taller in another dimension

E (slapshock), he/him, 30

[slapshock101]

slapshock masterlist

fics

Gravity (lando/oscar, WIP)

Lando woke the way he’d been waking lately: not jolted, not panicked—just… already on.

Rodellar didn’t allow the kind of sleep where you disappeared. The stone kept too much. The canyon kept too much. Even the quiet felt edged, like it could nick you if you leaned the wrong way.

Salt & Steel (lando/oscar, 109k, completed)

There were three ways to disappear.

You could die. You could run. Or you could go to Shetland in November and see which one the weather chose for you.

Second Flight (lando/oscar, 133k, completed)

“Almost there,” the driver said, in the tone of a man who’d said it a lot on this road. “Mousehole’s just round this bend.”

Lando leaned his head against the cold glass. The sea appeared all at once, a flat sheet of pewter catching what little light there was, the curve of the harbour wall like a cupped hand. A scatter of white cottages tumbled down towards the water, chimneys smoking, roofs dark with damp.

It looked like the inside of a snow globe somebody had forgotten to shake this year.

Co-Authors of the Chaos (lando/oscar, 85k, completed)

Mount Fromme didn’t look that scary from the car park. From the lay-by at the end of a winding mountain road, it looked almost pretty in a menacing, cinematic way — like something you’d see in the prologue of a horror movie. Sunlight spilled through the firs in thin, bright sheets, dappling the tarmac and the rolled-up sleeves of Lando’s kit. The morning had that after-rain cleanness Vancouver was famous for: wet dirt, cedar, and somebody’s expensive cologne on a passing jogger.

New Colours, New Chemistry (lando/oscar, 30k, completed)

Oscar Piastri knew how to stay calm. Locked doors at dawn weren’t supposed to test that.

He stood at the glass front doors of McLaren HQ at 6 a.m., first impression in one hand, backpack in the other. The main door was locked. Of course it was.

[slapshock101]

Gravity (16/16) [Complete]

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gravity — chapter 16: lo que aguanta (alonso pov)

the door has always been open. the village asks what open means after the repair has begun to hold.

what happens: 6:30 at la reunión. alonso setting the room in order before the baptism. a copied notice from the ferretería beside the chalkboard menu: surgencia abierta, ventanas abierta, palomera sur waiting for november maintenance. carlos pretending he needs white cloths. rebecca having already solved the problem. san juan bautista cold in october. oscar explaining palomera sur in functional spanish. a hand at the lower back. lando sitting down. carlos after midnight with the baby against his chest. don joaquín deciding palomera needed doing. logan already half-packed. a rogue glass moved where it belongs. the copied notice shifting in the doorway. the square keeping what was left of the music.

what lando says, because the correction finally changes shape: “our engineer.”

what alonso says, because he has said everything by saying nothing: “no he dicho nada.”

what carlos says, because not everyone has to come for it to be enough: “suficiente.”

what rebecca says, because gratitude is too large and still has to go somewhere: “for all of it.”

what the notice says, because open does not mean finished: “surgencia — abierta / ventanas — abierta.”

what the baby says, according to alonso: buenos pulmones.

chapter themes: open as a maintained condition / chosen family inside old ritual / repair becoming ordinary administration / return without possession / music as proof of arrival / love that no longer needs the room to witness it / trust checked through tables, notices, strings, coffee, cups, and hands / departure as part of the village’s circulation / what holds because people keep doing the work / the door as promise, habit, and final answer

he thought open meant solved.

then the village taught him open meant watched, repaired, complained about, written down, carried anyway.

la puerta estaba abierta.

como siempre.

