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➤ YOU ARE HERE | OSCAR PIASTRI

pairing: oscar piastri x soulmate!reader

summary: you and oscar discover that you're soulmates when randomly, once a year, you trade places for five minutes. it goes about as well as you expect for an f1 driver.

wc: 6.1 k

warnings: angst with a happy ending! mentions of minor injuries and hospitalization

➤ MASTERLIST - MAX'S SOULMATE STORY

2019

Waiting to figure out how you're going to meet your soulmate can be exhausting.

For some people, it's simple: a red string around their pinky, a timer on their wrist, not seeing colour until you finally lock eyes, but for you? Since you've turned eighteen, there have been no signs at all. No magically appearing footprints, no mystery injuries to match your soulmate.

Nothing.

You had tried to figure out what strange, hidden thing it could possibly be, but nothing made sense. Perhaps your soulmate would be someone else with no symptoms; perhaps you didn't have one at all.

That's why, when you wake up in a strangers bed, your first thought isn't about soulmates. It's the middle of the night, or at least it should be, yet the sun faintly shines through the curtains, an unfamiliar alarm clock blaring on a nightstand, which, rolling over to look at, is not your night stand, and is not your alarm clock, and this most certainly isn't your childhood bedroom.

It takes a moment to realize that you haven't been kidnapped, whipping off the covers and standing in the middle of the rather messy room, and rather, you've been transported...somewhere. The notepad on the bedside table explains that it's a Hilton hotel, and slowly, picking up the few pieces of dirty laundry scattered about, you realize you must have traded places with your soulmate.

Swapping locations wasn’t exactly uncommon, but it was a strange thing to wake up to in the night. You quickly move through the drawers of the tables and desks, trying to find something to write down your personal information with before you return to normal. You're not sure if it was a permanent thing, or a matter of minutes, but you're also a bit too tired to care right now. Instead, you write down your name, begin to write the first digits of your phone number, and in a blink, you're standing before your own bathroom mirror.

Well, at least your soulmate would know your name. Considering the whole swapping thing, your soulmate must have woken up in your room too, luckily much tidier than his hotel room was, but it's still an embarrassing thought, the stuffed animals nearby, the old posters on your walls. Finally recognizing why you're standing in front of your mirror, you realize whoever your soulmate is has tried their best to get a message across, lipstick smeared on your mirror in what you realize are words:

Oscar Pi

Seems he got cut off by the timing the swap, the lipstick now laying open in your sink, but with a growing smile, you find that you don't really care, because your soulmate does exist.

Oscar.

It's a good name, you think.

2020

The second time it happens, Oscar is on vacation, and he's not really prepared for it. He'd biked up a cliffside trail, overlooking the small, coastal Australian town where he and his family were staying. He'd stopped to take a break when suddenly, he was standing in the middle of a grocery store in nothing but his bike gear.

At least, he thinks, you hadn't been standing in the freezer section.

Ever since your first swap, Oscar had tried everything in his power to recreate it, the way he had fallen asleep, everything he had done that same day, but he was starting to think your swapping was a once-a-year type of ordeal, or maybe you were in charge of it. If he could ask, maybe he could know, but it had been difficult trying to figure out how to contact you, considering all he got was a name, and he was travelling so often. At least you'd have a nice view, when you teleport to where he was. If his parents are quick enough up the trail, you might even meet them.

Oscar stares down at the basket in hand, a rather strange mix of mostly junk food, and without thinking, he turns to the nearby fruit stand and places a few oranges and apples in for good measure. Then, as he moves towards a banana, he realizes he should be trying to get his number to you in some way. There's even less nearby for him to possibly write with than your room, and considering the few people staring at him, he can't exactly walk up to someone to relay the message.

Everyone had told him he had time to meet you, to get your number, but knowing you existed after questioning it for so long meant that Oscar wanted forever to start now. Finally, an old woman takes pity and offers him a smile, and with a deep breath, he approaches her. "Excuse me?"

"Riding? In this weather?" The woman says, eyeing him up and down. "You're a brave one, dear."

"I've just swapped places with my soulmate," He manages to get out, "Could you take a message?"

"Oh, how sweet! You know, it took me four years to find my soulmate after I turned eighteen. We shared reflections in mirrors, made it pretty tricky to get ready for the day!" Oscar nods along as happily as he can, trying not to rush the poor woman, but also desperately needing to get his message out. "Sorry, what did you want to say?"

"Tell them I'm from Australia, and my phone number is-" He blinks, and finds himself back on the trail, and he curses so loudly that when his sister rides up to him, she looks rather shocked.

Hattie pauses, lowering her bike as Oscar forces himself to sit on the ground, bringing his knees to his chest. "What, you crash your bike?"

"I traded places with my soulmate, and couldn't tell them my phone number, again." Then, he finds his phone in the grass beside him, and for a joyful moment, he thinks you might have left a message, and finds something only marginally better: a photo. You're pretty in a way that shocks him to his core, that you're his, that you're supposed to be together. You're turned to show the distance in the background, a thumbs up as if to show you approve of his vacation location. Then, in the sand beside the path, he finds your number scrawled, only for it to be blown away in the wind.

When you return to the grocery store, you find yourself in front of an old woman, and far more fruit in your basket than a human should need.

2023

For the next two years, it goes on about the same. You end up outside some racing track in Barcelona, and the workers don't understand what you're drunkenly asking, and Oscar ends up at a bar where everyone's too gone to relay the message. You end up walking dogs in Australia in a snowsuit while Oscar ends up in the middle of a ski hill, wiping out before he can even think of giving out his number.

You've sort of given up hope, at least for now, that you and Oscar could finally coordinate it. You carry sharpies wherever you go, just in case you end up somewhere you can actually write it down. All that preparation doesn't help, however, when it happens again in the middle of the night.

You end up in some orange room with nothing but a massage table, and when you step out into the hall, you find yourself among people dressed in orange who look just as surprised to see you as you are surprised to see them.

"What are you doing back here?" It doesn't help, you realize, that you're just in an oversized t-shirt. "Get out!"

"I'm Oscar's soulmate!" You quickly try to explain, though the few people around don't seem to believe it.

"Sure, you're Oscar Piastri's soulmate, and you're here like that?"

Piastri. You should probably be more worried about what's about to happen, but you can't really focus on that.

You have a last name. "We trade places. That's our thing. You have to give him my number-"

"Can we get security to escort them out? I don't buy it." Someone says, snapping their fingers at a guard. "I've never heard Oscar mention trading places with a soulmate before." A security guard, larger than any human you've ever seen before, tries to corral you backwards as you helplessly explain, over and over, but it's not use.

You're shoved out an emergency door, and with a blink, you're standing in your bedroom.

Oscar Piastri.

Never mentioned trading places with a soulmate. You slowly sink onto the edge of your bed, trying to figure out why he'd never say anything, and all the answers don't seem right. Maybe he was just a private person, but still, trading places with your soulmate, potentially at any time, is the kind of thing you mention to people.

Oscar Piastri. You grab your phone, before realizing that Oscar must have been in your room, must have left something behind, but despite the way you tear your room apart, you find no note, see no number, not even a selfie on your phone.

Never mentioned you, never tried to give you his number.

Maybe all this time, he was avoiding you on purpose, and sinking back into your bed, you finally google his name.

Oscar Piastri, F1 driver.

Maybe someone that famous didn't need a soulmate.

Maybe someone that famous didn't need you.

2025

Oscar's pretty sure, after his security team threw you out in 2023, that you had to hate him. He hadn't been able to leave behind a number yet, hadn't been able to find you on any social media, but you must've been able to search for him by now. That night, when he blinked back to stare at a very confused security guard through tears, he realized he'd sobbed his way through your last swap, unable to do anything but stand there.

It was pretty pathetic, all things considered. 2024 wasn't any better, another hotel room swap as Oscar ended up in the bathroom of some university, surrounded by women who screamed and chased him out and ruined his chance of leaving his number, again. You hadn't left a number or anything on your end, but you had finished folding his laundry, which is the only sign that you might still want to find him.

