Chapter Text
The first thing Lando Norris did after winning the Dutch Grand Prix was complain about the champagne.
It was not the quality of the vintage or the temperature of the bottle, but rather the sheer volume available to him in the immediate wake of victory. Staring down at the half-empty green bottle as he trudged through the quiet, echoing corridors of the McLaren hospitality unit, his fire suit half-unzipped and tied around his waist to expose a thoroughly damp grey undershirt, he looked deeply aggrieved by the logistics of celebration. He was dripping sticky residual wine onto his custom trainers, his curls were matted against his forehead, and he felt like he had just run a marathon while wearing a sauna suit.
"Honestly," Lando said, his voice bouncing off the temporary white walls as he flicked a speck of dried foam off his sleeve, "you'd think after two wins in a row they'd give me my own full-sized bottle to take back to the driver room. I got half of one. Half. And most of that ended up on the front row of the press crowd before I even got a proper sip."
Oscar Piastri did not look up immediately from his phone, his thumb flicking rhythmically through a sea of telemetry notifications, sector-by-sector delta charts, and post-race debrief summaries. He was still wearing his full kit, looking remarkably pristine compared to Lando, as if the fifty-two laps of high-g-force racing had politely skipped over his side of the garage.
"You got a full bottle," Oscar said, his voice flat, devoid of the theatrical outrage Lando was trying to manufacture. "I watched you. You sprayed three-quarters of it over the front-end mechanics, which is literally the point of standing on the top step. You also tried to drink it while running up the podium steps, which was mathematically doomed to fail."
Lando stopped dead in his tracks, spinning on his heel to point a damp, accusing finger directly at the back of Oscar's head until the Australian finally glanced up from his screen.
"Don't do that face," Lando warned, his eyes narrowing slightly in mock suspicion. "You're doing the face."
Oscar paused, his thumb hovering over a notification. "What face?"
"The face where you're about to say something deeply annoying," Lando said, stepping into Oscar's personal space until their shoulders almost brushed. "I can see it in the way your jaw moves. You get this tiny twitch right near your ear whenever you think you're being clever."
"I didn't say anything, Lando," Oscar replied, stepping neatly around him without breaking his slow, deliberate stride. "I think that's just my face when I'm exhausted, sticky by proximity, and standing next to someone who won a race while I spent seventy laps battling dirty air because the pit wall called me in three laps too late into a wall of backmarkers."
"See!" Lando shouted softly, jogging two paces to catch up. "There it is! The sarcasm! It's leaking out."
"It's not sarcasm," Oscar said mildly. "It's a factual summary of my afternoon."
"You're just bitter because I hit the target drop-off delta and you boiled your fronts."
"I didn't boil my fronts," Oscar said, finally slipping his phone into his back pocket and looking at Lando with a faint, dangerous spark in his eye. "My fronts were pristine until I spent twelve laps sitting behind Liam who was waving his rear end around like a boat."
"A boat?" Lando laughed, the sound loud in the quiet hallway. "Lawson isn't a boat."
"He was driving like a ferry," Oscar insisted. "A broad, slow ferry with structural integrity issues. I had to steer around him like I was navigating a harbor."
"You're ridiculous," Lando snorted, though he was grinning now, the high of the win still thrumming under his skin, made brighter by the easy, comfortable friction of having Oscar to bounce it off.
It was late enough that the surrounding Zandvoort paddock had begun to drain of its usual chaotic energy. The orange-clad sea of Dutch fans had dissolved into the coastal town to drink beer and set off flares, leaving behind only the ambient hum of heavy diesel generators, the metallic clatter of freight cases being loaded onto transport trucks, and the frantic chirp of a dying thermal printer somewhere inside the engineering trailer. Mechanics were moving with the heavy, methodical exhaustion that comes at the tail end of a double-header, their faces stained with grease, sweat, and carbon marble dust as they packed up the telemetry rigs for Monza.
