Chapter Text
Lando is familiar with waking up next to a stranger.
He’s no stranger too hookups and one night stands. Lando likes the feeling of something casual, dancing with someone new, the idea of having no string attached. So at first when he finds himself in a bed with someone who he doesn’t quite recognize, he doesn’t think much of it.
People have started to wonder why he hasn’t gotten into a relationship yet, but honestly he just hasn’t felt the need too. Girls are great, sex is great. But he doesn’t want anything more than sex, he doesn’t understand why that is so hard for people to understand.
The sheets are smooth against his bare chest, he can feel the lingering heat of someone next to him in bed. He has a slight pounding in his head, a reminder of how much he drank the night before.
Yesterday he won the Dutch grand prix, so Lando went out celebrating.
He had a great time, but like usual he can’t remember everything that happened last night.
He remembers pieces, that he was feeling feeling lighter than ever, that he was dancing with someone he can’t quite picture in his mind now. He remembers that they smelt amazing, made Lando laugh more than ever, and had a smile that made Lando melt like butter.
Lando feels surprised he doesn’t remember her, he liked her enough to go back to some hotel room with her.
Sometimes it’s like that though, faces blend into each other. Laughs feel familiar but you can’t quite pinpoint where you remember them from before.
Is Lando the most responsible person out there? No, but he doesn’t care about that. He’s the reigning world champion, shouldn’t he let himself have some fun after all he did to get that title? This season isn’t serious for him, he’s here for a good time, not professionalism.
Lando opens his eyes, expecting to see a slender figure in front of him, long hair flowing down the pillow.
Some girl, some pretty face.
He doesn’t, instead he sees bare broad shoulders, short brown hair that has been slightly messed up with the pillow.
Weird, this girl looks a lot like a guy.
Lando sits up on the bed slightly to get a closer look, and when he slowly sees who’s face it is his heart drops in his chest.
He’s lying in bed next to Oscar Piastri.
What happened to that pretty girl from last night? The girl who smelt amazing and make Lando laugh like an idiot. What happened to the girl he was planning to suggest a round two with after some pillow talk.
Lando sits up in bed, rubbing his eyes as if that will clear this all up. It doesn’t, he still feels confused as he sees his team mate in front of him.
Wait a minute.
Lando leans in a bit, putting his head a little closer to Oscar’s neck. Right as he smells the scent of Oscar’s cologne Lando recoils, his heart drops further down in his chest.
Oh no.
He recognizes that scent, that’s the scent of the ‘pretty girl’ he was with last night.
Well, there is no pretty girl. Oscar is the pretty girl, Lando spent his entire night dancing with Oscar Jack Piastri.
Oh my god.
What else did they do? Because they somehow ended up here, sharing a bed while only wearing their underwear in a bed.
In a moment of shock and fear, Lando shakes Oscar’s shoulder firmly, trying to wake him up. Hoping that somehow Oscar has some big reveal that will make all of this magically make sense.
Maybe there was some girl, maybe that girl somehow has the exact men's fragrance that Oscar has. Lando doesn’t judge, it smells nice either way.
“Oscar!” he whisper yells, trying to wake him up.
Oscar huffs, opening his eyes slowly the sound of Lando’s voice. God it feels too early, his brain hurts too much why couldn’t Lando just let him get a few more hours-
Wait. Wait.
Lando?
Suddenly he too realizes what this means, that they’ve somehow managed to wake up next to each other.
Oscar sits up in bed, looking over to see his suspicions are correct. He’s come face to face with Lando Kinder Norris, the man that he somehow ended up spending the night with.
“What is this?” Lando asks frantically, “What happened? How did we end up here?”
Oscar tries his hardest to think, his mind feels foggy but even once he manages to search through his memories of the night. He’s come up with nothing.
He remembers drinking, he remembers Lando. But he doesn’t remember anything that would lead to this.
Fucking hell, why doesn’t he remember anything? Why can neither of them manage to come up with some explanation for this?
Oscar’s heart drops in his chest when he thinks about that.
Did he tell Lando how he feels?