[slapshock101]

Gravity (15/16)

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gravity — chapter 15: quedarse (lando pov)

the wall gives him his body back. the village asks what staying means after the shape of it has changed.

what happens: november light in the canyon. a first climb after the fall. alex saying he’s going back to england before lando can put a joke between them. george watching the shoulder. carmen with cinnamon coffee. el camino, careful hands, gravity winning first. franco’s empty place at la reunión. daniel’s thinking-whistle on calle iglesia. esteban and flavy already gone. kimi, at a comp wall, sending proof of return. a cap from arco junior 2018. carlos with a scratched belay device and a twelve-week secret. rebecca’s caldo in the kitchen. the bolt fund ledger. oscar in the doorway with a torque wrench. oliver on a dark phone screen saying call before you’re falling apart. max fixing a tap because repair is sometimes literal. alonso deciding the engineer can stay. charles, under the bare wisteria, explaining that the work is the partnership. oscar at el delfín with a new bolt curing in the rock. lando finally crossing the space.

what alex says, because leaving is not disappearing: “i’m not disappearing.”

what flavy says, because trust is not obedient to timing: “sometimes trust doesn’t come back, lando.”

what carlos says, with a future held carefully in both hands: “twelve weeks. tomorrow twelve weeks.”

what oliver says, because brothers can be blunt when love has no energy left for elegance: “because you wanted it.”

what alonso says, which is basically a benediction if you know how to hear him: “this i have accepted.”

what charles says, because love is not the absence of disagreement: “you do not arrive and find the partnership already there, finished.”

what oscar says, finally naming the harm in his own language: “i turned you into a data point.”

chapter themes: return as a physical act / departure as part of staying / usefulness becoming belonging / the body remembering before language catches up / repair through ledgers, taps, bolts, bread, coffee, and work / love that remains without fixing everything / the difference between being ready and taking hold anyway

he thought staying meant not leaving.

then everyone started leaving, and he had to learn what remained.

[slapshock101]

Gravity (14/16)

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gravity — chapter 14: reconocimiento (max pov)

the room was wrong until it became the only shape that could hold what had to happen.

what happens: a letter written before dawn. the laugh being the first thing. green carried for nine years without language. oscar in the office with the application open and archive crossed out for stewardship. a municipal folder stamped page by page in bierge. carmen handing max empanadicos and saying hoy, max. george’s clinic, a skeleton in the corner, and lando saying they looked at him like he was the bolt. la reunión too quiet because the climbers are gone. daniel drinking aguardiente at one in the afternoon. the word leaving landing before the room is ready. charles under the wisteria, saying i was here first. a committee meeting with no head and no front. señores, notebooks, cancellations, liability, trust, labour, hands. daniel standing up with his taped wrist and giving oscar to the room. alonso asking the only question that matters. charles seconding the motion immediately. bells on the walk home. a kiss under san juan bautista. enough.

what max writes, because speech has failed him long enough: “this is the language. / it’s in your possession.”

what george says, with the skeleton offering no opinion: “turning our village into an audience for your ambush is another.”

what lando says, because the report was correct and still made a body into evidence: “they were looking at me like i was the bolt.”

what charles says, naming the pattern without questioning the love: “you do not get to decide to spare me.”

what daniel says, because trust sometimes transfers through hands before institutions know what to do with it: “head and hands.”

what alonso asks: “¿te quedas?”

chapter themes: love as certainty and love as consent / protection becoming authority / the cost of being right the wrong way / rooms as moral architecture / empty tables and missing climbers / labour as trust / the shop and the asociación knowing their own jurisdictions / a village deciding how to carry the weight together / a partnership learning to ask before carrying

he thought the question was whether the structure would hold.

the structure was asking who had been allowed to carry it.

[slapshock101]

Gravity (13/16)

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gravity — chapter 13: réplica (oscar pov)

the canyon keeps returning the sound. the chapter keeps asking what remains after the impact.

what happens: a basin at someone shorter’s height. a body that does not look like what it has done. charles refusing to let oscar disappear by simply continuing to feed him. kimi, at the terrace rail, saying thank you anyway. a yes to valencia that leaves oscar’s mouth before the calculation arrives. a borda, a bowl of broth, a fig at the edge of ripeness. a phone call across salt air. a grant application opening where the report used to be the only thing on the screen. carlos saying mi padre talks to people, not to pencils. three generations of hardware knowledge in a kitchen behind the shop. daniel on the wall, listening to the bolt. a wrist answering before the rest of him is ready. lando in a doorway for five seconds. alex, at the table opposite, asking the question that finally makes oscar say what he can say aloud.

