time in the tangerine

“Good question,” he chuckles easily, allowing himself a moment to make it look as though he’s really thinking about it. He’s not, of course. The answer is already there, red and flashing at the forefront of his mind; like a warning that he’s not going to heed.

Making a show of it, he shrugs, pursing his lips. “I mean, there are so many incredible drivers on the grid but, um,” he hums again, taking a pause before he meets the interviewer’s eyes, sees the bright flash of cameras in his peripheral.

With a grin, he concludes: “I guess I’d have to say Charles, yeah. His race craft is obviously great, and I think we’d have a good time together.” As though it’s an afterthought, he adds: “as teammates, of course.”

There’s some general murmuring among the press, a few polite claps and agreements to his declaration, and then they’re moving onto raise a question to Gabriel, sitting in between Max and Oscar on the couch.

Oscar barely hears the rest of the interview, a deep thrumming in his ear keeping count with his heart rate. He keeps his expression neutral, remains casual; knowing he won’t have to do anything else.

The internet will do the rest for him.

———

It’s a pleasant twist of fate that Charles just so happens to be in the cohort of the next set of interviewees. Giddy for a potential story, the interviewer is quick to bring up Oscar’s comment, posing much the same question to Charles. Oscar watches the scene play out with an amused tilt of his lips.

“Oscar was in here just before you,” the interviewer says eagerly, microphone gripped between tight finger. “And said he’d love to team with you on the grid one day. What do you say to that? Is Oscar a good candidate for a future teammate?”

Charles laughs, eyes bright. “Well, I think Lewis and I are both quite happy right now,” he quips, before shrugging with a grin. “But sure, Oscar would be an excellent teammate and I’d be more than happy to have him by my side.”

Honestly, Oscar couldn’t have scripted it better himself. He’d had an inkling that the interviewer would bring it up, of course, but there was no telling what Charles would say when asked — Oscar had only truly been thinking about his own answer, the sound bite that would undoubtedly be clipped from it.

Charles’s agreement is simply the cherry on top.

Automatically, Oscar’s eyes slide to the other end of the couch where Lando sits, glaring daggers into the side of Charles’s face. He’s never had a good poker face but this — Oscar relishes the smug satisfaction he feels, taking one last look before he exits the room.

———

“What the hell was that?”

The door to Oscar’s drivers room flies open, rebounding against the wall with an almighty bang. He blinks slowly up at Lando, gaze drawn from the mobile phone clutched in between slender fingers.

“What?”

“You know what,” Lando snarls at him, slamming the door shut. It vibrates on its hinges; a tremor running along Oscar’s back in perfect synchronicity. “Since when do you want to team up with Charles?”

The way he says Charles’s name, like it’s the filthiest curse word ever invented — Oscar has to force himself to keep a straight face, raising his brow imperceptibly.

“I was asked a question,” he says slowly. “I answered it.”

“You should’ve just said nobody. You should’ve said you weren’t looking for a new teammate.”

Oscar stares at him coolly. “What, like you did?”

“I knew this was about Carlos,” Lando sounds too triumphant, eyes gleaming. “You’re jealous.”

Oscar prickles with the implication, biting the tip of his tongue. “What, and you’re not? If looks could kill I think Charles would’ve keeled over right there in the conference room.”

Lando splutters for a moment, face turning an angry purple colour. “Red wouldn’t suit you anyway,” he says, tone bitchy when he finally has enough control of himself to speak again. “It’d wash you out.”

“Sure,” Oscar rolls his eyes towards the orange monstrosity hung up in the corner. “Because papaya doesn’t already do that.”

“You look good in McLaren colours,” Lando insists stubbornly. He’s still standing, looming over Oscar sat on the too-small sofa, casting a shadow over him that tugs deep at Oscar’s navel. “You look good with me.”

The words have an effect but Oscar can’t let Lando know that; not yet at least. He bites back the urge to give in already, schooling his features; keeping them deliberately blank.

“Maybe Carlos would look better.”

He says it flippantly, like it’s just a fact rather than a source of pain for him. He’s gotten used to hiding his disappointment in recent years, but there’s a sourness that stays whenever it comes to this. Still, he shrugs, like it’s easy, like it means nothing.

