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Oscar had known something was wrong long before he admitted it properly to himself.
Not wrong in the catastrophic sense. Nothing between him and Lando had broken. Quite the opposite, really.
They were still them in all the ways that mattered most: still orbiting each other instinctively, still slipping into the same private frequency no matter how loud the world outside got, still finding one another after bad days with the inevitability of muscle memory.
Lando still curled into him at night. Still stole his clothes. Still reached for him first when the world turned sharp at the edges.
That was what made the lack harder to ignore.
Because things were good.
Good enough, even, that Oscar could have gone on pretending for longer if Lando hadn’t started stealing from him with such visible intent.
At first it had just been one hoodie.
Then another.
Then one of Oscar’s shirts, found two days after it had gone missing folded under Lando’s pillow, absolutely saturated with the scent Oscar had forgotten to put directly where it belonged.
One race glove had disappeared for three weeks. A cap, a quarter-zip, a training shirt. The thefts were so consistent, so pointed, that after a while they stopped even pretending to be accidents and became what they actually were: protest.
Lando had not made a big thing of it in words.
He rarely did, not at first.
That was part of the problem with loving an omega like Lando - or one of the problems Oscar adored most, depending on the day. Lando did not always say that he needed him directly.
Sometimes he just started sleeping in Oscar’s old clothes or sulked with a softness in him that only Oscar knew how to read. Sometimes he sat too close and breathed in too quietly and waited to see how long it would take Oscar to notice the ache he was carrying.
Oscar always noticed eventually.
Just not fast enough last year.
Last year had got away from him in ugly little pieces.
The championship had narrowed everything. Pressure had made him stupid in practical ways and stupid in instinctive ways too, which somehow felt worse.
He had still loved Lando - God, constantly, helplessly, with a devotion that sat too deep in him now to even be called romance alone - but love on its own was not always enough to override exhaustion and stress and the thousand tiny cuts of a season. He had reached for Lando all year, kissed him, held him, slept beside him, looked after him in all the human ways that mattered.
But he had forgotten the deeper things.
The alpha things.
The pack things.
He had let too much time pass between proper scenting. Let too many weekends go by where he only topped Lando up in passing, hurried and distracted, instead of stopping to cover him slowly and properly and let his omega settle all the way into it.
He had let his own scent thin out on Lando under travel and heat and pressure until Lando started taking matters into his own hands and filling the gaps with stolen clothes instead.
The guilt of that sat badly in him.
And now, with the new season underway, Oscar felt it like an ache under the skin.
He needed Lando scented by him again.
Not casually. Not on the run. Not in the quick absentminded ways racers touched their omegas before media or after debrief or in hotel hallways because the day had got away from them and instinct was all they had time for.
He needed to stop.
Needed to put both hands on Lando and really scent him. Needed Lando’s omega to go loose and warm and soothed under his mouth and throat and shoulders. Needed to smell himself on him deeply enough that every restless, clawing alpha instinct in his own body would finally settle.
He needed to be scented back too.
That was the part he thought about less often out loud, but maybe wanted just as badly. Lando’s scent on his own skin, thick and warm and intimate enough to quiet the part of him that still felt vaguely off-balance after last year. There was no comfort quite like being claimed back by your omega after a stretch of neglect you knew you deserved to feel guilty for.
He was thinking about all of this far too much by the time the DNS happened.
The double McLaren DNS the week of China had the particular cruelty of a weekend failing before it was even really allowed to begin.
Battery issue.
That phrase became the whole day in about ten seconds. Battery issue over the radio. Battery issue in the garage. Battery issue in every clipped engineering sentence that followed. Battery issue in the body language of mechanics who were still trying but no longer quite believing in the thing they were trying for.
Oscar sat in the car for a while because there was nothing else to do.
That was the absurdity of it. He sat there in full race gear with all the adrenaline of a Sunday and nowhere for it to go except into a mounting, hollow frustration.
The cockpit smelled like heat and electronics and the sharp edge of disappointment not yet fully admitted. He could hear voices, movements. The team trying everything. He knew, before anyone officially said so, that the day was dead.
Across the garage, Lando was in the same position.
