Chapter Text
There is something about summer in Monaco that makes everything feel more tender than it should.
The old villa was drenched in sunlight, pale stone walls, warm terracotta roofs and vines tangled along the balconies. Salty air that slips through the windows and fresh fruit always on the table. Music floating from somewhere distant. Voices soft, footsteps even softer.
Oscar arrives the same way the heat does, suddenly, and all at once.
He didn’t bring much. Just a bag, sunglasses, and the kind of silence that lingers in a room after he’s gone. He’s quieter now. His mind always far away, thoughts lingering like a bruise, fading slow, but never quite gone. As if heartbreak has stripped him of something he hasn’t quite realized he lost. He broke up with Lily two weeks ago. Long years together, gone like a sigh. He doesn’t talk about it. Lando only knows because someone mentioned it in passing, and even then it felt like gossip. But Oscar’s different. Not broken, just quieter. Like he’s not used to the stillness yet.
Lando watches from a distance, as he always has. Pretends not to stare when Oscar leans out the balcony window in the mornings, watching the ocean. Pretends he doesn’t notice the way Oscar’s fingers trace the edge of his phone like he’s waiting for a message that won’t come.
There’s nothing loud about this part of summer. No race weekend chaos. No camera flashes. Just the slow drag of sun across sky, and the way Lando’s heart refuses to quiet down.
Because Lando had this certain burning in his chest when Oscar laughed over his stupid jokes. When he looked at him with a smile on his lips that made Lando’s heart skip a beat. Not the usual polite, media-trained smile he wore for the cameras, but the rare, unguarded one, the one that made Lando feel like the sun had shifted just for him.
He had a crush on Oscar for years. He tried to get over it many times, knowing that his chances were incredibly low. He’s trying not to hope. Really, he is. But Oscar has always been the kind of ache that settles under Lando’s skin. So still, hope lingered in the quiet corners of his heart.
It’s just past noon when the villa goes quiet again. Everyone packed off to the yacht for the rest of the day. Lando said he would rather stay because he had a headache and Oscar didn’t even bother to find an excuse. He just stayed.
Now they both exist in the hush that follows a house emptied of voices. The air is thick with warmth, the faint slosh of pool water echoing around the tiled patio. Lando lies shirtless on one of the loungers, a cap tugged low over his eyes, back facing the sun and skin already kissed red across his shoulders.
Oscar finds him there. He pauses just a moment at the threshold, eyes tracing the curve of Lando’s bare back, the way his hair is a little longer now, curling at the nape of his neck. He lays down onto the lounger next to him, a book in hand, though his eyes flick to Lando every few minutes. He tries not to look, but fails.
“You feeling better?” Oscar asks eventually, voice soft, careful even. Lando shifts, just enough to lift the brim of his cap and look up at him with sleep-warm eyes.
“Mmm. A bit.” Oscar nods, and for a moment, they just stay silent. The air feels thick with things unspoken.
“I heard about it,” Lando says quietly, hesitating. “About you and-” Oscar cuts in, gentle but firm. “Yeah.”
Silence again, save for the cicadas in the trees and the faint hum of music from somewhere inside.
Lando swallows, eyes drifting to the pool.
“Are you okay?” Oscar places his book on his chest and exhales, gaze up to the sky.
“I don’t know yet.”
Now Lando is the one to nod.
“We used to do this, Lily and I. Lay out in the sun like this. Not talk much. Just exist.” Lando doesn’t answer at first. He watches the wind ruffle the ends of Oscar’s hair, soft against the sharp line of his jaw.
“You miss her?”
Oscar’s head tilts slightly.
“I don’t know. I miss the way things felt. The shape of it, maybe. But not her, not really.” Lando swallows. That feels important. Feels like the kind of honesty you don’t get often.
Oscar turns his face toward Lando.
“Is it weird I feel more alone now than when we broke up?” Lando shakes his head, slowly.
“No. I think that’s when it really hits. The space they leave behind.”
Oscar hums. “And I don’t even know what I want to fill it with.”
Lando forces a smile, gentle but tight. “Maybe nothing. Maybe it just stays empty for a while.”
Oscar’s eyes are darker now, distant but searching.
“Do you ever feel like you’re waiting for something that isn’t going to happen?” A pause. Then, softer. “Or someone?”
The words hit a little too close. Lando looks away and swallows hard.
“Yeah,” he says. “I do.”
Silence stretches between them. Then Oscar rises slowly, brushing his hand through his hair, eyes flicking toward the pool. He turns back to Lando with a small smile.
“You coming in?” His gaze lingers. “Could use the company.”
Lando blinks, caught in the shift of Oscar’s voice, lighter now, but no less sincere. “Pool?”
Oscar’s already moving toward the pool, tugging his shirt over his head in one smooth motion, and Lando finds himself staring at the line of his back, the subtle shift of muscle beneath sun-warmed skin.
“It’s too hot to keep thinking.”
And maybe that’s the truest thing either of them has said all day.