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It’s the middle of the night and Oscar is suddenly, acutely aware of the finger poking into his ribcage. Even worse, he’s aware of the heat pouring off his body, the prickle of sweat along his neck, that he’s achingly hard and pressed up against the seat and that he’s breathing fast and uneven and that the seat is only so big. That a minute ago he’d been close and now he’s awake and disoriented and that Lando, lying on the seat next to him, is the one that’d poked him.
Even in the darkness of the plane, Oscar can tell Lando’s leering.
“Good dream?” he whispers gleefully, and Oscar turns his face into the pillow in humiliation. They’d jacked off in the same room together a few times, as a way of relieving tension and it’d been fine. Normal even, the kind of thing you do with your mates, but this is different. Different when it’s only him. Different when in this dream, he’d— well. He's sticky and flushed, still only half awake.
“Fuck off,” he mumbles. Maybe if he squeezes his eyes shut long enough he’ll wake up and discover this is just part of it, too. Nightmare, more like.
“I might—you’ve had your fun, I guess it’s only fair.”
Oscar groans helplessly; he knows Lando. Knows him well enough to know that he won’t let this go easily. It will be a thing and Lando’ll lord it over him for as long as he can and he’ll be forced to switch teams or give up racing and become the doctor his father wanted him to be all because of one stupid fucking dream.
“Who were you dreaming about, then?”
Something spikes into his stomach, adrenaline or fear. He swallows dryly.
“Nobody.”
“Didn’t sound like nobody.”
“Seriously, Lando, fuck off.”
“Was it Lily? I’ve always imagined her to be a bit frigid, but if you’re making those sounds just dreaming about—”
“It wasn’t Lily,” Oscar snaps, and then immediately regrets it. He should’ve just agreed. Perfectly normal to dream about your girlfriend, wasn’t it, even if you were sharing a jet with your teammate. Even if your teammate’s warm breath had been on the nape of your neck. Jesus.
“Why’re you being so dodgy? Was it someone you shouldn’t have been dreaming about? Someone obscene? Was it your mum?”
Oscar’s mouth drops in horror. “Jesus, Lando, no, what’s wrong with you—”
“Was it my mum?”
“No!”
“Then, c’mon, why won’t you tell me? Keep it up any longer and I’m going to start thinking you were dreaming about me.”
It’s Oscar’s silence that does it. He doesn’t mean for it, but his breath is punched out of his lungs and by the time he recovers it’s too late. Lando’s eyes have narrowed. Trailing over his face slowly. Searching him. Searching.
“Were you?” Lando says, and his voice has gone quiet.
“It’s—” Oscar shifts uncomfortably, thinks he could die in this moment and it wouldn’t even matter because there’s no carrying on from this. “Can’t control dreams, can you, it doesn’t mean anything, I was just—”
“You were,” Lando says, not a question this time.
Oscar’s face is burning. He wants to climb out of his skin. “Look, I’m not—”
“S’alright, Osc.” Lando’s voice is strangely light. He’s watching him, still, but there’s something new on his face that Oscar can’t decipher. He’s no idea what Lando’s going to do until he rolls over onto his back, pillows his head with his hands. “Go back to sleep.”
That’s an impossible task, right now, but Oscar doesn’t question it. He swallows hard and burrows back into the covers, facing away, and tries to concentrate on anything, absolutely anything, other than Lando.
He stays awake until the sky outside the windows lighten, terrified of falling back asleep and having that dream again. Again, while Lando’s sleeping right next to him, his hair curling over his stupid forehead, one hand tucked under his stupid chin. A few hours earlier he’d turned and his hand had grazed Oscar, just barely, and Oscar had scooted so far to the edge of the seat he thought he might fall off. He’d have slept on the floor if he wasn’t equally terrified that Kim would have something to say about it.