That was maybe the only thing that made the whole thing remotely bearable.
If Oscar was going to have a ruined race, at least his omega was in the same kind of ridiculous misery. They could be annoyed together. Useless together. Trapped together in the stupid spectacle of being present and not participating.
Eventually they climbed out.
They stayed by the cars for a while because sometimes hope lingered even after logic had left, and because there were only so many places drivers could go when the race had started without them and everyone around them was still trying not to act like the whole weekend had become a punchline.
They watched some of it from there.
Not closely. Not with any real emotional investment left. More because the race existed in front of them and there was nothing to be done about that. A few laps. A few comments. Engineers drifting in and out.
The kind of half-life that forms around a failed Sunday.
Then it became obvious nothing was getting fixed and they got sent to media because Formula One did not stop demanding little performances of professionalism simply because your car had betrayed you.
The pen was grim in the exact way Oscar expected.
Too bright, too loud and far too full of people trying to turn technical failure into a clean little narrative with a quote attached. He gave them what he could. Answers shaped enough to be usable, flat enough to discourage anything too gleeful in return.
Halfway through, he saw Lando being led into the same area.
And even through the irritation and race-day deadness of it all, something in Oscar lifted.
There he was. Still in kit. Still carrying that faintly wrecked, faintly offended expression he got when a day had annoyed him past theatrics and left him only with dry disbelief.
Oscar’s body reached for him before his brain had quite caught up.
By the time they crossed paths near the edge of the pen, the line had already escaped him.
“Fancy seeing you here.”
Lando’s head snapped around at once.
For half a second he looked scandalised in exactly the way Oscar had been hoping for, and then he laughed.
“Shut up.”
The laugh came loose and real despite everything.
That sound alone eased something tight in Oscar’s chest.
Because that was them, wasn’t it. Even in the middle of a ruined race, even in front of cameras and microphones and the whole stupid machinery of the sport, they still found each other under it. Still reached for the private line that made the world feel less hostile and still made each other laugh on instinct.
They got through media.
Then, by the sort of unspoken mutual gravity Oscar trusted more than plans, they found each other in one of the smaller back pack rooms tucked out of the way of the main paddock flow.
It wasn’t a glamorous space. Just one of those forgotten little technical rooms where equipment and bags and other bits of team life ended up stacked.
Quiet, private, and close enough to the heart of things that they could still hear the race outside if they listened, but muffled, as though the world had been kindly turned down a few notches.
Lando shut the door behind him.
Oscar looked at him.
Lando looked back.
And then, like there had never been any possible version of events where this didn’t happen, Lando crossed the room and folded himself into Oscar.
The relief of that nearly made Oscar weak.
He caught him on instinct, one arm around his waist, one hand up between his shoulder blades, and let his omega come all the way in. Lando always fit him with a kind of quiet inevitability, but on bad race days the fit felt even deeper somehow. Less like affection. More like home.
Oscar put his face in Lando’s hair for one second, just breathing.
There.
There was his omega. Warm and annoyed and soft underneath it. The smell of him wrapped up in race kit and skin and the faint sweet pull that always sat under everything else.
And immediately, sharply, the lack hit Oscar again.
He could smell Lando.
He could not smell enough of himself on him.
The old guilt turned over hard in his chest.
Lando nuzzled once into the side of his neck and muttered, voice muffled into papaya fabric, “Charles’ year, I reckon.”
Oscar laughed softly, his hand moving in slow, grounding strokes along Lando’s back. “Looks like it.”
“That or George.”
“That’s less fun.”
“Yeah.”
They stayed like that.
Long enough that the race outside them became nothing more than background noise and the whole ruined Sunday narrowed to the shape of each other.
Lando’s weight, his breathing. The way his omega always softened by stages when Oscar held him properly - not all at once, but enough that Oscar could feel each little surrender as it happened.
Eventually Lando leaned back just enough to look up at him.
His face was tired and sweet and open in the way it only got with Oscar when the rest of the day had taken too much out of him to maintain all his usual edges.
Then he reached down and took Oscar’s left hand.
Oscar looked at him, curious.
