Chapter Text
It was a great two days Lando got to spend in Monaco while the McLaren PR team tried to sort out this nightmare. Zak kept sending Lando and Oscar upbeat updates about this plan they were coming up with as if they should be excited for it.
Neither of them are, but for very different reasons.
Lando for the most part is trying to ignore it. He basically shoved his phone in a drawer, and hid from the world for a few days. He only knew the status of this ‘project’ from the emails that he kept getting.
Honestly, time away from the job was pretty great for Lando. He loves this job, but it gets hectic at times.
The engineers weren’t happy, they wanted to go over Lando’s stats before Monza but as Lando very kindly said in his final email; “nope”.
Seriously, after all of this Lando needs his break.
Sure it’s only like a week back from summer break, but after being publicly shamed for being caught kissing your male coworker one might make you need a little time off.
He spent most of his time in his apartment, sitting on his couch while watching Netflix, working out, sometimes spending a little time on the simulator, he’s trying to make the most of his break.
For a few days he didn’t have to think about much, he just focused on what he always did. Trying to ignore that he was on every headline of every news article, and that his mind couldn’t stop picturing that photo in his mind.
Oscar’s hand on his hip, the passion between them.
It doesn’t matter, that doesn't mean anything.
Seriously, it couldn’t have right?
Lando is very straight.
Doesn’t matter anyway, his week away from all of this has come to an end. Lando and Oscar got put on the next flight to England to go meet with the McLaren PR teams to discuss this insanely strange arrangement they have going on.
So here they are now, sitting in a board room which has a tense miserable energy amongst it. The only person who seems happy being Zak, who is smiling wide as he stands at the end of the table.
Lando sinks back into his chair, trying to not think about what weird idea Zak is coming up with.
Because seriously, he’s done enough. Lando has already agreed to a fake relationship, he isn’t making some coming out video with tears down his face and waving a pride flag around at a pride convention.
Not that he’s against gay people, he’s fine with gay people. The issue here is that he isn’t one of them.
As he sits in his chair, looking at a slide on the projection screen that says “Response to Current Circumstance: Plan Landoscar”, Lando feels like he’s entered some alternate timeline where he is the only sane person in this world.
Well maybe Oscar too, but still.
The room is a tense silence as everyone looks towards Lando and Oscar, who are sitting on the end of the table. Lando feels like he’s on trial for a crime.
Maybe that would be better, it doesn’t involve public humiliation.
Lando misses his bed.
He misses a time where the world didn’t think he was gay for his teammate.
He misses girls.
But hey, look on the bright side. He still has his contract, and for some reason no one seems exactly mad at him. More flabbergasted by the situation as a whole.
Which to be fair, it’s insane.
After a few moments of silence, Zak finally speaks up.
“Welcome everyone!”
No one smiles, no one reacts. Everyone is clearly too absorbed in their own thoughts.
Lando sees Oscar sink down into his chair, hating the feeling of everyone's eyes on them.
“I’m sure you all by now know about…” Zak pauses, trying to find a way to positively say this.
Lando speaks for him instead, “The photo of Oscar and I tonguing each other that was posted to my story.”
Zak blinks, but after a short moment he nods warmly, “That, and as you all know by now we plan to continue with this arrangement.”
Lando rolls his eyes, “What is the point of this? There is no possible way that this is going to end well.”
A woman from across the table speaks up after letting out a long sigh, “I agree. Why don’t we just get them to deny it? Get the PR team to come up with some statement.”
“Money.” Oscar mumbles under his breath.
Zak smiles still, using his clicker to move onto the first slide. It shows a google trends graph of ‘McLaren F1 Team’ with a large spike in the last few days shown clearly, thousands more searches over the last 3 days.
The worst part, there's a section popular posts across social media platforms, specifically there is a post displaying that photo with a big red circle around Oscar’s hand which is gripping Lando’s thigh that has hundreds of thousands of likes.
Oscar sinks further back into his chair, hoping he will find some way to sink down far enough that he will disappear.
“Our social media management team has found that over the last few days, that Landoscar and McLaren have been some of the most popular topics on the entire internet.” Zak says, seeming proud of the statistics on the screen.
“And that’s a good thing?” Lando asks, looking around as if everyone has lost their minds, “This whole situation is insane, I mean seriously what are we doing! None of you have anything against this?”
Silence.
Lando huffs and sits back in his chair too, he and Oscar both looking to be the only unhappy people in the room.
Everyone else is either indifferent, or in Zak’s case excited.
“You agreed Lando.” Zak says, the smile falling off his face slightly.
“Barely.” Lando mumbles out as he crosses his arms together tightly.
Silence falls over the room as Zak stares at Lando for a moment, Zak clears his throat as he continues onto his next slide. Lando is about to celebrate everyone’s eyes falling on the screen instead of at him, but then he sees the words ‘coming out post’ in bold text.
