar feels like he’s getting drunk on it.
“Even if I have to spend the rest of my life showing you, I’ll make it right…” He slurs. “I’m so sorry, Logan… I’ll get it right and I’ll go see a doctor and a therapist and I’ll make it right.” And he squeezes Logan as tight as he can until he lets out a squeaky sound.
They’ll find a way and Oscar will make it right – with everyone, but especially Logan.
Oscar watches the sun rise orange and round into a baby blue sky.
Logan is still asleep in his arms and the bedside lamp is still burning. Their sleep had been a bit fitful but he supposes that’s normal when you suddenly share your soul with another person. It still doesn’t feel odd or surprising, no matter how long Oscar thinks about it.
Logan starts shifting in his arms and Oscar gives him enough space so he can turn onto his back. Slowly his eyes blink open. They’re puffy and red still but Logan smiles at him, when he realizes Oscar is looking back at him.
Oscar pushes up onto his elbows and reaches out to carefully caress his cheek. His skin feels dry but smooth. There are little, minuscule freckles all over his cheek that Oscar has never noticed before.
“Did you mean what you said last night? That you’ll go to therapy now?” Logan asks shyly as he reaches out and caresses Oscar’s neck.
“I will,” Oscar promises and curls his hand around Logan’s waist. He uses the leverage to push himself up, hovering over Logan. It feels intimate and he’s sure there’s the same blush on his cheeks as he sees on Logan’s. “I know that- that what I’m- was- am feeling for Lando is not- normal…”
Logan nods and then hushes him when he tries to speak on, “Shh, you don’t need to talk about it anymore…” And he gently traces the slope of Oscar’s nose with one of his elegant fingers, “I want to talk about us... Our moms will be so happy.”
Oscar breaks into a smile at that too.
“God, it will be mayhem… Let’s not tell them at all,” He jokes but pulls Logan closer to himself. Logan smiles so fully, so happily, and the pain feels a little less every moment they keep laying together like this.
“Let’s wait the full year,” Logan whispers. There is so much aw in his eyes as he stares up at Oscar, like he just wants to consume him. “We can figure everything out and then start on the right foot.”
“Okay,” Oscar nods. He knows it’ll be mostly him figuring things out and that is okay.
He’s spent enough months sad and blind and angry... It’s morning now and he wants to breath in the fresh air.
“In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”
-Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles