Obviously this is Landoscar but it’s so deeply Landoscar and I just…
Lando doing something silly to get a reaction, Oscar watching him fondly and egging him on, the fond and entirely endeared teasing, the laughs, Lando looking slightly giddy at making Oscar laugh, Oscar looking so pleased with himself at making Lando laugh, the indulgent looks, I can’t explain it but I’m so moved
I got into watching f1 consistently early last year when my friend and i watched dts S7 (ik its not for everyone, but it got me hooked).
My profile picture, the one of oscar piastri riding his exercise bike, got me hooked on OP81 🐨.
I'm from his home country and city, but unfortunately (though, in hindsight it was probably best for the interests of my mental health,) was unable to go to the melb grand prix this year.
Like many others, I started reading fanfiction as a young teen during covid (re. dramione) and only got back into it late last year with landoscar.
purpose of this account
I wanted to collate Lando Norris/Oscar Piastri resources (libraries) for new fans interested in getting into some well written rpf, and for older fans like myself who find themselves lost in page 8 and beyond of the results page who are struggling to find works that they can still connect with. Obviously, these recommended works are chosen from the positionality of my own literary preferences, so if you do not personally enjoy the style that they are in, that's okay! Expect to see a post soon explaining how and why I choose certain fics. If you ever have any recommendations, please comment or message me directly, or use the ask function and I will read and update my lists. The "libraries" are constantly being updated with new and old fics.
navigation
AO3 account
one shot and short-form rpf library
long-form rpf library
bc you said you took requests, could you write a oneshot for soulmates Landoscar where the first thing they think when they see their soulmate shows up on said soulmate's arm? (idk if this makes sense, its like, oscar sees lando for the first time and thinks, wow hes pretty, and then those words 'wow hes pretty' will show up on lando's skin forever)
Soulmate AU // Lando Norris/Oscar Piastri // 2,5k words
The words had appeared on a sweaty Thursday evening on the autostrada outside Monza.
Lando had been driving—late for a sponsor dinner, mildly irritated with the world, hands at ten-and-two like the boring adult he supposedly was now at twenty-two. The Italian sun had been setting in his rearview mirror, painting everything gold and orange, and he'd been thinking about pasta when his left forearm had burned.
Not the quick scratch of a cat or the dull ache of a bruise—this was the hot, crawling sensation of skin rewriting itself in real time. He'd glanced down, still keeping one eye on the road, and watched in growing horror as words began to materialize on the inside of his forearm. Not just a sentence, but a full paragraph to the point the thought literally got cut off at the end.
Oh my GOD. Are you kidding me. I am going to lose my mind. I have been behind this absolute CUNT for three kilometers and he has not used a SINGLE turn signal. I hope he steps on a Lego. I hope his pillow is warm on both sides. I hope—
Lando's brain had short-circuited.
Soulmate.
The car behind him.
He'd whipped his head to the rearview mirror, heart slamming against his ribs, and caught it—a flash of black, a Polo or something, just as it signaled (oh, the irony) and pulled onto the exit ramp. The plate had been a blur of motion and distance and Lando's own stupid, desperate panic.
"No, no, no, no—"
The next exit was two kilometers away. By the time he'd doubled back, heart hammering, eyes scanning every black car in every petrol station and side street, it was gone. Like it had never been there at all.
He'd driven every winding road within fifty kilometers of Monza for the next two days. Every black Fiat, every black Renault, every black VW that looked vaguely familiar from the corner of his eye. Nothing. The memory of even just a single letter on the plate had evaporated in the adrenaline crash, replaced by the permanent, mocking evidence on his arm.
His soulmate, somewhere in Italy. English-thinking. Definitely furious at his driving.
The paddock had never let him live it down.
"Still no luck finding your little Italian road rager?" Carlos had teased, poking at the faded ink on Lando's arm. "Mamma mia, Lando, maybe she was a nun."
"Maybe she was a him," Lando had muttered, which only made Carlos laugh harder.
By 2022, the joke had calcified into legend. Daniel had bought him a custom shirt that said USE YOUR TURN SIGNALS in giant block letters. The words were still visible beneath the cuff of his sleeve—faded now, but permanent, because soulmarks never really went away. They just settled into your skin like old scars, like the universe's most passive-aggressive tattoo.
