Lotus

He was still blinking at the screen when Spencer started to bark, sad, confused little whines. He wanted his breakfast, couldn't understand why Mark wasn't paying attention to him, and Mark knew he wasn't being fair. He dropped his phone onto the cushions, ran a soothing hand over the top of Spencer’s head, and made himself get up. 

In the kitchen, the dogs waited patiently as Mark scooped the kibble, sitting obediently in the corner like he trained them when they were still pups. That was what good dogs did: they stayed where they were told. They didn’t crowd, they didn’t push. They didn’t question. When he placed the bowls down on the floor, he waited a second before letting them eat, relishing the way their bodies quivered with excitement, in the way they didn’t take their eyes off him, in the way they trusted him to give them what they needed.

He had to go to his office to put his phone on charge. The window with Grill the Grid was still open on his laptop from the night before, the video paused on Oscar’s face looking serious and determined. Mark could still hear the presenter’s voice saying, for the second week in a row, it’s someone quite close to you. Was Oscar close to Mark? Still? He hadn’t come to Mark when he had broken up with Lily at the beginning of the season, even though he had said after Abu Dhabi that — 

He called DC back first. It was early still, but DC was an hour ahead in Monaco, and Mark would rather hear it from DC.

_______

They end up shipping Mark out to where Oscar is holidaying. It was mortifying, knowing that he wasn't wanted but having to come to heel anyway. It had been mortifying to explain it to Ann, to hear himself repeat what the girl at McLaren had explained to him when he had finally picked up the phone: optics, uncomfortable questions. A strategy to put the story behind them. 

Oscar looked tired when he opened the door to the villa, even though they were already halfway through the break, more than enough time for a young kid like him to bounce back. Mark wasn’t so old that he couldn’t remember what it was like being 25. He remembered it like it was yesterday: the itching under his skin as he hounded Flavio, begging to be allowed in the car, the energy he had then, the drive. 

But perhaps Mark was being unfair. Oscar’s season wasn’t going well, and Mark remembered what that was like too. He remembered what it was like when things slipped, the feeling of being muzzled, of being told to obey.

Oscar didn’t want Mark to be there. He had made that very clear when Mark had offered, after Oscar had finally told him about the break-up, admitted that it was because Lily had found out. He had told Mark that he needed space, he needed quiet. He needed to think. He didn’t need Mark’s help. He had outgrown that. 

As it was, Mark had allowed himself to be photographed on each stage of the journey. At Heathrow, he had loitered at the gate wearing a hat and sunglasses until he felt someone pointing a camera phone at him. He had been recognised at baggage claim on the other side, had signed an autograph for a guy in a McLaren hat. He was ticking off the list he had been given, the plan for damage control.

It was a big villa. Mark dumped his bag in one of the spare rooms and met Oscar in the kitchen. It opened up onto a patio, the sea stretching out ahead of them, endless blue. Oscar wasn’t really looking at him. There was a muscle in his cheek twitching.   

“Sorry, kid,” Mark said, when the silence got too much. “I didn’t mean to ruin your holiday. I wasn’t thinking — I didn’t think anyone would notice. Who’s checking Instagram like that, you know?”

Oscar snorted through his nose, as if to make it clear that he was unimpressed with Mark’s excuses. 

“Who’s scrolling back years and years to delete photos, Mark?” Oscar said, pointed, and Mark didn’t have an answer to that. He couldn’t explain how he had felt watching Oscar on Grill the Grid — the look on Oscar’s face when he talked about Mark, resigned and fond in equal measure. It had been hard to remind himself that it had been filmed before the season started in earnest, that the Oscar on his laptop was Oscar from the start of the year. That things had changed.  

The list from McLaren included suggested activities for him and Oscar, and Mark opened it now. Football at the beach. Swimming. Lunch at one of the restaurants in town. Golf. He didn’t even know that Oscar had taken up golf — he had never wanted to play with Mark before, and now they were supposed to get papped doing it, performing a relationship that was fine, that was unchanged from how it had been before. 

“Golf?” he asked Oscar, and Oscar shrugged. 

“It’s something I’m trying,” Oscar said. “Zak likes it, so I thought I better learn.” He had his arms crossed over his chest, pulling the fabric of his t-shirt over his biceps. He was always very good at not giving anything away, unless you knew him.

“Oscar,” Mark started, without knowing what he was going to say. 

“Let’s just give Charlotte what she wants, okay?” Oscar said, before Mark could find out what was going to come out of his mouth. “And then everyone will see that we’re fine, and you can go home. Everything can get back to normal.”

“Normal?” Mark asked, forgetting that he was supposed to be behaving himself. “What’s normal now, then? What’s normal for you? Golf with Zak?”

“I guess so, yeah,” Oscar spat. “It’s the team, I can’t explain this to you again. It’s my fucking — it’s my career, Mark, just like it was my relationship with Lily. It’s not a —“  

Mark was on his knees before he was conscious of making a decision. The tile hurt his knees, but he wanted Oscar to stop talking and he didn’t know another way. He had only ever learned how to beg. He shuffled forward, pushed his face into the fabric of Oscar’s shorts, and was relieved when Oscar’s hand came to rest in his hair. He had been angry only a second before, but somehow his touch was still gentle, his fingers running against Mark’s scalp. He didn’t say anything when Mark pulled down his flies, when Mark pulled him out of his boxers so that he could take Oscar into his mouth. 

Oscar’s hand curled into a fist as Mark started to work his mouth along Oscar’s length, gripping his hair, guiding him in a steady rhythm. It felt better to be chasing something. It quieted the part of Mark’s brain that had been sick since Oscar had told him to go. It had been a long time.

Determined, Mark took Oscar all the way down, down to the back of his throat, and he was rewarded with Oscar saying his name again. It wasn’t the way he had said it only minutes before, cutting. It was the way he had said it before, when Mark was still someone he listened to, looked up to. When Mark was still someone he liked.