astronomers get coordinates wrong; NASA is not infallible in their own predictions. but lando norris loves you and you know it well.
ꔮ starring: astronaut!lando x best friend!reader.
ꔮ word count: 5.1k.
ꔮ includes: angst, friendship, romance. alternate universe: non-f1. mention of food, alcohol; profanity. title is from noah kahan's orbiter.
ꔮ commentary box: my other half, @norrisradio, celebrates her birthday today! my darling, dearest; noah says it best. i stare at/sing to/circle you. i love you to the stars & always, always back.
🎵 recommended listening ⸻ i’m an astronaut (you’re the moon), a playlist.
Here is how this story starts: On June 30, 2026, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration sent astronaut Lando Norris to Jupiter.
Norris departed on the Juno II spacecraft. Scientists estimate it will take him five lightyears to get to Jupiter, then another five lightyears to return to Earth—if all goes well. Norris was selected among a pool of promising astronauts for his “grit” and “tenacity,” which are just fancy words for much more complicated emotions.
NASA says he was brave for taking on Mission Orbiter.
Here is the truth: Lando did not feel very brave about it at all.
Maybe this is where the story really starts. Months earlier, in a sterile NASA board room, where Lando sits among men and women twice his age. Some intern drafted up the specifics of Project Orbiter on a free Canva template. Lando can only stare at the GIF of a rocket going back and forth, back and forth, as they try to orient him about the long-shot mission they want him to go on.
Him. Lando, who once accidentally dyed his suit a blushing shade of pink after forgetting a red sock in the laundry. Lando, who is a mechanical engineer solely because his hands can never stay still. Lando, who only took a shot at NASA because you wouldn’t shut up about the stars and he wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
“Norris,” Zak, Lando’s direct superior, says firmly. “You still with us?”
Lando plasters on the fakest smile known to man. “Yeah,” he croaks. “Still with you.”
They dismiss him two hours later with a sealed manila envelope, a new training schedule, and strict instructions on non-disclosure. Only immediate family. Anyone else was a security risk. To break that particular rule involved jail, so, as badly as Lando itches to tell you or even Fewtrell, he’d rather that neither of you serve time because of him.
That gives him four months. Four months before he’s jettisoned to outer space, which should be any astronaut’s dream, really. But Lando always thought he’d be sent on one of those smaller missions. A week on the moon. A spacewalk to the International Space Station. Not a nearly-decade long journey to go and see if the icy oceans of Juptier can be harvested to solve Earth’s water shortage.
Andrea Stella, the Chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office, had pitched for Lando like his life depended on it. “Norris has the mental resilience required for this mission,” Stella had said.
Whatever the fuck that meant.
Lando had a great deal of things, but he never thought courage to be one of them. It was not a particularly self-deprecating thought. It was just a living, breathing fact. He didn’t like scary movies. He slept with a night light on. He hasn’t told you how he feels about you. All that jazz.
That night—when he finds himself in your apartment for your once-a-week hangout—he thinks about it. For just a teeny, tiny moment, he considers it. How hard can it be?
He’ll tell you he loves you. He’ll tell you he’s been in love with you since he first met you in university, where he’d been an obnoxious fratboy with a backwards cap and you were his project partner constantly annoyed at his incompetence. You had straightened him out. Got him to land in NASA, of all places. The same guy who did jello shots on a Tuesday night was now supposed to be the saving grace of the Earth’s watersheds, and it was because you whipped him into shape.
Lando loved you then, in the clubs with the sticky floors and the library with its rattling AC. He loves you now in your too-small kitchen where you flit around as if you’re cooking something gourmet instead of a Kraft Dinner. He’s pretty sure he’ll love you in space, when he’s lightyears away and all he’ll have are the constellations to keep him company.
If he’s as courageous as they claim he is, he’ll tell you. He’ll say it out loud. He’ll close the distance, kiss you, lift you off your feet—
“Bon appétit!”
You lay down his bowl in front of him. The macaroni pasta glares up at him, sad and orange. He must have made a face because you smack him upside on the head.
“Ow!” Lando howls, rubbing the sore spot. “What the hell, woman?!”
“What did I say about saying woman,” you retort as you settle into the seat across from him.
He levels you with a glare. “Really? We’re going to tackle the intricacies of misogyny now?”
“You started it.”
“You hit me!”
“You deserved it.”
Lando takes a deep breath. You spear your mac’n’cheese. There’s a moment of silence before he shovels a forkful of the ‘meal’ into his mouth, ignoring the way it burns the roof of his mouth. He makes a show of swallowing before gritting out, “I’m sorry for calling you ‘woman’.”
You only stare at him, wholly unimpressed.
“What?” he huffs. “Do you want me to grovel?”
“I’m not opposed,” you answer without missing a beat.
“You—” He breaks off into a laugh, his forehead landing with a light thunk against your kitchen counter. He has had a day you can’t even imagine, a day he can’t even tell you about, and here you are, pushing every single one of his buttons.
He loves you. He loves you so much it makes him want to be brave.
But to want to be something is not the same as being, so Lando doesn’t tell you that night. Instead, he listens as you bitch about work. He lets you pick the movie. He doesn’t complain when you fall asleep midway, drooling on his shoulder.
