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Oscar was used to being in a room full of old people, but this was fucking ridiculous.
He should've been back home in Australia, enjoying the summer, playing beach cricket, maybe catching a test match at the MCG if he could get away with it. Instead he was halfway across the world where it was winter, trapped in a tuxedo that fit like a second skin but still somehow made him feel like he was wearing a costume.
Not that Monaco was the worst place to be exiled. It wasn't England, thank Christ. There were no stiff-lipped Windsors looking down their noses at him like the Australian Crown was something quaint they'd outgrown. Monaco had the decency to be honest about what it was. The Grimaldis weren't pretending there was some grand moral justification for monarchy in the twenty-first century. They just wanted money, and they had a very solid business model for it. The billionaires loved them. They loved the billionaires. Everyone knew the terms.
So when Prince Albert invited Oscar to his foundation's winter gala, Oscar said yes. You didn't say no to Albert. More importantly, you didn't give ammunition to the people back home who were already sharpening their knives for the next referendum.
The Grimaldi Forum was all glass and marble, the kind of architectural flex that made you feel small on purpose. The ceilings were impossibly high. Crystal chandeliers hung like frozen fireworks. Every surface reflected light—marble floors, mirrored walls, gold trim—so it felt like you'd stepped inside a jewelry box designed by someone who'd never heard the word restraint.
The tables were round, enormous, dressed in white linen and scattered with small arrangements of winter flowers and sea glass. Oscar sat staring at an artfully arranged replica of a sea turtle and thought about Prince Albert's sheer passion for saving the environment through charity work, while half-listening to a cluster of tech billionaires and oil executives pretend to be green while anxiously discussing next year's economic slowdown because of some war in the Middle East.
It took all of his etiquette training not to yawn.
Prince Albert sat two seats down, watching video screens that showed coral reefs, arctic ice, baby sea turtles, all kind of environmental imagery that made billionaires feel briefly haunted before they went back to their yachts.
There were other European royals in attendance, but no one as young as Oscar. Twenty years old. He'd been a teenager a few months ago. No one had come from as far away, either, but these people liked to pretend Australia wasn't on the other side of the world. They treated him like a future head of state. Like he belonged to the inner circle. People leaned toward him when they spoke.
Oscar clapped when Prince Albert finished his speech. Everyone stood. A string quartet played something tasteful and forgettable while the room began to move, bodies shifting into new configurations, mingling.
Oscar was surrounded almost immediately by people who wanted to talk about biodiversity protection in Australia, the Great Barrier Reef, carbon policy, as if he was the one making decisions and not the MPs who controlled his entire life.
That's when he saw this other guy, on the other side of the room, making a face at him.
Oscar was too PR-trained to reciprocate, but there was recognition there. Relief, even. Finally—someone his age. Someone who might not want to spend the next two hours discussing carbon offset frameworks.
It started as shared glances across their respective orbits. Oscar nodded at the right times, asked questions at the right moments, but kept stealing looks across the room. The other guy was doing the same—both of them moving tentatively through the swarm of networking executives and diplomats, drifting toward the bar, pretending to recognize someone by the canapé table, always aware of where the other one was.
There was gravity to it. The gravity of being the only two people in the room who probably knew what TikTok was.
When they finally ended up standing next to each other, the last European ambassador who'd been talking Oscar's ear off about SDGs hesitated, then stepped back. Oscar met the other guy's eyes, and they both exhaled at the same time. Shoulders dropped like a massive weight had just lifted.
They had champagne in their hands. The guy smiled at him—open, easy, the kind of smile Oscar had been trained out of years ago.
"First time?" Oscar asked.
The guy nodded. "Is it supposed to be this boring?"
"Yep." Oscar popped the p and drank his champagne, scanning his periphery to make sure no cameras caught him downing an entire flute in one go.
"Oh no. How many times have you been to one of these?"
"Couple times." Oscar smiled despite himself. The guy had pretty eyes—Oscar wasn't sure of the color exactly, just something bright and deep, like ocean water when the sun hit it right.
The guy extended his hand first. "I'm Lando."
Oscar hesitated, then met his hand. "I'm... Oscar. My name's Oscar."
He said it like he wasn't sure.
Lando didn't react like he knew who Oscar was. Didn't do the thing people usually did—the slight shift in posture, the recalibration of tone. He just smiled, wide enough that his eyes disappeared into it.
"Nice to meet you, Oscar. You've got an accent—Australia?"
Oscar deflected quickly. "What brought you here?"
“McLaren made me come. Partnership responsibilities,” Lando said, a little glint of humor in his eyes despite the resigned shrug.
Oscar nodded, understanding that kind of obligation all too well. “Right. So, you’re… in motorsport?”
“Yeah, Formula 1.”
“Oh.” A flicker of genuine interest. “Makes sense. Should’ve noticed the neck.”
Lando laughed, a hand coming up to rub the back of his neck self-consciously. “Yeah. I'm on my third season, actually.”
“I watch a bit,” Oscar offered, the understatement of the century. He caught the races when state functions didn’t interfere, knew the big names, the major drama. “Always try to catch the race in Melbourne.”
“Oh yeah?” Lando’s gaze turned assessing, a slight tilt to his head. “You look familiar. Have we met before? In the paddock or something?”
Oscar gave a non-committal shrug, the practiced, polite one. “Maybe. Maybe not. We haven’t had a race in two years.”
“Right. I was there in 2020, but they cancelled it last minute.” Lando grinned, that easy, disarming grin. “You guys were hardcore about lockdown.”
Oscar felt a familiar, defensive bristle—you guys, like Australia was some monolith, like the brutal, necessary decisions hadn’t kept thousands of people alive—but he caught the reaction before it could surface. Swallowed it down. His tone was measured, neutral. “It was important. People died.”
Lando blinked, the grin faltering for a second, caught off guard by the quiet severity.
Oscar immediately softened his expression, steering them back to safer, impersonal ground. “So, you’re in F1. Pretty wild how that last race of the season ended, right? All that controversy?”
Lando’s face lit up again, this time with the passion of someone immersed in the heart of it. “Oh, so you saw that! Yeah, it was insane. Max deserved it, but man, I felt for Lewis. That’s just how championship fights are, though.” He said it with a conviction that felt both youthful and ancient, the belief of someone who was already writing himself into that future narrative. “Someday, that’ll be me.”
Oscar smiled—not just at the confidence, but at the raw, unfiltered way Lando said it. Like stating a simple fact of physics. Like the world would inevitably arrange itself around his talent if he just kept pushing. There was something profoundly unguarded about it.