Lando had stopped looking. Mostly. He'd always driven with half an eye on black cars, always with his stomach doing something stupid when he saw a flash of movement in his peripheral vision. But nothing, no recognition, no signal that his soulmate had finally seen him.
Just the words, forever, paired with everyone's laughter.
One year later, after Bahrain, Lando was exhausted.
The race had been a war—fifty-seven laps of wrestling a car that wanted to kill him, finishing P15 after starting P13, and every muscle in his body currently filing a formal complaint. His firesuit was still half-zipped, sweat cooling uncomfortably against his chest, and all he wanted was a shower and approximately fourteen hours of unconsciousness.
But Jenson Button had cornered him near the Alpine hospitality unit, all easy charm and veteran presence, and Lando couldn't exactly say no to Jenson Button. So here he was, leaning against a padded barrier, mic clipped to his collar, answering softballs about the current championship while his brain fuzzy-droned in the background.
"—and you've really grown as a driver this season, Lando. The consistency's been impressive." Jenson's smile was genuine, the kind that made you feel like you were the only person in the paddock. "But I have to ask—" His eyes dropped meaningfully to Lando's left wrist, where the edge of the soulmark peeked out from the firesuit cuff. "—any progress on that front?"
Lando groaned, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Oh my God, Jenson, not you too."
"I'm just saying! It's been a year, the fans want to know!"
"The fans want me to keep my tires underneath a hundred-and-twenty degrees through nine and ten, actually—"
Suddenly there's a movement at the edge of his periphery. Someone approaching from behind Jenson's shoulder, hovering uncertainly at the edge of the camera frame. Lando's gaze flicked over automatically, and. Wow.
The guy—young, maybe early twenties, dark messy hair and sharp cheekbones and a face that was currently doing something devastating with its color palette—was blushing. Cheeks pink, ears pinker, the flush creeping down his neck in a way that Lando's tired, post-race, decidedly-not-thinking-straight brain found absolutely riveting.
He wonders if that blush goes all the way down.
It's a raw and unfiltered thought and deeply inappropriate given the circumstances, but it crashed through the exhaustion like a wave, bypassing every single one of his higher brain functions.
He was wearing Alpine colors. A reserve driver's badge on his collar. He looked like he'd been shoved in this direction by someone more assertive and left to fend for himself, and he was still blushing, and Lando's thought was still echoing in his own skull like a dropped microphone.
Jenson had noticed the newcomer, because of course he had, and was already waving him over with that expansive commentator's gesture. "Oscar! There you are. Come on, come on—Lando, this is Oscar Piastri, Alpine's reserve. Kid's been turning heads in the junior categories, you should—Oscar, mate, you okay?"
Lando's arm burned.
Unlike the slow crawl of words appearing, this was instant, a flash of heat right on the inside of his left forearm. He didn't have to look, he knew. It was the same spot, the same sensation. One year later, on the exact same patch of skin.
His soulmate was standing three feet away.
Oscar had stopped mid-step, one hand lifting to his neck. His fingers pressed against the right side of his throat, right over where his pulse would be, and his face—already flushed—went abruptly, terrifyingly pale underneath the pink.
"What—" Oscar's voice cracked. He cleared his throat, tried again. "What's up?"
Jenson was still talking, camera still rolling, the whole paddock still buzzing around them oblivious, but Lando couldn't hear any of it. He could only watch, paralyzed, as words began to bloom across Oscar's neck. Slow, one letter at a time.
I wonder if that blush goes all the way down.
His own words. The most exhaustion-addled, deeply inappropriate thought he'd ever had in his twenty-three years of existence, currently materializing letter by letter on the throat of a complete stranger. On live camera. With Jenson Button three feet away and god knows how many viewers watching at home.
Oh no.
Oh no no no no no.
This was so much worse than the road rage thing. The road rage thing was funny. The road rage thing got him meme'd and teased and gently roasted by every driver on the grid, but it was ultimately harmless. Annoying driver gets cursed out by their soulmate. A classic, really.
But this was pervert behavior.
Everyone was going to see that mark and read it. Everyone was going to know that Lando Norris, McLaren F1 driver, professional himbo, took one look at a blushing reserve driver and immediately started wondering about the extent of said blush's geographical distribution down his—
"Lando?" Jenson's voice cut through the spiral. "You've gone a bit pale, mate. Everything alright?"
Lando's hand flew to his mouth.
