Chapter Text
Oscar felt unbelievably drowsy after the race. Between getting screwed by Sainz of all people, and his gearbox killing itself after the contact, he was surprised he didn't burst a blood vessel with how agitated he'd been the whole day. And Lando had won, to make things worse. Another 25 points between them in the standings. Oscar smushed his face against the cool tile of the shower wall, and let the nearly boiling water sting his back.
Whatever. He'd been through worse. At least the car felt like a proper car for once, he'd just have to put in some work and get as much pace out of it as he could.
His hair was still a little damp when he dropped into his hotel bed, still warm from his shower and wearing soft shorts and a worn t-shirt. The way his body threatened to melt into the sheets wasn't all too different from butter over warm toast, and his head was so loopy he could hardly find the piping hot anger he'd been feeling all day.
Fucking Sainz, he thought, distantly, smushing his too-warm face into blessedly cool pillows.
An unfamiliar tingling all over his skin was the last thing his brain processed before his vision went dark.
Loud, insistent banging at his hotel door pulled Oscar from what might genuinely have been the deepest sleep of his life. Oof. Had the race been that much rougher on his body than he'd realized? Just trying to get out of bed felt like moving through sand, and the ground rushed to meet his body as he fell straight down, halfway tangled in the sheets.
"Fuck," he mumbled, cheek squished against the soft carpet. He pushed up from the ground, muscles straining as he managed to get his knees and then his feet under him, almost falling down again as he kicked the sheets off. The banging at his door had briefly stopped, and had now resumed again. "Jesus, give me a second."
A weird tingle went through his scalp, then all the way down his spine. His fingertips felt weird too, but between the fuzziness in his head and the fucking idiot still trying to punch a hole through his door, there wasn't much he could focus on. Oscar shook his head, and stalked towards the door, eager to open it before they got a noise complaint.
He'd barely gotten the door opened when someone was pushing past him and hurrying into his room. It'd been too fast for his sleepy eyes to process, but it was the scent that hit him: Lando. Jesus, had he bathed in cologne? Oscar closed the door with a sigh. It was too damn early for whatever this was. Not that he had any idea of what time it was. Probably too early.
"Lando, mate, what—" he stopped, turning around to meet a very disgruntled Lando, standing wide-eyed and slack-jawed in the middle of Oscar's room. "What is it?"
Lando blinked. Blinked again. His curls were a disaster, messier and poofier than Oscar had ever seen, and he was drowning in a too-big hoodie that had clearly been covering his head just then.
"Fuck," Lando breathed, eyes scanning Oscar's hair and then dropping to somewhere behind him. "You too?"
Oscar tilted his head. "Mate, you're not making any sense. Me what?"
Lando scrunched his face, and his hair moved with it, almost twitching. Oscar blinked.
"Mate. You might want to look in the mirror."
Oscar furrowed his eyebrows, still blinking through the sleep fog. Too damn early for this. But Lando was twisting the hem of his hoodie in his hands, all wide eyes and nervous energy, so Oscar forced himself to comply. There was a large gilded mirror on the far wall of the room, next to the windows, and Lando's eyes didn't leave him once as he walked over there.
Oscar's face was as pink and puffy from sleep as he expected, with deep lines from the pillowcase creased into the side of his face. His hair, brown and floppy, was especially hideous though, with two big chunks of it sticking up atop his head. Oscar sighed, bringing up a hand to fix them up.
And then they twitched.
Oscar froze, hand stopping mid air, and his eyes widened as the chunks flattened against the rest of his hair on their own. What—
He must've banged his head pretty hard when he fell off the bed. Tentatively, he reached to touch his hair, only to have it twitch again against his fingers.
And he felt it, a small jolt that spread through his scalp from the point of contact. Instantly, both chunks perked up again, higher than before, revealing delicate, pink skin at the base of the hair pieces. Oscar's eyes widened, and his hair went flat again. Because it wasn't hair at all.
They were ears. Triangular, cat-like ears sitting atop his head. His hands flew to the sides of his head, half concealed by his hair — which he now realized was definitely longer than it'd been the previous night — to find perfectly smooth skin covered by soft fur where his normal ears used to be.
Okay. Okay. Cat ears. Cool. Sure.
And then he began looking at himself properly. Face, okay. Shoulders, okay. Arms, okay. Torso—
And then he saw it. Swaying behind him, light brown as his hair, spotted with black and slightly puffed up: a cat tail. Attached to him. He grabbed it before he could think it through, and felt a small jolt up his spine. He felt up its length until he reached the sensitive spot at his lower back where the tail protruded from, and the small patch of fur that covered the skin there.
