i'm tweaking

Lando's brain had short-circuited.

Soulmate.

The car behind him.

He'd whipped his head to the rearview mirror, heart slamming against his ribs, and caught it—a flash of black, a Polo or something, just as it signaled (oh, the irony) and pulled onto the exit ramp. The plate had been a blur of motion and distance and Lando's own stupid, desperate panic.

"No, no, no, no—"

The next exit was two kilometers away. By the time he'd doubled back, heart hammering, eyes scanning every black car in every petrol station and side street, it was gone. Like it had never been there at all.

He'd driven every winding road within fifty kilometers of Monza for the next two days. Every black Fiat, every black Renault, every black VW that looked vaguely familiar from the corner of his eye. Nothing. The memory of even just a single letter on the plate had evaporated in the adrenaline crash, replaced by the permanent, mocking evidence on his arm.

His soulmate, somewhere in Italy. English-thinking. Definitely furious at his driving.

The paddock had never let him live it down.

"Still no luck finding your little Italian road rager?" Carlos had teased, poking at the faded ink on Lando's arm. "Mamma mia, Lando, maybe she was a nun."

"Maybe she was a him," Lando had muttered, which only made Carlos laugh harder.

By 2022, the joke had calcified into legend. Daniel had bought him a custom shirt that said USE YOUR TURN SIGNALS in giant block letters. The words were still visible beneath the cuff of his sleeve—faded now, but permanent, because soulmarks never really went away. They just settled into your skin like old scars, like the universe's most passive-aggressive tattoo.

Lando had stopped looking. Mostly. He'd always driven with half an eye on black cars, always with his stomach doing something stupid when he saw a flash of movement in his peripheral vision. But nothing, no recognition, no signal that his soulmate had finally seen him.

Just the words, forever, paired with everyone's laughter.

One year later, after Bahrain, Lando was exhausted.

The race had been a war—fifty-seven laps of wrestling a car that wanted to kill him, finishing P15 after starting P13, and every muscle in his body currently filing a formal complaint. His firesuit was still half-zipped, sweat cooling uncomfortably against his chest, and all he wanted was a shower and approximately fourteen hours of unconsciousness.

But Jenson Button had cornered him near the Alpine hospitality unit, all easy charm and veteran presence, and Lando couldn't exactly say no to Jenson Button. So here he was, leaning against a padded barrier, mic clipped to his collar, answering softballs about the current championship while his brain fuzzy-droned in the background.

"—and you've really grown as a driver this season, Lando. The consistency's been impressive." Jenson's smile was genuine, the kind that made you feel like you were the only person in the paddock. "But I have to ask—" His eyes dropped meaningfully to Lando's left wrist, where the edge of the soulmark peeked out from the firesuit cuff. "—any progress on that front?"

Lando groaned, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Oh my God, Jenson, not you too."

"I'm just saying! It's been a year, the fans want to know!"

"The fans want me to keep my tires underneath a hundred-and-twenty degrees through nine and ten, actually—"

Suddenly there's a movement at the edge of his periphery. Someone approaching from behind Jenson's shoulder, hovering uncertainly at the edge of the camera frame. Lando's gaze flicked over automatically, and. Wow.

The guy—young, maybe early twenties, dark messy hair and sharp cheekbones and a face that was currently doing something devastating with its color palette—was blushing. Cheeks pink, ears pinker, the flush creeping down his neck in a way that Lando's tired, post-race, decidedly-not-thinking-straight brain found absolutely riveting.

He wonders if that blush goes all the way down.

It's a raw and unfiltered thought and deeply inappropriate given the circumstances, but it crashed through the exhaustion like a wave, bypassing every single one of his higher brain functions.

He was wearing Alpine colors. A reserve driver's badge on his collar. He looked like he'd been shoved in this direction by someone more assertive and left to fend for himself, and he was still blushing, and Lando's thought was still echoing in his own skull like a dropped microphone.

Jenson had noticed the newcomer, because of course he had, and was already waving him over with that expansive commentator's gesture. "Oscar! There you are. Come on, come on—Lando, this is Oscar Piastri, Alpine's reserve. Kid's been turning heads in the junior categories, you should—Oscar, mate, you okay?"