He also can’t stop thinking about it. Long fingers and roaming mouths and Lando, Lando, looking at him like—
Lando groans a little when he wakes up, kicks at the cover as he stretches, and Oscar desperately closes his eyes when he goes to climb over him to get to the aisle. He’s a bad actor, though, and Lando can tell; he flicks Oscar on the nose, so Oscar steels himself and reopens them.
“Good morning,” Lando says, with a big wolfish grin. “How’d you sleep?”
“Fine,” Oscar says stiffly.
“Me too. Nice dreamless sleep, y’know. Don’t remember a thing.”
Oscar feels hot all over, but Lando just wiggles his eyebrows in an infuriating sort of way before he starts stuffing everything in his bag. “You going to get up and take me to breakfast, then?” he goes on, taking a hoodie from Jon.
“No.”
“Oh, really? After all I’ve done for you?”
It’s—Oscar can’t be sure what Lando means but he thinks he knows, and he has to swallow hard at the lump in his throat, just to keep his voice steady. “Thought you were sick of me.”
Lando’s smirk twitches, warm and familiar. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Suppose I am.” He takes his shirt off next, takes his time with it. Oscar pointedly does not look at his chest. “Still, though. Bit insulted. Least you could do is buy a guy some bacon and eggs.”
It’s miserable. This is miserable. Oscar has never once felt this miserable around Lando before. “Go kiss up to Jon,” he says, and presses his face back into the pillow. “Maybe he’ll feed you.”
“Have you met Jon?” Lando tuts at him, disappointed, and tugs his hoodie on. “Fine, you lazy jerk. Stay there if you’d like. Reckon you’d have a hard time taking off the covers anyway, yeah? Got a few things to handle and all?”
“I hope you fall off the plane and die,” Oscar tells him, and utterly means it. He squeezes his eyes shut again.
A shadow crosses over his face, blocks out the slant of morning sun. And then Lando’s hand cups the curve of Oscar’s chin, and still Oscar can’t look at him, afraid of what his eyes might give away, but he can hear the laugh behind Lando’s voice as he says, “Aw, Osc. No you don’t.”
He taps Oscar’s bottom lip with his thumb, just once, and then all at once he is gone.
They’re meant to do media day together the next day and for the first time ever in his life Oscar considers faking ill. He’s raced while actually ill before, a head cold so bad he could hardly hear whatever Tom was asking him on the radio. But the idea of seeing Lando fills him with dread in a way it never has before. Imagining him telling everyone. Imagining they all know.
In the end, it’s Kim that gets him out of his room, but he shows up just minutes before they’re slated to go on. George lifts his eyebrows at him. “You’re late,” he says.
“I know,” Oscar says. Lando’s finishing a drink across the room, but he looks over, like he can sense Oscar’s presence. Oscar quickly busies himself with his phone. “I was, y’know. Doing something. I had a thing.”
George lets out a quiet snort, and Oscar looks at him. “What?”
“Nothing,” George says. “Just, ‘a thing.’ That’s exactly what Lando said you would say.”
It’s a fairly normal night, as it goes; Lando doesn’t ignore him during the questions, doesn’t keep a wary distance, doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary except once, once, when they’re leant in and listening to a question, Oscar feels a little pinch at his hip. So quick he doesn’t even see Lando do it, but when he glances over, Lando shoots him a wink and carries on. Like nothing’d even happened.
Oscar’s entire body is flooded with relief. He doesn’t know what he’d have done if it had changed them. Just when they had really become comfortable around each other.
It must’ve been because of how much time they were spending together, that dream. It’d been near constant lately; long lunches and sun-soaked afternoons filming challenge videos and evenings playing video games and Oscar squeezing into Lando’s giant bed when it got to be too late without them noticing , which was happening more often than not. The time together. The proximity. That was it. That had to be it. It was a miracle he hadn’t had a meaningless dream like that before now, really.
When they’re finished, George loiters around the McLaren motorhome so they can get dinner together as they had planned. But as he’s saying his goodbyes, Lando appears, standing over him, nudges Oscar’s shoe with the toe of his own. “You said you were coming back to mine, right?” he says, although Oscar had said nothing of the sort. He raises his voice to add: “Unless Georgie needs someone to get him home after dark.”