"How are you so freaking calm?" Lando's loud voice called, suddenly right next to him, and the whole length of the tail, Oscar's tail, poofed up in response.
"I'm clearly not," Oscar snapped, tail lashing out of his hands.
He got a proper look at Lando then, with properly open eyes. Sitting atop his head, what Oscar had thought were especially messy curls, were actually floppy dog ears, twitching anxiously as Lando waited for a proper reaction from Oscar.
Right. Because if he was a cat, his teammate would obviously be a dog. Silly of him to expect anything else, truly.
"Well. That sure is something," Oscar sighed, running a hand through his hair and wincing at making contact with his new ears again. "Did anyone see you?"
Lando shook his head. "I woke up early needing to piss and saw myself like this. Came straight here."
Oscar sighed. "Okay. Yeah, okay. Sure. This is a thing, then."
Because missing out on a race win because of a fucking backmarker wasn't bad enough. Getting crashed into three races in a row wasn't irritating enough. Missing out on the first two races of the season, including his fucking home race, hadn't been crushing enough. No. He also had to wake up half-cat one day. Sensational.
"Oscar?" Lando called, brows furrowed. Between the twitchy ears and his fidgeting hands, he looked damn near ready to vibrate right out of his skin.
Another sigh left him, this one coming from deep within his chest.
"Let's maybe check online, then," he said, finally. "If it happened to us, it could've happened to other people and then others would surely have said something about it online."
Lando regarded him for a second before nodding, fishing out his phone from his hoodie pocket and turning around to head to the couch, and Oscar couldn't hold back the startled laugh once his eyes zeroed onto his lower half. The sound had Lando whipping around, cheeks flushed pink.
"Don't," he warned, severely undermined by his twitching ears and the soft whine creeping into his voice. His hand, the one not clutching his phone, was behind his back now, presumably holding the short, curly-furred tail resting right under the hem of his hoodie. The same tail he'd probably forgotten about for a moment, otherwise he'd never have turned his back to Oscar like that.
"Mate," Oscar snorted, failing to bite back another laugh. Behind him, he could feel his own tail swaying from side to side. "It's cute, don't worry."
"Oscar."
Oscar had to bite his lip to keep from laughing again, only to wince at the sharp fang digging into his skin. That had his focus snapping right back into place. Cat. Cat fang. Right. Bigger fish to fry than bothering Lando.
"I'll just go grab my phone," he said, leaving Lando standing with his face pink and scrunched up in embarrassment.
Now that he was properly aware of it, Oscar could feel the difference in his steps with the tail swishing behind him for balance. Atop his head, his new ears were swiveling around, catching sounds coming from the hallway and from the street many floors down that he definitely couldn't pick up on before. He caught another look at himself in the mirror near the bed, now paying more attention to the long spotted tail behind him. His stomach clenched at the sight, but a little voice began speaking louder in the back of his head. How had this happened? What did it mean? Was it permanent? How far had the change gone? If he got someone pregnant today, would the baby be part cat?
"Oscar," Lando called from the other room, the whine a bit more present in his tone.
Don't laugh. Don't laugh.
Instead, he hurried to grab his phone from the nightstand. A few texts from friends. One from his mom trying to cheer him up after the race. Something from Sophie about keeping a cooler head and not cussing people out in the media pen. But nothing unusual or panicky from anyone else he knew.
"Oscar!"
He winced at the shrill tone, ears flattening a little. "Jesus, I'll be right there."
Oscar hurried back to the other room to find Lando curled up into the couch, knees close to his chest and his phone still clutched in his hands. His floppy dog ears were completely flat against his curly hair. Without giving it too much thought, Oscar hopped over the back of the couch, plopping down next to Lando.
"Okay. So. Gameplan," Oscar said, unlocking his phone again. "I'll check Twitter, you check TikTok."
Lando frowned at him, before nodding and opening his phone, as Oscar did the same, tapping the familiar X icon and finding the search bar.
But what the hell could he even search? His fingers moved quickly over the keyboard.
cat ears
Nope. Fetish content.
cat hybrid
More fetish content.
did anyone else wake up as a cat today
Which only returned tweets about some anime about a boy who turned into an actual cat. Nothing useful. An absence of news is telling on its own, though. At the very least, he knew it wasn't a big, widespread thing. The question was, how contained was it? It couldn't possibly be just him and Lando.
