Chapter Text
Lando wakes up to the sound of rain and the weight of Oscar’s arm across his stomach.
For a moment, that’s all there is. Grey light leaking around the curtains, the soft drum of drizzle on the glass, the radiator grumbling in the corner. The flat feels small and warm and theirs.
He lies there, smiling at the ceiling, counting quietly in his head.
One, two, three—
On four, Oscar usually lets out this little grumpy exhale, buries his face deeper into the pillow and mutters something about “five more minutes.”
Today, he doesn’t.
Lando glances down. Oscar is curled on his side, half on Lando’s pillow, half on his. Hair a mess, lashes dark against his cheeks. His breathing slow and even. Lando feels his heart give a quiet, helpless flip. This is his Oscar. Not the composed, professional Formula 1 driver the world sees, but the one with bedhead and a morning temper, the Oscar who grumbles when he’s woken up and still melts, every single time, under his pestering little kisses.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Lando murmurs, voice still scratchy with sleep. “Remember that the world exists yet?”
No answer.
He nudges gently at Oscar’s wrist where it lies against his stomach. “Come on. You said you wanted to go out early before the shops get crowded. That was literally your idea. Don’t bail on me now.”
Oscar stays stubbornly limp.
Lando huffs a laugh. Okay. Deep-sleep mode. It happens. Travel, bad nights, crap time zones. He’s seen Oscar sleep through alarms that could wake a small country.
“I see how it is,” he says, rolling carefully out from under his arm. “Betrayal before 9 am. Noted.”
The floor is cold under his feet. He pads to the window and pulls the curtain back a fraction, peeking outside. Bristol is washed in that particular kind of pale, indecisive light — not sunny, not stormy, just… damp. The road shines. A bus splashes past.
He thinks of all the mornings they’ve already collected here. Rainy ones, bright ones, the snow day Oscar had sulked through because Lando insisted on dragging him outside to make a lopsided snowman on the pavement.
They’d come back soaked, laughing, Lando’s fingers numb and Oscar’s nose pink. The neighbours had stared like they were out of their minds. It had been perfect.
He lets the curtain fall and turns back.
Oscar hasn’t moved.
“Okay,” Lando sighs. “Option A, let you sleep and then listen to you complain about missing the bakery. Option B, wake you up and listen to you complain about waking you up.”
He considers. “I pick B.”
He leans down and presses a quick kiss to Oscar’s head, the touch of lips light and airy, filled with gentleness. When he stands back up the room tilts faintly, like the world takes a second to catch up. It happens sometimes. He blinks until it settles.
“Fine. You get ten more minutes,” he announces. “But if they sell out of croissants, that’s on you.”
He pads out of the bedroom in his socks. The hallway is cluttered in the comfortable way of people who live and not just exist in a place — shoes by the door, a scarf hanging off the coat rack, a cardboard box they never broke down leaning against the wall. Oscar’s hoodie is draped over the back of the chair by the window, half-dried from yesterday’s rain.
He considers, briefly, dragging himself to the kitchen and attempting breakfast. The mental image of the stove is enough to trigger a whole montage.
He remembers the first morning he’d tried to “spoil” Oscar.
It had gone… badly.
He’d set out with good intentions. Pancakes, bacon, coffee, the whole thing. He’d ended up with three blackened circles of something that used to be batter, one ruined pan, and the smoke alarm screaming loud enough to wake everyone on the street.
Oscar had padded in, hair everywhere, drowning in one of Lando’s hoodies.
“This is a health and safety violation,” he’d announced over the beeping.
“You’re a health and safety violation,” Lando had shot back, waving a tea towel at the ceiling.
Oscar had looked from the charred pancake remains to Lando’s soot-smudged grin, and something like fond resignation had softened his face.
“You,” he’d said, marching over to switch off the gas, “are never touching the stove again.”
He’d taken over from there, hips bumping Lando gently out of the way. After that, it had just… become the rule. If there was a pan involved, Oscar handled it. Lando did commentary and taste-testing like the supportive husband he was.
Now, standing in their shared living room, Lando let himself grin at the memory.
