fall apart and redefine what keeps you up at night @honeymurdock - Tumblr Blog

Jun 13

➤ SEEING RED (AND ORANGE) | LANDO NORRIS

pairing: lando norris x soulmate!reader

summary: since lando turned eighteen, he has yet to figure out what his soulmate trait is, but he's pretty sure he has mastered the art of emotional intelligence, which is totally the same. right?

or: you can feel your soulmate's emotions. lando has no idea.

wc: 7.3 k

warnings: moments of angst and poor emotional management

➤ MASTERLIST

2017

Lando sits, in the middle of his living room couch, surrounded by all of his friends and family. This year had been magical, joining McLaren, becoming a reserve driver, so close to his dream he could almost taste it. And now, he was about to find his soulmate, and his entire life would be complete.

He never could dream small, he thinks as the seconds tick down. He had this all planned out for who knows how long: he would win a world championship, have a giant family and a dog and a house in Monaco and England and maybe even one somewhere fun and tropical, and he would be the happiest, coolest person alive. His soulmate would be gorgeous and smart, much smarter than him, and run to him after every race, and-

"Five," They begin to count down for him, and Lando lets his fantasy slip away to brace for impact, arms stretched out in front of him to watch for any magical marks on his wrists. "Four."

"Three," Lando whispers under his breath. His soulmate mark or trait would be something cool, not the stupid colour blindness one, or a hard-to-find one. "Two,"

"One." For a moment, the world is perfectly still. No one moves, no one breathes, and nothing appears on Lando's arms. No voice fills his head, no memories of past lives come flooding to him. He stands, ripping off his shirt in case it's a mark hidden someone, stripping down to his underwear as everyone laughs, and he waits.

Mere seconds pass before the realization hits like a truck: Lando has no idea what his soulmate trait is, and it isn't obvious. "Maybe you have to write something on your arm?" Someone passes him a marker, and he frantically writes 'hello' on his forearm, and nothing appears.

Disappointment has never felt so bitter. It's deep within him, spiralling around his chest in a way he'd never felt before, ceasing him up entirely. He didn't have a soulmate trait. Maybe, he didn't have a soulmate. Maybe, this was all stupid and pointless, and he was standing in his underwear in front of everyone.

And then, just as he thinks he might cry, his heart very gently become warm, a slow building happiness that has Lando awkwardly smiling as he sniffs and wipes at his eyes. It's a calming notion, that comes over him next, like his heart is reminding him to take deep breathes, and he does. "So?"

"Nothing," He says to the crowd. "Nothing changed."

2023

"And you're alright with travelling?" Amanda asks over a mug of tea, steaming in the cool England air. "We've a winter house in the Alps and a summer house in Monaco, which with little ones is a big deal."

"Travelling, if anything, would be a perk." You joke back over your own mug, hands clamped around it tightly. Why she insisted on sitting outside in the morning just after the rain, when the chill still hadn't quite left the air despite the spring weather, was beyond you. That being said, you weren't about to miss this opportunity because of the weather, or your own annoyance with the cold. This was your one chance to finally travel, to finally put all your hard work to use, even if it was chasing a billionaire's kids around.

"Well, it's a highly stressful perk." Amanda continues, "And taking care of kids is a highly stressful job. Are you good at handling stress? Negative emotions?"

You nod, your real answer stuck on your tongue. Bringing up soulmates during an interview wasn't exactly the smartest of ideas, considering the potential discrimination from employers who might not want to hire someone who has yet to find their soulmate. After all, soulmate tracking could lead you around the world, and above all, you can tell Amanda needs someone committed to her children and their needs. "May I be honest?"

Amanda raises an eyebrow, mug paused just below her mouth. Based on the name scrawled on the inside of her wrist, and the fact you were interviewing to be an au pair, she had no trouble finding her soulmate.

But you?

You were not so lucky. "I have to be good at handling emotions, because it's my soulmate trait. I feel whatever they feel, all day, every day."

When you turned eighteen, nothing obvious had changed. Your family had stayed up to see the clock strike midnight, to see what soulmate trait you'd get, carrying on the tradition of colour-blindness, or maybe a timer, like your cousin had gotten. Instead, you saw no change, no secret mark appearing on your skin.

