Work Text:
Oscar was glowing.
That was the best way to describe him, up on the podium, orange vibrant, but what shone brighter was his smile. Subtle but proud, cheeks dimpled and flushed a gentle pink in that post-race come down. He slotted there, a piece of the jigsaw, as he belonged. The roar of the crowd, the cheers from the team, the radiating joy. Lando didn't even look at the other two, just staring up at the boy in papaya, hair tussled and happiness prevalent.
Lando wished he could be up there.
Not for himself, even if that was a sliver of the reason. All of them were here to win, of course he wanted to be up there too. But, more importantly, he wished he could be by Oscar's side. The desire to win was strong, a constant thrum in his veins, but the need to be beside his other half always managed to be louder.
Though today was not about him.
He had a one on his back and a title in his roster; he could spare to hold his selfish pity for today and instead rush forward into the bursting pride. It was warm, blossoming from his chest, settled between his ribs and the meat of his heart, beating along with the rhythm. He could not help but smile, hidden away in the hospitality area as he watched the podium play out on the screen. Champagne popped, music blared, and Oscar was showered in a pearlescent spray that tasted like success. Sure, he was not on the top step, but even now, a podium was huge for them, something to help keep the energy rolling into something much more.
For a little bit, Lando and Oscar did not cross paths. Lando didn't expect them to, with the rush of post-race celebrations and having to say your fair share in the interview pen. Lando was passed from journalist to journalist, questions answered, where he could not help but gush about Oscar and how well he had driven.
He expected another team meeting might be in order very soon. The team knew about their relationship and were happy to keep it private, perhaps encouraging them to keep it under wraps until they were absolutely ready to tell the world. Lando could recall the meeting post his championship, still riding the high of the victory, the accomplishment of chasing his childhood dream and achieving it made his emotions wired, his eyes turned glossy whenever someone asked him about it.
"There was a problem with my post-race interviews?" Lando asked, eyeing the printed stack of screenshots. Pages and pages that displayed several different social media, the comments from the fans were in ink for Lando to flick through.
"Not so much a problem, no," A staff member informed him. There were a select few, all from the PR team, that were huddled around the table with him, "It's just— well, you said quite a lot about Oscar. You probably mentioned him more than anything else that day. Which some people have picked up on, since they weren't expecting your most discussed topic after winning the championship to be Oscar Piastri."
Lando blushed, looking through the first printed tweet, a fan who had managed to count how many times Lando had said the name Oscar over all his interviews after his victory. It was an embarrassingly high number.
"There's nothing wrong with you mentioning Oscar, of course. And if that's what you want to do, we will be in full support of it," They continued, "but I understand the two of you aren't quite ready to go public yet, so just be careful with how you speak of each other, okay? There's quite a lot of speculation floating around now."
The blush deepened, hot against his cheeks as he gauged how big the stack was. Lando had the buzz of alcohol powering him that day, and he always got chatty when tipsy; the compliments and adoration flowed from him easily after he was a few drinks down.
"I'll keep that in mind," Lando squeaked out. The fact that he'd been brought in to have a meeting because people were assuming he and Oscar were in a relationship after he gushed on and on about him was a tad embarrassing.
Well, they were in a relationship, so the fans weren't wrong. That was beside the point.
He imagined that a new meeting might get set up soon enough, with the way he jumped to talk about Oscar immediately, going out of his way to congratulate him, before he talked about his own race.
A part of him considered being discreet, a larger part of him simply did not care.
He got the text message as he was packing up his bag, haphazardly shoving a handful of items into it before checking the essentials were on his person.
Oscar:
Meet you at the hotel?
Lando responded with a thumbs-up and heart emoji.
He suspected it would go down like that. Not only had Oscar gotten the team their first podium, but it was an extremely positive feat considering his past two races. Oscar tried to brush the start of the season off as best he could, but Lando noticed the way it would weigh him down. In his actions, the twitch to his eyebrows, or the way his lips would quirk down. He was good with his jokes, playing it off in that witty, sarcastic humour Lando adored. But he could tell, underneath, and when they crashed onto the hotel bed after those two races, the tiredness prevalent, it was obvious he was not happy. Lando did not blame him; he was disappointed after the single race he could not start at, and he would have hated it even more if it were two in a row.
Oscar needed this. Lando was positively beaming at the fact that Oscar had the podium under his belt now. Especially with the unexpected break coming up, it was what he needed to push him through, taking the momentum for himself and running with it until the next one.
Lando managed to shower and settle down by the time the hotel door clicked open, a halo of the bright corridor lighting sneaking past Oscar's silhouette and pushing into the gentle warmth of the room's dim lamps. He'd turned them down, bringing in the calm they liked to settle into after a race, knowing Oscar preferred to retreat into the stillness of a cosy room rather than the blasting music and neon lights of the club. For Lando, it was a coin toss whether he was in the mood or not. After the championship, he reckoned he was all partied out by now.
The temperature was just right, a middle ground, since Lando often stacked his layers and Oscar usually dressed down into a tee and shorts. It had been usually warm today, the window cracked open, with the rush of the late-night traffic coming in just past the curtains.