He spends his time wandering around their apartment, chatting to the plants, watching the people rush by on the streets. Eventually, Oscar steps out of their bedroom and starts making breakfast with the tired expression of someone who’s had a rough season. Lando understands, he always does, so he doesn’t say anything except press another faint kiss to Oscar's temple.
He perches on a chair at the kitchen counter, watching. Oscar fills the kettle, measures coffee, finds the bread. The sounds are all there — water hitting metal, cupboard doors, the dull thud of the fridge closing. Normal house noises.
In their first months here, every Saturday had turned into “Let Lando Help In The Kitchen” until they’d both accepted it was actually “Let Lando Talk In The Kitchen While Oscar Does Literally Everything.”
“You can stir,” Oscar had compromised once, handing him a spoon. “That seems safe.”
Lando had saluted. “I was born for this.”
He’d still somehow managed to flick sauce onto the wall. Oscar had sighed, cleaned it up, and kept cooking.
Now, watching him make two coffees and line them up on the table, Lando feels a weird mix of fondness and ache.
Oscar sits down opposite the empty chair. One mug in front of him, one in front of the space where Lando always sits.
“Right,” Lando says. “Caffeine and carbs acquired. Let’s plan.”
He launches straight into his spiel about the day — the café, the bookshop, the bakery, the possibility of the park if the rain lets up — as if Oscar has agreed out loud.
Oscar stares at his coffee for a long time.
Then he picks it up and takes a sip, face unreadable.
Lando watches the small movement of his throat as he swallows. It’s stupid, how much relief he gets from that. Coffee being drunk. Toast being eaten. Life happening, even if it’s quieter than it usually is.
“You’re getting the croissant," Lando reminds him. “Don’t argue. I can feel your resistance and it’s futile.”
Oscar doesn’t argue, and Lando takes that as a yes.
Outside, the rain has relaxed into a mist.
They walk to the bus stop, shoulders almost touching, moving in that easy half-sync you only get from doing the same walk a hundred times. Oscar keeps his hands shoved deep into his pockets, fingers curled tight around the lining, head ducked against the damp. His fringe is already curling at the edges. Lando bounces on his heels beside him, trainers squeaking on the wet pavement, the way he always does when he has more energy than the day knows what to do with.
“It’s kind of cosy, actually,” he says, tilting his chin up to the low grey sky. “Very, you know, British indie film. Two sad guys and some weather.”
Oscar’s mouth doesn’t quite curve, but the line of his shoulders loosens, the tension fading just enough that Lando can see it.
Lando counts that as a laugh.
The bus ride into town is short, muscle memory by now. They tap their cards in the same rhythm, climb the same narrow stairs, claim their usual spot on the top deck, front row, their seats. From there, the city unspools in front of them — rows of brick and glass sliding past, windows glowing soft and yellow against the drizzle. A dog trots along the pavement below, shaking itself every few metres like it’s offended by the weather. Someone in a high-vis jacket pushes a rattling cart across the road. The glass fogs at the edges where their breath hits it.
Lando keeps talking.
He fills the space between them with whatever comes to mind. A story about a mechanic’s terrible haircut, a half-remembered meme. Every now and then he nudges Oscar’s knee with his own, like a punctuation mark. Oscar stays quiet, gaze fixed on the window, but he doesn’t move away. His hands come out of his pockets. One rests, loose, on the rail in front of them, close enough that Lando could cover it if he wanted to pretend he’s just moving for balance.
He doesn’t stop talking until the bus sighs into their usual stop.
They drift through town on autopilot, tracing the same route they always do on days like this. First the café on the corner, the one where the barista doesn’t bother asking for their order anymore. Then the bookstore, with its crooked sign and uneven floorboards. They split automatically — Lando to the table of ridiculous novelty titles, Oscar to the shelves he always pretends he hasn’t already read his way through.
They make their way through all the small, ordinary places that have quietly become theirs: the café, the bookstore, the little shop where Lando insists on buying snacks they don’t need. At every stop, Lando takes the weight of the conversation, wrapping them both in a steady stream of words — soft, familiar, background noise like a radio left on in a lived-in flat. Oscar was still silent, but Lando could feel him relaxing next to him under the familiarity and comfort of routine.
