Work Text:
The roar of the Zandvoort grandstands still vibrated through the floorboards of the McLaren hospitality unit, a low, relentless hum of orange smoke and spilled beer.
Out on the seaside asphalt, Lando had put together a masterclass from pole, managing the gaps, keeping his front wing entirely out of the turbulence, and cruising home to take the checkered flag. The garage had erupted. The mechanics had hammered the pit wall dividers until their knuckles bruised, singing along to the English anthem while team shirts soaked through with sweat and cheap podium prosecco.
Oscar stood just outside the perimeter of that noise, his helmet already resting on the small corner table of the hospitality entrance.
His race had started with absolute clarity. On the safety car restart, when cold tyres and bunching packs usually made everyone tentative, Oscar had an amazing start, diving down the inside of Charles Leclerc before muscling his way past George Russell. By lap 18, he had secured P3 on sheer pace and precision, pulling away into clean air, perfectly positioned to give McLaren a commanding double podium.
Then came lap 31.
The box call had come over the radio, crisp and routine. Oscar had hit his marks perfectly, stopping on the yellow markers down to the millimeter. But the right-rear gunner jammed. The wheel nut refused to seat, spinning with a metallic shriek that echoed even inside Oscar’s balaclava. He had sat there, counting the tenths bleeding away on the steering wheel display. Three seconds. Four seconds. Five point four.
When the front jack dropped and the green light flashed, the damage was irreversible. He plunged straight out into the dirty wake of the Ferrari and Mercedes dogfight. In the turbulent air of Zandvoort, where downforce vanishes behind another car's diffuser, his fresh Pirellis grained within four laps. The podium disappeared over the horizon, reduced to a hollow, exhausting scrap just to keep the car on the tarmac and cross the line in sixth.
Oscar swallowed the dryness in his throat, adjusted the cuffs of his race suit, and stepped toward the center of the paddock ring where Lando was finishing his post-race media obligations.
Lando was grinning, hair damp and matted against his forehead, clutching the winner's trophy in one arm while a press officer guided him toward the engineering trailer. When Lando caught sight of Oscar, his smile shifted, softening into something far more grounded and questioning.
"Great drive, Lan," Oscar said, his voice level, practiced, and entirely devoid of inflection. He reached out, tapping Lando’s shoulder with a closed fist in a polite, standard congratulation. "Deserved win."
Lando opened his mouth, clearly wanting to pull him closer, to ask what happened to his race, but Oscar was already turning on his heel.
"See you at the debrief," Oscar added under his breath, slipping past the PR handlers before Lando could even shift the trophy to his other hand.
Oscar marched straight to his driver room, shutting the heavy door until the lock clicked. He did not throw his gloves. He did not kick the physio table. He simply sat on the edge of the bench, letting his forearms rest against his knees, staring blankly at the plain rubber flooring. The quiet inside the small room felt heavier than the physical G-forces in the banking. The bone-deep fatigue of fighting an understeering car in dirty air for forty laps settled into his shoulders, mixing with a cold, quiet anger that had nowhere to go.
Thirty minutes later, the mandatory knock sounded against the wood.
"Debrief in two, Oscar," a team coordinator called out.
Oscar took a slow breath, stood up, pulled on his team polo, and walked down the narrow corridor toward the main engineering room.
***
The room was already crowded when he arrived. Strategy engineers sat along the perimeter with their dual-screen laptops glowing, while the mechanical crew heads leaned against the back counters. Andrea Stella sat at the head of the conference table, flipping through the telemetry printouts alongside the chief race engineers. Lando sat on the right, looking up the second Oscar entered, his green eyes tracking Oscar's movement with intense scrutiny.
Oscar pulled out a rolling chair at the far end of the table, his posture slumped slightly, hands folded loosely in his lap.
"Alright everyone, let's go through the Sunday summary," Andrea began, his tone measured and professional. He glanced up at the main monitor hanging on the wall, clicking through to the race pace graphs. "Obviously, an outstanding result on Lando's side. The start was clean, the tyre management in the first stint gave us the buffer we needed, and the pit stop at lap twenty-eight was executed cleanly. Strategy was pretty good. That allowed us to control the gap to Antonelli comfortably until the end. Excellent work by the entire crew on Car 1."