They passed the hospitality kitchen, where a tray of cold mini-sandwiches sat abandoned under a heat lamp. Lando instantly veered off course, grabbing two tiny vegan cucumber-and-cheese rolls and shoving one toward Oscar's chest.
"Eat," Lando commanded.
Oscar looked down at the sandwich, then at Lando's champagne-damp fingers holding it. "Did you wash your hands?"
"I'm a Formula 1 driver, Oscar, not a surgeon. Just eat the bread."
"It's sweating, Lando."
"It's non-dampened cheese," Lando corrected, taking a massive bite of his own. "It's luxury caterer food. Zak paid three thousand Euros for this tray."
"Zak paid three thousand Euros for catering that looks like it was collected from a train station at 2:00 AM," Oscar said, but he took the sandwich anyway, taking a slow, reluctant bite. He chewed thoughtfully for three seconds. "It tastes like cardboard and low expectations."
"You have no culture," Lando said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Australian taste buds are ruined by Vegemite. You don't know real culinary craft."
"Vegemite has salt," Oscar pointed out. "This has the moisture content of an old fire suit."
They continued down the service corridor, the ambient noise of team radios and power tools humming through the thin partition walls. Lando lingered near the door of the driver room, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his dark grey team hoodie. He watched Oscar walk ahead toward the physio room, noting the slight slump in the younger driver's shoulders. It was a subtle tell, a tiny dip in his posture that anyone else in the paddock would have missed, but one Lando had learned to read over the course of two long, high-pressure seasons as teammates.
They had developed an unwritten, highly weird rhythm of existing in the same physical space without needing to fill every silence. Sometimes Lando would walk into the hospitality suite, sit down on the couch next to Oscar, and they wouldn't say a single word for forty-five minutes while scrolling through their respective feeds. Other times, like tonight, Lando felt an itching, restless need to pull Oscar out of his analytical shell, if only to verify that the robotic composure wasn't permanent.
"Lando," Andrea Stella's warm, accented voice cut through the hall as the Team Principal emerged from an engineering office, flanked by two race engineers carrying thick black binders packed with lap charts.
Andrea stopped, his sharp, observant eyes scanning both drivers. Oscar paused a few paces down the hall, turning back politely.
"Very good weekend on your side of the garage, Lando," Andrea said, stepping forward to clap a hand on Lando's shoulder. "The management of the second stint after the restart, the way you handled Kimi pushing behind, exceptional work. Really, very mature."
"Thank you, Andrea," Lando said, shifting his weight slightly and tucking his hands further into his pockets. "Car felt great after we adjusted the front-wing flap at the first stop. Balance came right back to us."
Andrea turned his attention toward Oscar, his expression instantly softening into that trademark measured, compassionate demeanor that made him such an effective leader, yet somehow always felt slightly like a doctor delivering a tricky prognosis.
"And Oscar," Andrea said softly. "Not the result we calculated for you today. The delay on the left-rear tire during the second pit stop cost us four seconds of track position that we simply could not recover against the undercut. But the underlying pace, when you had clean air in sector three, was matching the leaders. The potential was clear."
"We'll analyze it in the morning, Andrea," Oscar said smoothly. He offered a polite, practiced smile, the exact one he gave to television cameras when he had just been knocked out of Q2 through no fault of his own. It reached his eyes just enough to look convincing, but failed to warm his face. "The car had pace. Just wrong place, wrong time after lap twenty-two."
"Yes," Andrea nodded approvingly, tapping Oscar's arm. "That is the correct mindset. We win together, we learn together. Go get some rest. Monza is a very different monster."
Lando stood quietly, watching the micro-expressions cross Oscar's face during the entire interaction. He knew the difference between Oscar's media-trained composure and his actual emotional state. The public version of Oscar Piastri was a stone wall of calm logic, a bloodless data processor who didn't care about bad luck; the private version was just as fiercely, violently competitive as anyone else on the grid, quietly cataloging every lost second, every slow wheel nut change, and every strategic misfire into an internal ledger of grievances.
