#lbwrites

I've been turning this idea over in my head for almost two years now and decided fuck it, let me start posting what I have written to motivate myself to finish the dang thing. No set length yet but my outline is at least 13 chapters, so we're going to be here for a while.

🖤

"I'm not leaving you on your own now."

The final second stretches for an eternity. The hole in the universe splits open behind Lando's chest, centered right on his heart. In his peripherals, Oscar sees the infinite void, blacker than black, extending forever, folding in on itself over and over again into eternal nothingness. Some primal instinct tells Oscar that if he looks at it, there's no coming back. The same instinct tells him to run straight into it. But he never takes his eyes off of Lando, who throws himself at Oscar faster than physics can stop them, burying his head in Oscar's chest like it's the last thing he'll ever do.

Oscar wraps his arms around Lando as tightly as he can, lets his heels hit the edge of the dock, and tips them backwards into the water.

----

When Oscar resurfaces gasping for air, he isn't breaking the surface of the lake, but thrashing at linen sheets, sitting up in bed in a room he doesn't recognize. He can barely make out the contours with only moonlight streaming through the windows, but the old wooden dresser and chairs are more rustic than anything he owns and too solid to be in any run-down motel he's been through. There are two open suitcases in the corner, two phones charging on the nightstand, and a warm body stirring into consciousness beside him.

"Mmph, Osc? What's wrong? Nightmares again?"

Oscar scrambles for the lamp on the bedside table to make sure his brain isn't playing tricks on him—that the familiar voice beside him isn't a hallucination. He finds the switch, and Lando groans, throwing a hand over his face and squeezing his eyes shut to block out the light.

"It's okay," Lando says, blindly reaching to put a hand on Oscar's knee. "It's just me."

And there he is. Real and tangible—no shadows or black void trying to take him away. Sitting up in bed, bare-chested, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and blinking up at Oscar with complete serenity. Like they do this every day. Like they haven't both been through hell and back.

"Hey," Lando whispers, gently stroking the side of Oscar's face in a passing gesture of comfort. "You alright?"

Oscar is rendered completely speechless. All he wants to do is stare into Lando's eyes—to memorize the color and the shape and the little flecks of pigmentation before whatever sliver of paradise they've lucked into for the moment is wrenched away again. With shaking hands, he takes the sides of Lando's head and holds them together, noses nearly brushing against one another, anchoring himself to the moment and making sure they can't be torn apart.

"Oscar, what—" Lando's eyes go wide, and he lets out a small gasp. "Oh. Is it today? I thought there was a chance this might happen soon, but—"

Lando tries to pull away, to reach for something on the bedside table, but Oscar doesn't let him go, a soft whine escaping as he holds on.

"No, no, it's alright," Lando says, letting himself be pulled back in. "I'm not going anywhere. I— I suppose you probably need a minute, huh? What's the last thing you remember?"

"I— I don't—" Oscar can't stop staring. He can't stop his hands wandering over every bit of Lando he can touch, all the bumps and ridges he never had the chance to explore. The veins in his neck. The slope of his shoulders. The line of freckles across his ribcage. "You're alive?"

He feels his cheeks go wet and his lip start to tremble. He'd built up so much courage just to turn and look Lando in the eyes; now, there's almost too much to take in, and his body doesn't know what to do with it all.

"Oh, baby." Lando wipes away the tears and kisses him softly, in that way that always makes Oscar feel like he's going to break. "Yes, I'm here. This is real." He swoops in for another kiss. "It's all real." And another. "You did it, Osc. You fixed it. I'm...look."

Lando takes Oscar's hand and holds it directly over his heart, pressing so that Oscar can feel his pulse through the palm of his hand. Last Oscar remembers, a crack in the fabric of the universe was splitting open from where Lando's heart was supposed to be. Now, it's beating a steady rhythm—no black necrotic rot, or chasm opening in his chest, or impossible dance happening behind his ribs. Just a normal, consistent beat, keeping a warm body alive.

