as a gr63 fan who wasn’t able to watch the monaco gp, was this low placement actually his fault or bad luck again? i keep seeing a lot of russell hate but am not sure if it’s the usual or if he actually didn’t perform well this weekend
pierresteban reunion has me so sick because. wow. you really will always go back to the person you knew when you were five when you were both little boys in normandy and no one else knows what it’s like to be a world famous athlete from that small town except for him and no one knows the house you grew up in except for him and the first kart you ever drove was his and the first friend you ever had was him and the only other person who knows the insurmountable pressure of representing your country for a team from your country is him too, and so even though you’re both different people now, you’ll always go back to each other. at a psg match.
You’re in the same room as Lando, and he’s not trying to get your attention. Which is weird, because: 1) for the first ten years you’d known him, that’s all he ever did, and 2) for the first time, you want him to do it again.
PAIRING: lando norris x female reader
GENRE: enemies-to-lovers and/or idiots-to-lovers (lando is an irritance-to-lover) in the style of jily (though this is not actually a hogwarts au), mutual pining but even more so from professional yearner lando norris, fluff, romance, non-f1 au, kinda vaguely academia au in the sense that they're in grad school bc i love to Project ( – girl who's so close to graduating it's freaking me out)
WARNINGS: none really but ig some metaphors for love that toe the line of graphic
WORD COUNT: ~5k
You’re in the same room as Lando, and he’s not trying to get your attention. Which is weird, because: 1) for the first ten years you’d known him, that’s all he ever did, and 2) for the first time, you want him to do it again.
The Lando who used to perform all sorts of antics just to get you to look at him—pranks, speeches, elaborate displays of sentiment, and, once, a backflip that landed him in the hospital—is all grown up now, you suppose. You should be happy for him; he looks like the person you always imagined he could become, if only he could get his head out of whatever dumbass plan he had most recently concocted to ask you out.
And you are—happy for him, that is. Really, you are.
Certainly, his childish declarations of affection had been a constant source of vexation when you first experienced them so long ago; you remember thinking that he must be making fun of you, the new kid who didn’t know anybody in a neighborhood where people had been going to the same schools and hanging out with the same friends since they were in diapers. But over time, Lando’s persistence—and general willingness to look like a fool—in his pursuit of you made it clear that he wasn’t doing it just to tease you. So you figured that he just liked attention, and he’d do anything to catch yours when you were so unwilling to give it—after all, he loved a challenge.
You never took him seriously. Maybe you should have, because honestly, who pursues a girl for ten years, in the face of rejection after rejection, in the face of wasted time and effort and broken bones?
But it was always easier to assume that he just liked attention, and he just loved a challenge. Easier to assume that it had nothing to do with you; he didn’t like you, and he didn’t love you.
Harder to sustain this assumption once you started college at the same school and the world of people you knew exploded exponentially, and the number of people who couldn’t care less what Lando did exploded exponentially, as well. There were plenty of other uninterested girls at college (though they were outnumbered by the interested ones—a fact you recall with misplaced bitterness now), but Lando kept up his bi-weekly attempts to ask you out.
Halfway through college, all of that suddenly just stopped. You’ve never asked or understood why; you only know that one day, Lando stopped trying to seek you out in every free moment. It had been a welcome reprieve, at first. Then, one of your best friends started dating one of his, and you started seeing each other in that peripheral kind of way, but Lando was finally, well, normal around you. Eventually, you had developed a friendly enough relationship that you were glad to have gotten into the same university for graduate school as him, and you even found apartments in the same building.
All to say: Lando has grown up. Not just mentally, but physically, as well. You’re not sure if grad school is driving you crazy (it is) or if it’s just because of all the time you now spend together, but lately, you’ve been driven to distraction by how his limbs, once an awkward extension of his body that he barely knew how to control, now move with controlled grace whenever he picks up your books and puts them in your backpack for you; how his hands span so much of the steering wheel when he’s driving you anywhere; how the vein in his neck that pulses whenever he gets worked up about something is just so biteable.
How his eyes have never changed—always inquisitive and attentive, shining brightest whenever he looks at you.