Surely not.
Right?
“No clue…” Oscar murmurs, looking around the room with confusion.
He sees pieces of clothing scattered around the ground, some being Lando’s, other’s being Oscar’s. But what catches his eyes right away, is Lando’s phone on the nightstand lighting up every few seconds with a notification.
Oh no.
Lando’s eyes follow Oscar’s slowly looking over at his phone as it vibrates on the table, and he feels his heart drop even further in his chest.
Again, oh no.
Lando reaches out quickly and grabs the phone off the nightstand, looking at the notifications pouring in with a continuous stream. They’re coming in so quickly that Lando can hardly read a single one of them.
His eyes manage to focus on one of them, he taps on it quickly before it’s gone away. It’s from Carlos.
“LANDO CHECK YOUR INSTAGRAM STORY RIGHT FUCKING NOW OH MY GOD-”
He stops reading and he quickly closes out the app and opens Instagram. His heart is racing in his chest, he’s hoping that somehow Carlos is just being dramatic.
Maybe it’s just a photo of him drunk? That isn’t too bad, everyone gets drunk. His PR team won’t murder him for that one surely? Maybe this is something that washes over, hopefully it’s something that washes over.
Oscar is leaning in, looking over Lando’s shoulder as he presses the ‘my story’ button.
Turns out, Lando was being too optimistic.
Way too optimistic.
They are both greeted to a photo of Lando and Oscar in a club, taken by someone else. Not just any photo, it’s a photo of them kissing.
Maybe kissing is a little generous too, it’s not a simple peck or something.
They’re making out, fully making out.
The lighting is horrible, but somehow Lando can make out every single pixel of detail. Lando’s being held down in some booth by Oscar who is fully on top of him, his hand is resting on Lando’s thigh as Oscar presses his hips into Lando’s. Their faces smooshed together, looking like they are eating each other’s faces off.
Worst of all, Oscar is tagged; directly on his ass.
Lando looks up at Oscar, a look of horror on both of their faces as they look at each other. Trying to comprehend what just happened.
“Who took that?” Oscar mumbles out.
“Who cares Oscar!” Lando responds, fear clear in his voice, “We’re making out! Your grabbing a hand-full of my thigh mate! I can’t tell where you start and where I begin!”
Oscar blinks with confusion, “I can-”
“Does it matter!” Lando responds, cutting Oscar off with a voice crack, “We’re making out!” he repeats.
Oscar looks back down at the photo, seeing the his Instagram handle directly on his ass. Along with the time stamp in the corner, the photo was posted 10 hours ago.
Who knows how many people have seen it by now? It’s way too late to delete this now, it’s surely been re-uploaded on every single social media platform and is surely currently trending on Twitter in like 50 countries.
“What do we do?” Oscar asks, looking at Lando who is currently trying to put his phone on do not disturb to get rid of all of the satisfactions.
Lando thinks for a moment, “Die? Go into hiding? Figure out how to erase your identity?”
Oscar huffs, but then he thinks through Lando’s suggestion for a moment.
Eventually, Oscar shakes his head, “No, we need to face this.”
Lando looks at Oscar like he’s said the most stupid thing he’s ever heard, “Face this? What is there to face?! This means nothing! It was probably some dare or something!”
Oscar looks at Lando like he’s an idiot, “A dare that ended up with us sharing a bed? Actually sorry correction, sharing a bed while half naked?”
Lando groans, wanting so badly to ignore what that could mean, “We can’t face this either way. What are we meant to say?”
“We need to ask Zak-”
“No.” Lando responds firmly, “I’m not seeing him until we need too-”
Like clockwork, Oscar’s phone starts ringing on his side of the bed. He looks over and sees the contact name, “Zakary Challen Brown” staring right back at him.
“Zakary Challen Brown?” Lando responds in confusion, “His whole fucking name?”
Oscar nods, “Yeah? What is he under in your phone.”
Lando responds instantly without hesitation, “I put him as, ‘don’t answer’ in mine.”
