Chapter Text
Lando keeps a running tally of things that make no sense.
Like the weird thing where you instinctively check your watch, drop your wrist, and immediately have zero clue what time it actually is. Or the way every queue picks up speed the second he commits to a different one. Or why strangers treat a selfie with him like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, only to ask his name halfway through.
But the crown jewel of things that make absolutely zero sense, and the one currently driving him to the brink of insanity, is his own dick.
Obviously not quite as universal a struggle as the rest of them. But it’s proving to be a daily headache. His cock seems to operate on a simple, deeply flawed binary. If his heart rate spikes even a fraction above baseline, it’s showtime. The emotion behind it doesn't matter.
Lift a moderately heavy kettlebell? Hard. Run a lap? Hard. Putting the car on pole in front of his home crowd? Rigid. Or alternatively, locking up into turn 1, binning the car into the gravel trap, and having to ride back to the garage on the back of a marshal’s scooter in complete disgrace? Absolutely throbbing.
It’s annoying. He is profoundly tired of walking around announcing his arousal to the world.
He’s often doomscrolling after a race and without fail finds 4K, high shutter speed images of himself from media day standing there, smiling his usual smile while his erection is doing a better job of greeting the fans than he is.
The online traction those photos get is mortifying. Leaves him wondering which of his fellow drivers have seen them and, more importantly, mentally catalogued them.
He knows he’s well-endowed. The people he’s been with always make it a thing. Every first-time blowjob he’s ever received has always kicked off with some iteration of wow, spoken like they just uncovered a hidden feature in a video game.
Lando doesn’t view it as an achievement. It’s not like a race win trophy or his car collection. He didn’t work for it.
But it’s bred a very specific kind of urinal dread.
He absolutely loathes when the guys make it a thing. Because he’s notably above average even when soft that means they inevitably do. Lando reckons the paddock is basically sixth form on steroids, and it’d be easier to point out the similarities had he actually completed his schooling.
Everyone from Zak to Daniel has weighed in on it.
‘I’m bored, let’s all attend a workplace sexual harassment seminar’, is a text he wants to send in the official group chat they have with previous and current McLaren staff.
Maybe he’ll forward it to the drivers’ one too. He remembers Max stepping up to the neighboring porcelain fixture once after a race, something early on, still huffing a laugh at a joke he’d been telling someone from his entourage at the door. Max had glanced down, paused, and let out a dry, wheezing chuckle. “Jesus, Lando. Put that thing away.”
George, a few years earlier back in the junior formulas, had said, very aptly, “Mate, you’ve got an absolute hog.” It was perhaps the most sincere and earnest he’d gotten George to sound.
Then there’s Oscar.
Oscar isn’t like that. Lando sometimes feels like Oscar doesn’t think of him as human.
Oscar never makes it a thing.
In fact, Oscar treats any communal bathroom with the exact same efficiency he brings to a debrief. Prim, proper, zero lateral eye movement. He doesn’t swivel his head, he doesn't drop any crude must be nice remarks under his breath.
Lando would bet good money that Oscar's brain simply filters out the visual information entirely to save processing power. Even when Lando forgets his compression shorts after cardio and wanders into their shared changing room with a very obvious half chub, Oscar just asks him about the data for practice without missing a cue.
Because of this, Lando can admit he feels safe around him. Safe enough to wear grey sweatpants on days when he knows it’s just the two of them. He won’t have to take the locker room talk.
But lately that safety has started to feel like a challenge. He finds himself preoccupied by Oscar’s lack of emotion. Why is it so hard to get a rise out of him?
He’s not ashamed to admit that he’s become mildly obsessed with Oscar's complete, ironclad lack of reaction. How is it possible to be that unfazed? Is it a power play? Or is he, god forbid, just a better man than him?
The thought curdles and ferments for a few weeks until Lando finds himself wondering what Oscar would actually say if he were forced to acknowledge it. Oscar’s so prim and proper he can’t imagine him sexually aroused at all. Does the guy even get horny?
He finds himself wondering how Oscar would react if he were sucking him off. What kind of faces he’d make. The sounds. Would that stupid mathematical brain glitch out for once?
Would he say Lando’s big? Would he enjoy that admission?
When the full weight of where his mind has just parked itself hits him, Lando has to physically stop stretching and stare at the floor tiles. How exactly did a gym boner lead to this?
He blinks, trying to flush the thought out of his system. Maybe the perpetual erections aren't some weird medical anomaly. Maybe the Occam’s razor of the situation is just that he’s genuinely, profoundly horny. He’s entertained more dramatic theories in the past, blaming it on G forces or some specific nervous system response to shitty McLaren floor vibrations, but deep down, he knows the simplest answer is usually the right one.
