Chapter Text
The garage was too quiet.
Pre-season testing was a ritual—loud, stressful, slightly boring—but the kind of boring you came to crave after the chaos of a full race calendar. Cameras, engineers, suits with clipboards. Bright white halogens buzzing overhead. The hum of tyres warming, telemetry screens lighting up. It should’ve been the usual.
But there was only one car ready to go.
“Oscar not out yet?” Lando asked, pulling off his gloves to check his phone for the fifth time. Nothing from Oscar. No snarky texts. No complaints about jetlag or the porridge at the hotel.
One of the engineers shook his head. “He was seen about an hour ago. Haven’t heard from him since.”
Lando frowned. Oscar was punctual. Annoyingly so. He didn’t just vanish. That wasn’t his style.
Zak was already on the comms. “Get someone to check his driver room. Now.”
They moved quickly. Too quickly. Lando followed. No one told him to. He just did.
Oscar’s room was tucked at the back of the paddock setup—same generic walls, same sterile floor tiles, same half-hearted attempt at decoration with a McLaren poster and a single dying plant. The door was shut. Locked from the inside.
“Shouldn’t be,” muttered a tech.
They bypassed it with a master key.
The room was silent.
Oscar’s phone was on the table. Unlocked. Still charging.
His fireproofs were on the floor—inner layer, socks, balaclava—like he’d undressed in a hurry. But the outer racesuit was still zipped up, crumpled on the floor like someone had stepped out of it all at once. His shoes were still under the bench. His lanyard was hanging from the hook. A protein bar had one bite taken out of it, left forgotten on the counter.
Lando stepped in last. The air felt… off. Like the moment just after someone leaves the room, but too still. It made his neck itch.
“Maybe he went to the loo?” someone offered.
“For an hour?” Zak snapped. “No way.”
Security was called. Then circuit staff. Then local authorities.
The team pulled Lando aside. They asked if he and Oscar had argued. He said no. They asked if Oscar had seemed stressed. He said not any more than usual. They asked if he knew anything at all—and he didn’t. Not a clue. Just a sick, rotting feeling in his stomach that started the second he saw that empty suit.
He kept picturing Oscar standing there in it. Oscar fidgeting with the collar, rolling his eyes at some joke Lando made, pulling at his gloves like they were just a little too tight. The image wouldn’t go away.
He didn’t know where to put his hands. Didn’t know how to stand. Something had gone terribly, impossibly wrong, and Lando had no way to solve it.
They canceled testing for the day.
Paddock chatter exploded. Rumors spun like wildfire—heatstroke, panic attack, kidnapping. None of it made sense. No one mentioned the word dead, but it sat unspoken in the air like burnt oil.
Lando didn’t go back to his room. He just wandered.
And then—someone screamed.
He turned toward the source, down past the garages and out near the far end of the straight. A handful of marshals were scrambling. Lando jogged toward them, heart hammering.
“What’s going on?”
“There’s an animal on track!”
Sure enough, a rabbit. Big. Brown. Bolting across the painted runoff like it owned the place.
“What the fuck?” Lando said.
It was weirdly elegant—fluid in motion, ears flapping slightly, legs tucking with impossible speed. It was also clearly out of place. Pest control was radioed immediately.
But before they could get close, the rabbit stopped. Dead center, in front of Oscar’s empty car.
And just sat there.
Lando stared. Something about the rabbit stopped him cold.
It didn’t move like a wild animal. It wasn’t frantic or startled. It looked like it had purpose —like it had come here for something. Or someone.
His throat went dry. He took a step forward without meaning to. The wind carried a sharp tang of rubber and ozone. His pulse was thudding like he’d just run a lap.
It tilted its head toward him.
“Don’t,” he said suddenly, voice sharper than he meant. He stepped in front of the nearest marshal, hand outstretched. “Don’t grab it.”
“Mate, it’s a rabbit.”
“Yeah. I know. I’ll take it.”
The guy blinked. “What?”
“I’ll take it,” Lando repeated. “Seriously. I’ll handle it.”
There was a pause. No one argued. Too many other problems. One more weird thing barely made a ripple now.
He crouched, slowly, gently—and the rabbit hopped toward him. Pressed its head into his hand. Soft. Warm. Familiar in a way he could not explain without sounding insane.
He swallowed thickly.
“Alright then,” he murmured. “Guess you’re coming with me.”
The drive back to the hotel felt unreal. The paddock had turned into a frenzy of questions and flashing lights, but Lando slipped away in the back seat of the McLaren SUV with the rabbit in his lap, wrapped clumsily in his fireproof jacket.
He kept thinking: This isn’t right. None of this is right. He should be doing something. Should be yelling at someone, checking CCTV, kicking down doors. Shouldn’t be holding a rabbit like it meant anything. But here he was.
It didn’t try to escape. Didn’t squirm. Just curled into itself like it belonged there.
He kept glancing down, half-expecting it to freak out. To do something normal—nip at his arm, shit on the leather, kick out its hind legs in panic. But it didn’t. It just… blinked. Occasionally adjusted itself. At one point, it nosed at his palm like it wanted attention.
