ok but this fits Oscar having that Just a Guy look but also being so beautifully made that it truly looks like someone took extra care in making him. the swoop of his hair, the perfect proportions of his cheekbones and jawline and perfectly arched brows. the delicate lines of his mouth, the soft tip of his nose, that determined little upturn of his chin. the way his eyes always look a little sleepy bc he always reverts to standby when he's not needed or doing a task.
except when his eyes fix on Lando. then the lids lift open and Lando can almost see the circuitry behind the carefully crafted tempered glass eyes. and who exactly programmed that tiny lilt of OSCAR's lips and the pink color to rise in his finely meshed realistic skin when OSCAR looks at Lando?
bc of course the team behind OSCAR had chosen that name off the end of the project's original title: LANDOSCAR. a fun little play on Lando's Car because the robot was made to suit Lando's car set up perfectly to save time and money. if they were going to go along with Zak's not at all legal and morally suspect plan of giving Lando an artificial teammate then why not go the whole hog? especially when a good portion of the grid was suspected of already doing the same (if they had the money). that Ricciardo character smiled way too easily and it never seemed to go away and Red Bull had burned through too many number 2 drivers for Max Verstappen to suddenly have found the perfect one. and what about that George Russell? did they even try to make him look properly human? if they hadn't all seen Leclerc grow up before their eyes they'd have sworn that someone had fucked up and made him look too perfect to be real.
the McLaren AI team planned to circumvent any such uncanny valley slip-ups by having OSCAR be characterized as quiet and carefully media bland to perfectly balance Lando's kaleidoscope persona and frequent lack of filter. his features and body were modeled on fairly standard form. the little quirks of genius and beauty came from handing over a tablet to Lando and letting his creativity run free a little bit with the design. the arch of those brows, the strong neck sloping to broad shoulders and the tendency for the mouth to form a lopsided grin were all Lando's doing.
the full name of course had to be something normal but not too obvious. "Jack" for the middle name as a group in-joke because of course, cars and tyres. one day Zak was pacing around the room, thumping nerds on their fragile bones and booming out "what is a word for outstanding! how do you say to be superior! to be the greatest!" one of the nerds blurts out 'praestare' on autopilot and Zak grabs her shoulders. "what's that, Polish?" "uhhh no, it's Latin and um technically that's the infinitive and it's a verb that requires a noun before--" but Zak is already tearing around the room again saying "perfect! what can we get out of that? find me a last name to sound like that!" and eventually Piastri is google searched and a suitable family found to receive a handsome payment for digitally adopting Oscar as if he were their son. they were mercifully far away in Australia to avoid any probing questions and excuse their frequent absence from Oscar's life.
Lando thought wistfully how it would be nice to hear that accent around the garage again.
oh dear, though. midway through the season Oscar starts living up to the original terminology behind his last name and wins a sprint race. he's uh. not supposed to beat Lando at all let alone nab a win before Lando has won anything at all in F1. Oscar's logic is perturbed but he plasters on his most polite smile. lets the team and Zak hug and thump him the way he's been programmed to react to Successes. commentators all laugh at what's become Piastri's characteristic tempered reaction to everything, even winning. it's okay, they can dig around and fix whatever made this happen before the actual race. it'll be okay.
Lando smiles tightly for the photo, clutching his plaque with the all-too-frequent number 2 on it, Oscar stood beside him and smiling as if the shiny number 1 meant nothing at all.
"and that's just it! it doesn't even mean anything to you! they fucked up and now I'm having people call me NoWins again all because of a robot who doesn't even know what winning feels like!"
Lando finishes his towering fit and throws himself to sit on the couch of Oscar's driver's room and digs his hands into his helmet hair. he looks up through his fingers to where Oscar is leaning awkwardly against the only-for-appearances massage table, thick cord running out of his back and into a socket on the wall that's hooked up to the kitchen's backup generators.