"Do you remember the train?" Lando asks. "I was waiting on the platform and you—"

Oscar shakes his head at first, then gasps as the memories come rushing back. Lando standing on his own. Lando falling to the tracks. Oscar rushing forward and pushing as hard as he could, reaching and reaching and...

He suddenly tightens his grip around Lando's waist, as though he's pulling him back from the edge again. Lando smiles and tosses a leg over Oscar's lap, straddling his hips and pressing their bodies together even closer.

"See? It worked, Oscar. You beat death, you fucking madman."

Lando buries his hands in Oscar's hair, prompting a full-body shiver and Oscar's shoulders going limp. There's something so achingly familiar about the feeling of Lando's fingers rubbing against his scalp, like coming home after a long time away.

"Hmm." Lando presses his lips up against Oscar's forehead as he mumbles, "I wasn't sure if you'd remember. Everything has happened in a straight line for me, but you..."

He leans back with a new weight in his expression, a bit of sadness seeping into his eyes. Now that he's really taken him in, Oscar notices that Lando has changed a bit from when he first saw him. The shaved sides of his hair have grown out, and the mullet has been trimmed at the back. The jewelry is gone, though that might just be for sleeping. There's another small scar, higher up the bridge of his nose, while the first has faded.

"How long has it been for you?" Oscar asks.

"You can do the math. You're good at that," Lando smirks, though the smile doesn't reach his eyes.

If Lando was on the platform the same day as his job interview, and this is somehow the same night that they went to the lake in the forest...

"Over a year?" Oscar asks incredulously.

"Just had our anniversary last month," Lando replies. "Ah, maybe I shouldn't tell you that. Dunno how it works with, like, amnesia patients. Probably supposed to start small."

Oscar pauses where he's been subconsciously rubbing small circles around Lando's hip bone. He can feel it now in the way Lando is holding him, perfectly hitting the sweet spot at the back of his neck that makes his skin tingle. The intimacy that isn't just wanting but knowing. The way his touches glance casually, not because they're meaningless, but because they're a constant. Oscar hadn't even flinched when Lando mounted his lap, or when he started caressing the most tender spots under his jaw, as if his body knew what his mind, at the moment, is lacking.

"Why don't you start from the beginning then?" Oscar says. "How'd you find me?"

"You found me, actually," Lando chuckles, climbing off his lap to put on a t-shirt and grab a leather-bound notepad from the bedside table. "Offered to buy me a drink and asked for my number right on the spot. I had no idea you were such a proper flirt."

Oscar nearly has the words out to protest that he would never be so bold, but then he focuses on Lando's t-shirt carrying the colorful logo of a local coffee shop—the "Star-Crossed Cafe," and their appropriately celestial design—and he sees the memory with perfect clarity. Running into a beautiful stranger who looked oddly familiar. Realizing they had met before on summer vacation, though he supposes Lando already knew at the time. Each of them going back for one more drink or one more pastry until the shop closed, then taking a walk in the park and kissing under the stars.

"You made me try matcha for the first time."

"I did," Lando says, his eyes lighting up. "You took one sip and said it was gross, then let me have the rest."

"I feel like you meant for that to happen."

"Meh. I knew it would work out for me either way," Lando shrugs.

"What's this?" Oscar asks as Lando fidgets with the edge of his notebook, tracing the rather fancy stitching around the outside cover.

"Been working on it for the past few months," Lando says, loosening the strap around the side. "Kind of a journal, except I'm not much of a writer. I also thought, you know, if something like this happened, maybe it would help."

He flips open the front cover, and Oscar realizes it isn't a notebook; it's a sketchpad, each page filled with intricate pencil drawings of their day-to-day life that he catches a quick glimpse of as Lando flicks through the pages, then settles on the first with an extraordinarily detailed portrait of Oscar's face.

"A lot of these are of you, so let's just get that out of the way," Lando says, holding his hands up like he's been caught in a crime. "You're nice to draw, and there was a long time where I didn't get to see you, and now I can look whenever I want, so..."

