Work Text:
EMOTIONS
*Oscar*
This normality thing is a mess.
When I realized I'd gotten close to the famous 'normality' I'd been searching for for years, I was happy. But now that I have to deal with it on the practical side, I realize it's not that easy, it's not a snap of the fingers.
You don't change your way of being and living easily, as if nothing had happened. Change is messy, it's difficult, and it takes time. Time, mental strength and concentration—all things I don't have right now.
Because Mark is right about one thing.
I'm a contender for the world title. It's true that I've lost a lot of points and Max is coming like a shark from behind, but it's also true that I'm still in the race. We have three Grands Prix left and I could still make it and recover, if I don't make any more mistakes.
But to have the kind of performance I need, I have to return to my original state, when I acted like a robot and no pressure or emotion could dull my spirit.
I was happy as I realized I was capable of experiencing emotions and feelings like everyone else, that Lando had "cured" me. I was happy because I had what I had always sought and hoped to find.
But realizing you've found something you wanted is one thing, living with it is another.
It's not easy.
It's not enough to say, 'OK, now I feel emotions and I'm happy, I don't want to go back to being the emotionless, unloving person I was before,' but I'm not in an easy place in my life. Experimenting with my own life right now isn't the best thing.
I feel like I'm very close to making one mistake after another, both in F1 and with Lando, and those are two things I don't want to make mistakes about. But I can't be clear-headed with either of them.
After Brazil we got closer again. I did it quietly, as is my style. Without making declarations or speeches, and Lando, who knows me very well and knows how to deal with me, immediately understood with a look and a handshake. His eyes, as always so communicative, told me, 'OK, I understand, I accept. Let's do it the way you want, without talking about it.' I was fine, but during the week off from F1, when he and I got back together like nothing, it was beautiful.
Too beautiful.
Intoxicating.
I threw myself at us and I missed everything so much. Him, the feeling it give me being together, every touch, everything.
I was intoxicated, even drunk, I couldn't do without him, now that I had found him again, and when I had to go back to thinking about F1 and do a couple of simulator sessions with my team, my head was full of him. I missed him.
I missed Lando, being with him, his laugh, his warmth.
I couldn't think of anything but him, I couldn't concentrate.
And it's now, right at the end of training, that I realize it's not okay.
The normality I want so much is okay, but not now. This isn't the right time.
I have to be pragmatic and objective.
Lando is important, as are my feelings and emotions, but so is Formula 1. As long as I still have a shred of a chance of winning the world championship, I have to focus on that.
I owe it to myself. If I didn't, I'd regret it, I'd end up hating Lando.
I'd go from one extreme to the other.
I have to be honest with myself.
If I didn't do everything I could to try to win this world championship, regardless of how good Lando and Max are and how deserving they are, I wouldn't forgive myself. Not me, nor him.
So I don't like what I'm about to do at all, but I have to do it.
I'll live this new aspect of myself after all this is over; I'll have two months to get used to it and learn to juggle between emotions and feelings and coexist with the love that intertwines with work, like normal people do. I don't know how they do it, but I see them and it seems easy, but for me it's not at all.
I see Lando managing to live with his feelings for me and overcome his enormous personal problems with ADHD, not to mention how he manages the constant, powerful emotions that bombard him, throwing him into a thousand different emotional states. He goes from extreme happiness to depression, then to anger, then to sadness and then back to joy.
It's a constant roller coaster, but over the course of a year he's succeeded to manage it and live with it until he's back to driving well with his crystal-clear talent.
I admire him as well as love him. So I have to be inspired by him to do the same and overcome my enormous personal obstacles, but not now.
Normal people can't understand what it means for someone who has always lived on this side of a protective wall that prevented them from experiencing emotions and letting them overwhelm them.
I know I feel them, but I've always blocked them so as not to let them destabilize me.
Emotions destabilize those who aren't capable of managing them and I've never been able to. I've protected myself from them and now I can't pretend to simply experience them fully as if they were nothing. Not when I have something equally important to do that doesn't go hand in hand with emotions.
I think will Lando understands, because he truly loves me and I know it, because he's an extremely honest and direct person. You can see it when he feels something, you understand it immediately.
So I know he'll understand, but I also know he'll suffer and despite this, he'll accept it because he loves me. I just hope this doesn't put him off F1. I'll try to explain myself as best I can, so he understands that I'm not leaving him, but I just need to isolate myself for the three remaining races. I'll tell him that I'm absolutely convinced about us and that we'll stay together.
