Work Text:
“Oh—I love you!”
Logan exclaims loudly, shooting to his feet and stumbling over discarded wrapping paper. The small crowd gathered in the Piastri’s family living room coos and awes at him as they talk amongst themselves. Logan can’t bring himself to care, though, because Oscar was sitting on the carpet floor next to him, looking up with wide eyes and a thin smile. Gis cheeks color ever so slighty.
“Do you like it?”
It’s an RC car—one of the fancy ones. One of the ones from the top shelf of the toy store they had walked through just a few days ago. A classic model too. It’s a shining marina blue Impala and, from just a quick glance over the box, he could see it had more lights and sounds than he could count.
Oscar shuffles closer, still dressed in his pajama pants and an old faded dinosaur tee shirt. He sorta half-hides his face in his shoulder—disguises it as a shrug but Logan’s known him long enough to see it. “I saw it, and I saw that you saw it, and thought you might like it, so…”
“Well, I love it! Thanks, Osc.” Logan smiles so wide his cheeks hurt and Oscar looks at him all wide-eyed again, like a deer in headlights, before cracking into a smile himself.
Oscar's eyes are soft. The prettiest brown ever. And Logan absolutely loves it when they look at him.
Truthfully, the Piastris hadn’t had to get him anything for Christmas—Logan’s birthday was quite literally in a week and, by then, he’d be back home in Florida with his parents and brother—but Chris and Nicole had insisted he stay for the entire holidays.
Suddenly, there’s a sharp gasp from the couch behind them. Logan whips his head around to see Nicole with a large smile on her face and an expression of disbelief. One of her hands is placed on her chest, aghast, and the other wrapped gently around a wine glass.
“Oscar!” She chides playfully. “You can’t tell him you were the one to pick it out! It’s supposed to be from Santa. What if the girls hear?”
As if on cue, Mae turns from where she’s busy unwrapping her own toys and blinks owlishly at them. She whines. “I thought the gifts were from Santa?”
“They are! They are, sweetheart!” Nicole was quick to say. Logan tried uselessly to hide the boxed RC car behind his back as if that’d help the situation. “Oscar just got this one for Logan because… it matches his eyes!”
The car is nice, but Logan doesn't think the car matches his eyes—not one bit.
Oscar leans over close to him, hazel brown hair swept to the side. “I don’t think the car matches your eyes at all.” He stage whispers into Logan’s scruffy line-up. “The car is blue. Your eyes are green. I got it for you because I thought you’d like it. You don’t need anything to match your eyes.”
And they are fourteen and then some, and far too old to believe in Santa Claus. Logan laughs lightly under his breath, then looks over and sees Oscar doing the same, only tucking his mouth into his shoulder. He loses it and laughs louder. Nicole joins in without really knowing what they’re laughing at.
Oscar sticks by Logan’s side for the rest of the holidays, never straying too far for too long. Logan likes it. Logan knows Nicole knows he likes it.
He curls up in Oscar’s bed, next to his sleeping friend, tucked under the same plaid comforter. Oscar had fallen asleep early in the night but Logan just couldn't seem to. He frowns and stares at Oscar’s face, slack with sleep, and tucks a stray wave of brown hair from his pale forehead. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what he’d do without his friend.
He's a little too young to understand what it means.
Maybe the holidays just made him sentimental.
“I really did mean it.” Logan hopes Oscar couldn’t hear him in his dreams. “I really do love you, man.”
— — —
“Love you, man.”
It’s said lightly, maybe even jokingly, as they both get ready to suit up to head out onto the track. But Logan doesn’t mean it as a joke—nor does he mean it lightly.
Next to him, Oscar flashes him a small smile, eyes all soft and warm. That chocolate brown looking up at him through rounded eyelashes. Logan feels all warm inside.
It’s Silverstone, 2017, and Logan has a good feeling about this.
“Yeah, mate, I know. You, too.” Oscar replied smoothly, easily, like it didn’t mean much. Logan swallowed thickly in his mouth. It made his throat hurt. It made his eyes burn, just a little—Oscar’s sleek indifference. But Logan had stood by Oscar’s side long enough to know that the bleak tone the Australian used was standard and just as sincere as anyone else’s.
He was being stupid to linger over it.
They were rivals. Or at least, they were supposed to be. While all of them were competitive, Logan hadn’t really felt the need to ‘beat’ Oscar. He would not make an enemy out of a friend. God knows Logan couldn’t afford that.
Logan opens his mouth to speak again. Maybe to clarify that he meant it, he really meant it, and that Oscar was his bestest friend in the world. Maybe just to say goodbye. He didn't really know and his mouth was working faster than his mind.