Oscar was still standing there, fingers pressed to his neck, staring at Lando like he'd just watched a ghost crawl out of the nearest drainpipe. His lips parted, closed, then parted again, but nothing came out.
"Sorry," Lando heard himself say, and the word came out strangled. "Sorry, Jenson, we have to—I have to—sorry—"
He reached out and grabbed Oscar by the wrist. He didn't think about how warm it was, or how Oscar's pulse was hammering right beneath his fingers, or how his brain immediately supplied the word at least half-way down, confirmed like some kind of treasonous internal narrator that needed to be fired immediately.
"Come on—"
"Wait, what—"
"Cover your neck," Lando hissed, already dragging Oscar past the cameras, past the baffled journalists, past Jenson's delighted cackle fading behind them. "Now. Please. For the love of god, cover it."
Oscar's free hand flew to his throat. He fumbled with his collar, yanking it up, pressing the fabric against the still-warm words. His face was doing something complicated—half mortified, half bewildered, entirely red.
"Where are we—"
"Shut up and run."
They were nearing an alley behind the McLaren hospitality unit that was narrow, shadowed, and mercifully empty. A stack of old Pirelli tyres crouched against one wall, some of them deflated, all of them vaguely grimy.
Lando didn't stop in time and Oscar hit the tyre wall with a soft oof, stumbling backward, his shoulder catching the stack and sending a single tyre wobbling to the ground. He winced, one hand coming up to rub the back of his head where it had made contact with the rubber.
"Ow," he said flatly. "Great. Fantastic. Ten out of ten for hospitality, mate."
Lando stood there breathing hard, his firesuit still half-open, his curls a disaster, his entire life currently imploding in real time as he stared at Oscar. Oscar stared back like he was genuinely considering whether this was worth whatever Alpine was paying him.
"Hi," Lando managed. His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. He stuck out his hand. "Lando Norris. We're soulmates."
Oscar raised his eyebrows at him.
The hand hung in the air between them. Oscar didn't take it. He just gaped, mouth slightly open, eyes wide, the collar of his team shirt still clutched against his neck like a shield.
"...Right," Oscar said eventually. "Oscar Piastri. And I think you might actually be insane."
Lando dropped his hand and licked his lips as he tried to reboot his brain.
"Are you," he started, then stopped, before he tried again. "Do you have a thing with road rage?"
Oscar blinked. "What?"
"Road rage. Being angry at other drivers. In cars." Lando was doing a terrible job at this. "Specifically. Uh. Turn signals. Do you care a lot about turn signals?"
Oscar's expression shifted from bewilderment to something closer to suspicion. He shrugged, the movement awkward with one hand still pressed to his collar. "I mean, it's annoying when people don't use them, but it's not like I'm going to beep the horn about it. Why?"
Lando didn't answer. He just pushed up the sleeve of his firesuit—the left one, the one he usually kept covered during interviews because the world didn't need constant reminders of his shame—and held out his arm.
The words were still there. Faded after a year, but legible. Every furious, caps-locked, beautifully unhinged syllable of them.
Oh my GOD. Are you kidding me. I am going to lose my mind. I have been behind this absolute CUNT for three kilometers and he has not used a SINGLE turn signal. I hope he steps on a Lego. I hope his pillow is warm on both sides. I hope—
Oscar stared at the words, then at Lando's face, then back at the words.
A snort escaped him, then another, before he was laughing, full and genuine, his head tipping back against the tyre wall, his shoulders shaking, his collar slipping down enough that Lando caught a glimpse of dark ink still settling against pale skin.
"Oh my god," Oscar wheezed. "Is that—did I—"
"You wrote an entire paragraph," Lando said, torn between horror and something dangerously close to fondness. "A paragraph, Oscar. In all caps. You wished Lego on me, you hoped my pillow would be warm on both sides, it literally got cut off because of how many terrible things you were wishing on me."
Oscar was crying with laughter now, tears tracking down his pink cheeks, and Lando realized with a jolt that Oscar hadn't quite grappled yet. He was laughing at the mark like it belonged to someone else. Like it was a funny story about a stranger, not the physical proof of his own immortalized rage.
"Oscar." Lando's voice came out softer than he intended. "We're soulmates. You're my soulmate. These words, that was you."
Oscar's laughter faded slowly. His eyes searched Lando's face, looking for the punchline, finding none.
