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The engine noise inside the cockpit of the MCL38 didn’t fade so much as it transformed into a dull, violent thrumming behind Lando’s ears, vibrating right through his skull like a trapped wasp. The checkered flag had waved minutes ago.
Kimi Antonelli had taken a shock, staggering victory from 19th position, a drive that had left the entire paddock reeling in sheer, unscripted disbelief, while Lando had dragged his car across the line in fourth. Fifty-three brutal, punishing laps around Monza, the Temple of Speed, carved out in blistering late-summer Italian heat.
P4. It was three points better than Oscar’s P5, secured after a sharp, unyielding dive up the inside into the Second Variante late in the race. It was a move Lando had calculated with surgical, ruthless precision, forcing his younger teammate to give way or risk double carbon-fiber destruction. On paper, it was a solid drive. Solid recovery. Good points for the team.
Except Lando couldn't feel his hands.
Inside the tight carbon shell, the heat was suffocating. His race suit was soaked through, heavy with sweat, clinging to his skin like wet lead. When he killed the engine in Parc Fermé, the sudden absence of the roaring Mercedes power unit hit him like a physical blow. The silence was instantly replaced by the terrifying, deafening rhythm of his own heartbeat hammering against his ribs. *Thud. Thud. Thud.*
He sat completely still for three long seconds, his gloved fingers locked around the carbon-fiber handles of the steering wheel. He couldn't loosen his grip. His muscles were seized in a state of rigid, hyper-vigilant shock.
*Just unbuckle,* he ordered himself. *Unbuckle, step out, do the weigh-in. Standard procedure. You’ve done this a hundred times. Don’t look weak. Don't you dare look weak.*
*“Recognize the signs before the spiral starts, Lando,”* Dr. Harrison’s voice echoed from six months ago, smooth and infuriatingly patient, sitting in that quiet, sunlit office in London. *“Your body speaks to you long before your brain accepts the truth. When the panic rises, don’t fight it. Name the sensation, ground yourself, and let it pass through you.”*
*Yeah, well, easy to say when you’re not baking alive in a carbon-fiber coffin,* Lando thought bitterly, though his internal voice was weak, drowning beneath a rising tide of static.
He reached up to detach his HANS device, but his fingers were numb, clumsy, shaking with a subtle, fine tremor that made the quick-release tether slip through his gloves twice. Frustration, sharp and burning, sparked in his chest. His heart rate, which should have been dropping now that the checkered flag was done, spiked wildly into the 180s.
*Get it together. Pull the strap. Move.*
He unclipped the harness. Pushed himself up out of the survival cell with an agonizing effort, his arms trembling under his own weight.
The moment his boots touched the solid asphalt of the pit lane, the world tilted sideways by fifteen degrees.
Lando grabbed the halo for dear life, his knuckles white through the fabric. The ground beneath him felt fluid, like trying to stand on the deck of a speed boat slicing through heavy ocean swell. The roaring Italian crowd, a wall of red and black screaming for Antonelli and the podium finishers, sounded strange, warped, distorted as if he were underwater.
*Ground yourself. Name it.*
"I'm... I'm just hot," he muttered into his balaclava, but the sound was thin, swallowed instantly by the chaos of Parc Fermé.
He pulled his helmet off, the air hitting his sweat-drenched hair, but instead of relief, the harsh afternoon sun stung his eyes like white-hot needles. That was when the visual aura exploded.
It began at the periphery, a shimmering halo of static, like an old television tuned to a dead channel. Then came the stars. Flashing, geometric pinpricks of blinding light burst across his line of vision, expanding and contracting every time he blinked. Dozens of them. Hundreds of them. A violent, silent firework display dancing across the red firesuits of the Ferrari mechanics and the yellow high-vis vests of the marshals.
*Stars. I'm seeing fucking stars.*
*“If you feel overwhelmed, communicate,”* the therapist’s voice chimed in again, distant, useless, mocked by the reality of the paddock. *“Isolation is where the insecurity feeds. Speak to Jon. Speak to your team. They are your support system.”*
*No. Absolutely not.* The thought was automatic, born of a deep, primal panic. *You cannot tell anyone. You can NEVER let them see this.*
If he admitted he couldn't see properly, if he admitted the noise was making him vomit-sick and his head was spinning out of control, what then? It would go into the medical reports.
Zak would look at him with that worried, patronizing pity. The press would feast on it. *Lando Norris, fragile under pressure. Lando Norris, panicking again.*
Month after month of tedious, exhausting therapy, working to erase the narrative that he was emotionally unstable, that he broke when the heat was turned up, it would all be undone in a single afternoon. He would rather faint on the tarmac than let them see him bleed.
*Just keep moving,* he commanded his legs. *Look normal. Walk. Smile. Make a sarcastic joke. Laugh it off. Do what you always do.*
He bypassed Jon entirely, ignoring his physio’s raised eyebrows and outstretched water bottle. He couldn't look at Jon. If he opened his mouth, he was terrified what would come out, not words, but a breathless, pathetic gasp for air.
