One of the big things I struggle with functions-wise is getting stuck in what I call optimization loops. Where there's several tasks that need doing, and some would be optimized by having another task done first, but it can't be shaken out into a clear executable task list.
Simple example: I need to shower, eat food, and go to grocery store. I'm hungry and don't have energy to cook, so the easiest food option would be to get a deli item at the grocery store. But I want to shower before leaving the house. But I don't have energy to shower without eating first.
It feels very silly to get stuck on such a minor dilemma for as long as I have! But there are times I've spent hours looping through this list, trying and failing to start it anywhere. And the only way out, I find, is to manually override it: to catch it happening and say, fuck it! I can go to the grocery store stinky! It's fine!!
It could be considered a subset of perfectionism, because the override very much involves hitting yourself with the idea that it's ok to do things suboptimally. But it feels like it comes from a slightly different place. As someone who struggles with executive function, I get myself through a lot of tasks by trying to optimize to the smoothest, lowest-friction way through. The task order that minimizes having to do any step more than once, or having to remember too many things at a time. If I can arrange my tasks just right, sometimes I can get one task to cover part of the work of doing another! And if I can put my tasks in an order that feels natural and ideal, I can lower the energy of activation it takes to get moving. And, sometimes, avoid the choice paralysis of not being able to pick a task out of a list of equal priority.
Except that, obviously, sometimes the optimization process throws up glitches of its own. There's the closed loop I described, and there's also another catching point where a task I have the mental energy and wherewithal to do gets stuck behind a task that's too big/intimidating/difficult to tackle. For example: I just sent some emails I've been procrastinating on for over a month, because I need to set up a new email address, and I was telling myself it'd be better to get that set up before I contacted people, because it would save me the hassle of dragging a bunch of conversations over to a new account when I did get it set up. I still haven't made the other email! But I realized that hypothetical future hassle was not worth the delay of not sending those emails for as long as it's going to take to actually get my brain together to figure out a new email service.
Surprisingly, doing something like this often actually makes the difficult task I was stuck on easier! Another thing I struggle with is a flinch reaction from tasks that are both pressingly important, and unapproachable to do. The more I need to do a task immediately, the more stressed and overwhelmed and self-recriminating I get about the fact that I don't know how to even start doing it. It gets so bad I can't even think about it directly - I think about the general shape of it, flinch, and divert my attention so I don't panic.
And when I've got a minor, pressing task stuck behind a big nebulous scary task, it presses the unapproachable task forward, makes it urgent, and that makes it harder to figure out how to do. If I can get around it, and do the actually pressing task in some contrived way that pushes some miscellaneous messy consequences forward, it takes pressure off the big task. And then I can actually think about it, without panicking, which makes it possible to actually work on doing it.
That last point also often applies to asking for help. I have a weird hangup here: I find it excruciatingly difficult to ask for help if I haven't at least *started* the thing I need help with. Which gets into the same dynamic: I have a big unsorted task I can't think about directly without panicking, or the path of steps to doing it that I've managed to figure out starts with one I can't make myself tackle, so I'm stuck doing nothing with no way in. Asking for help means admitting to someone that there is going to be mess, that I can't tackle the problem in the optimal front-to-back way so there's going to be inconvenient problems generated in some of the steps that will have to be dealt with at other steps, and some of that inconvenience might be to people other than me!! But just managing to say this, to admit this upfront, is sometimes enough to cut the gordion knot of not being able to start anywhere.
So, ok, it is a little bit about perfectionism. But perfectionism that comes from a slightly sideways place: the desperation to avoid creating problems in the future, to the point where instead you create problems now.
Oscar narrows his eyes at you, then rolls his shoulders back and nods, having evidently come to a decision. “I bet I can have you swooning like a fan within two weeks,” he declares.
PAIRING: oscar piastri x female reader
GENRE: established relationship, humor (perhaps too much humor sorry i just love to Jest), fluff, romance (they are so in love it's egregious), oscar embracing his full potential as a competitive shit-stirrer
WARNINGS: suggestive content/sexual themes
WORD COUNT: ~5k
A/N: hello hi im insane but im #free. the other day i was thinking of one of the earliest fics i ever read where i was like holy shit this is rly a Craft and that was this fic by November Romeo (yes it's on fanfiction dot net. yes it's a gakuen alice fic. respect ur elders etc.) and then i was like wow i Must put oscar piastri in a similar Situation. all credit where credit is due—the entire premise of the fic u see below, along w/ a few passages of dialogue, are completely inspired by the November Romeo fic! that's all from me. happy reading<33
You’d said it in passing—a casual, offhanded, must-be-the-wind kind of remark. It wasn’t even meant for Oscar’s ears; you’d been joking around with Alex when you said it, during a lull in the annual pre-season F1 photoshoot marathon.