Oscar huffs and answers the phone call before Lando can stop him, Lando looks at Oscar with a look that says ‘you fucking idiot’.
“Yeah?” Oscar says, leaning back in the bed.
Background noise can be heard on the other side of the call, quiet whispers filling the silence that have such intention behind them.
Lando presses his ear right up to Oscar’s phone, trying to listen in.
“Oscar…” Zak responds slowly, like he’s distracted, “Can you see me? Like… Now.”
Lando mouths a firm ‘no’, but Oscar ignores Lando’s desperation.
“Where are you.”
“Currently… At Zandvoort, we’re in Lando’s drivers room-”
Oscar keeps listening but Lando gets up and starts pacing around the room.
God this is going to be bad, he’s going to lose his job. They are going to lose their jobs, he’s going to lose the best team mate he’s ever had.
Well maybe second best, Carlos was pretty great-
No, he’s the best.
The best team mate he’s ever had.
Fucking hell, Zak is going to kill them isn’t he?
----
They manged to throw some clothes on, get into a car that Zak called for them; and began heading to their death as Lando has been calling it.
Well, it might not be their death. But in Lando’s perspective it might as well be, because he feels like he’s already been on thin ice with his PR team lately.
First of all it was having a shirt about eating pussy, real classy he knows.
Then it was saying what he felt like in interviews over the last few races, brutal honesty that drives his PR team up the wall.
Then he got all drunk on that live stream of his friends, looking like he had just been knocked on the head with a frying pan.
And too top it all off, literally yesterday he made a comment in dutch about having sex in a kitchen. His PR team sent him a strongly worded text message about that right before he went to the club.
And now here he is, he just got caught passionately making out with his teammate; which he can’t even remember doing.
Lando has spent the entire drive looking at articles on his phone, some of the titles are creative; others are as simple as ‘McLaren drivers gone gay’ with a thousand exclamation points like they’re out of some tabloid from 2004.
He’s not even fucking gay! He’s very comfortable in his sexuality, he would know he’s been with a lot of girls.
Doesn’t matter now though because he’s walking with Oscar through Zandvoort, heading towards his drivers room that is still entirely intact considering it’s been a fucking day since the race. All he can do is hope that he doesn’t get murdered in cold blood by the FIA.
This isn’t going to get him a passive aggressive text message, or a lecture about brand image and what he can and can not say on live TV. Zak Brown is personally going to hand him a lawsuit and a perfectly written statement on the exact loophole that makes it so he loses his contract.
Fuck.
Oscar on the other hand is trying to keep it together, trusting that his team is happy enough with the two of them to not be too mad.
I mean, they could surely play it off as some sort of a joke right?
It’s just some photo of them making out in a booth at some dingy club, this will wash over, some joke between friends.
Because surely that’s all this is?
Surely Oscar didn’t drunkenly confess his feelings for Lando last night. He can’t be that stupid can he? It doesn’t matter either way, it’s not like the either of them remember enough to connect the dots anyway.
As they reach the door of his drivers room, Lando freezes up. Standing a few steps away like a deer in headlights.
Oscar sighs, grabs Lando by his arm and drags him into the room. Forcing Lando into whatever nightmare they are going to walk into.
Lando was expecting their PR teams, he was expecting the head of the FIA and the entirety of the McLaren development team to be here so they could all take their turns yelling at him.
But it’s just Zak.
Which is either a great sign, or a horrible one.
Zak looks up at the two of them as they walk into the room, Lando looks like he’s about to throw up, while Oscar on the other hand is trying to keep a straight face.
Unexpectedly, Zak smiles at the two of them.
“So…” Oscar says slowly, breaking the silence in the room before it can linger for too long, “We’re sorry.”
“For what?” Zak responds, sounding oddly cheerful.
Lando and Oscar immediately feel confused, they look at each other for a moment then back at Zak.
“For posting us making out?” Oscar responds, his words coming out confused, “Aren’t you mad?”
Zak laughs, “Mad?” he responds as if the words are stupid, “This is great!”
“Great?” Lando responds, entirely flabbergasted.
