Chapter Text
There’s a line in between Oscar’s eyebrows that Lando’s obsessed with.
Over the top of his monitor, Lando can see the way that Oscar is focused on his screen, listening intently to his engineer. Lando’s supposed to be doing the same; Will’s voice is droning through his own headset, but Lando’s been listening to him for sixty three laps. He’s allowed to have a mental break.
Oscar frowns at whatever he’s hearing, or whatever he’s looking at, and the furrow between his eyebrows deepens. Lando kind of wants to put his finger in it, to see what Oscar’s response might be.
The expression fades when Oscar starts to speak, gesturing with his hands towards the screen, and Tom leans over his shoulder to see what he’s talking about. On his own side of the desk, Lando answers a question that’s directed his way on auto-pilot. They’ve been discussing how the rear of the car feels for what seems like weeks, and his response is always the same. He could probably record himself making the same points, and save himself the time of sitting in a stuffy room, still coated in champagne and his own sweat.
He can only imagine how the room might smell to anybody else coming in. It’s probably the only place in the whole of the McLaren premises where the content and marketing team don’t venture on a race weekend. Lando doesn’t blame them, if he’s honest.
As stealthily as he can, he raises his phone, zooming in on Oscar’s face, and the way his hair falls into his eyes as he looks down at the iPad being passed to him. Lando bides his time, nodding along to whatever’s going on in the meeting, and then -
Oscar frowns again, the cute little ridge reappearing on his forehead. Lando doesn’t hesitate, thumb hitting the capture button on his screen before Oscar’s expression changes again.
It’s moments too late when Lando realises that he has his ringer on loud - the sound of the camera shutter unmistakeable in the half-quiet room. He’d probably have gotten away with it, had his headset microphone been muted at that moment. Oscar would have remained oblivious if Lando’s whole side of the desk hadn’t turned their attention to him almost simultaneously, looking at him in question.
Oscar must catch the movement in the corner of his eye because he looks up, eyes immediately finding Lando across the table, warily eyeing the phone in his hand. There’s a brief moment, a few tenths of a second where Oscar looks between Lando and the offending device, where he must be putting the pieces together in his mind.
Lando can’t help the way he reacts, taking another picture of Oscar’s puzzled face. His ringer is still on, only this time it’s worse because Oscar’s already pushed one side of his headset off his ears, and he’s looking expectantly at Lando, a teasing little smirk on his face.
“Can I help you?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. His focused expression has morphed into something playful that Lando only gets to see usually when he guiltily watches back interviews with Oscar. It’s always hard to catch in the moment, too focused on not messing himself up, but Lando takes great pride in seeing it in HD plastered all over the McLaren socials.
“No, you’re fine,” Lando replies, still with his phone trained on Oscar’s face. He’s looking past it though, to the man himself. It’s hard to capture the way his cheeks flush through a phone lens, and he can’t bring himself to miss this moment. “Pretend I’m not here.”
It’s not like he’s said anything that funny, but Oscar still laughs, eyes squinting in the way that they do when Lando’s said something particularly amusing.
The shutter clicks again, before Lando’s phone is unceremoniously taken from his hands by an unamused looking Andrea.
“Afterwards, yes?” he says, looking between Lando and Oscar as though he’s scolding a pair of naughty schoolchildren. “You will both film a debrief, and then we can go home. Please, you have both done well but the season is long. It will seem longer if you behave like this after every race.”
Oscar looks away almost guiltily, as if he had been the one causing the disruption in the room. When his head drops, his fringe flops forwards again, and Lando’s fingers twitch with the want to capture this moment as well. To keep all of Oscar’s microexpressions in a locked folder on his phone until he can figure out the way he ticks.
For now though, he turns his attention back to his own screen, glancing at Oscar out of the corner of his eye. Oscar’s watching him, the same way Lando had been staring only a few short minutes ago.
The media may be starting to paint them as enemies, but that’s not how Lando sees them. An enemy wouldn’t watch him as though he hung the moon, and he wouldn’t see the way that Oscar belongs in the sun.
Lando might not have his phone right now, but when Oscar takes a picture of Lando, he knows he’ll find his own fond expression mirroring Oscar’s own.