#piastryverse

Oscar Piastri isn’t ashamed to admit, at least to himself, that he wants Lando Norris.

As a teammate. A rival. A friend. A co-worker.

In his wildest dreams, as a lover.

He can look at himself in his bathroom mirror – fogged from his evening shower – and confess that he wants Lando Norris. Desperately, heartachingly, foolishly. He can rub at his freshly-shaven skin and think: I fell asleep imagining him in my arms. Imagining the way his dimples deepen with every squeaky chuckle. Imagining the squint of his crow’s feet when he’s trying to digest a ludicrous comment.

It makes him dig his palms into his eyes, of course. But that’s neither here nor there.

So why he’s sitting in the cooldown room, slick with sweat and the condensation of the water pooling in his fist, and unable to remove his gaze from his two rivals, is beyond him.

He hasn’t, quite embarrassingly, been with anyone since the start of last season. He’s a committed, one-track mind kinda guy: always has been, probably always will be. And somewhere between the end of his second season, and the start of his third, that track gained a definitive end.

Lando Norris.

It’s been Oscar and his fist for fifteen months now. Which is fine. It’s not like he can force himself to find a stranger (or anyone not driving for McLaren) attractive, and he’s survived this far. Five minutes and his imagination does the trick just fine.

It hasn’t been a problem.

Until now.

Until Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc.

“Ah,” Max murmurs, taking a hearty sip of his water before adding, “That was close.”

Oscar should make a follow-up comment, if only for the camera that sits at his shoulder like a threat. Keep his tone bland, but likeable – insightful. The kind of discernment that a future World Champion should have.

He says nothing. Can’t find a syllable beyond the thick weight that sits at the base of his throat like a stone. He swallows against the uncomfortability.

Charles whistles through his teeth at whatever plays on screen, and Oscar’s stomach curdles with the way that his gaze shoots to his lips. They’re framed by scruffy brown hair, and it should, objectively, be unattractive. Oscar isn’t really one for facial hair in the first place, especially not the goatee-fusion thing that Charles has going on, and yet.

And yet.

“Your tire management, mate,” Max says, then, and Oscar feels like a spotlight has been abruptly turned on him. Max’s eyes are wide and blue and meeting Oscar’s directly. They’re entirely too bright. “It’s impressive.”

Oscar doesn’t know what prompted the compliment: doesn’t quite know anything that’s played on the screen since he sat down.

“Thanks,” he mutters, allowing the corner of his mouth to quirk into a polite, gentle smile. Grateful and respectful. Oscar crosses his arms, uncrosses them – reaches for his water. Takes a sip. Stuffs his hands between his biceps and his sides. Feels more unmoored with every stilted movement.

Max turns to look back to the compilation, and his side profile is just so… sturdy. If a face can be such a thing. He looks like he can handle a partner; can tilt his head and narrow his brows just right, just enough to have another submit without complaint. He just has that assertive look about him. Maybe not as conventionally attractive as Charles, but he’s got that edge – that character that makes him just as devastating.

Oscar wonders if Charles would agree with him. Thinks that he would.

There’s always been rumours – since Oscar’s Formula 3 days – insisting that Charles and Max have always existed like magnets, a gravitational pull between them, ethereal. Oscar didn’t believe them. Knew there couldn’t be an actively queer Formula 1 driver on the grid, despite the advocacy from Seb, from Lewis.

And then he’d adorned papaya orange, and every misconception he’d obtained had unravelled in seconds.

Because Charles and Max were horrifically bad at hiding their affections for each other for more than ten minutes at a time. Two when in the same room. They were decent in front of the cameras, knew how to play the PR game, but as soon as the lenses turned away: heart-eyes and whispered admiration and hands on hips. Kisses against jaws.

If they weren’t so earnest and lovely about it, Oscar would envy that ease. That ability to love without fear.

Ferrari and Red Bull knew, had to know, the damning consequences should they try to break them apart. Must have decided to meet them in the middle; spinned media narratives and masks for the camera in exchange for unhindered love in the paddock. No one batted an eye. No one questioned it.

They just were.

And maybe it allowed Oscar to hope. Allowed him to, when he realised his feelings, dream of a reality wherein he kissed Lando between races. Where he followed him into his motorhome rather than his own. Where they stripped off each other’s fireproofs with gentle hands, gentler grins.

“That last turn – I nearly sent it into the gravel,” Oscar intones, half-mindless. His eyes have barely tracked the movements of whatever colour car’s on screen, let alone the lap – but he catches the small swerve he'd narrowly corrected. Enough to finally say something of substance, enough to snap himself out of it.

“Mate,” Charles says on the end of a chuckle, accent softening the term Oscar hears entirely too often, “I would never live the embarrassment down.”

Oscar isn't sure if that's the correct sequence of the wording. Isn't sure if his head's simply jumbled up enough that he's started mismatching sentences.

“Of course, you would,” Max scoffs, arms flexing where they sit crossed over his chest. His rather plush chest. “One bat of those lashes in front of the cameras and everyone would run to ruffle your hair. Please.”

Max is right. Almost hilariously so.

The compilation finishes on the standard: Let us celebrate you. Oscar's well used to it by now – not to toot his own horn – but today, today, it feels a little more like a taunt. A mockery.

What's there to celebrate, really?

The cameras from behind pull away, the crew exiting as quickly as they'd entered. It's barely a moment before Charles is speaking.

“Just because it works on you, mon coeur, does not mean that it works on all the people,” he raises a brow, chin tilted just so. There's a little quirk to the corner of his lips that Oscar can't help but imagine pressing his thumb against.

Imagine pressing the curve of his nail into the plushness.

“It absolutely works on all people,” Max insists, leaning forward so his forearms rest against his thighs. His dark blond hair looks brunette where the sweat’s made it curl against his forehead and behind his ears. It sends a startling thrill down Oscar’s spine that he wants no part in analysing. “Oscar, you know his charm.”

The man in question blinks. Once, twice. A third time.

Any moment now, the three of them will march down the hallway, go up the stairs to the podium. Let champagne soak their fireproofs, let it sting their eyes with bright smiles and even brighter trophies.

“Charles and charm practically rhyme,” he says, because Oscar might be smart – but he’s also an outright idiot.

Except both men laugh. Max’s nose scrunches a little between his eyes, his guffaw squeaky and high yet gravelly all at the same time, like a weird sort of paradox. Charles is, as always, elegant about it: his eyes meet Oscar’s gaze, warm with the way the apples of his cheeks push against the corners.

They’re so utterly beautiful.

They’re so utterly out of reach.

And, Oscar realises with a start, maybe that’s just it. He might prefer to be the hunted over the hunter on track, but outside of it – he likes the falsity of a chase. A chase he knows he’ll never complete with game in hand; a chase that’s as futile as running after a carrot on a string. Endless and worthless and so entirely impossible that it aches in Oscar’s chest like a living, breathing weight.

Moments pass.

He doesn’t know when they left the room. He doesn’t know when he started scaling the stairs. Moments are blotchy as he lets himself think – something he should save for tonight, with a balled up tissue in the bin and his face shoved into his pillow, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes.

He thinks of Lando with each second step. He thinks of brown curls and freckles and green eyes that aren’t entirely green. He thinks of large, tanned hands around the sim wheel. He thinks of the curve of his lips, the fan of his lashes.

For the steps in between those, he thinks of Charles and Max. He’d known, of course, that they were objectively attractive. Anyone with eyes could tell as much – anyone with understanding.

But he’d never really let himself look. And why today, of all days, is the breaking point; Oscar hasn’t a clue.

The worst part, if there’s any part of it all that’s better than rock bottom, is that the curdle in his stomach isn’t just shame. 

It’s guilt.

Oscar feels, horrifically, as though he’s cheating Lando by looking twice at anyone else. Which is fucked up and so completely twisted that he feels ill with it; his stomach pained twice over. Really, what the fuck is wrong with him? To feel some sort of loyalty for a straight guy – his world-famous teammate – who’s never looked at him twice?

The nape of his neck is warm with a mixture of sweat and anxiety, made more so when he reaches the top of the steps and the bright sun beats down against him.

The cheers are loud, vibrant: even standing back from the stage, hidden in the alcove, Oscar allows the chants to echo in his throat. He swallows, his jaw clicking where he mindlessly grinds his molars together. Forces a polite smile to his face.

He doesn’t know the last time he felt so nauseous.

A camera in his face. A tap on his shoulder. An announcement of his name from the large speakers attached to the stage.

He smiles, and he waves.

˙⋆✮

Things change after that podium.

It’s the night after the race. Oscar has hardly left his motorhome. Overdramatic and pathetic and weak, sure, but he’ll proudly bear that title if it means avoiding… everything.

Avoiding the self-inflicted conflict that’s turned his world, as he knows it, upside down.

The dishwasher is going, and the white curtains on the living room windows flutter softly with the wind. There's a single banana in the fruit bowl – browning and spotted – and his trainer's printed schedule lies on the kitchen counter, corners translucent from grease or water or something like that.

It's well past six, and Oscar's simply sitting lazily on his couch, mildly dozing. He's sure he'll regret it in half an hour's time, neck sore and eyes sleep-bruised.

He's very nearly asleep when his phone vibrates in his shorts pocket.

Charles Leclerc

6:49pm

hello oscar ☺️

me and max and carlos and lando and george and alex are going clubbing at 11, and we would love you there

are you interested ?

The fact of the matter is that there have been no more than three other exchanges in the message thread. Two of which Oscar started, the other a simple ‘Congratulations!’ from Charles after Oscar's first win. It'd been a breath of fresh air amongst a world of Hungary-coloured grey.

That is all to say that a message from Charles is… highly unusual. Unlike him.

Oscar's eyes snag on the ‘lando’, and his heart stutters a bit in his chest. He exits the thread with Charles – checks his pinned.

Nothing from Lando. Not for nearly two weeks.

Why didn't Lando ask him to come? Why the hell was it Charles?

Oscar should decline on principle. Wonders if Charles drew the short straw, or something. It feels petty and all too like the kinds of situations he found himself in during his karting years – young and desperate for the friendships that existed around him. 

He never did manage to enter those circles.

But, then: shouldn't he go? Prove he can be fun, worth their time? Not the stick in the mud he knows the media portrays him as? More than Oscar ‘Cool, Calm, Collected’ Piastri?

He's typing before he even realises that he's made his decision.

Me 6:53pm Yeah, that sounds good See you there

It takes another five minutes for Oscar to move from the couch. Three after that for Charles to respond.

Charles Leclerc 7:01pm see you there! max says to wear the flowing shirt you wore after monza last year lol 😆 he says it was linen ?

Me 7:04pm Haha the one with the brown buttons?  Ok 👍

Charles Leclerc 7:06pm oscar this is max, yes that one. see you soon mate ✌️ You reacted ‘👍’ to Charles Leclerc's message.

Oscar will deny it until the day he dies, but as he goes to microwave his trainer-approved dinner, he catches the flush of his cheeks in the door’s orange reflection.

˙⋆✮

The club is loud and busy but it's been fine. 

He's said his greetings to everyone – took a shot with Carlos, got a hug from Alex. He's always felt slightly out of place in this group; too young for the 2019 rookies, even younger compared to Max and Charles and Carlos. Still, they're welcoming. Warm and bubbly and caring. Even George: in his own stilted, aristocratic way.

Lando gave him the usual embrace, large hand spanning his back with firm pats.

Oscar hasn't seen him since he first entered; hasn't seen Max or Charles whatsoever. He half expects he wouldn't (would, if he took a second to practice introspection) want to find them right now, anyway. Sparingly feels like a fool for wearing the linen top.

And then, it happens.

Like all world-shattering moments, Oscar could never have anticipated it.

It’s a guy.

His hair’s shorn close to his scalp; scrappy and blond and dried out – like he does nothing but run his fingers through the strands, and shampoo it with a 5-in-1 every so often. The ends are split, and it’s not attractive. It’s off-putting.

He’s got a hint of scruff at his jaw, like he hasn’t shaved in a couple of days, and it looks like it’d scrape against your skin if you slid the bridge of your nose against the bone. It leaves him looking untidy and unhygienic and entirely unappealing. The kind of guy that’s left in the corner of the club, until he’s cut off, who then goes home in the cheapest uber he can get at two in the morning.

He’s unremarkable.

Except for how he suddenly isn’t.

With Lando Norris attached to him, he is every bit as remarkable as a shooting star.

The lights are bright, and they’re strobing: red, and blue, and purple, then red again. It’s humid, except for where the condensation of the glass meets Oscar’s palm, and even that’s more a steady reminder that he exists than anything.

Except Oscar doesn’t really feel like he exists right now. Even with the sweat of his house-special drink dripping down his thumb.

Because… It’s a guy.

Lando Norris is making out with a guy.

And Oscar has no idea what to do.

Bodies brush his own, and his hair’s raised against his exposed arms – both hung loosely at his side, his drink close to spilling over. He’s close enough to the edge of the mass of bodies to not be more than a slight annoyance when he stands stock still. When even his fingers have stopped tapping along to the shitty club music.

Oscar imagines that this is what the end of the world feels like.

Like a million tiny heartbreaks, synchronous in their shattering.

He thinks he swallows against the sudden blockage in his throat. Thinks that he manages to raise his glass to drink past the sharp pain that sits behind his ears. At the nape of his neck. At the backs of his eyes.

He should find George. Or Alex. Hunting for one of them will result in getting them both, anyway, so he supposes it doesn’t matter. 

He just needs to move. To turn around, grab another drink. Maybe another three.

Even Carlos. Carlos is kind and sweet and really, really genuine. Not Oscar’s first pick, or more than a friend-by-association, but anyone would do right now. Anyone.

Anything but this.

It’s a guy.

Oscar can’t even tell if he’s breathing. If his chest is moving, or if his heart is beating, or if his pulse is steady. Well. He knows it’s not steady – but he hopes it’s at least survivable.

Doesn’t really feel like it is, right now.

People are yelling, and easy laughter acts as a sort of white noise against the bass of palatable dance music. A remix of some recent song, Oscar thinks, vaguely. Most of the crowd is singing along, varying in rhythm and lyrics.

He’s going to vomit.

His palms are slick with sweat, and suddenly his head is pounding something fierce.

He needs to leave. Find one of the guys. Except, of course, that means looking away. Ignoring a trainwreck happening right in front of him. Who the fuck has ever looked away from a trainwreck?

There’s a hand in that blond, badly kept hair – large and tanned and rough from callouses. A hand that Oscar knows better than his own.

His eyes drop down unthinkingly, never thinking, and his jaw clicks when he sees the other squeezing at the guy’s hip. The thumb rubs at the small hint of skin revealed by the rumpling of the guy’s shirt.

Oh god.

“Oh god,” manages to escape Oscar’s mouth, soft and wavering.

He takes a step back. Accidentally knocks his elbow into the side of a dancing girl. She looks up, brows furrowed, as if to start an argument – but the crease at the centre of her forehead dissipates as soon as her eyes lay on Oscar’s face.

Maybe she recognises him. Maybe she recognises his expression. She side-steps him, and moves further into the crowd without a word.

The hand has moved to fully grasp the guy’s ass. Groping, like they’re not in the middle of a packed club at one in the morning. Like Lando Norris isn’t Lando Norris.

Oscar’s nose scrunches, between his eyes. His lips rest, slightly parted. Chapped.

A million tiny heartbreaks.

He feels stiff. Hollow, with the ache of it. Despite popular belief, he’s rather in tune with his emotions – even if he doesn’t go around showcasing as much. But now, now, under the bright club lights, and the humid air, he feels nothing.

It’s worse than anger. Worse than nausea.

It’s a guy.

His eyes dart around, frantic, finally pulling his gaze away. Fingers squeezing tight around his glass, uncaring whether it shatters, Oscar takes a shaky breath in. Another out.

It feels like going down Eau Rouge for the first time. It feels like accepting death with open arms.

It’s hard to see, beyond the general mass of people. He can’t tell apart faces, where bodies begin and end. It’s as if his vision’s been smeared; a greasy thumb swiped against a camera lens.

His gaze finds them again, like an electric pull. A second, and then two, he spends: watching Lando press a toothy smile into the guy’s neck, his hands remaining where they were when Oscar last looked.

A third second.

And then he turns away, and skirts around the edge of the crowd.

His head’s definitively turned to the floor – sticky and gross and unhygienic (not unlike the guy) – and he focuses on avoiding every pair of feet around him. It’s easier to avoid collisions, this way, he thinks. Easier to see without wanting to break.

He can tell that he’s nearing the side of the club, because there’s light streaming ahead; dancing across the tacky floor.

He looks up, squints. Sees the glowing green ‘exit’ sign.

The back of his jaw stings with the way that it aches, like he’s been tensing it all night. Except that he hasn’t, and he knows that it’s something else entirely. It hurts and hurts and hurts.

It’s the only thing that’s betraying just how numb he feels. It’s the centreing of his gravity.

He puts the glass down on the nearest empty table, the one closest to the exit. There’s a sliver of liquid left behind, but he doesn’t care to down it. He’ll get some from the minibar in his room, or maybe he’ll go all out and order some room service. He deserves it.

The air is cool and sharp against his face as he steps out. The exit opens to a little alleyway – clean and well kept, but dark. There’s only the light from the street ahead; a bright orange lamp, and the hint of colour from the skyscrapers above.

He misses Melbourne.

He doesn't like coffee, except for this one blend; one he can only recall finding at his favourite cafe back home. Not the crap in the States – not the watery shit here in Miami. Not a vanilla-pump Venti frappuccino, or whatever the fuck.

Just a flat white, one sugar. Maybe a vanilla slice if he’s going to give into his sweet tooth.

He aches.

It’s a guy.

It’s not as humid as inside the club, but it’s still not pleasant. The smell of the sea here has nothing on home. It’s tainted by something – Oscar isn’t sure what – that marks it as distinctly… different. Wrong.

There’s one or two stragglers, further down the alley, and Oscar isn’t quite ready to head back to the hotel yet. He feels unmoored, like he needs to anchor himself before he tears himself away.

The brick is cool against the back of his head, and he can feel it through the thin fabric of his shirt. He’s not wasted, just a bit more than tipsy, but he can feel the buzz fading with every unsteady breath. His head pounds with every release of carbon-dioxide and his eyes squeeze shut against the ever-increasing bloom of pain that sits behind his eyes.

After a few minutes, that pain becomes a threatening sting.

He hasn’t really processed it. He knows. But the thoughts are harder to avoid, the words in a thick arial bold: It’s a guy.

His fingers tighten against his shorts, clawing against the khaki. The bottom of his palms are already spotted with white crescents.

The honks of taxis. The distant sound of music. The bass that threatens to vibrate his toes. The sound of laughter, sixty or seventy or eighty metres away.

It’s a guy.

He brings a hand up. Lets it press against his cheek, then his nose, then his forehead. Leaves it at his chin.

“Oscar?”

His eyes fly open, his breath catching in his throat.

Brown meets green.

A not-so-familiar green.

“...Charles?” Oscar manages to sputter out, brows flying up in surprise. 

