ANY OTHER QUESTIONS?
summary lando noticed three things about sky sports' new journalist very quickly: you dress like you're about to fire someone, you speak at approximately library volume and he would quite like you to interview him again.
warnings workplace romance, journalist/driver relationship, lots of discussion of online speculation and sexism toward female sports journalists, lando norris being incapable of acting normal around a woman in a suit. the only description is that you wear glasses, and is implied that you and lando are the same age.
notes if ur reading my kimi fic ignore im posting this instead of updating that 💔 17.9k words WHEWWW BABY anw english is not my first lanaguage so please take it easy! i worked super hard on this so if you see any mistakes tell me! tyanks <3
part 2
MELBOURNE WAS BOILING THAT LANDO HAD ALREADY DECIDED ANYONE WEARING MORE THAN ONE LAYER WAS EITHER COMMITTED TO FASHION OR FUNDAMENTALLY MISUNDERSTOOD AUSTRALIA.
By Saturday morning, he was leaning toward the latter. It had hit 35 degrees, sweat already dripping on his back as he walked through the paddock with Oscar.
They had one final debrief before FP3, half-listening to the Aussie talk about something from the engineering meeting, when a woman coming in the opposite direction caught his attention.
Not because he recognised her. Actually, because he didn’t. There weren’t many unfamiliar faces left in Formula One once you’d been around long enough.
Even if Lando didn’t know somebody’s name, he generally knew where to put them: team, media, sponsor, FIA, someone’s manager, someone’s family.
He couldn’t place her at all. Standing beside one of the Sky producers, listening while he pointed toward the television compound.
There was a laminated Sky credential hanging from her waist and a little black notebook tucked beneath one arm, so that answered one question.
The clothes created several others. The sun was shining and there was a slight breeze. Everyone in the vicinity was in linen and floral sets if they weren’t forced into their team branded clothing.
Her trousers were black and fitted before widening slightly toward the bottom, sitting beneath a corset-like waistcoat laced down the front. A white shirt was tucked beneath it, crisp enough to survive the heat somehow, with a narrow black tie hanging from the collar.
Over that was a cropped black blazer with shoulders exaggerated enough that Lando briefly wondered if she’d stolen it from an eighties businessman and attacked it with scissors.
She looked wildly overdressed for ten in the morning. She also looked very good. Lando looked away. Then, after they’d passed, looked back an extra time.
The Sky producer was still talking. She’d opened the notebook now, writing something down while nodding along. Her hair barely moved in the breeze.
“Do you know her?” Lando’s head snapped around. Oscar wasn’t looking at him as he asked, somehow made it worse. “No.”
Oscar waited a moment before glancing sideways. “Then why did you look at her twice?”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“I was looking at Sky.” Lando shoved his hands into his pockets and increased his pace by enough that Oscar had to lengthen his stride slightly to stay beside him. “You’re very observant today.”
“I’ve been awake for four hours.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” Oscar let it go, which was precisely why Lando should have known it wasn’t actually being let go. They made it another twenty metres before Oscar asked, “Want me to go back and ask her name?”
“Shut up.” Oscar laughed, and Lando walked faster.
It wasn’t until nearly an hour later that he saw you again. This time you were inside the McLaren garage.
Lando had just climbed out of the car after FP3 when he spotted the Sky crew gathered toward the back, filming something with one of the engineers.
You stood slightly out of shot beside the cameraman, notebook open again, one hand resting over the page while you listened. Still in the suit.
Lando pulled his balaclava off and ran a hand through his hair, watching for perhaps a second too long before remembering there were several people trying to speak to him.
“Sorry, what?” Will repeated himself.
Lando listened this time, or at least made a much better attempt at it, following him toward the monitors. He managed not to look over again until he sat down.
You were gone. Probably for the best.
He had qualifying in a few hours and really didn’t need to be distracted by some woman he’d never met simply because she’d turned up to a Formula One paddock dressed like she was about to inherit a suspiciously acquired fortune.
By qualifying, he’d forgotten about her. Mostly.
There wasn’t much room for anything else once he was in the car. Melbourne demanded too much attention, and the margins were too small.
Everything outside the cockpit disappeared into braking points, steering input, tyre temperatures and whatever his engineer was saying over the radio. It came back once he was out of it.
The media pen after qualifying was the usual organised mess. Drivers being passed between broadcasters, microphones appearing from every direction.
Lando knew most of the faces without having to look properly anymore. Which was probably why he noticed hers immediately. She wasn’t interviewing anyone.
She stood behind the Sky crew while one of their reporters spoke to George, watching rather than participating. The notebook had returned. Lando was beginning to think it might actually be attached to her.
The outfit had changed, though. Of course it had.
She had ditched the blazer, leaving her in the white shirt and black tie underneath. It fitted sharply around her waist, Lando found himself looking at it for long enough that he had to make a very conscious effort to move his eyes back to her face.
Which was ridiculous.
He was twenty-five years old. He had seen women before. Beautiful women who had thrown themselves at him. Beautiful women in beautiful dresses.
Lando slowed. His press officer nearly walked into him. “Sorry.”
“You alright?”
“Yeah.” He continued walking. There was absolutely no reason to look again. He looked again.
You were smiling. That surprised him more than it reasonably should have. Thin glasses sat low enough on your nose that you had kept looking over them whenever somebody spoke to you.
Then you caught up with the group and the expression was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared.
Interesting. Not that he cared. “Who’s the new Sky person?” The question was out before he’d properly decided to ask it.
His press officer followed his gaze. He mentioned your name in a questioning manner. Lando tried very hard to make his next question sound incidental. “She’s new?”
“To F1, yeah. Started with Sky this year.” That explained why he didn’t recognise her.
“What does she do?” His press officer looked at him now. Lando immediately regretted the question.
“What do you mean?”
“Like, is she a presenter or—”
“Journalist, I think. Some broadcast stuff. Interviews. Features.” She looked between him and the Sky crew, then back at him. “Why?”
“No reason.”
“Mhm.” She smiled and started steering him toward his next interview before he could defend himself.
Lando went. He didn’t ask anything else. He learned her surname before the end of the afternoon anyway.
He learned later that afternoon that you had spent the last couple of years covering junior categories. Not because he’d asked.
He was standing around outside McLaren hospitality waiting for someone from the team when two members of the Sky crew stopped nearby.
One was complaining about Melbourne traffic, the other about somebody losing an accreditation pass, and Lando was occupied with his phone until a name he’d become annoyingly familiar with over the last two days slipped into the conversation.
YN. His thumb stopped scrolling.
He didn’t look up.
Apparently, you’d done F2 and F3 before this. Some written work, some broadcast stuff, this wasn’t your first time covering motorsport, only your first year properly on the Formula One team.
Lando continued looking at his phone while absorbing information he absolutely wasn’t trying to absorb.
You’d worked with one of the producers before. You were supposed to be doing a mixture of interviews and features this year.
The conversation drifted into something else. Lando started scrolling again. Useful information. For absolutely no reason whatsoever.
He saw you twice more before leaving the circuit. The first time, you were walking quickly in the opposite direction with her notebook pressed against your chest, looking mildly stressed as somebody from production hurried alongside.
Lando saw you again much later, when most of the Saturday paddock rush had finally started thinning out.
He was on his way toward the exit, proud that he started the season with a pole position, but tired enough that the only things left on his agenda involved food and getting back to the hotel, when he spotted someone sitting alone on the low wall beside Sky hospitality.
He recognised the shoes first. Which was bad. There was absolutely no reason he should recognise your shoes.
Lando slowed anyway.
You’d taken the waistcoat off at some point. It sat folded beside you with your accreditation tossed on top, leaving you in the white shirt you’d worn beneath it.
The sleeves had been rolled above your elbows, and your tie had been loosened enough that the top button of your collar was undone. Your glasses were pushed into your hair.
For the first time all weekend, you looked slightly less put together. You were writing again. Not typing. Writing.
Lando had seen journalists do practically everything on their phones. Record interviews, type notes, check transcripts, photograph timing sheets, send questions to producers. You, meanwhile, seemed personally committed to keeping every stationery shop in business.
You wrote something, stopped, frowned at it and crossed out half a line. Then wrote something beside it. Stopped again. Crossed that out too. Lando’s pace had slowed enough that he was barely walking anymore.
What were you writing?
Notes from today, presumably. Questions for tomorrow. Maybe observations from qualifying. Maybe—
You looked up.
Shit.
Lando immediately became extremely interested in something across the paddock. There was nothing there. Literally nothing. A barrier. Excellent. He’d been caught staring at you and responded by staring at a fucking barrier.
Now that Lando knew you existed, you seemed to be everywhere.
He saw you outside Ferrari in the morning talking to another Sky journalist. Twenty minutes later you were near the grid.
Always in black. He wondered if you owned another colour.
He wondered several things about you, actually, none of which were particularly useful when he was supposed to be preparing for a Grand Prix. At one point you passed McLaren while Lando was standing outside with Oscar.
Lando watched you approach. There was something faintly ridiculous about it now.
He had yet to see you wear anything that wasn’t black, white, or some variation of charcoal, and somehow every outfit looked more severe than the one before it.
The thought arrived before he could stop it. The Undertaker.
His mouth twitched. Oscar noticed. “What?”
“Nothing.” Lando kept watching as you passed, notebook tucked beneath your arm. You gave someone from Mercedes a small wave further down the paddock and continued on. Oscar followed his gaze. “Her again.”
“She dresses like the Undertaker.” There was a pause beside him. Then Oscar laughed.
Lando looked at him. “What?”
“Nothing. Just interesting you’ve thought about it enough to give her a nickname.”
“I haven’t given her a nickname.”
“You just called her the Undertaker.”
“Because look at her.” They both did.
You had stopped several metres away to speak to someone from Sky, the enormous coat making you look even smaller beneath it. At least you were matching the gloomy weather above this time.
Lando couldn’t hear you. He still hadn’t heard you properly at all, actually.
In his head, the voice had begun matching the clothes. Low, probably. Serious. Maybe a bit posh. The sort of person who would stare at a driver until he regretted giving a bad answer.
