Chapter Text
SEPTEMBER 2025
The tendrils of misfortune first gain their clutches on Oscar Piastri in Baku, Azerbaijan. He still can’t quite comprehend what goes wrong as his racecar slams into the barrier.
Tom Stallard, his race engineer, speaks over the radio, “Oscar, are you alright?”
Oscar struggles to swallow past the lump in his throat. “Yep. That was stupid of me.” He messed up in qualifying the day prior to the race. The first lap began with another blunder on his part, falling into twentieth place. It was only downhill from there when his car suddenly locked up.
He gets out of the car to the momentary silence of the grandstands behind him. There’s a cacophony of cheers; whether those are from fans of rival teams or in support of him, he has no clue. He keeps his helmet on, the shame bubbling hot in his stomach at the mess of his car. He knows his engineers and mechanics are going to have to work overtime to fix this before the next race.
The safety marshals usher him off the track, and he follows them wordlessly. Oscar feels as though he has left his body, like he is just another one of the spectators watching this debacle from a dark corner at the back of the grandstands.
His crew are there to offer consolations when he arrives at the McLaren garage. The hollow pit in his chest grows deeper.
After the race, Lando finds him in the corner of the garage, where Oscar is trying his best not to seem as though he is sulking whilst he pores over telemetry data. “We both did pretty shit, huh.”
Lando slides into the chair next to him, an easy grin on his face. It’s the most lighthearted interaction they’ve shared all season, and Oscar hates how it still makes his treacherous heart skip a beat.
“At least you finished in the points,” Oscar huffs out a breath, the wry smile on his lips resembling a grimace. Lando finished the race at P7. Neither of them has had finishing results fitting of potential championship contenders. Max Verstappen finished first.
“Potato, tomato,” Lando waves his hand around ridiculously, and Oscar’s smile is more genuine this time.
“I’m not sure that’s how the saying goes.”
“Geek.” Lando slaps him on the back, before standing up to head over to Zak, who is waving him over. “Chin up, Osc.” He gives him a small smirk, tiny and clandestine in its nature, because it is for Oscar’s eyes only. Oscar treasures it the same way he treasures everything about Lando.
Twenty minutes later, they sit around a table for the race debrief with Andrea and Zak and their respective engineers. Oscar tries not to meet Andrea’s eyes, almost certain of the disappointment he will see there. It is an open secret at McLaren that whilst their CEO, Zak Brown, loudly favours Lando, their team principal, Andrea Stella, is softer with his approval of Oscar.
Oscar listens to the briefing, knowing how blotchy and red his face appears from the disappointment. The tears and frustration will not come yet, not until he’s under the shower spray of his hotel room. He tries not to focus on how Lando has chosen to sit beside him for the first time in months, instead busying himself with taking notes with his engineer, Tom, who sits on his other side. He feels the press of Lando’s thigh against his own, Lando’s knee bouncing up and down impatiently.
Oscar takes a deep breath and he wonders if anyone in this room can sense how desperately he wants.
He doesn’t know where it all first goes wrong with Lando. Maybe it begins with Oscar signing onto McLaren. Or maybe it begins when they choose to spend time together outside of their contracted media hours.
Or maybe they’re doomed since long before that, when Oscar is just a teen in the junior championships, and Lando is the rising star as the seventeen-year-old McLaren reserve driver, all before Oscar can even manage a win in Formula 4.
Oscar comes into McLaren all starry-eyed for Lando, a person whom he has looked up to for years. The promise of being teammates with him leaves Oscar simultaneously queasy and euphoric. He finished ninth in his debut year of 2023, in the year of total Max Verstappen domination.
He scored two consecutive podiums, in Suzuka and Qatar, both shared with Verstappen and Lando. He kept shooting blinding grins at Lando, listening to his high-pitched giggles in return. Despite his elation at scoring his first podium, Oscar could not help but glance up at Verstappen on the top step, feeling the distance between them to be greater than the few inches that it was.
