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The worst part, Lando thought, was not even the admission itself.
It should have been. It probably should have been enough on its own to sour the whole evening beyond repair; that casual, almost laughing confession dropped into the room like it was harmless.
Like it was funny, or that it was a prank which had simply gone a bit too far.
Because Lando hates it.
Everyone knows Lando hates it.
That was the whole point.
And somehow that only made it land worse, hearing it repeated back in front of people, hearing Zak say he’d told MBS to touch his hair at the FIA Awards because Lando hated it, like that explained anything. Like that made it light.
Like intent mattered more than the fact of it.
Lando could still hear the reaction from the room. The noise, the awkwardness, the ripple of laughter that didn’t quite know whether to keep going or stop. He could still feel the awful heat that had crawled over his skin the moment it had been said out loud, because then it wasn’t just a memory anymore. It wasn’t just some grim, private moment he could grit his teeth through and bury.
Now it was public.
Now it was a story.
And the worst, worst part was that Zak had looked genuinely apologetic. Said he felt really bad. Probably thinking he hadn’t expected it to be so rough, or for MBS to actually grab at him the way he had.
As if the degree of it changed the fact that it had happened at all.
As if the cruelty only counted because it had been forceful enough to look ugly.
Lando had smiled through the rest of the event because he knew how, because years in Formula One taught him that some humiliations had to be carried with a straight back and a decent joke and a face that gave away as little as possible.
But by the time it was over, his jaw ached from holding it all in.
He barely remembered getting away from everyone. He hardly registered the corridors or the voices or the buzz of people still coming down from the event. All he knew was that he needed out, needed quiet, needed somewhere that didn’t still feel full of eyes.
He found Oscar in the little borrowed space they’d silently agreed on earlier, tucked away from the main flow of people - a private room off one of the back corridors, dimly lit and quiet except for the faint muffled thrum of the venue beyond the walls.
Oscar looked up the moment Lando came in.
He didn’t ask anything straight away. Just took one look at his face and stood up.
That nearly undid him.
Lando shut the door behind himself harder than he meant to. “It’s just-” he started, then stopped and dragged a hand through his hair, immediately regretting it. “It’s just so weird.”
Oscar stayed still, letting the omega come to him in his own time.
“He said it like it was funny,” Lando said, voice sharpening. “Like, ‘oh yeah, I told him to touch your hair because you hate it’. Brilliant. Great, thanks, mate.” He laughed once, ugly and humourless. “And now everyone knows. Even more than they already did. Everyone’s going to make it into a thing.”
Oscar’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t interrupt. Didn’t try to soften it too early.
That helped.
Lando paced once across the room, then back again. “And I know he said he felt bad, I know that, but that almost makes it more irritating, because why are you saying sorry after the fact when you literally set it up? Why is that meant to make me feel better?”
“It doesn’t,” Oscar said quietly.
Lando stopped.
The simple certainty in it made something tight in his chest shift, just slightly.
“No,” Oscar repeated, softer. “It doesn’t make it better.”
Lando swallowed. His anger was still there, hot and fizzing, but underneath it was that other feeling - rawer, harder to admit.
Embarrassment. Violation. That horrible skittish discomfort left over when someone had put their hands on you in a way you hadn’t wanted and the world had decided it was all just a moment.
“He grabbed it so hard,” Lando said, voice suddenly lower. “I still remember it. I can still feel it.”
Oscar took a step closer, slow enough to give him room to pull away if he wanted.
Lando didn’t.
“He knows I hate it,” Lando said. “Everyone knows I hate it- it just- it pisses me off, Osc.”
“I know.”
Lando looked at him then, really looked at him, and found nothing in Oscar’s face except attentiveness. No judgement, or any push to make light of it; no attempt to spin it into something easier to swallow.
Just Oscar, waiting.
That was somehow worse for Lando’s composure than if he’d been teased or reassured too quickly. He could feel the rant burning itself out, leaving him wrung thin and shaky around the edges.
“I’m just…” He exhaled hard through his nose. “I’m so annoyed. And it’s stupid because it’s hair, it’s just hair, but-”
“It isn’t stupid.”
Lando stopped talking.
Oscar had come close enough now that there was barely a foot between them. He lifted one hand carefully, slowly, telegraphing the movement the way he always did when Lando was wound tight.
When his fingertips touched Lando’s cheek, the contact was so gentle it barely felt like anything at first. Just warmth, permission.
Lando’s breath caught.
Oscar’s thumb brushed once beneath his cheekbone. “It’s not stupid.”
And because Oscar said it like that - steady, quiet, like a fact instead of comfort - Lando felt some of the fight go out of him all at once.
He tipped, just a little, leaning into the touch before he could stop himself.
Oscar’s hand stayed where it was, grounding him. After a moment, his fingers slid from Lando’s cheek to the side of his neck, light and soothing, resting where his pulse fluttered too fast beneath the skin.
Lando closed his eyes.
