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The bell above the door of Leclerc’s Confections chimed with the familiar, sweet sound of homecoming.
Oscar Piastri stepped inside, the late afternoon sun casting long, warm rectangles of light across the polished wooden floor. The air, usually a blanket of pure, undiluted sugar—a blend of melting chocolate, simmering caramel, and powdered fairy dust—hit him as it always did: like a physical embrace.
To an alpha with a sweet tooth like his, this shop wasn’t a retail establishment, it was a sanctuary. A temple. The one place where his most defining characteristic—a craving for candies so profound that it was practically a third gender in itself and was not a point of mockery, but a point of joy.
Today, however, the air was different.
Oscar paused just inside the doorway, his nostrils flaring.
Underneath the classic symphony of sugar, a new note played. It was sharp and bright at the edges, like the zest of a warm lemon, but it deepened into something richer, earthier—like amber resin or maybe… toasted vanilla bean? And there, beneath that, a whisper of something uniquely addictive, a sweetness that wasn’t cloying but complex, like burnt sugar cooling on a crème brûlée. It was incredible. It was maddening. It was the most delicious thing he had ever smelled.
His alpha instincts, usually a quiet, background hum, sat up and took notice with the urgency of a five-alarm fire. New candy. Find it. Consume it. Now.
“Hey, Oscar.”
The gruff voice came from behind the counter.
Max Verstappen stood there, looking profoundly bored as he meticulously aligned rows of licorice whips. Max was Charles’s alpha boyfriend, a 4th year architecture student with the build of a linebacker and the permanent expression of someone who’d rather be anywhere else.
His presence in the shop was a testament to two things: Charles’s power of nepotism, and Max’s inability to be more than fifty feet from his omega for any extended period. They were, in Oscar’s opinion, disgustingly, adorably codependent.
“Max,” Oscar greeted, his voice a little strained as he tried to subtly sniff the air. “Did… did you guys get a new line in? Something… citrusy? With depth?”
Max didn’t look up from his licorice alignment. “Dunno. Charles handles the inventory. Smells the same to me.” Max’s scent was all alpha—clean linen, concrete after rain, and a hint of motor oil. He was about as sensitive to the nuances of candy aromas as a brick wall.
“Right,” Oscar muttered, his eyes scanning the jars of gummies, the trays of truffles, the racks of imported chocolate bars. The scent seemed to be coming from the back, from the employee door behind the counter. He was just about to vault over the counter—purely for investigative purposes, of course—when the door swung open.
Charles Leclerc emerged first, his face lit with its usual sunny smile. He was balancing a tray of what looked like freshly-dipped strawberries. His scent soft and comforting, like marshmallows and lavender—a perfect candy shop smell.
“Oscar! Bonjour! Your usual sour watermelon belts are in the—oh.”
Charles’s smile turned knowing, his eyes flicking to the person behind him. And that’s when Oscar saw him.
The boy following Charles out of the back room was carrying a heavier box of syrup bottles.
He had a head of artfully messy brown curls, eyes the colour of warm honey, and a sprinkle of freckles across his nose that made him look like he’d been dusted with cinnamon sugar. He was wearing a dark, soft-looking turtleneck that covered him from collarbone to jaw, despite the shop’s warmth.
Oscar’s brain, which had been single-mindedly tracking the divine scent, temporarily short-circuited. The boy was… beautiful. The scent was momentarily forgotten in the face of this new, equally compelling discovery.
“This is Lando,” Charles said, his voice dripping with faux innocence. “He’s our new hire. Just started this week. Lando, this is Oscar. Our most loyal customer. He’s here almost daily.”
Lando set the box down with a soft thud and turned those honey-coloured eyes on Oscar. A small, friendly smile touched his lips. “Oh! Hi. Hello. Nice to, um, meet you.” His voice had a cheerful, melodic lilt, but it trembled just slightly at the end.
Up close, Oscar could now distinguish two separate wonders—the visual delight of Lando Norris, and the scent of a siren call of The New Candy, which seemed to be strongest right here at the counter.
They were separate. Obviously. One was a person. The other was a candy. His mind, addled by sugar and attraction, kept them in neat, distinct boxes.
“Hi,” Oscar managed to croak out after a beat of silence that stretched just a fraction too long. “Yeah. Oscar. I’m… I’m here. A lot. For the… the candy.” He gestured vaguely at the entire shop, feeling like the world’s biggest idiot.
He saw it then—a faint, rosy blush creeping up Lando’s neck, disappearing under the edge of his turtleneck. The pink tint reached his cheeks, making his freckles stand out.
“Right! The candy. Of course. It’s, uh, it’s a really good shop. For that. Candy.” Lando nodded a bit too vigorously, then seemed to catch himself, smoothing his expression into something more polite and reserved. He took a small, almost imperceptible step back.
“Well. Welcome. Again. Not that I’m welcoming you, you’re already here, but—yeah.” He clamped his mouth shut, looking adorably flustered.
“So, Oscar,” Charles chirped, breaking the wonderfully awkward spell. “What can we get for you today? The usual two hundred gram mix, heavy on the sours?”
Oscar’s gaze was still glued to Lando, who was now very studiously examining a label on a syrup bottle. “Hmm? Oh. Yeah. The usual. Sure.”
The next ten minutes were a form of exquisite torture.
Oscar pretended to browse the gummy dinosaurs while secretly watching Lando move around the shop.
He refilled the jelly bean dispensers with a quiet efficiency, his movements graceful. He answered a customer’s question about nut-free options with patient, if slightly rushed, explanations. Every so often, their eyes would meet across a display of chocolate frogs, and Lando would instantly look away, his ears going pink.
The delicious, mysterious scent seemed to follow him, which made sense if he’d been handling the new prototype candy in the back. Oscar’s brain made the logical connection, Lando works here. New candy is here. Therefore, scent is on Lando. I must find the source candy.
Finally, his candy weighed and bagged, Oscar approached the register where Charles was waiting, Max now lurking behind him with his chin hooked over Charles’s shoulder. while Lando was nearby, stocking shelves with tins of butter mints.
As Charles rang him up, the scent—the glorious, intoxicating scent—wafted over stronger than ever. The obsession came roaring back, a need overriding his flustered attraction.
“Charles,” Oscar blurted out, leaning in conspiratorially. “That new thing. That smell. The citrus-amber-burnt-sugar one. Which candy is it? I need to buy, like, a kilo of it. Immediately.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lando freeze, a tin of mints slipping from his fingers and clattering to the floor.
“Oh, sugar cubes!” Lando yelped, diving to pick it up, his face now flaming scarlet. “Sorry! Clumsy. Just… slippery. Tins.” He kept his head down, fussing with the mint tin as if it required his complete and total attention.
Charles’s reaction was lightning fast.
His smile didn’t falter, but his eyes darted to Lando’s hunched form for a nanosecond before returning to Oscar. “Ah! That,” he said, with the air of a magician revealing a great mystery. “That is a… secret prototype. A new recipe we are testing. Very hush-hush.”
Oscar’s heart sank. “A prototype? Can’t I even try a piece? Please? I’m your best customer.”
“Non, non,” Charles tutted, shaking his head. He tapped his lips, as if pondering deep. “Top secret. If you want to experience it… you will have to discover it for yourself. It is part of the… how do you say… the quest.”
“A quest?” Oscar repeated, feeling both ridiculous and hopelessly intrigued.
“Oui!” Charles’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “The Quest for the Ultimate Candy! It will require patience. And cleverness.” He bagged Oscar’s sour mix and handed it over. “Good luck, mon ami!!”
Lando finally stood up, the tin secured. He wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes, looking fixedly at a spot on the wall and was being awfully quiet.
Oscar took his bag, the determined spark igniting in his chest. A quest. For the most perfect scent-taste in the world. He could do that. He was an engineering student. He solved problems for a living. And returning on this quest meant seeing him again.
He threw a last, shy glance at Lando, who chose that moment to glance back. Their eyes met. Lando’s were wide, a complex mix of alarm and something else—amusement? The pink flush was a permanent fixture on his throat and cheeks now.
“Bye, Lando,” Oscar said, the name feeling new and sweet on his tongue.
“Bye, Oscar,” Lando replied, his voice barely above a mumble. “See you. Um. For candy. Obviously.” He gave a little, awkward wave with just his fingers.
Oscar left the shop, the bell chiming behind him.
The cool evening air did nothing to clear his head. Two separate but equally powerful obsessions now warred within him.
The burning need to find and consume the source of that incredible scent, and the warm, fluttering desire to see Lando Norris again, to make that flustered, adorable boy look at him without immediately turning the colour of a strawberry bonbon.
He was so wrapped up in his thoughts—engineering plans for candy-location matrices, and replaying the way Lando had said 'Oh! Hi. Hello.'—that he didn't notice the world around him.
He had a quest. And he had a crush. And he had absolutely no idea they were one and the same.
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The bell's chime had barely faded before Lando whirled around, mint tin still clutched in his hand like a weapon. His face was a spectacular shade of crimson.
"Charles Leclerc, I am going to murder you!" he hissed, stomping towards the counter. "A quest? 'Discover it for yourself'? He thinks I'm a walking, talking candy factory prototype!"
Max let out a loud, barking laugh, his arm tightening around Charles's waist. "It was brilliant. His face! He looked like a bloodhound that lost the trail."
"He is a very cute bloodhound," Charles giggled, entirely unrepentant. He batted his eyelashes at Lando. "And so were you! 'Oh! Hi. Hello. For candy. Obviously.'" Charles mimicked Lando's flustered, high-pitched tone perfectly.
"And what was that little outburst? 'Oh, sugar cubes!' Since when do you say 'sugar cubes'? Weren't you in the back room five minutes ago calling that broken tempering machine a 'twatting, useless piece of sh—'"
"Shut up! I don't sound like that!" Lando squeaked, throwing the tin of mints onto the counter. It skidded to a stop. "And that's different! That's just… work frustration. In front of him, I felt like I was going to spontaneously combust!"
"That is called attraction, mon cheri," Charles sang, leaning over the counter. "And it is mutual! Did you see how he looked at you? He forgot all about his mystery scent for a solid five minutes. He was smitten."
Lando slumped against the counter, the fight draining out of him, replaced by a familiar, weary anxiety. He tugged absently at the high neck of his turtleneck. It was starting to itch.
"It doesn't matter. It's just… it's just biology doing stupid things. He smelled something interesting and got confused."
"Oscar isn't like that," Charles said, his tone softening. "He's not a traditional alpha. You know he gets his sour mix every week? He's soft. He was bullied in school for it, Max heard from a friend on the rugby team. He hates the whole 'alpha dominance' nonsense as much as you hate… well." Charles gestured vaguely at Lando's sweater.
"Doesn't change what I am," Lando muttered, looking down at his hands. "Or what this is."
He didn't need to specify. The unique, complex scent that clung to him—the very one that had just launched Oscar on a candy crusade—felt less like a part of him and more like a curse most days.
"It's the first thing anyone notices. The only thing most alphas notice. 'Oh, you smell so good, omega.' 'What is that delicious scent?'" His voice took on a mocking, deep tone. "It's not me they see. It's a… a walking dessert platter. Or a challenge. It's never just Lando."
He thought of the countless times he'd been cornered at parties before he'd sworn them off, of the invasive sniffing, the creepy comments disguised as compliments. His scent was too distinctive, too potent to easily hide, and standard patches were a joke—itchy, ineffective, and they made him feel like he was wearing a biological failure sign. The memory of their clinical, antiseptic smell made his nose wrinkle.
"My entire business plan," he continued, the frustration giving his words heat, "is because of this cursed scent. Because alpha-dominated companies can't be bothered to make a patch that doesn't feel like a medical dressing for a disease we don't have. They don't get that we might want to choose when and how we present, or that 'neutral' shouldn't mean 'smelling like a hospital corridor'. I'm using my own allowance and this job to fund research for materials that are actually breathable, for adhesives that don't rip your skin off, for scents that are designed by omegas, for omegas."
He looked up, meeting Charles's now-understanding gaze. "So no, I'm not exactly rushing to get involved with an alpha who, sweet as he seems, just proved that my scent is literally a siren call. He doesn't want me. He wants the… the 'citrus-amber-burnt-sugar prototype'."
The shop was quiet for a moment, filled only with the hum of the cooler and the distant sound of traffic. Max, who had been uncharacteristically silent, gave a slow nod. "He has a point, schat. You set the poor kid on a wild goose chase for his own boyfriend's smell. That's messed up, even for you."
Charles pouted, but it was a thoughtful pout. He reached out and put a hand over Lando's. "I am sorry for teasing. But… I am not sorry for wanting you to be happy. And Oscar… he is a good person. Maybe he is the exception. Maybe he saw the cute boy first, and the scent just… added a bonus."
He squeezed Lando's hand. "All I am saying is, do not shut the door because of what other, lesser alphas have done. Your project is amazing. And maybe… having a sweet, engineering-minded alpha around who is already obsessed with your… 'product'… could be useful for feedback, no?"
Lando let out a short, wet laugh, swiping at his eyes with his sleeve. "You're impossible. You just want a cute romance to happen in your shop."
"Of course I do!" Charles beamed, his smile returning. "It is good for business! Love and sugar, they are the same thing!"
Max rolled his eyes but pressed a kiss to Charles's temple. "You're a menace."
Lando took a deep breath, the familiar, hated-yet-intrinsic notes of his own scent filling his lungs. He thought of Oscar's shy 'bye', the determined set of his jaw at the idea of a quest. He wasn't like the others yet.. There was no posturing, no chest-puffing. Just a genuine, flustered sweetness.
"Fine," he sighed, not conceding anything, but not closing the door either. "But no more 'quest' talk. And if he tries to lick me thinking I'm a candy cane, I'm filing for workplace harassment."
Charles clapped his hands in delight. "Deal! Now, help me clean up. And for heaven's sake, take off that turtleneck before you melt. It's a patch-free zone back here, remember? Your secret is safe with us."
Lando managed a small, real smile this time. Safe. It was why he worked here. Now, if only his heart—and a certain cute, candy-obsessed alpha—would get the memo.
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The back room of Leclerc’s Confections was, for all its sentimental purpose, a battlefield. Cardboard boxes were strewn like fallen soldiers, packing tape hissed and snarled as it was unwinded, and Lando Norris was its troubled general.
“You absolute wanker of a machine,” he muttered, wrestling with the industrial tape dispenser that had just eaten another three inches of tape. “Just do the one thing you’re meant to—oh, for fuck’s sake!”
The tape tore jaggedly, sticking to itself in a useless, gummy clump. Lando threw the dispenser down onto a box of fizzy cola bottles with a satisfying thud.
Charles and Max had left him in sole command for the Saturday afternoon shift, citing a 'critical emergency' that involved couples’ massages and corny romcoms. Lando knew he was being set up. A quiet shop, just him, his thoughts, and the lingering, terrifying possibility of a certain alpha returning on his ‘quest’.
He’d been hiding in the back, stocking inventory with aggressive focus, trying to drown out the memory of Oscar’s flustered face and his own mortifying ‘sugar cubes’ outburst while muttering a steady stream of creative, sailor-approved curses for the past twenty minutes, his voice the only sound in the cozy shop.
