Work Text:
Of course Oscar knew that being an F1 driver would come with a lot of challenges beside the obvious ones.
Yes, he had to do good and get through the junior series and perform well and get a good team and manage to get noticed by an F1 team. But he also had to do all that while sometimes living through stuff like this paddock.
This damn paddock would be the death of him.
He liked Italy, don’t get him wrong. And all paddocks were loud. But there was something about Monza that was always too loud to him. Too loud. Too damn loud.
He could stand it for the first few hours, but after a while it just got too much. Which wasn’t that bad. He usually could just go to his driver’s room and wait for it to get better with his headphones on, and it didn’t even take that long.
But when you’re the championship winner you still have a lot of duties, even in Formula 3, and that is not possible. Interviews, celebrations, the fucking champagne sticking everywhere. He couldn’t stand it, and he couldn’t even get away from it.
After maybe one hour and a half of celebrations he was starting to get overwhelmed. The kind of overwhelmed that makes your skin tingle and feel too small for you body and is slowly trying to sweeze you out. He wanted to cry.
Logan found him trying to disappear into a corner, staring ahead with a blank look on his face and a glass of something in his hand.
«Osc… are you okay?» he asked, trying his best to keep his voice as low as possible to not make it even worse. He had known Oscar enough to have a pretty good grasp of on what was happening and what he should - and especially shouldn’t - do.
The Aussie shook his head, looking at him but carefully avoiding his eyes. It was so loud, and he was just trying his best not to start crying right then and there on the spot at Logan’s voice. He was so soft and so nice to him and maybe he was a bit crazy like the people in boarding school liked to say but he really wanted to cry now.
«I… I really need to go to the bathroom. Do you want to come with me? I don’t want to go alone,» Logan said, thinking of a quick way to get Oscar away from the situation. He didn’t want him to feel bad, let alone in the middle of the celebrations for his championship.
Oscar nodded, a little bit confused but going along with it. It couldn’t be as bad as whatever was going on, the way he was starting to get that feeling of wanting to rip his skin off because of how uncomfortable he was feeling. Every time someone popped a champagne bottle he had to try his hardest not to flinch and cover his ears, and every time someone came in for a handshake or a hug or a high five or something he wanted to scream.
He just wanted to disappear into the floor and never come back up, he wanted to scream at everyone there that he was tired of it and yeah maybe he wasn’t the best at reading a room but they weren’t as well because if it wasn’t clear from the look on his face that he’d rather lick the floor than stay there a second longer then he dind’t know what he was supposed to do.
Tears welled up in his eyes as he thought more about it, about how he would really like to curl up under his weighted blanket - the heaviest he could find, he didn’t care it was unpractical to carry around when racing - and sleep for ten hours straight. How he couldn’t stand this anymore and he didn’t want to do this and if it was for him it could have ended two hours ago.
«Hey, you still here with me?» Logan asked, voice low and soothing as he just stood next to Oscar. «Can I hug you?»
«Please. Really need a hug, but only from mum. Or you. This is a lot,» Oscar mumbled, nodding and stepping into Logan’s open arms. He pressed his face to his chest, closing his eyes and listening to his best friend’s steady heartbeat under his ear.
The American smiled, brushing his hair and just holding him there for a little while. «It’s okay. Still want to come with me to the bathroom? Step outside for a little bit and try to calm down?»
«Yeah. It’s loud here,» he mumbled, words a little bit muffled by the shirt. He really wanted to get out of there.
Instead of going to the bathroom, Logan took him out of the garage. Outside, where people were taking apart the paddock - the Formula 3 one, all the other ones were still buzzing because there was F2 now and F1 was going to be later and there were so many people - and it was full of loud noises. He didn’t know wether it was better or worse.
On one hand, it wasn't a closed room where everything was happening so close to his personal space. On the other, the noises were a lot worse. It was drills and people screaming and engines and trucks and he couldn’t take it.
«Do you want to go back inside? Or go somewhere else? Do you want me to go and take your headphones from your driver room?»
Too many questions all together. Too much. Too much. Too much. It was all too much and he really wanted to cry.
«I… dunno,» he mumbled, starting to shake his hands a little bit.
«We can stay here, or we can go back inside, or we can go to your driver room or mine or whatever you want. And I can go get your headphones or anything else you need,» Logan said, probably thinking Oscar wasn’t really understanding what he was saying.
It only served to make Oscar even more overwhelmed. Logan was giving him specific choises, sure, but it was also way too broad for him. “Whatever you want”? “Anything else you need”? What was that supposed to mean? He didn’t know what he wanted. He had little to no idea of what he needed.
He didn’t want to cry, really, but it really was unevitable at that point. He had gotten to a level of overwhelmed that he knew at one point he was going to cry. He just didn’t want it to be in the middle of the paddock where other people could see them and maybe a journalist could take a picture or someone could post a video on TikTok. The thought didn’t do him any good.
«Hey hey hey, it’s okay. It’s okay, it’s okay. Let’s go to your driver’s room okay? It’s small but there shouldn’t be a lot of noise,» Logan said, gently guiding him back into the garage.
It wasn’t the first time that he had had to comfort Oscar through meltdowns, they had been somewhat frequent when they were in karting together and the atmosphere was possibly even more chaotic, but it still wasn’t nice to see him like this. And sometimes he still got it wrong and accidentally made it worse in the process. Like today.
Oscar plopped onto the small massaging table, now full on sobbing as the lights in the room were too bright. He hated this. He hated this with all his being. Why couldn’t he be normal? Instead he was crying because his clothes were soaked and sticky and felt too small and the lights were too bright and even now that they were away from the celebrations his senses were still dialed up to one hundred and he didn’t know what could help.
Logan, for his part, immediately started looking for Oscar’s backpack. There wasn’t anything he could do for the bright lights, but he could find something that could help Oscar nonetheless. He had done it enough times to know more or less what he needed, even when Oscar couldn’t really articulate it.
«Hey, Osc, can you show me where you put your stuff? I’m looking for your headphones and the blanket,» he asked, gently rubbing his back. He really wished he could just make it go away, he wished he could hug him and make it all better, but it didn’t work like that.
Oscar barely looked up at him, just pointing to the cabinet in the corner. He was starting to rock himself back and forth, hands pressed firmly to his ears.
It just felt like a constant attack to his senses, everything hitting him all at once and making it feel like he couldn’t catch a break and his nerve endings were on fire. He was glad that Logan was there with him, but at the same time he almost wished he was alone. He didn’t really want anyone to see him like this, but it was Logan. So maybe it was fine.
And then Logan was wrapping him in his weighted blanket and it really took the edge off. He looked up at him, slowing down his rocking and sniffling softly.
«Is this a little bit better?» Logan asked, handing him his noise cancelling headphones.
Oscar just nodded, putting them on and flapping his hands. The headphones were even better than the blanket, shielding him from all the sounds that were attacking his ears up until that moment.
«That’s good,» he said, sitting next to him. «Do you feel like talking or do you only want a hug or nothing?»
The Aussie put his head on his teammate’s shoulder, humming softly to himself.
«We can just stay here, okay? We can stay here in silence and chill for a bit and nothing more.» He hugged him, embracing him completely and holding him tight to calm him down with the deep pressure.
«Mh-Mh.»
They didn’t need anything more than that, Logan thought, breaking the hug for a couple seconds to take Oscar’s tablet and pull up an old race - preferrably one of Mark’s wins, but Logan really couldn’t remember even one of them like Oscar did, and he couldn’t really ask him now.
They were going to be okay.