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Ever since they had started working together, Jon was more for Lando than just his physiotherapist. Not in a romantic, let alone sexual context of course, since this would have not only been morally wrong (Jon was a paid professional after all!), but also illegal, considering the age difference when they had first met as well as the mentor-protégé-relationship -
But he was ‘more’ in probably pretty much every other way:
Even though the Lando liked to portray it exactly like that, Jon was not only ‘that guy who tortures him with brutal workouts and neck-training’; and neither only a professional who was hired to bring out the best in him and make sure that Britain’s rising star on the skies of motorsport was all fit and free from any ouchies before a race -
No, despite all the joking, they both knew that this was not true - starting already with that Jon did not at all feel like an employee at all to Lando, just like the Norris-family did not feel like a typical employer to Jon.
More like it, the older one was his friend.
A confidant.
A familiar face in all of the traveling that he had to do for racing, from the very beginning.
It had been just when they’d started working together - Jon and this boy who’d been smaller by at least a whole head than the others, but so incredibly fast behind the wheel! -, that Lando had both started competing on an worldwide international level in karting as well as gathered his first experiences in real cars, with the Ginetta Junior series - which had been a very exciting time for the young racer, but simultaneously also a very challenging one:
Cause now that his racing schedule had been even fuller, his parents had not been able to accompany their son to each and every race anymore like before. As long as he had only been karting mostly in the UK or maybe with a handful of events abroad throughout the year, they had always made it possible that at least one of them would come and watch their second-oldest on the track, and cheer for him, because they of course had known how much he’d needed that. But with the far-flung destinations of the FIA karting world championship, plus the twenty additional dates with Ginetta, this obviously had no longer been compatible with the general family life - they had three more kids after all, who needed their parents just as much; and they would have never wanted to either favor nor disadvantage one over the others.
So they had still showed up at the tracks whenever possible, sometimes even as a whole family, which had been the greatest for Lando; but for most of the weekends, especially the far abroad ones, he had been on his own out there. Every now and then, his manager Mark had also been around, but most often, it had only been him and Jon from then on - and therethrough, it had naturally resulted in that the physio had taken on the role of Lando’s personal cheerleader and encourager, as well as of simply a well-needed constant in those pretty turbulent times:
Because although it was unquestionable that it had been Lando’s absolute dream to become a famous racing driver one day and he’d been accordingly thrilled that this parents had been able to make it possible for him to actually try and pursue said dream - he had still been a boy of only 14 years in the end. And as such, all of the (constantly) increasing hustle and bustle as well as the many foreign places they’d been traveling to in such short time, being so far from home so often and meeting so many new people, had been quite a lot to deal with at times - especially for such a sensitive character that Jon knew Lando was.
Back then as now, his protégé had always avoided to show this vulnerable side of his to others and instead had rather tried to smile things away and act tough, as if nothing and nobody could touch him - and to be fair, he had also always been quite good at it (…probably also because of the difficulties he’d had with his peers at school), so you could have easily bought it from him if you hadn’t known any better-
But different to most people, Jon did know better: Since already pretty early in their relationship, he knew what was laying beneath the facade of the lighthearted jokester that Lando always tried to mimic: Namely a pretty insecure soul.
Even if it hadn’t got really bad until the F3- and F2-times, Lando had suffered from anxiety all along; in general as well as in particular in relation to his performance on track:
Once he’d actually got to sit in the car and the visor of his helmet had gone down, the young man from Bristol had been fierce and fearless and had driven his heart out on each and every circuit, leaving the others in the dust like nobody’s business, yes - but beforehand, he’d usually had the jitters like crazy and could have barely sat (or stood) still; starting already with the first arrival at the track, before any training session or anything had even taken place, and getting gradually worse until race day and the final hours until the lights went out.
Countless times, Jon had had to stop him from nibbling on his nails while they’d been waiting for his mechanics to finish preparing the car for him to get in, or had to talk him down during lunch, when he had barely been able to get one bite down because he’d already been in the start-box in his head.