This year, he had a feeling it wasn't going to be any better. In fact, ever since extending his contract with McLaren, he's had this deep-seated fear that refused to go away. If it was possible to trade places in beds, on bikes, and when skiing, then it would be possible in cars. Not just any cars, either.

In his racing car.

And you might die in a fiery wreck before Oscar even gets the chance to meet you, to give you his number, anything. You'll die hating him, and he'll have to go throughout life soulmate-less.

"You alright, mate?" Lando says quietly beside him from the driver's parade. "You're just...tense."

"I have a bad feeling today," He says, and maybe because he said it, maybe because he always knew, maybe because the universe hates him, it happens. He's just pushing out into a straight when he blinks and finds himself in all his gear at the front of a lecture hall, and the world goes silent for a moment.

You're in his car. For what Oscar can gather about you, you're most certainly not trained, you're not wearing any protective gear, and you are in one of the fastest cars on the planet, hurling toward your death at any second. "Well, I can't say I've seen this before." Someone he assumes to be your professor says, "An adventurous soulmate swap."

Four minutes. He rips off his helmet and the sleeve under it, and trying to calm his breathing, all he can think to say is, "You need to call an ambulance."

"What?" The professor looks at him in shock, and Oscar gestures to himself.

"I'm an F1 driver, a racecar driver." What could he possibly say? That a potentially mangled corpse is about to teleport into this room? "My soulmate...oh god, they've been swapped with me, in my car, without protection. If they can't control the car, they're going to crash and end up back here." Finally, what he's waited for his whole life is before him: a pen and paper. He scribbles his information down quickly, phone number, name, address, social media handles, anything and everything. "I need you to be prepared for it to be bad."

“I need everyone out of the room, now.” Immediately, the students are up and out of their seats, and Oscar pulls his helmet back on and waits.

You’re a student. He has no way of knowing if you can even drive, and he’s just chucked you into an F1 race, broadcast for everyone to see, and he has no idea what to do with himself. How does he possibly apologize for this? For maybe ruining your life? Who wants a soulmate who kills them before their first date? Tears spring to his eyes before he can stop it, and vaguely, he recognizes a phone being shown before his face.

“They seem to be okay?” A student says, extending a phone to him as he watches his own car choppily slow down, but it's not enough. You could hit a barrier, you could hit another car, and you'd be dead.

Instantly.

"What...what university is this?" He says, muffled by the helmet.

"University of Oxford, England. This is a conference, to showcase student work." Oxford.

You must be smart, then.

And he's the reason your brain is going to break.

You knew Oscar was an F1 driver, but it had never occurred to you that you might swap during a race. For a moment, when you open your eyes, you don't really believe it. The steering wheel in hand, feet on the gas, it's like a dream, and then every sense hits you at once that this is not what you're supposed to be doing.

You try to slow down, but the car isn't like a normal car, the force of it pressing you back into the seat as you force your eyes shut, the sound of it deafening, the weight, the car, the movement, it all spirals into a sensation that you can't control. The gas pedal itself is the hardest thing it feels to push, but you grunt your way through it as the car slows, the feeling of the ground underneath it changing, but you still can't bear to open your eyes, can't stand the thought that you're about to die without even meeting the stupid owner of this car, who probably doesn't even want to meet you.

You're not sure how long it takes, but finally, the car stops. The world stops. Your chest heaves, your head rolls, but the car is not moving, and you are alive, albeit unable to move, or hear, or function at all, really. Your eyes blink up to stare at a helmet peering over you, your own reflection staring back from its visor. If the driver is saying something, you can't hear. They take off their helmet, revealing a head of curly hair and a very, very concerned expression.

It's Oscar's teammate.

Lando, you think. He's quick to try and get you up out of the car, arms coming to undo the clasps keeping you in, and your arms very loosely manage to work their way around his neck.

As he tries to get you up, however, the world spins and you think you might be sick. He's saying something, you can tell he must be saying something, but it doesn't register. All you see is the dread on his face as you slip back down, hitting the lecture hall floor before you pass out.

Oscar comes to hugging Lando.

"No no no-" Lando's voice is shrill, obviously scared, and Oscar doesn't want to think of how hurt you must've been for Lando to stop racing and try to pull you out of the car. "Oscar? Your soulmate! Why the fuck wouldn't you tell us you swap places-"

"Are they alive?" Oscar shouts, ripping off his helmet as he manages to get out of the car, and Lando nods. "They didn't...they didn't crash?"

"Mate, they fucking steered the thing eyes closed." Lando and him stand on the grass for a minute, just taking in the moment before Oscar realizes you're back in Oxford, probably collapsed, injured, heaven forbid dying, and it doesn't take him long to get moving.

No one really knows what to do, and Oscar doesn't blame them. He never told anyone, until that fateful day, that he and his soulmate swapped places. It would be a hazard, something that would hold him back from F1. He refused to allow anything to stop him from what he'd dreamt of his whole life, but today, all that advice makes perfect sense. Because of him, because he wanted to go farther, to do more, he put his one true love in harm's way, and if you die, he's not sure how he's going to live with himself.

Passing flashing cameras, he finds that he doesn't care what the headlines say, doesn't care that he just threw the race for McLaren, he needs to be on the first plane to England as soon as possible, because he truly has no way of knowing if you're alive.

He's not waiting another year to find out.

For the past two hours, you'd folded the paper Oscar left you perhaps a hundred times, carefully into a perfect square before unwrapping it again. It was on the back of your script for your presentation, the contents of it now long forgotten for the frantic writing.

It begins with I'm so sorry.

It lists his full name, his phone number, his mother's phone number, a man named 'Mark Webber's phone number, his instagram, his twitter, both of which you'd already found. His address in Melbourne, his address in Monaco. Everything to identify himself with, finally in the palm of your hands, but you had yet to contact him. He was probably still racing, you found yourself arguing. Probably busy. It's all excuses that hold you back, but you wouldn't know what to say if you tried in the first place.

Hi, it's your soulmate you almost killed?

"How's the dizziness, darling?" A nurse asks over you, and you're broken from your intense folding of the paper to look up at her, and the room only spins a tiny bit.

"Better than before, still a little...woozy." She hums, writes something down.

"I think you might take the cake for patients today. Teleported into an F1 car by your soulmate," She muses, "What a world we live in. And your leg?"

"Sore, but survivable." Apparently, F1 cars' braking systems take a ridiculous amount of force to push, and while the adrenaline had let you brake, the aftereffect was that your whole left leg hurt, from hip to the tips of your toes. "Are you sure I'm fine to just leave? I'm not going to collapse on the street?"

The nurse flips through your papers. "You have no concussions, no ear damage from the car, no sprains or tears, I think it was just a mix of exhaustion, adrenaline crashing, and shock that made you pass out. Does anything still feel wrong? Anything out of the ordinary?"

The paper in your hands folds itself into a neat little square as you think. The world just sort of feels slow, or maybe suddenly too fast for things to make sense, that you were in that car, that Oscar had told them to call an ambulance for you, that you survived it all. That you were barely even hurt.

"There's a madman running through the parking lot." The room of patients turns to look at the elderly man in the bed closest to the window. His pain medication had made him quite the entertainment for the two hours you've been in and out of scans and tests, but this time, he seemed adamant. "Someone stop him. Looks like he's set himself on fire."

"What?" The nurse is gone from your side in an instant, before quickly sighing and placing a hand over her heart. "He's just wearing orange, Paul. He's not on fire."

Just wearing orange.

For the first time unaided in two hours, you rise from your bed and join them at the window, dragging your left leg as you walk, and watch Oscar slide between cars like some sort of action star, standing out amongst the grey weather in a neon orange hoodie before he manages to sprint inside, and the paper in hand suddenly feels so overwhelming that you're not really sure what to do.

He's here.