His brown curls are curled tighter across his forehead, slightly darker with what Oscar guesses to be sweat. He’s wearing pretty much the same thing as every other guy in there, just, somehow, classier. Better. 

Charles has always been like that.

Oscar doesn’t move, but Charles does. He takes a few steps closer, his hands fiddling with a pair of sunglasses. Why the man brought sunglasses to a club, Oscar can’t really understand.

“Are you waiting for your car?” Charles asks, with a small tilt of his head. His accent softens the syllables, lilting and pleasant in contrast to the mess that’s wreaked havoc in Oscar’s head.

“Uh,” Oscar starts, suddenly regretting that he hasn’t anything to keep his hands busy. He awkwardly shoves them into his pockets. “...No. Nah, just…”

He trails off. Can’t think of any normal explanation, let alone a reasonable excuse. Oscar has to swallow harshly, the pain in his jaw increasing with every movement that Charles makes. His nose sniffles again.

Charles nods easily, like he understands.

Neither man says anything as Charles moves to lean against the brick wall beside Oscar. Silent, but loud in his presence. Something rattles in Oscar’s chest.

“I thought you would be with Lando,” Charles says, soft, careful not to disturb the peace of the night.

Doesn’t realise that what he’s said is as peaceful as a nuclear bomb.

Oscar tries to respond. Work his mouth around a word or two, an easy, ‘got tired’, or a ‘you know how he gets’.

But nothing comes out.

Nothing but a small, irredeemable sob.

“Oh,” Charles breathes, and suddenly he’s in front of Oscar, and his hands are raised like he’s about to pet a cat for the first time. “Is –”

And Oscar’s maybe drunker than he thought. No man of a right mind would just –

“Oh, Sweetheart,” Charles murmurs, and then his arms are wrapping around Oscar, around where he’s just crumbled into Charles’ chest and broken.

He’s crying, openly; his shoulders shaking, vibrating with the weight of his tears, his throat tight around the sorrow. The ache in his jaw has grown into a starburst of true pain, and the sting in his eyes has become near unbearable.

There’s a hand in his hair, and flashes of the inverse invade his mind; a hand in badly kept hair, large and tanned and rough from callouses. His fingers dig into the meat of Charles’ back, just skirting his shoulder blades. It has to hurt. But Charles just continues to soothe him with gentle shushes, his fingers curling into Oscar’s brown waves, his cheek resting against Oscar’s temple. His other hand rubs careful circles into Oscar’s back, thumb stroking back and forth over the muscle.

He has no room to feel embarrassed, not with the wave of pure emotion that’s flooding his every nerve right now. He’s sure, that if it weren’t for Charles, that he’d have folded under his own weight by now.

“Charles? Schatje, is that you?”

This time, he catches onto the voice’s owner immediately. Even with his obnoxious sobbing, he can identify that rasp.

Max.

A few steps – concrete underneath leather – and then another weight lands on his shoulder. The warmth of a sturdy hand.

“What –”

Max halts after the first word, and Oscar is sure that Charles must have delivered a particularly noteworthy look to have shut the man up so suddenly.

Oscar chokes on another sob, one physically ripped from his chest, and both Max and Charles make simultaneous noises of sympathy.

It’s… mildly disconcerting.

It’s with both men here that he loses himself a bit, for a moment. Crumbles just that slightest bit more when Max’s hand moves to cradle the nape of his neck, his strong fingers massaging into his skin. He thinks he hears some whispered words exchanged between the two, catches the word ‘please’, isn’t quite sure which of them is speaking so earnestly. Likely both. Definitely both.

The hands ground him. Even when Max’s drifts to sweep his pinkie finger across the skin below the collar of his shirt. 

He feels a little more alive with every shuddering breath, every hiccupped sniffle. The tears have slowed, some – a few strays itch at the apples of his cheeks, and his face is tacky with salt, but he’s feeling steadier. Enough to be human.

Not human enough for the weight of everything to hit him, though. Not yet.

“The car’s here,” Max’s thick, dry voice intones; it’s the first sentence that Oscar’s managed to gather in the past however many minutes.

When Oscar swallows, it’s grating. Like parchment against gravel.

“I’m sorry,” falls from his lips, near-silent in the night. The words are barely indistinguishable from each other – but Charles hears them. Of course he does.

“Non,” he shushes, pulling Oscar in just that bit closer. His words are whispered against the younger’s temple. “Do not be sorry. There is no reason to be sorry.”

Oh, but Oscar is. He really, really is.

“Come on,” Max’s hand rubs down his spine once more, before he’s pulling away. He must gesture something to Charles, because then Charles is pulling back, too – not letting go, but allowing space. Enough for movement.

Oscar moves to pull away completely, let them go. He reaches his hand into his pocket as he jerks away, but Charles’ hand is lightning quick. Oscar should be less surprised than he is, with them being world-class drivers, and all.

“What are you doing?” Charles chastises, perfect brows pulling together and mirroring his perfect pout. “You are coming with us.”

“I –” Oscar starts, has to swallow harshly. He sounds like a fucking idiot. “I don’t want to be a nuisance. I can get home fine, I promise.”

It sounds paper-thin even to his own ears.

“Hah!” Max barks out, this side of too shrill. Oscar winces slightly – doesn’t notice Charles pulling him in closer to his side. “I know you’re not stupid – two-time grill the grid champion, no?”

Even in the relative darkness, and Oscar’s state of mind, he can see the pulling of Max’s lips; the dimples that look as though they swallow up all his features. Pretty and happy and so very Max.

Charles’ ringed hand spans Oscar’s lower back as he pulls him towards the black sedan, thumb continuing its comforting circles. Oscar swears that he can feel the chill of the metal through his linen; can feel where it presses against his like a brand.

“Get in,” Max says – borderline orders. He’s pulled the door open, looking like the pinnacle of chivalry in his black-button up, his black jeans. Oscar’s heart, betrayingly, skips a beat.

“Who do you want in the back with you, mon chéri?” Charles asks, head leaning down slightly to meet Oscar’s weary eyes. Oscar knows that his own face has more than its fair share of freckles and moles, but looking at Charles so close under the night lights, he thinks that he can count at least five on his. There’s a spot just above his top lip.

“Both,” Oscar says, because he’s a fucking idiot. It takes two blinks for him to realise what he’s just allowed to stumble out of his mouth. “Shit,” he breathes. “I mean –”

But Charles is grinning, beyond pleased, and Max’s hand reaches out to ruffle his hair as he scoots into the car before Oscar can so much as get a foot in. So much for being a gentleman, he thinks.

Says, if Charles’ choked off laugh is anything to go by.

He really needs to put a sock in it.

“Come on,” Max calls, pale hand patting on the leather seat in the middle. It’s not the smallest car in the world, but it’s not big enough for three professional athletes, Oscar’s sure.

He slides in anyway. Silently mourns the loss of Charles’ hand as he does so.

It’s a guy.

It’s even darker in the car; Max is saying something to the driver as Charles shuts the door behind himself. Both sides of Oscar are pressed against each man: thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder.

Somehow, it’s the scent of their differing colognes that hits like a sledgehammer to the chest. Charles smells like amber, bergamot: earthy and warm and him. Whatever Max uses is more fresh; clean and light and a complete foil to Charles.

They complete each other.

And here Oscar is: falling apart in between them.

“You are thinking so loud,” Charles murmurs, then, and Oscar tilts his head towards him. The car pulls away from the curb, the indicator ticks. Shadows pass over Charles’ face intermittently, making his light eyes look brown every so often. His hair looks darker in this light, too.

Oscar’s eyes still sting, still ache. His nose feels almost blocked. The skin around his throat feels tight.

His leg’s apparently bouncing, too, because suddenly a warm hand’s settling over the bare skin of his knee, stilling it.

Max doesn’t say a word – has always been more picky with his speech than Charles is probably capable of. His presence says enough; his audacity.

“Did you eat?” Charles asks, then, head turned fully to meet Oscar’s gaze when it returns to him. Charles’ eyes search his face, settling back on his eyes with ease. “Before going out.”

Oscar looses a breath, his shoulders settling slightly. They’ve pulled onto the main road, now: the lights dance more frantically across the reflection of the window, across Charles’ nose, his mouth.

“Yeah,” Oscar answers on a breath. “Just chucked in whatever Artturi wanted me to eat.”

He sounds a bit nasally, a bit pathetic. He’s sure his eyes are ringed with red.

“So nothing good, then?” Max intones, and Oscar looks to him. His eyes are truly so blue – made more so by this lighting. “We have a two week break. You can afford a little treat.”

A small, barely-there chuckle escapes Oscar. Max’s dimples deepen. “You’re trying to sabotage me,” Oscar rolls his eyes, looks to where his hands are folded together in his lap. Max’s hand hasn’t moved from his knee, and Charles is still pressed against his side. “So much for winning fair and square.”

“Non, Oscar,” Charles bemoans, hand reaching out to settle over Oscar’s. Where Max’s palm is warm, Charles’ is startlingly cold. “You race us so beautifully. Never that. Just, don’t you want some ice cream? If we all have some, it’s still fair and square, yes?”

“If all our trainers kill us, at least the championship will be interesting,” Max adds, and Charles squeaks out laughter.

“If we die it will be between George and Lando,” Charles groans, settling back into his seat with a small ‘thump’. “That is a sad, sad championship.”

The name is a jolt to Oscar’s system. Like a rewiring to some internal electrical circuit.

He thinks that Max makes a retort, that Charles laughs even louder – but it’s all white noise, staticky and numbing. Oscar feels like he might be sick. 

It’s a guy.

It was a fucking guy.

It was never – never about Lando being straight, or whatever bullshit.

It was that Oscar was…

Oscar.

“Oscar?”

“I’m sorry,” Oscar breathes; a response garnered from auto-pilot more than anything else. He doesn’t even know what it’s in response to, what it’s for. But he means it. He’s sure he means it.

A hand – startlingly cool – against his nape. His eyes blink open.

“You are okay,” Charles assures, and fuck – fuck, Max’s hand still hasn’t left his knee. Its grip has tightened, a reassuring weight, but it hasn’t moved.

Oscar has to inhale shakily to avoid bursting into tears again. He lets his head fall back, lets his eyes stare unseeingly into the fabric roof of this random uber. 

He’s in a random uber, squeezed between a very in-love Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc, while trying not to cry because he’s just seen his (crush, love of his life, everything) teammate make-out with a guy in a club.

All he wanted to do was drive fast for a living.

“Oscar,” Max says, and Oscar has to take another steadying breath before he can open his eyes, tilt his head just enough to the side to meet Max’s gaze. “What do you need?”

It’s a simple question.

For Oscar, it’s as complex as Yang-Mills.

His answer probably isn’t the right one, but it’s the only one he’s got. It’s sitting there on a silver platter.

“Ice cream,” he mumbles, and this time when Max smiles, his eyes are dimmed with something that Oscar can’t quite name.

˙⋆✮

The Miami breeze is even harsher closer to the coast, the stench of the sea and the soft warmth of May culminating in an unpleasant awareness. It makes Oscar feel entirely too awake, forcibly tethering him to reality.

Max shuts the car door softly, waves politely to the driver as he pulls away again. 

The light that shines through the front windows of the shops in front of the three men feels almost sacrilegious, in the face of the dark night. It has to be well past two at this point, and yet people mill about, roaring with laughter and bubbling with drink.

It has nothing on Melbourne. No city can really compare, Oscar thinks, a pang shooting through his heart.

“Oh, if they are not open,” Charles is huffing, dramatic and wistful all at once. “I will be very, very upset. Oscar, you have not had ice cream until you’ve had this ice cream, I swear to you.”

“Um,” Oscar manages, expression morphing into a mixture of incredulous and bemused. “Didn’t you launch an ice cream? Like, last year?”

Oscar’s blindly matching Charles’ steps, Max catching up within a couple of moments to walk at Oscar’s right. For the little height difference between them, Oscar feels almost small in comparison. Not weak. Just… maybe a little fragile. Caved into himself; if not physically, then emotionally.

“Well, yes,” Charles says, a little smirk pulling at his soft lips. “But I am also not dumb. This ice cream, god, Oscar.”

“I have heard you say otherwise,” Max interjects, and Charles gasps in dismay. “There is, of course, Baku…” he trails off with a badly stifled laugh when Charles ducks around Oscar to hit at Max’s bicep, emphatically cursing under his breath.

And, well, Oscar can’t help his own giggle at that. Even if it is stilted and half-hearted.

He can tell they’re playing it up, just the slightest. It’s not inauthentic, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s layered with an effervescent sheen that Oscar imagines is for his benefit.

His chest continues to ache.

“It should be – oh, grazie al Cielo!” Charles exclaims, and then his hand is circling Oscar’s wrist and pulling him insistently. Oscar is helpless but to follow. He’s been following Charles ever since he left the club.

The shopfront is a mint green, with a neon sign simply reading ‘Ice Cream!’ hanging in the large front window. It’s small and bright and the antithesis to the implosion in Oscar’s mind right now.

“Getverderrie,” Max huffs under his breath, his hand unconsciously finding Oscar’s lower back as he steps into the shop alongside him, the bell tinkling softly as the door shuts. 

Charles is already at the display case, having let go of Oscar to look over the selection. There’s a clock in the wall, above the menu: it’s nearing half-past two. Jesus Christ, Oscar thinks distantly. No wonder it feels like he’s been hit by a freight train.

He won’t let himself linger on why else that might be the case.

It’s surprisingly empty, although Oscar did see a couple seated at one of the tables just outside. He assumes it must be nearing closing, or the next wave of partygoers haven’t come through yet. Soft music plays in the background, something he’s sure wasn’t made in the last four decades.

The woman behind the counter is saying something to Charles, whose grin stretches into something sickeningly delightful. His hands wave about as he gestures to the array of flavours in front of him, and the woman’s cheeks are dusted in pink.

“Charles and charm practically rhyme,” Max says, under his breath, shoulder brushing Oscar’s. His hands are folded behind his back as his gaze falls on Charles’ frame; eyes softening with every second that passes.

Oscar wonders if his body’s just become one large, all-encompassing bruise.

“Yeah,” Oscar concedes, eyes trailing Max’s profile. So fucking recognisable. “Yeah.”

Max turns, and his eyes feel like they’re pulling Oscar apart at the seams. Calculating and knowing in a way that needles beneath his skin. The fans from the ducts above sound almost like laughter, if Oscar’s lost his mind enough to fall into shitty personification like that.

“Oh, you both,” Charles groans, and both men nearly snap their necks to look at him. His hands rest at his waist, and his eyebrow’s raised. “We do not have all night, and Sam is closing in ten minutes. Pick.”

Sam waves him off, insisting that, “No, no it’s fine, there’s no need to rush,” in her sharp accent. Other than Logan, Oscar’s rarely around Americans – finds himself in that weird in-between of fitting in, and standing out, when around them.

“We will not make you stay late,” Charles says, sparing one more look Oscar and Max’s way before smiling back at Sam. “Anyways, you were saying about your daughter?”

Moving around where Charles has taken post at the register, Oscar’s eyes trail over the selection. There’s neapolitan, mint chocolate chip, strawberry – a multitude of extravagant nightmares that would send Artturi into a coma if he so much as knew that Oscar was looking at them right now.

After a few moments, he settles on picking between the vanilla and chocolate chip cookie dough. He distantly yearns for a Bubble O’Bill, as childish and nostalgic as it is.

“What are you going to go for?” Max asks, and Oscar jolts a little when he realises that he’s looking over Oscar’s shoulder. His heart mirrors the jerk when he realises that he kind of likes Max hovering over him.

“Um,” Oscar’s eyes squint a little, his thumb coming up to pull at his lower lip. “Trying to decide between the vanilla and the cookie dough. You?”

“I will, of course, get the cookie dough and you will get the vanilla,” Max says, hand coming up to grip around Oscar’s bicep lightly. “Charles looks like he will kill us if we take another second.”

“Max –”

“You two are impossible,” Charles teases, seemingly completely calm now that he knows that they really won’t be making Sam stay overtime. He’s already got his ice-cream in hand: a waffle cone with a scoop of butter pecan.

“I will take a cookie dough,” Max smiles at Sam, subtly pinching Charles’ side. Charles slaps his hand away with a small grunt. “And he,” Max jerks his head towards Oscar, standing just a ways behind the two, “Will have a vanilla. Thank you.”

As Sam goes to scoop the ice cream, Charles turns to Max with furrowed brows. “First of all, that hurt,” he complains, pointed finger pressing against Max’s chest. “Second of all, why did you not get the pistachio? You always get the pistachio.”

“Max, you really didn’t have to do that,” Oscar winces, feeling endlessly guilty. “I would’ve just picked one, y’know.”

Something flickers in Charles’ gaze as he looks between the two, before settling on Max, who merely shrugs. His eyes don’t stray from Charles as he says, “You are clearly very sad. And I like cookie dough, so it is all okay. You can try both this way, and we are all happy.”

Fuck, does Oscar ache.

Sam reaches over the counter to hand Max and Oscar their cones, smile warm as they both take them with a ‘thank you’. Oscar can understand why Charles seems as charmed by her, as she is with him.

Reaching into his back pocket, Oscar pulls out his leather wallet, grabbing a fifty without thinking twice. He’s handing it to Sam before either Charles or Max realise, and Sam winks at him. It sends a thrill up Oscar’s spine – like he’s on the inside of a joke he didn’t mean to make.

It isn’t until they’re back onto the street that either man realises that he hadn’t paid.

“Oh, mio Dio,” Charles chokes out, midway through his lick. His eyes go startlingly wide as he stops where he’s walking. “We did not pay.”

“Fuck,” Max stops, too, frown pulling at his lips. “Will she still be there?”

“I paid,” Oscar says, hand raising unthinkingly – like he’s back in school, ten years old and waiting for his pen license. “It’s okay. I tipped.”

“You paid?” Max asks, expression scrunching up, like he’s sucked on something particularly sour. “We are the ones who took you. We should’ve paid.”

“Max,” Oscar says, breathy and incredulous. “I can afford three ice creams. Besides, I owe you both much more than that. Hell, I didn’t even pay for the uber.”

“Oh, Oscar,” Charles pouts, and suddenly he’s in front of Oscar, eyes sparkling underneath the Miami city lights. “You are so lovely.”

For a devastating moment, Oscar thinks that Charles is about to kiss him.

Instead, Charles’ mouth finds Oscar’s cheek – lips cold from the ice cream, from the breeze, but breath warm where he presses a chaste kiss to Oscar’s skin. Over one of his moles, Oscar’s sure.

“You are staying at the motorhome, yes?” He asks as he pulls away, as if Oscar’s thoughts haven’t been scattered like a scrabble board tipped upside down.

He blinks.

“Uh,” he says, intelligently. “Yes?”

“You are staying with us tonight,” Max claps him on the shoulder; the same way he does after a particularly good race. “I will take the couch.”

“Come on,” Charles adds, cheeky grin settled on his face like it’s stuck there. “It is just down this road.”