"Nothing here. Any luck?"
He cast a glance towards Lando, who was still curled up next to him, quickly scrolling through TikTok on mute.
"Nothing," Lando mumbled, letting his phone drop to the cushions and flopping back onto the couch. "It's hopeless."
Oscar snorted. "Calm down. It just means it's not a widespread thing."
"Yeah but if it's not a widespread thing, then who the hell is gonna help us?"
Good point. "Someone has to, it can't be just the two of us. We could check with our friends."
Lando stared at him. "Right. You want us to give Max a call and ask if he's grown ears?"
"Not ask him directly, idiot," Oscar rolled his eyes. "Just ask him how he is. We're flying together after all, if something's off with him, we're bound to notice."
Lando considered what he said, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. A flash of a sharp canine caught Oscar's attention. "What if he's normal, though? What if it is just us?"
There was the whine again, threatening to creep into his voice. It made sense to worry. Suddenly becoming some mutant freak would surely affect their careers somehow, which Oscar truly would rather not think about unless he absolutely had to. No point in it, anyway.
"We'll cross that bridge when we get there," he said instead, giving Lando a nudge with his shoulder. "Let's not suffer in advance."
Lando's droopy green eyes turned to him, a small frown on his face. "You're too fucking calm, you know. It pisses me off sometimes."
Oscar nudged him again. "But aren't you glad your teammate's so reliable?"
"Prat," Lando scoffed, returning the shove.
Instead of going back to his original position, Lando stayed close, their shoulders pressed together. Oscar cast him a glance, watching as his nose scrunched up once, twice, before he fully turned into Oscar's shoulder to—
"Mate, are you sniffing me?"
Instead of flinching back, pink and embarrassed, Lando only pressed his face harder into Oscar's shoulder. "Can't help it. Y'smell nice."
"Do I, now?"
Lando only answered by nosing further up Oscar's shoulder, until he was fully rubbing his face into the crook of Oscar's neck. The soft, curly fur of his floppy ears tickled Oscar's jawline, but he let the other do as he liked. A little closer than what he was used to, sure. But whatever kept Lando from spiraling and whining. Besides, it wasn't terrible or anything — Lando was warm. And he kinda smelled nice too, which Oscar decided not to think too much about, for the time being.
Something caught Oscar's eye, then. A flash of movement in the corner of his field of vision, and Oscar had to desperately swallow down the fit of laughter threatening to burst out of him. Lando's tail, which had been almost plastered to his back before, was now fully, completely wagging as he nosed into Oscar's neck like a puppy asking to be petted.
Oscar wasn't sure where it came from, but his body wanted to do it, and he allowed it: he lowered his face to rub into Lando's hair, letting his nose and cheek brush against apricot scented curls. The whole time, he watched Lando's tail, noticing how it only wagged harder as he reciprocated the gesture.
It was oddly nice, staying like this. Part of him just wanted to pull Lando even closer and take a nap on top of him. He had no idea how to even process that thought.
A small gasp followed by a giggle drew Oscar's attention again. Lando was still tucked into his side, but now he was glancing up at Oscar with a mischievous look in his eyes. "Mate," he laughed, ears perking up a bit for the first time since he stormed into the room. "You're purring."
Oscar froze, suddenly taking notice of the soft rumble resonating deep within his chest. Oh. Almost immediately, heat rose to his cheeks. He cleared his throat.
"I guess I am."
"Oh, don't be embarrassed, it's cute," Lando teased, pressing his cheek into Oscar's shoulder a little more.
"Yeah?" Oscar drawled, looking back at Lando. "Is it as cute as your tail wagging right now, though?"
This time, Oscar couldn't hold back the laughter, as Lando jolted backwards so suddenly he almost fell off the couch. Mortifyingly, part of him missed the contact almost immediately, but the chance to tease Lando had been too good to pass up on. Oscar was usually the one left flushed and embarrassed during their exchanges, so he had to take the opportunities as they presented themselves.
However, as Lando was about to fire something back, the sound of Oscar's phone ringing startled them both out of the discussion, both their attention snapping back to it. On the screen, in big letters: Max. They both stared at the phone for a beat, before meeting each other's eyes. Carefully, Oscar reached for it.
"Hey mate, how's it going?"
"Oscar! Sorry for the hour mate, I know it's a little early for you," Max began, voice a little scratchy from sleep. "I wanted to talk about us flying out later."