For you.

You don't know where he was racing, but considering he was here in two hours, it couldn't have been that far, or maybe he had a private jet, or maybe the the world was both too slow and too fast for you to keep up. Without thinking, you move out the hall and into the central area with the nurses desk as the elevator dings open, and for the first time, you see Oscar.

He's surprisingly dishevelled, considering you're the one who just got transported into one of the world's fastest cars. His hoodie seems a bit too big on him, and taking him in as he quickly approaches the nurses' desk, so are his pants. If you didn't know better, you wouldn't think they were his, and you're not really sure what to do with that information.

He just grabbed the closest thing to get changed to get to you? "I'm sorry, I can't understand what you're saying." One of the nurses says to him, "You need to slow down."

"Soulmate," He says between gasping breaths, "Not a car accident, but teleported into my car, hurt-"

"Oscar." You say before you can really stop yourself, approaching his side, and he just sort of waves a hand in your direction.

"I don't know if they're alive, or dead, or-"

"Oscar?" You realize he doesn't know the sound of your voice, like you do his. As gently as you can, you reach out and place a hand on the back of his neck, the closest exposed skin to you. The final step of a soulmate connection was touch, and you had heard so much about it: how sparks fly, how you've never felt more in love, how it changes the world, but it was just Oscar.

It was just you. Gently placing a hand on the back of his neck, to comfort him despite all that you had been through today, was just where you were meant to be. It was right, and it was normal, and you gently spread your fingers into the back of his hair as he slowly turned to you, your hand drifting now to hold his cheek. "I'm right here."

"You're here." Oscar breathes out slowly, quickly scanning you for any sign of injury, and without even knowing, his eyes settle on your sore leg, staring at it intently. "You are actually here."

"You're a hard person to track down, you know." Then, without much ceremony, Oscar slumps into you. It's as if all the weight he'd been carrying his entire life had been let go from his shoulders, practically folding over you. He buries his face into the side of your neck as his arms latch around you, pulling you tight to his chest. It's a desperate sort of thing that has you realizing how terrifying it must have been from his end of the swap, of hearing that you were in his car, knowing you would be hurt. You hold him back just as tight, hands gently smoothing against his broad shoulders as if to show that you're here, and you're safe.

"You have no idea." He grumbles softly, and you can feel the heat rise to your cheeks at the feeling of his lips so close to your skin, now pressed into a smile. "Worst soulmate trait ever." He pulls away slowly, and this close, you take in all the details you never could before. He's almost growing stubble, in need of a shave, a soft spattering of freckles across his face and neck. You find yourself stuck on the fact that he's yours, that he's staring at you, that he's real. "I'm so sorry," He tries to say, and you rush to cut him off.

"You didn't have any control over this." That's the sort of thing, with soulmates. It's meant to be, but you have no control over who it is, how far they are, what you have to do to find each other. The most important thing is that you did find each other, and if you get a ridiculous story to tell out of it, then you don't mind the hardships it took to get him here. Despite it all, however, there is one question that remains in your mind. "Why didn't you tell anyone?" Doubt comes creeping back in, so ingrained in your mind that even when holding your soulmate, you couldn't quite let go of it. "Seems important for an F1 Driver to mention someone else might swap into his car."

Oscar's eyes don't quite meet yours, returning to stare at your leg. Maybe it's a special soulmate ability to tell when the other is hurt. Maybe he just needs someone else to look at besides your eyes. "I didn't want them to think it was a liability. Not that you are a liability, it's just...you can see why they might not let me race if they knew this would happen." Then, without so much as taking a breath, he begins again. "I'm so sorry-"

"Oscar." His name feels right, on your tongue, and based on the way his eyes light up, it sounds right to him, too. "It's okay." You can understand why he'd do it. Not the smartest thing in the world, but then again, you didn't need some genius for a soulmate, you just needed Oscar. A small, perfect, ridiculous smile finally grows on his face, and you find yourself grinning up at him. You suppose it's your turn to apologize now for whatever damage you did to his car. "I'm sorry for making you lose the race."

"Lose?" Oscar echoes with a soft laugh, the kind of sound that makes you hate all the near misses before ten times over. "You didn't crash, you even got onto the grass safely. Ever considered a future in F1?"

"Well, I’ve considered a future with an f1 driver, does that count?"

Curled up in your hotel bed, Oscar begins trying to sort through the information he'd learned today. You were pursuing your masters, in a subject he can't really put his finger on currently, but he has the rest of his life to figure it out. Whatever it was, it was important enough that you were at Oxford presenting about it when you swapped into his car.

When you swapped back, you passed out, and woke up being brought into the ambulance. It was confusing, they ran a million tests, but you're okay, if just exhausted.

You were okay.

You were alive.

And you were currently taking a shower while Oscar sat on your hotel room bed and tried not to die himself. You had watched his races, kept tabs on him. Now that you weren't just passing by in the night, he had your number, every social media account. He had even introduced you to his mom, who tore a strip off of him over Facetime for not telling McLaren sooner about the soulmate-swapping thing, but that was all over now.

You were alive.

You were here. The shower turns off and Oscar stares intently down at Lando's pants, the closest thing he could find before rushing out, where the McLaren team let him use their private jet to get over to the closest airport in record time. He makes a mental note to thank Lando for his clothes, but that all goes down the drain when the door opens and you're standing in just an oversized t-shirt, haloed by the light of the bathroom, and Oscar rediscovers how attractive you are all over again.

You were staying the night together, seeing as Oscar had time, and the jet had already left back to the race. He wouldn't have tried to leave anyway. You needed someone to be here after everything that happened, and Oscar needed to meet you.

You limp slightly as you approach the bed, the only sign of the day you'd had, and the way the left side of your shirt rides up unevenly with your step makes Oscar blush in a way he didn't know was possible. This must have been what you looked like when you swapped into his hotel room for the first time, his. brain supplements as he forces himself to look back down at his lap. He remembers waking up to your childhood bedroom, the soft twinkling lights, the stuffed animals. It was so sweet, knowing you existed, and then he frantically tried to find a way to contact you, and ended up smearing make-up over your mirror.

Then, it was the grocery store, a bar, a ski hill. Always missing each other to lead to this moment now, and seeing how you're looking at him when you kneel on the bed, Oscar can't even be mad it took so long.

Because you're here.

You're alive. "How do you think they pick?"

"What?"

"How do you think the universe picks soulmates?" You ask, curling up next to him. Despite the fact he basically refused to let go of you when you first met, he's now hesitant to touch. After all, you were still just getting to meet each other. You hadn't even had a date yet. "Like what makes you my soulmate? How does the universe even pull off the swap?"

"No one knows." One of life's great mysteries, unfortunately. Oscar's pretty sure there's a science that goes into it, but right now, it doesn't feel like science: it feels like fate. "I suppose the universe just has a way of tying people together who are meant to be."

You yawn in response, leaning back against the headboard and kicking your legs out, and Oscar's hands rest on the edge of Lando's hoodie. You just sort of nod at him and he pulls it off, not quite able to meet your eye, and you can't seem to do the same, suddenly very interested in the ceiling. "I have another sleep shirt, if you want. But you have to promise not to be weird about it."

"Weird about it?" You slip from the bed to root through your suitcase, and Oscar quickly takes off his pants before he can think too much about sitting in front of you in his underwear. You toss something at him, and Oscar catches it midair, unravelling it to reveal one of his own shirt designs for the Austin Grand Prix, and his brain sort of breaks.

You bought one of his shirts.

You sleep in it.

And he hadn't even heard your voice until earlier. "Couldn't afford to go to a race to see you," You say softly, standing awkwardly in the dim light of the hotel room. "Got the next best thing."

"I think," He answers dryly, letting the shirt fall to his lap, "The next best thing is actually right here."

"Wow," You say, a laugh bubbling out of you that makes Oscar thinks that maybe, just maybe the universe really knows what they're doing. "Really?"