A few meters away, Kimi Antonelli was stepping away from his car, surrounded by a swarm of engineers. Lando forced his heavy, leaden feet to turn toward him. *Be a sportsman. Look cool. Act like the veteran.*
Lando reached out, intending to give the rookie a quick, encouraging clap on the shoulder. But as his hand landed on Kimi’s suit, Lando’s depth perception completely vanished. The ground dropped out from under his feet.
For one agonizing second, Lando completely lost his orientation in space. He didn't know which way was up, where the ground was, or which direction the garages were facing. The world spun in a sickening 360-degree blur of red, papaya, and blinding white sunlight. Panic surged through his veins like acid, hot and terrifying. His grip on Kimi’s shoulder tightened far too hard, his fingers digging into the fabric as he instinctively tried to anchor his falling body.
Kimi turned, looking slightly surprised by the intensity of the grip. "Lando? Good race, mate—"
Lando pulled his hand back as if burned, his heart hammering against his teeth. "Yeah. Good job, mate," Lando blurted out, his voice sharp, strained, totally unnatural. He didn't wait for a response. He spun around, his head swimming violently, and shoved his way blindly into the crowd.
*Don't look back. Don't let him see your face. Move. Keep moving.*
---
Across the crowded expanse of Parc Fermé, Oscar Piastri was unbuckling his own helmet.
P5. It wasn't the result he wanted, especially after losing fourth place to Lando’s late, aggressive dive into the Second Variante. Oscar had given him space because he had to, because crashing both Papaya cars into the foam blocks was the cardinal sin at McLaren, but the sting of the overtake was still fresh, cooling into a quiet, analytical coldness behind his dark eyes.
Oscar shook out his damp hair, taking a slow, measured breath of the hot Italian air. He stepped out of his car with his characteristic, methodical calm, handing his steering wheel to his mechanic with a quiet nod of thanks.
He grabbed his drink bottle, took a measured sip, and adjusted his cap, already mentally preparing his answers for the media pen. He would be asked about Lando's move. He would be asked if it was fair. He would answer professionally, coldly, giving the press absolutely nothing to spin into headline drama.
He turned toward the scales, stepping around a cluster of camera operators, when something in his peripheral vision caught his attention.
It was Lando.
Oscar stopped mid-stride, his analytical eyes narrowing.
At a glance to anyone else, Lando just looked like a driver who had had a tough race. But Oscar had spent two seasons studying Lando Norris, his body language, his nervous habits, the subtle shifts in his posture when he was angry versus when he was hiding.
Lando wasn't walking; he was staggering in micro-movements, his shoulders hunched, his chin tucked low into his chest. Oscar watched as Lando approached Kimi Antonelli, saw the way Lando’s hand grabbed the rookie’s shoulder with a strange, desperate rigidity, and saw the sudden, sharp recoil as Lando nearly lost his balance.
Oscar froze. He saw Lando’s face for a fraction of a second as he turned away from Kimi.
Lando was utterly, terrifyingly pale. His eyes were wide, glassy, staring straight ahead at nothing, unblinking under the blinding sun. He was moving toward the media pen like a ghost navigating by muscle memory alone, completely unaware of the people stepping out of his way.
Oscar’s brow furrowed. The irritation over the Lap 48 overtake didn't disappear, but it was instantly pushed aside by a sharp, instinctive alert in his chest.
*He's not okay,* Oscar realized, his mind stripping away the racing driver filter in a heartbeat. *He’s completely out of it.*
Oscar didn't yell out. He didn't make a scene. Instead, he quietly adjusted the path he was walking, bypassing the scales for a moment, his calm eyes tracking the papaya-clad figure drifting blindly toward the bright broadcast lights of the TV pen.
___
The transition from the open tarmac of Parc Fermé to the high-density grid of the media pen felt to Lando like stepping directly into a furnace built of bright light and suffocating noise.
The television lights were unbearable. They hit his retinas with the force of physical strikes, turning the static aura in his eyes into a dazzling, blinding haze of electric blue and stark white. Every camera lens looked like a massive, staring eye. Every microphone thrust toward his chest looked like a weapon. The chatter of twenty different broadcast teams, speaking in five different languages, bled together into a single, terrifying wall of sound that vibrated straight through his cheekbones.
*“When the environment becomes overwhelming, find a single point of focus,”* Dr. Harrison’s measured, distant voice instructed inside his head. *“Pick one object. A logo. A line on the floor. anchor your consciousness to it until the sensory overload subsides.”*
*I can’t find a fucking point,* Lando screamed internally, though not a single sound escaped his dry, locked lips. *Everything is spinning. Everything is moving.*
He tried to focus on the green-and-white logo of the broadcast backdrop directly in front of him, but it refused to stay still. It warped, stretching vertically before splitting into two identical, floating images that overlapped and drifted apart. He blinked hard, once, twice, three times, trying to clear the visual pollution, but the geometric stars only multiplied, dancing across the blurred outline of a British journalist holding a microphone toward his face.