There was always something a little unfair about Oscar when he got like this - so calm, so deliberate, so instinctively good at finding the exact point where Lando was frayed and easing the tension from it. He didn’t crowd, didn’t demand. He simply made himself available like something warm and solid to lean against.
Lando took one half-step forward.
Oscar accepted it without comment.
His thumb stroked slowly along the side of Lando’s neck, and Lando felt himself soften with humiliating ease, all that sharp anger turning suddenly brittle around the edges. He let his forehead tip briefly toward Oscar’s shoulder, not fully there yet, but close.
“There you are,” Oscar murmured. “My sweet omega.”
Lando made a small sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t been so tired.
“‘m still angry,” he muttered.
“I know.”
Oscar’s other hand rose then, pausing just beside Lando’s hairline in silent question.
Lando opened his eyes and looked at him.
This, with Oscar, had always been different.
Not just because Oscar was careful, or just because he knew. It was different because Oscar never touched without listening first, never took for granted that affection and access were the same thing. Even now, even after all this time, he waited.
Lando gave the tiniest nod.
Only then did Oscar let his fingers sink into his hair, softly.
At the crown first, and then through the strands with a slow, calming rhythm, nothing like grabbing, nothing like being seized, nothing like the rough indignity of hands that wanted a reaction more than they cared about the person they were touching.
Lando exhaled shakily.
Oscar stroked again, fingertips light against his scalp, and Lando felt his whole body begin to loosen in response. Some instinctive part of him that had gone rigid all evening slowly remembered it was safe now.
And then the scent came.
Subtle at first, winding into the air between them so delicately Lando almost didn’t register it consciously - a soft, warm release of calming notes, familiar enough now that his body reacted before his mind caught up. Clean and grounding and a little sweet, like being wrapped in something quiet. It settled over his skin and in his lungs, gentle as dusk.
Lando made a low, helpless sound and let himself fold fully in, forehead resting against Oscar’s shoulder now, hands loose at Oscar’s waist.
“Better?” Oscar asked softly.
“A bit,” Lando admitted.
Oscar’s fingers combed once more through his hair, down to the back, then up again. “Good.”
Lando stayed there for a while, just breathing. Letting Oscar’s scent work through him and hold him together without ever making it feel like that was what he was doing.
The anger was still there in principle, still something he’d be bitter about in the morning and probably for quite a while after that. But it had stopped crackling so violently in his chest.
It had been dulled into something survivable.
Eventually Oscar nudged him toward the small sofa tucked against the wall.
“Come here,” he murmured.
Lando went without resistance, suddenly too tired to pretend he wasn’t exhausted by the whole thing. They sat, then shifted, then somehow ended up folded together properly; Oscar against the back of the sofa, Lando tucked into him with his head beneath his alpha’s chin and one leg slung over his lap.
They began nesting into each other the way they always did when privacy allowed it. Like fitting two pieces of the same quiet puzzle together.
Oscar’s hand returned to his hair immediately.
Lando sighed and melted another inch.
“Still think I should bite someone,” he muttered into Oscar’s collarbone.
Oscar’s chest moved with a tiny laugh. “That would probably make the press.”
“Good.”
“Not helping your image.”
“My image is already beyond saving.”
Oscar hummed, unconvinced, and kept stroking his hair in that same slow rhythm.
The scent in the room deepened slightly, never overwhelming, just enough to sink Lando further into the cushions and the warmth of Oscar’s body.
Safe, warm. Claimed in the gentlest possible way.
After a while, Oscar pressed a kiss to his temple.
Lando’s eyes were already drifting shut, his earlier fury worn down to a tired ache.
“You didn’t deserve that,” Oscar said quietly into his hair.
Lando went still.
Oscar didn’t repeat himself. Didn’t dress it up. Just let the truth sit there between them.
Lando swallowed. “I know.”
But it helped to hear it.
Oscar’s fingers slipped to the back of his head again, massaging lightly there, and Lando gave up on holding himself upright altogether, curling closer until he was practically in Oscar’s lap.
“Rest for a bit and then we’ll go back with the others,” Oscar murmured.
Lando huffed. “Bossy.”
“Mm.”
Another kiss, this one to the top of his head.
The room had gone very still now, the noise outside fading into something distant and irrelevant.
Lando could feel Oscar breathing beneath him, could feel the slow drag of fingers through his hair, the steady warmth of his body, the calm scent wrapped all around them like a second blanket.
He was still angry.
He would be angry tomorrow too.
But here, in this small hidden room with Oscar’s hand in his hair and his cheek pressed to Oscar’s chest, anger no longer felt like the only thing inside him. It had made space for something softer; safety.
And it had made room for the sort of care that asked nothing, expected nothing and simply stayed.
Lando let his hand curl into the fabric of Oscar’s shirt.
Oscar shifted just enough to tuck them in closer, their legs tangling, his arms closing more securely around Lando’s body.
There they stayed, nested together in the dim light, saying nothing more at all.
And gradually, with Oscar stroking through his hair exactly the way he liked, with calming scent still drifting slow and warm around them, Lando finally let himself rest.