You passed them before Oscar could make it worse.
Up close, Lando could see the little Sky logo on your credential and your name printed underneath it.
His eyes followed you for a moment. You didn’t notice him. Oscar did. Lando caught him looking. “Don’t.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“You are.”
“I’m standing here.”
“Annoyingly.”
Oscar smiled. “You could just talk to her.” Lando scoffed and made a face, as though the suggestion itself was absurd. “Why would I?”
“I don’t know. You’ve spent two days looking at her.”
“I have not spent two days looking at her.”
Oscar began walking toward the garage. “Alright.” That was worse than arguing. Lando followed him. “I haven’t.”
“Didn’t say you had.”
Lando stopped for a fraction of a second. Then followed him inside, muttering something under his breath that made Oscar laugh again.
He didn’t speak to you that weekend. He came close once.
Winning Melbourne should have been enough to occupy him. For a while, it was.
The hours after the chequered flag came at him in pieces: the radio exploding in his ears, the team waiting beneath the podium, champagne sticking to his hair and race suit, hands grabbing his shoulders every few steps because somebody else wanted to congratulate him.
It was the first race of the season and he’d won it, survived the rain and the changing conditions and everything Melbourne had thrown at them.
By the time McLaren finally managed to steer him toward the media pen, Lando was still running on enough adrenaline that he suspected he’d feel the race in his chest until sometime Tuesday.
There were worse ways to start a championship.
The media pen was packed, louder than it had been after qualifying, drivers being moved between broadcasters while PR officers attempted to keep some kind of order.
Lando had already answered several versions of how good does this feel? before he saw Sky ahead of him.
Then he saw you. You had a microphone this time.
The notebook was still there, naturally, tucked beneath your arm while somebody from Sky spoke quickly beside you. You listened with your head slightly bowed, nodded once and shifted the microphone into your other hand.
Lando’s attention stayed there for longer than it needed to. So you were interviewing today. He didn’t know why that pleased him.
Maybe because he’d spent an entire weekend seeing you everywhere without getting close enough to have an actual conversation.
Maybe because he’d built up enough curiosity by now that hearing you ask him something about the race felt like the natural conclusion to it.
And, if there was ever going to be a convenient time for Sky’s new journalist to interview him, surely winning the Australian Grand Prix was fairly convenient.
The thought had barely finished forming when his press officer guided him forward.
For one stupid second, Lando assumed he was being sent toward you.
He straightened without thinking, wiping a hand over the front of his race suit and pushing damp curls away from his forehead as if he’d somehow become aware of what he looked like only now.
Then George, who was ahead of him was directed into your position.
Lando got the reporter beside you. Right. Of course.
He stepped toward the microphone he had actually been assigned and smiled, because he’d won a Grand Prix approximately an hour ago and it would have been slightly insane to look disappointed about anything.
“So, Lando, what a way to start the season.”
“Yeah, pretty good.”
He laughed and started answering, talking about the weather, the calls from the pit wall, the moments where he’d wondered whether the race was about to swing completely away from him.
It should have been easy to concentrate. Unfortunately, you were standing about six feet to his right.
He could hear George answering you, but not you yourself. Your voice disappeared beneath the surrounding noise every time you spoke, forcing the driver to lean slightly closer whenever you asked something.
Lando noticed that. Then immediately wondered why he’d noticed that. He dragged his attention back to his own interviewer.
The next question was about McLaren. He answered properly, spoke about the work over winter and how good it felt to reward everyone immediately. Somewhere halfway through, he heard you laugh.
His eyes moved sideways before he could stop them. You were smiling at something the other driver had said. Lando looked back at his interviewer.
“Sorry, yeah. Like I was saying—”
Excellent. World-class concentration.
He’d managed nearly sixty laps through changing conditions without putting a wheel wrong and apparently couldn’t survive a four-minute interview while one woman stood nearby.
Your interview finished before his.
Lando watched from the corner of his eye as you thanked the driver and lowered the microphone. The second the camera switched off, you passed it to someone from the crew and reached for the notebook.
Of course you did.
You opened it against your palm and began writing immediately, still listening while the producer beside you said something. A few seconds later you stopped, crossed something out, then wrote underneath it instead.
Lando smiled. He didn’t particularly know what was funny.
Maybe the fact that he’d watched you do exactly the same thing about six times this weekend.
His interviewer thanked him, and Lando turned back properly. “Cheers.”
By the time he glanced toward Sky again, you were gone.
He looked past the cameraman once, then toward the other end of the media pen as if you might simply have moved stations.
Nothing.
His press officer touched his back to move him along toward the next obligation, and Lando went without arguing. It wasn’t exactly a tragedy.
He’d won Melbourne. He was leaving Australia leading the championship, McLaren had started the year exactly the way they’d wanted, and there were another twenty-three races ahead of them.
Twenty-three weekends of the same paddock, the same media pen and, apparently, the same woman carrying that increasingly battered notebook around the world.
He’d talk to you eventually. There was plenty of time.
Monaco was the first weekend you stopped feeling entirely new.
Not comfortable, exactly. Formula One did not seem designed to let anybody become comfortable.
The paddock was too small, the schedules too tight and everything happened with the understanding that if you were three minutes late, someone else’s entire afternoon might collapse behind you. You had also, finally, stopped getting lost.
You had also, finally, stopped carrying the notebook everywhere. “You look like you’re going to court.”
You glanced down at yourself while Claire clipped your microphone pack beneath the back of your jacket. “Is that bad?”
“No. I just feel like I should confess to something.”
The suit was charcoal rather than black, which you privately thought represented enormous personal development. “You don’t have anything to confess.”
Claire secured the cable and stepped back. “Everyone has something.”
“I’m not interviewing you.”
“See? Terrifying.” You smiled and reached for your accreditation.
Monaco had been manic from the moment you arrived. More guests than usual, more cameras, more people who seemed to have acquired paddock passes despite having no obvious reason to be there.
Every available patch of space had someone standing in it, and getting from one end of the paddock to the other involved a constant series of apologies and sideways manoeuvres around celebrities, team personnel and people filming themselves walking.
You barely saw any of the drivers on Thursday. Friday wasn't much better. Lando Norris, however, had developed the mildly irritating habit of being very easy to notice.
You had known who he was before Melbourne, obviously. It would have been difficult to work in motorsport without knowing who Lando Norris was.
What you hadn't known then was that he apparently had a staring problem. You had caught him doing it several times in Australia.
Once outside McLaren when you'd nearly walked into him. Several times in hospitality.
You'd also caught him looking at you often enough that you'd started wondering whether there was something strange about your clothes that nobody at Sky was telling you.
Then you'd looked up from your notebook on Saturday evening and found him halfway down the path very obviously looking at you, only for his attention to snap toward an entirely unremarkable barrier the second your eyes met.
That had been difficult to interpret as anything else. It hadn't happened again. You had interviewed half the grid by now and somehow never him. Different schedules, different assignments, McLaren finishing their media before Sky reached them, another reporter being sent instead.
You'd crossed paths enough to recognise each other. That was it.
Occasionally there was a nod. In Miami, he had held a door open for you and you'd thanked him.
He'd said, “No worries,” like nobody had ever thanked him for anything before.
That had been the full extent of your relationship. Which was why you didn't think much of seeing him outside McLaren on Saturday morning.
You were on your way toward Ferrari with a producer when you caught sight of papaya ahead. Oscar was talking to someone beside the garage entrance and Lando was standing a little farther back.
His head turned. You noticed because it happened exactly as you approached.
His gaze went over you once. Just enough that you became suddenly aware you had spent ten minutes arguing with Claire over whether the brooch was crooked.
You resisted the urge to touch it. “Morning,” you said as you passed. Oscar answered first. “Morning.”
Lando was half a beat behind him. “Morning.”
By Sunday morning, you were dressed in charcoal rather than black for once, which several people at Sky treated like an event. One of the producers looked you up and down when you walked into hospitality. "Colour."
You looked at your sleeve. "Grey."
"Still. Progress." You ignored him and opened your notebook.
The clothes had become a joke around Sky before you'd realised anybody was paying attention to them. Someone had started referring to your Thursday outfits as the weekly funeral.
By the time the cars went to the grid, nobody was talking about your clothes anymore. Lando Norris had put McLaren on pole in Monaco.
That alone had been enough to turn Saturday evening into a small event.
The opening laps had nearly made everyone in the Sky area stop breathing on Sunday afternoon. Lando's small mistake at the start had given Charles exactly the sort of encouragement nobody in papaya wanted him to have.
You spent most of it standing just off-camera with your notebook open, writing things you could barely read later because you'd been watching the monitors instead of the page.
The final laps were worse. But the chequered flag fell and McLaren had won Monaco.
For the first time since 2008. The sound coming from the McLaren garage reached Sky before the pictures of the team celebrating properly did.
You looked up from your notes just as the broadcast cut to Lando on the radio, and for a few seconds there was no professionalism required from anybody.
You wrote NORRIS — MONACO at the top of a fresh page.
Then circled it. Twice. You had no idea yet that Sky intended to make him your problem. It took nearly an hour.
By then the podium had happened, champagne had been sprayed across half of Monte Carlo, and Lando had been dragged through enough celebrations that the adrenaline seemed to have settled permanently into his face.
You were halfway through making notes for a later segment when your producer appeared beside you. "You're taking Norris."
You looked up. "For what?"
He stared at you. "An interview, ideally. Media pen. Five minutes."
You closed the notebook, sliding it underneath your arm and followed him out.
The media pen after Monaco was louder than usual, mostly because nobody seemed ready to stop celebrating.
Mechanics were still moving through in groups, journalists were shouting to be heard over one another, and every broadcaster wanted the same drivers at roughly the same time. You took your position with Sky and checked your questions once. The cameraman adjusted his frame.
"First Norris?"
You looked at him. "Is everyone keeping track?"
"Apparently." He grinned behind the camera.
Before you could answer, the McLaren press officer appeared. And behind her, Lando.