*Just answer the questions. Do the five minutes. Then you can go to your room and fall apart. Five minutes. You can survive five minutes.*
The journalist, someone whose face Lando had known for six years, though right now he couldn't recall the man's name if his life depended on it, smiled and opened his mouth.
"Lando, intense race out there today. P4 in the end after a late move on Oscar into the Second Variante. Walk us through those final laps, and how you felt watching Antonelli take a historic win?"
The words reached Lando’s brain with a sickening delay, like an audio track grossly out of sync with the video. *Antonelli. Win. P4. Oscar.* The concepts hovered in his mind, isolated and meaningless, like loose pages floating in a gale. He knew he had passed Oscar. He remembered the metallic screech of his tires on the edge of the curb, the razor-thin gap between their sidepods, the sheer, ruthless adrenaline of taking the line. But right now, that memory felt like it belonged to someone else. Someone who wasn't currently standing on legs made of wet cardboard, fighting the overwhelming urge to vomit onto the pit lane carpet.
"Yeah..." Lando started.
His voice sounded horrifying to his own ears. It didn't sound like the bright, energetic, slightly raspy voice that came out on radio messages or YouTube videos. It was flat. Thinned out. Exhausted.
"Yeah, it was... hard out there," he stammered, his eyes staring blankly straight past the camera operator's right shoulder. He couldn't look into the lens. If he looked into the lens, the millions of people watching at home would see the raw, wild panic flickering behind his pupils. They would clip it. They would post it on Twitter. *Look at Norris, he’s having a breakdown live on air.*
*“You are in control of your narrative, Lando,”* the London office softly reminded him. *“Public vulnerability is only terrifying because you view it as weakness. You don't have to wear a mask every second of your life.”*
*Bullshit,* Lando thought with a cold, desperate anger. *You don't race in Formula 1, doc. If I show a crack, they put a chisel in it and hammer till I break.*
He needed his mask. He needed his shield. He needed the old, reliable armor that had carried him through every humiliating failure and every bitter disappointment of his career: deflecting humor. Self-deprecating sarcasm.
He forced his lips to stretch upward into what he hoped was a nonchalant, playful smirk, but his facial muscles were so tense, so utterly drained of nervous energy, that the expression died instantly, leaving his face frozen in a strange, pale, deathly serious mask.
"Pretty sure I'm... seeing a lot of stars right now, mate, to be honest," Lando muttered. He tried to chuck in a breathless laugh at the end of the sentence to mark it as a joke, but no sound came out of his throat, just a shallow, ragged hitch of air.
The journalist paused, his smile fading. He lowered the microphone an inch, his eyes flicking from Lando's mouth up to his eyes, absorbing the ghastly, ghost-white color of Lando's skin, the thin layer of cold sweat glistening on his forehead despite the sweltering heat, and the completely unseeing, unfocused stare.
The media officer standing beside Lando, a young woman from McLaren holding a press recorder, shifted uncomfortably, her eyes widening as she realized something was deeply, horribly wrong. She reached out a hand toward Lando’s arm, hesitation clear in her posture. "Lando? Do you need—"
*No. Don't touch me. Don't ask me if I'm okay on camera.*
Lando took a involuntary, clumsy step backward, his boot catching slightly on the power cables snaking across the floor. The world spun in a sickening, violent 180-degree roll. The sky seemed to plunge downward, and the black asphalt rushed up to meet him. His chest locked up entirely, his diaphragm refusing to pull in oxygen, leaving him suffocating in the open air, surrounded by a dozen staring faces and blinking red recording lights.
He was going to pass out. Right here. On live television. In front of the team, in front of the world, in front of Oscar. Months of relentless therapy, of trying to build a resilient, unshakable mind, shattered into a thousand jagged pieces of pure, unadulterated shame.
___
Oscar stood roughly ten yards away, positioned in front of an Australian broadcast crew, but he wasn't listening to a single word the interviewer was saying about his P5 finish or his tire degradation in stint two.
His body was positioned toward his own camera, his posture relaxed, his answers coming out in his usual measured, unbothered cadence, but his peripheral vision was entirely locked on the McLaren PR jacket standing next to Lando's broadcast position.
He watched Lando make the joke about seeing stars. He couldn't hear the words through the din of the paddock, but he saw the shape of Lando's mouth—and more importantly, he saw the total absence of the customary shoulder-shrug or eye-roll that always accompanied Lando's self-deprecating humor.
Then he saw Lando sway.
It wasn't a subtle shift in weight. It was the distinct, heavy lean of a body whose neurological steering wheel had been disconnected from the wheels. Oscar saw Lando’s eyes roll back slightly, catching the glare of the broadcast rig, and he saw the sudden, rigid panic seize the McLaren press officer's body language.
*He’s going down,* Oscar’s brain registered with chilling clarity.
