jingles miserably

no one is as surprised as lando. he’s always been territorial over mclaren—not in a “they must treat me better than the Other Guy” but in a “i have seen this team at their worst and their best and ill gut you if you act like they’re not giving their best every single day” kind of way. the car that season isn’t the rocket ship it was but it’s still capable of winning and he expects charles to come in, charm everyone, make them all think he’s happy with the car and the team and committed only to be meeting in back rooms with other teams, planning an escape route…or maybe lando is just projecting.

charles stays as late as lando most weekends, smiling at him with grease on his hands and face and leo curled up in a ball on the workbenches. more often than not, one can find charles (and leo) bothering lando asking question after question after question: “is this understeer normal?” “do you take your mechanics out for dinner? should i take mine out? i do not want to come on too strong” “can you take the first upgrade so i don’t look stupid if it’s actually awful”

questions about the car turn into questions about the car while they lay low in landos drivers room and then they turn into questions about the car over dinner and in hotel rooms and then their apartments and it’s months before lando realizes they don’t talk about the car anymore but lando has an overpriced dog bed both in his apartment and his drivers room and charles’ stupid clothes littered around his guest room and it’s on a cold as fuck morning at 3am, standing on the sidewalk outside his building while leo sniffs out a good spot to go potty that lando begins to wonder if charles accidentally moved into his apartment.

and charles has no clue what he’s doing he just knows he hates the way people talk to him about lando. little things like how they can’t wait to see charles put lando in his place, to make his life hell and charles wanted to do those things before but only bc lando is a racer and charles is a racer and racers want to beat each other. these people talk about him and lando like they talked about him and seb—as if they were dying dogs and charles was the savior come to put them out of their misery.