You just felt disappointed, and somewhere in the universe, in yourself, the feeling of disappointment returned to you.

It was always hard to explain that you could feel the same emotion as your soulmate, but you could. It was a separate thing, based in the middle of your chest, as if your heart could feel two things at once. It was always there, at the back of your consciousness, every feeling attached to a life you'd never seen.

Joy, you think, was the most pure and obvious emotion, something that bubbled up in you with a smile you could never shake. When your soulmate was happy, it was never just contentment, but a bright thing that made you daydream of how their grin must look, how wonderful their laugh must sound.

Anger was the second most common. It came in short moments of frustration, or sometimes a deep, week-long affair of something blinding, a rage that seemed to consume them whole, and you by proxy. Sadness was a different sort of beast, originally all consuming. There had been long, long stretches of time where it felt as if all your soulmate could feel was anxiety, sadness, grief, and it was this period that made you seek out meditation methods, psychology courses and ways to help others. You spent enough energy sitting with your soulmate's emotions, keeping calm on your end to help them with theirs, that it just sort of became your whole life.

They might have outgrown the sadness, but you never outgrew your ways of helping them.

You found joy in the world around you because you knew how it helped someone else feel. You pursued jobs and opportunities that allowed you to help others because you knew how to keep a level head, to hear everyone's story, to sit and mourn and love as if they were your own emotions.

Perhaps it wasn't the healthiest thing to get so wrapped up in the emotions of others instead of your own, but it was what your life had come to. Your soulmate had carved this life for you, despite the fact that you had no luck so far in finding them. The next step, then, was obviously branching out and travelling, which made this position, offered to you based on your emotional intelligence, a dream. "But besides your soulmate, how can you deal with other people's emotions, especially children's?"

"I've spent so long studying people, their emotions and their body language in attempts to find my soulmate that it's now just sort of second nature. I can tell what people are feeling because I'm so used to feeling more than just one thing at one time." You answer, and she shakes her head slowly.

"What an impossible thing to track. How would you know?" She sets her mug down and flags a waiter. The man stops by with the receipt, the timer on his wrist reading four months, six days, three hours. "See, a timer, that's useful. Emotions? Ridiculous, if you ask me."

"I think I'll just know when I meet them." Or at least, that's how all your fantasies played out, just locking eyes across a crowded room and realizing that you could feel them, that it was always them, but so far, nothing of the sort had happened. "I mean, I've experienced all of their emotions for the past five years, I ought to be able to pin that to a person."

Amanda rises, putting on her coat, and you're quick to follow, your own half-full drink abandoned. "I would've hired you already without the soulmate trait, but I suppose that's the bonus that makes you so special, anyway." She pauses, then, and turns back to you. "If you don't mind me asking, what is your soulmate feeling currently?"

"I think he's frustrated, but it's not the same as angry. Just sort of annoyed." You take a slow, deep breath in an attempt to calm your own racing heart. If they were annoyed, the last thing they'd need to feel is your nerves added to it. And, after enough breaths, you can feel them start to relax, all on their own.

“No soulmate trait?” Oscar asks, and Lando hums over a ridiculously large bowl of salad.

“It makes no sense!” He answers, stabbing at the lettuce in front of him with a vengeance. “Like not a mark, no colour changing shit, just…nothing. I think it’s one of those things where you have to touch people to know.”

“So that’s why you’re so clingy,” Oscar answers sympathetically, and Lando takes a crouton and throws it at him. It had been six years, and he had yet to find his soulmate, to have that connection click into place with a simple touch. Sue him for being clingy when it was the only hope he had for finding true love.

Then, just as soon as Lando begins to feel genuinely resentful, a soft wave of calm comes over him. He had joked, once, that his heart and his brain were capable of feeling two different emotions at once. Sometimes, he was furious, but in his heart, he knew he would be fine. Othertimes, his heart was just so happy for no reason. No one really understood what he was talking about, but Lando didn't mind. He was rather proud of his emotional intelligence, being able to decipher what he was really feeling under the surface. He was maturing into a proper adult who could rationalize their thoughts and feelings, but then again, proper adults don't throw croutons in dining halls.