Okay. It’s possible that you’re in too deep.
Certainly, you’re well past any right to his affection. He’s been over you for many years now, if his behavior is anything to go by. And sure, he picks up your books for you, and he looks at you with star-streaked eyes, but Lando is kind to everyone. Even when he was at the peak of his obnoxious declarations of love to you (there was an incident in your high school science classroom involving thousands of fake rose petals, candles, and a chemical fire), you had taken note of his considerate nature (he worked with the janitor after school every day until he graduated—long after his mandated detention days for the fire). Lando gave you the most attention, but that never meant that everyone else fell to the wayside; he carried bandaids in his pockets for people who tripped over the notoriously loose tiles in your high school atrium, he raised his hand in class just to say that he heard Oscar make a really good comment— hey, Oscar, what was that again?, and he slow-danced with the girl at prom who caught her boyfriend cheating on her moments before. Even you had been impressed by that.
So, you aren’t going to delude yourself into thinking that he still has any feelings for you. He’s just being Lando: kind, considerate, himself.
It sucks.
It sucks, because Lando is part of your everyday life now, and even if you had previously suspected the goodness of his heart, you would never have guessed how deep it ran. Lando has been by your side through every should-I-drop-out-of-grad-school crisis, sent you class notes every time you’re out because you’re sick or exhausted (or sick with exhaustion), made you laugh until you cried with his stupid impersonations of your professors; all this, and you know he’s just doing it out of the goodness of his heart. Because you’re friends, and you’ve known each other since fifth grade, and he’s loyal and nice.
So. Good for Lando. All grown up now, mature and intelligent and all kinds of attractive, and that’s the real problem, isn’t it? You’ve stumbled your way into some kind of horribly mistimed feelings for him, and you can’t even blame him—he’s just being Lando.
Lando, who no longer enters every room with his head on a swivel to spot you. Lando, freshly a year older as of twelve hours ago, laughing and joking amongst his friends at this arcade bar you reserved for his birthday. Lando, not looking at you at all now because his attention is fixed on the girl in front of him who is asking for his help on Tetris, probably. Which is dumb, because it’s Tetris—everyone knows how to play Tetris, and okay, fine, you’re petty and you’re too late, and you’ve spent years deafening yourself to the beating, complicated thing in your chest because you didn’t understand it.
And still, here you are, wishing that it could be you, standing there and glowing under the warmth of his regard.
Something in your stomach twists at the way he leans in closer to hear the girl; your friends and his are too damn loud. Your stomach drops completely when you see her mouth move away from his ear to press a kiss to his cheek, and then you’ve done a 180° turn without even realizing it. You don’t want to see whatever comes next, even though you should be happy for Lando. Birthday hookup, or something.
You know you’re being unfair—for all you know, this could be the start of a beautiful relationship. It’s not like Lando to do no-strings-attached, you guess. You can only guess, because for the longest time, the only heartstrings he reached for were yours.
And that brings you back to square one: you’re too late. He doesn’t have feelings for you anymore, and it’s entirely his prerogative to meet a nice girl at a bar and fall in love with her and be on his merry way.
Actually—you should be on your merry way. You’ve never had a good poker face. Anyone who looked at you right now would be able to see how upset you are, let alone Lando, who spent all of his formative years looking at you.
You start trying to find the nearest, most inconspicuous exit, and if that happens to be the exit nearest to Lando, then you’ll find the next nearest, most inconspicuous exit—
“Leaving so soon?”
Shit.
Lando can feel your eyes drilling into the side of his head.
Truthfully, he can tell whenever you even chance a glance at him; like a sunflower following the sun, he is dutifully attuned to your every movement. He’s as helpless as a sunflower against the sun, too—it has been well over a decade since he saw you tear into a much older kid on the playground after they made fun of fellow new kid Oscar Piastri’s accent, and Lando has been helplessly, foolishly, unbelievably in love with you ever since. He has long since relinquished the notion that he owns his own heart. The sun rises in the east, and as the sunflowers give themselves over to its arc across the sky, Lando gives his heart to you.
