was your soul rediscovered (was your heart rearranged?) ⸻ lando norris x reader .
featuring lando norris , soulmate au , friends to lovers word count 2.6k author’s note thank you thank you THANK YOU for all the love on my oscar fic , this is another one i’ve been workshopping for a bit - lowkey inspired by @binisainz , i love the way she writes lando sm . i promise yall i don’t only write friends to lovers !! anyway hope you all like it , inbox is open for requests or if you wanna talk to me !! title from maine by noah kahan .
“Mate, what are you watching?” your best friend says as he steps out of his room.
You were sprawled on his expensive couch, but you practically bolt up when you hear his voice. “Nothing,” you respond, voice shaky and high-pitched as you try to pause the video, but you’re no match for Lando’s reflexes, honed over years of pushing his body to the limit. He snatches the phone out of your hand — the little gremlin — and starts giggling almost immediately. “Soulmate Theory: Understanding the Red String of Fate?”
“Shut up,” you hiss, cheeks burning as you try to grab your phone from him. Lando’s anticipating that move, though, and he steps just out of your reach, grinning at you with that annoying smile he’s perfected over your years-long friendship. “Lan, give it back.”
You can hear the narrator’s voice, tinny through your phone speakers as the video keeps playing: “The two souls connected by the red thread are destined to be lovers, regardless of place, time, or circumstance. This magical cord may stretch or tangle, but never break.” You can’t stand the stupid smile on Lando’s face for a second longer, so you jump on Lando’s back. His giggle drowns out the rest of the narration as you finally manage to wrestle the phone out of his hands, stabbing the pause button like you have a personal vendetta against it.
“Not another word about it,” you warn him, smoothing your dress. He actually manages to keep his mouth shut for about five minutes.
“I can’t believe you buy into that stuff,” Lando scoffs, rolling his shoulders in that cocky way of his as you both exit his apartment building. He pulls open the passenger door, and you slide into his car as he walks around to the driver’s side. “It’s such rubbish.”
You sigh. “I can’t believe you don’t. I mean, look at all the people who found their soulmates. Look at Oscar and Lily! How can you hear all those stories and still believe there’s no such thing?”
“We can’t see it,” Lando shrugs as he hands you the aux cord without even looking. “The red string is supposed to show up if we fall in love with our soulmates, but who could prove it? I could say Tate McRae was my soulmate and no one would be able to tell I was wrong, even her. Unless she fell in love with me and didn’t see it.”
“Please,” you respond tartly, pausing before the punchline. “As if you could ever pull Tate McRae.” You know he’s about to respond, a sassy retort or a punch to the shoulder brewing in his mind, but before he can, you hit play on your ‘Make Lando Shut Up’ Spotify playlist. His eyes widen with delight as On the Floor by J.Lo starts to play, and before you know it you’re both singing along, the conversation effectively forgotten.
⸻
You’re sitting in a booth at Jimmyz, watching Charles Leclerc cross the dance floor with your chin propped in your hand. His tanned skin shines under the pulsing lights, those beautiful blue eyes crinkling at the corners as he speaks rapid-fire French to one of the other drivers. You’re not sure when you started noticing Charles the way you do now. Maybe it’s a stupid crush on one of Lando’s friends, a guy tangentially in your orbit who’s finally single. Or maybe, just maybe, he’s your —
“Just go talk to him, you muppet,” Lando says directly into your left ear, and you jump in surprise, whirling to face him. His hair is damp, a sheen of sweat on his muscular arms.
“Jesus Christ, Lando. Stop sneaking up on me.”
“I’m just saying,” he continues, eyes bright and teasing as he leans closer to you. “Eye sex tends to work better when the other person is looking back at you.”
“Charles will realize he wants my eye sex one of these days,” you counter, sitting back in the booth. “This is eye foreplay.”
Lando grins, wiggling his eyebrows. “Maybe you should get some eye experience, to know what you’re doing when the time comes. Wanna have a staring contest?”
You snort, bumping your shoulder against his. “Ew. Freak.” You don’t look back at Charles. He’s not looking at you, anyway. “Think those girls might have a problem with that,” you note, eyes flicking to the gaggle of bleach-blondes Lando left behind at the edge of the booth.
He rolls his eyes. “Please. You know you’re the only one who’s coming home with me.” You allow him a small smile at that, and he grabs your arm, pulling you out of the booth to dance.
⸻
“Oh my god,” you moan, teeth sinking into the first bite. “I think this pizza is my soulmate.” You’re at a tiny ristorante in Monza, executing your oldest pre-race tradition of taking Lando to Saturday night dinner (he insists that if you pay, it’s all even, despite the fact that he pays for your flights and hotel room and gives you a paddock pass).