A murmur of agreement ran through the engineers. Lando didn't smile. He kept his eyes fixed entirely on Andrea.
"Moving to Car 81," Andrea continued, clearing his throat slightly and tapping the remote. The telemetry graphs shifted, showing Oscar’s sector times plummeting during the second stint. "Oscar, strong moves on the restart to get ahead of Charles and George. Very aggressive, very good awareness. However, in the second stint, we saw significant graining on the hard compound earlier than our simulation predicted. The thermal degradation meant we lost track position to the Mercedes undercut, and from there, improving the pace proved difficult, leaving us with P6."
The room remained completely silent.
Oscar stared at the graph on the screen. There was no mention of the delta lost before the second stint even began. No mention of the gap that vanished while stationary in the pit box.
"We need to understand why the tyre wear accelerated so quickly compared to our Friday long runs," the lead tyre engineer added from the side. "Perhaps the out-lap after the stop was pushed slightly too hard into Turn 3."
Oscar let out a short, quiet breath through his nose. His face remained entirely blank, his eyes dull with exhaustion.
"Yeah, definitely," Oscar said, his voice flat, dry, and cutting right through the room without an ounce of raised volume. "Must have been the tyre warm-up on the out-lap. Nothing to do with sitting in the box for five point four seconds watching half the grid drive past me. Purely a driving error."
The sarcasm fell like lead into the room. A few mechanics shifted their weight uncomfortably, staring down at their tablets.
Andrea gave a tight, fleeting nod, clearly aiming to defuse the tension without assigning direct blame. "Yes, well, we will review the wheel gun torque data back in Woking to ensure standard operational parameters. Moving on to the hydraulic cooling updates for Monza—"
Lando’s chair scraped violently against the floor.
The sound was so sharp that every single head snapped toward him. Lando stood up so fast his hands slammed against the tabletop, rattling the plastic water bottles in the center.
"Are you serious?" Lando seethed, his face flushed red, his voice shaking with absolute fury. "Are you actually serious right now, Andrea?"
"Lando, please, let's keep the focus—"
"No, shut up! Don't tell me to keep focus!" Lando’s chest heaved, his eyes blazing as he pointed directly at the monitor screen displaying Oscar's lap charts. "You’re going to sit here and gloss over a five-second stop like it was a gust of wind? Look at the damn replay! He drove out of his skin all weekend. He passed two cars on raw pace at the restart and put that car in P3 on pure merit!"
The engineering room went dead silent. No one moved. No one typed.
"Lando, we acknowledge the pit loss, but we have a schedule to maintain—"
"You don't acknowledge shit!" Lando yelled, stepping around the table, his fists clenched tight at his sides. "Every single time we come into these meetings, you guys find a way to make excuses when things fall apart on Oscar's side of the garage! You can't always concentrate on doing good for one driver and completely fucking up the other’s race! It is a hundred percent your fault he dropped to P6 today. Not the tyres, not the out-lap, not him. You ruined his race on lap thirty-one!"
Oscar sat frozen in his chair. His lips parted slightly, his eyes wide and completely stunned as he stared up at Lando. In all their years as teammates, he had never seen Lando Norris lose his composure with the senior management like this. Not for himself, and certainly not with this level of raw, unvarnished protective rage.
Lando wasn't done. He turned toward the mechanics along the back wall, his voice cracking with intensity. "You should be ashamed of yourselves for trying to brush it off so easily just because he's too tired and dejected to scream at you! He shouldn't have to scream at you to get basic competence! He worked just as hard as I did to get a double podium today, and you threw it in the trash!"
"Lando, calm down right now," Andrea said, standing up and raising his hands in an attempt to assert authority. "We will analyze the hardware failure separately."
"I will calm down the day this team learns how to give a good race to both drivers at the same time!" Lando snapped back, his voice echoing off the metallic walls of the trailer.
Without waiting for another word, Lando took two long strides across the floor, reaching down and grabbing Oscar firmly by his hand, pulling him right out of his chair.
Oscar stumbled slightly on his feet, his mind entirely unable to process the speed of what was happening, but Lando’s grip was unbreakable, his warm fingers wrapping tightly around Oscar's hand and pulling him along.