When he comes back from Project Orbiter—if he does at all—ten years will have passed. Ten whole years without your little weekly traditions, your annual road trips. He’ll miss your birthday, he realizes. He’ll miss so many of them. Forrest Gump plays idly on as Lando spirals on your couch. Who’s going to remember to buy your birthday cupcake? That had always been his job.
You stir in your sleep, burying your face into his sleeve. You mumble something that suspiciously sounds like his name. He pulls you in gently, gently, careful not to wake you. When he falls asleep himself, he dreams of birthday sprinkles, of solar systems, of shooting stars the same color as your eyes.
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
Full stop. Record scratch.
Lando is t-minus three months, eight days, and one hour to D-Day. He has been good. Maybe a little too good. Constantly asking you to hang out, insisting on more sleepovers than usual. He’s always been clingy by nature, but recent events have turned him into cling wrap.
Your accusation comes on a Saturday. You’d begrudgingly accepted his invite to an observatory two hours away from your city, getting into his passenger seat at the bumfuck hour of five in the afternoon. Lando made several pitstops. A gas station convenience store, a diner with overpriced pancakes.
The two of you are back on the road, making your slow, steady way to the planetarium. Your This Is: Chase Atlantic playlist filters through the tinny speakers of his car. Lando’s fingers flex against the wheel as he cowers under the heavy weight of your all-knowing glare.
“What? Me?” he says with a weak laugh. “Hiding something from you?”
Historically, Lando has never been good at hiding from you. You’re smart like that. You read him like one of those worn books you keep on your bedside table; annotated, dog-eared, marketed as ‘well-loved’.
You fall quiet. He hates when you do that, when you weaponize your silence. It makes his palms sweat. He changes strategies. “Is it a crime to want to spend more time with you?” he insists.
“Sure, Jan,” you grumble as you go stare out the window instead.
Guilt simmers in the pit of Lando’s stomach. He tastes iron as he bites the inside of his cheek from trying his very best to keep the truth from spilling out. Please, he wants to beg, and he’s never been the type to get on his knees—but he’ll do it right now if he has to. Please, the number of hours we have left together is not so large. I don’t want to waste time fighting you when I could be loving you instead.
Thankfully, you are the forgiving and forgetful type. By the time he’s paying for the entrance to Palomar and ushering you towards the five-point-one meter Hale Telescope, you seem to have effectively forgotten you’re supposed to be upset with him.
“Did you know,” you say, voice pitched with excitement as you cling to Lando’s arm, “that the Hale corrected what we originally thought about the Andromeda Galaxy?”
Lando did know, actually. It was on the brochure. Still, he wants to hear you talk about it, so he says, “Really?”
“Really!” Your laugh, so full of life, echoes around the otherwise empty telescope dome. “Walter Baade wanted to look at variable stars. He didn’t find any; instead, he realized that previous distance estimates were wrong. Andromeda was twice as far as we previously thought.”
“Twice as far,” he repeats, trying to wrap his mind around that. About something once assumed to be so close being much further than expected. (He tries not to make a metaphor out of it.)
You have a different take on it. “Just like that,” you hum, gaze roaming around the observatory, “the size of the universe doubled.”
That’s what Lando remembers the most from that day. Not the look on your face when he got you access to try the Hale out yourself. Not the drive home where you two argued over America’s lack of a metric system. No, he thinks of that brief chat about the astronomer who didn’t know better and the world that was much bigger than expected.
Time marches steadily on afterwards. Lando gets busier with preparations for the mission, with keeping his secret from you and the rest of his friends. He tries valiantly to not make it look like he’s dying, because giving away his belongings and all that would surely have the alarm bells ringing. Instead, he writes letters despite his shitty cursive. He meets a NASA-mandated attorney over Zoom to draft a last will and testament, just in case.
He buys some six hundred dollars worth of Polaroid film.
“Be honest,” you say warily as he tears open the package, “are you going through a midlife crisis?”
“Bingo,” he deadpans.
It’s not that out of the ordinary. Lando has blown a significant amount of his salary on this hobby. Digital cameras, film rolls. Your expression is only slightly exasperated as you watch him tear into the Polaroid Go Color Film Double Packs he’d bought off Amazon.
“In my defense,” he grumbles, “they were on sale.”
“You have the moral backbone of a chocolate éclair,” you shoot back.
There’s a reason why, obviously. Not only is Lando heading someplace where money won’t matter, but he also won’t really have 24/7 access to Instagram while he’s trying to navigate the Milky Way. He imagines doomscrolling will be the least of his worries up in space.
He imagines it must be lonely.
There will be options for phone calls—signal routing, video chats, amateur radios. It won’t be the same, though, and so Lando reaches for what he knows.
“Hey!” you yelp.
The flash of his Polaroid is blinding. A mini-galaxy exploding in on itself. The device whirrs before spitting out the photo he’d just taken. You, mid-snort while watching TikToks, chewing distractedly on the aglet of your ratty hoodie.
The image fades into all of its unflattering glory. You try to snatch it, but Lando’s already holding it over his head.
