pairing: Lando Norris x Reader (second-person pov!!)
contents: fake dating, friends to lovers, pr nightmare, slow burn, mutual pining, flustered lando, paddock politics, soft touches, late night conversations (bc why not), shared hoodies.
word Count: 3.8k
synopsis: When a hot mic joke on a live stream gets twisted into a massive tabloid rumor about Lando Norris dating McLaren’s junior media manager, the team’s PR department decides the easiest way to handle the press is to play along. It’s a simple arrangement: pretend to date through the European leg of the season to shift the media focus. But when the cameras stop flashing and you’re left alone in his Monaco apartment, the lines between what’s fake and what’s real begin to blur.
author's note: hey guys! first of all, i am so, so sorry for completely disappearing for like a whole month. i promise i didn't abandon you! 😭 the reason for my absence is actually amazing news: i got into my dream college! 🎉 i was so incredibly happy (and honestly in shock) that my brain just completely reset. between celebrating, screaming, and having to run around like crazy to sort out all the paperwork, send in documents, and organize my life, i completely forgot to update things here. but the chaos has finally settled and i am officially back! i actually have some ideas and recipes already prepared and waiting for you guys. thank you so much for your patience and for supporting me on my first post!! hope you enjoy the read! xx
"I’m going to kill you," you muttered, staring at the massive glass windows of the McLaren hospitality suite.
Lando sat across the table from you, his head buried in his hands, his knuckles white against his messy brown curls. He looked incredibly small in his oversized orange team hoodie. The ears sticking out of his hair were bright, burning red.
"I didn't think the mic was live," he groaned, his voice muffled by his palms. "Seriously. Jon told me the stream was on mute. I was just taking the piss."
"You were taking the piss," you repeated, leaning forward and tapping the screen of your iPad. On it, a Twitter clip was currently sitting at over $2\text{ million}$ views. The video was a snippet from his charity stream the night before.
In the clip, someone had asked Lando if he was seeing anyone. Instead of giving his usual awkward, stuttering refusal, he had looked off-camera—right at you, where you had been sitting on his sofa answering team emails—and grinned.
"Actually, yeah," Lando had said on the hot mic, his voice dripping with playful sarcasm. "I'm madly in love. We're getting married in Monaco. She just doesn't know it yet because she's too busy yelling at me about my instagram captions."
He had meant it as a joke. You were his junior media manager; your entire job was keeping his chaotic online presence from turning into a corporate disaster. You were also one of his closest friends in the paddock, the one who stayed late at the simulator with him and ordered greasy takeout when he was too tired to function.
But the internet didn't know that. Within ten minutes, the clip had gone viral. Within an hour, the British tabloids had dug up every photo of you walking into the paddock beside him, every candid shot of you laughing at his jokes on the grid, and spun it into a full-blown secret romance.
"The press is having a field day," Charlotte, the senior PR director, said as she walked into the room, her expression remarkably calm. "And honestly, given the massive headache we've had with the engine upgrade rumors and the paddock politics this week, the board thinks this is actually a very convenient distraction."
You froze. Lando slowly lifted his head, his blue eyes blinking in confusion.
"What do you mean, convenient?" you asked.
"I mean," Charlotte said, leaning against the table, "we want you to play along. Just for a few weeks. Through Silverstone and Spa. If the media is busy writing articles about Lando's sweet, low-profile relationship with a team member, they aren't writing articles about our aerodynamic floor issues."
"No," Lando said immediately, his voice cracking slightly. He looked at you, his eyes wide and slightly panicked. "No, we can't do that. That’s... that’s mental. We work together. She’s my friend."
"It’s just fake dating, Lando," Charlotte replied with a small shrug. "A few hand-held paddock walks. A couple of nice comments in press conferences. It keeps the pressure off your racing, and it keeps the team out of the negative spotlight. We’ve already cleared it with Zak."
You looked at Lando. He was staring at you, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. There was a weird, heavy tension in his gaze that you couldn't quite read. He wasn't laughing anymore. The cheeky, confident boy who regularly drove at $300\text{ km/h}$ looked completely terrified by the prospect of holding your hand in public.
"It's just business," you said softly, trying to convince yourself as much as him. "We can handle a few weeks, right? It's just acting."
Lando stared at you for a long moment, his bottom lip tucked between his teeth. "Yeah," he murmured, his voice suddenly very quiet. "Yeah, sure. Just acting."
The first test of the agreement came on Thursday afternoon at Silverstone.
The British GP was always the most chaotic weekend of the year for Lando. The home crowd was loud, demanding, and utterly obsessed with him. As you walked down the concrete steps of the engineering trailer, you could already hear the roar of the fans gathered at the paddock gates.
Lando was waiting for you at the bottom of the stairs. He was dressed in his full race kit, his helmet bag slung over his shoulder. When he saw you, he stopped, his fingers fidgeting nervously with the strap of his bag.
"Ready?" you asked, offering him a small, encouraging smile.
"Not really," he admitted, a small, self-deprecating laugh escaping him. "My hands are sweating, mate. If I hold your hand, you're going to think I'm gross."
"I already think you're gross, Norris," you teased, stepping closer. "You leave your dirty socks in the simulator room."
That made him chuckle, the tension in his shoulders dropping slightly. "Alright, fair enough."
He took a breath, his expression shifting into something a bit more focused. He reached out, his hand hesitating in the air for a fraction of a second before his fingers slid into yours.
His hand wasn't gross. It was large, warm, and slightly calloused from the steering wheel. He didn't just hold your hand loosely; his fingers slipped between yours, interlocking them tightly, his thumb resting right over your knuckles.
The moment his skin touched yours, a sudden, electric shock traveled straight up your arm, settling right in the center of your chest. Your breath caught.
As you stepped out of the trailer and into the paddock, the flashing lights of the cameras instantly found you. The quiet murmur of the crowd turned into a sudden barrage of shouting.
"Lando! Over here!" "Is it official, Lando?" "Give us a smile!"
You felt your posture stiffen, your natural instinct to shrink back from the media taking over. But before you could pull away, Lando squeezed your hand tightly. He didn't look at the cameras. He kept his eyes forward, but he leaned in slightly, his shoulder brushing yours.
"Just look at me," he whispered, his voice low and incredibly steady. "Ignore them. Just walk."
You looked at him. His profile was calm, his jaw set, but you could see the faint, nervous flush rising on his neck. For the first time, you realized how much effort he put into looking untouchable. You kept your eyes fixed on his profile until you reached the safety of the McLaren garage, the doors sliding shut behind you to block out the noise.
The moment you were inside, you went to pull your hand back, but Lando’s grip lingered for a beat too long, his fingers reluctantly sliding away from yours.
"See?" he said, his voice a bit raspy as he rubbed the back of his neck, his cheeks pink. "Not so bad. Didn't even drop you."
"You did great," you said, your heart still beating a little too fast. "Go do your engineering meeting. I'll be at the media desk."
He gave you a quick, lingering nod before turning toward the back of the garage. You watched him go, your hand still tingling where his fingers had been.
By Saturday night, the paddock had cleared out, but the pressure of the weekend had clearly caught up to him.
Lando had qualified fourth—a good result, but he was a perfectionist, and he had missed out on the front row by less than $0.1\text{ seconds}$. When you walked into his private driver’s room to deliver his media schedule for Sunday, he was lying flat on his back on the small physical therapy table, his eyes closed, his arm draped over his forehead.
"If you're here to tell me I have to do another sponsor interview, I'm going to jump out the window," he muttered without moving.
"No interviews," you said gently, closing the door behind you. "Just your schedule for tomorrow. Warm-up at ten, drivers' parade at eleven."
Lando let out a long sigh, removing his arm from his face to look at you. He looked exhausted. The pressure of being the golden boy of British motorsport was a heavy weight, and tonight, it showed in the dark circles under his eyes.
"Sit down," he said, patting the empty space on the edge of the table. "Please. I haven't talked to anyone today who didn't ask me about tire degradation or corner speeds."
You smiled, setting your iPad down on the desk, and sat on the edge of the table near his feet. "You drove a good lap, Lando. The car just didn't have the straight-line speed of the Red Bull."
"I made a mistake in sector three," he said, his voice dropping into that quiet, self-critical tone he always used when he was disappointed in himself. "I carried too much speed into the chicane. I could have had second."
"And you'll get them at the start tomorrow," you said firmly. "You're the best starter on the grid. You know that."
Lando looked at you, his blue eyes soft and incredibly quiet in the dim light of the room. He shifted his position, sliding up on the table until he was sitting cross-legged right next to you. He was wearing his gray McLaren team t-shirt, his hair a wild, curly mess.
"Do you really think so?" he asked. There was no arrogance in his voice, no world-class athlete bravado. He looked like the nineteen-year-old boy who had entered the paddock years ago, desperately hoping he was good enough.
"I know so," you said softly. "I've watched your telemetry, Lando. I see how you drive. You're incredible."
A slow, genuine smile broke through his exhaustion, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He reached out, his hand hovering for a second before his fingers gently caught the hem of your sleeve, tugging on it lightly.
"Thanks," he whispered. "You always know what to say."
You looked down at his fingers on your sleeve. The distance between you felt incredibly small. The quiet room was a world away from the roaring grandstands and the flashing cameras, and for a second, you forgot about the PR strategy, the fake dating, and the team directives. You just wanted to lean in, to slide your hand into his hair, to find out if his lips were as soft as they looked.
Lando’s gaze dropped to your mouth, his breathing turning a fraction shallower. His fingers slowly slid up from your sleeve, his skin brushing against your bare forearm, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake.
"Lando," you whispered, your voice shaking slightly.