"How do you know?" he asked quietly. "I mean—how do you know it's me?"
Lando didn't answer with words. He reached into his firesuit—the zip was already half down, and he probably looked insane digging around in his own clothing—and pulled out his phone. His hands were shaking slightly, but he ignored them.
"Hold still," he said and Oscar obeyed.
Lando raised the phone and framed the shot. Oscar's neck, long and pale and currently flushed, the words stark against his skin in Lando's own messy mental handwriting. The collar of his Alpine polo, the sharp line of his jaw, the way his throat moved when he swallowed, nervous under the attention.
Wide, thick, sexy—
Lando took the picture and turned the phone around, showing Oscar the screen.
Oscar leaned forward to look and his eyebrows went up. Then up further. His blush, which had been fading, roared back to life with a vengeance, spreading down past his collar in exactly the way Lando's original thought had predicted.
"Oh," Oscar breathed.
"Yeah," Lando said. His voice cracked on the vowel.
Oscar's fingers brushed his own neck again, touching the words like he still couldn't quite believe they were real.
"So that's what you thought," Oscar said, it wasn't really a question.
Lando cleared his throat and looked anywhere but Oscar's eyes. The wall, the tyres, a very interesting piece of gravel near his left shoe.
"...Yeah." Lando answered anyway.
"And you just, thought that, about a stranger, during an interview."
"I was tired," Lando said defensively. "I'd just done fifty-seven laps. My brain was not—I wasn't—it's not like I meant to—"
Oscar was staring at his mouth.
Lando realized he'd been biting his lip inbetween his stuttering, nervous, anxious, the skin caught between his teeth. He released it slowly and watched Oscar's eyes track the movement like a hawk tracking prey.
Now would be a really good time for the ground to open up and swallow him whole.
But Oscar didn't look disgusted or offended. Didn't look like he was about to call HR or sprint back to the Alpine garage and pretend this entire interaction had never happened. He just looked mildly interested.
"Do you," Oscar said carefully, "often think such thoughts about strangers?"
Lando's heart stuttered.
And then, despite the fact that his soulmate's first impression of him was roadrage and his first impression of his soulmate was objectification, Lando grinned incandescently.
3,8k words / Lando Norris/Oscar Piastri / "Drop Dead" - Olivia Rodrigo
Oscar had been tackling the bedroom. Clothes first, then books, then the random junk that accumulates when two people who travel too much finally try to settle in one place. Lando's boxes were heavier than they looked. More fragile too—taped shut with excessive care, labeled in sharpie with things like "studio stuff" and "don't touch xxx" and once, cryptically, "sweaters (Lando's) (not yours) (stop asking)."
The journal was at the bottom of the first box.
Buried under notebooks and loose sheet music and a broken guitar pick someone had given him at a show. Plain black cover. Worn at the corners. No label. No indication of what was inside.
Oscar almost put it back, but curiosity had always been his weakness.
So of course he opened it.
Lando is on the couch when Oscar finally emerges from the bedroom. Feet tucked under him, scrolling through his phone, some reality show playing on the TV that neither of them is actually watching.
Oscar just stands there for a second. In the doorway. Journal in hand.
Lando doesn't notice at first.
Then he looks up.
And his entire body freezes.
"Where did you get that."
His voice is flat. Strangled. His phone drops onto the cushion.
Oscar holds up the journal. Doesn't say anything. Just grins.
Lando is off the couch in half a second. Actually vaults over the armrest like his life depends on it. Snatches the journal from Oscar's hands and clutches it to his chest like a stolen diamond.
"You—where—" He's sputtering, cheeks already flushing pink. "That was in a box. A closed box. A taped box."
"You taped it," Oscar says, and he's trying so hard not to laugh. "You taped a box of weirdly personal junk and put it in our bedroom."
"I labeled it!"
"'Studio stuff.' Lando. There is nothing studio about this."
Oscar reaches out and taps the cover of the journal. Lando jerks it away, actually turns his whole body like he's protecting it from a thief.
"You read it??" His voice has gone high. Pitched. Embarrassed in a way Oscar has never heard before.
Lando hits him with the journal. A smack to the arm, then another one, then another, each one accompanied by a noise of escalating mortification.
"You weren't supposed to—I thought I buried that—I moved that box three times—"
"You moved it," Oscar repeats, wheezing now. "You moved the box of your secret crush journal to our new apartment. Three times."