Lando is suddenly less angry because something new is happening on Oscar's face. it looks… like he's thinking. normally when he's "processing" his lids lower and the lights dim behind his eyes as he digs around for a solution or a response. but if Lando didn't know any better, Oscar's adorably scrunched expression looked like a real human person trying desperately to express themselves. when Oscar speaks next, it's in the same bland monotone but almost as if he were stuttering. as if some horrible realization were occurring.
"I'm. I am LANDOSCAR. I was made to drive Lando's car and my surname's inspiration requires a noun to precede it. I can't be superior to… nothing. there has to be a Lando before me. there has to be a Lando for me to have been made. I was made to help Lando win. if Lando cannot win because of Oscar then Oscar is obsolete."
Lando's been watching this speech with a sudden warmth replacing the storminess in his chest. he leaps up and puts his hands on Oscar's strong shoulders.
"no! no, Oscar is not obsuh-obli… Oscar is not pointless! hey, don't look like that buddy! you - wait. you said that your name needs a Lando before you, right?"
"technically the noun is required to be in front of the verb. but yes, in my case I require a Lando before my surname to satisfy the verb's function." Oscar blinks once to indicate that he is now listening.
"okay okay, so same thing! basically, you can only be superior if I give you something to measure up against, right? so that means I've got to be able to win a race or else you're just a, a verb with nothing to do! and who wants to be that, right? no one would program you to have no purpose! see?"
Lando doesn't know why he turns his most winning expression on a robot but he could swear Oscar's lids did that little flicker thing again and his lips started a responding smile. he suddenly looked so unbearably handsome with his hair all messed artfully using water from his drinks bottle to mimic sweat and those shoulders filling out his race suit so well that Lando thinks, oh fuck it.
kissing Oscar should feel synthetic, creepy. he should smell sterile and feel lukewarm. maybe it was the cling of fumes from the fuel and the tyres in Oscar's tissues and clothing that triggered some sense memory in Lando's brain. but Oscar felt so incredibly real and smelled so much like home that Lando allows his eyelids to flutter shut for a moment as he savors the feeling of Oscar's programmed breathing pattern against his own warm, fragile chest. he lets out a sigh and starts to pull away.
suddenly, Oscar's hands rise from his sides to clutch around Lando's jaw. a reflexive surge of icy panic spikes in Lando's brain because Oscar has been programmed to be strong enough to rip an entire car apart in the event of Lando becoming trapped inside wreckage. but the adrenaline diverts a different way when he feels how gently Oscar tilts Lando's head just enough to fit their lips together more perfectly. it fuzzes in the back of Lando's brain that of course Oscar will have been programmed with things like kissing and passion and for his body to be 'responsive' in case he were caught in a situation where his lack of response would give the game away.
but. but Oscar only knows how to respond. he's only been programmed to observe and respond. no one gave him initiative or his own desire. and Lando hasn't moved a muscle of his own since pressing their mouths chastely together. Oscar isn't supposed to be capturing Lando's lips like this or stroking Lando's cheekbones with his thumbs as if Lando meant… well, anything to him. when Lando's knees buckle, Oscar should respond in Medical Mode and assume that Lando was unwell. he shouldn't have made that noise deep in the back of his artificial larynx when Lando's body trembled against him. he shouldn't have responded by pushing their mouths open and slipping his artificial tongue into Lando's mouth. his tongue isn't supposed to feel warm because he is supposed to pass only lukewarm food directly down a tube into a compartment where his stomach should be.
Oscar cannot run out of breath. he can't possibly need to pull away from Lando's mouth and close his glass eyes and pant from his human-made mouth.
ha. human-made. aren't we all? Lando thinks giddily as he dives back into the unreal warmth of Oscar's mouth, arms thrown around Oscar's strong neck.
a sudden BOOM somewhere beneath their feet makes them jump and break the kiss. Lando looks around wildly and his eyes land on the cord connecting Oscar's back to the wall. the coating has bubbled slightly and a faint, electrical smell is coming from the floor and the wall. below them there is a hubbub but Oscar's emergency protocols must not have kicked in because he's still holding Lando tight and staring at him with shining eyes and panting as if he'd been told to run a marathon and make it look realistic.
oh that's right, Oscar doesn't have enough charge for emergency protocol because he was supposed to be 'resting' the whole time Lando was ranting at him. Oscar has barely enough charge at the end of the day on race weekends to communicate a few words let alone carry Lando to safety. especially with, oh! his charger all fried and him yanking it out of his back and staring at it dumbstruck.