“Yeah!” Zak responds, walking up to the two of them with confidence, “Do you know how popular Landoscar is getting!? Seriously, we need to get in contact with the merch company as soon as poss-”
“Hold on,” Oscar says, cutting off Zak, “What is a ‘Landoscar’?”
“You.” Zak responds simply, gesturing at the two of them.
Lando laughs in disbelief, “Us?”
Lando feels a sense of relief that Zak doesn’t seem mad at them, but he still feels entirely confused that they aren’t being scolded right now.
“This is bad!” Lando continues, “We got caught making out at a club! Everyone’s talking about it! I read the headlines over here!”
“Exactly!” Zak beams, a wide smile plastered on his face, “Everyone’s talking about it! There’s no point denying it, so why don’t we encourage it.”
Oscar huffs out in disbelief, “But we aren’t-” he thinks over the word for a minute before speaking, “Dating, we aren’t anything! They’ve got it all wrong.”
Zak shrugs, “It doesn’t matter if it’s true, more people are talking about the team than ever. If we lean into this, it could be something huge!”
Lando looks at Zak like he’s grown two heads, “I’m not even gay!”
“You will be.”
“What the hell does that mean-”
Oscar cuts them both off, “What is this? A PR relationship or something? Designed to bring us attention and nothing more?”
“Exactly!” Zak says with enthusiasm, as if someone is finally making sense, “You’ve obviously got something there, people have been starting to notice. This is the cherry on top, this can be something huge! We can turn this into some of the best publicity we have had in years!”
“The hell?!” Lando responds, “We aren’t dating! We aren’t anything! What do you mean they’ve ‘noticed’?!”
“Chemistry Lando,” Zak responds, as if it should be self explanatory, “I’ve seen it you know! The edits, the fan fiction! Landoscar is huge!”
“Oh my god you’ve gone crazy,” Lando responds, grabbing the edge of a table, “This doesn’t mean anything! We can make an apology and move on!”
“Or… We can lean into this.” Zak responds.
Lando is about to say something, make a loud scene about how stupid this is and how he is very much comfortable in his sexuality.
But Oscar speaks first.
“Fine.” Oscar responds.
Lando and Zak’s gazes fall on Oscar, Lando is looking at him with disbelief while Zak is looking at him with a wide smile on his face.
Zak beams, “Perfect! Isn’t this great!”
“No!” Lando responds, his eyes darting between Oscar and Zak like they’ve lost their minds, “My relationship status isn’t a PR thing!”
Zak walks towards Lando, “For every moment you two are seen in public, I’ll give you a bonus.”
For a moment Lando wants to scream out ‘no’ and run out the room so he can find someone normal to talk about this.
But then he thinks about it, well more specifically he thinks about the money.
This doesn’t have to be forever does it?
The money would be good, and maybe getting on McLaren’s good side would be a good thing considering he’s been pissing them off for a while now. Zak hasn’t exactly smiled at him much lately.
Oscar already said yes, and that has made Lando wonder why. It’s not just the fake dating, it’s the passion Oscar had in that photo, the way he was gripping his thigh, the way he was pressing down on top of him with his hips.
Does this mean something for Oscar?
Lando wonders, does Oscar remember more than he’s letting on?
Something happened last night, and it obviously meant something back then. And as much as Lando would rather it not be public, he has found himself wondering what that means.
What if there is some chemistry there?
He isn’t gay though.
He’s just exploring this, the possibility of Oscar being into him. That’s all.
Lando hesitates for a moment, “How much we talking?”
Zak smiles wider, “How much you want?”
Lando lets out a laugh of disbelief, “Seriously?”
Zak nods, “Name a figure, and I’ll find some way to match it.”
With a deep breath, and ignoring everything bit of rationality in his mind. Lando nods, it’s a shaky nod but it’s still a nod.
“Fine,”
Zak beams, but Lando isn’t done.
“But, if I want out of this deal. I end it, no questions asked.”
Zak hums, “Fine,” he says with a hint of a smirk on his face, “But I have a feeling you won’t want out.”