#oscarisms

2. Heat

Lando dumped the plate of ill-presented noodles on the table in front of Oscar. Lando, in a past moment of intelligence, had decided it was time for both of them to try the black packaged instant noodles.

Lando watched as Oscar looked up from his phone, set it beside him, and stared at the bowl. He plonked himself in the chair opposite his teammate, a wicked grin slowly spreading across his face.

“Whoever loses rock, paper, scissors has to take the first mouthful.”

Oscar groaned, already accepting his terrible ability in rock, paper, scissoring. Both threw their object when Lando yelled shoot, his rock decisively beating Oscar’s scissors.

Oscar sighed, moving to pick up the fork and staring regrettably at the bowl of red, worm-looking noodles in front of him. He swirled the fork, gathering a clump and bringing it towards his mouth.

Lando looked at him expectantly, watching as the noodles went slowly into Oscar’s mouth and disappeared down his throat. Oscar stared at Lando for a few seconds, face absolutely blank, before red bloomed across his cheeks and his eyebrows rose.

Lando leaned forward expectantly, waiting for Oscar to do something to indicate the level of hotness. He had to ignore how Oscar’s cheeks were bright red because that didn’t mean much with him.

“Well!?” Oscar’s eyebrows didn’t move, still perched in that exact spot they always found.

Lando slightly panicked, stared at only the small, almost unperceptible twitches of Oscar’s eyebrow. He couldn’t tell if this would be the end of Oscar, a silent but agonising death from noodles, or if he actually enjoyed the savage red worms.

Lando couldn’t take it anymore, grabbing his own fork and shoving a mouthful of the noodles in his mouth. He immediately choked on the spice, spluttering on the rest of his bowl. He coughed, the entirety of his mouth burning. He was sure smoke would be pouring out of his ears, nose, mouth, and eyes, like a volcano ready to explode.

Oscar looked up, watching Lando struggling before letting out a loud laugh, choking himself on the kicking heat in his mouth.

“Grab the milk!” Lando grabbed at his throat, pointing dramatically at the fridge.

Oscar stumbled to the fridge, took out the bottle and didn’t bother trying to find a glass. Flicking off the lid, he poured the liquid down his throat, sighing as the heat started to subside. The bottle was crudely pulled from his hand by a desperate Lando, before he chugged the milk.

“Never again!” Lando swore, hugging the bottle to his chest.

“I told you it was bad.” Oscar snorted.

“You told me shit! I can’t read this,” he gestured to Oscar’s forehead before trudging back towards the table with the milk bottle.

3. Battles

Lando, for their few hours off, had challenged Oscar to a sim battle. He’d tried to convince the engineers that it’d help for the upcoming weekend, but he didn’t know how convincing he was. They just shrugged and walked off, leaving the two up to their own devices.

Oscar had sat back in his seat, watching as Lando fiddled around with his settings. He’d let out a quiet sigh, stretching his leg briefly before fiddling absent-mindedly with the steering wheel.

When Lando had finally deemed himself ready for the match, he’d looked over to see if Oscar was ready. Except, he’d turned to find Oscar’s eyebrows raised. They hadn’t even started, and Oscar looked smug. Smug. Lando didn’t even know what Oscar had to be smug about. It’s not like he was currently staring at the screen, seeing OP81 plastered in the top three spots. No, because if both he and Lando looked at the screen, it would be Lando being smug.

“What?” Lando asked, completely deadpan.

Oscar glanced over, his face scrunching a little.

“What?”

“Why are you smug already?”

Oscar laughed, confused. “I’m not?”

“You clearly are! Your eyebrows are smug!”

Oscar snorted lightly, still looking genuinely lost. “What have I got to be smug about? We haven’t even started.”

Lando huffed, turning to start the race. Oscar shrugged lightly before turning away from Lando and gripping the wheel.

Five laps in, and Lando had somehow spun, and Oscar was ridiculously too far ahead. When Lando had glanced over, the same eyebrow raise was settled back on Oscar’s face.

“Stop! Stop projecting your smugness!”

Oscar quickly glanced over.

