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Monaco in mid-August was hot, beautiful, and absolutely, mind-numbingly boring.
Lando lay starfished across his living room rug, the air conditioning blasting directly onto his face. The summer break was only one week old, and he was already climbing the walls. He had already played golf with Max Fewtrell until his shoulders ached, completed three 100% stints on his sim-racing setup, and watched some MotoGP highlights. (May just be me projecting.)
With a heavy sigh, Lando picked up his phone and opened Twitter. He scrolled past a few standard delusional LH fans with the '8 WDC winner' stickers and angry Ferrari fan threads until a post from a random McLaren fan account caught his eye.
“If you think the Papaya rules drama on the pit wall is bad, you should read Chapter 12 of this. The yearning is crazy,” the tweet read, followed by a link.
Lando frowned. Drama? What drama? He and Oscar got along great. They were literally the most low-key, drama-free teammates on the grid. They communicated entirely in deadpan nods and shared quadrants of a single brain cell. Out of sheer curiosity, Lando tapped the link, hoping it wasn't some Rickrolling bullshit.
His screen flashed, redirecting him to a minimalist, archive-style website with a red header. At the top of the page, text read: Archive of Our Own.
"What is this, a telemetry archive?" Lando muttered to himself.
He looked down at the box of text. At the top was a massive wall of tags in little gray bubbles: Lando Norris/Oscar Piastri, Mutual Yearning, Idiots in Love, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shop, Established Relationship, Top Oscar, Bottom Lando.
Lando blinked. He understood the first few words, but the rest looked like a foreign language. Coffee shop? They worked for Zak Brown at McLaren. What did coffee machines have to do with anything? And what on earth did 'Top' and 'Bottom' mean in racing terms? Were they talking about the floor of the car? Had the FIA introduced a new regulation change while he was asleep?
He scrolled down further and hit the first paragraph of actual text.
The steam from the espresso machine hissed, burying the sound of Lando’s quiet sigh. He wiped down the counter for the fourth time, his eyes automatically darting to the corner booth. Oscar was there, as he was every Tuesday, a laptop open and a half-empty flat white sitting next to his long, slender fingers. Lando’s heart did a familiar, painful little flip. He wanted to walk over. He wanted to press a soft kiss to the crown of Oscar’s soft brown curls, but he was too terrified to ruin the fragile peace between them.
Lando sat up so fast his spine cracked. His jaw dropped. His heart slammed against his ribs. He read the paragraph again. Then he read the next one. And the next one.
It was a story. A highly detailed, incredibly well-written story about him and Oscar. Except they were baristas, and apparently, Lando was completely, hopelessly in love with his Australian teammate.
"What the actual fuck dude?" Lando whispered, a dark red flush immediately creeping up his neck.
He scrambled to open a private browser tab and furiously typed into Google: What is Archive of Our Own?
Search Result: Archive of Our Own (AO3) is a free non-profit website where people can read and share fanfiction, podfics and other fan works. (So what if I actually searched that up ¬_¬)
Lando’s thumbs flew across the keyboard at a terrifying speed. What is fanfiction F1?
Search Result: Stories written by fans about existing drivers or real people (RPF).
He swallowed hard. Real people. Them.
He went back to the original tab. He should close it. He really, really should close it. It was weird, right? Reading stories about yourself? If Andrea found out about this, Lando would be grounded from or bound to the simulator for a month. It had to violate some kind of driver etiquette code.
But as he stared at the screen, his thumb hovered, and then... he clicked 'Next Chapter'.
Around four hours later, it was already 1:30 AM. Lando had not moved from the rug. He was now clutching a sofa cushion tightly against his chest, his eyes wide and bloodshot in the glow of his phone.
The coffee shop story had ended, but Lando had discovered the search bar. He had filtered by his own name. He had discovered things that made him squeak out loud in his empty apartment. He learned what the 'Omegaverse' was, which caused him to close the tab so fast he almost dropped his phone, scrubbing his face with his hands in sheer psychological terror. Why were people writing about him having a mating heat?! He was just trying to secure P2 in the Drivers' Championship!
Right now, he was on chapter 34 of a massive, 50,000-word story set in the actual F1 paddock. And it was destroying him.
The author was describing Oscar. But they weren't just describing him; they were describing the way Oscar looked when he concentrated on tyre degradation data. The way his deadpan, sarcastic TikTok-humour always had a hidden warmth to it. The way Oscar’s eyelashes were ridiculously long, casting soft shadows on his cheekbones when he looked down at his steering wheel before a qualifying lap.
Lando paused his reading. He slowly lowered the phone.