The door suddenly clicked open, and Jon, his trainer, stepped in holding a protein shake. "Alright, Lando, time for your stretch—"
Lando pulled his hand back instantly, leaping off the table with a sudden, clumsy energy that was classic Lando. "Right! Yes! Stretching! Excellent. Let's do that."
He didn't look at you as you grabbed your iPad and slipped out of the room, but you could hear the frantic, rapid beat of your own heart echoing in your ears all the way back to the media center.
The race on Sunday was a triumph.
Lando drove an absolute masterclass, overtaking two cars at the start and holding onto a brilliant second-place finish, standing on the podium in front of a sea of roaring British fans.
By the time the post-race media frenzy finally died down, it was nearly ten in the evening. You were sitting on the steps of the McLaren hospitality unit, your legs aching from standing all day, watching the clean-up crews dismantle the grandstands in the distance.
"Hey," a voice said.
Lando walked out of the building, his trophy tucked under his arm, his race suit unzipped and tied around his waist. He looked tired but completely radiant, the residual adrenaline of the podium still glowing in his eyes.
"Hey," you smiled, standing up. "Congratulations, podium boy."
"Thanks," he said, setting the heavy gold trophy down on the step next to you. He looked down at his boots, then up at you, a familiar, cheeky grin spreading across his face. "I think... we have to do one more thing before we leave."
"What's that?"
Lando pointed to the paddock gates. Even though it was late, there was still a small group of dedicated fans and photographers waiting outside the barrier.
"Charlotte said we need a good 'victory' shot for the tabloids," Lando said, his voice dropping into a softer, slightly hesitant register. "To finish the weekend narrative."
Your stomach did a nervous flip. "What kind of shot?"
Lando stepped closer, his physical presence suddenly very warm, very real. He reached out, his hand sliding gently around the back of your waist, his palm flat against your lower back. The warmth of his hand burned through the fabric of your team shirt.
"Like this," he murmured, his eyes locked on yours.
With his other hand, he gently reached up, his fingers sliding into your hair at the back of your neck, his thumb resting along your jawline. He pulled you a fraction closer, his chest almost pressing against yours. He smelled like champagne, sweat, and the rain-slicked asphalt of the track.
"Lando," you breathed, your hands automatically coming up to rest against his chest, feeling the fast, steady rhythm of his heart beneath your palms. "Are we... is this still acting?"
Lando looked down at your lips, his thumb tracing a slow, agonizingly soft line along your jaw. The playful, cheeky boy was completely gone, replaced by a quiet, fierce intensity that made your knees feel weak.
"No," he whispered, his voice incredibly low, almost a confession. "Not for me."
Before you could process his words, Lando leaned down and pressed his lips to yours.
The kiss wasn't clumsy, and it wasn't for the cameras. It was deep, warm, and full of a desperate, lingering hunger that had been building between you for months. His grip on your waist tightened, pulling you flush against him, his lips moving over yours with a gentle, possessive rhythm that made the rest of the world completely fade away.
You let out a soft sigh, your fingers tangling in the curls at the back of his neck, pulling him closer, giving yourself completely to the feeling of his mouth on yours. There was no paddock, no media, no strategy. There was only Lando—his warmth, his breath, the frantic beat of his heart against your chest.
When he finally pulled back, just a few inches, his forehead rested against yours. He was breathing heavily, his eyes dark and incredibly bright, his cheeks flushed a beautiful, deep pink.
"Definitely not acting," he murmured, a breathless, happy laugh escaping him as he squeezed your waist.
You looked up at him, your hands still resting on his chest, a soft, matching smile breaking across your face. "So... what does this mean for our PR strategy?"
Lando grinned, his fingers gently playing with a strand of your hair. "I reckon Charlotte’s going to have to write a very different press release."
Your upstairs neighbor is unbelievably loud. One day he decides to leave you a note to apologize, but will that be enough?
warnings: fluff, angst, long fic
note: hello ♡ after many requests here is the long-awaited part 2 of apartment #12. apologies in advance for how much you will scream at y/n... in my defense - i did too :) - dean
pt.1 | masterlist | sign up for my taglist
The next note arrives sometime after midnight. You don't hear it. Instead, you find it the following morning tucked neatly beneath your apartment door, folded into the same careful square it always is.
Your coffee is still brewing. You stand barefoot in the hallway, hair still damp from your shower, reading it before you've even remembered to put your glasses on.
because now i know you're pretty.
You stare at the sentence for far longer than necessary and, against your own better judgement, you smile.
Life refuses to pause simply because your mysterious upstairs neighbour has unexpectedly developed the ability to make your heart skip inconveniently. Monday still arrives. As does work.
Your Ducati rumbles awake beneath you just after eight, the familiar engine settling into its steady rhythm as you weave through Monaco's narrow streets. The workshop sits tucked away just outside the busiest part of the principality, hidden between a tailor and a family-owned café that has somehow been there longer than anybody can remember.
The sign above the door reads:
L/N Moto Atelier.
Your surname. Your father's dream. Your home. Inside, everything smells faintly of paint, machine oil and fresh espresso, exactly as it should.
The notes continue, of course they do. Not every day, sometimes every other. Occasionally two appear within twenty-four hours of one another because one of you remembers something halfway through making dinner.
You learn that Apartment #12 still cannot assemble flat-pack furniture. He learns that you have a deeply unreasonable hatred for glitter paint. He complains about airport food. You complain about customers who insist motorcycles are "basically bicycles." He agrees.
Tuesday afternoon finds you balancing your phone between your shoulder and ear while polishing a fuel tank. Mia answers on the third ring.
"So."
"No hello?"
"You've had three weeks."
"Still no hello?"
"You still haven't introduced yourselves?"
You laugh.
"I knew this was coming."
"You've been exchanging handwritten notes with a handsome stranger for nearly two months."
"I don't actually know if he's handsome."
"You literally told me he was."
"I said he had nice eyes."
"And?"
"And..." You hesitate. "...the rest of him happened very quickly."
Mia groans dramatically.
"You've got to be kidding me."
"It was raining. He fell down the stairs. I was distracted."
"You've built an entire friendship based on fucking post-its."
You lean back against the workbench.
"When you say it like that... It sounds completely insane."
"It sounds like a Jane Austen novel written by a lovesick idiot"
You laugh loud enough that Luca pokes his head around the corner.
"Everything alright?"
"My best friend is bullying me."
"Good."
He disappears again. Traitor. Mia isn't finished.
"I'm serious."
"I know."
"You don't even know his name."
"I know."
"He doesn't know yours."
"I know."
There is a pause. Then,
"I'm coming tonight."
"I know."
"And before I leave Monaco..." She lets the sentence hang. "...I expect to meet Note Boy."
You snort.
"We are not calling him Note Boy."
"You've literally been calling him that."
"I've been calling him Apartment Twelve."
"You absolutely texted me 'Note Boy bought me cinnamon rolls.'"
"...Maybe once."
"Twice."
By the time you get home that evening, Mia has already landed. Her suitcase occupies approximately half your living room. Her shoes occupy the other half. The television occupies the remaining space. Formula One qualifying highlights play across the screen.
"Oh good." She doesn't even look up. "You're home."
You kick off your boots.
"I completely forgot there was a race last weekend."
"I noticed."
She gestures vaguely towards the television. You collapse onto the sofa beside her.
"Replay?"
"Mhm."
"Perfect."
You don't usually miss race weekends. Work had simply refused to cooperate. Two restorations, one emergency repair, three customers who apparently believed deadlines were optional. Monaco Grand Prix week always turns the city slightly mad. Apparently this year included your workshop.
The replay reaches the final laps. Max Verstappen appears on screen. Without thinking, you lean forward.
"Come on..."
Mia immediately notices.
"Oh."
"What?"
"You're still hopeless."
"What?"
"You've supported Max since we were sixteen."
"He's a phenomenal driver."
"He absolutely is."
A McLaren flashes across the timing tower. Mia points at the screen.
"I still think Lando takes it."
You wrinkle your nose.
"I don't."
"You just don't like him."
"I don't."
"Why?"
You shrug.
"I don't know."
"Yes you do."
Another shrug.
"I've just never..." You search for the words. "...understood the hype. He always seems to be dating somebody new. Always..." You wave vaguely at the television. "...all that."
Mia rolls her eyes.
"You know that's mostly the media."
"Maybe. I still don't buy it."
She points accusingly at you.
"You've never even met him."
"Exactly."
"So?"
"So I'm allowed an opinion."
"No. You absolutely are not."
Upstairs... Apartment #12 unlocks quietly. Lando slips inside sometime after eleven. Long day. Longer debrief. He drops his overnight bag beside the kitchen island and instinctively glances towards the floor below. Right on cue-
"COME ON, MAX!"
He stops, then laughs softly, shaking his head.
"So that's who you support."
The television continues muffled through the floorboards. A few seconds later-
"NO, DON'T DEFEND HIM."
Lando raises an eyebrow.
"...Interesting."
He smiles to himself. Then disappears into the kitchen. Five minutes later... A folded square of paper slides neatly beneath Apartment #7.
congratulations to max. my ceiling nearly celebrated with you.
Mia is awake before you. This has always been deeply offensive. You stumble into the kitchen sometime after nine wearing one of your oldest university hoodies, only to find her already dressed, coffee made, scrolling through her phone with the kind of energy reserved exclusively for morning people and psychopaths.
"Good morning."
"It is not."
"It literally is." You grunt in response. She slides a mug towards you. "I heard something under the door."
You blink.
"What?"
"About twenty minutes ago."
She points towards the hallway.
"Your boyfriend left you mail."
You nearly choke on your first sip.
"He's not my-"
"Relax." She grins. "I know. ...Note Boy."