Then they stop at a colourful little shop by the road-side, Lando knows this place by heart.
The bell in the flower shop is softer than the café’s, a little tinkling ring that feels like it should be attached to a fairy in a storybook.
The store is a riot of colour. Buckets of stems crowd the floor. There’s moisture in the air, a damp, green coolness that makes him itch with remembered allergy. He started wandering around anyways, staring at all different types of plants and flowers, quietly considering whether they should take more plants home despite their abilities to keep them alive.
Oscar goes straight towards the reception. The florist looks up and smiles when she sees him. “There you are,” she says. “Got some nice tulips in today.”
Orange catches at the edge of Lando’s vision.
They’re in a bucket near the back, petals still mostly closed, each one tipped in gold like someone’s run a paintbrush along the edges.
Oscar goes straight to them.
“Those, please,” he says quietly.
The sound of his voice, however small, lands in Lando’s chest like a handgrip.
The florist starts wrapping the tulips in brown paper. “Special occasion?” she asks as she folds and tapes.
Oscar’s fingers tighten around the strap of his bag. “Yeah,” he says after a beat. “Kind of.”
Lando watches him.
He remembers the first time he came home to find tulips on their kitchen table. He’d dropped his keys too loudly and blurted, “Are these for me?” like some shocked maiden aunt.
“They were on sale,” Oscar had said, looking everywhere but at him.
Lando had spent twenty minutes moving the vase to different spots to find the best light. “They’re so ugly they’re cute,” he’d decided. “Like me.”
“They’re not ugly,” Oscar had replied. “And you’re—”
He’d stopped there. He hadn’t needed to finish.
Now, watching Oscar take the bouquet like it’s something fragile and vital, Lando feels that same fierce softness curl under his ribs.
He steps closer, bumping his shoulder lightly against Oscar’s out of habit.
“You really out here buying my favourite flowers, huh.” he says. “So whipped. Such a good husband.”
Oscar doesn’t react, but his hands close more carefully around the stems.
Lando waits for the familiar move — the turn, the flustered little they’re for you, idiot as he thrusts the bouquet into Lando’s arms.
It doesn’t come.
Oscar hugs the tulips to his chest instead as they step back out into the street.
Lando blinks at him. “You’re just… gonna carry those around?” he asks, half-laughing. “What, no dramatic flower handoff? Rude.”
Oscar keeps walking.
The route they take isn’t to the park. It’s slightly off their usual line. Lando realises it slowly, the way you realise you’ve missed a turn on a familiar road, in the discomfort of a corner that comes too soon, a landmark that appears at the wrong time.
His words keep going on autopilot.
“So, okay,” he says, half to fill the space, half to convince himself this is fine, “we get the flowers, we do a romantic stroll, we hit the bakery on the way back, you finally eat something that isn’t coffee. This is a solid plan.”
Oscar’s boots make small damp sounds on the pavement.
Up ahead, through the thin mist, the black railings come into view.
ST. AUGUSTINE’S CEMETERY, the sign on the gate reads.
Lando’s voice falters.
He’s been here enough times now that his body knows the path even when his brain would prefer detours. The air feels cooler inside the gates, the city noise fading to a muted hum.
Rows of stones stretch out ahead of them, some leaning, some new and sharp. Flowers, old and fresh, dot the grass.
Oscar walks like he’s done this many times before.
Left at the angel with the broken wing. Right at the cracked cross. Past the little headstone with toys propped against it.
He stops halfway down the next row, under the birch tree whose bark peels in curling strips.
Lando stops with him.
He knows what’s written there. He always does. He still looks, like pressing on a bruise.
LANDO NORRIS
1999–2027
The rest swims. Beloved, husband, something about laughter. He doesn’t need to read it, it’s printed on the inside of his eyelids. So is the date.
He stares at it anyways.
1999–2027. That’s all he got. Twenty-eight years, a Bristol flat, a Monday wedding, a handful of championship fights, too many stupid jokes, not enough Sundays.