Finally, wiping his brow with his forearm (he’d ditched the turtleneck for a soft, long-sleeved henley the moment Charles and Max had left, luxuriating in the patch-free air, expecting no customers at 1pm), he pushed open the door to the main shop, a fresh box of rainbow sherbet belts in his arms.
He froze.
There, in the middle of the shop, stood Oscar Piastri.
He hadn’t even heard the bell.
Oscar was bent at the waist, his nose hovering an inch from the jar of lemon drops, his brow furrowed in profound concentration. He then straightened up, shook his head, and moved to the bin of horehound lozenges, repeating the process. He looked like a sommelier at a particularly confusing wine tasting, or a bloodhound who’d been given a map written in ancient runes.
Lando’s heart performed a complicated gymnastic routine in his chest. Oh, no. He’s back. And he’s… sniffing everything.
Oscar must have sensed the presence behind him. He turned, and his entire face transformed. The look of intense focus evaporated, replaced by a bright, startled flush that spread from his neck to the tips of his ears. He straightened up so quickly he almost knocked over a display of chocolate seashells.
“Lando! Hi! I didn’t—you were—the bell didn’t—” Oscar stammered, his hands fluttering uselessly at his sides.
Lando’s own face, he knew, was heating up in sympathy. He forced his professional mask on, though it felt cracked and wobbly. “Oscar. Hey. Didn’t hear you come in. You’re, um… conducting a scientific survey?” He hefted the box of sherbet belts as if to explain his own presence.
Oscar’s blush deepened. “Right! Yes. Sort of. The, uh, the quest. Charles said… I have to discover it for myself. So I’m… discovering.” He gestured weakly at the jars. “Systematic elimination. Starting with the citrus-adjacent categories.”
He was so earnest.
So adorably, ridiculously earnest.
Lando felt a wave of affection so potent it momentarily overrode his panic. He’s such a loser. A gorgeous, sweet, nerdy loser. He cursed Charles violently and creatively in his mind.
“Right, the quest,” Lando said, setting his box down on the counter with a thump that was louder than intended. He cleared his throat. “Well. As the sole representative of Leclerc’s Confections on duty today, I am… obligated to offer my assistance in your research.” The words felt absurd. “What are your parameters?”
Oscar’s eyes lit up, the shyness replaced by a spark of pure, unadulterated nerdiness. “Really? You’ll help?”
“Can’t have our best customer suffering from 'olfactory' confusion, can we?” Lando said, walking around the counter. The shop felt suddenly very small, the air very warm. He could smell Oscar’s scent now—something calm and clean, like fresh linen and green tea, with an underlying note of graphite and… gummy worms?
It was nice. Really nice. Not overwhelming. Just Oscar.
“Okay,” Oscar said, suddenly all business. He pulled out his phone and opened a notes app.
“I’ve categorized the scent profile into three primary notes, with possible sub-notes. Note one: top note of vibrant citrus, specifically reminiscent of Meyer lemon zest, not the sharper Eureka variety. Note two: a heart note of warm amber, maybe with a touch of… toasted rice? Or perhaps orris root? It’s earthy-sweet. And note three, the base note: a deep, caramelized sweetness. Not simple sugar. Burnt sugar. Like crème brûlée, or the dark bits on a perfectly roasted marshmallow.”
He looked up from his phone, his gaze intense. “And.. it’s… it’s the most perfect thing I’ve ever smelled.”
Lando was rendered completely, utterly speechless.
He was used to alphas describing his scent. It was usually grunted, single-word affairs: “Sweet.” “Yummy.” “Good.” Or worse, the leering, suggestive comments that made his skin crawl.
No one had ever… analyzed it. No one had ever given it poetry. Meyer lemon zest. Toasted rice. The dark bits on a perfectly roasted marshmallow. They weren’t lustful words. They were appreciative. They were… artistic. They were the observations of someone who genuinely loved sensory experiences, not someone looking to claim one.
A flush, different from the flustered one, bloomed deep in Lando’s chest and rose to his cheeks. He had to look away, pretending to study the jar of horehound lozenges with great interest.
“That’s… a very detailed analysis,” he managed, his voice a bit thick.
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” Oscar admitted, a little sheepishly. “So. Where should we start? I’ve ruled out the obvious lemon drops and the amber hard candies. They’re too one-dimensional.”
Lando swallowed, gathering his wits. This was his shop. He was in control. He could do this. “Okay, Dr. Piastri. Let’s think. Complex, layered scent… maybe not a single candy, but a combination? Or something infused.” He moved down the aisle, his mind racing. “We have the bergamot creams… too floral. The honey-ginger chews… too spicy.”
He reached for a small, expensive-looking box of French candies. "These have a caramelized orange peel dipped in dark chocolate." He opened the box and offered one to Oscar, the delicate confection resting on the crisp white paper like a tiny jewel.
Oscar took it, his fingers brushing Lando’s for a millisecond—a spark of static, a flash of warmth. They both froze, eyes meeting in a brief, electric moment of surprise before Oscar quickly popped the candy in his mouth.
He closed his eyes, concentrating. Lando watched, mesmerised, as Oscar’s throat moved when he swallowed, his long lashes fanning his cheeks.
After a thoughtful pause, Oscar shook his head. “Close on the citrus-caramel combination,” he said, his voice a little hushed. “Really close, actually. The bitterness of the dark chocolate plays against the sweet peel in an interesting way. But it’s missing that warm, almost… dusty? No, that’s not right. That sticky warmth of the amber note. The chocolate, as good as it is, overpowers it. It’s a duet, but I’m looking for a trio.”
Lando felt a strange flutter at the careful analysis. “Right, right,” he nodded, getting into the spirit despite the whirlwind in his chest. “Amber note… what even gives a candy an ‘amber’ note?” He started pulling down jars, reading ingredient lists aloud like a mad scientist. “Tahitian vanilla? Too straight-up sweet. Brown butter toffees? That might give us that toasted, nutty quality…”
He scooped a small toffee into a tiny white tasting cup. Oscar took it, his gaze intent on Lando’s face as he bit into it. The crunch was loud in the quiet shop.
“Mmm, the brown butter is a good thought,” Oscar said after a moment, licking a tiny crumb from his lip. Lando’s eyes tracked the movement before he forced them away, feeling his own lips tingle strangely. “It’s got that warm, almost savory depth. But it’s missing the bright top note entirely. It’s all base. We need the citrus to cut through.”
“Okay, citrus cut,” Lando murmured, scanning the shelves. His brain was firing, connecting candy to descriptor in a way it never had before. “What about these?” He grabbed a bag of chewy candies shaped like little suns. “Blood orange and saffron gummies. The saffron might give you that earthy, exotic thread.”
Oscar accepted one, his expression skeptical but game.
“For the quest,” he said solemnly, giving Lando a little nod that was so adorably dorky Lando had to bite the inside of his cheek. He chewed, and his face went through a fascinating journey—initial surprise, then deep consideration, then a wrinkled nose of pure dismay. “No. That’s… that’s medicinal. The saffron tastes like… old books and regret. Powerful, but wrong direction.”
Lando burst out laughing, the sound bright and unfiltered. “Old books and regret! That’s the worst—and best—candy review I’ve ever heard! I’m writing that down for the marketing team.”
Oscar’s grin was triumphant, pleased at having made him laugh. “It’s accurate! Your turn.” He suddenly darted to a shelf with the energy of a kid in a playground and pulled down a distinctive blue tin. “Swedish salty licorice. An acquired taste. The salt might play against the sweetness in an interesting way, and the ammonium chloride gives it a… a sharp, almost smoky quality.”
Lando eyed the sinister black candy with deep suspicion. “I know what that tastes like. It tastes like the ghost of a salted tyre. It tastes like being punished for enjoying life.”
“For science! For the quest!” Oscar insisted, his eyes sparkling with mischief as he held out a piece.
With a dramatic, world-weary sigh, Lando took it. “If I die, tell Charles he can have my stash of sour belts.” He placed the whole piece in his mouth. The intense, salty, almost chemical bitterness exploded on his tongue like a tiny bomb. His eyes watered instantly. He gagged, slapping a hand over his mouth, making a sound like a distressed seagull.
“That’s just wrong, Oscar! I need to spit it out right now!” he cried, though his words were a garbled, horrified mumble.
Oscar was already doubled over, laughing—a proper, breathless, shoulder-shaking laugh that was the most wonderful sound Lando had ever provoked. “You said for science!” he wheezed.
“Science has limits! My taste buds have filed a formal complaint!” Lando managed, darting behind the counter for a cup of water. He guzzled it, spluttering, while Oscar leaned against the jelly bean display, helpless with giggles.
When Lando emerged, wiping his mouth, Oscar was still chuckling, his face flushed with joy, and Lando’s heart did a slow, somersault.
“Okay, okay,” Oscar conceded, wiping a tear from his eye. “Salty licorice is officially eliminated. Too polarising. The prototype scent is… inviting. Comforting. This is repelling. Actively hostile.”
“Thank god for small mercies,” Lando groaned, though he was smiling so widely his cheeks hurt. He felt giddy, a little breathless. This was the most absurd, wonderful thing he’d done in ages.
They moved on, their collaboration becoming a playful dance around the shop. They sampled toasted coconut truffles, and when Oscar got a piece of chewy coconut stuck in his teeth, Lando had to turn away, shoulders shaking with silent laughter, as Oscar worked at it with his tongue, looking adorably perplexed.
(“The texture is right—that slight graininess could be the ‘toasted rice’ feeling, but the flavor is all tropical, wrong season,” Oscar finally judged, once he’d dislodged it.)
They made small cups of hot water to steep aromatic herbal tea candies in, blowing on them in unison before sipping like connoisseurs.
(“Now we’re just drinking tea, Lando,” Oscar laughed, holding the tiny porcelain cup with surprising grace, his pinky finger extended just so, making Lando snort into his own cup.)
At one point, Lando suggested they try sniffing the jar of pure candied violet petals. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, heads bent over the open jar, so close Lando could see the individual shades of gold in Oscar’s irises. The floral perfume was overwhelming.
“It’s pretty,” Oscar whispered, his head tilted. His breath, smelling faintly of the bergamot tea candy, stirred the curls near Lando’s temple. “But it’s all top note. No heart. No base. It’s… it’s insubstantial. The scent I’m looking for has weight. It stays with you.” He said it with such quiet reverence that it didn’t feel like he was talking about candy at all.
Lando’s breath hitched. He knew that. He knew his scent lingered. He pulled back, suddenly too aware of the heat radiating from Oscar’s arm beside his, of the way his own pulse was hammering in his throat.
To cover it, he bumped Oscar’s shoulder lightly with his own. “Getting poetic on me, Piastri. Next you’ll be writing sonnets to sour worms.”
Oscar bumped him back, a soft, warm pressure. “Don’t tempt me. I’ve got a lot of feelings about sour worms.”
For twenty glorious minutes, the shop was their laboratory, a kingdom of sugar ruled by two conspiring, giggling fools. The air was filled with the rustle of wrappers, the soft clink of jars, and their mingling laughter.
At one point, Oscar tried a powdered sugar beignet candy and emerged with a fine white dusting on his right cheek. Lando stared at it, captivated by the contrast against his skin.
“You’ve got a little…” Lando gestured vaguely at his own face.
Oscar swiped at the wrong cheek. “Did I get it?”
“No, other side. Higher. No, you’re just smearing it.” Without thinking, driven by a fluttery, brave impulse, Lando reached out. He used the very edge of his thumb, the touch feather-light and fleeting, to brush the sugar from the crest of Oscar’s cheekbone. The skin was warm and smooth. “There.”
They both froze. The air crackled. Oscar’s eyes were wide, his lips slightly parted. Lando’s thumb felt like it was burning.
“Thanks,” Oscar breathed, the word barely audible.
“It was… obstructing the research,” Lando mumbled, pulling his hand back as if scalded, tucking it safely in his pocket where it tingled.
“This is the most fun I’ve had failing at something,” Oscar finally grinned, leaning against the gummy bear display, looking happily defeated and wonderfully rumpled, a hero at the end of a sugary quest.
Lando, his sides aching from laughter, his guard not just down but utterly dismantled and packed away, hugged himself. The spot on his thumb still felt warm. “We haven’t failed. We’ve successfully eliminated 85% of the shop’s inventory. That’s progress in reverse.”
“An engineer’s favorite kind,” Oscar agreed, his eyes soft and crinkled, fixed on Lando’s face with a look of such open, warm fondness that Lando thought he might simply dissolve into a puddle of caramel right there on the linoleum.
He was so utterly charmed, so disarmed, that he almost didn’t hear the bell chime.
The bubble popped.
An elderly woman walked in, looking for sugar-free mints. The real world rushed back in with the draft from the door.
Lando immediately straightened up, his professional demeanor snapping back into place, though it felt tighter than before. “I’ll be right with you, ma’am!” he called, then turned back to Oscar, who looked similarly startled back to reality. “Duty calls.”
“Right, of course,” Oscar said, hastily starting to gather the myriad of tiny tasting cups and wrappers they’d generated. “I should—I’ll pay for all these. And for my time. I’ve basically conducted a private tasting session.”
Lando waved a hand, busying himself with straightening a jar of jelly beans. “Don’t be daft. It’s on the house. Consider it… research and development for the shop. Customer feedback is vital.” He dared a glance back at Oscar. “And… it was fun.”
Oscar’s smile was so bright it threatened to melt the chocolate bunnies. “It was. The most fun. Thank you, Lando.” He carefully piled the trash onto the counter. “I’ll… I’ll let you get back to work.”
He hovered for a second, as if wanting to say more, before giving a little awkward wave and heading for the door. He paused with his hand on the handle. “I’m not giving up, you know. On the quest.”
Lando, helping the old woman locate the sugar-free mints, felt a swoop in his stomach.
"I know", he thought. "I’m starting to hope you never do."
“Good luck,” he said aloud, his voice thankfully steady. “You’re gonna need it.”
The bell chimed again as Oscar left. The shop felt quieter, emptier, despite the customer.
The woman paid for her mints and left. Silence descended once more.
Lando walked slowly back behind the counter and looked at the small pile of candy wrappers—the evidence of their shared, giggling investigation. He picked up one of the tiny cups that had held the bergamot cream.
He was falling.
He was falling hard and fast for a gorgeous, clueless nerd who was hunting for a scent that was literally right under his nose.
He was a loser. Oscar was a loser. And.. that was perfect.
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It became a thing.
A glorious, predictable, utterly wonderful thing.
The following Tuesday, Oscar showed up at 3:17 PM, right in the middle of Lando’s shift. He claimed he needed 'brain fuel' for a structural dynamics problem set.
“It’s a real thinker,” he’d said, leaning against the counter with an exaggerated sigh. “I’m pretty sure the bridge I’m designing would only hold if it were made of marshmallow and prayers.”
Lando had rolled his eyes, already scooping a mix of gummy bears and sour worms into a bag. “The marshmallow would provide tensile strength, obviously. The prayers are for the wind resistance. Want me to throw in some jelly beans for structural integrity?”
Oscar’s eyes had lit up. “You understand engineering!”