“No one in the world would trust you to keep them safe, Norris,” George grumbles, which seems to delight Lando. They both turn to Oscar, waiting for his answer.
He feels wildly thrown off. It was one thing for Lando to look past it, to set it aside and pretend it hadn’t happened; entirely another to invite him to his room the very next night. He thought it’d be weeks before he’d earned this particular trust back. Before they’d go back to falling asleep in the same bed as far as possible. Pillow dividers and all sorts of stupid things like that.
But no. Lando wants him to come over. Tonight.
“Right,” he says, relieved that his voice doesn’t crack on it. He scrunches his forehead towards George. “Sorry, George. Must’ve forgotten.”
George rolls his eyes. “Remember earlier next time, would you? I’ve been waiting for you for half a bloody hour.”
“Likes to take his time, Osc,” Lando agrees, and reaches down to pat at Oscar’s hair. “Just like a girl.”
Oscar knocks his hand away and stands, shoots him a dirty look. “You could’ve helped with the data. The devil makes work for idle hands, you know—”
Lando grabs for him like he’s alarmed, abruptly cradles Oscar’s face between his hands. His fingers are warm and callused and familiar. “Weird,” he says, turning his head from left to right. “It’s Oscar’s mouth moving, but those are definitely Zac Brown’s words—he must be possessed. Osc? You’re still in there somewhere?”
So things with Lando really haven’t changed. Oscar twists himself out of Lando’s grip and shoves him away, picks up his bag like a shield. “I’m not possessed,” he protests, “I’m smarter than you, that’s all.”
He doesn’t even realize George’s already gone until he casts around for him. Must’ve gotten tired of their nonsense. Lando’s grinning at him, crooked and contagious. “Right. Let’s go, smartass,” he says, and so Oscar follows him out the door.
Oscar doesn’t have any spare clothes because he hadn’t actually planned on going back to Lando’s, and of course he can’t go to bed wearing the ones he has on now, but the idea of undressing in front of Lando is suddenly mortifying. He’s been naked in front of Lando many times, in many places, and it’s never been an issue. Shouldn’t be an issue now. His stupid fucking brain.
Lando, however, seems to be entirely unbothered. He takes off his shirt—Oscar glances away at the first flash of bare skin—and discards his pants, climbs into the sheets. Then he gives Oscar a look. “You waiting for me to tell you what to do?” he asks, and then pats the space beside him. “Here, boy. Sit.”
“Shut up,” Oscar says, then yanks off his clothes as quickly as he can without tripping over his feet. He slides onto the bed next to him, careful not to touch, and Lando laughs quietly.
“Good boy,” he murmurs. They aren’t dividing it at all.
He doesn’t ask why Lando’d wanted him to come over if all they were going to do was go to sleep. He wants to ask, but he doesn’t. Because it’s too unnerving to entertain the answer. Too unnerving to think about what he actually wants the answer to be.
The window’s cracked and the room is drafty, curtains fluttering against the glass. “It was pretty good on the sim last week,” Lando offers into the quiet, no you or we to maintain plausible deniability. Oscar and his male friends hardly ever openly complimented each other; Lando gives them out like he’s only allowed a limited amount.
“We’ve been better,” Oscar says, but Lando only snorts.
“Frickin’ pessimist, aren’t you,” he says loftily. He’s close enough that Oscar can feel him drumming his fingers against his ribcage, like he’s nervous. He’s close enough that Oscar can see his throat move when he swallows.
“Realist,” Oscar counters. He forces himself to stop looking at Lando’s throat. Lando just makes a thoughtful humming noise and they lapse into silence.
“So what was I doing?” Lando asks, just when Oscar’s started to think he might’ve drifted off. It sounds like he’s trying too hard to be casual.
“What?”
“In your dream.”