Just then, someone pokes their head in through the open doorway. Their hair is cropped short and their voice is a little too nasally. “Boys, you’re needed to your respective teams. Last call.”
They nod and walk briskly out of the doorway, itinerary notes in hand.
Oscar glances at him sideways again, a thin grin pulling the corners of his mouth into a taut smile. “That’s us, mate. We better get out there. Good luck today, I have a good feeling about it.”
And hey! That’s what Logan thought, too!
That stupid feeling of warmth spreads through his chest.
The aussie’s hand has a grip on his shoulder for a second or two longer than it should. Logan can feel the heat of Oscar’s palm radiating through his fireproofs. He swallows.
“Yeah, man. Good luck out there.”
Logan ends up winning the second race. He stands on the podium with his hands clasped behind his back and his head tilted back as the American national anthem rings out through the Silverstone Circuit. It’s the fourth of July. He wonders if Oscar would have liked to set off firecrackers.
He can’t help himself. Logan takes a peek.
Oscar is on the podium with him, too. Down on the third step. His dark chocolate brown eyes are gazing up at him, crinkled at the edges and thinly veiled in long eyelashes. Logan thinks his heart does a quick palpitation.
“Good job!” Oscar mouths to him. The music is far too loud to hear anything but Logan likes to think that, if Oscar had said anything, he would have been able to pick it out on instinct. But he can’t hear anything.
“I love you.” Logan mouths back. A little mumbled. A little sloppily.
Oscar’s face twitches to the side ever so slightly. A barely there furrow of a brow, arch of a lip, quirk of an eye. They both turn back to the crowd around them, roaring and waving and loud.
As the national anthem reaches its last crescendos, Logan takes a deep breath and says the only thing his mind would ever repeat when in Oscar’s presence. “I really do mean it.”
He doesn’t think Oscar hears him.
— — —
“I love you…”
Logan’s aware he’s far past tipsy by now. Oscar was currently dragging him through the halls of the hotel Perma had booked them—a shared room just like always. So their parents wouldn’t worry.
His voice was scratchy and weak, even to his own ears.
Above him, Oscar huffs out a laugh between wine-stained lips. “Pfft, yeah? Love you, too, Loges. Now, let's get you to bed.”
They're in different categories now—Oscar in F2 while he stayed behind in F3—but they still find time for each other in between things. Logan thinks he really likes being Oscar's friend, and that it’ll hurt a lot when it has to end.
Oscar’s face does something odd, brows furrowing, eyes hard, and bottom lip pouting outwards ever so slightly in concentration. He fishes for the keys in his pocket and Logan watches as he unlocks the door.
“What'd you mean, ‘it has to end’, Loges? I'm still here.” The Aussie’s voice is soft and silken smooth as he drags Logan across the room and lays him down as generously as possible on the hotel room bed. “Where else would I be, if not here?”
Logan shifts and looks up at him.
Oscar was sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning over him with a determination that never left. Not when he was around. His face is gentle and curious, eyes blink a little slower under the influence of alcohol.
“I can't—” Logan feels his throat squeeze around the words. The brunette above him only tilts his head. “I might not be able to race next year, F3 or otherwise. I can't—can’t really afford it no more. An’ the sponsors… an’ the money… n’ my parents…”
Slowly, Oscar lowers himself on the bed. Rests his chin on Logan's sternum and tangles his hands underneath Logan's back. His eyes don't ever look away.
“And why would that not make me your friend?”
“Because.” It's really all Logan has to offer. He knows that's not true, but the influence in his head left him hazy and thinking in circles. “You’ll be very busy. And I will be right here.”
Oscar's arms squeeze around his middle harder. “And where else would I be, if not here?”
Their positions change slightly, as Oscar presses his whole weight into pinning Logan between himself and the bed. The younger man turns his head and snuggles sleepily into Logan's chest. Logan huffs.
“We’ll figure it out. And even if we don't, I’m not going anywhere. Wherever I end up, you’ll be there, too. I’ll make sure of it. I’ll drag you up with me if I have to.”
Logan chuckles lowly in his chest. “Oh, giving—giving handouts now, are we?”
He could feel the grin stretch on Oscar's face. He could feel the warm imprint of it on his skin. Dark chocolate brown eyes flick up to meet him. “Only for the half-decent looking ones. Shh, don't tell.”
They both laugh so hard it shakes the bed.
Logan bundles the blankets around them. “I really do mean it, though.” He says, perhaps a little too earnestly. “I love you, man. You're incredible.”