Lando’s scrolling through his phone absentmindedly, not looking at you. “That’d be a real win for the universe, wouldn’t it?” he replies dryly.
You give him a pass. He’s still waiting for his food, and he gets fussy when he’s hungry. “I’m serious,” you continue lightly, waving a slice in his general direction. “Try some.” He doesn’t look up. “I should invite Charles here. Maybe we’ll be poly soulmates with this margherita. Do you think if we both ate some at the same time, we’d be able to see the red string going down our throats?”
Lando giggles, finally putting his phone away, and you feel a little swell of happiness in your stomach. “Oh my god, shut up, you muppet.” He reaches for the pizza, about to take the slice from your hand when he goes pale, letting it slip through his fingers. It falls face-down on his plate, untouched.
“What the hell, Lan?” you grin, but all of a sudden he looks like he’s on another planet, eyes wide and fixed on your face. “You okay?” you ask, concerned, and place your hand on his wrist. The skin burns beneath your fingers.
His eyes meet yours for another second, and then he shakes his head like he’s clearing cobwebs from his brain. “Totally. Just… zoned out for a second, I think,” he says softly.
“Okay,” you say, unconvinced and ready to press him on it, but then the waiter comes back to your table with his pizza, and that strange, charged moment passes.
⸻
You’re sprawled on Lando’s couch under a big blanket, a little wine-drunk as Notting Hill plays on the TV screen in front of you. You’ve seen it a hundred times, since Lando picks it practically every single movie night, but you can’t stop your eyes from getting a little misty when Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts look at each other in the crowded press room, the red string wrapping around the mic stands and chairs from one pinky to the other.
“See?” Lando tosses a piece of popcorn into the air, catching it in his mouth. “Hugh Grant was like, totally in love with his wife. She finds her soulmate and leaves him. And the whole time, Julia Roberts was there. His real soulmate, out in the universe, and he marries someone else.”
“That doesn’t lessen the value of the love,” you shrug, throwing a handful from your bowl at his head. He yelps, pieces hitting him in the face. “It just means the person who was made for him was somebody else. You can still be happy with someone who isn’t your soulmate.”
“God. Love’s complicated enough without soulmates messing it up,” he mutters under his breath, just loud enough for you to catch. “I hate soulmates.”
“How do you hate something you don’t believe in?” you ask automatically, expecting his usual anti-soulmate rant. But it doesn’t come, and when you look over at him, he’s avoiding your eyes.
“Oh my god,” you say, somewhat delightedly. “You do believe in them. You believe in soulmates.”
“Shut up,” he mumbles, suddenly very interested in his popcorn bowl.
“I thought you thought they were ‘rubbish,’” you mimic his words from weeks ago, not even bothering to hide your smile anymore. “What happened?”
“They still are rubbish,” he protests. “How terrible is it that we know someone out there is made for us, but we don’t know if we found that person until we’re already in love? Look at Hugh Grant and the ex-wife. They had to know they were dooming their soulmates if they stayed together.”
You frown. “It’s just a movie, Lan. An admittedly great movie, but a movie. Plus, they found the right person in the end.” You motion to the TV, where Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts sit in the park.
He sits up, eyes flickering over your face restlessly. “What if they hadn’t? If you love somebody who isn’t your soulmate, would you leave them to wait for the real thing? Or would you stay with the person you love anyway?”
“Me?” you ask, and he nods, his fingertips drumming against the arm of the couch. “I dunno. Who knows if I’ll ever find my soulmate, you know? I want to believe I will, but it’s a big world. I guess I’d stay with the person I love.”
He slouches back on the couch as the credits roll. “Yeah. Love’s hard enough without soulmates.”
⸻
“You’ll never believe what just happened,” you laugh. “Are you sitting down?”
“Hold on,” Lando’s voice spills through your phone speakers. He’s in Woking for testing this week, so you’re all alone in Monaco, and you hate to admit that just hearing his voice is making you smile. “One second.” You hear him close a door behind him, then the soft oof of him flopping facedown onto the couch. “Alright. I’m sat. Lay it on me.”
“Okay. So. I was on one of those park benches by the beach reading, right? And all of a sudden this little dog runs up to me.” You pause for dramatic effect. “It’s Charles’s dog. And he comes running up after him, all cute and sweaty, and thanked me for catching Leo. And we got to talking, and he asked me if I wanted to grab dinner with him tonight.” You can hear the smile in your voice, sure he’s about to tease you endlessly for it. “What?” Lando says, sharply, and you have to hold the phone away from your ear a little.