what charles says, and means exactly: “you are not allowed to make yourself disappear, oscar.”

what kimi says: “thank you. for showing me the looking.”

what logan says, over water and rigging and bad signal: “stay in it.”

what carlos says, setting the terms: “the notebook stays in the bag.”

what alex asks: “what is lando to you?”

chapter themes: repair as labour / usefulness as the first language of remorse / a family archive instead of an institutional one / the body recognising beauty before vocabulary can classify it / the difference between correct and complete / a man trying to call longing by any other name / data becoming real because someone else saw it too

he thought he was working on the report.

the report was working on him.

[slapshock101]

Gravity (12/16)

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gravity — chapter 12: continuidad (carlos pov)

the report did not end the story. it altered the load-bearing structure.

what happens: a boy on estrella fugaz asking for tension from his grandfather. surgencia closed in carlos’s own handwriting, one station after another, until the route with his family name on it takes a fraction longer than the rest. a shop corkboard absorbing the day into administration. a certificate from zaragoza reducing an entire village conflict to three lines of bureaucratic spanish. a candle lit by a body before the mind catches up. max signing in church because procedure can be clean and still be convenient. don josé saying the asociación was built so no one man had to carry the canyon alone. lando getting his licence back and a different kind of work with it. rebecca at the sink. a kitchen that has held generations. a sentence finally beginning.

what the older man says, looking at the wall instead of the boy: “estaba aquí antes que yo. / estará aquí después.”

what don josé says, because sometimes the old men wait until the exact right day to tell the truth: “por eso la asociación. para repartir el peso.”

what carlos says out loud for maybe the first time in his life: “i came back because i wanted to.”

what lando says, because gratitude sounds better with a little bite on it: “i’m thanking you anyway, you twat.”

chapter themes: inheritance as body memory / three generations on one route / metal, ink, and family names / duty mistaken for destiny / the difference between being asked and choosing / the village as something built to distribute the weight / a marriage pausing at the sink before the truth enters the room

three signatures.

one candle.

one man coming back across the kitchen instead of stopping at the door.

[writingdose]

writers, you can and should be proud of your fic even if you personally are not satisfied with it. because even if you think it's "not good", you can be proud of the fact that you wrote it and it's something you created. you can be proud of the fact it's not ai.

repeat after me, it's something you put your soul and dedication in — and that's something ai could never achieve.

[slapshock101]

Gravity (11/16)

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gravity — chapter 11: grietas (lando pov)

the meeting ends. the damage keeps moving.

what happens: a door closed from the outside and then from the inside. a street conversation where methodology is not the point and never was. max and charles on opposite sides of a kitchen that used to know exactly how to hold them both. a route board crossed through by hand. a ferretería locked in daylight. george refusing the bright version. alonso, polishing wood, telling a story about the carrasca splitting in a storm and the village choosing the tree over being right. a bar full of people doing separate arithmetic on the same wound. a call to ollie without the machine. three words said plain. the walls staying up anyway.

what lando says, and means: “i know.”

what george says: “don’t do that.”

what alonso says, without looking up from the counter: “the roots—that is the village. the canopy? that is the argument.”

what lando finally says instead of the safe version: “not great, ollie.”

what changes shape in this chapter: max’s walk. daniel’s silence. franco’s greeting. the quarter-hour bells. the distance between the bar and daniel’s table. the kind of quiet a flat can hold after someone has left it.

chapter themes: private hurt becoming public weather / the machine seen from the outside / a village counting and a man being counted / love withheld, love offered, love still there in other forms / the difference between being fine and saying it / the wall staying standing after the strike

he was not okay.

he said so.

the walls heard it and they didn’t fall.