So Oscar kept asking questions, playing the role of interested casual fan. He apologized first—maybe he only watched the highlight reels—then asked how Lando's season had been. What this year was like for him. Why he thought it would be him someday, and how far off someday actually was.
Lando smiled and drained the rest of his champagne. "Pretty good, all things considered."
"All things considered," Oscar repeated.
"We didn't have... the best car, you know." Lando shifted his weight, gesturing with the empty flute. "The team won a race though. Monza. Good timing, bit of luck—Max and Lewis crashed into each other, and it was a one-two with Daniel."
Oscar brightened. "Daniel Ricciardo! He's our guy. We were so proud of that win."
Lando smiled, nodded. "Yeah. Unforgettable."
Then he kept going, and Oscar just listened. Lando explained how it was McLaren's first win in nearly a decade, how they'd reached a point where it didn't even seem possible anymore. How Daniel started front row and led from the first lap, how Lando was behind Max and Lewis, and then the strategy shifted, and Max's pitstop went wrong, and when Lewis came out of the pits they just—
"—crashed into each other. Right there. Turn one." Lando's hands moved as he talked, sketching the corner in the air. "And suddenly we're first and second."
Oscar nodded, but he wasn't really tracking the details anymore. He was watching the way Lando stood there—loose-limbed, slouching against the bar, face open and animated, completely unselfconscious. Lando inhabited his body without appearing to think about it. He made faces when he talked. His hands moved. He took up space.
Oscar had been trained to be still. Contained. Graceful. His tuxedo felt like a uniform of state. Lando's physical ease was—
Attractive. That was the word.
He seemed real in a way Oscar was rarely allowed to be.
"—so that's how we won the race. Crazy, really crazy." Lando looked at Oscar then, like he'd just realized Oscar had been staring at him. He went a little self-conscious, smile faltering.
"Must've been thrilling," Oscar said quickly. "To win the race."
"Well, I didn't win it."
"Right. Right. You were behind Daniel. One-two for the team." Oscar straightened slightly, aware he'd drifted. "I was listening, I promise."
Lando smiled, nodding like he wasn't fully convinced but wouldn't hold Oscar to it. "I came close in Russia, though."
Oscar leaned forward then—fully aware he was breaking protocol, that his posture was too interested, too intent. "What happened in Russia?"
But just as Lando opened his mouth to answer, an elderly European countess materialized at Oscar's elbow. Hawk-faced, from some old Austrian house. She swept in with the kind of authority that came from centuries of unearned confidence.
"Your Royal Highness."
Oscar straightened immediately, internally cringing as he caught Lando's reaction in his peripheral vision. The countess offered a curtsy so slight it was almost an insult, her eyes sharp with assessment.
"One so rarely sees the Antipodean crown in Monte Carlo."
They fell into the rhythm of it—the high-brow small talk Oscar had been trained for his entire life. She remarked on how Monaco agreed with him, how vital the colonial branches of society could appear. Oscar caught the tone, the implication. He'd been dealing with people like her since he was five.
"The climate is certainly preferable to Vienna in winter, Countess," he said smoothly. "I recall your ballroom, however, is quite impervious to the cold."
She looked surprised. "You have a good memory. You must visit again when your schedule allows. Though I understand your... domestic situation... requires so much of your attention."
Oscar didn't roll his eyes only because he'd been trained not to. She was annoying him. He cut her off with a final remark, delivered with perfect, meaningless politeness. "The attention of one's people is a privilege, not a burden. But you are kind to think of me. Please give my regards to your grandson at Oxford."
As she drifted away on a cloud of heavy perfume, Oscar let out an exhausted exhale. The muscles in his jaw unclenched. He turned back, seeking the ease of the previous moment—
Lando was staring at him, mouth slightly open.
His champagne flute was frozen halfway to his lips. His eyebrows had disappeared into his hairline.
"...Your Royal Highness?"
The words sounded foreign and clumsy in Lando's mouth, like he'd just bitten down on a piece of fancy cutlery.
A bolt of pure, cold panic shot through Oscar’s gut. Idiot. You had one night. One normal night. He saw the recalculations begin behind Lando's expressive eyes—not just oh shit, but a frantic reel of everything he’d just said: the casual teasing, the easy jokes, the flirting. All of it now filtered through the glaring lens of a title. The cool wall of separation wasn't just sliding up; it was crashing down, and Oscar was on the wrong side of it, alone.
"It's—" Oscar started, the word cracking. He broke off, his mind blanking on every piece of etiquette designed for this exact moment. He made a quick, fluttering gesture with his free hand, a desperate, dismissive wave meant to shoo the title away like a swarm of wasps. "It's nothing. A formality. Please." He leaned in a fraction, his voice dropping to a rushed, almost pleading whisper. "Just Oscar is fine. Seriously."
Lando blinked, slowly lowering his glass. He looked from Oscar's face to his still-waving hand, then back again.
The initial shock melted. Replaced by something else, a dawning, delighted comprehension. He'd just seen the mechanism. The shift from person to prince and back again. And he'd been given the backstage pass to ignore it.
A slow, lopsided grin spread across his face, one that reached his eyes and made them crinkle.
"Right. Okay." He paused, letting the new information settle. "Oscar." He said the name deliberately, testing it, and seemed to find it satisfactory. The grin turned playful, a glint of mischief returning. "So... does this mean I have to bow? Because my trainer says my neck mobility is bad enough as it is."
The tension shattered.
Oscar laughed—a real, surprised burst of sound he quickly tried to smother into a cough, his eyes darting around instinctively. "God, no. Please don't. I'd have to write you a formal letter of thanks and it would take my private secretary three weeks."
"Noted. No bowing. Just... normal talking to a prince." Lando nodded, as if filing it under Workplace Safety. "This is a first for me."
"Honestly," Oscar said, the mask gone again, replaced by wry, self-deprecating honesty, "it's a first for me too. The 'normal talking' part."
He tried to play it cool, waving a hand like they could just rewind. "Right. Where were we? Russia? What happened in Russia?"
Lando scoffed. "Nah, mate. Who cares about what happened in Russia and how I was this close"—he pinched his fingers together—"to winning my first ever F1 race. Tell me about you. You're a fucking—" He stopped, eyes widening. "—prince. You're a prince." He cringed immediately, like the swear had escaped on its own.
