18: labels

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Oscar's POV:

My second lot of interviews had been hectic and the repetitive questions bombarded me. It was getting hard to keep that calm demeanor up and I knew I'd need a couple minutes to settle before lunch. That was fine. I'd been doing this for years and everything had been fine. All I needed was those couple minutes, in the toilet if it had to be, and then I'd be ready for lunch and laughing and, yea, I'd be fine. Perfectly, completely, totally fine. Even if I was autistic, that wasn't a bad thing and I could handle it and cope like I always have.

I popped into my driver's room after calming down, wanting to get a couple things I'd left in there earlier. Opening the door, I saw Kim crouched on the floor, picking things up. Those things included my ear defenders which stood out like a sore thumb on the floor. I panicked. "Sorry Oscar, your bag fell over whilst I was trying to find something, nothing looks broken." As he said that, his fingers brushed over the ear defenders and I could see cogs turning in his head.

He paused, and placed them back in my bag, setting it up on the side. "Everything okay?" He asked when I was still stood there, not saying anything.

"Yea, it's uh yea, I'm okay, just long day." I gave a weak smile and tried to steer my eyes away from my bag to his face. I couldn't force myself to make eye contact, but it would have to do.

"Alright, you on lunch now?"

"Yea."

"Me too, you getting some food?" I followed him out to lunch. My fingers twitched in my pockets. I could feel my chest getting tighter as it got harder to breathe. Everything felt on top of me, like it was closer and more difficult to not just shut down. He was definitely going to tell Andrea and maybe even Zak. I might not even get to race this weekend after all. So much for being able to work things out during summer break.

Lando's POV:

I don't normally sit with Oscar at lunch. We've not really been that close until recently and I guess we just sat with our individual teams within McLaren. But he was sat at a small table off to the side of the room and didn't really seem to be eating anything, even though his plate was full. So after I got my own lunch, I went to check he was okay. When he looked up at me with glassy eyes and lip wobbling, I decided it was probably best we went and found some quiet.

I helped him pack up his food into its takeaway container and he trailed behind me the whole way back to our driver's rooms. "Yours or mine?" I asked, when he shrugged, I chose mine.

"I'm sorry." He managed to squeak out, it seemed difficult for him to talk.

"You don't have to be sorry," I said, sitting beside him and fiddling with my phone case. I really needed a new one by this point but still hadn't changed it. "It's a lot, the weekend after your first win, it's okay to be a bit overwhelmed. I was too." He shrugged again and I guessed that for whatever reason, speaking wasn't really an option for him right now. "Do you need anything or we can just sit here and eat quietly for a bit?" He nodded to the last part of my question and so I began tucking into lunch, absolutely starving from barely having breakfast earlier.

I ate and watched stuff on my phone, knowing sometimes being around someone just helped. Max and I had done plenty of that at home. After about 15 minutes, he spoke again, "Kim found my ear defenders." His voice was small and quiet.

"Oh," I said simply, careful to not try and upset him even more, "did he say something?"

"No, he said nothing but he seemed weirded out."

"Knowing Kim, he won't be, he'll just be confused."

"Yea, but I just I was going to talk to him about it at some point but I'd managed to hide it for so long and I don't get why everything is falling apart now and it's all getting too much and it's like it's hard to breath and the food tastes weird and everything is on top me so like I can't even speak and-"

"Oscar, stop. Just take a breath." He did as I asked but continued to look at me nervously. "Things are a lot right now, it's hard to keep everything running smoothly when things are a lot. We all let things slip."

"But what if he doesn't want to work with me anymore?"

"You know Kim well enough to know that's probably not true, plus I really don't think McLaren would get rid of you over a pair of ear defenders."

"But what if they find out I'm weird and you know and it's a risk and then I might be more trouble than I'm worth!"

"I've had several seasons of being more trouble than I'm worth, it's fine. And you aren't any trouble anyway. You could wear your ear defenders all weekend, you're not getting kicked out for them, in fact most of the team would probably ask where you got them, they're always complaining about the noise."

"I just don't want Kim to hate me."

"Then it sounds like you need to speak to him."

"Yea but I don't want to mess it up. I keep messing up everything at the moment."

"I'm sure you're not, but I understand the anxiety. It was difficult for me to ask Jon to have more alternative training yesterday but now I feel a lot better and I'm hoping it will help when I race."

"Would you be there too? If I did to speak to Kim, would you come with me?" He looked at me very cautiously, his fingers were twitching but I could tell he was trying to hold it back. 

"If you want me to be?"

"I just, I know we weren't really friends until super recently but I don't feel as bad about being different when I'm around you and you'd probably stick up for me if Kim said something bad and someone else would be able to verify it and then if it gets too much I know you'll understand and be nice about it."

"Then yea, I can be there. How about now?"

"Yea, that sounds good. I'm not really hungry anyway, I'll eat later." I knew he wouldn't really have time to eat later. Depending how long it took to find and talk to Kim, we would probably be just about going out for track walk and eating on track wasn't really allowed.

Still we went to find Kim who was sat eating, talking to other team members. Oscar asked if he could speak to him for a couple of minutes, we found a quiet office, closed the door and sat down.

"Is everything okay Oscar?" Kim asked, evidently concerned.

"I know you saw my ear defenders earlier and-" he paused, struggling to get words out.

"Yea, I saw them," Kim said, filling the silence, "if you wanted to wear them, you could."

"Huh?"

"I mean I assume you have them in your bag because they're yours and you wear them but I've never seen you in them."

"I thought it would be an issue."

"An issue with who?"

"You or the team or anyone?"

"Well, it isn't. We can talk to PR if you're concerned about the optics of your wearing ear defenders but ultimately saying that you've got to protect your hearing because of ear infections would probably be enough to cover it. Unless you are willing to share the real reason you have them but you don't have to."

"I'm weird," Oscar blurted out. "Like umm, not normal, you know. I uh, I think I might be autistic?" He almost cringed at the word. I still wasn't used to saying it out loud.

I wasn't autistic. I mean, he could be, he explained how he'd been thinking about it for a while but found it hard to grapple with. But I wasn't. I mean, there had been that ADHD assessment when I was younger but I never ended up actually having it. I was away racing the day it had been scheduled for and it just never really got rescheduled, there wasn't enough reason to. But now, maybe there was a reason too. If Oscar was brave enough to stand by a label, maybe I could be too. Even if it was only the team that knew.

A/n Hey! Story is heating up now, only a couple chapters left of this part of it. But definitely more to come! Thanks for all your support!

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