The folded paper is exactly where she said it would be. You pick it up. Still warm, somehow. You unfold it.
congratulations to max. my ceiling nearly celebrated with you.
You laugh.
"I wasn't that loud."
Mia raises an eyebrow from the kitchen.
"I heard you from the spare bedroom."
"...Fair."
You grab a pen from the little ceramic pot beside the front door. Hover over the paper. Pause.
"What?" Mia is suddenly standing directly behind you. "What are you writing?"
"I don't know yet."
She thinks for exactly three seconds. Then,
"Ask his name."
You glance over your shoulder.
"What?"
"His name."
"Mia."
"What?"
"We've been doing this for months."
"Exactly."
"And?"
"And maybe it's time."
You look back down at the paper.
"I don't know."
"Why?"
You shrug.
"It'll change things."
Mia softens.
"It doesn't have to." Another pause. Then she smiles. "Besides... If his name's something awful, you'll want to know now."
You snort.
"What if it's Nigel?"
"Exactly."
You finally write.
my apologies to your ceiling.
A beat.
Then, smaller beneath it-
can i ask you something?
The reply arrives before lunch. You find it waiting after taking the rubbish downstairs.
always.
You don't hesitate this time.
what's your name?
Upstairs... Lando stares at the question for a solid minute. Then another. He could write it. He should write it. Probably.
Instead... He thinks about tomorrow's headlines. His face on television. His name trending every other Sunday. The quiet little world between Apartment Seven and Apartment Twelve suddenly feels fragile. He doesn't want to lose it. Not yet. So he writes the first ridiculous thing that comes to mind.
bob.
He stares at it.
"That's terrible."
Unfortunately... He can't think of anything better. Before he has time to reconsider, he folds the note. Slides it beneath her door and immediately regrets every decision that led him here.
You unfold it less than five minutes later. Silence. Then you burst into laughter. Mia looks up from the sofa.
"What?"
"He said Bob."
"...Bob?"
You hold up the note. She reads it herself. Then starts laughing even harder.
"There is absolutely no way."
"I know."
"Nobody under seventy is called Bob."
"I know."
"You don't believe him."
"I absolutely do not."
Beneath the suspiciously ordinary name is another question.
you?
You look at the paper for a moment. Then simply write,
y/n.
No surname. No explanation. Just...
Y/N.
The answer comes before dinner. Three words.
pretty name.
You don't realise you're smiling until Mia steals the note out of your hands.
"Oh."
She looks between the paper and your face.
"Oh, you're gone."
"What?"
"You've got the smile."
"I do not."
"You absolutely have the smile."
"What smile?"
"The one women get when they're in trouble."
"I'm not in trouble."
She hands the note back.
"No." She grins. "But Bob certainly is."
The investigation begins approximately eleven minutes later. You are against it from the start. Mia, unfortunately, has never considered your opinions particularly binding.
"I'm just saying." She curls up on your sofa, laptop already balanced across her knees. "If his name really is Bob, this'll take five seconds."
"It isn't Bob."
"Exactly."
"So why are we looking him up?"
"Because lying about your name is suspicious."
"You've also never told him yours."
"I literally did."
"You told him your first name."
"So?"
"So..." She points triumphantly. "Mutually suspicious."
You sigh.
"Leave Note Boy alone."
"I haven't even started."
"You've opened Google."
"I'm investigating. I worry about you"
"Stop worrying."
She ignores you completely.
Across the ceiling... Apartment #12 looks remarkably similar. Lando sits at his own kitchen island. Coffee growing cold beside him, his phone unlocked. The search bar already open. He hesitates just for a moment. Then gather all the things you've shared over the part months and types:
Y/N Monaco motorcycle
Enter. The result appears immediately. He blinks.
"...Well."
That was... Unexpectedly easy.
The first result is a website. The second is Instagram. The third is an interview with a local magazine about independent restoration workshops. He clicks the first.
L/N Moto Atelier.
The homepage loads. A black-and-white photograph stretches across the screen, six people stand outside the workshop; paint on their jeans and branded coffee cups in their hands. Someone is laughing. Someone else isn't looking at the camera. And there you are, second from the left. Arms folded. Smiling, without his knowledge, exactly the way you smiled after reading-
because now i know you're pretty.
Lando leans back in his chair.
"...It's you."
Of course it is. The staircase, the rain, the eyes. He should have realised weeks ago.
Downstairs... Mia is having considerably less success. She types:
Bob Monaco
Nothing useful.
Bob mechanic Monaco
Even less useful.
Bob airport food hates flat pack furniture
You lean over the back of the sofa.
"...Really?"
"I'm eliminating possibilities."
"You are doing a shitty job."
She sits back dramatically.
"There are too many Bobs."
"There are probably four."
"I've found at least twelve."
"You've found Robert."
"They count."
"They absolutely do not."
Upstairs... Lando is still looking at your workshop website. The photographs, motorcycles. The little "About Us" section. He smiles when he reads:
Founded by Y/N L/N and her late father, the atelier specialises in vintage Ducati restoration and bespoke motorcycle paintwork.
"So that's why."
He finally understands. The smell of paint, the glitter hatred, the customers. Your Ducati. The way you wrote bringing old things back to life. when talking about your job.
He scrolls lower. A team photograph, another one. Then... A candid - you're laughing, head thrown back with hands covered in blue paint. He catches himself smiling, the kind Oscar has repeatedly informed him means he's "completely gone."
His phone buzzes.
Max: still alive?
Lando doesn't answer. Instead... He opens his wallet. Carefully unfolds a note that never made it to you on account of his inability to spell-
prety name.
Looks at it. Then looks back at your photograph.
"...Yeah." He says quietly to the empty apartment. "It is."
Downstairs... Mia suddenly freezes.
"Oh."
You look up.
"What?"
"Oh my God."
"What?"
"I forgot something."
"What?"
She turns the laptop towards you.
"You know who gets called Bob?"
You squint.
"...Who?"
She grins.
"Lando Norris."
You blink.
"...Excuse me?"
"His friends call him Bob all the time. It's a nickname, a joke."
You stare. She stares back. Neither of you says anything.
"No."
Mia points dramatically.
"I'm serious."
"No."
"He gets called Bob."
"No."
"Google it."
"No."
"You think your mysterious travelling car man who drinks too much coffee and disappears every other weekend might just-"
"No." You laugh. Actually laugh. "Absolutely not."
"Y/N."
"Mia."
"Think about it."
"He wouldn't."
"Why not?"
"Because..."
You stop. Because... He had said-
big week at work.
He travelled. He drove. He knew Monaco Grand Prix weekend had been busy. He'd congratulated Max. No. Surely not. You shake your head.
"No."
Mia slowly smiles.
"You just thought about it."
"I absolutely did not."
"You absolutely did."
"I refuse."
"You've entered the denial stage."
"I am not investigating Lando Norris."
Mia closes the laptop with a satisfied snap.
"You don't have to."
She grins.
"You can investigate Bob instead."
For the first time since the notes began... A tiny thread of doubt winds itself quietly through your mind. And despite your very best efforts it refuses to leave.
For the next twenty-four hours you refuse to think about it. This proves remarkably unsuccessful.
You paint a fuel tank. Think about Bob. You rebuild a carburetor. Think about Bob. You accidentally overfill your coffee. Still... Bob.
By lunchtime, Luca notices.
"You've sanded the same panel three times."
You blink.
"I have?"
"Mhm."
"You alright?"
You nod a little too quickly.
"Fine."
He studies you. Then wisely decides not to ask another question.
That evening, Mia is waiting with two takeaway pizzas and the expression of somebody who has spent the entire day planning something.
"I have an idea."
"No."
"You don't even know what it is."
"I don't need to."
"You do."
"I really don't."
She pushes a folded square of paper across the kitchen island. Blank. Waiting.
"You ask him something."
"I ask him something every week."
"No."
She shakes her head.
"You ask him something..." She smiles far too sweetly. "...only Lando Norris would know."
You stare.
"...Mia."
"What?"
"That's insane."
"It's genius."
"It is absolutely insane."
"If he's not Lando..." She shrugs. "...nothing happens."
"And if he is?"
She grins.
"You'll know."
You chew thoughtfully on the end of your pen.
"What would I even ask?"
She immediately answers.
"His favourite corner."
You snort.
"I don't know his favourite corner."
"Exactly."
"You ask which circuit he likes best."
"Too obvious."
"What he thinks about Monaco."
"Too normal."
"What he'd change about Formula One."
You stop.
"...Actually."
Mia notices immediately.
"What?"
You smile slowly.
"I've got one."
Later that evening... You slide the note beneath Apartment #12. It contains only one question.
be honest. papaya rules?
Lando reads it standing in his hallway. Then sighs, long and deep.
"...Oscar is going to kill me."
He walks inside, makes tea he absolutely will not drink, comes back. Reads it again. Because there are approximately twelve different ways to answer that question. Only one of them belongs to Bob.
The reply arrives almost an hour later. You unfold it immediately.
only when they're written down.
You frown.
"...What?"
Mia snatches the paper from your hand. Reads it once. Twice. Then slowly lowers it.
"I... I don't understand."
"Neither do I."
You spend the next fifteen minutes trying to decode it.
"Maybe he likes fruit?"
"No."
"Maybe he's colourblind?"
"No."
"Maybe he's making fun of you?"
"No."
"Maybe..." You look at the note again. "...Wait."
You grab your phone. Search:
McLaren papaya rules
The first result appears instantly.
Papaya Rules - the internal team orders McLaren introduced...
You stare, very slowly at the article, then back at the note, then at Mia.
"No."
Mia is already smiling.
"Oh."