He takes a slow, deep breath, trying to match the beating of his heart, and after he exhales, he returns to his conversation. “Does your heart ever get happy when your brain is angry?"

“What?”

“Like I was pissed about the soulmate thing, and now I feel all calm. Like my heart knew I was being stupid.” It was like someone reminding him to breathe, to think of the better alternatives, like the fact that his soulmate was probably out there, just with a rare trait that would make it all the more worthwhile.

Oscar, unfazed by both the strange question and the crouton, thinks for a moment before speaking. “I think you’re just old enough to know not to be mad about things. Or you have other things to focus on.”

“Maybe.” Years later, Lando would look back at this moment and bang his head into a table, but in the present, he continues to eat his salad and ponder why no one's investigated the psychology of the heart.

2024

"Micah? Is that what you're supposed to be doing?" Micah, who should be unpacking his things into the summer house in Monaco, has decided he will not be sorting his socks, and instead will be constructing the world's largest indoor racetrack around his bedroom floor. Never to be left alone, his younger sister Emily is perched in the middle, drooling over a little pink car.

"I put 'em away, Nana." Micah says, jabbing his thumb in the direction of his suitcase, half shoved in a closet. Typically, children called their grandmothers Nana, but they had adopted the word for you, a sweet little thing you were terrified they'd outgrow. "See?"

"Ah, yes, I see." You walk over to the suitcase, gently drumming your nails on the top. "How silly of me, this is perfectly unpacked as your mother requested."

Micah, not quite yet understanding sarcasm, beams his gap-toothed smile. "Told you!"

"But, what if you need to get an extra pair of shoes? Or sandals? They're stuck at the bottom." Emily gives up on her determination to eat the pink car and grabs part of the track, like a baby-sized Godzilla over the raceway. "And what if we, say, wanted to go to the beach after dinner?"

Micah pauses at that, sitting up and squinting at his suitcase. "...I can just lay the suitcase down?"

"And if you can lay your suitcase down, you can put your other clothes away too. Now come on, before dinner. Your cars will stay exactly where they are." Then, to grant him some mercy, you scoop up Emily from the floor and try to put the pieces of his track back in place.

And then, your heart stops beating in your chest, fingers hovering over the little plastic track.

Disguised for a moment of panic, you realize it's your soulmate's heart that's stopped, your whole body going cold. For a moment, a terrible awful moment, it feels as if the connection is broken, that there is no emotion to be felt at all, and before you can truly grasp what is happening, a joy greater than anything you've ever known washes over you. Scientifically, you know it must just be a rush of adrenaline, of endorphins and hormones, but god, this must be the most a human body can produce at once, rendering you entirely numb to anything but the excitement, the triumph, it can't compare. It's ecstasy, with a laugh you've never heard before ringing in your ears.

It's a bright kind of sunshine that makes you dream of how your soulmate must be smiling, what they must be doing to become so happy, how much you wish you could be there to experience it with them. Then, as it begins to wane, it becomes tinted with every other emotion possible.

Sadness, grief, pain, fear, love. It's that last one, the love, that startles you the most, because you've never felt it on your soulmate's end before. You dream that this must be how it will feel when you finally meet, so different than any other emotion you've dealt with before. It's something pure and unadulerated, with no real sign. You just know it's love, and you have to sit on Micah's bed as you try to catch your breath at the feeling.

It's the sort of mosaic of emotions that you think must embody a person whole. That everything your soulmate has ever felt has just been channelled back inside you, taking over where veins once were. Colours are brighter, the world slower, the pain softer. Emily reaches up to pat your cheeks, startling tears from your eyes that you hadn't realized had formed.

Micah comes to stand beside you, a sock outstretched in his hand. "I'm sorry I didn't put them away."

"Oh, sweetheart," You soothe softly, gently parting his hair away from his face. It's sad, you think, that people don't get to experience this in their everyday life. To know what it's like to feel a partner's joy, to know that when you reach out with your own happiness for them, it gets taken and amplified a hundred times over. "I'm not upset because of you. I'm happy."

"Happy?"

"Your mom told you what soulmate's are, right?" He nods along quickly, face lighting up.

"Did you just meet yours?" He almost shouts, and while she must have explained some concepts, it's obvious he doesn't understand how the whole thing quite works yet, but he has plenty of time to learn.

