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Lando wove through the field, and saw it in his mirrors: the turn, and then a flash of papaya, and then bright orange careening straight into the barriers, a trail of sparks scraping behind it, and debris exploding across the track.
It was as silent as it got during a race, the only sound the sound of the engines purring through the field. The crowd was silent. Lando could hear himself breathing, short, heavy pants as he wrestled the car over the track, his heart pounding in his ears.
"Fuck!" Lando slammed his fist on the steering wheel, jabbing frantically at the radio button. "That was Oscar. That was a really bad crash. Is he okay? Is he out?"
The radio crackled quietly. There was no reply.
"WILL, FOR FUCK'S SAKE," Lando roared into the radio, jerking the steering wheel as he slammed the brakes, fumbling his overtake attempt on Ocon. "Say something! Is he okay??"
"He's fine, Lando, focus on your own race," Will said calmly. "I repeat, Oscar is okay. Yellow flag in sector 1, yellow flag in sector 1."
Lando couldn't care less about the race right now, his body operating on autopilot. "Is he out? It looked really bad, it looked like there was fire, is he out?!"
Will cleared his throat. "He's still in the car. The car is fine, it's not on fire. He's moving, but he's not responding-"
His mind whited out. The steering wheel jerked, missing the apex of the corner, his front left dragging across the gravel. "How is that okay??" Lando yells. "For fuck's sake, Oscar. For fuck's sake!"
The response came almost immediately. "Lando, he is responding, I repeat, he has responded. He is still in the car, but he is okay."
The flush of relief flooded through him so fast he's lightheaded with it.
"Thank god. Okay. Can he not get out?" Lando could feel his heart thudding in his ears, the whirr of the car as he fought it through the track.
"Marshals are here, they're getting him out now. He's fine, he's walking, the car is being recovered. Safety car."
"Jesus Christ," Lando hissed, and refocused on the race ahead of him.
He didn't see what happened until he was in the media pen, walking away from Sky's interviews. On the broadcast screen, a replay of Oscar's accident: Oscar, slicing down the main straight, flooring the throttle. Oscar's car aiming head-on to the wall, front wing clipping the barrier, before spinning and slamming sideways into the barriers. Lando watched Oscar's onboard, watched the angle, watched how Oscar's hands clenched on the wheel, jerking it sideways just in time for the car to slide off the track and careen side-on into the barriers. The back of his car sent up a shower of sparks, the specks of light skidding across the asphalt.
"Sorry, um, yeah, the back snapped out on me," Oscar's voice crackled from the radio. "Car is okay, sorry about the crash."
"It's okay, Oscar. Are you okay? The marshals are on their way," Tom spoke into the radio, his voice clear and shaky. "I repeat, the marshals are on their way. Yellow flag where you are."
Oscar made no move to get out of the car, not until the marshals were right beside him, their hands unbuckling his safety harness and tugging him away from the wreck.
Something small and painful scratched at the back of Lando's brain. He shook his head, throwing it out of his mind, and hurried to his shower.
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Lando went to Oscar after the race.
He wasn't even looking to fuck, for once — there was something wound tight in his chest, creaking with the weight of itself, clicking to the rhythm of Oscar's name. He couldn't stop replaying it, in his head, Oscar unmoving on the track, watching the cars speed around him, Oscar wrenching the car sideways, so different to his usual smooth steering; Oscar, who was calm and placid and content, who was like lake-water, still and cold and unfathomably deep.
He just wanted him — just wanted to see him, just wanted to know he was okay.
Lando and Oscar had been together—or at least sleeping together—for a while. That wasn't new. Lando was used to it, no longer knew how to live without it, the constellations mapping out Oscar's body, the way his chest spasmed, breath hitching, when Lando ran his hand over the lines of his hip, the taste of his mouth, the way his tongue felt against his teeth. Sometimes, he thought he could close his eyes and fall into Oscar, drown in him, race him and fuck him and have him endlessly, on and on and on. The sleeping together wasn’t new. Lando had even gotten quite good at it—had surveyed the terrain of his body, mapped out the crevices of his lust.
Once, Lando caught sight of him in the afterglow, and recoiled. Oscar's eyes were blank, unseeing, his face slack and empty.
"Hey," he said cautiously, as they both wriggled back into their clothes, "are you… okay?"
Oscar turned to face him, face blank. Something stuttered in Lando's chest, flinching backwards at the expanse of nothing. Then he smiled, and it was Oscar standing there again, tired but soft. "Yeah, I'm good."
If you ever want to talk about anything, Lando didn't say. Whatever they were, they never spoke about it. Lando had Oscar. Oscar had Lando. It was simple, it was easy. What was there to talk about?
The hotel was quiet and still, the cool night air stuffy and filtered in the hotel corridors. Lando padded through the hallways, footsteps muffled by the thick carpet, leaving little indents wherever he steps. Oscar was a floor away and multiple doors down; for once, McLaren didn't manage to book everyone in a thick block of rooms, personnel scattered around the building. McLaren had barely managed to book enough hotel rooms — almost everyone had already headed back to the factory, making the most of the two-week gap.
When he got to Oscar's room, the door was ajar.
The feeling intensified. Lando knocked lightly.
"Oscar?"
There was no response. Lando could hear the faint sound of running water. He knocked again, louder.
"Oscar! Your door's open," he called. "Are you there?"
The heavy taste of metal coated his tongue, smearing down the back of his throat. Slowly, Lando pushed the door open.
All the lights were on. The curtains were closed tight, heavy creamy satin draped across the wall of window. Oscar's clothes were draped neatly across the room, little piles of folded fabric stacked on the corners of surfaces. The bed was rumpled, a body-shaped indent across the top sheet. Lando could see signs of life: a single black sneaker next to the bed, his phone on his bedside table, briefing notes neat in their closed folder on the desk.
There was no sign of Oscar.
"Mate, if you wanted to see me so badly," he said, trying to keep his voice light, "you should've just come over, or texted, or called, or something!"
There was still no reply.
Lando swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. Very faintly, he could hear the sound of running water, an irregular echo of dripping. Lando closed his eyes, his mouth relaxing into a faint smile. Of course Oscar would not have heard Lando coming in, in the bathroom, and would not have gotten up to see him. Of course Oscar would want to relax, destress, after a race like he had. Maybe it would be nice, if Lando showed up, surprised him, helped him take his mind off things.
Lando stepped into the bathroom, and paused. All he could see of Oscar were his legs, long and pale and toned, hooked and dangling over the side of the tub. Sheets of paper were scattered across the sink, by the side of the tub, Oscar's sprawling handwriting covering the bathroom floor. Over half the pages were scribbled out, crumpled and ripped and scattered everywhere. Journalling, his brain helpfully supplied. Oscar had been writing a lot lately, the same way as Charles, carrying a book of notes everywhere with him.
"Oscar?"
There was a faint bubbling sound. Oscar didn't move.
Lando crept closer.
He looked down, and his heart stopped.
Oscar lay there, at the bottom of the tub, naked apart from his boxers, completely submerged. His eyes were closed. His hair wafted around his face, a short-shorn kelp forest, obscuring his forehead, his eyebrows, the mole on his temple. In the fluorescent-lit water, his skin was paler than usual, glowing almost blue. He looked, Lando thought absurdly, almost happy.
"Oscar."
A bubble slipped from his lips, bursting tiny and silver and soundless against the surface of the water. Lando felt bile rising bright and bitter in his throat, his heart rabbiting against his chest. He reached in. When he grabbed Oscar's shoulder, it was cold. Panic was rising, bright and silver, blowing out the highlights, running wires across his brain. He grabbed harder, and shook.
"Oscar, get up!"
Oscar opened his eyes, and for a split second, his face was furious, terrified. Then, he began to choke.
Lando swore loudly, hands shaking, and grabbed him, yanking him upwards and out of the bathtub. Inexplicably, Oscar thrashed against him, twisting away and out of his hands, and he scrabbled at him, the skin pale and slick and trailing silver water over his fingers. Oscar flailed against him, one clammy hand slapping across the side of his face, leaving a wet mark, and Lando was frantic, panicked, fed up with this. Lando hooked him under the armpits, grabbing his shoulders hard enough to bruise, and hauled him bodily out of the tub, almost throwing him onto the white tiles of the bathroom.
Water sloshed everywhere. Oscar coughed, a wet, pathetic sound. Liquid dribbled out from between his lips. He stayed there, hacking, hunched over, the edge of the bathtub keeping him up.