The conclusion he’s reaching is that he probably just needs to be in a relationship again. He’s been single for a disgustingly long stretch of time, and his brain is clearly short-circuiting from a lack of a proper, human outlet. He just wants someone to come home to.
Someone to fuck after a brutal weekend at the track, without it being a whole conversation.
He has to start looking at some point.
Lando climbs into the cockpit for qualifying in Austin. He's profoundly grateful that F1 management hasn’t introduced a direct, high definition crotch-cam to the live global broadcast yet.
That’s probably next on the list. New introduction to F1TV, he bets, starting next year.
The temperature has climbed significantly, and the heat is doing his balls no favors. Everything feels a bit loose and uncooperative compared to the tighter, prim and proper situation he deals with during the colder rounds.
He spends a frantic and deeply undignified few seconds shifting and adjusting down there. He is acutely aware that if his balls get pinched against the seams of his fireproofs, the distraction could easily cost him a tenth. It wouldn’t even be the first time he loses pole because of a cock related problem.
The session itself is a mess.
Lando is surprised he even manages to scrape into Q3 given how little control he feels over the car.
His final flying lap is completely scrappy. He finds a marginal bit of time, but it’s an absolute ass-hair’s breadth.
Hardly the statement he wanted to make. He’ll be starting P5. It’s not ideal, but he takes it on the chin. That’s life. Oscar fairs slightly better, securing P4.
After surviving the media pen, they cross paths for a brief moment and exchange equally weary, frustrated looks. There’s no one better who understands the car’s limitations right now.
But the interaction feels instantly off. For a split second, Lando is certain he sees Oscar’s eyes flicker downward, tracking something below Lando’s waist.
Lando does a quick inventory and, yep. There it is. Despite the multilayered Nomex and the thick, heavy fabric of his race suit, his erection is visibly poking through the front. Outstanding.
He briefly remembers a medical resident he dated for a few months who used to joke that Lando should donate his body to science. At the time, Lando figured the guy was just a pervert looking for an excuse to keep him naked, but looking down at the prominent ridge currently tenting his team gear, he reckons the man might have actually been onto something.
It turns incredibly awkward. The air balloons into something heavy, and Lando feels a desperate, panicky need to puncture it before it hardens into something genuinely weird.
He needs to say something. Anything. Something inconsequential that doesn’t sound like he's over explaining a spontaneous erection to a colleague.
“Oh,” Lando says, keeping his voice casual as he does a quick, necessary adjustment to smooth out the obscene silhouette of the bulge. “Can you tell quali was exciting?”
He waits for the payoff. Oscar says absolutely nothing.
He waits for a wry one-liner, or at the very least, a suppressed smirk and gets nothing.
Oh, well. Tough crowd. He'll have to work on his material.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, Lando is back in his hotel room. Thank god for five star accommodations located within walking distance of the paddock.
He hops in the bath and realizes very quickly that this isn’t the type of spontaneous public boner that goes away on its own.
He leans his head back against the cool tiles, eyes closed, briefly entertaining the idea of arranging a hookup. The thought is dreadful. He has no appetite for hollow small talk or the mediocre, uninspired sex that usually follows a last minute invite.
He also doesn’t want his name to open any headlines tomorrow as the F1 guy who is Super Gay and Horny.
Worse, he doesn’t even know anyone in Austin. Except the people on the grid, obviously, and that’s a hard no.
Needless to say, he’ll settle for porn.
He flicks open the browser on the hotel’s massive TV. He knows it’s loathsome. Watching porn on a screen bigger than a phone…
Anyway. Maybe he won’t feel like he hit a new low if he gets it done quick.
Lando browses the categories and searches for the home-made stuff. He can’t stand the choreographed big productions. They always take it a step too far and remind him he’s watching porn, which isn’t a boner-killer, because almost nothing is a boner-killer for him lately, but also doesn’t really do anything for him either.
He’s sitting there, hand slick and tight around himself, a wave of incredible self-hatred welling up inside, his eyes completely glazed over as he watches a video loop on the screen, when a bright notification ping on his phone cuts right through the filth.
Oscar: You want to grab dinner?
His tongue strokes the inside of his cheek. This is deeply odd.
He has to think for a solid half-second before deciding he’s actually going to say yes, but his thumb still hesitates over the screen before he types anything out.
He really should just exit the text window. His dick is currently whispering in his ear like Venom, telling him he needs to finish what he started on the hotel TV. Instead, he finds himself scrolling back through their entire text history to check if Oscar has ever actually done anything like this before.