If there's anyone in the world who can understand me, this strange state of mind of mine, this abstruse request, it's Lando.
I couldn't be luckier to have him in my life.
*Lando*
I can see it in his face instantly.
As soon as he walks in the house, I know he has to talk to me and that it won't be something I'm going to like.
My heart immediately starts pounding, galloping in my throat and it feels like the beginnings of a heart attack.
Why do I always have to exaggerate when I feel things? Can't I resize my fucking emotions?
But the beauty of living everything to the fullest without half measures, is that you're used to it and every time a powerful emotion hits you, you don't get killed because, in reality, you're used to that too.
I instantly tense up and remain attentive, moving slowly around the house, as if there were a spell preventing my movements.
I watch him wander around my living room, he’s uncertainly and thoughtfully, serious. He's incapable of lying to me or hiding things from me.
Oscar sighs and finally raises his eyes to mine apologetically and I don't know why, but I know what it is. Oscar finally collapses tiredly on my couch, but it's mental and emotional tiredness, not physical.
He clasps his hands in his lap and sits rigidly. He rubs his lips and looks at me, waiting for me to sit down and, perhaps, to find the right words so I can understand.
Is he leaving me?
It seemed okay between us.
When we shook hands in Brazil, his face was full of sweetness and apology, I understood and didn't investigate. I knew he didn't want to, so I simply let him back in the way that was most comfortable for him.
The week passed beautifully together. I missed him, his calm, his sweetness, his frankness, his ruthless directness, but he was different.
I sensed a change in him that he didn't want to talk about, but I could see it. He was more relaxed with me, he let himself go more freely with his emotions, the sweet ones, the ones full of love and passion.
We made love passionately and he let himself be taken in, as if he needed to experience everything I could convey to him, as if he also needed to relax and hold back everything I could give him, without having to always be the one managing and deciding everything.
He really let himself go to me.
It wasn't a lie; if something were wrong, I would have sensed it there.
- I’m not leaving you. - as is his style, he gets straight to the point and does so with extreme clarity, to prevent me from misinterpreting and rushing off and not understanding anything anymore.
I breathe a sigh of relief. If he tells me that, I believe; he's not lying, he doesn't know how to do it.
I sit on the couch with him, at the other end, as if terrified of entering too much into his world.
Oscar turns three-quarters toward me and continues.
- But I need to isolate myself for these last three races. - I like this one less. I bite my lip and clench my jaw and my fists, one on the back of the couch and the other on my knee.
He says it seemingly matter-of-factly, as if he feels nothing, but I know that behind this tension, this wall he's building between us, there's only an attempt to explain himself clearly, because he wants me to understand. And I understand. Because I know exactly what Oscar is like.
He's delicate and fragile and protects himself behind inaccessible walls and no one knows what he's really like. Only me. Everyone thinks he's cold and insensitive and unloving, but I know that's not the case. He's just fragile and scared of the world. A world he's learned to protect himself from by building that wall.
But now he's torn it down, at least with me.
- If I didn't try everything I could to win the world championship while it's still within my reach, I'd regret it for the rest of my life and I might even end up ruining what I feel for you.
He explains it well, he explains it incredibly well.
I breathe. I take a deep breath.
My heart is racing like crazy and my head is pounding and I hear ringing in my ears, which I think indicate my blood pressure has skyrocketed.
Calm down. What do you do in these situations? Should I drink water? Take a cold shower? What the fuck do you do?
Again my ADHD.
Stop Lando and back here in present.
I remain still planted here next to him, my eyes wide and burning. He’s definitely seeing what I'm feeling: discomfort. Discomfort and pain.
Don't react like a child, Lando. You're not one anymore.
Be an adult. You're doing a great job this year to grow and live with your emotions. This is one of those moments where you have to apply what you're learning.
You know why he does this. You know.
- You have to do what's right for yourself.
When I hear my own voice say this, I'm amazed. I do it with difficulty, low and with effort. Then I feel that if I continued to speak, my voice would tremble and I'd burst into tears, so I shut up and he, looking into my eyes, understands.
He understands that I understand and that I want to support him because he needs it, but he also understands that it hurts; it's just that I'm doing the right thing. Or at least I'm trying.
So Oscar closes the distance between us, takes my hands, joins them in his and kisses them.
As soon as he makes this gesture, the tension that was killing me evaporates and I collapse in his hands.
