Work Text:
“Do you think I should move to Monaco?” Lando asks Daniel one day.
They’re waiting for Charlotte to arrive to brief them on upcoming interviews and media things they have for the weekend, sitting across from each other at a table in the Mclaren hospitality centre.
Dan looks up from his phone, eyebrows raised.
“I dunno.” He shrugs, glances back down at his phone for a second before turning it off. “Why are you asking me?” It’s a complete non-answer, and now Lando’s the one who has to come up with the reason he asked Dan for his opinion in the first place.
In all honesty, he’s just been asking everyone he knows – his family, everyone else at Mclaren, Max, other Max, George, earlier that day, and had received answers ranging from “please don’t” (Max, Fewtrell not Verstappen) to “absolutely” (Verstappen) to “you know, I was actually thinking of moving to Monaco as well, maybe you’d like it there” (George).
“You live in Monaco, right, you know what it’s like? Do you think it’d–” Lando searches around for the words “–suit me? Or, that I’d suit it? One of those.”
“Not sure,” Dan starts, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands. Lando had been expecting a joking answer or a simple “yeah” or “nah” from him, but Dan looks genuinely thoughtful, staring into the distance past Lando.
“You live really close to the factory at the moment, right?” Dan queries eventually, and Lando nods his head. “Yeah, so it’s a lot more of a hassle for me to go to the factory than it probably is for you, so you’d want to, consider that, I suppose, if you want to use the sim or something.” (Lando has) “And uh, there’s a lot less people here, like paparazzi and shit, which is really nice – is that why you’re moving?”
“Thinking of,” Lando corrects, even though he’s mostly made up his mind to move by now, “yeah, it is.” It crosses his mind that Dan must have picked up on Lando’s growing privacy concerns at some point, and he mentally adds it to his cardboard box of ‘things that make him reconsider his initial assessment of Dan as being a bit of a self-centred dick’.
“Yeah, you might like it then,” Dan nods.
He looks like he’s about to add something, but Charlotte is suddenly there and greeting them with a “hello, boys” and the thought is lost.
Being in Monaco also means he and Dan will be in the same place, which might not be that bad.
He texts Dan later.
Me: Thanks for the advice today. Probably going to move sometime over the break 😎
Me: I’ve discussed it with Zak and Andreas, they don’t mind as long as I come back often
Me: So you might end up with me as a neighbour
Me: Which would be cool, you can show me around Monaco 👀
Lando’s not really being serious, doesn’t expect Dan to reply (after all, they’re not that close friends, and he’s not going to pretend there isn’t still some kind of tension between them).
Dan: 👍👍👍👍
Dan: Text me if you need help moving in 😉📲📦📦
He flies to Monaco over the summer break with a suitcase of clothes and not much else (he ends up leaving the house and most of what’s inside to Max (Fewtrell, not Verstappen), on the promise that he’ll crash there any time he has to come to the UK again).
His new apartment would probably be nice, but it doesn’t have any furniture in it, and he’s struck with the feeling of isolation he knew would hit him eventually after moving away from all of his family and friends. Sure, he can still travel (perks of being a millionaire athlete, he supposes), but there’s 500 miles more and a flight away.
A wave of furniture trucks arrive soon after him – there’s A Lot, and while he’s initially hopeful that he can move it in himself, when the sofa arrives he realises it’s wishful thinking. He already knows that Other Max (Verstappen) is somewhere travelling with Kelly, and Charles is in Greece, so neither of them are options.
Lando doesn’t know if Dan would actually follow through with his offer of help, but he opens their Whatsapp thread anyway.
Neither of them has sent the other a message in the two weeks since their last conversation, and it worries Lando that he might be using Dan. He’s been trying to get over his anxiety about asking for help though, and after counting himself down from 10, sends a message before stuffing his phone into his back pocket; then he worries it might not have been clear he was asking for Dan to come and help him, and takes his phone out to message again.
Me: Hey are you in Monaco right now? I’m at my new apartment, and there are so many boxes 😅
Me: If you want to help me move stuff?
Dan: Nah I’m free
Me: Awesome
Dan: Just send me your address 👍
He messages back a link to his apartment building on Google Maps, and sits down on one of the cardboard boxes in the middle of the foyer, pretending not to notice the stink-eye the doorman is giving him.
It’s only 10 minutes later that he hears the foyer doors slide open, and Lando looks up from Instagram.
Dan’s in one of his oversized Speedway shirts and a pair of ripped jorts that show off his thigh tattoo (and Lando tries not to spend too much time looking at his thighs, but it’s also not like he hasn’t searched ‘Daniel Ricciardo tattoos’ before – just out of curiosity, mind, and he’s pretty sure everyone’s googled it at one point or another anyway).
“Hey,” Dan greets him and gives the doorman a “g’day” and a wave, which would be cute if he hadn’t become Lando’s newest nemesis minutes earlier.
Lando reaches out for a high five over a stack of flatpack furniture he thinks is part of his bed frame, but Dan bypasses it completely to pull him into a hug, and Lando’s heart rate doubles .
“Thanks for coming over.” Lando feels like he should say something else, but the way Dan grins at him is distracting.