Like, casually asked him out to dinner.
He hasn’t, and he didn’t have to scroll so far to verify that.
Even weirder that he decides today’s the day. They definitely don’t have anything to celebrate, that’s for sure.
Still, he taps out a quick reply.
Me: yea sure
He is fully aware that not asking a follow-up question like “Where were you thinking?” or “What time?” before he agrees makes him look desperate. Like a dog waiting by the door with absolutely nothing better to do. But it’s all true anyway. And why should he bother playing hard to get? It’s not like he has a crush on the guy.
He taps on Oscar’s profile picture, expanding the tiny circle until the pixels start to blur, his hand still wrapped tightly around his erection.
Lando’s a secure enough man to admit he looks good. Oscar’s wearing that maroon t-shirt that he probably thinks is nice. Those dark shorts Lando has definitely seen him wear more than a dozen times.
He fixates on the way Oscar’s thighs stretch the fabric. The way his biceps look like they’re getting suffocated by the shirt sleeves.
His thighs are so thick and fuzzy.
He forces himself to exit the photo and returns to his porn search. He’s agonizingly hard now, his cock heavy and twitching, and feeling like it might actually split his skin.
But nothing he sees is hitting the spot.
Finally, he commits and clicks into the gay section. The guilt hits him right on cue. Which is predictable. He knows it’s some deep, internalized shit that he absolutely refuses to look at too closely. It’s a problem for future Lando. Maybe when he’s thirty and retired, he’ll sit down and actually unpack why he secretly doesn’t like being bisexual. Right now, he’s too hard to care about morality.
He’s scrolling through the grid of videos when a specific thumbnail stops him completely dead. He doesn’t even wait to read the title before he clicks it and watches the video start to buffer.
The man on the screen is wearing a dark red shirt. One might venture to call it maroon.
He’s pale, possessing that same build, with thick legs covered in a light, tempting dusting of light brown hair.
Lando’s cock throbs violently in response. He doesn't waste a second, drizzling lube and beginning to pump his shaft with a slow rhythm.
The man in the video speaks. It’s a dry, sardonic lilt, low and steady, that is so familiar it makes his head spin. He gulps, his vision blurring as he fast forwards.
He skips past the preamble and lands on a scene where the man is sprawled on his back across a deep couch, his legs folded back, socked feet shoved close to the lens.
His shorts have ridden dangerously high, exposing the full, meaty expanse of his hamstrings. A second man, leaner and taller kneels between his legs, kneading the muscle with a possessive grip before sliding a hand deep under the hem of the shorts.
The guy in the red shirt lets out a low, guttural curse, his head lolling back against the cushions.
Lando lets his eyes unfocus until the screen goes blurry. It’s easy to replace the man’s face with Oscar's like this.
He imagines the exact face in the profile picture.
It’s pretty fucked up that he’s already mentally planning how to debrief this with his therapist. She’ll have to become cool with a lot of things real fast if she wants to be entrusted with this information. She’s going to have to know that Lando’s turned a new leaf, and is now immensely turned on by the thought of his teammate. The guy who looks like a youth pastor on a mandatory gap year. The guy who looks like he’s never even had a dirty thought in his entire life.
Eventually, both of them strip, though the man keeps the red shirt on.
One of his legs gets pinned ruthlessly against his own shoulder, his body folded open and vulnerable as the other man buries his face between his thighs.
Their chemistry is devastatingly real in a way that makes Lando feel like an absolute cuck. Peering into a life he’s suddenly, violently craving. Imagining himself with his own maroon t-shirt-wearing man.
Lando comes with a pathetic whine. He tries to catch the mess with a handful of wet wipes, but it’s a losing battle. There is far too much of it today, a hot, frantic overflow that spills over his grip and trickles slowly down the length of his cock, coating his hands.
He checks his phone to make sure he didn't accidentally facetime Oscar, mortified at the notion of his teammate hearing the pathetic, needy sounds.
It definitely wasn’t the kind of deep, heavy grunt he imagines Oscar makes when he’s balls-deep in someone.
He finds himself wondering if Oscar likes the macho man type or more of a needy whimpering mess. Lando’s ready to be whatever he wants.
Oscar: You’re here monday right? Let’s do it then
Oscar: You can decide the place
Lando blinks a few times. He’s not here Monday. He always leaves first thing after a race. But it hardly matters. They don’t have another day they can reschedule this to. Jet fuel and itineraries are secondary. This comes first. He has to say yes. Why is he treating this like a date?
It’s definitely not a date. Not that it needs saying. But it’s starting to feel less like a casual get-together. Dinner today would’ve made sense. Dinner on Monday feels premeditated. Too earnest and too deliberate that it doesn’t suit Oscar at all.
