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Lando is eleven when his soulmark comes in.
Naturally, he’s not expecting it — having lived childhood without being able to see in color, viewing the world through a filter of black and white, he never thought he’d be the recipient of another connection.
He first learns about soulmates when he’s five, asking his parents about their matching tattoos. They sit him down to explain how soulmarks and soul connections work, and they explain the meaning behind the world of color locked away for him, right now.
He gets a little sad when they tell him he won’t be able to see colors until he meets his soulmate and falls in love with them, but in true five-year-old fashion he’s quickly distracted by his mum announcing she’s making cookies that afternoon.
He ultimately doesn’t end up remembering most of the conversation, recalling more of the love and respect woven in every note of it instead; mirrored in his parents, much like the twin constellations dotting their shoulders.
As he grows up, he finds different connections more and more, hiding them away in little corners of his brain to think about late at night when he dreams. His childhood best friend, Max, doesn’t have a connection or a soulmark, but some of his other friends do — his older brother, Ollie, has a soulmate timer, and his grandparents have been able to feel each other’s pain for as long as they can remember. His little sister, Flo, can’t see color either, and the youngest, Cisca, has a string of fate leading her to her soulmate.
But among all of them, none of them have had or ever heard of someone bearing more than one connection.
━━━━
It’s a cold day in November when his eleventh birthday arrives, and he’s sitting on the couch, valiantly trying to read a book even as the words blur together on the pages. There’s a rare, pale sun shining, and his mum is humming in the kitchen as his sisters giggle from where they’re watching cartoons in a blanket pile on the floor.
The skin of his arm begins to itch as he’s concentrating, and he puts the book down with a huff as his eyes start to swim, losing his place in the chapter for about the eighth time.
He looks down at his arm almost as an afterthought, and his eyes widen as he bites back a yell, watching flame-hot letters burn themselves to life on the inside of his left forearm, tingly and sparkling, firework-bright.
He bolts up and runs for the kitchen, grabbing at his mum’s shirt. She whirls around, worried, and he holds out his arm to show her even as it shakes, letters continuing to form. She processes it and turns to yank a coldpack out of the icebox; and as the letters cool, they read the words out loud together.
”Let’s get started, yeah?”
She hugs him tight and kisses his temple, soothing; and once he’s calm, she stands with a slightly watery grin of her own. She nods towards a bowl of blueberries sitting on the counter, about to rinse them for his cake, and her ponytails bounce over her shoulder as she throws him a wink and says, tone thick with mischief, “Yeah, alright, kiddo. Let’s get this party started.”
He smiles back at her, grin shy, and he sneaks a look down at his arm one last time before going to stand beside her at the sink.
Later that evening, she tells him the words are a bright, vibrant fluro-green. He doesn’t know what that looks like, not yet — but he thinks it’s his new favorite color.
━━━━
Fast forward.
Eight years have passed, and Lando’s made it — he’s really made it. All the way from being just a little kid who had to be velcroed into a big kart so he didn’t fly out of it, to the breakneck pace of the world’s elite, top motorsport.
He’s now officially in the international madhouse, multi-circuit grid they call Formula 1.
He doesn’t quite know how he’s made it this far; and sometimes he just likes to stand in the lobby of the MTC and stare up at the ceiling, marveling at the height of it and how the vastness makes him feel small. Like just another cog in the colossus of a machine that makes up McLaren.
His new teammate, Carlos, likes to joke that the height keeps him humble. Carlos is taller than Lando and holds it over him unapologetically, who’s a hurricane of a man with windswept hair who smells of cinnamon, spices, and the earth after it rains. A man who gives the most amazing hugs; hugs that remind Lando of his family back home so much that sometimes it makes him want to cry.
Carlos is funny, delightful, and looks out for Lando in ways he’s not used to. For a while, he almost hopes that Carlos turns out to be one of his soulmates — he thinks he wouldn’t mind. (He doesn’t think Carlos would, either.)
But Carlos’ first words to him are bright, clear, and marked nowhere on Lando’s body. “Welcome to Formula 1, my friend. I’m excited you are here,” and not a precise, typewriter font the sear of lit neon against Lando’s skin. “Let’s get started, yeah?”
Lando’s colors never reveal themselves around Carlos, either, but that ends up being okay. He can love Carlos and know that they’re still bonded for life regardless, with or without a connection determined by something finicky like fate.
And then, on a soft, spring evening, he meets Magui.