Max Verstappen stood tall and proud on the top step of the podium, head held high and sporting a sharp grin, all teeth and spite at the crowd booing. He painted the kind of figure who was despised and worshipped in equal measure. He was already on his way to being written into the history books. He was unbeatable. Not even his teammate in equal machinery could catch him.
Oscar had been envying him from afar for a while, this surreal man who was only four years older than Oscar but was already on track to win his third consecutive championship, but that was the exact moment when his envy transformed into reluctant admiration.
Verstappen’s eyes stay trained forward, only glancing down occasionally to smile at a little girl who keeps screaming for his attention in her mother’s arms. Penelope Piquet-Kvyat. A child who shares nothing with him except unconditional love. Max Verstappen is just a man, and men can be beaten.
It’s hard for Oscar to remember that when Max finishes the year with 19 race wins under his belt, whilst Oscar had to fight tooth and nail for two podiums.
Finishing ninth in his rookie season is meant to be an accomplishment that he can be proud of, but all Oscar can think of is where he wants to ultimately end up and how far he still is from reaching that mark.
Hamilton finished second in his rookie season. A year older than Oscar is right now. He won his first championship with McLaren, in only his second season, at the age of twenty-three. Oscar watches Lewis getting out of his car in parc fermé, finishing third overall in the championship standings. He is stoic and graceful as he congratulates Max, who finished more than three hundred points above him.
Maybe the disappointment hurts less when you’ve already got seven world championships. Oscar thinks he would die for a single one.
An arm slings around his neck and the scent of sandalwood that he has grown accustomed to draws his attention to his teammate. He knows they both probably reek something foul after having just finished a race, but Oscar has only ever been drawn to everything perfect about Lando. He tries not to squirm in his hold.
“Your first year’s over, mate.” Lando grins, and the merriment dancing in his eyes is infectious. Oscar lets his disappointment run away from him, just for a little while. “I reckon it’s time to celebrate.”
He’s managed to hold Lando off from making him tag along on nights out, citing the reason that he doesn’t drink during the season, but now that point would be moot. He lets himself be dragged along to a high-end club in Abu Dhabi, feeling ridiculously underdressed in his white tee and jeans next to Lando’s linen shirt, of which the top few buttons are undone.
Oscar is dragged to the centre of the dance floor with Lando and some of his friends that have flown in, who Oscar doesn’t really know, with the exception of Max Fewtrell. He and Fewtrell had known each other in the Renault Academy, but they hadn’t really kept in touch over the years as Fewtrell drifted away from racing. They share a polite greeting, but Fewtrell keeps himself glued to Lando’s side.
He finally manages to escape the dance floor despite not having done much other than stand there awkwardly and heads back to the VIP booth that Lando had secured for them. He busies himself with scrolling through his phone, sorely wishing he had gone out to dinner with his mum and sisters instead. They had all flown out for the final race of this season, with him paying for their tickets and accommodation. It was odd having the finances to be able to ensure comfortable lives for them now. The security it provided was both comforting and startling in its nature. His mum had insisted that he go out and have a nice time: she knew he was prone to solitude.
“What are you doing here by yourself, Osc?” Lando practically falls into the space next to him in the booth, half on top of Oscar. His cheeks are flushed, and he is bordering on the line of tipsy. Oscar has had a few drinks himself too, so he lets his eyes drop to the few inches of the tanned chest that is exposed by Lando’s shirt. “Come join us.”
“I can’t really dance,” Oscar mutters.
Lando giggles like he finds Oscar to be the most hilarious person he knows. “I could tell.” He flicks Oscar on the forehead, and Oscar’s hand reaches out to wrap around his wrist. Something passes between them, a short moment in time where their eyes meet, and Oscar is questioning and unsure and Lando is so beautiful. This person he has looked up to for so many years is finally in front of him, and Oscar’s lips are tentative when they press against the corner of Lando’s mouth.
It doesn’t feel like a mistake when he lets Lando lead him through the darkness of the club and into a bathroom stall. It doesn’t feel like a mistake when he presses Lando against the door and swallows his gasps with another kiss as he palms his dick through his trousers. Lando is so achingly desperate with every noise Oscar draws from him. The music from the club reverberates loudly even in the stalls.