"All I'm saying," He says as he pulls the oversized shirt over his head, "Is that who needs an Oscar Piastri shirt when you have Oscar Piastri?"

"That's the last time I spend money on your merch," You answer resolutely. "I get free stuff for the rest of time."

Then, with a soft glint to your eye, you launch yourself onto the bed, falling backward with another laugh, and Oscar looms over you, giddier than he thinks he's ever felt before. You were all his, and you were right here. You weren't going to teleport away, weren't going to disappear. He had your phone number, and he was debating getting it tattooed on his forearm for good measure. "You can have whatever you want after what I've put you through."

"That's a dangerous declaration, Oscar." Your voice saying his name still seems so strange, but it's right. He's just going to have to get you to say it a few more times to get used to it. Your hand gently smooths up his chest, waiting right over his pounding heart, and your eyes flicker up to his at the feeling of how fast it's racing.

It should be weird, really, for two strangers to be suddenly soulmates. There's an adjustment period everyone has to go through, the first dates, the first hundred questions needing to be asked about favourite colours, about life goals, but all of that stress, that awkwardness, slips away with your hand on his chest, your eyes on his, because the chase is finally over. Oscar might be good at racing, but going slow, with you, with the rest of his life, doesn't seem so bad.

"I think," He finally says, "The universe figures out what someone needs in another person, and picks that way."

"And what do you need?" Then, as cheesy as it is, as much as he knows the others will groan about it when he tells them every vivid detail, he very gently says,

"You. Here." Then, to be more serious, "Someone to keep me calm. What do you need?"

You don't answer him, but rather lean up to gently press your lips to his, and Oscar tries to thank every individual star, every planet, every galaxy that makes up the universe for putting you here, for him, forever. It's soft and sweet and hesitant, the kind of thing Oscar needed this to be. It's you, here, with him, and it's every mile over the speed limit Oscar's ever driven, and it's slow and it's steady like everything Oscar didn't realize he needed in his life.

2025, Again

It was a very different experience, being on this side of the race.

You had only seen it from screens, and then the grass, but being in the paddock was like its own little world. If you were alone, you're sure you could exist here on your own without anyone noticing, but considering you were walking in beside Oscar, hand in hand, people were starting to pick up on who you were very quickly.

"You know, that's a first in F1 History," Someone with a camera says, pointing at you and Oscar. "A soulmate swap into an F1 car! We're quite happy you turned out okay, but have you considered ever getting into a car again? Maybe following in Oscar's footsteps?"

Oscar looks at you, checking to see if you want to answer, and you smile up at him. "I am happy to never set foot in a race car again, actually. I don't know how you do it, or how anyone does it."

"You didn't do that bad," Oscar says, shaking his head. "You just need the right protection and the right training."

"The closest I am ever going to get to a race car is here," You joke softly, offering a small wave to the camera operator. "I'm happy to enjoy the comforts of the paddock."

"Your loss," Oscar says before pressing a kiss to your temple, and it hasn't gotten any less thrilling since your first kiss. It had been four months since you'd finally met, and it had been a lot of strange negotiations to get you here, date nights spent with Oscar flying out to you to get to know you, and in return, Oscar flying you out to get to know him, and see Monaco, and finally, now, his races.

You were worried it would bring back some sort of traumatic memory, but if anything, it was exciting. You were here with no threat of being shoved in a car or crashing, but rather to watch Oscar in his element. He guides you through the day, stopping into hospitality, meeting people, meeting Lando again. You'd already sort of met, considering he was trying to haul you out of the car, but now you could actually talk and thank him without a racecar in the way.

Oscar suits up eventually, about to start the race, and he corners you just before he goes out. "If it gets too overwhelming, just let someone know, okay?"

"Oscar, I'll be fine. I want to see you race." He presses a quick kiss to your forehead, and you choose to grab the front of his fireproofs, pulling him down to kiss him properly. "Now go win so I can finally hold a trophy."

"That's what you want? A trophy?" He asks with a laugh, putting his helmet on. "Not me getting the points?"

"After my race? I want my participation trophy." Then, because you can't ever truly ignore him, "And obviously I want you to win to do well too. Trophy just comes first." He shakes his head, moving away from you, and thought muffled, you can make out him saying three words neither of you had said yet, something you hadn't known how to. You freeze in the hallway of the paddock, watching him go, and it's a blur as people try to find you a headset and a monitor to look at, but it doesn't last very long.

You were soulmates. You knew that, obviously, but it still felt strange to think about what it really meant, how you really felt, what the future held.

Your mind drifts to those thoughts as easily as Oscar makes his rounds. He's got a second-place start, which is good, but watching the cars goes around and around on the screen isn't what you came here for. You could do that anytime, any place.

So, against all better judgment, you don't stay put with the thoughts of what might be, what to do, what to say. Instead, you make for the stands, and sit and listen to the cars whip by, feel the force and the wind, and it's everything you thought a race would be before you had accidentally partaken in one. It's fast, it's loud, and it's distracting, but it's good, intoxicating as the fans cheer, the cars almost too quick to make out their movements.

At some point, Oscar gets the lead, and you think you and the McLaren fans around you lose your voices as you scream for him, and despite how hard you try, you find yourself wondering why the universe picks soulmates like it does. Why it would in the first place? Love can be so many things, loving sports, loving family, but with Oscar, it's something so wholly new that makes you think the universe was onto something.

Because the universe figures out what someone needs in another person, and picks that way. That's what Oscar had said.

When the race ends, and you're ambling down the stands and back to the paddock, it's the universe guiding you. When you get to where they park the cars, and Oscar is standing on top of his, he keeps looking around, helmet already off as he's squinting at the crowd forming nearby of McLaren workers, because the universe figures out what someone needs in another person, and picks that way.

And Oscar needs to find you, in the crowd, to know you're there, to know it's real.

And you need Oscar, who's rushing to you like a man on a mission, like how he was that day at the hospital, and without thinking, your hand finds the back of his neck, pulling him in for an indentical hug as his face presses into your neck, and the universe congratulates itself for putting two pieces back together again.

"I was watching in the stands," Is what you mean to say to Oscar, and you do, but maybe it's the universe, maybe it's him, maybe it's the adrenaline still pumping, but you find yourself adding something to the end before you can stop yourself. "I love you."

And though you can't hear it, over the sound of the crowd screaming around him, the sound of your own heart, the sound of the fireworks, you feel the way he says the words back to you, and what it really means.

I love you.

You are here.

a/n: returning to my fanfic roots with a soulmate au + my first time writing for oscar!!

#soulmates au #are a slay #this one however #WAS CRAZY #in a good way ofc #he went to the hospital to check on reader #warms my heart #they're so precious and dear to me #wren recommends

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verycoolusername1 · 3 days ago

Text

✶ STRANGER, DANGER AND VANILLA SWIRL

summary: the night you met franco colapinto involved stealing, melted ben & jerry's, blunt honesty, and kissing a complete stranger, because you were pretty sure you were never going to see him again. except, by morning, you do see him again, and he looks way more familiar this time around.

F1 MASTERLIST | FC43 MASTERLIST

pairing: franco colapinto x journalist!f!reader wc: 6.5K cw: meet-cute, tooth-rotting fluff, stealing, reader doesn't know anything about f1, like one suggestive joke, slightly ooc franco note: requested here! i think you healed my writer's block with this request actually because it was so much fun to write, and it's been a whileeee since i had fun writing. hope u like it <3

BEING A JOURNALISM major wanting to step into the world of sports implicitly meant that one had to possess few unofficial prerequisites: unwavering neutrality for the times the players you so heavily supported got royally screwed over by the game, a rabid competitive edge for the mere opportunity to write half a column in an outdated magazine because you topped the class, mastering the ability of a poker face when thrown in a den of sexist, castrated cats—not to confuse with lions.

Nowhere on that imaginary list was lying with practiced ease. And yet, as the last student in your year without an internship for the final semester, you’d reached an inevitable conclusion: desperate times called for desperate measures. What harm could one tiny fabrication really do?