At the exact same moment, tears stream down my cheeks.
Oh fuck, you really are a child, Lando!
You shouldn't have lived everything you feel to the fullest like you always do!
You can filter something out, right?
- I don't want to leave you. I need you in my life, and what I feel for you is so strong I couldn't erase or suppress it. But it's so strong that I can't stay clear when I'm racing anymore. When I'm in the car or on the simulator or with the team, I can't focus on that, I can't think clearly, I can't figure out what I have to do. I only think about you, wanting to see you again right away.
His voice trembles, but to continue he increases in intensity and tone.
- I need to distance myself emotionally from you, but now. Only now. As soon as the World Championship is over, however it ends, we'll be back together exactly as we were, I swear. Nothing will change between us. I couldn't do without you.
Oscar has never talked so much and has never been so thorough. He tends to be constipated with words and I often have to interpret him. But now he doesn't stop talking; it's a torrent of emotions, he speaks with intensity, anxiety and fear. Fear that I'll react badly and leave him.
Or that I don’t understand.
But I understand. I understand perfectly. I understand too much. Because I love you, so I understand.
I nod, sniffling and wipe the tears from my face with the sleeve of my sweatshirt.
Oscar smiles sweetly at this childish gesture.
- Okay, - I say with difficulty. My voice is still shaking, I sigh deeply and then I start again: - and when will we start racing again next year? Will it be like this again? I need to know, Osc, because if I have to prepare myself for these ups and downs, I have to ask for help, because I don't know how can do it alo... - but Oscar lets go of my hands to cup my face, he stops me and he's very determined and calm.
- No, it won't always be like this, I don't want it to always be like this, I think I'd go crazy if I did, I couldn't stand it myself. It's just that now I... I've suddenly changed, but I can't live with this change now, I need time. Time I don't have right now. Right now I have to focus on the World Cup, then I'll think about...
Now it’s me that I don't let him finish his sentence, because I throw myself on his mouth, covering it with mine.
I press myself and stay still like that, in a deep kiss that takes his breath away.
Oscar stops in surprise and immediately softens, takes my lips between his and sucks them softly. His warmth relaxes me. Some things you just can't fake, especially him.
He truly loves me.
It's strange what he said; it seems like an excuse to leave me without saying it clearly, but I know it's not like that. He's different from everyone else and that's what made me fall so head over heels for him.
I love him just the way he is, but if he were to learn to live with his emotions, I'd be happy for him because they're beautiful; even though I'm trying to learn to manage them so they don't devour me.
We're so different, yet so similar in the kinds of problems we have and try to overcome.
It's so incredible.
We couldn't help but end up together.
- Do you promise you're not leaving me? - I ask anxiously, even pleadingly, I think.
Oscar smiles sweetly and nods, keeping his eyes closed. After a while, he opens and we meet in this toxic closeness, forehead to forehead, our breaths mingling.
- I promise.
His are so expressive now. So much.
- I don't know how I'll handle this, but I'll get through it. I'll focus only on the three remaining races, but on December 7th, whatever it ends I want you by my side. I'll race to reach both you and the world championship.
As I say this without having thought about it before, I feel better. I realize I've instinctively found the best solution for me and I think Oscar understands it immediately, because he smiles brightly.
He nods.
- You'll see, you'll do great.
It's obvious he hopes to win the world championship. So he's not wishing me to win it. He's just wishing me to race well, to my fullest, without regrets.
And that's what I intend to do.
If I've learned anything this year, it's that I can overcome my obstacles and this will be just one of them.
- You too. - I say meaning the exact same thing.
We understand each other instantly, for the umpteenth time, without needing to explain ourselves further.
You're precious, Oscar.
It's thanks to you that this year I've tried to improve my flaws and overcome my emotional and mental obstacles. Inspired by you and by what you were taking away from me.
I'm getting personal results that are spilling over into my professional life that I never, ever thought I could achieve, convinced that my ADHD would prevent me from doing certain things for life.
Instead, you've inspired and pushed me with your very existence and presence at my side.
I hope to give you at least a little of what you've given me, so precious and special.
I kiss him again, this time with less desperation. It's a sad kiss but sweeter, I try to savor it and remember it.
- The next kiss will be Sunday, December 7th in Abu Dhabi. - I say this to clarify once again.
Oscar smiles sweetly and nods.
- I promise.
I will race with this dual goal.
The world championship and him. And I will win both. Absolutely.