"I didn't know you'd go digging!"
"It was at the bottom of the box, Lando. I had to dig."
Lando hits him again.
"Ow—okay—stop—"
"You read my private thoughts!"
"You wrote 'He's looking like an angel on the walls of Versailles' and then drew a little halo over my head!"
Lando makes a sound like a dying animal. He drops back onto the couch, still clutching the journal, and presses it flat against his face. His ears are crimson. His whole neck is red.
"This is the worst day of my life."
Oscar sits down next to him. Close enough that their thighs press together. "It's really not."
"You violated my privacy."
"You left it in our bedroom."
"I didn't think you'd just—open it and read it like—like a—"
"A book?"
Lando groans. Full body. Dramatic. He slumps sideways until his head hits Oscar's shoulder, still holding the journal over his face like a shield.
"I hate you."
"No you don't."
"I really do."
Oscar pries the journal out of Lando's hands. It's easy—Lando's grip has gone loose with shame. He sets it on the coffee table and pulls Lando properly against him, one arm around his shoulders.
"You wanna look at it together?"
"No."
"Come on."
"Absolutely not."
"It's cute, Lando."
"It's not cute, it's deranged."
Oscar laughs and Lando shifts to glare at him. "You're supposed to be pretending this didn't happen."
"I'm not going to pretend anything." Oscar reaches for the journal. "You filled a notebook with pictures of me and thoughts about me before we ever met. That's—" He flips it open to a random page. "That's insane. And also kind of the most romantic thing anyone's ever done for me."
Lando watches him turn the pages. Tense. Waiting.
Oscar's finger lands on a Polaroid. Someone's bathroom—Oscar can tell by the tile. A race afterparty maybe. He's in his McLaren polo, hair messy, laughing at something off-camera. There's a heart drawn around his face in silver pen.
"I don't even remember this, where did you find this?"
"I don't know," Lando mumbles into his shoulder. "Probably just Pinterest."
Oscar turns the page.
Newspaper clipping. Race results from a race Oscar didn't even win. P4 at some random Grand Prix. Lando has underlined his name and written in the margin: "P4 and still the prettiest on the grid?? make it make sense."
Oscar snorts.
"You're so embarrassing."
"I know."
Another page. Lando's handwriting, messy and slanted: "I think we might go really nice together."
No context. Just that. Floating in the middle of the page like a prayer.
Oscar's thumb brushes over the words. "You wrote this before we even talked."
"I was manifesting."
More pages. Pictures clipped from magazines—Oscar in F2, Oscar at a press conference, Oscar mid-interview with his "I'm being polite but I want to leave" face. Lando has written in the margins of one: "You're so so pretty boy. I'm paranoid I made you up."
Oscar laughs again. Soft this time.
"You thought I wasn't real?"
"You seemed too good to be true." Lando's voice is small. "Like. Someone I'd invented to make my life more interesting."
Oscar turns another page. A receipt from a café he doesn't recognize. Lando has written on the back:
"Has he taken that Eurostar to France? Would he want to? Could I ask? No. Don't ask. That's weird. That's so weird. You've never spoken before. Why would he tell you about his travel history????"
Oscar sets the journal down and just looks at Lando.
Lando won't meet his eyes.
"I was down bad," he mutters. "We've established this."
"Yeah." Oscar tilts Lando's chin up with one finger. "But you were down bad for me. Before I'd done anything to deserve it."
"You didn't have to do anything." Lando finally looks at him. "You just had to exist."
Oscar kisses him. Soft. Slow. Lando melts into it the way he always does, hands coming up to cup Oscar's jaw, and when they pull apart he's smiling.
Lando looks at him for a long moment. Then his eyes drop to the notebook. Then back to Oscar.
"You're not gonna tell anyone about the journal, right?"
"The one full of creepy pictures of me and weirdly romantic observations about my travel habits?"
"That one."
Oscar pretends to think about it. "I'll consider it."
Lando goes to hit him again, but Oscar catches his fist this time. Holds it. Presses a kiss to his knuckles.
Lando's hand goes limp in his grip.
"You're disgusting," he says, but his voice has gone soft at the edges.
"You love it."
"I tolerate it. Barely."
Oscar grins and lets go, settling back against the couch cushions. The journal sits between them like a third person now, open to a page covered in Lando's messy handwriting and what appears to be a very detailed drawing of Oscar's jawline.
