‘cause you’re a reckless driver ⛐
‘i didn’t mean to kiss you, now you can’t focus on the road when im in your car.’ -reckless driving, lizzy mcalpine. part of my christmas gifts collection! 💝
word count: 2.0K.
warnings: swearing, angst, arguing, ideas of crashing, dangerous driving. best friends to ?-non f1 au- not proofread !
words from evie: to my dearest @fruityfluter, merry christmas! my gift to you! ❣️🎁. i hope you enjoy this !!!! sorru it’s a little angsty, but i mean. this song is insane 💔! adore you mwah . my masterlist.
You slip into the passenger seat of Lando’s car with a practiced ease, even though your range of movement is slightly limited by the lack of stretch in your skirt, and the way you’re almost too cold to open the door fully.
There’s something in the way you’ve done this a million times before that makes you feel nostalgic, like you can remember each time you’d kicked your feet in the footwell from when you were both freshly seventeen, to halfway through a degree neither of you are sure you want where your heels now make you reach the very end.
And if you think hard enough, you can remember the back-left seat of his dad’s car, long before either of you had been near the steering wheel. Stuffing half-eaten sweets and empty smoothie packets into the sides of the doors, making Lando promise he’d throw them away when he got home. You’d get angry at him when they’d still be there the next morning.
“Hi.” Lando mutters, tapping the wheel impatiently, flashing you his signature elfish grin. Which is ironic, considering the red and green nature of his outfit.
“So, you went for an elf, then.” you nod, scanning his awkward, jingling, hat, and he beams.
“And you, I mean, you-” he begins, but you shoot him an angry stare.
“Shut up, Norris.”
He tries to mask his laugh (and fails, spectacularly), before frowning.
“You have no idea what I was going to say.”
You shrug, giving him a knowing smile. “You sure? You were going to say something odd, I assume.”
He huffs, eyes trailing to the road, as he begins to drive.
You don’t mind Lando driving you around. Sometimes he goes a little too fast, or brakes a little late, but he’s not an idiot. He’s just.. passionate. And although you’d never admit it, you find it much easier to sit back and fiddle with the radio than actually be behind the wheel.
“Why are we heading to the middle of nowhere?” you ask quietly, after what feels like a half-an-hour stretch from the outskirts of the city to farmland you didn’t know existed.
He shrugs, flicking his eyes to his map.
“McLaren like country barns, it seems. I’m just using the address they sent me.” he replies, and you hum in assent, turning the heater up a little and pulling your feet up onto the seat, resting your head on the window.
You don’t see another car for the next half an hour as the mid-afternoon suddenly turns malicious, and that’s when you start to bicker in the way you’ve found yourself doing since before you had the vocabulary to know what that means.
“I still don’t know why you dragged me to this. I’m not even doing a business degree. You could’ve brought Oscar, or Max. Spared me the hassle.”
“And have them think one of them is my boyfriend? Not worth it. But don’t worry, I would’ve rather been with them.”
You give him an outraged laugh, whacking his arm angrily.
“So you’re using me to seem heteronormative, and you don’t even have the grace to pretend I was your first choice?” you scoff, and he glances at you with an impossible grin, chuckling when you pout back.
“Sorry. But don’t act like you don’t want an excuse to hang off my arm for an evening.” he accuses, and you genuinely cackle, head-thrown back in surprise.
“You need to check your ego. I’m doing you a favour, even letting you breathe the same air as me. You should learn your place, Lan.” you fire back, without any hesitation, and he raises a hand off the wheel in mock-innocence.
“Don’t pretend you’ve never thought about it. I heard you yesterday.”
You shoot him a quizzical look, and a smile flickers over his face, accompanied by the last of the dying sunset light.
“Kendra asked if I was your boyfriend last night, and you hesitated. Like you weren’t sure what to say.” he accuses, a proud smirk tugging at his lips, as if he’s just won a prize you weren’t offering.
You hate the way you have to stop yourself from smiling.
“‘S’cause I didn’t hear her. That’s all.” you mumble, not quite meeting his eyes, and his face lights up.
“You wouldn’t mind people thinking I’m your boyfriend.”
It’s not an accusation now, it’s a statement that he’s daring you to dispute.
You look forward, at the last stretch of golden light, at the empty road, and then you turn back to him.
His eyes are trained on yours, specs of green and blue swirling, mouth half-upturned, and hair curling by his forehead.
For a second, you forget you’re supposed to breathe.
“You’re not saying anything.” he mutters victoriously, and you squirm.
“I’m thinking.”
He chuckles, low and gleeful.
“Can’t believe it’s taken you so long to figure it out. I’ve been here for years.”
You scoff, hugging your knees closer to your chest, ignoring the twinge of your seatbelt.
“Figure what out, Lan?”
He inhales. “That we’re more than friends. Or that we should be.”
The air stills. You shoot him an incredulous look, watching over a decade of friendship unravel in a car you could know by sound alone, eyes darting to pieces of you that are scattered on the dash.
“That’s not-” you begin, turning away from him so he can’t see the slight pink of your cheeks. He hums awkwardly.