“I understand candy,” Lando corrected, but he was smiling. He’d added an extra handful of sour worms.
On Thursday, Oscar appeared at 2:55 PM, looking genuinely frazzled. “I need a consultation,” he announced, dropping his backpack by the door with a thud.
“A consultation?” Lando asked, wiping down the gummy worm dispenser.
“Yes. On… optimal sugar delivery systems for sustained mental focus. It’s for my materials science midterm.” He said it with such deadpan seriousness that Lando had to press his lips together to keep from laughing.
“Well, as your appointed candy consultant, I recommend a tiered approach,” Lando said, walking around the counter. He felt a little thrill at playing along.
“You start with something quick-release, like a fizzy cola bottle, for immediate alertness. Then you move to a complex carbohydrate-based item, like a licorice strap, for endurance. And you finish with a mood-booster, like a milk chocolate sea shell, for the final push.”
Oscar stared at him, his mouth slightly agape. “That’s… genius. You’re a genius.”
“I know,” Lando said, batting his eyelashes. “It’ll be fifty dollars for the consultation fee.”
Oscar fumbled for his wallet, looking adorably panicked, until Lando broke and giggled. “I’m joking, you muppet. Your usual mix is on the house today. For academic solidarity.”
The blush that spread across Oscar’s face was worth a thousand bags of candy.
By the second week of this new routine, Lando found himself checking the clock around 2:30 PM, a fizzy, anticipatory feeling bubbling in his stomach.
He’d straighten the lollipop display for the third time, or reorganise the chocolate bars by cocoa percentage, just for something to do with his hands. When the bell finally chimed and Oscar’s slightly rumpled, definitely-cute form appeared in the doorway, Lando’s whole world seemed to click into brighter, sweeter focus.
He’d stopped wearing the stifling turtlenecks to work. Instead, he wore soft crewnecks or hoodies, still enjoying the patch-free comfort of the shop, but feeling less like he was in costume.
His scent, that 'prototype' as Oscar called it, was just… there. A part of the shop’s atmosphere. And Oscar, while he always seemed to take a deep, happy breath when he entered, never mentioned it again. He was too busy talking about trusses, or thermodynamics, or the baffling personality of his studio partner, Lance.
“He tried to suggest we make our bridge model out of actual balsa wood and glue,” Oscar groaned one afternoon, picking dejectedly at a bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans. “Like a primary school project. I had to explain the concept of a scale factor. He asked if that was a new band.”
Lando snorted, leaning his elbows on the counter. “And you didn’t just whack him with your engineering ruler?”
“It was tempting. But I’m pacifistic. I channel my aggression into… sour candy.” He popped a particularly vicious-looking chili-lime gummy into his mouth, his eyes watering instantly. “See? Productive suffering.”
Lando laughed, the sound easy and free.
He loved this.
He loved the dumb excuses, the nerdy rants, the way Oscar’s face did complicated things when he ate something too sour. He loved that Oscar seemed to genuinely want to tell him about his day. It was so stupid but he was falling, fast and hard, for the gentle alpha who treated candy with reverence and never, ever made him feel like a walking dessert platter.
One rainy Wednesday, the shop was dead. The drizzle outside made the world feel soft and grey, but inside, it was warm and golden-lit. Oscar came in, his hair dotted with rain droplets, and didn’t even bother with a pretense.
“Hi,” he said, smiling softly. “Slow day?”
“The slowest,” Lando replied, putting down the inventory clipboard he’d been pretending to study. “I’ve debated the nutritional merits of candy corn with myself for twenty minutes. I lost.”
Oscar chuckled, coming to lean on the counter opposite him. They were close enough that Lando could see the different shades of brown in his eyes. “I could help you debate? I’m team ‘it’s technically a vegetable because corn.’”
“A horrifying, waxy vegetable,” Lando shot back, grinning.
They lapsed into a comfortable silence, just looking at each other for a moment. The rain pattered against the window.
“You know,” Oscar said, his voice quieter. “Coming here… it’s the best part of my day.”
The simple honesty of it stole Lando’s breath. No candy quest, no brain fuel excuse. Just… this. Him.
“Yeah,” Lando said, his own voice barely above a whisper. He traced a pattern on the polished wood of the counter. “Me too.”
Oscar’s smile was so warm it felt like sunshine breaking through the rain. “Even though I’m a massive nuisance who asks a million questions and samples half your stock?”
“Especially because of that,” Lando said, looking up through his lashes. “It’s nice. Having a regular. Who’s also a friend.”
The word ‘friend’ hung in the air between them. It felt both right and utterly insufficient.
“Friend,” Oscar repeated, nodding slowly. Then his eyes sparkled with mischief. “As a friend… would you help me with a critical analysis? I think I’ve narrowed down the quadrant of the shop where the prototype scent is strongest.”
Lando groaned, throwing his head back. “Not the quest again! Oscar, it’s a wild goose chase. Charles was probably messing with you.”
“No, I’m serious!” Oscar insisted, pushing off the counter. He pointed dramatically to the left side of the shop, near the speciality caramels and honeycomb. “It’s strongest over there. I’m sure of it. Come on, do your sniffy thing.”
“My ‘sniffy thing’?” Lando echoed, raising an eyebrow. But he was already moving out from behind the counter, unable to resist the pull of Oscar’s enthusiasm. Or the chance to stand close to him in the caramel aisle.
They stood shoulder-to-shoulder again. Oscar closed his eyes, taking a deep, theatrical breath. “Do you smell it? That… that amazing smell?”
All Lando could smell was Oscar—green tea and linen and graphite—and the general sweetness of the shop, and his own stupid, traitorous scent. He bit his lip to keep from laughing. “I smell… caramel. And beeswax from the honeycomb.”
“No, underneath that!” Oscar insisted, leaning closer to the shelf. He was so focused, so adorable in his determination. He turned his head to look at Lando, their faces inches apart. “You really don’t smell it? It’s like… sunshine and something ancient and sweet and…”
He trailed off, his gaze dropping to Lando’s lips for a split second before snapping back up to his eyes. Lando felt his heart stutter.
“I think,” Lando said softly, his pulse roaring in his ears, “you might be smelling the promise of something. Not the thing itself.”
Oscar blinked, his brow furrowing in that cute, confused way he had. “What does that mean?”
Before Lando could formulate an answer—or do something truly insane like kiss his confused frown away—the shop door burst open with a force that made the bell jangle violently.
A man stood in the doorway, shaking rain off a jacket that looked more expensive than Lando’s entire semester’s tuition. He had the carefully bored expression of someone who’d never been told ‘no’ in his life. His eyes, a pale, chilly blue, scanned the shop and landed on Oscar with a smirk that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Piastri. Fancy finding you here. Should’ve known you’d be in a place that smells like a nursery.” His voice was a lazy drawl, dripping with condescension.
Oscar’s easy posture stiffened immediately. He didn’t move from Lando’s side, but his shoulders squared. “Lance. What do you want?”
“Just avoiding the monsoon. And following up on our… project disagreement.” Lance sauntered in, his designer shoes making no sound on the floor. He stopped a few feet away, his gaze flicking dismissively over Lando before returning to Oscar. There was a weird, performative quality to his movements, like he was trying to exude an alpha dominance he had to consciously remember to project.
“George said you’re being stubborn about the carbon fiber lay-up simulations. Again.”
“George said I’m being accurate,” Oscar corrected, his voice tight. “Your calculations for the load distribution on the eastern pylon are off by fifteen percent. If we use your specs, the model will fail. Spectacularly.”
Lance waved a dismissive hand. “Details. It’s a model, Piastri. For a grade. It doesn’t have to hold up real traffic, it just has to look impressive to Professor Wolff. And my designs look impressive. Yours look like a toddler’s spaghetti bridge.”
“It has to be structurally sound!” Oscar’s frustration was palpable. “That’s the whole point of the class! It’s engineering, not interior design!”
“Semantics.” Lance’s smirk widened. He took a step closer, his scent—a cloying, aggressive mix of expensive cologne and something metallic, like cold cash—invading the warm, sugary space.
“You know, my father knows Professor Wolff. Plays golf with him at the club. It’d be a shame if he heard our team was being held back by someone with… unconventional methods.”
The threat hung in the air, ugly and blatant.
Lando had heard enough. The way Lance talked down to Oscar, the casual nepotism, the insult to the very careful, intelligent work Oscar had been ranting about with such passion for weeks—it lit a fuse in him.
“Unconventional methods?” Lando interjected, his voice cool. He stepped forward so he was level with Oscar, a united front. “You mean like ‘actually doing the math’? What a radical concept.”
Lance’s icy eyes slid to Lando, finally giving him his full, disdainful attention. He took an obvious, theatrical sniff of the air, his nose wrinkling. “Oh. I see. This is why you’re so attached to this place, Piastri. Found yourself a sweet little omega to play with. Smells like he’s trying to cover a bakery fire with lemon zest. Desperate.”
The words were meant to wound, to reduce and humiliate. They hit their mark, sending a hot spike of shame through Lando’s chest. He instinctively wanted to shrink back, to cross his arms over himself.
But before the old, defensive chill could fully settle in, Oscar moved.
He didn’t shout. He didn’t puff up. He simply took one firm, deliberate step forward, placing himself squarely between Lance and Lando. He wasn’t as tall as Lance, but in that moment, he seemed to fill the space with a quiet, immovable authority.
“You will apologize to him. Right now.” Oscar’s voice was low, a vibration of pure, controlled fury. It was a tone Lando had never heard from him before. His calm green-tea scent shifted, sharpening into something clear and cutting, like a winter wind through pine trees.
It wasn’t an aggressive alpha challenge; it was a protective barrier, solid and unyielding.
Lance actually blinked, thrown off by the directness. He recovered with a sneer. “Or what? You’ll throw a gummy bear at me?”
“Or I will take your shoddy calculations, your ‘impressive’ designs that ignore basic physics, and your daddy’s golf dates with Professor Wolff directly to the Dean of the Engineering School,” Oscar said, each word precise as a scalpel.
“I will file a formal complaint for academic coercion and threatening behaviour. And I have every email, every revised spreadsheet, and three independent software verifications to back it up. Your model will fail, Lance. And if you try to drag me down with you, I’ll make sure everyone knows exactly why.”
The silence that followed was absolute.
The only sound was the soft hiss of rain against the window. Lance’s bored mask had completely slipped, revealing stunned, furious disbelief. He was used to his name and wealth bullying people into submission. Oscar was fighting back with the one thing Lance couldn’t buy—integrity, and a better grade.
Lance’s jaw worked. He looked from Oscar’s resolute face to Lando, who was staring at Oscar with a heart so full of awe it felt ready to burst. He’d never seen anyone stand up to a bully like that—not for him, not for anyone.
With a final, venomous glare, Lance turned on his heel. “This isn’t over, Piastri. You’re making a big mistake.”
“The only mistake,” Oscar said, his voice returning to its normal, steady tone, “was ever thinking I’d let you coast by on your last name while I did the work. Now get out of this shop. You’re scaring the candy.”
The door slammed shut with a force that rattled the jars of jelly beans.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. Oscar’s shoulders were still tense, his fists clenched at his sides.
Lando reached out, his fingers gently brushing the back of Oscar’s hand. “Hey.”
Oscar flinched, then turned to look at him. The fierce protector was gone, replaced by the sweet, flustered boy Lando knew. His expression was full of worry. “Lando, I am so sorry. God, are you okay? What he said was—it was disgusting. I’m so sorry you had to hear that.”
Lando shook his head, his throat tight. “Don’t you apologize. Not for that. That was… that was the single most impressive thing I’ve ever seen.” He let out a shaky laugh. “You basically just told a walking trust fund to get bent using differential equations. It was kind of… breathtaking.”
Oscar’s anger seemed to melt away, replaced by a dazed relief. A slow, disbelieving smile touched his lips. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Lando breathed. He was still touching Oscar’s hand. He didn’t want to let go. “You defended your work. And you defended… this place. Me. With techinicalities. Oscar, that’s the nerdiest, hottest thing I’ve ever witnessed.”
Oscar’s smile turned into a full, beaming grin. He turned his hand over, letting their fingers slide together for a fleeting, electric moment before they both pulled away, blushing. “Just doing my civic duty. Can’t have bullies in the candy shop. It’s a sacred space.”
“A sacred space,” Lando agreed, his heart hammering against his ribs. He looked at Oscar—at his kind, furious, brilliant, gentle self—and felt any last shred of hesitation crumble to dust. Lance Stroll was everything Lando feared alphas could be. Oscar Piastri was everything he’d never dared hope they could be.
“So,” Oscar said softly, the tension finally leaving his body. “Still friends?”
Lando looked at their hands, now resting side-by-side on the counter, close but not touching. He thought of the word ‘friend’. It felt like a too-small blanket trying to cover a roaring fire.
“Yeah,” Lando said, meeting his gaze. His voice was firm, sure. “Friends."—Who maybe think the other one is a lot bit hot when they weaponize their homework to destroy arrogant billionaires.
Oscar’s laugh was a soft, happy sound that filled the whole shop. “Good. That’s… really, really good.”
When he left a while later, the rain had slowed to a mist. He didn’t even buy candy, just said he’d come by tomorrow for his usual.
The shop didn’t feel empty after he left. It felt charged, like the air after a lightning strike—clean, fresh, and full of potent, thrilling possibility.
Lando locked the door after closing time, leaning his forehead against the cool glass. He was done being afraid. He was done letting jerks like Lance Stroll define what his scent, or his dynamic, meant.
He had a business to plan. And he had a sweet, brave, spreadsheet-wielding alpha who made his heart do backflips.
The quest for the mysterious candy was forgotten. A much more interesting, terrifying, wonderful quest had well and truly begun.
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Things with Oscar and Lando as 'friends' were, in a word, perfect. And also, in another word, absolutely torturous.
The stupid excuses continued, but they’d evolved. They were softer now, more transparent.
“I had a really bad lab,” Oscar would say, resting his chin on the counter, looking up at Lando with soulful eyes. “The concrete didn’t set. It was a metaphor for my entire life. I need gummy worms to rebuild my existential foundations.”
Lando would nod sagely. “The pink ones are best for foundational despair. The green ones are for structural grief. A mix?”
“Please.”
Other times, the excuses vanished altogether. Oscar would just walk in, his face lighting up the second he saw Lando, and say, “Hi. I missed you.”
Simple. Devastating.
Those were the ones that flustered Lando the most. He’d fumble with the scoop, or drop a jelly bean, or feel his cheeks ignite like twin cherries. “You saw me yesterday,” he’d mumble, unable to meet Oscar’s gaze.
“Yeah,” Oscar would say, as if that explained everything. And somehow, it did.
The Great Candy Hunt had officially been declared dead.
Oscar had stopped sniffing shelves with theatrical concentration. Instead, he’d just lean against the counter, take a deep, contented breath, and sigh happily.
“This shop just smells so good.” He said it like someone appreciating the scent of rain on pavement or fresh bread—a general, wonderful ambiance. He’d accepted the mysterious, divine scent as part of the shop’s permanent, delightful character. It drove Lando quietly insane with a mix of relief and a strange, possessive glee.
It’s me, you adorable idiot. The thing you love about this place is literally me.