Does Oscar have long eyelashes? Lando thought, his brain spinning out. I mean... yeah. I guess he does. They're actually really nice. Like, structurally perfect eyelashes that would make any girl jealous.
Suddenly, his phone buzzed at the top of the screen. A notification popped up.
Pastry boi: Yo. You down to hangout tomorrow or are you still pretending you have a social life?
Lando shrieked, dropping the phone directly onto his face.
"Ow Ow Ow!" he groaned, rubbing his nose. He scrambled to pick the phone back up, staring at the lock screen.
Oscar’s contact photo was a picture Lando had taken on the podium earlier that year. They were both covered in champagne, grinning like idiots, Oscar’s arm thrown casually over Lando’s shoulders.
Lando had looked at that photo a hundred times. It was just a teammate photo. A standard McLaren PR dream.
But looking at it now, at nearly 3:00 AM, deep in an AO3 rabbit hole, Lando felt a bizarre, hot spike of adrenaline shoot through his veins. He looked at Oscar’s arm around him in the photo. He looked at Oscar’s lips.
Oh no, Lando thought, a wave of pure panic washing over him as he buried his face in the sofa cushion. Oh, no, no, no. I'm broken. The internet broke me. GP2 engine brain.
He couldn't hang out with Oscar tomorrow. He couldn't talk to Oscar. In fact, Lando realised with a sinking feeling of dread, he was never going to be able to look at Oscar Piastri ever again without thinking about "slow burn mutual yearning."
Just then, another notification had appeared The text from pastry boi had been : “Still in Monaco??? Let’s grab food or hit the simulator before we head to Zandvoort.”
Lando had left it on read for four days. He had then replied with a single, highly suspicious emoji, the thumbs-up one, and immediately muted his phone, tossing it onto the other side of the bed as if it were a live grenade that was about to explode at any second.
Now, it was Thursday at the Dutch Grand Prix, and Lando was living a living nightmare. The summer break was officially over, which meant he could no longer hide in his apartment under a mountain of pillows. He was back in the paddock, wearing his papaya team kit, and his brain was entirely fried.
Every single thing around him looked like an AO3 tag. He walked past George Russell talking to Alex Albon and thought: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends to lovers. He saw Lewis Hamilton walking down the paddock in a high-fashion neon outfit and thought: Character Study - Slow Burn. He even saw a couple of mechanics laughing over a broken front wing and thought: Hurt/Comfort. It was a disease. He was infected.
When he reached the McLaren hospitality unit, he spotted Oscar.
Oscar was sitting at a table, calmly eating a bowl of oatmeal, looking utterly unfazed by existence. His curls were perfectly messy. His eyelashes, Lando choked on his own spit, were indeed structurally perfect.
"Morning, Lan," Oscar said, his voice a low, steady Australian drone. He raised a spoon in greeting. "Did your phone fall into the harbour or something? You never replied about food."
"Oscar! Hi. Hello. Teammate? Oscar," Lando stammered, his voice jumping an entire octave. He tightly gripped the strap of his rucksack like a shield. "No! Phone is fine. Great phone, 10 out of 10, would recommend having. Signal was just... bad. In Monaco. You know how the tunnels affect the... data packets."
Oscar raised an eyebrow, slowly lowering his spoon back into the bowl. "Right. The famous Monaco Wi-Fi outage. Truly devastating for a guy who streams on Twitch." He leaned back, examining Lando with a cool, analytical gaze. "Are you alright? You look like you haven't slept since Spa."
I haven't, Lando wanted to scream. Because I was reading about you pinning me against a team hospitality wall in Silverstone!
Instead, Lando forced a high-pitched laugh that sounded like a dying seagull. "Completely fine! Just super focused. Full focus on Zandvoort. Maximising performance. Upgrading the... floor edge. Yeah."
"We didn't bring a floor upgrade this weekend, Lando," Oscar stated flatly.
"Right! Testing you. You passed!" Lando darted toward the espresso machine, desperate to escape the intense, soul-reading geometry of Oscar's gaze. He reached for a mug, his hands shaking so much the ceramic clattered against the counter.
The steam from the espresso machine hissed... The exact words from Chapter 12 flashed across his mind in bold font.
Lando dropped his hands as if the machine had shocked him. He spun around, only to realise Oscar had stood up and walked over to deposit his empty bowl. Because the hospitality kitchen was narrow, Oscar had to step right into Lando's personal space to reach the sink.
He smelled like mint and the expensive hotel soap McLaren booked for them.
