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The paddock was louder than usual.
Not with voices or engines, but with noise—the kind of noise that lives between glances, fills awkward silences, and hums under headlines. Sargeant under pressure. Sargeant under review. Sargeant on borrowed time.
Oscar didn’t like it.
He didn’t like the way Logan walked these days, all stiff shoulders and forced grins. He didn’t like how Logan’s gaze kept finding the floor. He didn’t like the silence that had crept in between them, not angry silence, just… careful.
They weren’t kids anymore. No more karting trophies traded like baseball cards. No more laughing about how they’d both “make it someday.” No more being teammates, that was a long way behind them now.
Oscar had podiums now. A team that backed him, a car that danced when he asked it to, the reassurance of the public that he was worthy to sit in the car every weekend. And Logan… Logan had a countdown.
Hours after qualifying, Oscar found him sitting on the low pit wall, helmet still on, visor up. Just staring at the empty track like it might offer him answers. The stands were empty now, lingering with employees getting ready for the next day, and the garages clearing out by now too. The sun was beginning to set and casted a warm glow over the pavement.
Oscar felt like the scenery was mocking him. The warm glow was the equivalent to the feeling he should have after the session, he did well. But he couldn’t keep his mind off the divergence in his and Logan’s pathways.
He pressed his back against the wall, the weight of his reality pressing down on him. Oscar always imagined they’d rise to the occasion together, side by side, and Logan hadn’t even made it out of Q1 in weeks. Every successful move Oscar made felt like he was shoving a weight down on the already heavy shoulders of the person who once kept him afloat. And that guilt, sharp, quiet, constant, was the one thing success couldn’t silence.
Then he sat beside him, knees bumping, close in that old way. Muscle memory.
“You looked good in sector two,” Oscar said quietly as he took off his helmet, not bothering to look over. He knew who had sat beside him.
Logan didn’t laugh. Didn’t roll his eyes. He just tilted his head, like that part of him, the one that once glowed under praise, had gone dim. “I’m trying. I really am.”
Oscar swallowed. “I know.”
Logan finally looked at him. Really looked. And Oscar hated how unfamiliar that expression was—so much weight behind his eyes. Like he’d been living in a standstill while the rest of the world kept turning.
“You remember Mugello?” Logan asked. “Back in F3. When you beat me by four points and I didn’t talk to you for, like, two days?”
Oscar smiled. “You sulked.”
“You made me care,” Logan said. “Racing was just a thing I was good at until you showed up. Then it mattered if I won.”
There it was, the echo of something old and true. Something that stirred inside Oscar long before he knew what it meant. Logan didn’t say you mattered. But Oscar heard it anyway.
He nudged their knees together again. “You’re still good, Logan.”
“That’s not always enough.”
Oscar wanted to say it was. That talent and heart and all the years they’d spent shoulder to shoulder should count for something. That he still saw him. The kid with the stubborn streak and the soft smile and the English slang he used coming out with his ridiculous Florida drawl.
Instead, Logan whispered, “I hate watching from the sidelines.”
Oscar blinked. “You’re not.”
“I am,” Logan said. “We both know I am.”
The silence that followed wasn’t careful. It wasn’t quiet. It was heavy, and real, and laced with all the things neither of them had said.
“I always thought you’d be lightyears ahead.” Oscar breathed out, leaning his head back against the barrier.
Logan didn’t know what to say after that. What driver admits to not thinking they’d be the best? And what driver means it?
The sun was gone now, swallowed by the horizon. The floodlights buzzed to life around them, casting a sterile glow across the empty pit lane. Everyone else had gone. For the first time all weekend, and probably in many weekends, no one was watching him.
Just Oscar.
He pulled off his hat and set it down on the pavement. His hair was a mess and his skin stuck with sweat, but Oscar didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. If anything, he looked more certain.
Logan hated that it made his throat feel tight.
“Do you ever wish it was like it used to be?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Oscar didn’t ask when. He just knew.
“Yeah,” he said. “All the time.”
Back when they raced for pizza and pride. When there were no press conferences, no team politics, no contract clauses. Just the two of them who looked forward to seeing each other on and off track with too many dreams between them.
“But I think…” Oscar hesitated. “I think we’re still us. Under it all.”
Logan looked at him. Oscar’s eyes were dark in the artificial light, but soft. Still soft, after everything.
“I don’t feel like me anymore,” Logan admitted. “All I think about is if I’m going to be in the car next week. If every lap is the last one I’ll ever drive. Everyone is looking at me all the time and no one is actually seeing me.”
Oscar was quiet for a long beat. He knew how hard it had been for Logan over the last year and a half. Williams’ wasn’t backing him the way McLaren backed Oscar. The media never shut up about Logan’s possibly near-end future. Social media was even worse, claiming Logan paid his way to the top or was Williams’ last option. Even other drivers on the paddock ignored Logan half the time, like his hardships and failures would rub off on them.
“You’re not the only one who sees you.” The brunet eventually said, looking over at the blond.
Logan let that sink in. It was a simple sentence. But it filled in all the cracks that the headlines and the awful words written underneath them had left behind.
He didn’t mean just as a driver. He meant him. The real him. The 14 year old boy that Oscar met in karting all those years ago. And Logan felt it again. That terrifying, vulnerable warmth that hadn’t hit him since the early days. Since he realized Oscar Piastri wasn’t just a rival.
Wasn’t just a friend.
Oscar was the reason he’d started caring in the first place. And now he was the reason it would hurt so much when he inevitably had to let go.
He shifted closer, his knee brushing Oscar’s again, not by accident this time.
“I wish I was better at this,” Logan’s voice was shaky, finally able to be vulnerable after so long of pretending he wasn’t. “At… not falling apart.”
“You’re not falling apart,” Oscar said quietly. “You’ve just… been under a lot of pressure.”
Logan looked down at his hands. Callused, steady, capable. But shaking. “I think I’m scared.”
Oscar nodded. “Good. It means there’s something worth being scared of losing.”
Logan looked up again.
The pit lane wasn’t empty anymore—not really. Not with this space between them. Filled with a label so much more than old karting buddies or ex-teammates.
And maybe he’d still get cut. Maybe this would be his last season. Maybe the world would keep turning without him in it. But sitting here, next to Oscar, with no cameras and no pressure and no noise…
It was almost too much, until Oscar spoke again.
“We used to dream about podiums together.”
Logan’s heart clenched in his chest, fond yet harsh memories of the two of them laughing and picturing their future that would never come to fruition.
He reached out, fingers brushing against Oscar’s.
Not a grip. Not a promise. Just enough to feel him there.
“I used to think I could hear the ocean in seashells, when I’d bring them home from the beach.” Logan said, staring off across the pitlane with a blank stare. “What childish dreams we had.”
Oscar could do nothing but hold the position. Just held it, like if he moved his hand one centimeter, Logan would disappear.
He stared off into the distance with him, watching the dancing lights of the city. Oscar didn’t know how many more moments he’d get with Logan like this, but he knew he’d stay in this one for as long as Logan would let him.
The world would take Logan from Formula 1 in a few weeks. Oscar would get his first win right before that and Logan would watch from the sidelines, just like he said he was.
The world could take him later.
But this moment was theirs.