“Really, I guess it’s kind of flattering, in an adjacent kind of way. But to me, he’s just Oscar. And besides, we’ve been together for so long that it hardly registers to me anymore.”
The topic of conversation: a recent upsurge in online adulation for your boyfriend, simply because he’d stepped out in longer hair and pants that fit well. Thirst edits of Oscar had even made their way to Alex’s For You Page; when you look back on this moment, that’s where you’ll pin the blame.
Oscar comes to a cartoonish halt as he’s on his way to the main shoot, limbs frozen mid-gait. “What was that?”
You turn at the sound of his voice and smile warmly at him, a familiar fondness surging through you at the sight of his floppy hair post-helmet fitting. “Oh, hey! All done?”
“Yeah, yeah. What was that? About the, uh, trend in fan interest?” He directs his question at Alex, who looks between the two of you with thinly-veiled amusement before answering.
“They were really into your new look. Hair, pants, you know. But they’re always into you,” Alex allows.
Oscar waves him off good-naturedly. “Cheers, mate. And you said it hardly registers to you anymore?” His attention is now fixed on you, intense and single-minded in a way that makes you squirm a bit—he looks like this whenever he’s set his mind to some new challenge, all steel and sinew.
Still, you laugh, making light of your comment. “That you’re hot? Oh, please. I just meant that I’m used to you, that’s all. I’ve known you for years!”
Oscar spots Lando coming this way and raises his voice slightly to reach the other driver. “Hey, Lando! Do you think I’m hot?”
Lando gives your group a two-fingered salute and replies without even looking up from his phone. “Ask me a serious question.”
Oscar points at him, half triumphant, half accusing. “Lando’s known me for years, too.”
You roll your eyes. “C’mon, Oscar. You were shorter than me when we met, and your sleeves didn’t reach your wrists because your arms were growing faster than your legs. Which was not a deterrent for me, by the way! I had a crush on you even then, way before you had any fans,” you hurry to add.
“But you don’t have a crush on me anymore?” he presses.
“Anymore? What are you talking about—Oscar, we’re dating,” you splutter.
Alex—and Lando, drawn in by his nose for drama and general amusement—watches your exchange like a tennis match.
Oscar narrows his eyes at you, then rolls his shoulders back and nods, having evidently come to a decision. “I bet I can have you swooning like a fan within two weeks,” he declares.
The statement is so absurd and so unlike him that you burst out laughing. “Sorry, what?”
He doesn’t blink. “You heard me. Two weeks, baby. Winner gets to choose what we do for summer break.”
Oh, this is serious. You straighten and put your hands on your hips, projecting a confidence you don’t quite feel. “Deal.”
He winks—winks!—at you before being ushered away to the photoshoot, and you’re left standing there, heat crawling up the back of your neck.
Alex and Lando break, hooting and shrieking with laughter.
“You’re in trouble,” Alex gasps out.
Your jaw drops. “You guys don’t think I can resist swooning for two weeks? When have you ever known me to swoon?”
“I don’t think you can resist a competitive, motivated Oscar for two weeks,” Lando corrects.
As if. You’re a grown woman with a fully developed pre-frontal cortex. You’re made of stronger stuff than that.
As it turns out, you are not made of stronger stuff than that.
“This is ridiculous. This is obscene,” you hiss.
Lily whistles between her teeth. “This is a show, honey. One-man show, sold out just to you.”
The press powers-that-be have decided that the drivers should do individual and group helmet shots this year. Which would be fine, but the photos are being taken in Monaco, on a docked yacht, in full view of the cafe where Oscar had innocently suggested would be good for brunch with the drivers’ partners.
Not so innocent now, you realize, as you’re watching Oscar lift up his goddamn shirt to wipe at the visor of his helmet for a “candid” shot.