"Seriously, mate," Oscar murmured, stepping closer. He reached out, his long, slender fingers, the ones from the story, oh my god; hovering just above Lando's arm. "You're vibrating. Did you drink five monsters before 9:00 AM?"
"Don't touch me!" Lando blurted out, taking a frantic step backward. His heel caught the edge of the linoleum mat, and he went flying off-balance.
Before his brain could process the upcoming impact with the floor, Oscar’s hand shot out. His grip snapped around Lando's forearm, solid and entirely unyielding, pulling Lando back up before he could fall. For a split second, they were chest-to-chest. Lando could see the exact hazel flecks in Oscar's eyes. He could see the slight, confused tilt of Oscar's lips.
Top Oscar, Lando's brain supplied helpfully. Established Relationship. Idiots in love.
"Thanks! top tier reflexes! That's why you're in F1!" Lando ripped his arm out of Oscar's grip, grabbed a completely random, empty paper cup from the counter, and bolted out of the hospitality suite into the cool Dutch air, leaving Oscar standing by the sink in utter, silent bewilderment.
Lando sprinted all the way to his private driver room, slammed the door shut, and locked it. He collapsed against the wood, sliding down to the floor, breathing as if he had just completed a qualifying lap on soft tyres.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Trembling, he pulled it out.
Pastry boi: I don't know what's wrong with you, but we have the engineering briefing in ten minutes. Try not to tackle Jon on the way there.
Lando buried his face in his knees. The race weekend hadn't even started yet, and he was already completely, utterly cooked.
The rest of that Thursday at the track morphed into a high-stakes, black-ops stealth mission. Lando’s primary objective was painfully simple yet logistically horrifying: under no circumstances was he to be found within a five-metre radius of Oscar Jack Piastri.
It was an absolute disaster to coordinate. They were teammates. They shared a garage divided only by a couple of walls. They shared data telemetry. They shared a mandatory PR schedule that felt like it had been custom-designed by the universe to torture him. Every corner he turned presented a new tactical hazard. If he saw a flash of Oscar’s distinct, calm stride coming from the engineering room, Lando would immediately pivot 180 degrees and pretend to be deeply fascinated by a stack of blank Pirelli tyre blankets.
The real test came during the mandatory McLaren fan Q&A session on the main stage. Positioned backstage before walking out, Lando engineered a masterful piece of tactical positioning. As they were called out to the roaring crowd, he subtly grabbed their PR manager, Kim, by the shoulders and gently but unyieldingly steered her into the physical space between himself and Oscar.
The resulting stage arrangement was bizarre: Lando on the far right, Kim looking slightly claustrophobic in the center, and Oscar on the left, standing with his hands casually clasped in front of him, looking like a statue of serene composure.
Whenever the stage host fired off a question directed at both drivers, Lando immediately went on the offensive. He aggressively locked his eyes onto the furthest rows of the grandstands, nodding his head like a malfunctioning bobblehead. He completely refused to rotate his neck even a single millimeter to the left.
"So, Lando, how did you spend your summer break?" the host asked, holding the microphone out.
Lando snatched his mic upward, his knuckles white. "Great! Just... fanf.. tastic! Stayed inside mostly. Total blackout. Avoided screens. Didn't read anything. Especially not on the internet. The internet is a wasteland. Fiction is bad! Fact is good! Teamwork is efficient!" he yelled into the microphone, his voice cracking slightly on the word fiction.
Beside him, Oscar slowly turned his head. His deadpan expression didn't break, but his left eyebrow migrated upward by a fraction of a millimeter. The corporate, media-trained facade wasn't just cracking; it was experiencing a full blown earthquake. He looked deeply, profoundly, and clinically confused by his teammate's sudden descent into public mania.
The true catastrophe struck twenty minutes after the media sessions concluded. Believing the coast was clear, Lando was making a swift break back to the safety of his driver room. The paddock noise was a distant hum as he navigated the narrow, shadowy corridor directly behind the team hospitality units.
Then, the sound of rhythmic, unhurried footsteps echoed against the composite panels behind him.
"Lando. Wait up a second," Oscar’s voice called out.
Lando froze mid-stride. His survival instincts, completely warped by weeks of reading late-night Archive of Our Own tags, screamed at him. He looked around wildly. The corridor was a dead end if Oscar cut off the main exit. To his immediate left was the single window to his private driver room. Because the afternoon was warm, the window was currently cracked open about six inches to let the breeze in.
"Lando?" Oscar’s voice was closer now. Ten metres. Maybe less.
Pure, unadulterated panic completely hijacked Lando's nervous system. He didn't evaluate the risk profile of what he was about to do. He didn't calculate the probability of tearing his bespoke trousers or pulling a hamstring right before Free Practice 1.