Me: yea?
Me: ok i’ll let you know
He thinks of food places in America. There's McDonald’s. KFC. What else? Burger King?
You can’t take Oscar, your hot date, to a Chuck E. Cheese for your first date, is a real thought that crosses Lando’s head.
The question sticks. What’s appropriate here? He can’t quite find the middle ground. If he goes too high-end, it tilts into date-territory. If he swings the other way and lands on Chuck E. Cheese. Well. He hopes Oscar has a better sense of humor than he’s let on all these years.
Lando celebrates a P4 finish by arranging a hookup on Monday. He cancelled his flight for his non-date with Oscar, so he might as well pick up some collateral.
He finds that chronic blue balls are a thing even when you’ve been coming regularly. He’s reached a point where he’s realized he needs something better than his own fist. The fact that he has to reach that conclusion feels a lot sadder than realizing his hairline has been pushing back since age 18.
He arrives at his hookup guy’s flat and rings the bell. Not that he actually needs to. He’d just talked to the guy thirty seconds ago on the phone and told him he was standing right outside the door. Alas, gay men. They need a lot of reassurance.
He’s swinging on the balls of his feet, trying not to be too jittery about the fact that potentially anyone passing by the corridor could recognize him, even if he has his hood pulled up.
The door opens, and Lando is immediately hit in the face with the heavy scent of Lynx Africa. Which basically dictates that he is going to have a massive migraine in the next fifteen minutes. Hurrah.
Lando hadn’t asked for a face picture beforehand, mostly because he would have had to return the favor. And then it would’ve led to a similar headline that he was trying his best from ever hitting the tabloids: Lando Norris Is, Unsurprisingly, Still Gay and Horny.
He doesn’t do faceless hookups. They’re too risky. But it’s reaching a tipping point. He can’t just jerk off all the time.
The man is not a creep. Probably. He didn’t react in any odd way to seeing Lando’s face. No signs of recognition that would usually make Lando zip out the door in an instant. He isn’t a 70 year old man pretending to be his age so he can attract younger men, and to be honest Lando wouldn’t even mind that scenario if said 70 year old man was at least mildly hot and somewhat respectful.
Such is the dire state of things.
His name is John, which Lando really hopes he can get past. It’s not spelled the same as Jon, his fitness coach, his older brother figure since early childhood, except that it is the same in every meaningful way because it’s the same pronunciation and the same inflection and the same sound when he opens his mouth.
He briefly considers asking for a middle name instead, but that’s just creepy and stalker-ish and will open the floor up for further questions directed back at Lando. That’s the last thing he needs. He just needs to turn his brain completely off and get fucked. That’s all.
John is nice enough, as far as anonymous hookups go. But it’s clear he expects Lando to take the more assertive, dominant role. Lando was heavily hoping for the exact opposite. He almost laughs at his own situation because. He remembers reading John’s profile. Bisexual and vers. Same as Lando. Looks like both of them hate making decisions.
Lando goes first, mostly because he always wants the other person to think the best of him. So what if the last thing he wants right now is to top someone. He’ll still be up for anything. He’s a good sport. He’s always been told that.
John’s cradling a mug of coffee that Lando nudges him to put aside. Some of it spills as Lando leans in for a kiss. But it’s fine because the guy smiles into it.
Lando can smell the coffee on his breath, and when he licks into his mouth, he tastes it, too.
John’s an okay kisser. But Lando has never really had any major issues with how anyone kisses him, so maybe he’s just not that picky.
They stumble backward toward the bed until John’s calves hit the wooden frame. Lando shoves him back, and the guy’s spine hits the mattress.
He blinks a few times, looking a little shell-shocked by the sudden change in Lando’s demeanor. But he recovers just as quickly and sits right back up. He peers up into Lando’s eyes as he palms over the stubborn imprint in Lando’s grey joggers.
Lando didn’t bother putting together a look today. What’s the point if the outfit you meticulously pick out is just going to come off in a few minutes anyway?
He’s distracted by the guy’s expression. His smile gets bigger as he palms his cock.
“This should’ve been your opener,” he says, finger tracing the outline of his tip. “Shouldn’t have bothered with words, really. A picture would’ve been enough.”
Lando’s flattered. He thinks. But at some point, it doesn’t feel like anything to hear that. Maybe it’s the opposite now. He wants to get railed. He’s tired of giving. He wants someone to take the reins instead of conferring power to Lando just because he’s got a few inches on them.
“You want me to shut up that bad?”