His shirt, which can only charitably be called such, because it’s a billowy, practically translucent thing; the kind of white button-down guys wear in the Mediterranean to be allowed to order a drink at the bar, but not much else.
“Where did that shirt even come from? I swear I’ve never seen it in his closet,” you gripe. It’s true—Oscar owns maybe three white button-downs, one-and-a-half of which fit him, all of which are the kind of thick, stiff cotton that needs to be ironed before wear. Nothing approaching the casual elegance of what he’s got now, sea breeze kicking merrily at the hem of his shirt and dancing atop his shoulders.
Alexandra giggles from beside you. “That might be Charles’s fault. Oscar came over last night to borrow a shirt for today’s shoot… and with the way you’re reacting, I’m not sure he’ll want to give it back.”
“I am not reacting—oh my god, Oscar’s going to kill him,” you announce upon seeing Lando douse Oscar thoroughly with a water gun. But instead of grabbing the gun out of Lando’s hands and emptying the whole thing onto his head, as you expect, Oscar just smiles pleasantly and shakes water out of his hair.
You’re instantly suspicious at his lack of put-out, drowned-cat behavior. And your suspicions are proved correct because Oscar makes sure to look directly at you and shrug in an oh, what can you do? kind of way before starting to unbutton his shirt entirely.
Lily and Alexandra are downright cackling now. “I think Oscar’s going to kill you, first,” Lily delights in pointing out.
Her words pretty much go in through one ear and out through another for you. You’re transfixed by the steady, methodical work Oscar’s hands are engaged in now, undoing each button on his (Charles's?) shirt with a dexterity he has no reason to show off for such a menial task. You’re vaguely aware that your jaw is slack and you’re blatantly ogling him, but you can’t help it, not really. A faint smirk graces Oscar’s lips as the last button pops loose; he looks like he was born to do nothing but sit around and be handsome on a yacht, cheeks kissed pink by an obliging sun and your even more obliging attention.
Divine intervention arrives in the form of your waiter, delivering a round of drinks to the table. You thank the waiter far more fervently than is necessary and gulp down half a peach bellini without tasting it.
Lily takes pity on you and offers you a mini fan from her purse, but you wave it away with the grim determination of a soldier heading off to battle. “Oh no,” you insist, “I’m not going down that easy.”
Alexandra muffles a laugh into her drink. “Are you not already down?”
You shoot her a dirty look and refuse to dignify that with an answer.
On the yacht, water drips from Oscar’s hair down the planes of his chest, tracking down terrain you know like gospel. In one smooth movement, he flicks his shirt away from where it’d been sticking to his torso and twists to say something to the photographer, exposing the flex in the obliques along his waist.
Your willpower whimpers.
“Don’t you think you’re laying it on a bit thick?” Lando remarks, eyeing the cafe where the girls are sitting.
Oscar squints at him and resists the urge to put on sunglasses, which he knows would ruin the show he’s putting on for you. “I think there’s a bet on, and all fair’s in love and war.”
Lando tuts sympathetically in your direction. “Poor girl.”
Oscar scoffs. “You’re lucky she’s here; otherwise, I’d have pushed you overboard for that shit with the water gun.”
“Promises, promises. But who knew you had it in you, huh? Where was this energy when we were doing the merch shoot last week?” Lando gestures at Oscar and all of his slick skin and shameless smirking.
“Not like this is my normal state of being. This is the hardest I’ve ever worked for a paycheck.” Even now, Oscar has to resist the urge to hunch into his usual posture.
Charles catches the tail end of his comment and laughs heartily. “Mate, you are so full of it.”
“Sorry, are you seriously talking right now? Guy who’s been voted most handsome on the grid like, every single year?” Oscar grumbles.
Charles clasps a hand to his chest, all aflutter. “Aw, Oscar, I didn’t know you were keeping track like that.”
Oscar rolls his eyes. “Not really much to keep track of if it’s the same every year.”
Charles drops the ingénue act and starts to look at him more thoughtfully. “I thought you didn’t care about stuff like that.”
“I don’t. I care about…” Oscar coughs and refuses to meet anyone’s eyes. “I care about her. What she thinks.”
“Uh, I don’t know if you noticed, but she looks like she wants to jump you.” Lando shades his eyes with his hands to get a better look at you. “Violently or sexually, or both—hard to say.”