“No,” Lando frowns. “No, Osc, that was — you know I didn’t mean that…” he shuffles closer, pressing their toes of their trainers together. “It was for engagement. We’re in Spain, the fans love that stuff…” his hand drops to Oscar’s shoulder, the weight of it immeasurable. “You’re the only person I want to be with. On and off the track.”

“Yeah?” Oscar hates himself for how small and pitiful it sounds, immediately lowering his gaze.

“Yeah,” Lando confirms it with conviction. “And Charles — you didn’t actually mean that, did you? You don’t want to replace me?”

“I don’t know,” Oscar’s throat feels tight even as he tries for levity. “Charles is pretty great.”

Lando sees right through it, rolling his eyes before he’s moving forward; settling his weight into Oscar’s lap without question, without waiting for permission. Oscar tosses his phone somewhere to the side of the sofa so that he can get both hands on Lando’s waist, groaning when Lando pushes down.

“You sure about that?”

“No,” Oscar confesses, eyes dropping to Lando’s lips. He can hardly remember what they’re even discussing.

But this time, there was a sharp little intake of breath from behind him, and Oscar said “What is it that we do, then, exactly?”

Lando’s hand faltered on the waistband of his joggers. “I don’t — it isn’t — we’re mates, Osc. We, like, hook up, sometimes,” he’d mumbled, pulling his hoodie over his head and feeling briefly grateful when it covered his face. “Don’t make a frickin’ thing out of it right now.” 

“It’s already a thing, Lando,” Oscar had snapped, then, composure finally cracking enough to expose something unbearably raw underneath. “It’s been a thing for months, you just — you don’t want to talk about it, or, I dunno, can’t or something—”

Lando made the mistake of moving his head just enough to see Oscar in his peripheral. He was propped on his elbows, duvet pooled around his waist, hair wrecked, a bruise in the shape of Lando’s mouth purpling carelessly over his collarbone. “There’s nothing to talk about,” he’d interrupted, voice coming out small and rushed. “It’s — it’s casual. It’s been good, yeah? Like, it works the way it is.”

Oscar stared at his side for a long moment. The room was so quiet that Lando could hear his own blood thundering in his ears. 

“Wow. Okay. Leave, then,” Oscar’d said finally, voice flat, devoid of anger. Devoid of anything at all, really. “Go. Since that’s what works.”

It’s exactly what Lando had wanted, to engineer Oscar into being the one to tell him to go. Now that he had it, though, it felt so shit that he had the absurd urge to throw himself at Oscar’s feet and beg him to take it back. Beg him to let him stay, let him bury his head in Oscar’s chest and let him play with his curls in the way Lando swore to himself he didn’t like. 

Instead, he’d dragged himself to his feet, picked up the slides he’d worn over with one hand, and walked towards the door. “See you tomorrow,” he’d said, hand on the knob, because it felt too strange to leave without saying anything at all. 

Oscar laughed, but it sounded tired and hollow, a carcass of the one he knew. “Just get the fuck out, Lando.”

So he’d gotten the fuck out, letting the door swing shut behind him and walking the fifteen feet back to his own room next door. He’d still been able to hear Oscar through the wall, the faint sound of the TV turning on, probably to the cricket highlights he watched when he couldn’t sleep. 

It was slightly annoying, trying to go to bed while being audibly reminded of what he’d left behind. The fight, Oscar, this thing between them felt inescapable that way, pressing in on Lando’s whole life without his permission. He’d tried to make it smaller — after every race weekend, he’d fly home and sit in his apartment and think okay, done, got it out of my system, and then race week would come around again and Oscar would glance up at him in the garage and Lando’s whole chest would go tight with it, this enormous, stupid thing he kept refusing to name, and he would just fall into it all over again.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to stop, anymore. Wasn’t sure he even could. 

The last thing Lando’d thought before he drifted off was this would all be so much easier if there was any fucking distance between us.

It takes Lando about a second of consciousness in the morning to realize that he’s late. The light is all wrong, Spanish sun slanting golden through the curtains at an unfamiliar angle. His phone’s dead, which is strange, because he could swear he plugged it in last night when he got back to his room, but it explains the lack of alarm, at least. He’ll have to wait to speak to Oscar, he realizes, and can’t decide if it’s a relief or a disappointment. 

