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Oscar didn’t know how it happened. He thought he had been hiding it well enough– coming up with good excuses to avoid team dinners, excusing himself back to his room after hotel room service movie nights, saying his trainer would kill him if he tried any of the cupcakes from catering. He had felt good about it, it had all sounded believable, and he had never let the anxiety slip through the cracks.
He had tried so hard. So hard. Yet somehow, somehow, Lando peered through the cracks, putting broken pieces together despite Oscar trying so hard to make the puzzle unrecognizable.
It had started small– Lando would feed him a fry from his own plate, make him try a bite of the catering’s new chicken recipe so Oscar could “make sure it’s not poison” before Lando dug in– and somehow it spiralled, snowballed, into something bigger, something that planted fear deep in Oscar’s chest.
At first, he worried that Lando would tell someone on the McLaren team. It was mortifying enough to be a grown adult with an- with whatever he was dealing with, but being benched because of it? Oscar thought that would ruin him. It would feel like losing control, they would think he lost control, and he could never let that happen. This is just part of his plan: weigh less, workout, drive quick, and win. It was all so easy. He’d make it easy.
After, though, the fear shifted. Caught in the ambiguity of somethingness, Lando and Oscar had found themselves in something beyond a teammate relationship– beyond friendship, even– and Oscar was hit with the sudden clarity that Lando cared. He cared so fucking much.
Suddenly, Oscar didn’t want to let Lando down, and it was going to be so hard for him not to let Lando down.
It became even harder when Lando– understanding, tender, patient– insisted on gluing himself to Oscar’s side for Summer Break.
For most drivers, Summer Break meant delicious food, vacations, and ignoring media obligations for a couple of weeks. For Oscar, it usually meant training, training, and more training, with a salad or two in between, and a Monster for good measure. This year, Lando wanted it to mean rest, poolside naps, and pizza for dinner. For both of them.
Oscar hadn’t had pizza for dinner in a year.
“Half a slice,” Lando coaxed softly, “just half a slice, Oscar. Please, trust me. Half a slice won’t do anything to you, you have my word.”
Oscar swallowed hard. His mouth was suddenly too dry, his palms too sweaty. He felt like a pussy. He was being a pussy. He hated Lando seeing him like this; wound tight, on the verge of a breakdown over a slice of cheese pizza. Half a slice of cheese pizza.
“Maybe the half with the crust?” Lando tried to reason, his voice soft enough to bring something raw to the surface, Oscar ready to drown in it, “you’ve always liked the crust. We can put some sauce on it too? Just a little bit?”
Oscar hadn’t realized he was looking at his hands, fidgeting in his lap. He could feel his pulse in his fingers, rabbiting. When he finally looked up at Lando, the tenderness in his plea compelling him to look into the blue-green eyes, he was cracked open. He felt like a frayed nerve. An exposed socket. A deer looking into the chamber of a gun.
Oscar, fighting through everything in his body telling him not to, nodded, small and shameful. With shaking hands, he grabbed the garlic sauce from Lando’s outstretched hand, pouring a thin layer over the pizza crust, barely more than a couple of drops.
“Could you-” Oscar tried to hide the nervousness, the fear and the shame, but he could feel the telltale twitch in his face when he bit down on his lip, hard. “Could you tell me a story? Or- or put on a YouTube video or something?”
”Sure, baby,” Lando broke into a grin, small and tentative, but pleased nonetheless. “How about I put on some of that shite music you like and tell you about how Carlos tried to get away with cheating in our padel match yesterday?”
Despite himself, and the looming anxiety pooling deep in his gut, the corner of Oscar’s mouth twitched up in a fond, annoyed smile. Oscar nodded, eyes returning to his hands as he tried to avoid looking down at the slice of pizza on his plate.
“Osc?” Lando asked, tentative, a nervous edge around the breath.
Oscar looked up again, met with an expression so soft and nervous and patient that Oscar almost convinced himself he could eat the whole slice– maybe the whole damn pizza– if it would make Lando happy.
“Does being distracted make it easier?” Lando asked, gentle and tender and too caring, too caring for Oscar, who’s scared of a fucking slice of pizza.
All Oscar could do was nod, allowing himself to be suddenly mesmerized by the sight of Lando’s fingers unlocking his phone.
Lando once told Oscar he would never play any of his “boring Drum and Bass shite” on his own phone, worried that his Spotify Wrapped would come out all wrong and fucked up. Between then and now, and countless interviews where Oscar had made mention that he can almost always hear Lando’s pre-race music selection, Lando had created a playlist of songs he had collected, from Oscar’s own playlists, his TIkToks, his Instagram stories, that he knew his teammate loved. Oscar didn’t know when it all happened, when Lando’s pre-race selection started to sound more like his favourite songs than Lando’s usual Drake-Bob Dylan-Lady Gaga-Queen Frankenstein playlist, but it felt intimate. It felt purposeful. It felt bigger than him.
