Work Text:
Oscar feels a headache forming at his temples. He stares at the telemetry data he’s been pouring himself over for hours and still nothing clicks.
He still doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong.
The car is fast. Faster than he knows what to do with, apparently. He’s trained his entire life to have a car like this, to have a season that could have been as good as this one, and he’s failing.
His tyre management is off, his suggestions to his race engineers always a bit too late to count for anything. He’s changing up his lines too frequently, not getting used to a strategy enough before changing it in search of something that could work better.
He needs to be better.
He stares at the blank hotel wall in front of him, lowering his head into his hands and pressing too hard on his eyes, looking back up to see the wall now painted with vivid colors and shapes.
He feels himself starting to slip, feels the emotions he’s been repressing for the better part of three months climb their way up his throat, stinging his eyes.
He needs to go for a run, maybe take a shower before he keeps working. There’s no sim here, but he desperately wishes he could feel the wheel beneath his hands, needs to try some new suggestions and prove that he’s been working on improving. Needs to prove that he’s trying, more than anything.
He knows the team knows that he’s trying, but he also knows how they feel about his performance. Despite trying to sugar-coat it, their feelings are written all over their faces. The disappointment, the poorly concealed anger at his repeated let downs.
The race earlier wasn’t ideal for the team as a whole, with even Lando struggling, but it’s been a tough season for him since testing in Bahrain. Not just today, not just a one-off.
He pulls out his phone as a distraction and sees the messages pooling at the bottom of his screen. Several from his family groupchat, his mum and sisters telling him that he had done good and to not let one bad race get to him. Not just one. He ignores them for now.
A message from Zak, and two from Andrea, sending him specifics to look for in the data and requesting a meeting when they get back to MTC.
An instagram reel sent from Logan a few hours ago. He decides not to open it in fear that he would be faced with his own feed, his grim face plastered with a reminder of his stats from today, or from last week.
And one WhatsApp message from Lando. Doing alright mate? It reads.
He responds to this one. Yeah, fine.
The double check marks appear almost instantly, as if Lando was waiting for his response. U sure?
Yeah mate. Just looking over data.
Still? It’s almost midnight.
Just needed to look over a few things. Are you out celebrating?
He doesn’t know why he asks honestly, he knows what the answer will be. Lando had a decent race today despite their struggles, still scoring points. The group of drivers he hangs around did as well, they must be in a club somewhere.
Nah not tonight. Knackered.
Oscar’s surprised, but he doesn’t say anything. There’s a few beats, and then Lando sends another message.
What’s ur room #?
What does Lando need with his room number? Although it would be a nice gesture, It’s far too late for room service, and there’s little to nothing on the menu that fits their meal plans. He can’t think of any other reason why he would need it but he sends it anyway. Because he asked.
118, why?
Oscar waits several minutes after the check marks appear, but Lando doesn’t respond. He must have fallen asleep. He sighs and stares back down at the sheets in front of him, and loses himself in the numbers for the umpteenth time that night.
Minutes, or maybe even hours later, he hears a soft knock at his door. In his boxers and worn out McLaren shirt he pads over to the front of his room and opens it, and is faced with Lando.
Lando, wearing sweatpants and a soft-looking hoodie. Lando, staring up at him as if he expected Oscar to not open the door at all.
“Lando?” Oscar says quietly, almost whispering into the dimly lit hallway where the other man is shifting on his feet.
“Hi, yeah. Can I come in?” He asks as more of a formality it seems, because he brushes past Oscar and into his hotel room before Oscar even has the chance to respond.
He would have said yes anyway, but still.
“Why’re you here?” It’s late and Oscar’s exhausted. He doesn’t really have anything left in him to entertain.
Lando doesn’t respond, just looks Oscar up and down, taking in his state of undress, the bags underneath his eyes, and his unruly hair.
He walks over to the table where Oscar had his work sprawled out, and carefully gathers the messy papers into a stack, places them in the manila folder where they came from, and closes his still-running laptop.
“What are you doing? I was still working?”
“No, you’re not.”
“I needed to make notes and bring suggestions for a meeting. I still have a couple of pages to get through tonight.”
“Oscar, you’ve probably been staring at the same page for hours. You look exhausted, you’re not getting anything else done tonight.”
“It doesn’t matter how I feel, there’s work that needs to be done.”
Lando can see right through Oscar. It’s not enough that he has to feel like this, but other people have to see it too? Lando has to see it?
Confusion, and maybe even anger, must be written all over his face at this point as he looks between his now neat table and Lando, standing off to the side, as if waiting for something more.
Lando crosses the room with a few strides, and grabs Oscar’s hand.
“We’re going to sleep.”
Although he should protest as Lando drags him towards the white bed, he doesn’t. Lando lifts the corner of the blanket and practically pushes Oscar until his knees are pressed against the sheets, where he takes the hint and gets in.
Lando covers him with the blanket and turns off the bedside lamp before crawling in on the other side, leaving a respectable amount of space between the two of them.
Oscar feels tears prickling at his eyes, and he turns away from Lando before he can see.
Lando speaks first. “Hey. This okay?”
“Yeah, course.” He whispers out, scared of being too loud, of breaking the moment. “I’m sorry. I’m not actually angry with you.”
His voice breaks a little, “I’m just so tired of this.”
He feels his shoulders shaking slightly, trying to calm himself down. He hears the rustling of fabric, and then Lando’s there, pressed up against his side, rubbing a hand down his arm soothingly.
“I know, Osc. Just go to sleep, yeah?” He says softly, “We’ll talk in the morning. We’ll figure it out.”
Lando is warm and solid next to him, not moving, not shying away from Oscar. Not even when he’s like this.
He grabs Lando’s hand from where it’s still resting on his arm, squeezes three times, and holds it tight as sleep takes him.