Oscar thought about putting it on speaker, but Lando's ears were perky again, twitching with every word out of Max's mouth.
"Oh, yeah. What about it?"
There was a pause on the line.
"Actually, I might need to call it off, sorry mate. I woke up feeling weird and it might be contagious," Max said, and Oscar's eyes immediately locked with Lando's. "But don't worry, I already called someone and they can get a PJ for you and Lando, so it should be fine."
"Oh, sorry to hear that, mate," Oscar said. "What do you have, though?"
A pause.
"Just feeling weird, to be honest."
"Right. And was it very sudden?" Oscar asked, spelling out the words carefully. "Because I also woke up feeling different today."
Lando's eyebrows rose in alarm, but Oscar waved him off. Hook, line…
The pause on the line stretched longer this time. "It was pretty sudden, yeah," Max trailed off. "How do you feel, though?"
Sinker.
"Like I'm not entirely myself," Oscar answered, before adding, "Lando has it too, actually."
"Does he?"
"Mhmm. Maybe we could talk about it on the flight today, then. Compare symptoms."
A loud, incredulous laugh echoed from the other side of the line. "Mate, that's just crazy, huh? Yeah, sure. PJ's pet friendly either way."
Lando had to slap a hand over his mouth to keep quiet, eyes crinkling. Oscar was also holding back a reaction of his own.
"Thank God for that. We'll meet you at 6PM then?"
"Yeah man, whatever at this point. See you two then."
Oscar could only blink as the line went dead.
"So, that just happened," he let his phone drop to the couch, and rested his head against the cushions. "Either Max has cat ears or we're about to have a very funny evening."
"Or dog ears," Lando mumbled, knees to his chest again. "Or do you think he's something else entirely?"
Oscar raised an eyebrow. "Mate. Max would never be a dog. He has to be a cat," though it would be extremely on brand for him to somehow be a lion or something way cooler than them.
He did say pet friendly, though.
However… "Are you upset about being a dog? Is that what this is about?" Oscar asked, tilting his head to appraise Lando. "What kind of dog are you, anyway?"
Lando scrunched up his nose at that, glaring at Oscar through his lashes. The action had Oscar biting his lip to hide a smile — much more carefully now.
"Sorry, are you happy to be a cat?"
Oscar shrugged. "There are worse things to be," he tilted his head then, studying the floppy ears and the curly fur. "You kinda look like a poodle, I reckon."
"A poodle?" Lando spluttered, looking so indignant Oscar couldn't help but keep going.
"Yeah. I think the little ones really suit you, y'know," he grinned, distantly aware of the slow sway of his own tail behind him. "What are they called, again? Toy poodles?"
There was a brief second where Lando only stared at him, slack-jawed, before he promptly kicked Oscar in the ribs.
"Are you mad?" he said, grabbing a pillow to whack over Oscar's head as he grabbed his ribs and laughed non-stop. "I'm not a freaking toy poodle, you muppet."
The next time he moved to whack Oscar with the pillow, Oscar grabbed it from his hands and smacked Lando's face with it instead. It produced a startled little yelp from the other one, and Oscar hit him again just because he could. The pillow was then yanked from his hands, and before he could react, Lando was tackling him to the ground, both of them falling in a heap of limbs onto the soft carpet. Long fingers found Oscar's sides, and soon more laughter was being ripped from him, now from his teammate mercilessly tickling him.
"Wait– W-wait, Lando," Oscar tried, barely getting the words out amidst his laughter, but Lando wasn't budging. Usually, Oscar would've been able to throw him off easily, but the position they fell in left him trapped under Lando with one of his arms at an odd angle between his torso and the couch.
"What, I thought you liked laughing?" Lando drawled, only intensifying his assault, now with his full weight fully on Oscar's waist.
"Yeah– I–," Oscar managed, trying to breathe so he could get the words out. He was squirming properly now, his free arm grabbing at Lando to try and throw him off. "I bet y–your tail's wagging right– ah– now."
His words had Lando freezing for just a second, which was more than enough for Oscar to gather the strength to flip them around. His larger frame pinned Lando to the ground effortlessly, and he held the other's arms down just enough to pin them under his thighs. He'd half planned to tickle Lando back, but the position had his ears flopping back, making him look every bit the disgruntled, wide-eyed puppy. Instead, Oscar settled for lightly batting Lando on the nose.