Lando collapsed onto the floor, soaking wet and gasping for air. He could still feel it, the panic pressing against his ribcage, like a seatbelt in a crash, yanking hard enough to bruise. He rubbed at his chest, feeling the way his heart fluttered against his knuckles, pressing the terror back into his bones. Under him, around him, blue bled off the soaked pages on the floor. When he shifted, he could see lines of ink mirror-imprinted onto his skin, the paper tearing wet and pulpy under pressure. Let them, he thought viciously, desperately. Let them all drown.
"Why did you do that?"
He looked up.
Oscar stood there, incandescent and dripping, backlit by the harsh bathroom light. He could hear the harsh pant of Oscar's lungs, struggling to replenish the air. Even now, Lando's heart skipped a beat at the sight of him.
He pushed himself up into a sitting position. "What, not even a thank you?"
"Why did you-" Oscar's hands curled into his hair, yanking so hard his knuckles went white. "What are you doing? Why are you here?"
"You're-" Lando stares at him like he's just announced he's retiring. He had never seen Oscar like this, like an animal pretending it wasn't backed into a corner. "I was checking up on you after that race, and good thing too! You were trying to drown yourself!"
The same furious, terrified expression flashed across his face. "I wasn't trying to drown myself," he hissed flatly. "I fell asleep in the bath, okay? It's been a long day and I've been going over data and journalling, just like Andrea and Emma are always going on about."
"Sorry I was worried about you," Lando snapped back. "It was a good thing, given that you were fucking drowning!"
He shrugged, a tiny twitch of his shoulders. "I fell asleep in the bath. I'll take better care next time. Just leave me alone, okay?"
A hard lump lodged itself in Lando's throat. "Christ, okay! I was just worried! Sorry I care about you."
Oscar stared at him, and he could visibly see the moment Oscar pulled himself together, the fight seeping out of him as his shoulders slumped. "No, fuck, I'm sorry. I don't want to fight. Sorry. It's just been a really awful race."
"You really scared me," Lando tried to laugh, the sound coming out strangled and dull. "Christ, Osc, don't pull that shit again."
Oscar rolled his eyes, a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "Alright, Lando, I promise not to take any more baths without you."
Against his will, Lando blushed.
"Is that why you came over? To… take a bath together?"
Lando made an inarticulate noise. "No! I just wanted to check on you. That was a nasty crash, mate, I just wanted to see if you were okay!"
"Well, you've checked," Oscar said, spreading his hands wide. "See? Absolutely fine and dandy." Water sluiced off his skin at the movement, dripping down his arms and falling off his fingertips. Lando tracked the movement, watching the way Oscar's skin gleamed in the bathroom light. Almost absurdly, he wanted to lick him.
Instead, he threw a towel at him. "Put some clothes on, mate."
On Oscar's bed, waiting for him, Lando's head span, pounding and slow. That was insane. That was dangerous. That felt like something a lot worse than what it was. Oscar took a lot of baths, right? He hadn't drowned before. Something felt wrong. Lando took a deep breath, inhaling the thick, fresh smell of the hotel room, layered under the smell of Oscar. The sheets were smooth and cold under his hands. The bathroom door creaked, and Oscar stepped out, towelling his hair.
"Thanks for checking on me."
Lando forced a smile, his heart racketing. "No problem, mate."
"It's okay if you just leave me- if you just leave it next time, yeah? You gave me a massive scare."
Lando stared at him, his heartbeat screaming in his fingertips. "…Right. Okay. Sure."
"Do you wanna-" Oscar gestured at the room. "Are you going to stay, or…?"
"Are you kicking me out, Osc?" Lando said lightly. A thrum of hurt stabbed through him. It was fine. It was just Oscar. They weren't anything, not really.
"Look, just-" he sighed. "I need to shower. We've got an early flight tomorrow, yeah? You should get packing."
"I'll give you a morning call, wake you up," Lando teased. His heart wasn't in it. Something was tugging at his thoughts, something not-quite-right that he couldn't pin down. "See you tomorrow, yeah?"
Oscar gave him a soft smile, something blank in his eyes. "Only if you manage to wake up and not be late."
Lando couldn't help but laugh.
On his way out, Lando spotted Oscar's keycards, splayed across the side table. Oscar was still fiddling in the bathroom, something rattling as he puttered about. There was a quiet hiss in the back of his mind.
Without thinking about it, he swiped one into his pocket, and slipped out of the room.
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Back in his room, Lando haphazardly shoved his clothes into his suitcase. Something felt wrong. He could see Oscar there, in his mind's eye, gleaming and wet and white, something cold and empty about him. What was it? What had gone wrong? As he stared at his reflection, damp and frazzled, he could almost convince himself he made it up.
A spot of colour caught his eye, and he frowned. There was a smudge of ink on his arm, bright blue and blown out and dissipating across his skin. It almost looked like words.
When Lando held it up to the mirror, it said his name.
Lando, it said. I'm sorry.
Lando remembered this: he had been looking for him, after the race, when he heard clattering, and a muffled grunt, coming from Oscar's driver's room. Curious, he had followed the sound. The door had been ajar, and so of course Lando peeked in.
Oscar stood there, fresh, clean, in nothing more than his boxers, his clothes a pile on the sofa. A thin sheen of water covered him, glimmering in the fluorescent light. Lando's pulse jumped at the sight of his pale abs, the broad speckled expanse of his back, the thick stretch of his thighs. Oscar was broader than him, paler than him, every inch of his body belaying the fit strength of a racing driver.
Oscar dug through the cooler, the muscles of his back rippling, his spine a stark raised line. He found what he had been looking for, and straightened up. Mist curled out from between his fingers, the tips of them turning white where they were touching it. Lando had been so absorbed by him that he almost didn't realise what Oscar was doing. When he did, he could feel his heart shouldering itself through his ribcage, screaming in helpless confusion against his skin.
Lando watched, his heart thumping painfully in the back of his throat, as Oscar pressed the lump of dry ice into the bare skin of his chest. The skin turned red, then white, and he pressed it in harder, before ripping it away with a long hiss of pain. The tension drained out of him, his shoulders slumping, the wet strands of brown hair flopping over his forehead. Lando hadn't realised the stress in his shoulders, the strain on his expression, until he saw Oscar now, half hunched over nothing, bloodless, in his driver's room.
He looked, for the first time in weeks, at peace.
Lando thought about that, now. The quiet hiss at the back of his mind intensified.
Lando had made a career out of listening to his instincts, riding the thin line between himself and the machine. Lando had fine-tuned his periphery until it was a weapon, near lethal, as good as it was going to get. Lando, I'm sorry. Lando thought about the way Oscar had looked, sinking peaceful to the bottom of the water. The panic as he struggled out of his grasp, the way he flinched away from Lando's hands. He thought about the noise as he left, the smooth susurrating rattle he had heard. Lando closed his eyes, and he could see the soaked sheets of paper in his mind's eye, the blue words bleeding out across the floor.
Who even wrote letters to people anymore?
He felt dread rolling, cold and heavy and nauseating, at the bottom of his stomach. Something was shouting at him in his mind. He couldn't get it out of his mind, the image of Oscar's eyes coming alight as his skin blistered under his own hand.
"You're being dumb, Norris," he muttered to himself. But he couldn't help it. With a sigh, he palmed Oscar's key card, and started walking.
When he got to his room, he felt a rush of relief, at first. The room was unlit, the curtains half-open, and he could faintly make out the dark shape of Oscar on his bed. Lando slipped the keycard into the slot by the door, and the room lit up fluorescent white.
"Oscar?"
Lando approached him warily. Oscar was in nothing but a plain tee and shorts, his hair still damp from the shower. There he laid, peaceful and unmoving, above the sheets on the king-sized bed. Lando looked at him, and something ticked in his brain, ill-fitting and scared.
It was true, Oscar was a deep sleeper — between them, Lando was the one who woke up at every little creak in the night, every soft movement of the sheets. Oscar took forever to fall asleep, and then he slept like a log, snoring and still, until his alarms blared loud enough to wake him, and the three neighbouring rooms, up. It was not so unusual, that Oscar wouldn't hear him coming in, or calling his name.
But something felt wrong. Lando crept closer, staring down at his still form. Oscar's skin was sallow in the light, his lashes casting long shadows over his cheeks. Lando stared, and stared, and abruptly realised the problem. Oscar was almost completely still.
"Oscar." Lando reached out and shook him. Oscar was barely breathing. His veins were blue and harsh and raised against his skin. "OSCAR!"