Oscar laughed, rubbing his face. "Yeah. Member of the Antipodean crown, as Countess Leonore von Amsberg-Tirol just helpfully announced." He leaned in, grin turning conspiratorial. "We just call her the witch, though."
Lando blinked. "I have no idea who she is."
"Most people don't. She just assumes everyone does because her pseudo-Habsburg ancestors used to rule the world."
"Are you... related to her?" Lando asked, then gestured vaguely toward the rest of the room. "Or to Prince Albert?"
Oscar shrugged. "Maybe. There are records somewhere if you really want to trace it, but who cares. Those records are unreliable anyway. They only serve some kind of stupid narrative."
Lando tilted his head, still processing. "But you're a prince... in Australia?"
Oscar looked at him. "You know we're also a monarchy, right?"
"Yeah, well—" Lando hesitated, like he was walking into a trap. "So you've got... a king. Like King Charles. Back in London?"
Oscar's eyes narrowed. "You're British."
"Yeah?"
Oscar exhaled through his nose, choosing his words carefully. "The Australian royal family was established in the beginning twentieth century after a... separation from the British monarchy."
He paused, catching himself—this must sound boring as hell to someone who didn't grow up studying constitutional history—but Lando was still listening, so he kept going.
“Point is, we’re just like any monarchy around the world nowadays. We're just figureheads with no real power. But we’re expected to project a uniquely Aussie image—less formal, more athletic, more accessible.” His tone sharpened slightly. “We’re different than the Windsors.”
“Oh, I can tell,” Lando said, his gaze doing a slow, appreciative sweep that stopped at Oscar’s face. “It’s the jawline, for starters. Looks like it could cut glass. Not a… cousin-marriage special.”
Oscar choked on a surprised laugh, the sound strangled by a rush of heat to his cheeks. “You can’t just— say that.”
“Why not?” Lando’s grin was unrepentant. “I’m not under any constitutional obligations. It’s just an observation. Your whole face is… better. Like, genetically.”
Flustered, Oscar grasped for the simplest, truest deflection. “Well. My great-grandmother was Chinese. So, you know. That probably saved the bloodline.”
Lando’s eyebrows shot up, his teasing expression melting into genuine interest. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Oscar said, the blush warming into something closer to pride. “I’m one-sixteenth Chinese. Not much, but… I like it.” He realized, too late, how earnest he sounded.
Lando’s smile softened. “It’s a good sixteenth. Suits you.”
Oscar tried to look away, tried to summon some kind of deflection, but he was helplessly, visibly blushing. Lando was flirting with him. Openly. In the middle of a gala.
They both turned then, looking out at the grand hall. Prince Albert was still playing host at the front, but the crowd had the loose, migrating feel of a party reaching its natural end. The string quartet shifted into something slower, quieter—a musical cue for departure.
A familiar, subtle pressure began to build at the edges of Oscar’s awareness. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Artturi—his personal aide—no longer bothering with subtlety. The man was standing a clear ten meters away, phone in hand, staring directly at Oscar with the placid, immovable expression of a granite cliff. Message received. Jonathan, his head of security, had moved to the main exit, a silent, broad-shouldered sentinel. The clock was no longer ticking; it was counting down.
A heavy, cold weight settled in Oscar’s chest. His flight to Sydney was at 0700. A brutal 24 hours in the air, landing him directly into a whirlwind of pre-Christmas royal responsibilities: the navy’s charity toy drive, the lighting of the Parliament House tree, a painfully awkward filmed lunch with the Prime Minister’s grandchildren. A scripted, sentimental parade where he would play a version of himself he no longer recognized.
He looked back at Lando, at his easy smile and open face, and felt a desperate, clawing sense of waste. This—the first real conversation, the first genuine laugh he’d had in months—was about to be catalogued as another diplomatic footnote: ‘HRH conversed with a member of the motorsport community.’ It would become a forgettable line in a briefing paper, buried under talk of carbon policy and soft power.
The sheer, stifling inevitability of it all closed around him, not like a sentence, but like a door he hadn't even realized was open was now being gently, firmly shut.
“What’s next for you?” Oscar asked abruptly, tearing his gaze from Artturi’s looming figure. “After… all this?” He gestured vaguely at the dying gala.
Lando shrugged, a flicker of genuine relief crossing his face. “Break. Finally. Been working non-stop since March. Got a ski trip to Verbier lined up with some mates in a few days.”
He’s leaving too. The coincidence felt like a cruel joke. They were two satellites passing in a single, fleeting orbit.
“Right. Of course,” Oscar said, the words tasting like ash. The clock in his head was now deafening. He had minutes, maybe. Think. “So… you’re just… here? In Monaco? Until then?”
“Yeah. Just me and the sim rig for a bit. Glorious nothing.”
The image was achingly appealing. Spontaneous. Free. Everything Oscar’s next week was not. The panic and the longing fused into a single, impulsive spark.
He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping, stripped of all princely pretense. It was just urgency. “I have to be on a plane tomorrow morning. Back to… royal Christmas nonsense.” He waved a hand, dismissing an entire hemisphere of duty. “But it’s…” He checked his watch, a useless gesture. “…it’s not tomorrow yet.”
Lando watched him, his earlier grin softened into something more curious, attentive.
Oscar threw caution, and every lesson he'd had, directly into the Mediterranean. “You live here, right? Would you… could you give me a tour? A real one? Now?”
There was a beat—a silence where Oscar heard the entire fragile idea shatter. He saw the practicalities flash behind Lando’s eyes: the security, the press, the sheer absurdity of it.
But then Lando’s face changed. The curiosity ignited into a bright, daring understanding. He glanced past Oscar, saw Artturi’s stony face, and something in him seemed to decide. A slow, defiant grin spread across his features, wider and more real than any he’d offered all night. It was the grin of someone accepting a very fun, very illegal challenge.
“Yeah,” Lando said, the word full of promise. “Yeah, I can do that. I know just how.”
There was logistics involved. It wasn't a simple nod and a wave. Artturi appeared at Oscar's shoulder, expression carefully neutral but eyes sharp with assessment. Lando's manager, a man with the weary patience of a herder of cats, materialized with similar energy.
Quiet conversations into earpieces, the low murmur of practicalities: routes, timelines, risk assessments. Oscar stood beside Lando, watching the machinery of their lives engage. He kept his posture relaxed, his tone light when Artturi glanced at him for confirmation.
"It's just a drive, Art," he said, the nickname a deliberate softening. "A quick tour. He's a professional driver, for God's sake. Probably the safest option in the principality." He made it sound trivial, a casual detour, not the reckless escape it felt like.
