54 For Omegaverse Please And Thank

54 for omegaverse please and thank

54. "P-please scent me, I don't want to smell like them, I want to smell like you..."

It starts innocent enough, Lando popping his head around the door of Oscar’s driver’s room somewhere between press responsibilities on Thursday. “Hey,” he says, glancing at where Oscar is sprawled over the couch, scrolling through his phone. “Can you scent me?”

Oscar raises an eyebrow. They’ve been teammates for a while now, long enough for Oscar to know Lando’s nose is sensitive. He particular, about who and what he does and doesn’t smell like. Borrows hoodies from friends and family to be wrapped up in their scent, gets antsy when things smell wrong.

So this. This means Oscar… His inner Alpha, the one that’s been screaming mine mine mine ever since he first laid eyes on Lando, rumbles happily. Oscar firmly tells it to shut the fuck up and turns to Lando, reassuring smile on his face, determined not to make this weird. Lando wouldn’t ask him if he wasn’t feeling uncomfortable, so.

“Sure,” he says. “Get over here.”

Lando makes a happy noise and instead of waiting for Oscar to get up so they can do the whole cheek rubbing, neck nosing thing that’s normal between friends, flops down square on top of Oscar and snuggles in.

“Oof,” Oscar wheezes out, when Lando’s elbow ends up somewhere in his abdomen. “Okay.”

“Hm,” Lando says, shoves his nose into Oscar’s neck. Oscar stares up at the ceiling, tries to think of Normal and Sane things that aren’t his teammate currently lounging on his chest, fitting into his arms like a puzzle piece sliding into place.

After about five minutes of Oscar trying to name every single part of the MCL60 in his head and not thinking about shoving his nose into Lando’s soft curls and taking in his chocolate cookie sweet scent, Lando lets out a happy noise and gets up again. “Thanks, mate,” he says, and then disappears before Oscar can utter as much as a ‘No problem’.

--

It happens again, after that. And again. Lando has clearly added Oscar to his roster of ‘People Who Smell Good’, and makes grateful use of the fact that Oscar is just around, like. All the time. It reaches a point where Lando just follows Oscar into his driver’s room between obligations, sprawls all over his couch, steals his hoodies.

Like he belongs.

And that’s. That’s when it starts becoming a problem. Because the more and more Lando inserts himself into Oscar’s space, the more Oscar’s stupid instincts scream at him that he’s his, that he belongs to Oscar, that he is his Omega. Which is stupid, because Lando doesn’t belong to anyone. Least of all Oscar.

The moment Oscar realizes he’s gotten in way over his head is when him and Lando make it onto another podium, and when Max gives Lando a congratulatory handshake, Oscar actually growls at him.

Nobody catches it, over the sound of the celebrations and the general F1 post-race ruckus, but Oscar realizes that if he doesn’t put a stop to this now it’s only going to get worse and that isn’t fair to anyone. Not to Lando, not to any Alpha that comes close to Lando, not to himself.

He doesn’t tell Lando, doesn’t know how to explain without putting his heart on the table and making it gratingly awkward for everyone involved, and so he keeps quiet, pulls away bit by bit, slowly disappearing back into the shadows he existed in before Lando put him in the spotlight.

Lando, for the most part, lets him. Frowns, when Oscar closes the door to his driver’s room before Lando can follow, when Oscar moves away from his touch. But he doesn’t say anything, seems to accept the distance Oscar is trying to create. Doesn’t push.

It hurts, only a little bit. Oscar had fooled himself, at one point, that maybe it meant something, to Lando. But the way he lets Oscar pull away so easily…

Oscar puts his head down, focuses on the car. He’s here to race after all.

--

The whole weekend has been shit. Qualifying was garbage for the both of them, and then there’s a sprint on Saturday that goes completely tits up, too. Lando ends up in the gravel somewhere halfway, and Oscar watches the screens, watches him climb out of the car, sulk back to the garage.

Lando gets subjected to a million interviews that all ask him the same questions, and Oscar can see the exhaustion on his face, from his end of the media pen. Something in him wants to reach out, pull Lando close, shade him from the rest of the world. He pushes that something down, and answers the fifteenth question about how they’re expecting the race tomorrow to go now the car seems so spectacularly shit this weekend.

He doesn’t expect there to be a knock on his hotel room door later that night, revealing Lando in all his jittery, exhausted glory. “Oscar,” he says, mouth tight and eyes downcast. He looks so small, and Oscar’s Alpha whines at the sight. “Oscar please. I know I’ve been asking way too much, making you all uncomfortable but please, please scent me. I don’t, I don’t want to smell like them, I want to smell like you.”

Oscar wants to give in immediately. Pull him close, press his nose into Lando’s scent gland. Take off his clothes, because skin to skin scenting is always better. Wants to cover him until Lando smells like nothing but Oscar, so everyone else can smell who he belongs to. But that’s not. He needs answers first. So he restrains himself, tries to keep his face neutral as he says. “Why me?”

Lando makes a frustrated little noise. “Don’t. Don’t be mean, Oscar. You know. You know why.”

“I really don’t,” Oscar says, genuinely confused.

“But,” Lando says, “You pulled away. Because you realized I was in love with you. That’s why… You needed space.”

Oscar blinks. Tries to process fifteen things all at once and comes up completely blank. “I needed space because I realized I was in love with you,” he says, a little dumbfounded.

Lando frowns. “Why would you need space, then?”

“I, because I didn’t think you wanted me?”

“Well, that’s stupid,” Lando says, frown deepening. “Of course I want you. Why would I scent you all the time if I didn’t want you?”

Oscar wants to bring up the nose thing, how he just thought that’s how Lando kept himself comfortable. Want to bring up how Lando never said anything. But it’s details, really. Details that don’t really matter, not when Lando is standing in front of him, saying he’s in love with Oscar.

So instead, he grabs the front of Lando’s hoodie, pulls him close, presses their lips together in a searing kiss. Lando yelps, but then melts into it immediately, making a happy little purring noise in the back of his throat.

(Later, with his arms wrapped around Lando’s naked, sleeping form, Oscar presses his nose into the place where Lando’s neck meets his shoulder. He smells like LandoOscarLandoOscar, and it’s the most beautiful thing Oscar’s ever smelled. He’s falls asleep only seconds later.)