He lunged sideways, grabbed the plastic frame of the window, and shoved it fully open with a loud clack. Hooking his right knee over the narrow sill, he hoisted his entire upper body upward, scrambling for leverage.
"What the-" Oscar’s voice cut through the air, tinged with genuine shock.
Lando didn't look back. He scrambled through the remarkably small gap, his Puma trainers kicking frantically against the exterior white wall of the hospitality unit, leaving two distinct scuff marks. With one final, desperate heave, he tumbled headfirst into his own room, losing his balance entirely and crashing into a chaotic heap of dirty training kit, discarded Nomex layers, and spare racing boots.
Wasting no time, he scrambled up from the floor on all fours, reached out, slammed the window shut, locked it, and violently pulled the blinds down, plunging the room into shadow, while trying his best not to check if Oscar had followed him all the way.
Outside in the corridor, Oscar stopped dead right where Lando had been standing a second prior. He stared blankly at the closed white blinds. He blinked once. Twice. He looked down at the fresh black scuff marks on the wall.
"Did he just... parkour away from me?" Oscar whispered to the empty hallway, completely processing the fact that a multi-million-pound elite athlete had just escaped him like a panicked raccoon.
Inside the darkened room, Lando lay flat on his back on top of a pile of McLaren-branded laundry, staring blankly at the ceiling tiles. His heart was going faster than his f1 car at fullspeed. Slowly, with trembling fingers, he pulled his phone out of his pocket, unlocked it, and brought up the private browser tab that had been open since Tuesday. He scrolled to the top to read the tags of the specific fic he was halfway through.
Tag: Miscommunication like an Olympic sport.
"Wayy too accurate," Lando groaned, pulling a spare team cap off the floor and dropping it directly over his face to block out the world. "The internet literally predicted my entire life."
Time Skip to December.
The grueling twenty-four-race season was finally over, but instead of jetting off to a secluded tropical island to sleep for a month, Lando found himself at a mutual friend’s massive multi-level penthouse party in Monaco. Half the grid was crammed into the space, celebrating the winter break with the exact kind of high intensity you would expect from people who spend their weekends driving at 200 mph.
Lando, however, was thoroughly miserable.
He was slumped on the edge of a plush leather sofa in the corner of the secondary lounge, staring blankly into a red plastic cup filled with a 'punch' that smelled suspiciously like 90% premium vodka and a splash of cranberry. For the last few weeks, his brain had been operating in a permanent state of overload. He had spent every waking hour trying to balance his very real, very heavy feelings for Oscar with the digital ghost of their fictional selves. Every time Oscar looked at him, Lando's brain cross-referenced it with forty different tropes.
By midnight, the alcohol had completely dismantled what little executive functioning Lando possessed. The nervous, running-away energy that had defined his autumn suddenly flipped. It morphed into a pure, stubborn, unyielding determination.
He couldn't keep doing this. The slow burn was exhausting. He was tired of running.
Lando stood up so fast his head spun. He walked into the kitchen, dumped his untouched cup squarely into the sink, grabbed his heavy winter coat off the rack, and slipped out of the party into the biting winter air. He didn't call an Uber back to his own flat. Instead, with a jaw set in defiance, he opened his maps app and typed in an address he had memorized weeks ago, the modern apartment complex overlooking the harbor where the pastry boi lived.
Twenty minutes later, after a frantic, freezing walk through the steep streets of Monaco, Lando was standing in front of Oscar’s door. He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving, his cheeks violently flushed from a combination of the vodka, the winter chill, and absolute, sheer terror.
He knocked hard, three times, before his brain could convince his limbs to parkour over the balcony railing to escape.
The door swung open. Oscar stood in the warm light of the entryway. He wasn't wearing team gear or a tailored suit; he was dressed in a soft, oversized gray hoodie and matching sweatpants, holding a steaming ceramic mug of tea. He looked completely settled, entirely calm, and utterly beautiful.
"Lando?" Oscar blinked, his dark eyes adjusting to the sight of his shivering, disheveled teammate standing on his welcome mat at midnight. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be at the penthouse?"
"I was," Lando blurted out, his voice a little too loud in the quiet hallway. Before Oscar could even invite him in, Lando stepped right past him, invading the warm, neat flat like a minor hurricane. He spun around in the middle of the living room, his coat swinging, his chest heaving. "But I couldn't stay. Because of you. Because of my absolute disaster of a brain."
