Chapter Text
*****Oscar*****
Red flag, green flag. A game. For marketing. Like those flags meant anything to drivers other than race directions. Marketing liked getting drivers to play these pseudo dating games for some reason.
The interviewer asking about people who say sorry too much turned into almost exclusively Lando talking, and somehow talking about road rage? Which- Oscar knew Lando hated traffic as much as any F1 driver- more than Oscar for sure. Oscar didn’t really end up even putting a flag up at all for the sorry thing. It rather depended on why they were saying sorry, didn’t it? Saying sorry enough was important. Saying sorry too too much was probably psychologically worrisome. Which didn’t mean it was a red flag exactly, just someone who needed help. And then there was whatever was in between.
Putting your phone face down at dinner.
Oscar didn’t understand why Lando was sort of nervously giggling to himself.
“You do that don’t you? I can tell,” the interviewer asked Lando.
“I do that,” Oscar volunteered. He was supposed to be participating in this, after all.
Lando looked over at him and slowly raised his flag. Like it was okay to do it after Oscar did. Which didn’t make any sense. Or…
“Depends on what the reason-” Oscar explained as they all sort of talked over each other. Oscar could tell Lando asked ‘Why do you do it?’, so Oscar answered the obvious and true answer, “So I’m not distracted by it.”
“Oh! Yeah,” Lando answered.
“Yeah, that’s exactly why you do it, isn’t it?” Oscar said. Sort of helping him, sort of teasing him for whatever Lando was nervous about.
The interviewer sort of talked at mostly the same time, “You were talking about hiding something, right?”
“What? No,” Lando answered. He surely wasn’t trying very hard to be convincing. “What’s the next question?” Lando asked, over the interviewer saying something with the word ‘partner’. ‘So you can talk to your partner’ or something like that.
“Hang on, hang on,” the interviewer insisted. Oscar was mostly glad that it was Lando taking all the heat, but he wouldn’t mind moving on. “If your partner had their phone face down, would you not be suspicious?”
Sort of needless inclusive language, but it was nice, Oscar supposed.
“Well, we’re talking about partners here, like,” Lando said like that was a complete statement. While he waved both flags around. Because he was bad at sitting still. Oscar didn’t have any idea what he meant.
“Okay, family or partners,” the interviewer amended. “Do you think they’d be hiding something, or is that more of a question mark?”
A question mark about it being a red flag or not.
“No,” Oscar answered. to try to move on, raising his green flag again.
“No,” Lando said a fraction later. “What you don’t know, you don’t know, you know?” He smiled at his word repetition.
Watching true crime documentaries.
Lando went with red. “That’s a bit weird, that.” Oscar raised his green instead. It wasn’t Oscar’s first choice of entertainment, but calling it a red flag would be harsh, he thought. Some were okay. The most highly regarded ones were worth watching.
Lando started talking with the interviewer about something he saw online that said it was worrying if people spent too much time watching true crime. “You put green flag?” Lando seemed surprised when he looked. Maybe Oscar had been too quiet when he said something.
“I did.”
Lando looked confused, and wouldn’t stop playing with his flags.
“Are you a big true crime fan?” the interviewer asked.
“I’m not a big true crime fan, but I don’t mind it here and there. I don’t-”
“I find it freaky,” Lando cut in. “Like, the more you watch of it, the more you- I feel like you get paranoid in real life.”
And that made Oscar think that Lando had seen something, and it had messed with him.
“Yeah,” Oscar said to sympathise. And, yeah, it was true.
“You just think anyone- like you,” Lando said, waving one of his flags at the interviewer, “Could be like Joel Daymer, or whatever his name is.”
“Joel Daymer,” the interviewer laughed, “Jeffrey Dahmer”
And Oscar laughed too, because… it was awkward.
“See? You know what I meant.”
“You tried,” the interviewer allowed.
“You know what I meant,” Lando repeated.
“Out of you two, do you think- one person would turn out to be a serial killer, who would it be?”