Something cold and heavy drops into Oscar’s stomach, makes his entire body freeze. This is what he’d been waiting for, he thinks. Lando to roll this out, to use it against him, to turn him into a joke.
Only Lando doesn’t sound like he’s joking and there’s nobody around to laugh.
“Don’t be a dick,” Oscar murmurs, staring determinedly at the ceiling.
“I’m not being a dick. You had a dream about me, I just want to know what I was doing in it.”
Oscar can hear Lando shift on the mattress, his unsteady exhale after. It’s the unsteadiness that undoes him, sends a thrill bursting through his veins. He can tell him to fuck off, put an end to it once and for all, or. Or.
“You were touching me,” he says, his heart pounding wildly inside his chest.
Lando’s quiet for a moment. Oscar’s glad the lights are out, glad that Lando might only see what his face is revealing in the pale slivers of moonlight filtering in through the curtains.
“Where?” he says, and reaches across the bed, curls his hand around Oscar’s arm. “Here?”
He has to suppress a shiver, already waiting for this fever dream to end. But not wanting it to. Desperately not wanting it to. “No,” he says, and covers Lando’s hand with his own. He moves it, tentatively, down to his side. “Here.”
Lando’s thumb drags along the hem of his shirt, just barely slips under the cotton to press against his skin. It’s enough to make Oscar’s stomach flip over. Enough to make him want. “Then what?” Lando says. His voice is low and deadly serious.
“What?”
“What’d I do next?”
It’s not hard to remember. Before he’d been unceremoniously ripped awake it’d felt—felt so real, so heavy. And yet it didn’t come close to what he’s feeling now. “You,” Oscar says. “You, uh. Sort of. Climbed over me.”
Too far, he thinks, that’s too far, but then—after a pause, Lando’s pushing up onto an elbow. And then the mattress is dipping, and there’s a weight settling over him, careful, so careful, and Lando’s legs are bracketing Oscar’s and he’s looking down at him, holding eye contact like they’ve done a thousand times before, and it’s familiar and not, and Oscar has to physically stop himself from pushing his hips forward, from making the contact that he so badly and so suddenly needs. He has no idea how far Lando’ll take this. But he also knows he’ll take whatever he can get.
“Like this?” Lando asks, and Oscar has to bite down on the inside of his cheek.
“Yeah,” he breathes. “Just like that.”
“And then?”
This time Oscar doesn’t hesitate. “You started to move,” he says, “you, uh—”
But Lando must know what he means because a second later he’s doing it, doing it just like he had in the dream, rolling his hips forward and he’s hard, Oscar can tell that he’s hard, and he is too, of course he is, and he makes a little gasping noise and grabs onto Lando’s waist with both hands. He doesn’t pull him closer but he wants to, god, he wants to.
“Did I kiss you?” Lando says, almost urgent with it. “In the dream, did I kiss you?”
He hadn’t. They hadn’t kissed in his dream, like maybe he’d subconsciously thought it was too unlikely.
“Yeah,” Oscar says, “yeah, you kissed me—” and the words have barely got out before Lando’s ducking forwards, all at once capturing Oscar’s mouth with his own.
He’s so good at this. Oscar’s dimly aware that he’d probably think that even if he wasn’t, because his brain’s short-circuiting, because Lando’s kissing him, kissing him, and he’s never been kissed like this before. Somehow both filthy and sweet at the same time, just like Lando himself. Oscar makes a little satisfied noise without meaning to and Lando pulls back, suddenly, just enough to huff out a laugh against his lips. “Yeah,” he says, and drags his fingers into Oscar’s hair; “that’s the sound you made last night.”
Oscar can’t even bring himself to feel embarrassed about it. Not with Lando pressed so close. He turns his face in blindly and presses another kiss to the underside of Lando’s jaw, needy. He hooks an ankle behind Lando’s bare leg and uses it to urge Lando forward, searching for more friction, more pressure, more anything. Luckily, Lando gets it right away.