He flicks at the bottom corner of the pages, biting his lip and looking over the portrait with worried eyes.

"It's a really good drawing," Oscar tries to reassure him. "I can't believe how talented you are."

"Maybe this is too much at once," Lando says suddenly. "I mean, you've just been through a hell of a time, and I'm throwing all of this at you so fast. We could...slow down. Let you get used to things a bit?"

Oscar leans over and kisses him on the temple, nuzzling through his curls to rest their heads together. He smells like citrus and worn leather, both brand new and etched into Oscar's bones. For all the trouble he's having accepting that they really are safe, in a way, Lando has just lost the man he spent the last year of his life with. And Oscar promised not to leave him on his own.

"I just need you to jog my memory a bit, Lan."

The nickname is half guess, half impulse, but the way Lando smiles and relaxes into him tells Oscar that he got it right.

"Right, okay."

Lando flips the page to reveal a drawing of a picnic blanket spread out on the grass next to a pond. In the background, two figures are holding hands and running from a flock of geese.

"So, our first date," Lando says. "Umm, wasn't exactly as romantic as I planned, but...well, it was a bonding experience, I guess. The duck pond was the closest thing I could find to a proper lake, because I wasn't sure if you would... Anyway, the ducks all got run off by these dickhead birds who took all of our sandwiches."

Oscar chuckles, first at the drawing, then at Lando's retelling, and then at the memory slowly coming into focus in his head. He'd spent so long that morning agonizing over what sandwiches to make and whether bags of potato chips were acceptable or if he should be a mature adult and make a side salad. It hadn't mattered in the end.

"But it was a nice day, and we got burgers after. Pretty solid date, in my opinion."

"Yeah, you took me to Five Guys. Real romantic, Osc," Lando says with a dramatic eye roll.

"You love Five Guys," Oscar counters, pulling that information from somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind.

"Almost as much as I love my guy," Lando says, blushing immediately after. "Ugh, sorry. So cheesy."

He cringes and crumples in on himself, fidgeting again with the edges of the book, which are already full of bends and tears from how much time he's clearly spent going over the pages, perfecting every detail. Oscar gets a sudden flash of a memory: seeing Lando curled up on the end of the couch with his sketchbook, asking what he's working so hard on, and being told that it's supposed to be a surprise. He poured his absolute heart and soul into those drawings, and that's perhaps the part Oscar is struggling with the most.

Before Lando, Oscar had never been in love before. And it's not his own strong feelings that he's having trouble believing. He accepted those long before he sent them plunging into the water. Oscar has never been loved before—never had someone care so deeply about him.

"I don't mind cheesy," Oscar says, wrapping an arm around Lando's waist and holding him tighter. "I'm trying to...make it fit. I know it's not really new, but—"

"But it is for you," Lando says. "If you don't remember, then I'm basically a stranger to you."

Oscar can't help but let out a shocked laugh. Lando being unfamiliar to him is one of the most comical things he's heard in a long while.

"You've been with me my entire life," Oscar reminds him. "You could never be a stranger."

"Okay, fine. But being a shadow is pretty different from being your boyfriend."

Oscar's heart practically leaps out of his chest at hearing Lando referred to as his boyfriend. Obviously, he's worked out their relationship from context. But hearing the word said aloud is something so magical he has to hide his smile against Lando's shoulder, using every ounce of willpower not to scream into his t-shirt like a lovestruck teenager.

"I'm remembering some. It's a bit strange right now. I've got two whole separate lives to try to stitch together, but we can figure it out. We've dealt with a lot worse."

Lando smiles weakly and nods, grabbing hold of Oscar's hand and squeezing to keep himself grounded. He takes a deep breath and flips to the next page, where he continues telling Oscar the story of his own life, and their life together. How Oscar took a job at a smaller company so he could help do accounting for some of the artists Lando works with on the side. How Oscar's mum came to visit and was so excited to meet Lando that he wondered why he was ever so afraid of coming out to her in the first place. How they're planning on moving in together soon, even though Lando practically lives at Oscar's place already.