(Really, Lando doesn’t understand how Oscar didn’t fall in love with you on the playground. When he asked Oscar about this, Oscar pulled a horrified face and assured Lando that he values his life and you are, frankly, incredibly scary. You also treat Oscar like a wayward child most of the time, so Lando supposes Oscar can be forgiven for not seeing your obvious charms. For one, Lando likes your… assertiveness. Oscar says Lando has no self-preservation instincts, but Lando has no need for any instinct that isn’t loving you.)
All to say: Lando would know if your eyes fell upon him even if by accident, even if only for a second, so the way you’ve been burning a hole into his temple for the past five minutes is blaring an alarm signal in his mind.
The girl in front of him is saying something about… something. He doesn’t want to be rude; she’s a guest at his birthday party (though he’s struggling to place how he knows her), and he should listen to what she’s saying. He leans in closer to the girl, hoping that he can pick up enough context clues to figure out what he’s been nodding and hmm-ing and ahh-ing about this whole time, but it’s futile—he can’t focus on anything when you’re staring at him like this.
Eventually, he manages to disentangle himself from the conversation (it was about air fryers, towards the end), and he thinks he’s home free to go check on you, but the girl stops him with a kiss on the cheek. Lando freezes, and then she’s asking him about coffee, and he can’t believe this is happening to him—air fryer girl is asking him out on a date?
He wants to laugh out loud because it’s so ludicrous. The first time he ever got asked out was senior year of college. Before that, his obvious (and obviously pathetic) crush on you was a pretty effective blocker for any other interested parties. Since then, he can still count on his fingers the number of times he’s been asked out, because soon after he stopped publicly humiliating himself to get your attention, the two of you actually became friends. Your friendship is the best thing that has ever happened to him, and he knows it shows on his face whenever he’s near you. So that has been a pretty effective blocker as well; he’s still the village fool for you, but now you call him an idiot with affection in your voice, and he walks on clouds because of it. Sure, you don’t see his heart on his sleeve, but most people do.
Air fryer girl joins the ranks of the few who don’t see, or don’t care, and he would be mildly impressed with her forwardness if he wasn’t itching to get over to you and ask if you’re okay.
“So, what do you say?” Air fryer girl smiles at him.
Lando cringes internally at what’s about to happen. He’s not even sure exactly what question she asked (so stunned was he by the prospect of getting hit on), but he has a pretty good sense. And he knows what his answer is going to be, and it isn’t pretty. “I’m sorry…” He struggles for her name, then drops his head into his hands when her face falls. “I’m sorry!” he repeats, properly anguished now. “I promise I’m not normally an asshole who forgets people’s names, but you can totally think that of me, if you want. Yeah, actually, you should tell your friends I’m the worst—”
“Lando.” Air fryer girl interrupts him with a hand to his arm. She looks amused now, which is better than heartbroken, he supposes. “You haven’t actually told me what you’re sorry about, yet.”
“Oh.” He blinks rapidly at her. “Yeah, sorry. Um, I was just going to apologize, because I can’t go out with you—not because of you, or anything! You’re wonderful, I’m sure, but honestly, I’ve been in love with the same girl since I was 10, and we’re not even together, so… yeah.” He scratches the back of his head. “It’s not you, it’s me?” He offers.
She bursts out laughing and pats him on the arm before releasing him. “Don’t worry about it, Lando. Seriously, I’m glad you feel comfortable enough to, uh, share your decades-long love story with me, but I just asked you out because I think you’re cute, and I had a nice time tonight. No hard feelings, alright? Happy birthday!” She waves at him as she leaves, and he has to remind himself to pick his jaw up off the floor.
He forgets that other people can just do that— ask someone out, casually, like it’s nothing. Like they’re not putting their heart on the line every time, gambling away their sanity on a hope and a prayer. He would say that he’d like to achieve that level of offhand breeziness one day, but he wouldn’t mean it. Being in love with you is Sisyphean, sure, but he’s not sure it would feel true or real any other way. Not to him, at least.