"So," Oscar says. "How's the song actually going?"
The shift in Lando's energy is immediate. His whole body seems to deflate—shoulders dropping, face crumpling into something miserable.
"Absolutely nowhere."
Oscar raises an eyebrow. "Nowhere nowhere?"
"Nowhere as in I've written fourteen different openings and scratched through all of them." Lando rubs both hands over his face, dragging the skin down. "Nowhere as in I've been staring at this notebook for three days and the only thing I've managed to produce is a grocery list and a very compelling argument for why I should just quit music and become a goat farmer."
"A goat farmer."
"I'd be good at it. Goats are low-maintenance. They don't have opinions about my chord progressions."
Oscar laughs, but it's gentle. "How many days do you have left?"
Lando's hands drop from his face. He stares at the ceiling.
"...Next week."
"Next week as in—"
"As in I have to have the single written, recorded, and mixed by next Friday." Lando's voice goes high and tight at the end, like the words themselves are strangling him. "My label cut the deadline. Again. Because apparently 'creative process' isn't a valid excuse when you've already pushed back the release twice."
Oscar's expression shifts. The amusement fades into something sharper.
"They cut the deadline? Without telling you?"
"They told me. Yesterday. Via email."
"An email."
"A very passive-aggressive email."
Oscar sits up straighter, jaw tightening. "That's—Lando, that's not okay. You can't just—art doesn't work on a corporate timeline. You can't rush—"
"I know." Lando's voice is tired. Defeated. "Believe me, I know. But I've already spent the advance, and the studio's booked, and the promo slots are locked in, and I can't just—" He waves a hand vaguely. "I can't just not have a song."
Oscar looks at him for a long moment. Then he exhales, forcing his shoulders to relax.
"Okay. Okay. So what do you have?"
"Nothing."
"You have to have something. An idea. A vibe. A word."
Lando chews on his lip. Considers.
"I want it to be... nice."
"Nice?"
"Yeah. Like. Sweet. Sickeningly sweet, even. The kind of song that makes people roll their eyes and go 'ugh, they're disgusting' and then secretly listen to it on repeat in their cars." He looks down at his hands. "I've been feeling that way lately. Just—stupid and in love and I wanted to write something that sounded like that."
Oscar's expression softens. "So why can't you?"
"Because every time I try, it comes out sounding like a Hallmark card threw up on a guitar." Lando groans, tipping his head back against the couch. "It's too cringey. Too corny. I write one line about wanting to hold someone's hand and my brain immediately goes 'this is embarrassing, delete it, write about something cool instead.'"
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Cars. Sex. My crippling fear of abandonment."
Oscar laughs despite himself. Lando glares at him. "This isn't funny."
"It's a little funny."
"It's not. I'm having an artistic crisis."
Oscar leans over and kisses him. Quick. Firm. A punctuation mark.
"Just be corny," he says.
Lando blinks. "What?"
"Corny. Be corny. That's what you're feeling, right? Stupid and in love and like you want to hold someone's hand?"
"I mean—yes, but—"
"So write that. What's wrong with being corny?"
Lando opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.
"My fans know me for being horny, Oscar. Not corny. I have a reputation."
"You have a reputation for being yourself." Oscar's voice is steady. Calm. "And your fans—the real ones, the ones who've been there since the beginning—they've grown with you. They'll grow with this. Anything you put out, they'll love. Not because of the content. Because it's you."
Lando stares at him.
His cheeks are pink. His mouth is slightly open. He looks, for a moment, like he doesn't know what to do with the words Oscar has just handed him.
"You really think that," he says. Not a question.
"I know it." Oscar reaches out and tucks a curl behind Lando's ear. "You could record yourself reading a phone book and they'd find a way to make it a TikTok sound."
Lando laughs. A real one this time. Bubbling up from somewhere surprised.
Then he says: "You know what I think?"
"That I should quit music and commit to the goat thing?"
"No." Oscar smiles. "I think you should dial the corniness all the way up. Maximum. No shame. No filter. I think you should write exactly what you feel, exactly how you feel it, and let the chips fall where they may."
Lando's eyes flicker. Something waking up behind them.
"And I think," Oscar continues, reaching over to tap the journal still sitting between them, "that you have an entire book full of evidence that you've been corny since before we even met. So maybe—just maybe—you should use that."