"My soulmate is really, really happy about something, and I'm so happy for them." It makes it all worth it, you think.

Becoming so devoted to learn about the brain and emotions was already worth it, already a passion, but feeling this, greater than any emotion you've ever felt, it's indescribable. It's something you doubt you ever could forget, the power of their excitement feeling as if it might never fade.

"But you don't know what they're happy about." Micah points out, returning to the volcano that is his suitcase.

"I don't need to." You answer honestly. "Joy should be shared at any time, for any reason. I don't need to know the fine details." And with that, you rise, intent on finding Emily's sandals somewhere in her nursery. "And for that reason, we should go and celebrate too. We can get ice cream after dinner."

Micah, not needing much convincing, quickly joins your side. "I like your soulmate. He should be happy more often."

"Yes," You answer, wishing you could bottle this emotion and keep it forever, "He should."

Lando knew his first win would be big, but it was the sort of dream that didn't feel real, even as he was thrown into the crowd, even as he put the trophy over his head, even as he hugged his mom, even as the night waned and the club slowed and he, inevitably, found himself back in his hotel room.

He couldn't help it. It was just this constant rush of everything all at once, the excitement, the pride, the terrifying realization that life continues on. There will be more races that he might win, and he finds himself more determined than ever to win them. It's the delight that he did it, he finally did it, and the sadness that comes with knowing it took him so long. His younger self would be so proud, and the thought only adds more confusing emotions into the mix. Overall, however, is how much he loves this sport, despite all the pain that does come with it. This was what he was always meant to be doing.

His heart isn't helping either. The happiness from it just sort of comes in waves, not connected to his thoughts or his words at all. It's like his heart, every so often, remembers that he has something to be so happy about, radiating a warmth that Lando's never felt before. He's never been this happy in his life, like he's perfectly whole, even with his missing piece, a small cloud he'd ignored hanging over him the entire day.

He never could dream small, but when he had his first win, he wanted a soulmate to share it with. That being said, he's not sure it really matters now. This moment, soulmate or not, is just perfect. He can share plenty of wins with them in the future, anyway. For right now, there's just him and his heart, gently beating and echoing warmth, joy, delight, triumph, whatever you want to call it.

Lando is very happy that his heart is happy, he decides as he finally goes to bed.

It should feel like that more often.

2025

Fourth wasn't bad, Lando could tell his heart was trying to tell him, but he didn't want to listen.

He had fucked up, plain and simple, all the way back to starting tenth like he was a fucking rookie again, and sure, he had made his way back to fourth. It was respectable, really. He made a good recovery, he was fine, but he was more furious than he had been in a long time, because this season showed that he should know better.

He was leading the championship, for god's sake, and now he was below Oscar when he could've kept his title. It was an anger that led, rather quickly, into self-deprecation. He had failed, of course. He could have done better, could have tried harder, could have been better. He didn't have the mindset, people kept saying. What mindset? What did Oscar have that he didn't?

He had cried and fought and struggled to get here now, and he fucked up. In qualifying, like a rookie, like someone who should know better. Fourth, a burn only worsened with the thought of the meagre points he'd get. Fourth.

Needing something to lash out against, Lando picks up his water bottle from beside him in the driver room and winds up, eyes set on the wall across from him, when his heart does what it does best, and soothes him. It wasn't telling him that fourth was okay, he finds, but rather a strange sort of sympathy that he had a right to be mad.

It was understanding of his pain, sending soft waves of calm, a tune stuck in the back of his mind that he couldn't quite understand. He should be mad, the water bottle launched across the room, but it stayed in his hand as his heart unravelled the worst parts of him. Anger, rage, was a good, short release, but it didn't get to the heart of the problem. He needed to take a deep breath, his lungs working of their own accord as he let his arm fall, dangling uselessly at his side.

Fourth.

Next race would be better. Next race, he'd lock in, he'd figure out whatever hiccup had cost him podium, had lost him first. He would do better, and he would be better, and that would be that.

Even still, as he finishes up for the night, he finds a sadness coming from his heart, an emotion he didn't know would hurt as much as it did.

