VIPER || Oscar Piastri

Chapter 39

[POV: Narrator]

"Where are we going?" Oscar asked, raising his voice as this was the second time he was asking this very question. Andi hadn't heard him the first time. Or maybe she was ignoring him, he wasn't sure.

No answer.

"You know, I'm kinda tired, after the race and everything—" He tried to slow her down, pulling back a little but finding out quickly that Andi had assured plans; wherever she was taking him, she was going to get there, no doubt about it.

"It's fine! This'll only take a minute." She told him, guiding the two of them through the people coming towards them from inside the garages.

They were headed towards the McLaren garage, Oscar realised.

"And... what, exactly, will only take a minute?" He queried, wondering why, as they were getting closer, Andi was speeding up.

"Andi, why are you..."

Once they reached the McLaren garage, Andi lead them out into the pit lane from inside, where there were tons of people gathered. Once they saw Oscar, they started yelling, as Andi knew they would.

She suddenly turned to her captor and said: "Oscar, I am in super crisis mode. Okay? Just go with this. Please."

And with that, she wrapped her arms around him in a tight embrace. As soon as she did so, a flash went off. Then another, and another, and soon, multiple cameras flooded the pair's field of vision.

Oscar went along with it; not that he had a choice. He was too bewildered and starstruck that he wasn't paying attention the specifics of what was going on — instead he focused on the plain facts. Andi was hugging him. She had her arms around him in such a way that it forced him to hug her back. Though it only lasted mere seconds, Oscar remained in a shocked state until long after Andi let go of him.

Once she broke off the hug, she took his hand to bring them both inside once again.

"Sorry," was the first thing she said. She let out a sigh and shook her hands around, as if the hug had taken a lot of energy out of her. "There were so many of them, did you see? The lights made me go practically blind! Phew, at least that's over. Sorry again, for rushing around. It's just— god, I'm so out of breath — it's just that Charles said something and it totally freaked me out, so I started panicking and hyperventilating and... this is what came of it." She rambled, gasping for air between sentences.

Oscar understood. That happened to him too; the loss of breath. Only his reasoning was slightly different to hers.

He went to say something, but Andi cut him off. Thank god, he thought, knowing that if he spoke now he'd probably sound exasperated. "God, I'm so sorry!" She brought two hands up to her cheeks, as if she'd only just realised the gravity of what she'd done. To Oscar, it was clear now that this 'plan', if it even was one, was not thought through or calculated. "Was that okay? Oh my gosh, I didn't even check. Was it? I only did it because I thought— well, I didn't think. But I did, like, kind of... I just had to do it! He thought us being together was 'nice', that's what he called it, nice! So I thought we— no, I should step things up! Because clearly he isn't catching on that he's supposed to be jealous. Oh, god! I should've asked first, I'm—"

"It's fine."

Andi froze, quitting her endless nervous blabbering. "Is that a... I'm mad at you 'fine' or an It's actually fine 'fine'?"

"Do I look mad to you?"

"Well... you look... like, kind of scared... Shit! I freaked you out didn't I? I really didn't mean to—"