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Every engineering student experiences a particular kind of misery during final week. Even Oscar Piastri.
He sits by the library window, staring at his own dark reflection. It’s snowing outside.
This morning, the sun was bright enough that he’d confidently walked out wearing just a T-shirt under his coat. No, he refuses to live like Lando—bundled up like a rolling ball of fabric in October. This is about Australian dignity.
Unfortunately, the weather has betrayed him. The sky darkens, the clouds roll in, and suddenly—snow. Actual snow. Outside. Snowing.
Soft white frost gathers on the pine trees around the library. Christmas is coming. Warmth, sweetness, peace—everything is approaching. Everything except Oscar, who still has to fight four exams before he’s allowed any reward.
Going home early would be sensible. But today, the Australian koala is feeling wronged.
I’ll just stay here all night, he decides. I’m not going home. It’s cold. I hate it.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Lando and Carlos went out for dinner and still aren’t back. And whenever they go out, Lando always comes home late. They have exams too! Lando has exams! They’re all terrible people. George is terrible. Max is terrible. And Carlos Sainz—Carlos Sainz is the worst of them all.
Oscar lets his thoughts drift until the formulas on the page start dancing. He’s exhausted, but he can’t sleep. Things still aren’t done.
And it’s snowing.
Staying later only means it’ll be colder when he leaves. It means his small, already chilled koala heart will crack just a little more when he gets home to a dark, even colder living room. People think Oscar is an ice cube—strong, calm, unshakable. But engineering students during final week are fragile creatures.
Go home earlier, he tells himself, picking up his pen again. Turn on the lights. Make hot chocolate. Make two cups. Wait for Lando.
If Lando’s been drinking, it’ll help him sober up.
If he’s cold—God, he’s always cold—I can hug him.
Just as Oscar’s head threatens to hit the desk for the fourth time, something warm—almost painfully so—presses against his cheek.
He jumps, swallowing his scream.
Lando is grinning down at him, holding two paper cups with the campus café logo.
“Oh. Hi,” Oscar says, his brain still stuck in a swamp of equations and concepts. “What are you doing here?”
“Well,” Lando says, “I thought I’d come pick up my poor roommate.”
“Where are Max and the others?”
“They’re… uh…” Lando glances sideways. Oscar catches a few suspiciously familiar heads disappearing behind the bookshelves. “Studying.”
Oscar pauses. “Very convincing.”
A thumbs-up emerges from behind the shelf. Then silence.
Lando sighs and hands him a cup. “Anyway. Let’s go home? I brought you cocoa. In return, you have to come with me.”
This is not a trade. This is a reward, Oscar thinks carefully, making sure not to say it out loud.
Being picked up from the library by the roommate you’re secretly in love with during final week—no one knows whether that’s a blessing or a curse. He brought you your dream hot chocolate. He brought you a hoodie. His hazel-green eyes crinkle when he smiles. His soft curls are trapped under a beanie.
He grabs your hand.
Your brain makes one last dying noise before completely shutting down.
You realize with despair that you are probably going to love him forever.
Guess why Lando dragged everyone out to dinner.
Definitely not because he realized during final week that he might be in love with his roommate. Definitely not Oscar Piastri, who normally shows interest in nothing but studying and sleeping.
Lando gathers his friends at their usual restaurant with the most serious expression of his life—like he’s about to propose tomorrow—and begins a speech titled:
“I Realized During Final Week That My Sleep-Deprived Roommate Has Incredibly Cute Cheeks and I Want to Bite Him and Oh God I Think I Actually Like Him But I’m an Idiot and What If He Doesn’t Like Me Back.”
Five minutes in, Alex raises his hand.
“Have you never noticed the way he looks at you? The fact that he hasn’t snuck into your room and fuck you at midnight is a miracle.”
“When you wore that cropped top,” Charles adds, “he practically stared holes into your waist.”
“Every time I put my arm around you, he glares at me,” Carlos says.