Great.
Zak’s smile forms on his face again, like he’s trying his absolute hardest to ignore the tension in the room, “Now, to start this plan we need to confirm the rumours.”
Everyone looks directly at Lando and Oscar again.
“How?” Lando asks, his words coming out with suspicion.
“Press conference, I’ve set an interview up for this Thursday.”
Oscar can’t help but let out a laugh under his breath, “Isn’t that like… Stupid? Aren’t we meant to talk about race strategy? Things actually important to the job.”
Zak’s smile doesn’t falter, “This is important for the job.”
Lando speaks up, his arms tense as he crosses them so firmly, “I’m a shit actor you know, I mean what do you even want us to do? Kiss in front of the interviewer?”
Zak’s smile forms into a smirk, “If you’d like.”
Lando uncrosses his arms to run a hand down his face, trying to make any of this make sense. He would rather not get caught kissing his team mate again publicly, because that is how they got into this disaster in the first place.
Oscar on the other hand, doesn’t exactly hate the thought of it.
Mainly he likes the kissing part though.
“No,” Lando says firmly, “I’m not doing that, you’re already pushing it with any of this. I mean do I need to say that I’m not gay again?”
Zak hums, “As I said, you will be.”
Lando scoffs and crosses his arms, feeling like he’s the only sane one left in this room. If Zak says that stupid comment one more time, he will rip up his team contract and set it on fire in front of him.
He loves this team, he loves Formula 1. He loves being a driver, he loves racing for McLaren and could never see himself anywhere else. Most importantly though, he loves girls.
Their laughs, their smiles, the way they look at him like he’s the best thing in the world.
How can Lando party and sleep with when he’s in some gay relationship; that not a single soul seems to actually be surprised by.
That is worst part of this, that everyone seems to have been expecting this. That everyone in Lando’s life seems to have been waiting for him to come out of the closet.
He’s getting too many text messages stating that “they always knew” and “that they’re so proud of him for finally figuring out his sexuality”.
Again, he’s happy for the support. It’s nice to know the people around him aren’t all homophobic.
BUT HE ISN’T GAY.
And why does everyone want him to be gay so bad?
Why does everyone think he’s gay?
Those messages are from family, friends, colleagues, people he hasn’t spoken to since high school. People from all stages of his life.
It’s just so infuriating, all of this is so confusing.
Because they’re right, there is no straight explanation for that moment. He made out sloppily with his coworker in a dingy bar after winning a race, and stayed the night with him while sleeping in the same bed together.
Maybe something happened that night, maybe it was a dare, maybe it was something more.
But Lando has no explanation, and he seriously wants one right now.
Seriously, how did he end up here?
----
Lando felt like he was awaiting death as the clock ticked down to Monza.
Normally he would be itching to get in that drivers seat, excited to do what he loves most in the world. The one thing he feels like he’s actually good at.
But he was absolutely dreading it over the week, because going to Monza meant doing that stupid interview.
They set it up perfectly with some interviewer, the first one of the weekend is with a source who is known for spinning the truth. So Lando has no faith that any of his words won’t be spun into something entirely different.
He’s been trying to tell himself that it doesn’t matter.
None of this is real, none of this is true. The public can believe what they want, they lie to the press all the time.
This may be different, but it’s the same principal.
Lando just needs to say some bullshit over the next while about this ‘relationship’.
Surely this won’t be forever, eventually they can manufacture some breakup and say they will ‘be friends for the team’ or some bullshit. Add some ‘papaya rules’ terminology to smooth it over with the public.
That week of peace and freedom went too quick, and then he was flown out to Monza around mid week so they can start to work on this press tour they’re doing.
Basically a coming out tour.
God, this is stupid. So fucking stupid.
They haven’t said anything about that ‘incident’ so everyone online has sort of going insane about it, making up crazier conspiracies and rumours each day.
Some are saying that Lando and Oscar have been dating for a while, some think it’s a mistake, some think they have been married since 2024 and have somehow been keeping it a secret for all of this time.
It would be funny to watch, if it wasn’t so irritating.
But here he is, about to confirm the rumors that aren’t even true.
McLaren sent him a 10 page document he was made to study of things he should say in these interviews, some elaborate story they came up with.
It read like some cheesy romance novel, Lando hated every word of it.
Though it doesn’t matter what he thinks, he’s already agreed to this.
He’s sitting in a chair in some press room, holding a microphone in his hand with a pop filter that is astronomically big. Oscar is sitting next to him, he’s tapping his foot nervously against the floor.
A sweet looking younger woman is sitting in front of them, blonde, pretty. Lando would absolutely love to slyly flirt with her during this, but he can’t because he’s sitting next to his ‘boyfriend’ right now.