And that reminds him: where the hell are you? He knows you stopped staring at him a minute or so ago, so he can’t imagine that you’ve gotten very far…
He catches sight of the back of your head worming your way through a crowd, towards the doors that lead out into the terrace. He thinks that’s a bit strange because there’s a light dusting of snow outside and you don’t have a jacket, and aren’t you going to be chilly? Should he bring you his coat? It’d be a shame to cover up the hypnotic expanse of your backless top, but he doesn’t want you to freeze, and—
For christ’s sake, mate, get it together.
It’s possible that his brain is a bit scrambled from all the joy of tonight. You’d organized this surprise birthday party, filled with his favorite people and favorite things, all for him. The high school version of him, who had lived off of scraps of your attention, could have never dreamed of such a privilege. Even the college version of him, who had eventually realized he should try to be your friend instead of continuing this foolish crusade to win your heart, would have laughed at the idea that you might one day do so much just to make him happy.
Nowadays, he still marvels at the thought that you text him play-by-plays of your favorite podcasts, and he gets to hand you a warm drink when you refuse to order anything that isn’t iced even in the dead of winter, and his shoulder is where your head falls when you doze off in the library.
Oh, unrequited love has its place in his heart still. Of course it does. The wayward, puppy-dog adoration of his childhood and the heart-pounding, all-consuming infatuation of his later youth has only smoothed out into a more steadfast, deeper devotion. He knows himself well enough by now to understand that he may well be in love with you for the rest of his life, and he will bear that blessed pain with a smile on his face. You will never look at him with anything more than fond friendship, and he may one day see you walk down the aisle towards someone else, and he will still be grateful just to know you and love you. Because he’s never going to put the weight of his feelings on your shoulders again. After a decade of it, the last thing he ever wants to do is force you to soothe the ache in his chest, to give resolution to the breath he’s always holding in around you. He will love you like this—in suffering silence, in loyal anonymity, in permanent secrecy. And it will hurt him good, like that first, clean inhale of ice-cold air in the winter, crisp and addictive even as it slices through his lungs; a pain he continues to chase because he needs it to breathe, to live.
So. He’s fucked, basically. But what else is new? As it is, he’s got more pressing issues to deal with—
—such as catching you just before you leave and delivering what he hopes is a casual, “Leaving so soon?”
You whirl around with a look of guilty surprise on your face. “Lando!” you squeak out. “When did you get here?”
“Hours ago? You came in with me? Blindfolded me, the whole nine yards?” He grins. “Good job with all that, by the way—I didn’t suspect a thing. And I know you said to stop thanking you, but seriously, thank you. This party is mint. You’re a proper good mate for organizing all this, yeah?”
You nod dully. “That’s me. A proper good mate. But I meant when did you get here as in, uh, when did you leave your… interested prospect?”
He stares blankly at you. “What?”
“What?” you parrot back.
Something in the look on your face makes him nervous, loosens his tongue, like he’s 17 years old and asking you to the prom again. He’s older now, and he hopes he’s just enough wiser that he won’t be surprised if you’re about to say something that will break his heart just like the last time. Certainly, his heart will break no matter what; that’s a foregone conclusion.
Still, his voice wavers on his next words. “C’mon, sweetheart. You’ve always been too smart for me; I reckon you’ll have to spell it out for me, yeah? What’s gotten into you?”
Instantly, a frown sets in between your eyebrows. “Don’t say that. I hate it when you say that shit, Lando.”
Impatience—and a little bit of anger he thinks he deserves to feel—bleeds through. “What have I done now to make you hate me?” Desperately, he thinks, I thought we were good! I’ve been so good! Really, it has been almost two years of comfortable, steady friendship, and he has been so good, so careful about easing you into his life and doling out his affection, holding back the momentum of the heart that strains through his ribs for all that it wants to be held by you.
Not a single word of his wanting, his aching, his wounded hoping—not a single word has escaped from where he keeps it all clenched behind his teeth. He’d rather bite his tongue bloody than see you distressed over how to ease the blow of another rejection.