Lando brushes his teeth in about forty-five seconds, pulls on the first team polo he can find, and spends the entire car ride to the circuit rehearsing an apology he already knows won’t be sufficient in his head. A shitty apology’s better than none, though. He’ll say whatever Oscar needs to hear, get Oscar’s clipped, polite little response back. Maybe they’ll mess around a bit before the quali strategy debrief, if Oscar’s feeling generous. And then they’ll go back to not talking about it.

He badges in, cuts the back way through hospitality to avoid Jon telling him off, stops in his driver’s room to plug in his phone and then knocks twice, quick and hard, on the next door over. “You in there, mate?” he calls, picking at his cuticle and immediately hating the nerves audible in his voice. There’s silence, and then footsteps inside, and the door swings open towards him, and —

Pato O’Ward is standing in front of him, sipping on a protein shake. 

“Hey, Lando,” he says, easy as anything, like this is normal, like he and Oscar have become best mates behind Lando’s back sometime in the past twelve hours. “What’s up?”

Lando blinks. “Um. Hey,” he says, keeping his voice carefully level. Does Pato know about — what they're doing? Would Oscar have told him? The thought makes him dizzy, and he braces his hand on the outside of the door frame to steady himself before he speaks again. “Why are you in Oscar’s room?”

Pato squints. “Lando,” he says, gentle and measured, like how you’d talk to a toddler. “What are you talking about? This is my room.”

And — okay. He gets it, now. Oscar’s annoyed with him for last night, and this is his twisted way of getting even. He’s roped Pato into some elaborate bit, taking the piss out of Lando until he grovels properly. He thought they were over the head games after last year, but fine. He supposes he deserves it a little bit. 

“Alright. Very funny, mate,” Lando snorts, going for something breezy and unbothered. “But seriously, where’s Oscar?”

Pato tilts his head. “Oscar Piastri?” he says, and he sounds genuinely confused. It’s a decent bit of acting, honestly. Lando didn’t know Pato had it in him. “Why would he have a driver’s room in the McLaren garage?”

Lando rolls his eyes. “Because, you muppet,” he starts, and then stops, because now that Pato’s moved his bloody enormous head out of the way he can see past into the room and it’s — wrong. 

It’s all wrong, actually. It’s neat as a pin, for starters, no clothes tossed haphazardly over the floor. There are no Tim Tams on the high shelf for Lando to steal. The helmet on the table is neatly colorblocked, white-green-red; no insane patchwork of patterns, no Australian flag. The racing suit is pressed neatly on a hanger, PO5 embroidered on the waist where OP81 should be.

Pato touches his arm. “Lando,” he says. He sounds like he’s a million miles away. “Are you okay? Do you want me to call Jon, or —” 

“No,” Lando says, high and unsteady, backing up until his shoulder blades slam into the corridor wall and he jumps half out of his skin. “No, I’m — it’s fine, mate, I’m fine.” 

He’s not fine. He’s been drugged, maybe — his pulse does feel high in his throat, face sweaty and mouth dry the same way it gets when Max wheedles him into doing a bit of molly over summer break when he knows he won't get tested. That must be it. Spiked water in the hotel or something. It would explain the mass hallucination he seems to be having right now. 

He’s walking unsteadily towards hospitality for water when he spots Tom across the garage, and he exhales for the first time in what feels like hours, because Tom he can trust. Tom will know where Oscar is, because Tom always knows where Oscar is; it’s basically his job, keeping track of Oscar’s schedule and moods and the twelve specific pre-session rituals Oscar needs to not be a miserable prick before quali.

Lando changes course, jogging towards him at a pace that’s probably inappropriate for work. “Tom,” he calls, and he can hear the barely-contained mania bleeding into his voice but can’t do a single thing to stop it. “Tom, something’s — where’s Oscar? I need Oscar.”

Tom’s brow creases. “Piastri?” he says, tugging at the collar of his polo. “Dunno, Lando. I’m really not sure of his schedule.”

“You’re not sure of his — you’re his frickin’ engineer, Tom, how do you not know Oscar’s —”

“Lando, I’m Pato’s engineer,” Tom says slowly, giving him a long, careful look that makes Lando’s skin positively crawl, a cold prickle sweeping his entire body. “Have been since he signed. You alright, lad?”

Lando doesn’t answer. He pushes past Tom, walks straight towards the exit, towards the buzz of the paddock. He needs fresh air, a crowd to disappear into, five seconds to himself, and then he’ll go get his phone and he’ll ring Oscar and they’ll sort this all out. He shoves through the door on unsteady legs, sun breaking over his face so brightly that he has to close his eyes against the force of it. 

