Chapter Text
There is a story about two people feeling their way through a pitch-black tunnel.
They grew familiar with everything about one another along the way—the sound of their voice, the touch of their hand, the rhythm of their breath. They held on tight, adjusted their pace, until their fingers were fully intertwined.
Heartbeats echoed where their shoulders met, feeding the fantasy that hope would eventually arrive.
Heaven, in its mercy, answered their prayers.
An unfamiliar light finally broke through the darkness.
They rushed toward it in joy, but the tunnel narrowed, allowing only one to pass. They pushed each other forward, neither willing to fall behind. The child left in the dark will be devoured, a divine voice whispered. Only the fastest would be saved. Only one.
The path tightened without warning, and at some point, their hands began to slip apart. They held their breath, palms still clinging to the fading warmth and familiar scent of the other.
Just as the walls pressed them toward the end, the one behind was shoved back violently. Before disbelief could even form on his face, the blinding light revealed—for the first time—the side profile of the one who’d pushed him.
And the true nature of that light—
A train, speeding at full velocity.
Shit.
Lando Norris scrolled through his phone, face unreadable. Social media was flooded with raw emotion. Official accounts had already anticipated the moment, spamming orange celebration graphics—while below, fans from both sides cursed and attacked each other with breathtaking venom. He didn’t dare open his main account, terrified that one misplaced like would bury him in a flood of death threats.
At the very bottom of his feed was the fanpage run by a shipping account he followed on his burner. Its owner, unusually quiet after the P3-P4 double finish, had posted nothing but a broken orange heart emoji.
He turned slightly, careful to seem casual, and glanced back at Oscar Piastri, who was resting with his eyes closed in the seat behind him.
Of course the universe knew exactly how to ruin whatever he had with his only teammate.
All it took was giving them one MCL39.
Thirteen hours in the air. The drone of the engines carried them from the tropical night back to a British dusk—long enough for any heightened emotions to cool, and long enough for a sensitive heart to sink completely into the abyss of overthinking. Lando Norris felt trapped in the silence of his first-class seat, while the area behind him remained unsettlingly quiet—
Oscar was right there.
He'd glanced back more than once. The first time, his heart lurched, thinking he'd met the other's gaze, only to realize it was just a trick of the light from the window. The times after, he was more careful—adjusting his pillow, pretending to pick up a fallen blanket, stealing quick glances from the corner of his eye.
Oscar hadn't moved. Head leaned against the window, he seemed asleep, his familiar cap pulled down over his face, hiding any trace of expression.
"Catching up on sleep," a rational voice insisted in Lando's mind. "He's just exhausted. Singapore is a brutal track."
He's giving me the cold shoulder, Lando argued back.
The memory of that night rushed over him—the mix of sweat and champagne breaking through the cabin's filtered air. He'd been a mess back then, eyes red and uncertain where to look, the standee's frame digging into his arm, his entire being focused on the person beside him.
Oscar hadn't looked at him once.
Even under countless lenses,Oscar remained unreadable. No one could tell what was really going on inside—not even Lando, who stood closest to him.
And now, finally, they were this close again. This time, with no one else around.
There was movement from behind during meal service. Oscar thanked the flight attendant softly. The clinking of cutlery paused for a few seconds against the plate. Lando's breath hitched, thinking he might finally say something. But nothing came. Only the relentless spiral of his own thoughts: Does he think I was too aggressive? Did I finally push him past his limit, make him retreat behind the safe line of just being 'teammates'?
He needs the rest, Lando finally told himself, closing his own eyes. His thumb unconsciously traced over his phone's screen—over a photo of him and Oscar on the podium after their double finish in Suzuka earlier in the season. Back then, they weren't as close, and their smiles held fewer calculations and shadows.
The plane began circling over Heathrow, preparing for descent. A bout of turbulence shook the cabin, and Lando instinctively glanced back again. Oscar shifted, adjusting his position. The last of the daylight, mixed with the runway lights, softened his already subtle features. In another time, Lando would've already scrambled to sneak a photo, captioning it something like, "Freshly baked white bread, how much per loaf? Wanna eat it while it's hot."
The cabin door opened, letting in air thick with noise and a sense of release. Lando stood up almost immediately, then froze, waiting for the one behind him. Oscar moved a little slower. Retrieving his luggage, they briefly stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the narrow aisle.
"We're here." Oscar tilted his head toward Lando, offering his first words of the flight, as if puzzled by his teammate's odd hesitation. His voice was still rough with sleep.
Lando opened his mouth, but his throat felt tight. All the rehearsed, clumsy opening lines stuck there. In the end, only a single sound made it out: "...Mhm."
"What's wrong?" Oscar turned, seeming to hesitate himself. His eyes finally met Lando's directly, but they held no clear emotion—just a layer of lingering drowsiness, like the misty coasts of Australia.
"...Nothing." Lando managed a faint smile and shook his head. "See you later." Oscar nodded, said nothing more, just zipped his jacket higher, swung his backpack over his shoulder, and quickly merged into the stream of passengers disembarking ahead.
Lando followed a few steps behind, watching his silent back. Panic screamed in his ears, ringing with a sudden tinnitus: Oscar isn't angry. He's retreating. Falling back behind that absolute, safe, purely professional line.
The arrival hall was flooded with team staff celebrating the WCC title defense. For a disorienting moment, the orange sea of Singapore swallowed him again. Cheers, hugs, the explosive pop of champagne corks washed over him. Someone clapped him hard on the back and shoved a drink into his hand. Amid the roaring orange, he searched again for that one specific figure, wanting to see if he, too, was sharing in this collective joy.