“I wasn’t ready!” you whine.
Neither am I, Lando almost says. Instead, he sticks out his tongue and says, as if it’s the world’s biggest inconvenience, “Let’s take another one, then.”
You two run through an entire pack. You tease him about being trigger-happy, about wasting his money on some mundane day, but he would argue otherwise. Everything from the too-close selfie to the accidental snap of your socked feet makes Lando feel like the universe isn’t too big after all.
It can fit, right here, in the palm of his hand. In the sound of your laugh. In the stretch of his room and a sun-lit afternoon with you.
Nobody blinks an eye when Lando goes on to take a bajillion photos.
Hangouts with Fewtrell and the rest of the boys. Strategy meetings where Oscar shoots him pitying looks. Weekends and evenings and errands with you.
Lando buys a dozen more boxes of film because all of it suddenly seems so photo-worthy. The flowering weed cracking peeking through the cracked concrete. The dust of flour over his mother’s kitchen counter. Your nail polish, your elbow, your back as you walk ahead of him.
“Are you planning some sort of exhibit?” you finally ask one evening.
It’s a lot. It’s two shoe boxes worth of Polaroids with another box already being cleared to make way for a new batch. Lando sits in the middle of all the mess, holding two of the more recent ones—Flo posing with her horse and Oliver flipping the camera off.
Lando’s shoulders raise in a shrug. “New hobby,” he says, and that’s that.
He knows he’ll have to do some serious sorting. NASA was clear about his personal preference kit being limited to a maximum of 20 items. A kilogram of material for a decade away. He’s done his complaining, and he’s bought the photo album, and—
Click.
Lando blinks away the flash. You stand at the edge of his collection, camera up to one eye. You catch the photo of him before it can flutter down onto the floor.
“You need to see how insane you look,” you say with a giggle that makes his heart do something funny in his chest.
He does look insane, certifiably so. He looks dead serious as he stares into the abyss, surrounded by a month’s worth of photographs. “That’s kinda meta,” he says amusedly, reaching for the photo.
You hold it out of reach. “This one’s mine,” you say. “You already have so many.”
“Excuse you! Film is expensive.”
“You can spare me one.”
“Why should I?”
“Because you looove me.”
Oh, the way you say it. Even with the teasing tone, even with that cocky smirk on your face—you say it like it’s a cardinal truth. Astronomers get coordinates wrong; NASA is not infallible in their own predictions.
But Lando Norris loves you and you know it well. More than that, you trust it.
It’s cruel, and unfair, and Lando would have it no other way.
You tuck away the Polaroid with an aha-I-won air. You raise the viewfinder to your eye a second time. “C’mon,” you say. “Say ‘cheese’!”
Lando had been so busy collecting photos of all of you that he’d neglected that you, too, might need some documentation of him. Some proof that he was once twenty-something with his feet to the ground, with his heart in your back pocket. When—if—he comes back, he can only imagine the differences. Wrinkles and laugh lines and silver hair. And so he smiles, says “Cheese,” lets you nick that photo, too.
For every dozen he takes of the world around him, you’ll steal one or two of him. Lando, toeing off his rubber shoes in your entryway. Lando, struggling to open an umbrella as a storm rages on. Lando, his chin in your palm as he stares at you through the camera lens. He pretend-fights you for each one, just so it feels sweeter when he ‘lets’ you keep it.
Everything he has is yours to begin with, anyway.
NASA doesn’t tell him.
Among the many shitty things the Administration has and is about to put him through, that happens to take the cake. There is no warning on the day they seed the press release.
NASA to Launch Jupiter Mission with Astronaut Lando Norris. A four-minute read with a quote from Washington’s NASA Headquarters. The accompanying photo features Lando in his suit, with his helmet on his knee, the standard patches over his chest. He’d been smiling so wide his eyes were crescents.
The news hits while Lando’s in the shower. He emerges to his phone blowing up—seven missed calls from Fewtrell, and several frantic voicemails from Carlos. Lando feels a lump in his throat as he stares down at the deluge of activity on his lockscreen’s Notification Center.
And then.
Two texts from you. A link to the article, then a single question mark.
Lando doesn’t waste any time. Doesn’t even bother to get in his car. His shirt’s probably inside out and he doesn’t remember if he locked his front door, but it doesn’t matter, not when he’s running. Down the street. Around the corner. An absolute madman, racing down sidewalks and pedestrian lanes until he’s at your apartment. Even then, he opts for the stairs—taking two at a time, sweating buckets despite his fresh shower.
He’s nursing a stitch in his side as he rings the doorbell, jamming his thumb into the damn thing enough times that it might even break.
When you open the door, he beats you to it. “I wanted to tell you,” he blurts out, “but they told—they told me you’d go to jail if I did. And I, ah—” (He’s still trying to catch his breath from all the running. He’s practically doubled over, holding himself up with one hand on the doorframe.) “You would do so badly in prison. Like, so badly. You don’t—you wouldn’t like the food.”
You try to slam the door in his face.
He jams his foot just in time, wincing as his shoes barely do anything to protect him from the impact. It doesn’t matter. NASA would still send him to space with a broken pinky toe.