━━━━
Magui is graceful, pretty, and light in contrast to Carlos’ dark. She’s classically beautiful with curves for days, and a perfected look of disinterest that grows bigger, sharper, bolder when she sees Lando for the first time.
She holds out a hand for him to grasp, polite and deliberate, and her first words to him are light, innocent, accented. “Let’s get started, yes?”
And just like that, Lando’s gone.
Things with her are fast and exquisite. He falls so hard that he hits his head and stares up at her in a daze for months, fueled with all the excitement and passion of a first love. She consumes him, fully, completely, until all he can make out is the shape of her camera-ready smile.
He does know, deep down, that her first words to him aren’t an exact match for the ones on his arm. But he convinces himself that they’re close enough, that maybe there’s a discrepancy between different languages and countries. He tells himself this over and over again with a fervor born out of an ever-growing desperation, because a love that shines this brilliant has to be something special, something unique, something fated.
He tries explaining this to Max once — lovely, supportive Max, who’s never once asked Lando for an explanation, who’s always had Lando’s back. But is someone Lando feels he has to explain himself to anyway; to quiet, perceptive Max, who has never liked Magui, who just looks at him when he trips over himself trying to explain, something akin to sympathy and pain in his gaze.
Lando doesn’t try to bring it up again. Four months later, on the dinner of their first anniversary, Max is proven right. Magui breaks his heart.
She walks away with her makeup intact and composure immaculate, as if destroying the future Lando thought they had wasn’t enough to even ruffle the perfect, model-readiness of her.
Lando is left sitting there, plates half-eaten and wine glasses still full, chest tight and head aching as he fights back tears. He goes home alone to sweep up the pieces of his heart and hide them away in a box strapped with chains and duct tape, smeared with blood and tears as caution; and he buries it deep within the recesses of his lungs, leaving it there to rot without a look behind.
It’s for the best that his colors never revealed themselves around her, either.
━━━━
He comes out of his first two years in F1 with a new best friend for life, a quietly heavy heart, some exciting points finishes, and a slight reputation for being immature. (He’s not fully sure how he got that last one.)
Carlos says it’s because he wears his heart on his sleeve, and often says what he’s thinking without entirely considering the consequences.
Lando guesses that makes sense, but he doesn’t quite know how those aren’t seen as strengths — they’re both skills he takes pride in, his willingness to always being open and his commitment to honesty. But the longer the season drags and the more gossip spills, the more he finds himself shutting down. Carlos tries to pull him out of it, but everything slowly starts to feel harder, and he doesn’t know how to make any of it light again — and maybe he shouldn’t try. Things are more manageable like this, anyway; there’s less scrutiny, less judgement the more of himself he files away.
Then one day, Carlos leaves and doesn’t come back — back to the MTC, back to McLaren, back to Lando.
━━━━
Enter Daniel.
Daniel’s fun. He’s loud and effortless, and reminds Lando of warm sunshine on a summer day, the shape of confetti resting on a podium, and the smell of fresh starfruit cut carefully into slices. He’s full of a hilariously infectious energy, and seems to shake the unfair comments people throw at his shoulders off like snowballs.
Lando can see them hurt sometimes, when they first make an impact; but they usually melt pretty quickly, and Daniel always crawls his way back to himself with an undeniable brand of perseverance.
Lando envies it, craves it like he’s never wanted anything else in his life.
He summons the courage to ask Daniel about it one day, after they’ve just shaken off a group of reporters hounding the older driver about his RedBull days, and Lando thinks maybe there might never be a better time to ask.
Daniel thinks about it for a moment, weighing his answer, and his mouth twists up, rueful. “To be honest, mate, I’ve learned to let myself feel it right away — like in the moment, or as soon as I can. And it’s important that I feel all of it; the good, the bad, and the ugly. Even the things that I wanna do nothing but shake a stick at and run away from — often especially those things, because those usually tend to be the issues that’re holding me back the most.”
He tucks his hands in his pockets, and rocks back and forth on his heels for a minute. “And when I get that time to think and process, that’s when I breathe, and do my best to let it go. Because that’s really all you can do, sometimes — let it go.”
He straightens, starts to walk again. “That’s not to say that it’s easy, cuz sometimes it really, really ain’t. But you have to try, I mean, or you’ll end up miserable. I know I did, for a while, and I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Then, he clutches his back all of a sudden and groans dramatically, playful. “And don’t get old, mate, I am like a rusty hinge on a gate, wow.” He rotates his shoulder with a huff, and a click sounds from somewhere within it, Daniel making a little “yeowch” in response. Lando giggles at the sound, quiet but unrestrained, and a smile passes over Daniel’s face.