Oscar closed the door slowly, the latch clicking into place with agonizing deliberation. He set his mug down on the kitchen counter, never breaking eye contact. His calm demeanor didn't waver, but his eyes softened, tracking Lando's erratic movements. "Okay. What's wrong with your brain, mate?"
"Everything!" Lando cried out, the volume of his voice dropping instantly from a shout to a soft, frantic, desperate whisper. He took a heavy step closer to the kitchen island, his hands trembling as he unbuttoned his coat. "Osc, I’ve been a total nightmare since August. I know it. You know it. Zak knows it. The whole bloody engineering team knows it. I’ve been running away from you, and jumping out of actual windows, and acting like you’re a walking five-second penalty. But it’s not because I hate you. I could never, ever hate you, Osc. That's the whole problem."
Oscar stayed completely still, leaning back slightly against the counter, listening with an intensity that made Lando’s stomach do a complete flip. "Then why?"
"Because I found this... this website," Lando confessed, the words finally tumbling out in an unstoppable torrent. His eyes shone with a volatile mix of vulnerability and panic. "This archive. Archive of Our Own. People write stories about us, Oscar. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. They write about us kissing in stupid coffee shops, and pinning each other against garage walls during red flags, and having these massive, dramatic, torturous slow burns. And at first, I thought it was just a joke. I thought the internet was just completely unhinged."
Lando took another step, closing the distance between them until he could smell the strong scent from Oscar's tea. His heart was completely on his sleeve now, raw and unprotected.
"But then I kept reading. I couldn't stop. And the more I read, the more I started looking at you in real life. Really looking at you. I noticed how you always know exactly what to say to calm the garage down when everything is going wrong. I noticed how steady your hands look on the steering wheel during a wet formation lap. I noticed your eyelashes, Oscar! They’re so long! It's ridiculous! And I realized... I'm not panicking because the stories are weird. I'm panicking because I actually want them to be true. I'm hopelessly, terribly, completely in love with you."
The flat fell dead silent. The only sound was the faint hum of the refrigerator and Lando's shallow, ragged breathing. He held his breath, his heart hammering violently against his ribs, feeling instantly lighter but terrified of the crushing rejection that surely had to follow.
Oscar stared at him. He didn't blink, move, or speak for what felt like five entire business days. Lando's internal timing loop was breaking down.
Then, slowly, an incredibly sweet, genuine smile broke across Oscar’s face, turning up the corners of his mouth and crinkling the skin around his eyes.
"Lando," Oscar said softly, stepping forward from the counter until the remaining distance between them vanished entirely. "You're an absolute dumbass."
"I know... you know what, maybe I should just g-" Lando sniffled, his eyes darting toward the door as his defense mechanisms tried to re-engage.
"But you're my idiot," Oscar murmured.
Before Lando's brain could process the words, Oscar reached up, his large, warm hands cupping Lando’s flushed, cold face. He tilted Lando's head down slightly and pulled him down into a sweet, deep, completely real kiss.
It wasn't clumsy, and it wasn't frantic like Lando's thoughts. It was steady, deliberate, and perfect. Lando melted into the touch instantly, his hands moving automatically to grip the soft fabric of Oscar's gray hoodie, pulling him closer until there was no air left between them. The taste of hot tea and mint lingered, and for the first time in four months, Lando’s brain went entirely, beautifully quiet.
When they finally pulled apart, Lando was beaming, a goofy, love-struck grin plastered across his face. "Wow. Okay. The real-life version is definitely better than the fanfics."
Oscar let out a soft, low chuckle, his thumbs gently brushing over Lando's cheekbones before he stepped back toward the kitchen counter. "Yeah, it really is. Especially since we don't have to deal with any weird alternate universes."
Lando paused mid-smile, his slightly drunken brain suddenly flashing back to a specific, fifty-thousand-word story he had finished on the flight back from Abu Dhabi. "Wait a minute. Does that mean you actually know about them too?"
Oscar picked up his mug of tea, taking a slow sip as his face completely reclaimed its signature, unreadable deadpan expression. "Oh, absolutely. I’ve been reading them since my rookie year."
Lando’s jaw dropped so low it felt literal. "What?!"
"Yep," Oscar said, popping the 'p' with maximum satisfaction. "How do you think I knew you were hiding in the dirty laundry?"
"It was great entertainment, mate," Oscar reasoned flawlessly. "But listen, as long as we're being honest..." Oscar looked at him seriously. "If you ever bring up that 'Omegaverse' tag to me in real life, I am signing with Red Bull once and for all."
Lando let out a loud, dramatic groan, burying his face in his hands as Oscar laughed, pulling him back in for another kiss. The slow burn was finally over, but the paddock chaos was only just beginning.