You had seen him happy before. This was different. He looked almost lightheaded with it.
His cap was slightly crooked, hair still damp beneath it, and there were darker patches on his McLaren shirt from champagne or water or both. He had clearly smiled so much over the last hour that it had become his default expression.
He spotted Sky. Lando stepped into position while his press officer spoke briefly to your producer. You adjusted the microphone cable and waited until the cameraman gave you the signal.
The red light came on. You looked at Lando.
"Hi, Lando." He stared at you. For a moment, you wondered whether something had gone wrong with the microphone.
"Sorry?"
You moved it a little closer. "Hi."
His expression did something you couldn't identify. Then he smiled again.
"Hi." You continued before the beginning of your first interview with a Monaco Grand Prix winner could somehow become any stranger.
"First of all, congratulations. You've just won Monaco from pole, McLaren's first win here since 2008. Has any of that actually sunk in yet?"
Lando leaned toward you. You paused.
His eyebrows lifted, so you assumed he hadn't heard. You repeated the question.
This time he moved another inch closer. The microphone was already between you. You started wondering whether it was broken.
"It hasn't really," he said eventually, smiling as he glanced away for a second. "I think it'll take a while. Obviously this is one I've wanted for a long time and you grow up watching this race and knowing what it means. So to win here, with McLaren as well, it's pretty incredible."
You nodded. "Especially after the start. There was that moment into the opening phase where it looked like Charles might have an opportunity. How much did that change the way you approached the rest of the race?"
"What?" You blinked. Lando moved closer again. You moved the microphone with him automatically.
"The start."
"Yeah."
"The mistake there. Did that change how you managed the rest of it?" He answered, but you were only half-listening for the first few seconds because you were now trying to work out whether you were doing something wrong.
The cameraman could hear you, your producer hadn't intervened.
Lando was answering. Maybe Monaco was simply louder than you realised? You waited until he finished before asking the follow-up. "You looked much more comfortable after that. Was there a point where you felt you had the race under control?"
Lando dipped his head toward you again. You looked at him, eyebrows furrowing slightly.
"Sorry?" You stared for a second, then you laughed in slight disbelief.
It slipped out before you could stop it, "Do I need to shout?"
Lando immediately shook his head. "No, no. I'll come closer." He already had. That was the problem.
You were practically sharing the microphone now, Lando bent toward you while you angled it between you. Behind the camera, somebody made a noise suspiciously like a suppressed laugh. You ignored it. "Okay."
"You're just very quiet."
"I've been told."
"Have you?"
"Frequently."
That made him grin. "Maybe listen to them."
You looked at him, watching him slowly break out into laughter over his own joke.
The strange thing was that once you'd established the solution was apparently for Lando Norris to stand considerably closer to you than most drivers did, everything became easier.
He gave you good answers. Long ones too.
Long enough that your producer gestured twice for you to wrap up and you ignored him once because Lando had said something about the pressure of qualifying on pole that was considerably more interesting than your prepared question.
"So after yesterday," you asked, "when you've done what everyone keeps calling one of the best laps of your career, is there more pressure going into Sunday because everyone suddenly expects you to convert it?"
Lando nodded, still leaning toward the microphone. This time he heard you. Amazing what happened when somebody stood approximately twelve inches from your face.
"Definitely. Especially here. You know what pole means here, so if you don't win from it you're probably going to feel like you've thrown something away. But also there are so many things that can happen in Monaco that you can't control, so you try not to think like that."
"But you were thinking like that."
His smile widened. "You're meant to let me give the nice answer."
"You can give it."
"You've already ruined it."
"I asked a follow-up."
"Exactly."
You smiled, though you tried to hold it back. "So you were thinking about it?"
He looked at you for a moment before conceding. "Yeah. Obviously."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome." The cameraman was definitely enjoying himself now. You could tell by the way he was refusing to look directly at either of you.
Your producer held up one finger. Last question. You shifted your grip on the microphone. "When you think back on this weekend later, what do you think you'll remember first?"
For the first time, Lando didn't answer immediately.
His eyes moved briefly toward the paddock behind you, where McLaren personnel were still wandering past.
Then he looked back.
"The team, probably. Seeing everyone after the race. The podium. Just how happy everyone was." His smile softened slightly. "And the lap yesterday. I'll remember that for a long time."
You nodded. "Congratulations again."
"Thank you." The red light went off. You lowered the microphone.
Lando didn't move. Usually drivers did.
The second an interview ended, they were already being steered toward the next broadcaster. You had learned early not to take it personally.
Lando remained standing in front of you. You looked at him.
He looked at you. Then his press officer touched his arm. He glanced toward her as though he'd forgotten she existed. "Right."
You bit down on a smile. "Enjoy the rest of your night."
He looked back at you. "Yeah. You too."
Then he was finally moved along. The cameraman waited until Lando was several metres away. "You know you can speak louder."
You turned to him. "I was speaking."
"Technically."
"You heard me."
"I'm wearing headphones."
You stared at him. He started laughing. Your producer appeared beside you with an expression you immediately distrusted.
"Why does everyone keep saying nothing like that?" He held out his hand for the microphone. You gave it to him. "Good interview."
"Thank you."
"Very intimate framing by the end." Your head snapped toward the cameraman. He immediately looked away.
"It was loud."
"Of course."
"He couldn't hear me."
"Clearly." You narrowed your eyes at both of them and reached for your notebook. Neither said anything else. That should have been the end of it.
It wasn't.
The clip went up while you were still working. Kky cut thirty-eight seconds from the interview and posted it across their socials, beginning with your question after the start and ending, unfortunately, with:
Do I need to shout?
Followed by Lando, smiling directly at you:
No, no. I'll come closer.
Someone had even left in the part where he actually did.
You found out because your phone began vibrating continuously against the table during the post-race show. You ignored it for ten minutes. Then fifteen.
Eventually, during a break, you turned it over. Thirty-seven notifications. You frowned. That was never good. Your account had grown in followers since literally a week ago, people now flooding into the comments under your recent post.
ᯓ Heartbeat, Childish Gambino
ynusername: pastries are top tier view comments:
username: completely understand why lando is incapable of handling himself
username: @/landonorris U CANNOT HANDLE THIS ⤷ username: not even a joke he’s shown he cant
username: her outfits… #mother
You locked your phone. Then unlocked it again because apparently self-preservation wasn't one of your stronger qualities.
The clip had doubled in views. "Fantastic." Your producer looked over from his laptop. "What's fantastic?"
You turned the phone face-down. "My first viral Sky clip."
He smiled immediately. "Oh, I saw."
You stared at him. "And you said nothing?"
"I thought you knew."
"It's about Lando Norris not being able to hear me."
"Technically it's about Lando Norris repeatedly moving into your personal space because he can't hear you."
"That's considerably worse." He laughed. You opened your notebook with more force than necessary. You had spent years working toward Formula One.
Your first clip to really spread beyond the normal motorsport audience was you quietly asking Lando Norris whether you needed to shout.
Brilliant.
By the next race weekend, you had mostly convinced yourself Monaco had been a one-off.
The clip was still following you around online, unfortunately, but that was different. Social media moved quickly. In another week somebody would fall over in the paddock or swear on live television and everyone would find something else to talk about.
The fact that Lando Norris had apparently needed to stand close enough to share your microphone in order to hear you would stop being interesting eventually.
Sky had found it considerably funnier than you had.
Your cameraman still leaned theatrically toward you whenever you spoke to him. One of the producers had started asking whether he needed subtitles.
Rachel had sent you the clip twice after you'd specifically asked her not to, the second time accompanied by a screenshot of a comment calling you the quiet one with the suits.
You had decided the best solution was to pretend none of it existed.
That worked until Friday afternoon at Spain.
FP1 had ended less than twenty minutes earlier, which meant the television compound had entered its usual temporary state of chaos.
Somebody was trying to locate a missing microphone pack. Two producers were arguing about whether they had time to get Ferrari before the live segment.
A runner was moving through the room with enough coffees balanced against her chest to constitute a workplace hazard.
You were sitting at the edge of the table with your notebook open while your producer worked through the post-session assignments for the entire weekend.
“George for you,” he said, glancing at the sheet in his hand. “Rachel, you've got Charles. Oscar is going to Craig, and Norris—”
“Is YN doing Lando?” The interruption came from behind him. You looked up.
One of McLaren's media staff had appeared in the doorway, accreditation bouncing against her shirt as though she'd walked over quickly. Your producer looked toward her. “Sorry?”
“Lando. Is Y/N doing him?”
There was a brief silence. Then, for reasons you didn't appreciate considering the idea of you “doing Lando,” several people looked at you. You slowly lowered your pen.
Your producer looked between you and the McLaren representative. “She wasn't.”
“Can she?” You blinked. Rachel, sitting two chairs down, became extremely interested in her laptop.
Your producer's mouth twitched. “Apparently she can.”
The McLaren woman gave a small nod, already checking something on her phone. “Perfect. We'll bring him over after Ferrari.”
She disappeared as quickly as she'd arrived. You stared at the doorway for another second before looking back at your producer. “What just happened?”
He returned to his assignment sheet. “You're doing Norris.”
“I gathered that.”
“Excellent. We're all caught up.”
You narrowed your eyes. “Why?” That finally made him look at you.
“Why what?”
“Why am I doing him?”
“You're a journalist.”
“You'd already assigned him to somebody else.”
“I hadn't actually finished the sentence.”
“You were going to.”
He gave you a patient look that suggested you were becoming inconvenient. “Would you prefer not to?” That wasn't what you'd said. You looked down at the notebook again. “No.”
“Great.”
The assignments continued. You wrote NORRIS beneath RUSSELL and started adjusting the questions you'd prepared.
There was an obvious explanation. Monaco had gone well. That was all.
The interview had performed well online, which Sky liked. Lando had given you great answers, which McLaren liked.
You'd asked about the race instead of trying to force a headline out of him, and perhaps his press team had simply decided you were easy to work with and weren’t going to rile him up.