Lando turned the hand over slowly, thumb brushing once across the mole on Oscar’s ring finger.
The gesture alone made Oscar’s chest tighten.
Because Lando had always been like this with his moles - absurdly reverent, absurdly possessive, like every tiny mark on Oscar’s skin was part of a private map he loved better than any territory on earth.
Lando bent his head and kissed the mole on his ring finger.
Oscar’s breath caught.
Lando lingered there for one beat, then looked at it again with the softness of someone already imagining a future and only half disguising it as teasing.
“Will have to cover that mole soon,” he murmured.
Oscar looked at him.
Lando kissed the same spot again, mouth warmer this time, then added, even quieter, “With a ring.”
Something inside Oscar went molten.
Because there was nothing accidental in that. Nothing casual. It was the sort of thing Lando only said when he felt safe enough to let the future slip into the room in one unguarded line and trust that Oscar would catch it instead of flinch from it.
Before Oscar could gather enough of himself to answer, Lando stepped in closer and kissed the moles below his Adam’s apple.
One.
Then the other.
Slowly.
And there it was - that impossibly specific tenderness that always destroyed Oscar more thoroughly than any overt seduction could have.
Lando kissing him like he loved him by detail. By tiny, memorised parts. By skin, by history.
Oscar tipped his head back a little on instinct, fingers tightening at Lando’s hips.
“You can’t do that in a pack room after a DNS,” he said, voice gone rougher than he wanted.
Lando’s mouth curved against his throat. “Why not?”
Oscar did not answer.
Because the answer was: because I already need to scent you so badly it’s making me half stupid, and if you keep kissing me like that I’m going to forget entirely where we are.
Instead he kissed the top of Lando’s head and held him tighter until his own breathing settled again.
Later, after they’d pulled themselves back together enough to leave without looking entirely suspect, Oscar made the post.
Just a photo, with the caption: two weeks of watching f1
Lando sent him a screenshot of it later calling him dramatic. Oscar had replied that it was accurate. Neither denied.
Lando heart-reacted the post.
That made Oscar smile at his phone like an idiot.
~~~
They travelled back to the UK that night.
Post-race travel always had a strange, flattened quality to it, but a ruined weekend made it worse. Everyone looked more tired than usual. The planes and cars and terminal lights all blurred into one long, sterile corridor of movement. By the time they got back toward MTC, Oscar felt physically hollowed out.
And still, through all of it, the same instinct kept catching at him.
Lando.
Too little of him on Lando.
Too little Lando on him.
It was ridiculous how bodily the problem had become. No amount of rational thought improved it. No amount of reminding himself that they had managed, that the weekend was over, that Monday existed and golf existed and they were not in any immediate danger of collapse into some kind of unscented tragedy.
His alpha simply did not care for argument anymore.
By Monday morning, Lando was preparing to go golfing at Wentworth with Max Fewtrell.
That should have been simple.
In theory, Oscar even liked the plan. Golf did good things to Lando’s mind after bad races. It peeled the stress off him by layers. Fresh air, movement, stupid competition, Max being Max - all of it helped reset him.
In practice, Oscar looked at his omega getting ready to leave and felt his instincts rise up in flat refusal.
No.
Absolutely not.
Not until he fixed this.
Lando was standing in the bedroom half-dressed for golf, adjusting something at his wrist, all long easy lines and soft morning scent and the faded trace of Oscar from the pack room not nearly enough anywhere. The sight of him was so offensively domestic that Oscar felt his whole body sharpen in response.
Lando looked up. “What?”
Oscar crossed the room without answering right away.
Lando watched him come, expression already changing as he read the seriousness in him.
Oscar stopped directly in front of him and put both hands on his waist.
“Before you go,” he said.
Lando’s breath shifted. “Before I go what?”
Oscar held his gaze.
Before you leave. Before Max takes you to Wentworth. Before half the world breathes around you and none of it is me. Before you spend another day having to steal my scent from cloth when I could just put it where it belongs.
He didn’t say all that.
He didn’t have to.
“Before you go,” he said again, lower now, “you’re letting me fix this.”
Lando blinked once.
Then his whole face softened with understanding so quick and complete it made Oscar feel almost winded.