And Oscar remembers it all, not as though it happened to someone else, but as true and as real as he lived it. There are moments that overlay in strange ways—things that happened in both timelines but ended differently because he wasn't quite the same person. Those are hard to make sense of, and it's difficult to fit everything in when he's lived twice as long as he should have. But then, it was always hard for him to fit all of his feelings inside. All of the pain he couldn't share and the love with nowhere to go. With Lando, it's much easier.

"Did you ever try to tell me?" Oscar asks when they're nearing the end of the sketchbook. "About...dying, and being a ghost?"

"No. I thought about it sometimes," Lando says, closing the book and running a finger over the engraving. "I wondered if talking about it would make you remember. But either you'd think I was crazy, or I'd be reminding you of something sad. Figured you were better off not knowing."

Oscar leans back so he can look Lando head on. It seems terribly lonely, having all of those horrible memories with no one to talk to about them, even the person who was with you the whole time. Perhaps Lando tried to convince himself he could forget, but again Oscar sees that faint flicker of sadness behind his eyes, the one he couldn't quite place when they were dating, and understands the heavy burden he's been carrying.

"I disagree," Oscar says definitively, lightly putting a finger under Lando's chin to tilt his head upward. "Wouldn't change a thing."

When he kisses Lando this time, nothing gets held back. Oscar presses their lips together with total conviction, leaving not a flicker of doubt that he wants this with every fiber of his being. And when Lando leans in further, Oscar brings a hand to the back of his neck and holds him even closer, mouths parting against one another like they could mold their bodies into one.

It's only the need for air that forces Oscar to pull away, and they fall leaning against the headboard, wrapped in each other's arms, hands wandering lazily over the familiar planes of one another's bodies.

"Where are we, anyway?" Oscar asks. He knows the room isn't either of their apartments. From the rustic feel and the heavy wood scent, he'd guess an old family home in the country. Or a cabin in the woods.

"Just outside of Sapphire Valley. It's not the same cabins," Lando clarifies as Oscar sits up straighter. "You were right, those are gone now. But I tried—we tried—to get as close as possible. You wanted to see the old sights. And I wanted to make sure we were around when— when it happened. Thought there might be a better chance of…getting you back."

"Lando…."

"I thought—" Lando sucks in a trembling breath, on the verge of tears. "I don't know how this parallel universe shit works. If you didn't have your memories, I figured the other version of you might have died pulling me off that platform. Or that you'd be a shadow, like I was, lost and scared somewhere."

"But I was with you," Oscar protests. "You had me the whole time."

"Weird, innit? Missing someone when they're right there with you."

"Yeah. I think I know the feeling," Oscar says. His memories of Lando as a shadow are already going fuzzy, overshadowed by happier times of kissing under the stars or wasting the morning away in bed together. But he remembers the contradiction of wanting him so bad, even though they were never truly apart.

"I could barely fucking take it," Lando admits. "Imaging any version of you that—"

"Hey, I'm right here," Oscar says, holding him tight, reiterating the words Lando said to him so many times. "I'm here. All of me. And you're here. Somehow."

"Somehow," Lando repeats, a tear falling from his eye. "Got the place right and everything."

"It was never about the place. We'd find each other anywhere in the world, I reckon."

Lando chokes out a laugh and buries his face in the crook between Oscar's shoulder and jaw, pressing his nose against his jugular and lips across his throat. Tucking himself into any crevice that Oscar can make.

"Don't need to go looking anymore," he mumbles into Oscar's skin. "Got a lot of lost time to make up for."

Oscar cradles the back of his head and dips his chin to tuck Lando in even closer, working his other hand into the perfect spot at the small of Lando's back. It's like coming home, the past a solid foundation beneath them and a secure future stretching out ahead. Oscar plants a kiss on the crown of Lando's head and whispers into his curls.

"We've got all the time in the world."