Drivers had preferred interviewers all the time. Max had Erik Van Haren, maybe you were about to become that. It didn’t mean anything.
You were satisfied with that explanation right up until Lando arrived.
He came into the media pen still wearing the top half of his race suit, sleeves tied around his waist, talking to somebody from McLaren. His eyes moved across the waiting broadcasters before settling on Sky. Then on you.
His entire expression brightened, crossing over while his press officer peeled away to speak to your producer.
“Hi.” There was something irritatingly pleased about the way he said it. You adjusted the microphone in your hand. “Hi.”
Lando immediately leaned closer. You hadn't even asked him anything yet. “What?”
“I haven't started.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you doing that?”
“Doing what?” You gestured vaguely at the distance between you, or lack thereof. Lando straightened perhaps an inch. “Preparing.”
“For what?”
“You.” The cameraman made a sound behind the lens. You ignored him. The red light came on before either of you could continue, and you slipped back into work. The interview itself was easy.
Maybe easier than Monaco because you already knew what kind of answerer he was now.
Lando wandered slightly if you gave him too broad a question, but if you pressed on something specific he would usually abandon the polished version and tell you what he actually thought.
He liked making jokes when he didn't want to answer directly. He also had a habit of looking away while thinking and then coming back to you halfway through the answer.
You noticed these things because it was your job. That was what you told yourself, anyway.
When the camera went off, Lando stayed again. You were starting to suspect this might simply be something he did. “How was that?”
You glanced at him while writing a note beneath the final question. “You were there.”
“Yeah, but you're the journalist.”
“And?”
“So I'm asking for the professional assessment.”
“You survived.”
He laughed. “High praise.”
“You answered most of my questions.”
“Most?”
You looked up over the top of your notebook. “You avoided the tyre question for nearly a minute.”
“I answered it.”
“You talked about track temperature.”
“Which affects tyres.”
“You're very good at this.”
“Thank you.”
“That wasn't a compliment.”
“It sounded like one.” His press officer called his name from several feet away. Lando glanced back, then toward you again. “See you.”
You nodded. “Probably.”
His smile widened slightly. “Definitely.” Then he walked away.
You watched him for about two seconds before looking back at your notebook. Your producer appeared beside you almost immediately. You didn't bother raising your head. “Don't.”
“I haven't said anything.”
“You were going to.” He smiled and walked off. You told yourself the second interview proved absolutely nothing.
The third made that argument more difficult. On Monday, you sat in the main office in London, halfway through preparing for another interview when your producer stopped beside your chair and slid a new running order across the table. “Norris has moved.”
You looked at it, your name was beside his. “I thought Tom had him.”
“He did.”
“What happened?”
Your producer's face remained suspiciously neutral. “McLaren asked whether you were available.”
You stared, but he stared back with the exact same blank face. “Why?”
“I imagine they enjoy your company.”
“They?” His mouth twitched. You closed your notebook. “Did Lando ask?”
“I didn't speak to Lando.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
“No, but it's the answer I'm giving.”
You sat back in your chair. Across the room, Rachel looked over. You caught her eye, she immediately smiled.
“Oh, don't you start.”
“I haven't said anything.”
“You're all unbearable.”
Rachel swivelled her chair toward you. “Maybe he just likes your interviewing technique.” You ignored her.
The fourth time, there was no attempt to disguise it.
Sky wanted ten minutes with Lando for a feature ahead of the Canadian GP, rather than the usual media pen interview. It wasn't particularly urgent, just a sit-down about the opening part of the season, McLaren's form and the championship picture.
You happened to be standing beside your producer when the reply came through. He read the message, then looked at you.
“What?” He held out his phone. You read it.
Happy to make Lando available Thursday afternoon. Can YN conduct?
You stared at the screen. Then at him. “Why are they asking like I'm a contractual requirement?”
Your producer took the phone back. “You're popular.”
“With one person.”
“That still counts.” You folded your arms. Something warm and inconvenient had begun creeping into your face.
The problem wasn't that Lando had asked.
It was that you liked that he'd asked. More than you should have.
There was something strangely flattering about knowing that, out of all the people Sky could send, he had remembered you after Monaco and the 2 minutes you had with him after FP1 in Spain, and apparently decided he wanted you back.
You tried to make it practical. Maybe he liked consistency. Maybe the interviews were useful.
Maybe, as Rachel had said, he genuinely preferred your interviewing style. All perfectly normal.
Then Thursday arrived. You were setting up in a small interview space behind the McLaren hospitality unit when Lando walked in.
He spotted you immediately. “Good.” He dropped into the chair opposite yours.
“They actually sent you.” That did not help your perfectly normal explanation. You slowly closed the notebook. “Did you ask them to?”
Lando's face gave him away before his mouth did. There was the smallest pause. Then, “Maybe.”
You stared at him. He smiled. “You did.”
“It's not a crime.”
“Why?” He leaned back in the chair, looking far too relaxed about being interrogated before the actual interrogation had begun. “Because I like your interviews.”
You waited, seeing if he’d say anything else. “That’s it?”
“What do you want me to say?” You looked down and opened your notebook again, partly because there was nowhere else particularly safe to look.
“Right.” Lando laughed softly.
“What?”
“Nothing.” There was that word again. His grin widened. Someone from production called that they were ready. You picked up the microphone.
Lando sat forward. And, without thinking, leaned closer. You hadn't said a word yet. For half a second, neither of you spoke. Then Lando started laughing. “You do realise we're sitting in a quiet room?”
“I know.”
“You can hear me.”
“Probably.”
“So why are you over here?”
He looked down at the very reasonable distance he'd already reduced between your chairs. “I don't know.”
That answer, unfortunately, sounded genuine. You fought the smile threatening at the corner of your mouth. “Go back.”
Lando shifted his chair perhaps two centimetres. You looked at him. “That's insulting.”
“I'm comfortable here.”
The cameraman behind you muttered, “Can we start before he ends up in her chair?”
You dropped your head, laughing despite every effort not to. Lando looked delighted.
And somewhere between Monaco and the fourth interview he'd specifically asked for, it occurred to you that perhaps this wasn't only about your interviewing technique after all.
By the time Lando found your Instagram, he had already told himself three separate times that he wasn't going to look for it.
That should have been the first indication that he absolutely was.
It happened on a Tuesday night between race weekends, when there was no paddock to distract him and considerably too much time before he needed to sleep.
He had been in bed for nearly an hour, phone held above his face, mindlessly moving between videos, messages and the sort of posts he wasn't actually interested in enough to remember thirty seconds later.
Then Sky uploaded another clip from Monaco. Not even the interview.
A little behind-the-scenes reel from the weekend. Presenters walking through the harbour, clips from the grid, somebody nearly losing a microphone cover to the wind.
You appeared for perhaps three seconds near the end, standing beside a camera in that grey suit while scribbling something in your notebook.
Lando stopped scrolling. He watched the reel again.
That was ridiculous, so he immediately moved on. Then moved back. Your name was tagged.
Of course it was. He stared at it.
There was nothing strange about clicking on the profile of somebody you knew. Or, well, someone you'd met. Several times now. Someone who had interviewed you enough that you had specifically started requesting her.
Actually, if anything, it would be strange not to know what her Instagram looked like. This argument satisfied him for approximately two seconds. Then he clicked anyway.
Your profile loaded. Public. That surprised him slightly.
He had expected private for some reason, although your account wasn't especially personal once he started looking.
The first few rows were mostly work: Monaco, Miami, Melbourne, photos outside different circuits, one Sky desk shot, a picture of the paddock in Japan taken early enough in the morning that nobody seemed to be there.
There were more photographs of your clothes than of you actually looking at the camera.
Lando smiled. Naturally.
There was a picture from Miami, in your usual black clothing that was so severely out of place considering the amount of lights. Japan. Another black suit, but he did notice the small cherry blossom charms you had attached to your tie.
Bahrain. Black. Fuck, did you never boil?
He snorted quietly. "Fucking Undertaker."
This was still reasonably normal. He had met you in 2025. Looking at posts from 2025 was simply learning more about a colleague. Even 2024 could probably be defended.
Your account changed slightly as he moved backward. Less Sky, obviously. More junior paddocks. F2 garages, press rooms, airport windows, badly lit hotel desks with laptops open beside coffee cups.
You had posted photographs from circuits he recognised immediately and a few he had to think about. There were captions about delayed flights and missed trains. One photograph of a notebook completely ruined by rain with the caption:
journalism is a glorified nosiness
Lando smiled again. He hadn't known you'd been doing this for so long. He found an old post from an F2 weekend where the second picture was a photograph of a press room at nearly midnight.
Then another where you were standing on a grid with headphones around your neck, looking several years younger and considerably less severe.
Still wearing a tie, though. At least this one was red. "Of course."
He flicked to the next one. Then the next. At some point, the innocent act of checking your professional profile became something else entirely.
The junior paddock disappeared, dissipating into university posts, then photographs with friends.
Lando paused, glancing at the date. 2021. That was probably far enough.
He should leave. Instead, his thumb moved again.
There was something strangely addictive about seeing a version of you that existed before Formula One knew you. Before Sky. Before the intimidating suits had become polished enough for television.
You still dressed strangely. That seemed to be permanent.
There was a picture from what looked like someone's birthday where you were wearing an oversized blazer and tie even then, except your hair was longer and you'd paired it with trainers.
Lando looked through the carousel. You laughed in the second photograph. Properly laughing, head thrown slightly backward, eyes closed, one hand covering your mouth.
He stopped. That did something inconvenient to him.
He was used to your little smiles now. The ones during interviews when he said something stupid enough to break through whatever professional expression you had put on. He had started looking for them without really admitting that was what he was doing.
This was different. He wondered what somebody had said. 2020. He really should stop.
He continued. His phone was getting warm in his hand. It was also nearly one in the morning. There was no conceivable reason he needed to know what you had been doing six years ago.
2019. Now it was objectively stalking.
Lando knew that.
He still clicked on a photograph. You looked about eighteen or nineteen, sitting on the floor beside what appeared to be a very badly decorated Christmas tree. No suit this time. Just a jumper, jeans and glasses much larger than anything you wore now.