Lando and Oscar automatically pointed flags at each other. Lando’s face overly suspicious and fully committed to the act, until he started smiling, and Oscar’s laughed.
“Me? One hundred percent him. Look at him,” Lando argued, looking to the interviewer for support.
And, that was a little uncalled for.
“Me? Look at you with your-” Oscar motioned at stroking his own chin. The villain goatee. “Goatee going on.”
“You don’t like the goatee, do you?” the interviewer asked.
Shit.
“No- I mean- yes? It’s fine. Lando looks fine either way. I guess I understand trying to not have a baby face. He’s still like the what- the fourth youngest on the grid? I got that wrong on the Grill the Grid, thinking Zhou was younger. Ah- I’m not sure when that airs. Maybe we could- cut just- all that?”
“Yeah, yeah, let’s refocus here,” Lando announced, looking at the camera dramatically before looking down. Still playing with those flags. “Yeah, maybe it is me.” The serial killer. Right. So seriously, composed.
“Yeah, it definitely is.”
“Moving on, moving on,”Lando coaxed.
“Fussy eaters,” the other man announced.
Oscar raised his red flag- which was harsh of him, but it was just a game, and fussy eaters were annoying. More annoying than true crime. Lando raised his green. Of course he did.
Oscar didn’t exactly feel great about his choice, but he wasn’t going to look good folding.
Lando was a fussy eater himself, and that was annoying sometimes. It didn’t really affect Oscar, but it would come up a lot.
“When someone’s like ‘I can’t eat that’ and I’m like ‘Oh my god, you’re the one,’” Lando said, obviously kidding and over dramatic, hands to his face. “I’m like- ‘Is this real?’”
“But, but, but, what if they don’t eat meat, but they eat fish? Because you don’t eat fish,” Oscar asked, just to poke at him. Many of the people watching this would know that one of Lando’s pickiest things was absolutely no fish.
Lando fully huffed and switched to red flag.
And then there was the whole pescetarian thing, Lando’s ‘They shouldn’t be here’.
“Wow. Wow. I’ll pass that along to my girlfriend,” Oscar announced.
“Oh- oh, is she a- pesca-”
“Yeah.”
“Your girlfriend’s lovely, mate, but-” he shrugged. “Time to move on.”
And that- they really should have moved on to the next question after that joke. Obviously it was a joke, Lando telling Oscar to dump his girlfriend. It wasn’t even worth faking being offended over. Wasn’t worth acknowledging at all. But, instead of moving on, Oscar started rambling about ordering Chinese for the whole table, and one person being picky, and Oscar really hoped they cut all that too, because it was just awkward. James Bond, and curry, and- yeah, it was bad. It was so bad.
“You’ve over-thought that,” Lando commented.
“I have. I really have. I’ve got nothing else to do.” Which- why did Oscar say that?”
“Just stick to chicken nuggets.”
Shit, and that was probably going to be the moving on joke. The editors were probably going to leave Oscar’s whole ramble. Especially because Lando had talked more until then.
They could at least agree that going to the gym a lot was a green flag. It was pretty hard to say anything else in their line of work.
A non-awkward question and answer. Oscar was probably lulled into a sense of ease.
“People who believe in horoscopes,” the interviewer asked.
Oscar raised the red flag without a thought.
But Lando got this… expression that he was going to do something. Something more trouble than the chicken nuggets by far.
“Oh my god, I’m a Scorpio, and let me tell you all about it.”
Oscar knew Lando was kidding. Even before Lando said anything, Oscar knew Lando was going to be playing a game. He’d been around Lando enough to know that. It wasn’t just what he said, but how he said it. He… the… the way his voice, and his hands and it all just… it was very… perky. That wasn’t the right word, but it was the one Oscar was going to pick anyway.
And Oscar was going to be the boring one again.
Lando and the interviewer bantered a bit, Lando bullshitting through it. Of course Lando hadn’t read his horoscope ‘yet’ that day.
“And Oscar, you said it was a red flag?” they moved on, finally.