Once Andrea had offered a final encouraging nod and walked away down the corridor toward the team truck, Oscar turned back to Lando.
"You're a terrible liar, by the way," Oscar said quietly.
Lando blinked. "What? I didn't say anything!"
"You didn't have to," Oscar said, walking past him toward the main exit. "You looked like you were going to explode while Andrea was talking about my pit stop. You had that look on your face like you were about to start yelling at the wheel-gun operator yourself."
"I wasn't going to explode," Lando retorted, walking faster to catch up until their shoulders brushed in the narrow hallway. "I just hate when management tries to make a sixth-place finish sound like a victory because the pace was good in sector three. You started fourth, the team blew the stop, you lost two positions to Ferrari and Mercedes, and now you're sitting fifty-five points behind me in the championship standings. It sucks, and you don't have to act like you're completely fine with it just because Andrea used the word 'learning' three times."
Oscar stopped walking, turning to face Lando fully under the harsh fluorescent lights of the service corridor. For a fraction of a second, the carefully maintained armor slipped, revealing a raw, sharp edge of cold frustration that he usually kept buried deep beneath layers of analytical detachment.
"I'm not pissed at you, Lando," Oscar said, his voice dropping an octave. "You drove a clean race and you deserved the win. You had the pace from Friday morning. But watching a podium slip away because someone cross-threaded a nut on the left-rear isn't something I enjoy repeating every three weekends. I don't need it dressed up as a 'learning opportunity.'"
"I know it's not my fault," Lando said softly, his playful tone evaporating entirely as he stepped closer. "I just... I don't want you sitting there thinking I'm walking around celebrating while ignoring the fact that your race got completely ruined by something out of your control. We're supposed to be moving this team forward together, not just one car."
Oscar looked at him for a long moment, the tension in his jaw visibly loosening. "I know," he said quietly. "It's fine. It's just F1."
"That phrase is banned," Lando declared instantly, trying to lighten the heavy air. "If I hear you say 'it is what it is' or 'it's just F1' one more time today, I'm throwing your phone into the sea."
"It's a good phrase," Oscar defended himself, a faint twitch returning to his lips. "It saves me from having to explain things to people who don't care."
"I care," Lando said. The words came out faster than he intended, sharper and more honest than their usual banter.
Oscar looked at him, his gray-blue eyes steady under the dim lights. "I know you do, Lando."
They exited the rear of the hospitality building into the cool, damp North Sea night air. The wind was coming off the coast, carrying the sharp scent of salt water, damp sand, and burnt synthetic rubber from the track surface. The distant noise of the grandstands had completely died down, leaving only the sound of their own footsteps on the tarmac.
"Fancy a proper walk?" Lando asked, gesturing vaguely toward the dark, quiet tarmac road leading away from the paddock toward the coastal dunes. "I don't really want to sit in the hotel room staring at telemetry until midnight. My head feels like it's going to vibrate off."
Oscar looked down the dark, paved path, then back at Lando, raising an eyebrow in silent assessment. "If we get swarmed by lingering Dutch fans who are eight beers deep, I am leaving you behind."
"You wouldn't," Lando said, falling into step beside him. "You'd use me as a human shield."
"Mathematically, you have a larger surface area when you're waving your arms around," Oscar noted as they passed through the outer security gate. "It's just practical."
They walked in silence for the first few hundred meters, their sneakers crunching over loose gravel along the edge of the access road. The streetlights cast long, shifting shadows across the pavement ahead of them. Lando kicked a small piece of loose asphalt into the tall grass by the roadside, his mind racing through the complex, messy landscape of their shared season. He was fourth in the standings, riding the high of consecutive victories in Hungary and Zandvoort, yet an odd, nagging dissatisfaction lingered in his chest, a feeling that the closer he got to his ultimate goals, the harder it was to find anyone who understood the specific, suffocating weight of that pressure.