“Oh,” Lando said.
Yes.
Oh.
Lando’s mouth softened. “Okay.”
That one word nearly undid Oscar.
Because there was no resistance in it. No teasing, just immediate consent. Immediate trust. His omega giving himself over to the need of it because he needed it too.
Oscar started at Lando’s throat.
He always wanted to rush when the instinct got this sharp, and always had to remind himself that rushing was not what either of them needed most.
Not with Lando. Not with scenting. The whole point was to slow down enough that the body could understand it was being cared for, not simply handled.
So he took his time.
Hands steady at Lando’s waist. Nose pressing in under his jaw. Breathing him in first, fully, before giving anything back. Lando’s omega rose to meet him almost at once, that subtle softening of the body Oscar would have recognised blind by now.
The breath out, shoulders lowering. The tiny shift from ordinary morning attention into something deeper and more instinctive.
Oscar kissed under his ear.
Then scented.
Properly.
Throat, jaw, behind the ear. The shoulder where Lando always shivered, and the collar of his shirt. Then hollow beneath his jaw again, slower this time, mouth and scent working together until his own alpha finally felt the first long exhale of relief start to leave him.
Lando made the smallest sound.
Not words. Just a quiet involuntary noise from somewhere low in his chest that made Oscar want to put him on the bed and scent him into the sheets for the next hour.
He didn’t.
He stayed careful.
Moved one hand up into Lando’s hair instead, fingers spreading at the base of his skull while he kept going, making sure the scent sat deep. Not only enough for the world to catch. Enough for Lando to feel wrapped in it.
Claimed, held.
By the time Oscar reached the side of his neck again, Lando had gone visibly softer in his hands. His eyes half-lidded. Mouth parted slightly. All those fine, taut little race-weekend nerves and post-DNS remnants finally melting out of him in stages.
“There you are,” Oscar murmured before he could stop himself.
Lando’s lashes lifted just enough to meet his eyes, the softest of pur’s rumbling in his chest.
The look in them made Oscar ache.
Because it was trust, yes. Omega ease. But more than that too.
Love.
The kind that sat deep enough in Lando now that even being cared for this way carried all of their shared years inside it.
When Oscar finally drew back enough to look at him properly, Lando smelled right.
Like himself, still. Always himself first. But covered now in Oscar’s alpha so deeply it felt like some wrong note in the room had finally resolved back into harmony.
Oscar exhaled.
“Better?” Lando asked softly.
Oscar laughed under his breath. “Much.”
Lando smiled. “You were spiralling.”
“I was not.”
“You absolutely were.”
Oscar kissed him to stop him continuing, and Lando kissed back with that still-soft, faintly dazed warmth scenting always left in him.
Then, because fair was fair and because Oscar needed this almost as much, Lando reached for his throat.
That part always ruined him more quietly.
Lando never scented carelessly. Never as an afterthought. His omega treated it like devotion.
Mouth to skin first. Then breath. Then the slow, lovely claim of his scent spreading over Oscar’s throat and collar and chest until every agitated alpha instinct in him finally sat down like it had been waiting all weekend for permission.
Oscar closed his eyes.
God.
There.
There he was again. Properly held. Properly theirs.
By the end of it they were both calmer. Both a little wrecked.
Lando touched Oscar’s jaw with the backs of his fingers, gaze soft and bright. “You gonna survive me playing golf now?”
Oscar kissed the corner of his mouth. “Barely.”
Lando laughed.
And that was enough to make the whole bad weekend feel survivable at last.
~~~
Lando went to Wentworth.
Oscar let him.
That was love too, he supposed. Not only scenting your omega until both of you felt right in your own skins again, but then actually releasing him to the things that helped him reset.
Letting him breathe, let him laugh with Max, let him spend a morning in open air carrying Oscar with him without needing Oscar physically attached at the hip to prove anything.
He did his own thing.
Work. Bits at MTC. Recovery. Routine.
But the whole day was easier because he knew exactly what Lando smelled like by then.
And when Lando came back that evening, sun-warmed and lighter, with grass and outside air tangled through the deepest threads of Oscar’s scent still wrapped around him, Oscar nearly felt his heart physically turn over.