The anger and joy, this year, kept coming in rounding bouts. Excitement one weekend, failure the next, something that could only be akin to gambling addiction, some sort of sports fan, or someone going through just a rough couple of months. Emily seems as attuned to your soulmate as you are, wailing the moment the anger occurs, rearing its ugly head, and you find yourself calming two souls at once.

You bounce Emily in your arms, a hefty task now that she's four, humming a soft lullaby as you try to get your soulmate to take deep breaths, take apart their anger. Sorting through emotions was a tall task, even this many years in, but there were so many layers to the sadness and anger that it was just...hurtful.

A pain you couldn't fathom. Emily soothes as your soulmate does, falling back asleep as you get her tucked into bed, your soulmate's resentment cascading away to just a tired, dull sort of thing. There's a hint of happiness, somewhere at the edges, and that's all you need to let go, to focus back on your own life.

You don't know how often you'd done that, taken time to soothe someone who never did the same. Your own anger, sadness, what have you, never seemed to be noticed. There was never a comforting, deep breath, a calm happiness to comfort you, just whatever they were feeling, like they couldn't care about helping yours.

You had devoted your life to the emotions of others, you realize as you peer into Micah's room to find him asleep, peacefully curled up under his blankets. You'd raised him for the past two years, taught him how to exist and grow and act, same as Emily, sleeping peacefully behind you. They were children who needed the guidance, the extra set of hands, but your soulmate was grown.

So how could they not handle it? You took extra courses, found a career path out of it, but they just seemed to live life, going through the motions with little regard for what all the frustration might do to someone else's daily life. That spike, that explosion of joy held so fondly in your memories now only returned in shorter bouts, like a drug slipping away from someone, and you focus on tidying up the last of the toys scattered around the hall to distract yourself.

You knew all the emotion tactics to calm yourself, anyway.

So why would you need someone else?

Lando's heart has been acting up lately, following him through Miami's second place, and into Imola's second place, and now Monaco.

It just hadn't been as happy as it could've been, as calming as it could've been, like every time Lando experienced a bump, it got less and less willing to pick up the pieces, and Lando understood. Being his heart was a big task, but it was sort of his heart. He needed it, and its strange intelligence.

The worst part was people started noticing it, too. Not his heart, exactly, but just that as much as he was happy, it wasn't to his core. He had tried numerous remedies, chocolates, therapies, everything, including now going for runs at random hours of the day, currently on a hike in the few hours of dawn just outside of Monaco.

But the farther he ran, the more up this hillside he went, the further his heart sank inside him, until he could only describe it as weeping.

Reaching the top, he begins to think he might be losing his mind when he begins to hear it crying, too, only to stumble across a real person, crying before him, and his heart tugs in his chest so hard he thinks it might fall out.

Burnout happens far too fast to really understand it, even coming from someone who dedicated their life to understanding people's emotions.

It was hard to always be happy, to always be in tune with other people's emotions, but it was all that you knew. You were supposed to be the happy one, the helpful one, but it was hard to always be happy and always be helpful when it was all coming to an end anyway. Emily and Micah were grown, old enough to have opinions and dreams that far outshone your own, because at some point, children outgrow nannies. This would be your last year full-time, Amanda had broken to you a week or so ago.

She wanted you around for help with Emily, at least until she was five, but after that, they were going to try functioning as a whole, with you there if they needed extra support. And it wasn't leaving the family, leaving this job, that was the hard part. You were more than understanding, after all.

The hard part was the realization that nothing was meant to last. You weren't meant to always be there, supporting other people, raising children and sending peace out into the world. At some point, you needed to stop projecting emotions and needed to start feeling them, stunted for so long in the name of love.

You didn't blame your soulmate, really, but it was time you started living, outside of them, outside of nannying, and that meant doing things for you, like waking early, finding a nice hiking trail, and just going. You walked until your feet grew sore, until a bench looked promising, until your emotions caught back up, and so did your soulmate's.

Soft and on edge, a sadness that wasn't anything too deep, but just persistent. Instinctively, you take a breath, and it all falls apart.

Every emotion you've been taught to suppress, to help others navigate through, every joyful moment not shared, every painful moment you've taken on as a burden comes out in a wail that you can't control.