"Do you ever feel like people only know the version of you that shows up on the F1 TV broadcast?" Oscar asked suddenly, his voice quiet against the background whistle of the ocean wind. "The calm, robotic guy who doesn't get flustered by telemetry data?"
Lando looked over, surprised by the sudden drop into realness. "All the time. They think I'm either completely relaxed and playing sim games, or completely spiraling and crying into my helmet, with nothing in between. They don't see the parts where you're just genuinely terrified of slipping up when everything is on the line."
"Terrified?" Oscar repeated, testing the word as if it were a foreign concept. "You don't look terrified out there. You looked like you were on a Sunday drive during that final stint."
"That's because I don't give them that version," Lando admitted, pulling his hoodie strings tight around his neck to block out the coastal chill. "I give them the jokes and the post-race complaints about champagne. It's easier to play the kid who makes funny faces than to try and explain why my chest feels so tight every time I strap into the car for Q3 that I can barely take a full breath."
They reached the perimeter fence overlooking the dark outline of the grandstands, the massive steel structures standing like silent sentinels over the empty circuit. Lando's phone buzzed sharply in his pocket, the bright screen illuminating his face in the darkness.
Max Verstappen: where are you
Lando: walking
Max Verstappen: with?
Lando: someone
Max Verstappen: that is the most suspicious answer you have ever given me
Max Verstappen: are you buying illegal aero parts from red bull?
Lando let out a brief, breathless laugh, sliding the phone back into his pocket without replying further. Oscar glanced over, catching the dim outline of the screen.
"Max checking up on your whereabouts?"
"He crashed out of his home race, so now he's bored and trying to drag me into sim racing," Lando said with a faint grin. "He gets weirdly protective when I don't respond within thirty seconds."
"You're avoiding the topic again," Oscar noted quietly, leaning his back against the chain-link fence and crossing his arms over his chest. "You do that whenever things get slightly too real. You throw out a joke, or you mention Max, or you start complaining about the catering."
"And you hide behind a wall of silence until everyone assumes you don't have feelings at all," Lando fired back, though there was no real venom in his voice. "We both have our defense mechanisms, Oscar. Yours just looks more professional on camera."
"Mine is more practical," Oscar corrected smoothly. "It prevents me from having to answer thirty variations of 'how did it feel to finish sixth' every Sunday afternoon."
"It's boring," Lando said.
"It's efficient."
"It's robotic."
"It works."
Lando turned to look at him, the streetlight catching the sharp angle of Oscar's jaw. "Does it? Because you looked like you wanted to kick a tire through a wall twenty minutes ago."
Oscar didn't answer immediately. He looked out over the dark expanse of the track, the asphalt glowing faint grey under the moon. "Maybe," he said softly. "But kicking a tire doesn't gain back four seconds."
The silence returned between them, but it was no longer comfortable, it had turned sharp, electric with an unexpressed desire to bridge the gap that professional competition naturally built between two drivers sharing the same garage. By the time they walked back to the driver hotel, the atmosphere had shifted into something far more intense than a standard post-race debrief.
---
The hotel room was quiet when Lando followed Oscar inside, the interior minimalist and impeccably organized in a way that felt almost clinical compared to Lando's usual chaotic trail of gear bags, discarded shoes, and half-empty water bottles. Oscar tossed his electronic room key onto the glass nightstand and poured two glasses of tap water from the small kitchenette, handing one to Lando without a word.
"You said earlier that I don't know you," Lando said, leaning his hip against the edge of the heavy wooden desk while Oscar sat on the corner of the neatly made bed. "What did you actually mean by that?"
Oscar took a slow sip of water, his grey-blue eyes fixing on Lando with an unsettling, direct focus. "I mean you see the lap times and the telemetry traces, Lando. You see me when I'm working. But you treat me like a constant baseline, like I'm just here to be the quiet guy in the second car who doesn't mind when the strategy goes off the rails."