He smiled at the difference. The caption mentioned somebody forcing you to decorate because apparently you'd refused to participate.
That sounded right. He swiped.
The second photograph was the tree leaning visibly to one side. The third was you standing beside it with your arms crossed, unimpressed.
Lando laughed under his breath. His thumb shifted toward the screen. A heart appeared.
Red. He froze. For perhaps two full seconds, his brain simply stopped functioning. Then his entire body went cold.
"No."
He stared at the screen. The heart remained red. "No, no, no." Lando stabbed it again. White.
Unlike. Fine. Fine.
Nothing had happened. Instagram didn't send— It did. He knew it did.
Maybe notifications were delayed. Maybe you didn't have them on. Maybe you were asleep. Maybe no one—
His phone buzzed. Lando stared at the message banner.
max manytrells
He didn't open it. Another arrived.
max manytrells: mate
Lando closed his eyes. A third.
max manytrells: 2019??????
"For fuck's sake." He opened the chat.
Lando locked his phone and threw it onto the bed beside him.
That was enough. He was done. Rolling onto his side, dragged the duvet higher and made the mature decision to ignore the situation entirely until morning.
His phone vibrated again. Then twice. Then repeatedly.
Lando lasted perhaps twenty seconds before grabbing it.
His notifications were a disaster. Not his own Instagram, thankfully. Nobody could see what he'd unliked from his profile anymore.
Unfortunately, screenshots were immortal. The original fan post already had thousands of likes. He opened the replies against every instinct he possessed.
username HE WAS IN THE ARCHIVES 😭😭😭
username 2019 IS CRAZYYYYY lando what were you LOOKING FOR
username not him accidentally liking a post from SIX YEARS AGO please arrest this man
username everyone stay calm he is doing research on his favourite journalist
username lando norris discovering scrolling etiquette at the age of 25
username HE UNLIKED IT SO FAST I WATCHED IT DISAPPEAR
username lando in melbourne: who is that lando in monaco: can you interview me lando in june: let me investigate her childhood
He laughed harder. This was bad. Really bad.
His phone buzzed again. His stomach dropped for one ridiculous second before he saw the name.
Within five minutes, the group chat had discovered it, and Max had taken his discoveries there.
Lando put his phone face-down. He didn't want to know. He lasted another minute.
When he looked again, someone had edited an archaeologist's hat onto him. At some point between the tenth screenshot and Oscar sending him the definition of digital footprint, another thought finally occurred to him.
You. Had you seen it? Probably. Maybe. No. Hopefully not.
You weren't particularly active online during race weekends, but it wasn't a race weekend now. And someone had definitely tagged you by this point.
Lando opened your profile again before realising that was exactly what had caused the problem and immediately exited.
He contemplated messaging you. That was insane. What would he even say?
Sorry I was six years deep in your Instagram at one in the morning. Absolutely not.
Maybe: Instagram glitched. Worse.
Maybe: Nice Christmas tree. He dropped the phone onto his chest. "Jesus Christ."
The worst part was that he could already picture your reaction. You wouldn't make a big thing of it. That would almost be preferable.
You'd probably look at him over the top of your notebook with that tiny, knowing smile and say something quiet enough that he'd have to lean closer to hear the humiliation properly. His phone buzzed again.
max manytrells: are you going back for 2018 or calling it a night
Lando blocked him. Not actually. He considered it.
lando: go to sleep
max manytrells: you first
Lando stared at that message. Then checked the time. 1:17 a.m.
He had been on your profile for nearly an hour. That detail was going to the grave with him.
He locked his phone properly this time and put it on the bedside table, far enough away that he would have to physically sit up to reach it. Then he lay in the dark.
Five minutes passed. His phone vibrated once more. He ignored it. Another buzz. Still ignored it.
Then one more. Lando sat up with a groan and reached across. A new message from Oscar. This one was just a screenshot of a trending search underneath the F1 category.
lando y/n instagram
He stared. By morning, the accidental like had escaped motorsport Twitter entirely.
There were TikToks, edits. Someone had screen-recorded themselves scrolling all the way back through your account to demonstrate exactly how much effort Lando must have put in to reach December 2019.
That one had hundreds of thousands of views. And beneath it:
username: THIS TOOK ME TWO FULL MINUTES OF CONSTANT SCROLLING 😭😭😭
username: not casual. not accidental. targeted reconnaissance.
username: he knows her pre-sky lore now
username: imagine waking up and finding out lando norris has been in your 2019 instagram while you were asleep
username: she spent years studying motorsport journalism and HE spent tuesday night studying her feed
He was due to see you in less than a week. For the first time since Monaco, Lando wasn't completely sure he wanted the next interview.
Only mostly.
By the time he arrived at the circuit on Friday morning for the Austrian GP, he had decided he didn’t care about what people were posting about his stalking tendencies online.
Then he saw you outside Sky hospitality in a black double-breasted suit underneath a long leather coat trimmed heavily at the collar and cuffs, looking like the Undertaker had received a considerable clothing budget, and remembered immediately that he did.
You caught him looking. Unlike Melbourne, you didn’t look away first anymore.
You lowered the coffee from your mouth and watched him approach with a small expression that already suggested you knew exactly what he was going to hear about.
Lando slowed beside you. “Morning.”
“Morning.”
Your voice had not become any louder with familiarity. If anything, he had simply become better at hearing it.
He automatically dipped his head a little, something he no longer noticed himself doing until Oscar or a cameraman pointed it out.
You took another sip of coffee. Lando waited. Nothing. He frowned. “That’s it?”
You looked over the rim of the cup. “Was I supposed to say something else?” He knew you were enjoying this.
The tiniest movement at the corner of your mouth gave it away. “You’ve seen it.”
“I see lots of things.”
“The Instagram thing.”
That finally got a proper smile. Lando hated how pleased that made him. You lowered the cup. “Which Instagram thing?”
“Oh, fuck off.”
Your laugh was soft enough that somebody passing behind him probably couldn’t hear it, but Lando could. He had become annoyingly good at hearing that too.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and walked backward for several steps because his schedule required him to keep moving and apparently his dignity required him to continue arguing. “It came up on my feed.”
“A post from 2019.”
“The algorithm is weird.”
“Very targeted algorithm.”
Lando pointed at you. “I’m never looking at your Instagram again.”
“You followed me this morning.” His hand dropped. You smiled into your coffee. He turned and left before you could make it worse.
The morning after his late night Instagram escapades, he realised there was been no recovering gracefully from liking a photograph from 2019 at one in the morning.
He had tried ignoring it for twelve hours, which only gave everyone else twelve hours to make it worse. By the time he came back to the hotel from MTC, there were edits of archaeologists digging through your feed, screenshots of the notification being analysed like telemetry.
So naturally, to save his reputation, he followed you instead.
You posted from Austria late Sunday evening.
landonorris liked your post.
You stared at it. There was something almost aggressively deliberate about the timing.
Not three hours later after casually finding it. Not tomorrow morning. Immediately. You opened the post, and you could see in the corner, posted 50 seconds ago.
liked by, lando, skysports, skysportsf1 and others ynusername: inhaled red bull the entire weekend in honour of red bull ring view comments
lando: current year. everyone stay calm ⤷ username: pin this he’s so proud ⤷ ynusername: well done ⤷ lando: thank you it’s been difficult
username: current year AND first hour we’re witnessing growth
username: oscar needs to give him a sticker chart
username: 2019 survivors rise
username: lando norris you are NOT beating the allegations
username: i know he felt relief when he saw 2025 in the timestamp 😭
username: bro checked the date seventeen times before liking
Race weekends began stacking on top of one another until you started remembering the calendar through airports rather than countries. Thursday arrival. Friday practice. Saturday qualifying. Sunday race. Monday flight. Laundry somewhere in between if you were lucky.
It should have made everyone more irritating. Somehow, Lando became easier. Easier to handle, maybe?
You had stopped being nervous about interviewing him after Monaco. There wasn’t much point when he’d apparently decided your microphone was communal property anyway.
Standing outside Ferrari waiting for Charles, you could practically feel Lando appeared beside you, accreditation swinging against his chest. "You're always here."
You continued reading your notes. "At work?"
"At Ferrari."
"Jealous?"
"No." The answer came fast enough that you finally glanced up. Lando's face was completely neutral.
You nodded toward the garage. "Charles is my favourite."
He stared at you. You lasted perhaps four seconds. His eyes narrowed. "You're joking."
"Am I?"
"Yes."
"Good."
He laughed, half relieved and half offended. "You're actually horrible." Charles arrived before Lando could defend himself further. You moved into position, smoothing out your clothes, expecting Lando to leave. Instead, he remained several metres behind the camera.
You knew this because, halfway through Charles explaining something about qualifying, you looked past the lens and found Lando pulling an expression so stupid you had to press your lips together.
Charles noticed. "Something?"
You shook your head immediately. "Nothing. Sorry." Behind the camera, Lando looked delighted. Charles followed your gaze.
Lando vanished, so you were sure you looked schizophrenic in front of the Monégasque. The second the interview ended, you went looking for him. You found him outside McLaren. "If you do that again while I'm live—"
"I didn't do anything."
He started laughing before you'd finished. "You nearly made me laugh in Charles's interview."
"Nearly?" You stared.
That was what he had taken from the sentence. "You're a child."
"Did you laugh?"
"No."
"You did a little." You walked away before he could see that you were doing it again.
The real problem from Lando's inability to leave you alone in interviews arrived two days later. Not from a fan account.
From an article. You saw the headline because somebody sent it to you, which was already a bad sign.
It was one of those lightweight motorsport columns that existed somewhere between actual reporting and paddock gossip, written around half a dozen observations and enough qualifiers to avoid claiming anything outright.
The title was irritating.
NORRIS'S SKY FAVOURITE BECOMES PADDOCK FIXTURE
You almost didn't open it, then you did.
The first few paragraphs were mostly nonsense about your clothes, the Monaco clip and the Instagram incident. You could tolerate that.