Staring at the empty white of your document screen-burning your already hyperventilating computer, the title blinked at you smugly as if it knew better: INNOVATIVE F1 QUESTIONS FOR DRIVERS AND STAFF. See? That one little white lie was already taking you places, as you’d somehow landed an internship at a motorsport-based social media company.

Your only problem was that you didn’t know a single thing about Formula One, or motorsports, or racing. At all.

The ad popped up as you were wasting away your time on social media, a pathetically common occurrence when procrastinating for your finals. It was a golden opportunity, you weren’t dumb enough to let it slide— they were looking for temporary staff to help cover the Imola race, whatever that was, and you were looking for anything that might convince the administration that your academic year hadn’t been a total joke. Unfortunately, you were dumb enough to believe it could actually work.

They were sending you, along with a small team, to interview drivers and staff alike. Being the intern, and supposedly in training, meaning expandable, you’d been put in charge of coming up with questions—original ones, at that: no ‘What’s your favorite track?’ nonsense, they precised.

You learned the difference between the Driver’s Championship and the Constructors Championship yesterday. You usually covered hockey, the NHL, a real punch-in-the-face sport. There was no way you could go beyond asking them what shade of tires they were using unless they decided to do a 180° and start racing on ice.

So here you were, in your rented Italian apartment with decaying paint, a squeaky couch, and the muffled chorus of your snoring colleagues. Your laptop screen buzzed diml,y and the void of your thoughts stared back at you as the clock crept dangerously close to one in the morning. Ten sentences, that was the goal: ten measly, coherent, original questions. The cursor blinked at you like it could see right through your sad attempt at powering through your lie. You rubbed your eyes with the back of your hand, your body aching for sleep, but you couldn’t allow yourself the sweet deliverance of unconsciousness until you’d typed something. Tiredness, you told yourself with misplaced pride, was not an option.

However, ice cream was.

Five minutes later, you were half-dressed for crime in an old hoodie three times too big for you, sleep shorts honoring the adjective, and the great fashionability of flip-flops with sports socks, slipping out the front door with the grace of a goblin. The streets were mostly quiet, save for the occasional whir of a moped in the silence, and you could feel the cooling asphalt beneath the plastic sole of your shoes. The flickering fluorescent glow of the 24-hour convenience store, growing more intense the longer you walked, called to you.

You didn’t know what you were looking for exactly, whether it be comfort, an escape from racing cars and your withering GPA, or a much-needed sugar rush, but you were pretty sure it came in pint form.

You entered the store under the obnoxious screech of a bell. It didn’t seem to faze the cashier, who was fully slumped behind the counter, head tipped back in a mouth-breathing slumber. If someone walked in to rob the place, you had a feeling they wouldn’t be met with much resistance apart from the occasional belted note from the ambient europop.

Tempting.

You shuffled further inside, wandering among the empty aisles in search of the frozen section, and physically recoiling when the temperature dropped a certain amount of degrees as you reached it. The freezers hissed and cracked, the strip lights illuminating the stacks of sad frozen meals and desserts. You dragged your feet along the tiles, arms wrapped around yourself, eyeing the glistening line of tubs in front of you. You needed something sweet, vaguely comforting.

Your heart finally settled on the Ben & Jerry’s Half-Baked pint, your favorite and, as fate would have it, the last one left. You smiled to yourself, already imagining the therapy-like comfort of vanilla, brownie chunks and cookie dough it would bring you. You reached out for it.

But so did someone else, and your fingers brushed.

You flinched, instinctively yanking your hand back a little too dramatically. You hadn’t even heard him walk up, he just appeared at your side in a strange warmth, his palm colliding with yours on its way to reenact the world's least romantic meet-cute.

Your eyes finally snapped to the intruder. He looked just as startled, if more amused, brows lifted in mild apology. He was tall, a good fifteen centimeters above you, and his tousled dark curls were half-hidden by the hood pulled over them, accentuating the drowsiness in the darkness of his eyes. The sleeves of his hoodie were pushed halfway up on his forearms, and a slight redness flushed his cheeks, which might have been from the cold or eventually the awkwardness of this exact moment.

“Sorry,” he said, an accent you couldn’t quite place swirling around the words. “Didn’t see you there. Didn’t expect someone to also be craving ice cream this late, either.” He offered you a lazy grin, and your stomach did something deeply irrational. He was objectively good-looking, for a stranger.

“You’re alright, don’t worry,” you answered, voice light but guarded. You were tired, unarmed, which weren’t ideal conditions to spar with a man, even though you wouldn’t expect someone who looked like he belonged in a mildly expensive cologne ad to come to fists in the middle of a convenience store.

His eyes dropped to the pint of ice cream, still sitting in the open freezer. “Half-Baked, huh?” he asked. “Strong choice.”

“It’s the best one,” you shrugged.

He tilted his head, as if considering. “Eh… debatable.”

Nonchalance thrown aside, and any desire of survival with it, your jaw detached from your body along with your carefulness. Debatable? “I won’t even dignify this slander with an answer.”

“It’s not my favorite,” he answers, looking far too entertained. “But I respect it. Like… top five material.”

“Top five? You’re insane.”

The smile he already wore on his lips widened and—great—now, he was laughing. The disbelieving sound pleasantly echoed around the quiet store and empty aisles, leading you to cross your arms on your chest as if the gesture could protect you from the charming presence of the stranger.

Somehow, the pint was still sitting between you, dangerously unclaimed.

“Soooo,” you dragged off, cutting the brown-haired man short in his semi-mockery. “By that logic, you wouldn’t mind letting me have it.”

His head tipped back just slightly, studying the flickering lights as if wisdom might descend on him and save him from this moral dilemma. “No,” he ends up saying after agonizing seconds. “I want that one.”

“You don’t even like it.” You stared at him, incredulous.

“I do,” he countered. “It’s just… not my favorite.”

You groaned,dragging a hand down your face. Frustration rose through you like molten lava, enough to make the frozen rows next to you melt. “Listen,” you start, as calm as you could muster, “I had a shitty day. I’m having an even shittier evening. If you had even an ounce of decency in your body, you’d let me walk out of here with my favorite ice cream and my last shred of will to live.”

You reached for the tub. You weren’t even surprised that his hand followed, yet you had to fight the urge to scream. Now, your fingertips were dueling on the cardboard.

“Big talk about dignity from someone wearing flip-flops with socks,” the stranger retorts, that shit-eating grin growing wider by the minute.

This time, you were actually offended. It was one in the morning, you were getting a subjective necessity, not walking the Met Gala. The fact that he, out of all people, had the nerve to make fashion commentary in his wrinkled basketball shorts and downright ancient sneakers was next-level ridiculous. “Oh, please,” you snapped. “Big talk from someone trying to steal ice cream he doesn’t even believe in.”

“Oh, so we’re believing in ice cream, now?”

You stab your finger in his chest. “This is about morals.”

“Right,” he hums, nodding. “You’re the one trying to emotionally blackmail me with your tragic backstory.”

The daggers you were trying to stare at him with didn’t seem to reach his back nor his smugness. The two of you were still standing in the middle of the aisle, each with a hand on the poor tub of Half Baked. The bright, white lights above you were becoming more overwhelming the longer you spent underneath them.

“So we’re really doing this?” you asked. “Neither of us is backing off?”

The stranger leaned closer, and the slow movement had you pausing at the soft delicateness of his features. The maddening smirk tugging at the corner of his lips sobered you instantly. “You’re admitting defeat?”

You scoffed, inching your grip tighter on the ice cream. “In your dreams, maybe.”

He held your gaze for a long moment, amused and searching, before finally tilting his head with a tired sigh, giving the impression he was oh so generously offering the solution for world peace. “... We could share it.”

You frowned in confusion. He rolled his eyes, gesturing toward the pint with a nod. “There are plastic spoons near the register. We could do split custody— ten bites each, top.”