[ao3feed-landoscar]

Second Flight by slapshock

https://ift.tt/eLiBOpf it on AO3 by slapshock Lando Norris used to be the guy you lost yourself to at 3 a.m. in a club: DJ, producer, professional burnout in progress. Then the crash, the rehab, the very nearly not-making-it. Now he lives above a wildlife hospital on the Cornish coast, making coffee for exhausted vets and writing quiet, bird-soaked tracks no one’s supposed to hear. It’s small, and disciplined, and safe. Mostly. Oscar Piastri is the vet who signed off on admitting him as “not technically avian” and never quite recovered from it. He likes order, risk assessments, and patients who can’t sneak off to sit on sea walls and flirt with catastrophic decisions. Unfortunately, he also likes Lando. When a BBC documentary and live show — Tidal Line Live: Sea & Sanctuary — offers Lando a way back onto a stage, everyone has an opinion. Trustees see headlines. Old managers smell money. Lando feels the old hunger in his bones. Oscar feels sick. This is a story about what comes after the crisis: about recovery as a practice, about found family in a small hospital full of broken birds, and about two people learning how to stay — with themselves, and with each other. Words: 7126, Chapters: 1/15, Language: English Fandoms: Formula 1 RPF Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris' Family, Fernando Alonso (Formula 1 RPF), George Russell (Formula 1 RPF), Max Verstappen, Alexander Albon Relationships: Lando Norris/Oscar Piastri Additional Tags: Addiction recovery, Alcohol & Substance Abuse (Past), Suicidal ideation (past), suicide attempt (referenced), depression & anxiety, Panic Attacks, Medical Trauma, Grief/Mourning, Exploitative Music Industry, Angst with a Happy Ending, recovery is not linear, Sober Sex, Consent is Sexy, Found Family, No Villains Just People, Slow Burn

[slapshock101]

Gravity (10/16, WIP)

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gravity — chapter 10: la reunión (lando pov)

the body goes to barbastro. the story stays in rodellar.

what happens: an mri that turns a shoulder into weather. a certification review triggered by the wrong set of facts in the right order. alex, who believes him before the report exists. ventanas at midday, all beauty and no entry. the wall as the thing he can no longer get inside. carlos arriving out of the scrub oak with a haul bag, chalk on his forearms, and the same hand that keeps lando’s name in the canyon. a kitchen argument about what truth costs depending on where you drop it. oscar saying he’s not leaving. and then a standard community meeting that stops being standard the moment the report hits the table.

what dr. martínez says, with the kind of honesty that doesn’t ask permission: “this is the recoverable version.”

what alex says, because someone has to put the thing in plain terms: “your fall becomes proof the whole system’s broken, not that you cocked up.”

what carlos says, soft enough to feel like care and still do damage: “your body first. siempre.”

what lando does not know until the room hears it with him: that his body is about to become part of the evidence.

chapter themes: body as currency / the wall as beauty and belonging and exile / the pen that writes the village also keeps his name in it / there’s a difference between making the findings public and detonating the room / the bolt held. the margin did not / truth arriving in a room that thought it was there for something else

god, how he wanted to keep it.

the meeting went into recess. the information didn’t.

[slapshock101]

Gravity (9/16, WIP)

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gravity — chapter 9: hallazgos (oscar pov)

this chapter took longer than the others. it needed to.

what happens: a caliper reading taken at dusk on a wall that has already answered its own question. a kitchen in a flat that has only ever held one person's protocols. a document assembled in the dark while someone else breathes. a corridor in bierge that smells of floor polish and burnt paper. a man who stands in doorways without crossing them. a clinician summary folded once and slid into a notebook with the same precision as a shim into a gap.

what max says, not looking up from the wall: "standard grade is for door hinges."

what george says, closing the folder: "he doesn't usually let people in this fast."

what oscar says, to the person eating cold eggs in his own kitchen: "i'm here because i want to be here. not because you need monitoring."

what lando says, watching the trail where the scrub oak closed: "that's not the part that—"

what the clerk says, offering a plastic envelope: "así no se pierden."

chapter themes: seven stations, one bolt, one body / the comarca remit covers publicly filed documentation relevant to the sector under assessment / a constellation he'd never allowed himself to study so openly before / protection and violation arriving in the same document / the material expressed the margin

the report was sound. every data point had provenance. every finding was supported by independent corroboration.

he let him rest.