It had got better meanwhile though, after one more strong peak when he’d come into F1 and everything had been just so new and so much bigger than before - and by now, Jon had a feeling that his protégé had really ‘arrived’ and ‘settled’ in the highest of Formula series, and was on a good way to excelling also here-
But in his teenage days, he’d used to get nervous about pretty much everything and everywhere, even off-track, and most often, there had not been much that Jon could have actually done about it, neither to help him, let alone to prevent these attacks from coming, even - cause that was the thing with anxiety: It just happened. You couldn’t plan with it at all.
The only thing you could control about this backstabbing whim of nature, was how you wanted to handle it - and for that reason, Jon had taught Lando some breathing techniques and a few basics of progressive muscle relaxation, as a self-help-tool for whenever it would go bad - like that one Sunday where the younger one had almost lost it on the podium when he’d realised how many eyes had been fixed on him in this very moment…!
This had been a very dicey moment, in which Jon had had no other option to help than to try and make him look at him, and to calm him through his looks, just like he’d always given his best (and did so still) to just radiate a general sense of calm and composure alongside Lando anyway, to wordlessly reassure him: It’s all good. We got this, okay?
Plus, to - whenever he noticed that something was been seething inside his mentee - seek talks with him and try to take his mind off the worries before these feelings could boil over, and to instead bring his focus back to the good things - such as that he was following his big dream of becoming a racing driver here and how far he’d already come; not to forget the many cool places he thereby got to visit, which his nasty classmates were probably only dreaming of to go on vacation to!
Most of the time, such a little reminder had already been enough and had done wonders to the anxious teenager’s soul.
But also in the more concrete cases - like when that the youngster had been worried about all the other, mostly older and (in his view) so much more talented kids alongside him on the grid, and about that he might not be able to keep up with them this time;
or whenever he’d happened to crash and get injured and had to go to the track doctors or even to the hospital, which had scared him a lot without his parents;
or also when just a wave of homesickness had hit Lando in the evening and he had been missing his family and his own bedroom so much that he’d been on the verge of tears, sure that he wouldn’t get a wink of sleep in the foreign bed -, Jon had done everything within his power to help his protégé: Be it with an encouraging pat on the shoulders and talking him into the right racing mind-set, because fuck yeah, he was a champion!;
or by keeping him company and holding his sweaty hand on the examination table while they’d been waiting for the x-ray results, telling him bad jokes and funny anecdotes about how stupidly he himself had happened to get hurt so far, deliberately making a total fool out of himself as to distract Lando from his pains and to please just stop this lower lip from quivering -
or by suggesting that they, before going to bed, could make use of that forbiddenly large flat screen in Lando’s hotel room and still watch a funny movie together, before the physio would head over to his own room next door then.
And to be fair, his success rate was applaudably high! Most often, he’d managed to brighten up the younger one’s mood again like that, but of course - blame it on stellar constellations or whatever - there had also been days where even the best-meant distraction attempt had not worked out and Lando’s feelings had overwhelmed him still, so that he had rather needed a shoulder to cry on instead of a movie night or a series of anti-jokes - which, in turns, and increased Jon’s anxiety then:
Cause to be honest, he had never been particularly good at comforting people; or at least had he never felt in any way confident of what to do when tears were falling (and he still wasn’t), no matter if it had been girlfriends or family members or whoever else - but despite his personal discomfort and helplessness: How on earth could he have pushed this small-boned kid, that Lando had been back then and that he also today sometimes still saw in him, away?
This timid child who, overchallenged with the external stimuli, expectations weighing on him and disappointments to deal with, had needed nothing more than just… a hug? A firm, honest hug and someone who he could lean onto for a while, until he’d regained composure? Someone who he could trust in all this tohubohu?
Never ever could Jon have brought himself to do that.
So he had repeatedly swallowed his own insecurities down and had instead put his focus fully on Lando and on giving him the freaking best hug in the world, in the hope that it would somehow help him, even though he of course knew that it could never replace the comfort of parental consolation, dang it! - but judging by how quickly the tears from the water-color green eyes usually had dried up again, he seemingly had not acted too stupidly.
(Besides that, as a last resort, there had also always been telephones to make contact with home. But except for two or three times, that hadn’t even been necessary and they’d been able to handle it just as the two of them.)