“There’s literally other ice cream. Like, so much,” you said, gesturing vaguely to the frozen aisles around you. You paused, then added with a pointed look, “Also, I don’t know you?”

“Well, I’m Franco Colapinto,” he replied with a lopsided grin.

He laughed. It was an easy sound, coming out low and deep from his chest that rumbled more than it echoed. It sent an involuntary flutter up your spine, which you firmly blamed on your lack of sleep and not the stupidly attractive curve of his lips.

The name tickled something in the back of your brain. It was somewhat familiar, even though you couldn’t quite pinpoint in what way. Frankly, you were too tired and too emotionally invested in your current argument to attempt to dig deeper in the drowsiness of your memories. “I’m Y/N Y/L/N,” you said cautiously, unsure of the reason why you were even entertaining him.

His smile widened. “Great. Now we’re not strangers anymore.”

“That’s… not how it works.”

“Sure it is,” Franco nodded, serious. “I know your name. You know mine. We’ve shared an argument, introductions… that’s practically a friendship. What’s an ice cream after that?”

Your eyebrows shot up to high heavens, though your mouth still tugged up at the corner in the semblance of a disbelieving smile. This entire interaction felt like a fever dream, and Franco Colapinto might have been the strangest man you'd ever met, which explained why the two of you now stood side-by-side at the front of the convenience store, facing the soundly snoring clerk, both patting down your respective pockets.

A curse escaped you when you hit the bottom seam of your hoodie pocket and found nothing: no wallter, no leftover coins, not even a crumpled receipt. Nothing. Franco glanced over, two pathetic white plastic spoons in hand, with his brows raised in a silent question.

“Uh…” you started, wincing. “I may, or may not, have… forgotten my wallet. In my apartment.”

One second passed. Another. Before you knew it, Franco was trying his very best, which was to say, not at all, to hide his snorting. He was doing so openly, no longer bothering to attempt to cover his amusement. His shoulders shook with the force of i,t and the only thing you could do was stare at him, dead-eyed.

“Oh my God, good thing we decided to share, huh?” the brown-haired man managed through a laugh. “Just imagine if you were alone in there, broke as hell.”

You threw your very empty hands in the air. “You act like you’re about to save the day!”

“I am,” Franco taunted, a mock heroicness in his voice as he patted his shorts’ pockets with an exaggerated flourish, only for the performance to crumble when his face fell. He patted again, and again. “Oh shit.”

Words couldn’t possibly be put on the satisfaction rising inside you. You crossed your arms, a smugness usually unknown to you dripping from every word. “Don’t say it.”

“I left my wallet in my hotel room,” he said anyway, sheepishly.

You both stood in front of the counter, spoons in hand, and the pint of Ben and Jerry’s still clutched protectively between you. The soft buzz of a fluorescent light filled the awkward silence as you stared each other down, unsure how to proceed.

“Well…,” Franco started eventually, voice dropping low, almost conspiratorial. “He is asleep.”

As if in agreement, the clerk let out a snore, louder than the others.

You turned to him comically slow. The idea, which settled comfortably among your thoughts earlier, came back full force as you waited for him to explain his own thinking process.

Franco shrugged with one shoulder. “We could just— take it? I could always come pack and pay tomorrow.”

“That is literally stealing.”

“You were thinking it too,” he pointed out.

“I was not!”

“You definitely were.”

“I thought about it,” you corrected, “but I never said it out loud, which makes me the moral compass in this situation.”

“You and your morals,” he laughed, only to promptly try to hide with a small cough, throwing a quick look at the clerk.

You stared at him. Condensation was gathering between your fingers, seeping into your skin, and truth be told, your eyelids were growing too heavy for your own good, and a pitifully blank document was still waiting for you in your crumbling rental. You didn’t have enough faith in yourself, nor enough patience, to go back and get your wallet. Frankly, you doubted Franco was any more motivated. ”You’re really gonna come back and pay?” you asked, hesitant.

“Promise,” and the glint behind the depth of his eyes looked sincere enough for you to believe him.

He slipped the pint from your hands, balancing the two spoons in the other, and nudged the door open with his shoulder. The bell above it gave a lazy jingle at the movement, echoing in the stillness around you.

“C’mon,” he called with a wink, casual as anything. “Let’s go be criminals.”

Against all logic, reason and legality, you did. Your steps were slow and sure, forming an unspoken pact in their trajectory.

At least, they would have been if the clerk hadn’t stirred at that exact moment.

A low rustle could be heard from behind you, followed by a sleepy grunt and the unmistakable sound of someone shifting behind the counter. A groggy mutter in Italian filled the air, low and accusatory. Your Italian was rusty at best, but you were pretty sure it wasn’t anything kind or a wish for a good night. Judging by Franco’s face, he seemed to have caught enough of what the man said to make him pause. He turned to you slowly, lips parted. Your eyes widened in a silent question to which he didn’t answer.

In that moment, frozen in amber, you saw your entire career flash in front of your eyes. Your major, thrown away in flashes of red and blue.

You mouthed one word: Run.

“Wait, are you serious—?”

You were already gone.

You bolted out of the door, Franco hot on your heels, the bell above you clanging in metallic indignation. The hoarse complaints of the clerk faded to background noises, swallowed by the wild slap of your flip-flops against the cobblestones. The wind tore through the loose strands of your hair as street lights passed by in a delirious blur. Franco’s breathless laugh reverberated against stone walls, so reckless and uncontainable it made you laugh too, even as you sprinted around a corner, then another, burying yourself further into a maze of sleepy streets you had no idea how to escape from. Finally, the knotted gravel gave way, spitting you both into the hush of a small, empty park.

You collapsed onto the nearest bench, doubled over, panting and wiping the sweat beading on your forehead. Franco was quick to drop beside you, clutching the pint of Ben and Jerry’s to his chest. “Okay,” he gasped, grinning widely through labored breathing. “I think we’re in the clear.”

You chortled, a deeply unattractive sound of such magnitude it turned into a cough. You buried your face in your hand to try to stifle it, just like the growing grin thinning your lips. “Oh my god,” you managed to say, strangled with disbelief. “I’m going to get arrested. I’m going to get fired. I’m going to get banned from Italy for stealing.”

“It doesn’t sound like you believe in Half Baked anymore,” Franco teased, leaning back. You elbowed him with a groan.

In the comfortable silence, broken by giggles every now and then, the brown-haired man ended up prying the lid off the ice cream you so valiantly fought for with a triumphant flourish, which you fondly rolled your eyes at. You both stared down the pint, impatient to dive into your prized possession.

Soup.

The only word that could be used for what was once ice cream was soup. A sad, goopy mess of once-frozen chocolate and vanilla now swirled lazily in the container, brownie bits drifting. The heat of your argument, during which you left the freezer door open, along with the sprint across town, had completely melted it.

There was an awkward pause as you stared at the liquid. “Well,” Franco started, “can it be considered as a milkshake?”

You glanced his way and as soon as your eyes met, you couldn’t hope to hold the pretense of seriousness. Another snort escaped you and morphed into a loud, unstoppable laugh that you were sure the neighboring houses could complain about. Franco stared at you, a glimmer of wonder in the dark of his irises, before following suit until you were both wiping at the corners of your eyes, entirely done with the ridiculousness you managed to bury yourselves into.

“Criminal masterminds, truly,” you managed to wheeze out. “We really took that long to make up our minds?”

Franco offered you a spoon between two laughs. “After you, partner in crime.”

You took it, and for a split second your fingers brushed against the others’, making you pause just enough to see his smile twist into something reserved for the depth of the night. You felt a familiar warmth tighten your face, yet tried not to pay it too much mind as you plunged it into the puddle. You took a bite. The taste and consistency were objectively disappointing.

Still, cold sugar was cold sugar, and it was perfect.