Oscar opens his mouth, ready to argue, but Max raises his hand, expression stern. “If you want to argue, you can argue when we are at the hotel. It is late and you are tired. Also, your ice cream is about to melt onto your hand.”

Eyes going wide, Oscar hastily brings his cone up, licking at the stray dessert and just narrowly avoiding a sticky mess. Charles laughs throatily, and a flush creeps onto Oscar’s face.

With the catastrophe avoided, Oscar follows as Charles and Max start walking again, implicitly trusting their judgment and ability to remember where the hell their hotel is.

“Try the cookie dough,” Max says, then, extending the cone so it’s at Oscar’s mouth level. How he manages to keep it from getting on Oscar’s skin as they walk is a little impressive. “It’s very good.”

Forcing a chuckle, Oscar asks, “You sure? Not worried about cooties?”

“Oh, Max does not worry about cooties, Oscar,” Charles singsongs, and Oscar tries not to splutter. He darts one more look towards Max, who simply raises a brow as if to say ‘just get on with it’, before darting his tongue out and taking a lick.

It is, admittedly, very good. Beyond the thought that Oscar’s just licked the same place that Max Verstappen has, he can appreciate the taste.

“Good?” Max asks, pulling the ice cream back again. Oscar feels like he’s going insane when he’s nearly certain that Max licks over the exact same spot that Oscar just did.

“Good,” Oscar chokes out, head spinning and gaze now set resolutely on the concrete in front of him.

What the fuck is anything ever, even.

“Do you not feel happier with ice cream?” Charles prods, eyebrows waggling comically. Oscar chuckles softly at the theatrics, and he realises that he’s as helpless to Charles’ charm as poor Sam. He narrowly avoids tripping over the next crack in the sidewalk.

“No, I am endlessly more miserable, actually,” Oscar rolls his eyes, just to be a bit of a dick.

“You definitely look like you are,” Max goads. His hand gestures towards Oscar’s entire face as he adds, “Your smile and those creases in your cheeks are very much proving your point.”

Oscar’s face heats at Max’s teasing, and he raises a self-conscious hand to his face, covering himself. He doesn’t want to look like some schoolgirl with a – a crush, or something, but he knows how pink his cheeks can get and he doesn’t want to encourage the blond idiot.

“Aww, Oscar,” Charles coos, his accent doing unfathomable things to Oscar’s name. (To his heart.) “It is all okay, you do not need to hide. Look, we are at the hotel!”

They are, as it turns out. And, Oscar realises, maybe a little belatedly, that they’ve gotten quite lucky all night. No one’s recognised them, no one’s asked for a picture.

Staring down the entry to this unbelievably glamorous hotel, Oscar is sure that their luck ends here.

“Um,” he starts, taking another apathetic lick to his ice cream. “We are definitely getting caught if we just waltz in there.”

“Caught?” Max asks, confusion written all over his face. “Caught doing what? We are friends, Oscar, and we have ice cream. Our PR teams are, of course, top grade. There is nothing to worry about.”

“This might be one of the most insane nights of my life,” Oscar sighs, maybe a little tired, maybe a little drained. He squeezes his eyes shut for a second, before opening them again. He looks between Max and Charles, who’ve both stopped just a metre away from him.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, feeling like he’s signing his own death warrant. “Let’s go.”

Charles’ grin widens just that slightest bit more, and Max’s blue eyes twinkle with a mischief that Oscar isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to anticipate.

He doesn’t know it, but he hasn’t thought about large tanned hands or shorn blond hair since the uber ride.

Doesn’t know, either, how green eyes that aren’t entirely green watched him get into the black sedan.

And, as he gets into the elevator – doesn’t know that there’s finally a notification waiting for him from his pinned contact.

˙⋆✮

The hotel room is warm. Warm lighting, warm heating. It’s as if it’s been dipped in a soft yellow: hazy and all-consuming.

A little like a hug.

“Do you want a shower?” Charles asks, head tilted just so. Max closes the door with a mild thud; toes off his shoes with a practiced ease. “The water pressure is very lovely.”

Oscar shudders out a sigh. Beyond the pounding in his head that’s becoming more and more of a nuisance, he can acknowledge the tightness that lines his every muscle – the physical exhaustion that’s becoming evermore prevalent with each exhale.

“Yeah, alright,” Oscar mumbles, and Charles’ hand rubs up and down his back in a steady rhythm. Present, comforting. There. “I don’t have a change of clothes, though,” he winces slightly, lets his toes press further into the soft carpet.

“I, of course, have some spare that’ll fit you,” Max assures immediately, his mouth pulling into that smile that makes his eyes squint a little. “Maybe a little big. Not by much.”

“No, yeah,” Oscar nods, “Thanks. I really appreciate, y’know, all this.” He gestures awkwardly to his general vicinity; the hotel room, the two men, the everything.

“You are welcome any time,” Charles says, syllables softened and eyes twinkling. Oscar really needs to sleep.

Max firmly pats Oscar’s shoulder before heading to what Oscar presumes is their room. There’s only two doors in the whole place – but with its open plan and floor-to-ceiling windows, it looks every bit the wealthy hotel room that it is. Not a penthouse, but just shy of it.

“Come,” Charles jerks his head towards the other door, walking backwards with a hint of arrogance in the set of his mouth. It, decidedly, suits him. “We can get you a towel and everything.”

Oscar nods. Inclines his head, slightly, like a regal cat allowing its owner to pat it.

“Will you be okay without your, eh, hair products?” Charles asks, turning around as he opens the bathroom door with a soft click.

Oscar blinks. Allows his brows to furrow. 

“Ah,” he broaches, grimacing slightly. He has a feeling that Charles won’t be particularly pleased with his response. “I don’t really have… those.”

The bathroom light that Charles turns on (there’s, like, five switches) is… intimate. Just a soft, amber light that sits on the wall between the sink and the shower. Its light barely reaches the corners of the room.

It’s frankly disturbing how it sends a jolt through Oscar’s stomach. Like he’s some – some guy from TLC attracted to random objects.

Except, he knows, it’s not the light. It’s everything that it implies, intentionally or not.

“Oscar,” Charles gasps, stopping in his tracks. 

And, fuck, Oscar never said that he was a good person, never really thought it to be true: but this cements that fact. Because his mind is evil and desperate and so very unsure, because he can’t stop himself from comparing.

Comparing Charles’ ambiguous, adorable accent – and Lando’s. British but not really, sharp and squeaky and quick to trade some syllables for the next.

Oscar doesn’t know which he prefers, right now. Wants to punch himself for even considering Charles’ as able to compare to Lando’s.

But then –

It was a guy.

“You are unbelievable,” Charles is saying, and Oscar can hear him, understand him, but – “You are just as bad as Max. I thought you had more sense, Oscar, but clearly this is not true. Do you use the five-in-one like Max used to? Oh, god, do not tell me.”

Oscar’s heart is thundering, his hands are shaking.

“I,” he begins, swallows. Feels like a goddamned fool. “No, uh, my sisters would kill me. Just this, um, shampoo and conditioner they said suited my hair type.”

Charles’ eyes squint a little, and despite the low light, Oscar can see something settle within them. Has to wonder if Charles is a mind reader, or something, when his hand shoots out to grab at Oscar’s.

“Are you still very upset?” Charles asks. Takes a small step closer. His fingers are still cold against Oscar’s skin where they curl around his own. “We never really talked about it. But, hm,” he pauses, tries to meet Oscar’s gaze. “How about you have a shower. Me and Max have some whiskey, and then we can all sit and talk. Talking always helps. And, you know, alcohol.”

A small chuckle escapes Oscar. Charles grins like he’s won the lottery.

A gentle knock sounds against the open door, and Oscar quickly turns, eyes wide – as if his hand’s been caught in the cookie jar. Charles lets go.

“I have the clothes,” Max brings his arm up, where the pants and shirt have been folded over it. “I did not think you wanted my boxers.”

Oscar’s cheeks warm instantly, a startled expression painting his face. Charles laughs brightly, and Max's dimples seem even deeper in the harsh shadows created by the amber light. Oscar has to fight against burying his face in his hands again as he mutters, “Yeah, um, good call, mate.”

“The hot water heats fast, so be careful,” Max adds, placing the clothes on the counter. “We’ll be on the couch if you need anything.”

“Thanks,” Oscar returns, looking up to smile at both of them; a little half-hearted, more than real. 

“Ton sourire me fait fondre,” Charles murmurs, and Oscar’s mind blanks for a second at the easy French. Before he can ask what the hell Charles’s just said, the door’s closed behind both him and Max.

He exhales steadily. Charles said it in French for a reason, Oscar supposes.

Stripping off his shirt – that fucking linen shirt – feels a little like unthreading a knot in an old pair of earphones. Something unhooks at the bottom of his spine, and his shoulders loosen ever so slightly. He lets the fabric fall to the floor in the corner of the room, his shorts following soon after.

He’s never been very confident in his looks. He knows he’s an athlete, knows that his body is objectively attractive, but he’s never quite internalised that. Let himself believe it.

In this lowlight – just in his black boxers – he allows himself to look at the mirror. Study his frame, the lining of his muscles, his slender hands, his perfectly trimmed nails.

His stomach twists. With every mole that his eyes pass over, he wonders, is this the one that did him in? Was that the inch of skin that made Lando want anyone but him? Was it that vein that made him undesirable – his last choice?

The idea that Lando was simply straight was indescribably easier. A fact of life – immovable, no fault on Oscar’s part.

Now, it’s a little like being stabbed.

Because it has to be Oscar. That he’s not good enough. That there’s something about him that Lando can’t get over.

He brings his hand over his jaw. Traces the line of it, continues down his throat, over his Adam's apple. Lets it continue to trail down the middle of his pecks – clean shaven and smooth. He never did like having hair over his chest in the way Lando did.

One more glance in the mirror, and his fingers grazing his stomach – his abs (because he has abs, maybe Lando isn't into muscle?) and then his eyes are fluttering shut a little. This lighting makes it easy to just float, feel a little out of sorts.

That, and maybe everything that is tonight. Maybe the men that sit just a few metres away.

“Fuck,” Oscar curses softly under his breath, his head falling back a little. His throat still feels sore, his eyes stinging from his uncharacteristic tears earlier. He can still taste the ice cream behind his teeth – Max's cookie dough.

He opens his eyes again, hazy around the edges. He turns to the shower, pulls the hot lever. It's not the knobs he's used to back at home, at his parents’ house. They're metal and sleek, not really knobs at all; fancy and minimalist. He isn't too fond of just how sensitive they are – how quickly the sting of the hot water brings blood to the skin of his hand, tinting it red.

He slides his boxers off, chucks them in the general direction of the rest of his clothes. Toes his socks off, too.

As he steps into the shower, wincing slightly at the heat, his eyes slide shut yet again. His mind is a rush, all passing thoughts of brown curls and toothy smiles and large hands in shorn blond hair.

He feels nauseous. He feels shattered. He feels adrift at sea.

But, also, like he has his arms around a buoy.

The water ripples down his back (Charles was right, the water pressure is amazing) in firm sheets, and Oscar grabs the liquid soap with ease. Sniffs it, once, a little curious.

It smells like Max.

Manly, in a way that Oscar has never really been – never did like strong cologne or the crazy ‘rubber and petrol’ scents of his peers back in boarding school. But this, this soap, is heady with the way that it instantly brings forth images of pink lips and blue eyes and stubble.

With the way that it sends a spark through Oscar’s spine.

He pours a decent amount into his hand; can’t quite tell what colour it is under the shadows of the light. Starts to rub it against his stomach. His chest. Under his arms.

Even now, it’s like he can feel Charles’ cold fingers against his skin. Max’s comparatively hot hand on his back, his shoulder.

They were so tactile. Have been all night.

Oscar isn’t touch-starved. He doesn’t think. Fifteen months without touch is – it’s not great, especially when you’re an athlete with weird hormone shit going on, but still. It’s tolerable. People stay celibate for much, much longer. He’s not special.

Then why does he feel branded with their touch?

Suds cover the upper half of his body, his lashes tickling his cheeks as he looks down at his skin. It’s pinkened underneath the hot water, glistening under the light. Tense from yesterday’s race, still: muscles tight. Arturri will have his head for it. 

Tomorrow, Oscar thinks distantly. An issue for tomorrow.

Another to add to the fucking list.

He washes the soap off, his head finally ducking underneath the showerhead. He needs to run his hands through his strands, move his head this way and that, to fully soak it. His mother always said that his hair was too hard to get wet. Too quick to dry. She used to brush it every night before bed, after his sisters. Didn’t treat them any differently.

He wonders about the small differences between himself, Charles, and Max. Three sisters, two brothers, one sister. Where they could bridge the gaps.

His mouth falls open a little at the sudden thought. At the ease with which it just… appeared.

Like second nature. Like thinking about family and bridging gaps was normal; like tonight wasn't the first night that he’d ever been asked to spend time with them. Even that was a group event – didn’t see them in the club at all, actually.

Fuck, that club. That man.

And yet, thoughts of Lando and his conquest are dimmed ever so slightly by a black Sedan, by vanilla and cookie dough ice cream, by ringed hands and blond hair.

Max and Charles had held him. Had seen him crumble, and had, without thought, done everything in their power to bring a smile back to his face. Had held him, run their fingers across his back, through his hand – walked with him along the Miami shoreline. They were little more than co-workers. And yet.

Oscar’s mind trails back to the podium. The startling realisation that they were hot, suddenly. Not just the two out queer drivers on the paddock, not just Verstappen and Leclerc.

Hot. Attractive.

“Oh god,” Oscar mumbles, eyes unmoving from the slate wall directly in front of him. Water continues to stream down his back; white noise. His hand rises unthinkingly to his mouth, fingers pressing into his bottom lip. “Oh god.”

What was that saying? The one that Mark had once said, two glasses of whiskey in and comforting Oscar after his first break-up, at age nineteen?

The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else?

Well, Oscar thinks, surely than can extend to someones.

A little foolish. A lot presumptuous. 

Isn’t that what heartbreak’s all about, anyways? He’s allowed a stupid mistake. A one-time pass to make a dumb decision. To try and eradicate the poison that’s been curdling in his chest since the moment he saw Lando’s hand groping that decidedly male ass.

Max and Charles insisted Oscar come to their room. Stay the night.

They were always kind to him (Max unusually so, almost in defiance to everything anyone else had to say) and thoughtful, but this was a step beyond that. Surely.

And, yeah, Oscar was in complete and utter shambles against that brick wall, and they could certainly just be worried, but. It didn’t quite feel like that, anymore.

Maybe he was beyond exhaustion. So tired that he’s somehow convinced himself of an entirely untrue reality.

Maybe he was finally seeing beyond his Lando-tinted glasses.

He clearly didn’t want him anyway. And although Oscar could acknowledge that he’d be feeling much differently come morning, he still felt oddly slighted. Like Lando had gone out of his way to hurt Oscar as much as possible.

Like maybe this – Charles, Max – could be his retribution.

Lando won’t ever know. Wouldn’t care if he did, clearly. Oscar knows as much. Oscar can’t quite find it within himself to care. It’s a revenge only he’ll ever really benefit from – but, fuck, does he want it.

He wants it bad.

His mouth feels permanently ajar, his jaw hinged on  a loose screw as his hand falls lower, lower still. Eyes fluttering shut a little. That goddamn light making the shadows stark and the air stagnant.

He’s a little hard. Enough that it’s heavy in his palm when he wraps his fingers around it, his nails biting into the base of his hand as he squeezes. Lets out a rough gust of air, lets his head fall back. His Adam’s apple bobs.

They’re just so – they’re everything. Brunette and blond, knowing eyes and five o’ clock shadows. Skillful hands and talent and glory on track.

And that’s the whole other thing. 

Watching them race is like art.

Actually racing them? Dancing and teasing and challenging?

Fuck, thinking about it now – it sets Oscar’s soul alight.

“Jesus,” Oscar grits out, eyes pinched tight. His thumb teases the head, makes him choke on a breath. He’s unbearably sensitive: more so than his usual, perfunctory wank after an intense race. It’s all, just, a lot. On the knife’s edge of being too much, and yet not enough.

He thinks of a ringed hand pressing against his back, a Monegasque quip. He thinks of a pink tongue darting out to lick over ice cream, where his own just had.

He thinks of hot and cold. Being forced into the middle.

Giving himself one last squeeze, Oscar lets go, teeth digging into his lower lip as he feels himself twitch a little. He’s fully hard, now, his heartbeat sounding in his ears.

If this fails (which, chances are high) then he’ll just. Go to his room. Finish himself off.

Cry a little.

Cry a lot.

Survive.

He’s quick about washing his hair – shampoo, rinse, conditioner, rinse – and cleaning himself thoroughly. Oscar distantly hopes that Max never finds out where exactly his soap has been put to use.

Stepping out of the shower feels a little too much like taking a bite of a forbidden fruit. Realising that he’s just… touched himself in the hotel room of two of his ‘rivals’ – just a few metres away – is as intoxicating as it is nauseating.

Not as nauseating as other recent events. But enough to make him look himself in the mirror, brown eyes blown and made black underneath the dim light, and swallow harshly.

He dries off methodically; patient, careful. Goes through the motions while his mind is entirely unpresent. Oscar can’t help the intermittent flashes of Lando, the slight twinge of wrongness that sits at the back of his mind like a weight. But it’s – Max and Charles are really, truly, lovely.

Why can’t Oscar want lovely things?

Max’s pants are just slightly too long: tight at the hips, loose at the waist. But they’re soft. Plaid. The kind of pyjamas that Oscar would assume Max would wear, cosied up on his couch with Sassy and Jimmy and Donut.

They smell like the specific laundry detergent that Max uses. They smell like comfort and warm sheets and lace curtains.

Max’s shirt – just a black tee – is also a little loose. A little long. 

Oscar knows that they’re not that far apart in height, and they’re both strong, but Oscar feels pointedly reminded of his own frame, wearing Max’s clothes like this. Max is shaped like a dorito, Oscar is decidedly not. Always did have a softness to him that couldn’t be shaped or moulded by diet or exercise.

His shoulders fill it out, at least. Enough to cling ever so slightly. Even though Oscar is sure that Max wears it like that, anyway.

Oscar lets his hands press to his heated cheeks, the sides of his neck, his forearms. Looses a sharp exhale. Straightens his posture. Lets the buzz that sits under his skin maintain its monotonous rhythm – ignores it.

Blinks once. Twice. Opens the bathroom door, turns off the light.

“Oh, good!” Charles’ voice rings out, and Oscar can hear the smile before he sees it. Wide and pretty and softened at the edges. “You are out. Was it alright?”

Oscar’s fingers find the hem of the shirt, tangle themselves within it. “Yeah, it was, thanks. The hot water was hot, though.”

“I did tell you,” Max’s eyebrow raises where his head’s turned over his shoulder, arm resting easily on the couch’s armrest. His legs are folded at the ankles on the ottoman, all relaxed and arrogant all at once.

It does something to Oscar that he doesn’t want to spend anytime considering.