“Please,” he wheezes. “Please don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad!” you screech, sounding rather mad.
But you’re right. When you pull open the door, and Lando straightens enough to look at you properly, he sees that you’re right. You’re glaring daggers at him; your eyes are crossed over your chest.
And you’re crying.
Your eyes are rimmed with red. There are tears streaming down your cheeks and wet spots around the collar of your shirt, like you tried to wipe them off just a few minutes ago. You’re furious—rightfully so—but you’re also something else. Something that makes Lando want to cry a bit himself.
“Oh, baby,” he breathes.
He closes the distance, reaching for you. You try to resist, shoving his chest, his shoulder, but his arms are bands as they wrap around you. His face instinctively buries in the top of your head as you thrash in his grip.
“Let me go,” you wail, balled fists slamming against his chest. Somehow, it hurts less than the sound of your sobbing. “You—fuck you—don’t touch me!”
Lando’s seen you through your different moods across the years. He should know better. Should know to take a step back, to let you feel what you need to feel, to give you the cursory day or two before processing it all.
But he doesn’t have the luxury of time today. It’s t-minus a month and two days. If Lando has to spend even thirty minutes of that with you hating him, he’s not sure if he’ll survive. So he holds you as you cry and flail and curse him out; he lets you beat him up, lets you sob through his shirt, lets you feel the fear he’s been doing his best to hide.
Through it all, he says only two words, over and over and over again.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles into your hair. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry.”
What does sorry sound like in space? Did extraterrestrials know what it felt like to feel betrayed? Lando’s thoughts are everywhere and nowhere all at once as he waits you out, as he holds you for what feels like forever.
You calm down eventually. He invites himself in, making a beeline for your kitchen. He pours you a glass of water—his fingers shaking against the pitcher—before going into Defcon 1 preparations. Your favorite blanket, your comfort show as background noise. It’s a routine that he’s perfected over time.
You linger exactly where he left you. Lando looks up nervously. “Come on,” he says, his voice cracking.
When he says your name, it’s a quiet thing. You should know by now that your name is safe with him. Still, you look at him as if he’s someone you don’t recognize. As if a part of you is already grieving the decade ahead.
You don’t ask Why didn’t you tell me?, because you know why. You don’t ask Are you scared?, because you know he is.
The question you end up asking is, “Are you going to come back?”
Lando could talk about the odds. The math and the science behind it all. How there’s a small team at NASA dedicated to making sure everything goes smoothly for him, led by the best engineers in the world.
He could talk about the unfathomable as well. Mechanical failures and rogue comets. How tomorrow is not promised for anybody, especially those cruising at altitudes that very few will ever get to reach.
But the look on your face leaves no room for logic. This is not the moment for Lando to spew numbers, to show you his dossier, to reassure you of NASA’s track record.
Instead, he takes a deep, deep breath.
He whispers back, “You know I always come back to you.”
The public sees the pre-launch press conference, the mission briefing. On the week of his departure, they see Lando exactly as how NASA wants him to be seen. A charming, plucky astronaut with carefully gelled curls and a tight-lipped smile. Lando calls the mission an ‘honor’, says it’s a ‘privilege’ to do this for humankind.
They try to pry into his more personal feelings, his innermost thoughts, but he has been media trained to hell and back. He laughs politely. He deflects. He slips in a joke or two, chirping, “There’s no place I’d rather be.”
The public does not see the weekend at the lakehouse.
Family, friends, coworkers who can keep a secret. Anybody who says ‘Jupiter’ has to take a shot. The dollar-star decorations feature cartoon planets and clip art astronauts. The menu’s themed, too—rocket fruit skewers, sandwiches shaped like stars, Moon Pies.
You’re at the center of the organized chaos. You’re in the kitchen, making planetary cupcakes with Cisca. You’re handing out towels to people hurtling themself into the lake. You’re running the weekend like the military, and everybody looks away. Nobody says a thing. This is just how you cope, how you make sense of it all.
You’re undoubtedly still mad. Lando’s not naive enough to believe he’s completely forgiven. But work is work, and you know that your days, your hours, your minutes are limited, and so you’ve spent every night at Lando’s apartment. You’ve judged his personal preference kit. You suspend the worst of your emotions in favor of soaking up what little of Lando you have left.
This Lando, who is crass, whose curls are a mess, who smiles with all his teeth bared. This Lando, who follows you around like a lost puppy. Hooking his chin over your shoulder. Pressing his palm to the small of your back. Whispering some dumb joke in the crook of your neck, then pulling back to see if you’re laughing. (He is soaking up what he can, too.)
The highlight for everyone else is Saturday afternoon. You, organizing the cooler on the dock. Lando, his footsteps quiet as he sneaks up on you. Conversations pause as you screech, “Norris, don’t you dare—!”
It’s too late. Lando has thrown you over his shoulder with ease, has booked it down the dock, has sent you two hurtling into the cold water. Some shake their heads. Some snap photos. Everyone laughs.
You and Lando surface. Your arms tangle around his shoulders, holding on for dear life. “I’m going to kill you,” you sputter as he gasps out breathless, watery laughs. “I’m going to drown you right now, I swear!”