“Fuck, Oscar,” he hisses, and Lando shivers at the way his name sounds coming out of Lando’s mouth like that. His eyes are heavy-lidded and his voice is gravelly and his other hand is slipping back under his shirt to graze his fingernails across Oscar’s stomach. “Tell me. Tell me what I did next.”
He feels drunk with power, at that. He could say anything. He could say anything, and Lando’s face tells him that he’d do it. He sucks in a breath. “You took these off,” he says, smoothing a hand along the top of Lando’s waistband.
Lando follows directions immediately, shoves his shorts down and over his ankles and kicks them away, messy, no finesse. “And yours?” he says, already grasping at his shirt like it didn’t matter what the answer was. “Must’ve taken yours off too, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Oscar breathes, and lets it happen, lets the rest of his clothes drop carelessly to the floor, and Lando’s surprisingly gentle with it, but only for a moment, because then he’s aligning their bodies again, then he’s moving against him, glorious skin against overheated skin, panting hot against the sensitive spot just below Oscar’s ear, the most incredible team effort the two of them have ever done together, and it’s too much and not enough and Oscar groans, doesn’t even care how desperate it sounds.
“Osc,” Lando says again. He must know that this is no longer—he hadn’t been in the dream long enough before Lando’d prodded him, tore him away from it, they hadn’t even gotten to the good part, not like this, but he seems to need it. Or want it. Want to hear it. “Did I—did I touch you?”
“No,” Oscar says, and Lando looks dismayed for a moment before Oscar laughs and brushes another kiss against his neck. “No, I touched you,” he says, and slips a hand down between them, hardly even pauses before he’s wrapping it around them both.
It’s Lando that makes the shuddery noise this time, and it’s possibly the best thing Oscar’s ever heard. “Fuck,” he says, thrusting against him, “oh, fuck—I got here yesterday, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it, Osc, you dreaming about me, you getting off thinking about me, you looked so—”
It goes straight to Oscar’s groin, his words, and he’s suddenly so close it’s unbearable; he doesn’t want this to end but Lando’s right there and saying this to him, to him, and he moans helplessly at it and tugs Lando down to drag him into another kiss. It’s sloppy and dirty, Lando’s wet, open mouth, but it does something to him, something incredible, and he twists his fingers against Lando, wants so badly to bring him to the edge, too.
“I did,” Oscar confesses, murmured against his lips. “As soon as I got to the hotel, I did. I got in the shower and I got off thinking about you. Just like this.”
It’s enough. Lando falters, just momentarily, before his hand joins the tangle between them, fingers knocking against Oscar’s, and then Oscar’s coming, biting at his lip too hard to stay quiet, and Lando’s hardly a moment behind.
It takes a long moment to catch their breaths, and then Lando drops down onto the mattress beside him, sticky with sweat and ragged. There’s a mess that Oscar can’t be bothered to do anything about, just yet. He wants to stay in this moment as long as he can.
Because he’s afraid of what comes next. Because he’s afraid of what might not.
“You’ve got a dirty mind, you know,” Lando says, as if he can read Oscar’s mind. He’s grinning at him, flash of white teeth across the pillow.
The fear in his stomach dissipates.
“Me?” he says indignantly. “You’re the one who lured me in here. ‘You said you’re coming back to mine, right,’ filthy lia—”
Lando laughs and moves in; presses a kiss against Oscar’s collarbone, quick, doesn’t let it linger. “Worked, didn’t it? Now, shut up. It’s time to sleep.”
“Oh, is it?”
“Yeah.” Lando’s still smirking, and he nudges his foot in between Oscar’s. Trapping it there. Steady. Warm. “Can you do something for me?” he murmurs, and Oscar has to bite back the urge to say yes, to say of course, to say anything, anything at all.
“Mm, what’s that,” he says, instead.
“When you wake up,” Lando says, and looks at Oscar’s mouth, “let me know if you’ve had any strange dreams.”