Charles shuffles over to the far left corner of the couch, patting his hand insistently on the leather between himself and Max. His rings clink together as he does so. “Come, Oscar, now that you are all clean and refreshed.”

Oscar can’t help the sudden guffaw that leaves his mouth, the sharp: “Hey! I didn’t smell that bad, did I?”

Both Charles and Max share a look, and Oscar groans, head falling back in exasperation. Max chuckles, and Charles downright giggles – all high and bubbly. Like the champagne they poured over each other, just a little more than twenty-four hours ago.

“Oscar,” Max says, then, that emphasis on ‘car’ making Oscar’s spine straighten just a little. “You do not ever smell bad. But the chocolate is a little,” he tilts his head side-to-side, lips pursed. “Childish.”

“Yeah, well, once it’s become a meme there’s not really any going back,” Oscar grumbles, falling back into the couch with a small ‘oomf’. “Thought you two would know that better than anyone.”

“Oh, do not say it,” Charles grumbles, head turned towards Oscar with a firm frown on his face. It’s more of a pout, really, but Oscar isn’t about to be semantic.

“It’s cute!” Oscar smirks, toothy grin on full display. “You two were adorable.”

“Charles is just embarrassed,” Max coos, wheezy laugh following. “He is, of course, not as good at English as me.”

“Do you want a glass, Oscar?” Charles sharply asks, cutting off the conversation coolly. His mouth is set in a firm line – as if stifling the urge to smile or laugh – but his eyes are soft and telling.

“Yeah, I’ll take one,” Oscar nods, wiping his palms over his thighs; clammy and warm. His stomach swoops like he’s cresting the shoddy rollercoaster back home, at Luna Park. 

Seeing the sun high in the sky, as a kid, coming over that initial rise. Seeing it set in that same seat as a teenager, a girl’s hand in his, sticky with fairy floss and soft drink. The conductor making quips like it’s his full-time job.

He hasn’t been back in a long, long time.

He finds that he misses it.

Charles pours the whiskey into three glasses, hand steady. It’s strong, Oscar can smell as much. Aged and expensive.

“There you go,” Charles hands him the glass, their fingertips brushing for just a second. Another swoop, another crest.

“I don’t usually drink, y’know,” Oscar confesses, swinging his legs around to curl up underneath him, toes underneath his upper thigh. “Like, never. Once a year, maybe.”

“We are lucky, then, is what you are saying,” Max smirks. 

Charles settles back into the couch, on Oscar’s other side – and maybe he’s going crazy, but he swears he sits closer, this time. Max radiates heat like a furnace, but Charles is barely a presence on his side – more like a wisp of sensation.

“I wouldn’t say me drinking is lucky,” Oscar confesses, a sad smile lilting his lips. He takes a short sip, winces slightly at the burn as it goes down. Not as good as his Nonno’s moonshine.

“Oh, Oscar,” Charles murmurs in sympathy – shuffling a little bit closer. The fabric of their pants brush. “It is no good to be quiet about these things. We are here for you. What happened? I assume… I cannot imagine it was anything but very bad.”

The lights in the kitchen are on; bright, overhead white. The windows that fill the back wall of the hotel room cast city-neon over Charles’ cheekbones, Max’s lighter hair. The ambiance has all the makings for a bad decision, a scrapped episode of some late-night soap opera.

Oscar can feel his heart beat in his throat.

“Um,” he starts, takes another sip of the whiskey. One more. He sets his glass down on the sleek black coffee table. “Before I… say anything,” he interlocks his fingers, keeps his gaze set on them. “I trust you guys. I know we’re not, uh, close, or anything. But. Please don’t… go and tell anyone about this. Obviously.”

Max clears his throat, turns slightly. Oscar forces himself to look up and maintain eye contact.

“We would, of course, never tell anyone anything you do not want told,” he says, expression firm and hand firmer, where it reaches to squeeze Oscar’s shoulder just nigh of too tight. “You are safe here, Oscar. It is between us, of course.”

“I am very good at keeping secrets,” Charles adds, a brightness to the otherwise onyx night. His glass is still mostly full. “It is okay, Oscar.”

Oscar swallows, encloses one of his wrists with a fist. Squeezes, steady, ensuring a sense of tangibility that he can’t quite seem to fathom.

“Can I, um, ask how you guys got together?” Oscar asks, meek. Feeling a little like Icarus.

They share a look between themselves. Not leaving Oscar out, still very much aware of his presence, but just – speaking in a kind of silence only fostered through years of true knowing. Soul bonds and twin flames and all that bullshit that Oscar still hasn’t quite made his mind up about. He’s twenty-five and he doesn’t really think that he needs to know, yet. Not really.

He’d thought he’d known Lando. Had thought that he’d known how their story would go.

Look where that’s gotten him.

“We hated each other, of course,” Max confesses, then, a little raspy. He takes a large sip from his glass, lips pursed slightly. He’s not looking at Oscar, or Charles, but rather the kitchen counter. Oscar can’t imagine what Max’s seeing in that expanse of marble. “A lot, actually.”

“I hated you more, I think,” Charles cuts in, nose scrunched a little between his brows. It makes the spattering of freckles on his upper cheeks look bigger. “You were always very annoying. And rude.”

“Says the suck-up,” Max bemoans, raspy chuckles following when Charles shoots daggers. “Everyone loved you! And you were very pretty, of course. I hated you very much for that.”

“And you won so much!” Charles retorts, hands flying up in dismay. A little Italian for a Monegasque, Oscar distantly considers. “Went straight up to F1. I had to win F2, so many other things… I was so jealous. We were so close, in age, and yet you were so far ahead.”

“I did miss you, you know,” Max says, then, a little softer. “I watched your races when I could.”

And Oscar doesn’t know much about them, not beyond whispers shared between his engineers or rumours spread through the reporters, but he can feel the weight of that admission.

Especially when several beats pass, before Charles murmurs:

“I did not know.”

Buttersoft and liquid smooth and so delicate Oscar sort of wants to shatter it – like when he’d dropped his Grandma’s porcelain plate, in the middle of Christmas dinner, when he was five.

It had taken him half an hour to stop crying, to take his hands away from his ears.

“We had a massive fight, back in twenty-two, Oscar,” Max continues, voice lower, less sharp around the consonants. “I forget what it was about. Do you remember, Charlie?”

“Non,” Charles shakes his head, still sounding a little dazed. “But it was very, very bad. I nearly punched him.”

“You what?” Oscar’s eyes go wide, the question coming out without him quite meaning it to. “Jesus, Charles. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

Max barks out a sharp laugh, teeth white and on display. “He is always fooling everyone with his pretty eyes and sad little mouth. But he is as violent as me, I promise. He is just better at hiding it.”

Charles rolls his eyes – but doesn’t deny it. As a matter of fact, his lips curl upwards, a little.

“But, anyway,” Max continues, “It was a very bad fight. But I had loved him for a very long time, you see, and we were so angry at each other that year…”

“He kissed me,” Charles intones, eyes bright. “When I went to punch him, he kissed me, and then I kissed him back. It is actually quite simple.”

“Very simple,” Max nods, clearly pleased with himself.

“You’re both, like,” Oscar’s mouth twists a little. “Verifiably insane, I reckon. Jesus Christ.”

Max shrugs. “We have been together ever since, of course. If we are insane, then we are happily insane together. It works very well, and we are better people and drivers for it.”

“Did that answer your question, Oscar?” Charles asks, tilting his head a little to the side.

Oscar grabs his glass, drains it in a few gulps. Has to clear his throat against the sting.

“Yeah, uh… yeah,” he nods, wipes his hands on his pants once more. Moves to rub at his throat, the back of his neck. “I just asked, because, well…”

How long can you be in love with someone without a hint of reciprocity? Can it last a lifetime? Can you survive that long?

“...I’ve been in love with someone. For a very long time. In love for, um, maybe a year and a half. Had a crush on for… quite a few years before that. And, yeah, at the club… I realised that they’re really, really not into me. So.”

His eyes sting, along with his nose. It reminds him of accidentally snorting sea water, off the coast of the beach back in Brighton: hands waving about and eyes scrunching behind his goggles, making them pop off. His sisters laughing at him. Hearing the sounds of giggles and yelling and footies being kicked, muffled underwater.

“Did you ask her out?” Max asks, expression blatantly confused, his lips pulled into a tight little frown. “Did she reject you, or something?”

“I am so sorry, Oscar, this is horrible,” Charles says as Max trails off, hand reaching over to squeeze at Oscar’s calf. “There are so many girls out there that would love to be with you, I have no doubt. You are so amazing.”

“He,” Oscar stumbles out, palms clammy and body tense. “It, um, yeah, it was, I mean, is, a guy. That I love. Sorry.”

“Oh,” Charles blinks, at the same time that Max simply hums low, as if in consideration.

“What did Lando do?” Max asks, then, blue eyes darting to search Oscar’s deep brown.

“He was, fuck, he was making out with this random, like, blond guy. Full on – wait,” he breaks off, head swivelling around to fully face Max. “What?”

“It is Lando, of course, no?” Max looks at Oscar like he’s maybe a little slow. “You two are… very obvious.”

Oscar’s stomach feels hollowed out. Cantaloupe emptied by an ice-cream scooper.

The words play on repeat, like a sick trending audio. You two are very obvious. It is Lando, of course, no? 

“Max,” Charles hisses, before the hand he’d left on Oscar’s calf comes up to cuff the back of his neck. It startles him enough to break his train of thought, dissipate the revolving door of panic. Charles directs Oscar’s head to level with his own as he says, “It is just because me and Max were watching. I do not think anyone else would know. Okay?”

Oscar swallows, harshly, blinks in quick succession. Rushes out, “But –”

“No,” Charles shakes his head, shakes Oscar’s. “It is okay. You are okay. Tell me.”

“I’m okay,” Oscar breathes, eyes still startled wide, his body thrumming with excess energy. On the verge of short-circuiting.

“Good,” Charles murmurs, eyes searching Oscar’s face for something. Seems to find it as he repeats, steadier, “Good, Oscar.”

“So he was making out with a random blond guy?” Max pokes, eyes squinted and mouth pinched at the corners. Charles shoots him another dirty look, and Oscar has to swallow against a sigh. He doesn’t need to be handled with caution, doesn’t need to be wrapped in bubble wrap. He might be sad and pathetic and a little wounded right now, but he doesn’t need Charles fighting for his honour.

Doesn’t need that – but he does need.

“Yeah,” Oscar exhales, settles further into Charles’ hand, where it still rests heavy against the nape of his neck. “I didn’t, I guess, realise that he wasn’t straight. It makes it harder. The not having.”

“You didn’t realise Lando wasn’t straight?” Charles grimaces, and Oscar shocks himself with the bark of a laugh that escapes him. “Oscar, I am very sorry, but…”

“You are unbelievable!” Max croaks, eyes wide in that mix of shock and humour that paints his face every so often. “I thought everyone knew that he was not straight. Mate, you are absolutely blind!”

“I’m not about to go assuming,” Oscar rolls his eyes, cheeks stinging with the smile that tugs at his lips. “That’s very rude, Max, I’ll have you know.”

“It’s,” Charles waves his hands about – Oscar distantly misses his hand on his skin – “It is not assuming, when Lando does not hide it ever. You cannot… how can you miss it? Oh, Oscar, you are a bit stupid, sometimes.”

Oscar’s pinks are brushed in bright pink; a bit of the whiskey, a bit of the atmosphere, a bit of embarrassment. A bit of Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen, he reckons.

He shrugs. “I think it was easier, y’know, to not… for it to be him, and not… not me.”

Both Max and Charles go quiet.

And then – and then, a warm hand is engulfing his own. No silver bands or a cold palm, but rather a warm, calloused hand. Completely and undoubtedly Max Verstappen’s hand.

Oscar can’t help it: his eyes dart towards him, the hand’s owner – blue eyes glacial yet softened by the low light of the evening, if it can really be called that, at this hour; surely early morning. Framed by long, curled eyelashes that do nothing to dim the sapphire irises.

“It’s not you, Oscar,” he breathes, still splitting his name into two distinct sounds. “It cannot be you.”

He does the unthinkable, then, and Oscar’s heart thunders in his chest, threatens to travel up his throat. He has to swallow it down as Max’s eyes flutter closed, and his lips press warm and soft against Oscar’s hand.

Princely. A mirroring of a kind of courtship that Oscar dreamt of as a kid, a teenager, a wistful adult.

His heart beats and beats and beats; a gory, bloodied mess in his chest.

“Max,” he says. Says, and leaves in isolation: the simple name carrying a weight in the air that he doesn’t quite know how to follow. 

Cold fingers graze his cheek. The opposite side of his body to the warmth eclipsing his right hand, the side enveloped by Charles’ presence.

Max pulls away. Just enough to hold Oscar’s gaze, still holding Oscar’s hand in his, still capturing every thought that floats through Oscar’s mind. Oscar, he thinks, Max is looking at Oscar. 

“He doesn’t deserve you, you know,” Max grumbles, then, bassy and raspy like he so usually is. It takes a moment for Oscar to process the words beyond the sound of their syllables. “Lando is not careful with delicate things.”

“I’m not delicate,” Oscar retorts, almost mindless; a reflex more than anything truly contentious.

Max holds his gaze, and the cold fingers against his left cheek trace down, tickling almost, until they dance across his neck. Trace his moles, he realises. It’s almost enough to stray his focus, until Max turns his hand over, gentle and meticulous, until Oscar’s wrist is facing skyward.

He leans back down, pressing his lips to the artery at the centre of Oscar’s wrist. Meets warm lips with warm blood, sheathed beneath pale skin. It’s unbearably intimate; so much so that Oscar shivers from it, goosebumps raising along his arms, his thighs, his calves.

“You deserve to be delicate,” Charles whispers. Not breaking the spell, just entering it. “You can be so delicate with us.” 

Oscar Piastri isn’t used to this. To being wanted. Chosen. Propositioned. He’s naive and a little sheltered – has only really had one girlfriend, after all: has only ever kissed a boy behind their cabin at school camp, back in year nine. He isn’t – he doesn’t do hook ups or flings or whatever this is.

Tonight, he supposes, is just a lot of ‘and yet’s.

“Show me,” he murmurs. “Please.”

If the room could breathe, it’d be exhaling, right now, Oscar imagines: in synchronicity with the three of them.

“I have wanted to kiss you for such a very long time,” Charles says, and Oscar can’t even begin to untangle the implications of such a confession before his head is being turned, and lips press against his own.

Charles Leclerc tastes of mouthwash and strawberry gum, and his prickly facial hair scratches against the skin around Oscar’s mouth in a way that sends lightning rippling down his spine. His hand, too, finds itself buried in Oscar’s hair – fisting the roots and directing every slight movement of his head.

His lips are unbearably soft, insistent where they work against his own. Their noses bump against each other, but it doesn’t feel awkward or immature, it feels desperate and Oscar gasps into Charles’ mouth when he opens it ever so slightly, tongue darting out to trace Oscar’s bottom lip. Moans when the lick turns into a soft bite.

“Fuck,” Max exhales, and Oscar’s skin feels aflame. “You two are…”

He trails off. Lets the three words stand alone, lets the two of them continue. Charles only seems more motivated by the emphatic appreciation, the hand not clasping Oscar’s hair darting up to cup his jaw, thumb pressing into his cheek insistently.

Their tongues meet, and he can’t help it – he shifts closer, his body just… gravitating towards Charles, desperate for the press of skin, anything to relieve the static that’s coated his skin.

Charles groans when Oscar boldly swings his leg around and over Charles' hip, using the momentum to hoist himself into the older man’s lap. Oscar doesn’t break the kiss, doesn’t force Charles to let go of him. Charles pulls back, though, once Oscar’s firmly settled.

“You are,” he sighs, panting slightly. His head falls back against the couch, both of his hands falling down to dig into Oscar’s hips, thumbs resting in the dips of his hipbones where his shirt’s ridden up slightly. Charles’ eyes fall shut when he mutters, “Mi fai impazzire.”

The couch squeaks a little, and Oscar’s slow to turn his head, to watch as Max closes in, settling in right beside Charles – their thighs separated only by where Oscar’s knee presses into the couch. Closed in, by the two of them.

“Oscar,” Max says, eyes trailing every inch of his face, stopping at his lips; a little kiss-swollen, definitely spit-slicked. “Come here.”

And Oscar does. Of course, he does. When Max Verstappen tells you to come here, looking like he’s about to eat you whole, you don’t exactly deny him.

Max is, surprisingly, softer about it. His lips are slightly chapped, objectively rougher, but he’s… gentle. Slow. Not as immediately eager as Charles, but more sensual: pulling away between closed-mouth presses, the sound of their lips breaking making Oscar twitch, every so often, still in Charles’ lap.

It’s a slow burn, but eventually, Max’s large hand moves to cradle Oscar’s skull, and then he’s teasing their mouths apart, finally, truly kissing him. Oscar’s hands steady himself on Charles’ shoulders, fingers clawing at his skin as Max takes and takes and takes.

Charles’ hands gently stoke up and down Oscar’s hips, catching on the edge of his jeans every now and then. Max’s hold never turns into a grip, never pulls – simply steadies, ensures that Oscar’s mouth remains locked with his, even when both of them get needier, when Max gets more demanding.

And Max, kissing when demanding, has Oscar feeling all too much like a thing about to be ravaged. 

He doesn’t get rough, doesn’t get mean. But Max, he gets insistent. Every swipe of Max’s tongue has Oscar becoming more and more of a willing victim to the man’s whims – has him docile.

“S'il te plaît, Oscar,” Charles bemoans, grip tightening around his waist. “Let me take your shirt off. Let me touch you.”

Max pulls away at Charles’ words – Oscar mindlessly follows him, eyes still shut, hand reaching out to pull at Max’s shirt. Max laughs, throatily; his hand coming up to encircle Oscar’s wrist. “Listen to Charles, baby,” Max chuckles. “Listen to what he wants.”

Oscar’s eyes flutter open, his cheeks flushing that ever so slightly more as he leans back, away from Max. His hand quickly lets go of his shirt, his other hand falls from Charles’ shoulder.

“Oscar,” Charles repeats, and Oscar meets his gaze. His pupils nearly eclipse the ambiguous hazel-green of his eyes. “Raise your arms for me.”

Oscar is sure that isn’t what Charles had said, just before. Is sure that what he’d said was a question, not a command. Is even more sure that the change is purposeful, as is the certainty of his tone, its directness.

Oscar raises his arms.

“Good boy,” Max praises, and Oscar shudders – the words like a physical caress down his chest. He catches the glimpse of an exceptionally pleased expression before Charles is pulling his shirt up; pulling it over Oscar’s head.

Max’s hand is unimaginably tender as it moves to span across Oscar’s ribcage, thumb resting beneath his dusky nipple, his fingers stretching along his side. When Oscar breathes, he can feel the weight of it: pressing, pressing.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” he mutters, eyes going a little wide. It still hasn’t quite caught up to him, although he can feel the emotional devastation that’s sitting, waiting, in the back of his mind.

The poison isn’t quite there, like it was just a couple of hours ago. But it's dormant.