And that’s the worst part, because now that he knows you, really knows you, he’s sure you would try to be gentle about it. Maybe you’d even try to meet him halfway—suffer through a few dates with him, fret over why it wasn’t working, or, god forbid, try to convince yourself to feel something for him. But the chasm between what he feels for you and whatever platonic fondness you may feel for him is so wide that it’s laughable, and he’d sooner throw himself over the edge than watch you try to cross that distance to fulfill some sense of obligation.
Even now, he can see a shine in your eyes that indicates you’re about to cry, and he hates himself for it. “No, hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.” He hugs you before he can stop himself.
You sniffle angrily and push back against his chest. “Don’t apologize to me, either! You’ve done nothing wrong, Lando!”
“W-What?” Now he looks like he’s about to cry, though he thinks he can’t be blamed for it; you’ve been giving him such emotional whiplash in the last few hours.
“I hate it when you joke about not being smart,” you snap. “You are. You work twice as hard as anyone else to get through the same material, and you never complain, and you have better things to say than all the rest of them put together. You—you have a wonderful mind, Lando. Anyone who ever made you think otherwise—that’s who I hate. Not you. Never you.”
This is just about the last thing he could have ever predicted you would say. He’s so dumbfounded that all he can do for a few seconds is stare at you, jaw slack.
The silence stretches on for long enough that you start to ramble, digging your own grave as you go. “To be clear, I kind of hate myself, too, for every time I insulted your intelligence because I didn’t know what else to say. It was never true. And if you don’t believe me, just ask the girl you were talking to earlier! I guarantee she wasn’t just talking to you because you’re a pretty face. Not that you aren’t pretty. You’re definitely, uh, fine to look at. I guess. And she was gorgeous, too. It’s great! The two of you will have beautiful and intelligent children. If you want to have biological children, which you don’t have to, of course. I respect your choices.”
By the end of it all, your cheeks are burning with humiliation, and you’re pretty sure you should never open your mouth again. In that moment, you're willing to believe that nothing so graceless and awkward has been spoken in all of history.
Lando bursts out laughing, all high-pitched and near cackling with it. He laughs with such little abandon that you can’t help but smile in response, hesitant and bewildered but defenseless to the soundtrack of his joy; you’d like to play it on repeat, every day of your life.
“Oh my god," he gasps, when he’s finally finished laughing. “That’s who you were talking about? My ‘interested prospect’? Air fryer girl?”
Your smile stays somewhat bewildered as he explains his near-death experience (getting asked out), but then your whole face freezes in some garish caricature of amusement when he ends his story with this: “… and I mean seriously, I don’t know how you put up with me all of those years. I get asked out once, and I swear it took a year off of my lifespan. I think I owe you, like, life insurance payments or something. Thank god I got over myself, right?” He throws you a conspiratorial grin, as if you’re in on the joke instead of watching the tiny flame of hope you've been harboring in secret now go dark, snuffed out cheerfully by Lando Norris.
“Seriously, I don’t know what air fryer girl was thinking,” Lando continues on, oblivious to your internal turmoil. “Everyone knows I’m not available. I mean, I’m single, sure, but in all the ways that matter, I’m really quite useless for anyone who isn’t you. That ship sailed a long time ago—” He stops himself several moments too late. Then, he lets out a strangled laugh, tinged with panic. “Which is what I would say if I was in high school! You know, something about a group of friends getting together for a birthday just makes me so nostalgic. Really brings me back to the good ol’ days, which I guess were not so good for you because I couldn’t shut up about you or around you. Fuck, I’m not doing a great job of that right now either, am I?”
Long, rambling monologues destined for doom seem to be the theme tonight, but his words stopped making sense to you as soon as he alluded to… Maybe, could it be possible that he still…?
“Lando,” you say, tremulous. “What are you saying?”
“Just that I’m an idiot,” he declares. “Um, not in the way where I’m calling myself dumb. Thank you, I learned my lesson there. And later, I should thank you for saying all that stuff about me. My intelligence. It means a lot to me. A lot. But right now, I’m just saying that my mouth ran away from me, and you should forget what I said!” Nervously, he laughs again.