And Oscar…
Oscar looks up fully from where he was still curled into Logan's chest. His expression falls and his eyes dart around Logan's face like he was searching. He wonders if he's gone and fucked something up now.
Finally, Oscar resigns and lowers himself back into him so they're pressed together. “Yeah, mate. You too.”
Logan doesn't sleep much that night.
— — —
“I love you!”
Logan shouts it from across the small alleyway in between garages and motorhomes and other half-pitched buildings.
Oscar’s retreating form turns and he waves back at Logan, a huge smile on his face. The Aussie had to go back to his garage, work with his team, watch the Formula 1 race as a reserve for Alpine.
He had better things to do than wait around by Logan’s side.
Still, he shouted it from across the garages. And he basked in the beam of Oscar’s smile.
Liam shoulders him hard from right next to him. “Mate, c’mon. Aren’t you a little old for that?”
“What? Saying ‘I love you’ to a friend?” He blinks at the New Zealander. Liam’s hair is longer than his, and much more golden in color. Logan can’t help but feel a tiny bit jealous. Did Liam just wake up like that? Would Oscar hang out with him more if he looked like Liam? If he looked like any other one of the drivers?
He thinks that jealousy might be an ugly look on him.
Liam shrugs skinny shoulders. He’s thinner than Logan was. “I mean, yes? It’s a little odd, innit, mate.”
“Well, I don’t think so. Maybe it’s a cultural difference.”
His teammate makes a thinking face, teasing smile pulling at the edges. There’s a snicker in his voice as he speaks. “Mmmm, yeah, I don’t know. He didn’t look all that enthusiastic about it, either. Maybe that’s your ‘cultural difference’.”
Logan scoffs, shoves Liam away from him playfully as they walk back to the Carlin team. “Whatever, man! Fuck off!”
He runs ahead of where they were walking but Liam gives chase and runs to catch up.
“I’m just saying! I know Australians like the back of my hand! And Oscar? Like stone, mate.” Liam runs ahead of him and then turns around, walking backwards. “I like the guy, don’t get me wrong, but seriously? Stone!”
“You are from New Zealand,” Logan chides back easily as Liam trips over a cord and stumbles in order to catch himself. “You’re a fucking Kiwi. You don’t know Australians—and you really don’t know Oscar.”
Liam only laughs. “Right, right! I forgot, you’ve got puppy love. You love Oscar and you’ll have one big happy family one day, I get it.”
He says it a little mockingly, just on the wrong side of teasing. Cruel. Logan lets his gaze linger on Liam’s form for a moment too long. He suddenly doesn’t feel well. Something stirs like bile in his gut.
Liam falters slightly as they meet where the team had gathered. “Hey, I was just joking, okay?” He says with a friendly hand on Logan’s shoulder. It doesn’t feel nearly as nice as when Oscar does it. Logan frowns harder. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I know you aren’t like that. You’re just being friendly and I’m sorry for pushing.”
“Yeah, man.” Logan says, a little too meekly for his liking.
Another pat on his shoulder, harder this time, as Liam’s grin takes over again. “Yeah? Alright! Now we go out there and give them hell!”
Logan places third in qualifying, and finishes fourth in Spielberg. Red Bull Ring as relenting as always.
But then, a disqualification and a few time penalties are dished out and served cold, and suddenly, Logan’s standing on the top step of the podium. He takes home a win in Austria.
Oscar meets him in the wings of the podium ceremony. He’s probably not supposed to be there, but he is and Logan couldn’t be happier.
Oscar stands sturdy and tall, arms crossed over his chest and back straight. But there’s a soft smile on his face and the corners of his eyes are crinkled into crow’s feet. Logan practically feels himself melt.
He’s sticky with champagne and wet with sweat, and still, Oscar reaches an arm out to hug him over his shoulder. Logan lets himself be pulled into an embrace, one of Oscar’s hands on the back of his head and the other wrapped around his waist. Logan could stay there forever.
“I really mean it. Every time, Osc.” Logan says, muffled in Oscar’s Alpine polo that was undoubtedly getting stained. “I love you.”
Oscar squeezes him impossibly tighter.
— — —
“I love you.”
It’s said more as a statement than anything. It’s not a loud proclamation of love, or desire, or devotion. Logan is sat criss-crossed on the floor of Oscar’s living room of the Aussie’s flat in London. Oscar himself sits on the couch, lounged back with one leg curled in the cushions and the other draped off the side.
They’re both driving in Formula 1 this season.
Oscar was set up with a fancy seat at Mclaren. Logan gladly accepted a seat at Williams.