“I cannot believe we have such a pretty thing in our hotel room,” Charles responds, eyes heavy where they rest on Oscar’s bared skin. When Oscar looks down, he feels his stomach tighten, his breath sharpening.

Charles is so very, very beautiful. One of the most beautiful men Oscar has ever met.

What he sees in him, he doesn’t –

“Oscar,” Max says, a little sharp. Oscar startles, heart pounding as he snaps his head around to look at the blond. His brows are furrowed. “What is going on in your head?”

Oscar slumps a little, then straightens remembering that he’s shirtless. Feels like an idiot all over again.

“Um,” he says. Stops. Starts again. “Just. Y’know. Actually,” he shakes his head, chuckles awkwardly, hates himself a little more. “Don’t worry. Please, can we –”

“Oscar,” Max repeats, and his hand grips Oscar’s jaw, his chin, forces him to meet Max’s eyes. “No. Tell us.”

“I just don’t get why you’re doing this with me, I guess,” he manages, averts his eyes, stares at the bare wall. “I’m not exactly, I dunno, hook-up material.” He knows that his cheeks probably look sunburnt from his blush. All he can think is that he looks like a pathetic, self-conscious idiot, who’s about to throw away a night with two of the hottest men on the planet just because he’s an emotional disaster. He hates everything that he is, at this moment.

“Oh, mon chou,” Charles sighs, and his hand rubs Oscar’s back, a smooth up-and-down. “You have no idea at all, do you?”

He leans forward, his eyes shut. He presses a delicate, barely-there kiss to the edge of Oscar’s collarbone, just before the curve of his shoulder. It tickles, almost, but all Oscar does is breathe. Breathes as Charles presses another, then another, until they’re countless.

“This does not have to mean a thing to you, of course,” Max says, then, as Charles continues his gentle ministrations. “But we are not simply doing this because of pity or because of whatever. You are very beautiful, Oscar. We are not blind. We want to treat you. Give you what you deserve, of course.”

If Oscar had anymore tears in him – if he were the type to cry at a thing like this – he would. Sob, that is. Bawl in between them both, silently beg for them to pick up the pieces.

Instead, he begs aloud.

“Please,” he breathes; pleads not for the first time tonight. Definitely not for the last time. “Please, make me feel – I need to feel you both. Fuck, can we… can we go to the bedroom?”

Charles hasn’t stopped his kisses; as a matter of fact, he’s grown messier with them – biting at his neck, leaving behind spots of lilac that Oscar doesn’t have the wherewithal to truly comprehend right now.

“Of course,” Max smiles, finally releasing Oscar’s chin from his grip. His fingers trace the line of his jaw before they fall away. “We will make you feel very good.”

Charles’ lips travel slowly up Oscar’s neck, leaving small nibbles, before they brush his earlobe; the epitome of sensuality as he whispers, “If you’re good, I’ll let you fuck me.”

Oscar can’t help the gasp that escapes him; the flames that erupt and sit low in his stomach. His exhale is more of a shudder as he nods, a jerky thing, his hips twitching ever so slightly. He should be embarrassed. Isn't, any more than he’s embarrassed about everything that is tonight.

“Yeah?” Max breathes, eyes darting between both Oscar and Charles. “Want to be good for us, Oscar?”

Oscar grabs the collar of Charles’ shirt, pulls him in: roughly smashes their lips together once more. He can’t – won’t articulate the mess of emotions that are flooding his system at their words. Charles’ hands find his arse, handfuls, bringing him in closer with an urgent pull.

A warm hand finds the hair at the base of his neck and fists it.

“Don’t get distracted,” Max warns, a brow raised as he shakes Oscar’s head side to side, a little like he’s scuffing a naughty sheepdog. Oscar can hear the thump, thump, thump of his heartbeat in his ears. “Come on, both of you.”

There’s not really a better word for it. Oscar scrambles.

Charles’ squeaky giggle follows him as Oscar manages to get himself to his feet, before he’s grabbing Charles’ hands (Charles intertwines their fingers immediately, sentimental in everything he does) and pulling him up, too.

“Oscar!” Charles chastises, and it’s a little breathy, a lot cheerful. The driver grabs his face, a quick thing: plants one more chaste kiss to Oscar’s lips, and then an extra. Oscar’s face scrunches, and Charles’ sharp laughter is liquid sunlight.

Max sighs fondly, and distantly, Oscar thinks that he’s actually about to cry again.

They manage their way to the bedroom. It’s a little clunky, especially when Charles keeps stumbling over his feet to plant another kiss to Oscar’s lips, his cheek, his bared shoulder. It makes Oscar feel that Luna Park kind of nerve wracked, all over again.

The bedroom is nice.

The bed itself is large – certainly large enough for the three of them – and hosts an abundance of fluffy pillows. The window that encompasses the full back wall has its blinds raised, still: the room alight with soft neon and the distant sound of honks and feet against pavement and sirens.

It looks like a cliche. Feels like one, one that shouldn’t exist in Oscar’s life, one that he doesn’t feel deserving of.

Hands (their fucking hands) lightly graze his waist, the bare skin of it. When he looks up from the bed, looks in front of him, he sees that it’s Max. Looking down at him, that ever so slightly, his mouth slightly ajar as his eyes trace the dots that sprinkle his chest. His thumbs are reverent where they trail along the sharp jut of his pelvis.

Charles is sitting, quiet and patient, on the bed: doesn’t say a word when Max whispers, head dipped low as his hands continue their gentle movements, “Ik ben gek op jou.”

“You guys need to stop saying shit in other languages,” Oscar laughs softly, chin falling to his chest and his hair covering his face from Max’s view. “I feel so stupid.”

One of Max’s hands moves from his hip, finds its way back to Oscar’s cheek. Lifts his face up, up, up, until they make eye contact again. So much eye contact, with them. 

“You are not stupid, Snoepje,” Max asserts, eyes molten. That blue reflects the lights of this awful city in them. So very beautiful. “We can teach you, you know. Show you how to say some things.”

“How do I say…” Oscar chews on his lower lip, heart pattering faster when Max’s thumb darts out to pull it away, out from his teeth: tracing its redness. “I want you to fuck me so good that I forget everything?”

“Voglio che tu mi scopi così bene che io dimentichi tutto,” Charles supplies from the bed, a cheeky grin on his face. “Monte sur ce lit pour que je puisse faire exactement ça, mon amour.”

“There’s no way that was the same language,” Oscar winces, and both Max and Charles laugh. It makes him smile a little painfully, tugging at the muscles in his cheeks. 

“Come here,” Charles directs, shuffling further back on the bed, until his back’s against the headboard. He looks like sin incarnate. Chocolate curls and stubble and crystal eyes shadowed by thick lashes.

“Not yet,” Max huffs, and then his thumbs are hooking into the pockets of Oscar’s sweatpants (Max’s, he remembers belatedly) and pulling him forward until their chests are pressed together, until his nose finds Oscar’s neck, brushing and soft and insistent.

“Fuck, Max,” Oscar’s breath comes out in a tremble, his arms unsurely wrapping around Max’s waist. He doesn’t know if he’s ever been harder. Definitely hasn’t been, when Max’s hands dip under the elastic waist, skating the hem of his boxers.

“Max,” Charles groans, and when Oscar’s head snaps up, he sees the firm pout that’s resting on the man’s face. He looks truly disgruntled. “Give him here.”

And it’s– it’s disrespectful. Talking about Oscar like he’s a thing, like he’s not even here, but it – fuck, he doesn’t know what the fuck is wrong with him.

Maybe Lando has truly, irreversibly ruined his life.

(Definitely has. He’s not giving it any thought, right now.)

Because he – Charles’ words – they just make him buck a little against Max, fully beyond the line of too pathetic. Fucking… humping him.

The numerous dog comparisons are not lost on him.

“Yeah, Osc?” Max goads, face still pressed against Oscar’s neck. His breath is warm, sends hair shooting up across his nape. “You want us to pass you around? Yeah? I know that you want it, Schatje.”

“Fuck me,” Oscar whines, head bowing, still needlessly grinding against Max’s front – arms tight around the man’s waist, a rope around an anchor. “Please, please, I’m serious, just…”

Within the next second, Max spins them both around, and shoves Oscar backwards.

He lands on the mattress with a small huff of air, blinking a couple of times before Charles’ arms are hooking around Oscar’s shoulders and dragging him backwards – until Oscar’s head rests over Charles’ stomach.

Charles leans over: head upside down in Oscar’s vision. His gleeful smile looks like a frown, like this. 

“I have an idea,”  he tilts his head, words falsified in their sweetness. Oscar thinks that the worst person to hear those words from is Charles Leclerc.

Max’s knee presses into the mattress, making it dip slightly. And – fucking Christ –

Max starts to get his shirt off, his hair a mess as he pulls at the buttons, haphazard and quick with it: a few snag, and he just lets them pop off. Doesn’t pay it any mind as he manages to get it off entirely. His chest flexes a little as he does it, and although Max has never been the most visually athletic on the grid, the softness to him only serves to leave Oscar aching that little bit more. Max looks edible.

“Stop getting distracted, Oscar,” Charles clicks his tongue, hand wrapping around the bit of skin that lays underneath his chin, to his neck. It has Oscar’s head, practically, entirely in Charles’ palm. “Even though he is very pretty, isn’t he? You are supposed to be listening to me.”

“Sorry,” Oscar manages, eyes closing. Take away the temptation, he supposes. “Continue.”

Charles squeezes, a mockery of a warning. Oscar has to quell a smirk.

“Okay,” Charles starts again, grip easing. “We are going to teach you a little French. The language of love, no?”

Oscar doesn’t have the mental capacity to unpack that. So, he doesn’t.

“Not exactly what I had in mind,” he mumbles, and Charles huffs. Oscar blinks his eyes open, looks up into Charles’. “Kinda wanted to, y’know.”

“We will still be doing that, of course,” Max chimes, fully on the bed now. His chest is… unfairly distracting. “Would you like Charles to ride you? He is very good.”

Oscar blanks.

“I will do all of the work,” Charles adds, thumb creeping closer, until it rests in the dip at the corner of Oscar’s mouth. “You will just have to lay there, Oscar, and repeat after us. Easy.”

“Oh my god,” is all Oscar can say. Is he fucking hallucinating? Is this a heartbreak-induced illusion?

Suddenly, Max is between his legs. He’s wholly, entirely sandwiched between the two men; head still laying against Charles’ stomach, Max’s knees just inches away from his crotch. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Let’s start simple, yeah?” Max asks, except he’s not looking at Oscar – he’s looking at Charles. There’s something distinctly playful in his expression. “Let me get you nice and wet, okay, Oscar?”

And then, Max is pulling his sweatpants off. Slow bunching of the fabric, letting it ripple as he carefully tugs them down, down, down, until they’re off entirely.

Until Oscar is left in just his navy boxers.

“Oh, your thighs,” Charles enthuses, and when Oscar looks up, he can see he’s biting at his lip, gaze cemented on, well, his thighs. “I have wanted to ride them for a very long time, Oscar. Back in –”

“Charles,” Max snaps, a little – not harsh, but pointed, and Oscar feels like he’s missing something crucial.

“Sorry, sorry,” Charles acquiesces, fingers combing through Oscar’s hair as if to calm him. It admittedly does, makes him settle further against Charles once more. “You want Max to suck you off, right, Oscar?”

Oscar is nodding before Charles finishes his sentence, Adam’s apple bobbing when Max pulls at the elastic band of his boxers a bit, letting it slap back against his skin. It only stings a little – makes him ache a lot.

“Use your words, liefje,” Max warns, letting the elastic snap back once more, harsher.

“I’m,” Oscar struggles, feels like there’s something tacky in the back of his throat, threatening his ability to make sounds, manage words. “I, uh, will you please…”

“Aw, Oscar,” Charles giggles softly, fingers still trailing through Oscar’s hair. He pulls a little, makes Oscar wince. “Do not be shy, love, it’s okay. We just want to hear how much you want this.”

“I know,” Oscar nods, looks up into Charles’ gaze again. There’s just enough light streaming through the windows for Oscar to see the shadows of his features, the slope of his nose. He’s so unbearably beautiful. “I want this. I promise.”

“What do you want, Oscar,” Max urges, and Oscar figures: send it.

“Just fuckin’,” he grimaces, slightly, at the emphasis of his accent, “Max, if you don’t get your mouth on me, I swear I’m gonna–”

“Not do a thing,” Charles teases, leaning down to press a gentle kiss to the tip of Oscar’s nose. His cheeks flame, layers and layers of rosiness that he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to scrub off. “You like doing this, for us. Letting us do what we want with you.”

“I – fuck,” Oscar squeaks out, cuts himself off, as Max suddenly pulls Oscar’s boxers down, chucking them mindlessly over his shoulder. Straight up moans when Max bends down, maneuvers himself so he’s laying on his chest; face looking up at Charles and Oscar from between Oscar’s legs.

“Listen to Charles, Oscar,” Max orders, blue eyes crystalline, before he dips his head and skates his lips across Oscar’s inner thigh, long fingers coming around to spread both of his thighs, pulling them up and over his shoulders.

It’s – it’s an obscene sight, is what it is. Utterly pornographic.

Oscar hasn’t a clue what he ever did to deserve this.

“Hm, okay,” Charles hums aloud, clearly thinking. Hand still buried in Oscar’s hair. “Repeat after me: Non riesco a smettere di pensare a te.”

Oscar’s brows furrow, mouth ajar, brain working to remember even the first word when –

“Oh, oh my god, Max,” he groans, eyes rolling back a little bit as Max just suddenly – licks, from the base of his dick, to the tip. “Max, Christ, that’s –”

“Oscar, repeat after me,” Charles demands, hand quickly closing into a fist and pulling at the hair at the very base of Oscar’s neck. It punches a sharp exhale out of Oscar’s chest. “Non riesco a smettere di pensare a te.”

“Charles, I don’t – oh, fuck,” Oscar cuts himself off once again, hands scrambling against the rumpled duvet beneath him as Max laves his tongue across the head, slick and messy and perfect. 

“Non,” Charles huffs, a little impatient. It takes more seconds than it reasonably should before Oscar manages to shakily repeat it – hiccupping slightly through the ‘o’ as Max continues his kitten licks, cheeky little things against where he’s most sensitive. Charles hums, sounding a little displeased, before he slowly enunciates, “Riesco.”

“This is – do we really, Jesus, do we really have to do this?” Oscar asks, chest rising and falling in heavy rhythm as Max continues and Charles fist in his hair doesn’t ease its grip. Actually, with his words, it tightens.

“Do you want me to ride you or not, Piastri?” Charles asks, coolly – the last name like a jolt to Oscar’s system. “Riesco.”

Oscar huffs, struggles between the pure want that sits in his chest and the growing annoyance. Grits out, “Riesco,” butchering it only slightly. Keens a little too loud when Max hollows out his cheeks, and takes the entirety of Oscar’s head into his mouth. 

“Oh, he's so good, isn’t he?” Charles sympathises, condescending, and Oscar swallows sharply as he nods, face screwed up. Max still hasn’t let up. “A smettere, Oscar, you can do this. A smettere.”

“A – oh, oh fuck, fucking hell, Max,” Oscar pants, hips bucking; Charles’ free hand darts down to hold him against the bed, palm weighted against his groin. “A smettere, please, Charles, please, just let me –”

“Non,” Charles firmly shakes Oscar’s head, seeming to delight in the whine that leaves Oscar’s lips. His green eyes are locked firmly on where Max’s blond hair bobs, slightly – taking more and more of Oscar in with each exhale from the younger man. “Just four more words, Oscar, it is so easy. Then, I’ll ride you. Okay?”

“Okay, yes, Charles, okay,” Oscar nods, like a bobblehead on a dashboard. “Anything, I promise, I’ll – I’ll repeat it.”

“You are so good for us, mon chou, so good. Di pensare,” Charles draws it out, loosens his fist in Oscar’s hair ever so slightly. “Di pensare, it is so easy.”

Tears threaten Oscar’s eyes, mouth open without a sound coming out as Max manages to take him all  the way, and Oscar tenses; tries not to jerk up when he hits the back of Max’s throat. Both men groan: Max’s muffled, Oscar’s throaty and desperate. Charles gasps, soft, clearly pleased.

“Di pensare,” Oscar croaks out, fingers fully clawed into the blanket beneath them. His body thrums. “Di pensare, Charles, di pensare.”

“A te,” Charles whispers, crisp, and Oscar actually sobs when Max lets up, only to go back down again: starting a relentless rhythm that has hiccups falling from Oscar’s lips. He hasn’t been touched – not like this, not in any of these ways – in a very, very long time.

Oscar manages through heavy, desperate pants to whimper out, “A te.”

As soon as he does, Charles is leaning down; contorting himself just enough to be able to bring Oscar into a messy, devastating kiss: slick and wet and needy as Max slows down, lets his hand fist around Oscar’s dick while he gives a few more open-mouthed kisses to the head.

Oscar thinks that this must be what Heaven feels like.

Silently grimaces and apologises to his Nonna for that bit of sacrilege.

The room goes quiet, except for the sound of Oscar and Max’s heavy breathing, and the Miami city life down below. It’s nice. A little interlude, a breather.

Oscar hadn’t cum, of course, but he feels right on the precipice. He’s beyond hard, red and thick, and he chews on his lower lip at the way that it looks, shiny from Max’s spit.

“You want him, Oscar?” Max manages, voice even raspier than normal, eyes glazed slightly. His cheek rests on the smooth skin of Oscar’s inner thigh as he looks up at the two, and it’s – it’s maybe even more of a turn on than the fucking blow job.

It makes Max look sweet, in a way that Oscar has never really associated with the World Champion.

“Do you,” Oscar breathes out; has to clear his throat. “Do you want me to prep you?” He asks, looking up at Charles, voice soft in the late night. “Do we even have lube?”

Both Max and Charles laugh, and Oscar’s made to suffer a moment of confusion before Charles is shaking his head, giggles decorating his voice as he says, “Yes, silly boy, of course we have lube. We always have lube. And… you don’t need to worry about prepping me. Although it is a very nice offer.”

A frown pinches at Oscar’s lips, makes his brows pull together a little. Charles’ thumb smooths out the crease. 

“I… I like prepping. Want to take care of you,” he mumbles, confesses. Feels heat blaze across his cheeks once more.

“Maybe next time,” Max throws out, and Oscar’s chest hollows. The words reverberate through his skull, through this random Miami hotel room. So many implications have followed him throughout this night, have haunted its corners: he’ll shove this one away into the same compartment in his mind that he’s shoved all the others into.

It’s getting quite cramped.

Charles pats his cheek, bordering on condescending as he says, “I have to move, Oscar; come on, pretty thing.”

Oscar nods, flutters his lashes a little at being called a pretty thing.

He’d always – he’d never been dominant, not with his ex-girlfriend, but she’d certainly never treated him like this. Like he was something to be treasured, something made of porcelain.

The two hook ups he’d had in his life consisted of rough quickies in club bathrooms, so they weren’t exactly comparable to this, either.