His joggers get tugged straight down to his knees. “When did I say that? God, Scorpios are so sensitive.”
The man isn’t joking at all, but Lando clearly had been. He immediately wishes he hadn’t entertained him when the guy asked what his star sign was earlier in their chat. It was the second message. Which was the same morning as today.
Still, John isn’t deterred. He tucks his boxers under his balls and watches Lando’s fully hard cock in awe for a few seconds. “Fucking hell.”
Lando’s hands tangle in the man’s hair, gripping it tightly. “What do you think?” he asks, but his heart’s not in it. Which clearly isn’t important to his body, seeing as he’s still completely rock hard. “Aren’t you lucky?”
He’s being a little shit, and he usually doesn’t get like this unless he’s had a few drinks. Right now, he is stone cold sober, plus it’s literally early morning.
To his surprise, John merely nods in total earnest. Behold the absolute power of a huge cock.
Lando wants to take a clever dig at the guy, but for the life of him, he can't remember John’s star sign. Aries? Capricorn? You really can’t do a clever comedic callback if you have a shit memory, Lando is learning.
Thirty minutes later, it’s over. The surprisingly good blowjob, the prep with the lube, eating the guy out, fucking him. It’s uninspiring, but at least Lando came.
The immediate aftermath is always the worst part because of the sudden, aggressive return of logic that Lando’s come to abhor.
He’s already reaching for his grey joggers before John has even fully opened his eyes.
"You're leaving?" John asks, propping himself up on one elbow, looking slightly rumpled and confused.
"Yeah, sorry, mate," Lando says, pulling his hoodie back over his head. He avoids looking at the spilled coffee on the nightstand.
Lando slips his phone into his pocket, and glides out the door before the cloying body spray permanently embeds itself into his sinuses.
He thinks about how it would’ve gone if this were someone else’s apartment he was walking out of. Maroon shirts.
Ugh. It’s disgusting how his mind keeps returning to Oscar this past week.
He already knows the dinner’s going to be a disaster. At the very absolute least, he tells himself, he’s going to get a decent plate of food out of the ordeal. And if Oscar happens to wear those tight shorts to the restaurant, Lando will just have to pray that his mind doesn’t wander again.
He might have to get a chastity cage ordered on Amazon same day delivery. And if Oscar, heavens forbid, truly goes with that tight shirt and shorts combo, he might have to lock Lando Jr. up for the night.
Lando shows up to the restaurant, agreeably early for perhaps the first time in his life.
He stands just inside the entrance, feeling the anger start to make the blood throb at his temples. He pulls out his phone and shoots a furious text to Max. The one who’d recommended the place.
Me: this is so overkill
Me: watch your fucking back
Me: u fucking prick
It feels like salt in the wound when he’s finally led to his table by a 3 person formation of staff. The menu has no prices listed. Every single dish is something he can only attempt to pronounce. The throbbing in his head hits a new gear.
Oscar walks in not five minutes later. Before he can stop himself, Lando finds a massive, genuine smile breaking across his face just watching him approach the table.
And then he catches himself and wipes the smile clean off his face. Oscar’s not his girl, and this isn’t a date. He’d get that tattooed on his own forehead if it meant his brain would finally listen to it.
Oscar takes a seat. Even his chair dragging method is pristine. He doesn’t make a scraping sound. Efficient like he is everywhere else.
Oscar orders first. It takes him a grand total of three minutes to decide what he wants, which is a criminal offense by Lando’s standards. It usually takes Lando a solid ten minutes to figure out what to eat at a new place, and that’s when the listings aren’t written entirely in French. But Oscar had announced he was ready, and Lando didn't want to lose out, so he hadn't stopped him from calling the waiter over.
The waiter now stares at Lando and Lando stares back. He darts his eyes to the menu, but it’s futile. He’s about to just point at something completely random and pray it isn’t one of those dead birds served inside a pig’s inflated bladder. Someone at his table had actually ordered that exact dish once at a similar restaurant. He’s not naming any names, but the person in question might rhyme with Bac Brown.
“He’ll have what I’m having, please,” Oscar says after a minute of silence, a hint of frustration in his tone. “Thank you.”
Lando gives one final, pitiful look to the waiter and accepts his fate.
He sort of enjoys the fact that he didn’t have to make the decision. Even if it’s bad, at least he wasn’t the one responsible for choosing it.
Then they’re left alone and Lando physically feels the silence stifling him. He almost wishes the waiter would come back and drag a third chair over just to give them some neutral company.
Oscar’s gaze is incredibly intense. With every passing minute, the vibe gets worse, and Oscar isn’t spitting out the actual reason why he asked Lando to dinner in the first place. Now it’s really starting to feel like a date.