“You have such a way with words,” Oscar deadpans, resisting the urge to see for himself. “Anyways, she said she’s used to me.”
Charles shakes his head. “You can’t tell me you actually believe that.”
“Not for a second, but—” Oscar sighs and gives in to the urge to look at you. Even from this distance, he can tell that you’re flustered, and that sends a jolt of self-satisfaction through him. His mouth curls into a grin, boyish and playful as he mouths the words Hi, baby, to you.
You turn away instantly, and he laughs out loud. No, you have never given Oscar a reason to feel insecure in his relationship or in himself. And he’s glad that you like him—love him—for all the right reasons. His ambition, his level head, the way he treats others, and even his dry-ass sense of humor. Still, level as his head may be, he’s also young and in love, and his pre-frontal cortex is not yet fully developed, so yes, he thinks it’d be nice to hear that you like him for all the superficial reasons, too.
“—but this is kinda fun, anyways,” he finishes.
Down at the cafe, your heart is thrumming like a snare drum even as you refuse to look at Oscar. “I cannot believe him,” you say, trying to sound indignant and ending up somewhere near breathy.
Alexandra pats your hand, placating. “Oh, have some mercy. He’s suffering just for you.”
“Suffering? The guy’s on a yacht. In Monaco.”
“Yeah, and do you think he’d ever be caught dead behaving like this for anyone else?” Lily levels you with a knowing look.
“Well… no,” you’re forced to admit. “But that doesn’t excuse his behavior!"
“God forbid your boyfriend tries to seduce you,” Lily agrees archly.
“He doesn’t need to seduce me—he already has me!” you cry.
“Right, so… tell him that.” Alexandra, ever the voice of reason.
You whip around and glare at her. “And lose the bet? Absolutely not.”
She sighs and tosses her hands up. “I give up. You guys are made for each other.”
Inexorably, your gaze swings back to Oscar on the yacht, where he’s leaning back against the railing of the top deck, shirt lifted by the wind. A hum of pure delight escapes you at the welcome sight. Yeah, you’re made for each other, alright. You watch appreciatively as Oscar cocks his head to receive an instruction from the photographer, but then he’s tossing his shirt aside and—oh dear god, he’s diving off the boat, one perfect arc slicing through the glittering Mediterranean sea.
You toss back the rest of your drink and slam it down on the table. “We’re leaving,” you grit out.
In the immediate aftermath of Oscar’s… performance on the yacht, he has wisely chosen to ease his foot off of the drive-my-girlfriend-insane pedal. But he’s only human, and his conscious choices must yield to his unconscious instincts, so when he gets a series of dramatic texts from you about severing all of your blood ties (read: you’re helping plan your sister’s wedding, and both her and your mother are being nightmares about it), it’s instinct that pushes his bottom lip out just slightly (a pout by any other name) for your plight.
It’s instinct that drives him to scour the high-brow Monaco grocery aisles for your favorite boxed mac-and-cheese and tomato soup, it’s instinct (and maybe a bit of his own sweet tooth) that stops him in front of a display of chocolate flowers, and it’s instinct that carries him through sniffing approximately thirty candles to find the one he thinks you’ll like most.
His own desires come into the mix when you arrive home and he kisses you hello, slow and indulgent, but that’s instinct, too; kissing you has always felt like the natural conclusion to where his body should end and yours should begin. And he knows exactly how to kiss you mindless, so he luxuriates in it, draws it out like molasses, a masterclass in heat and sensation.
When he finally pulls himself back from the trembling pulse in your neck, some indeterminate amount of time later, he’s pleased to see that your eyes have gone hazy and heavy-lidded, all thoughts of cake flavors and tablecloth colors purged by his wandering mouth.
“Hi,” you breathe out, slightly hoarse. The problem with being so hopelessly in love with your boyfriend is that it really doesn’t take much to set you off. The kiss—all of the kisses—were spectacular, of course, and he’s managed to take you so completely out of your head that you’re surprised to discover you’re still splayed against the door, purse and keys and shopping bags perilously close to dropping from your suddenly loose limbs.
But it’s really the fact that you’ve caught the scent of some woodsy candle in the air, and you can see a spot of tomato soup at the hem of his shirt and another of cheese powder at the collar, and you can taste chocolate on his tongue—all of that, and the care and devotion it entails, is really what warms your chest and weakens your knees.