When Lando pressed thick fingers harsh into his jugular, his wrists, there was barely a heartbeat. When Lando pressed a hand to the spot on his chest he loved falling asleep on, there was barely a sound. Oscar lay there, translucent and glowing under the hotel light, and Lando couldn't tell if he was still alive. He could hear his own heart pounding in his ears, an agonized thrum. Lando had never felt like this, not even when he ended up in the wall in Vegas. "Osc, fuck, what the fuck, please wake up."
He shook him harder.
Oscar didn't move. There was a faint trail of thick liquid leaking out the side of his mouth.
"Please, Jesus Christ, please," he chanted. He couldn't find his phone, and then he couldn't grip it. God, he couldn't remember the emergency number for the country—Max had told him years ago that dialling any one of them would likely redirect to the local number—and he fumbled for the screen, suddenly too-smooth, and punched in three nines.
The phone rang for an eternity.
"Hallo?"
"Hi," Lando said, gripping Oscar's wrist tight enough to bruise with the other hand, "can I get an ambulance? I think my friend's overdosed."
The voice was tinny and robotic in his ear, accented English. He rattled off the address as he was asked, and he thought he sounded really rather articulate and calm, all things considered.
"Do you know what he's taken?"
"I don't- I don't know," he stammered.
"That is alright, completely understandable. Can you see anything if you look around?"
Lando looked around wildly, wondering what was different. The room was messier, he thought, but he didn't want to rifle through it. The thought of letting go of Oscar felt too awful to bear, as if his hand was the only thing anchoring Oscar's soul in his body. Something rolled against his foot, and he looked down to see an empty pill bottle, the kind the drivers got after medical attention. With a sinking flash, he thought back to the crash earlier; to the sleeping problems Oscar had tried to hide. "I think painkillers, or sleeping pills. He got into a crash earlier- at the circuit, we're both drivers, please, this can't get out, it would ruin his career-"
"The ambulance will be there soon. Can you give us the number of the room you are in?"
"Please," Lando babbled helplessly into the phone, Oscar's skin cold and velvety against his fingers, "please, can you take the back entrances, please, he can't die, he can't not race, he won't want anyone to know about this-"
It was the only thing he could think about. If Oscar was alive—he would be, he had to be—then he needed to have a career to get back to, something to keep living for. Lando recoiled as the thought crossed his mind, his grip tightening on Oscar's arm. Oscar had so much to live for.
"Sir, please, you need to calm down. Is your friend conscious?"
Lando shook his head mutely. It took him a second to remember he had to say it out loud. "No, he's not."
"Can you check if he's breathing?"
"It's… I can't tell!" Lando shouted, frustrated and terrified. "I think so? It's really faint, but I think so."
"Okay, the paramedics will be there shortly. Please can you open the door, so they know where to go."
He hesitated. That meant letting go of Oscar. But he could hear the clock ticking in the back of his mind, something horrible and twisted spreading over his brain. "Yes. Okay. I can do that."
Lando stared down the blank, over-lit hallway, and strained his ears. The faint ding of the elevator sounded, followed by the sound of running. They rounded the corner, and Lando shoved his phone into his pocket, and madly waved them down. There were four of them, and there was a stretcher, and they were injecting something into Oscar, hooking him up to something, oxygen shoved over his face, and all the while, Lando tucked himself into a corner, as still as possible, wishing he could vanish.
It passed in a blur. Lando watched as they moved him, frail and unmoving against the white stretcher sheets. "No, please, can you cover his face," he burbled suddenly, absurdly, "people can't see, he wouldn't want it, he still needs to race-"
"Sir, saving him takes precedence right now," one of the paramedics said to him gently. "There's no time to worry about that. You won't fit in the ambulance, but you can follow us to the hospital, if you have a car." She hesitated. "You can drive?"
A laugh threatened to bubble out of him. "Yeah, I can drive."
For a wild moment, he thought that Oscar would wake up, look at him, and he would be furious and betrayed, and he would hate Lando forever, but he would be alive. Instead, he watched as they carried him away, loaded him into the ambulance. There was nothing. Oscar lay there, pale and still and horribly unmoving, a mask pumping air into his lungs for him, and Lando watched as the glowing doors shut over his pale figure.
Lando stood there, in his hoodie and shorts and slippers, and watched the ambulance speed away, lights flashing. His hands were shaking. His vision was blurry, moons echoing across his field of sight.
In the taxi, he called Max Verstappen.
The phone beeped. "Hello?" Max's voice said, sleep-rough and annoyed. "Lando, if you have woken me up to tell me that you are going to wake up late and miss your flight and you want to fly with me, you are of course welcome, but can you not just text me this information?"
"Mate," Lando said, "can you meet me at the hospital?"
"What?"
The taxi sped down the dark roads. Lando breathed, and felt his diaphragm expanding and contracting, slow and mild and even. "Oscar's tried to-" He choked on the words. "I think he's overdosed."
Max was silent for a moment.
"I kind of don't know what to do," Lando said, his voice very calm. He was quite proud of how it didn't shake, how the words were legible. "I'm in a taxi right now. Can you maybe meet me there?"
The phone beeped. Lando stared at the dimming screen of his phone in disbelief. Max had hung up.
"Fuckssake," he muttered, shoving the phone back into his pocket. In his other pocket, the cold edges of Oscar's phone dug into his thigh. "That's fine. That's okay."
The taxi sped endlessly on.
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"A private room," the nurse promised, the paramedics rushing them through a discreet side entrance. "I of course understand the difficult situation, and we take patient confidentiality very seriously here."
"Someone has to call his parents," Lando said, gripping the edge of the counter. He felt lightheaded. The counter was the only solid thing in the world. If he let go, he would fall away; he would dissolve; he would disappear. "Or his manager."
The nurse raised an eyebrow. "Do you have their numbers?"
Lando shook his head hard, the world spinning around him. "Someone needs to call Mark," he repeated. It felt like the only important thing in the world. "Oh, god, someone needs to tell Mark."
"Is Mark his family? Is he authorised to make medical decisions?"
Lando thought about all the times he had seen the grizzly figure haunting the corners of the motorhome, scowling at the team in briefings, lighting up with joy at Oscar's podiums. He thought about Mark ruffling Oscar's hair, tapping his helmet for luck, lending him his holiday house; the way Mark smiled indulgent and fond at Oscar's every move. Mark, who took his hopes of a championship and pressed them forwards into Oscar, who had known all along that Oscar was better than him, would do more than him, would have a better chance than he did. Mark, who loved Oscar like his own, who wanted more for Oscar than he could give.
Lando knew suddenly, with a horrid certainty, that this news would break Mark.
"Yes," Lando choked out, feeling his insides twist. "Yes. Oscar is everything to him."
"Alright. There aren't any numbers on file for him," she said, her eyes sympathetic, "but of course this is not where he usually receives treatment. If you have his phone, you could perhaps… some phones have emergency contacts?"
Lando scrabbled at his pocket, fishing out Oscar's phone. Thank god for Oscar's phone, thank god for Oscar, thank god. He stared down at the locked screen, and realised he had no idea what Oscar's password was. He tried his birthday, and then his own birthday, and then the first 4 digits, with no success. "Fuck!"
"Some phones don't need the passcode," the nurse said gently, holding out her hand. "You can access the emergency contacts from the home screen- ah, yes, here we have it."
She fiddled with the phone, and the numbers came to him in a flash — 2107, when Oscar had won his first race, when they had started sleeping together. It didn't matter, anyway. Lando had been once again just a little too stupid, a little too late. The nurse dialled the phone, and the tinny buzz of the ring filled the air.
In his pocket, his phone started vibrating.
His lungs stopped working.
Lando fished his phone out of his pocket, and Oscar's name lit up the screen.
His legs gave way.
Distantly, he could hear someone speaking, low and firm and concerned, but all he could think about was how the ground was suddenly very close, and someone was crying, loud, shattering sobs that were echoing through his chest, shockwaves ripping through his ribs. The hospital was too loud and too bright. He was cold, suddenly, frozen to his core and shaking madly with it, and he felt like he would never be warm again. Lando crumpled to the floor, and he realised that he was the one crying, and he was Oscar's emergency contact, and Oscar had tried to kill himself, and all he could think about was that the floor was sticky, and they were going to miss their flight, and nothing would ever be alright again.
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Oscar doesn’t remember when it started.