Lando's arm burned.

Unlike the slow crawl of words appearing, this was instant, a flash of heat right on the inside of his left forearm. He didn't have to look, he knew. It was the same spot, the same sensation. One year later, on the exact same patch of skin.

His soulmate was standing three feet away.

Oscar had stopped mid-step, one hand lifting to his neck. His fingers pressed against the right side of his throat, right over where his pulse would be, and his face—already flushed—went abruptly, terrifyingly pale underneath the pink.

"What—" Oscar's voice cracked. He cleared his throat, tried again. "What's up?"

Jenson was still talking, camera still rolling, the whole paddock still buzzing around them oblivious, but Lando couldn't hear any of it. He could only watch, paralyzed, as words began to bloom across Oscar's neck. Slow, one letter at a time.

I wonder if that blush goes all the way down.

His own words. The most exhaustion-addled, deeply inappropriate thought he'd ever had in his twenty-three years of existence, currently materializing letter by letter on the throat of a complete stranger. On live camera. With Jenson Button three feet away and god knows how many viewers watching at home.

Oh no.

Oh no no no no no.

This was so much worse than the road rage thing. The road rage thing was funny. The road rage thing got him meme'd and teased and gently roasted by every driver on the grid, but it was ultimately harmless. Annoying driver gets cursed out by their soulmate. A classic, really.

But this was pervert behavior.

Everyone was going to see that mark and read it. Everyone was going to know that Lando Norris, McLaren F1 driver, professional himbo, took one look at a blushing reserve driver and immediately started wondering about the extent of said blush's geographical distribution down his—

"Lando?" Jenson's voice cut through the spiral. "You've gone a bit pale, mate. Everything alright?"

Lando's hand flew to his mouth.

Oscar was still standing there, fingers pressed to his neck, staring at Lando like he'd just watched a ghost crawl out of the nearest drainpipe. His lips parted, closed, then parted again, but nothing came out.

"Sorry," Lando heard himself say, and the word came out strangled. "Sorry, Jenson, we have to—I have to—sorry—"

He reached out and grabbed Oscar by the wrist. He didn't think about how warm it was, or how Oscar's pulse was hammering right beneath his fingers, or how his brain immediately supplied the word at least half-way down, confirmed like some kind of treasonous internal narrator that needed to be fired immediately.

"Come on—"

"Wait, what—"

"Cover your neck," Lando hissed, already dragging Oscar past the cameras, past the baffled journalists, past Jenson's delighted cackle fading behind them. "Now. Please. For the love of god, cover it."

Oscar's free hand flew to his throat. He fumbled with his collar, yanking it up, pressing the fabric against the still-warm words. His face was doing something complicated—half mortified, half bewildered, entirely red.

"Where are we—"

"Shut up and run."

They were nearing an alley behind the McLaren hospitality unit that was narrow, shadowed, and mercifully empty. A stack of old Pirelli tyres crouched against one wall, some of them deflated, all of them vaguely grimy.

Lando didn't stop in time and Oscar hit the tyre wall with a soft oof, stumbling backward, his shoulder catching the stack and sending a single tyre wobbling to the ground. He winced, one hand coming up to rub the back of his head where it had made contact with the rubber.

"Ow," he said flatly. "Great. Fantastic. Ten out of ten for hospitality, mate."

Lando stood there breathing hard, his firesuit still half-open, his curls a disaster, his entire life currently imploding in real time as he stared at Oscar. Oscar stared back like he was genuinely considering whether this was worth whatever Alpine was paying him.

"Hi," Lando managed. His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. He stuck out his hand. "Lando Norris. We're soulmates."

Oscar raised his eyebrows at him.

The hand hung in the air between them. Oscar didn't take it. He just gaped, mouth slightly open, eyes wide, the collar of his team shirt still clutched against his neck like a shield.

"...Right," Oscar said eventually. "Oscar Piastri. And I think you might actually be insane."

Lando dropped his hand and licked his lips as he tried to reboot his brain.

"Are you," he started, then stopped, before he tried again. "Do you have a thing with road rage?"

Oscar blinked. "What?"