“I’d like to see you try,” Lando shoots back.
You try to dunk his head. He gets a mouthful of water before dragging you down with him, the two of you kicking and flailing.
Underwater, above ground, or in space, it doesn’t matter; Lando’s love for you is glaringly obvious.
What everyone else thinks to be Lando’s favorite part happens that same evening. At dinner, where Lando is dreading the thought of being asked to make some sort of toast—he rehearsed in front of the bathroom mirror, just in case—you turn the tables on him.
“We have some gifts for you,” you announce, and everybody starts pulling stuff from under their chairs as if that were their cue.
Lando blinks, thrown off, his speech now moot. “I can’t—,” he starts, because he’s already filled out the NASA-mandated 5-by-8-by-2-inch bag for his personal preference kit.
Oscar, the head engineer of Lando’s team, shakes his head. “We got you another one,” he says. “It was hell to file for, but you’re clear.”
Oh. Oh. “I could kiss you right now, mate,” Lando blurts out.
“Let’s not go that far,” Oscar says drily.
The extra PPK is something Lando had no say in. There’s a beaded friendship bracelet from Flo; one of those nifty Kodak Charmeras from Fewtrell. Cisca packs him an embroidered hanky from his childhood, and Lando traces his initials with his thumb while trying very, very hard not to burst into tears. Nobody would judge him if he did. There isn’t a dry eye left in the room, even as the table attempts to keep it light. Laughter and jokes and jabs.
Your gift is a ten-pack of birthday candles. One for every year that he’ll be gone.
“I don’t think they have cake in space,” you say. “So you’re going to have to improvise.”
Your smile is so sad. Lando knows what you look like when you’re holding back tears, and he imagines you two must look like a pair of fools—stuttering on your words, speaking around the lumps in your throats.
“Thank you,” Lando chokes out once everyone has shown off their parting gift.
This is probably the time for his grand soliloquy. The part where he waxes poetics about doing the right thing, delivers some zingers about meeting aliens.
None of that. Lando ducks his head instead, rubs his teary eyes with the back of his fists like a kid. “Thanks, guys,” he repeats, his voice cracking, and that’s that.
They think that’s Lando’s highlight of the weekend. And while it was certainly a memory that Lando holds close, there is one more.
Once all the plates have been cleared, once the music has been turned down. Once everybody has dozed off and left Lando to his own devices. He knows.
He knows you’ll be on the dock. He knows you’ll be at the edge of it, legs hanging underneath you, palms flat on the wood still drying from earlier that day. He finds you there and sits down next to you, reaching for the words that have been on the tip of his tongue.
You speak first. “We’re all being pretty dramatic, aren’t we?” You glance sideways at him. “Video chat is a thing.”
Coping, Lando thinks, but he goes along with it. “They’re setting me up for weekly Zoom calls.”
“And we can’t text all the time, but you can do emails.”
“Right. Modern technology, baby.”
“And you’ll come back.”
You say it with so much certainty. You say it like a fact. Lando doesn’t respond immediately. He’s still dancing that thin line of trusting the numbers and fearing the unknown. His hands clench into fists, but his eyes stays fixed on you. He doesn’t look away. He can’t.
“You’ll come back,” you double down.
He nods, and something inside him cracks open.
“I—I don’t want you to wait on me or anything,” he starts, which is a terrible start, but a start nonetheless. “I’m not selfish enough to ask that of you. I just—I—”
Your hand rests against his elbow. “Don’t.”
You meet Lando’s gaze—half-agony, half-hope—with a resoluteness of your own. Here it comes, Lando thinks miserably. You’re going to let him down gently. You’re going to give him that look of pity. You’re going to—
“Tell me later.”
He’s not sure he heard right.
“When you get back,” you say slowly. “You can tell me what you want to say.”
Lando’s not sure if he wants to laugh or cry. He stares at you, then, drinking you in. How your hair falls into your face. The soft line of your jaw. The way you’re looking right back at him.
“Okay,” he says, voice barely above a murmur. “I’ll tell you then.”
“I’ll wait,” you say.
His chest seizes. “Okay.”
“Don’t keep me waiting too long.”
He presses his face into your shoulder, laughing just a little bit. It might be a sob. You don’t point it out. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he breathes.
Your hand finds his. He clings to it like a lifeline. The world spins madly on.
Lando lied in his press briefing. There is a place he’d rather be than on a rocket to space. Here—in this moment with just you.
By Friday, all eyes will be on him. He will be launched into the solar system with two PPKs and a Polaroid photo pressed in the inside of his suit—a picture of that lakeshore weekend, where everyone he loves is smiling up at the camera. He will spend 10 years, three months, and 22 days on Mission Orbiter.
For now, he raises your linked hands and presses a shaky kiss to your knuckles, one at a time. One for every year he’s loved you. One for every year he’ll be gone. A dozen, in total, and then a couple more just because he can.
Would you look at that?