━━━━
Lando really likes being Daniel’s teammate.
But along with Daniel comes Max Verstappen, the horns of RedBull himself, because unfortunately for everyone around them they’re a package deal, and you don’t get one without the other far behind.
Lando wonders why a few times, when he stops to wish he had someone like that. But he never thinks of it as anything more than friends and former teammates, until Max approaches him once during a rain delay.
Lando’s standing off by himself, and he’s curious about why Max has chosen to approach him now, but decides not to ask as Max gets closer. He does want to get to know Max better, and figures if nothing else he’ll stick to Daniel as a topic, because the most surefire way to get Max Verstappen on your side is to talk to him about Daniel.
“Daniel and I have matching tattoos, you know,” Max says, completely unprompted and out of the blue, yanking down one shoulder of his RedBull polo without further fanfare. He angles it slightly so Lando can see better, and Lando’s breath hitches as he leans forward, shy but eager to catch this glimpse into the dynamic that makes up Daniel-and-Max.
The tattoo itself is small, straightforward, and dynamic in its simplicity, a number 3 set against Max’s right collarbone in solid black against a series of racing stripes.
Lando looks at it shyly, reverently, almost not quite sure he’s allowed even though Max was the one who marched over here and yanked down his shirt. Lando murmurs back, hushed, “No, I didn’t know.”
Max nods, like he’s not completely surprised. “I see. Well, Daniel has a matching 33 on his collarbone, too, and you should ask to see it. He likes to show it off, but of course only when it is safe to do so.” He slides his sleeve back into place, folds the collar neatly down.
Lando nods back in response, mind whirling as words float just out of reach, fingertips tracing the contours of his own mark through the fabric of his hoodie. Max looks at him, scrutinizing, and takes a breath as he seems to come to some sort of decision.
“You know,” and Max starts fiddling with a bracelet tied around one wrist. “I have another soul connection, too.”
That breaks through the fog in Lando’s mind, and his head whips up, eyes blown open in shock.
Max chuckles. “It is a string of fate. You’ve heard of those, yes?”
Lando nods, frantically, casting about for an answer. “Yeah, um. My baby sister has one. She, uh, hasn’t met the other end of hers yet.” His hands are clasped tightly in his lap, nails digging into the skin of his palms. Anxiety is eating away at the insides of his stomach, and he feels a little faint. “Uh. Have you?”
Max grins again, softer. “Yes.”
Lando breathes out, shakily. Once, twice. Pushes down the urge to cry. He thinks he’s fairly successful, even as he whispers, voice slightly watery, pitched quiet so anyone nearby doesn’t catch it. “Do I know them?”
Max looks at him with a bit of uncharacteristic shyness. “You do. It is, um. It is Charles.”
Lando gasps, hand flying up to cover his mouth, almost against his will. Not just one, but Max is connected to two different drivers on the grid? His mind spins faster than ever, but the more he thinks about it, the more sense it makes. “Whoa. Max, that’s — that’s incredible. I — I’m so happy for you, mate.”
He takes a deep breath. “Um, I guess I should tell you this too, since you’ll understand. I, um. I have two connections, too.”
It’s Max’s turn to look shocked, eyes widening even as a smile grows. “Really? That’s very cool, Lando. I am glad to not be the only one.” He clears his throat, and his ears turn a slight pink. “Mine are two different, um — how do you put it? Two different types — Charles is friendship, and Daniel is more. He — he is romantic.”
Lando giggles happily, resists a tiny surge of tears. “I, um. I don’t know what mine are? I haven’t met either one yet.” His features go a bit sober. “I thought I had — well. Yeah. That doesn’t matter.”
His fingertips are back to tracing his own mark. He swallows, smiles up at Max. Thinks, maybe, he’s starting to find something like home. “Thank you. For telling me. I don’t — I don’t feel so alone.”
Max grins back and the clouds break, and his smile looks like the sun even as it shines through the downpour of the rain.
━━━━
The race season of 2022 kicks off, and Lando’s world changes within the very first race, although he doesn’t know it yet.
He and Alex get ushered in for an interview directly after the AusGP, and despite wanting nothing more than to go back to the motorhome and change out of his fireproofs, he pastes on a smile and grabs a microphone while they wait for SkySports to finish setting up.