"That's not true," Lando argued, setting his glass down with a small, sharp click. "I know how hard you push. I know how much it pisses you off when the team makes a call that hurts your side of the garage."
"Do you?" Oscar countered smoothly, leaning forward slightly with his elbows on his knees. "Because every time I try to say something real about how frustrating this season has been, you turn it into a joke about my personality or my lack of expressions. You use humor as a shield so you don't have to engage with the fact that we're both trying to beat each other into the ground."
Lando opened his mouth to offer a quick, sarcastic defense, but the words caught in his throat. The critique hit home with the sharp force of a telemetry line showing a lost tenth in a critical corner. He took a deep breath, rubbing the back of his neck as he stared down at the hotel carpet.
"Fine," Lando said softly, looking up to catch Oscar's gaze directly. "If you think I don't know the real version of you, then let me learn it. But we do it properly."
Oscar tilted his head, intrigued despite his analytical nature. "What does 'properly' mean in your head?"
"A rule," Lando declared, his eyes lighting up with the sudden, reckless inspiration that usually preceded his most chaotic ideas. "No lying. Absolute, unvarnished honesty between the two of us. If one of us asks a question, the other either answers it completely truthfully or explicitly refuses to answer. No deflection, no polite PR answers, no jokes to hide behind."
Oscar stared at him for a long moment, evaluating the proposition as if it were a high-risk overtake into Turn 1 at Monza. "That sounds entirely unsustainable for two people sharing a garage in the middle of a championship fight."
"Are you scared you can't handle it?" Lando challenged, a small, provocative smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "You're supposed to be the disciplined one, Oscar. The emotionless computer. I'm offering you a clean slate to tell me exactly how much you hate my driving style, or my jokes, or my face, without any filter."
"I don't hate your driving style," Oscar said flatly, though a subtle shift in his expression showed he was taking the bait. "How long is this supposed to last?"
Lando didn't pause to think. The number had been sitting in the back of his mind since he had looked at the season calendar earlier that afternoon, though he framed it with his usual casual, off-hand air.
"Eighty-one days. Exactly."
Oscar blinked, a rare flash of genuine surprise washing over his features before he caught himself and flattened his expression. "Eighty-one days? Why eighty-one?"
"Because it's a solid block of time," Lando lied smoothly, keeping his voice light while avoiding direct eye contact with the number 81 painted on Oscar's gear bag sitting near the closet. "Takes us right through the European leg, through Monza, Spain, Azerbaijan, and into the autumn season. If we survive eighty-one days of total honesty without destroying the team atmosphere, we win."
"And what's the penalty if someone breaks the rule and tells a lie?" Oscar asked, his tone dropping into a quiet, serious register.
"The other person gets to ask one question, any question at all and you are legally required by driver contract etiquette to answer it with absolute depth," Lando stated, holding out his right hand toward Oscar. "No evasions. No walking away."
Oscar looked down at Lando's outstretched hand, considering the ridiculous, dangerous nature of the agreement. They were teammates in one of the most high-pressure environments on the planet, separated by hundredths of a second on track and endless media scrutiny off it. Opening a channel of total transparency was an absurd risk, a line drawn directly through the middle of their professional dynamic.
Slowly, Oscar reached out and took Lando's hand, his grip firm, warm, and steady.
"Eighty-one days," Oscar said. "Starting right now."
"Day zero," Lando whispered, a mixture of anticipation and sudden, sharp anxiety tightening in his chest.
"Day zero," Oscar echoed quietly, his gaze steady, refusing to look away first.
The hand pressure dropped away, but the ghost of Oscar's grip lingered on Lando's skin like an uncalibrated telemetry sensor reading hot long after bringing the car into parc fermé.
Lando paced the narrow perimeter of Oscar's hotel room, his socked feet making silent tracks on the beige carpet. The room was standard top-tier F1 accommodation: pristine, neutral, entirely lacking in soul. It looked like an architectural render of comfort. Lando's own room two doors down was currently an zone of open luggage, discarded socks, half-charged controllers, and three different pairs of damp trainers drying near the air conditioning vent. Oscar's room had his suit hanging neatly in the wardrobe, his laptop resting square on the center of the glass desk, and his washbag zipped tight beside the mirror.