It only takes a few pumps and Oscar’s teeth grazing against his earlobe to have Lando spilling into his hands with a shudder. His head drops down onto Oscar’s shoulder, his eyes screwed shut.
The gravity of what he has done only sinks in once he leaves the club bathroom after Lando, who immediately rejoins his friends. Oscar walks out of the club and doesn’t look back.
His stomach is in knots as he stands outside Lily’s apartment in London. Oscar knew the second he walked out of that club that he needed to break up with Lily, not because of grand delusions of a future with Lando or even the possibility of them falling in love. No, he needed to do it because Lily deserved someone better than him. Somebody who would stay true to her and be loyal.
He could never be the shitty type of person who broke up with somebody they were in love with over the phone. A part of him still loves Lily, his first friend, whom he had made when he was new at boarding school on a whole new continent. Even then, she was lovely and sweet and soft-spoken. The media calls Oscar far too calm and controlled, but next to her gentleness, he had always felt like the one who felt too much.
He meets her over at her nice apartment near King’s College, which he had bought for her midway through his first year as a driver in McLaren. She is currently working towards her Master’s Degree in Engineering. After a single knock, she greets him with a soft kiss at the doorway, and he cherishes the feel of her lips on his, wanting to remember her as somebody he loves and somebody who loved him.
She has been waiting for him eagerly, he realises with a pang in his heart, when he sees the boxes of Chinese takeaway on the coffee table in the living room. He feels sad suddenly, and he can’t bear to delay this any longer. “I need to talk to you about something.”
It’s horrible the way she freezes, her whole body suddenly taut with fear. She has been expecting this perhaps, due to the nature of his texts, which have become less frequent over this past year, how his responses have become more monosyllabic. He’s only been consumed with racing. She sits down on the sofa and fiddles with her hands on her lap. “You can talk to me about anything.” She tries at a smile, and Oscar feels like he’s going to be sick at the understanding in her eyes.
He tells her, leaving Lando’s name out, and she does not cry or scream or shout. Her silence is somehow worse, and Oscar’s own eyes shine with unshed tears that he does not let fall. It would be too unfair to her.
“I think you should leave,” she murmurs. He hears the sniffle behind him as he leaves, and he knows he’s broken her heart. He feels like a black hole in this living room, threatening to swallow everything whole because of how much he ruins.
He plans to spend the beginning of the winter break before the next season at his mother’s house in Australia. Lily was supposed to be joining him on the flight over, and her absence causes questions amongst his mother and sisters at brunch.
“We broke up.” Oscar spreads vegemite on his toast slowly. He doesn’t need to look up to know that everyone at the table has frozen.
“You broke up?” Hattie repeats incredulously. “You guys have been dating since forever. What happened?!” His sisters love Lily. A little more than they love him, he suspects.
“I did something I regret.” He doesn’t elaborate.
They’re able to put two and two together, especially when Lily no longer responds to any of their messages. His sisters don’t speak to him for the rest of his stay at home. He leaves Australia early and stays at the new apartment he bought in Woking in order to be closer to the McLaren Technology Centre.
He spends Christmas alone.
Lando keeps sending him memes throughout the break, just like he has since the first week they met. He makes no mention of what occurred at the club. Neither does Oscar. This arrangement suits him just fine.
Oscar puts in as many hours as he can per day on his racing simulator. He follows the training regime set up by his performance coach, Kim. He doesn’t order takeout a single day and he measures every ingredient that goes into his meal preparing down to the exact decimal place on the kitchen scales.
He catches up with watching cricket when he’s free. He even heads down to the MTC to check on development for the car of 2024. He knows enough about the engineering and mechanics of it all to hold a conversation with the engineers, and he even tries to offer his own inputs. He’s not allowed to test drive until pre-season testing. He’s itching to get back into the car.
“Shouldn’t you be enjoying your break, mate?” a new mechanic, Josh, asks him, and Oscar does his best to laugh it off. He doesn’t think he’s very convincing.
When the news comes out that Logan has been dropped by Williams, Oscar drops him a text to check on him. He receives no reply.