Work Text:
Oscar had one fear in his life that he never told anyone.
He couldn’t remember when it started. Just frames of memories. Blue light, summer heat, the edge of a pool that looked too deep.
All of his school friends had jumped in.
Oscar didn’t.
He knew it was an irrational fear.
There were lifeguards and also those big, neon orange pool floaties that could save anyone from the barely deep waters.
The pool was harmless.
But all he could think of was what would happen if something went wrong. If water rushed into his lungs when he tried to scream for help.
Drowning, slowly and quietly.
He learned how to hold his breath eventually. But the childhood fear seemed to carry on into adulthood.
So when Mclaren’s Hilton sponsors with hotels and massive swimming pools came into view on race weekends, Oscar stayed on the sunbeds and watched Lando instead.
Laughing, floating freely on the water in a way Oscar never understood.
It wasn’t a fear, he told his teammate.
He just didn’t want to get his hair wet.
—
It was the night before Monza.
Lando’s thumb was calloused and rough, shaped by years of etching tiremarks on tracks until it lived in his gloved hands.
Oscar felt it etch a burning path onto his skin as Lando dragged it along his jawline.
The music behind them in the club was loud, each beat drilling into the minds of bodies dancing together, carefree in a sense that everything will come undone by the morning.
No one noticed them.
Lando pressed him back against the rough stone wall near the bathroom line, eyes searching.
Oscar’s breath caught in his throat.
“Look at me.” Lando whispered.
But Oscar couldn’t.
Because looking meant sinking.
And sinking meant drowning.
When he finally did look, the familiar pair of half-lidded aquamarine eyes pulled him into a bottomless ocean, so fast that he couldn’t breathe…
Oscar had seen aquamarine before.
Years ago from now.
Back when they belonged to a boy with flushed cheeks and messy curls sticking to his forehead with sweat after a race, standing next to Oscar with a microphone in his hand. Back when Oscar was in Alpine blue, back before everything that has happened.
The PR manager dragged him somewhere and the next second Lando was standing next to him.
“Have you raced against these guys?” The reporter asked, trying to include the young reserve driver in the interview.
“No.” Oscar answered, wind catching in his hair.
“Not yet.” Young Lando added, clear eyes finally meeting him for a single second.
His smile was pretty, Oscar thought.
The water that threatened to drown him rose to his ankles.
The beat of the bass cut through the silence of the memory, bringing Lando back into his sight.
“Oscc, you okay?” Lando slurred the words, dragging his name out.
They were too close.
Close enough that Oscar could no longer separate Lando’s heartbeat from his own.
Close enough that he could see Lando’s eyelashes.
Close enough that if he leaned in just an inch forward…
But before anything could happen, he was swallowed by the aquamarine in Lando's eyes again.
The stars above seventeen-year-old Oscar glowed faintly against the dark ceiling. Cheap plastic constellations. A universe of stickers he had stuck there himself because he was tired of sleeping in total darkness.
Perhaps his future was the same.
Seemingly beautiful, bright, but so artificially created and dim compared to the real sky.
He closed his eyes to see the boy in orange, two years older than him and already living his dream. Already won everything in the junior ranks. Always a few steps ahead of him.
“Not yet.” He whispered to himself.
And one day he will be alongside him. He promised himself. He’d be looking at the real sky then. Out of this dorm. Out of this small, cramped bunk bed. Next to a shining, truly bright star.
The water rose to his knees.
Lando’s voice broke through the memory. He stared at Oscar like he was trying to figure him out. “What are you thinking about?” He asked, voice soft.
What was I thinking? Oscar asked himself before another scene appeared.
They sat side by side in the back of the white golf cart, driven by the Mclaren personnel to their next photoshoot. The sun’s fading life colored Lando’s face a rose-gold, softening the edges of his face. The wind blew, and Lando reached out to tame his curls–now wild and free flowing in the air. Turning around, he laughed at Oscar’s “swoop” or whatever he liked to call it, now turning into a bird's nest.
It took him the rest of the ride to decide whether the sun was prettier, or the boy sitting next to him.
The water rose to his waist.
The intensity of Lando’s stare brought Oscar back to the present.
His gaze traveled down carefully, resting on Oscar’s lips before quickly flickering up. The look in his eyes was familiar.
It was the one before an impulsive comment during a strategy meeting. Or a bitter stare before a risky stab at another driver. It was the one before every bad, irreversible decision.
The hint was clear enough for Oscar to take. But the tightness in his chest wasn’t anticipation as he had expected.
It was the opposite.
He had imagined this too much, had been proven so many times that it was impossible. A wrongly timed memory intruded into sight.
The club was crowded with drivers, businessmen, CEOs, all lavishing on a Sunday night.
Oscar stood to the side, squeezing the glass until his hand froze.
A few people walked by, patting him on the back.
“First win, huh?”
“You’ve got a bright future ahead.”
He nodded and smiled at each one, eyes darting behind each person into the crowd.