It’s late at night. The city is dark outside and the drawn curtains don’t help whatsoever. The living room is quiet besides the soft dialogue from the TV. Logan doesn’t remember the name of the movie—an old racing movie. Logan recognized Will Ferrell.
“Hey, Osc, did you hear what I was—” Logan turns.
In the shadows of the TV, he could see that Oscar’s eyes were closed. His thick eyelashes flutter a little as the images on the screen get bright for a moment. The second passes and Oscar goes still again.
An odd part of Logan sinks. An odd little part of him that wanted to curl up against Oscar like they were fourteen again. The same part of him that thinks back to Liam and F2 and the friendly nudge on his shoulder that said ‘that’s not what you are’.
Logan frowns. Liam hadn’t meant it in a bad way, it was rude of him to take it in a bad way. He was being mean.
He scoots back over the carpet until his back hits the couch’s side. Oscar was lying right above him. Quietly, Logan brings his knees up to his chest and tucks his feet under his legs. His arms come around to wrap around his shins and he places his chin right between his knees.
It sorta hurt his tailbone. But there wasn't enough room on the couch for him and Oscar both to lay. He would be fine for the night.
“Really do love you, Oscar.” He says once more to silence. He thinks he’s been here before. Maybe multiple times now. “Even if you never hear me.”
Oscar shifts in his sleep and knocks his socked foot against Logan’s back, right in between the shoulder blades.
The movie plays on. Will Ferrell wins Talladega, only to be disqualified. The two protagonists kiss.
Logan sleeps surprisingly peacefully that night.
— — —
“I love you.”
Logan whispers it to Oscar during the driver’s parade. He’s not really sure if Oscar caught it or not—he was seeming to have more trouble hearing people clearly as the years went on. It’s the Australian Grand Prix, Oscar’s first home race. So, he guessed it wouldn’t have been completely out of the picture for Oscar to be busy inside his own head.
The pressure of a home race was enough to ruin an entire weekend performance. Logan winces at the thought of having his own three home races later in the year. That probably wasn’t going to be fun.
But Oscar has had a decent start to his Formula 1 career and Logan couldn’t be more happy to stand by his side.
So, he guessed maybe the ‘I love you’ really stood for ‘good luck’, just this once.
Logan pats Oscar on the shoulder as they exit the truck and start to separate into their team garages. Oscar smiles back at him—focused, calculating, and level-headed. Just as Oscar had always been.
Suddenly, Alex is behind him, a blinding white smile noticeable from a mile away. Logan’s not sure how the tall Thai driver managed to sneak up on him. He ruffles Logan’s blonde hair and pulls him over to the Williams garage, ecstatically talking about something Lily had done the previous weekend.
He doesn’t get to look behind him and see Oscar retreat to his own team.
It wasn’t like Logan liked to watch Oscar from a distance. But why would he focus on anything else when Oscar was there, stealing the show just by being in the room? He smiles politely and nods along with Alex until they reach the garage and James Vowles pulls him aside for the first of many stern talking-to’s.
Nicky de Vries collides with him during the third restart of the race.
Logan gets his second ever stern talking-to. James refuses to even look at him afterwards.
Oscar places eighth. In the points, just like Logan knew he could.
They don’t get to talk before post-race interviews are conducted. They don’t get to talk before team briefings start. They don’t get to talk when Oscar brushes his shoulder up against Logan’s side while walking the opposite way down the hall.
Logan feels his insides tangle up in a knot.
“Love you…” he whispers out in one ghost of a breath, letting his hand touch Oscar’s back for only a moment as the Aussie races by him to get out of the circuit. The brunette is quickly flanked by a handful of Mclaren team members and Logan nearly has to jump out of the way to avoid being shoved.
It doesn’t really mean much, especially not to Oscar. But Logan still feels a little irrationally butthurt over it.
He thinks that maybe this time, ‘love you’ meant something more like ‘good job’.
— — —
“I love you!”
The words come out with more enthusiasm than Logan had felt in months.
It’s the winter break between seasons and he has Oscar on the phone. Logan was tucked away at home in Florida, enjoying the mild weather of winter in the Gulf. As for Oscar, he was seemingly somewhere warm but Logan didn’t know where. He wasn’t at home in Australia and he wasn’t in his apartment in Monaco so…
Logan was stumped and he wasn’t about to ask. Would that make him seem desperate? Logan didn’t want to look desperate.
It had been too long since they had last had a meaningful conversation. The last time they had sat down and actually talked was probably in Brazil, months ago.
Well before Logan had finished 21st in a 20 driver championship.
He tries not to hold on to that much. Afterall, they were talking now!
It was well into the new year, almost a week into January, and Oscar was calling to wish him a happy birthday.