In an instant, the lingering disappointment of losing fourth place to Lando’s aggressive move vanished completely. The competitive grid, the championship points, the intra-team dynamics, it all evaporated, rendered utterly trivial compared to the immediate, mechanical reality: his teammate was standing in the center of a global broadcast, completely disoriented and on the verge of physical collapse.
"Oscar, just back to that lap forty-eight move into turn three—" the Australian interviewer began, tilting the microphone up.
"Excuse me. We're done for now. Thanks," Oscar cut in, his voice dropping into a quiet, absolute register that left no room for argument or follow-up questions.
Before the interviewer could even process the abrupt end to the segment, Oscar had already turned his back on the camera. He moved with swift, deliberate purpose, cutting directly through the narrow gap between two television crews, ignoring a Italian presenter who tried to call his name.
He reached Lando’s side just as Lando took that clumsy, backward stagger off the cable track.
Oscar didn't hesitate. He stepped smoothly between Lando and the main television lens, effectively blocking the broadcast angle with his own broad, dark-suited shoulders. He didn't make a scene. He didn't raise his voice.
He slid a firm, solid hand onto the small of Lando’s back, a heavy, grounding anchor of physical reality and used his other hand to gently grip Lando’s upper arm, catching his weight before the elder driver could lose his balance entirely.
"We're wrapping this up mate, he needs to get to the physio," Oscar said, his tone perfectly flat, addressed to the stunned journalist and the panicked McLaren press officer. He didn't ask for permission. He didn't wait for the PR team to coordinate a statement.
Lando flinched violently at the touch, a harsh, ragged gasp catching in his throat as he felt someone holding him up. "I... I have to... the interviews..." Lando mumbled, his voice slurred, his eyes darting frantically around Oscar's shoulder, trying to find his bearings in the blinding light.
"You're done, Lando. Come on," Oscar murmured, his voice softening just a fraction, spoken close to Lando's ear so the directional microphones wouldn't pick it up.
Without waiting for Lando to agree, Oscar shifted his grip, locking his hand securely around Lando’s forearm, pulling Lando’s dead weight against his side. With calm, unyielding force, Oscar turned Lando away from the bright lights, away from the staring lenses, and began steering his disoriented teammate straight out of the media pen and into the shaded, quiet sanctuary of the paddock rear access.
The walk back through the shadowed rear corridors of the hospitality complex was an agonizing blur of neon light, muffled voices, and the heavy, rhythmic thud of Oscar’s boots keeping time against the floorboards. Oscar kept his hand clamped firmly on Lando’s forearm, taking enough of the elder driver’s weight to keep him upright, steering him past staring team personnel and bewildered press officers with an impenetrable, icy stare that warned everyone to stay away.
When Oscar pushed open the door to his driver’s room, the sudden drop in temperature hit like a wall of ice. He maneuvered Lando inside, kicked the heavy wooden door shut with his heel, and turned the lock with a sharp, definitive *click*.
The silence inside was instantaneous and absolute.
Oscar didn't offer a gentle transition. He guided Lando straight to the low physio bench against the wall and eased him down. The moment Lando’s hips hit the padded vinyl, his legs completely gave out. He folded forward, dropping his head into his trembling, gloved hands, his elbows digging into his knees.
Outside, a muffled knock rattled the door panel. "Oscar? Lando? Is everything alright in there?" called a voice from the McLaren comms team.
"Leave us for five minutes," Oscar called back, his tone level, hard, and utterly unyielding. "Don't touch the handle."
The footsteps hesitated, then slowly faded down the hallway.
Oscar stood in the center of the small room, his chest rising and falling in slow, controlled cycles. He took off his driver's cap and tossed it onto the table, his dark eyes fixed entirely on the shivering, broken figure hunched over on the bench.
Lando was hyperventilating now. The rapid, shallow breaths were coming in terrifying, hitching gasps, tearing out of his throat like ragged dry-heaves. His shoulders rose and fell in violent, erratic jerks. The static in his head hadn't cleared, if anything, now that the noise of the paddock was locked outside, the silence inside his own skull was deafening, filling the vacuum with pure, unadulterated shame.
*You broke. You fucking broke right in front of him.*
Lando’s fingers dragged through his damp, tangled curls, clutching at his hair so hard his knuckles turned stark white. The therapy sessions, the breathing techniques, the months of agonizing effort to prove he was a matured, battle-hardened leader capable of winning a world championship, it was all gone. Wiped out by a hot afternoon in Monza because his brain couldn't handle the heat and the pressure.
“I am embarrassing...”
The words tore out of Lando’s chest before he could stop them, choked and muffled against his knees.
Oscar didn't move immediately. He watched the way Lando’s spine curved, the way he seemed to be trying to pull his entire body into a tight, self-protective shell, hiding his face from the world and specifically from Oscar.