It was a gift to feel your soulmate's emotions, but you shouldn't have to feel so obliged to help them through every bout of sadness and anger, exhaustion piled up from years of your own neglect.

You had been given so much joy in this life, watching a Monaco sunrise from the clifftop, but you can't help the way it's all been tainted by experience.

After all, there are no tips or courses on how to heal a broken heart, desperately trying to get out of your ribcage.

Lando's heart keeps tugging him toward the person currently sobbing on a bench, and he has no idea what to do about it. He's emotionally intelligent, he tries to reason with himself. If someone is in distress, like they're lost, he can help! Or, he might be ruining a moment that a stranger needs alone, but his heart keeps weeping and the sadness keeps spreading until finally, Lando takes a few brave steps forward before coming to kneel before the person on the bench. "Hey," He says, with the awkwardness of a man thrust into a truly new situation, "Don't cry."

You blink at him owlishly before covering your face with another sob.

Great start. "I mean, crying's okay!" He says, quickly coming to sit beside you, leaving enough space not to crowd you. "It releases stuff for you. But like, if you're crying about a reason, I can...help."

"Oxytocin and endorphins," You sniff, a sentence that fully catches him off guard, but the weeping in his heart ebbs way for...annoyance? "Crying releases oxytocin and endorphins, they help promote-" You uncover your face to look at him, and it's just heartbreaking, truly. He doesn't remember the last time he saw someone this upset besides his own reflection in the mirror. "Helps promote well-being."

"Maybe I should cry more often," Lando jokes softly, and happiness slips into his heart before disappearing again. His heart normally was so good at calming him, so why was it so difficult to calm other people? "But I mean it. I get that I'm a stranger, but if something's wrong, I can help." Then, because he knows better, "Or I can try?"

You don't answer him immediately, turning to look out at the sunrise. It's pretty, he thinks. Calming. You hiccup beside him, and Lando glances over to see your bottom lip tremble with another wave of unshed tears, and his body reacts before he can.

He takes a big, deep breath. The kind his heart is always telling him to take. One deep breath in, one deep breath out. "You can breathe like that, too. It helps."

"It triggers the relaxation response." You answer through stuttered breath, somehow far more informed on emotions and their controls than he is. You must be a doctor or something, he thinks. Maybe one of those wellness coaches. Either way, you start breathing alongside him, in perfect unison.

"My heart always helps me breathe." Lando says, trying to make conversation, and you give him a strange look as his heart echoes confusion. "I don't know how to describe it, but my heart has its own emotions. And when I get upset, god knows it's too often, it reminds me to be calm, and breathe. Like this-" He takes in a deep breath, and releases it.

Then you take a deep breath in, and release it, and his heart mimics the action. You watch him intently, repeating the action a few times, until Lando realizes his heart is in sync with you.

The breathing, the confusion, the weeping.

A strange mix of emotions floods his heart seconds before he makes the connection, too.

"You can feel me?" You ask softly, "My breathing?"

The world sort of comes to an end on a park bench in Monaco, Lando realizes, because he can feel you breathing. When your eyebrows raise, he feels the shock deep in his heart, and his mind supplements that his soulmate trait must be feeling your emotions, and like the true idiot he is, this whole time he just thought it was his heart feeling things.

God, it's been eight years. Eight years you've been feeling every emotion and trying to help him out, and Lando never knew. He'd never got to help you with your emotions, anyway. You've just had to suffer through all his anger, all his sadness, and he slowly lowers his head into his hands, truly unable to come to terms with what you're saying, what he's feeling, what you're feeling.

He's been blind. Worse than that, he's been ignorant and honestly almost manipulative. All those deep breaths were you having to take the time to breath with him. All those moments his heart was sad, for no reason, or happy, for no reason, it was you living a life that he was unaware of. Every secret emotion he let out, that only he and the walls of his room shared, you knew.

You knew all the deepest, darkest parts of him, and he thought you were his heart.

It's a new sort of grief that wells up inside him, that is immediately replaced with action. This was not his time to mourn, but yours. He snaps back up, and you're still in the same, curled up position, looking at him in awe, and without much ceremony, Lando reaches over to pull you to his chest, the soulmate connection snapping in place as he gently cradles the back of your head into his shoulder. "Jesus fucking christ," He breathes out, "I thought you were my heart."