His first memory of it was this: hurtling into the barriers at Zandvoort, the adrenaline still whining through his body; a flash of white and Danny wrenching his wheel sideways, smashing his wrists instead of Oscar. The sickening thrum of relief. The even more sickening undertone of disappointment, something twisted and aching and wanting. Oscar climbed out of the car, shaking and dazed and flying high, and very carefully did not think about going faster. The consolations and briefings after, and Oscar sat there trembling through it all, biting back the fact that he wished Daniel hadn't stopped.
It felt a bit like falling in love, a bit like racing. He had been so happy to have made it. He was an F1 driver now. Then, the feeling had slipped into his head like a crush: slowly, exhilarating, and then suffocating, all-consuming, all at once. Inevitable. There was something heavy pressing down on him, muffled under the five-point seatbelt, waiting for him to step out of the car. Oscar raced, and won, and lived, and he tried to feel something, through the heavy layer of nothing pressed around his heart. There was nothing wrong with him, apart from the fact that he was a racer, and everything else.
It scared Oscar, at first, the feeling. He thought it had been nerves, the pressure of finally joining Formula One. It scared him, when he won, and the feeling didn't go away. And then slowly, he got used to it. Got comfortable with it. Probably I'll go hang myself, Mark had said a decade ago. Sometimes after bad races, Oscar lay there in the dark and rolled the thought around in his head. Once, he thought about asking Mark, telling Mark about it — Mark, who would understand, who could do something, Mark who was the embodiment of Aussie Grit. Mark, who wanted a championship so badly for Oscar that Oscar could feel it in his bones, like a disease too deep to dig out. Sometimes, Oscar caught Mark looking at him, something hungry in himself reflected in the older driver.
Oscar never brought it up.
Most of the time, he just wished he were stupid enough to do something about it. And now he had.
He woke up to a sterile white room, the lights flickering and over-bright. His tongue felt heavy, his head stuffed and aching and spinning hollowly, racing like a ghost around the track. He could taste plastic. There were tubes coming out of his nose, and a mask over it and his mouth, and more tubes coming out of his veins. He clenched a fist experimentally. It hurt. The beeping picked up. It was very quiet otherwise.
When he turned his head, there was no one there beside him; only the machine, staring back apathetically. Oscar inhaled deeply, felt the way the stretch made his lungs ache, and did not cry at where he was now. He closed his eyes, and slipped back into the grey space, where nothing mattered.
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When Lando wouldn't—couldn't—stop crying, they put him in a private area, a little examination room off to the side, with a door. Lando curled up on the plastic chair at the side of the room—where his sisters would sit waiting, when his mum took them all to his checkups. A nurse had come with something in a cup, a tiny pill and water, promising to calm him down, and he had, treacherously, hesitated, aching for the sweet relief of haze.
Lando didn't want to sit on the bed. Lando didn't want to be examined. He wasn't the one dying. In the end, he refused it; he had things to take care of.
It was still the middle of the night, but Zak picked up on the third ring. "Hello?"
"Zak," Lando breathed shakily, and then he couldn't speak. The words were fumbling in his mouth, falling all over themselves in an attempt to stay inside. "Zak, there's- something's happened."
"Lando?" He sounded awake now, his American accent grating through the phone. "Is everything okay? What's going on?"
"Oscar's- something's happened," Lando choked out. "It's bad. It's really bad."
Zak was quiet. Lando could hear him breathing, heavy and alive, down the line. The sound rasped against his ears. He felt like throwing up.
"Oscar's in the hospital," he continued. "I don't- I think I need to talk to you and Andrea, and someone from PR. Can you- can you give me Mark Webber's number?"
"Lando," Zak said, his voice very soft. Lando had never heard him sound this gentle, not even when he had sent himself into the barriers in Vegas. "What happened?"
His vision was tunnelling. Lando's hands were shaking so much, the phone screen ricocheted off his ear. He could feel it, his ungrateful pulse wracking in his ears, thrumming against his throat, racing on and on and on unrelenting as Oscar lay there somewhere, swathed in white and trying to die. Lando opened his mouth, and found that nothing came out apart from a choked sob.
A hand landed on his back. Max plucked the phone deftly from Lando's fingers as Lando shook and gasped and buried his head into his hands. "Lando, breathe." There was the quiet beep of the mute button, and the phone went into some pocket of Max's jeans, impossibly skintight as always. He dropped to the floor in front of Lando in his shitty plastic chair, and pulled him into a hug. Lando could feel the muscle shifting in his arms, the rise and fall of his chest, the smell of his aftershave flooding over the sterile smell of the hospital. His stubble was rough on Lando's temple. Lando's face was mashed uncomfortably into his collarbone, against the collar of his dark tee, miraculously Red-Bull-free.
"Breathe, Lando," Max said again, and Lando could feel the words vibrate through his chest.
"How are your jeans not splitting," he mumbled, muffled into his shirt. Max huffed, quiet and amused.
"I of course buy them with the stretch, so I can move."
He sniffled, fisting the shirt tighter. "You came."
Max sighed, the breath ghosting across the top of Lando's hair. "Of course."
They stayed there for a long moment, curled into each other, breathing and watching the world move around them.
Slowly, Lando untangled himself, and Max stood. "It will be okay, Lando."
"Will it?" he mumbled.
When Lando looked up, Max had pulled the phone back out of thin air. "This is Max Verstappen," he said in his flat Dutch accent. Max squeezed the back of his neck, hard, and moved to step out of the room. Lando curled his hands into fists. "I'm with Lando in the hospital right now, there's been an incident," and he watched as Max's lips formed the words, "Oscar tried to-"
He wrenched his gaze away. It was too late. Lando breathed in shakily, and his brain whispered that Oscar might not, ever again, and the tears came once more.
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"I didn't know who to call," Lando said, twisting the edge of his shirt between his fingers. "I thought-"
"I know, Lando." There were lines of tension around Max's eyes. Suddenly, foolishly, Lando thought he might have been a bit stupid, a bit selfish. "I understand. I do not mind."
"I need to-" He gagged. The thought of having to call Mark, explain to him what happened — the thought of having to call Oscar's mum, whom Lando had met a handful of times and spend one long, summery Christmas with, and tell her what happened — it was too much. Lando could feel it rising in his throat, the words burned away by stomach acid. He swallowed, thickly, and tried to continue. "I have to fix it. I need to do something."
Max's hand was warm and heavy, rubbing circles on his back. "You did the important part. You found him. We called Zak, and he will take care of it — and if not, we can sort it out later." Lando buried his head into his hands. "You found him. He's okay."
"I'm sorry," he mumbled through his fingers. "I should've known. I should've seen."
"You of course cannot always see this kind of thing coming," Max said softly, bluntly. "This is the kind of thing people hide, until they are breaking, and then they break instead of revealing. It is of course worse, in our line of work, where it is already so public and psychological."
"I thought we-" Lando broke off, wary. Then, he sighed. If anyone would understand, it would be Max. "We were sleeping together- we are sleeping together. I kept seeing things, kept feeling like something was off. I didn't… I should've seen, should've pushed harder."
Max shrugged. "That is the nature of these things. You cannot blame yourself for this, you were not looking and you could not have known the signs. Of course I can also sit here and say maybe I should have known, maybe I should have seen, I know this better than you do, but of course there is no point in saying if if if now."
Lando was silent for a long moment. He could hear Max breathing, a low, whistly sound, feel the warm displacement of air as he shifted.
"What was it like with you and Daniel?"
"He loved me," he said simply. "In the end, it was not enough, for either of us."
"I'm sorry," Lando mumbled, "for how the team treated him."
"You were young, and an idiot, and adapting to the world," Max said. "It is not your fault, that you did not recognise it, that you were not able to help him with them. He is much happier now, away from the racing."
Lando hated him, suddenly, hated him and pitied him and understood him. Obviously it was not Lando's fault that Daniel had had a hard time at McLaren, but he had not taught Lando anything about how to be an older teammate, how to deal with a situation like this. He had never told Lando how it had been to find Max, why he had never come back, in the end. He supposed it was simple. The world had moved on. It had no need for him anymore.
Was that how Oscar had felt, he wondered, except it couldn't be true, because Daniel had raced a full life and Oscar was only twenty-four, only four full seasons deep. No, he thought, realising, was that how he would feel, if- when Oscar got better, and moved on, and left him? Lando couldn't fathom it, couldn't imagine a world where he could be happier away from the racing.
They lapsed into silence. Max's hand was still stroking up and down Lando's back, drawing rough circles that dented into corners unconsciously — Eau Rouge, 130R, the Senna esses. He wishes he could understand—it felt like the most painful thing in the world to understand, if he could, why it happened.