He saw the doubt in Artturi's eyes, the calculation of headlines and protocol breaches, and met it with a flat, steady look that carried the full, unspoken weight of his earlier ultimatum. Try and stop me.
Lando, for his part, showed a picture of easy competence. "We'll stick to the main roads, no stops unless you're behind us," he assured Jonathan, his voice calm and reasonable.
"I know every camera in this town. You'll have a clearer tail on me than you would if he was in a blacked-out limo." He said it with a disarming smile, turning a potential security nightmare into a simple matter of superior local knowledge.
It was a dance of permissions, a negotiation where Oscar leveraged his will and Lando leveraged his credibility. After a few more tense minutes and a final, resigned nod from Artturi, they made it happen.
Twenty minutes later, they were standing in the underground car park and Oscar was staring at a GT3 RS like it had personally offended him. Dark green, low-slung, aggressively not discreet.
"Um," Oscar said.
Lando followed his gaze, then looked back at him, realization dawning. "Oh. Yeah. This is... the car I'm using currently." He paused, then gestured quickly toward the passenger side. "Don't worry about it. Just get in."
Oscar hesitated for half a second—thinking about protocols, about optics, about the sheer, screaming contradiction of a crown prince sliding into this flashy, roaring machine with a man he'd met an hour ago—then opened the door and folded himself into the passenger seat.
Lando slid into the driver's seat like he'd done it a thousand times. Everything about him felt natural—the way he adjusted the mirrors without looking, the way he reversed out of the tight space with one hand on the wheel, relaxed and precise. The engine growled to life, loud enough that Oscar felt it in his chest.
Oscar's security tail was a dark Mercedes SUV, three cars back. Close enough to intervene. Far enough to pretend this was normal.
Lando pulled out of the Grimaldi Forum's underground maze and didn't head for the hills. Instead, he drove slowly along the port. The superyachts glowed like tiered wedding cakes in the dusk, their reflections shimmering on the dark water.
Oscar watched the familiar landmarks of the postcard principality slide by, his mind curiously blank. He realized, with a faint shock, that he had no frame of reference for this. He knew the circuit only as a collection of famous names on a TV screen: the Tunnel, the Chicane, the Swimming Pool, all disconnected shapes.
He didn't know how to ask what it was like to race here. The question felt too vast, too childish. So he stayed quiet, waiting for a cue, feeling the strange, low growl of the engine vibrate through the seat and into his bones.
To Oscar's surprise, Lando drove to the top floor of the Fairmont Hotel's staff-only parking garage. It was grimy, fluorescent-lit, the kind of place that smelled like oil and exhaust. Lando parked in a specific corner bay, killed the engine, and gestured toward the view.
"From here, you could see the chicane," Lando explained at the whole sweeping section laid out below like a model. "And if you stayed quiet, you could hear the tunnel. Not exactly the roar of race weekend, but the echo of it. The ghost of speed and sound."
"I found this spot my first year," Lando said quietly. "No one comes up here after dark."
Oscar stared out at the track, at the city lights spreading out beyond it, and realized Lando had just brought him somewhere private. Somewhere he clearly came when he wanted to be alone.
"What about your race here this year?" Oscar asked. "Where did you finish?"
"Podium, actually." Lando sounded almost surprised by it himself.
"Thought P5 was the best I could manage. Then Charles crashed on his out-lap—his car was too fucked from the crash in qualifying, clearly not race-ready—and Bottas DNF'd. So I made up two places." He shrugged. "Which is the only way you make up places in Monaco, really."
"But you qualified fifth," Oscar said. "That's impressive in Monaco."
Lando glanced at him.
"I would've hit the walls several times before making a full lap," Oscar continued. "Probably. If anyone was letting me drive at all."
Lando's brow furrowed. "Can you drive?"
"Of course I can drive." Oscar said it quickly, almost defensively. "I'm pretty sure I'd be good at it."
Lando waited, sensing there was more.
Oscar exhaled, leaning back against the seat. "In another life, I might be doing this, you know?"
"Doing what?"
"Racing." Oscar's voice went quieter. "I was into RC cars when I was nine. Really into them. Competitive about it. Beat everyone I raced against—full grown adults in hobby shops, kids at state fairs." He smiled faintly at the memory, then it faded. "It wasn't just the cars. It was figuring out how to be faster. How to win. But my family thought the hobby wasn't really... prince-like. Being obsessed with toy cars. So they got me to do cricket and rugby and rowing instead."
"Which you were good at," Lando said, not quite a question.
Oscar nodded, a sharp, almost bitter edge to the motion. "Yeah. I was. I am. I had to be. If I couldn't have the thing I actually wanted, I was damn well going to win at the things they gave me." He paused, the confession hanging in the dark. "At the core of it, I just... I like to win. Racing would've been the ideal path for that. But it was never a choice. It was a fantasy with the batteries taken out."
He let out a short breath. "They still wanted me to be good at riding horses, though. For some reason. Safer, I suppose. More... regal."
Lando was quiet for a moment, watching him. Then he said, "You would've been good."
Oscar looked at him. "You don't know that."
"Yeah, I do." Lando's voice was certain. "You've got the instinct for it. I can tell. That competitive streak—it doesn't just go away. It just finds another track."
Oscar didn't know what to say to that. No one had ever told him that before—that the thing he'd lost without choosing might have been real.
Then there was light from behind them. A black sedan pulled up—an Audi A6 with darkened window tint. Someone stepped out of the driver's seat.
"Jon!" Lando called out, already opening his door. "Thank you for bringing it. Sorry for the last-minute notice."
He introduced Jon as his physio, who'd been pretty much his caretaker the whole season and was nice enough to help him out tonight. Oscar could tell his security team had been briefed—Jonathan barely moved when the car approached.
"So," Lando said, gesturing to the Audi. "We've got to use this car. Just to trick the usual stalkers."
"That's smart," Oscar said. "Do you have to do this often?"
Lando grinned. "Only for someone I wanted to impress."
Jon tossed the keys to Lando. Lando caught them—then immediately threw them to Oscar.
Oscar caught them with the kind of reflex he didn't know he had.
"You drive," Lando said. "I'll give directions."
Oscar's eyes widened. He glanced at Jonathan, who looked like he'd just aged ten years from this decision alone. Behind him, Artturi's expression was carefully, professionally neutral, which meant he was screaming internally.
But Oscar was already moving toward the driver's seat, adrenaline humming under his skin.