He doesn’t know how he’ll ever go back to anything other than this, he thinks distantly. Doesn’t know how he can go back to his fist and late nights and loneliness.

Doesn’t know much at all.

Both Charles and Max help lift Oscar up from Charles’ stomach, letting Charles shuffle out from underneath his weight – easing Oscar’s head back down onto the array of pillows. He feels like a puppet without strings, letting the two of them control and care for his every movement.

The two of them, in front of Oscar, feels like an image straight out of his subconscious.

He’s just, he’s beneath them, hair a mess and arms awkwardly resting over his stomach, dick hard and sweat cooling at his nape, and they’re – they’re both kneeling; Charles next to his thigh, Max still between them. Looking down at him.

Powerful. Both in their, well, everything, but also in the way that the window’s light dances around them, highlights their silhouettes.

Oscar realises, a little belatedly, that he’s the only one naked.

“What?” Max raises a brow, taking quick notice of Oscar’s slight tensing. His lips are… red. Very red. Kinda perfect, like this: Oscar has to swallow down the urge to pull the man down.

“Uh,” Oscar darts his gaze away, chews at the inside of his cheek. “Just, y’know, you’re both… not naked. Bit embarrassing.”

“If you wanted us naked, tesoro, all you had to do was ask,” Charles smirks, a cheeky thing – before he winks. Oscar huffs a small laugh from his nose at the clunkiness of it. How people literally swoon from it, Oscar will never quite understand.

“You could…” he trails off, has to settle his nerves. He still feels off kilter, asking. “You could. Um. Take each other’s clothes off. If you wanted. Maybe.”

Both Max and Charles share a quick, knowing look, and Oscar is suddenly reminded that they’re together. Very in love. Clearly have been for a while.

What the fuck is he doing?

He’s in love.

“Do you want that, Maxie?” Charles asks, batting his eyes, hand grazing Max’s stomach. Clearly mocking, clearly poking fun at Oscar’s poorly disguised request. “Want me to get you out of those jeans?”

“You are an idiot, Charles,” Max huffs, before his hands capture Charles’ face and bring him in, their mouth colliding: tongues darting out and hands rough where Charles’ grab at Max’s chest, where Max’s move from Charles’ face to grip his arse in handfuls.

They’re…

They are.

Max’s knee bumps into Oscar’s calf, and Oscar has to reach down and steady his dick at the sight of them practically mauling each other.

There’s no hesitance between them, no uncertainty. It’s unbearably clear how well they know each other’s limits, how they don’t have to second guess or layer gentleness and caution over every movement. It’s like watching the ballet, seeing them tangle like this.

Oscar believes himself to be the luckiest man in the world, right at this moment.

“Max,” Charles moans against Max’s lips, pulling away just enough to look into his partner’s eyes. They share another look (another conversation), and then Charles’ thumbs are hooking into the belt loops of Max’s jeans and jerking him forward. Max chokes out a breath. Pupils blown as Charles’ deft fingers undo the button of his jeans, unzipping them.

Max, for his part, reaches for the hem of Charles’ shirt, makes him lift his arms so he can pull it off. Charles’ biceps are… Oscar’s eyes catch on them as they flex, slightly, beside Charles’ head. Oscar wants to bite.

Thinks that Charles would let him, if he asked.

“Fuck,” Max drawls, hands gripping at Charles’ waist, digging into his skin. His thumbs rest over his top abs, brush over the muscle. “Je t’aime de toute mon âme,” he adds, softer, and Oscar might not know French, but he bloody well knows what je t’aime means. Feels a little like he’s intruding.

“Je t’ai dans la peau,” Charles returns, molten heat in his tone; and then they’re both kissing again, biting at each other’s lips, hands searching.

A minute of groans and whimpers and soft murmurs passes before Oscar, almost unthinkingly, breaks the moment with a small: “Please… I’m – I need it so bad.”

They can have each other all of the time, Oscar reasons. All he has is tonight.

“Shh, liefje, we’ll take care of you, of course,” Max soothes, hand smoothing over Oscar’s thigh as he pulls away from Charles, who wrestles his own pants off easily. They’re both left in just their boxers. “Didn’t you like the show?”

“Of bloody course I liked the show,” Oscar huffs petulantly. “But I’m aching, and you two promised.”

“Mm, yeah, I like you like this, Osc,” Charles chews at his lower lip, eyes half-mast as he meets Oscar’s gaze. Never without that mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “You should beg more, I think. You sound very pretty.”

“Please,” Oscar whines, head falling back against the mountain of pillows. He’s so hard he genuinely feels like crying. “Come on, I can’t.”

“Go on, Charlie,” Max guides, delivering a small slap to Charles’ hip. It earns him a sharp glare, but his smile simply stretches. “He so wants it, can’t you see?”

Charles sighs, looks down at Oscar like he’s truly considering it. “...Yeah. I can definitely see that.”

Oscar blushes. Feels like he’s done entirely too much of that, tonight.

It’s a surprisingly easy affair, getting Charles hoisted into his lap; getting his boxers off, getting him settled. Oscar doesn’t even have to ask about why Charles wants to prep himself, because –

“You had a very long shower, Oscar, and we did not want to waste any time.”

That settled that.

Oscar does ask about a condom, feels a little confused by the flat looks both Charles and Max level him. He isn’t the kind of guy to be ignorant of safety, especially as an athlete – which is how it hits him, why they’re looking at him like that.

“Oh,” Oscar blurts. “We’re all athletes, aren’t we?”

No condom it is. Charles says he likes the way it feels, without it.

Oscar absolutely does not argue.

It’s Max’s hands around Charles’ hips that direct them both. His chin rests on Charles’ shoulder, looking down at where they’re both about to connect, mouth slightly ajar and expression slack. Oscar’s heart rate is as fast as it is on track, he’s near certain.

When Oscar first breaches Charles’ tight muscle, his breath catches in his lungs; his eyes squeeze shut.

It’s a vice-like grip, and paired with Charles’ high, breathy moan, he nearly shatters right then and there.

“Kijk eens naar jullie beiden. Zo perfect,” Max whispers, mouth against the skin of Charles’ neck, eyes on Oscar. Oscar, who can’t breathe – every inch that Charles takes is another hit to his windpipe.

Charles’ thighs are trembling, and Oscar’s shoulders are shaking, and he’s never felt this much pleasure at once. All-encompassing and soul ruining and unavoidable.

How does one move on from something like this? 

Why does his heart still ache, distant and shadowed but real?

“Oscar,” Charles gasps, high, and Oscar’s eyes fly open. The man’s lips are pink and his mouth is agape, firm creases between his brows. His fingers are spread over his abdomen – where Oscar is about to be entirely sheathed. “Oscar.”

“Charles,” Oscar breathes back, and unthinkingly, his hand finds its way up, up, up, until it’s eclipsing Charles’. 

Max finally lets go of Charles’ hips, and both Oscar and Charles moan in unison when their skin properly meets; Charles taking him to the base.

Charles lets his head fall back, letting it meet Max’s shoulder – Max, who’s biting and kissing at Charles’ neck, leaving behind strokes of purple and red. It looks beautiful against Charles’ skin. He looks beautiful against Charles’ skin.

They take it slow. Easy. There’s no rush; Oscar might be desperate, might be right on the edge, but he knows how to savour something, make it last.

Max and Charles’ lips meet again – also slower. Gentle tugging of lips, pointed swipes of their tongues. Max’s hands find their way back to Charles’ hips, help him ride Oscar, all the while making little quips.

“Doing so well.”

“The two of you – wish I could film this. Watch it when everyone is asleep on the jet.”

“There we go, that’s it. Fuck, the noises you both make.”

Oscar’s still trembling. Never stopped.

When they get close, tears really do spring to Oscar’s eyes, for the nth time tonight. He feels good, really fucking good, and he’s fucking Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc, and he’s a fucking multi-race winner for Formula 1, and he’s in fucking Miami, and he’s about to fucking continue exploring the world year after year after year.

He’s so happy. He has everything.

He hasn’t. He hasn’t got Lando.

Lando, who’s probably in the same position as him, underneath a guy with hair shorn close to his scalp; scrappy and blond and dried out, who moans weirdly and doesn’t make Lando feel good and doesn’t even get Lando off.

Lando, Lando, Lando.

Max and Charles are kissing again. Kissing, because they’re in love. So, so in love. They have each other, will always have each other. They’re two halves of the same whole, and if Oscar really thinks about it, he reckons they’re the most solid evidence for soulmates that there is.

He’s underneath them both, moaning aloud, seconds away from cumming, but he knows they’re entirely focused on each other, devoted to their love and infatuation and everything that exists beyond Oscar and a Miami nightclub and a one-off threesome.

He hopes that Lando’s safe. Hopes that he actually enjoys himself.

Hopes that Lando can find a Max to his Charles. A Charles to his Max.

Just because that’s not Oscar doesn’t mean that he doesn’t deserve it. Lando deserves the fucking world – even though he won’t let Oscar be the one to give it to him.

“I’m, I’m gonna,” Oscar gasps out, face screwing up, hips twitching. He doesn’t see them pull apart, but he feels one cold hand interlace with his, push it deeper into the pillows, and a hot one pull his other hand forward, until Oscar’s palm is being pressed against a spit-slicked mouth.

He cums.

The tears are synonymous.

Max’s knuckles graze Oscar’s stomach as he jerks Charles off, quickening and quickening until Charles lets out a high-pitched whimper, his thighs shaking as he cums, the whiteness of it splattering across Oscar’s chest. 

It’s hot – Charles Leclerc jerking on top of your chest is hot – and Oscar despises the fact that he can’t fully enjoy it. Can’t bask in the afterglow.

“Oh, Oscar, that was,” Charles sighs, eyes nearly shut. His body weight’s fully supported by Max. “That was one of the best moments of my life, I think.”

“Charles,” Max growls, a little, biting harshly into Charles’ shoulder. He laughs, the sound squeaky in his wrecked state. 

“You cannot lie, and say it was not one of yours also,” Charles retorts, and at Max’s silence, smirks. “Exactly.”

Even in his glassy vision, Oscar can see how they both glow. Always glowing – podium or bed. It’s a little relieving, knowing that they’ve both clearly enjoyed themselves. It almost makes up for the guilt that’s consuming his body, the poison that’s flared up again.

“Oscar?” Max asks, a hint of worry in his tone. It sharpens when he says, “Oscar, why are you –”

“I’m sorry,” Oscar manages, the words croaky and broken. His hands come up to hide his face, trembling and pinkened at the tips of every finger. “I’m so sorry.”

“Shit,” Charles startles, sounding truly panicked. Oscar hates himself so fucking much. 

Max, though – he takes the practical route immediately. “Do you want Charles to get off?” He asks, and when Oscar peeks between his fingers, he sees that his hands are soothing over Charles’ sides, his hips. Anchoring him, while trying to prioritise Oscar.

They’re so good.

“Off, please,” he sniffles, hastily following with a, “I’m sorry, Charles, you were–”

“Shh, Oscar, please,” Charles comforts, easing off Oscar with a small wince. Max doesn’t take his hands off of him once. “Do not worry about me, mon cœur. Let us take care of you.”

It’s such a sharp and direct subversion of the very same words that they’d been saying all night. Let us take care of you. Not – not sexually.

But to take care of him. Maybe gather his broken pieces, and put them all together again.

He sobs; racks his shoulders with the force of his hiccupy tears. Feels so embarrassed, so guilty – Charles’ cum hasn’t even dried against his skin, and here he is, pathetic and crying and acting like a loser. Who the fuck ends a one night stand like this? How can they look at him?

“I’m getting a cloth, to clean you two up,” Max says, then. It’s assertive and direct and Oscar appreciates it beyond words. “I’ll be gone for a minute. Okay?”

“Okay,” Charles supplies, for the both of them. Oscar hears the sound of a kiss being pressed against skin, before the mattress shakes, and Max patters out of the room and towards the bathroom.

It’s quiet, except for Oscar’s sobs.

“Can I…” Charles starts. Oscar doesn’t know if he’s ever heard him sound so uncertain. “Can I hold you?”

Oscar can’t manage words. But he can manage a desperate nod.

Charles sighs, a soft thing, and then he’s maneuvering himself, shuffling in close to Oscar’s side. They’re both tacky with sweat – Oscar gross with more than just that – but neither comment, or acknowledge it. Charles just presses their bodies fully together; brings his arm around to pull Oscar in closer. 

Oscar doesn’t remove his hands from his face, and Charles doesn’t ask him to.

What he does is press fleeting, barely-there kisses across them. Between every knuckle, over each of them. Seems to make a game of trying to give his attention to every soft brown dot that decorates the backs of Oscar’s hands.

Max returns, as quick as he’d said. Charles only moves as much as necessary, for Max to thoroughly wipe them both down – apologising with every time that he has to graze where they’re most sensitive.

Once Max throws the cloth in the bin, muttering something about a bonus tip, he’s careful to manage the two of them.

“Let me get you both under the covers, okay? I’ll put the top blanket into the laundry,” he softly suggests, standing at the end of the bed. Charles is fully wrapped around Oscar – still crying, just quieter. Trailing off.

Aware enough to realise what Max isn’t saying.

“Don’t go,” Oscar croaks, voice thick and nasally. Unattractive and pathetic. “I – I need you too.”

It’d be so easy for Max to let him down softly. Tell him that he doesn’t want to sleep with Oscar, didn’t want anything more from tonight another than a fun, spontaneous fuck. Hell, he’d be entirely in his rights to demand that Oscar not spoon his boyfriend – demand that Oscar leaves entirely.

Instead, his entire body seems to melt. Like a thread’s been pulled.

“Of course,” he says. “Of course.”

Oscar ends up sandwiched between them. He’s halfway on top of Charles, his cheek resting against his chest, and his left leg hooked around his waist. Max is fully spooning Oscar, head buried in the nape of his neck – arm swung around so his hand rests in the ends of Charles’ hair.

It’s a little too warm. Oscar used to struggle even sleeping with his ex-girlfriend, so this… it’s a lot.

But it’s kind of perfect, in the way he’s coming to associate with Max and Charles.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmurs into the night. His tears stopped a good few minutes ago. He’s still wrung dry. “I ruined it.”

“You did not ruin a thing, mon amour,” Charles assures, just as quiet. “We probably should not have… done that. You are so heartbroken, right now.”

“No,” Oscar quickly corrects. Hurts his throat a bit with the suddenness of the word. “No, I… I don’t regret that. It was really, really good. You two are really good.”

“Thank you,” Max grumbles, clearly the most exhausted of the three. It’s his only two cents, before his breathing evens out once more. He’s definitely still awake, still listening: but letting them do the communicating.

Charles' fingers find their way once more to Oscar’s hair. Playing, trailing, combing. It sets Oscar at ease more and more with each runthrough.

“I hate that you do not see yourself the way we do,” Charles confesses, and Oscar’s eyes sting. Charles’ voice is so sweet when he adds, “You are one of the best people I have ever known.”

“We’ve hardly ever talked,” Oscar mumbles, confusion painting his face, his mind.

They really hadn’t. Not more than the half of the grid that he wasn’t close with, that is. He didn’t — couldn’t quite get what Charles was saying.

“We talked more than enough for me to understand who you are, Oscar. You are beautiful. An amazing driver – you are one of my favourites to race, you know. You and Max. And you are exceptionally smart. Funny, too, in a different way. I like that when you are joking, most people don’t know whether to laugh or not.”

“You always laugh,” Oscar returns, sleep weighing at the back of his mind. He’s so comfortable. So exhausted.

“I do,” Charles agrees, and it’s wistful. Light enough to catch in the small breeze of the room, and dissipate.

“Lando does not deserve you,” Max says on a sigh, muffled by Oscar’s skin. His breath is warm against it. Oscar remembers that this is not the first time that Max has said this, tonight.

“He doesn’t want me,” Oscar shakily responds. Doesn’t shatter. Recognises it as a step in the right direction.

“He’s a fucking idiot,” Charles sharply mutters, and Oscar swallows against the pain that sits in the back of his throat. Settles further into the fingers that run through his hair, finds comfort in the solid weight of Max against his back.

It’s silent. Moments pass, inhales and exhales.

When Oscar speaks up again, it’s so quiet that even he barely hears himself.

“Thank you.”

Charles’ fingers pause in his hair; Max’s breath falters.

“You haven’t a thing to thank us for, Oscar,” Charles whispers back, dipping down slightly to press a soft kiss to Oscar’s forehead. It nearly sets him off again. “We should be the ones thanking you.”

Oscar’s chuckle is hollow. Self-deprecating in a way he doesn’t like to be, overtly. “What did I do, but lay back and take it, and then sob all over your expensive hotel sheets?” He asks, and hates the bitterness that leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

“You were ours,” Max answers. The simplicity of it makes Oscar’s head pound, makes his thoughts run around each other, tangling themselves into knots just trying to make sense of what that could possibly mean.

“Sleep, Oscar,” Charles gently encourages, once again playing with Oscar’s hair. “We’ll be there when you wake up.”

Oscar doesn’t know when he became so subservient; so much so that Charles’ mere, barely-there suggestion has his eyelids being dragged down by mystical weights, his muscles loosening every hint of tension, his lips slacking.

He falls asleep between Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc.

But he dreams of Lando Norris. At first, that is.

He dreams of disproportionately large hands holding his, of snide comments and expensive cologne that’s so distinctly Lando that Oscar practically has a Pavlovian response to it.

He dreams of a podium.

He’s standing on the top step, he knows. The crowd is booming, cheers deafening, and the blinding sun sits in an unfortunate spot, high in the clear blue sky. Oscar doesn’t quite know where he is, but he knows it’s important – can tell by the weight in his chest.

The hands in his are Lando’s. Obviously.

But then, Oscar thinks, why am I holding Lando’s hands on the podium?

“Oscar!” That familiar, odd accent cries out, and Oscar snaps his head to the side. Lando’s beside him, on the top step – they’re standing on the top step together. “We got a penalty!”

“What?” Oscar asks. It takes time to push the syllables out; like wading in molasses.

“We have to go to the second step!” Lando shouts back, and his face morphs – misshapen in its anguish, its panic. Oscar’s heart is pounding in his chest. “We didn’t win!”

“But we’re on the top step,” Oscar tries to explain, tries to make sure that Lando doesn’t leave, doesn’t take second place.

It’s too late, of course.

Because, suddenly, they’re already on the second step. Oscar feels like he’s burning from the inside out, the sun staining his skin.

“Of course they won,” Lando scoffs, and Oscar is yet again confused.

They won. They were on the top step.

Except they’re not anymore.

Oscar looks up, has to sluggishly bring a hand up to shield his eyes from the harsh sun. Feels like he’s going to vomit when he sees who’s standing on the top step.

Navy blue and rosso corsa.

“They’re not teammates, though!” Oscar cries out – which doesn’t quite make sense, he realises, as he says it. Teammates don’t stand on the same step no matter what. It’s not a team sport, is it?

He turns back, about to shake Lando, beg him for answers, but –

He’s gone. 