"Sleep, Lando," Max said eventually. The clock ticked quietly in the background. Outside the room, people drifted about, watching, waiting, wounded and weary and weak. Inside, there they sat, Lando and Max, holding out hope, watching and waiting and wondering, in their little room where nothing had yet happened.
"My rib hurts," Lando whispered, pressing a hand to where it ached, where God had drawn one out to make Eve. Lando would give it up, all of it up, to breathe life back into Oscar.
"You have probably strained it from crying," he said, running his fingers over Lando's fingers, over his side. "We can get it checked out later, when we hear back, yes?"
"I'm scared."
"Sleep," Max said again. "I'll wake you up if I hear anything."
Lando curled up, buried his face in his knees. Max's hand was warm and heavy on his back. He closed his eyes, and let himself fall.
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When Oscar next woke up, there was sunlight streaming through the window, and Mark was sitting at the side of his bed.
Mark sat there, in the same clothes as he had last seen him in — Mark hadn't packed for a long race weekend — leafing through a folder of documents. He looked like he had aged years in a night, a heaviness pulling at his eyes, an exhaustion in the curve of his back. His hands, Oscar saw, were shaking.
Oscar twitched, or he made some sort of noise, and Mark's head snapped towards him. His eyes were red-rimmed, sunken in the angles of his face. He hadn't, Oscar thought, looked as gaunt in the entire time Oscar had known him; he looked worse than he had when he had been racing.
"Mark," he tried to say, and nothing came out. His throat hurt. There was a plastic tube taped to his nose, stretching across his face. "Mark, 'm sorry."
"They had to pump your stomach," Mark said, as calmly as if they were discussing telemetry, or biometrics. Oscar supposed that in a way, they were. "You've got a lot of stuff going in and out of you right now."
Oscar waited for the guilt to hit. Mark's eyes were wet, and his hands were shaking. All he felt was a cold, empty calm, numb and fuzzy and grey. His chest hurt — a lot of him hurt, his arms, his stomach, his calves, his back. Something hard and aching clawed at his stomach.
"How are you feeling?"
Oscar shrugged. "Sore," he managed to croak out. Mark looked disapproving and concerned and pitiful all at once, and Oscar wanted to reach out and scrape the pity off his face, punch the softness out of him.
"Don't try to talk too much, they only just pulled the tube out your throat."
That would explain why it hurt, why his voice failed him. He turned to the pitcher of water there on the side table, and Mark set his folder aside, poured him a glass, held it to his lips as Oscar drank slowly, swallowing painfully after every sip. He flinched, still, when Mark's hand landed on his arm, heavy and warm and concerned.
"For god's sake, kid, why didn't you say something?" His eyes were red-rimmed. Oscar looked at him, looked at the rumple of his clothing, and waited for the guilt to hit; there was nothing but a chilly, hollow expanse of dust. He felt, perhaps, he ought to be concerned that he was feeling nothing, except he couldn't muster up the willpower to be concerned about anything.
He shrugged.
"I don't know, Mark." He was so tired. He didn't have it in him, to fight Mark, to comfort him, to identify the problem area and make a plan to fix it. He didn't want to do this. He hadn't asked for any of it, hadn't asked to wake up after trying to go to sleep, hadn't even asked for Lando to try and save him, for fuck's sake.
Mark's grip tightened. "I know you did it on purpose," he said. "I've seen the telemetry."
"What telemetry," Oscar said tonelessly. He moistened his lips, tried to swallow, and his brows pinched at the scrape. Mark was there immediately, tipping the cold glass to his lips. Oscar parted them slightly, and cool water slid down his throat, smoothing over the pain. Slowly he drank again, his throat stiff and convulsing as he tried to get it down, tried to soothe it.
"The race telemetry," Mark said, and he was still holding the cup to Oscar's lips. Oscar's mouth paused around the rim of the glass, and a trail of water dripped down his chin. "I was already looking it over last night, and I couldn't figure out what went wrong, but it makes sense now, doesn't it?"
Oscar looked at him placidly over his hand. He couldn't be bothered to glare. Mark set the glass down, and handed Oscar a tissue, which he scrubbed across his mouth and jaw. "I didn't understand it, but I do now. You did it on purpose. Your foot was on the throttle. You wanted to crash."
"And what if I did?" Oscar asked, suddenly genuinely curious. It didn't matter, he hadn't crashed in the end, but what if he had.
"Then you would've died," Mark said, and his voice is thick, and angry, and curling heavy around the room. "You would've died, or gotten seriously injured, or something! God, Oscar, you've seen what happened in 1994."
"I turned," he said flatly. "It didn't feel fair, to make everyone watch."
"Why did you do it?" Mark ran his hand through his hair. He was pacing now, agitated and fidgety. "Did you want to be Senna, die for the racing?"
"No," Oscar said, his voice raising itself involuntarily, "because Senna died a champion, and I would die nothing."
He broke off into a cough. The water was close enough to grab, and he tried to close his hand around it, but it was heavy and aching and weak. Mark sighed, sitting back down in the chair, and helped him drink.
"I would die nothing," he continued, once he had had his fill. "It's not about the racing. It's just how I am."
"But why?" Mark's brow was furrowed. "Why would you- why?"
"I don't know, Mark," he said, and he meant it. He didn't. This was just how it was.
"I can't lose you, kid," Mark said, his voice wet and raw. Oscar stared at the ceiling, at the calm expanse of white speckled tile, pleasingly divided into a grid of squares. "Please. Oscar. I can't lose you."
"Me, or the championship you want me to win?" he said, blank and empty.
He waited for the words to hurt. Mark flinched backwards. "How- how could you say that," he whispered, and Oscar knew, immediately, that if he turned his head, he would see Mark Webber crying, stiff and breaking. "I don't care about any of that, kid, I just need you to be okay."
Oscar still felt nothing. He closed his eyes. There was nothing more he wanted to say.
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Lando shot up when Mark walked out of the room. "He's awake?"
"Awake and talking back," Mark said. He rubbed at his eyes. Suddenly, he looked very old. "He's not well, is he?"
Max shook his head. Lando laughed, a dry, horrid noise. "Mark, he tried to kill himself."
"And we all missed all the signs," the older man mumbled, half to himself. Lando looked away.
Lando had woken up to raised voices, looked up to see Max braced against Mark Webber—no, that was wrong, Max was holding him up as he strained and sagged, half-fighting Max to get to Lando, half-relying on him to stay upright. Max looked over, and they had locked eyes, and the corner of his mouth had ticked up in a wry smile at the scenario. Lando had smiled back impishly out of instinct, in that half-second of sleep-haze, before he remembered.
Zak had called Mark, and gotten him there, and now here he stood, frantic and trying to hide it and all teeth, ready to take it out on whoever was there. Lando swallowed his apologies, his explanations; they would do no good to either of them, in the state they were in. Mark didn't need to know — Lando could be the only one to have the image of Oscar, cold and corpse-like and unmoving on the sheets, stained into his eyelids. No one else needed to know.
"How long has it been," had been the only thing Mark asked, drooping against the wall. Lando shrugged. "Shite, what do I tell his mother?"
"How about whether he's alive or dead," he snapped, inexplicably. He had been horrified as soon as the words left his mouth. Mark recoiled from him, his face spasming, and there was something dull and burning rising in his throat, and he rushed to the bin, leaned over, and retched up hot bile.
A nurse knocked. She poked her head in. "Oscar Piastri?"
All three froze, heads snapping up. Lando, then Max, then Mark.
"Which one of you is his medical proxy?"
"I am," Lando and Mark both said, and paused, glaring at each other.
Max sighed, rolling his eyes. "We are all very close to him, and care very deeply about him," he said, "so if it is okay you can of course just tell all of us."
"Wait," Lando said, and his voice came out too loud for the room. He swallowed thickly. "Wait. I don't want to hear it, if it's bad news."
The nurse hesitated for the briefest of seconds, and Lando felt his heart drop through his stomach, could feel Mark Webber tensing next to him.
"He's going to be fine," she said.
"He's still unconscious. We had to-" she continued, listing what they had had to do to save him, but it didn't matter, Lando was crumpling boneless into his chair, his face in his hands, heaving in great, relieved sobs. He was alive. Oscar was alive.
Max was still talking to the nurse. Lando looked up, and he saw Mark slumped against the wall, shoulders shaking, and realised he was having the horrifying experience of watching Mark Webber cry.
Mark had been the one to go in to wait, in the end. Max had managed to bully Lando into getting his ribs checked out.
"I want to talk to him," Lando said.