Logan’s family hadn’t done much this year, and honestly, Logan had been avoiding his father for most of his time off. Daniel wasn’t a mean man but he was a judgemental one. His mother pitied him. That was worse.
“I know it’s past. I’m real sorry, mate.” Oscar’s voice comes over the phone a little static-y. He talks slowly into the receiver. Logan thinks he must’ve caught the Aussie at a busy time. “I meant to call you sooner! Happy birthday! Big twenty-five, you’re old in Formula 1 now.”
Logan laughs lightly, high and airy in his throat. “Yeah, yeah. You’ll be there in like half a year, so I wouldn’t talk shit yet.”
Oscar laughs with him. “Then we’ll both be too old for Formula 1. We won’t be able to keep up with the others anymore! We’ll have to find something else to do!”
“Hmm, like what?” Logan asks and Oscar goes a little quiet on the other end.
“Well, it’s a good thing we don’t have to think about that too much, do we? Things seem to be on the up for now. We’re doing great—” Logan is exceedingly not doing great. He’s still waiting on an email from Williams about contract negotiations. “And we’ll keep it that way, right?”
There’s a long pause in conversation. Logan sort of just stares at his phone and watches the seconds tick upwards. It was nice to just sit in silence with his friend. He didn’t get that often now. He wouldn’t mind staying on the phone for longer with Oscar. Just sitting in silence. Listening to the static that formed in the phone’s speakers.
“... Right?”
Logan jolts. “Yeah! Yeah, man. We don’t need to think about that right now, we have plenty of time left.”
He could hear the change in Oscar’s demeanor, brightening up like a bird of paradise. “Well, alright. Happy birthday, mate, really. I have to go now, but you have a good rest of your break. Keep me updated!”
Logan smiles thinly and knows Oscar can’t see it. “Yeah, man, okay. I will.”
An email chimes in his inbox over on his computer and, in the split second it takes to look over and see it, Oscar’s hung up the phone.
— — —
“Fuck, man! I love you!”
Logan has his hands on Oscar’s shoulders and he’s nearly doubled over laughing. Oscar had just won the Hungarian grand prix and was still grinning ear to ear about it.
Well, Oscar had won a few hours ago. But between team celebrations and maiden wins and team briefings and interviews and everything else that came with being in Formula 1, this was the first time they had gotten to see each other.
Oscar had changed into fancy but cozy looking clothes. Logan was still in his team kit.
The only way to describe the feeling swelling like wildfire in his chest was pride. Logan stood proud of Oscar and his friend’s accomplishments. A win! In his second year! Logan thinks his cheeks are going to split from how long and hard he’s smiled.
The Aussie in front of him sighs offhandedly and Logan can see the exhaustion wear on his body. He tucks his hands back at his sides and fidgets with the hem of his kit instead.
Oscar’s eyes flicker down to his hands, then back up again to his face. “I know! It was absolutely insane, mate, you just had to be there. Lando was right behind me!”
It’s said with such emotion that Logan thinks, yeah, maybe he can go back on what Alex taught him. He’ll root for Mclaren instead. He’ll root for Mclaren every weekend if he gets to see Oscar light up like he was now.
“And to think! I did all that with a broken rib.”
Logan’s face falls so fast he fears he actually dropped it. “You what?”
Oscar laughs nervously. “Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t have done it. But I did, and I got first, so…”
“You drove with a broken rib—Oscar! You’re insane!” Logan refrains from shaking him by the shoulders. “Why did you do that?”
He grins and tries to look away but Logan could see the rosy color in his cheeks. “I felt good about today, I guess. Like I knew this was going to be it. So I… I don’t know, I pushed through. And I’m glad I did, I’d do it over again in a heartbeat.”
Logan backs away a free steps, gives him room to breathe. “Well, okay, I guess. Your mom is going to kill you when she finds out, though. Just fair warning.”
As if on cue, a loud, sharp gasp sounded through the small hall they were in. Staff members around them looked up in confusion.
“Oscar. Jack. Piastri!”
The way Oscar’s face dropped into horror was nearly enough to make Logan double over again with laughter. The brunette’s shoulders had gone stiff and his eyes were wide and scared. The loud click of shoe heels on the linoleum tile was deafening.
They both turn to see Nicole pacewalking towards them, charging like she was on a warpath. Behind her, Eddie trailed a little slower, an amused smile on her face. “A rib?”
She grabs Oscar by the wrist and pulls him towards her insistantly. “Why on Earth would you race with a broken rib? Go to medical! Now!”
Nicole seems to notice Logan lingering after a moment and turns her attention towards him, a deep frown on her face. “What about you? No injuries, right?”