It mentioned the frequency of your interviews with Lando, that McLaren had reportedly requested you for several features. It called the two of you "an increasingly reliable pairing for Sky."
Whether Norris's obvious fondness has played a role in Y/L/N's growing access to the McLaren driver is impossible to know, though Sky have certainly benefited from the relaxed answers he tends to give her.
You read it twice. Then a third time.
There it was. Exactly what you had been afraid of. Not that you were sleeping with him.
Not even that you were dating him. Something almost more insulting. That the work was good because Lando liked you.
Silverstone made everything worse.
Not between the two of you, exactly. You weren't evil and was going to punish him with terrible interviews from what was posted online.
The problem was more that Lando had spent most of Sunday getting progressively less capable of behaving like a normal person.
He had won at home. That fact kept arriving in waves.
Sometimes it hit him as the radio call after the chequered flag, his engineer half shouting into his ear while Lando laughed hard enough that the first thing he tried to say came out completely mangled.
Sometimes it was the British flags thrown over shoulders in the grandstands, or the sound of the crowd when he lifted the trophy, loud enough that he felt it through the soles of his shoes.
There were races you won and races that seemed to happen to your entire body.
Silverstone was the second kind.
By the time he was finally being marched through post-race media, he had hugged so many people that he had stopped recognising who was grabbing him until after the fact.
His hair was still damp, there was champagne drying sticky along the back of his neck, and his face actually hurt from smiling. He didn’t particularly care.
Someone from McLaren was explaining the interview order beside him. Lando nodded along without absorbing much of it until he heard Sky.
Then he looked up. He knew you were doing his interview. He had asked. Again.
There wasn't even a pretence anymore. Earlier in the weekend, when McLaren media had told him Sky wanted him after the race, he'd asked who was doing it before they'd finished the sentence.
The answer had been your name, and he had said yes quickly enough that the press officer had looked at him with the tired expression of somebody who had long since given up trying to make him subtle.
So he knew you would be there. What he had not known was what you were wearing. Lando saw you before you saw him.
You were standing beside the Sky camera with your back half turned, talking to your producer while you checked something in your notebook.
Burgundy trousers, a burgundy blazer. White shirt with a brown patterned tie. A belt at your waist matching the darker leather of your shoes, sleeves pushed back just enough for several gold bracelets to sit at your wrist.
And the glasses. Large square frames, amber-brown around the edges, faintly tinted without hiding your eyes completely. Lando had seen you in enough glasses by now that the fact he immediately knew these were new should probably have concerned him more than it did.
He stopped walking. Not completely, but just enough that his press officer had to touch his arm. "Lando."
He blinked. "Yeah."
"Sky."
"I know." She followed his line of sight.
Then looked at him. Lando immediately started walking again.
The burgundy was bad enough. He had spent months privately convinced that black was simply your colour. You wore black constantly, and every variation of it had somehow given him a new reason to stare.
The long coats, the suits, the ties, the stupid glasses he was now apparently capable of cataloguing well enough to know when you'd bought a new pair. Then you'd shown up to Silverstone looking like this.
Colour. Actual colour. And not even something easy. Burgundy.
Deep enough that it changed depending on the light, dark around the lapels and warmer where the sun caught it. The trousers were wide through the leg, the blazer structured heavily through the shoulders. The whole thing should have looked severe.
It did look severe. Fantastic.
Lando rubbed his mouth with one hand as he approached. He had just won the British Grand Prix. He was a professional racing driver.
He had driven a Formula One car around Silverstone at speeds that would make most people nauseous and managed his tyres and the race and everything else while half the country screamed from the grandstands.
He could walk twenty metres and speak to a woman wearing a suit without forgetting how his own legs worked.
Probably.
You looked up, eyes found him behind the glasses.
There. That was the problem. Something about the way you looked at him made his entire brain misfire.
Not even flirtatiously, making eyes that he’d seen many women do before. You just looked at him.
Then your expression softened because you saw his face, because he was obviously still somewhere between exhilaration and disbelief, and a small smile appeared.
Lando nearly laughed at himself. “Congratulations,” you said when he reached you, so quietly that someone standing a few feet away probably would have missed it.
Lando didn’t. He rarely missed you anymore. “Thank you.” His own voice sounded a little rougher than usual.
You looked him over properly now, taking in the damp hair, the cap he'd shoved back onto his head, the stains down the front of his shirt.
"How much champagne did you get on you?"
He glanced down at himself. "Enough." Lando smiled.
His eyes went straight to the glasses again. You caught him this time. Your fingers lifted to the frame. “What?”
“Nothing.” Lando looked away quickly enough to make the answer completely unconvincing.
You tilted your head a fraction, but didn’t say anything in return. He glanced at the glasses again.
Then at the suit. He should have kept his mouth shut. Instead, "This is new."
You glanced down at yourself. “The suit?”
“The colour.”
That earned him a longer look. “Colour?”
“You normally wear black.”
“I’ve worn other colours.”
“When?” The question came out far too fast.
Your eyebrows rose slowly behind the glasses. Lando immediately understood what he had done. “Not that I’m keeping track.” He laughed, rubbing one hand across the back of his neck. “I’m saying you don’t do it often.”
“It’s burgundy.”
Lando was grinning now, he couldn't help it. The happiness from the race had nowhere to go, and somehow standing in front of you was making it spill over again.
His eyes dropped to the glasses one more time. "You look different." There. That came out before he could edit it. You went still for half a second. Not awkwardly.
Just enough that Lando heard what he'd said after it was already hanging between them. He rushed to explain. “Because of the colour.”
That somehow made the sentence worse. You repeated, “The colour,” with a softness that told him you were going to make him suffer for this.
“And the glasses,” he added, because apparently his survival instincts had abandoned him completely.
“I’m trying to understand what you mean.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I genuinely don’t.”
Lando stared at you and realised there was a small spark of amusement behind the tinted lenses. “You know exactly what you’re doing.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“That’s the problem.”
You laughed, dropping your gaze briefly to the notebook in your hand, and something in Lando’s chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with the race.
Lando had become used to your laugh by then, but Silverstone had apparently stripped away every defence he had. Maybe it was the adrenaline. Maybe winning at home had left him feeling too exposed to begin with.
Whatever it was, he looked at you laughing in those ridiculous glasses and burgundy tailoring and had the completely unhelpful thought that he wanted to keep you doing that for the rest of the night.
His eyes must have betrayed him. Because your smile faded slightly. Your gaze stayed on his for a second longer. Then your producer called to say that they were ready.
Then your producer called that they were ready, and the moment closed before Lando could make it worse.
You turned toward the camera and shifted the microphone in your hand. Lando stepped into position automatically, then leaned toward you before you had even spoken.
Your eyes dropped to the space he had immediately removed between you. “We’re outside.”
“I know.”
“You can hear me.”
“Maybe.”
You gave him a look over the glasses. “I can speak louder.”
“No, you can’t.”
“I can.”
“You keep saying that, but I’ve never actually seen it happen.”
Your mouth tightened because you were trying not to smile. “Maybe you should stop requesting me if it’s such a problem.”
Lando looked at you as though you had suggested something completely unreasonable. “I never said it was a problem.”
The camera light came on while you were still looking at him, which meant the first few seconds caught the exact moment you had to rearrange your expression into something professional.
“Well, Lando Norris,” you began, “British Grand Prix winner. What does that feel like?”
The words hit differently now that somebody else was saying them directly to him.
Lando’s smile came back immediately, but his answer didn’t. He looked past the camera toward the distant grandstands, where people were still moving through the circuit and flags were still visible above the barriers.
For the first time since arriving at Sky, his brain seemed to run out of things to say. “It’s…” He laughed quietly and shook his head, more at himself than anything else. “Pretty special.”
You waited. That was something you were very good at. You never rushed to fill silence just because it made television uncomfortable.
You let him think, and Lando had learned that if he tried giving you a polished answer simply to escape the pause, you would usually look at him until he gave you a better one.
He breathed out and tried again. “I’ve wanted this one for a long time. Everyone says every race is the same, but when it’s your home race, it isn’t. You come here and you see the flags, you hear everyone, and obviously there’s more pressure because you want to give them something back.”
His eyes moved toward the circuit again, and some of the emotion he thought he had already exhausted on the podium came back unexpectedly. His throat tightened halfway through the next sentence.
“To win it with McLaren and have everyone here…”
He stopped. You noticed instantly.
The microphone lowered slightly, not enough to end the interview or make the moment obvious, only enough that he no longer felt as though every breath had to be performed for the camera.
Lando looked down, rubbing beneath one eye before laughing quietly at himself. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologise,” you said. It was still your voice, still quiet, but the tone was different now. Less neutral than the one you used when interviewing him. Warmer. Softer in a way that made him look back up.
You were watching him without teasing now.
For a second, the rest of the media pen blurred around the edges. Lando could still hear people moving nearby and somebody giving another interview behind the camera, but his attention stayed fixed on your face behind those stupid glasses.
He smiled, smaller this time. “Trying to make me cry on Sky?”
“I asked how you felt.”
“Same thing.”
A little smile returned. “I can ask you about tyre degradation instead.”
“Please don’t.” That got the laugh he wanted, and some of the tightness in his chest eased.
You lifted the microphone again. “The final laps looked relatively controlled from the outside. Did they feel that way in the car?”
Lando shook his head. “Not really. Nothing feels controlled when you’re leading here. Every little noise suddenly matters. Every vibration. Every message on the radio. You start convincing yourself something’s about to go wrong.”
“Even with the gap you had?”
“Especially then,” he said. “Because you know what you’re about to lose if something happens.”
You nodded slowly. “So having something comfortable actually gives you more time to think about what’s at stake.”
“Exactly.”
The interview covered the strategy, the start, what the car had felt like through the middle stint, how much the crowd had registered while he was driving. Lando answered everything with more honesty than he probably gave most broadcasters, although that had become normal with you.
You listened too closely for him to get away with rubbish, and he had learned months ago that trying to talk around one of your questions only meant hearing it again.