"Wouldn't that be exciting?" he murmured, mostly to himself.
Lando slid into the passenger seat, grin widening. "That's the spirit."
Oscar settled behind the wheel, hands finding their positions like muscle memory he'd never been allowed to build. The engine purred to life. In the rearview mirror, he could see Jonathan getting into the Mercedes, resignation written across his face.
“Where to?” Oscar asked, trying to sound casual, like his heart wasn’t hammering against his ribs.
Lando leaned forward, bracing one hand on the dashboard as he scanned the concrete maze. “Okay. Head back down, but not the main exit. Take the service ramp on the left—the one that says Livraisons. It spits you out right at the entry to the tunnel.”
Oscar followed the instructions, easing the car around a corner he wasn’t entirely convinced was legal. The ramps spiraled downward, fluorescent lights streaking across the windshield, until the road opened up beneath the Fairmont Hotel and the city seemed to drop away.
Out of the corner of his eye, Oscar saw Lando shift in his seat. He’d loosened his tie, tugged it free entirely, and was working open the top few buttons of his dress shirt, as if he could finally breathe. The rigid, gala-polished version of him was slipping, replaced by something softer, more real: collar open, shoulders relaxed, gaze fixed on the road ahead like this was where he actually belonged.
Oscar had to look away before it became obvious how much it disarmed him.
The ramp fell away beneath them and the concrete walls closed in. The engine note changed—deeper, louder—and Oscar felt it in his chest before he processed the sound.
“Right here,” Lando said, his voice shifting as they drew closer, settling into something focused, almost reverent. “This is a blind entry. You’re carrying so much speed from Massenet. The wall on the left feels like it’s reaching for you. In the car, your ears pop. The noise…” He made a small, helpless gesture with one hand. “It’s like God screaming into a tin can.”
Oscar’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel without him meaning to. The tunnel mouth swallowed them, light dropping away so suddenly it felt like a blink. The car hummed differently down here, sound ricocheting off concrete, vibrating through the seat into his spine.
“You have to trust the car is going to stick,” Lando went on, glancing at him for a fraction of a second before refocusing on the road, “because you can’t see the exit for a second and a half.”
The space narrowed. Oscar’s pulse crept up into his throat. The headlights tunneled forward, everything else collapsing into a blur of grey walls and streaking lights.
“Keep it steady,” Lando said, relaxed but intent. “This is the only true flat-out section. In the race you’re doing over two-eighty and it’s just orange light and your own heartbeat in your helmet.” His voice dipped, quieter. “It’s the most alone you ever feel.”
They burst back into open air and Oscar sucked in a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. The harbor flashed silver in front of them, too bright after the dark.
“Okay, this is it,” Lando said. “Hardest braking zone on the calendar. You see the sea, and you’ve got about a car’s length to decide your fate.”
Oscar pressed the brake and felt the car pitch forward, the harness biting lightly into his shoulder. His vision narrowed, everything tipping toward the windscreen.
“Brake too late, you’re in the wall. Brake too early, ten people pass you. The g-force tries to pull your eyes out of your head.”
His stomach lifted, a strange, weightless sensation, and he laughed once under his breath, startled by how alive it made him feel.
Now the road smoothed out, sweeping along the waterfront. Lando’s voice fell into an easy rhythm. “Tabac, this left kink, you take it flat, but the wall’s right there. That’s the one that catches you when you’re tired.”
They slipped through it and Oscar felt the car glide, precise and obedient beneath his hands.
Then the Swimming Pool section, right, left, left, right, came at him fast. He followed Lando’s quiet cues, barely thinking, just reacting, knuckles brushing the wheel as the barriers rushed past close enough to feel.
“It’s like a video game,” Lando said softly. “No time to think. The walls are so close you could scrape your knuckles.”
Oscar’s heart was hammering now, a bright, fizzy rush under his ribs. He grinned, unable to help it.
They slowed into the final corner, Rascasse, tight and awkward.
“Easy here,” Lando murmured. “This one’s evil. You have to force it, feel it pivot around you. Get it wrong and you’re staring straight at the wall on the pit straight.”
Oscar coaxed the car through, feeling the weight shift, the rear end twitch and settle.
“But get it right…” Lando said, eyes on the road ahead, “…you get a perfect run. Where it all starts again.”
They rolled onto what should have been the start-finish straight, the city opening out in front of them. Lando turned to look at him.
Oscar’s hands were still buzzing on the wheel, his pulse loud in his ears, like part of him hadn’t quite caught up yet.
"Want to do the whole lap?"
Oscar was grinning ear to ear, adrenaline singing through him, feeling more alive than he had in months.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I do."
It wasn't exactly a hot lap. There was still traffic, pedestrians, scooters and tourists in rental Fiats navigating streets they didn't understand. But it was the same tarmac. The same geometry. And even though this wasn't an F1 car, wasn't even Lando's GT3 RS, just some anonymous sedan with very good darkened windows, Lando’s voice transformed the space.
His narration was quiet, intense, a steady stream of data and sensation that built a ghost car around them.
“You’d be flat from here, the wall right there in your peripheral, just a grey smear… now, hard on the brakes, harder than you think, feel it try to lock, but you catch it… turn-in, crisp, and the g-force is pulling your neck like a hook…”
His words painted the adrenaline, the split-second decisions, the hyper-awareness of temperature and texture and space. The boring reality of tourists and traffic melted away. There was just Lando's voice and the corners and the rhythm of it.
Lando wasn't just giving directions. He was chasing a ghost. The perfect, theoretical lap that existed only in his mind. And for twenty minutes, in the quiet dark of that ordinary car, Oscar got to ride shotgun in the cockpit of his memory.
After a few laps, Oscar's hands had found a confidence he didn't know he had. And Lando noticed.
"You're good," Lando said, and it didn't sound like flattery. "You clearly have the instinct for it, like I said. The way you're taking the optimal line—you know what you're doing."
Oscar smiled, feeling something warm and unfamiliar settle in his chest. "Yeah. McLaren should give me a seat next year."
Lando laughed. "I don't know about that. You going to take Daniel's seat? That's a risky move. The whole nation might turn on you."
"I'm literally their prince."
"Yeah, but didn't they call Daniel a national treasure?" Lando grinned. "I would've been more careful."
They both laughed, the spell breaking but the ease remaining. Oscar loosened his tie, unbuttoned a few buttons at his collar. It felt wrong—reckless, even—but he was too relaxed to care. In the rearview mirror, he could see Jonathan's headlights, steady and resigned.