*Look at him,* Oscar thought, a strange, ache settling deep behind his ribs. *He just forced me off line at turn three to take fourth place. He drove like a demon. He pushed the car to the absolute limit. And now he’s sitting there looking like he’s waiting for someone to strike him.*
Oscar hated it. He hated the invisible, suffocating armor Lando insisted on wearing every single day. He hated the endless, exhausting wall of sarcastic laughs, the quick brush-offs after bitter losses, the way Lando would sit in post-race debriefs cracking self-deprecating jokes while his eyes remained completely dead. Oscar knew Lando was brilliant, freakishly fast, instinctively talented, relentless on track. But off track, Lando treated his own human vulnerabilities like dirty secrets that had to be beaten into submission.
Oscar walked over, grabbed a small wooden stool, and pulled it up directly in front of Lando. He sat down, leaning his forearms on his knees, putting himself at Lando’s level.
"Lando. Look at me," Oscar said softly.
"I can't... I can't fucking see you anyway, Oscar, it's all—it's all stars and static," Lando wheezed, his voice breaking violently into a sharp gasp for air. He didn't lift his head. "Just... leave me alone, man. Go do your media. Go tell them I'm a fucking disaster."
"I'm not going anywhere," Oscar replied, his voice an anchor of utter stability. "And you're not a disaster. You're having a panic attack. Your body's overheated and your nervous system is fried."
"I am the older driver!" Lando suddenly shouted, the words ripping from his throat with a raw, ugly desperation that startled the quiet room. He finally snapped his head up, staring blindly in Oscar's general direction, his face pale, streaked with cold sweat, his eyes bloodshot, wide, and glossy with unshed tears.
"I am the older driver, Oscar!" Lando repeated, his voice cracking, trembling with a mix of fury and intense shame. "I’ve been in this team for six years! I should be acting like it! I should be helping *you*, guiding *you*, holding this team together, not... not getting pulled out of the media pen by my fucking shirt like a helpless child because I can't keep my eyes open!"
"Lando—"
"No! Shut up! Just shut up!" Lando gasped, dragging his palm hard across his eyes, trying to force the flashing dots away, but only making them burst into brilliant, painful white streaks. "I don’t want you to see me like this! Do you get it? Anyone else, Jon, Zak, my brother, fine! But not *you*! Everyone always sees this part of me sooner or later! The fragile Lando. The emotional Lando who breaks down when things get tough! I spent six months trying to kill this part of me!"
He dropped his hands, his breath coming in shallow, frantic wheezes, his entire frame shuddering as the hyperventilation tightened its grip on his chest.
"I don't want you to see it," Lando whispered, his voice dropping into a small, crushed sound that cracked right down the middle. "Not you."
Oscar sat completely still for a moment. He listened to the harsh, rattling sound of Lando’s breathing, watched the chaotic, terrified movement of Lando’s blind stare. The raw, unfiltered honesty of Lando’s breakdown hung in the cool air of the room, heavy and fragile.
Oscar slowly reached out. He didn't pull back when Lando flinched. He placed his large, warm hand flat against the center of Lando’s chest, feeling the terrifying, manic flutter of Lando’s heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Oscar leaned in closer, forcing Lando to feel his physical presence, forcing him to listen.
"What is so bad about this part, Lando?" Oscar asked quietly, his eyes locked onto Lando's unseeing ones with an intensity that cut through the haze.
Lando froze, a hitched breath caught tight in his throat. "What?"
"What is so bad about this part?" Oscar repeated, his voice steady, deep, and impossibly gentle. "You think because you laugh off every mistake and make jokes about your own mental health that you're hiding it? You're not hiding anything, Lando. I see how hard you push yourself. I see how much you hate yourself when you don't win. You carry the entire weight of this team on your back every weekend and act like it doesn't hurt."
Oscar’s thumb rubbed a slow, grounding circle right over Lando’s sternum, feeling the frantic pulse beneath his hand.
"You just drove fifty-three laps at two hundred miles an hour in thirty-five-degree heat, forced me off line to take fourth place, and gave everything you had until your body literally shut down," Oscar whispered, his voice thick with a sudden, rare emotion he usually kept locked far away. "There is nothing embarrassing about that. There is nothing weak about that. You're human, Lando. Stop punishing yourself for it."
Lando stared at him, his chest heaving under Oscar’s palm. The quiet, unyielding weight of Oscar’s words slammed into the wall of Lando’s internal defense mechanisms, shattering them instantly.
A single, hot tear finally escaped Lando’s eye, cutting a clean path through the grime and dried sweat on his cheek. He choked on his next breath, his shoulders collapsing completely as the panic attack peaked, dissolving from angry panic into pure, exhausting overwhelm. He dropped his head forward, his forehead coming to rest heavily against Oscar’s shoulder, his hands reaching out instinctively to clutch at the fabric of Oscar’s firesuit like a drowning man grabbing a ledge.
The initial wave of terror began to recede, leaving in its wake a raw, hollow exhaustion that weighed Lando down like wet cement. His forehead remained pressed against the heavy fabric of Oscar’s McLaren suit, the coarse Nomex rough against his damp skin. Beneath his cheek, he could feel the steady, slow rise and fall of Oscar’s chest, a stark, grounding contrast to his own frantic, rattling breath.