"Oh no."
"Oh..." She points triumphantly. "He knew."
"He could've Googled it."
"So could you."
"I didn't."
"Exactly."
Silence. Long silence. Then,
"...That's a very Lando Norris answer."
"It is."
"It really is."
"It annoyingly is."
Upstairs... Lando buries his face in a cushion.
"What have I done?"
His phone buzzes. Oscar.
Oscar: you alive?
Lando types back without thinking.
lando: i think i've accidentally made note girl suspect i'm me
Three dots appear. Disappear, reappear. Finally-
Oscar: ...
Oscar: how does one ACCIDENTALLY do that
Lando stares at the message. Honestly... He isn't entirely sure himself.
The following morning begins with silence, the thinking kind. Mia sits cross-legged on your kitchen counter eating cereal directly from the box. You stand in front of the coffee machine.
Neither of you has mentioned Bob or Lando for almost twelve minutes. A new record.
Mia breaks first.
"So."
"No."
"You haven't even heard what I was going to say."
"I know exactly what you were going to say."
"I don't think you do."
"You were going to say-" You point accusingly with your coffee mug. "'Ask him another Formula One question.'"
She smiles.
"...Maybe."
"Mia."
"What?"
"I am not interrogating my upstairs neighbour."
"I'm simply suggesting..." She shrugs innocently. "...scientific research."
You roll your eyes.
"Fine."
She sits up immediately.
"Really?"
"One question."
"I'll take it."
"But if he answers like a normal human being... I'll drop it."
"And if he doesn't?"
She grins.
"I'll become unbearable."
"You already are."
That evening... Another folded square waits beneath your door. You smile despite yourself. Inside,
survived today?
You laugh softly. Then answer.
barely.
A pause. Then, underneath,
can i ask you something?
The reply comes while you're brushing your teeth.
always.
You think about Mia's suggestion. Think about the article. Think about,
only when they're written down.
Then... You write the first thing that comes to mind.
what do you actually do?
Upstairs... Lando closes his eyes.
"...Right."
He knew this question was coming eventually. He'd simply hoped not yet. He tries. Mechanic? No, too specific. Engineer? Technically... Not. Marketing? Absolutely not. Driver? Definitely not.
He sighs. Looks around his apartment as though somebody else might answer for him. Nobody does.
Eventually... He writes only,
i travel, mostly with cars. stream. it's less exciting than it sounds.
You read it twice, three times even, hand it to Mia without saying a word. She studies it.
"Hm."
"What?"
"He didn't answer."
"He answered."
"No." She taps the paper. "He described his job. He didn't tell you his job."
You hate that she's right. You write back immediately.
that wasn't an answer.
Lando laughs, one he reads it, rubs a hand over his face.
"You've got me there."
His reply arrives almost embarrassingly quickly.
fair. i've been told i'm difficult.
You smile and write back:
by who?
Lando doesn't even think.
my coworkers.
That answer somehow makes things even muddier. Because now you know, he definitely has coworkers. He definitely travels. He definitely works around cars. He definitely knows Formula One terminology. He definitely refuses to tell you what he actually does.
Mia slowly lowers the note.
"...Girl."
"What?"
"I think Bob is either..." She starts counting on her fingers. "A Formula One engineer, a mechanic. Or..." She looks up. "most certainly Lando Norris."
You groan dramatically.
"I hate all three options."
The note sits on your coffee table for the rest of the evening. You keep glancing at it, not because you're trying to solve him anymore, but rather for the first time you realise Bob is keeping something from you and that disappoints you more than it should.
Above, Lando folds another piece of paper. Then another. Neither one is good enough. The truth sits only three words away.
I'm Lando Norris.
He could write it. He almost does. Instead... He folds the blank page in half, slides it into his wallet beside the others. And whispers quietly to himself-
"...Just one more week."
He isn't sure whether he's asking for more time... Or borrowing it.
Mia leaves for her morning run just after seven. She steals one of your hoodies and complains about Monaco being "all hills." then disappears before you are properly awake. You fall asleep again almost immediately.
The bakery sits only two streets away. Mia has been gone barely twenty minutes when she joins the queue carrying absolutely no intention other than buying croissants. Then somebody behind her says:
"Sorry."
She steps aside automatically. The man reaches around her for a loaf of sourdough. Dark hoodie, baseball cap, sunglasses despite the fact it's barely eight in the morning. The cashier smiles.
"The usual?"
"Please."
The voice. Mia blinks.
"...No way."
She doesn't react, doesn't even look twice. Instead she pays for the pastries and quietly watches in the reflection of the display cabinet. The man thanks the cashier, picks up his coffee and walks outside, turns into your street.
Mia follows, not in a creepy way, but in what she later describes as "an emotionally invested best friend way." There is apparently a difference.
She watches him disappear into your apartment building. Waits exactly forty-three seconds and walks in herself. The lift is occupied. She takes the stairs. Halfway up... she hears a door close. Apartment #12.
Her mouth falls open.
"...Oh my God."
You wake to the sound of your bedroom door flying open.
"MOVE."
You groan into your pillow.
"Mia."
"GET UP."
"Mia."
"SIT UP."
You squint at her.
"...Did Monaco explode?"
"Worse."
You sigh dramatically.
"What?"
She points towards the ceiling.
"I saw him."
You blink.
"...Who?"
She stares.
Then very slowly says:
"Bob."
Your brain takes several seconds to catch up.
"You... what?"
"I saw him."
"Outside?"
"No."
"In the building."
"He lives upstairs."
Silence. Long silence.
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"You are joking."
"I followed him."
"You what?"
"Respectfully."
"There is no respectful way to follow somebody."
"There absolutely is."
"There absolutely isn't."
She waves both hands dramatically.
"That is not the point."
"It absolutely is the point."
"The point..." She points upwards. "...is that your mysterious travelling Formula One maybe-engineer definitely-not-Bob neighbour..." She takes a deep breath. "...is Lando Norris."
The apartment suddenly feels very quiet. You stare at her waiting for the punchline. It never comes.
"You recognised him?"
She nods.
"Immediately."
"You didn't say anything?"
"I wasn't about to introduce myself."
Another silence.
"He lied."
Mia's expression softens.
"Y/N..."
"He lied."
The hallway remains empty all morning. No footsteps, no crashes and absolutely no notes. You tell yourself that you're relieved. You are. Probably.
Just after lunch... The familiar scrape finally comes. A note slides beneath your door. You don't move. Mia looks at it.
"Aren't you going to..."
"No."
"You always..."
"I know."
Neither of you speaks. The note remains exactly where it landed. For the first time since the correspondence began... Apartment Seven says nothing at all.
The second note arrives the next morning. You don't open it. Mia watches you step over it on your way to make coffee.
"You know..." She says carefully. "...he doesn't know that you know."
You don't answer.
The third note arrives that evening, still folded, still carefully tucked beneath your door, still unanswered.
By Friday... There are four perfect little squares of paper stacked neatly on the console table in your hallway. You haven't opened a single one. You tell yourself it's because you're angry. You try very hard not to acknowledge that you're also curious.
Upstairs... Lando has stopped expecting replies. He writes anyway. The notes grow shorter, almost uncertain.
hope work wasn't awful.
i passed by your workshop today, but you weren't there. it smelled like fresh paint.
somebody nearly backed into my car. thought you'd appreciate that.
Nothing. Not one answer.
Oscar notices first.
"You look miserable."
"I'm fine."
"You've worn the same hoodie three days in a row."
"...That's unrelated."
"It never is."
Lando sighs.
"I think I upset somebody."
Oscar looks up.
"The note girl?"
Lando freezes.
"...How do you guess it was about note girl?"
"Dude." Oscar gestures vaguely. "You smile at folded paper."
"I..."
"You literally keep notes in your wallet."
"I..."
"You've become the least subtle person alive."
Lando drops his head into his hands.
"I don't know what happened." Oscar waits. "I didn't change anything."
"You sure?"
"I guess she suspects, who I am, but there is no-"
Lando thinks back. Bob. The questions. Papaya Rules. The job. The concision all of them taken together lead to. His stomach sinks.
"Oh."
Oscar immediately notices.
"What?"
"I think..." He exhales slowly. "I think she figured it out."
Downstairs you finally pick up the oldest note. Not to read it, just to move it. Your thumb catches on the fold. It would be so easy. One glance. One sentence.
Instead... You place it back on the table face down.
Saturday evening arrives wrapped in music. Mia insists that sitting around sulking is "deeply unattractive." You insist she stop using words like "deeply." She ignores you. Naturally.
By nine o'clock the apartment smells like pizza, perfume and the expensive bottle of wine she'd insisted on buying "for emotional support." The playlist grows louder. So do the two of you.
Above... Lando stands in his kitchen with a passport on the counter and a suitcase half packed. Another race week. Another flight tomorrow morning. He looks automatically toward the floor. Nothing. No scrape of paper. No laughter. No notes. Just... Music.
He smiles despite himself. Then remembers, she still hasn't answered not once in four days. His smile disappears.
He writes one more note anyway. He folds it. Walks downstairs and stops outside Apartment #7. The paper feels strangely heavy in his hand. He crouches to slide it beneath the door. Then hesitates.
For the first time... He doesn't. Instead, he raises his hand and knocks once. It is quiet and almost purposefully small. The music inside doesn't stop. He almost leaves, but he's already gotten here, so he knocks again, a little louder.
The apartment falls silent. Footsteps., two sets. One laughing. One slower. The lock turns.
For a moment nobody opens the door. Lando almost laughs. Of course, he deserves that. He shifts his weight. Looks once toward the stairs. Maybe-
The lock clicks. The door opens.