Maybe Lando Norris was a little bit brave after all. ⛐
for those unaware today india experienced one of its biggest protests in half a decade. there were protests all over the nation for various causes but the major one was in delhi. all we asked for was the resignation of the education minister because he's failed the students of this nation time & time again. but we were met with brutality, the police had barricaded the main site of protest (jantar mantar). metro stations were shutdown, the public was restrained from reaching the protest site and all the adjoining areas had signal jammers to make sure the crowd had no access to constant updates. they had us blocked from all the sides. they were lathi (baton) charging students from one side & releasing tear gas from the other. you couldn't walk 100 m on streets without having a tear gas shell thrown at you. there were many students, women & kids bleeding — some from their head. some couldn't walk anymore. the police had removed their nameplates, covered their faces & acted with full impunity to resort to unprecedented levels of violence. they were pelting stones at us, beating up people for no reason, forcefully detaining them and attacking us constantly with tear gas & rubber bullets. they wouldn't let you exit either. the crowd was peaceful & looking out for each other yet they were met with violence. i made a friend who was all alone & she asked to join me & my friend because a policeman wouldn't leave her alone. he constantly prodded her for personal info, invited her back to the jeep saying they have food there, wouldn't stop following her around. you couldn't call or ask anyone for help, we were left to fend for ourselves & be on a constant lookout if you did not want to be beaten up to death by police. all for what? asking a resignation? shame on this country.
please read this even if you're not indian. especially if you're not indian.
you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.
first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.
now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:
in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.
and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.
and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.
it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:
• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.
• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.
• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.
• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.
• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.
• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.
and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.
what i'm asking:
if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.
if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.
india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.
we all know that law chronically does not sleep but what if another insomniac joined the crew and what if that sleep-deprived person was you?
the polar tang is always unusually quiet at night. the crew have mostly settled into their respective bunks and the only sign of life left is the constant reassuring hum that seems to be vibrating through the ship's walls at all times.
except there is one last other thing left or rather one person, and that person is you.
you have always had trouble sleeping. it started back when you were a teenager, and now that you're older with new struggles and more worries, it only keeps getting worse. it's not that you don't want to sleep, you crave it desperately, maybe more than anything else, but lying in bed wide awake every night is probably the most infuriating experience you have ever had. (even more infuriating than playing cards with shachi who keeps cheating very badly every single time.)
now, you know that leaving the comfort of your bed might not help you fall asleep any faster but you've never done well with time that feels wasted and so you've gotten into the habit of busying yourself until you feel like it's worth another try to enter dream land.
the crew sometimes jokes about the helpful ghost that seems to be haunting their ship because they keep waking up to things they swear were broken when they went to bed last night suddenly fixed.
no one really mentions it, apart from the occasional jokes, because even after five months of sailing with them, no one's really sure how to approach you about it. but it's an unspoken agreement that whenever someone finds you passed out on the floor next to a boiler that was causing trouble the day before, a wrench still in your hand, they let you sleep. it doesn't happen every night, but usually you manage to catch up on at least a few hours like this. sometimes someone even drapes a blanket over you. (you've tried to figure out who it is, who cares enough to go get a blanket from somewhere and come back to carefully place it on top of your sleeping form, but whenever you mention it to anyone they act like they have no idea what you're talking about.)
you're not sure how your captain feels about you missing early morning meetings from time to time, when you've finally managed to fall asleep and no one had the heart to wake you up - the ever present shadows under your eyes telling them that you desperately need the rest - but the crew insists they can brief you about everything at lunch anyways.
it's a delicate balance you and the others have settled into and it's what keeps you sane through those countless sleepless nights.
the only issue is that lately there hasn't been much left to fix anymore.
at first, you think that maybe there can't be something broken all the time, maybe you've finally caught up on all the little emergencies that are always going on.
but you live on a submarine with like 20 other people. two of those people being penguin and shachi. there's always something that needs fixing.
and you could've sworn that the coffee maker wasn't working just this morning, but when you enter the kitchen at 2am sharp, toolbox in hand, you notice that the little yellow light signaling the machine is doing it's thing is glowing again, and someone has put a jug into the compartment that is already filling with steaming hot black coffee.
before you can even begin to wonder who on this ship has decided to make coffee in the middle of the night, you hear someone clear their throat behind you.
a little startled you glance back to find law standing behind the door. he's leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, casual as ever.
(was he.. waiting for you?)
"i've been wondering how my crew manages to get so many tasks done lately but i'm starting to think that it's not the crew."
he pushes himself off the wall.
"it's just you, right?"
he looks at you with what you interpret as a contemplating gaze, but if you're being honest you have no idea what's going through his head. it's always hard to read him.
a silent moment forms between you while you consider what to say. your brain isn't working right at this time of night. you inhale to say something, anything, to not make this situation any weirder than it already is but he beats you to it. you let out your breath, relieved that you don't have to come up with an excuse right away.
"why are you doing this?"
and for god's sake, that's an even worse question to answer.
you try to collect yourself and start stammering something, random words quietly bubbling out of you. you think you hear yourself mumble something along the lines of "just- uh, doing my job", but before you can form a coherent explanation, law stops you again.