“Let’s make sure we don’t have a repeat of Sunday,” Lando blurts out, his voice fishbowling inside the rim of his wine glass. “Ever. Ever again.”
“Hm.” That gets Oscar going. He uncrosses his arms and takes a swig from his glass as well. “Agreed. Reckon I should’ve switched set-ups for the race.”
“You wanted to experiment during the race? Bit late, no?”
“It wasn’t possible to do any worse. I might as well have.”
“Just admit that I was right in the Friday debriefs,” Lando says. He keeps his eyes glued to the table, swiveling his wine glass in a neat circle, because he’s mildly afraid to look directly at Oscar’s face right now. “Admit the setup I chose was superior. You don’t have to do this whole… thing.”
Oscar goes quiet for a moment. “I disagree,” he finally says in that Oscar-bot tone that Lando’s come to enjoy. “According to the data we had-”
“Data. Data. You sound funny when you say that.”
“-it made sense to use my setup,” Oscar continues, unbothered by the interruption. “The fact that yours ended up being slightly better is… just luck.”
“Yeah. Because I’ve had heaps of that recently.”
Oscar’s eyes narrow. “You know what I’m saying.”
Lando does. Oscar is kind of right, but Lando would rather die than admit that out loud. Plus, it is deeply intriguing to see Oscar getting defensive for once. Lando loves nothing more than prodding at a fresh bruise.
“Your girlfriend likes it when you talk about boring shit on dates like this?”
Truly catastrophic phrasing, even by Lando’s standards. Dates like this, but of course he hadn’t meant to say it in that order.
The way the rest of the words spill from Lando’s mouth is sort of like a natural disaster. “I mean, boring shit like this, on dates. Agh. Just forget what I said.”
It would’ve been fine if he hadn’t tried to correct himself. Now he’s made it weird. He’s told Oscar he’s been sitting here thinking about whether this looks like a date, which is just vehemently stupid. No sane person would have even let that cross their mind.
Oscar raises an eyebrow. “Boring shit? You brought it up. Secondly, I’m right, so I can keep arguing all I want,” he says, taking another sip from his glass. A bigger, heartier one this time. “And, actually, we broke up.”
“Oh,” is all Lando offers. He definitely wasn’t expecting that. Not that he’s particularly saddened to hear it, which probably makes him a bad person. But whatever. It doesn’t even make the top ten worst things he’s done this month.
“Yeah. It was a mutual thing. Not the same goals, or whatnot.”
Lando finds that interesting. Oscar never talks about his relationships. Now it feels like he’s overexplaining, answering questions Lando definitely didn’t ask.
It loops right back to that half-baked thought he had earlier in his hotel room about Oscar being aroused. About how it was practically impossible to imagine this guy horny. Lando’s hearing about Oscar's sex life from his own mouth, yet he still can’t picture anything beyond Oscar holding hands and lying in bed like a Ken doll. No genitals.
Lando’s not even turned off by that idea. He reckons he could make it work. That's how dire the situation is.
“So you’re a free agent?”
“Ugh,” Oscar says, his face twisting into a grimace. “Don’t ever say that again.”
Lando lets out a small laugh at that, conceding without much resistance. It had been disgustingly sleazy, now that he hears it out loud. “I just meant,” he begins, hoping to clear his name. “Are you interested in dating? Or something simpler for now?”
“Haven’t really given it much thought, actually. You?”
Lando likes that he’s getting those awkward first date butterflies. Good. This means something. He’s sure it means something. “I’m open.”
Oscar sets his glass down. “What does that mean?”
He shrugs, fingers drifting to the napkin in front of him, folding it once without thinking, then unfolding it again. There’s a restless energy in his legs, a stupid urge to stretch them under the table, but he holds back, careful not to risk brushing against Oscar and making the moment even more loaded than it already feels. “I dunno. Can’t seem to decide.”
Oscar leans back in his chair. The swoop of his hair is charming today. He has a lopsided smirk when he asks, “But are you a one-person guy or…?”
Oh.
The Ken doll with no penis or sex drive just asked Lando if he’s fucking multiple people at once.
Lando doesn’t know if he should nod or shake his head and ends up doing an odd diagonal head movement that’s a half and half mix of the two. How should he explain to a straight guy that it’s different for him? A good first step would be to come out. He’s not doing it at a French restaurant.
Lando just wants to do whoever he wants whenever he wants and he doesn’t care if he’s proving every stereotype right. Instead of saying that, he settles for, “I’m whatever we agree to.”
“Hm. Good.”
