The perfect match

Max, Penelope, Lando and Oscar flew together to Bahrain a couple days after Oscar’s heat, wanting to get a little bit of sun and vacation before testing.
They had decided on renting a little villa for their stay, after all, together with the vacation, testing and race weekend, they would be here for a little more than three weeks. The villa had four bedrooms, five baths, a big living and dining area, a good-sized kitchen and a pool. They were about twenty minutes from track and thanks to some pre-orders, the fridge and pantry were stocked, although Oscar had made all kinds of snacks at home to take with them.
The nanny arrived the Thursday of the race week, the time before Oscar had taken care of her if Max was racing or in meetings.

That Wednesday was also the evening Rodney Stacks had invited Oscar and Lando to the sponsor’s dinner. They had organized a driver bringing them there and there were even a bunch of paparazzi waiting in front of the door.
Inside, Lando felt really useless. Rodney Stacks had seen Oscar pretty much immediately and pulled him away with little explanation towards Lando, but he trusted Oscar to call him if he needed him. He stood a little bit lost on a little balcony at one of the walls, trying to spot Oscar somewhere, sipping on an alcohol-free fruit punch. Instead of Oscar he spotted someone else, a dark-haired person, not too tall, seemingly getting a little cornered by some alphas.
Not wanting to think the worst, but also not wanting to leave someone alone in a possible dangerous situation, he made his way down from the balcony and followed the wall towards where the young man was. An omega, as he realized when he came closer. The three other men had by now pushed him away from others and in between some curtains hanging from the ceiling, partly covering the walls.
“And I said I don’t want to.” The omega said firmly.
“Oh, come on, couldn’t have been the first time, I bet you’re absolutely used to everything.” One of them said and Lando thought he would vomit.
“I said no and that is not going to change.” The omega said and wanted to walk past them, when another one of them pushed him back against the wall by his shoulder.
“Are you trying to play coy now? Come on a little omega like you? The only reason you’re here is because you know how to swallow it. Why else would you be here, anyway?”
“Because I’m fast. I can race. That’s why I am where I am. If I blow someone, I decide who I blow and where I blow them.”
“You’re fast … cute, little omega, you. You can’t be fast, be real, only alphas can race fast.” Another one said with a sleezy voice while pointing at himself.
“Then why don’t you?” Lando asked, his voice calm, but the threatening alpha growl underneath.
“What?”
“Why don’t you race fast? You pointed at yourself when talking about fast alphas. You’re not in Formula 1. Why don’t you race fast if you can? Or is this some kind of ‘I could but I choose not to’ nonsense?” Lando asked, stepping up to them and starting to push himself in front of the omega.
“Who do you think you are, talking to me like that?” the sleezy alpha asked and one of the others whispered something into his ear, making the sleezy alpha turn around and hurry away, the others kept staring at Lando. “What are you waiting for?” he growled at them and then watched them hurry away in all directions like scared little puppies.
He then turned around to the omega, who stood still pressed against the wall, staring at Lando. “You’re Charles, right? Charles Leclerc?”
“Yes” Charles pressed out.
“It is great to meet you, I’m Lando. Are you okay?” Lando asked, stretching out his hand.
“Mhm.” Charles mumbled, cautiously shaking Lando’s hand.
“I’m sorry if they scared you. They are just some spoiled, little, rich kids who think they are allowed to do what they want.”
“I worked so long on … you know, getting confident and stuff and always when I think I made it … something like this is happening.”
“You are confident. You are a fighter. You are strong. If you wouldn’t be, you wouldn’t have made it to Formula 1, welcome to the grid, by the way.” Lando said with a smile.

“Lando! There you are.” Oscar said, walking up to them from the side. “Is everything okay?” he asked, looking at Charles, who still looked a little bit ashen.
“It will be, just some stupid young alphas, you know. By the way, this is Charles Leclerc.” Lando said.
“The new Ferrari driver! It is so great to meet you. You are really great; we watched some videos. Are you here on your own?” Oscar babbled.
“Well, yes, my mum wanted to come, but my brother is also here, he’s five and we didn’t feel comfortable bringing him here.” Charles said.
“That’s understandable. Do you have any more obligations here?” Lando asked.
“No. I never really knew what my obligation was. I stopped for a picture at the front, talked to some of the Rolex, MSC, Mission Winnow and DHL people.”
“Okay, did you talk to someone from Pirelli?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Okay, if you want to, we can drive you home, we would just have to stop by the Pirelli people for a minute, just for an introduction.”
“That would be nice.” Charles said with a little smile.
“Alright, what about you, Oscar?” Lando asked him.
“I’m done, Rodney already left.”
“Oh, it’s Rodney now? Okay.”
“Are you jealous?” Oscar smirked and followed Charles and Lando to a little group of people and a couple minutes later out of the building.
“If you are invited to these things, it’s the most important for you to let your sponsors see that you are there. If they are too busy, you don’t have to talk to them, just look at them directly and lift your glass to acknowledge them. Where do you stay?”
“At the Palm resort, in one of the houses. And thank you, for everything, again.”
“Alright, then let’s go there, we are staying in one of the villas over there.”
“A villa?!”
“Well, we share with Max and Penelope, and their nanny, so we needed more bedrooms.” Oscar explained to him.
“Don’t worry, most of the time we are going to normal hotel rooms, we just connected testing and the race with a little vacation.” Lando said.
“Ah, okay, yeah we came here a week earlier, too.” Charles said.
When they entered the resort, they realized Charles had almost the house opposite to them. He was right, it was a lot smaller and Lando invited him and his family to use the pool whenever they wanted to.