“All good,” he replies, “I didn’t have anything on. You needed help?”
“Yeah–” Lando looks around at his cardboard kingdom “–that would be really good.”
“No problem.” Daniel immediately grabs the nearest box, and (seemingly effortlessly) takes it to the nearest elevator. Lando follows suit, and starts to stack things inside the lift as Dan waves his arm in front of the doors to keep it from closing.
When it’s full, Dan gestures for Lando to enter with a bow and a flourish (“ladies first”), and follows him as Lando punches in the floor number.
“Keep an eye on this stuff, will you?” Lando shouts to the doorman as the doors close, who doesn’t react (he realises a second afterwards that he might not even speak English – embarrassing).
When they reach his floor, Lando’s the one to wave his arm over the doors while Daniel carries boxes out of the lift, tossing the light ones which clearly have clothes and linen. The boxes are quickly all transferred out of the lift, and as Lando goes to unlock his apartment, he figures he probably could have left it unlocked while he was downstairs.
“You’re definitely going to pay me for this, right?” Dan says, leaning against the wall as Lando tries to figure out which key fits in the lock.
“You’re literally richer than me,” Lando chirps back.
Dan shrugs.
“Yeah, but you could find another way to pay me back.” He’s obviously joking, probably means Lando could take over a media duty for him at the next race or something, but his tone always comes off as just a little suggestive and Lando’s mind immediately reaches for a different form of repayment. He looks down at the key in his hand as his face heats up, trying to remember if he’s tried it in the lock already, as he feels himself go red.
“You don’t actually have to do anything, by the way,” Dan says, when Lando finally opens the apartment door.
“No, it’s chill, don’t worry,” Lando replies too quickly, trying not to sound awkward, but the damage is done.
It takes them more than an hour just to take all of the furnishings up to Lando’s apartment, and as soon as the last piece is dumped into (what will eventually be) Lando’s living room, he collapses onto the sofa frame. Dan slumps next to him.
“Fuck, that’s a lot of stuff,” he groans, and looks over at Lando. There’s a slight sheen on his forehead and a drop of sweat trails down past his eyebrow. “It’s getting late, huh.”
He’s right, the golden light that’s been glaring through the living room window is starting to fade, the shadows in the room lengthening.
“Yeah, it is,” Lando agrees. “You can uh, you don’t have to stay or anything, I can handle it from here.”
Dan just stares at him, eyes wide, as though Dan is looking at a piece of telemetry he’s trying to unravel and understand. Instinctively, Lando wets his lips with his tongue, and notes that just for a second, Dan’s eyes flash down to follow the movement.
“You, um, you sure?” Dan’s being polite, checking with him, but it’s still nice that it sounds like he cares.
“I should be good,” Lando reassures him, looks down at his hands, stands up. “I’ll see you… sometime soon then, I guess?”
Dan looks kind of taken aback, but stands as well, following Lando to the door. He claps a hand on Lando’s shoulder, pulling him into a side-hug momentarily.
“Yeah, I’ll get going then. But um, if you need anything, you can text me.”
Lando nods a bit too quickly, burying the disappointment of Dan leaving. He stays by the door longer than he has any reason to, just in case there’s a knock and Dan is outside.
Eventually, he starts feeling a bit silly waiting in the now dark room – time refuses to wait for Lando’s flights of fancy, and if he wants to sleep on a bed tonight then he has to assemble it.
The IKEA instructions are (as always) befuddling, and Lando tries not to think about the fact that he has a living room full of IKEA furniture waiting for him after this. He’s not sure how he’s managed to lay out the bed wrong, but the pieces don’t look like they do in the pictures and he’s ended up with a small handful of spare dowels spread across the carpet.
As he flips back through the instructions, there’s a rap at the door, and at first, Lando thinks it’s noise from another apartment. He goes to check anyway.
Daniel is standing in the hallway, typing on his phone with one hand while he holds a plastic bag in the other, a second bag by his feet, and looks up when the door is pulled open.
“Thought you might be, um, hungry? I am.” Dan grins widely and Lando’s ‘dick Dan reconsideration folder’ grows once more. He opens his mouth, closes it again, and Dan takes this as an invitation to keep talking. “It’s thai – you said you liked it, once, I think–” (and Lando doesn’t think he ever told Dan that, doesn’t remember it at least) “–so I got some because, um yeah, it’s getting late and you hadn’t eaten and I didn’t see any food so, I dunno, I thought you’d appreciate it?”
Lando blinks, and Dan’s already pushed past him through the door, setting the bags down on the kitchen bench.
“I got pad thai, of course, and then there’s some satay skewers and–” he continues to list a variety of foods as he pulls plastic containers out of the bags and Lando looks on. “I bought paper plates and plastic cutlery too, because I didn’t know if you had any of that stuff yet, so it means less clean up and it’s easier to eat.”
Up till now, Lando’s been pretty certain on the type of person that Dan is, and he’ll admit that he didn’t think that Daniel was capable of a lot of foresight, but with every new piece of food that he pulls out of the takeaway bag, another piece of Lando’s image of him has to be crossed out.