One afternoon, Charles was in the shop, 'supervising' which meant lounging on a stool while Max hand-fed him chocolate-covered strawberries.
“So,” Charles sang, licking a smear of chocolate from his thumb. “How is your friend, Lando?”
Lando, who was restocking the sour belts, shot him a warning look. “He’s fine. He’s good. Stop it.”
“Stop what?” Charles blinked with faux innocence. “I am just asking about your good friend Oscar, who comes to see his good friend every single day, and who looks at his good friend like he is a rare and precious caramel that he wants to gently unwrap and—”
Lando didn’t think. He just grabbed the nearest thing—a giant, striped candy cane from a display—and hurled it like a javelin. “I’LL END YOU, LECLERC!”
Charles shrieked with delight, ducking behind Max. The candy cane flew true, but Max, without even looking up from the strawberry box, caught it mid-air with a lazy, effortless hand.
“Hey,” Max grunted, finally looking at Lando. “No projectile candy at my boyfriend. Use your words.”
“My words are all swear words right now!” Lando hissed, storming over to snatch the candy cane back from Max’s grip.
Charles peeked out from behind Max’s shoulder, grinning. “He is so defensive! It is adorable! You are in so deep, mon cher.”
Lando sighed, the fight going out of him. He leaned against the counter, twirling the rescued candy cane. “It’s just… it’s good, okay? It’s really good. And I don’t want to jinx it by… by putting a label on it that doesn’t fit yet.”
“The label of ‘boyfriend’ seems to fit quite nicely,” Charles mused.
“He hasn’t even asked,” Lando whispered, the confession feeling huge. “About my… you know. My secondary gender. Not once.”
Max raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? It’s kinda obvious.”
“Not to him, apparently!” Lando threw his hands up.
“And that’s the point! He doesn’t treat me like… like an omega. He treats me like Lando. He talks to me about stress vectors and bad lab partners and his weird neighbour who breeds ornamental snails. He asks for my opinion on sour candy rankings. He doesn’t posture, he doesn’t try to scent-mark the air around me, he doesn’t do that weird alpha-flexing thing Lance tried to pull.” He looked down at the candy cane, his voice softening.
“It doesn’t feel forced. It doesn’t feel like I’m supposed to like him just because he’s an alpha and I’m an omega and biology says we should do a weird tango. It feels like I like him because he’s Oscar. And he likes me because… he thinks I’m funny, and I know about candy. And maybe because he likes the way the shop smells.”
Charles’s teasing smile had softened into something genuine and warm. “That is it, Lando. That is the thing. He sees you first. The rest is just… details.”
“Yeah,” Lando said, a small, wondering smile touching his lips. “He sees me. And I can just… be me. I don’t have to perform. I don’t have to be demure or whatever. I can tell him his bridge design looks like a drunk spider web and he’ll just laugh and argue about tensile strength.”
Later that week, Oscar proved Charles’s point in the most spectacular, unintentional way.
He came in looking more rumpled than usual, his hair standing up in five different directions, dark circles under his eyes. He slumped onto his usual stool at the counter.
“Rough day?” Lando asked, already scooping a generous portion of sour watermelon belts—Oscar’s ultimate comfort candy.
“The roughest,” Oscar groaned, burying his face in his arms. “Group project from hell. George and I were up all night fixing Lance’s section. Again. I’ve consumed nothing but terrible coffee and regret for eighteen hours.”
“Yikes.” Lando slid the candy across the counter. “Here. Nuclear-strength sour. It’ll cut through the regret.”
Oscar lifted his head, managing a weak smile. “You’re a lifesaver.” He took a belt, chewed, and winced. “Oh, wow. Yeah. That’s the good stuff.” He ate another, some colour returning to his face. “Thanks, Lan. You’re the best.”
The casual nickname, a sleepy, unthinking shortening of his name, sent a warm shiver down Lando’s spine. “Any time.”
Oscar ate a few more candies in silence, then looked at Lando, his expression bleary but soft. “Can I tell you something weird?”
“Weirder than your snail-breeding neighbour?”
“Different kind of weird.” Oscar took a deep breath.
“Sometimes, when I’m super stressed or my brain won’t shut up… I think about this place. Specifically, I think about that smell. The… the prototype one.” He said it like a secret.
“I know it’s not a real candy. I know Charles was probably having me on. But just… thinking about it. The lemon and the amber and the burnt sugar. It’s so… calm. It makes my brain quiet down. It’s like my own personal mental safe space. Isn’t that ridiculous?”
Lando’s heart stopped.
It literally felt like it skipped several beats before restarting with a frantic, pounding rhythm. Oscar was using the memory of his scent as a comfort. A safe space. He wasn’t lusting after it, he was… soothed by it. The knowledge flooded Lando with a feeling so profound it stole his breath.
“It’s not ridiculous,” Lando whispered, his throat tight. He reached out, on impulse, and placed his hand over Oscar’s where it rested on the counter. “It’s really sweet.”
Oscar looked down at their hands, then back up at Lando, his tired eyes wide. He didn’t pull away. Instead, he turned his hand so their palms pressed together, his fingers curling slightly around Lando’s. His skin was warm, his grip gentle. “You’re sweet.”
They stayed like that for a long moment, connected by a simple touch amidst the jars of brightly coloured sugar. The shop was quiet. The world outside didn’t exist. It was just the two of them, a pile of sour belts, and a truth hanging in the air that was too big for words like ‘friend’.
Oscar’s thumb moved, a tiny, tentative stroke against the side of Lando’s hand.
The bell over the door chimed, shattering the moment.
They sprang apart as if electrocuted. An elderly woman walked in, asking for sugar-free peppermints.
The rest of Oscar’s visit was a study in flustered, happy awkwardness. He couldn’t seem to look Lando directly in the eye, but a small, dazed smile kept playing on his lips. When he left, he didn’t say “bye, friend” or “see you later.” He just said, “Thanks, Lando,” with a weight that meant everything.
As soon as the door closed, Lando slumped against the back counter, pressing his still-tingling hand to his chest. He was a goner. Fully, completely, irrevocably gone on Oscar Piastri.
Charles called that evening. “So? How was your day with your friend?”
Lando, sprawled on his bed staring at the ceiling, didn’t even have the energy to protest the teasing. “He held my hand,” he said, his voice dreamy.
A beat of silence. Then, Charles’s squeal was so high-pitched Lando had to hold the phone away from his ear. “HE DID?! DETAILS! NOW!”
“It wasn’t like that,” Lando said, but he was grinning so hard his face hurt. “He was tired. He was telling me how he thinks about… about the shop smell… to calm down. And I touched his hand. And then he held mine. Just for a minute. It was… it was everything.”
Charles’s voice softened. “Oh, Lando. That is everything. That is better than a grand gesture. That is quiet and real.”
“I know,” Lando breathed. “I think… I think I need to tell him. About the scent. About everything. It’s not fair to let him keep thinking it’s some magical shop aura.”
“Are you sure?” Charles asked, gently. “It is a big thing. It changes the context.”
“That’s just it,” Lando said, conviction solidifying in his chest. “I don’t want there to be a different context. I just want it to be us. And for that, there can’t be any secrets based on something as stupid as a smell.” He paused. “Well. My stupid, curse-of-my-life, apparently very calming smell.”
Charles laughed. “Okay. But plan it. Do not just blurt it out when he is buying sour worms. Make it special. For both of you.”
Lando nodded, even though Charles couldn’t see him.
He would. He’d make it special. Because Oscar, with his sleepy confessions and his gentle hand-holding and his respect that asked for nothing, deserved something special.
The 'friend' zone was a lovely place to visit. But Lando was ready, more than ready, to build a home somewhere else. With him.
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It was a Wednesday. Oscar always came by on Wednesdays, usually around 3:30 PM, after his Materials Lab. It was a ritual as reliable as the sunrise.
Lando had spent the morning in a state of fizzy anticipation, a feeling that had become as familiar as the scent of sugar in the shop. He’d even worn a new hoodie—a soft, forest green one that brought out the honey in his eyes, or so Charles had squealed over FaceTime that morning. He’d told Charles to shut up, but he’d left it on.
3:45 PM. No Oscar.
Lando straightened the licorice allsorts for the tenth time, the cheerful multicoloured disks a mockery of his growing unease.
4:00 PM. Still no Oscar.
He re-alphabetised the international chocolate bar section with militant precision. (Who put the Swiss chocolate before the Swedish? Amateurs. Didn’t they know the alphabet continued past ‘S’?)
The task felt hollow. The silence in the shop, usually comforting, began to press in on him. The soft hum of the cooler was too loud.
4:15 PM.
A cold, slimy feeling started to curl in Lando’s stomach, coiling around the hopeful butterflies and choking them. Rationalizations popped up like weeds, each more pathetic than the last.
Lab ran late. Professor kept him back. He had to meet with George.
Then, the darker thoughts, vines of insecurity that strangled the rational ones: Maybe he forgot. Forgotten Wednesdays, forgotten candy, forgotten… me.
The worst thought slithered in last, cold and cruel: Maybe he’s bored. Maybe the novelty of the cute, slightly feral candy shop omega had worn off. Maybe Oscar had finally realized there were other, less complicated omegas out there—omegas who were demure and sweet in the traditional sense, who didn’t have a potty mouth and a business plan for revolutionary patches, who didn’t carry the burden of a scent so distinctive it caused literal quests.
Maybe he’d found someone easier.
By 4:30, Lando was a puddle of miserable anxiety slumped over the counter, chin cradled in his hands, staring at the door with the tragic intensity of a forgotten puppy in a pet shop window.
Max, who was doing inventory in the back, had come out twice, taken one look at Lando’s despondent face, opened his mouth, closed it, and wordlessly retreated back to the safety of cardboard boxes.
"He’s just busy", Lando told the empty air, his own voice sounding small in the sugary silence. He has a life. A big, smart, engineering life with bridges and differential equations. A life that doesn’t, and shouldn’t, revolve around sour belts and a part-time candy clerk with a chip on his shoulder.
The self-criticism did nothing to ease the hollow ache in his chest.
His eyes, glazed with self-pity, drifted from the stubbornly still door to the large shop window.
The afternoon light was softening into gold. There was a small crowd gathering on the sidewalk just past the shop’s cheerful striped awning. Not unusual for the bustling street, but there was a tense, crackling energy to it that felt different from the usual tourist huddle. People weren’t just standing; they were rooted, necks craned, postures stiff.
Max came out of the back again, a box of jawbreakers in his arms. He followed Lando’s vacant gaze to the window and frowned, his senses evidently picking up on the discord outside.
“What’s that about?” he grunted, setting the box down with a thud.
“Dunno,” Lando mumbled, not really caring. His world had shrunk to the profound, aching absence of one specific, softly-spoken engineering student with a devastating smile. A world without Oscar in it at 4:30 PM on a Wednesday was a world out of orbit.
But then a flash of familiar, slightly-rumpled fabric caught his eye—a dark blue hoodie, the one Oscar wore when he’d been up all night studying, the one with a faint grease stain on the sleeve from a bike chain. Oscar’s hoodie.
Lando shot upright so fast he knocked a display of chocolate frogs askew.
His heart didn’t just lurch; it performed a frantic, terrified tap dance against his ribs. Oscar was in the crowd. And he wasn’t browsing or chatting. He was at the center of it. Lance Stroll was facing him, too close, his posture rigid and aggressive, that familiar sneer plastered on his face.
A taller guy with neat, almost fussy hair and a look of profound exasperation (George, Lando’s brain supplied, piecing together Oscar’s rants) was trying to wedge himself between them, hands up in a placating gesture that was being utterly ignored.
Every instinct in Lando’s body screamed danger. This wasn’t a classroom debate. This was primal, street-level hostility. The air outside seemed to vibrate with it, even through the glass.
Without a single conscious thought, acting on pure protective adrenaline, Lando slapped a scent patch on the side of his neck—a generic, beta-mimicking one he kept for emergencies under the counter. He didn’t want his own scent complicating whatever volatile alpha nonsense was happening out there. He just needed to get to Oscar.
He bolted out from behind the counter, a green blur of panic.
“Hey!” Max barked, dropping a jawbreaker. It hit the floor and rolled under a shelf with a series of loud clacks. But Lando was already gone, the shop door swinging violently behind him.
The cold afternoon air hit Lando’s heated face like a slap. The scene was a hundred times worse up close. The tension was a live wire, and the small ring of onlookers formed a grim arena.
“—just admit you can’t handle the pressure, Piastri!” Lance was sneering, his voice loud and dripping with contempt, meant for an audience.
He gave Oscar’s shoulder a hard, two-handed shove, a cheap move meant to provoke. Oscar stumbled back a step on the uneven pavement, his face a mask of tightly controlled fury. His hands were clenched at his sides, white-knuckled, but he didn’t shove back. Not yet. Lando could see the effort it took, the way Oscar was swallowing his instincts, trying to be the bigger person.
“This isn’t about handling pressure, Lance, it’s about you not doing the work!” Oscar shot back, his voice strained but clear, cutting through the murmur of the crowd. “George and I are done carrying you! The pylon specs are wrong, and if you submit them, we all fail. It’s not personal; it’s physics!”
“Carrying me?” Lance threw his head back and laughed, a nasty, hollow sound. “My designs are what’s getting us the ‘A’. The innovation, the vision. Your little equations are just the footnotes. The boring fine print everyone skips.”
He took a step closer, invading Oscar’s space again, his voice dropping to a venomous hiss the crowd had to strain to hear, but Lando caught every word.
“Everyone knows the truth, anyway. You’re only in the advanced program because they need quota students who aren’t… traditional. You know. Loud, dominant, real alphas. You soften the department’s image. A charity case.”
Oscar flinched as if physically struck. The controlled fury on his face flickered, replaced for a heart-stopping second by raw, gut-punched hurt. George grabbed Lance’s arm, his own pleasant, rain-fresh scent spiking with anger. “Lance, for God’s sake, shut up! That’s enough!”
But Lance, seeing he’d drawn blood with his words, grinned, a predator’s smile. He shook George off and looked past Oscar, his pale eyes deliberately scanning the storefronts until they landed on the cheerful, striped awning of Leclerc’s Confections. His smirk turned venomous, calculated.
“Or what, Piastri?” Lance’s voice rose again, theatrical. “You’ll run back to your little candy store? Hide behind the counter with that tart who works there? The one who always smells like he’s trying so hard to be something… special?”
He made a show of sniffing the air with disgust, even though Lando’s patch made him smell like nothing more than clean cotton. “What’s his name again? Larry? Lenny?”
That was it.
Something in Oscar shattered. All the careful control, all the pacifism, all the years of taking similar jabs about his masculinity, his sweetness, his very nature, crystallised into one white-hot point of fury.
“DON’T YOU FUCKING TALK ABOUT HIM!”
The roar that tore from Oscar’s throat was raw, guttural, and utterly unlike any sound Lando had ever heard him make. It wasn’t an alpha bellow; it was a protective snarl, pure and undiluted. All pretense of calm evaporated.
Oscar lunged forward, not with a wild swing, but with a powerful, focused shove that planted both hands on Lance’s chest and sent the bigger alpha staggering backwards, his expensive shoes scrabbling for purchase.