“Red flag,” Oscar confirmed.
Lando put on an offended face, “Why?”
Oscar often wasn’t sure what to say. Was he going to actually offend people? Did he care if people who genuinely believed in horoscopes were offended? Not particularly.
“Why would you waste your time on that stuff?” Oscar answered.
“I can tell you’re like a… Pisces whatever,” Lando said, waving his flag dismissively. From the way Lando almost stumbled over saying Pisces, Oscar was one hundred percent positive that Lando just said the first non-Scorpio sign he could think of and used it as a comeback.
Oscar just laughed to not have to answer.
“He’s giving Pisces energy?” the interviewer asked. This. This was going to be the clip that went around the internet.
“He is. I’m just-” Lando waved his flags around even more. “You feel it?”
“I’m Aries, actually,” Oscar felt compelled to say to… defend himself? Show that Lando couldn’t guess right? Even though Oscar knew it was all a joke. Oscar wished he didn’t even know what his own sign or whatever.
“I’m not even waving these flags. You feel that,” Lando went on. Like the flags were being waved by Oscar’s Pisces energy. It made sense in some convoluted train of logic that came with Lando. Oscar wasn’t even sure if Lando had heard Oscar saying his actual sign.
“You’re a horoscope fan and you’re not,” the interviewer summarised.
“No. Waste of time,” Oscar doubled down.
“It’s just for fun.”
“Lots of things are more fun,” Oscar shut back.
“Oh, for sure,” Lando agreed. “Are we- do you have enough?” Lando asked the interviewer. Enough material for the video.
“Yeah, yeah, we're good, mates. Thanks for coming.”
Like they had a choice.
“Of course, yeah,” Lando agreed anyway.
“Thank you,” Oscar said, which made less sense. But, he could be glad to be free, and hope that that video would end up a lot shorter.
Maybe he was a little annoyed. Not really at Lando, exactly. Lando was just trying to… have a good time with all the shit they had to do. But he didn’t have to do it like that.
“What was that act about at the end? Don’t you think it was a little much?” Oscar asked.
They had to do these stupid pseudo- dating things. Questions and answers, Mr. and Mr. or whatever, but they weren’t actually supposed to act like… waving a flag around in a… flamboyant way. Maybe it just played well with the media and Lando knew that. Carlando and all. Lando probably didn’t think anyone took it seriously.
“Mate, I’m just taking the piss,” Lando claimed. “I don’t know shit about astrology except I’m a Scorpio, and sometimes it’s fun to hear the horoscope when someone says it. Like a fortune cookie. No one takes it seriously. Or- some people do, I guess, but not me.”
“No, I’m not- I don’t care about that. It wasn’t what you said. It was how you said it. ‘Oh my god, I’m a Scorpio!’” Oscar imitated it. It sounded worse than when Lando did it. “Are you intentionally queerbaiting?”
“What?”
“Acting like you’re queer when you’re not. It’s called queerbaiting, and it’s not cool.”
“What?”
“Pretending you’re gay or something when you’re not.”
“I know what queer means,” Lando interrupted. “I even know what queerbaiting is. I was just… surprised. I’m not doing that.”
“You might not mean to, but-”
“I said I’m not. It’s acting queer when you’re not, year? Well, I’m not doing that.”
“You might just think it’s-”
“Oscar. I know you’re smart, mate. I said I’m not doing that. Because, like you said, it’s only really baiting when the person’s not queer, yeah?”
“Yes?”
No. That…
“Well, there you go. I think you can put it together. You’re a smart lad. Are we going to be weird?”
“What?”
“Oscar! Is it going to be weird that I’m… bi or something? I don’t like labels. I mostly like guys. I mostly hook up with guys. I don’t really bring it up, but I don’t really hide it around people I know either. Is that going to be weird?”
Oh.
“No?”
“Good. I didn’t think it would be for someone our age, but you can’t know. Really, I’m surprised you didn’t pick up on it before. I don’t hide it that well publicly either. Apparently, I was really obvious checking out that baseball player for that other video, because a ton of people sent me that clip.”