When he opens them again, he sees Oscar. 

He’s maybe thirty feet from Lando, walking with Pierre, of all people, which is another bizarre occurrence to add to the list. But he’s here, and he looks so familiar — same maroon shirt and ugly khaki shorts, same swoop of dark hair over his forehead, same smile crinkling his eyes at the corners — and the relief that slams through Lando is so violent it nearly takes his knees out from under him, because that’s his Oscar, right there, and whatever nightmare the last twenty minutes has been is about to end.

“Osc!” he calls, jogging to catch up before he’s even really decided to, plowing through a group of Ferrari engineers in his haste to just get to him. “Osc, oh my god, mate, you won’t believe the morning I’m having, I mean, everyone’s gone completely mental and —”

He gets a hand on Oscar’s shoulder, and Oscar stops and turns to look at him, and it’s wrong, too. There’s no fondness, no warmth; none of their private frequency, the shine that Oscar seems to reserve just for him. This is more like Oscar’s sponsor look. Professionally pleasant, privately hoping the interaction will be over as quickly as possible.

“Oh. Hey, Lando,” Oscar says. He glances sideways at Pierre, then back, doing a very poor job of hiding the fact that he clearly doesn’t understand why Lando Norris is standing in front of him, slightly out of breath, talking to him like they know each other. “Sorry — um, what did you say?”

Lando doesn’t really know what to say, then. He’d had an apology ready, had practiced ten different ways to say I’m sorry I left last night without saying anything more damning, but he’s getting the feeling that Oscar would have no fucking clue what he’s talking about. He was inside him less than twelve hours ago and Oscar's looking at him like they've spoken maybe a handful of times.

He feels like he’s standing in front of a stranger wearing his favorite person’s face. Distantly, he realizes that Oscar’s collarbone is unbruised, perfect pale skin jutting out from under his t-shirt.

“Nothing,” Lando hears himself say, voice echoing in his own head like he's underwater or something. “It’s — sorry. It’s nothing. Good luck today.”

Oscar looks surprised, but he gives Lando a polite smile anyway. “Uh, yeah, thanks,” he says, already turning back to Pierre and walking away. “You too,” he adds over his shoulder after a moment, like Lando is an afterthought. A minor, unplanned blip in his day, an interaction he’ll forget about within the hour. 

Lando stands there and watches them walk all the way down the paddock together. Pierre leans in and murmurs something and Oscar shakes his head, a little half-smile on his face — the one Lando knows means don't worry about it. Pierre must say something funny, then, because Oscar throws his head back laughing and bumps his shoulder against Pierre’s, easy and practiced.

That’s what he does with me, Lando thinks dully before the rest of his brain can catch up and correct it. He still doesn’t know where he is, but he suspects Oscar doesn’t do much of anything with him, here.

When he gets back to his driver’s room, moving on some kind of horrible autopilot, his phone’s already powered back on. He swipes into his messages and has to scroll back months to find his thread with Oscar, when it should be in its rightful place, next to Max's, starred at the top. He reads through every message they’ve ever exchanged in five minutes. Nice race. Thanks mate cheers. The kind of messages you send to a coworker you don’t even really like. He swipes into Safari instead, types in oscar piastri, has to retype it three times because his hands won’t stop shaking.

The first result loads. The thumbnail is Oscar’s official headshot — same jaw, same steady brown eyes, same face Lando has traced with his mouth in the dark. But this Oscar isn't wearing papaya. His suit is a sickly sort of pink. 

Underneath the photo, it reads, in clean bold type: Oscar Jack Piastri (born April 6, 2001) is an Australian racing driver who has competed in Formula One for BWT Alpine for four seasons. 

Lando’s stomach lurches, sudden and violent, and he barely makes it to the bin in time before he’s doubled over and retching, one hand braced on his knee and the other white-knuckled around the rim. Nothing comes up, but his body keeps trying anyway, long awful dry heaves that leave him gasping and snotty and shaking on the floor. 

He stays there for a while, forehead pressed to the cool metal of the bin, breathing through his mouth, listening to the distant whine of a car on the track and the muffled thump of bass from Pato’s room, until he remembers it: this would all be so much less complicated if there was any fucking distance between us.

Lando laughs, half-hysterical. Well, he's got it, hasn't he?