Lando looks down at the journal. At the open page, his own handwriting, the little halo he drew over Oscar's head in silver pen.
His face changes. The tension in his jaw loosens. The furrow in his brow smooths out.
"Holy shit," he says quietly.
Oscar grins. "There he is."
Lando grabs the journal. Grabs his notebook. Spreads them both out on the coffee table like a general surveying a battlefield.
"The bathroom line thing," he mutters, flipping pages. "I had something about the bathroom line. Where did I—"
He finds it. Scribbles something in the margin. Flips to another page.
"'Angel on the walls of Versailles.' That's good. That's actually good. What if I—" He taps his pen against his lips. "What if I make that the pre-chorus? No—second verse. Second verse, bathroom line, angel on the walls of Versailles, then the chorus hits."
Oscar watches him. The way his eyes go sharp and focused. The way his whole body leans into the work like a car taking a corner at speed.
"I should add our zodiac signs," Lando says, already writing. "That's—okay, that's either terrible or genius. I can't tell yet."
"Both," Oscar says. "It's both."
Lando doesn't hear him. He's gone now, fully submerged, pen flying across the page, crossing things out and rewriting them, humming fragments of melody under his breath.
Oscar watches for another minute. Then he leans in and presses a kiss to Lando's cheek.
Lando doesn't look up. But his hand reaches out blindly and finds Oscar's knee. Squeezes once.
"I'm going to the gym," Oscar says. "Training with Artturi for the preseason."
"Mm."
"You need anything before I go?"
Lando finally looks up. His eyes are bright. Focused. Already a little bit gone.
"Just you," he says. "But you can come back later."
Oscar smiles. Stands up. Grabs his gym bag from the floor by the door.
"I love you," he says.
"I know," Lando replies, already looking back down at the journal. "I'm manifesting it."
-
The studio was dim when Oscar arrived, soft-edged, the kind of low lighting that made everything feel a little bit suspended. A little bit outside of time. The control room hummed with the quiet electricity of equipment left on standby, monitors glowing blue, faders sitting exactly where Martin had left them.
But Lando wasn't in the control room, he was in the booth.
Oscar stopped at the glass. Didn't knock, but instead just stood there, gym bag still slung over his shoulder, and watched.
Lando had his back to the window. Headphones on, mic positioned just below his mouth, one hand pressed flat against the foam panel in front of him like he needed something to hold onto. He was swaying slightly. Barely. A metronome motion, unconscious and steady.
Martin was at the soundboard, fingers hovering over the faders, head tilted in that way he had when he was listening for something no one else could hear. He glanced up, saw Oscar through the glass, and raised an eyebrow.
Oscar held up a hand. Five minutes.
Martin nodded. Turned back to his work.
Oscar slipped into the empty chair by the door and set his bag on the floor. He couldn't hear what Lando was singing—not really, not through the thick glass and the soundproofing—but he could see it. The shape of it. The way Lando's mouth moved around certain words, soft on the vowels, harder on the consonants. The way his eyes stayed closed the whole time.
He'd never seen Lando record before.
It was different than he'd expected. More vulnerable. Less performance. In a stadium, Lando owned every inch of the stage—confident, loud, magnetic. But here, in this small box with the foam on the walls and the red light blinking, he looked almost fragile. Like he was giving something away.
Martin hit a button. The playback crackled through the control room monitors.
"—pressed up in the bathroom line, you're looking like an angel on the walls of Versailles, the most alive I've ever been, but kiss me and I might drop dead—"
Oscar's breath caught. Lando's voice was raw and unpolished. The kind of take that would get smoothed over in post-production, probably, but right now it was just truth. Bare and trembling at the edges.
He knew that line. Had read it in the journal, scribbled in the margins next to a picture Oscar didn't even remember anyone taking, but hearing it aloud was different.
Hearing Lando sing it—now, after everything, with Oscar sitting thirty feet away on the other side of the glass—was different.
The playback stopped. Martin's voice crackled through the talkback mic.
"Again from the top. That was good, but you rushed the pre-chorus."
Lando nodded. Adjusted his headphones and didn't open his eyes.
Martin hit record, and Lando started singing again.