“What?”
“If you keep saying ‘what’, people are going to think you’re the dumb one, mate.”
“There doesn’t have to be a dumb one.”
“It’s fine. I’m lucky enough to get to do the one thing I’m good at for a living. Doesn’t really matter that I suck at geography and whatever.”
“You’re not the most… school educated. But you’re not dumb,” Oscar settled on. It was true. And none of them had done all that much more school, to be honest. Maybe some people pursued learning a variety of subjects and others didn’t.
“Thanks, Oscar,” Lando smiled.
*****Oscar*****
It came up completely randomly.
“Such an Aries,” Lando teased at nearly nothing.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not right at all.”
“You said you were an Aries,” Lando objected.
“I am. I just don’t think I just did an Aries stereotype.”
“Oh, you just have to find a different list that gives the attributes you want,” Lando brushed off.
“Uh… I don’t think it works like that? Everyone says the same thing basically? Like… ‘fiery’ or whatever. Things I’m not,” Oscar explained. Because it was all made up.
“It’s all like… similar but different words, and no one fits all of them, so you just focus on the ones you fit. Or ignore it. It’s just for fun.”
It didn’t sound particularly fun to Oscar.
It was a mark of how profoundly bored Oscar was that he googled Aries characteristics in his empty flat. He’d heard them before, but couldn’t really remember looking.
He was very bored.
Oscar sort of missed having roommates.
He was also stretching, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
Oscar read the first description that came up.
‘Aries are driven by a desire to prove themselves and their strength. They have high energy, and are competitive and ambitious. They naturally take charge because they are good at initiating new projects. They can also be impatient, but are naturally active and don't like to waste time.’
That… sounded more like him than what Oscar thought the Aries characteristics were supposed to be. It didn’t say ‘fiery’, at least, which Oscar couldn’t even say without rolling his eyes. Oscar wasn’t the most ‘take charge’ person he knew, but he definitely wasn’t the least. He could take charge when no one else around was going to do it better. Most people wouldn’t describe him as ‘high energy’ from his personality, but… he was, in an enduring sort of way. They all had to be.
Oscar clicked on the second link, maybe just looking for something to be more obviously garbage. It had lists more like what he was expecting.
‘Strengths: Courageous, determined, confident, enthusiastic, optimistic, honest, passionate
Weaknesses: Impatient, moody, short-tempered, impulsive, aggressive
Aries likes: Comfortable clothes, taking on leadership roles, physical challenges, individual sports
Aries dislikes: Inactivity, delays, work that does not use one's talents’
Courageous. Oscar wouldn’t say it, but other people would probably say all F1 drivers were that. Determined, confident, yes. Enthusiastic? That was one of those vague words to Oscar. He could be enthusiastic when he cared enough about something. Racing, obviously, but some other things too. Optimistic… maybe. Honest… well, not always. Passionate… similar story as enthusiastic.
The weaknesses… some of them sometimes, but he wouldn’t say those were his greatest weaknesses. Probably there could have been different words for strengths too. Just because some of those words fit didn’t mean others wouldn’t fit better if he looked at the whole possible list. Oscar was probably one of the least short-tempered on the F1 grid. But maybe that wasn’t saying much. Lando usually wasn’t one either. But, if, like Lando said, he only focused on the ones that fit… Oscar could see how someone could succumb to confirmation bias on this sort of thing. If they wanted to believe it.
Oscar stared at ‘individual sports’ on the list of likes, and had to acknowledge it. Technically, F1 was a team sport. He had a teammate. And he had the entire McLaren team supporting every aspect of performance. But… it was still sort of an individual sport. He could have created a different list that fit better if he hadn’t been influenced by this list.
Oscar felt far more ridiculous as he googled ‘Aries compatibility.’
He didn’t even really need to stretch anymore.
‘People with Aries as their Sun sign will likely get along easily with other fire signs and air signs.’