Good? Like he’s grading Lando’s answers. Why is Oscar even inquiring about this? It’s all very, very odd.
But the thought is cut short when the starters arrive.
Lando tries a bite. It’s good. Which is worse, somehow. Because if it was bad, he could at least be loud about it. Complain about Fewtrell’s choice. At least now he can try and take credit for it.
He swallows, trying to keep his eyes strictly locked on the remaining smear of sauce on his plate, but his discipline fails him the exact way it always does. His gaze drifts upward anyway, tracking past the condensation pooling around his water glass, until it lands squarely on the other side of the table.
Oscar is objectively, and Lando is able to recognize this the same way he'd recognize any neutral fact, quite attractive. The way he holds eye contact a half second longer than is strictly comfortable. The fact that he's wearing a white shirt and has made absolutely zero effort and still looks like that.
It's not relevant. Oscar is straight. Oscar had a girlfriend in Lando’s reality up until approximately five minutes ago. Oscar is a colleague and a competitor and an occasional headache with a racing license.
"You chose well," Oscar says, glancing around.
Lando did. In the loosest possible sense of the word chose. What actually happened is that he panicked and texted Max, who texted someone else, who texted someone's assistant, who apparently had opinions about nice restaurants in Texas. There are now three degrees of separation between Lando and this decision, and zero of that is visible to Oscar, which is the important thing.
"Yeah," Lando says. "I know places."
"You know places."
"Mhm. I know people who know places."
That's the thing about Oscar, Lando thinks. He lets you keep talking until you've said too much, and then he just looks at you with those eyes and you realize you've handed him something you didn't mean to. It's a patience thing. A control thing. Lando finds it deeply annoying. He also finds himself trying to perform well in front of it, which is even more annoying.
He still doesn't know why he's here.
That's the thing gnawing at the corner of this whole evening.
Oscar texted him. Oscar proposed this dinner. Oscar, who in the entire span of their working relationship has never once suggested they do anything beyond what the schedule requires. They've eaten near each other. They've traveled near each other. They've sat in debriefs and talked at each other and around each other and occasionally directly into each other's faces when the frustration spilled over. But Oscar has never, not once, said do you want to get dinner.
So Lando is here, trying to reverse-engineer the invitation, and drawing blanks.
"Can I ask you something?" Lando says.
"You're going to regardless."
"Why'd you ask me to dinner?"
Oscar doesn't look up from his plate. "You were free."
"I wasn’t, though."
Oscar raises an eyebrow. "You watched TV in your hotel room."
Lando doesn’t bother asking how he knew that. Lucky guess. It’s not a reach anyway.
He almost confesses that he had to reschedule his flight for this likely inconsequential homoerotic meal with a colleague but he stops himself in time. He can’t just admit he’s down bad to the guy he’s realizing he’s down bad for.
The mains arrive as a welcome interruption.
The meat and vegetables are arranged like an abstract painting. Oscar had ordered for him and Lando had accepted this. He’d liked it. The accepting part. The taking away of his autonomy to decide on a succulent French meal part. He wants to feel like an inanimate object sometimes.
He eats.
It's good. It's the same as the starter in that way, but he'd never admit this to Max, who’d clutched with the recommendation. Because that would be proving Max right, and Lando would rather ask a firing squad to open fire on him.
Oscar eats badly, which Lando always finds fascinating. Not disgusting like talking-with-mouth-full badly, but he holds his fork wrong and shoves his food around the plate. Like no one ever corrected it and he never thought to care.
He cuts things in a way that's slightly jarring. For a guy who is allegedly all efficiency, he's kind of a mess here.
"That’s shocking," Lando tells him and almost wants to ask for backup napkins because there’s no way that’s going in his mouth without dripping or falling.
Oscar looks down at his fork. Looks back up. "It does the job."
"Does the job for a caveman, maybe."
Oscar looks at the fork again. Adjusts his grip for approximately three seconds. "Better?"
"Whatever, man. Just eat."
"Mmm." He takes a big bite. Still holding it wrong. "You're very concerned with how I do things."
Lando realizes this might be true and reroutes. "I'm a detail-oriented person."
"You are many things," Oscar says, and that's all he says. He just leaves it there. Slightly loaded and completely unresolved, like a sentence that ended mid-
Lando drinks his wine.
It's their second glass. Maybe third. The bottle on the table is doing its best.
They've talked about the race. The setup, again, circling the same territory. Lando's right, Oscar knows he's right and won't say it, this is their dynamic in every professional context and apparently also in French restaurants. They've talked about their schedules. They've talked about Mercedes in the way that teammates talk about an external threat. Not quite solidarity, not quite camaraderie. Just shared acknowledgment of a problem.