"Road rage. Being angry at other drivers. In cars." Lando was doing a terrible job at this. "Specifically. Uh. Turn signals. Do you care a lot about turn signals?"

Oscar's expression shifted from bewilderment to something closer to suspicion. He shrugged, the movement awkward with one hand still pressed to his collar. "I mean, it's annoying when people don't use them, but it's not like I'm going to beep the horn about it. Why?"

Lando didn't answer. He just pushed up the sleeve of his firesuit—the left one, the one he usually kept covered during interviews because the world didn't need constant reminders of his shame—and held out his arm.

The words were still there. Faded after a year, but legible. Every furious, caps-locked, beautifully unhinged syllable of them.

Oh my GOD. Are you kidding me. I am going to lose my mind. I have been behind this absolute CUNT for three kilometers and he has not used a SINGLE turn signal. I hope he steps on a Lego. I hope his pillow is warm on both sides. I hope—

Oscar stared at the words, then at Lando's face, then back at the words.

A snort escaped him, then another, before he was laughing, full and genuine, his head tipping back against the tyre wall, his shoulders shaking, his collar slipping down enough that Lando caught a glimpse of dark ink still settling against pale skin.

"Oh my god," Oscar wheezed. "Is that—did I—"

"You wrote an entire paragraph," Lando said, torn between horror and something dangerously close to fondness. "A paragraph, Oscar. In all caps. You wished Lego on me, you hoped my pillow would be warm on both sides, it literally got cut off because of how many terrible things you were wishing on me."

Oscar was crying with laughter now, tears tracking down his pink cheeks, and Lando realized with a jolt that Oscar hadn't quite grappled yet. He was laughing at the mark like it belonged to someone else. Like it was a funny story about a stranger, not the physical proof of his own immortalized rage.

"Oscar." Lando's voice came out softer than he intended. "We're soulmates. You're my soulmate. These words, that was you."

Oscar's laughter faded slowly. His eyes searched Lando's face, looking for the punchline, finding none.

"How do you know?" he asked quietly. "I mean—how do you know it's me?"

Lando didn't answer with words. He reached into his firesuit—the zip was already half down, and he probably looked insane digging around in his own clothing—and pulled out his phone. His hands were shaking slightly, but he ignored them.

"Hold still," he said and Oscar obeyed.

Lando raised the phone and framed the shot. Oscar's neck, long and pale and currently flushed, the words stark against his skin in Lando's own messy mental handwriting. The collar of his Alpine polo, the sharp line of his jaw, the way his throat moved when he swallowed, nervous under the attention.

Wide, thick, sexy—

Lando took the picture and turned the phone around, showing Oscar the screen.

Oscar leaned forward to look and his eyebrows went up. Then up further. His blush, which had been fading, roared back to life with a vengeance, spreading down past his collar in exactly the way Lando's original thought had predicted.

"Oh," Oscar breathed.

"Yeah," Lando said. His voice cracked on the vowel.

Oscar's fingers brushed his own neck again, touching the words like he still couldn't quite believe they were real.

"So that's what you thought," Oscar said, it wasn't really a question.

Lando cleared his throat and looked anywhere but Oscar's eyes. The wall, the tyres, a very interesting piece of gravel near his left shoe.

"...Yeah." Lando answered anyway.

"And you just, thought that, about a stranger, during an interview."

"I was tired," Lando said defensively. "I'd just done fifty-seven laps. My brain was not—I wasn't—it's not like I meant to—"

Oscar was staring at his mouth.

Lando realized he'd been biting his lip inbetween his stuttering, nervous, anxious, the skin caught between his teeth. He released it slowly and watched Oscar's eyes track the movement like a hawk tracking prey.

Now would be a really good time for the ground to open up and swallow him whole.

But Oscar didn't look disgusted or offended. Didn't look like he was about to call HR or sprint back to the Alpine garage and pretend this entire interaction had never happened. He just looked mildly interested.

"Do you," Oscar said carefully, "often think such thoughts about strangers?"

Lando's heart stuttered.

And then, despite the fact that his soulmate's first impression of him was roadrage and his first impression of his soulmate was objectification, Lando grinned incandescently.