“Jesus, Lan. Volume.” You’re only teasing, but for a moment there’s nothing but silence on the other end of the phone.
“Well… that’s cool,” he says flatly. You frown. You don’t know what reaction you were expecting, but it’s not this.
“Are you serious?” you say, picking at your cuticle. “I thought you’d be happier for me. You’ve been telling me to talk to him for, like, ever. And this was a pretty cute first encounter. Straight out of a rom-com. Maybe I’ll see the red string tonight. Maybe he’s my —”
“Charles Leclerc is not your soulmate,” Lando scoffs dismissively.
You roll your eyes before you realize he can’t see you. “How would you even know?”
A pause. Suddenly the amorphous space between you feels charged like a live wire.
“He just isn’t. No way.” Lando says firmly, and you let out a breath you didn’t realize you were holding.
“Whatever,” you say, but your enthusiasm is somewhat dimmed. “I guess we’ll see on the date. How’s testing going?”
He launches into some story about how Oscar accidentally nearly broke the rear wing by leaning too heavily on it, but you’re not listening, not really. His words, his certainty rubbed you the wrong way. How would Lando possibly know whether or not Charles was the right one for you?
He couldn’t, of course. No one could. You wish you could just ignore it, let it go, but Lando knows you better than almost anyone, and you trust him instinctually.
Charles Leclerc is not your soulmate.
You hadn’t thought that he was, not seriously at least, but hearing Lando say it so straight-out made the butterflies in your stomach stop fluttering. An hour before you’re supposed to meet Charles at the restaurant, you text him to cancel.
⸻
“I think it’s going to rain,” you muse, taking a sip of your iced coffee. You’d dragged Lando on an adventure to some cafe overlooking the ocean; your friend had told you it had a beautiful view and the best kouign amanns in the principality. She wasn’t wrong, and although the walk was longer than you’d expected, you’d been congratulating yourself on a Saturday well spent until the sky started growing darker.
“It’s not going to rain,” Lando says from beside you, voice muffled as his mouth is half-full of one of the pastries. “It never rains in Monaco.”
It’s like the storm was waiting for dramatic effect; just then, the sky opens up, and before you know it the rain is soaking through your shirt.
“Shit,” you laugh, watching the shock evident on his face. “Never rains, huh?”
As you speak, there’s a crack of thunder behind you. You’re not a child, not scared of storms like you used to be, but Lando still grabs your hand as you take off running, searching for the nearest shelter from the driving rain. He pulls you down a side alley, your sneakers skidding on the wet stone as you stop beneath an awning.
You lean against the wall, panting as you look up at him. His white tee is soaked through and his hair is plastered to his forehead, but he’s grinning at you, eyes bright, so breathtaking that you feel like the wind just got knocked out of your body. “Always an adventure,” he says cheerfully, and you realize he’s still holding your hand. You’re about to wriggle away, to wipe the water off your face, when something catches your eye. You look down at your hands and nearly stop breathing. There’s a glowing red thread, winding from your pinky to his.
The red string of fate, you think to yourself. The two souls connected by the red thread are destined to be lovers, regardless of place, time, or circumstance. This magical cord may stretch or tangle, but never break.
Oh. Oh, oh, oh.
Lando was your soulmate.
You were in love with your best friend.
“You okay?” Lando asks, and you realize you’ve been silent for far too long. You want to look at him, but you can’t seem to drag your eyes away from the thread.
“Our hands look good together,” you say dreamily. You can’t keep the smile off your face. “I never realized until just now.”
“Yeah?” Lando says, his voice pitching up slightly. “What changed?”
You look up, finally, and meet his eyes, see the way his tongue darts out to lick the plush pink of his bottom lip. He’s nervous. Does he know? You’re not going to force it, if he doesn’t.
“A new accessory,” you say vaguely, shrugging your shoulders, but your cheeks are starting to hurt from beaming at him.
“Red, by any chance?” he asks, and you know.
“And joint custody,” you agree.
His smile lights up his entire face. “Took you long enough.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!” you smack his arm, hard, and he just shrugs. You’re understanding his change of heart on soulmates, now. He figured out that he had one. “When did you find out?”
“When you were shoveling that pizza, in Monza.”
You grin, eyes shining with tears. How could you not have guessed it? “Played it off well, there.”
“I’m super smooth,” he agrees, pulling you closer. Your hands land on his chest, like they’ve always been meant to be there. “I’m gonna kiss you now, yeah?” he murmurs, tilting your chin up with one finger.
You’re already leaning in, and when your lips brush against each other for the first time it feels like coming home. “Took you long enough.”