Mark and Max both hesitated. "Lando," Mark said very carefully, "I'm not sure it's a good idea right now. He's just woken up, he's disoriented, he's not exactly a conversationalist right now."
"I want to see him—I need to see him," he insisted. "I found him, I at least have the right to see him for myself, to know he's alive." Horrifyingly, he realised he was on the cusp of tears.
Mark looked at him, and there was something like pity in his eyes. Lando realised with a start that his face was wet. "Okay. I can't stop you." He swallowed. "I need to- I need to make some calls."
Outside the windows, the sun was rising. Lando flexed his hands nervously, and pushed the door open.
Oscar looked down at him when he entered. "Lando."
"Osc," he whispered. He was alive. His legs almost gave out, but he managed to lower himself into the chair next to the bed without falling over. Oscar just watched him, placid and blank and empty. Lando looked at him. Oscar's eyes were too dark, too blank, his face too still. His hands were lying flat and unmoving on top of the sheets, plastic tubing and wire coming out of various parts of him. Lando looked at him, and he felt uneasy. There was something… off about him, almost uncanny, like someone had turned him upside down and drained all the Oscar-ness out of him.
Oscar just looked back, silent and unmoving. They sat there in silence.
"I can't believe you told Mark," Oscar said eventually, his voice sharp.
"I told Zak, actually, and he called Mark," Lando said, as calmly as he could. "I didn't have Mark's number."
"I actually can't believe you." Oscar turned away from him, his hands curling into fists. "It wasn't your place to meddle."
"You tried to kill yourself," Lando said harshly. His heart was racketing against his ribs suddenly, some great pressure on his chest, aching and unyielding, and he couldn't breathe. "You tried to kill yourself, Oscar."
"That's not any of your business, or his," Oscar bit out.
"You made it my business," he carefully did not shout, "when you planned for me to find your body."
Oscar froze.
"You planned for it, didn't you?" Now that Lando had said it out loud, it was so obvious. "You knew it would be me. You knew I would find a way to get into your room, that I would wake you up." The thought popped, horrifying and fully formed, into his brain. "Osc- Oscar. Did you think I'd be late?"
Oscar wouldn't meet his eyes.
His ribs hurt, his chest hurt, every inch of him ached and screamed. "You knew I'd be late. You knew I'd oversleep, and think you'd meet me at the airport, and leave without you. You wanted me to leave you. How could you- You wanted me to leave, not knowing you were dead!"
"Lando." Oscar looked up, and his eyes were wet, and blank, and horrible. He reached out, fingers tight and pale on his. "Lando, I'm sorry."
Lando shook his head mutely. He opened his mouth, and no words came out, and he pressed a hand to the base of his ribs, finger-widths below his heart, where the doctor had said he had strained them. It hurt. Oscar's grip tightened. "Please."
Don't leave me, he didn't say, but Lando could feel the words heavy in the air, hovering smothering over them. He ached all over. Why, he wanted to scream, how could you say that, how dare you say that, when you left me first. He squeezed, and Oscar squeezed back, and they were just sitting there, two hollow halves of a whole, gripping hands so tightly both their fingertips were dark red with blood.
He couldn't resist asking. "Why me?"
Oscar kept looking at him, with those calm, empty eyes, and Lando thought suddenly that it had been a mistake. Lando had found Oscar, but he had been too late, because whoever Oscar had been had died, and only this shell of his body was left, forced to stay alive.
"We're teammates," Oscar's body said, and Lando's body spasmed, trying to rip itself apart from inside out.
"Fuck you," he said, shaking his head. "Fuck you so hard, honestly." Oscar was still looking at him. Lando wanted to reach over and claw out his eyes, tear his body open, hold his still-beating heart in his hands, just to prove it was still beating, just to prove he still had a heart.
"It had to be you," the body on the bed said softly, and Lando ached all over. "I'm sorry Lando. Of course it had to be you. Nothing else would make sense."
Lando stood up, the chair clattering to the floor. "I need a moment."
Oscar didn't say anything. He just watched him go.
He fell to his knees in an empty stall, curling and gagging over the toilet bowl. His ribs hurt. His throat burned. Lando pressed a hand to his side, pressed down harder to feel the ache, and threw up the scream clawing its way out of his throat.
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They adjusted his meds, later. A doctor came by and told him, in lilting English, what had happened to him. He was having a shock reaction. He was on a heavy dose of a lot of things. He was lucky to not have permanently damaged his liver. They told him, haltingly and carefully, about psychiatric holds, about patient privacy, about how they were taking steps to ensure no one discovered him here. Oscar listened in a haze, dizzy and tired and half-awake. He didn't feel real, didn't feel like himself, didn't really want to feel much at all, to be honest. They asked him how he felt, and he blankly recited the desolation inside of him, and the doctor's eyebrows flew up.
"I think perhaps for the time being we will keep you under surveillance," the doctor said carefully, "and we can discuss medication and treatment later."
Oscar shrugged. There was nothing to treat.
Mark came in again, later, sat there while they removed a jungle of tubes from him. Oscar watched curiously — it was odd, how the plastic looked so seamless with his body, how it was like he was part machine. He liked it, being part machine, not having to feel, not having to be real. He could feel it there, now that he was looking for it, now that he was awake and aware and thinking properly. There was a gap, in the back of his mind, like a missing tooth; when he probed at it, he could taste a hint of real feeling, shoved down in the chasm, slow and terrified to wake; so that was where it was, where it went when he was like this, blank and half-existing.
He knew, once he started thinking about it, he wouldn't be able to stop. The thought comforted him. The comfort scared him.
"I wish Lando hadn't saved me," he said flatly and quietly, turning his head away from Mark. Mark flinched. "I'm so tired, Mark. I don't know how to do this."
Mark gripped him with frightening intensity. "You have to, kid. It's the only thing there is."
The idea of that saddened Oscar, more than words could say. He closed his eyes and fell into the darkness, Mark's hand the only thing anchoring him to existence.
When he next opened his eyes, the room was dim, the blinds drawn low, and empty. Oscar sat up, and the blankets fell away, and he examined his hands, his arms, his body, the IV coming out of his arm, connected to something dripping down the side of the bed. He wasn't as sore anymore, but he ached, something hard and yawning and painful in the pit of his stomach. He probed that dark, hidden place again, and he could feel it dissolving — the dark placid calm turning rancid, fear and anger and grief, welling up between his synapses.
He swallowed hard, and made to swing his legs over the side of the bed. They refused to move. Oscar stared at them, betrayed and exhausted, and laid back down onto the stiff sheets, staring back up at the endless ceiling sky.
The door clicked open, and Oscar tensed, ready for a doctor to tell him what was wrong with him, for Mark to resume his horrible not-vigil. Instead, Max Verstappen slid through the door, and sat neatly down at the side of his bed.
"Where's Mark," he asked, and then the thought struck him. "Where's Lando?"
He had thought he dreamt it, until he had opened his eyes, the drugs wearing out of his system, and seen the chair still knocked over on the ground. He swallowed.
"Mark is making some calls," Max said, and Oscar flinched at the thought of it, of having to tell his mother and sisters what he had done, of Mark having to be the messenger, the failed guardian angel. "Lando is in his room, recovering."
Something jolted through Oscar, loose and sharp and rattling. "Why? What happened?"
Max eyed him keenly. "He has been throwing up a lot, and he is dehydrated, and strained, and he passed out in the corridor. Did you not hear the racket?"
He had not. Oscar swallowed thickly. "What do you want, Max?" Somehow, he was glad, that it was Max — unfamiliar, impersonal Max, that he was dealing with now, fully lucid and feeling, instead of Mark or Lando, with their terror and sorrow thick and cloying.
Max looked at him for a long moment. Then, he started unbuckling his watch, his hands clear and precise on the thick strap of his custom TAG Heuer.
"When I was twenty-four," Max said, and the watch slid off his upturned wrist, "I tried to kill myself."
On the underside of his wrist, constantly covered by the rotation of sponsored watches, there was a thick scar — a jagged, puffy, twisting thing, a red and white puckered line spanning the expanse of his wrist. Even now, years later, it glowed of violence, of a desperation that didn't want to be fixed.
Oscar's eyes flicked up to meet Max's. Max was staring at him, unwavering, and his eyes were very blue. Twenty-four. Oscar was twenty-four. He did the math quickly, and his eyes widened. "When you-"
"Won the championship, yes." Max smiled, a droll, almost bitter, thing. "I won, and then I got the drunkest I'd ever been, and then I decided that maybe I had had enough. There was… I broke a bottle, in my hotel room, and I thought I did not want to drive anymore, but I did not know what I could do other than drive."