Halfway through an answer about the closing laps, he caught himself looking at your glasses again.
Not your eyes. The frames first. Then your eyes behind them. He looked toward the camera for a second, forcing himself to focus. His attention drifted back anyway.
You noticed. He knew because the corner of your mouth moved, although you let him finish the answer without interrupting. When he stopped talking, you waited a beat and asked, “Done?”
Lando blinked. “Yeah.”
“You looked distracted.” Somewhere behind him, his press officer made a small sound. Lando looked at you carefully. Your face was completely composed.
There was no possible version of the honest answer that he could give while the camera was recording. “Long day.”
“Of course.” The slight curve of your mouth told him you didn’t believe him for a second.
Your producer signalled that there was time for one more question. You glanced over, then back at Lando.
“When you think about today years from now, what do you think you’ll remember first?” He considered it properly.
There were too many things to choose from. The launch off the grid. The final lap. His engineer shouting. The crowd. His family. The team waiting for him. Standing on the podium with a British flag around his shoulders.
And, inconveniently, this. You standing across from him in burgundy while he tried to get himself back together.
He didn’t say that.
“Crossing the line, probably,” he answered after a moment. “Then the radio. Everyone at McLaren completely losing it.”
You smiled. “I think most of Silverstone heard them.”
You gave a small nod, satisfied with the answer. “Congratulations again, Lando.”
“Thank you.”
The red light went out, but neither of you moved immediately.
Then the interview was over, the microphone lowered, and suddenly there was no professional reason for Lando to still be standing quite so close.
He stayed anyway. His eyes went to the glasses again.
This time, you caught him immediately and laughed under your breath. “You really like these glasses.”
Lando rubbed a hand over his face, laughing because there was no denying it anymore.
“For everything today.” You shook your head, still smiling, and Lando looked at you for a second too long again.
The humour between you quietened. Your expression shifted in response, not away from him but into something less easy to joke about. Then his press officer called his name from several metres away.
Lando closed his eyes briefly. “Of course.”
You tucked the microphone against your side and nodded toward McLaren. “Go. They’ve probably got another twenty people waiting for you.”
He glanced over his shoulder before looking back at you. “You’ll still be around later?”
The question came out before he could make it sound casual. Your eyebrows lifted slightly. “Working?”
“Yeah.”
A pause followed, and then you smiled. “I’m usually working at my job, Lando.”
He laughed at himself and started backing away. “Right. See you.”
ᯓ London Bridge, Fergie
liked by, landonorris, skysports, skysportsf1 and others ynusername: home race win always holds a place in your heart. congratulations to everyone at mclaren 🇬🇧 view comments
lando: unbiased reporting
The heat had already made the paddock unbearable by Friday morning at the Hungaroring.
By the time you reached Sky hospitality, you had abandoned most of the darker layers you normally relied on.
You were stood near the production desk while someone worked through Thursday's content for the Hungaroring when a request came back from McLaren.
Your producer skimmed the message. "They'll give us Norris for ten after practice."
Someone behind him asked, "Who's got it?"
Your producer looked across the room. "YN."
Another producer, barely looking up from his laptop, laughed. "Of course. Send his favourite and we'll get twenty."
Several people smiled. It was obviously a joke. You had heard versions of it before. Usually you would have rolled your eyes and continued working.
This time, you felt something tighten unpleasantly beneath your ribs. Your producer noticed your expression a second too late. "I'm joking."
"I know." He paused. You looked back down at the notes in your hand and added, quieter, "It's fine."
It should have been fine. Nobody there thought you were bad at your job. By Sunday evening, nobody was particularly interested in the joke anymore.
McLaren had just won its 200th Formula One Grand Prix.
You had spent the latter part of the race adding arrows and notes around the number in your notebook because it was impossible to talk about the win without talking about what it meant to McLaren itself. When Lando crossed the line, the garage seemed to erupt all at once.
Hungary was different. There was pride in it.
ou read over the questions once, then closed the notebook as the cameraman adjusted his position.
You knew Lando was coming before you saw him. Someone from McLaren appeared first, speaking briefly with your producer, and then Lando rounded the edge of the media area still carrying the unmistakable afterglow of a win.
His smile found you before he properly reached Sky. That had become normal enough that you barely registered it anymore. What you did register was the way he slowed once he got close.
His eyes travelled from your shoes to the beige trousers, over the waistcoat and checked blazer, then finally returned to your face.
You waited. Lando stared at you for another second.
Then, with complete seriousness, he asked, “Who are you?”
You glanced down at yourself, briefly checking whether something genuinely was wrong. “What?”
“Where's the Undertaker?”
The cameraman behind you made a noise. You looked back at Lando. He had already realised. It happened beautifully.
The amusement disappeared from his face first. Then came the tiny widening of his eyes, followed by the expression of a man who had just watched his own sentence leave his mouth and desperately wanted it back. You lowered the microphone.
“The what?”
Lando shook his head immediately. “No.”
Your producer, standing behind the camera, had already turned away because his shoulders were starting to move. You stared at Lando. “Did you just call me the Undertaker?”
“I didn't call you—” He stopped because even he apparently recognised there was no point attempting that defence. His hand went over his mouth for a second before dropping again. “I used to.”
That was somehow worse. “You used to?”
“In Melbourne. And in China, and then when you came to Bahrain in black….”
You had forgotten every question in your notebook. “Why?”
Lando was fighting laughter now. You could see it building despite the obvious knowledge that laughing would only make you more offended. “You wore black every day.”
You blinked. “And?”
“And you looked…” He hesitated.
You narrowed your eyes. Unfortunately, Lando was incapable of leaving danger alone once he had found it. “Like you were going to kill someone.”
The cameraman broke.
A laugh escaped behind the lens, immediately followed by your producer giving up whatever pretence of professionalism he'd been clinging to. Lando was laughing now too, shoulders shaking while he looked anywhere except directly at you.
You remained perfectly still. Months.
He had apparently looked at you for the first time in Melbourne, watched you walk around the paddock in black tailoring and decided, privately, that you were the Undertaker.
You slowly looked down at yourself, then you looked back at him. “And now?”
Lando's laughter eased. His eyes ran over the outfit again.
You could practically see him thinking. You should have stopped him, instead, some terrible part of you wanted to know. He considered you for a few seconds before saying, “Accountant.”
You hit him with the microphone.
Not hard enough to hurt, just enough for the foam cover to bounce lightly against his upper arm. Lando recoiled dramatically, laughing harder. “What?”
“Accountant?”
“You asked.”
You stared at him over your glasses. Lando's smile widened until there was no possible way you could maintain the glare without laughing yourself. You looked away first.
You could already imagine how the clip would look once Sky cut it down: Lando admitting he'd privately called you the Undertaker since Melbourne, you discovering this information in real time, then hitting him lightly with the microphone when he decided beige apparently made you an accountant.
It was funny.
You knew it was funny.
You rubbed a thumb along the microphone handle and tried to get your face under control while the cameraman wiped at his eyes. Lando was doing no better. Every time he looked at you, he started again, which made you laugh, which made him worse.
The whole thing took long enough that somebody from McLaren eventually asked if you were actually going to conduct the interview.
Fuck.
You had given them more. Not more proof of anything romantic, because there was nothing to prove. But more material.
More reason for somebody to look at an interview you had researched, prepared and fought for time to conduct, then decide the most important thing about it was the way Lando Norris smiled at you while answering.
Lando nodded and visibly tried to rearrange his face into something more appropriate for a historic McLaren milestone. You raised the microphone.
He leaned toward it automatically. Your eyes dropped to him. Then you quietly told him, “You can hear me.”
“I know.”
“So why are you already over here?”
He glanced down at the space between you as if he had only just realised he'd closed it. “Habit.”
The cameraman made another small sound. You decided not to engage. The red light came on.
Professionalism, finally.
"Lando, McLaren's two-hundredth Grand Prix victory. You've spoken a lot about the history of this team, but does being the driver who delivers a milestone like that feel different?"
The shift was subtle enough that anyone watching probably wouldn't have noticed.
Lando did.
You saw it in the tiny pause before he answered.
"Yeah, definitely." His eyes stayed on you for half a second longer than usual before he glanced toward the McLaren personnel behind the camera.
"Obviously you know the number going into the weekend, but you try not to think about it too much because you've still got to actually win the race. Then afterward, seeing everyone and knowing what it means to the team, it's pretty special."
Normally, you would have let that breathe and followed the part about knowing the number beforehand.
Instead, you moved to the question already written beneath it. He continued to give you good answers as you asked about the final stint. The pressure. The championship implications.
The interview was still good. You were not punishing him by making it bad, and you were too proud of your work to become deliberately stiff simply because you'd suddenly become uncomfortable with everything surrounding it.
But you removed yourself from it.
His eyes kept returning to you, searching your expression every time he finished answering as though there was something there he was trying to work out. The happiness from the win hadn't disappeared, but the easy grin he'd arrived with had faded into something more cautious.
You hated that you noticed. You hated more that some part of you wanted to fix it.
The red light went out. Normally the end of the camera created more space between you professionally and less everywhere else.
Today, you lowered the microphone and immediately turned toward your producer.
"Do you need anything else from me before Ferrari?"
He looked briefly surprised by how quickly you'd asked. "No. You're good for about ten."
"Perfect."
You reached toward the small table beside the camera and picked up your notebook, already opening it to the page where you'd left your Ferrari questions.
Lando didn't move. You kept your eyes on the notebook.
His press officer was standing several feet away, waiting for him to move onto the next broadcaster. Usually that was enough. Drivers didn't linger after interviews because nobody had the time.
Lando lingered. "YN." You looked up.
His brows were slightly drawn together now. He wasn't smiling anymore, and that somehow made you feel worse than if he'd looked annoyed.
"You alright?"
There was something almost irritating about how quickly he had picked up on it.
You had worked with people for years who couldn't tell the difference between you being exhausted and you being furious.
"I'm fine." His expression didn't change.
"Did I do something?" The question came quietly enough that you nearly missed it beneath the media pen noise.