“No, ma’am. No injuries.”
Nicole looks even more upset at that. “Logan! Don’t call me ‘ma’am’, I’ve known you for over ten years now! You’re making me feel old.”
Logan goes to say sorry and laugh it off but Nicole was already dragging Oscar away by the arm.
“Bye! Love you!” He shouts but Oscar doesn’t turn around. He does, however, get a kiss blown to him from Nicole. He can’t help but smile.
Eddie punches Oscar in the shoulder with a pointed look.
— — —
Zandvoort will be his last race.
Logan’s known it for a while, but it still hurts. The email had come in over summer break—a bunch of legal jargon about performance clauses and breaking contracts and leaving.
He had begged for one last chance. A final shot at proving to the team that he was worth keeping around. And what did he do with it?
He sent the fucking car into the barriers.
Caught the damn thing on fire.
It’s anger that sizzles under his skin as he stands for the Dutch national anthem on Sunday. It’s an unfamiliar feeling, a hateful one, but Logan can’t rid it. He’s tried everything—from cold showers, to screaming into hotel room pillows, to staring at himself into the mirror until something caved and changed and allowed him to perform. Nothing ever did, though, so he guessed he was stuck with it.
Oscar was right next to him. The orange of his suit was an enraging shade of ‘piss-you-off papaya’, made specifically to piss him off at the least appropriate time.
The Aussie nudges their shoulders together once. A barely there brush of fabric.
Logan clenches his jaw and stares forward.
Oscar makes another move, this time brushing up against him hard enough that Logan felt the warmth of his skin press against his own.
Still, Logan stared forward.
His goal for today was to race clean. The team wasn’t expecting a win, or a podium, or points. Hell, the team wasn’t even expecting him to cross the finish line but he had to try.
Another knock to his shoulder, this time hard enough to push him over a step. Logan catches himself before he could stumble and looks over to see Oscar’s chocolate brown eyes looking at him sadly. His brows are furrowed upwards and his mouth is twisted downwards and everything is wrong.
It is a terrible look on Oscar. Logan has never been more disappointed in himself for causing it.
“Are you alright?” Oscar mouths, hands wringing behind his back nervously. His eyes dart between the front and back.
“Fine.” Logan mouths back and settles back into his place as the anthem comes to an end.
He tries not to look over at how sad Oscar looked beside him. He fights down the urge to say everything—to tell Oscar that this was it. This was the last time. To get on his knees and ask ‘what do i do now?’ —but he is nothing if not resilient. Logan says nothing.
He finishes the Dutch grand prix unremarkably. He leaves the circuit feeling hollow.
On his way out, well before Williams was due to leave—they don’t need any data from him and all his belongings pack up nicely in his backpack—he catches Oscar talking to a group of his engineers.
Oscar flashes him a smile, small but steady. It makes his eyes sparkle in a way Logan hadn’t seen for a long time.
Logan thinks he’ll miss that the most.
He thinks about telling Oscar again, maybe more meaningfully this time. The words ‘I love you’ sit heavy and thick on the tip of his tongue.
But one of the engineers gives him a stern look that tells him to go kick rocks, so he leaves them be and leaves the track.
— — —
By the time Logan made it home to Florida, about a week or so after Zandvoort, there’s a voicemail sitting in his inbox from a number that hasn’t called since his birthday.
A part of him is desperate to open it. To see what Oscar has to say. To hear his voice as he asks and asks and asks.
Logan could see it now. “Why didn't you tell me?”
He wants to cry.
Life without being right by Oscar’s side is nothing short of miserable. Logan gets up in the mornings and goes for his runs. He golfs from sun up to sun down. He gets wasted on a fishing boat and pukes into the ocean and catches no fish.
Whatever he does, he does not answer the phone.
Even when it hurts.
Especially when it hurts.
With no racing to keep him busy, Logan spends a lot of time thinking. He thinks on his fishing boat. He thinks at the local library. He thinks on a rock out in the middle of the Everglades—well, that one was thanks to the napping snake around his ankle, but it was self-reflective nonetheless!
He thinks while walking the train tracks, and he thinks while walking the boardwalk.
One day, when the weather starts turning a little colder and his parents kick on the heat in the house because it has dipped under fifty degrees, it dawns on him.
Like a crack of lightning in the sky, the thought makes itself clear in a way Logan hadn't ever thought about.
“I think I’m in love with Oscar.” He says quietly. It’s only them in the living room. Logan eyes the seasonal decor so he doesn’t have to risk the chance of making eye contact. “And I really miss him not being around.”