Lance, off-balance, humiliated in front of the growing crowd, and now incandescent with rage, swung back. It wasn’t a clean punch—it was a wild, haymaker arc—but it was heavy and it was hard. It caught Oscar squarely on the mouth with a sickening, wet smack.
Oscar’s head snapped back. He stumbled, his legs buckling, and fell to the wet pavement with a thud that made Lando’s own bones ache. A thin, bright trickle of blood immediately welled from his split lip, stark against his pale skin.
A collective gasp, a mix of horror and voyeuristic thrill, rippled through the crowd. George yelled “YOU IDIOT!” and shoved Lance back, hard, finally getting his solid frame between them.
Lance shook George off, his chest heaving, standing over Oscar like a conqueror. The look on his face was one of ugly triumph.
“Look at you,” he spat, his voice dripping with scorn. “On the ground. Bleeding. Is that what an alpha does? Get put down by one punch?” He crouched slightly, bringing his face closer to Oscar’s, his voice dropping to a taunt meant for Oscar’s ears only, but Lando, frozen just feet away, heard every syllable.
“Maybe my father was right. You don’t have the spine for this field. Or for anything that requires a backbone. You’re not a real alpha at all. Just a pretender. A sweet, soft pretender with a sweet tooth.”
Oscar, dazed on the ground, one hand pressed to his bleeding mouth, looked up at Lance. And Lando saw it—the moment the words landed, deeper and more brutal than the punch ever could. It wasn’t just anger that flashed in Oscar’s eyes. It was a deep, welling pool of hurt, of old wounds ripped viciously open.
It was the look of a boy who’d heard that particular poison all his life—too soft, not enough, not a real alpha—from peers, from distant relatives, from the voice in his own head on bad days. It was the look of someone who had built a life in spite of those words, and to have them weaponized here, now, by this spoiled brute… it broke something in his expression.
His face didn’t crumple in rage, but in a flash of devastating vulnerability before he fiercely tried to mask it again.
That was it. That was the line that now broke Lando.
White-hot, incandescent rage exploded behind his eyes.
It was a supernova of fury that burned away every ounce of his own anxiety, every shred of self-doubt, every fear about his scent or his worth. It vaporized the cold slime in his stomach and replaced it with molten lava.
No one. No one got to do that to his Oscar. His sweet, brilliant, gentle Oscar who defended people with spreadsheets and treated candy with reverence and looked at Lando like he’d hung the moon made of marzipan.
The world narrowed to a tunnel. At one end, Lance Stroll’s smug, cruel face and at the other, Oscar on the ground, hurt in ways a split lip could never represent.
Lando didn’t remember moving.
There was no decision, no plan. One second he was a statue of shock, the next he was in motion. He was just suddenly there, stepping into the space between the fallen Oscar and the gloating Lance, placing his own body as a shield. He wasn’t thinking about dynamics, about size, about anything. He was pure, unadulterated instinct.
“OI! WANKER!”
Lando’s voice cut through the murmuring crowd like a knife, sharp, clear, and laced with a venom that would make his old rugby coach proud.
Lance blinked, his triumphant expression shifting to one of amused contempt as he looked down at Lando. He straightened up, towering over him. “What’s this?” he drawled, a nasty smile playing on his lips. “You here to cry for your boyfri—”
He never finished the word.
Lando didn’t debate. He didn’t posture. He didn’t swing for the jaw, where Lance would expect it.
He used the oldest, most democratic, most equalising weapon in the book, perfected over years of dealing with bullies in boarding school hallways. He drew his leg back—in his comfortable, thick-soled boots, perfect for the task—and drove his foot upwards with every ounce of strength, every bit of rage, every iota of love he had for the boy bleeding on the pavement behind him.
The kick was flawless. It made perfect, punishing, intimate contact with Lance Stroll’s crotch.
The sound Lance made was not human. It was a high-pitched, wheezing shriek of pure, unadulterated agony that died into a choked gurgle. All the blood and arrogance drained from his face, leaving it a ghastly grey-green. His eyes bulged, comically wide with shock and pain.
He didn’t just crumple, he folded in on himself like a cheap lawn chair, hitting the pavement with a heavy thud where he immediately curled into a tight, moaning ball, hands clutched protectively between his legs.
The crowd, which had been buzzing with tension, went dead silent for a full three seconds. Then it erupted. Shock. Gasping laughter hastily swallowed. A few low whistles of awe. Someone at the back muttered, “Damn, omega’s got a kick on him.”
George stared, his mouth hanging open, his placating hands now frozen in mid-air.
Lando wasn’t done. The fire was still blazing. He stood over the writhing, pathetic form of Lance Stroll, who was now making soft, mewling sounds, and pointed a furious, trembling finger at him.
“YOU LISTEN TO ME, YOU OVER-GROOMED, TRUST-FUND TWAT!” Lando’s voice was a whip-crack, every word dripping with fury. “YOU DON’T GET TO TALK TO HIM LIKE THAT! YOU DON’T GET TO TOUCH HIM! HE’S TEN OF YOU! HE’S A THOUSAND TIMES THE ALPHA YOU’LL EVER BE, YOU SPOILED, USELESS, COCK-WOMBLING ASSHOLE!”
He took a step closer, and Lance, through his pain, flinched back. “HIS SPINE IS MADE OF FUCKING TITANIUM COMPARED TO YOUR WET NOODLE OF AN EXISTENCE! HE’S SMARTER, KINDER, AND A BETTER PERSON IN HIS PINKY TOE THAN YOU ARE IN YOUR ENTIRE BLOODLINE! YOU HEAR ME?!”
Spittle flew from Lando’s mouth. He was trembling with the force of his emotion. “AND ANOTHER THING! IF YOU EVER COME NEAR HIM AGAIN, IF YOU EVER SO MUCH AS LOOK AT THIS SHOP, I SWEAR TO GOD I’LL FIND A BIGGER BOOT AND I’LL FIND A MORE SENSITIVE TARGET! I’LL REDEFINE ‘KICKED IN THE TEETH’ FOR YOU, YOU ABSOLUTE WASTE OF CARBON!”
He was vibrating, ready to start aiming for kidneys, ribs, anything. He was vaguely aware of Oscar pushing himself up to his elbows behind him, of Oscar saying his name, but the red haze was too thick.
He barely registered the strong, familiar arms that suddenly wrapped around his waist from behind, pulling him back from the whimpering heap that was Lance.
“Lando. Lando.”
Oscar’s voice was in his ear, breathless, a little slurred from his swelling lip, but insistent.
“LET ME GO, OSCAR!” Lando yelled, trying to wiggle free, his boots scuffing the pavement. “I’M NOT FINISHED! I’M GONNA TURN HIS FAMILY JEWELS INTO FUCKING DUST! I’LL MAKE SURE THE STROLL LINE ENDS RIGHT HERE ON THE PAVEMENT!”
Oscar’s grip only tightened, firm but not hurtful. “Lando, stop. It’s done.”
“IT’S NOT DONE UNTIL I HEAR HIM APOLOGISE TO YOU THROUGH SOBS!” Lando yelled, kicking his legs out, his boots connecting with nothing but air.
Oscar didn’t bother with a fireman’s carry. Instead, in one swift motion, he simply bent and wrapped his arms around Lando’s waist, hoisting him up off his feet entirely, holding him against his chest like a furious, oversized and wriggling teddy bear. Lando’s boots left the ground, his momentum stolen.
“HEY! PUT ME DOWN! OSCAR PIASTRI, I WILL END YOU NEXT! UNHAND ME!” Lando shrieked, pounding his fists against Oscar’s back, legs cycling violently in the air. He was a whirlwind of limbs and profanity.
Oscar just adjusted his hold, securing him tighter, and started walking backwards toward the shop, carrying his kicking, screaming burden as if he were lugging an angry, spitting cat away from a fight. Lando’s colourful threats against the Stroll dynasty grew louder, more creative, and increasingly anatomically impossible.
“Max!” Oscar called out, his voice strained but firm, turning his head to avoid a wild swing from Lando’s arm, his voice carrying effortlessly over Lando’s continued, inventive stream of threats against the entire Stroll lineage and all their future children. Lando was now calmly analysing the structural integrity of various Stroll-family anatomical features.
Max, who had come out to stand in the doorway, arms crossed over his broad chest, took in the scene with the impassive gaze of a seasoned bouncer—the gaping crowd, George now kneeling next to the groaning, fetal-positioned Lance looking utterly helpless, and his small, ferocious employee being carted off like an angry sack of potatoes by the bloodied engineering student.
A slow, grim, utterly approving smile spread across Max’s face.
“Yeah,” Max said, uncrossing his arms and cracking his knuckles with a sound like popping rocks. “I’ll handle it. You handle the feral kitten.” He nodded towards the inside of the shop. “First aid kit’s under the counter. He’s gonna need to come down from the ceiling.”
And with that, Oscar carried the still-wriggling Lando through the door of Leclerc’s Confections, kicking it shut behind them with his foot. The solid thud of the door finally cut off Lando’s furious, creative, and decidedly un-omega-like tirade, plunging them into the sudden, profound silence of the warm, sugary shop.
He set Lando down just inside the door, but the omega was still a live wire, buzzing with residual rage. He whirled around, pointing a trembling finger back towards the street, his chest heaving. He couldn't seem to stand still, energy vibrating off him in painful waves.
“I could have taken him! I was just getting started! Did you see his face? I should have gone for the solar plexus next, or maybe just stamped on his ego, since it’s his biggest organ—” Lando ranted, pacing a tight, furious circle on the spot, his hands flexing at his sides as if they still yearned to connect with something.
“Or his throat, I could have gone for his throat, silenced that nasty little mouth for good—”
“Lando,” Oscar said, his voice still a bit thick from the punch. It was quiet, but it cut through the noise.
“—absolutely insufferable prick, talking to you like that, touching you, I swear I’ll find out where he lives and replace all his hair gel with treacle, I’ll superglue his stupid designer shoes to the floor, I’ll—”
“Lando.”
“—and his stupid shoes, who wears suede in this weather, the absolute, monumental, galaxy-sized bellend—”
Oscar reached out. He didn't grab or shake. He moved slowly, giving Lando every chance to pull away, and simply cupped Lando’s flushed, furious cheeks in both his hands. His palms were warm, his touch grounding. His thumbs came up, stroking gently over the heated skin of Lando’s cheekbones, a soft, rhythmic counterpoint to Lando's frantic energy.
“Lando,” he whispered, his voice so tender it seemed to glow in the quiet shop. “Look at me. Please.”
Lando’s rant cut off with a choked gasp, dying in his throat. He was forced to meet Oscar’s eyes, which were warm, a little dazed from the hit, but profoundly, achingly soft. They held Lando’s gaze, steady and sure, a silent anchor in the storm of his emotions.
“I’m okay,” Oscar whispered, his thumbs still moving in those gentle, soothing arcs. A faint, pained smile touched his eyes. “I’m fine. See? All in one piece.” He gave Lando’s face the softest of squeezes. “Thanks to you.”
The fight drained out of Lando all at once, leaving him feeling shaky, hollow, and suddenly, terribly young.
His fierce gaze, which had been burning with the fire of a thousand suns, dropped from Oscar’s eyes. It flickered over his face—the concerned brow, the smudge of dirt on his temple from the pavement—and then landed, with a sickening lurch, on his mouth.
On the swollen, split lip, the bright, shocking bead of blood that had welled at the centre and now traced a tiny, cruel path towards his chin.
All the fury, the glorious, righteous anger, transformed in an instant into a sharp, wrenching worry that felt like a cold hand squeezing his heart.
“Your lip,” Lando breathed, the words barely audible. His own hands came up, covering Oscar’s where they still cradled his face. His fingers were ice-cold against Oscar’s warm skin. “Oh, god, Oscar… your lip.”
He pulled away as if burnt, the need to do something, to fix this, overriding everything else.
“First aid kit! Max said it’s under the—where is it—!” He dove behind the counter, movements jerky and uncoordinated. He knocked over a display of lollipops with a clatter that echoed in the silence, not even flinching at the sound. He emerged a second later, victorious, waving the white plastic box like a lifeline.
“Sit,” Lando ordered, his voice wobbling dangerously. He pointed a trembling finger at the stool behind the counter.
Oscar obeyed, lowering himself onto the stool. He watched Lando’s frantic movements, a small, pained smile touching his ruined lips. “It’s really not that bad,” he tried, his voice gentle. He winced as the movement tugged at the cut.
“Shut up,” Lando whispered, but there was no force behind it, only a desperate plea.
“Don’t talk. You’ll make it bleed more.” His hands, which had been shaking moments before, became surprisingly steady as he popped the kit open. He rummaged through it, his focus absolute. He fumbled for an antiseptic wipe, tore the packet open with his teeth, and then leaned in, his brow furrowed in a trench of intense concentration.
Oscar watched him, the smile lingering in his eyes, softening them. Lando was so close Oscar could see the individual flecks of gold in his honey-brown irises, could count the faint freckles scattered across his nose. He could feel the faint, anxious puffs of Lando’s breath against his skin.
“My hero,” Oscar murmured, the words slightly distorted by his swollen lip.
“I said shut up,” Lando repeated, his voice barely a breath now. He dabbed so gently at the cut, his other hand coming up almost of its own volition to cradle Oscar’s jaw, tilting his face carefully into the light.
His touch was infinitely tender, a stark, breathtaking contrast to the violent fury of moments before. It was the touch of someone handling something precious. “I’m so sorry,” Lando mumbled, his eyes fixed on his work, on the angry red line he was cleaning.
“What on earth for?” Oscar asked quietly, staying as still as a statue under Lando’s ministrations, not wanting to break the spell.
“For this!” Lando’s voice hitched. He finished cleaning the cut and reached for a small, sterile plaster, his fingers beginning to tremble again. The clinical focus was slipping. The adrenaline was gone, leaving behind a raw, vulnerable emptiness that was quickly filling with a crashing wave of delayed emotion.
“For him hurting you! For… for everything!” His breath caught on a sob he tried desperately to swallow, turning it into a shaky inhale.
“Lan, it’s okay, really—”
“It’s NOT!” The dam broke. A single, hot tear escaped, tracing a scalding path down Lando’s cheek. He blinked rapidly, but another followed, and another. He sniffled violently, trying to line up the plaster through his blurring vision.
“He doesn’t know you. He doesn’t know anything. You’re the best person. The best alpha I’ve ever met.” His voice cracked on the word. “You’re… you’re Oscar. And he… he made you look so sad.”
A full-blown sob wracked him, shuddering through his shoulders. He gave up on the plaster, letting it fall to the counter, and dropped his forehead against Oscar’s uninjured shoulder instead, his body trembling.
“I hate him. I hate him so much for hurting you. I hate that he said those things. I hate that he made you feel like that.”
“Hey, hey,” Oscar murmured, his own eyes stinging. He wrapped his arms carefully around Lando, pulling him into a proper hug, ignoring the twinge in his lip. He rested his cheek against Lando’s soft, fragrant curls, cradling his warmth as if trying to absorb it into himself.