Oscar's stomach growled again, louder this time.
"Alright," Lando said. "Food. Real food. You up for some pasta?"
"Yeah."
Lando directed them through narrow streets, away from the glittering port, into the older part of Monaco—La Condamine, where the buildings crowded close and the streetlights were warmer. They pulled up in front of a tiny Italian place, barely marked, the kind of spot you'd never find unless someone brought you.
It wasn't a restaurant. Not even a proper dining room. Lando led them around to the back kitchen entrance.
They left their jackets in the car, rolled up their sleeves. Lando greeted the owner—Mama Giulia, he called her, a small woman with iron-gray hair and sharp eyes who looked at Oscar with brief assessment before apparently deciding he was acceptable. She gestured them toward a stainless steel prep table.
"Siediti, siediti," she said, already moving toward the stove.
They sat. Mama Giulia brought them plates of pasta—no menu, no choices, just what she'd made—and poured house red into water glasses. The kitchen smelled like simmering ragù and garlic and something baking. There were no other customers. Just the two of them, and the quiet clatter of Mama Giulia working, and the warmth of good food after a long night.
Oscar took a bite and nearly groaned. "This is—"
"I know," Lando said, grinning. "She feeds me and the engineers sometimes. After bad days. Or good ones."
Oscar looked around—at the worn prep table, the industrial kitchen, the complete absence of anything resembling the world they'd just left. "What do bad days look like? And good ones?"
Lando considered it. "Podium here was a good day. Monza was a good day." He paused. "Russia was... a bad day."
"Right." Oscar leaned forward slightly. "You owe me that story. What happened in Russia?"
Lando exhaled hard, like he'd been holding it in for months. "I got pole. First ever pole for me. McLaren's first since, like, 2012. The pressure to convert it was insane." He picked at his pasta. "I didn't get the best start—Carlos took the lead—but I knew I was the fastest. I reclaimed it a few laps later. I was in control for most of the race."
"That's good, right?"
"It was good. Best feeling I'd ever felt." Lando's voice went quieter. "It was going to be my first win. That race was right after Monza. Daniel had just won, and I guess there was this... entitlement, you know? Like it was my turn. And I would've won it by pure pace, not just luck."
"So what happened?"
"It started to rain."
Oscar waited.
"The whole time, I was just... so protective of the lead. Didn't want to lose track position. Kept delaying the pit stop for intermediates, stubbornly kept the slicks on. Just one more lap, just one more lap." He shook his head. "Then I lost grip. Slid off a couple times. Fell down the order. Finished seventh instead of winning."
The silence stretched between them.
"I took responsibility for it," Lando added. "Told the engineers it was my fault. No one else's."
Oscar studied him. "Are you close with them? The engineers?"
"Yeah. It's... kinda weird, actually." Lando set down his fork. "Most of them are full-grown adults. People with families and mortgages and kids at school. They travel the world with me. A lot of them see me more than they see their own families."
He was quiet for a few beats.
"It's a lot of pressure," he said finally.
Oscar just sat there, listening.
"It's almost unfair," Lando continued, words coming faster now. "This massive operation—nearly a thousand people at the factory, a couple dozen trackside. Engineers, pit crews. And then there's me at the center of it. Yeah, there's Zak and Andreas, but they also want me to stand up in front of everyone. Give speeches. Be... something."
"They expect leadership too," Oscar said quietly.
Lando nodded. "My entire life, I was trained to be fast. And I am fast. I've learned everything else—how to give clear technical feedback, how to handle media, how to be charming to sponsors and fans." He laughed, but it was hollow. "But nobody warned me how much 'inspiring people to move forward' was also part of the job."
He looked up at Oscar then, something raw in his eyes.
"I'm just too young for this shit, you know?"
Oscar smiled—not with pity, but with a hard-won recognition.
"Yeah," Oscar said softly. "I know."
Lando held his gaze, and Oscar watched the realization dawn. My pressure is a house; his must be a continent. Lando’s expression shifted into something almost apologetic. "Sorry," he said, the word too quick, flattening the shared feeling into a comparison. "You must have it much worse."
Oscar hated that. The instinct to compare, to rank their cages, when the whole point had been the simple, shocking relief of finding someone who understood the weight of the lock.
Oscar’s smile stiffened. He wanted to explain that it wasn't a competition, that Lando’s failure in Russia was a kind of anguish Oscar would never know. That his own gilded trap offered no such clear metrics for success or failure, only a permanent, nebulous state of ‘duty’.
But explaining that would ruin this beautiful, fragile thing they’d built tonight and turning it into another heavy conversation.
So he deflected. He reached for the simplest, safest, and most useless truth. "I don't know. It's just... different."
"Yeah, obviously different," Lando said quickly. He leaned back, a subtle retreat. "I mean, I'm only dealing with a team. You're dealing with... an entire nation."
There, Oscar thought, the way he was always being reduced into a symbol and not a person who'd just listened and engaged and was interested in Lando's own story.
Oscar stood up abruptly, his chair scraping loudly against the stone floor. "Let's go somewhere else," he said, his voice taut. He gestured vaguely toward the night. "The Rock, or Jardins Saint-Martin. Anywhere. I need some air."
Lando looked up at him, and something flickered across his face—hurt, maybe, or confusion. He'd opened himself up, been vulnerable, and Oscar had just... shut down.
Then he exhaled, a slow, controlled breath. He looked down at his hands on the table, then back up, his expression smoothing into something polite and distant. It took him two deliberate seconds. "Right," he said, his voice carefully neutral. "I've got a better idea."
Oscar waited.
"There's a place near Cap-d'Ail," Lando continued, standing slowly. "Empty space behind a hotel. It's ugly by day, but at night it has the purest, darkest view of the sea. I think it got the best view of Monaco."
Oscar nodded. He didn't care if it was an empty parking lot or a garbage dump. He just wanted to go somewhere with him.
Lando paid—waving off Oscar's attempt to contribute—and they headed back to the car. But when they reached it, Artturi and Jonathan were waiting. The Mercedes SUV was parked directly behind Lando’s Audi, close enough that there was no pretending it was an accident.
Jonathan leaned against the hood, arms crossed—not aggressive, just utterly immovable. Artturi stood a step behind him, hands folded, his expression already arranged into something politely disappointed.
Oscar felt his shoulders go tight.
"Sir," Jonathan said evenly, straightening as they approached. "We need to re-establish the security bubble. For your safety. And Mr. Norris's."