You're standing there barefoot, one of Mia's oversized university sweatshirts slipping off one shoulder, hair slightly messy, a wine glass still in your hand. You look exactly like the girl from the workshop photographs, like the girl from the staircase, like the girl he'd imagined every time he'd unfolded another note.
Except you're looking at him as though you don't know him at all.
Neither of you speaks. Not immediately. Finally,
"So." You lean against the doorframe. "Bob."
Lando closes his eyes.
"...Yeah."
"I have to admit." You smile. It doesn't reach your eyes. "I wasn't expecting that one."
"I can explain."
"I imagine you can."
"I'd like to."
"You've had weeks."
The words aren't loud. They're somehow worse because they aren't. Behind you Mia quietly appears in the hallway. She takes one look at Lando, at you and silently retreats back into the apartment, closing the living room door behind her very deliberately.
Lando notices.
"You know."
"I do."
Another silence.
"I wasn't trying to lie."
You laugh. A short one.
"Really?"
"I wasn't."
"You told me your name was Bob."
"I know."
"You knew mine."
"I..."
"You knew exactly who I was."
He doesn't deny it. Because he can't.
"I found your workshop." He says it quietly. "After you told me your name. I Googled it. I recognised you. I should've told you."
"You should have."
"I know."
"But every time I tried..." He shakes his head. "...I kept thinking you'd stop writing."
You stare at him. He laughs once without humour.
"Turns out... I was right."
Something twists painfully inside your chest.
"You don't get to say that." His head lifts. "You don't. You don't get to make this my fault."
"I wasn't-"
"You let me keep writing."
"I know."
"You let me tell you things."
"I know."
"You knew exactly who I was. And I knew absolutely nothing about you."
He opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. Because you're right.
"I liked Note Boy." You admit quietly. "I trusted him."
The sentence lands somewhere deep inside him. Because he knows exactly what comes next.
"I don't know Lando Norris."
The silence stretches. The music from inside the apartment has started again, quieter now, almost distant. Lando nods.
"That's fair." You hadn't expected him to agree. "I don't know what people have told you." He says after a while. "I don't know what you've read. I don't know what you think you know." Another pause. "But..." He looks at you, really looks at you. "I wish you'd let me be the one to tell you who I am."
Your fingers tighten around the stem of your glass.
"I gave you that chance."
His shoulders fall, because you did. Neither of you says anything for almost a minute. Then Lando quietly reaches into the pocket of his hoodie, pulls out a folded square of paper. The last note, still unopened.
"I wasn't going to leave this." He places it gently on the little table beside your door. "I was going to slide it underneath. I just..." He shrugs. "...Thought maybe talking would be better."
You don't reach for it. He notices. Of course he notices. He nods once.
"I've got to leave tomorrow." No response. "A race." Still nothing. "I won't bother you again." That finally makes you look up. "I mean it." He smiles, small and broken. "You've made it pretty clear." He steps backwards. One step then another. "You deserved honesty. I should've given it to you sooner." Another step. "I'm sorry."
This time he leaves - no dramatic goodbye, no last look - just the quiet sound of footsteps disappearing up the stairs. The same footsteps that had been the soundtrack to your evenings for months. Only now... They sounded unbearably far away.
You remain standing in the doorway long after his apartment door closes. The folded note still rests untouched on the console table. Mia appears again. Wordlessly, she looks at you then at the note.
"You gonna read it?"
You don't answer. You quietly close the apartment door, leaving the note exactly where he left it.
You don't read the note that night or the next morning. It remains exactly where Lando left it.
Sunday is strangely quiet. Mia doesn't push, she makes coffee, opens every window in your apartment, waters the little basil plant on your balcony and pretends not to notice every time your eyes drift towards the hallway table.
Monday arrives. Then Tuesday. The note remains unopened.
By Wednesday morning, Mia's suitcase sits beside the front door.
"I have to leave in an hour."
You nod.
"I know."
She zips her bag shut then walks over to the console table. She doesn't touch the note. Just looks at it.
"You know..." She says softly. "...not reading it doesn't mean it stops existing."
"I know."
"It just means you're letting your imagination write it instead."
You don't answer, because she's right. You've already imagined a hundred versions. None of them have made you feel any better.
The doorbell rings, neither of you is expecting anyone. Mia frowns.
"I'll get it."
It's a florist, a very confused florist, holding an enormous bouquet of white lilies, pale pink roses and eucalyptus.
"Delivery for Miss Y/N L/N?"
You blink.
"...That's me."
He smiles.
"As well as..." He checks the card again. "...two paddock passes."
Silence. Mia makes a noise somewhere between a gasp and a laugh.
"I KNEW IT."
The florist hands over a cream-coloured envelope, much heavier than it should be. You already know whose handwriting is waiting inside. You recognise it immediately. This time it doesn't begin with anonymous black ink or Apartment #12, or Bob. At the bottom of the page there is only one signature.
Lando.
Your hands tremble ever so slightly as you unfold it. The paper is covered on both sides. No crossings out. No hesitation. Just... Lando.
Y/N,
I think I owe you more than an apology. I owe you an introduction. My name is Lando. Not Bob. Bob was stupid. Oscar laughed for a full five minutes when I told him. I deserved it.
You laugh despite yourself. Mia notices, says nothing.
You were right. You gave me every opportunity to tell you the truth. I didn't. Not because I wanted to trick you. Because I was selfish. For the first time in years, somebody liked talking to me before they knew who I was. I didn't want to lose that. The problem is... I lost it anyway.
Your throat tightens.
You once asked me what I did. I never answered. Here's the real answer. I drive racing cars. I spend most of my year in airports. I make too much noise when I walk. I'm terrible at building furniture. I drink coffee that's far too strong. I apologise with cinnamon rolls. I still don't know how vacuum cleaners work. And somewhere along the way... I became the man who waited every evening to see whether there'd be another note beneath his door.
You stop reading, just for a second, to breathe.
I can't ask you to forgive me. I haven't earned that. But I am asking for one thing. Come and see for yourself. Not headlines. Not interviews. Not social media. Me. I've arranged passes for both you and Mia. The plane leaves Friday morning. If you come... I'll answer every question you've ever wanted to ask. If you don't... I'll understand. Either way... Thank you for every note. You made Apartment Twelve feel like home.
— Lando
Silence fills the apartment. You read the final paragraph twice, then a third time. Mia quietly takes the letter from your hands and reads it herself. When she reaches the end she folds it carefully and places it back inside the envelope. Looks at you.
"So."
You already know.
"No."
"Y/N."
"No."
"You are absolutely getting on that plane."
"I don't-"
"You don't have to forgive him." She steps closer. "But..." She presses the envelope gently back into your hands. "...don't spend the rest of your life wondering whether Note Boy was real."
You look down at the letter, at the careful handwriting, the same handwriting that had slipped beneath your door for months, the same handwriting you'd memorised without realising it. For the first time you notice something - every anonymous note had ended with a period. Every single one. This one doesn't. It simply ends with: Lando. No full stop. As though he isn't trying to end the conversation. Only finally begin it.
You say no. Three times.
The first time is immediate.
"No."
Mia nods.
"I expected that."
The second time comes Thursday morning.
"No."
She slides your passport across the kitchen table.
"I packed it."
"You packed my passport?"
"I know where you keep it."
"Mia."
"What?"
"That's concerning."
The third comes Friday, standing outside Monaco Heliport, suitcase in hand, because somehow... Somewhere between Wednesday and Friday... "No" had quietly become... "Fine."
"I hate you."
"I know."
"You manipulated me."
"I encouraged personal growth."
"You blackmailed me emotionally."
"I inspired healthy communication."
You glare. She grins.
"You'll thank me later."
"I absolutely won't."
The helicopter ride is mercifully short.
The private terminal afterwards is not. Everything feels polished, effortless; people know exactly where they're going. You very much do not.
A woman in a McLaren polo smiles the moment she spots you.
"Y/N?" You nod. "And Mia?" Mia waves enthusiastically. "Perfect."
She hands each of you a pass, around your neck. Your name, your photograph, the McLaren logo. Reality settles a little deeper into your stomach.
"This way."
You don't realise how enormous Formula One actually is until you're standing in the paddock. Television never captures the noise, the movement, the organised chaos. Mechanics pushing equipment, engineers carrying laptops, photographers running backwards. Someone speaking Italian, someone else speaking French. Three different conversations happening simultaneously.
It feels alive.
"You okay?"
Mia nudges your shoulder.
You nod.
"I think so."
"Liar."
"...A little overwhelmed."
She smiles.
"Normal."
You make it exactly twenty metres before somebody calls your name.
"Y/N?"
You turn. A familiar grin and bright blue eyes. Max Verstappen standing three metres away. You blink.
"...Hi."
He smiles.
"So you came."
You stare. Then slowly... Very slowly... Look at Mia.
"You..." She immediately raises both hands. "I didn't tell him. I swear."
Max laughs.
"I figured it out."
"How?"
"Lando's been miserable."
"...Right."
He steps closer glances between the two of you.
"He asked me not to interfere." A beat. "I'm interfering anyway." Mia snorts. Of course he is. "He really likes you."
You sigh.
"So everyone keeps telling me."
"No." Max shakes his head. "I don't think you understand. He talks about you. Constantly. He made us eat cinnamon rolls because apparently 'they're important.'"
Your eyebrows lift.
"What?"
"I still don't understand. I don't think Oscar understands either. We just accepted it."
You laugh despite yourself, a tiny one. Max notices.
"He isn't..." Max searches for the words. "The person people think he is."
You look down at the pass hanging around your neck.
"I know."
He frowns.
"You do?"
"I read the letter."
Silence. Then Max nods once.