His mother only nods. She doesn’t even look up from her cross stitch. “Yeah, Logan. I could have told you that when you were sixteen.”
He gapes at her. “Why didn’t you?”
She looks up at him, something stern in her eyes. “Because I think you needed to see it for yourself. I can’t help you be in love, Logan. That’s just… something you figure out.”
Logan takes it in stride and does what he has become best at. He thinks about it.
He thinks about spending a life together with Oscar as he walks the boardwalk and tourist areas. He thinks about sleeping in the same bed as Oscar as he walks the tracks. He thinks about being so in love with Oscar he would be happy with just staying by his side.
He thinks about that voicemail in his inbox.
Logan had turned his phone off at some point—messages from old teammates like Liam and even older friends like Zhou had become overwhelming—but he took it from his nightstand drawer and powered it on once he was sure both his parents were in bed for the night.
At least a hundred new messages come through. He actually sighs and sets the phone on his bed, letting the poor thing have a moment to catch up.
Oscar’s only message remains alone in his inbox. He only ever called once.
Next to it, it seemed like the rest of his voicemail had been taken over by Alex and Lily. There's at least twenty-five messages from each.
Logan picks up the phone and dials Oscar’s contact.
It rings once, twice, then a third time. The phone line clicks and Logan breathes—
“You’ve reached Oscar Piastri. Sorry I missed your call, please leave a message with your name and phone number—”
Logan hangs up.
— — —
The 2025 Formula 1 season approaches with all its usual fanfare.
Logan’s busy arguing with his management over a contract he hasn't signed and an announcement post he didn't approve of.
He ‘drops’ out of WEC—not that he ever signed anything in the first place—and quietly drops his management soon after.
He doesn't keep up with the races.
He doesn't call Oscar.
Madelyn gives him tight-lipped smiles and half-disappointed looks when she asks about the Aussie over dinner. There's a weird searching look in her eyes, like she's ready to tell him to run and don't stop til he makes it.
But Logan has already ran and ran, and all it got him was laying face down in the dirt.
So he just picks at his food.
The year crawls on and Logan hears through word of mouth that Oscar leads the championship. There's a bright swell of light in his chest at the thought. Oscar leading. Oscar winning.
He’d be champion soon enough.
It's pride that practically bursts from his chest cavity. Logan smiles so wide his jaw aches. The sting of longing clawed desperately at his ribs, gnawing on the bone like an old, sick dog but it couldn't dampen the joy of Oscar rising.
“Oh my god, really?” He asks through laughter to Kyle, who was seated next to him. They're deep in the panhandle of Florida, fishing for a week. “That's so cool!”
Kyle takes another sip of his beer—gone warm in the late spring humidity—and tilts his head towards Logan with a grin. “Yeah! Your boy’s leading by a fucken’ mile!”
And Logan thinks maybe he should call. Maybe he should say something.
He doesn't.
But he really thinks about it.
The season goes on. Logan goes all summer without something to do. He ends up getting really good at COD and Halo, much to his brother's despair.
“Why?” Dalton wails over the mic one night. It's late—far later than either were used to staying up til, and Logan knows his sleep schedule was fucked for the next week or so.
“Get good, man.” Logan replies back easily with a smirk. Smugness had settled into his demeanor around the fifth time beating Dalton. “Not my fault I'm better.”
“Yeah, yeah. Keep telling yourself that, man. Maybe it'll mean something someday.”
Dalton doesn't mean it rudely, but it still hurts just on the too far side of cruel. Logan winces as his brother laughs over the mic. “Yeah, whatever. I have to go for the night. Same time sometime soon?”
His brother goes still on the other end for a long moment. “I didn't mean anything by it. But yeah, yeah, same time sometime. Say hi to your boy for me, yeah?”
They both know who ‘his boy’ was, even if neither would say it. At some point over the many years of karting and travel and connections, Oscar had become Logan's—at least to his family, of course.
He hums under his breath.
“Sure! I’ll let him know.”
Logan does not let Oscar know.
By the time he cinched another contract with a different management, it was fall and the trees were starting to die off.
Florida was still warm, with only a slight shiver in the wind.
Madelyn mentions COTA at dinner and Logan just smiles tightly. He tells her that the money was just not in the cards right now.
Madelyn mentions Vegas the next day, to the exhausted look of his father on the other side of the table. Logan smiles once again and tells her no way in hell.
He goes on to compete in two different IMSA races. The feeling of being back in the car— a car. Any racecar—was unmatched. He feels the force of the car, the sheer power behind the engine shaking through him, and it feels like it should be home.
It doesn’t feel like home.