“Hi,” he returns, grin lopsided and arms solid around you, so steady and reliable that you have to reconsider your aversion to swooning.
The worst—best?—part is that he won’t hold you against your bet for finding him so unbelievably attractive right now, because he doesn’t even know. He has no idea that he’s doing anything remarkable; to him, all of this is just instinct.
“I love you,” you sigh, awash in contentment.
He hums a tuneless agreement into your hair. “Double it and give it to the next person.”
And then there’s that infamous sense of humor. You pinch his waist lightly in retaliation, but he sees that coming from a mile away and dodges easily to plant a kiss on your forehead instead.
“Silly, you’re the next person,” he tells you, unabashedly fond even as his hand slips up your inner thigh, and yep, that’s it—dinner can wait.
The next time is all premeditated—no instinct, just strategy.
Step 1: Find an event to go to that requires him to wear a suit. This would normally be the opposite of enticing to him, but he knows the cards he can play, and well-fitting formalwear is at the top of the deck.
He tries to be subtle about it, bringing it up one morning when you’re getting ready in the bathroom. He tells you that Hattie’s been bugging him for weeks to take her to this charity gala where one of the K-pop groups she likes will be in attendance. This is all true, but this is also where he makes his first fatal mistake:
“ENHYPEN?!” Your shriek makes him wince.
“Uh, yes, do you know them?”
“Oscar.” You throw him a withering look. “Do I know them? Yes, you idiot. I know them. Honestly, what a question. Of course I’ll go with you! Oh my god, I should text Hattie to see what she’s wearing…” And then you’re bustling away, and he’s left blinking at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror.
Step 2: Acquire aforementioned well-fitting formalwear. This isn’t the kind of thing where he can just go borrow something from Charles, and while Charles would probably still be his first choice for the daunting task of shopping, the man is out of town this weekend.
So, Oscar is left with some knockoff of the Three Musketeers: George, Alex, and Lando. That’s his second fatal mistake.
“I didn’t actually ask you two to come,” Oscar makes a point of saying to Alex and Lando.
Lando sniffs. “I take offense to that.”
“Yeah, you were meant to. I’m not about to show up to this thing in a fluorescent bowtie.”
“Not that I have one, but I’d rock a fluorescent bowtie.”
Alex holds up his hands. “I’m just here because I was with George when you called him. Also, my sister wants Niki’s autograph, so do me a solid, yeah?”
“Once you told me what was going on, I knew I needed to call in reinforcements,” George—the only one Oscar had asked for help—explains.
Although, Oscar is now feeling a bit dubious about George’s judgement. “Alex and Lando are your reinforcements?”
“Not for style. Don’t be ridiculous. Just for this—here, make yourself useful.” George grabs five suits from a rack and dumps them in Lando’s arms.
Lando grunts under the sudden weight. “You know there are employees in this very expensive store who get paid absurd amounts of money to do this?”
George dismisses him with a flick of his wrist. “I made a private styling appointment, without any employees, for a reason.” He grabs Alex’s arm and starts draping ties over it.
“Actually, why did you ask the employees to leave?” Oscar’s curious, too.
George turns to him with utmost seriousness. “Oscar, I’m a good mate. I’m not about to let more strangers know the exact extent of your sad wardrobe.”
Damn. Oscar really should have waited for Charles to come back to town.
Oscar loses the plot somewhere around Step 3, which was probably going to be something like marvel at how hot your girlfriend is when she asks you to pick a dress.
As it is, he expresses his appreciation into the swell of your chest and the cradle of your hips on the morning of the gala, and you’re more than happy to accommodate.
“This doesn’t count for the bet, by the way,” you remind him. But the words come out on a moan, so it’s not your most convincing effort.
Oscar pulls his head up to huff a tiny laugh into your belly button. “You really wanna argue about that now?”
“Well, opportunities multiply as they’re seized."
He laughs fully at that one. “What?”
With no small degree of smugness, you inform him, “Sun Tzu. All’s fair in love and war, right?”
“Oh my god, did Lando snitch?” Miffed, Oscar pushes himself up on his elbows and frowns at you.
“Obviously. And he told me about your shopping trip, too!”
Oscar blows out a breath and collapses back into you. “Turncoat.”