“I’m not smug! I’m too concentrated on not binning this corner.”

“Your eyebrows are doing the thing!”

Oscar sighed. “I am not smug, I’m concerned about your suspension.”

Lando stilled, because oh. Oh.

They were concerned eyebrows?

“But they don’t look any different to the smug ones!”

“Have you seen my smug eyebrows?” Oscar challenged.

Lando huffed indignantly. “Yes! The goggle soccer thing.”

Oscar shrugged. “Okay, fair, but that was a good reason to be smug. You’ve seen me with a soccer ball before.”

Lando huffed again. Those eyebrows were exactly the same if he remembered correctly. How did one eyebrow raise have about fifty emotions attached to it?

4. Karaoke

Lando had cursed the entire media and marketing team for the media content for the weekend GP. He’d thought when they’d been forced to finish the song lyrics for the Austin GP years ago, that’d be the end of singing. How wrong he’d been.

When they approached the idea of karaoke, Lando and Oscar had tried to stage an uprising. Both were five seconds away from running opposite directions and hiding to escape the horrific idea.

Yet the team had wrangled them up and sat them on a couch, thankfully this time without the hats, feather boas, and odd objects scattered around them. Lando and Oscar had just exchanged long-suffering looks before trying to muster up some form of a smile for the camera.

It started like most of the media did, with Lando trying to wrangle up enthusiasm and trying to shove it onto Oscar. It had started relatively easily, with classics like Hotel California, Sweet Caroline, or even The Nights.

Lando had managed to get in, but by the second song, Oscar had managed to turn it around and surprise everyone in the room totally. Lando had been belting his lungs out to a Justin Bieber song when he heard Oscar’s lower voice join in. He’d swivelled his head around so fast he was sure he heard a snap coming from some muscle. His voice dwindled out completely, leaving just Oscar to carry the song’s ending.

Oscar turned to look at him, his eyebrow raising slightly. Lando just stared at him, electing to say nothing and make Oscar stop.

“Okay, good, we have lovely harmonies, next!” Lando managed to choke out. Oscar just nodded solemnly before moving to tap the play button.

During the next few songs, every time Lando so much as moved, the same eyebrow reacted. A small, uncomfortable shift: eyebrow up. A pause to catch his breath that was longer than five seconds: eyebrow up. A random pause for Lando to contemplate his life decisions: both eyebrows up.

Lando was spiralling, and by the end of it, he’d sung about twelve percent of the lyrics, and spent the other eighty-eight trying to figure out if Oscar was judging him, hating it as much as he did, or if he was always that talented at singing.

Since when did Lando feel so threatened by an eyebrow raise?

5. Lego

Lando never particularly minded Lego. He didn’t always have the patience to build an entire set by himself. Or really just one bag. But he still could appreciate it from afar. Riding in the life-size ones at Miami and the podium car at Vegas were extremely fun.

Yet, he knew Oscar loved Lego, so he thought building it as a media activity wouldn’t be too bad. He could always start pestering Oscar if it got too boring anyway.

What he didn’t expect was the level of competition that would ignite between them as soon as the media team said, ‘best MCL40 wins’. It quickly became all-out war.

The issue, however, was that Lando never took up Lego Technic building. Staring at the pieces in front of him, Lando felt the prickly feeling of being utterly lost swirl in his stomach. Looking over at Oscar, the feeling intensified. Oscar was completely invested in building his replica, and Lando already knew it would look similar to the real set.

Lando groaned dramatically, slumping in his chair.

“I can’t even build a Lego set with instructions, how do I build one without?” He pouted, Oscar only briefly looking up.

After a few more seconds of moping, Lando began to try to piece together a remotely recognisable front wing. He wouldn’t admit the level of struggle it took to find pieces that worked well enough to take the curved shape, and then fit onto the nose of the car.

At one point, Oscar looked up from his, in Lando’s opinion, though he’d never admit it out loud, award-winning replica to stare at Lando’s… very much not award-winning front wing. Oscar didn’t say anything, just silently raised an eyebrow and watched as Lando sorted through miscellaneous pieces to try to build the nose of the car.