So he pet it. Tentatively.
His fingers trailed through the thick brown fur—soft, really soft, like fleece washed a thousand times. The rabbit shifted closer. It was heavier than he’d expected. Dense. Solid. He let his hand rest there, over the warm curve of its back, feeling the twitchy rhythm of breath beneath.
Oscar would hate this.
He could practically hear it: “You brought a rabbit into the car? Jesus. Does it at least have a carrier? You’re going to get fined.”
Lando swallowed. The thought of Oscar’s voice—sharp, dry, slightly nasal—hit harder than it should have. He blinked down at the rabbit again.
“Not helping,” he muttered.
The rabbit stared up at him. Big, brown eyes. Slightly watery. Long lashes. Too intelligent. Not human—not quite—but aware. As if it was watching him watch it.
Lando scratched behind its ears. The rabbit tilted into it. Almost smug.
And that made him feel crazy.
“You’re just a rabbit,” he told it. “A really weird, possibly haunted rabbit. But not Oscar. Not that that would make sense. Because that would be fucking insane.”
The rabbit sneezed.
He bit back a laugh. Or maybe a sob. He couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
Outside the window, Bahrain blurred past—bright signage, dusty roads, the ghost of a weekend that had already gone sideways. The sun was dipping low now, casting everything in gold. Lando felt the fatigue crawl in behind his eyes, the kind that didn’t come from lack of sleep, but from holding too much in his chest.
He looked down again.
The rabbit had fallen asleep. Right there in his lap. Like it trusted him.
“…Oz,” he said quietly. “That’s your name, I guess.”
He didn’t think about why that name came to him. It just did. Felt obvious. Felt right.
The car turned into the hotel lot. Lando didn’t move for a second.
He stayed still, hand resting gently over the soft rise and fall of fur, heart thudding with something he couldn’t name.
The hotel room was too clean.
Lando kicked off his shoes at the door, then stood motionless for a second, rabbit cradled awkwardly in one arm like a swaddled infant. The lights were too bright. The minibar hummed. The AC clicked on.
He had no fucking clue what to do.
“Right,” he said softly, mostly to himself. “Bunny setup.”
Oz wriggled a little in his jacket, but didn’t bolt. Just kind of blinked at him like, yeah, figure it out, genius.
Lando deposited him on the bed. White sheets. Four pillows. Immaculate. The rabbit immediately flopped sideways in a patch of sun and started grooming his paws.
Like he owned the place.
“Okay,” Lando said again. “Cool. Totally normal. Not worried at all.”
He pulled out his phone and typed in:
how to take care of a rabbit
The results hit him like a freight train.
“Rabbits require large enclosures.”
“Rabbits are prey animals and easily stressed.”
“Rabbits cannot vomit.”
“NEVER feed iceberg lettuce.”
“NEVER keep them on hotel linens.”
He stared at the screen, horrified. Looked back at Oz, now munching on the corner of the pillowcase like it was on the menu.
“Bro. Please.”
Oz stopped. Looked at him. Kept chewing.
Lando grabbed a hotel towel and gently scooped him off the bed, setting him down on the floor by the window. Then he barricaded the area with two dining chairs and a suitcase to make a makeshift bunny pen.
He Googled again:
what do rabbits eat when you have literally nothing
He ended up tearing apart the mini salad in his dinner delivery—picked out a sad handful of spinach and arugula, and a slice of apple that he rinsed three times. He set it on a folded napkin like a peace offering.
Oz sniffed it. Nibbled. Approved.
Lando sat down on the carpet with his back to the bed, legs stretched out. He was still wearing his team kit. The black one with the papaya trim. It felt heavy now, like it didn’t belong on him anymore.
Oscar was still missing.
They hadn’t found anything. Not a clue. Not a trace. It didn’t make sense. People didn’t just disappear.
He looked over. Oz was sitting up, licking his chest in slow, deliberate swipes. His ears twitched like radar.
“I know you’re not him,” Lando said. “But it’s fucked up that you look at me like that.”
The rabbit paused. Stared.
And then—it launched itself at him.
Lando flinched back with a startled yelp, but Oz didn’t bite. He just… scrambled into his lap. Circled twice. Then parked himself dead center on Lando’s thigh and flopped sideways, pressing his full warm weight against him.
He stared down.
“…You’ve got problems,” he muttered.
Oz thumped once. Lazily. Just a little vibration against his leg.
Lando didn’t move. He let his hand rest against the rabbit’s fur, fingers twitching occasionally to keep himself grounded. Outside, the city glowed. Inside, he listened to the slow, steady breaths of something alive. Something here.
It helped.
It shouldn’t have. But it did.
Because Oscar was gone. Vanished. And every second Lando wasn’t thinking about it, wasn’t spiraling, wasn’t calling someone to demand answers—it felt like a betrayal. Like if he stopped being afraid for even a heartbeat, he was giving up on him.
But he couldn’t live like that. Not for long. Not without something cracking wide open.
So he sat there. With the rabbit. Letting the silence stretch out. Letting himself pretend—for just a minute—that maybe he wasn’t alone.