You smooth down the ruffled hair at the top of his head. “If it’s any consolation, he traded me information for a Sunoo autograph for his sister.”
“Believe it or not, that offers me no consolation whatsoever.” Oscar sighs. “This whole gala thing is kind of backfiring on me, isn’t it?”
“A little, but then again, you get to see me in a dress I look killer in. There are worse fates.”
He presses a kiss into your sternum and smirks at the shiver that goes down your spine. Yeah, there are definitely worse fates.
This is something he has to remind himself of, many hours later, when he’s being coaxed through the motions of a 30-second TikTok dance by Jake Sim, who is displaying an admirable level of patience with him. That had been Oscar’s third fatal mistake: abiding by some vague sense of patriotism and Jake’s promise that the dance would be “easy” and “fun!”
“Sorry, dancing’s not really my thing,” Oscar apologizes for the umpteenth time after stepping on Jake’s foot.
Jake waves the apology away easily. “Nah, dude, you’re doing great! And I could never do what you do, trust me. Maybe we can try the dance again, at point-two-five speed this time…”
Halfway across the room, you and Hattie watch with rapt fascination as Oscar attempts some kind of body roll, which sets you both off into hysterics.
“This is like Christmas, my birthday, and every other holiday rolled into one,” Hattie chortles.
“He is never going to live this down,” you wheeze.
Hattie nods sagely. “Many such cases.”
She continues to giggle as she pulls out her phone to film the whole ordeal, which is just as well because your amusement has turned syrupy sweet for your stiff-limbed boyfriend, whose face is bright red but is still trying so hard to do right by his countryman, his sister, and everyone else counting on him as an autograph conduit.
This is what gets to you: he will grit his teeth through public humiliation if he has a promise to keep, and he will complete a task with equal parts dorkiness and sincerity, and he will never be anything less than your favorite person. So, yeah, you aren’t swooning, but your heart goes tender at the sight of him putting in the effort, anyways.
Oscar is appropriately dramatic about his suffering when he returns ten minutes later and drops his head into the crook of your neck. “We should burn down TikTok,” he groans.
You pat the back of his head fondly. “Don’t quit your day job, baby. And don’t make your day job fire you for arson, either.”
“I’m going to play this video at your wedding,” Hattie declares gleefully.
Oscar discreetly points his middle finger at her. “Not if I don’t invite you.”
The unspoken when—not if—of marriage has long been acknowledged between you and Oscar, but it still sends a little jolt through you every time. This is the person you will spend the rest of your life with, and if you are lucky, there will be many people who have equal longevity in your life, but there is only one Oscar. There is only one person who looks at you like you’ve inspired him to dream new dreams, only one person who has rewritten the rhythm of your heart to beat in time with his, only one person whose guiding star trails after the ones he sees in your eyes.
What is the point of swooning when this is the magnitude of what you feel for him, when you know the magnitude of what he feels for you?
It’s a rhetorical question, but it’s one that you answer for yourself an hour later, when he tosses the car keys to Hattie for the drive back home.
She shrieks, “Really? You’ll let me drive?”
“It’s a rental, obviously. But yes, I know you’ve always wanted to drive in Monaco. Don’t tell Mom,” he tacks on at the end, watching her get in the driver's seat with a shake of his head.
“Wow, somebody call the press! Never thought I’d see the day when you give up the keys,” you joke.
He pulls you close and murmurs the next words against your ear, raising goosebumps along your arms. “Would you believe me if I said I had ulterior motives?”
“What kind of ulterior motives—oh.” The breath gets knocked out of you when he pushes you gently into the backseat of the car, a knowing look in his eye.
“Don’t think I didn’t notice how you’ve been shifting on your feet all night, baby.” He gets down and starts undoing the intricate laces of your heels. “I thought you were going to get rid of these after how much they bothered you at the FIA ceremony.”
You melt into the seat; he’s so fucking dreamy like this, striking in a sharp suit, all clean lines and expensive tailoring. But more than that, it’s the way he dropped to his knees without a second thought, without regard to the gravel and dirt now rubbing against his multi-thousand-dollar pants, all because your feet hurt, and he noticed. He noticed even before the ache in your soles registered to you.
One shoe comes off, and then he’s pressing a kiss into your ankle with a wicked smile. “What’s got you so tongue-tied, hm?”