Dan doesn’t wait for Lando to finish his crisis, already grabbing the nearest plastic container and opening it enthusiastically.
“You gunna…” he prompts, and Lando leaves his introspection for another time.
“You have a, uh, a gap between your front two teeth, you know?” Daniel gestures to his own mouth with his fork between bites as they’re eating (Lando knows this, why wouldn’t he? He looks at his reflection in the mirror every day, of course he knows he has a gap between his front teeth – and it’s something he’s insecure about as well, not everyone had braces so they can have perfect teeth Dan , why would he bring it up?). He wants desperately to reply with something sarcastic, but holds back when it looks like Dan’s about to say something else.
“It’s cute, I think.”
Lando’s biting remarks die on his tongue.
Dan has finished his food, and stands up, businesslike.
“Bed?” Lando’s mind goes, predictably, to another place (he’s starting to have trouble distinguishing between what’s intrusive thoughts, what’s Dan actually being suggestive, and what’s just wishful thinking).
“Inviting yourself in?” he jokes in return.
“If that’s what you want,” Dan replies, and Lando’s pretty sure he’s flirting, maybe? “I just thought we could uh, make it? You can’t sleep till you do, right?”
“Oh, yeah, of course.”
He has no opportunity to be embarrassed by the fact that the bed frame is laid out completely wrong because Dan gets straight into it, giving him directions for where the different pieces go, explaining surprisingly patiently what Lando had done incorrectly the first time.
He helps Lando pile up the cardboard by the door, helps him unwrap the mattress and lay it onto the bed frame, helps him find the box of linen and make the bed neatly.
And when Dan gives him a proper hug before he leaves the second time, Lando squeezes him tightly, hoping it conveys the ‘thank you’ he’s too anxious to say out loud.
Daniel wakes up midway through the night, freezing under his duvet. The air conditioning’s not on, but he’s got goosebumps, shivers when he tries to rearrange the blankets and exposes his arm to the air.
There’s no ibuprofen or panadol or anything in the cupboards when he drags himself, cloaked in his duvet, to the kitchen, either, which is just perfect luck (he doesn’t even remember running out). The nearest pharmacy doesn’t open until the morning, so he’s completely fucked.
Going back to bed won’t do much, but it’s better than nothing, so he ends up choosing a podcast at random on Spotify and sets it to play from the speakers on his phone. He draws his knees up to his chest, and pulls the duvet up to his neck.
The next time Dan comes to, the podcast is playing an episode he doesn’t recognise, and the sun is radiating through his window.
There’s no pills when he checks again either. The wooden floorboards of the kitchen swim slightly below his feet, and he spends nearly a minute staring straight into the fridge before he remembers he’s looking for water.
He texts Michael, ‘sick , and gets back a list of recommendations he only scans, vision too blurry to try and read the messages closely. It takes him an hour to will himself out of the house after that, and he has to tell himself more than once that it’s because he needs to be a properly functioning adult (something he has to do worryingly often) and the pharmacy’s not that far away anyway.
Even though it’s warm outside, he shivers from the cold underneath his hoodie.
The woman at the pharmacy counter raises her eyebrows when she sees Dan, looks him up and down (and Dan worries she might think he’s high, not just sick), but doesn’t say anything.
“Nurofen?” he grimaces, and the woman mutters something in French and turns around to the shelf behind her. He tries to focus by just looking at his feet, which is hard enough as the ground tilts beneath him and he has to brace himself against the counter.
The woman slides a small box of whatever the Monegasque version of Nurofen is across the counter, and he taps his phone against the card reader, mutters “no receipt” and leaves before she can give him one.
Daniel’s not looking up as he exits the store, and literally runs into someone. His hands go out on instinct to steady himself, grasping at the peach-coloured button up the person is wearing.
“Danny?”
“Sorry,” he mumbles, letting go of the shirt way too quickly and sinking down to the ground, not caring that he’s crouched in the middle of the pharmacy doorway.
“Daniel?” The person repeats again, and suddenly it’s Lando, crouched in front of him, arms hovering over Dan’s shoulders as if unsure whether or not to grab them. “Are you alright?”
“Dizzy,” Dan responds, attempting to focus on the boy (man, his brain supplies) in front of him, expression somewhere between worried and confused, forehead creased as he frowns. Lando makes a questioning sound, and Dan repeats himself shakily. “Said I’m dizzy, just give me… give me a second.”
Lando is silent and Dan has closed his eyes, isn’t looking at his face anymore and can’t tell how much he’s being judged right now.
“Okay, all good,” he forces out a few moments later (in reality, it’s not all good, if he gets up he might have to sit down again immediately, but it’s kind of embarrassing being this much of a mess in public, let alone around Lando, who Dan gets the vibe is the most judgemental person ever, even if he doesn’t say it). He stumbles to his feet.
Lando stands up with him, hands finally falling to rest on Dan’s shoulders, and Dan’s grateful he’s there to steady him.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Lando pushes, trying to make eye contact with Dan. “You must be really hot.”
“No, why?” He meets Lando’s eyes, finds him gazing back at him with incredulity.