And even if he, deep inside, had always been very relieved when these weak moments had been over again without scathe, each and every of these had also bound them together even more; and in the blink of an eye (in hindsight), they’d grown to be more than just a trainer and his client.
Maybe Jon had back then been something like a best-friend-replacement for Lando, who’d not been treated too nicely by his classmates ever since they’d known. As far as the older one could assess, those pubescent pricks had only been green with envy over that he’d got to skip so many days of school for his racing - and instead of wasting only one second to think about how difficult it might also be to both compete in professional sports and keep up with the curriculum and that this apparent ‘fortune’ was rather a disadvantage, they had rather held his special treatment against him.
Lando always claimed though that he’d never been really bullied, but neither had his classmates showed any effort or interest to include him in - more like it, they had simply avoided the boy who’d been allowed to cut classes on a regular basis; which, in addition to his said frequent absence as well as his general clumsiness around other people, had sadly pushed him into the position of an outcast for most of his school years. And that was already more than enough to unsettle a young, growing soul at this age where everyone was already confused enough with themselves, desperately searching for their place in the world and a way to fit in, as well as people to belong to.
However, on two occasions, Jon had also spotted suspicious bruises on his torso during a massage treatment, which Lando had insisted that he’d sustained from the sports lesson. He hadn’t gone into detail, only mumbled something about his clumsiness and stuff, you know? - and although the older one had been really curious about what type of sports for goodness’ sake they’d been covering at the moment, so that he happened to look like that afterwards, which to him had rather appeared as if he’d been pushed around or worse, he also had not asked any further - it had been obvious that Lando hadn’t wanted to talk about it and he hadn’t wanted to put him under pressure.
So he had only spared the bruised areas during the massage and had been a little more clement with him that weekend, but likewise had he kept a closer eye on the boy subsequently, especially after the second time - during the first time, Jon had almost believed him his clumsiness-story, but two times? That had not only sounded fishy.
And although he’d been aware that there hadn’t been much he could do, he had sworn to himself that he wouldn’t let that become a regular thing. If there had been a third time, he’d would have sought talks with Lando’s parents or the teachers or pay his school a visit himself, to hold these nasty kids a lesson about good manners - which was why a part of him had also been relieved when Lando had quit school some time later, in order to fully focus on the racing.
And that had been only of the occasions where Lando had also felt like the younger brother he’d never had for Jon.
Throughout the years, he had anyway - what it felt like - got adopted into the Norris’ family, since he had used to spent a great deal of time also at the house of Lando’s parents before the latter had moved into his own place; and his parents had always been very nice to him - the whole family, actually.
Their company had rarely, if not even never, felt like a work-related affair or like the typical employer-employee-kind of thing. Even in the beginning, they had never made him feel like the guy who was only hired to keep their son fit, but had extended a warm welcome to him and had expressed their gratitude for his great work and efforts - like by regularly inviting him to join them six for lunch respectively dinner after Lando and him had finished training; which was an offer that he could hat never turned down - because Lando’s mum was a marvelous chef!
But even aside Cisca Norris’ amazing cooking skills, it was just the whole personal approach in general that made this job so great for Jon and gave so much more purpose to the whole endeavor of getting this young boy into the masterclass of motorsport than just the aim itself.
Again, Lando had pretty quickly felt like the little brother he’d never had but always wanted to him; and also the other way around, Lando seemed to have seen something like a big brother in him as well: Back in 2014, the age difference between Olli and him had sadly been quite crucial for their relationship - with Oliver already being 18 and Lando just having turned 15 (and being a bit of a late-bloomer), they had been at very different points of their development and simply had not shared many similar interests.
But although Lando and Jon were even wider apart in terms of age - nine years, to be precise -, this somehow had never mattered between them. More like it, Lando had seemed to enjoy to have someone to look up to and to orientate himself by-
Okay, also someone to pull shenanigans with, which they had also done often enough - like tying Mark’s shoelaces together when he’d been holding a nap during a red flag in F3 once, or the many silly fun-competitions they had during training (like: who can balance their water bottle longer on their head? Who’s faster from one side of the gym to the other? Who can carry more medicine balls at once, or do more pull-ups in a row while naming British F1 drivers? Loser pays for lunch!); or that one time when Jon had allowed Lando to drive his road car in an abandoned parking lot after a race, actually in the endeavor to teach him about traffic rules, but what had ended in drag races and drifting for the poor Ford Focus -
But no, despite all the funny stuff, Lando had probably needed (and also seen) Jon more as someone to admire and to learn from - an older sibling, in short.