The neon club lights flashed across bodies pressed against each other, lighting people’s faces up for mere seconds.
A familiar tuft of curly hair made his heart speed up.
Lando pressed against a brunette in a black dress, eyes intoxicated as he moved closer. Oscar quickly looked down from his teammate, blinking as a single drop of tear fell out of his eyes.
Later that night, Oscar laid on the hotel bed, white sheets soft as silk beneath his fingertips.
How naive was he to think that he could ever be significant in his life?
What else could he be to him, except for the younger teammate that just stole his win?
The thought was a familiar weight, like the water that now seemed to sit at Oscar's neck.
“Osc.”
But the Lando standing in front of him whispered softly, repeating his name over and over again like a prayer.
His breath was warm against Oscar’s mouth, and Oscar hated how easily his name, shaped by Lando’s lips, made his heart sting.
He should have stepped back.
He knew that it could never mean the same for both of them.
But the space between them tightened, shrunk, collapsed until there was nothing except the sound of both their breathing getting quicker.
Lando’s lips shut off everything in his mind.
Every memory, every thought seemed to disappear as Lando tilted his head just so slightly to graze his lips against Oscar’s, the touch almost unnoticeable.
In his dreams, Lando wasn’t like this. He wasn’t gentle. Nor did he kiss him softly.
It was always teeth and tongue clashing against each other, like he was terribly drunk and had just grabbed the nearest guy around who was coincidentally his teammate.
But the Lando in front of him was soft and gentle and those blue-green eyes were looking up at him now, silently pleading for permission to try again.
Oscar nodded, or not. He wasn’t quite sure what happened because the next moment Lando’s lips were on his, soft and desperate like he had been waiting as long as Oscar did. His hand slid behind Oscar’s head, shielding it from the wall as he pulled him impossibly closer.
The kiss tasted like alcohol and unspoken words. It tasted like the champagne on his lips when Lando put his arm around his waist for a photo after their first double podium. It tasted like the water he sipped on nervously when Lando fell asleep on his shoulder in the car. It tasted like tears and salt and ocean waves.
Oscar kissed him back slowly, treading into the new, unknown waters and learning to find his way through it. He let Lando deepen the kiss. He let himself hold on to the front of Lando’s unbuttoned shirt, fingers grazing against the warm skin there and earning a small sound in the back of Lando’s throat.
The sound vibrated through Oscar’s own chest. Lando tilted his head deeper to catch Oscar's sigh.
He let himself get jealous when the smell of Lando’s expensive perfume intruded his nose. It reminded him too much of that night in the club. It reminded him of the crowd, the neon lights, and everyone else that got to look at him before Oscar did. He let himself bite Lando’s bottom lip in revenge before smoothing it over with his tongue.
“Ow, Osc, that hurted.” He chuckled against Oscar’s mouth before pulling him closer, making the kiss longer, deeper.
Oscar feels the aquamarine water rise above his head, slowly creeping up with each second Lando spends with his lips pressed against his.
Air leaves his lungs slowly. The last rush of adrenaline, the last line of defense, the last hope of survival, breaks.
A suffocating calm washes over him, smoothing the crease that has long sat between his brows.
His breathing slows down, down, down…
Lando pulled away, aquamarine turning into a deep sapphire.
“Oscar.” He whispered, lips grazing against his in the shape of his name.
The aquamarine searched for Oscar’s face in the shadows, color clear as the water in the Maldives at dawn, but behind them, deeper, more violent, like the Bering sea that sailors only learn to respect when it had already decided their fate.
It was a plea for everything Oscar had to give.
A clear, ridiculously obvious path put at the cost of every contract they’ve signed, every fame they had chased for, every goal set to stand at the top of the cruel asphalt tracks.
“You sound so sincere when you say that.” Oscar responded, as if that was enough of a response for everything Lando had just asked him of.
Lando didn't push after that. He smiled, eyes blinking slowly in the darkness like they did at him every late night car drive after a race.
“I am sincere.” He said lightly. Maybe there was some truth to it, Oscar liked to think to himself.
Oscar stopped breathing long ago.
But for the first time in his life, he didn't care about the lack of air.
Suddenly, the water no longer drowned him.
Oscar took a slow, tentative breath beneath the surface.
A new kind of air, warm and slow, entered his lungs.
He had learned a new way to breathe.
—
Oscar kissed him again in the dark alleyway outside of the club in the shivering cold. Slower this time to memorize it. Slow enough to know how to relive this moment for the rest of his life.
Lando’s hand, again on the back of Oscar’s head, threaded through his hair softly as he hummed in approval.
The street light was a soft yellow, lighting up only the right side of Lando’s face, making him look that much younger.
“Missed me this much during break?” Lando whispered with a smile in their shared breath between kisses but Oscar swore he was blushing under the dim light.
Many, many years later, he would still remember that kiss with the boy he knew since he was young, and that dark night where he finally learned how to breathe.