Oscar… shouldn't even be awake right now. he should be crumpling neatly to the floor with his eyes closed, looking for all the world as if he'd just passed out until someone came along and got him to a power source again.
he certainly shouldn't be blinking rapidly and turning his face from the dead cord in his hand to Lando and looking as if he were experiencing a panic attack. or maybe he was just responding to the one Lando was having at that moment.
Lando stumbles and falls back onto the sofa. watches in a daze as Oscar slowly sinks to his knees, too controlled to be losing power. almost catlike in how gracefully and carefully he kneels and reaches out to clutch Lando's hands. were they both shaking? or just Lando's?
the look on Oscar's face is so human that Lando has to squeeze his eyes shut against it for a moment. because when Lando opens them again he sees a frightened boy looking back at him, achingly beautiful face suddenly vivid with life and a pulse singing from his wrists to Lando's fingers that clutched them. a pulse that they would later learn should have died along with the smoking, destroyed generator downstairs.
warm, warm hands against his cheeks. the air around him devoid of something. what was it? oh. the gentle, barely perceptible whir of Oscar's internal workings even when 'asleep' and charging up. silent. Lando had become so accustomed to it that it's absence is louder even than Oscar's galloping heartbeat.
Oscar. moving his hands - still shackled with Lando's - to his race suit collar. ripping away the velcro and tugging the zipper down. jerkily pulling the fireproof top above the swell of his smooth chest. pressing both their pairs of hands against the pink flush on his pale skin that no one programmed for no one to ever see. pressing his own fingers in hard and wincing hard at the bruise so that his hair fell in his face. pulling their fingertips from his skin and holding the glistening sweat - that no one had ever put inside him - up to their eyes in wonder. their gazes refocused on each other, mouths open and faintly aware of footsteps rushing up the metal stairs to their rooms. and oh, Lando needs more than just a few seconds. he needs hours, days, years! to comprehend the perfect flesh and blood man in front of him. so he was amazed at himself, when Oscar asked the question below, that his answer immediately came out: "you are Oscar and I love you."
thump thump thump on the door. blink blink blink go Oscar's irrational eyelids.
"Lando… what am I?"
(thank you to the nerds I live with for the Latin part and the "ghost in the machine" scifi knowledge that I completely simplified to make it work for me lagsjflgasflsjg)
(and I hope this was nice even if it's not proper fic!!)
I finally got around to doing the Landoscar dad fic! It’s short, it’s not amazing… I had a lot of writers block and it made me want to throw my iPad out a window, but now I can focus on big projects again!
This is why I hate writing them in the normal world…
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it somewhat!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Okay, so this is my first time doing a post like this, so bare with me.
I see lots of people talk about Lando having a competency kink, especially when it comes to Oscar. So Lando can't do something, so he gets Oscar to do it. Every time, Lando then seems amazed at how Oscar can do everything so effortlessly.
Now here's where it gets interesting for me. So what if Oscar has a praise kink. The dynamics would then get really interesting. Oscar would complete everything that Lando asks him to, then Lando praises Oscar for being able to do something. It's kinda like the end of season video where Lando keeps bringing everything back to Oscar being able to win a race (yes I know its a sprint race, but still) before he does. You can kinda see how Oscar goes all shy when Lando praises him for the sprint win.
I don't know, I just feel like they have this sort of dynamic. But I think one having a competency kink and the other having a praise kink would make things very interesting
titsay
jacobvanloon
turnnoffyourmind
stormborns
baratheonpilled
dailybridgerton
yousharknotpass
snowghoul
discoholicmusic