Lando looked up once he noticed Oscar was staring at him. The first thing he clocked was the raise of the eyebrow, and the way Oscar wasn’t even continuing his car. Lando immediately felt defensive, looking down at his mess of a car.

“Stop judging, Osc!”

Oscar shook his head. “I’m not judging, I’m just trying to understand the thought process.”

Lando scowled. “There is no thought process. Clearly. Take your judgement elsewhere. Creative liberalism is not made to be mocked.”

Oscar laughed lightly. “I’m not judging! I’m trying to understand why your front wing is curved inwards and not outwards.”

Oh.

Lando looked down at the front wing. He could understand how Oscar thought it looked more like a smiley face than a curved-in wing. Honestly, it looked more like a Twistie than a wing.

Lando looked back up at Oscar, his eyebrow still raised, but a look of amusement in his eyes, and a small twitch of his lips. Lando narrowed his eyes slightly. “Rigghhtt… now what do you call that expression?”

"You're an idiot."

Lando needed to start a dictionary of Oscarisms and eyebrows. He couldn’t understand his teammates' eyebrows and expressions at all, especially as they didn’t change angle, direction, or height at all between differing expressions.

1. Overthoughts

Lando sat on the bench at the back of the garage, mindlessly swinging his legs and staring down at the phone in his palms. He considered skipping the song playing through his headphones, his finger hovering about the next button. Movement out of the corner of his eye had him turning to look towards Oscar’s side.

Oscar had been missing most of the day, which Lando had found a bit odd. Oscar was usually always around in the garage, trying to get the maximum out of the car and himself before a weekend. Yet, Lando hadn’t seen him at all.

Until now, that was.

Oscar stood tensely near the back of his side, turned to stare at the back of his car. His shoulders stood stiff, his fingers fidgeting slightly by his side. His engineers stayed clear of him, working around the car.

Lando quirked an eyebrow, watching as Oscar seemingly zoned out, his face turning slightly in Lando’s direction. He could see the pinched expression on Oscar’s face, the way his jaw was set, and his eyes bored holes aimlessly wherever he stared. Lando noticed the raised eyebrows, twitching slightly.

Lando pushed himself off the bench, walking slowly towards Oscar.

“Hey, Osc?”

Oscar’s eyes flew to Lando, trying to school his face into a blank expression. His eyebrows dropped, and his lips smoothed out from where they had been pulled tight.

“Yeah?”

“Are you… okay? You haven’t been around all day.”

Oscar tried to push the tension away from his shoulders, Lando could tell. He shrugged.

"Yeah."

Lando fought every urge to roll his eyes. He knew that if Oscar was wound tighter than a spring, something was clearly wrong.

"Uh-huh."

Oscar glanced at him, an eyebrow raised.

"What?"

"There! They're doing that thing again?"

"Whose doing what thing?" Oscar frowned.

"Your eyebrows. It's ticking - you're frustrated, annoyed, and a tad stressed." Lando nodded once, proud of his analytical deductions. "Please let me hide before you throw something, I'm already suffering from that ball to the jugular."

Oscar tried to fight the small lopsided smile that ticked at the edges of his lips. It didn't last long, the edges dropping again. Lando nudged his shoulder as Oscar dropped his eyes to the floor.

"I think I messed up." He rubbed the back of his neck. "It was nothing big!" He hastily added.

"Just… one of those dumb little things you overthink but everyone else has probably forgotten, you know? It's just… frustrating."

"If you haven't forgotten about it, it obviously means something to you."

Oscar ran a hand down his face. "But it's stupid!"

Lando just nodded slowly, fiddling with his fingers.

"Yeah, well, welcome to being a Formula 1 Driver. Great to have you join us." Lando mock saluted, a stupid grin crossing his face.

Oscar just huffed, the smile crossing his face and holding.

"There we go!"

Oscar raised his eyebrows in question.

"Better."

"Oh, for goodness sake." Oscar rolled his eyes, walking off with a half-hearted birdie in Lando's direction. Lando still heard the small laugh as he exited the garage and considered it a win.

And huh.