"So," Lando started, spinning on his heel at the foot of the bed. "Day zero. We need testing parameters."
"Testing parameters," Oscar repeated flatly. He sat on the edge of the mattress, resting his forearms on his knees, holding his glass of water with both hands. "It's a bet, Lando, not an aerodynamic update."
"Everything needs parameters! Otherwise you'll claim that a white lie to Charlotte about how many hours of sleep you got counts as a violation, and I'll be hit with a penalty before we even get on the charter to Milan." Lando pointed at him aggressively. "First question: does PR count? If a journalist asks me if I think McLaren has the best line-up on the grid and I say yes to keep Zak happy, do I lose?"
"The rule applies exclusively between us," Oscar said quietly. He took a small sip of water. "What you lie to the media about is between you, your conscience, and Charlotte's blood pressure. But if you walk into this room, or my room, or sit next to me on a plane, and I ask you a question... you don't give me the PR script."
"Deal," Lando said, dropping into the armchair across from the bed.
He pulled his legs up, crossing his ankles and hooking his chin over his knees. He looked small like that, stripped of the bulky fire suit and the adrenaline of holding off Kimi Antonelli for fifty-two relentless laps. "Your turn. Ask something."
Oscar looked at him. Really looked at him. His grey-blue eyes had a way of flattening out when he was analyzing data, but right now they were sharp, unreadable, reflecting the dim light of the bedside lamp.
"Why eighty-one?" Oscar asked softly.
Lando froze for half a beat. "I told you. It takes us through the European season—"
"Lando." Oscar's voice was barely louder than a whisper, but it carried the weight of a red flag in Q3. "Day zero. Rule check. You hesitated."
Lando swallowed, his throat suddenly tight. He felt the phantom heat of Oscar's car number pressed against his back every weekend, the big orange 81 sitting right beside his own 4 in every graphic, every timing screen, every pit board. He hadn't planned to use it. It had just slipped out of his mouth because when he thought of Oscar, that number was hard-coded into his brain alongside ideal brake temperatures and corner-entry speeds.
"Because it's your number," Lando admitted, looking down at the fabric of his sweatpants. The confession felt surprisingly raw, slipping past his teeth before his brain could assemble a joke to cover it up. "Eighty-one days. It felt... significant. Like setting a target delta."
Oscar didn't laugh. He didn't offer a witty Australian quip about Lando being a sentimental idiot. He just let the silence sit between them, thick and heavy, until the hum of the hotel mini-fridge was the only sound in the room.
"Okay," Oscar finally said, his voice softer now. "That's one."
"Your turn to be interrogated," Lando said quickly, eager to shift the spotlight off himself. He sat up straighter, resting his arms on the armrests. "When the pit wall told you that the left-rear nut was stripped during the stop... what was the absolute first thought that went through your head?"
Oscar's jaw tightened. The tiny muscle near his ear twitched, the exact twitch Lando had called out in the corridor an hour ago.
"I wanted to turn the engine off," Oscar said.
Lando blinked. "In the box?"
"In the pit lane," Oscar clarified, his eyes fixing on Lando with brutal, stark clarity. "They were struggling with the gun, and I saw the Mercedes pull out on the pit lane monitor above the garage. I saw George go past. I knew the lap delta. I knew I was coming out behind Liam in dirty air on cold hards. And for about two seconds, I just wanted to hit the kill switch on the steering wheel, step out of the car, and walk straight out of the circuit into the dunes."
Lando felt a cold pit drop into his stomach. In Formula 1, drivers talked about anger. They talked about swearing into the radio, about slamming visors down, about throwing gloves across the driver room. But wanting to hit the kill switch, wanting to simply turn off a nine-hundred-horsepower machine mid-race because the incompetence of the system was too heavy to carry, that was deep. That was a dark, quiet rage that Lando had never associated with Oscar's smooth, analytical persona.