"you know that you don't have to prove yourself, right? you have already earned your place on this ship."
you look up in quiet surprise.
he spoke in the same voice as always - sharp, controlled and direct, not leaving anything up for interpretation. but in his eyes, and along the sharp structure of his face, lies a softness you're not used to seeing on your captain.
something about it makes you incredibly nervous. but it also drains the tension out of your shoulders and you notice yourself relax a little.
does he think you stay awake every night to impress him? and what's even more important: is he concerned about you?
"i can't sleep", you blurt.
you don't want him to worry about you - about this.
"it's really not that deep, i've always had issues falling asleep and i just like to use the time i'd spend lying awake in my bed anyways for something useful instead."
law gives you a half-smile.
no, really.
he smiles.
just a little.
a smile just tiny enough to be gone the second you see it.
(what is happening?)
"i see", he says.
then he moves over to the table and sits down before patting the space next to him.
"tell me more. i'm a doctor. maybe i can help."
he looks up at you expectantly.
you realize you're still just standing there, by the coffee maker, with your stupid toolbox and you hesitate for a moment before you rush to put it down and almost stumble over it as you go to sit down next to law at the table.
"i don't mean to question your abilities as a doctor, but honestly i think i've tried everything", you sigh and rest your hands on the table before resting your forehead on top of them.
"it's quite frustrating, really", you turn your head so you can look up at him, putting your cheek on top of your stacked hands. "nothing seems to help."
"fixing the coffee maker at four in the morning will not help you fall asleep any faster either", he hums quietly.
"yeah, what's up with that by the way? i swear it was still broken at breakfast."
"i fixed it", he admits casually. "in hopes of finally making you go to bed on time."
you raise your brows in surprise.
has law been aware of your bad sleeping habits all this time?
he just seems to keep doing it tonight. surprising you. catching you off guard in the dimly lit kitchen at 2am, like some kind of weirdly concerned ghost.
you start wondering if your captain also was the one to fix the lights in the storage room two nights ago.
"but i see now how my strategy might be flawed", law says and has the audacity to sound slightly amused.
you chuckle.
"thank you anyways", you mutter. "for trying." and then: "i didn't realize you cared so much."
now he seems to be the one surprised. which, in terms of law's range of publicly displayed emotions, is barely noticable, but you still do. you notice. you always do.
there's a short moment.
he swallows.
"what kind of captain would i be if i didn't care about the wellbeing of my crew?", he says in a tone you can't quite place. but then again you don't think you can place anything about him ever.
and yeah, you're guessing that it makes sense for him to care about the members of his crew getting enough sleep every night. and it's not like it stops there. he always makes sure you're all eating right and then there's the regular medical check ups. he makes sure you're all well taken care of in any way he can. and you're beginning to wonder if maybe you've just been imagining the way law always seems to soften around the edges when it comes to you.
"probably not a very good one", you try to joke but it comes out a little strained.
you watch him stare at something that isn't actually there, before his shoulders drop a little and he looks back down at you, with eyes that seem to be struggling with something unknown to you.
"i care about you", he says. "because you're part of the crew, of course, but also because you're-"
he pauses.
"because you're you."
and it seems like he deflates a little as the words leave his mouth.
a few seconds pass.
your brain starts working towards realizing what law just said in slow, agonizing steps.
you lift your head off the table, then lift yourself to sit up straighter. you tilt your head up slightly to be able to catch his eyes with yours properly. you open your mouth. then close it. you take a shallow breath, because your heart might burst at any moment now and your ribcage won't open properly to let in more air for a reason your brain is too slow to name.
you think you feel yourself smile but you can't be sure.
is this-? did he..?
he didn't really say much. but it's law. law, who doesn't waste his breath for anything untrue ever. law, who chooses his words so carefully that every syllable he speaks is worth more than entire libraries ever could be. law, who only speaks when he deems it absolutely necessary. law, who, unbeknownst to you, hasn't told anyone that he cares in such a long time, that he almost can't believe he could still pronounce the words right.
something shifts. the air feels different. and law stands up.
is he leaving? he can't be leaving! you haven't even had the chance to say anything, he can't just leave you sitting here with all of these weird feelings and emotions coursing through you, it's like your entire body is screaming and you can't move, hell, you're pretty sure you've forgotten how to breathe at some point.
"let's go", he says warmly.
you look up to where he's standing by the door.
"what?", you hear yourself say. "where?"
"come on", he says and before you can say anything else he's already left the room.
of course you get up and follow him out of the kitchen, down the hallway.
you feel a little like a lost puppy, just trailing behind your captain like this. you could obviously just catch up to him, but the hallways are narrow on the polar tang and you don't trust yourself to be in such close proximity of him right now.
his words keep replaying in your head until they start sounding like a scratched record that your brain produced, and you get so lost between your whirling thoughts and rewinding the moment over and over again that you don't notice where you're going until you're there.
law suddenly stops and opens a door, before gesturing for you to go inside the room.
you do just that, only half managing to make your damn brain shut up, and then you look up and you stop in your tracks because you're standing in the only place you've never been to on the entire ship.
it's laws room. captain's quarters. the only door that's always closed.
and you can see his desk. and shelves filled with books. and his bed backed against the wall. it's honestly smaller than you expected. (the room. not the bed. the bed is fine. why are you thinking about the bed.)
you feel a hand on your lower back as law pushes you a little further into the room so he can come inside as well.
and in any other situation you probably would have freaked out about that little gesture alone, but you're too busy freaking out about literally everything else, this entire strange caricature of a night, that you don't even get to notice how his hand lingers before he carefully takes it away again.