Oscar didn't break stride. "We're not done yet. Lando was going to show me—"
"It's late," Artturi cut in gently, stepping forward. His tone was mild, almost sympathetic, which somehow made it worse. "And as Prince Albert's personal guest this evening, there are... optics to consider. Being unaccounted for, for an extended period of time—"
Oscar stopped.
He turned to face Artturi fully, chin lifting just a fraction—not defiant, not deferential. Something in between.
"I'm not unaccounted for," he said. "You're standing right here."
Artturi smiled thinly. "You're not at the Forum. Or your hotel."
"I am with a Formula One driver who is publicly known to be in Monaco," Oscar replied, his voice steady, educated, maddeningly reasonable. "In a car that has been vetted. With two members of my security detail following behind us. There is no realistic scenario in which I have vanished."
Jonathan opened his mouth, but Oscar kept going.
"This is not a state visit. It is not an official engagement. It is a charity gala hosted by a foreign royal family. I have fulfilled every obligation required of me tonight. I spoke to Prince Albert. I shook hands. I smiled for cameras. I did the environmental talking points." A beat. "I am allowed to go for a drive."
Artturi's expression tightened. "Sir, this is not about permission. It is about risk."
"Everything is risk," Oscar shot back, too quickly—then he inhaled, reining it in. "What you mean is control. And I am telling you, very clearly, that I am choosing this."
Silence stretched. The alley hummed softly around them.
Jonathan glanced at Artturi. Artturi hesitated—just for a second—and Oscar saw it: the calculation, the weighing of headlines and logistics and the look on a twenty-year-old's face when he'd finally decided to push.
Oscar took a step closer, lowering his voice.
"I am not a minor," he said. "I am not incapacitated. I am not breaching any laws or agreements. And I am not going to be escorted back to a hotel room because someone is nervous about what the Grimaldis would think about how I'm using my free time."
Another beat.
"Now," Oscar added, softer but no less firm, "you can either follow us, like you're supposed to, or you can stand here and explain to Mark tomorrow morning why you made this more difficult than it needed to be."
The two men exchanged a look. Then Artturi nodded, once. "Very well, sir."
They retreated to the Mercedes, moved it out of the way without another word.
Oscar turned back and realized Lando had been watching him the whole time. Not with the easy amusement from before, but with a focused, unnerving stillness. He was taking Oscar apart with his eyes, reassembling him as something else: not the quick-witted, frustrated guy from the gala, but the product of all that stifling protocol.
“Sorry,” Oscar muttered, rubbing the back of his neck, suddenly looking every bit twenty. The confident prince who’d faced down his security was gone, replaced by a kid who’d just made a scene. “They’re… a lot.”
He forced a smile, trying to play it off—rolling his eyes like this was just normal inconvenience, the kind of thing anyone their age dealt with. See? I’m normal. This is normal bullshit.
Lando nodded slowly. "Yeah. Sure."
Oscar’s gut twisted. He thinks I’m pathetic. A spoiled prince throwing a tantrum about his bodyguards. Of course he did. What was Lando’s biggest problem tonight? A boring gala. His whole life was built on merit and speed, not archaic birthright. He’d never had to negotiate for basic freedom with men paid to treat him like a volatile asset. He couldn’t possibly understand.
The silence thickened as they walked to the car, the earlier ease replaced by a heavy, awkward chill. Oscar reached for the driver’s side door, a feeble attempt to reclaim some control, to prove he wasn’t completely helpless.
Lando’s hand shot out, not touching him, but blocking the path. "I'll drive," he said. His tone wasn't hostile, but it was final. A professional assessing risk. "There are some areas that aren't well-lit. Better if I do it."
It was logical, sensible and it still felt like a demotion. Oscar just nodded and slid into the passenger seat.
In the car, the silence felt different than before. Heavier. Oscar stared out the window as they wound through narrow streets toward Cap-d'Ail, trying to think of something to say that would bring back the ease from earlier.
"What's your winter routine like?" he asked finally, internally cringing at how pathetic the question sounded. "When you're on a break. Do you actually let yourself stop thinking about racing? Is it something you can turn off?"
Lando glanced at him, then back at the road. "Not really. I still train, on a lighter schedule, but it's there. Keep the neck strong, the reflexes sharp." He paused. "I try to do normal stuff too. See friends. Play games. Pretend I'm not thinking about next season."
"But you are."
"Yeah." Lando smiled, but it was smaller than before. "Always."
Oscar nodded, filing that away. Lando was answering with the kind of practiced charm he probably used in media sessions—polite, engaged, but not there. Not the way he'd been in Mama Giulia's kitchen.
The realization that he'd ruined it was a treacherous thing. The loop started in his head: I just ruined the night. Lando clearly hates me now. I still don't want this to be over but he's probably just humoring me, being polite because I'm a prince and he has to be.
Lando made the turn from the main coast road onto an unmarked, crumbling asphalt lane that dipped behind a grove of scraggly, salt-pruned Aleppo pines.
Oscar glanced in the side mirror. Jonathan and Artturi were still following, headlights steady in the darkness.
It's their fault, Oscar thought bitterly. Lando went into media mode because he saw how bad it was. He probably thinks I'm a spoiled brat who complains a lot.
They passed a municipal works depot—closed and dark—and followed the lane until it ended at a chain-link fence with a broken gate left permanently ajar.
They got out of the car quietly.
It was near midnight. Almost silent. The wind blew at them, bitterly cold. The roar of the casino district was a distant, muffled hum, like hearing a party from the bottom of a well. Oscar could hear the wind in the pines, the crash of the Mediterranean on the rocks far below, and nothing else.
Oscar followed Lando through the gate and onto a flat, expansive concrete pad, maybe the size of two tennis courts. It looked like a service and turnaround area for heavy trucks accessing some now-defunct coastal maintenance path. Stained concrete, weeds pushing through cracks, the smell of diesel and pine resin. Faded yellow parking markings. A lonely, overflowing industrial bin.
During the day, Oscar guessed, it would look ugly.
But at night, it was something else entirely.
The pad was perched on a cliff edge, hidden from the road above and the mansions below by its strategic depression and the tree line. The vista was unobstructed. Panoramic. Perfectly framed.
All of Monaco laid out like a glowing circuit board.
Lando walked to the edge, stopped a few feet from where the concrete dropped away into darkness. Oscar followed, standing beside him.
Lando pointed. "There. The serpentine rise of the Rock—you can see the Prince's Palace. And the towers of Monte Carlo. Fontvieille port down there." His hand traced the air. "And the entire Grand Prix circuit, traced in streetlights. The pit straight. The curve around the pool. Tunnel entrance."