“I was kidding, don’t worry. Forget it.”
It’s a weak recovery. You’re grateful for it nonetheless.
Still, something in you stirs. You pause.
“Lan-”
“No, seriously. It was a joke.”
“Lan.”
He turns to you now, eyes dragging away from the road, settling on yours. He gives you a wounded smile, and that’s enough.
You lean in, pressing your lips to his carefully, letting whatever was left of your friendship fully unwind itself.
His hand snakes away from the wheel and to the back of your head, pulling you further towards him, catching you as you try to breathe.
“Norris, you need to drive.” you murmur, still pressed against him, and he sighs.
“I am driving.” he protests, swerving to the right a little, to prove his point. You hiss, biting the edge of his lip. He shudders.
“I’m being serious.”
You pull away with some determination, and he has to mask his disappointment, but he doesn’t turn back to the road.
Instead, he keeps staring at you.
“Lando. Stop looking at me like that. Stop looking at me, like, at all.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re not convinced I’m real, or something. I’m not going anywhere, c’mon.” you snap, giving him a frustrated glance, and he smiles, like it’s a big joke.
“You trust me, don’t you?”
You groan, dropping your head into your hands, trying to mask the slight panic spreading in your chest.
“Y’know I do. But I also don't want to die. Look forward, and we can sort this out later. Or, pull over.” you mutter, but he’s still giving you a careful look, adjusting the wheel without so much as blinking at the road.
And then, he pushes the pedal, and you shift forward a little faster.
“Lando, I’m being serious.”
He laughs. “Yeah, so am I. You’ve seen me doing those races. I know what I’m doing. Trust me.”
“And you look like you’re on the edge of death every fucking time.” you shriek, gripping the side of the car a little tighter as he accelerates.
You see it now, the way he can’t tear his eyes away from you, even if he tried. The way he’s not even intentionally trying to spite you, but it’s just part of who he is. The challenge, the dare, the total disregard for reason.
Maybe he’ll go too fast, and that’s it, and he won’t even regret it.
Lando hums to himself, trying to analyse why you’re the one looking at him weirdly now. He doesn’t want to tell you that he feels invincible when you’re sitting by him, which is why he doesn’t even need to look. He just feels safe. Which might be ridiculous.
But looking away from you, not staring at the slope of your jaw and the slight frizz in your hair feels much more dangerous than not bothering to look where he’s driving. Like if he doesn’t hold you in place with his eyes, you’ll simply cease to be, and that’s much worse than the risk of barrelling off the road.
It’s because he loves you. He’s loved you for years, in the way that settles under your ribs and aches. The way that makes you a reckless driver, the way that makes you unable to think of anything else, even when you should be driving.
He hasn’t realised he’s still pushing the accelerator, and he’s over 100mph now, but you have. You, with your eyes screwed shut, shaky hands.
The guilt hits instantly, but it’s too late.
You’re already imagining it; the crash as the car hits the trunk of a tree. The windshield shattering, glass splintering onto your exposed arms, a shard sticking into Lando’s leg. The crumple of the bonnet, you head flying forward, the airbags only half-working.
The shrill ring of silence, the muffled voices of people you’re not sure are there, the darkness.
You don’t realise you’re crying until you feel the car slow, and a hand on your thigh.
“Hey, I’m sorry-” Lando starts, but you shrink away from him.
“Pull over, Norris.”
He begins to argue, but you glower at him.
“I said to fucking pull over, Lando.”
He listens, and you clamber out instantly, slamming the door, walking slowly forward.
“Look, don’t be stupid. You’re going to freeze out there, c’mon. I’m sorry, seriously. I’ll go slowly, but just, get back in. This is insane.”
You pause, watching the car pause with you, Lando trying to lean as close to your window as possible.
“If I come back in, I’m driving.” you whisper, the sound barely carried by the wind.
You watch him hesitate. He concedes.
The rest of the journey is half-silent. You don’t look at him, and you keep just below the speed-limit. He doesn’t comment on how carefully you’re driving. He doesn’t dare to show you it bothers him that you seem unphased by him at all.
That is when you realise you have made a fatal mistake in kissing him. You don’t love him like that, in that way that makes you completely awful. You might not love him at all. You do not feel like kissing him was a resolution of something that spent years unsolved. You feel like it was an experiment that imploded.
Before, when he’d nearly drift himself to the hospital, or miss a lecture, or make a mistake, it was fine. You’d comfort him, and silently complain about having to be the one taking care of him, but it had never been an issue.
Now, thinking about it, you realise you'd have to love him enough to be willing to be in the chaos. In the car, as it almost tumbles into the side of a barrier. Running behind him into the hall, pushing past people with judgemental stares. Having to fix his mistakes.
You don’t love him like that. You don’t love him enough to be here if he kills you both. You don't want to be here when that tree really does come.
It’s something you should’ve learnt long ago- you can’t save him. You never could, never had any control over anything other than the occasional flicker of his heart.
You don’t tell him that the slow drive back might be the last time you’re ever in the same car. ⛐