“It’s like, warm and you’re in a hoodie?”
“No, I’m just cold,” Dan asserts, and that only makes Lando’s frown deepen. He doesn’t want to admit to Lando that he’s sick, doesn’t really know why.
Lando takes one of his hands from Dan’s shoulder, presses it to Dan’s forehead more quickly than he can even react, and he flinches away from the stinging sensation of Lando’s cold fingers.
“You have a temperature.” Lando states with conviction, but his voice goes quieter after that, tone more gentle as he questions him again. “Are you okay to get home? Do you need someone with you? Have you had any food? Water?”
Dan doesn’t really process anything after the first question, mumbling, “yeah, car’s just over there.”
“You drove here?” is Lando’s disbelieving reply, volume rising.
“Yeah, it’s fine, don’t speak so loudly.”
“Okay, sorry,” Lando sighs, speaking much lower this time. “Can I drive you home? – In your car,” he clarifies, “I walked here.”
“Um, yeah.”
Dan’s sure this would be so much more awkward if he was actually paying any attention, but for now he’s focusing on matching Lando’s footsteps as they walk towards the car. Even though he’s completely nauseous and definitely out of it, he’s still distracted by the arm Lando’s reached around Dan’s waist (as if it would do anything if Dan were to lose his balance – there are times he likes being bigger than Lando, but this is not one of them).
“Keys?” Lando prompts him when they reach the car. Dan passes them over.
They don’t speak during the drive to Dan’s house – he’s not sure how Lando knows the way to his apartment (the next time Dan gets in his car, he remembers that his address is set as ‘home’ in the satnav), but he’s not complaining – because while Lando’s driving, Dan’s trying not to vomit all over the interior of his Mclaren, which is a lot more difficult as a passenger than it was while driving.
Lando asks him what his apartment number is once they’ve parked in the garage, and Dan doesn’t take in the fact that Lando’s still with him going up to the apartment, that he opens the door for Dan (he must have forgotten to lock it, fuck) and follows Dan in.
He doesn’t realise that he doesn’t have the paper bag from the pharmacy until Lando marches into his kitchen, refills his glass from earlier with water and looks pointedly at Dan to join him at the bench. The bag is discarded on the bench as Lando pops two pills out of the blister-pack, putting them next to the glass of water, and Dan guesses that Lando must have brought it in from the car. He doesn’t recollect picking it up after sitting down at the pharmacy, or carrying it at all, but hadn’t noticed Lando taking it either.
As soon as Dan has downed the Nurofen (and the rest of the glass of water, his throat feeling dry as soon as he’d taken the first sip), Lando walks right past him out of the kitchen again toward the living room.
“Are you coming?” he calls, while Dan is still in the kitchen, having made no move to follow.
“Yeah,” he replies after a moment, “coming,” though he’s not sure what he’s coming to.
Lando reaches out again when Dan enters the lounge, grasping his biceps and steering him straight towards the sofa, giving him a small push when Dan doesn’t immediately sit down.
He’s covered with a blanket as soon as he’s sitting on the couch.
“Thanks.”
Lando disappears back to the kitchen momentarily, returning with his glass of water and a bag of chips he’s procured from somewhere.
“What’s your favourite um, type of soup?”
“Pumpkin?” Dan asks in return.
“Cool,” Lando nods, fidgeting with his hands. “I’m going to go grab some stuff for you, I’ll be back in ten? Is that alright?”
Dan nods. “Yeah,” he croaks out, throat like sandpaper.
“Cool,” Lando says again.
He lets Lando leave, doesn’t argue with his obvious mother-henning. It makes him feel somewhat special, he supposes the word is, that Lando’s looking after him, is trying to make him feel comfortable.
He wonders briefly if this is Lando’s love language, acts of service, thinks about the grin radiating across Lando’s face when Dan brought takeaways when he was moving in, the way he always looks away and tries to hide his smile when Dan offers him a piece of food on race weekends.
His mind drifts, imagining what it might be like to have Lando around more often. He could get used to Lando’s touch, something that seems to only be reserved for his family and close friends except for today, could get used to Lando telling him to take care of himself, driving together in the same car, just being friends.
He’d been jealous of Carlos and Lando when they were teammates, while Dan had Nico and then Esteban – they were (still are) great guys, but never close friends, and he’d envied the intimacy of the Mclaren pair.
Joking and ribbing Lando hadn’t helped when they became teammates, though, and Dan had pretty much given up on befriending him. He likes this earnest Lando, though, even if it’s not the way it was with him and Carlos.
The sound of his door creaking open echoes through the apartment ten minutes later. Lando pads into the living room (he’s not wearing his shoes anymore, Dan notes, must have taken them off at the door), and holds out a disposable coffee cup.
“I used your car, by the way,” he informs Dan as he takes the cup from Lando. “Hungry?”
Dan shrugs, makes a face, doesn’t think he’d be able to keep down food if he tried.
“Later? Watch TV with me if you’re hanging around, though?” He pats the cushion next to him, raises his eyebrows, sniffs.
“Yeah,” Lando rubs his palms together, “alright then.”