"Why didn't you?" Lando asked gently.
"Because Tom was on the radio telling me head down, long race ahead" Oscar said, letting out a short, hollow exhale that was almost a laugh. "And because if I stopped the car, it would make the team look bad. And my job is to make the team look good, even when the team gives me three wheel-nuts and a prayer."
"Fuck, Oscar," Lando muttered, rubbing his hand over his face. "That's heavy."
"You asked for the truth," Oscar said smoothly, leaning back against the padded headboard of the bed. "No filters. That was the truth."
Lando stared at his trainers. The sticky champagne residue had dried, leaving stiff dark spots on the grey suede. He thought about his own race, the clean pit stops, the flawless strategy calls, the way the pit wall had managed his gaps down to the millisecond while Oscar was left to suffer in dirty air behind backmarkers. The gap between their garages felt wider than fifty-five championship points. It felt like an abyss.
"I hate that it happens to you," Lando said quietly.
"I know," Oscar replied.
"No, really. I hate it. Because people look at the results board and they see Norris P1, Piastri P6, and they write their little articles about hierarchy. They write about who is driver number one and who is driver number two. And it's bullshit, Oscar. It's absolute bullshit."
Oscar watched him, his posture completely still. "Are you angry on my behalf, Lando?"
"Yes!" Lando snapped, his voice rising slightly before he remembered the thin hotel walls and forced it back down. "Yes, I'm angry! I want to win, obviously. I want to beat you every single weekend. But I want to beat you, the guy who puts together perfect sectors and drives like a machine. I don't want to beat a broken pit stop."
Oscar's lips twitched upward into a faint, genuine line. "That's surprisingly noble of you."
"Shut up. I'm not noble. I'm competitive. There's a difference."
"A subtle one," Oscar murmured. He set his empty water glass on the nightstand with a soft clack. "It's past midnight, Lando. We have an early shuttle to Schiphol."
Lando didn't want to leave. The realization hit him suddenly, a sharp, uncomfortable pulse in his chest. The silence in his own hotel room felt loud and oppressive, filled with the ghost of race anxiety and the looming pressure of Monza. In Oscar's room, surrounded by clean lines and stark, uncomfortable honesty, he felt anchored.
He stood up anyway, dragging his hands through his messy, damp curls. "Right. Schiphol. Peppermint tea and strategy debriefs."
Oscar stood up too, walking him to the door. He didn't open it immediately; he just stood with his hand resting on the metal handle, looking down at Lando.
"Day zero," Oscar said softly. "You survived."
"Barely," Lando said, offering a small grin. "You're terrifying when you don't use PR answers."
"You asked for it."
"I did." Lando hovered in the doorway, suddenly acutely aware of how close they were standing. The hallway behind him was freezing from the industrial air conditioning, but the doorway of Oscar's room was warm.
"Goodnight, Oscar."
"Goodnight, Lando."
Lando turned and walked down the carpeted hall toward his room. He pulled his keycard out, tapped it against the lock, and stepped inside. He dropped onto his unmade bed, staring up at the white ceiling.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out.
Oscar: You left your second vegan sandwich on my desk.
LANDO: eat it. protein.
Oscar: It is currently decomposing.
LANDO: rule check: is it decomposing or are you just being dramatic
Oscar: It has the structural integrity of wet tissue paper. That is a fact.
LANDO: go to sleep piastri
Oscar:Night, Lando.
Lando held the phone over his chest, looking at the small illuminated text. Eighty-one days. They had eighty-six days left in the season, eighty-one days left of the bet, and an entire championship fight standing between them and Abu Dhabi.
He closed his eyes, the hum of Zandvoort finally fading from his ears, replaced by the quiet, terrifying knowledge that he had just opened a door he was never going to be able to close.