Oscar spins around, frantic, limbs still heavy and useless – but Lando’s gone. He’s alone, on the second step. Desperate, he looks back up – back up to Charles and Max.

“Where did he go?” Oscar asks, pleading, voice breaking. His eyes burn from the sun, from it all.

Charles and Max share a look. Always sharing a look.

“He’s not here, Oscar,” Max says. His eyes are a furious, bright blue. Almost as bright as the sun; beckoning, as Max extends a hand. “You have to come up here, now.”

“He said we didn’t win,” Oscar shakes his head, scared and confused and a mess of misunderstandings. He claws at his race suit, and when he looks down – gasps sharply.

It’s an awful tie dye; red and orange and blue swirled together, like a cheap mid-twenty tens knock-off.

“What –”

“Come up, Oscar,” Charles insists, extending his own hand, too. “We won.”

The crowd is still chanting, and it’s at this moment that Oscar realises what, exactly, it is they’re chanting.

We won. We won. We won.

Oscar looks between the crowd. His step. His suit. Looks back up at Max and Charles. Charles and Max.

Swallows, and makes his decision.

˙⋆✮

Max never claimed to be anything other than selfish.

He said it how it was; always had, always will.

Maybe that’s why he doesn’t think twice before he clicks send.

Lando Norris isn’t ashamed to admit, to practically anyone who asks, that he wants Oscar Piastri.

As a teammate. A rival. A friend. A co-worker.

Inevitably, and perhaps only, as a lover.

When they hang up their helmets and retire for good, when they’re no longer teammates or rivals or friends or co-workers, they’ll do it hands interlaced.

Lando has envisioned it for a long, long time. 

Oscar will mention it, off-handedly: maybe when they’re in they’re mid thirties, maybe later. Will mindlessly mention a cruise, or something equally asinine. Something only old, retired people would even think to talk about; the kind of comment that makes Lando distinctly think: ‘huh’.

They’ll both have won a Drivers Championship by then. Hopefully a couple. Unbelievably, several.

Maybe, it’ll be the year of Kimi’s, or Isack’s, or Ella’s, or Gabi’s, or Doriane’s first Championship. Maybe they’ll be comfortable on the second and third steps of the podiums. Maybe they’ll be happy to pass on the torch.

Max and Carlos and Nico and Lewis and Esteban will all have retired. When Lando dreams of this, he always thinks of the same joke: laughs to himself at the image of Fernando still hanging on – well into his fifties.

It always goes something like this. Has since the moment Oscar – rosy-cheeked and shy – had stumbled in, late to that meeting. Late to Lando’s life, he’s always thought, a little hopelessly.

Oscar will imply retirement, and Lando will think: yes. Yes, we should retire.

Because Lando may have helped rebuild McLaren, one excruciating race at a time, but he’s – he can’t do it without Oscar. Can’t do much of anything without Oscar, actually.

McLaren will be theirs, but it’ll become someone else’s. When they leave, it’ll be together.

They’ll talk about announcing it. Oscar will mention how strange it is, that Lando was suddenly so on board with retiring, too. Chuckle that Lando would miss him too much if Oscar left him on the grid alone.

It’ll give Lando the opportunity. The one he’ll have been waiting for, for just over a decade, at that point. 

Lando will say: “Yeah, Osc. I would.”

And Oscar will realise the vulnerability of Lando’s tone, and his face will melt in that way it so rarely does. It’ll make Lando’s heart flutter, and it’ll make his palms clammy.

“Is that… is that it? You’re leaving because I am?” Oscar will ask, his perfect brows furrowed together, and Lando will smile. Softer in age and experience and hope.

“It’s not racing if it’s not with you,” Lando will mumble, and he’ll reach for Oscar’s hand, and he’ll intertwine their fingers together. Oscar will be startled, and his blush will coat his cheeks, and he’ll look shyly down to their feet.

“I love you, Lando,” he’ll whisper, and it’ll be soft as butter, and Lando will nearly die on the spot. He’ll squeeze Oscar’s hand in his, and he’ll stabilise.

Stabilise enough to finally say what he’d wanted to for years: a returned, “I love you, Osc.”

It’s simple, really.

And then it isn’t.

Max (The Worse One)

7:23am

[Attachment: An image of Oscar asleep, laying over Charles’ chest. The image is cropped so only Charles’ lips are in frame; smirking. The sunlight’s filtered in enough to decorate both Oscar’s back and hair, and Charles’ chest, in a morning glow.]

Told you

If you don’t make him yours, someone else will

Seen, 7:24am

Lando can’t really breathe.

It’s Oscar. Clearly.

Naked.

On top of Charles fucking Leclerc.

The bastard – he’s smirking. Vindictive cunt, with a quirk to his lips that makes him unbearably punchable. Lando doesn’t punch people; despite popular opinion, he’s chill. Calm. A little rough around the edges, and certainly too excitable, but he isn’t – he’s not an angry person.

He’s going to punch Charles Leclerc.

Lando’s hands are trembling, his screen shaking as he quickly exits the chat with Max, rushes to his messages with Oscar. His Oscar.

Not Max’s. Not Charles’.

His.

Me

1:12am

why tf did u leave with max and charles loll

score a 3sum??

2:01am

osc??

why arent u answering

3:46am

hope u had a fun time 👍

theyre ran thru, make sure 2 wrap it

Sent

…Admittedly, he’d been pretty drunk.

He’d seen Oscar get into that fucking sedan with them both – had seen red, was more accurate.

Since when was Oscar friends with Max and Charles, of all people? He’d thought. Had sent the sets of messages, aiming to poke where Oscar was sore – hadn’t really meant any of it.

Fuck, he clearly should’ve meant it.

What the fuck.

He’s still shaking. Bodily.

What the fuck.

He really was going to punch both Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen.

Max Verstappen, of whom Lando had confided in, on countless occasions. FIA galas where Oscar was all dressed up, and Lando could hardly bear to keep it in his pants. Drivers parades, where Oscar was looking entirely too good, talking with the rookies or whoever bothered him at the time.

The cooldown room, after Oscar had crashed into the wall; 43Gs.

Lando truly feels like he's going to throw up. His throat is closed, scratchy almost, from last night – but he knows that won't do anything to abate the nausea.

He goes back to the chat with Max. Doesn't really think as his thumbs dance across the keyboard; definitely doesn't think as he presses send.

Me

7:31 am

youre a sick bastard

where the fuck are you staying

charles doesnt do a good enough job huh??

Max (The Worse One)

7:33am

He did well enough for the both of us

So did Oscar

Me

7:35 am

this isn’t a bloody joke

where are u

Max (The Worse One)

7:36am

Currently wrapped around two gorgeous men in my bed

Have a good flight mate

Lando’s thumbs pause over the keyboard. His blood thunders through his ears; he swears he can hear the galloping woosh, woosh, woosh of it.

He wants to bring his hands up and claw at the veins, the arteries, make them stop – pull at each thread of red until they snap, until there’s no sound at all. Let that crimson stain the hotel bedsheets: let the macabre meet sacred white.

“...Hey.”

Lando’s head snaps up at the annoyingly American voice, the drawling accent.

Noah is blond. Shaggy and shorn too close to the scalp – nothing like Oscar’s soft, gentle brunette waves. 

But he has a few moles that decorate his face, and deep brown eyes. Not really like Oscar’s (he doesn’t have the doe eyes that make Oscar’s so breath-taking, and the placement of his moles aren’t quite right), but just enough. 

Just the right amount of Oscarisms for Lando to close his eyes, and imagine.

It worked, he supposes: it got him off.

But it still isn’t enough.

Nothing will ever be enough, unless –

“I thought you’d left already,” Lando quips back, and it’s a little mean. Sharp and annoyed.

Noah certainly seems to think so: he takes an uncertain step back, back into the adjoined ensuite where he’d just come out of. He’s got a twisted expression on his face. Brows furrowed.

They don’t pull together in the same cute way that Oscar’s do, either, Lando notices.

“Sorry, I thought,” Noah bites at his lower lip, looks off to the side awkwardly. Lando is steadily losing his patience. “I thought we could get some breakfast. Go another round?”

Lando huffs, sits up in his bed. He shuts his phone off with a firm click, but Max’s words don’t leave his mind.

“What do you think this is, mate?” His eyes narrow, and he lets the white duvet pool against his lap: leaving his chest bared. He doesn’t want to know if Noah’s left any marks – prays that he hasn’t. “Don’t tell me you’ve never had a one night stand before.”

Noah’s mouth is set in a firm frown, now.

“‘Course I have,” he returns, and even though he’s embarrassed, his cheeks aren’t dusted in pink. “I just thought, I don’t know. We had a good time last night.”

Lando searches the room; takes note of his boxers thrown just to the left of him, chucked on the floor. He thinks that’s his shirt hanging on the bedroom door’s handle. He doesn’t look back towards Noah as he pulls the covers off, and reaches down to grab his boxers.

“A good time is a bit of a stretch,” Lando murmurs as he stands, shuffling his boxers up. Why’d he have to wear the tight, black ones? “It was a quick and easy time. That’s that.”

“Ouch, man,” Noah chuckles awkwardly, voice cracking slightly. Lando would feel bad if it wasn’t for everything else. “Hit me where it hurts.”

“Yeah, well,” Lando huffs out as the elastic of the boxers snap against his skin, and he stretches his arms above his head. He still hasn’t turned around – hasn’t made the effort to look at Noah. Doesn’t really want to. “Forgive me for not wanting to sweet talk a hook up.”

Noah releases a disbelieving, sharp bark of a laugh, at that. “You’re a real dick, man. Fuck you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lando waves his hand – waves it towards the door. “Fuck you too. Now go.”

The door slams shut as Noah does just that.

Lando lets his face fall into his palms.

˙⋆✮

Who one flies with depends entirely on contracts, destinations, and, most predominantly, on whims.

Lando’s already fulfilled his obligations to fly with McLaren’s jet partner, back in Australia and Bahrain. He’s supposed to be flying back to Monaco with Oscar – he’d brought up the need for team morale, and building camaraderie. Zak had immediately endorsed it, and Oscar had simply nodded.

The message comes in twenty minutes before boarding.

Osc 💕

9:38am

Hey, sorry didn’t see your messages

Lol how drunk were you

Oscar doesn’t say lol very often. Lando doesn’t think this is the best situation for him to suddenly adopt 2000s internet lingo.

Me

9:39 am

pretty

have a good time, didya mate

Osc 💕

9:39am

Did actually

About that

And Lando’s a little torn. A little jaded, maybe: but he doesn’t know if he wants to talk about that. The picture had been more than enough for him to gather the situation. Max’s messages had clearly been the final nail in the coffin.

But then –

Does Oscar know about Max’s messages?

Surely not. Right?

Me

9:40 am

yeh whats up??

He doesn’t want to fucking know. Except maybe he does.

Maybe that’s the entire problem in the first place.

Osc 💕

9:41am

I’m heading back with Max and Charles

I’ve never been on his PJ and they offered

Is that okay?

It’s like swallowing glass. Lando can almost hear the sickening crunch as he swallows against the sharp, brutalistic pain of it – can almost hear the splintering of the fragments. Crystalline.

It will hurt for eternity, Lando’s sure. That image a constant imprint in the back of his mind: smooth, tanned skin juxtaposing soft, pale, freckled. Knowing that – no matter what – Max and Charles had been there first.

Had taken his Oscar first.

He’d never, not in his life, felt violence like this.

Not on track, not after an idiotic divebomb that’s sent him careening into the wall. Not during a press conference, after one too many leading questions aimed at him, at sending him over the tipping point.

Of course it’d be bloody Max Verstappen to push him to this. To… to dreaming of knuckles bursting warm skin open.

He wants blood on his hands. Rosso corsa and muleta red; thick and visceric coating his palms. He wants the rushing of his arteries to taunt the gore that’ll result if he sees either man right now. Spilled and retained. External and internal. Beating and ceasing.

Oscar gets left on read as Lando calls George.

It’s an easy thing, funnily enough: changing flights over. There’s only so many flights to Monaco – and with most being private, all it takes is him alerting the attendant at the desk of the luxury lounge he’s in to swap flights entirely.

He’s sitting across from Alex and George within fifteen minutes of his call.

“You’re looking a little peaky,” George asserts, as soon as Lando falls into his pristine white seat with a deep, bone-tired exhale. His blue eyes are furrowed, and his pouty lips are pulled into a disapproving, paternal frown. “Have you eaten today?”

Lando hasn’t, actually. Hadn’t thought about it. Can’t stomach it, quite literally.

“I’m fine,” he says, instead. Alex looks at him like he’s truly lost it, this time.

Alex and George (and Lily, for that matter; because what’s theirs is hers and all that) know, like most people within Oscar and Lando’s circles know.

They get told more than most, though. More than any, if Lando takes a second to really consider it.

It’s because of this fact that Alex allows the quiet to sit for a second, before he goes: “It’s about Oscar, isn’t it?”

Lando’s eyes are locked onto the small window. Its three layers of glass. He wonders about the intricacies between each sheet, wonders, if they were to be able to think, if the one in the middle would like the squeeze. If the inner and outer panes would wish they were one another, or if they were happy at their end, happy with having that one in the middle. If there’d be spats and disagreements, or if there’d be a perfect harmony only achieved through the three of them.

Lando wonders if he needs another psych evaluation when they land.

“Lando,” George calls his name, in that prissy, demanding way of his. Like he’s a princely observer of the goingson of his ragged, uncouth citizens. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Alex slide his hand over George’s, atop his thigh.

“Did you guys see? Last night?” Lando asks, folding his arms up tight across his chest. Squeezing himself a bit. Squeezing himself in the way that middle window pane is being squeezed, except not really, except not at all.

The air is stagnant and dry in that way airplane air is always stagnant and dry. George’s cologne and Alex’s deodorant are more potent, enclosed like this.

It makes Lando feel an odd mix of sick and comforted.

“Mate,” Alex winces, a little. Lando looks away from the window, lets himself meet Alex’s eyes. They’re syrupy and warm and not at all brown in the way that Oscar’s are brown. “Unless you’re talking about seeing stars, then no. Haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”

Which is, y’know. Fair.

“Did you know that Max and Charles were open?” Lando bites out; words venom-slicked and clipped. He hopes they’re razor sharp. He hopes they cut.

He hopes a lot of things.

Alex and George share a look, and it – it doesn’t hurt. 

It’s just that, back when they were in karts and F2, it was the three of them sharing looks. Silent conversations in the middle of meetings, or ceremonies, or mini-galas that weren’t the galas they went to now. It was simple and sweet and an easy, easy friendship. Easy in the way most things were, back then.

Now that look is reserved for each other. When Lily’s there, all three of them.

No room for little Lando Norris.

No room for him anywhere at all.

“...I don’t think they are, mate,” George intones, then. Said as a complete, unchanging fact. Like Lando doesn’t know something – has been left on the sidelines yet again.

His nails are too bitten to break the skin of his palms, but they hurt where his hands have formed fists.

“Tell that to them,” Lando scoffs, rolls his eyes. Slumps back into his chair a little more. Lets his tongue run across the backs of his teeth, lets his tastebuds burn against the acidity. “They fucked Oscar.”

There isn’t a moment to breathe before Alex squeaks out, “They what?”

Lando pulls out his phone, pulls up his thread with Max. Scrolls up a little bit, before shoving the phone into Alex’s grasp. The photo leaves little to the imagination.

George’s jaw drops, and Alex brings a shocked hand to his mouth – it makes a little clap as it lands. Both of their eyes are unbelievably wide.

Lando doesn’t protest when George leans over Alex’s shoulder, uses his pointer finger to scroll down – reads their exchange. He looks angrier and angrier with each passing second, and, yeah. Lando feels a little vindicated.

“Mate,” George exhales, accent thick. Thicker than Lando’s has ever been; definitely thicker than his is nowadays. “That’s… Blimey, I didn’t know he had it in him.”

“He’s a dickhead,” Lando bites out: wants to chase the sour taste of the word with a shot or two. Maybe, if he asks nicely, George and Alex will turn a blind eye. “Of bloody course he had it in him. And Charles’ pretty boy act doesn’t fuckin’ fool me.”

Alex levels Lando with a slightly disapproving glare, but Lando’s not having it. 

“Shove off, Alex,” he spits, pulling his knees up until they’re pressed into his chest. He rests his crossed arms atop them. “Charles is just as bad as Max. The prick’s just better at hiding it.”

“So Max knows you’re in love with Oscar? And he… what, did that to taunt you?” George thinks aloud, eyebrows slanted severely. He hands the phone back to Lando, who doesn’t know when the fuck he’d taken it off of Alex.

Lando’s pointer finger and thumb find the hair tie around his wrist, pulling it back and letting the elastic snap sharp and true against the thin skin that sits over his bone.

“I told him, like, two years ago,” Lando admits. Feels like an idiot. A foolish, carefree, naive idiot. “I knew that he loved Charles before they bloody started dating – so. I don’t know. It felt, I guess, safe. Should’ve fuckin’ known, clearly.”

“He mentioned, ah…” Alex starts, chewing at his lip. He looks to the roof of the plane as he thinks, as if it’s some sort of divine oracle. The thrum of the engine vibrates against Lando’s chest, matches the vibrato of his heart. They haven’t moved an inch. “Something about… if you don’t make him yours, he will?”

Lando lets his forehead rest against the jut of his knee, lets his eyes squeeze shut. Lets himself be consumed by the darkness.

“Yeah,” he mumbles. Pulls once, twice, at the tie on his wrist. “He’s been telling me all year to confess. That Oscar definitely likes me back. Fuckin’ – Japan, he said if I ‘don’t wife him up, he’ll show up soon with a different last name’. I thought he was just stirring me up. Throwing me off.”

He couldn’t have known. Surely not.

He and Max were friends – maybe not as close, since everything that was the past season and a half, everything before that, too. But friends. There was, like, bro code, and shit, wasn’t there? Lando wouldn’t even think to fuck Charles, now, not when he knew that they were in love with each other. Together.

Except, maybe he would. Maybe he wanted to see how Max Verstappen liked seeing what was finally his be taken by another.

Maybe he’d fucking film it. 

Do him one better.

“Jesus,” George breathes out emphatically, grimacing uncomfortably. Alex’s expression isn’t too dissimilar. “That is… reprehensible, mate.”

“Where the hell did you learn the word reprehensible?” Lando barks out, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. George’s glare only widens his grin. “Got a dictionary for Christmas?”

“You can cope with your heartbreak yourself,” George returns, folding one of his legs over the other. He stares resolutely out of his window. “Go have your dick-measuring contest with Verstappen. We won’t hold you when you come back crying.”

“Are you okay?” Alex asks, then, voice belied by something wary and soft. He leans a bit to the side, as if to reach Lando’s gaze, where it’s laser-focused on the creme wall to his right. “Lando.”

“Mate,” Lando forces out, words shrouded in an uneven chuckle. It’s grating, even to his own ears. “I feel fuckin’ horrid. It’s not every day the love of your life gets banged by two of your co-workers.”