“Thank you,” he whispered into Lando’s hair. “Thank you for being so… magnificently, terrifyingly wonderful on my behalf.” He felt a wet, half-laugh, half-sob vibrate against his neck. “No one’s ever done that for me before. Gone full knight-in-shining-armour. Or, knight-in-doc-martens, I guess. No one’s ever fought for me like that.”
Lando clung to him, crying quietly now, the fear and rage leaching out of him in quiet tears that soaked into Oscar’s hoodie.
Oscar just held him, one hand coming up to cradle the back of Lando’s head, the other rubbing slow, soothing circles on his back. He whispered soft, comforting nothings—it’s alright, I’ve got you, you were amazing—his voice a low, steady rumble in the silent shop.
The world outside, with its crowds and violence, ceased to exist. It was just this—the warm light, the smell of candy and Lando, and the profound intimacy of holding someone while they fell apart for you.
He pressed a gentle, careful kiss to the top of Lando’s head, letting his lips linger in the soft curls.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Lando’s shaky breaths evened out. The violent tremors subsided into occasional hiccuping sniffles. He pulled back just enough to look up at Oscar, his face blotchy and tear-streaked, his eyelashes spiky and wet. He looked utterly wrecked, and more beautiful than anything Oscar had ever seen.
Oscar’s heart clenched so tightly it hurt. He used his thumb, carefully, to wipe a lingering tear from the apple of Lando’s cheek. His touch was feather-light.
For a long moment, they just looked at each other in the quiet aftermath, faces close, sharing the same air. The storm had passed, leaving a strange, soft peace.
“Hi,” Lando whispered, the word hoarse from crying and yelling.
A slow, tender smile spread across Oscar’s face, making his split lip sting. He didn’t care. “Hi,” he whispered back, his thumb stroking Lando’s cheek once more.
The sheer normalcy of it, after the chaos, made Lando let out a wet, shaky little laugh. He dropped his forehead against Oscar’s good shoulder again, just for a second, breathing him in.
He could smell the clean cotton of Oscar’s hoodie, the faint metallic hint of blood, and—underneath it all—the warm, calming scent of green tea and linen that was purely, wonderfully Oscar.
He straightened up, his hands coming to rest lightly on Oscar’s shoulders, needing the connection. “You’re really okay?”
“I’m really okay,” Oscar affirmed, his hands settling on Lando’s waist. “Better than okay. I have my own personal bodyguard who fights with his feet. It’s very efficient.”
Lando swatted his arm, the gesture weak but fond. “Shut up. Don’t make jokes. I was scared.”
“I know,” Oscar said, his smile softening. “Me too. For you. When you stepped in front of him…” He shook his head, the memory flashing in his eyes. “Don’t ever do that again. Or, if you do, warn me so I can be ready to carry you away faster.”
“You carried me like a sack of flour,” Lando grumbled, but he was leaning into Oscar’s touch, his thumbs rubbing small circles on Oscar’s collarbones.
“A very angry, very eloquent sack of flour,” Oscar teased gently, his gaze so warm it felt like a physical caress. “Well, Mission: Rescue Oscar was a resounding success. Though I think you might have broken the Geneva Convention with that kick.”
Lando hit his shoulder again, a proper smack this time. “He deserved it! And I’ll do it again! Don’t test me, Piastri.” But he was fighting a smile, the terror and fury finally receding, replaced by the warm, giddy relief of having Oscar here, whole, and teasing him.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Oscar murmured, his voice dropping again. His gaze was so warm, so focused on Lando’s face. His hands tightened just a fraction on Lando’s waist.
Their eyes locked again. The air in the shop, already thick with emotion, seemed to grow heavier, warmer, charged with a new kind of electricity. The aftermath of the fight, the shared vulnerability, the soft teasing—it all had built up into this single, suspended moment. Oscar’s gaze dropped, almost helplessly, to Lando’s lips, which were pink and bitten and smiling just a little now.
Lando’s breath hitched, a tiny, shaky sound. He didn’t look away. He leaned in infinitesimally, a silent answer to a question that hadn’t been voiced.
Oscar started to close the distance, his movements slow, giving Lando every chance to retreat. His good hand came up to cradle the back of Lando’s neck, his fingers tangling gently in the soft hair at his nape. His touch was a question, a plea.
Their lips were a mere breath apart. Oscar could feel the warmth of Lando’s skin, could see the flecks of amber in his eyes from this impossibly close distance. The world narrowed to this point of almost-contact. Lando’s eyes fluttered closed—
And that's when the shop door burst open with enough force to slam the bell against the wall with a deafening crash.
“WHAT IN THE EVER-LOVING HELL HAPPENED OUT THERE?! I HEARD PIASTRI GOT JUMPED BY A WALKING HAIR GEL AD!”
Logan Sargeant barrelled into the shop, his broad frame filling the doorway, his usual bored expression replaced by one of dramatic, protective outrage. His scent, all stormy sea salt and adrenaline, flooded the space.
Right behind him, George Russell entered with a calmer, though deeply exasperated, demeanor. He looked like a man who had just spent twenty minutes mediating between a feral alpha and a weeping trust fund baby (which did happen), and was now being dragged into another drama. His scent was a crisp, clean ozone, like the air after a rainstorm—a surprisingly calm and logical alpha presence.
Lando and Oscar sprang apart like scalded cats.
“Logan, for God’s sake, lower your voice,” George sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He gave Oscar a sympathetic once-over. “I see you’ve been patched up. Good. Lando, I assume? George.” He gave Lando a brief, polite nod, which was surreal given Lando had just been about to kiss his best friend.
Logan ignored George, zeroing in on Oscar’s face. “Your lip! He got you good, huh? I knew that Stroll ponce was all talk and cheap shots! Where is he? Is he still breathing or did someone do the world a favour?”
His eyes landed on Lando, taking in his red-rimmed eyes and furious posture from earlier, which hadn’t entirely faded. A slow, impressed grin spread across Logan’s face.
“Wait. It was you, wasn’t it? The omega who nutted him? The guys in the crowd were talking about a green demon with a lethal boot. That was YOU?”
Lando, still off-balance from the almost-kiss and the sudden invasion, just crossed his arms and lifted his chin. “He deserved worse.”
Logan let out a loud, barking laugh and clapped Lando on the shoulder, nearly knocking him over. “I KNEW I liked you! Oscar’s been going on and on about the candy shop and the smart, funny guy who works there, but he left out the part where you’re a one-omega wrecking crew! Respect, man. Serious respect.”
Oscar flushed bright red. “Logan, shut up.”
George rolled his eyes, moving to examine Oscar’s lip with a clinical eye. “The plaster’s crooked. May I?” At Oscar’s nod, George carefully peeled it off and reapplied it with surgeon-like precision.
“There. Stroll’s gone home to cry to his father, presumably. I smoothed it over with the crowd, said it was a disagreement over academic integrity that got physical. Which is technically true.” He shot Oscar a look. “Though next time, perhaps let your terrifying friend here handle the physical part from the start. He seems more… strategically effective.”
Lando finally found his voice, looking between the two new alphas. “You’re not… mad?”
“Mad?” Logan boomed. “That was the most entertainment I’ve had all semester! Stroll’s been asking for a takedown for years. Just didn’t expect it to come via a candy shop omega’s right boot.” He grinned at Lando, all earlier dramatic concern replaced by pure glee. “You’re a legend.”
Oscar watched Lando, who was looking bewildered but secretly pleased at Logan’s praise. George finished his first aid and gave Oscar’s shoulder a firm, supportive squeeze. “You alright, truly? Not just the lip.”
Oscar met his friend’s steady gaze and nodded. “Yeah. I am now.” His eyes found Lando’s again, and a world of meaning passed between them—gratitude, unfinished business, a promise.
The moment was broken, but the charge in the air remained. They had an audience now. But as Lando looked at Oscar, sitting there with his crooked, grateful smile and his perfectly applied plaster, surrounded by an alpha friend who was a drama king and another who was a calm strategist, he realized something.
Oscar’s world wasn’t just equations and candy. It was full of good people. And maybe, there was a place in it for a foul-mouthed, ball-kicking, aspiring entrepreneur with a scent that drove him quietly crazy.
⋆｡‧˚ʚ🍭ɞ˚‧｡⋆
Four days before Christmas, and the world outside Leclerc’s Confections was a blur of frantic cheer—last-minute shoppers, twinkling lights, and the constant, tinny soundtrack of carols. Inside, however, the shop was a tomb of festive failure.
It was closed for the evening, the ‘CLOSED’ sign turned on the door. The usual warm, sugary glow was replaced by the stark, unforgiving light of a single utility lamp, which shone down on a battlefield of construction paper, half-inflated balloons, tangled tinsel, and a spreading pool of crimson glitter that looked vaguely like a crime scene.
In the middle of it all sat Lando Norris, a glue gun held limply in one hand, a lopsided, sad-looking gingerbread man cutout drooping from the other. His brow was furrowed in profound despair. A stray piece of glitter was stuck to his cheek like a tear he was too proud to shed.
Charles and Max had flown to Monaco two days prior after a panicked call, Charles’s grandfather was ill, and while it wasn’t critical, Charles being Charles, had immediately spiralled into a guilt-ridden frenzy about not being there for family.
He’d left Lando with tearful, last-minute instructions to “make the shop magical for Christmas Eve! Garlands! A display! Something whimsical! You have such vision, mon cher!”
The problem was, Lando’s vision was for business models and material tensile strength, not for whimsy.
Craft was not his thing. It had never been his thing. He was a man of spreadsheets and prototypes, not pipe cleaners and PVA glue. The few attempts he’d made looked less like festive cheer and more like abstract art interpretations of holiday stress.
The garland was a tangled rat’s nest. The balloon arch had deflated into a melancholic slump. The gingerbread man’s gumdrop buttons had slid off, leaving tragic glue trails. He was one bent candy cane away from a full-blown meltdown.
“Why?” he whispered to the empty shop, his voice echoing slightly. “Why does ‘whimsical’ have to be so… structural? It’s not holding any weight! It just has to look happy!”
He dropped the glue gun with a clatter and put his head in his hands, seriously contemplating just buying a bunch of pre-made decorations and pretending he’d crafted them. But Charles would know. Charles had a sixth sense for artistic fraud.
He was so deep in his pit of crafting despair that he didn’t hear the soft tap at the glass door at first. The second tap was louder, more insistent.
Lando’s head shot up. Peering through the glass, his face slightly squished against it, was Oscar Piastri. His nose was red from the cold, a beanie pulled low over his ears, and he was holding up a paper bag from the bakery down the street. He waved, a tentative, hopeful little gesture.
A surge of pure, unadulterated relief flooded Lando. He scrambled up from the floor, nearly upending a pot of glitter, and hurried to unlock the door.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Lando breathed as Oscar stepped in, bringing a gust of cold, clean air with him. “Or maybe just a sight for someone whose eyes are burning from glitter fumes.”
Oscar’s gaze swept over the apocalyptic craft scene, his eyes widening slightly. He took in Lando’s defeated posture, the glitter on his cheek, the general air of creative carnage. A slow, understanding smile spread across his face.
“I was just walking by, saw the light on. Brought you a pain au chocolat. Thought you might need… fortification.” He held out the bag. “But it looks like you need a search and rescue team.”
“You have no idea,” Lando groaned, taking the bag and inhaling the buttery, chocolatey scent. It was the first good smell in here in hours. “Charles has entrusted me with making the shop ‘magical’. I am single-handedly destroying the magic of Christmas.”
Oscar set his bag down and carefully stepped around the glitter puddle. He picked up the drooping gingerbread man, tilting his head. “He looks… melancholic.”
“He’s given up on life, just like me,” Lando said, sinking back onto the floor with a thump.
Oscar knelt beside him, his movements calm and deliberate. He surveyed the materials, the good quality card stock, the vibrant rolls of ribbon, the bags of unused ornaments. “Okay,” he said, his voice shifting into a gentle, problem-solving tone Lando recognised from discussions about bridge load. “Talk me through the vision. What’s the end goal?”
“Something… overhead. Garlands. Something on the counter. A centrepiece. Whimsical. Not… this.” Lando gestured helplessly at the disaster zone.
Oscar nodded, thinking. He reached for the tangled garland, his long fingers surprisingly deft as he began to patiently unpick the knots. “Garlands are just repeating patterns. It’s a modular design problem. We can do that.” He glanced at Lando. “You heat the glue gun?”
Lando blinked. “You… you want to help?”
“I’m an engineer, Lando,” Oscar said, a small, earnest smile on his face as he successfully freed a length of garland. “I see a design challenge and materials. This is just applied physics with glitter. Hand me those pinecone ornaments.”
And so, they got to work. Lando, under Oscar’s calm direction, became the assistant. He cut lengths of ribbon to Oscar’s precise measurements. He sorted ornaments by colour and size. He held things steady.
And Oscar… Oscar created.
It wasn’t just competence. It was a quiet, fluid artistry.
Where Lando saw a mess, Oscar saw potential. He took the sad gingerbread men and, with a few precise dots of glue and some cleverly placed silver balls, turned them into a charming, rhythmic bunting. He constructed a garland that was perfectly balanced, mixing textures and colours in a way that looked effortless and elegant. He even salvaged the balloon arch, reinforcing its structure with a hidden framework of floral wire he produced from his pocket like a magician.
Lando watched, his initial relief morphing into sheer, open-mouthed awe. Oscar’s hands were sure and careful, his focus absolute. He didn’t just make things; he made them beautiful.
“You’re… really good at this,” Lando said softly, handing Oscar a sprig of faux holly.
Oscar’s hands stilled for a moment. A faint pink tinge crept up his neck, visible even in the low light. He kept his eyes on the garland he was weaving. “Yeah. I, um. I’ve always liked making things. With my hands. Not just equations.”
“It’s more than liking,” Lando pressed gently, sensing a door cracking open. “You’re an artist.”
Oscar let out a soft, self-deprecating huff. “Don’t let my old rugby team hear you say that.” He attached the holly, his movements slowing. “When I was a kid… I loved it. Drawing, building models, pottery class. My mum still has these truly hideous ashtrays I made her. She displays them proudly.” He smiled, but it was a little sad.
“Then I presented as an alpha. And it was like… there was a script. Sports. Being loud. Being the ‘leader’. Crafts, art… it was for omegas, or for betas who weren’t ‘real’ men. It was soft. Silly.”
Lando’s heart ached. He sat quietly, listening, holding a bundle of ribbon in his lap.
“I got teased. A lot. ‘Piastri’s gonna knit you a sweater.’ ‘Going to art class to look at the omega girls?’ That kind of thing.” Oscar’s voice was low, matter-of-fact, but Lando could hear the old hurt buried in the words. “So I stopped. I joined the rugby team. I got okay at it. I focused on maths and science because that was ‘acceptable’ alpha intelligence. Building bridges… it’s creative, in a way. It’s making something. But it’s also strong, logical, alpha. It’s a compromise.”
He finally looked up at Lando, his eyes vulnerable in a way Lando had only seen once before, on the pavement outside. “I still doodle in the margins of my notes. Sometimes I buy a model kit and build it in my room at 2 a.m. Like a secret.”
The confession hung in the glitter-filled air between them.