Your stomach tightened. "No."
Lando watched you for another second. "Because you were fine before."
"Go. You've got about fifteen more interviews."
Lando didn't laugh.
"Right."
You hated that too.
He took one step away before stopping. "I'll see you later?"
The summer break sat between the words in a way neither of you acknowledged.
This was the last race before several weeks apart.
Usually the answer would have been obvious. He always found you later. Outside hospitality, in the media centre, somewhere near the paddock exit when you were both finally finished.
You looked down at your notebook instead. "I've got a lot to finish tonight."
The attention would have been easier to dismiss if it had only been about the clothes.
People liked the suits, they found the glasses, they made accounts identifying ties you had bought second-hand years ago and somehow tracked down the exact coat you had worn in Austria.
Your follower count rose every weekend, and Sky had started tagging you in more of the paddock content because the engagement was noticeably higher whenever they did. That part was strange, but not unpleasant. The interviews were what mattered.
You loved that. You loved the work more than you had expected to love the paddock itself.
There was something deeply satisfying about sitting down after a session with half a page of notes, hearing a driver say something interesting and being allowed to follow it rather than watching a producer point frantically at the clock.
The quality of the interviews had improved because the people around you had begun trusting you. That mattered.
Which was why the attention around Lando began bothering you at exactly the point everyone else seemed to find it funniest.
You shook your head and returned to your laptop, although your phone was sitting face-up beside it and kept lighting every few seconds.
It was still funny then.
Rachel had sent you a link while you were still at the paddock that Sunday evening, trying your best to wrap everything up before the summer break. It was a compilation, nothing malicious, but that almost made it worse.
lando norris getting the yn treatment for five minutes straight
A shot you hadn’t even known existed of Lando walking toward Sky, spotting you and visibly smiling before he reached the camera. Then another clip. A McLaren press officer asking something off-camera. Your name audible in the response. Then Lando saying, "Yeah, perfect."
You frowned. You had never seen that one. The comments were predictable, so you didn't even bother opening them.
username: honestly sky know exactly what they're doing because he obviously likes her and gives her better interviews
username: i'd send her too if it gets them more access to a championship contender lol
username: must be nice being able to walk into mclaren because the driver fancies you
username: send the girlfriend and suddenly he remembers how to speak
Your thumb stopped.
Girlfriend. You stared at the word longer than it deserved.
There was nothing particularly vicious about it. The account probably didn’t mean anything by it. Half the comments were laughing emojis and people arguing over which of your interviews had been the funniest.
Sunday evenings had a strange sense of completion to them, especially once the live broadcast finished and you could finally sit down without somebody calling your name from across hospitality.
Summer break.
Instead, you were still at Sky nearly two hours after you needed to be.
Your blazer had been abandoned over the back of a chair. The tie remained because undoing it somehow felt like admitting how tired you were, although the top button of your shirt had surrendered sometime around six.
The notebook beside you was nearly full. You flipped another page. A note beside one of the strategy questions reminding yourself to check something after the break.
The article was still sitting somewhere in your browser history, even a month after it had come out.
You had spent the better part of the past weeks trying to tell yourself you didn’t care. That had worked spectacularly badly.
Saving the document and started gathering your things. You were folding the blazer over your arm when somebody stopped outside the open hospitality door.
You didn’t need to look up to know who it was. That was irritating too.
There were hundreds of people in the paddock and somehow you had learned the rhythm of one person’s footsteps well enough that your shoulders tightened before he said anything.
Lando leaned around the doorway.
He had changed out of team kit at some point. Dark trousers, trainers, a sweatshirt despite the lingering warmth outside. His accreditation was gone, probably abandoned with the rest of his workday, and his hair looked like he had showered since you last saw him.
He looked tired. His eyes moved around the mostly empty room before settling on you. “You’re still here.”
You kept folding the blazer. “So are you.”
“I was looking for you.”
That made your hands pause.
You draped the jacket over your bag instead. “Why?”
Lando stepped inside, although not far. There had been a point several weeks ago when he would have simply taken the nearest chair without asking.
Now he remained near the doorway as though the distance you had created during the interview was still there between you. His expression was harder to read without the usual smile. “You disappeared.”
“I’ve been here.”
“That’s not what I meant.” You zipped the laptop compartment and avoided looking at him.
There were several ways out of this conversation. You could say you were tired.
You could tell him you had an early flight. You could point out that McLaren had probably planned some celebration and he should be there instead of standing in Sky hospitality trying to decipher your mood.
Lando had no intention of letting you continue.
He moved further into the room and stopped opposite the table rather than sitting down. “You were weird with me after the interview.”
You glanced up. “That’s tactful.”
“You know what I mean.” You hooked the strap of your bag over the chair and exhaled slowly. “It wasn’t the interview.”
“Then what was it?”
There was no accusation in his voice yet, mainly confusion. Lando simply looked like someone who had spent several hours trying to work out what he’d done wrong.
You looked past him toward the empty doorway. “Have you seen the article?”
His eyebrows drew together. “What article?” Of course he hadn’t.
You almost laughed, although there was nothing funny about it. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It clearly does.”
“Lando.”
“No, because you’ve barely looked at me since we finished filming, and now there’s apparently an article I’m meant to know about.”
His frustration had started showing now, not loudly, just in the way his words came faster.
You pulled your phone from the table, opening it, walked around the table and held the phone toward him. The longer he read, the less confused he looked. By the time he finished, his jaw had tightened. He looked up. “This is bullshit.”
“I know.”
“Then why do you care?” The answer came quickly enough that you almost reacted to it before reminding yourself he genuinely didn’t understand.
You took the phone back from him and locked it. “Because you get to call it bullshit.”
Lando frowned. “So do you.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Why not?”
You put the phone into your bag with more care than necessary. “Because nobody is going to read that and decide you only won today because I like you.”
You continued before he could interrupt, because if you stopped now you suspected you would lose the nerve to explain it properly.
“If people think you like me, it’s funny. They make jokes about you having a crush and everybody laughs because you’re Lando Norris. You already have a career. You already have a reputation here. Nobody gets to take anything away from you.”
Lando was listening now. Completely. You looked down at the edge of the table and ran your thumb across it. “For me, it becomes something else.”
He didn’t say anything, and you were grateful enough to continue.
“They don’t watch the interview and think I got a good answer because I asked a good question. Or that Sky gave me longer because I’ve shown them I can handle it. They think you gave me a good answer because you fancy me, ir that you specifically request for me.”
Lando’s gaze dropped briefly. That hurt in a way you had not expected. Because it was true. He had asked.
You saw the realisation arrive before he said it. “I do ask for you.”
“I know.”
“I thought—” He stopped and rubbed a hand across his jaw, searching for the right version of the sentence. “I thought that was a good thing.”
“So did I.” That was the most honest thing you had said all day. His eyes came back to yours.
For several seconds, neither of you spoke.
You hated how exposed the admission made you feel. That every time McLaren had asked whether you were available, every time your producer had looked across the room and said Norris wants you, some part of you had liked being chosen.
That was precisely why the article bothered you so much. “I like doing your interviews. They’re good interviews.”
Lando leaned one hand against the back of the chair opposite you. “I don’t understand how me liking your interviews is a problem.”
“Because you’re not asking for Rachel. You’re not asking for Craig. You’re asking for me, and everyone knows it.”
“So I stop asking.” The immediacy of it caught you off guard.
There was no sulking in his expression. No attempt to argue that everyone else should simply ignore it. He had heard the problem and gone straight to the part he could control.
You rubbed your forehead. “I don’t want you to think I’m blaming you.”
“You are a little.”
“I’m not.”
“You showed me an article about me asking for you and then explained why me asking for you is making your job harder.”
You picked up your blazer again, then put it down almost immediately because your hands needed something to do and the movement was not helping.
“I worked for years before I got here, Lando.” You regretted the sharpness immediately, but not enough to take the question back.
“I covered junior series nobody watched. I wrote pieces that got barely any clicks. I’ve interviewed people standing beside portable toilets because that was the only quiet place in an F3 paddock.”
Your voice softened as the frustration wore into something closer to exhaustion. “And I love it. I love that Sky trusts me with this now.”
Lando exhaled slowly.
You could see him replaying the last few months now. Probably a dozen other tiny things neither of you had thought twice about while they were happening.
He pushed away from the chair. “Okay.” You waited. He nodded once, more to himself than to you. “I’ll stop.”
Something inside you dropped. It was exactly what you had needed him to say.
You hated hearing it. “Lando—”
“No, it’s fine.” He wasn’t angry, although his tone had become more careful. “You don’t want McLaren asking for you every time. I’ll tell them not to.”
“I don’t want you to never talk to me again.”
His eyes flicked to yours. That sentence had come out far too quickly. You tried to correct it. “I mean professionally. I’m not saying you need to avoid me.”
His mouth moved slightly, not quite a smile. “Professionally.” You knew exactly how that sounded. You also knew you could not fix it without making the entire conversation worse.
You reached for your bag instead. “I just need people to know who I am here without you being attached to every conversation about me.”
Lando nodded, there was no argument this time. Then, quietly, “You’ve already got that.”
You looked at him. He shifted one shoulder. “People know who you are.”
The sincerity of it hurt worse than the article had. You smiled, although it came out small. “Not enough.” For a second, he looked as though he might disagree.
Then he let it go. You finally picked up your blazer and folded it over your arm. “You should go celebrate. It’s your two-hundredth win.”
“McLaren’s.”
“You drove the car.” That got something from him too. The conversation died slowly where normally, one of you would find a reason to extend the conversation.
Lando shifted his weight and looked at you. “So I’ll see you after the break.”
You nodded. “Zandvoort.” There was something strange about putting a race name on it. Several weeks.
You had spent months seeing him almost every weekend and now there would be nothing until the end of August.
The summer break was exactly what you had wanted. Three weeks without cameras, paddocks, interviews or people dissecting every time Lando Norris looked at you.
By the time you reached the hotel, you were already beginning to suspect you were going to hate it.