"Good." He gestures towards the garages. "Go."
"What?"
"He's pretending to work. He hasn't looked away from the hospitality entrance in twenty minutes."
Your heart immediately starts beating far too quickly.
"I... I don't know if I'm ready."
Max smiles.
"Neither is he." He starts walking backwards. "But somebody has to make the first move."
Then he's gone, just like that, leaving the two of you standing alone. Mia links her arm through yours.
"So."
You already know.
"No."
She laughs.
"Come on."
You take one deep breath. Then another.
Somewhere beyond the crowd... Beyond the cameras... Beyond the orange shirts... Note Boy is waiting. You aren't walking towards Lando Norris. You're walking towards Apartment Twelve.
The first time you see him... He doesn't see you or at least pretends not to.
He's standing with three engineers around a timing screen, headphones around his neck, a race suit tied around his waist, one hand buried in his hair. He looks busy, a far cry from glamorous.
You stop walking. Mia notices immediately.
"There."
You nod.
"I know."
"You gonna-"
"No."
She looks surprised.
"I thought..."
"So did I."
You watch him for another few seconds.
"I think..." You exhale slowly. "...I just want to see him."
So you do. For almost an hour, you never once approach him. Instead, Formula One happens around you.
A mechanic drops a wheel gun. Lando is the first person to pick it up. A little boy waits nervously beside the garage with a McLaren cap clutched in both hands, security politely tries to move him. Lando notices, walks over himself, signs the cap, then kneels down to ask the boy his name. You can't hear the conversation. You don't need to. The smile on the child's face says enough.
Later... One of the catering staff accidentally spills coffee across a table. Lando is halfway through a conversation with an engineer. He stops. Grabs napkins. Starts helping clean before anyone even asks. Nobody seems to notice. Except, well, you.
"You're staring."
Mia appears beside you carrying two iced coffees.
"I know."
"You've been staring for fifteen minutes."
"I know."
She hands one to you.
"So?"
You don't answer immediately.
"He says thank you."
"What?"
"To everyone." You gesture vaguely towards the garage. "The mechanics. The hospitality staff. The photographers. He..." You frown. "...He thanks everybody."
Mia smiles into her coffee.
"I know."
The final straw comes entirely by accident. You wander away from the hospitality unit in search of somewhere quieter. You round the corner just in time to hear somebody laughing.
Oscar. Max. Lando. The three of them stand beside a stack of tyres. You instinctively step back before they notice you.
"You still keeping the notes?"
Oscar asks. Lando doesn't even hesitate.
"They're in my wallet."
Max laughs.
"I told you."
Oscar rolls his eyes.
"Mate... You've carried folded paper around Europe for months."
Lando shrugs.
"They're important."
Oscar looks at Max. Max looks at Oscar. Neither says anything until Oscar sighs.
"You are painfully in love."
Lando smiles.
"...Yeah."
"So fix it."
"I'm trying."
"No." Oscar shakes his head. "You apologised. You invited her. You wrote the letter."
"I know."
"You've done enough."
Lando looks down.
"I don't think I have."
Something inside your chest shifts, almost imperceptibly. He isn't saying those things for you. He doesn't know you're standing there.
You step away before they can see you.
Mia is waiting exactly where you left her.
"Well?"
You stare at the ice slowly melting inside your coffee. Then... Very quietly...
"I think..." She waits. "...I judged him before I ever gave him a chance."
Mia doesn't smile. Doesn't say "I told you so." She simply hooks her arm through yours.
"You ready now?"
You look back towards the garage. Lando is laughing at something Oscar has said. Completely unaware you've been watching him all morning. You smile.
"Yeah. I think I am."
You find him almost by accident or perhaps he finds you. The afternoon has settled into that strange lull between sessions. The paddock grows quieter: engineers disappear into garages, journalists migrate towards the media pen, even the constant hum seems softer somehow.
You're standing beside the fencing overlooking the circuit, watching marshals reset a barrier, thinking. Mostly about folded pieces of paper.
"You came."
The voice is almost cautious. You turn. Lando stands a few metres away, hands buried inside the pockets of his hoodie.
"I did."
Silence follows. The comfortable kind once lived between you. This one... Still needs rebuilding.
"I wasn't sure."
He admits quietly.
"I know."
"I thought maybe..." He smiles faintly. "...you'd throw the letter away."
"I thought about it." His smile disappears. "I didn't."
Another silence. Then-
"Thank you."
He blinks.
"For what?"
"The letter. You didn't owe me one."
"I did."
"You really didn't."
"I did."
You shake your head.
"No. You owed me honesty. The letter..." You look down at the pass around your neck. "...that was a gift."
Lando laughs softly.
"I nearly rewrote it twelve times."
"I can tell."
"You can?"
"You didn't misspell one word."
He freezes.
"What?"
"You always misspell. The letter didn't have one error. I noticed."
For a moment... He simply stares.
"You noticed my spelling."
You shrug.
"I noticed everything."
Something in his expression softens. It isn't relief, it's quieter. More fragile.
"I really am sorry." He says.
"I know."
"I should've trusted you."
"You should have."
"I thought..." He laughs once. "...I thought if you knew who I was..."
"I'd stop writing." You finish for him. He nods. "I know." You look back towards the circuit. "I probably would've."
He winces.
"I know."
"But not because you're Lando Norris." He frowns. You take a slow breath. "It would've been because..." You search for the right words. "...I would've assumed there was no point. You live this enormous life. I restore motorcycles. You fly around the world. "I spend most Tuesdays arguing with carburetors." He laughs despite himself. "It's not exactly the same."
"No." He agrees. "It isn't." He takes one careful step closer. "But you know..." He smiles. "I spent months looking forward to somebody who argued with carburetors."
Your heart betrays you immediately.
"I liked Note Boy."
You admit.
"I know."
"I trusted him."
"I know."
"I..." You stop. He waits. "I don't think I stopped." His eyebrows lift ever so slightly. "I just..." You laugh quietly. "...got angry because I realised Note Boy didn't trust me back."
For the first time all afternoon Lando closes the distance between you.
"So..." He says. "What do we do now?"
You look up at him. Really look. The hoodie, tired eyes, the smile that's somehow both hopeful and terrified. And suddenly... You don't see headlines anymore. You don't see interviews. You don't see social media. You see the man who apologised with cinnamon rolls. Who lost arguments to vacuum cleaners. Who signed every note with perfect punctuation. Who carried months of folded paper around the world.
"I think..." You smile. "...maybe we start over."
His entire face changes.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"No Bob." You laugh.
"Definitely no Bob."
"No lies."
"No lies."
"And..." He hesitates. "...maybe coffee?"
You tilt your head.
"We've technically already been on about sixty dates."
He laughs.
"I suppose we have."
"They just happened under a door."
This time when he reaches for your hand you let him. His fingers fit between yours as though they'd been waiting. Maybe they had.
"Can I kiss you?"
The question surprises you, because he asked, after everything... He still asks. You smile.
"You've been waiting months."
"I know. I've been very patient."
"You've been Bob."
He groans.
"Oh, I'm never escaping that, am I?"
"Absolutely not."
You rise onto your toes, closing the last inch yourself. The kiss is soft and careful. Almost uncertain. Until... It isn't. Until months of folded paper and almost meetings and quiet apologies collapse into something warm and real. When you finally pull away you're both smiling.
"So..." Lando murmurs. "What happens to Apartment Twelve?"
You pretend to think.
"I suppose..." You squeeze his hand. "...Apartment Seven finally comes upstairs."
He laughs, the kind of laugh you've imagined for months. Only... It sounds even better in person.
POV: You were never going to give up trying to escape. And he, was never going to stop pursuing his beautiful lady and bringing her back home.
Warnings: Dark-ish, lovesick, obsessive, dependent and yearner Lando.
✦•┈๑⋅⋯ ⋯⋅๑┈·✦
You move with a waddling gait along the dark street, clutching the loose raincoat tightly in front of you to hide your pregnancy.
Your heart is pounding against your ribcage, but not out of fear, it’s from the adrenaline and (unfortunately) that sweet thrill of knowing you’re about to fail again.
You hear calm footsteps following you just a few meters behind. You know who it is; there is no need to look back.
You know you don't stand a chance. But anger and stubbornness override your logic. You place your hands on your belly and try to walk faster.
You hear him sigh behind you.
"Your feet hurt, my love."
"No, they don't."
(Yes, they do.)
You won't admit to him that your feet are actually swelling and starting to make your shoes feel tight.
"I can give you a nice massage at our home, you know."
You don't pause your steps, but the idea takes shape in your mind.
You know how his big, strong and gentle hands (just for you) can soothe your feet. Every evening, he massages not only your feet, but also your lower back, shoulders and boobies. - even after every time you run away-
"I don't want to."
(Oh.. you want to so much.)
Lando smiles and continues watching you with his hands in his pockets.
"The same route again, my love. If only you had turned north this time, at least-"
You huff in anger and turn your back.
"I'm leaving. Don't follow me."
He walks slowly toward you. Already signaled his bodyguards to stay back. He stops when there are only a few steps between you.
He could never hurt you.
For Lando, such a possibility doesn't even exist.
You are the love of his life, the mama of his baby girl, and his everything.
He knows that his love for you sometimes overwhelms you. But he is so weak when it comes to you that, despite everything, he cannot stay away.
Shaking his head slightly, he lets his gaze roam over your body with great tenderness.
He breathes as if his heart is melting while looking at you.
As the intensity in those blue eyes makes your heart race, you look away and turn your head to the side.
He leaned his head toward your face and planted a small but lingering kiss on your cheek. A soft breath escaped your lips as your eyes closed involuntarily.