The next day, Lando and Oscar drove to the circuit together and Lando brought him to the McLaren hospitality. Daniel’s mum Grace was already there, Daniel apparently upstairs, changing into his suit. Lando took off the necklace Oscar gave him and secured it around Oscar’s neck until the evening.
They first had some lunch, enjoying the good cooking of the hospitality team, but the closer they came to the start of the first free practice, the more nervous Oscar got.
“I’m not even racing, why am I this nervous?” Oscar asked Grace, pacing up and down in the hospitality.
“It is normal, you are worried, Oscar. He’s your mate. Come sit down with me here.” She said and patted the seat next to her on the couch. “Come on, they don’t have the on-board cameras on live stream during practice and qualifying, but we can still watch them on the screen.” She explained and they watched the first cars leaving their garages.
“Why aren’t Lando and Daniel driving?” Oscar asked, starting to panic “Is the car broken?”
“No, it’s not. They just wait a little bit. Look at all the cars queuing up, they would just stand there and wait for nothing and the tires would get cold.”
“Okay” Oscar said.
The rest of practice went by alright, Grace explained more details or situations to Oscar, a new racer on the grid this year called Logan slipped off the track and took a wide detour, but other than that, everything went well. Lando ended in 6th, Max 3rd, Daniel in 8th and Charles finished 10th.
They had a little bit of free time between practices, but Lando had already said it was highly unlikely that he would have the time to see Oscar. Grace and Oscar went out of the hospitality and just walked their way through the paddock, looking at the different trailers and such, especially RB, who had a whole new name and colour scheme this year. In between some trailers they saw a woman with a young boy, apparently eager for a toilet.
“We will find it, Artur! Just give me a second!” the lady said in French, looking through the paddock map frantically.
“May we help?” Grace asked, also in French.
“Oh, I apologize, we were just looking for the Ferrari hospitality!” the lady said, the boy now jumping up and down.
“A little emergency?” Oscar asked, pointing at the boy.
“Yes, you know … kids, if they need to go, it needs to be now!” the lady said while Grace already banged on a hidden door on a dark blue trailer until it was opened, then she quickly talked to someone who stuck their head out. Less than 20 seconds later, Arthur was lifted into the trailer and used the toilet in there. “Thank you so, so much!” the lady exclaimed to the employee that jumped out of the trailer.
“No problem, ma’am! I know how it is, I have some of my own. You are Charles Leclerc’s family, aren’t you?” he then asked.
“Oh, yes, we are, Pascale Leclerc, it is nice to meet you.”
“Just call me GP, that’s easiest. I’m Max’s race engineer.” The man introduced himself.
“Oh, hey Grace, what are you doing here?” Max, who had just walked down the hallway in the trailer and looked down to them.
“We had a little emergency and GP was nice enough to help.” Grace told him.
“I’m done.” Arthur said, walking down the hallway from the other side.
“Did you wash your hands?” Pascale asked and Arthur nodded.
“Oh, you must be Arthur, Charles’ little brother.” Max said with a smile and kneeled down to him. “I’m Max.” he introduced himself and the little smile from Arthur’s face vanished.
“NO!” he said stoically “You bad person, you push Charlie off!” he yelled at Max with his little childish voice and jumped down from the trailer, running away quickly.
“I’m really sorry!” Pascale yelled while speeding after her son.
“Well, you kind of did push him off the track.” Grace said while GP laughed at Max’s perplex face.
“He didn’t leave the space!” he said to her before making his way down the hallway in the trailer.
“Alright then, enjoy your day!” GP said to them and climbed back up into the trailer, closing the door.
“Nice little boy!” Grace said with a smile.
“Well, definitely a Ferrari fan.” Oscar agreed and they made their way back.

They were back in the hospitality for the second practice, Oscar seemingly gotten calmer. Second practice was a little more chaotic, apparently a lot of teams had changed things at their cars and now there were a whole bunch of drivers complaining about their car saying words Oscar didn’t even know what they meant.
When they came back from the after-training meeting, Daniel and Lando found Grace and Oscar on the floor in front of the couch in the hospitality, shoes off, and Grace explaining the differences between their rear wings on some models and pictures they had taken off the wall.
“You guys good?” Lando asked.
“Yes, but … I know even less than I thought I would.” Oscar said, kissing Lando.
“Don’t worry, that will happen in no time.” Lando said to him, helping them pick up the pictures and hanging them back on the wall before leaving.
The qualifying the next day was nerve wrecking for Oscar. Especially the one time Lando came around the corner on a fast lap, but Hamilton hadn’t gotten the notification and was completely blocking the road, forcing Lando to abort the fast lap. In the end, Max started 1st, Lando 4th, Daniel 7th and Charles 8th. Pierre would start 16th. Oscar or Lando didn’t have the time to really talk to Charles again, but he looked genuinely happy on the pictures.

Oscar’s nervousness was completely back the next evening. Grace and Joe, Daniel’s dad, picked up Oscar two hours before the race, Max and Lando had already left by that point. It would also be the first time for him to be in the garage directly. He thought the one and a half hours before the race start would stretch, like they did the days before, but they just flew by. At first, he met Kika, who was on her way to the Alpine garage with Pierre’s parents and they had a little talk.
Shortly after saying goodbye to them, he heard a little voice from behind yelling for him and Arthur sped down the street, hugging his knees. His mother came up behind him, silently complaining that it wasn’t legal to put your pups on a leash. Grace suggested to her to let him run around through a more silent part of the hospitality or close to the offices to let out some steam. They were also filmed and asked a lot of questions by some paparazzi, but chose not to answer any. They arrived in the garage just a couple minutes prior to the warm-up lap, Lando just having time to sneak a good luck kiss from Oscar.
He never felt more tense. Even the tv hosts made a little fun of him, standing in the garage, Grace holding him from behind, nervously chewing on the straw of his water.