Lando kicked open the heavy engineering room door, turning back over his shoulder to glare at the entire room one last time.
"Set a meeting asap," Lando barked toward Andrea. "Specifically to talk about how from now on you’re gonna guarantee both drivers the same treatment. Until then, we’re done."
With a final slam of the door that rattled the glass partition, Lando dragged Oscar out into the corridor, breathing heavily as he marched them straight toward the private driver quarters.
The narrow hospitality corridor smelled of industrial disinfectant and stale adrenaline. Lando did not release his hold on Oscar’s hand for a single fraction of a second, his fingers wrapped tightly around cold skin as he pulled him past catering staff and startled PR officers who flattened themselves against the temporary partition walls to stay out of the crossfire.
Lando reached the door of his private room, hit the latch with his elbow, and dragged them both inside. The door banged shut behind them with a heavy, final thud.
The room still carried the immediate chaos of a race winner’s quarters. Race suits hung half-draped over the folding chairs, clean towels sat piled beside the massage table, and prominently in the center of the low coffee table stood the massive, polished Dutch Grand Prix winner’s trophy, catching the harsh overhead strip lighting.
Lando took one look at the gleaming piece of ceramic and gold, made a sharp, guttural noise of pure disgust, and crossed the room in two strides. He snatched the trophy by its neck, hauled open the tall laminate wardrobe, shoved the heavy award onto the bottom shelf behind a pile of spare team jackets, and kicked the wardrobe door shut with his heel.
He didn't want Oscar looking at it. He didn't want the gaudy reminder of a celebration that had come entirely at the expense of fairness sitting between them like an insult.
When Lando finally turned back around, the silence in the room rushed in like a vacuum.
Oscar was still standing exactly where he had been pulled, frozen two paces from the entryway. His posture was completely rigid, his chocolate-brown eyes wide and fixed on Lando with an expression of stunned, unreadable disbelief. His chest rose and fell in shallow, measured breaths, his arm hanging limp at his side where Lando had finally let go of his fingers.
Lando stared back at him, the immediate rush of fury that had fueled his outburst in front of Andrea beginning to crack around the edges. The reality of what he had just done—screaming at the team principal, publicly humiliating the pit crew, dragging his teammate out by the hand like an unruly schoolboy—settled into his chest like cold lead. His breathing hitched, his shoulders dropping from their aggressive posture into a tense, nervous hunch.
"Oscar, I—" Lando started, his voice suddenly losing all its commanding volume, fracturing into something thin and anxious. He ran a trembling hand through his sweat-damp curls, backing up half a step until the edge of the physio table pressed against his thighs. "I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m sorry. I overstepped. I know I did. You didn't ask me to do that, and I just—I completely lost my temper. You’re absolutely capable of handling your own debriefs and I probably just made things ten times worse with Andrea and the crew and I made a massive scene when you were already exhausted, and—"
Lando’s frantic rambling was cut off instantly as Oscar crossed the gap between them.
Oscar didn't speak. He didn't offer a measured analysis or a dry Australian quip. He stepped straight into Lando’s space and wrapped both arms around Lando’s neck, pulling him in with an intensity so sudden and forceful that Lando’s breath left him in a sharp gasp. Oscar buried his face into the hollow where Lando’s shoulder met his collarbone, clutching the fabric of his team polo with fists that shook.
For a split second, Lando was paralyzed by the shock of the impact. Then he felt the dampness against the skin of his neck.
Oscar was crying. It wasn't loud or theatrical. It was a silent, agonizing release of tension, slow tears soaking into the cotton of Lando’s collar as Oscar’s entire body shuddered against him. The stoic, unshakeable facade that Oscar had maintained through seventy-two laps of miserable pace, through the media pen, and through the opening minutes of that dismissive meeting was completely fracturing.
The remaining panic in Lando’s mind evaporated on the spot.
Lando brought his arms up, wrapping them firmly around Oscar and pulling him flush against his body. He pressed one hand on Oscar’s hip and the other one flat against the back of his head, tangling his fingers gently into the short, soft hair at the nape of the Aussie’s neck, anchoring him.
"I’ve got you," Lando murmured, his voice softening into a steady, tender rhythm. "I’ve got you, Osc. It’s okay. Let it out."