At some point however, Jon had even had a feeling as if this brotherly admiration had turned into more and that Lando might have a little crush on him - of the kind that you, when you’re a teenager, develop on pretty much everyone who is nice to you and / or is a bit older than you and just ‘cool’ in your eyes - not that Jon thought of himself as particularly ‘cool’, but he probably was for Lando.
Fortunately though, such a flash of puppy love most of the time was as innocent as it was short-lived, and also for them, it had been over again only two weeks or so later.
Until today, neither of them had ever addressed this topic, and Jon at least also wasn’t planning to ever to do so in the future - he just didn’t want to embarrass Lando in hindsight if it really was true. With probably every other person, it would have would been perfect teasing material for the whole next decade, but regarding Lando, he’d rather leave him in the belief that he hadn’t noticed anything back then.
Because then as now, he was well aware that the racer did not come to trust easily and still preferred to remain close as a clam towards other people (…even them had taken some time to warm up to each other!) - and it was just not worth to risk the trust they had built meanwhile for any stupid jokes.
Cause that he indeed was a very trusted person in Lando’s life had been showing when the younger one, around the F3-time, had opened up to him about his confusion about wether he might maybe, uhm, like… boys.
Truth be told, that news had taken Jon quite by surprise, both in terms of timing - he’d just been assisting the younger one to stretch his leg muscles after training when he had picked up this topic totally out of the blue - as well as that he’d simply not seen this coming at all - mostly because he had just never thought about it in the first place, cause needless to say, this was none of his business.
Of course he’d been aware that Lando had never showed any increased interest in girls, but if anything, the older one would have assumed that this was because of the little time he’d had outside of racing and traveling, or for the reason that he simply had not felt ‘ready’ for such stuff yet - which Jon would have never judged, cause he himself hadn’t been very popular with the ladies in his teenage years either and had needed some more time to get things on as well. But again, he hadn’t even wasted a thought on this stuff before, since this was not at all his business.
But on that afternoon, when Lando had stammeringly opened up to him about his probable preference for boys over girls, he’d realised that his mentee had no longer been just lagging behind his peers as the typical ‘late-bloomer’, but must have already carried this topic around with himself for quite some time, telling from the way that his voice had been trembling and that expression of worry in his eyes. It had been beyond debate how much this question must have been weighing on him and tormenting his mind.
And although he’d had even less experience with spontaneous coming-out’s than with drying tears, Jon had given his best to talk Lando out of the idea that being gay was a bad thing in any way, as well as to reassure him that it was totally fine if he liked boys and that he could take all the time he needed to figure it out. And that it wouldn’t make a difference about who he was as a person.
Apparently, it had been exactly what the younger one had needed to hear, cause from there, he’d gradually started to relax and to open up more bit by bit, so that they’d ended up having a very wholesome conversation, like two adults on equal terms - which had not only done Lando noticeably good, to be able to talk to someone about the whole affair instead of only dealing with it alone, but in the course of which Jon had also got to know that he’d been the first person in general that the younger one had ever told about this - not even his family yet.
And although the physio, despite being hetero himself, could understand that it probably was extra-scary to come out to your parents - aka the closest and most important people in your life that you’d never want to lose or repel - and that you for that reason would want to test it at someone else first, who you also trust, but who is not that close to you — despite this knowledge, Jon’s heart had even on his drive back home still been warm from the honour that Lando had actually chosen him for that - that he had been trusted him enough to let him in on that very important secret.
Truth be told, best-friend-/ big-brother-replacement, motivator, listener and consoler as well as trusted soul (and whatever else he was for Lando) was a lot more than he’d thought he’d sign up for when he’d accepted the job offer that Lando’s dad had made him, for sure! - but nothing was further from him than regretting it.