You don't answer him, but he waits to expect the anger, the confusion, the sadness, but all he can feel is something soft and small radiating from you that he thinks might be love, and he begins to cry for it.

He's sure that if there are any other unfortunate hikers on this trail, they'll stumble across a strange scene of two strangers hugging each other and crying, but Lando has seen stranger in Monaco. Besides, he can't care much about anything besides the soulmate in his arms, and all the ways he needs to make it up to you. From now on, his emotions take a back seat, and he'll help calm you, keep you happy. He wants to memorize every detail of your face, your smile, your laugh. Firstly, he thinks, he should probably get your number and your name.

"How do you know how to handle it?" Lando finds himself asking as he lets you pull away, wiping at your eyes. "Oxy-cotton or whatever, how could you..."

"I studied it." You answer quietly, "For you."

"For...for me?" You nod, and Lando's body shakes with unshed tears.

"You experience everything so vividly. I just wanted to help." You've felt how hard he's been on himself, how angry, and you've been there every step of the way, trying to help. You studied how to help him, for him specifically, and there's nothing he could ever do to make up for it. You reach up to wipe away the tears as they fall, studying his face. "Seems like I could have taught myself a thing or two."

"You're perfect," He says, voice cracking as he looks down at you. "I'm an idiot."

Lando never expected to meet you here. He always thought he'd be in some strange corner of the world, where he'd lock eyes across a crowded room and just know, but instead, you're here, in Monaco, a gift from the universe because he never would have been able to find you otherwise. "Your words," You answer with a sniff. "Not mine."

"Stop being so good at this," Lando says, rubbing his hands over his face. "I need to be the one helping you, not the other way around." He opens his fingers to peer at you through them.

"You just being here helps." You shove his shoulder gently as you speak. "But you really didn't consider once that your heart having emotions was weird?"

"Thought I was emotionally intelligent. Like...my heart was also a brain." He watches you suppress a laugh and he hides behind his hands again. "Shut up! I know, I know, I have a lot of work to do."

And for a moment, you just look at each other, and then that happiness comes spiking back up, and you're slumping into his side as you laugh, a deep thing that has Lando laughing too, like some old joke you've known forever.

His soulmate. You're his soulmate, and he can feel your emotions, and while that is genuinely probably the worst soulmate trait Lando has ever heard of, it's a trait. He has a soulmate, and he is an idiot, but as he wraps an arm around your shoulders and watches the Monaco sunrise, he realizes he has all the time in the world to make up for it. "I'm Lando, by the way."

Every time you look at Lando, you feel a rush of emotions that you now know he feels too. Maybe that's why he turns to flash you a grin, just as bright as you knew it would be. Or, maybe, it's because it's your first time in the paddock, the first time Lando gets to reveal you to the world, the fact that you're real.

You can't really fathom how he never knew he could feel another person's emotions, and with a soft groan, he leans into your side. "You're never going to let that go, are you?"

The past months you've spent together, Lando has been determined to get to know your emotions. Every little thing you go through, you get a text, a random delivery at your door, him peering around the corner into the living room with a raised eyebrow as you angrily try to put together Ikea furniture. Nearing the end of your contract with Amanda, and trying to find your new way in life, Lando insisted you move in with him, and that he would be your emotionally intelligent student. It was a lot of big steps to take, but looking at him now, you're more than happy to take them.

"I thought you couldn't read minds," Lando's teammate Oscar says, and Lando's quick to shake his head.

"I told you, we can feel each other's emotions," He says, arm wrapping around your waist. "For example, I can tell that right now, they are madly in love with me."

He leans in to kiss you, and you gently shove his face away with your hand, matching grins plastered over your faces. You were, honestly. He was a strange, strange being who defied the emotional courses you took, but it made sense. You were a rock when he was a bouncy ball - hyper and all over the place, but he was teaching you to relax, to let go, to let him go. He insisted that he didn't need your help now that he knew how much brainpower it took up, but that didn't stop you from slipping into old ways, reminding him to breathe no matter where in the world you were, calming him from a distance.