Oscar didn't pull away. If anything, his grip tightened, his fingers twisting into the back of Lando’s shirt as if letting go would send him spinning off into the gravel traps. The bone-deep exhaustion of fighting a car that refused to turn, of watching the podium slip through his fingers while he sat stationary in the pit box, poured out of him in heavy, trembling breaths against Lando’s warm skin.
Lando shifted slightly, taking Oscar’s weight as he sagged against him. With gentle, repetitive motions, Lando smoothed his hand down Oscar’s back, over the tense muscles of his shoulder blades, rubbing soothing circles into the knot of tension between his shoulders.
"You drove a brilliant race," Lando whispered into Oscar’s hair, keeping his lips pressed close to his temple. "You drove so damn well. That restart move around Charles and George was incredible. You belonged on that podium with me. You know that, right? You deserved to be up there."
Oscar let out a broken, ragged breath, his forehead resting heavily against Lando’s shoulder. He stayed there for several long minutes, allowing the quiet hum of the driver room and the solid warmth of Lando’s chest to ground him until the shaking in his hands began to slow, and the heavy tightness in his throat loosened into a dull ache.
Slowly, reluctantly, Oscar began to pull back.
Lando didn't let him go completely. He loosened his grip on Oscar’s waist, sliding his hands up to rest lightly on Oscar’s hips, giving him space while keeping the physical contact unbroken. Lando looked up into Oscar’s face, taking in the reddened rims of his eyes, the damp tracks on his cheeks, and the pale, worn look of sheer physical and mental depletion.
Lando felt a profound ache in his chest. "I’m sorry, Osc," Lando said softly, his voice full of genuine remorse. "I’m so sorry the team favors my side. I hate that they do it. I hate that when things go right for me, they act like the job is done and treat your side of the garage like an afterthought. It isn't fair, and it’s not right."
Oscar shook his head slowly, wiping the side of his hand across his wet cheek in an uncharacteristically clumsy movement. His voice was rough when he spoke, thick with the aftermath of crying.
"It’s not your fault, Lan," Oscar murmured, looking down at Lando with an expression of quiet vulnerability that made Lando’s heart turn over. "You drove a clean race. You took pole and you won. You don't have to apologize for their fuck-ups." Oscar paused, his throat bobbing as he swallowed hard. "And... thank you. For back there. I was just... I was so tired I couldn't even find the energy to argue with them. Seeing you stand up like that... no one has ever done that for me."
The absolute sincerity in Oscar’s gaze caught Lando completely off guard. The emotional barrier that Lando usually kept between them—the professional boundary of teammates competing for the same piece of asphalt—crumbled into nothing.
"Of course I did," Lando blurted out, the words leaving his mouth before his conscious mind could filter them. "There’s nothing I wouldn't do for you, Osc. Nothing."
The words hung in the quiet room, heavy and undeniable.
Lando froze, suddenly realizing the sheer weight of what he had just confessed. His cheeks burned hot, panic flaring briefly behind his ribs as he scrambled to pull the conversation back from the edge of that precipice. He forced a small, nervous laugh, trying desperately to lighten the atmosphere.
"I mean... you know. Except letting you win a championship for free, of course," Lando added quickly, attempting a playful smirk that failed to reach his eyes. "Gotta draw the line somewhere."
Oscar let out a puff of air that resembled a laugh. But his dark eyes remained fixed on Lando, turning intense, like searching for something after those words that felt like a confession. He didn't blink. The distance between their faces felt impossibly small, the air thick with an unspoken gravity that rendered every joke useless.
Oscar’s gaze drifted slowly down from Lando’s eyes, lingering on Lando’s slightly parted lips. The silence stretched between them, charged with a sudden, electric heat that made Lando’s breath catch in his throat.
When Oscar looked back up into Lando’s eyes, the exhaustion was gone, replaced by a quiet, determined certainty.
"Of course," Oscar whispered, his voice dropping an octave, smooth and resonant.
Before Lando could process the shift in tone, Oscar leaned down and captured Lando’s mouth with his own.
The kiss was not hesitant. It was deep, desperate, and overflowing with all the raw passion that had been simmering under the surface of every debrief, every flight, every shared glance across engineering tables for months. Oscar pressed his body entirely against Lando, backing him up against the padded edge of the physio table.