"Finally call it quits on your awful tire strategy?" Alex quips, lounging against one end of a couch, clearly bored out of his mind. A bit rich since Arvid has been there since before the lights went out and seems much more alert. Probably rookie nerves. The first time in FIA magical quarantine is a shock for everyone.

"Gearbox," Lando responds simply, gladly taking a bottle of water and a seat on the empty side of the couch. "Just all of the shit luck at once, eh?"

"Yeah, guess the witches knew what they were talking about."

Lando looks around the room to find Fernando already asleep in the corner—figures with the number of curses he's been through—but no one else in confinement with them.

"Where's George?" Lando asks.

"George?" Alex asks, suddenly sitting up straight. "No… Don't tell me they crashed."

"Well. They didn't crash." Lando grimaces and gestures up at the sky. A curse. An aura. The "racing gods." Whatever unnatural force has set its sights on the circuit. Hard racing could happen anywhere. Horrible luck on this scale causes other kinds of issues.

Alex winces and groans as he realizes the implication. "Fuck. That's even worse."

Checo arrives shortly after with a shrug and a roll of the eyes, having the same idea as Fernando to find a nice spot near the wall and sleep off the disappointment. They're both well accustomed to it at this point.

"Do you think George could have been the cause?" Arvid asks. "Maybe they had to take him to the witches directly."

It's not a bad theory. Lando got dragged to them after Sao Paulo in 2024 for a similar reason. His stomach twists with the memory. He casts his thoughts back instead to lifting the championship trophy, and his nerves settle.

"Could be," Lando shrugs.

"Not intentionally," Alex clarifies, a touch too defensive.

"You sure?" Arvid asks with a raised brow. "Championship fights can get ugly."

"Not that ugly," Lando says, at the same time Alex insists: "George wouldn't."

As if on cue, the door opens again and George walks in, his posture rigid with tension and gaze unfocused towards the floor. Lando thinks to move to the other couch with Arvid so that George and Alex can share, but without hesitation, George takes up the middle seat in between them and puts his head in his hands. Lando can smell the burnt sage and cedar wafting off of him.

"Did they fix it?" Alex asks, leaving the question open-ended to mean the curse in general or George specifically.

"Can't fix a broken engine with a smudge stick, mate," George says grimly. "Or give the points back."

Alex rubs a hand up and down his back for comfort, but George stays coiled tight like he might spring up and start pacing, or else collapse under the pressure.

"Maybe you should have run each other off the road harder, to keep it even," Lando says sarcastically, bumping his knee against George's.

Alex shoots him a look over George's back, but George huffs out a half-hearted laugh and looks up towards him.

"I told you the same thing last year."

It's true, he'd jokingly given that advice multiple times. Not just last year, but one year ago exactly, at this very track. Said he should have taken Oscar out with him, crashing into the wall. Said the energy was unbalanced because they weren't at each other's throats enough and the flow of magic was getting weird with the old rules of F1 being broken. Part of him probably believed it. Lando never did, though. Blaming magic for bad decisions always seemed weak to him. The only thing he could control was himself, so he'd do that in the best way he could.

"And look how it worked out," Lando shrugs, a touch smug, if only to make his point. "There's still loads of time. Anything could happen."

George sighs and sits up, going from leaning over his knees to stretching his spine over the back of the couch in one fluid motion.

"Yeah. I guess," he says, turning to look Lando squarely in the eye. "Did it always feel this impossible?"

"Every day, until it wasn't."

George nods quietly, running a hand through his hair. Lando offers him the other half of his unfinished water, which George gladly takes and downs in a few gulps.

"So, how often does this kind of thing happen?" Arvid asks. "Swear to god, I thought I was being kidnapped when they shoved me in a car on pit lane."

"Couple times a season?" Alex estimates. "It's not every chaotic race. Sometimes it's the ones you least expect."

"Yeah?"

"Ask Alex about his Red Bull season," Lando teases. It wasn't funny at the time, constantly seeing Alex escorted away after missing a podium, but the benefit of hindsight makes it fair game for joking around.

"Don't scare him," George chides, gesturing at Arvid's Red Bull branded fireproofs.