Oscar stared, following the lines Lando was drawing.
"It's the only spot," Lando said quietly, "where you can see the entire principality at once. Without being in it."
He was quiet for a moment, then continued. "I moved here because everyone's moving here. It just made sense for a driver to be based in Monaco. But I never really understood the place."
Oscar stayed quiet.
"I mean, I'm only here for maybe ninety nights a year," Lando continued. "I never have to understand it. Never wanted to pretend that I did." He paused. "But there are always ways you learn, you know?"
He gestured vaguely back toward the city. "The secret parking lot. Mama Giulia. This place. I learned about them slowly. From the engineers, from people I trust who know what I need. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere I can have a private screaming meltdown. Somewhere comforting."
Oscar could hear something shifting in Lando's voice—like he was working toward something he hadn't quite figured out yet.
"I've been to a lot of places around the world," Lando said slowly, like he was just realizing it as he spoke. "And some places... they open up easily. The corners, the cafés, the hidden spots. And some don't." He turned to look at Oscar. "Monaco opened up easily. That's how I knew about these places."
He stopped, then added quietly, "I made the mistake of assuming you were like Monaco."
"Lando, I didn't mean—"
"No, I'm sorry." Lando cut him off, shaking his head. "I overstepped. We've known each other for, what, four hours? Maybe less. You don't owe me anything."
"That's not—" Oscar stopped, frustration tightening his chest. "That's not what I meant."
Lando waited.
Oscar exhaled hard, vapor clouding in the cold air. "I liked that I could be like a real person with you." The words came out rougher than he intended. "It's been such a long time since I got to be like that with anyone. My entire life, maybe." He forced himself to look at Lando. "I showed you the real version of myself tonight. And I enjoyed my time with you. I don't want to lose that."
"But?" Lando asked quietly.
"But we're different."
Lando's expression shifted, something guarded sliding back into place.
"I deeply respect you as an F1 driver," Oscar said quickly. "The commitment you've put into your career. But what I have..." He took a very deep breath, felt the cold air fill his lungs, then exhaled hard. "What I have is something I didn't choose. And it'll stick with me for the rest of my life."
Lando stayed quiet, watching him.
"We're not in some pain Olympics," Oscar continued. "I know that. And I'd hate it if that's how we defined our connection—just two people comparing who's had it worse." He met Lando's eyes. "I'd like to know you as more than just the person who's gone through the pressure of your sport. And maybe you could know me as... just Oscar."
Lando looked at him then, really looked at him, and Oscar saw the moment something clicked. The realization that he'd gotten it wrong. That Oscar wasn't some unreadable robot who didn't care—he just didn't know how to open the right doors. Not yet.
And Oscar realized, with a flash of relief that made his chest ache, that Lando didn't hate him for being a spoiled brat. He'd thought Oscar was closed. Unreachable. Which was somehow worse, and also somehow fixable.
"Maybe one day," Oscar said, his voice quieter now, stripped bare by the wind and the darkness, "I can tell you what it's really like."
He looked out at the glittering principality, a perfect diorama of a life that wasn't his.
"What it's like being the eldest and only son. The heir." He let the title hang, ugly and heavy. "How your parents' very public, very messy divorce doesn't just split a family, it splits your identity. And you're the piece everyone expects to glue it back together in front of the cameras."
He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. "The way my younger sisters can laugh it off, make TikToks about the 'weird royal cousin', and it's charming. If I try, it's a constitutional crisis. I have to absorb it. All the pressure from the press, the public, the politicians... it funnels to me. I'm the shock absorber for the whole bloody institution."
He glanced at Lando, his expression bleak. "We try to stay out of politics, but politics always finds us anyway. There's another referendum coming. About a year from now. A vote on whether people even want us anymore. And I'll have to stand there, smiling, neutral, while the entire country debates my family's right to exist."
The wind picked up, a blade of cold cutting through his dress shirt, and Oscar shivered. It felt like the truth was physically chilling him.
"But tonight..." He stopped, his voice cracking on the words. He forced himself to meet Lando's eyes, to make the plea tangible. "But can you just—for one night—help me forget about all of that? Can I just be Oscar? Not the heir, not the shock absorber, not the referendum boy. Just... me."
It came out quieter than he meant. Almost pleading.
Lando didn't say anything right away. He just looked at Oscar—at the way he was standing there, shoulders tight against the cold, asking for something he clearly didn't know how to ask for.
Then Lando nodded. "Yeah. Okay."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." Lando's voice was softer now, the careful distance gone. "Just Oscar. I can do that."
The permission hung between them, fragile and immense. Oscar felt something unlock in his chest, a tension he’d carried for hours—maybe for years—dissolving into the cold air. He let out a shaky breath, a white cloud that vanished between them.
He didn’t know who moved first. Later, he would think they both did, drawn by the same gravitational pull that had been tugging at them since they’d exchanged glances across a room full of billionaires.
One moment, they were standing a foot apart. The next, Oscar’s hand was rising, almost of its own volition, his fingers brushing the chilled line of Lando’s jaw. It was a question.
Lando answered.
He closed the distance, his hands coming up—one splaying flat against the small of Oscar’s back, pulling him in, the other sliding up to cradle the nape of his neck. His lips met Oscar’s, and they were cold from the wind, a shocking contrast to the warm breath that gasped between them.
Oscar froze for a heartbeat, stunned by the reality of it—the scent of Lando’s cologne and night air, the faint scratch of stubble, the solid warmth of the body now pressed against his. Then the surprise dissolved, replaced by a rushing, profound rightness. He melted into the kiss, into the hands holding him as if he were something precious and not a political problem.
His own hands found their place—first gripping Lando’s shoulders, feeling the strong, familiar shape of them through his shirt, then sliding up, fingers tangling in the soft, unruly curls at the base of his neck. Lando made a soft, approving sound against his mouth, and the kiss deepened.
It wasn't careful. It wasn't tentative. It was hungry and grateful, a desperate, wordless conversation. Yes. This. You.
They moved together like they had rehearsed it in a thousand daydreams, like this was the inevitable conclusion from the moment their eyes had met. The chaotic, pressurized worlds they’d just been dissecting—the referendums, the lost wins, the aides and the expectations—fell away into the silent, dark expanse around them. There was only the concrete under their feet, the wind in the pines, and the warm, alive point of contact where they were, finally, just Oscar and just Lando.