They get through about half an episode of Brooklyn Nine Nine (which Dan has already seen – Lando hasn’t) before Dan dozes off into the cushions, eyelids heavy. He hovers in and out of consciousness, vaguely registering Lando’s movement around him – after he pulls closed the curtains, without the sun hitting his eyes Dan thinks he sleeps more or less constantly after that.
It’s nearly dark when he stirs again, tangled up under the blankets that are starting to feel hot now. When he blinks away the sleep in his eyes, his vision is nearly clear.
“Hey,” Lando’s murmur comes from above him, and he realises with surprise that he’s laying with his head in a pillow on Lando’s lap.
He sits up slowly, looks around for Lando.
Lando inhales, holds his breath. “Couch is kind of short,” he excuses, taking the pillow off of his legs, standing up, stretching.
“Ah,” Dan acknowledges, “thanks.”
Lando cracks his knuckles, shifting on his feet.
“Soup?”
“Uh, yeah, that would be good,” he replies automatically, but it brings his attention to his empty stomach.
Lando legs it out of the living room, and Dan is left alone on the couch.
“Did I talk in my sleep?” Dan asks, when Lando returns a few minutes later, with two bowls of soup, refusing to look him in the eye.
“No? Do you usually?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he replies, licking his soup spoon and placing it on the coffee table, bringing the bowl directly to his mouth.
Lando grimaces when Dan grins, showing off his soup moustache.
“Gross.”
Though, after looking down at his own bowl for a minute, Lando does put his spoon on the table next to Dan’s. He spills a few drops of soup down his hoodie as he drinks the soup, but neither of them comment on it.
He falls asleep to a Christmas movie on the couch later in the evening with Lando hugging a pillow next to him. When he wakes the next morning he’s alone, the dirty bowls on the coffee table gone and a glass of water in their place.
Dan gets a call at 1AM on Sunday morning, his chirpy ringtone disturbing him from a dream he can only half-remember about flying squids. His phone is face-up on the bedside table, and he squints at the caller ID.
Lando Norris
It could be something bad – he doesn’t think Lando would just call him for no reason – but as soon as he picks up, Lando’s giggle emits from the phone, and Dan can tell immediately that he’s drunk.
He sighs, puts his phone to his ear.
“What’s up?”
“Hey Dan,” Lando sings over the line, almost shouting above what sounds like music in the background, “what are you doing up?”
“You woke me up.” It’s not the first time he’s been woken up by a drunken call, but he’d thought Lando wasn’t one for drinking.
“Sorry Danny, I just wanted to talk to you.”
“What’s wrong?”
Lando hiccoughs through the phone and the background noise cuts off, like he’s stepped outside.
“I just wanted to talk to you,” he repeats. “ Sorry– ” he says, and it bothers Dan a little that he’s apologising for wanting to talk to him.
“Where are you right now?” Dan prods him. He wants to know Lando’s safe, first, before he can go back to bed.
“It’s just, well, I’m at a club. With Max,” he giggles again, “and other people as well.”
“Tell him I say hi, then.” Dan’s perhaps a little bit hurt that they didn’t invite him (his friends can do things by themselves if they want and it’s none of his business – though he’d thought maybe he and Lando were close enough by now that they could go out to clubs together).
“Oh, I can’t find him. He’s not picking up his phone–” Lando’s pitch increases, his words breathy and slightly slurred, difficult for Dan to follow, but he sounds slightly panicked. “I can’t get home and I’m tired and I want to sleep.”
Dan was in his early 20s once upon a time, so he tries not to judge Lando too harshly, he’s sure at some point he must have phoned Seb, or even Christian once, he thinks, while drunk, so it could be worse.
“I’ll come get you.” He doesn’t know why he’s saying it, isn’t even sure Lando wants him to, but he offers anyway. Lando hasn’t replied by the time he’s throwing his sheets off, padding over to the dresser on the other side of the room to get his keys.
It’s not even that he doesn’t remember that Lando’s an adult – he’s young, for sure, but he’s not a kid. Dan already knows that, has watched his behaviour with the team and in the paddock enough to know how mature he is. None of that prevents the bud of protectiveness that blooms in his chest.
“Thank you Danny, sorry I’m making you come so late.”
“So early, you mean?” Dan quips back. “You’re not making me do anything, though, I offered,” he adds after registering the rest of Lando’s phrasing. “Can you give me your address, where are you?”
Lando gives him the name of the club, and that he’s standing outside so Dan will be able to find him easily. Dan wonders if he’s cold.
It doesn’t take him long to drive there, and Lando’s waiting out the front, as promised. He’s leaning against the wall, hands braced, and he doesn’t know how Lando even called him in the first place, he looks dead on his feet.
Lando’s still lucid enough to be able to recognise Dan’s car, at least, as he picks himself up and stumbles over, yanking the door open and falling into the passenger seat.
“Long night?” Dan asks, though he’s not sure Lando even hears him.
After a long pause, Lando replies.
“I want to go home. Brush my teeth.”
“No shit,” Dan snorts. “You can brush your teeth when we get home. Are you gunna throw up in the car?”
“Dunno. Prolly not.” Lando leans his head against the window, stares into the night around them. “You have nice hair.”