For nearly two minutes, neither of them spoke. The only sounds in the small, sterile driver’s room were the quiet hum of the air conditioner overhead and the harsh, shuddering hitches of Lando’s lungs trying to recalibrate.
Oscar didn't shift away. He didn't pull back or offer awkward, rushed platitudes. His right hand remained flat against the center of Lando’s chest, his thumb continuing its slow, rhythmic tracing over Lando’s sternum, while his left arm rose to rest lightly across the back of Lando’s shoulders, pinning him gently against his side. It was an anchor, firm, motionless, and absolute.
As the static in Lando’s eyes slowly gave way to dark, muddy shapes, the physical panic was replaced by a surging, defensive heat in his veins. The shame didn't disappear; it morphed. It curled into something sharp, poisonous, and reactive.
*Why is he doing this?*
The thought flickered like a spark in dry brush. Lando’s hands, still tangled in the fabric of Oscar’s suit, tightened into rigid fists, pushing hard against Oscar’s chest to force distance between them.
"Get off," Lando growled, his voice thick, rough, and dripping with suddenly summoned venom.
He shoved himself backward, his back hitting the wall behind the physio bench with a dull thud. His breath was still coming fast, but his eyes, though red-rimmed and glassy, were finally beginning to track again. He glared at Oscar through the mess of dark curls sticking to his forehead.
"Just... get off me, Oscar. Stop."
Oscar didn't react with anger. He withdrew his hands slowly, setting them on his knees, his dark eyes watching Lando’s sharp, erratic movements with watchful patience. "Lando—"
"No, don't *Lando* me!" Lando spat, his chest heaving as he pointed a trembling finger straight at Oscar's chest. "What the fuck are you doing? Huh? What is this?"
"I'm making sure you don't pass out," Oscar said, his tone entirely level, unbothered by the sudden venom.
"I don't need you to babysit me!" Lando’s voice cracked, rising into a harsh, strained pitch that bounced off the white walls. "I don't need your pity, Oscar! Do you know how ridiculous this is? You're sitting here holding my hand like we're... like we're best mates sharing a bloody moment! We're not!"
Oscar’s brow twitched slightly, a micro-expression of curiosity rather than offense. "We're teammates, Lando."
"We are competitors!" Lando shouted, slamming his hand down onto the vinyl padding of the bench. The sound echoed sharp in the quiet room. "We are bloody rivals! I literally just forced you off the track six laps ago! I took fourth place from you! I shoved my car up your inside into turn three and forced you to back off or crash! You should be furious with me!"
Lando leaned forward, his hands gripping the edge of the bench so hard his knuckles turned yellow under the skin. His eyes were wide, burning with a mix of desperate rage and profound confusion.
"You should be in your own room right now, throwing your helmet against the wall because I beat you!" Lando barked, his voice raw. "That's how this works! That’s what teammates do! We push each other! We hate each other when we lose! We don't... we don't bring each other tea and hold each other while we have a mental breakdown! You're supposed to exploit this, Oscar! You're supposed to see me like this and know I'm weak, know I'm cracking under the heat, and use it to destroy me on track next week!"
The room fell into a heavy, suffocating silence.
Lando was panting, his throat parched, his entire body shaking from the adrenaline spiking back through his bloodstream. He had thrown everything he had at Oscar, every unwritten rule of the cutthroat motorsport world, every brutal lesson he had absorbed since he was a ten-year-old kid in karts being told that his friends were just obstacles in identical suits. He expected Oscar to snap back. He expected Oscar to get defensive, to bring up the telemetry, to get cold and distant. That was how drivers reacted. That was the script.
Oscar didn't move an inch.
He sat on the small wooden stool, his broad shoulders relaxed, his hands folded quietly over his knees. He looked at Lando not with anger, not with competition, but with a deep, quiet, agonizingly tender understanding that made Lando’s stomach twist into knots.
*He’s completely insane,* Oscar thought, a profound sadness pulling at the edges of his mind. *He’s so terrified of someone seeing his pain that he’d rather I hate him than help him.*
Oscar understood coldness. He understood execution, strategy, telemetry, and lap time optimization. He had been raised in the same brutal, high-stakes pressure cooker of European racing as Lando. He knew the narrative: *Teammates are your primary enemy.* He had heard it from engineers, managers, media commentators, and former champions.
But looking at Lando right now, sweat-drenched, pale, shaking, defensively spitting venom like a cornered animal just to keep from dissolving into tears again, Oscar realized how hollow that narrative truly was.
"Are you done?" Oscar asked softly.
Lando blinked, stunned by the absolute lack of hostility in Oscar’s voice. "What?"
"Are you done shouting at me for caring about whether you live or die?" Oscar leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, bridging the physical gap between them once more. His eyes locked onto Lando’s with an intensity that felt almost physical, stripping away every lie Lando had ever told himself.