"Don't tell me to leave you, love."
As one hand gently encircled your waist, the other touched your rounded belly with tenderness.
Sensing her dada's presence even before contact was made, your baby had already begun to stir inside.
"That is as impossible as wishing for the sun not to rise."
Your eyes meet his, and you feel your heart melt.
After gazing at each other for a while, a gentle breeze brings him back to reality. Lando forced himself to pull away and looked at your face with misty eyes.
"I believe you aren't in pain. But it hurts 'me', to think of the two girls I love most wandering the streets alone at this hour."
He slowly slid the hand resting on your belly beneath your knees and carefully lifted you into his arms.
You never quite got used to him picking you up like this. Your breath caught in your throat as you immediately wrapped your arms around his neck.
Without giving you a chance to open your mouth and object, he reeled off his tempting offers.
"A lovely, warm bath accompanied of course, by those uniquely scented products you love so much."
You closed your mouth and thought for a moment.
"The best full-body massage service, provided by your hubby."
"Your feet, shoulders, that sweet belly (our daughter's hotel) and your beautiful boobies."
Realizing that even just hearing it had begun to relax your body, you understood that you couldn't hold out any longer.
"Okay. I'm coming."
Lando let out a small laugh at the answer you gave while already heading toward the house in his arms.
"Thank you for accepting, my love."
As if the opposite were possible.
You can run as far as you want, you might want to leave. Lando will always come after you. Like a puppy that never leaves its owner's side.
Or a man who cannot breathe without his wife.
✦•┈๑⋅⋯ ⋯⋅๑┈·✦
**This fic, serves as a thank-you for reaching 100 followers🤍
Synopsis: Lando’s least favorite repeat call becomes the one he secretly starts hoping for when the woman living in the “toaster house” makes every emergency a little harder to leave.
Pairing: Firefighter!Lando Norris x Reader
Warnings: Mentions of house fires, grief, and loss of loved ones (reader mentions her grandparents who passed away).
Words: 2,584
Author’s note: Hiiiii! This one is a little longer, but I had so much fun writing it that I could not bring myself to cut it down. I hope you enjoy reading their little moments as much as I enjoyed writing them! Also, a hug to anyone dealing with the loss of a loved one (like I am). I hope you’re being gentle with yourself and taking care of yourself. ♡
. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁ The problem was exactly where you’d said it was.
A section of old wiring behind the living room wall had overheated, likely from years of handling more than it was ever meant to. Lando had seen it plenty of times before. Old houses had their quirks, and sometimes those quirks turned into something that sent a fire engine racing down the road in the middle of the night.
He crouched near the wall while one of the other firefighters checked the surrounding area, making sure there wasn’t any damage spreading somewhere they couldn’t see. The house was quiet now, apart from the occasional creak of old wood settling and the rain tapping steadily against the windows.
You stayed nearby, watching them work.
He’d noticed that about you over the last few calls. You never hovered close enough to get in the way, never asked a hundred questions while they were trying to figure something out, but you were always there. Curious. A little worried. Like you needed to see with your own eyes that everything was actually okay before you could relax.
“You can sit down, you know,” he said after a while, glancing back at you.
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve been standing in the same spot for ten minutes.”
You looked down at yourself, then back at him. “Have I?”
“Yeah.”
You huffed out something like a laugh and finally sank onto the arm of the sofa, mug abandoned somewhere on the side table. “Force of habit. I keep thinking if I look worried enough, the house will behave.”
“Has that worked so far?”
“You’re literally in my living room for the fourth time. What do you think?”
Lando huffed, testing a section of exposed wire with careful fingers before nodding to himself, satisfied. “Good point.”
Oscar called something from the other room about the fuse box, and Lando answered without looking up, easy and automatic, the kind of shorthand that came from working alongside someone long enough to not need full sentences. You watched the exchange with faint curiosity.
“Have you two always worked together?”
“Four years now.” Lando reached for his kit, pulling out a roll of electrical tape. “Feels longer some days.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Depends on the day. Ask me after this shift.”
That earned a real laugh, quiet but genuine, and something in Lando’s chest eased at the sound of it, like he’d been waiting to hear it since he walked in.
He worked in silence for a few minutes after that, aware in the kind of way he didn’t examine too closely of exactly where you were sitting, exactly how the mug had gone cold in your hands, exactly how the rain outside had softened into something gentler than before.
“There,” he said eventually, taping off the last section. “That should hold till the electrician can come take a proper look tomorrow. No more buzzing, no more flickering.”
“No more fire trucks at midnight?”
“Can’t promise that. This house seems to have something against me.”
You smiled down at your hands, and when you looked up, something had softened in your expression, more than politeness, less than anything you’d say out loud yet. “Thank you. Actually. Not just for tonight, for not making me feel like an idiot every time I call.”
Lando straightened, meeting your eyes properly for the first time all night. “You’re not an idiot. Old wiring’s old wiring. Not your fault.”
“Still. You didn’t have to be so,” you gestured vaguely, searching for the word. “Nice about it.”
“Would you have preferred I wasn’t?”
“No,” you admitted, and the honesty of it caught you both off guard. “No, I really wouldn’t have.”
The quiet that followed wasn’t uncomfortable. If anything, it stretched a beat too long, charged with something neither of you moved to name.
Then Oscar appeared in the doorway, took one look at the two of you, and grinned like Christmas had come early. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was going to say,” Oscar said, entirely too pleased with himself, “that for a man who ‘finished up two minutes ago,’ you’re taking your sweet time saying goodbye.”
Lando didn’t answer, mostly because there wasn’t a version of the sentence that didn’t make it worse. He climbed into the truck instead, staring straight ahead while Oscar settled into the seat beside him, still grinning like this was the best part of his week.
The engine pulled away from the curb, rain streaking sideways across the windscreen. Oscar let the silence sit for exactly as long as it took to be unbearable.
“You didn’t even ask her name tonight,” he said, far too casually for how pointed it was.
Lando’s jaw ticked. “I know her name.”
“Didn’t say that.”
Lando didn’t answer that either, and this time the silence said plenty on its own.
The fifth call came almost two weeks later, and this time there was real smoke (not much, just enough to blacken the wall behind the stove where a spark from the same tired wiring had caught the edge of a dish towel someone had left too close). By the time Engine 81 arrived, you’d already smothered it with a lid, and you met them at the door looking more furious at the house than afraid.
“It tried to kill my kitchen towel,” you said, before anyone could ask. “I’m considering pressing charges.”
“Against the house?” Lando asked.
“Against whoever wired it in 1974 and called it a day.”
Captain Zak Brown, hanging back near the truck, caught Lando’s expression before he had a chance to arrange it into something more professional, and filed it away with the quiet satisfaction of a man who didn’t miss much.
By the sixth call (a breaker that blew hard enough to spark visibly through the panel) Lando had stopped pretending to himself that this was just part of the job. He’d catch himself at the station, hosing down the truck or restocking the medical kit, wondering what you were doing. Whether the electrician had ever actually come by. Whether you’d started keeping the fire extinguisher somewhere more accessible like he’d suggested, half-joking, the last time.
He learned your last name almost by accident, glancing at the incident report Oscar filled out at the scene. He learned you were in your final year at university when you mentioned, offhand, that you’d be pulling an all-nighter for a deadline the same night the smoke detector had gone off for the fourth time that month (“brilliant timing, as always”). He learned you lived alone when Oscar asked, casually, if there was anyone else in the house they should account for, and you said no, just you, like it was nothing.
He learned about the tea because you always had a mug of it, no matter the hour, no matter how bad the night had been. He learned about the records because he spotted the shelf of them by the window on the seventh call, and made the mistake of asking, and got a twenty-minute answer he hadn’t expected and hadn’t minded in the slightest.
Back at the station, it became a running joke he could feel building momentum he had no way to stop.
“Chertsey Road again?” Zak would say, deadpan, scanning the call sheet, and somehow always find a reason to look directly at Lando when he said it.
“It’s not funny,” Lando said, more than once, to increasingly less effect each time.
“It’s a little funny,” Oscar said, mimicking Lando’s own words back at him with visible glee.
“The toaster house has a crush on him,” someone from B shift said, one afternoon, and Zak didn’t even bother denying it, just grinned into his coffee.
“I think,” Zak said, “that Lando here has a crush on the toaster house.”
“I have a crush on nothing,” Lando said. “It’s faulty wiring. It’s a coincidence.”
“Seven coincidences,” Oscar pointed out.
“Old houses have old wiring.”
“You know her records collection alphabetically.”
Lando did not have a response to that one, mostly because it was true, and everyone at the table knew it, and the collective silence that followed was somehow louder than if they’d all laughed at once.
He didn’t mind it, not really. Not the way he minded most things people teased him about. He just didn’t have a good answer for why a house two miles off his usual route had started to feel like a place he looked forward to being called to, or why he’d started noticing things like the exact shade the sky turned right before a call came in, the particular creak of your front step, the way you said his name like you’d been testing it out before you said it, that had nothing to do with wiring at all.
The eighth call, he told you, without quite meaning to, that you were clever for spotting the burning smell before the alarm even went off.
“Smart girl,” he said, easy, the way he might’ve said it to anyone.
You went quiet for a second too long, something flickering across your face that you didn’t quite manage to hide, and Lando, filing that reaction away the same way Zak filed away everything, decided, privately, that he liked it far too much.
The ninth call started with a smell. Faint, electrical, the kind that made you second-guess yourself for a full ten minutes before you finally gave in and dialed. By the time Engine 81 arrived, you’d already gone through the house twice, sniffing at outlets like a woman losing her mind, and still couldn’t pin down where it was coming from.