“Uh, thanks Lando. So do you.”
“It’s not as…” he trails off for a moment, tapping his fingers together while trying to find the right words, “S’not as curly as yours… Sorry.”
Lando doesn’t throw up during the car ride, doesn’t even really talk much. Whenever Dan looks over to check on him, Lando’s gazing back at him with wide eyes which immediately dart elsewhere when he sees Dan turn. Dan pretends he doesn’t notice.
He parks on Lando’s street pretty close to the apartment building, and taps him on the shoulder when he doesn’t react to the lack of motion of the car.
“We’re home,” he informs Lando, winces at the way his phrase implies that it’s Dan’s home too, but Lando doesn’t pick up on it. “Are you good to walk?”
Lando startles out of the daze he’s in, nods vigorously, then stops, covers his eyes with a forearm, slumps back against the window.
“Fuck, too fast… Sorry.”
He ends up heaving Lando’s arm around his shoulder (in what would be the most cliché of scenes if anyone had photographed them – thank god they’re in Monaco) and half helping, half carrying him inside.
There’s a moment where he can’t find Lando’s keys in his pockets (it feels invasive feeling around in there, but Dan reassures himself that he’s not doing anything wrong, he’s being a good friend. Maybe it’s just the fact he doesn’t know how Lando will react to any of this when he wakes up tomorrow), but it turns out they’re on the passenger seat when he jogs back to check.
The next challenge is finding out where the fuck Lando lives inside the building – Lando had never told him the apartment number and he spends a good 2 minutes searching through their messages to see if he can find the message Lando had given him the address.
One of the letterboxes catches his eye, the name ‘Norris’ scrawled on a piece of paper slipped inside the name thing next to the number 32. He nearly smacks himself in frustration save for the fact that his right arm is around Lando’s waist.
“Fuck kid, you’re heavy,” Dan sighs as he drags Lando into the lift.
“That’s mean,” Lando chides, nudging in closer. “You smell nice.”
“You smell like alcohol.”
Lando doesn’t reply, and Dan can feel his body move with the long breaths that punctuate the silence.
As the lift doors are closing, he makes eye contact with the doorman, who raises his eyebrows but doesn’t say anything.
“Can you find my toothbrush? Wanna brush m’teeth,” Lando asks as Dan opens the apartment door.
“Yeah, alright.”
“Please, I need to do it before bed.”
“Yeah,” Dan repeats, “I got it.”
He directs Lando down the hall towards his room and ensuite so he can brush his teeth, and is about to leave him there but Lando decides to sit resolutely down onto the floor, legs splayed in front of him, and looks up at Dan with a pout.
“Legs are tired,” he whines, “can you get my toothbrush?”
Dan clicks his tongue, shaking his head, but steps over Lando’s legs to reach the sink anyway.
“You should really consider how you’re going to brush your teeth before getting drunk.” Lando isn’t going to remember it in the morning, probably, but he makes an agreeing sound from the floor.
He squeezes some toothpaste onto what he assumes is Lando’s toothbrush and runs it under the sink, then hands it to Lando, who puts it in his mouth and immediately retches.
“Tastes shit. Kind of… spicy,” Lando declares, drawing a laugh from Dan for the way he says it so solemnly; it’s a side of Lando he’s rarely been able to see, free from the self-conscious air Lando always seems to have and it’s as sweet as it is funny.
“I thought you wanted to brush your teeth?”
“I do,” Lando maintains, and sticks the toothbrush back in his mouth while failing to hide a grimace.
Once Lando has rigorously brushed all of his teeth, he spits into the bathtub and thoroughly rinses his toothbrush under the tap. Dan waits while Lando finishes his routine (it’s cute, even though he ends up with a bit of toothpaste next to his mouth), before holding out his hand to help Lando (whose concentration is gone, priority complete) to get up.
He steers Lando towards his bed, where he instantly curls up. Dan manages to get his shoes off, tossing them haphazardly over his shoulder, and pulls the duvet over him (he’s sure he’ll be forgiven for not trying to get Lando into pyjamas, but he’s not sure he and Lando have reached a point in their relationship where that wouldn’t be weird when Lando’s drunk).
“Thank you,” Lando mumbles from where his head is pressed into the pillow. “Love you, Danny.”
“You’re welcome,” Dan replies with a quiet voice, and pats Lando over the duvet before he stands up. He pretends he didn’t hear the last part – he knows Lando wouldn’t say it if he were sober, doesn’t know whether or not he means it.
“Sleep well,” he announces to Lando’s room.
Lando’s kitchen seriously needs some more stuff to fill the empty drawers, Dan thinks as he looks for a water bottle. Once it’s located, he fills it up in the sink, and discovers the Panadol (though it’s branded Dafalgan in Monaco) in a cupboard above the fridge.
The water bottle and a blister pack go on Lando’s bedside table – by now, Lando’s completely asleep and doesn’t respond when Dan trips over a shoe on the floor – and Dan retreats, ready to fall asleep on the couch. He’s settled under a blanket which, for some reason, is plastered with copies of George Russell’s face (nightmare fuel) on the sofa, curtains drawn, about to pass out before he remembers he should probably check on Lando.