"I don't care about lap forty-eight right now, Lando," Oscar said, his voice dropping into a deep, steady register that cut through the noise in Lando's head like a blade. "I don't give a shit about turn three. You made a move. It was aggressive, it was tight, and you took P4. Good for you. We'll analyze the telemetry on Tuesday. We'll argue about the entry speed in the debrief with Andrea and Zak."
Oscar reached out, and before Lando could pull back, Oscar gripped Lando’s right wrist. His fingers wrapped around the thin bone, firm and unyielding, feeling the rapid, chaotic thrum of Lando’s pulse right against his skin.
"But right now, we are not in the car," Oscar continued, his voice softer now, almost a whisper, yet carrying the weight of absolute truth. "Right now, you are not ok, and you're so fucking proud that you'd rather push me away than let me help you."
Lando swallowed hard, a lump forming in his throat that burned like fire. He tried to pull his wrist away, but Oscar held fast, not aggressively, but with an absolute refusal to let go.
"You think being a driver means you have to bleed in secret?" Oscar asked, his thumb pressing gently against Lando's pulse point. "You think I admire you when you laugh off a horrible race with some sarcastic joke while your eyes are dead? I don't, Lando. It breaks my fucking heart."
The word hung in the air—*heart*. Raw, unscripted, and entirely naked.
Lando’s chest hitched. The defensive fire in his blood snuffed out instantly, leaving him completely exposed. "Oscar..."
"I don't want a teammate who destroys himself to give me a show," Oscar murmured, stepping off the wooden stool and kneeling directly on the cold floor between Lando’s knees. He reached up with both hands, taking Lando’s face between his palms. His hands were warm, solid, and impossibly gentle against Lando’s cold, damp skin.
"I want you fast," Oscar whispered, tilting Lando’s head up until their eyes met, gray-blue locked onto dark brown, inches apart in the quiet room. "I want you pushing me to every single millisecond on every single track. I want to fight you for wins. But I need you alive to do it, Lando. I need you whole."
Lando’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. The final wall inside his mind, the wall built of six years of F1 isolation, media scrutiny, therapy homework, and deep-seated terror of inadequacy, crumbled completely.
The anger was gone. The embarrassment was gone. All that remained was the staggering, overwhelming realization that he didn't have to fight this alone. That the person sitting between his knees, holding his face as if he were made of fragile glass, wasn't looking at a broken driver or an unstable risk. He was looking at *Lando*.
A quiet, broken sob tore out of Lando’s chest. He didn't pull away this time. He leaned into the touch of Oscar’s warm palms, his eyelids fluttering shut as the last remnants of the visual static finally dissolved into darkness.
"I was so scared," Lando choked out, the words barely audible, whispered against the tiny space between them. "I couldn't... I couldn't see the ground, Osc. I couldn't hear anything. I thought... I thought I was losing my mind."
"I know," Oscar murmured, his thumb gently wiping away a stray tear from the corner of Lando’s eye. "I know. But you're here now. You're on the ground. I've got you."
Oscar didn't pull him into a wild, frantic kiss. There was no desperate passion in the movement, only an overwhelming, romantic depth that transcended words. Oscar leaned forward slowly, pressing his forehead directly against Lando’s.
They sat like that in the quiet room, kneeling on the floor and sitting on the bench, foreheads pressed together, breathing the same air in slow, synchronized cycles. Oscar slid his hands from Lando’s cheeks down to the back of his neck, his fingers tangling softly in Lando’s damp curls, holding him steady, anchoring him to the present moment.
Lando brought his own hands up, resting them on Oscar’s shoulders, his fingers clutching the fabric not out of anger or panic, but out of a deep, profound need to stay connected to the solid reality of the man in front of him.
"You're an idiot, you know that?" Lando whispered after a long time, a tiny, watery chuckle breaking through the huskiness of his voice. "You ruined my angry rant."
Oscar let out a quiet breath of air against Lando’s lips, a tiny smile touching his mouth. "You're terrible at angry rants, mate. Your voice goes way too high."
Lando let out a real laugh then, weak, exhausted, but genuine. It wasn't the sarcastic, defensive bark he gave to the television cameras. It was real.
"We still have to talk about turn three," Lando mumbled, closing his eyes, letting his weight settle comfortably against Oscar's forehead and hands.
"Tuesday," Oscar replied softly, his fingers gently petting through Lando’s hair, keeping him grounded in the dark. "We'll talk about it Tuesday. Today, you just sit here and breathe."
"Okay," Lando whispered, sinking into the quiet warmth of the room, feeling safe for the first time all day. "Okay."
The silence that settled over the room was no longer the heavy, suffocating quiet of a panic attack, but a soft, rhythmic hush.
Lando stayed still, resting his weight against Oscar, his breathing slowly settling into a deep, steady cadence. The world outside the heavy door, the clacking of keyboard keys from PR officers, the heavy footfalls of engineers hauling telemetry equipment through the corridors, the distant, muted reverberation of the Monza paddock packing down, felt light-years away. For six years, Lando had treated this paddock like a battlefield where every sign of exhaustion was a crack in his armor. Sitting here in the dim light of Oscar’s room, he realized his chest didn't feel constrained for the first time all day.
