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LOREN is the first of his sisters to arrive, and she's always been something of a shadow for Oscar ever since they were little. But, even so, he could never be mad at her for it. She's the youngest of his sisters, after all, and his mom used to tell him that her following him around was a sign that she looked up to him.

So, it's no surprise that, when they finally get home from her flat near her university, the first thing the pair of Piastri siblings do is sit down together on the couch and take turns playing F1 22 on their console, since Oscar hadn't gone out of his way to buy the latest version yet.

He's gotten P1 in Silverstone, Monaco, and Baku and, while it was a decent amount of wins, Oscar's about to be matched up by Lori if she manages to maintain her top spot driving around Las Vegas. She had already won in Montreal and Bahrain, which was impressive for someone who doesn't spend much time playing racing games in the first place.

'Extensive usage of the wheel-controller on the Wii,' is what she gives her racing credit too—as if her own race car driving brother didn't exist and wasn't sitting right next to her.

It's not long before she finds herself at Turn 9, where she'd been struggling for most of her laps, and she puts it in the wall.

Oscar lets out a laugh as Lori sits with her jaw dropped.

"That's such a shit corner. That's not fair!" She whines, smacking his leg with the controller.

He continues to laugh through his pain, and gives her a light push. "Don't take your anger out on me just because you can't turn properly!"

"How am I supposed to turn when it's a 90-degree angle?" She asks exasperatedly.

"Not even," Oscar shakes his head as he takes the controller from her hands.

His parents' home had not echoed with the laughter of their children in so long, but as Oscar and Loren's childish bickering and booming laughs bounce off the walls, it's a good reminder for Oscar that his childhood home is a great place to be.

"Hit pause, I'm gonna grab a snack," Loren requests, getting up from her spot on the couch as Oscar changes the screen to the Main Menu.

For a while, he only hears the rustling of chip bags and the clattering of snacks landing in a bowl, and he would kill the preparation time by texting someone, but his phone had been particularly dry since yesterday.

Even Maia hadn't texted him since yesterday either, and he was starting to wonder what conversation starters he could use to get her attention again.

"So-o-o," his sister sings from the kitchen, the sounds of cupboards closing accompanying her voice. "How are you and your girlfriend?"

"Ah, you know Carrie was joking about that, right?" He asks as he watches his sister walk back to the living room.

She sits on the floor up against the couch, and places the bowl full of chips and snack pretzels next to Oscar.

"I'm aware, but those pictures she posted of you were quite soft-launch-y, don't you think?"

Her hands find their way to the bowl, and she takes out a handful of its contents. Oscar cringes at the crumbs getting in-between her intricate, gold colored rings on her fingers.

"Take off your rings when you eat," he huffs as he grabs a pretzel. "It's so gross, Lori."

"I'll wash my hands later," she rolls her eyes. "And answer my question! How are you and Maia?"

Oscar puts the pretzel in his mouth, and when he's done with the small treat, he makes a 'so-so' movement with his hand. "We're fine. Nothing much has happened besides us hanging out a bit."

"Oh, 'hanging out a bit'? Is that what we're calling it?" She says, high-pitched and teasing.

The older man rolls his eyes. "Yes, because that's exactly what it is, okay?" He exits out of the main menu and makes a couple modifications to the car—the Williams car, since Lori was just so adamant about using 'anything but McLaren, please.'

Lori chomps on a few chips, and tilts her head up at her brother.

"Well, at least tell me if you had bought her a Christmas gift during all of the shopping that you did," she pleads. "You must've gotten her something, right?"

Oscar exhales a breath as he loads up a hot lap, "I mean...I did but, I'm just not sure she'll like it, you know? And, I have her convinced that the gift is for someone else so, there's that too. Could always play it off."

It's not that he intended to lie to her about her gift, but he just wasn't sure if he had the confidence to actually give it to her yet. Sure, he's found himself on the line between playful words and flirting, but something about actually putting those words into practice made him nervous. It was the same kind of nervous that he would get entering a new season, the kind of nervous that includes jitters, excitement, and worry all fusing into one great amalgamation of Holy shit, am I really doing this?

He just wants her to like it.

That's all he cares about, in full, total, clear honesty.

Lori gasps and claps her hands together at the new information. She then moves up onto the couch, nearly knocking over the bowl of snacks with her speed.

"What is it? Can I see?" She asks rapidly, making her brother laugh as he tries to keep the car steady in the game's rainy weather.

"There's a pink bag in my room near my bedside table. It's in there and you can grab it, if you want to see it so bad," Oscar directs, and soon enough his sister is swiftly making her way up the stairs and out of his sight.

It's a pair of earrings, slightly mismatched but each individual earring still has the same idea. They were the type of earrings that would dangle from her ears if she were to wear them, and their design was of four different looking flowers. Their colors aligned well, white colored enamel and silver gemstones against golden hardware, with pearls at the center of each flower.

He had noticed she wore a lot of gold and silver at once—mixed-metals was the term that he saw when he searched up what that sort of style was called—so he figured it would perfect; or, at least he hoped it would be.

"OSCAR!" Lori's voice booms through the house, making Oscar jump slightly and crash his car into the barriers.

"What?" He yells back, and he turns his head to see his sister holding up the box that the earrings were settled into.

Lori points at them with one of her ringed fingers. "You know these are, like, 330 dollars, right?"

He merely shrugs at the number. "That's not that much."

"Oh my God, Ossie."

He laughs at the reaction, and turns his attention back to his game; and he doesn't tell Lori about how he didn't look at the price when he bought Maia's gift, he just picked whatever he thought she might like, and walked to the register like it was a pack of gum you could buy at the supermarket.

It's not until Lori says her next words that Oscar crashes the car a second time.

"You better not play this off as a gift for someone else, because if this is how you're treating her as friends, then you better have her wife'd up by the time you're both twenty-three."

...He's twenty-two.

Does his sister know he's twenty-two?

Lori runs back up the stairs, most likely returning the box to its pink-bag-home, and Oscar sighs as the screen shows him that he got a bronze medal for crashing his car twice and only completing one hot lap.

Yeah, he's pretty sure his sister does not know that he's twenty-two.

NOTES!

small filler i wrote in case it wasn't clear that the gift was for maia hehe 🌞🌞🌞

xoxo, cas