He took a deep breath. "I tried to… Daniel found me. He said there was blood everywhere, that my father cried, that Christian yelled at everyone he saw, that somehow, miraculously, barely anyone else found out. I don't remember that. All I remember was wanting it to be over, and then feeling like it was almost over, and then Daniel was holding my hand and screaming at me, and then I woke up in hospital, and everyone was furious."
Horror prodded loosely at the back of Oscar's brain. "Jesus, Max."
Max shrugged. "I have a lot of money, and very good medical services, and I am doing a lot better now. But I am saying this to you so you know I understand." His eyes sharpened, and he said bluntly, "You are twenty-four. But we are different. You have not won a championship yet."
"Thanks," Oscar said back in the same tone. "Really needed that reminder, that I haven't accomplished anything."
"You have won a race," Max said, his eyes boring into Oscar. Oscar fought the urge to look away. "And you are trying to deflect."
"Why are you here, Max?"
"Lando called me," he said simply. "I was the only one he knew, who had… experience, shall we say, with the matter."
"And?" Oscar shrugged bitterly. "It's not the same."
"Perhaps it is not," he agreed. "Then of course you have to say what it is, if not that."
"You don't understand," Oscar said, his hands curling into fists in the blankets. He was angry now, blindly and drowningly angry. "It's not the same at all."
Max looked at him, quiet. His hands were still on the bed, unmoving and heavy, the mattress divoting around it. Abruptly, he said, "There was an incident, in my second season."
Oscar looked at him, his brain crawling along, failing to see the significance.
"I was of course not there for it," he said, "but Danny told me afterwards, much later. He thought I might like to connect with him, that we might find some… understanding." He shrugged. "I did not think it was a good idea. You have to understand, Formula One was not always like this. People did not use to be… friends. It used to be that what you did off track was your business, unless your rivals made it theirs, and no one looked too closely at anything that was not a result, that didn't affect the results. That year was different. It was personal."
"He called for… for his teammate," Max said, stuttering lightly over the words, "and for his father, and it was not so bad in the end, but it was... not good."
"Okay," Oscar said, trying not to shake, pressing his hands to his thighs. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"2016," Max added, and the pieces collapsed and dropped into place.
Max leaned forwards, his eyes gleaming with something. "I am trying to tell you that even if it is not the same, you are not alone. For many drivers, the racing, the championship battle, it is stressful. And then of course you get to the end of it, and you have achieved or lost what you wanted, and no matter if you are a champion if not, here is a way to be in the history books forever. So of course if you are already… inclined, there is always the temptation — what if this was it, what if it could all be over, what if you could go down in history as a true first."
He paused. "It is almost worse, for the champions, I think. There is always the fear of not winning a second, and the bliss of it being over, and the memory of how much it hurt, how much it cost. It is a dangerous mixture, when you have that, and you have been living for nothing more than to win the championship for a very long time."
"Was that how it was for you?" Oscar asked. Max smiled drolly, something still and twisting in his face.
"No," he said. "I just wanted it all to be over."
Oscar didn't say anything. The gaping chasm yawned at the bottom of him, creeping and hungry and cold. He felt, sometimes, that he would never have enough, that he would never feel real the way he did before all of this. That racing had been the one thing that sustained him, and the one thing that ruined him, in the end.
Max looked at him, his eyes boring through him, like light dripping into the bottom of a dark well. "Most drivers who think like this do it after they win their first championship, but you are different. That is dangerous."
"So?" He shrugged. "We do danger for a job. We drive at breakneck speeds every other weekend."
Max shook his head. "No, Oscar," he said very softly, "a different kind of dangerous. I think you know this, and you are scared, and you are angry, because now you know what you can do."
"If you want me to teach you to lie, to cover for you so you can get out of here, pretend everything is fine," he said, "I can do that. I can of course tell you the right things to say, the right things to do, so that everyone thinks you are fine, that you are better."
Oscar turned it over in his mind. It was temptation itself, it was the forbidden fruit, the gold at the end of the rainbow, the dizzying vertigo of the tightrope. To keep the yawning blankness, to know he could return to this, to know he had a way out, if he needed one. To know that this was—not normal, but... common. That Max Verstappen, of all people, understood.
"But," he continued, "the cost is that it will never get better, that it will be like this forever. And perhaps eventually you will decide you want to try again, and perhaps you will succeed, and it will be a massive waste."
Oscar bit back a sound, wriggling its way out of his mouth, squirming down his tongue. It was stupid. This was stupid. He had thought he knew what he wanted — he wanted it to be over, he wanted it to go away, he wanted it to stop and start and feel, and he wanted a million things at once, a million things that he couldn't have, that weren't even real, that didn't exist.
He wanted, suddenly and with an urgency that terrified him, his mother.
Max stood to leave, and Oscar was filled with a holy terror, something gripping him on his spine, gripping him and shaking, screaming in his head.
"Why are you telling me this," he bit out. "I'm a danger to myself. Why would you tell me this?"
Max paused at the door. "I was not given many choices when I was younger," he said finally. "I am glad I was not given this one, but I think for you, it is more important that you choose by yourself."
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They released him a lot faster than they released Oscar.
Lando sat in the corner, exhausted and silent, as Mark negotiated with the doctor, Zak's voice echoing tinny and tired-sounding from the speakers. Oscar sat on the bed, a mirror image of him, blank and unmoving, waiting for something to happen. He wouldn't meet Lando's eyes, fixed on his face. Lando pressed a hand to the familiar spot on his side, where he had touched, traced, poked so many times already. He was familiar with it, the slightly swollen flesh, the stab of pain, the deep ache that follow, the shallowing out of his breath. He pressed harder, and breathed lightly, and waited.
Max had left an hour ago, just after Lando was cleared. He watched silently as they pulled the IV needles out of Lando, Lando himself too squeamish to think about it, let alone watch. Then, as the nurses cleared the room, he said, "I'm going to head back now, and fly back as well."
Lando nodded, his heart soft and raw. "Thanks for coming, mate. Really. I appreciate it."
Max shrugged. "It is of course no problem." He hesitated. "Keep an eye on Oscar, alright? And take care, you of course know you can call me for anything, anytime."
Something in his heart twisted at that, light and grippy and aching. "Safe flight," was all he said, clapping Max on the shoulder. Max smiled at him, a soft closed-lip thing, and vanished. Lando signed his papers, changed back into his own clothes, and slipped into Oscar's room, where a proper racket was being made.
On screen, Zak threw his hands up. "Oscar, if you want to go, they have to release you into someone's custody," he said, brow furrowed. "Even if we promise we're giving you a top team of psychologists, they're obviously worried for your immediate health and safety."
Oscar shrugged, still blank. Lando's hands curled into fists. He was alive. He was here. He was real. Everything else could wait. "I don't want to go with either of them."
It wasn't fair, Lando thought, the thought stinging at the nape of his neck. Oscar shouldn't be like this—this lifeless, unresponsive, as if he barely existed. Oscar should be looking back at him, the familiar wry twist of his mouth holding back something snarky he couldn't say out loud. Oscar should be fine—Oscar should be— he shuddered, and wished that this night had never happened.
"He'll go with me," Mark cut in, cold and harsh. Lando could see the lines on his face, and until now, he had thought that 'aging decades in a day' was a figure of speech. "I'm his manager, I'm practically his family, I'll take care of him."
Please, he could hear under it all. Mark's shoulders were tense, limned with exhaustion and concern. Please, give me my boy.
The doctor hesitated.
"I'm afraid you're not authorised to make the decision," she said delicately. "Mr. Piastri's paperwork has Mr. Lando Norris down as his medical proxy and next of kin."
The room froze. Now, Oscar lifted his head, his eyes meeting Lando, like little black holes burning in his face.
"What?" Mark croaked.
Lando couldn't breathe. He hardly remembered this. Oscar had changed it, at the start of the year, when it had been decided that Mark would cut back on time trackside, focus more on sponsors and management. Obviously, if he couldn't be at the scene, there had been no point in keeping his name. And so Oscar had asked Lando, his teammate, guaranteed to be at every race beside him, there at every moment, and Lando had said yes, almost touched. And that had been that.
Oscar was still looking at Lando. Lando couldn't look away, his eyes flickering over Oscar, the moles on his face, his neck, his hands, the pale swathe of his collarbone, the colourless pink of his mouth. His eyes were wet, somehow.
He drew a deep, shuddering breath, half-relishing the pain in his rib, but Oscar beat him to it. "I'll go with Lando."