Micah makes a fake gagging sound from beside you, though he's also grinning ear to ear. Lando had given the entire family paddock passes, mostly as a gesture of goodwill, but also so that he could have an excuse to have you here for a race. "Be nice, Micah." You say, ruffling his hair.

"Yeah, Micah." Emily quotes, reaching for your hand. She was still quite shy around Lando, whose energy was not always appreciated. You pick her up, an old habit that will die hard, even as she's no longer a toddler, but you hold her on your hip as you hum one of her old lullabies to help ease the stress.

Beside you, Lando absent-mindedly hums along, and you stop your own noise to stare at him. He was always full of surprises, really, somehow knowing a song that must have slipped through the cracks of your emotions. Well, all of him was a surprise, being an F1 driver more famous than you had ever expected your soulmate to be.

To Lando's surprise, you existed. It was something to get used to, a shame that clung to him, but he was growing out of it. He wanted to know every little detail, from favourite colours to where you grew up to where you wanted to go. You weren't sure yet, really. You wanted to help people, but you needed your own time and space with your emotions, and Lando was more than willing to help grant you that.

The media, unfortunately, had also wanted to know every little detail, intent on painting you as some young mom before it came out that you were a nanny, which was somehow better and worse. People had plenty of things to say, but that didn't really matter when Lando was at your side, intent on making Emily smile and putting up with Micah's antics, who had already scored a free hat, shirt, and the fuzzy part of a boom mic from somewhere. "Who do you think is going to win the race?" Lando asks the two, who both blink back at him. "Come on, it's me, right?"

"Or is it going to be Oscar?" You ask, the other man beside you laughing.

"Oscar." Emily announces rather quickly. "He can win."

Both Lando and Oscar wear matching expressions of confusion, but Oscar's quickly morphs into a grin as he does a little bow. "Thank you, I'm happy to have your support."

"Oh, come on!" Lando says, now desperately turning to Micah. "You want me to win, right? British boy to British boy."

Micah looks from Lando slowly to Oscar, who offers two thumbs up. "I want...Oscar?"

"Oh, this is just not fair!" Annoyance stirs in Lando, but dissipates when he looks at you. "You're supposed to teach them better than this."

"Oscar wins so you can stay home," Emily says, playing with her paddock pass. "You make Nana happy."

Lando pauses, and you can feel his heart swell with love, and with little regard for the cameras everywhere, he buries his face into the side of your neck as he blushes. "Get off Nana!" Micah says, tugging at Lando's shirt.

"Nope," Lando says into your neck, wrapping his arms around your waist and holding you tight. "S' my heart now."

"Always was yours," You answer with a kiss to his temple, and you can feel Lando melt both against you and in your heart. "Now go win a race, yeah?"

Lando peels back with that smile that makes your heart do things, and you can tell he knows exactly what you're feeling when that grin just grows. "Thought I was supposed to stay home to keep you happy?"

"You've got the rest of your life for that." With a genuine sadness you can feel in your veins, Lando finally parts, sneaking another kiss before he's off, and you find yourself that much more attuned to his emotions when he's gone. You can feel the anxiety and the stress as he prepares, the excitement as the race starts up, and the inevitable growing anger and fear as he fights for pole. Second, in your mind, was fantastic, but Lando never knew how to dream small.

Taking a deep breath, slowly in and out, you wait for Lando's heart to sync with yours, and you can feel him relax just the smallest bit, granted a moment in a corner to overtake Max, and you scream so loudly with excitement that Emily and Micah cover their ears. Lando echoes back that joy and excitement, keeping pace until the race ends. You don't get to see him when he pulls up to the parc ferme, still stuck wrangling the young children, but you can feel nothing but pure joy all the way until he's up on that podium, trophy high above his head as he scans the crowd. He belonged up there, you think, with this kind of ecstatic delight taking over him. That moment filled with joy and love, all those years ago, had been his first win.

And yet, here, now, that memory was dull in comparison.

Because when Lando scans the crowd, and finally locks eyes with you, you feel a burst of nothing but pure love.

It's a feeling that never goes away.

a/n: i saw this concept for a soulmate trait and just had to do something with it!! i honestly want to write so much more between these two

#cute cute cute cute #lando norris x reader #fic rec