He googles “how often should you check on a drunk person” (every 30 minutes for the first two hours and then every hour after that) and dutifully sets the alarms (he checks on Lando when the alarms go off, and he seems fine every time, fast asleep in almost the same position the whole night).
He’s not ready to get up when his normal alarm goes off at 7, but eventually he can hear signs of life from Lando’s room. Dan leaves Lando for a while, but when he hears a door pushed open, followed by sounds of retching, he decides he should probably get up himself.
Lando’s in the bathroom hunched over the toilet when Dan finds him.
“You alright?” Dan asks, and Lando’s head whips around at the noise. He’s struggling to hold his eyes open, but he’s unmistakably shocked to see him.
They hold eye contact for a moment, till Lando drops his head back down over the toilet to throw up again.
“What the fuck–” he pauses to gag, “are you doing here?”
Dan crouches, puts his hand on Lando’s shoulder, doesn’t really know what else to do. Lando doesn’t flinch away in the way he often does.
“You called me last night, kid, you were smashed,” he replies, chuckling. Lando throws up again. “Just wanted to make sure you’d be okay overnight, not like, die in your sleep or whatever.”
Lando nods quickly, still not looking at him, before slumping back over the bowl.
“Feeling dizzy.”
“All good.”
Dan’s knees are getting sore kneeling on the cold tile, and he taps his fingers against his thigh.
“Y’know what, I’m gunna go make us some breakfast, come out when you’re ready.”
Lando’s kitchen is still bare – Dan supposes he can’t judge him too harshly, God knows he was just as bad when he first moved to Monaco. He ends up ordering Ubereats and waits in the foyer for it to arrive. By the time he gets back, Lando’s seated at the kitchen counter, head resting on his arms – though he looks up when Dan enters.
“Sorry about last night,” Lando sighs, “for bothering you.”
“It’s all good.” Dan reaches over to ruffle his hair, and his hand lingers. He drifts closer behind Lando, hand slipping from his hair down to his bicep, squeezing him into a half-hug. Lando tenses.
“I’m there if you want me,” Dan hums, and Lando’s posture eases beneath him slightly. “If you need it, I mean.”
He receives a contented “mhm” in response.
“D’you want a muffin?”
“Please.”
It’s domestic, nice.
The team Christmas party comes around this year the way it does every year, the last of the work obligations Lando has until the new year, but that fact doesn’t make him any more excited to go, nor because it’s his 4th time going. He spends the early afternoon at Max’s place having a whinge about how much team events stress him out and agonising over what he should wear – ends up picking out a cable-knit jumper to go with his ‘casual’ suit.
Lando’s not even that self-conscious about how he looks until he sees Dan at the entrance to the MTC, catching his eye in a peach floral shirt that makes him look like a magazine cover. Dan waves when he sees Lando, isn’t subtle with the once over he gives him and Lando has to consciously make the effort not to look away.
He has to put that to the side when he goes into the building, has to put on the face of the charismatic character he needs to be for the team, the type of persona that flows naturally from Dan (who’s currently squeezing Charlotte into a greeting hug).
In truth, the reception isn’t that bad: he’s introduced left, right and centre to partners of people on the team, sponsors, other randoms, manages to get in a reasonably interesting conversation with one of the Mclaren Shadow representatives, chokes through half a glass of champagne he ends up ditching with a waiter.
It doesn’t even get much worse with dinner. He doesn’t mind the pork other than that it comes in a huge piece he doesn’t come close to finishing; nobody else does either, and he gets through enough of it not to look like much of a picky eater.
He has to give a speech after the main course, after Zak does. The words he says into the microphone are mostly those from his practised spiel, of how much he’s grateful to every one of the people here for making this Mclaren’s strongest season in years, Lando’s best in F1.
He can’t see faces he recognises on the surrounding tables, the people in the garage with him during the year. He’s already gone around to all of his mechanics, other personnel in the garage to thank them. This part doesn’t feel that genuine.
He thanks Zak and Andreas, and then Dan; he hasn’t actually thanked Dan yet, never had been able to find the right time to do it.
“It’s been really great getting to know you this year and racing together. Coming into the team, it’s hard to do, but you’ve really made it your own, and I’m, uh, yeah, really happy we’ll still be teammates next year as well,” he says, and it’s true. As he speaks, he realises there’s more he wants to thank Daniel for, more he wants to say, but none of that feels right to include here.
Dan catches his eye from across the table part way through dessert, gives him a smirk, goes back to entertaining the woman sitting next to him who’s clearly hanging off his every word. He’s leaning in close to her, touching her arm, and if it were anyone else it would be flirting but Lando knows that it’s Dan and that’s just what he does with anyone. It makes him feel sick.
“Sorry, what was I saying?” Lando pulls his attention away from across the table to the person sitting next to him, whose name he didn’t catch over the surrounding noise.
After dessert, Zak announces the band, encourages people to dance. Lando avoids the centre of the room like the plague – he mills around the edge of the room for a while, checks his phone every so often, sucks on a candy cane he’d picked up from the table earlier. The beat of the music is loud enough that he can feel it in the wall – who decides to play music this loud, anyway? The room is too warm, too, even after he pulls off his sweater.