"Bad puppy," he said, trying to sound as stern as possible. He'd expected Lando to blush and be angry and indignant again— instead, his face crumpled and the most dog-like whine Oscar had ever heard escaped his throat instead.
Both of them froze.
Wow. It really runs deep, doesn't it?
Oscar tilted his head, tracking as color finally bloomed on Lando's cheeks again.
How deep, though?
Tentatively, he reached down with one of his hands, sliding it into Lando's mop of curly hair. It took the other a second to realize what was happening, and he began squirming the second it dawned on him.
"Oscar– wait. Wait, don't–" but the protest died in his mouth once Oscar's fingers reached the base of one of his ears and began gently scratching it, threading nimble fingers through messy curls and letting his blunt nails drag against Lando's scalp.
The effect was instantaneous: Lando shivered, and his head immediately hung in the direction of the touch, leaning into it. Oscar watched with rapid attention, keeping the petting slow and gentle the way his actual dog back home preferred, as Lando struggled to keep his eyes opened and even more puppy-like whines began slipping out of him. Oscar had to bite back a smirk— his teammate would just hate this when he was more clear-headed.
Unfortunately for him, the transformation seemed to have been more than purely physical.
"I'm sorry, you're not a bad puppy," Oscar said, trying on the soft tone he used when speaking to small animals. "You're a good puppy, aren't you?"
Lando's face scrunched up as he closed his eyes harder, cheeks fully red with embarrassment. And yet, he couldn't help but lean further into the hand petting his ears.
If Oscar were to be asked, he wouldn't have known how to explain what happened next, but the next thing he knew, his body was leaning down all on its own, and then his cheek was pressed into Lando's. His scent was even clearer now, a mix of cologne, shampoo and something Oscar had never actually smelled before, but that his brain was computing as Lando. His hand was still scratching the other's ear, but his brain was shifting focus to pressing Oscar's face into his teammate's neck. His teammate.
Lando let out a small yelp when Oscar dropped his full weight on top of him, now fully focused on the scent of his teammate. Warm, shivering and with his face likely still all scrunched up. This time, Oscar noticed the purr right as it began rumbling deep within his chest. He found it hard to mind, though, and instead let his body go practically liquid atop Lando's, who was still letting out low, wounded noises as Oscar continued to pet him.
Lando went still beneath him first, then not-still in a different way — the tension bleeding out of his shoulders, his knees, the hand still trapped under Oscar's thigh unclenching. His head lolled further into the crook of Oscar's neck, nosing there like he was trying to burrow in.
"You've stopped kicking me," Oscar mumbled, voice gone a little rough from the purring still working its way up his throat. "Progress."
Lando huffed against his skin, something between a laugh and a whine, and didn't move otherwise.
Oscar let his eyes fall shut. His hand kept working through Lando's curls without much input from the rest of him, nails dragging slow circles at the base of one ear, and the noise Lando made — high and pleased and entirely undignified for a world champion — had Oscar's chest rumbling harder in response. He should probably feel weird about this. Some far-off, sensible part of him was insisting he should feel weird about this. He couldn't seem to locate it very well, buried as it was under the very pressing, very warm fact of Lando tucked against him, solid and pliant and smelling like apricots and clean laundry and something underneath that Oscar's brain kept insisting was just Lando — not a smell he could name, just one he apparently already knew.
"'M not a dog," Lando mumbled, entirely unconvincing, muffled into Oscar's collarbone.
"Sure."
"'M not."
"Never said you were." Oscar scratched a little higher, right where the ear met skull, and got a full-body shiver for his trouble, Lando's tail — he could feel it now, thumping once, twice against the carpet — giving him away completely. "You're just very committed to the bit."
Lando pinched him for that, weak and half-hearted, more reflex than protest, and then didn't do anything else. His breathing had gone slow and even in a way that made Oscar suspicious he might actually be dropping off, curled into Oscar's side on the floor of a hotel room at — Oscar still had no idea what time it actually was — with a tail he didn't have yesterday and a marketable amount of dignity currently unaccounted for.
Oscar should probably wake him up. They had a flight. They had questions that very much still needed answering, chief among them why do we have ears and is this permanent and does Max actually have a tail too or was that a lucky guess.
Instead he stayed where he was, hand still moving, chest still rumbling, something warm and unbothered settling into him that had nothing to do with the fever-heat of Lando pressed against his side.
Plenty of time to panic later. Lando had gone soft and heavy against him, and it turned out Oscar really, really didn't want to be the one to move first.