Oscar moved first, but only to shift his position on the cold floor. He slid off his knees and sat back against the base of the physio table, pulling one knee up. He didn't drop his hand from Lando’s neck, keeping his thumb resting lightly over the warm skin behind Lando’s ear.
"Sight back?" Oscar asked quietly, looking up at him.
Lando slowly blinked, opening his eyes fully. The flashing geometric stars were gone. The harsh, vibrating static at the edges of his vision had dissolved back into the soft grey shadows of the room. He looked down at Oscar, at the messy fringe of hair usually hidden beneath a flat cap, at the steady, unbothered calm in his dark eyes, and felt a strange, quiet ache in his chest that had nothing to do with racing.
"Yeah," Lando murmured, his voice still rough from the hyperventilating. "Yeah, it's clear. Just... heavy. Everything feels like lead."
"That’s the adrenaline crash," Oscar said, his tone turning practical, though his fingers softly stroked the back of Lando’s neck. "Your body dumped every bit of cortisol it had into your blood to keep you standing during the race, and then you ran out of fuel."
Lando let out a small, self-deprecating huff of air, but caught himself before it turned into his usual defensive laugh. He reached down, his fingers hesitating for a fraction of a second before he closed them around Oscar’s hand, lifting it from his neck and holding it between both of his own.
"I'm sorry," Lando said quietly, looking down at their joined hands. "For... well. Everything. Screaming at you. Saying you should hate me."
Oscar looked at their hands, his thumb lightly tracing the pulse point on Lando’s wrist. "You don't have to apologize for losing control, Lando. You're allowed to break down when the pressure gets impossible. You don't owe me, or anyone else out there anything."
Lando looked up, his grey-blue eyes meeting Oscar's. "I've spent months in therapy trying to fix it, Osc. Trying to learn how to keep my head straight, how not to let the team down, how to look like a proper leader when things go wrong. And then I get out of the car after a decent P4 and completely fall apart on live TV."
"You didn't fall apart on live TV," Oscar corrected gently, his voice firm. "You got dizzy in the heat, and your teammate stepped in. That's the story. That's all anyone sees outside this room."
Lando swallowed, the words sinking in. *Your teammate stepped in.* He thought about the ruthless, unforgiving culture of Formula 1, a sport that bred paranoia and treated teammates as bitter enemies bound by contract. He thought about how he had expected Oscar to use his weakness as leverage, to hold it over his head the next time they wrestled for position at 200 miles an hour.
Instead, Oscar had shut out the world, locked the door, sat on the floor, and held him together until he could breathe again.
"Why?" Lando asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
Oscar tilted his head, a faint, genuine smile touching his lips. "Why what?"
"Why do you care so much? I pushed you wide at turn three. I’m the guy taking points off you."
Oscar stayed quiet for a moment, his dark eyes searching Lando’s face, taking in the red rims around his eyes, the damp curls stuck to his forehead, the raw, unfiltered honesty that Lando so rarely allowed anyone to see.
"Because racing you is the best part of my week, Lando," Oscar said softly, his voice devoid of any hesitation or pretense. "And I don't give a damn about a P4 trophy if it means watching you destroy yourself to get it. We're competitive, yeah. We're going to fight on track. But when the helmet comes off... I'm not going to leave you alone. Ever."
The absolute simplicity of the statement struck Lando straight in the center of his chest. It wasn't a dramatic declaration; it was an absolute, unbreakable truth spoken in Oscar’s steady, unshakeable Australian drawl.
Lando leaned down off the bench, closing the distance between them again. He didn't say anything. He couldn't. Instead, he pressed his face into the side of Oscar’s neck, wrapping his arms securely around Oscar’s shoulders, pulling him tight against his chest.
Oscar didn't hesitate. He wrapped his arms around Lando’s waist, pulling the elder driver down off the bench entirely until they were both sitting together on the floor, locked in a tight, quiet embrace. Oscar buried his face against Lando’s shoulder, holding him with a firm, protective weight that completely sealed out the rest of the world.
They stayed like that for a long time, no telemetry, no media obligations, no championship math, no lingering bitterness over Lap 48. Just the quiet, steady rhythm of two drivers breathing in sync on the floor of a dim room in Monza.
When a soft, hesitant knock finally sounded at the door ten minutes later, accompanied by Jon's quiet voice calling, "Lando? Oscar? We really need to head to the debrief," neither of them jumped.
Lando slowly pulled back, his hands lingering on Oscar’s upper arms. His face was still tired, his body still heavy, but the wild, frantic terror in his eyes had been completely replaced by an profound, quiet peace.
Oscar reached up, his thumb gently wiping a final trace of moisture from Lando’s cheek. "Ready?"
Lando looked at Oscar, really looked at him and felt a warmth spread through his chest that had nothing to do with the Monza heat. He gave a small, genuine nod.
"Yeah," Lando murmured, his fingers giving Oscar’s arm a firm squeeze before letting go. "Yeah, I am."