Logan frowns as he focuses in the car. He brings the team up to third place and it feels like liquid fire in his veins. It doesn’t feel like Oscar.
He tries not to dwell on it—thinking of Oscar wouldn’t be productive. It wouldn’t get him back on track. It wouldn’t make the words ‘I love you’ any lighter.
Logan hated how much he had come to distaste the words.
He trades out the car again. Goes back to the garage. Watches the rest of the race with his jaw clenched and his head full of the softest brown eyes he’d ever seen.
After Petit le Mans, Oscar still does not reach out. But Logan watches the small ‘typing…’ icon appear and disappear for nearly five minutes with baited breath.
Madelyn calls him late into the night. She sighs long over the phone in that way only a mother can. Logan hears her tut on the other end of the line, liminal static crackling over the receiver. He knows she’s seated on her loveseat in the living room, with one of her projects in her lap and her phone pressed between her ear and shoulder.
He knows his mother well. She knows him better.
“Boys are finicky.” The eye roll is practically audible. It sounds more like she was talking to a middle school friend. Logan curls up on his side on his hotel bed. Georgia isn’t far from Florida, but still too long of a drive after the weekend. “They’re always so hot-cold! You can never get a read on them! Sometimes, it’s best to let them come to you, rather than chase after them.”
Logan hums and, after a minute, Madelyn continues. “Boys can be stupid sometimes, Lo. That doesn’t mean they don’t like you. It especially doesn’t mean Oscar doesn’t like you—god knows, that boy can’t get enough of you. He’s practically been attached to your hip since you were fourteen!”
He smiles. “Yeah.”
“But don’t wait around too long!” His mother scolds lightly with a teasing edge. “I’ll smack that boy upside his head if he leads you on!”
He laughs. A deep, happy laugh from somewhere warm in his chest. A smile tugging on his face.
“Yeah, I’m sure you would.” They sit for a moment, listening to each other breathe. “I gotta go for the night. Thank you, really, for everything. Love you, momma.”
Madelyn sighs fondly. “Of course. Love you, too, baby. See you soon.”
— — —
By the time Logan really gets around to keeping up with the current season of Formula 1, Oscar has already lost the lead. He's not sure why he feels so dejected seeing Oscar so miserable.
Kyle had offered to celebrate with him—a little pity party of their own making. Colton was going to Formula 2 and leaving Kyle behind. Logan just hopes Colton doesn’t cut his hair—but he just couldn’t get into it. He didn’t want to celebrate Oscar feeling like shit. It just made him feel more like shit.
He sighs and decides to tidy up his apartment. Logan has moved to Miami now, out of his parents’ house and into his own space once again.
It wasn’t much quieter than his parents’ house, and it wasn’t much different than living in London, but it was still different and Logan could live with a little bit of change.
Abu Dhabi was scheduled for the next day. Logan’s heart beat erratically in his throat whenever the reminder struck him. Oscar’s championship on the line.
Logan hated himself just a little for thinking that Oscar’s chances had slipped away well before the last race of the season. He winces at the narrow point deficit. It wouldn’t be enough. Not with Max and Lando driving like they were.
He watches it anyway.
Oscar drives like McLaren had lit a fire under his ass—a bat out of hell. He places P2 in the race and P3 in the championship. An absolute accomplishment for his third year.
Logan watches him cross the finish line twelve and a half seconds behind Max Verstappen. The familiar taste of ‘I love you. I love you. I love you’ on his tongue.
He waited on the couch for hours after the broadcast ended. The screen is dark and black and the curtains are still drawn tight.
Oscar would be out celebrating whether he wanted to or not. McLaren had won title after title and had dethroned Max’s spot at the top—there wasn't any doubt that the entire team was ecstatic.
It's late morning in Miami, dead of night in Abu Dhabi.
Logan can't tell if he's desperate to wait for a call or just plain stupid. He stares at his phone in his hand with a fiery type of fervor, a quickness in his pulse that slowly dies down as hours tick on.
He waits until the sun dies below the horizon in Miami and breaks dawn in Monaco.
The phone stays dark.
Logan crawls back into bed early that Monday, tail between his legs and licking his wounds like an animal. A lost dog. But he doesn't sleep.
He was right—he’s both desperate and stupid. Just one call. That was all he wanted.
Could Logan call Oscar himself? Was that allowed? He frowns. Maybe Oscar was simply too busy, too hard at work, to stop for a call.
He falls asleep restlessly, eyes tired and strained with the burn of tears that never really fell.
Logan Sargeant, too desperate and too stupid. Maybe he'll call in the morning.
The words ‘I love you. I love you. I love you.’ still fit in his mouth perfectly.