He stands in front of his own grave and thinks — not for the first time — that this should bother him more than it does. That the obviousness of it should burn away everything else. That he should face it properly, admit it, stop pretending.
Instead, he adjusts the denial like a collar and shrugs it back into place.
“I don’t like that picture,” he says, because that’s safer. “The one they used. My hair looks stupid.”
The engraved oval of his face stares back at him from the stone: smiling, alive, eyes crinkled at the corners. Oscar had chosen that photo. Lando remembers, faintly, the way the photographer had caught him mid-laugh in the garage, helmet under his arm.
He remembers the papaya suit. The way the light had bounced off it.
He remembers the last time he wore it.
Oscar kneels, jeans soaking through on the wet ground. He lays the tulips carefully at the base of the stone, tucking the stems in among the remnants of last week’s wilted ones.
“Hey,” he says, voice rough with disuse. “Brought you your favourites.”
Lando stares at his own name until the letters blur.
The cosy domestic haze he’s spent all morning building thins all at once.
Something sharp pushes up underneath it.
He remembers the car, the wall, the smear of red on papaya that his mind has made permanent. He remembers white light and a curtain and a doctor saying we’re very sorry in a voice that didn’t sound sorry enough.
He remembers, too, all the mornings since then that he’s woken up and chosen to look anywhere but here.
I know, he thinks. Of course I’ve always known.
He watches Oscar’s shoulders tremble once, like a held-in shiver.
“I, um…” Oscar clears his throat. “It’s… been a year. Today.”
Lando knew that, too.
It’s been ticking quietly in his chest all morning, a date he’s carefully covered with coffee plans and bakery routes, blurred with stories of how they got here. He hadn’t wanted to look at it straight on.
Here, in front of this stone, he doesn’t get the option.
Oscar is still kneeling, fingers resting lightly on the stone, thumb moving back and forth over the carved curve of the L. His shoulders shake once, almost imperceptibly.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “By the way. About that last fight. You were right. You always were, it’s annoying.”
Lando swallows.
He sees it clearly, suddenly — the motorhome, the hum of generators outside, the pressure-cooker heat of a championship Sunday. Lando pacing, ring clinking silently against the inside of his palm. Oscar standing by the little window, arms crossed, eyes on the rain streaking down the glass. The argument had been explosive, fear dressed as the most painful words. Everything they said had hung there, exposed. Huge and ugly.
He’d left before he could say anything worse. Helmet under his arm, he’d walked out into the noise and the cameras and the rain. He hadn’t looked back.
That was the last time he’d seen Oscar alive.
He’d thought there would be time to fix it. After the race. After the championship. After everything.
He should have known better. Time had never liked them much.
Oscar’s shoulders slump. He presses his forehead briefly to the cold granite, as if hoping it will cool something burning inside him.
The rain starts up again, fine and persistent.
Lando stands there, hands jammed in his pockets, watching the droplets darken the paper around the tulips. The orange petals tremble under the weight.
“I didn’t mean it,” Oscar says. “You know that, right? I hope you do. I wasn’t scared of being with you. I was scared of everyone looking at you. At us. I thought if we kept it quiet a bit longer, we’d be safer.”
He laughs once, a thin, broken sound.
“And then you went out there and—” He cuts himself off. The sentence sits there anyway, heavy and obvious.
Lando lets his eyes shut.
He listens.
To Oscar’s apology. To the rain. To the way his own name sounds when spoken into stone instead of him.
He doesn’t have any answers. He doesn’t have a grand revelation, no sudden cinematic acceptance. He just has this: a grave, some flowers, a man he loves talking to rock because there’s nowhere else to put all that love now.
He stays.
As long as Oscar keeps coming, he will keep waking up to this flat, to this rain, to this city. To bus rides and cafés and the long walk up to the gate.
To orange tulips, bright against the grass.
To the life they had and the one Oscar is still trying to live around the hole shaped like him.
From the outside, it’s just a quiet scene in a grey cemetery: one man, one headstone, one bouquet on damp earth.
From where Lando stands, it’s everything.