At least he’s not alone. Alex makes things like these easier, more bearable; he’s comfortable like that, always has been. Endlessly gentle, refreshing like a blueberry mint lemonade in summer, with the energy, silliness, and loyalty of a golden retriever.
One knee starts bouncing as he and Alex wait for the interviewer, and as they sit there another driver approaches the counter, settling on a stool and picking up a microphone of his own. Lando cocks his head, intrigued, because the guy doesn’t look familiar but he’s wearing an Alpine shirt and badge, so he’s probably their testing and reserve.
The other driver looks up, and his gaze locks with Lando’s. Their eyes meet and Lando gasps, immediately flooded with an unbearable warmth but a gentle weight, a presence in the other’s eyes like a support he can lean against when the world gets loud. The other driver blinks a moment later, and Lando’s breath flees.
God. He’s pretty.
The interviewer interrupts the moment, cruelly tossing him back to reality, and he responds to her questions on autopilot as he casually banters with Alex. But he studies the other driver the whole time with a careful kind of awe, quietly burning with a longing for something he didn’t even know he was missing.
He checks back in when the interviewer turns to the other driver, addressing him with a comment about how he hasn’t actually made it to F1 yet, since he’s only testing and reserve. Her hair is perfectly coiled and her dress is crisp, and Lando hates her just on instinct. “You haven’t had the pleasure of driving an actual F1 car yet, have you?”
The driver starts to raise his microphone, but Lando beats him to it. He knows firsthand how often criticism is cleverly disguised as commentary, and while he normally looks out for the rookies he’s overwhelmed with an instinct to protect this particular one; wanting to shield him from that consuming, barbed-wire dialogue Lando spends his most intimate nights with.
“Not yet, he isn’t.”
He reaches up to rub at the shell of his ear, a self-soothing motion, anxious even as he refuses to second guess himself, and he turns to the younger driver, offering a smile. He tries his best to sound encouraging, directing his next words to the other and the other only.
“Not yet.”
The driver across from him freezes at the attention, pretty eyes shocked, and he fumbles with his microphone for a second before choking out something unintelligible. He places it down, whirls, and flees into the bustle of the paddock.
Lando looks after him, feeling confused and inexplicably lost. He wants the other driver to come back, wants to feel that safety and warmth again — because the last time he felt like that, it was wrapped in one of his mum’s hugs, and he misses her, misses the feeling of her safety, misses the weight of her love.
He wonders if he’ll ever see the other driver again. He quietly wishes for it in the exposure of day, desperately hopes for it within the anonymity of night.
━━━━
Two-thirds of the way through the season, McLaren announces that they’re dropping Daniel.
Lando’s furious. And deep down he understands their choice even as he doesn’t want to; because it’s not entirely Daniel’s fault that he can’t wrangle the shitbox of a car that McLaren’s placed in their laps this year, and told them they have to excel with.
Lando’s been struggling with the car too, naturally, and he can see the frustration written across the engineers’ faces on an almost-daily scale, upgrades and parts just not coming together, just not creating the cohesion they need in order for it to flow.
What he really doesn’t understand how composed Daniel appears to be about the decision. Cracks do show here and there, with flashes of temper and sarcasm coming from the older driver that Lando’s not quite sure how to handle. But overall, Daniel is quiet and resigned in a way that fundamentally goes against his nature; his shoulders are no longer steadfast, but instead slumped, fixed and rounded with a weight that’s festered unchecked for years.
Max comes, quietly offers Daniel a place at RedBull as soon he hears. Nothing permanent, unfortunately, he was only able to bargain a place in testing and reserve — but still, it is better than no car, no driving; better than no movement at all.
Daniel’s hackles raise, he fights back. Says no. Lando’s shocked, annoyed, and wants to fight, but then he looks over at Max; how he tilts his head to the side, observant, patient — waiting for Daniel like he knows him inside and out, waiting for Daniel like he knows him better than he knows himself.
A week later, Daniel turns around, proves Max right. Says yes.
He and Max click back into place side by side, chained by something long ordained, filling the gaps left open next to each other with something like destiny.
And Lando’s incredibly happy for them, he is; but he cannot help but feel left alone — left alone to struggle with the abomination of a car he has to drag around a circuit every few weeks, left alone with a team he’s not sure he can trust, left alone to fend against a swarming media, left alone after four years of Formula 1 that have ended with both his teammates walking out the door.