"Ah, sorry, mate," Lando says.

Alex jumps in to explain properly, putting a fair bit of sugar-coating on the stories to assuage any fears. Maybe that really is how he sees the experience now. These things are always less gut-wrenching with time.

Lando jumps slightly when George reaches over to lightly squeeze his thigh. He looks over in confusion to find George with his other arm slung behind Alex's back, fingers brushing his shoulder where no one else can see, Alex tucked into his side in a way that might look like a simple lack of space on the couch, if one didn't know any better. George flicks his gaze over and mouths a silent, "thank you," before discreetly moving his hand away and turning his attention back to the conversation. Lando nods along with the joking like nothing happened, but bumps his knee against George's in acknowledgement, this time leaving it there and keeping their legs pressed flush together.

Lando doesn't have any magical ability of his own, and the protection charms on the confinement chamber would block it even if he did, but he imagines sending a comforting energy between the point of contact, soothing with touch what he can't with words.

And without imagining, he could swear he feels the energy being reciprocated.

---

magically bonded 2019 rookies??? maybe there's a longer fic in there...

It's a minor miracle he’s even made it this far, standing in the pit lane listening to Ted explain just how fucked the McLarens are with barely restrained glee. He’d had a minor heart attack at the start, the pride at the sheer balls on Lando for cutting across Max so aggressively dissolving into dread as he went wide into the runoff. Jenson deserves a commendation for continuing to make coherent commentary when he was laser focused on Lando in the background of every shot, a lump in his throat every time he got close to the wall.

He's not sure whether Crofty was oblivious, or if he was overly observant and deliberately messing with him by going on about “the last two first-time British champions,” a bit of championship math so convoluted Jenson is mortified to admit he’s already thought of it. Two boys from Somerset, sixteen years between them in titles and even more in age, linked closer than anyone could imagine.

Jenson has never been able to be subtle about the way Lando gets under his skin, making him smile and stammer through interviews, defending him harder than his own team can be bothered at times. But Lando has a championship fight to focus on. He doesn’t have time for more than a quick chat, a quick fuck to let off steam, the occasional late-night phone call.

And that’s fine. Jenson understands. Better than most, he constantly reminds Lando when he gets a bit guilty about it.

“You’ve got bigger things to worry about.”

Lando’s face pinches in on itself, but he doesn’t disagree.

In a city like Vegas, Jenson figured he could at least get a drink out of him. A quick stop at a bar before Lando went off to celebrate a better-than-expected result, or back to his hotel room to sleep off a mediocre race and be ready for the next two that really mattered. The offer would always be there, as long as Lando will allow.

This is different though. Jenson nods his way through the rest of his broadcast duties, spewing some nonsense about the implications of Haas ending up on the lower ends of the points—good for them but Jenson isn’t particularly bothered. Internally, he’s busy coming up with a new plan.

--

The moment they get the all-clear from the producer, Jenson bolts. Someone suggests going to a casino but he brushes them off—says he's a bit knackered, makes up some excuse about time zones while he's hunched over his phone, searching for the nearest liquor store. There's about fifty right off the strip, also selling various combinations of weed, guns, and sex toys, but the closest one that looks like it stocks ciders will have to do.

It's what he promised on the broadcast, after all. Lando has no way of knowing that, of course, but Jenson knows he likes his drinks sweet and low on alcohol, so he can pretend he's not really drinking this year. Vague protestations before he usually gives in to whatever Jenson is offering.

He throws on a baseball cap and pops on his glasses so he can avoid being recognized as he clears the paddock and heads down the road, but everyone he passes is either too intoxicated or too wrapped up in their own eventful evenings to pay him any mind. He dodges a man vomiting into the gutter and graciously declines a woman on the corner in a short leather skirt, bee-lining for the short grey building with the neon red sign.

He's blasted with florescent lighting and too-loud pop music as soon as he walks in. Every damn building in this city is always playing music, inside and out. He didn't mind it when he was younger and visiting Vegas for a bit of fun, but now that he's older and traveling for work, he finds it unexpectedly grating.