It was so honest, so tenderly offered. Lando understood secrets. He understood the weight of expectations based on a biological designation. But more than that, he felt a white-hot spike of protective anger—not the explosive kind from the street fight, but a deep, simmering fury at a world that had made his sweet, talented boy feel he had to hide something so beautiful.
He didn’t just reach out. He surged forward, gripping Oscar’s sticky, glue-dotted wrist, his touch firm and anchoring. “Listen to me,” Lando said, his voice low and fierce, burning with conviction. “It’s not silly. It’s not soft. It’s a superpower.”
Oscar’s eyes widened, caught off guard by the intensity.
“They were wrong,” Lando continued, his words sharp and clear, cutting through years of whispered taunts. “Every single one of them. They were small, and jealous, and so fucking stupid they couldn’t see that creating something from nothing—whether it’s a bridge or a gingerbread bunting—is the strongest, most alpha thing you can do. It’s not hiding. What you’re doing right now?”
He waved his free hand at the elegant garland taking shape. “That’s not a secret shame. That’s a masterpiece. And anyone who ever made you feel otherwise can go choke on a bag of mouldy candy canes.”
He was breathing heavily, his own past frustrations with narrow-minded alphas lending fire to his words. He was defending Oscar’s right to be whole with the same ferocity he’d defended his body.
Oscar stared at him, his vulnerability now shimmering with something else—shock, awe, a dawning, profound relief. No one had ever put it like that. No one had ever fought for this part of him. His fingers tightened around Lando’s where they gripped his wrist, a silent, grateful squeeze.
“You’re making magic, Oscar,” Lando said again, his fierce tone softening into something just as potent and it was pure unwavering belief. “And you should be able to make it whenever you want. In broad daylight.”
The space between them seemed to hum with the aftermath of Lando’s declaration. Oscar’s thumb began to move, a slow, tentative stroke against the pulse point in Lando’s wrist. The air was thick with the scent of pine, hot glue, and something new—a fragile, blooming hope.
“Okay,” Oscar whispered, a real, unguarded smile finally touching his lips. “No more 2 a.m. secrets.”
He gave Lando’s hand a soft squeeze before letting go. “Now, come on. Your turn. I’ll teach you the sacred art of non-melancholic gingerbread assembly.”
The next hour was a masterclass in gentle guidance and utter, hilarious failure. Oscar, with infinite patience, showed Lando how to apply a dot of glue 'the size of a ladybug’s knee, not a dragon’s foot.' Lando’s ladybug’s knee inevitably looked like a dragon’s foot. He tried to thread ribbon through a bell, and somehow got the bell stuck on his own thumb, jingling pathetically as he waved his hand in panic.
Oscar laughed, a bright, free sound that filled the quiet shop. “You’re a menace with fine motor skills.”
“I’m an intellectual!” Lando protested, grinning as he finally wrestled the bell free. “My brain is for big ideas! Not for... for tiny shiny things!”
But under Oscar’s steady, encouraging gaze, Lando’s clumsy attempts began to feel less like failures and more like shared jokes. The air grew soft again, comfortable, threaded with easy laughter.
As they worked side-by-side on the counter display, the conversation drifted. Oscar asked about Lando’s studies, and Lando found himself saying more than he intended.
"...so business is good, it's fine, but honestly, it's just the framework," Lando said, gesturing with a glitter-dusted hand. "The real thing, the thing that gets me out of bed, is my project. My company."
Oscar, carefully wiring a sprig of holly, glanced up with open curiosity. "Yeah? What kind?"
And that was all the invitation Lando needed. It was like uncorking a bottle of fizzy, pressurized frustration and ambition that had been shaking inside him for years.
"Omega patches," Lando said, and the words began to tumble out in a passionate, unstoppable stream. "But not the shit ones that are out there now. The ones that feel like you've stuck a piece of medical tape soaked in regret to your neck. The ones made by alpha-run companies who think 'neutral scent' means 'smell like a sterile corridor' and 'comfort' means 'doesn't cause immediate bleeding.'"
Oscar's eyebrows climbed towards his hairline, his hands stilling. He had no clue. Of course he didn't. Why would he?
"They don't get it," Lando ranted, pacing now amidst the craft debris. "They don't get that maybe an omega doesn't want to smell like nothing. Maybe they want to smell like sandalwood, or rain, or vanilla, or fucking nothing if they choose, but it should be a choice, not a clinical mandate! And the material! It's like they design it to be the itchiest, most suffocating thing possible, probably because some alpha in a boardroom thinks discomfort is a fair price for 'modesty' or some archaic bullshit!"
He was on a roll, his voice rising with conviction. "My dad, he's got his own company, right? Massive. Millions. He could write a check and fund this in a second. Wants me to just come work for him, take over the 'family legacy.'"
Lando made air quotes, his expression sour. "But that's his legacy. His achievement. I don't want a handout. I don't want my success to be because my last name is on a building. I want to build it myself. From the ground up. With my own ideas, my own research, my own sweat. This job, my allowance—that's my seed money. For proper research into hypoallergenic adhesives, breathable membrane layers, sourced scents that don't smell like a chemical weapon..."
He finally stopped, chest heaving, realizing he'd been practically shouting in the quiet shop. He braced himself. For confusion. For a polite, glazed-over look. For the classic, 'That's nice, dear,' dismissal his dreams often received from people who didn't understand.
He looked at Oscar.
Oscar was just... watching him. His expression wasn't confused or patronizing. It was one of rapt, absorbed fascination. His eyes were wide, soft, and blazing with something that looked an awful lot like... pride. Pure, undiluted admiration.
"Wow," Oscar breathed, the word full of genuine awe.
Lando deflated a little, the anger seeping out, replaced by sudden self-consciousness. "Sorry. I just... I have a lot of feelings about adhesive backings."
"Don't apologize," Oscar said quickly, setting down his pliers. "That was... incredible. You have it all mapped out. The problem, the solution, the ethics, the funding strategy... Lando, that's not just a business. That's a revolution."
The words landed, warm and solid, in the center of Lando's chest. A revolution.
"You really think so?" Lando asked, his voice small.
"I know so," Oscar said, with utter certainty. He stood up, stepping over a pile of ribbon to get closer. "The way you talk about it... you're not just seeing a product. You're seeing people. You want to give them agency. That's... that's the most powerful thing I've ever heard."
He shook his head, a slow, fond smile spreading across his face, making his eyes crinkle. "And you're funding it with candy shop wages. That's the most badass thing I've ever heard."
Lando felt a blush burn from his neck to the roots of his hair. No one had ever called his dream 'badass' before.
"Yeah that's the other thing!" Lando barrelled on as if he realised a missed detail, the momentum of his passion carrying him forward again, needing Oscar to understand the full scope of everything, even the problems he was facing right now.
"The business side. I can design the best patch in the world, but what do I know about marketing? Supply chains? Branding? It's a total fucking nightmare to think about, and my dad's entire board would just look at me like I'm a kid playing CEO with my pocket money, and—"
"Logan."
The single, calm word cut through Lando's spiraling anxiety. He stopped mid-sentence, blinking at Oscar. "What?"
"Logan," Oscar repeated, a practical, problem-solving light in his eyes. "Logan Sargeant. My sometimes-annoying, overly-dramatic friend who burst in here the other day? He's a business major. Marketing focus."
Lando just stared, his mind trying to shift gears.
"He's actually really sharp about it when he's not being a theatrical idiot about his friends getting punched," Oscar continued, a small, fond smirk on his lips. "Seriously. Last semester, he came up with a guerrilla marketing campaign for a fake energy drink that went semi-viral on campus. He loves that stuff. And he'd do it for you in a heartbeat."
Lando's brain stuttered. "For... for me? Why?"
"Three reasons," Oscar said, ticking them off on his fingers. "One, free candy for life. Two, bragging rights that he's helping an actual start-up founder—he'd dine out on that for years. And three..."
Oscar's expression softened, his gaze steady on Lando. "Because it's a good idea. A really good, important idea. And Logan, for all his bluster, likes being part of things that matter. He'd see the challenge in it."
He took a small step closer, his voice dropping, intimate in the quiet of the shop. "You don't have to know everything, Lando. You just have to know the core thing—the problem you're solving. Which you do, better than anyone. The rest? You find people who know the other parts. That's how you build something real. Not by doing it all alone."
The offer wasn't grand or overbearing. It was simple, practical, and utterly perfect. It was an answer to a problem Lando had just voiced, a problem Oscar had been listening closely enough to hear. He wasn't trying to fix it for Lando, he was handing him a tool.
Lando felt the overwhelming weight of his solo mission crack just a little, letting in a sliver of light. Of possible, tangible help. From Oscar's world. Offered not out of alpha pride, but from a place of genuine belief and thoughtful support.
Oscar was watching him with that quiet, proud fondness, a single speck of glitter stuck to his temple. In this moment, surrounded by the mess of their shared making, Lando didn't just see the sweet alpha with a candy obsession. He saw a partner. In every sense that mattered.
The silence stretched, but it wasn't awkward. It was thick with the weight of the gift that had just been given—not just the offer of Logan's help, but the gift of being seen, of being believed in, so completely and without reservation.
"Really?" Lando breathed, the word barely a whisper. He needed to hear it again.
A soft, sure smile touched Oscar's lips. "Really."
"Logan would... help me?" Lando pressed, taking a small step closer, the glitter on the floor crunching under his boot. "With my... patch company?"
"With your revolution," Oscar corrected gently, his eyes warm. "Yeah. He would."
Lando's heart was doing something wild and joyful in his chest, fluttering against his ribs like a trapped bird. The sheer, unexpected rightness of it—the solution appearing not from his family's millions or some stuffy investor, but from Oscar's loud, dramatic friend who liked free candy—was too much. The stress, the fear, the lonely determination all melted in the face of this simple, solid support.
A giddy, disbelieving laugh bubbled out of him. "Really?"
Oscar's smile widened, crinkling the corners of his eyes. He nodded, a slow, definite dip of his chin. "Really."
That was all it took.
With another breathless, jubilant laugh, Lando didn't think. He just launched himself forward.
Oscar, as always, was ready for him. His arms came up instinctively, catching Lando easily as Lando jumped, wrapping his legs around Oscar's waist in a gleeful, impulsive hug. Oscar staggered back half a step with a soft oof, but his hold was firm, secure, one arm banding around Lando's back, the other supporting him under his thighs.
Lando buried his face in the crook of Oscar's neck, giggling, his whole body shaking with relieved, happy laughter. "Thank you," he mumbled into Oscar's skin, his voice muffled but radiant. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."
Oscar just held him, his own laugh a soft, warm rumble Lando could feel where their chests were pressed together. He swayed them gently on the spot, surrounded by the silent, watching ornaments and half-finished garlands.
"It's okay," he murmured into Lando's hair, his breath stirring the curls. "You're welcome. It's going to be amazing."
For a long, perfect moment, Lando let himself be held, his feet off the ground, utterly secure. He breathed in deeply, comforted by Oscar's familiar scent of green tea and linen and graphite. And Oscar, his nose pressed against Lando's hair and the warm skin of his neck, breathed in too.
The scent that filled his senses—vibrant citrus, warm amber, deep caramelised sweetness—was so familiar it was like a favourite melody. It was the scent of comfort, of quiet afternoons in his favourite place, of his mental safe space. It was the scent he'd been hunting for weeks.
It was Lando's scent.
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
The realisation hit him like a physical jolt. His arms tightened around Lando instinctively, even as his brain short-circuited.
The prototype. The quest. The most perfect smell in the world. It wasn't a candy. It was Lando. It had always been Lando.
He'd been obsessing over Lando's scent for weeks. He'd been one of those alphas, waxing poetic about an omega's natural scent, reducing him to a sensory experience. The thought filled him with a sudden, cold horror.
Slowly, carefully, he lowered Lando back to the ground, his hands lingering on Lando's waist for a moment before he took a full step back, putting a little space between them. His face, which had been soft with affection, was now flushed a deep, mortified scarlet.
Lando, still buzzing with happiness, blinked up at him, his smile fading at the look on Oscar's face. "Oscar? What's wrong?"
Oscar ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up even more. He couldn't meet Lando's eyes. "The scent," he blurted out, his voice strained. "The... the one I was looking for. The citrus, and the amber, and the burnt sugar. That's... that's you, isn't it?"
Lando's eyes widened. He'd almost forgotten about that, about the great candy quest that had started it all. He saw the genuine distress on Oscar's face, the shame. He understood instantly. Oscar thought he'd been objectifying him.
A slow, soft smile spread across Lando's face. He reached out and gently took Oscar's hand, which was clenched at his side. "Yeah," he said, his voice gentle. "That's me."
Oscar's gaze snapped to his, full of apology. "Lando, I'm so sorry. I didn't know. I would never have— God, I've been going on and on about it, I made it this whole weird thing, I'm no better than those perv alphas who—"
"Oscar," Lando cut him off, his tone firm but kind. He squeezed his hand. "Stop. You're nothing like them."
"But I—"
"Listen to me." Lando stepped closer, forcing Oscar to look at him. "You didn't lust after it. You didn't try to claim it or act like it was something for you to own. You appreciated it. You... you found comfort in it." He felt his own cheeks grow warm, but he pushed on. "You called it your mental safe space. You described it like it was a piece of art, or a memory. Not a... a trigger. There's a world of difference."
Oscar stared at him, the panic in his eyes slowly receding, replaced by a hesitant hope. "Really?"
"Really," Lando said, echoing his earlier assurance. He brought Oscar's hand up, pressing the back of it briefly, gently, against his own cheek, letting him feel the warmth there.
"I liked it. I liked that you loved something about this place... about me... without even knowing it was me. It felt... pure."
The tension seeped out of Oscar's shoulders. The blush remained, but it softened from one of horror to one of profound, dawning wonder. His thumb stroked over Lando's knuckles where he still held his hand.
"It is pure," he whispered. "It's the best smell in the world now. Because it's you."
This time, the silence that fell between them was sweet, not charged with anxiety but with a new, tender understanding. The last secret was out. The final piece of the puzzle had clicked into place with a soft, definitive sound.
Lando gave his hand one last squeeze before letting go, a playful glint returning to his eyes. "Now, come on. We have a revolution to plan, and a gingerbread army to assemble. And you," he said, pointing a finger at Oscar's chest, "are officially banned from ever comparing yourself to Lance Stroll again. Understood?"
A real, relieved smile finally broke through on Oscar's face. "Understood."
They went back to their crafts, kneeling amidst the glitter and ribbon once more.
The conversation drifted to lighter things—the absurdity of Logan's potential marketing slogans, the best type of chocolate for festive displays—punctuated by the same easy laughter and giggles as before.
But everything was different now. It was all out in the open. The scent in the air was simply theirs, mingling freely—citrus and amber and green tea and graphite, woven together with the sugar of the shop and the pine of the decorations.
Outside, the Christmas lights twinkled in the cold dark. Inside, in their pool of warm light, they built their little world together, one glue dot, one shared dream, one perfect, understood secret at a time.
⋆｡‧˚ʚ🍭ɞ˚‧｡⋆
Oscar hadn’t been back to the candy shop in four days.
Four days, eighteen hours, and—Lando checked the clock above the counter—approximately twenty-three minutes.