And yes, it still was a demanding challenge, probably now more than ever - because competing F1 was on quite another level than karting or Ginetta Junior, in pretty much every way; and although he’d already worked with clients of all age groups beforehand, also with teenagers and kids, he had not at all been aware of what efforts it meant to do a longterm-1:1-coaching, nor of how many grey hairs and nights short of sleep this kid in particular would cost him.
Which was fortunate also, because most likely, he wouldn’t even have started the job if he had known before; and on some days, he even caught himself asking in his head why he was even putting himself through this, when he could have it so much easier working in a gym just around the corner or the like-
But the answer to that instantly became apparent again whenever he was at the track with Lando and saw his speed and determination to make it to the top even in this series; and all the more when he looked back at how far they’d already come together: Starting in senior karting, doing single seaters all over Europe and the world, and now actually competing in F1, the top flight of motorsport! Him and this tiny kid from the karting tracks! Who had seen this coming, hu?
But it wasn’t even only about the list of achievements. By now, the work with Lando was just much more than just a nice addition to his portfolio or a financially lucrative business - he liked the youngster for the person he was.
Maybe he was biased because he’d never worked with anyone before long enough to build such a deep relationship as he had with Lando, but he was indeed a very fine lad; and even when he’d sometimes annoyed him like hell when he yet again tried to wriggle himself out of the training schedule or even cheated during the exercises - he’d never want to have done this journey so far with anyone else but this cheeky bastard; and he was so thankful that he was allowed to accompany him on his way and to watch this little kid grow into a great young man, who he was happy and proud to be able to call his friend-
But when he on that one afternoon in Singapore in late September 2019 walked into his protégé’s driver’s room with some fresh towels that he’d just picked up from the team’s laundry department, he instantly knew that their relationship would face changes in the near future, and that he soon would be mostly his performance coach again instead of all the other roles he’d taken on over the years:
Because even if Lando and Carlos jumped apart at an instant, acting totally innocent and as if Jon had not just caught them slouching so close to each other on the massage table as if they’d been about to kiss - they couldn’t fool him.
And for that reason, the older one - after he’d deliberately casually dropped the towels off and had shut the door behind himself again, leaving the two back on their own - couldn’t help but feel a grin light up on his face: Cause no matter how often they’d stressed in this half a minute that Carlos had just been giving Lando some useful tips for the race, since it would be his first Grand Prix under flood light and he also didn’t have much experience with such heat, plus the time-shift, and so on and so on - the personal coach had well-seen his protégé’s rosy cheeks; and also has been working long enough with him now to know what he looked like when he was excited - not anxious, but positively, madly excited - as well as when he wanted something.
He’d seen this look often enough in the past, for example whenever Lando had been starting from pole and had been overly hungry to claim this trophy as his, or when he was on the golf course and was determined to hole in the next shot, or also when he was just ogling with the popsicles in the freezer in the MTC canteen after a hard session in the sim-
It was just this look that Lando was looking at Carlos with.
Actually, Jon had a feeling for longer already that the Spaniard and his protégé could be more for each other than just teammates, but just like with Lando’s crush on him when he’d been younger, he had kept it to himself - as long as Lando didn’t want to talk about it himself, he wouldn’t ask.
But on that very day, he had received the proof that his favourite client would soon get another, better, more wholesome shoulder to cry on; a better hand to hold; a better motivator and movie buddy - and that he would get to mostly only be his physio again.
And although he had done all these things gladly for Lando, and would do so again at an instant, for sure! - he, at the same time, was very happy for him to have apparently found someone who could give him even more than he could. Because Lando deserved it. He deserved to feel and be loved, and after having worked with him for so long, Jon also knew him well enough to sense how much he needed and had probably already been yearning for that, too - which made the knowledge of the scene he’d just witnessed extra-sweet.
And it was for that reason that he just couldn’t wipe that contented smirk off his face when smoothly jogged down the stairs into the lounge area of the hospitality again - smiling broader than anyone in the history of physiotherapists, racing drivers or just mankind as a whole had ever smiled over getting degraded.