They haven't talked about what Oscar said about Lando's current relationship status. Hm. Good. The way he said it. Whatever that was.
Lando had filed that under things he's not touching and sealed the folder.
"I've got something-" Oscar starts, then stops. He reaches into his jacket pocket for his phone.
"Is this about the setup data," Lando says. "Because I’ll leave. I will get up and leave."
"Here," Oscar says, and holds his phone out across the table. "Tell me if that looks level to you."
It's a photo of something in his apartment. A floating shelf. It's slightly crooked and Oscar apparently cannot tell and needs a second opinion, which is the most human thing Lando has ever witnessed him do and he's going to hold it over him for at least six months.
“My girlfriend- my ex and I had a fight over it.”
“Are you taking the piss. That’s why you broke up?”
“No. Of course not. Just answer the question.”
Lando takes the phone. Different goals, his ass.
He tilts it. Squints. Opens his mouth to deliver his verdict.
But then a notification drops down from the top and he can’t help that his eyes track it.
You've been outbid! Current bid: €1,200 on 'LANDO NORRIS WORN TRAINERS (SPA 2024)' – Increase your max bid now.
Lando reads it once.
Reads it again before it disappears.
The words are very clear. The words are not ambiguous. Lando is familiar with the trainers in question because he threw one of them into the crowd at Spa and the other one is presumably in a landfill somewhere.
Someone had caught it. And then listed it. And Oscar, who is sitting across from him right now, who ordered his food for him, who asked him to dinner out of nowhere, has been bidding on it. Is currently losing the bid. Has been outbid by someone who is apparently willing to pay more than twelve hundred euros for a shoe Lando wore.
He sets the phone face down on the table.
"Level," Lando says. "Needs to go up on the left a bit."
"How much?"
"Like a centimeter."
Oscar nods. Takes the phone back. Doesn't look at the screen. His face is doing absolutely nothing.
Lando picks up his wine.
His brain is doing laps.
Okay. So. Options. He could say something. He could address it and make a joke because he's good at jokes, jokes are his native habitat, he could turn this into something funny and defuse it before it becomes whatever it might otherwise become. He could pretend he didn't see it. He could ask directly. He could-
He says nothing.
Because here's the thing. If he says nothing, he gets to keep watching. And if he says something, Oscar shuts down completely and Lando gets nothing.
He's also trying to figure out what Oscar even wants with the shoe.
Lando thinks about the most charitable explanation first, because he's an optimist or something like it. Birthday present. It's coming up. Oscar knows this. Maybe. The whole team knows this, and there are probably spreadsheets. Maybe he thought it'd be funny. Maybe it's a practical joke. He'd throw the shoe back at Lando's head or present it in a box with a bow, and they'd both laugh, and it would be weird in a normal way.
Except.
When has Oscar ever gotten him a birthday present? When has Oscar ever remembered his birthday?
What is their relationship, actually, if you had to write it down. Teammates. Colleagues. Two people who occupy the same professional space and occasionally eat near each other. They've never done this before. This dinner. This whole...whatever this is. Oscar doesn't joke with him, not really. Oscar doesn't have that kind of ease with him. Lando has better relationships with his previous teammates in his sleep. With Carlos he'd have been at the hotel bar three hours ago. With Daniel there wouldn't have been a hotel, there would've been something inadvisable.
With Oscar there's this. A restaurant Lando chose by committee and a shelf that needs moving.
And a shoe going for twelve hundred euros.
Lando looks at Oscar across the table. Oscar is checking something else on his phone now. Completely neutral. Completely contained. Hair still doing that unsanctioned thing near his brow.
Oscar who looks at Lando sometimes like he's a mildly interesting problem. Like he's something to be assessed. Oscar who never, not once, in all the months they've worked together, gave Lando any indication that he was anything more than a variable in the same equation. Oscar who doesn't even seem to particularly like him on most days.
Lando had worn trainers one day.
Oscar is bidding on one of them at dinner.
He wants to go through his browser history. He can't, obviously. But he wants to know the extent. Whether the shoe is a thing that makes sense in the context of other things Lando doesn't know about yet.
Maybe he's just a foot guy. That would be the simplest answer. There are a lot of those. More than people admit. Lando's not going to judge. Maybe just a little.
He sort of respects it. That's the messed up part. He didn’t imagine Oscar would be a bigger degenerate than him, but he has him beat here as well. Lando’s going to have to find another niche.
He finishes his wine and looks out at the rest of the restaurant and tries to look like someone whose head is completely empty.
"Another bottle?" Oscar asks.
"Yeah," Lando says. "Definitely."