Kiss, Marry, Kill // Oscar Piastri ff (Ft. Landoscar, Loscar, Max And Kimi)

Chapter 1: Last Call at Las Vegas

The Paddock Club afterparty had long since migrated from the sterile glitter of the official venue to somewhere considerably more chaotic. Someone — nobody could quite remember who, though suspicion had settled firmly on Carlos Sainz, who denied everything with the kind of practiced innocence that only confirmed guilt — had suggested a bar crawl. Vegas being Vegas, the bar crawl had swallowed four hours, three different establishments, and what Oscar Piastri could only estimate was an inadvisable quantity of alcohol.

The final destination was a place called The Meridian, all low amber lighting and leather booths sunk deep into dark corners, the kind of bar that made everyone look like they were in a film noir and feel, consequently, significantly cooler than they had any right to. The music was loud enough to blur words at distance but not so loud as to make conversation entirely impossible. It was perfect, as far as Oscar was concerned, which was probably why he'd stopped trying to leave approximately two hours ago.

He was, if he was being scientifically precise about it, quite drunk.

Not catastrophically. Not in the way that Charles Leclerc was drunk, which involved increasingly passionate declarations about the superiority of Monégasque cuisine delivered to anyone within arm's reach. Not in the way that Pierre Gasly was drunk, which had apparently resulted in a twenty-minute attempt to teach Esteban Ocon the correct way to do the worm on a section of dance floor that didn't technically exist. Oscar was drunk in a quieter, warmer, more pleasant way — the way where the edges of everything softened just slightly, where laughter came more easily and the night felt expansive and unhurried, like something worth staying inside of for as long as possible.

The Las Vegas Grand Prix weekend had been good. His first podium here — third, behind Max and Charles, but a podium regardless — and the champagne at the ceremony had merely been the opening act. He'd been grinning for approximately six hours straight and his cheeks were starting to feel the effort of it, but he couldn't quite make himself stop.

He was, in short, in an excellent mood. Which was probably why the three separate disasters of the evening had all felt, at the time, like wonderful ideas.

The first disaster had been Lando's fault. This was not a surprise. Most disasters, in Oscar's experience, had a Lando Norris fingerprint somewhere on them.

It had started innocently enough, as things with Lando always did, with an air of absolute guileless enthusiasm that Oscar had long since learned to treat as a warning signal. They'd been at the bar, wedged in the crowd around the counter waiting on drinks, when Lando had appeared at his elbow like a very loud apparition, eyes bright and a cocktail already in hand despite the fact that he'd supposedly been at the other end of the room sixty seconds ago.

"Oscar," Lando had said, with the gravity of a man about to propose something extremely reasonable. "I need you to settle a bet."

"I'm not settling any bets," Oscar had said.

"It's a very simple bet."

"Your simple bets are never simple."

"This one genuinely is." Lando had grabbed his arm, steering him with the determination of someone who has already decided the outcome of the conversation. "So I told Daniel—" he'd gestured vaguely to where Ricciardo was apparently involved in this somehow, "—that I could get you to do a shot of whatever the bartender's most creative suggestion is without looking at it first. Blind shot. He says you're too sensible. I say you're secretly not sensible at all."

Oscar had looked at him. "You've bet on my sensibleness."

"Your lack of sensibility. I have faith in you, mate."