"the sheets are fresh", law says from behind you, quietly. "i will let the others know you're sleeping in tomorrow morning."
you hear the door creak and you turn around so fast you get whiplash.
law's hand is on the doorknob, clearly meaning to go and leave you here. in his quarters. to sleep. in his room. on his bed.
what.
"what?", you say eloquently.
"you. bed. now. captain's orders."
"i- but you.. where will you go?"
"i'll be fine." he walks over to you and gestures towards the bed (his bed!) again. "now go get some rest."
and you have the impulse to argue with him, you want to say something, you want to talk about that moment you just shared in the galley, and maybe also about how it really doesn't feel right that he's just leaving you here in his room all by yourself, but the only thing that comes out of your mouth is:
"uh, i mean- yeah, sure", and then a quiet "thank you."
law nods and then turns around again to leave the room.
no.
wait.
this isn't right.
you have to get a grip on yourself.
he's walking away.
say something.
now!
"law", you say and it's so quiet that you're surprised when he actually stops walking.
"hm?", he turns his head and looks at you.
you search his face for something, anything, any sign of whatever it is that you're looking for, because you don't even know what you're expecting to see, but there's nothing there, nothing at all for you to hold onto.
but it doesn't matter. law was honest with you and now you're going to show him the same kind of honesty in return. he deserves to know how you feel, too. you brace yourself before you let out the words.
"i don't want you to go."
you watch as your words hit him, and it's almost comical, because for a split second he actually looks like he got hit. there's the tiniest hint of motion, only a slight tear in his stoic demeanour, but it goes through his entire body, shakes him to his core, and you're pretty sure you hear his breath hitch.
he stares at you.
you stare at him.
for a long moment you just watch each other in your awkward and unsure, but all the while shared misery.
"can you say that again?", law then asks, he pleads, and you don't think you've ever seen him like this, never seen him so soft and open, never seen this side of him that is making you wonder what else this man is hiding.
and isn't that a cliché if you've ever seen one? the cold and mean 'surgeon of death', hiding his softest parts behind a mask that he never takes off. who would've guessed.
"stay, please. i want you to stay", you say in all your honesty, because it doesn't matter anymore, you've already decided to be brave about this and there's no way back now.
he draws in a soft breath.
"okay."
and he steps away from the door, quietly closing it behind him, and then he carefully crosses through the room, all the way over to you.
you see the exact moment he swallows down his hesitation, because then he's climbing into his bed and holding up the covers for you, waiting for you to lie down next to him.
and you take a second to be very really glad about the fact that he spared you the awkward moment of debating wether it was too much to actually share the bed.
and so you take the place next to him and there seems to be an unspoken agreement of some sort between you, that apparently both of you are too tired to make a fuss about anything anymore, and that this is a moment of much needed comfort for the both of you and so you barely hesitate when you scoot closer and he doesn't wait even a second before he wraps his arms around you.
you pass out within the same minute.
- ✧ -
the next morning you wake up to law's even breathing and the weight of his arm that is still holding you close to his chest. you breathe in and almost choke because it's like you just inhaled an overdose of law. you're not just wrapped up in his arms, you're wrapped up in him, in his very essence, in trafalgar law in his entirety.
and then he wakes up and he starts moving and blinking and he looks down at you and your eyes lock and it's a moment that feels larger than life itself.
nothing happens. for a minute or two. you just stare. the air around you is so charged, you can almost see the electricity flicker in the corner of your eye.
law is the first to break the stillness, when he moves his hand that is still resting on your back, just a little. his fingers slowly, very slowly, trail down your spine and then back up, before the process repeats itself all over again. it's a small movement, but it's enough.
your breath catches.
you don't know who leans in first, but the next thing you know are his lips on yours and your hands in his hair, and his arms pulling you into him, so tight around your waist you feel like you're melting and - oh god - now he's swiping his tongue against your bottom lip and you open your mouth, and suddenly the small room feels very hot, and you press your hand against the back of his neck to pull him impossibly closer, and there's a lip bite and a groan and it's all so beautiful and chaotic that you start wondering if you're still dreaming.
dreaming.
right.
you had a dream.
you were asleep.
you slept.
you immediately pull away.
"oh my god", you gasp. "oh my god, i'm not tired."
suddenly you feel giddy.
"for the first time in months i am not tired", you realize. "i slept through the entire night, i slept for hours on end!"
you look at law and shake his shoulders a little, as you beam at him.
"law, i fell asleep!"
he chuckles, actually chuckles, and nuzzles your head softly.
"i know", he hums.
"oh my god, i'm so happy i could just-"
you stop, as a small realization hits you.
"could just what?", he asks, one eyebrow playfully raised as he looks down at you.
"i'm so happy i could kiss you."
"then do."
and you do.
- ✧ -
a/n: this turned out way sappier than i thought it would, but i still think it's cute. soft law is good for the soul, or so i've heard.
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.”
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