It was Christmas Day.
The shop was technically closed for the holiday, but Lando had opened it anyway, more out of a desperate, superstitious hope than any real expectation of customers. He’d told Charles he wanted to 'catch the last-minute, panicked gift crowd,' but Charles, now back from Monaco with a relieved Max in tow, had just given him a look of profound pity and patted his cheek.
“He will come, mon cher,” Charles had said, far too kindly.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lando had muttered, arranging a display of peppermint bark with aggressive precision.
But Oscar didn’t come.
The festive magic Oscar had helped create—the elegant garlands, the whimsical bunting, the stunning centrepiece—now felt like a beautiful, hollow stage set for a play that had been cancelled. Every time the bell on the door jingled, Lando’s heart would leap into his throat, only to plummet when it was just a harried parent buying a consolation chocolate Santa.
He’d thrown himself into his start-up plans over the last few days.
Logan, true to Oscar’s word, had been a whirlwind of chaotic, surprisingly effective energy. He’d set up social media accounts with quirky, memorable handles, drafted a pitch that made Lando sound like a cross between a tech genius and a superhero, and had even bullied George into running some preliminary material stress tests. It was going well. Better than well.
But Oscar was the one who had made the connection. Oscar was the one who had listened, who had seen the dream and handed him the first tool to build it. And now Oscar was gone.
The old, insidious fears crept back in, dressed in new, festive horror.
What if telling him about the scent freaked him out? What if he realised I’m not some cute, simple candy shop omega, but a ball-kicking, business-starting, opinionated handful? What if I’m too much? Too independent? Too… loud? Maybe Oscar wanted someone softer, easier, who didn’t come with a five-year business plan and a history of assaulting trust-fund babies.
By mid-afternoon, with the sky outside threatening snow and the shop utterly deserted, even Charles’s relentless cheer had faltered. Max had finally physically removed Charles from the premises, muttering about 'letting the sad one wallow in peace,' shooting Lando a sympathetic, if gruff, look over his shoulder.
Now, alone, Lando let the façade crumble. He slumped onto the stool behind the counter, resting his chin in his hand, staring at the door. The Christmas lights winked merrily, mockingly.
He’d been so stupid. He’d let himself believe in the soft looks, the shared secrets, the way Oscar had caught him when he jumped. He’d let himself think it could be real.
With a heavy sigh that seemed to come from his toes, he finally admitted defeat. He was just Lando Norris, alone in a candy shop on Christmas, pining over an alpha who had clearly had a moment of festive charity and then moved on.
He moved through the closing routine like a ghost—cashing out the empty till, wiping down the already-spotless counters, turning off the lights one by one, until only the soft glow from the streetlamp outside filtered in, painting the ribbons and garlands in monochrome.
He bundled himself into his thickest coat, wound a scarf around his neck until only his eyes were visible, and stepped out into the biting cold, locking the door behind him with a final, definitive click.
The first flakes of snow were beginning to fall, drifting lazily in the amber glow of the streetlights. The world was quiet, wrapped in the hush of Christmas night. Lando shoved his hands deep into his pockets and started the walk back to his flat, his boots making soft crunching sounds on the frosty pavement.
Each step felt heavy. The festive cheer of the decorated street seemed to belong to another universe, one where people were hugged and loved and not left wondering where they’d gone wrong.
He’d made it about halfway down the block, head bowed against the gentle snow, when he heard it.
“Lando!”
The voice was familiar, slightly breathless, cutting through the quiet like a bell.
Lando turned slowly. The figure under the streetlamp came into focus—Oscar, bundled up, breath fogging the air, a small paper bag clutched in his gloved hands. Relief warred instantly with a sharp, four day old hurt.
"Oscar?" Lando's voice was flat, muffled by his scarf.
Before Oscar could say another word, Lando stalked back toward him, the snow crunching under his boots with finality. He stopped a foot away, his eyes blazing with a mixture of anger and raw vulnerability.
"Where have you been?" The question was an accusation, sharp as broken glass. "Four days. Nothing. You just… vanished. After everything." He gave Oscar's chest a weak, frustrated push with both hands. "You can't do that! You can't make me… make me feel all that and then just disappear! Do you have any idea how that feels?"
Oscar stumbled back a half-step from the push, not from the force but from the pain in Lando's voice. His face crumpled.
"Lando, no, God, I'm sorry. That's not—I wasn't—" He surged forward, closing the distance Lando had created. He caught Lando's wrists gently, not to restrain but to hold, to ground them both in the freezing, snowy night. "I wasn't disappearing from you. I was trying to… to give you something. I was trying to get it right."
"Get what right?" Lando tried to pull his hands back, but Oscar's grip was tender and insistent.
"Listen," Oscar breathed, his voice a low, earnest plea in the hushed evening. "Please, just listen. The day before yesterday, the 22nd. I came by the shop. I was going to ask you to get coffee. You and Charles were in the back, the door was ajar. I heard… I heard you talking."
Lando went very still, the fight draining out of him, replaced by cold dread.
Oscar’s expression softened with a remembered ache. "You were talking about your scent. You called it a 'curse.' You said you hated it, that it was the thing that always got you the wrong kind of attention. Charles was trying to cheer you up, telling you it was lovely, but you… you just sounded so tired of it. Like it was this weight you had to carry, this part of yourself you had to apologize for."
He took a deep, steadying breath, his thumbs beginning a slow, soothing rhythm on Lando’s wrists. "And it broke something in me, Lando. Because that scent… to me, it’s never been a curse. It’s been… it’s been my sanctuary."
Lando’s breath hitched, caught in his throat.
"For me," Oscar began, his gaze drifting for a moment, lost in memory, "candy was never just a sweet tooth. When I was a teenager, and everything felt wrong—when I was too soft, too quiet, too not-alpha for the world—my mum, she’d leave a single piece of candy on my desk every morning before school. A fruit chew, a chocolate coin, a butterscotch. It was our little secret. She’d always tell me sugar was bad, that I shouldn’t have so much, but she never stopped leaving it."
A soft, wistful smile touched his lips. "That candy… it was the one thing I could absolutely count on. It was a tiny, bright promise at the start of every grey day. It comforted me. It made me feel… light. Like myself, in a way nothing else did. It was my first comfort. My mum called it bad, society calls it unhealthy, but to me? It was perfect. It was exactly what I needed."
His eyes found Lando’s again, intense and vulnerable. "And then I walked into Leclerc’s, and there was this new scent. And it became my second comfort. It felt like… like coming home. Like peace. It made my brain quiet. It made me look forward to the next day, just to catch another hint of it."
He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a raw whisper. "And now… now there’s you. You’re my third. The person who is quickly becoming my favourite comfort of all."
He swallowed hard, his eyes shimmering. "To hear you talk about a part of yourself—a part that feels like home to me—with so much hurt… I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t just tell you not to hate it. Words weren’t enough. I needed you to see it. To experience it the way I do. Not as a burden, but as a gift."
He finally held up the small, plain bag, his hand trembling slightly. "So, I’ve been with my friend Yuki. He’s a pastry chef, practically my mum's second son and I’ve been in his kitchen for four days, driving him utterly mad. We’ve made batches and batches. I was trying to get it perfect. A candy that tastes… the way you smell to me. Not for me to keep. For you."
He took another step, erasing the last of the space between them, his voice thick with emotion.
"I combined my two favourite comforts—candy, and the memory of your scent—and I’m giving them to my third. To you. Because I want you to understand. Just because the world, or some shitty alphas, try to tell you something about yourself is wrong or too much or a 'curse'… that doesn’t make it true. My mum said candy was bad, but it saved me. Society says I’m not a proper alpha, but I’m learning that’s their loss. And if anyone has ever made you feel like your scent is anything less than breathtakingly perfect… they were wrong. So deeply wrong."
Oscar’s gaze was unwavering, love and fierce conviction shining through his tears. "I don’t… I don’t want to be the kind of person who just says ‘I’ll love that part of you enough for the both of us.’ That’s not enough. That’s just putting a bandage on a wound that shouldn’t be there in the first place. I don’t want to replace your love for yourself. I want you to love you. All of you. Completely. The brilliant, fierce, independent you. The you that wants to change the world. And the you that smells like my favourite memory and feels like my future."
A tear escaped, tracing a path through the frosty air before landing on the paper bag. "This… this is what you are to me, Lando. You are comfort. You are home. You are the sweetest thing I’ve ever known. And you deserve to taste how perfect that is."
Tears, hot and silent, streamed down Lando’s face, melting the snowflakes that clung to his skin. He looked from Oscar’s tear-streaked, earnest face to the humble, trembling offering in his hand—a testament to four days of desperate, loving alchemy.
For a long moment, he was utterly speechless, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of what Oscar had just given him—not the candy, but the understanding. The profound, patient love that sought not to possess, but to heal.
With a choked sob, he let go of Oscar’s wrists and instead threw his arms around his neck, burying his face in the cold wool of Oscar’s scarf. He held on tightly, as if Oscar were the only solid thing in the swirling snow.
“Thank you,” he whispered, the words muffled, soaked with tears. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” He repeated it like a prayer, each one a release of the old, bitter hurt he’d carried for so long.
Oscar’s arms came around him, strong and secure, one hand cradling the back of his head. “Shhh,” he murmured into Lando’s hair, his own voice rough. “It’s okay. You don’t have to thank me.”
Slowly, Lando pulled back, sniffling. He took the small paper bag with reverent hands, as if it were made of glass. He peered inside at the multiple, beautifully crafted pieces of candy—it was delicate, amber-coloured hard candy, swirled with white, like a captured sunset. He carefully took it out.
With Oscar watching, his eyes soft and hopeful, Lando brought the candy to his lips and took a bite.
Flavour exploded on his tongue—vibrant, sun-warmed lemon zest that melted into deep, resinous amber, all anchored by a rich, smooth caramelised sweetness that had no bitterness, only warmth. It was… incredible. It was him. But purified, celebrated, transformed into something meant to be savoured.
A wet, disbelieving giggle escaped him. He looked up at Oscar, his eyes shining. “It’s good,” he whispered, his voice awed. “It’s… it’s really good. Just like… just like you said it was.”
A smile of pure, unadulterated relief broke across Oscar’s face, brighter than the Christmas lights.
Lando took another small suck on the candy, the sweetness spreading through him, mingling with the warmth of Oscar’s confession. Then, his face fell slightly. “Oh, god. I didn’t… I didn’t get you anything. I was just… sad and pouty in the shop all day.”
Oscar hushed him immediately, brushing a melting snowflake from Lando’s cheek with his thumb. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is my gift. Seeing you… see yourself.” He nodded at the candy. “Now eat. Enjoy it.”
A comfortable, quiet peace settled between them, punctuated only by the soft crunch of Lando enjoying the candy and the whisper of snow. The street was theirs alone. Lando leaned into Oscar’s side, and Oscar’s arm slipped around his shoulders, holding him close.
After a few moments of sweet silence, Lando nudged him, a playful glint returning to his tear-damp eyes. He sucked thoughtfully on the candy. “So,” he began, his voice casual but laced with curiosity. “I’m your third favourite comfort, huh? After candy and my scent. What’s my rank? Am I a solid third? Threatening for second?”
Oscar’s response was immediate and firm. He turned, cupping Lando’s face in both hands, his expression suddenly serious, breathtakingly tender. “No. Lando, you’re not a thing on a list. You’re not a rank. You’re—"
Lando didn’t let him finish, because he couldn't hold this back anymore.
He surged forward, the candy forgotten, and captured Oscar’s lips with his own.
It was their first kiss. Not a startled, gentle brush of lips in the snow—that would be a promise or a question. This was the answer.
It was deep, and tender, and unbearably sweet, flavoured with the unique caramel-citrus of the candy and the salt of their dried tears. Lando poured every ounce of his gratitude, his understanding, his own fierce, blossoming love into it. His hands came up to frame Oscar’s jaw, his thumbs stroking the cold skin of his cheeks.
Oscar melted into it with a soft, broken sound—a sigh of pure, overwhelmed gratitude. His first kiss, truly his first kiss, and it was with Lando, here in the snow, after laying his soul bare. He kissed back with equal tenderness, his arms tightening around Lando’s waist, holding him as if he were the most precious thing in the world, which, in that moment, he absolutely was.
When they finally pulled apart, breathless and warm despite the freezing air, Oscar was sniffling again, fresh tears clinging to his lashes. He looked dazed, utterly wrecked in the best possible way by the weight and wonder of it. Their first kiss.
Lando’s heart swelled until he thought it might burst. He gently wiped Oscar’s tears away with his gloved thumbs, his own eyes soft.
I’ll cherish you, he promised silently, his gaze locked on Oscar’s. I’ll learn all your secret comforts. I’ll make you feel as seen, as loved, as perfectly you as you’ve made me feel.
Oscar’s lower lip wobbled, not from sadness, but from an overflow of emotion. He pouted, adorable and flustered. “You didn’t let me finish my speech,” he mumbled, his voice thick.
Lando chuckled, the sound bright and happy in the quiet night. He squished Oscar’s cheeks between his hands, making his lips purse.
“I heard the important parts,” Lando said, his tone playful but his eyes serious. “The ‘you’re not a thing, you’re—’ part.” He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “But if you want it so bad, you can tell me the rest of the speech… maybe back at my apartment? You can… elaborate. On my… bed?”
Oscar’s eyes flew wide.
A spectacular, full-body flush bloomed from his neck to the tips of his ears, visible even in the dim light. He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again, emitting only a soft, choked noise. He was utterly, adorably speechless.
Lando threw his head back and laughed, a full, joyful sound that echoed down the snowy street. He released Oscar’s cheeks and instead linked their arms together, hugging Oscar’s bicep close as he began to lead them down the sidewalk, away from the shop.
“You’re terrible,” Oscar finally managed to get out, his voice a flustered whisper, bumping his shoulder against Lando’s. “A menace. After… after our first kiss, you—”
“I know, I know,” Lando grinned, snuggling closer against his side as they walked. The snow fell around them like a curtain, wrapping them in their own private world. “I’m a ball-kicking, speech-interrupting, terrible-crafting menace. And you’re stuck with me.”
Oscar looked down at him, his flush fading into a look of such profound, tender fondness it made Lando’s breath catch. He brought their linked arms up and pressed a gentle kiss to the back of Lando’s gloved hand.
“Yeah,” he said softly, his voice full of certainty. “I am.”
They walked in comfortable silence after that, their footsteps in sync, their breaths puffing in unison.
The world was quiet and cold, but wrapped in each other, they were warm. The anxieties of the past few days, the old hurts, the uncertainties of the future—they didn’t vanish, but they shrank, put into perspective by the solid, comforting presence walking beside them.
Lando knew, with a calm certainty that settled deep in his bones, that as long as they had this—this easy companionship, this fierce protectiveness, this tender, understanding love—everything would be okay.
It might not always be perfect. There would be fights and frustrations and days that felt grey. But as long as they had each other, even just a fine would feel like the most perfect thing in the world.
And as they disappeared into the softly falling snow, arms linked, hearts full, the future stretched out before them—not a daunting unknown, but a promise, waiting to be unwrapped, one sweet, shared day at a time.