You passed the pint back and forth, settling comfortably deeper into the bench, still warm from the remnants of the day, as the quiet of the very first hours of the morning wrapped around you like a blanket shared at a sleepover—something uniquely yours. The adrenaline faded slowly, making way for gentler words and inflections of voice, as well as the stunning realization the stars above you shone a little brighter than they did before.

Topics went and passed easily. You found out Franco Colapinto was an easy man to talk to: he was laid-back and attentive, slipping subtle jokes and flirtations in-between sentences you could almost miss if he wasn’t looking at you the way he did. You would huff at his attempts, but never quite push him away.

You conversed about every insignificant detail of your lives. The horrible state of your rental apartment and your colleague Maggie’s incurable snoring problem as well as the catastrophic, overpriced pizza you ordered on your first night here. Franco went on about his incredibly passionate vendetta against decaf coffee. Along the way, you learned he wasn’t Italian—well, only by his father—and that the interesting swirl of his tongue around words was Argentinian, that his favorite movie was Interstellar. You told him you never watched it. He berated you for half an hour.

In an interesting turn of event, the conversation drifted toward fashion. “Wait,” you interrupted with a mouthful of ice cream, pointing your spoon at him. “You’re not allowed to judge my flip-flops ever again.”

“The whole combo is a crime against fashion,” he answered, without missing a beat. “Even in the dead of the night.”

You rolled your eyes at him for what felt like the hundredth time tonight, yet none of them had contained any animosity. The spoon clinked against the nearly empty tub as you scooped again. “Well, can’t blame me. This night’s been… weird. The whole day, actually.”

Franco’s gaze turned toward you, not quite literally, as his eyes hadn’t left you ever since you sat down. “You said you were having a shitty day earlier.” A simple affirmation, to which you nodded without much thought. It was true. “Why?” he asked.

You hadn’t noticed how close you had physically gotten until your head dropped backward to face the sky, only to meet Franco’s arm replacing the wooden edge of the bench. He had an arm around your seat, you were tucked to his side, and the balm of his presence enveloped you whole. It eased you into confession with a compassionate simplicity.

“Because I’m a fraud,” you admitted, not without the addition of a largely over-dramatic sigh.

His eyebrows lifted in surprise, but he didn’t interrupt. The inevitable sign that you had to explain the pathetic situation your hubris had gotten you entangled in.

“I… sort of, maybe, eventually bluffed my way into an internship with a motorsports media company,” you explained. The second his lips parted in surprise, embarrassment pooled hot in your chest. It might have been the first time you were ashamed of your actions. “Do you know anything about F1?” you blurted, hoping to get ahead of it.

Franco stared at you for several seconds, facial traits comically deprived of any expression. “Not at all,” he deadpanned. “Apparently, they race cars?”

You debated whether to laugh or groan. He was teasing, and it was working— you chuckled against his shoulder as your head dropped to the side. “Me neither! I didn’t expect to do something useful during this internship, so I thought one little lie couldn’t hurt!” you exclaimed. “Now they have me interviewing drivers and staff with ‘innovative’ questions before the race. Innovative. The only team I knew of was Alpine because I liked the blue and pink combo. I thought they were winning the championship!”

Franco choked mid ice cream bite, halfway through a laugh.

“And apparently they’re swapping drivers left and right?” you pressed on, waving your hands around. “How does swapping drivers midseason make sense? It can’t be efficient. It sounds more like a swinger scandal than a strategy!”

The longer you spiraled, the more Franco’s features disappeared in the dark of his hoodie, the shoulder you were lying on shaking in what looked suspiciously like a laugh. When he finally emerged at the end of your rant, he threw his head back, no longer concealing his giggling. He finally calmed under the stern look you gave him.

“Well,” he said, voice hoarse and warm, “maybe don’t say all that to their faces.”

“I’m not going to!” you scoffed. “I’m already one imaginary question away from losing my job and my opportunity at graduation and humiliating myself on the paddock.”

The arm Franco had around the bench was now resting on your shoulders, pulling you further—if discreetly—closer to him. “What type of questions did you have in mind?”

You listed out the sad sentences you’d typed and deleted in your document, and the brown-haired man next to you could only answer with a few snickers here and there through every few words. You shot him a raised eyebrow, daring him to do better, and that was all he needed: your voices echoed across the empty park as the night stretched thin and silver around you. He navigated you through the strange language of Formula One with ease, translating jargon you’d only ever skimmed past into something that made sense. Focus on their personality, make it human, he insisted. You reminded him that you didn’t even know most of their names.

Still, it spiraled— like it often did with him, you’d grown to notice. From brainstorming about questions on the ethics of DRS to what races they put on to hype themselves up, you found yourselves answering the questions instead of directing them. The topic of who would survive the longest in a zombie apocalypse came up, and your restricted knowledge of the sport only made the conversation more ridiculous by the minute. You threw out the name of George Russell. Franco had tears of laughter in his eyes.

“You know a lot for someone who supposedly doesn’t know anything about F1,” you noted

He gave you a one-shouldered shrug, accompanied by a smile. “Just picked stuff up. My entourage is really into motorsports.” Then, as if confessing a secret, he leaned into your space, his voice dropping levels to lower down to a whisper. “And I enjoy helping pretty girls.”

Your laugh came out in a breath at the comment, yet something in the air had inevitably shifted—slightly, but there nonetheless. The quiet amusement between you faded into silence, which only left the distant hum of the waking city and the occasional buzz of a street lamp above the park as a soundtrack. The ice cream pint was empty. The sky was lazily painting itself pastel.

Franco was close, so much you could feel the heat of his breath sweeping over your lips, the intoxicating depth of his perfume engulfing you whole. Your knees were brushing hesitantly against each other, your body pressed to his side like gravity kept inexplicably pulling you in, deciding what you wanted before your mind could catch up with the situation. The shadows of the rising light painted his face a sharp golden. His eyes were on yours. They never left.

Were you really about to kiss a man you had known for no more than five hours? You weren’t sure, but Franco didn’t seem to be pulling away. Neither were you.

“¿Vas a besarme?” he murmured, barely above a whisper, his pupils dilated and trained on the curve of your mouth.

You didn’t know what it meant and truthfully, you couldn’t care less. You didn’t want to ruin whatever it was with overthinking, and logic had been left in aisle seven the second you accepted to share that damned ice cream. All you could really tell was that your heart beat loud in your chest, from nerves and anticipation alike, and he was just there. Waiting.

Screw it.

You pulled him in.

It was heated, reckless, and you abandoned yourself into it, leaving caution thrown to the wind. His lips met yours halfway between a laugh and sigh and you swore you’d felt him smirking against your lips before you opened your mouth, giving him the access you both hopelessly desired. Franco kissed the way he talked: smooth, disarming, anticipating your every move with a hand on the dip of your waist and guessing what you liked, gauging your reactions by swallowing every exhale he could tease out of you. He tasted like vanilla, like bad decisions, like everything you could have possibly wanted in the span of a night. Your hands curled in the fabric of his hoodie, his fingers brushed along your jaw, and for a brief, dizzying second, it felt like the spark of something unexpected.

But when you finally pulled away, breathless and flushed, the first ray of sunlight brushed your features at the same spot his fingers caressed.

“I… We should go,” you managed to breathe out.

He nodded, the shadow of a smile thinning the pink of his lips. The silken chill of dawn crept through your hoodie as you both stood up, exchanging awkward sentences you barely registered amidst the buzz of your brain. Franco kissed your cheek, uncharacteristically gentle. “See you soon.”

You grinned because it was the polite thing to do, not because you believed him. No one ever really meant that. See you soon was only the prettier version of a goodbye, which is where you were leaving him. Overwhelmingly bittersweet, contrasting with the empty ice cream tub in his hand.

You walked back to your crumbling Italian apartment, trying not to turn around—the scent of his perfume on the hood of your sweater and the lingering taste of him on your lips made the task remarkably more difficult than you thought it would be. The air seemed to smell like vanilla swirl. A smile stuck to your face like melted chocolate.