"Ciders?" Jenson yells at the man behind the register. He doesn't mean to shout, but he's just been speaking over the noise in the paddock, and his nerves are fried, and there's sweat running down the back of his neck thinking of Lando coming out of his horrible engineering meeting with no one there to properly comfort him.

Whatever the reason, the clerk is entirely unfazed. He doesn't even look up from his magazine as he wordlessly points towards the back of a refrigerated aisle.

There isn't a great selection, the few ciders on offer buried behind shelves and shelves of discounted 12- and 24-packs of cheap beer, so Jenson does the best he can. He picks the brand that comes from closest to home and calls it a day. He grabs a twenty from his wallet and tells the clerk to keep the change as he barrels out the door.

It's nearing four in the morning by the time he makes it back to the paddock. He hides the bottles of cider under his jacket as he goes through the turnstiles, but security has all but clocked out. No one but engineers and team staff are still around, slowly trickling their way out to get ready for the long flight to Qatar. But the lights are still on at McLaren—Jenson can see that from a mile away.

He positions himself near the motorhome entrance, leaning against a wall of planters like he just happened to stop there to check his phone, trying to catch his breath as it fogs out in front of him in the chill of the desert night.

He's still breathing heavily when Lando emerges a few minutes later. He'd huddled in a stack of coats, black hood pulled up to hide his face from the last waiting cameras, but Jenson's full attention snaps to him instantly. He'd know Lando anywhere—in a crowded room with the lights turned low, passing briefly in a busy corridor. Even if they were the last two people on earth, Jenson reckons he'd still feel that magnetic pull leading them back together.

Lando's eyes slowly drift over, and Jenson sees the faintest flicker of a smile pull at the corner of his lips when he notices him waiting. He holds his breath for what feels like hours while Lando says his last goodbyes and dodges the cameras to come meet Jenson in his inconspicuous corner.

He doesn't have the words, so he simply holds an arm out. A shrug, a peace offering, whatever Lando wants to see it as.

Without breaking stride, Lando walks straight up to him and wraps his arms around Jenson's waist, burying his face in his chest. It's not tight or desperate—his shallow breaths don't feel like he wants to cry—but a gentle acknowledgement of comfort: "this sucks, but I'm glad you're here."

Of course Jenson hugs him back. Not the way he wants to, with fingers tangled in his curls, carrying him off away from all of the messiness and the hurt. But enough to make his point.

"Brought you a drink," Jenson says, gesturing to the pack of bottles when Lando pulls away. "If you want."

He gets about half of a proper smile from Lando when he sees the packaging. Big British flag and rolling green hills. Not exactly subtle on Jenson's part.

"Thanks."

Lando turns a bottle over in his hand a few times, eyes glazed over as he thinks of something else, then shoves it into the deep pocket of his overcoat.

"Do you want to come back to mine for a bit?"

Jenson's heart leaps into his throat. Lando's gaze is somewhere off in the middle distance, not making eye contact, but the strain in his voice is unmistakable.

"Sure," Jenson says. "Whatever you need."

Lando nods and turns for the exit, weakly gesturing for Jenson to follow. Which he does, free hand in his pocket so he doesn't do something ridiculous like put an arm around Lando's shoulder or try to hold his hand. That has to wait until they're in private—for Lando to crawl into his lap, to trail light kisses down his jawline, to beg Jenson to touch him.

This is pure, self-indulgent fluff. Please do not interrogate the anatomy/physics too hard. I'm not an entomologist. Thanks.

I started writing this as some goofy, slightly-inappropriate work relationship fluff...but it kind of turned into a story on workplace burnout and finding joy in the everyday. Whoops!

Surprise, they're back! Major spoilers for the original fic; go read that first if you haven't.

I was going to post a short drabble to line up with when these events happen in the actual timeline (aka real life) but it got out of hand and I didn't want to wait until Saturday. So this fic universe is now unfolding in real time.