I know that the bar closes at eleven
I hope you never finish that beer
You know all the words to "Just Like Heaven"
And I know why he wrote them
Now that you're standing right here
Ohh
One night I was bored in bed
And stalked you on the internet
It's feminine intuition
'Cuz I always had a vision of us standing like this
All pressed up in the bathroom line
You're looking like an angel on the walls of Versailles
The most alive I've ever been
But kiss me and I might drop dead
Lando's voice cracked on the next line. Just slightly. Just enough.
And I feel like I might throw up
Left hook, right punch to the gut
You're so so pretty boy
I'm paranoid I made you up
Yeah I'd love it if you walked me home
If you promised we could go real slow
'Cuz I got chewing gum
And a bunch of stuff I'd like to know
Like, have you ever been to Japan?
Or taken that Eurostar to France?
I've been dropping hints all night
That I'd love it if you held my hand, goddamn
And then maybe we could make-makeout
Clothes off and fall to the ground
Let's go steady
Let's go out
And tell the whole damn world how
Oscar exhaled. Didn't realize he'd been holding his breath.
The journal entry about the Eurostar. The one where Lando had written "Has he taken that Eurostar to France? Would he want to? Could I ask? No. Don't ask. That's weird." It was in the song. Lando had taken that—the most embarrassing, most vulnerable, most ridiculous piece of evidence from that whole ridiculous journal—and turned it into a lyric.
Oscar wanted to laugh at the silliness. Wanted to cry from pride. Settled somewhere in the middle, chest tight, throat thick.
One night I was bored in bed
And stalked you on the internet
It's feminine intuition
'Cuz I always had a vision of us standing like this
All pressed up in the bathroom line
You're looking like an angel on the walls of Versailles
The most alive I've ever been
But kiss me and I might
The music shifted underneath. Softer. A key change that felt like a door opening.
Pisces and a Gemini
But I think we might go really nice together
If you let me stay the night
Well I think I might just have to stay forever
Pisces and a Gemini
But I think we might go really nice together
If you let me stay the night
Well I think I might just have to stay forever
Martin was nodding to himself. Making small adjustments. But Oscar barely saw him.
His eyes were fixed on Lando.
On the way his free hand had come up to press against his heart. On the way his jaw tightened during the high notes, like he was pulling the sound up from somewhere deep. On the way he still hadn't opened his eyes.
Like he was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere the song lived.
Ohh
One night I was bored in bed
And stalked you on the internet
It's feminine intuition
'Cuz I always had a vision of us standing like this
All pressed up in the bathroom line
You're looking like an angel on the walls of Versailles
The most alive I've ever been
But kiss me and I might
Kiss me and I might
Kiss me and I might drop dead
The last note hung in the air for a beat too long. Then the track went silent.
Lando's hand dropped from the foam panel. He pulled off his headphones and turned to look at Martin through the glass. "How was that?"
Martin didn't answer, just pointed at Oscar.
Lando followed his gaze and froze.
For a second, neither of them moved. Lando standing in the booth, Oscar sitting in the control room, thirty feet of glass and silence between them.
Then Lando's face did something complicated. Panic, maybe. Or embarrassment. Or hope. All three, tangled together.
"How long have you been there?" Lando's voice crackled through the talkback mic, tinny and small.
Oscar stood up. Walked to the glass. Pressed one palm flat against it.
"Long enough."
Lando swallowed. His eyes were wide. Vulnerable in a way that made Oscar's chest ache.
"You weren't supposed to hear it yet."
"I know."
"I wanted it to be finished. Mixed. Polished. I didn't want you to hear the raw take—"
"Lando."
Lando stopped talking.
Oscar looked at him through the glass. At the boy who had filled a journal with pictures of him before they'd ever met. Who had written "I think we might go really nice together" on a page with no context and no audience. Who had taken all of that—all of that embarrassing, vulnerable, ridiculous, hopeful, terrifying want—and turned it into a song.
"It's perfect," Oscar said.
Lando's lip trembled.
And then he was pushing through the booth door, crossing the control room in three quick strides, and crashing into Oscar like he'd been holding himself together by a thread and had finally, finally let go.
Oscar caught him. Held him. Pressed his face into Lando's hair and breathed.
"You're crying," Lando mumbled against his chest.
"So are you."
"I'm not. I have something in my eye."
"It's in both your eyes?"
"Shut up."
Oscar laughed. Tight and wet.
"I love you," he said.
"I know," Lando replied. And then, quieter: "I manifested it."
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