George’s elegant fingers press into his temples, his eyes squeezing shut. Alex’s face freezes in an unfortunate look of bewilderment.

Lando’s mouth feels sore and weighted: exhausted, as if he’s been chewing at a stick of taffy for hours on end. His muscles contract, almost, with the pain that sits in the backs of his eyes, making the skin of his eyebags pinken. It’s something he’s always lived with – this physical manifestation of his embarrassment or upset.

Thin skin gone pink and blue and purple.

He pulls at the tie around his wrist.

“Let’s get you home,” George says, resolutely. His aquamarine eyes are piercing when Lando looks up. Make him feel translucent and laid bare in a way he never really enjoys.

“We’ll stay with you,” Alex adds, sparing a short glance to George before he continues and says, “Or you’ll stay with us.”

Lando startles, a bit, opens his mouth indignantly: “I’m not –”

“Lando.” 

Alex’s voice is firm and allows Lando no space to argue. No place to, not really. Not after everything. Not after Sao Paolo 2024, not after Abu Dhabi 2025.

Lando swallows. Nods.

Looks out of the window. Those three panes. Traces his tongue against where his bottom lip’s chapped, just a bit.

“Thank you,” he says.

Neither George or Alex say a word, but Lando registers the gentle squeeze of a hand around his knee.

He sniffs back the tears, and closes his eyes.

˙⋆✮

Lando stays in Alex, George, and Lily’s guest room for two nights.

It’s nice: all soft blues and blush pinks. It looks a little like a gender reveal’s vomited all over the place, but in a good way, Lando thinks. Palletable and gentle and familial.

When Lily first opens the door to the three of them, her face falls from a bright, excited grin to a pinched, sympathetic expression.

She smells of yuzu and hassaku, all bright and sunshiney and warm, when she wraps her arms tight around him. Her hair is soft against his cheek, his nose – and she doesn’t comment, doesn’t pull away, when he buries his wet eyes against it.

“It’s still okay, right?” George asks, gently; obviously trying not to disturb the embrace. Lando’s reprieve.

Lily scoffs, and despite it all, despite everything, Lando’s lips pull up into an uneasy smile. Hidden by her hair. But there. “I would’ve killed you both if you left him alone like this,” she retorts, voice a little accusatory. A lot defensive. Her hand finds his hair, massages at the base of his skull as she whispers against his ear, “Now who do I have to kill?”

“Lily,” Lando gasps, and it’s wet, and it opens the floodgates: makes his shoulders quiver with heavy sobs as he leans more of his weight on her. Lets the sorrow consume him whole.

“We’ve got you, mate,” George soothes, his hand rubbing across his back in gentle circles. “We’ve got you.”

And they do. For forever, hopefully. For now, definitely.

Lando isn’t – he’s not a part of them. Hasn’t been for a couple of years. But it matters little, now, and maybe he’s not been as separate from them as he’d thought, either.

Maybe things have just changed, and maybe they’re dating each other, and maybe Lando’s decidedly not.

Maybe that’s okay.

The first night, they’re all slightly jet-lagged, bar Lily. She orders them all people, and while George and Alex unpack, after Lando’s shower, she makes him sit down on the bathroom stool.

Lando’s got a pair of George’s sweatpants on (George and Alex are entirely too tall for their own good, and he has to roll the cuffs over and over until they just brush the tops of his feet) and a towel wrapped over his shoulders.

The mirror is slightly fogged, around the edges, despite the bathroom fan still whirring. He can see himself just fine, though: can see Lily stood behind him.

She reaches around him, grabbing one of the assortment of bottles laid on the counter that she’d brought in right alongside her. It makes an odd sort of squeak, before a thick, beige cream pools in her palm.

Lando hadn’t asked why she wanted him sat on the stool. What the bottles were for.

She hadn’t told him, either.

He gathers what’s going on pretty quickly, though, when she rubs the cream together in her palms, makes sure that it’s an even slather across both hands, both sets of fingers. When she starts to scrunch at his wet curls.

His eyes flutter shut easily. His hair has always been a weakness – always sensitive, always relaxing. When he was a little kid, his mum would play with his hair until he fell asleep.

The calm is disrupted, slightly, when Lily admits, “They told me what happened.”

Lando’s eyes open, open to the mirror – to Lily looking directly at him through it. His eyes are rimmed red, and his lips are raw from where he’s picked at them. She, comparatively, looks like she might’ve just walked off of a runway: despite her shorts, despite her tank top, despite her hastily pulled together ponytail.

George and Alex are absurdly lucky.

“Pretty shit, hey,” Lando aims for humour, falls a little short. His voice is strained, a bit, and breaks throughout the syllables. He clears his throat.

Lily doesn’t pause her efforts, adding a different cream to the mix as she sighs, responds, “I’m sorry, Lando. I’m really sorry.”

The bathroom fan continues to whirr, and it should be annoying, but it’s not really. It’s just white noise, a sort of backdrop to the soft squelching of the hair cream, and Lily’s soft breathing that matches his own.

“Max knew that I wanted to fuckin’ –” he exhales sharply, lets his eyes squeeze shut, “Fuckin’ marry him one day. And he. He went and…”

“My earlier offer still stands,” Lily quips, and Lando looses a soft chuckle. When he opens his eyes again, it’s to see that a smile paints Lily’s face.

The silence – the fan, their breathing – sits for a few moments. Allows Lando to relax, allows his shoulders to loosen, slightly. Lily’s fingers are dexterous and strong, and Lando is reminded of just how fond of her she is.

Beyond the obvious golf factor, and the fact that she’s two of his best mates’ girlfriend, she’s astonishingly kind. Funny. Empathetic.

She’s putting cream through his curls when she could be doing literally anything else.

“I’m angry,” Lando says, then. Doesn’t really think about it when he does – but it rings true. He is really, really angry. Maybe the angriest he’s ever been. “I fucking hate him.”

Lily’s hands pause, for a moment, in his hair. It takes another few before they start moving again.

“Max?” She asks, and it’s slightly stilted – like she’s hedging on something that she doesn’t know if she should be involved in.

“Yeah,” Lando exhales, lets his eyes shut once more. Lily’s stopped putting more cream in; she’s just massaging what’s left through the strands. She is truly wonderful. “I hate him. Think I’m gonna do something about it.”

Lily stops fully at that. Her hands fall onto his shoulders, resting over the rough fabric of the towel that sits there. 

Lando opens his eyes, meets her gaze once more in the mirror. She looks… unsure. A little concerned, maybe. Her eyes narrow when she states, “Don’t do anything illegal or dangerous, Lando. I mean it. You’re not leaving the apartment without us for another night, either.”

It’s not like Lando’s done many illegal things – dangerous, maybe, but that’s par of the course for a fucking racing driver. Danger is in his blood, as cheesy as it is.

But. Yeah. He guesses her concern is valid.

“I won’t do anything illegal or dangerous,” he recites, but Lily doesn’t look appeased in the slightest.

The fan whirrs.

A knock on the door sounds, and both Lando and Lily jump at the sudden echoing: Lily calls out, and Alex ducks his head in. His eyes are set on Lily, and it’s cute and more than a little nauseating. “Dinner’s here,” he calls, and Lando perks up a bit. He’s really hungry.

Lily squeezes his shoulders once, twice, before she takes a step back.

The imprint of her fingers feel burned into his skin for the rest of his stay.

He manages a few hours of sleep that night, although it’s restless and uneasy and rough. He doesn’t dream, but he wakes up thinking that his fingers have dipped themselves into papaya-coloured acrylic.

The day is slow. He goes on a walk around the block with George to ease the energy that’s pulling at the tendons beneath his skin, but it does little to truly abate the thrum of it. He tries to help Alex cook some pasta, although he’s so shit that he ends up just sitting on the counter, throwing a comment every so often.

His limbs feel heavy and useless, and he’s a little slow to the uptake. Foggy with emotion and exhaustion and something else that he can’t name.

He watches a movie with the three of them. He goes to sit on the arm chair, but they all end up yelling at him in opposition almost in synchronicity, so he ends up sitting on a beanbag on the floor, with Lily’s head resting in his lap. George’s legs are in Alex’s, up on the couch.

It’s nice. Nicer than being alone, Lando’s certain. Safer.

The next day, he goes home. They help him take his still-packed luggage the two blocks over to his apartment, and he thanks them profusely. Lily hugs him goodbye first, ordering him to be smart, and then George is holding him, saying nothing but a simple: ‘you know who you are, Norris.’

And then Alex pulls him in, and it’s safe and nice and familiar.

He doesn’t warn him against recklessness, like his partners. Doesn’t offer any comforting words.

What he says cuts through Lando much, much cleaner.

“The race isn’t over till it’s over.”

Alex pulls away, and it’s with a knowing smirk on his face, and a little glint in his eyes. It sets Lando’s mind aflame like a match to gasoline. Alex must know it, too – must know that the fire in Lando’s eyes is infinitely better than its greyed absence.

The final farewells are said, and finally, the door to Lando’s apartment shuts.

He presses his forehead against the cool wood, lets his palms flatten against the chill of it. His breaths are slightly shaky.

He feels the most alive that he’s felt since he saw that black sedan.

Since when did Lando Norris give up? Throw in the towel? He didn’t when McLaren was in the gutter, he didn’t when Max cleared him in 2024. And look where he is now – firmly battling for the Drivers Championship, in a Championship-winning car.

He isn’t about to fucking – give up on the love of his life. His future husband.

He isn’t about to lose in love to Max bloody Verstappen. Not to him, not to Charles, not to anyone.

Oscar is his. Has been for longer than he’ll ever know.

One misguided threesome isn’t going to change that. One night of drunken mistakes isn’t going to change their future – their homecoming.

Max Verstappen can get fucked.

Not literally.

But still.

Oscar will come home, and Max will find out the bloody consequences to his actions. Four-time world champion or not.

˙⋆✮

A day later, Lando texts Charles.

Me

2:41pm

hey mate

u busy?

At face value, it’s stupidity to the nth degree. It looks like Lando being reckless and hasty and desperate.

What it really is, is planned and purposeful.

Either Charles responds, or he doesn’t.

If he doesn’t, then the seed is still planted. He’ll show Max, will have uncertainty and doubt creeping into his thoughts. It’ll be off-putting and so very out of place, and Charles won’t respond, but it’ll be something.

If he does –

Lando’s phone buzzes, where it sits on his kitchen counter while he eats the protein smoothie bowl that’d been glad-wrapped and shoved into his fridge by Jon. His spoon nearly falls from his mouth as he reaches for his phone, hurriedly swipes down the notification to read it fully without opening it.

Charles Leclerc

3:19pm

did you mean to msg me???

It’s little comfort, but it’s nice to know that someone on the grid texts like their age.

Me

3:22pm

yeh

this is charles, right??

Charles Leclerc

3:24pm

yes

what do you want, lando

The fact that Charles isn’t even playing at civil makes Lando feel, oddly, a little relieved. No masquerading or beating around the bush this way, he supposes.

Charles isn’t acting like he didn’t fuck Oscar, and Lando isn’t going to act like he doesn’t know that he has.

Me

3:25pm

can we meet at the cafe on the corner?

wanna talk

Charles Leclerc

3:26pm

should i be fearing for my safety??

i am not dumb lando

Me

3:27pm

nah

youre fine

Lando knows full well that Max had to have told Charles everything. He isn’t going to kid himself, isn’t going to join the masses thinking Charles to be some perfect godsend. An angel reborn.

Charles is a manipulative, self-involved prick, and probably gets off on the fact that Lando’s infatuated with his most recent conquest.

Lando holds no guilt for using him. Not when he had Oscar underneath him, not when he had his mouth on soft, pale skin – probably against his moles.

His jaw clicks with the harshness of his swallow at that thought.

Charles Leclerc

3:29pm

alright

ill be there in 10

Lando simply likes the message, and goes to tug his sneakers on.

˙⋆✮

The breeze bites against his cheeks as Lando finds his way to the cafe. It’s still a bit chilly, this time of year, and he forgot to chuck on a hoodie in his haste.

The adrenaline that floods his veins is enough warmth, anyways, he supposes. The barely concealed fury that threatens to gnaw at his skin from underneath.

Gentle wisps of cloud float in the perfect blue sky, and it’s more than a little mocking. Lando feels the furthest from sunshine and blue skies that’s humanly possible, he thinks. He wants to see it fade into grey. He wants to see droplets thunder from above.

When he opens the door to the cafe, the bell attached to it jingles softly.

Charles is sitting in a corner booth, and his eyes are already set on Lando.

Shoving his hands into his shorts pockets, letting them curl into fists, he makes his way over with his face set into a picture of calm indifference.

The lighting above is precise in the cosiness and ease that it aims to evoke, with its orange glow paired with the sleek wood of the tables and chairs, the art adorning the lightly painted walls.

It’s a Monaco cafe.

And Lando Norris is approaching a very alone Charles Leclerc.

He’s playing with his rings, elbows leaning against the tabletop. He hasn’t aborted their eye contact once, hasn’t shown a hint of backing down.

At least he knows what this is about. Owning up to it, maybe.

Definitely not apologising for it.

“Lando,” he says, tilts his head a little as Lando shuffles into the booth opposite him. He’s got a bit of a five o’ clock shadow going on, a little scruffy at the jaw and cheeks. Lando won’t ever admit to it, but it’s. Y’know. A little attractive.

On anyone else, it’d be wholly.

“Charles,” he returns, folding his arms over his chest.

One thing he appreciates is that he and Charles are fairly evenly matched, like this. Charles’ presence is delicate and pretty and soft – everything that he’s strived to present himself as to the media, over the years. So very falsified. Obviously so on track; less so off it.

But it is. Falsified, that is.

Charles is a dickhead.

“Did you like the photo Max sent?” Charles asks, resting his chin against his fist. He’s smirking, and the fury that’s threaded itself underneath Lando’s skin threatens the seams. “Oscar is very beautiful, is he not?”

Lando exhales through his nose, taps his fingers against his bicep.

“Does he know that it was a one-time thing?” Lando spits, and Charles has the decency to flinch back at the words. The accusation. “Or are you fucking around with his feelings for fun?”

Charles guffaws, at that, his eyebrows shooting up in indignation. His accent is a little thicker than usual when he retorts, “I did not expect you, of all people, to be accusing someone of that. Do not speak on things that you do not know anything about.”

“What?” Lando bites out a forced chuckle, brows furrowed harshly. “I know bloody well what I’m talking about. You and Max wanted to have a bit of fun, and decided to fuck with me while you were at it. I just don’t want to see Oscar hurt at the end of it. He doesn’t deserve that.”

And – and Charles.

He looks furious beyond words.

His eyes are glacial, mouth thin and lips pulled back, leaving his cheeks looking slightly hollow, his jaw tense and muscle jumping a bit beneath the skin. His nails have clawed against the glaze of the table, a bit.

He looks terrifying, actually.

“You are a blind, blind man, Lando Norris,” Charles hisses, each word dipped in vitriol. Lando’s breath catches in his throat. “You do not come here, and accuse us of hurting Oscar. You do not come here and accuse us of this made-up scenario that you have obviously fantasised about. You do not come here with that smug little grin and act like I’m the villain. You do not get to do that.”

Lando shivers slightly. His eyes are wide and his lips are parted, and spit gathers in his mouth where he’s unable to move his jaw, his tongue.

He has misstepped. Irrefutably.

The coffee machine hisses, and people distantly chatter, and the bitter scent of fresh coffee permeates the air of the cafe, and Lando Norris has made a severe mistake.

He’s about to make another one.

“I love him,” claws out of his throat, and he’s conscious enough to recognise the statement as an error in his judgement. “Max knew that I love him, and you probably did too, and you fucking took him.”

Charles’ hand slams against the table, and Lando fully jumps where he sits, his heart rate spiking violently. He can hear the thrum, thrum, thrum of it like a booming drum during a drivers parade.

“He is not a trophy, Lando!” Charles seethes, and he’s suddenly very, very close to Lando’s face. 

He has seen Charles Leclerc cry. He has seen Charles Leclerc furious at his engineers. He has seen Charles Leclerc cuss out every driver on the grid.

He has never seen Charles Leclerc on the verge of murder.

“You love him?” He asks, and it’s mocking and cruel and Lando regrets everything, everything, everything. “You love him? Really?” Charles bites out a disbelieving laugh. “Because you act like he is so very beneath you. You want him to wait around while you screw anything that walks? You are unbelievable! Pour qui tu te prends?”

Lando’s heart is in his throat, and it’s almost as if he could choke on it.

“Je suis furieuse! You think you deserve Oscar? Really? If you love him so much,” and Charles spits the words like they’re poison, the pinnacle of immorality, “Then surely you know that he deserves the world, no? Do you really think that he deserves you?”

Charles stands. Grabs his wallet, where it was sitting near the wall.

“You must not love him, then, as you say,” he finishes, and the words are cold and final. His eyes feel like nails as he adds, “I have to go, now. Oscar and Max made dinner, and I would not want to be late.”

Lando registers the shutting of the door, the distant jingling of the bell. The churn of the coffee machine. The beeping of cars outside. The honking of boats on the harbor.

He thinks of retirement. He thinks of Oscar. He thinks of crimson.

He wants to carve the red from his body. He wants to rid himself of any hint of Red Bull or Ferrari. He wants to bleed papaya.

He wants Oscar Piastri.

His ears are ringing, he thinks, or maybe there’s been a gunshot, or maybe his heart’s ceased its useless rhythm.

When he looks down, his hands are trembling. They always were too large for his frame – comical in their width. He’s always kinda liked it; no partner ever complained about his hands being too big.

He wants to wrap them like his protein bowl was wrapped. He wants to see them lessen beneath the plastic.

He wishes he could do that to his whole body. Be tightly, physically concealed – but on full display, all at the same time. He wonders if Charles would see how much he means it when he says he loves Oscar, then. If his physicality is contorted, morphed into some unnatural shape; if his soul is laid bare and existent in and of itself.

Charles is right, he thinks. Oscar deserves so much more than this.

But.

And isn’t there always a but?

But don’t you deserve Oscar? But can’t you be what he deserves?

Why would Charles know what Oscar deserves?

You are what Oscar deserves.

You are what Oscar deserves.

You are what Oscar deserves.

“Can I get you something to drink?” The waitress asks, and she looks a bit hesitant. Her pen nib’s pressed against her notepad, and Lando can’t see it, but he knows the pressure’s left an indent.

He hides his hands underneath the table, lets them rest on his thighs – like they’re splattered with blood, grade A evidence.

“A flat white, if you can do it,” Lando says, and he smiles, and he knows that it’s not quite right. “With one sugar.”

The waitress smiles back, and she nods, and then she says something about it being a couple minutes, before she heads off, and Lando’s alone again.

You are what Oscar deserves.

He thinks of soft, mole-riddled skin sandwiched between pinkened pale and tanned smooth. He thinks of Oscar’s face painted in ecstasy for two men that he doesn’t realise are entirely evil. Wolves in sheeps’ clothing.

You are what Oscar deserves.

He is what Oscar deserves.