Oscar tiptoed in, careful to click the door shut quietly, and left his shoes at the entrance. He silently shrugged off his bag. Lando watched, chuckling, and the noise caused Oscar's head to turn.
"I thought you were asleep," he commented sheepishly.
"Why would I fall asleep when I wanted to see you, Mr Podium?" Lando shot back.
He pushed himself to the side of the bed, and Oscar took that as an invitation to sit down next to him, back against the headboard. "Hey, I'm sorry—"
"Don't, Osc, it's fine," Lando swooped in, already guessing what Oscar was going to say. It wasn't Lando's race— none of the races so far had felt like they were quite under his control, each one slipping away and giving him a position he did not want, the podium and wins always just slightly out of reach.
Lando could not think of that right now; he would crush those feelings up as much as he could, into a tight, compact box and tuck it away in the darkest corner of his mind to open up at some other point. He did not need to breach the topic now, not when Oscar had secured a podium, something that should be celebrated. Lando would not sour the mood; he would not allow his fragile insecurities and gnawing disappointment to sully what they had right now.
"But you—"
"I'm fine," he reassured, swinging himself over to straddle Oscar, kneeling either side of Oscar's legs, and cupping his jaw softly, "I am fine, I mean it, Osc. Let's talk about you instead."
For a second, doubt flickered across Oscar's face. The truth that Lando wasn't happy with the way his season was going was evident, but the doubt melted away as quickly as it appeared, Oscar seemed happy to drop the subject for now.
"There isn't much to talk about," he commented.
"Oscar, you got a podium! That is what we can talk about!" Lando leant forward, bringing Oscar's lips to his own and letting the world become a muted background. They broke away, both smirking, "After the shitshow that was the first two races, I am so happy to see you up there on the podium. I'm so proud."
Oscar's cheeks reddened, a charming ruddy shade that meant Lando had gotten under his skin in the best way possible. Oscar always flustered under the pure, unfiltered comments. Lando loved showing his boyfriend in praise, if only to see the bashful shyness.
"I mean it," he planted a kiss beside Oscar's lips, a little lower to where the freckle sat against Oscar's skin. "I'm really proud of you."
"And I'm so proud of you, Lan," Oscar said gently.
"I know," because Lando did know that as truth. He could be dead last, dragging the car from the very back of the pack, and Oscar would still be unapologetically proud of him. At first, it felt almost unnatural to have such a sturdy pillar to lean onto, a lighthouse that stood in the fog that was his thoughts, Oscar's reassurance cutting through the dense smog to guide Lando into a sense of comfortable certainty.
He moved across, kissed against the next freckle, a little dot that formed a target. He cherished them, the speckles of painted perfection that sat atop Oscar's face. He made sure to punctuate each kiss with his praise. Oscar, doe-eyed and pliant, smiled adoringly up at Lando as he did so.
Up towards his ear, "Love you so much, you know that, yeah?"
Then to the one that sat just below his lobe, "My driver, showing the world what he can do."
He pressed into the ones just to the side of Oscar's nose, feeling the skin shrunch slightly. The sight was something that exclusively Lando got to admire, "And then it's me that gets to take you back to the hotel room and show how much I love you."
Above the brow, jutting against the bone, "The world loves you, Osc, but I get to say that you're mine."
Into the hairline, the motion a soft, fleeting peck. "I think that makes me the luckiest man in the world."
Again and again, each kiss stopped with his words, each one tender, a precise accumulation of his affection. Oscar was content, cheeks still blushing rose as Lando left a trail of warmth pressing into skin, all the way across his left side and down, further and further to the few that were scattered against Oscar's neck.
"Love you," Lando mumbled into Oscar's skin, before going just that bit lower, moving the fabric of the t-shirt out of his way, and placing his teeth against the exposed skin, pressing down softly.
Oscar gasped, a whispered, airy sound, a hand coming up to Lando's curls, fingers tangled with the locks, nails scraping against his scalp. Lando smirked against the bite, the indents of his teeth forming an arch of small reddish divots of devotion.
He was guided away, Oscar's hands gentle as he tilted Lando's head backwards slightly, Lando's own neck on display. "It's only fair," Oscar remarked before leaning in, free hand tugging down the edge of Lando's tee, and placing his lips to the collarbone.
Lando wanted it, of course— that was the whole reason he left his mark on Oscar, so he would get one in return. Oscar sucked lightly, skin taut between lips, leaving a patch of slightly raised skin, a blotching of cherry reds that tinted purple.
"Love you too," Oscar muttered before moving away, pulling Lando into another kiss, a proper one this time, where everything else did not matter, and only the two of them existed in that moment.
Finally, Lando lifted himself off of Oscar, settling into the side of him, shoulder to shoulder on the bed. "Shall we order some food?"
"Food sounds good, yeah," Oscar agreed, taking Lando's hand in his own.
They ordered, Oscar not letting go, and once the food was eaten and several episodes of a reality TV show they both claimed to hate but secretly really enjoyed watching had passed by, the lights flicked off, and they sank under the duvet. Oscar pressed up into Lando, Lando's arms wrapping around Oscar as they both drifted to sleep, victory just a faint, golden memory, as they dreamt of blushed cheeks, reddened marks, and chaste devotion.