By the time your fingers hit the keyboard, the questions you both brainstormed spilled easily onto the page along with the few terms and techniques Franco had clarified for you. You didn’t even reread them, you just wrote until the sun was fully filtering through the blinds and your colleagues had gotten up to make coffee. Maggie asked you where you went—apparently, your little escapade had woken her up as you left. You didn’t tell her about Franco, nor did you tell any of them.

After all, you didn’t expect to see him again.

Which is why you wholeheartedly believed he was a hallucination when you bumped into him on the paddock later that afternoon.

The day had been a confusing series of events. Your all-nighter, no matter how pleasant, had taken a lot of energy out of you, and was the reason you spent your morning alternating between getting ready and ten-minute naps, much to the team’s dismay. Even in the burning afternoon sun hovering above the Imola track’s paddock, you weren’t quite awake enough, and carbureted solely on your third can of Redbull—the iron grip you had on it threatened to split the metal in half.

They had sent you and Maggie, your unofficial camera woman, in search of the Mercedes hospitality to find the infamous George Russell that wouldn’t survive a zombie apocalypse according to Franco. The memory took your attention off your surroundings for a single second, pulling a chuckle out of you.

The impact jolted through your shoulder, nearly knocking you off balance.

You stumbled back a step, hands fumbling to protect the expensive media badge swinging from your lanyard. The paddock was alive with voices, soon-to-be rolling wheels—and you were about to become very acquainted with its asphalt.

The same hands that tripped you were the ones that caught you. You were about to curse out whoever had the audacity of being so inconsiderate, but stopped as the words were about to leave your mouth. “Careful there, partner in crime,” came an amused voice, with an overly familiar vocal timbre.

Your gaze shot up.

The brown curls, hair damp with heat, were the first thing to come out of the tired blur hindering your vision. Then was the infuriating smirk you had grown accustomed with, only to make way for the delicate traits of his eyes. The pink and blue racing suit was last, with white letters and sponsors across his chest. Alpine.

Your stomach dropped. “... Franco?” You were not sure if you were asking for him or accusing him.

He helped you up, detaching you from the grip of his arms only to face you with a proud smile. One you were itching to slap off his face. “Told you I’d see you soon,” he commented. Soon was an understatement—you had kissed him mere hours ago.

“You— You told me you didn’t know anything about F1.”

Franco hummed in agreement.

“You’re an F1 driver. For Alpine.”

“Maybe.”

Your jaw slackened. Franco Colapinto’s name had sounded familiar for very good reasons that were included in the hundreds of articles you went through, you realized, along with the mortifying understanding that you had openly called his team’s strategy a swinger scandal. Still, the words that left your mouth weren’t apologetic, and not even close to a stutter.

Instead, you stabbed a finger in his chest. “You lied to me!”

Franco arched an eyebrow, his gaze going from the nail you had buried in the softness of his suit to your offended expression. “Ah, I thought you wouldn’t be the one telling me off about one little omission.”

The callback to your late-night admission caused heat to flare up your cheeks, which seemed to greatly please him. He continued, his smug smile not faltering a tiny bit. “So… are you going to interview me here or…?”

“No,” you answered, words sharp and eyes narrowed. “We’re actually here for George Russell, so if you’ll exc—”

“Ohhh,” Franco cut in. “The zombie apocalypse non-survivor. That George Russell.”

You opened your mouth—ready to deny, deflect, eventually flee from the most delirious situation known to mankind—but Maggie appeared beside you, making her presence known with an obnoxious cough and eyes darting between you and Franco. “I’m sorry to interrupt whatever that is,” she starts, “but do you guys know each other?”

“No,” you blurted.

“Yes,” Franco said at the same time.

Maggie narrowed her eyes, flicking from the F1 driver to you. “Ooookay, because if you did it would be amazing on camera, with this whole…,” she made a vague hand gesture, “chemistry and all.”

“There’s no chemistry,” you insisted, silently pleading with her.

“There isn’t? I thought we had at least some, after everything,” Franco countered, not even bothering to hide his glee.

And before you could try to snark back with something, anything, that could save this interaction from the clout-chasing endeavors of your colleagues, Maggie was already pulling her phone out from her back pocket. “That’s great! I’ll tell the team we’re bumping Russell up,” she chirped, already sliding away and ordering the second half of your group around.

You slowly turned back to Franco, mouth agape in disbelief. The silence between you was thick, filled with lingering memories and entirely too proud on his end. His arms were crossed on his chest, and his cheeks tinted a light shade of pink.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” you muttered, running a hand through your hair.

Feigning ignorance, Franco threw a grin your way. “Come on. If your first interview is with me, it’ll be easier. We already practiced, remember?”

He seemed to revel in your squirming. You remembered alright. You recalled the warmth of his arm around your shoulders, the roughness of his hands threading through your hair, and the icy aftertaste his lips left on yours that no coffee, as strong as you could possibly make it, could wipe out. It was all too vivid in your mind, despite the drowsiness. It lingered, stubborn, just like him.

Franco didn’t need to be made aware of that, he already looked too pleased with himself. “Yeah, when you lied about not knowing anything about motorsports.”

“And you lied about knowing F1 for your internship,” he fired back. “It feels like fate, doesn’t it?”

You let out a slow, dramatic sigh, pinching your nose bridge. “It feels like an addition to my headache.”

He studied you. There was a difference in the light of day, switching perspectives on what happened when the blanket of nighttime wrapped around people, but his eyes seemed to strip off all those artifices bare. The chatter around you narrowed down to white noise as he took a step forward, shrinking the comfortable gap you had installed.

“Interview me,” Franco breathed, eyes boring into yours, “and I’ll make it up to you for messing with your schedule, and for our questionable first meeting.”

You scoffed at him, but taking a step back was a thought too far removed from you. You basked in the heated air, whether it be from the sun or the man in front of you, much to your own incomprehension. “And how would you make it up to me, Franco?”

Franco’s lips curved slow and deliberate. “With a date.”

“A date?” Your heart paused, catching up with his words before your brain could.

“Yeah. A real one, this time. No heist.” Obviously, that was too normal a sentence for him, because he added almost immediately, “unless you’re into that. Then there will be a heist. Again.”

You punched his shoulder, albeit with not much conviction behind it, which made him chuckle, the sound pooling like liquid sunlight on your skin.

A date. Franco Colapinto was definitely the strangest, and boldest, man you had ever met in your entire life. You would be lying to yourself if you even attempted to deny the fluttering of your chest when the idea crossed your mind. “No stealing,” you affirmed, steadier than you expected yourself to be.

A visible weight seemed to have been taken off his shoulders as he answered. “Promise,” and the glint behind his eyes had a whole other shade, this time around.

Just as you were about to respond—with what, you didn’t know yet—Maggie’s voice cut through the bubble Franco and you had carefully stepped in. All of a sudden, the overwhelming presence of other journalists, staff members, commentators and fans were noticeable enough to break the moment you both became engulfed in.

“You two ready to set up the interview?”

Franco didn’t move. He glanced in your direction, waiting.

Taking a chance on a man you had met in the dead of the night over stolen ice cream and fake identities was a dubious decision, at best. Kissing that same stranger on a park bench like a hormonal teenager, even more so. Every instinct, every rational thought was screaming in bright, flashing red to turn around from this uncharted territory.

And yet—

“Yeah, we’re ready. Just… give us a second.”

Franco flashed you a smile, shameless, just as bright as the midday sun washing over you, and somehow, impossibly, it made your heart ache. Not from regret, but from the terrifying thrill of wanting more of it.

It was probably a terrible idea, but so were all the ones that led you here. Look how far they’d gotten you.

What was one more?

#i love this because 1. it was a franco fic #2. journalist!reader #and 3. BEN AND JERRYS MENTION LET'S GO #this was rather long #but it was definitely a fun read #10/10 would recommend #their chemistry was off the charts #wren recommends

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