But he couldn't find him.
Blinking back to reality from a wave of dizziness, he heard someone laugh and throw an arm over his shoulder: "Ready? The main celebration crew's already heading to the bar!"
Lando's heart sank like a stone.
It was already too late. On the plane, while he'd hesitated over what to say. In the aisle, as he'd awkwardly swallowed his words. And now, as he was swept along by the crowd, his search fruitless. He kept regretting it—why hadn't he reached out to stop Stella, or anyone, and said:
"Wait for Oscar."
Or, more honestly:
"Don't separate us."
The glow of the phone screen flickered across his face in the dim cabin light, syncing with the drone of the takeoff. Oscar Piastri scrolled through social media. He didn't need to wait for Tuesday's strategy debrief; the various video clips and data analyses he'd seen while waiting at the gate were enough to piece together the full picture of the Singapore start incident—a standard racing incident. Lando hadn't meant it.
Of course he hadn't meant it.
What made Oscar frown slightly was something else. After parking his car and walking through the weigh-in area, heading as usual to face the media, he'd looked up and caught the celebration broadcast from the entire team playing on the large screen in the corridor. Champagne foam and orange smoke filled the display, the noise reaching him from a distance, distorted. His eyes quickly scanned the excited faces, finally settling on a corner—Lando was standing there, fingers pressed hard against his brow bone and eyes. The camera only captured a blurred, turned-away profile. The residual heat from the adrenaline faded rapidly. He stood there for a few extra seconds, staring at that overlooked frame.
Thankfully, no cameras had been pointed at him just then, capturing no potentially overanalyzed micro-expressions. He thought about this belatedly, his gaze pulling back from the dark runway outside the window and landing on the lowered, fluffy back of a head in front of him. Lando was still scrolling on his phone, his knuckles looking tense.
Stop looking. Oscar could almost imagine what those comments were like. Old grievances piling onto new, with most of the vitriol likely aimed at him this time. He didn't even want to read them himself, let alone have Lando see them. The words rolled in his throat, but were ultimately swallowed back unspoken. Saying anything now would feel like cheap consolation, or worse, might be misinterpreted by his emotionally charged teammate as provocation. Probably the last person in the world who wanted a Landoscar drama was Oscar himself. He leaned back into his seat. He was tired, and wanting to shut out all this chaos was genuine.
The slight disturbance of the flight attendant offering the meal made him open his eyes again. He thanked her quietly. The clink of his cutlery against the plate edge sounded sharp, somewhat conspicuous in the relative quiet of first class. He paused. There was no reaction from the seat in front; Lando didn't seem to be eating either. Was he hoping the other would say something? Maybe. But in the end, there was only the faint sound of his own utensils continuing.
He thought, somewhat inopportunely, of the chaotic moments in the garage, right before Stella gathered everyone for the group photo. The scent of champagne hung thick in the air. Lando had been standing very close, close enough that Oscar could almost feel the residual heat coming off him, and the sticky, damp champagne spray that might have smudged his own race suit. Lando had said something quickly, muffled, the words swallowed by the surrounding noise. But, in a flash of understanding, Oscar had deciphered the lip movement—"My bad."
Maybe it was the surreal feeling of having the WCC locked up early that left him feeling disconnected, his mind mechanically rehearsing the pre-prepared PR lines, even though the actual race result was far from perfect. It was only after all the necessary words had been spoken that he dared a quick glance toward his teammate.
Lando was looking right at him, his eyes holding a concern that was far too clear, like something scalding, making Oscar almost instinctively want to look away. He was afraid of being pinned in place by that gaze, afraid that if neutral and live wires touched, it would detonate the entire carefully maintained world of safe distance he'd built around himself, right there beside him.
What fundamental issue could there possibly be between the two of them? He kept telling himself that. What happens on track with the cars stays on track. It's always been that way.
The vibration of the landing gear touching down shook through the cabin. The distinctly different humidity of England seeped in as the door opened. Lando stood up, but then froze in the aisle, as if lost in thought, or… waiting for him? Oscar quickly retrieved his backpack from the overhead bin—a habitual thought that his teammate had forgotten something again, like so many times in the motorhome. He stepped forward, his right hand almost instinctively moving to clap Lando on the shoulder, but the motion aborted mid-air, turning into adjusting his other backpack strap instead.
Lando's state was off; the tension was almost palpable. Respecting a teammate's boundaries was one of Oscar Piastri's well-honed habits.
He put on his noise-canceling headphones, deftly navigating around the WCC celebration crowd surging through the arrivals hall, the noise effectively blocked out. His mind drifted to whether he could beg his mom to make some desserts tonight, something he could maybe bring to the factory in a couple of days and share with Lando. Sweet things always helped lift the mood.
Halfway home, his car idling outside a McDonald's as he debated going in for a quick meal, his phone buzzed. It was Tom, his race engineer, sending the address for the victory party, followed by a string of expression emojis.
He stared at the screen for a few seconds, then replied, "Nearly there. Just need to change. I'll head over soon." It wouldn't do to miss a second team event.
By the time he finally pulled into his driveway, the sunset had completely faded. His headlights swept across the front drive, the beams abruptly catching on a figure hunched on his front doorstep, curled up, face completely hidden by the large hood of a hoodie, like some homeless London teenager casually dumped there.
It was Lando Norris.