Mark whirled around furiously, glaring at Lando, looking at him half-mad, half pleading. "No. Kid, c'mon-"
Oscar shook his head. "I'll go with Lando, if Lando will take me."
Very slowly, Lando nodded.
"Great!" Zak clapped his hands. "That's resolved. Can we sort out the paperwork and what kind of continuing care you recommend?" He said it so lightly, as if he wasn't holding Oscar's life in his hands, as if it didn't matter what they did from there on. Lando gritted his teeth, and forced himself to relax.
Mark moved towards the bed. "Oscar," he said. Oscar flinched away from him, and Mark stopped dead in his tracks, something horrible and wounded coming over his face. With visible effort, he pulled himself together, and turned back to the conversations with the doctor.
"Lando," Oscar said, and his eyes were piercing, like nails digging into Lando's, and Lando was there. Lando was there. Lando was there.
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Oscar knew almost immediately that staying with Lando was a mistake.
It was awkward. He was no longer the version of himself that Lando remembered — he could no longer remember how to be around Lando, how they had fit together. He barely functioned — he wasn't sleeping well, wasn't eating well, wasn't actually doing very much. Some days, Lando would come home, and he would startle back into awareness from the couch, where he hadn't moved all day, or he would still be in bed, too tired to get up, too sorry to face the world.
Lando kept looking at him like a kicked puppy, like he was worried that if he took his eyes off him for even a second, Oscar would turn into smoke, would disappear without a trace. Worse, Lando wouldn’t touch him for some reason, his hands stopping just shy of his skin, flinching away from his body, keeping a respectable distance at all times. Lando spoke to him softly, clumsily, more often than not lapsing into awkward silences.
But staying with Mark would have been worse. Staying with Mark would have meant Mark's stilted attempt to talk about his feelings, when Oscar knew he hadn't thought about having feelings since 2012, and stumbling through well-meaning minefields. Staying with Mark would have meant workouts, half-finished, Mark refusing to push him to spare his feelings, or pushing him too hard. Worst, staying with Mark would have meant having to call his family—even visit—and the thought of that was too terrible for words.
At least Lando left him alone — gave him space, made him food and watched him eat it, didn't push him too hard to get up, or go out, or call his family, or do anything at all, really. Lando just kept living his life, and looking at him, like a stray cat he was trying not to spook. That alone was enough, sometimes, for Oscar to force himself up, to sit in the sim or the home gym or anything, just to avoid that soft, sorry stare.
For him, the days passed in an imaginary haze. He went to the psychologists Zak had set up, except he couldn't trust him, because he had heard the horror stories from the other teams, and he couldn't shake the feeling that everything he said would be passed back up to McLaren. Besides, he realised, there was quite simply nothing he wanted to say. He sat there, staring blankly at the screen, answering choppily, and waited for the hour to be up.
When he told Mark, Mark went silent for half a day, and came back with a promise that he didn't have to see the team psych except for check-ups if he was willing to talk to someone else, and mailed him a long list of options. Oscar looked at the email for half a minute, and closed the tab. He didn't see the point. It was too much effort.
The meds made him hurt all over, made him fuzzy and sore and floaty, and so he stopped taking them. He retreated, all the time, to that wonderful place of desolation, deep inside him; that place where nothing felt real, and nothing could hurt him, and none of it mattered, and it all stopped feeling quite so heavy for a moment. He couldn't sleep. He could, but only next to Lando, and wasn't that humiliating? But it hurt, waking up to an empty bed when he had slept past Lando getting up to go to work. It hurt even more to wake up next to him, to watch him sleeping, see the soft curve of his jaw, the flutter of his lashes, and feel something raw and aching pressed against his bones.
Oscar started lying there, awake in the darkness, in the place where everything went blank, heaviness swirling through his body, until Lando got up to start his day.
And all of a sudden, the week had passed in a haze and it was the night before the two of them flew to the factory for race prep, before flying out to the race. Oscar lay there, motionless, tangled up in Lando's sleeping limbs, unable to breathe. He could feel his heart rabbiting in his chest, a sudden panic and claustrophobia squeezing around his throat. Carefully, he extracted himself from Lando's sleeping body — Lando only touched him when he was asleep. It was like his own sleeping body forgot how to be careful, how to be sensitive, forgot everything except its yearning for him, its aching, dizzying want.
He padded softly out onto the balcony of Lando's flat. It was a cool night, a temperate summer darkness, and for a moment, Oscar felt light, the night breeze soft on his face. He tilted his head upwards, and was greeted by a sliver of a crescent moon, a white scratch in a star-speckled sky. It was beautiful, he knew, and yet he felt nothing. The lightness had been replaced with a horrible, clawing emptiness, a desperate urge to fall endlessly, to tip himself over the side and disappear. He crumpled to the floor, dizzy with it, hands grabbing anything within reach — the banister, the side of the door, his phone. His phone. He choked on a sob, struggling to breathe, feeling it overwhelm him, the chasm swallowing him up.
Oscar knew, all of a sudden, that if they put him back on track, he would never come back.
"Hello?"
"Max," he gasped out. "Max."
"Breathe, Oscar," the Dutchman said instantly, snapping to alertness. "Deep, slow breaths, can you do that for me?"
"I don't want to do this anymore," Oscar wheezed down the line. "I can't do this anymore."
There was a very loud silence. Then, very carefully, Max asked, "Do you mean the racing, or do you mean the rest of it?"
"I don't know," he replied, and he could feel his hands shaking, the phone stuttering against his ear, and it ended up on the floor, with Oscar hunched over it on his knees, begging for something he didn't even recognise. "I just don't think I can do this anymore."
"I want it to be over," he said, and something almost like a sob wrenched its way out of his throat. "I just want it to stop, Max."
"I know, Oscar," he said, and his voice was so terribly sad. "I know."
Oscar was struck abruptly by Max in his mind's eye — no longer in red and white and blue on the top step, but in soft greys and dark jeans, standing at the doorway. Offering him an impossible choice. He gagged around a laugh that threatened to bubble in his throat — an impossible choice for an impossible situation. God, how could they let him in the car like this? How could they let him do anything like this?
Max-in-his-mind's-eye turned, and the door opened. Max had tried to kill himself. Max had won three more championships, had some semblance of normalcy. Of happiness.
"Will it really get better, if I try?"
Max was silent for a long time, and Oscar wondered suddenly, wildly, what Max would have chosen, if he had been given the same choice. He said eventually, "This is going to sound like bullshit, but is the chance of getting better enough to risk trying?"
"I don't know," Oscar whispered, curling a hand into his hair. "I can't remember what it feels like. I don't know how to do this. What if I can't? What if it's like this forever?"
"It's not," Max said, voice hard and gentle. "And you don't have to. Know how to do this, that is. You of course have many people who love you, and people who want to help you, peple who want you to get better." Distantly, Oscar could hear the tapping of keys in the background of the call. A phone was ringing, somewhere in the night. "You don't need to do it on your own, Oscar."
Oscar didn't say anything; he didn't know what to say. He knew he was loved—his mother, his sister, Mark and his team and his friends, on and off the track. Lando. Lando, who had opened his home to him, who watched him and wanted him and waited for him. Lando, who had found him; whom he had planned to find him.
"I don't want them to think I'm…" he trailed off. There was no way to finish that sentence. Only the people who already knew could help him, and they already thought he was broken. That he was freakish, empty, wrong.
Max shook his head, and Oscar heard the rustle of it through the phone. "They worry about you, Oscar, because they love you. Lando loves you," he said, and Oscar suddenly had to blink back tears. "He cares for you. He worries about you."
"I know he does," he said. He could feel the cold tile digging into his bare knees, leaving indents of the grooves on his bare skin.
"Do you love him?"
"I don't know." His voice cracked. "I could."
"I do not want him to have to find your body," he said. Oscar said nothing. His tongue was thick and heavy in his mouth, spit gathering in the back corners of his jaw, pooling sickly sweet and viscous.
"He wants the best for you," Max pressed, unrelenting. "He wants to help you, even if he can't save you."
"I know," he whispered. "I know."
"You have to let him."
There was the sound of pattering footsteps.
Oscar looked up, and Lando stood there, eyes wild, phone in hand, framed in the doorway and glowing in the hallway light. He was breathing heavily, eyes flickering frantically over Oscar, over his face, over his body.
Oscar opened his arms, and Lando fell into him, holding him close, holding him tight, and something in him broke, and the tears finally came, there and then, curled around his teammate on the balcony floor.