“So what exactly is Max Verstappen contributing here,” George asks, “as a fellow romantic idiot.”
“Hey!” Max protests.
“But he looks so calm,” Lando says quietly. “So mature. Like he doesn’t care about anything. He looks people in the eyes because he’s polite. You know he’s well-raised. He looks at Charles like that too.”
“Yes,” Charles says flatly. “Because I am basically his foster parent.”
“Landito,” Carlos sighs, flicking Lando on the forehead. “Relax. He’s hopelessly in love with you. Our job now is to get you two into bed as soon as possible so the rest of us don’t have to suffer watching these two idiots anymore.”
“But it’s final week,” says Max Verstappen, the third romantic idiot. Charles pinch him in the arm.
“So?” Alex cracks his knuckles. “Pick him up from the library. Kiss him. Let him pin you and his notes to the desk. Perfect final week.”
“Oh,” Lando says, blushing and turning into a tomato.
So this is Step One: pick up the beloved roommate from the library.
Do not think about steps two and three, you idiot, Lando tells himself, completely unaware that he’s already holding Oscar’s hand outside the library. Oscar, meanwhile, looks like a koala who’s been punched in the face by an electrical circuit—floating, dazed, barely conscious.
George watches from between the shelves, nodding in satisfaction.
“Bonus.”
Oscar really does feel like he’s ascending.
Four hours of sleep. Too much caffeine. Exams and deadlines hitting him nonstop. And Lando’s warm hand.
This could destroy any college student.
“Lando, hey,” he says softly, “slow down. Thank you for the cocoa and the hoodie. I almost got trapped in the library overnight.”
Lando slows immediately. “I’d never leave you there. You need sleep, Oscar. You’ve been torturing yourself. I’d drag you home if I had to.”
Oscar’s nose stings. Engineering students during final week are fragile, remember. He squeezes Lando’s hand. I love you almost slips out—but turns back into thank you at the last second.
Humans have so many unsaid words. A koala even more so.
Lando doesn’t know what Oscar didn’t say. But he offers all his warmth anyway. He tucks Oscar’s hand into his coat pocket without looking at him.
The snow keeps falling—soft, light, impossibly fragile as it covers the world. The moon is bright. The streetlights glow. The edges of everything soften, and the road home shimmers quietly.
Student-era suffering would end. Happiness would arrive, again and again, in different forms and different stages of life.
On the morning of Christmas Eve, Lando finished his last exam.
He went home, walked into the living room, and collapsed onto the couch. He stayed there for a full thirty minutes, staring into nothing, like a device that had finally powered down after weeks of overuse.
Around lunchtime, Oscar appeared in the doorway with the unmistakable face of someone who had not slept nearly enough. Only then did the two exam-ruined animals begin to move, slowly and without enthusiasm, reheating leftover pizza and vegetables from the day before.
It was a very quiet lunch.
No one’s brain was functioning properly. Even eating felt exhausting. Engineering students during finals week are remarkably fragile creatures.
After lunch, Lando returned to the couch and wedged himself into the corner between the armrest and the back cushion. He meant to say something to Oscar. He really did. But hugging his knees made him feel safe, and the cushions behind his head and shoulders were soft, and the sunlight filtered through the curtains in the gentlest way.
Oscar drifted around the room, back and forth, like a sheep wandering through a pasture.
Lando fell asleep the moment he closed his eyes.
Oscar packed his bag. Before leaving, he reached out and ruffled Lando’s hair.
The owner of the curls made a small, half-conscious sound that vaguely resembled “good luck.”
Good luck.
Oscar stared at the twenty-four pages of his algorithms exam and thought about that. Carlos, sitting diagonally in front of him, had already entered the stage of existentially gazing at the ceiling.
The good news was that time was, in fact, passing.
By the time the sunset turned the snow outside a soft papaya color, Oscar finally made it home. He dropped his bag on the floor, climbed onto the couch, and rested his head on Lando’s still-sleeping stomach.