Lando gasped into the kiss, a soft sound of shock that Oscar immediately swallowed, deepening the angle of their mouths. Lando’s hands moved on pure instinct, sliding up from Oscar’s hips to grip the fabric of his polo, then traveling beneath the hem to find warm, bare skin.
Oscar’s hands were everywhere. One palm cupped the side of Lando’s neck, fingers spreading wide against his pulse point, feeling the rapid, frantic beat beneath the skin, while his other hand tangled into Lando’s curls, holding him steady as their lips moved together in a fierce, hungry rhythm.
Lando melted completely against him, opening his mouth to the press of Oscar’s tongue, letting out a low, breathless whine that vibrated between their lips. Every trace of the race, the championship points, the team politics, and the paddock noise vanished, reduced entirely to the taste of Oscar, the friction of their clothes, and the heat radiating between them.
Oscar broke the seal of their lips for a split second, both of them gasping for air, but he didn't pull away. He trailed his lips down Lando’s cheek, pressing warm, fervent kisses along the curve of his jawline. Lando tilted his head back, exposing the long line of his throat, his hands sliding up Oscar’s ribs, feeling the rigid definition of muscle beneath his fingertips.
"Osc..." Lando breathed, his fingers curling tightly against Oscar’s sides.
Oscar didn't stop. He pressed his mouth against the sensitive skin right below Lando’s jaw, biting down with gentle, deliberate pressure before soothing the mark with a slow drag of his tongue. He worked his way down to the crook of Lando’s neck, kissing him deeply, leaving dark, blooming marks against the pale skin where the race collar usually sat.
Lando shivered, a sharp, helpless sound escaping his chest as Oscar’s hands pushed up under Lando’s shirt, broad palms hot against the bare skin of Lando’s lower back, pulling him impossibly closer.
While his lips were pressed firmly into the hollow of Lando’s collarbone, Oscar paused, his warm breath fanning across Lando’s feverish skin.
"I love you, Lan," Oscar whispered against his neck, the words clear, steady, and stripped of all hesitation.
Lando’s entire body went soft. The words hit him with the force of a physical impact, filling every empty, doubtful corner of his mind with pure warmth. Tears pricked the corners of Lando’s eyes, not from stress or anger, but from a sudden, overwhelming sense of relief and profound affection.
Lando brought both hands up, sliding them along Oscar’s jaw and cupping his face, gently lifting Oscar’s head until their eyes met again. Oscar looked down at him with a tenderness that took Lando’s breath away, his dark eyes wide and completely open.
Lando pulled Oscar down into another kiss, pressing their lips together with deliberate, reverent softness before pulling back just enough to speak against Oscar’s mouth.
"I love you too," Lando murmured between soft, lingering kisses, his thumbs stroking the high curve of Oscar’s cheekbones. "I love you so much, Osc. You have no idea."
Oscar let out a breath that sounded like a sigh of pure contentment, leaning heavily into Lando’s touch. He kissed Lando again, slow and deep, the frantic desperation from earlier giving way to a sweet, intoxicating rhythm that made the rest of the world completely irrelevant.
Oscar shifted his weight, catching Lando under the thighs and guiding them both away from the edge of the physio table over to the wide team sofa on the other side of the room. They tumbled down onto the cushions together in a tangle of limbs, shirts half-pulled up, hair completely disheveled.
Lando settled back against the armrest, pulling Oscar with him. Oscar draped his long frame over Lando, resting his head comfortably against Lando’s chest, his face tucked just beneath Lando’s chin where he could hear the steady, rhythmic beating of Lando’s heart.
Lando wrapped both arms securely around Oscar, resting his chin on top of Oscar’s dark hair, his fingers idly tracing patterns against Oscar’s upper back through the thin fabric of his polo.
The room remained quiet, the dim afternoon light filtering through the small window blinds of the trailer. Outside, the sounds of pack-up crews and distant engine revs continued, but inside the locked quarters, the noise didn't matter anymore.
Oscar let his eyes flutter shut, his breathing finally falling into a slow, relaxed cadence, safe in the circle of Lando’s arms, while Lando held him close, refusing to let go.