[slapshock101]

Gravity (8/16, WIP)

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gravity — chapter 8: higos y sopa (lando pov)

the day after a fall is still a day. the road still rises. the village still runs on coffee and news and other people deciding what your body means.

what happens: a descent done with teeth, one hand, and a rope that does not care. george, with notes going back to june and no patience for lies that arrive dressed as stubbornness. a sling that means weeks, not days. carmen, who feeds him before she lets him leave and presses figs into his good hand like sweetness might count for something. a mountain road that asks for two hands and gets one. a collado where the machine finally blows a fuse. a bar full of concern, gossip, and men choosing different versions of what the hardware holding actually means. a flat that has not changed. a knock he recognises before he opens the door. shutters closing. soup promised. the fact of someone coming back.

what george says, writing it down anyway: “the system caught you. that’s not working.”

what carmen says, because there is no arguing with women like this: “bebe un vaso de agua.”

what carlos says: “the infrastructure held.”

what lando cannot stop hearing: the sound at the draw. not clean. not a gate.

what finally fails: not the bolt. not yet. just the part of him that keeps insisting he can do everything alone.

chapter themes: accumulated strain / the bill has arrived / a thing that will spoil beside a thing that will stay / downhill only asked for a brake / the only currency he had ever used here was his body and his competence / the story writes itself / what actually happened matters to me

the village did not know what happened on the road. he would not tell it.

for now, it was only the fact of him coming back.

[slapshock101]

Gravity (7/16, WIP)

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gravity — chapter 7: tolerancia (oscar pov)

the first chapter of act ii begins where chapter six left it: with an absence that has a shape.

what happens: events that refuse to stay in sequence. a handshake that lasts longer than it has to. neither of them is the one who ended it. a moka pot handle angled slightly left. a note that would be a performance for a room that can't answer back. open shutters. a dog by the church wall with one blue eye and one amber eye that looks away first. three stations verified, one confirmed priority. clean work. useful work. not what the morning was planned around. string lights that are just green wire in daylight. a man who has been watching lando for longer than oscar has, saying so simply. a rectangle of light that moves at a measurable rate, if you care to measure it.

what oscar does not leave: a message. a note. a reason.

what the beep does not make room for: i woke up and you were gone.

what logan says, from a harbour in kalymnos: you can't just wait. you have to wait and construct a framework around the waiting so you can tell yourself you're not only waiting.

what oscar says, flat, before he can soften it: that stopped being available.

what logan says, closer: okay. then be in it.

what max says, still flat, adjusting the cable: he was in a sling.

chapter themes: the contamination principle / a measurement that reclassifies everything before it / it was good work. it was not what the morning had been planned around. / the output was warmth / get the report first. then decide / almost invisible unless you know what to look for

the silence reclassified.

he knocked once, clearly, and waited.

[slapshock101]

Gravity (6/?, WIP)

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gravity — chapter 6: san lorenzo (lando pov) the village turns itself inside out once a year. the space between the buildings was the point all along.

what happens: a melody older than the road it moves along. a conversation that ends the moment lando rounds a corner. bread that tastes of flour and olive oil and salt and survival. a knot that understands. a woman from porto who recognises something before lando does and releases him without being asked. two men inventing a rhythm that was, to lando's ear, better than the official one.

what alonso says, without looking at anyone in particular: "aquí, lobito."

what the bread tastes like: flour and olive oil and salt.

what lando does not examine: why his hands shook once.

what the bolt does.

what the system does.

chapter themes: seven stations failing, three of them yesterday / a machine that runs on whatever is real / the same distance to the ferretería. the same distance to— / one hundred million years of limestone. six to eight months of corrosion

he was good at this. he let it. jesus christ he let it.

the village didn't stop moving. neither did he. until he did.