Then he closed his eyes.
The small fabric couch wobbled slightly under the added weight. Oscar felt his consciousness melt, sinking quickly and comfortably into Lando’s warmth.
It was Christmas Eve.
And at long last, the deeply detestable finals week was over.
“So,” Alex says brightly, clapping his hands, “you slept together.”
“No!!!” Lando yelps, instantly turning tomato-red again. “We did not! We were just exhausted and fell asleep on the same couch!”
“But you kissed him,” George says calmly. “Not only did you kiss him—you panicked and ran out the door, interrupting my and Alex’s Christmas Eve, you idiot.”
Lando lets out a strangled noise and buries his face in his hands. “What was I supposed to do? You have no idea how cute his cheeks are when he’s just woken up—lying on my stomach—I couldn’t just not—”
“Okay enough,” George says flatly, slapping a hand over Lando’s mouth.
Alex, grinning like a menace, pulls out a phone from behind his back. The screen is lit up with an active call.
The name Oscar is right there.
Lando sees it and screams again. “Alexander Albon! That’s my phone! Oscar’s calling me! How—how dare you?!”
“Oh, George, hold him,” Alex says casually, using his height advantage to dodge as Lando flails. George grabs him around the shoulders, and Lando ends up suspended in his arms like a panicking frog trying to scare off predators by puffing himself up. “You threw your phone on the table the moment you walked in. Poor Oscar’s been calling you nonstop, and you didn’t hear a thing.”
The frog deflates instantly, going limp in George’s hold.
“He heard everything,” Lando mutters miserably, staring at the floor.
“Yes, yes, Lando’s with us,” Alex says cheerfully into the phone. “You want to come get him? Take him home? Honestly, we could just let this romantic idiot walk back by himself—no, no, of course you’re welcome. Come over. George has made pie.”
“This guy is completely in love with you, you know that? Oh, you figured it out? Thank God. Finally, at least one of you is thinking clearly.” Goerge added with a mischeifing.
“Will you two listen to me?!” Lando shouts, mortified. “I’m still suffering from the trauma of accidentally confessing to my crush over the phone!”
From the other end of the call comes a sound.
Later research would confirm that this is the exact noise a koala makes when their crush accidentally confesses to them over the phone.
Later, according to Lando Norris himself, he remembers absolutely nothing about how Oscar arrived at George and Alex’s apartment that day. Or how they all ate pie together. Or how he and Oscar eventually made it back home.
George says that when Lando saw Oscar, he looked like an alien who had just learned basic Earth etiquette—painfully struggling out a tiny, earnest “hi”—and that Oscar’s cheeks promptly turned red enough to qualify as actual apples.
Alex says they sat pressed together on the couch like two melting mochi, mechanically chewing through George’s pie, as if they were dogs who had never in their lives encountered food this good.
Lando insists this is slander. He and Oscar were not that stupid. At the very least, Oscar wasn’t.
Oscar says… he’s not sure.
Oscar really isn’t sure.
He feels even more lightheaded than he did during final week.
The boy resting on his chest—curled lashes, soft hair, bathed in morning sunlight, smelling faintly of chocolate, impossibly beautiful, almost angelic—is this really his now? This isn’t the final hallucination before collapsing from exam-related exhaustion, right?
He reaches up and gently runs a hand through Lando’s hair.
Lando blinks awake.
Oscar has noticed before that Lando’s eyes change color in different light. In the Christmas morning sun, that green—tinted with brown—looks so clear it feels like you could see straight through it, all the way to Lando’s heart.
Oscar can’t help himself. He leans down and presses a soft kiss to Lando’s eyelashes.
Lando giggles, props himself up against Oscar’s chest—and then casually starts undoing the buttons on Oscar’s sleep shirt.
The koala freezes.
“Merry Christmas, boyfriend,” Lando says lightly, eyes sparkling with mischief, “And now I’m opening my Christmas present, what do you say?”