Oscar didn’t even know what those were.
Is Scorpio a fire sign? Oscar felt even more ridiculous searching that. It sounded like a fire sign.
‘Because of its incredible passion and power, Scorpio is often mistaken for a fire sign. In fact, Scorpio is a water sign that derives its strength from the psychic, emotional realm. Like fellow water signs, Cancer and Pisces, Scorpio is extremely clairvoyant and intuitive.’
Oh. Not the words Oscar would use to describe Lando. Not most of them anyway. But… once the words were in front of him… It was how the garbage worked. Confirmation bias. Except, clearly Lando wasn’t clairvoyant.
Oscar changed the search just to ‘Scorpio traits’.
Determined, Brave, Loyal, Honest, Ambitious.
Wasn’t that really similar to the Aries list? Lando had said they were vague. Except Oscar knew that loyal hadn’t been on the list. He would have noticed that one. People didn’t exactly think Oscar was loyal.
Oscar typed, ‘Aries characteristics loyal.’
‘This sign is known for being impulsive, exciting, and always up for a challenge. They're also incredibly loyal and will always be there for their loved ones— no matter what. So if you're ready for a wild ride, an Aries man or woman is perfect for you.’
‘Aries characteristics disloyal’ got posts about Aries cheating. Some website would say whatever someone wanted to read. Obviously all of it was made up.
Oscar typed, Aries compatibility Scorpio.
Aries and Scorpio share a good compatibility especially if they have met through friends or due to work. Aries natives are little particular about their values and schedules and Scorpio natives likes to adjust for someone they love making them perfect for each other.
Oscar read it three times before he noticed the typo ‘Scorpio natives likes to adjust…’ when it should be ‘Scorpio natives like to adjust..’
He couldn’t possibly take something with a typo that seriously. Even when he knew all of it wasn’t serious, this was the least serious of all of them.
All of it was completely preposterous.
They must say that everyone was a good pairing. Scorpio wasn’t even a fire or air sign like the other website had said. Even if one of them had said that Scorpio was similar to fire.
Oscar switched his search for other signs he could think of. Scorpio with Pisces… Aquarius… Gemini… Taurus…
Right, all of them said complimentary things. Scorpio and Pisces even said things like ‘highly preferred’ and ‘profound shared trust’. Some of the others didn’t promise that much, but none of them were like ‘don’t date this person’.
All of it was garbage saying what people wanted to hear.
Best careers for an Aries, Oscar searched.
Professional athlete was on the list.
Why bother putting something on a list that so few people got to do? Others were like sales manager, marketing manager, entrepreneur. So, being the boss. Tour guide? They sort of bossed people around?
Best careers for Scorpio.
Okay, these were the least fitting Lando careers ever. It actually made Oscar feel relieved, which was stupid.
Researcher- no. Engineer- Lando could give excellent feedback to their engineers. But that didn’t mean he should be one. Market Analyst- well… maybe. Lando could do marketing- clearly he was good at it. And he didn’t shy away from looking at track data like some people might think. Marketing data was probably just easier. Psychologist/Psychiatrist. Well… that took way too much school. Surgeon or Medical Examiner was ridiculous. Way, way too much school, and Lando would hate being a medical examiner more than anything else. Investigating the deaths of people who died violently or mysteriously? Or, whatever else medical examiners did? People who died of old age didn’t need autopsies. It would be so much worse than watching true crime docs. Auditor, Pharmacist, Chemist, Detective. Maybe Lando could solve some mysteries, but he wouldn’t like the criminal ones, and surely that was most of what a detective did?
Oscar felt almost relieved by absolute confirmation that it was garbage- which was stupid, because of course he knew that positioning of the stars or whatever, the season, whatever, had absolutely no impact on someone’s personality. Even identical twins could have totally different personalities. The idea that people born in a random collection of days across decades would have anything predictable in common was ridiculous, and it was a tremendous waste of time that Oscar would stop thinking about.
Oscar went on a run, even though he didn’t really like cardio.