He feels so weird at the idea of that term.
Boyfriend.
The hell is he doing? Why the hell did he agree to this?
A man is setting up the camera as the woman gets talked to by a producer, and for once Lando actually feels nervous for one of these interviews.
Normally he’s fine with them, he can say some bullshit and move on. He never takes them too seriously, he makes stupid comments that he later regrets but make him laugh anyway. But right now he feels like he’s sick to his stomach.
What if he says the wrong thing?
His team is already mad at him, he’s really fucked up lately.
Messy interview after messy interview, his PR team is basically about ready to quit their jobs collectively in some sort of a strike.
Did they even sign off on this?
How the hell did Zak manage to convince them that this was a good idea?
God, this is going to be a nightmare.
The camera man starts recording, and the woman looks at the two of them with a smile on her face.
Neither Lando nor Oscar are smiling, Oscar is looking down at the ground and Lando is looking straight ahead with a dead glare; his mind too preoccupied to manufacture his look like usual.
At first the questions are alright, she asks about how Lando is feeling after his win, she asks if Oscar feels like he can perform better this weekend. She asks about the car, she asks about the team. The usual stuff.
But it doesn’t matter, because they both know whats coming.
And only after a few minutes, she asks.
“So,” the woman has a smile on her face, too wide, too casual, “There have been a lot of rumors going around lately, any comment on those?”
Casual, like she’s asking something that doesn’t matter.
It matters.
Lando feels like he’s about to throw up on the table from his nerves.
He knows what he’s expected to say, he’s read that stupid fucking document over and over again. Thinking about those words feel so fake, the words feel so scary coming out of his mouth.
Why does it matter? All of his family know it’s fake, the people that matter to him know who Lando really is.
This will blow over, he can move on and act like none of this happened in a few months time.
So why is he so scared to come out to the world?
“We’re… Dating.”
The words come out of Lando’s mouth as if he’s unsure, it sounds more like a question than an actual statement. Oscar moves his foot over to nudge Lando’s a silent gesture of support.
Lando is a horrible liar, he can hear the hesitation in his own words. But maybe, people who want that to be true will believe it no matter what.
The woman smiles at the two of them, “So, the rumors are true then?”
Professional, sweet. The woman isn’t the problem, her employer probably is forcing her to ask these questions anyway.
Lando just feels sick, so sick.
Because for some reason, this feels real. Like he’s actually admitting something he means.
He doesn’t, but it feels that way.
Lando’s gripping the microphone tight, trying to look at anywhere but the camera.
This is stupid, so stupid.
“Yes, we’re dating.” he repeats.
The words slip out of Lando’s mouth, like he’s not entirely aware of what he’s saying. He’s shut down, from both nerves and the weight of the situation.
He isn’t gay.
He isn’t dating Oscar.
None of this is real.
Fucking hell, he hates interviews normally but he really wants out of this one.
They’ve got so many more to do as well.
Fucking hell.
Oscar feels his heart racing in his chest, hearing those words coming out of Lando’s mouth feels surreal. Partly because he’s wanted to hear them.
Honestly, he’s dreamt of moments like these before. He’s dreamt of dating Lando, telling the world about their relationship; finally being able to be honest about this part of himself.
He’s always known he wasn’t entirely straight, and from the second he figured that out about himself he knew he would have to hide it. Motorsport isn’t the most accepting place, and he wasn’t about to ruin his career over it.
So right now sitting in a room and telling the world he’s in a ‘relationship’ with a man, it really feels surreal.
His team told him to do this, he’s being fully encouraged by everyone in his life to be gay for his job.
Sure it’s for ‘business’ reasons, but that doesn’t change that it’s real for him.
But none of this is real for Lando.
Lando isn’t gay, he isn’t into Oscar.
It hurts, Oscar knows it shouldn’t but it does.
The woman smiles at them as if she hasn’t picked up on the tension in the room, “I figured.”
Lando blinks, “You what?”
The woman nods sweetly, “You two always seemed close.”
Lando wants so badly to say something about how he’s not in love with his team mate, he isn’t gay. and that none of this is real. And that maybe people need to stop assuming that he’s gay, because in his mind he’s insanely straight.
But he doesn’t.
Instead he smiles, tries his hardest to not grip the microphone too hard; and acts professional.
“We are,” Lando says, trying his hardest to fake a warmth in his tone, “It’s been... Hard keeping this a secret-”
His media trained brain finally catches up with him, he starts spilling out all of the stuff he’s been instructed to say by his team. Referring to everything that was outlined in that stupid 10 page document.
He laughs, he smiles.
Every word feels so fake, every sentence feels stupid.
Oscar just sits there, unable to get himself to speak.
He’s worried that if the words come out of his mouth, it will actually feel real; because he so badly wants it to be.