“Lando,” you repeat, more firmly now. “I don’t want to forget what you said. About me, and why you’d be useless for anyone else. Can you please, please tell me what you meant? I know it’s not my birthday, and you don’t owe me anything, but… please.”
He stares at you, at the emotions flashing by in your eyes too quickly for him to name, at the earnest, beseeching press of your hands against his chest. He isn’t stupid (and he knows you don’t think he is, either). He knows what you’re asking him. Of him.
You are asking for the truth, and the truth is a tangle of emotions he has known and held for so long it feels like an old friend now. Thanks to you, he even knows its name, because at 15 years old, all clumsy and tender-hearted, he had picked up your favorite Jane Austen book in hopes of understanding you better, or at least having something in common to talk about. It took him weeks and weeks of reading with his fingers tracing over each letter, laboring through language from a time long ago, and he didn’t even end up talking to you about it because the meaning he had grasped from it felt far too precious—too serious, too real, too close to the marrow of him—for the spectacles he put on for you as a smokescreen for what he couldn’t say.
The words beat a drum inside his chest now, steady and unmistakable.
If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.
What comes out of his mouth instead is a poor imitation: “You’re not going to make me say it again, are you?”
Confusion mars your forehead. “Say what? Lando, what is it?”
He closes his eyes and thinks about the first real smile you ever gave him, a few days into fifth grade, fingers sticky and shy as you’d accepted the cookie he offered you at lunch when he’d noticed you staring longingly at it. When he opens his eyes, he doesn’t really mean to compare himself to a cookie, but he thinks there’s something similar to the way you’re looking at him now: a bright, innocent kind of wanting, hope so delicate it shimmers like gossamer.
He hadn’t been able to resist you back then, and he certainly can’t now, not when you’re like this, all lovelorn and lovely.
So that’s it, then. He’s resigned to his fate, and he salutes himself to it.
In the end, it only takes a few breaths: “I’ve been saying it all along, sweetheart. Maybe not in so many words—mostly in a lot of other, roundabout words, actually. But it’s quite simple: I’m in love with you.”
“Still?” you ask. You’re halfway there, but you need to be sure.
He shrugs, grinning wryly. “Still. Bit terminal, I’m afraid.”
He’s ready to assure you that it doesn’t have to mean anything to you, and he’ll never mention it again, and nothing needs to change between you, but the words fail him, because you’re kissing him in the next breath, and he’s kissing you back, and it is—
Everything. It is the answer to every question he has never dared to ask, the soft landing for all the tumbles his heart ever took, the release of each desire he has always choked back, the spotlight on so many quiet measures of devotion.
He won’t—can’t—stop kissing you, fervent and almost frantic with it. Now that he’s said the words, they keep pouring out of him, dispersed between each desperate press of his lips against yours. “Please—are you? Does this mean—do you?”
The heat of his mouth, his hands, his heart beneath your palms; it’s dizzying and all-consuming, and you never want it to end. But there is something you need to say to him, something you know he deserves to hear.
“Lando Norris,” you gasp out, slapping a hand over his mouth so you can speak unimpeded (but what a welcome imposition it is). “Let me say this one thing, and then I’m taking you home, party be damned.”
His eyes darken at you from above your hand, and his head cocks to the side in a silent, go on, then.
“I’m kind of in love with you, too,” you confess.
All the breath leaves him in one great whoosh, relief and joy and adoration tangled up together. He leaves a kiss against your hand before taking it into his own, wonderstruck that he can do this now. He’s pretty sure he could power a whole city with the emotion brimming in him, body a live wire tuned just to you. But he’s still cheeky enough to quip, “Terminally?”
Your smile, before you kiss him again, is the only thing he has wished for on every birthday. “God, I hope so.”
george russell has 63 points. this is a good sign. he will win the championship. he will win the championship. he will win the championship. he will win the championship.
I’m a little confused as to how I ended up on the side of F1 tumblr where everyone is a hater. Why are we genuinely hating on drivers? Why are we complaining about the new regs as if they were created specifically to spite us? How do I get back onto the side where we’re all just happy to be here
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stormborns