“You look smug,” Lando said at the door.
Oscar looked him up and down. “You smell good.”
Lando went a little pink around the ears.
Good.
He deserved that.
The days after settled into a softness Oscar had been missing for too long.
MTC helped. Routine helped. Debriefs and meetings and all the stupid practical business of carrying on after a failed race became easier when they could keep finding each other in the middle of them.
A hand low at Lando’s back in a corridor. A kiss stolen in a quiet corner. Oscar brushing past him in a room and catching the faint pulse of his own scent still sitting warm under Lando’s.
Then Thursday came, and with it London.
They went in the morning, not because there was any enormous plan attached to it but because they could. Because after a weekend like that and a reset like this, the idea of simply taking Lando into the city for a few hours and being with him in a way that had nothing to do with racing felt too good not to indulge.
London in the morning suited them.
There was something gentle in the way they moved through it together when neither of them was in a rush. Cold drinks first, then breakfast that slid toward lunch by accident because they were talking too much and walking too slowly and stopping every time something caught one of their eyes.
Oscar loved Lando best like this, maybe - not only in heat or scent or race-weekend intensity, but in daylight and ordinary clothes and the soft little domestic habits that crept in when no one was watching.
Lando stole bites off his plate as if Oscar’s food had always belonged partly to him by law.
Oscar pretended to be offended.
Neither of them meant it.
At one point waiting to cross a street, Lando reached for his hand without even looking at him first.
Just reached. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Oscar took it at once.
The pressure of Lando’s fingers through his stayed with him for the rest of the morning like a pulse.
They wandered through shops without buying much. Shared one pastry from a paper bag while walking. Stood too close in line for drinks just because they could.
Lando wore one of Oscar’s jackets because of course he did, and every time Oscar caught sight of him in the reflection of a window, tucked inside something that smelled of him and looked right on him in a way that still made Oscar’s alpha go stupid, he had to actively stop himself from dragging him into the nearest doorway and scenting him all over again.
By the time they headed back to MTC, both of them were lighter.
More reset.
The additional debrief still happened - it had to - and it was still long and technical and full of the usual boring ritual around a battery issue that had already ruined enough of their week.
But even that felt easier with London folded inside the day first, with Lando’s scent still on Oscar’s throat and Oscar’s on Lando’s collar, with the soft private afterglow of time spent properly together.
And once the work part was done, they let themselves have the rest.
More cold brew and pastries.
Some stupid game in one of the side rooms.
Lando stealing one of Oscar’s pens and then refusing to give it back purely because Oscar wanted it.
Oscar catching him in a quiet corridor later and pressing him gently against the wall - not like Mexico in that other universe of theirs, not all heat and confusion, but soft and territorial and loving - just long enough to scent the side of his neck again and feel Lando melt for one perfect second before someone walked past and they had to separate laughing.
They were going to Japan soon.
The season would start moving again. Flights, hotels, time zones and paddocks. The whole rolling machinery of Formula One threatening, as always, to eat the most instinctive parts of them first if they let it.
But this week had given them something back.
A ruined race.
A pack room.
A mole kissed and promised over.
A scenting before Wentworth.
London in the morning.
Hands linked at crossings.
Quiet joy tucked into ordinary hours.
That night, Oscar lay beside Lando with his face tucked into the place under his jaw where their scents always settled richest together and thought, with the deep, exhausted seriousness of someone making a vow to himself more than anyone else:
He was not letting last year happen again.
Not with this.
Not with Lando.
No more letting pressure strip the instinctive loving things out of his life until his omega had to go stealing shirts to get held properly.
No more letting the championship narrow him into some lesser version of an alpha who reached but forgot to anchor.
No more waiting until the ache became impossible before giving either of them what they needed.
He kissed the warm skin under Lando’s ear.
Lando made a sleepy, pleased little sound and tucked himself closer, fitting perfectly.
Oscar smiled into his neck.
This season, he thought, breathing in his omega and all the comfort of him, he was going to remember what mattered first.
And Lando, smelling gloriously and completely of him, seemed already to believe him.