He spots Daniel through the crowd, dancing to the music, eyes closed. His shirt has come untucked slightly from his trousers and Lando desperately wants to go over there and fix it for him. He watches Dan dance instead, following his hips as they sway side-to-side; unconsciously biting his bottom lip to mirror Dan when he does the same.
The bathroom is an escape – Lando doesn’t even need to go, but he loses sight of Dan after a while and everything else seems boring. He spends a few minutes more than he needs washing his hands extremely thoroughly, drying them, trying to smoothing his hair, inspecting his face closely for possible food, just wasting time, really.
The door is slammed open and Lando startles back from the mirror.
It’s Daniel who swaggers in, shirt undone a few more buttons than it had been earlier (Lando stares, discreetly).
“Fancy seeing you here,” Dan says, grabbing for paper towels. There’s a slight sheen of sweat on his face, and he’s breathing heavily.
“Yeah, I… You know?”
“Yeah,” Dan shrugs. “I get it – lots of people, sponsors and shit?” He gets it. (Lando sighs.) “Do you want to get out of here?”
“What?”
“Or just go outside? Dunno, it’s hot in here.”
They end up strolling around the park beside the MTC, a place Lando’s never yet had the motivation to explore in his time at Mclaren. It’s pretty, a field of grey-blue bordered by cobalt forest in the cool twilight, brisk air biting against the skin of his face and hands.
“I meant what I said, by the way,” Lando states, wanting to fill the silence with something. “I’m really happy we’re teammates.” He keeps walking, doesn’t look for Dan’s reaction, only stopping when he realises Dan’s not next to him any longer.
He turns back around to Dan, who’s come to a stop in the middle of the path, starts to wander back over.
“Me too, kid – Lando, sorry. You’re not a kid,” Dan corrects himself at the end. “It’s a habit, I don’t actually, like, think you’re a child, by the way – you’re more of an adult than me sometimes.” Dan looks to Lando for his reaction.
He nods, half-smiles. The words are cathartic to hear, finally a confirmation that they’re on even ground, that he doesn’t have to prove himself. It hadn’t mattered with Carlos, who had happily taken on the role of older brother, but with Dan it’s different.
Lando realises that somewhere, in the middle of this mess of a season, he’d managed to fall in love with Dan (and that knowledge isn’t as startling to Lando as something like that reasonably should be). Now that knows he sees them as equals, Dan feels just a bit less out of reach.
He’s not sure if he’ll have the courage to say anything if he doesn’t do it now. Besides, the park feels like a picturesque-enough setting to (not that Lando usually cares about that stuff, it’s just, he wants to do it right with Dan).
He steps closer, keenly aware of the dewy grass crunching under his shoes, the only sound as he comes to a halt opposite his teammate.
“Is this okay?” He asks, places a palm against Dan’s chest, swallowing his courage..
“Yeah,” Dan breathes, breath condensing into the wintry air, and Lando can feel the weight of Dan’s hand coming to rest on Lando’s hip.
He tilts his head slightly upwards, leans forward, giving Dan plenty of time for an out if he wants it, but he doesn’t take it, so Lando presses his lips to Dan’s.
At first Dan doesn’t respond, and Lando’s worried he’s ruined everything between them, but then he does, deepening the kiss, cupping Lando’s cheek with his hand, and Lando’s reminded for a brief moment of a print in his parents’ house, a painting of two lovers embracing surrounded by gold. That’s what they look like right now, he thinks, except in real life. Dan tastes faintly of alcohol, but Lando doesn’t mind. The kiss is soft and delicate in a way he hadn’t imagined it to be with Dan (objectively, it’s by far the best first-kiss he’s ever had).
He has to break it off for air eventually – Dan’s lips are still parted in surprise, eyes round, dazed. Lando knows he probably looks the same, can feel the heat in his cheeks.
There’s a heartbeat of silence.
“Still okay?” He prompts.
Dan nods, and Lando gets a hint of pride that he’s rendered him speechless; the thought draws an almost hysterical giggle from Lando and he buries his face into Dan’s chest.
“Holy shit,” Lando hears Dan mumble. “You um, you sure you’re not fucking with me?” and it makes Lando dissolve further into nervous laughter, which probably doesn’t help the fact he’s trying to seem confident, mature.
“Yeah!” he assures Dan between giggles. “I’m not, I mean – I’m serious.” He runs his hands up Dan’s chest to the collar of his shirt to tug him closer.
Dan’s the one who surges forward into another kiss much more passionate than the first, his stubble scratching Lando’s face.
They continue until they’re out of breath, noses pressed together, gulping in each other’s air.
Lando’s eyes are wet; the stinging cold finally starting to get to him. It’s also getting to Dan, who sniffs, the tip of his nose pink, and pulls his hands away from Lando’s face for a second to exhale into them.
“Are you crying?” Dan grins.
“Shut up! It’s cold!” Lando protests, but he can’t stop laughing, not even as Dan pulls him in for another kiss.