“I swear it’s not nothing,” you said, meeting them at the door, arms crossed like you were bracing for someone to tell you it was.
“Didn’t say it was,” Lando said, already stepping past you into the entryway.
It took them the better part of twenty minutes to trace it, an outlet behind the bookshelf, warm to the touch, wiring beginning to scorch just under the surface without ever quite catching. Nothing dramatic. But close enough that if you hadn’t trusted your own nose, it might have gone very differently by morning.
“Good instincts,” Lando said, once it was capped off and safe. “Most people would’ve talked themselves out of calling.”
“I almost did.”
“Glad you didn’t.”
It was quiet after that, the kind of quiet that came from adrenaline draining out of a room once the danger had actually passed, and it left enough breathing room for the question that had apparently been sitting in the back of Lando’s mind for weeks.
He asked it while packing up the kit, careful to keep his tone light, like it was just curiosity and nothing more. “Can I ask you something?”
“Depends what it is.”
“Why do you still live here? House tries to kill itself every other week. You’re clever enough to know a lost cause when you see one.” He said it with half a smile, testing the ground before he put his full weight on it.
You didn’t answer right away. You looked toward the entryway light instead, now steady, like the house had decided to behave for the moment. “It’s not really about the wiring.”
Lando waited. He’d learned, over the last few calls, that you talked more freely when he didn’t fill the silence for you.
“My grandparents raised me,” you said eventually. “Since I was seven. This was their house.” A small, humorless breath escaped you. “They passed last year. Four months apart, almost to the day. My grandad first, then my nan. I think she just didn’t know how to be here without him.”
Lando’s hands had gone still on the kit. “I’m sorry.”
“Everyone says that.” You said it without any bite to it, just tired honesty. “It’s fine. It’s just, they left me the house. And I know it’s falling apart, and I know the wiring’s a nightmare, and I know a sensible person would sell up and let someone else deal with it. But it’s theirs. It’s the only thing that still feels like them, some days.” You glanced at him, like you were bracing for whatever came next, pity, or the kind of sympathy that made grief feel like something to be fixed.
He didn’t offer any of that. “So you keep calling us instead of moving out.”
Something in your shoulders loosened, grateful for the shift in tone. “Efficient, I know.”
“I mean, at this rate we’re basically on a first-name basis with your fuse box.”
That got the laugh he’d been angling for, small but real, and it settled something in his chest he hadn’t realized had gone tight. “You could just say you don’t think I should sell.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Lando didn’t argue the point. He just zipped the kit shut and let the quiet stretch, comfortable this time, while outside Oscar leaned against the truck pretending very hard not to be watching the two of you through the open door.
Oscar didn’t let it go. Of course he didn’t.
“So,” he said, the next morning, far too pleased with himself as he leaned against the locker beside Lando’s. “You gonna ask for her number, or are we doing this the hard way where you just keep finding excuses to drive past Chertsey Road on your days off?”
“I don’t drive past on my days off.”
“You drove past on Tuesday.”
“I was getting coffee.”
“The coffee place is in the opposite direction.”
Lando didn’t have an answer for that, which Oscar seemed to take as its own kind of victory, grinning the rest of the way to the truck bay. It became the theme of the week, Oscar finding new and increasingly unsubtle ways to bring it up, Zak occasionally chiming in with a comment about wedding invitations, someone from B shift leaving a joke Valentine’s card taped to Lando’s locker with your future toaster house wife scrawled inside it in Oscar’s handwriting.
Lando let most of it roll off him. He was used to being teased, it came with the territory of working alongside people who spent entire shifts crammed into a truck together with nothing to do but wind each other up.
But underneath the teasing, quieter, was the part he didn’t say out loud to any of them, that he kept thinking about the way you’d talked about your grandparents. The four months between them. The way you’d braced for pity and gotten none, like you weren’t used to people just letting you finish a sentence about grief without trying to fix it. He thought about the house differently now, too. Not as a nuisance that kept dragging his engine across town at odd hours, but as something you were holding onto with both hands because it was the last place that still felt like the people who raised you.
He thought, more than once, that he should ask for your number. He thought about it enough that Oscar’s teasing had started to feel less like a joke and more like a countdown.
He was still thinking about it four days later when the call came in.
Structure fire. 4 Chertsey Road.
Not your voice on the line. A neighbor’s, panicked, breathless, saying they’d seen flames in the upstairs window and they didn’t know if anyone was inside.
Lando was moving before dispatch finished the sentence.
Synopsis: Lando’s least favorite repeat call becomes the one he secretly starts hoping for when the woman living in the “toaster house” makes every emergency a little harder to leave.
Pairing: Firefighter!Lando Norris x Reader
Warnings: Mentions of house fires, firefighter!Lando Norris (the thought should be a warning on its own).
Words: 863
Author’s note: A little shorter than what I normally write! I mostly wrote this as a tester to see if I liked the idea, but I ended up having a lot of fun with it. I hope you like it! ♡
. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁ By the fourth call, Lando knew the address before dispatch finished reading it.
He was halfway through pulling on his jacket when he heard 4 Chertsey Road come through the radio, and somewhere behind him Oscar groaned dramatically enough to earn a glare from the captain.
“No,” Oscar said. “Not the toaster house.”
“The toaster house,” Lando confirmed, already reaching for his helmet.
The first time, it’d been an electrical fire in the kitchen wall. The second, a socket in the upstairs bedroom had started spitting sparks for reasons no electrician had yet managed to explain. The third, a toaster of all appliances, had somehow managed to catch fire. None of the incidents had been catastrophic, but all three had happened just late enough at night to drag Engine 81 across town, and Lando had developed the conviction that the house itself had something against him. Oscar, meanwhile, had reached the conclusion that the place was haunted by whatever ghost specialized in faulty wiring.
Rain had started sometime during the drive, fat drops rattling against the windscreen hard enough that the wipers struggled to keep up. By the time the truck rolled to a stop, he could already see the front door standing open. There was no smoke this time. Just a porch light flickering like it couldn’t decide whether it still wanted the job.
“See?” Oscar muttered beside him. “Haunted.”
Lando snorted. “It’s Surrey, mate. I’d haunt this place too.”
Every previous call had gone the same way, you’d been frantic, apologizing before he could get a word in, insisting you hadn’t done anything this time. Instead, when he climbed the front steps, he found you standing barefoot on the porch in an oversized university hoodie, hugging a mug that was sending lazy curls of steam into the air.
“I swear,” you said before he could ask what happened this time, sounding more exhausted than embarrassed, “I’m becoming your least favourite resident.”
It caught him so off guard that he laughed. Not politely. A proper laugh that escaped before he could stop it. You looked relieved, like you’d been hoping for exactly that reaction, and for reasons he couldn’t explain, the rest of his annoyance dissolved with it.
For a second, neither of you moved.
Rain drummed steadily against the porch roof. Steam curled lazily from the mug between your hands, and somewhere behind him Oscar let out an exaggerated sigh that sounded suspiciously like finally.
Lando shot him a look over his shoulder.
Oscar only raised his eyebrows.
Right. He was supposed to be working.
Lando cleared his throat, more out of habit than necessity, and nodded toward the open front door. “So,” he said, slipping back into the version of himself that belonged on the job. “What’s the house done now?”
You turned, looking over your shoulder into the house as though hoping the answer might change if you gave it another second.
“I genuinely don’t know.” There was a laugh tucked somewhere beneath the words, worn thin by exhaustion. “The lights in the living room started flickering, then half the sockets stopped working, and then there was this weird buzzing noise in the wall. I decided I’d rather call you before the house made another attempt on my life.”
“Smart,” Lando admitted.
“I can learn.”
He caught the tiny smile that tugged at the corner of your mouth as you stepped aside to let the crew in. It wasn’t the frantic, apologetic smile he’d grown used to seeing on the previous callouts. This one said you were just as fed up with whatever bizarre electrical curse had settled over the place as he was.
Oscar lingered beside him for a moment, eyes flicking between the entryway and the old staircase leading to the second floor.
Buzz.
“I’m telling you,” he murmured quietly enough that only Lando could hear. “Ghost.”
Lando rolled his eyes. “You think every old house is haunted.”
“No,” Oscar pointed toward the buzzing wall with complete sincerity. “Just the ones that keep setting breakfast appliances on fire.”
You laughed before you could catch yourself, and both firefighters looked up at the sound.
“Sorry,” you said, covering your mouth with one hand. “I know this probably isn’t funny for you.”
“It isn’t,” Lando replied, seriously.
Your shoulders dropped in immediate embarrassment. Lando held the expression for another second before the corner of his mouth gave him away. “It is a little bit.”
For the first time since he’d started coming to this address, you laughed properly. Not the strained sort people managed because they were nervous, but the kind that slipped out before they could think better of it, bright enough to fill the entryway for a second. Lando found himself smiling before he even realized he was doing it.
Oscar noticed immediately, nudging him with his elbow as they headed towards the fuse box. Lando ignored him. Mostly because he had a feeling that Oscar was about to become even more insufferable than usual if he admitted that, somewhere between the toaster incident and the mug of tea in the porch, he’d stopped thinking of this as the toaster house.
It was becoming your house.
Author’s note: Hiiiii! This is my first time posting something I’ve written so I’m a little nervous but I hope you like it! A huge thank you to my beautiful friend @clovermoters for reading it first and encouraging me to post it. You should go check out her incredible writing!
If you end up liking it, let me know! And if you’d like to see a part 2, let me know that, too! I’d love to write one. ♡
TSITP AU HAS HIT 8K!!! I think i'm going to try and keep chapters to around 10k words in length (some may be longer but oh well more content for you all). I'm so excited to put this out I love all the characters sm rn they're like my little babiessss.