The playlist filled him with warmth as each new song played, ones that he could tell Lando added recently, ones he knew Lando had to dig to find. Between the playlist and Lando wolfing down his own pizza cheerfully, telling Oscar about how Carlos lied about hitting a foul ball during a padel session, Oscar almost, almost, forgot about the pizza in front of him. For a few moments, he wasn’t thinking about food at all. He hated thinking about food. He thought about it all the time.
When he finally looked down, he had finished just about a third of the slice. It was more than he had to. It was more than he should have. He felt something tighten in his chest. That slice was inside of him now. He needed it out. It wouldn’t feel right until it was out.
“Hey- hey, Oscar. Oscar, look at me,” Lando said, an edge of panic leeching into his tone. Oscar realized that he must’ve been making a face, wide-eyed, eyes glistening.
“Oscar,” Lando tried again, and this time Oscar moved his head up slowly, plastered on a fake smile and tried to will away the tears.
“It’s okay,” Lando said, gentle but firm, “you are okay.”
“No, yeah,” Oscar nodded, his eyes avoiding Lando’s, “totally fine. I just- I- I’m just gonna run to the bathroom.”
“No,” Lando responded, reaching his hand across the table, slow, tentative, “we agreed, Osc; you and I are gonna sit here for a bit, chat shit like two muppets, okay?”
“I just-” Oscar felt the panic rising in his throat, felt it threatening to choke him, “I just need to pee, that’s it.”
“Oscar, darling,” Lando brought a soft hand up to Oscar’s cheek, guiding him to look back at Lando, “you are being so brave. Can you keep being brave? We can do it together.”
“Lando-” Oscar squirmed in his seat, fidgeting with his fingers under the table, eyes darting around the room, “Lando, please.”
“No,” Lando repeated, firmer than before, but never far from gentle. “Oscar, you can’t leave right now. We’re going to sit here and talk, alright? Just talk, that’s all we’ll do, you’ve already done the hard part.”
“No- no!” Oscar’s breath hitched as he raised his voice, he could feel the wetness in his eyes, and looked at the ceiling, blinking hard. “Fuck- this is the hard part! I need to get it out. Don’t make me sit with it. Don’t make me, Lan. Please.”
Lando hummed softly under his breath, a song Oscar recognized, and started rubbing soft circles on Oscar’s cheek, tracing moles under his thumb. “You know, during my seat fitting they almost trapped me in the car.”
Oscar looked up, sucking his cheeks in, brows knitted in a tight furrow. His voice was weaker now, shame creeping into his tone, “wh-what?”
“They put too much foam in the top, mate,” Lando said with a lopsided grin, “it was bad enough that they took so long I nearly fell asleep, then, I try and get out and I’m trapped in! It took them ages to get me out, I thought I’d be stuck in there until Melbourne.”
Lando’s exasperated tone was enough to startle a laugh from Oscar, a real, genuine laugh, and quickly replace his confusion.
Lando’s grin widened at the sound, an unmistakable glint in his eyes, “yeah, mate! Then during testing Will kept makin’ fun of me, askin’ if I needed a shoehorn and shit.”
“Oh my god!” Oscar exclaimed, eyes lighting up in recognition, “he kept calling you ‘Junk’!”
Lando’s face went positively scarlet, eyes darting quickly to the the table in front of them, “as in ‘junk in the trunk’.”
This time, when Oscar laughed, it was loud and uninhibited, all bright and happy, and the sound made Lando positively beam.
“Oi!” Lando yelped, eyebrows shooting up to his forehead. The expression just made Oscar laugh even harder, a snort slipping out as he tried to hide his face in Lando’s hand.
Lando watched, enamoured by the mirth in Oscar’s eyes, the twinkle he hadn’t seen in weeks. When Oscar finally sobered up, a soft smile on his face. His eyes softly fluttered closed, and he let the weight of his head rest fully on Lando’s hand.
“Lan?”
“Hmm?” Lando hummed, watching Oscar take deep breaths, scratching softly into his hair, pleased when the affection had the younger boy pushing into the feeling even more.
“I’m sorry,” Oscar admitted, voice barely a whisper. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I didn’t mean to be like this.”
“Oscar,” Lando shook his head, bringing his other hand up to cradle Oscar’s face, rubbing gently over the boy’s closed eyelids, “you are braver than you’ll ever know.”
“No,” Oscar replied with a weak shake of his head, “no, but I hope that one day that’s true.”