[slapshock101]

Gravity (5/?, WIP)

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gravity — chapter 5: poza (lando pov)

a client cancels at 5am. lando has been counting on the wall for two days and has opinions about everything except what the empty table by the window is doing to him.

what happens: logan leaves. three routes on a body that has no business being on any of them. the fourth bolt on el corredor—the one after the undercut, the one you clip on faith—held in the layback position one beat longer than necessary. a poza where the water is snowmelt-cold and two adults behave like idiots in limestone. a flat that receives them without accusation.

what oscar says at the anchor, eyes on the hardware: "i was worried." and later, on warm stone, still looking at the sky: "i see it."

what lando says, the first honest word of the day: "thanks."

what alonso says, without looking up from the counter: nobody asked me to leave. nobody asked me to come back. one morning i got on the bus. that was twenty-eight years ago.

chapter themes: the bolt you clip on faith before the hold confirms itself / a machine that runs so well you forget you're the one running it / "and sometimes i think if i stopped, just for a second, there'd be nothing left"

the village doesn't ask us to stay. it only makes space for those who choose it.

lando stayed.

[slapshock101]

Gravity (4/?, WIP)

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gravity — chapter 4: falta (oscar pov)

oscar has been in rodellar for eleven days and is now the kind of person who times how long alonso looks at things

what happens: logan leaves. this is announced via pack weight, departure details on a phone screen, and a hug oscar did not see coming and went very still for. the figs are still on the table. the bread was easier. a makeshift stage lists two degrees in the morning and a family eats breakfast on it like it was always there. george says "the file's never the whole person, though" and oscar's fingers reach for a pencil that isn't there. max holds a seven-day countdown in three words and kimi's thumb flicks once and goes still. lando enters a room and the noise changes key. lando's eyes go to the door twice in the same evening. oscar times the first one. he doesn't time the second. he closes the laptop instead.

what logan says: "you're fine at contained. small is different." he says this to the bread.

what oscar catalogs about kalymnos: bolt spacing 1.5 metres, titanium not steel, limestone density higher than rodellar's, salt corrosion factors calculable, wind exposure variable by sector. different from rodellar. no delaminating tufas.

what oscar does not catalog: why the last item registers as a loss

the door checks: two. identical. the substrate beneath the coating. a face that wasn't performing anything. classification required a framework oscar didn't have.

what oscar does not do: cross the four steps to the bar. look at lando when he leaves. eat the figs.

what oscar does do: knock on a door at nine forty in the morning with no data to justify it

chapter themes: what absence sounds like when you've been measuring it / a man who times everything except the one moment he allows himself not to / logan looked at the building. oscar didn't time it.

the figs didn't care whether he'd listened.

[slapshock101]

Gravity (3/?, WIP)

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gravity — chapter 3: registro (oscar pov)

oscar has been in rodellar for ten days and has opinions about everything except his own feelings, which he is filing under "no column for this yet"

what happens: a season-start party at el refugio where oscar stands at the same wall he always stands at and watches the entrance not produce lando for the entire night. daniel gives him handwritten field notes about surgencia's upper tier (visual only, no measurements, one anchor flagged with two question marks). rebecca decides she might be willing to revise her initial doubts. a british photographer sits next to kimi with a water bottle and an offer-not-an-assumption, and something in kimi's face does something oscar has never seen in ten days of shared canyon mornings.

the next morning: a vertical limestone wall, a caliper, and max belaying in silence while oscar stops breathing at a tufa formation and pretends this is about the light.

what oscar writes in his notebook margin: "context before comment." not ethics. not principle. a rule about delivery.

what oscar does not do: eat the figs.

chapter themes: the shape an absence makes / a man whose instruments work on everything except the thing that matters / "it doesn't feel significant. just a life with a fig tree and a shop counter that knows carlos's hands better than i do"

the stage is still listing two degrees toward stage right. no one fixes it.