He feels selfish, embarrassed, and horrible as heat prickles at the corner of his eyes, watching Daniel and Max walk away down the paddock, side by side; and he forces down the weight of his emotions with an aggression he usually reserves for battling on track and the blanket cover of his worst nights. He chews down the inside of his cheek as his fingernails dig into his arms, and his sorrow tastes bitter and devastating later within the solitude of his driver’s room.
He shudders once. Lets himself have a singular moment of vulnerability, staring at the walls that have stood enough testament to his own loneliness to coat it within the whorls of paint.
He wonders who fate will send his way, this time.
━━━━
It sends him quiet strength in the form of Oscar Piastri.
Oscar Piastri is younger than him by a year, and comes with the credit of back-to-back F2 and F3 wins. He carries a firm set of confidence that’s only built on the knowledge of his skill, and even with the turbulence of his career upheaval at Alpine and the media storm who tear into him without mercy, Oscar stays calm, collected, head up high.
It’s Daniel all over again, in how Lando both craves and resents it — that composure, that steadiness.
More importantly, he is also the driver Lando met last year, the one who looked him in the eye and didn’t back down — the one who looked him in the eye and held it like he thought Lando was something important, something meaningful, something valuable.
After Zak makes the staff announcement, Lando goes through youtube and watches Oscar in social media clips and interviews, trying to get a grasp of the other and how he ticks. Zak also shows him the onboarding video of Oscar’s first introduction to McLaren upper staff, upon Lando’s request, and while the younger is clearly nervous he holds himself steady with a trademarked determination.
They don’t get a chance to meet for a few weeks after Oscar’s first signed on, only running into the other in passing, neither given the chance to even say hello as they’re rushed from one place to another. They’re left with only little nods and waves, exchanged across rooms or down corridors.
Finally, after three weeks into Oscar’s official tenure, they’re both called in for a joint meeting with Zak and Andrea for a formal introduction, and a conversation about team expectations and dynamics going forward.
Lando shifts back and forth in bed that night, restless, email sitting heavy within the inbox of his brain. He has little idea of what to expect, and he hopes that, if nothing else, Oscar is nice. He shifts again, still uncomfortable, and scratches at the skin of his exposed mark absentmindedly.
Sleep finds him eventually, even sandpaper-edged with the trademark of anxiety.
━━━━
He wakes up two hours earlier than usual that morning, which leaves him time to stop for coffee. Will and Tom, his and Oscar’s lead engineers, will both be there, and he grabs their orders too. At the last second, he snatches a bagel for Oscar. It’s blueberry; he hopes Oscar likes it.
He settles himself into a chair next to Andrea, pulling his legs up and crossing them. He sips his own cup of tea, and makes a face as he realizes he forgot to ask them put honey in it. Oh, well. C’est la vie, or whatever.
Oscar’s late.
One of Lando’s legs starts to bounce underneath the table, and his fingers begin to wander, finding a loose thread on a sleeve. He starts to work it free, and it occurs to him only a few minutes later after he’s worked the stitching loose that he probably shouldn’t be destroying his hoodie.
God. The nerves are eating him alive.
Finally, the room’s glass doors open with a clank, and there’s Oscar. Lando looks at him, eagerly drinking him in and trying his best to be subtle about it, but even he’s sure he’s spectacularly failing. Oscar looks harried and exhausted even from where he’s buried into a parka with a furred hood, looking so cozy that Lando wants to steal some of its warmth. And maybe some of Oscar’s warmth, too.
He shakes his head immediately, trying to dispel the thought. Get it together, Norris. It doesn’t matter how he makes you feel — be appropriate.
He watches as Oscar makes his way into the room, shaking Zak’s hand as he apologizes for being late. He pulls out a chair in the next moment and unzips his parka, bending over to hang it on the chair’s spine. As he straightens, he looks up and catches Lando’s gaze; and a small, genuine smile crosses his face, his hair flopping in his eyes, and it makes the stress and exhaustion in his features bleed away until just the boy is left underneath.
Lando’s breath hitches within the confines of his lungs. He bites down on his lip, trying to ground himself, because he finds himself slipping, falling right back down into that gentle presence, body and brain finally going quiet. He breathes in deeply through his nose, holds it, desperately fighting back the urge to cry.
Oscar stands back from the table, and squares his shoulders as Andrea introduces him to the room. But he keeps looking back at Lando, and it’s all Lando can do to not let himself cross the space between them and curl into the other’s arms.
Andrea finishes, and gestures for Oscar to speak. When he does, all it takes is one gentle sentence to turn Lando’s world upside down — four soft words to set it alight.
He looks Lando in the eye.
“Let’s get started, yeah?”