You release your bottom lip from where you’d been biting it between your teeth, watching him. “Maybe I should keep the shoes, if I get to see you like this.”
The other shoe comes off, punctuated with a kiss to your other ankle. “You know I’d get on my knees for you any time, gorgeous.”
There’s nothing appropriate you can say in response to that, so you just try to trap the whimper in your throat as best as you can.
Your shoes dangle from his fingers when he gets in the car, and then he’s pulling up the privacy divider and kissing you with such intensity that it makes you gasp, tongue sweeping into your mouth like he owns it, teeth catching on your bottom lip and digging in right where yours left a mark earlier. It’s over as quickly as it began (he still has some sense of decorum), but he makes it one of the hottest moments of your life, and you think you could live inside of it forever.
When he pulls away, he rubs his thumb over the wet shine of your mouth and grins smugly at the shudder it elicits from you. “Messy girl,” he coos, sucking his thumb into his own mouth just to see you squirm again.
“Oh, god,” you say finally, with feeling. You'd have swooned if you hadn't already been sitting.
“Nah, just Oscar,” he corrects, cheeky.
The coup de grâce comes a week later.
Frankly, you’d kind of forgotten about the bet in that week, because it’s the lead-up to the Australian Grand Prix, and Oscar’s heart has been broken here too many times for you to think about anything else.
He’s a good sport about it and always has been, so you also try to be casual about it throughout the week, like you couldn’t care less how he does on Saturday. In the grand scheme of things, you don’t care; he has been beloved to you long before he ever got into an F1 car, and he will always shine so brightly to you, no matter what he does on track. But you know the enormity of the hunger that hums underneath his skin whenever he’s in Albert Park—the scale of his hope, the reach of his longing.
You want it because he wants it, and even then, you know your want is only a shadow of his. Still, your heart pounds in your ears through all 58 laps, a constant drumbeat of please, please, please, as if the circuit can hear you. Please be kind to him. Please let me see that once-in-a-lifetime smile again.
The unbelievable, dizzying speed of this sport contradicts itself at the end. When Oscar’s car crosses the finish line in P1, the world goes slow-motion around you as bedlam of the best kind erupts. His sisters are shrieking, jumping up and down, and his parents are crying freely, but all you see is him, getting out of the car and raising his fists to the crowd, which roars its approval back tenfold.
You’re running to him before anyone can stop you, everything other than him fading to background noise. He whoops when you jump into his arms, and though he still has his helmet on, you know there’s that once-in-a-lifetime smile underneath it. And so goes your white flag, waving in defeat. He was right—he’d have you swooning within two weeks.
Really, it was a losing battle from the start. You’d been naive to think otherwise; after all, you’re so goddamn in love with him. Later, you’ll tell him all of this, and more. But for now…
If you’re going down, you’re going down swinging.
“Oscar,” you begin, all bravado and command. “Get ready to catch me.”
He barely has time to splutter out a muffled What? behind his helmet before you’re pitching yourself backwards.
Thank god for racing reflexes; he catches you one-handed, just inches from the ground. You pop a leg up for him to hold by his waist, just for the drama of it all, and then you press a kiss to his helmet.
The moment is picture-perfect; indeed, a thousand camera shutters go off around you. But his world has narrowed just to you, dazzling and breathless, so lovely it makes his chest ache, makes his whole body remember that gravity is tethered to wherever you’re standing.
Oh, he thinks, you are so dear to me.
He has spent two weeks peacocking and preening, putting on airs designed specifically to get under your skin, tempting you with sin and seduction, turning you molten with a flicker of his gaze, a whisper of his touch. Even after all of that, it only takes a few words from you to bring him to his knees.
And the next words out of your mouth are made for him: “Hi there, hometown hero. I’m so proud of you.”
one of the details in next to normal that genuinely makes me insane is the fact that diana isn’t just imagining a perfect son when she imagines gabe. yes, he’s her “superboy,” but in the very first part of the musical, when she’s “waiting up for him,” she imagines him coming home late like any other teenager. she complains and calls him a loser and a brat and a little shit. she’s not imagining a reality that never would have happened where gabe grew up to be the perfect child that never causes her any problems or stress. she imagines him as a real teenager, someone that could have been. diana doesn’t want the perfect son. she wants her son.
