"Max."

Max doesn't move. Lando looks past him to where there's an empty tequila handle on the nightstand, sides sticky with drips from long pours. Lando can fucking smell the tequila, like it's in the bedding with them. He averts the path of his eyes so he doesn't look at Max's back again as he scans the rest of the room: sock on the armchair, Lando's linen shirt on a lamp, the pillows on the love seat so disrupted Lando only assumes they started there before making it to the bed.

"Max?" Lando almost whispers.

Finally, Max stirs. It's like the soft, unsure tone of Lando's voice reached him more than the snapping one. He rubs his eyes before he opens them, focusing on Lando on the other side of the bed with his first blink.

"Bob?" he says, voice rough.

Lando feels his stomach fucking flip. He's going to be sick. He watches Max wake up, each blink bringing an awareness to his features that is more than Lando can stomach.

When Lando swallows, it's audible. Max follows suit. There's a long, heavy beat of silence between them.

With the influx of normies in fandom since covid, we find more and more that there are people who do not like traditional fandom's activities and weirdness appealing and want to treat gif artists and fan artists and fic writers as "content creators" to consume rather than other members of a community to interact with.

There has also been a major increase in fans of f1, especially in an online fandom way, over the last few years. This is not inherently bad, and I am even one of them. But I do think it has bred a whole host of fans who don't engage with the sport and fandom the same as before. here are people who heard about F1 through DTS or tiktok or whatever and consumed that and only that. I encounter more and more fans that 1) don't even watch races and 2) do nothing to learn even recent history of f1 and then operate in a way where they assume there is nothing else to know and no greater context for the sport other than the season they jumped into F1 through. And then to use myself as an example of the opposite, I came into f1 through DTS but I am also a traditional fandom person. So I threw my whole attention into F1 and watched old races (although admittedly I still have a LOT more to get through) and watched old content and learned lore and deep dove abandoned accounts and and and. I hyperfixated. I learned everything that I could.

But we see these new, consumption based fans in the erasure of driver's personal histories (or at least this I where I feel I have seen it the most). Fans who don't realize or don't even know what Max's 2023 dominance looked like. Fans who don't realize Lando was in slop back marker and midfield cars for years before the McLaren improved. Fans who don't now Fernando is a champion. Fans who don't know Pierre lost his seat on Red Bull. Fans who don't know how Yuki was dragged through the mud before finally getting that Red Bull seat. People who don't know Daniel and Jules were friends.

I know when there is years of lore, it can be intimidating to jump into. But traditional fandom types always do and will. When I got into the MCU and Stucky, I wasn't interested in comics at ALL but I wanted to know what else there was about them when there's multiple versions of those characters in their own canon. So I did the research to figure out where I could jump into the comics and I read my way through the Winter Soldier storyline just for that ship. And this influx of non-fandom types won't put in that effort/aren't interested in it.

So ships like landoscar and lestappen get big because there is already a lot of fic about them and it's easily consumable because you don't need to know them to read this fic because it's easy fic written with little regard for who it is actually about. And I can tell you that the people who really care about these ships feel that there is a LOT of bad fic for them, that isn't reflecting who the drivers really are and is obviously just an excuse to write easy romcoms with their faces (and not their personalities) attached.

Landoscar's popularity stems from (I believe) the enigmaticness of Lando, combined with McLaren largely marketing towards a younger f1 fanbase. They post Taylor Swift album art edits, embrace trends, etc. And they have two drivers in the younger half of the grid. This leads the newer fans (largely younger fans) to ship them as they are more accessible and marketed more towards them.

With Lestappen, I have to argue with you. Because lestappen is BORN from lore and lore only. They had their brief title fight in 2022, but otherwise they are born from the inchident video and their birthdays and Max recommending Charles to take his karting seat and Jos saying that Max and Charles would fight one another forever. They have SO much lore. But this also doesn't mean the fic embraces it, and I can tell you that people who really care about lestappen are frustrated by the lack of good characterization and lack of respect for who Max and Charles are irl.

Because what you find when writing these big ships, is that people just consume and consume and consume but don't comment or interact. They read fic as content created for them but don't engage and don't see it as a conversation. One of my friends has some of the highest hit count lestappen one shots in early 2024 but thought no one liked it because people didn't leave comments. And I think this is the normies coming in, consuming, and leaving. They don't see it as art or a bid for connection or don't even recognize that there is someone behind the keyboard who is real.

Most of the embassies are filled this week, visiting for the World Cup. It means this party in the back of a club in one of the more elite parts of Madrid is about as debaucherous as it gets outside of a private home. Carlos practically gapes at what some of the women are wearing, didn't know the children of foreign dignitaries even had dresses like that in their closets. At least his outfit doesn't stick out amongst the men, just a button up and slacks. He runs his hand through his hair, to mess it up even more than it naturally is. To look less put together. It's fitting.

Martim leads him and Teto around, introducing Carlos to people he can't hear the names of over the music bass. The whole room is clouded with smoke, enough he assumes there is a fog machine until he puts two-and-two together with the smell. It's vape smoke and cigarettes and cigar all mixed into one, sickly sweet but also biting and rancid on the tongue when he dares to speak.

Martim leads them to a big booth on the edge of the room, velvet cushions covered in people who barely look older than teens at a glance; girls wearing a pound of makeup and the boys bright-eyed and posturing so much it circles back around to make them seem young.

There's a boy in the middle of it all, one arm across the back of the booth behind his buddy as he rubs his jaw with the other, futile mustache on his lip. He's chewing gum slowly as he tells a story, and everyone seems to be paying attention to him, hanging off of each word as he articulates them for maximum impact, working his crowd.

Martim slides into the end of the booth and Carlos follows. The boy stops himself mid sentence, huge grin cracking across his face as he spots them.

"Martim! And who's this?" He asks. As he turns, the thickness of his neck flexes, the teenage thought in Carlos's head suddenly gone. Carlos can see the gum trapped in his teeth beside his pointy canines, something simultaneously so boyish but succubus about him.

"Lando, this is Carlos. Carlos, Lando."

Lando leans across the people between the drinks on the table to shake Carlos's hand.

"Man needs a drink," Lando says, the smile still on his face. It seems permanent, like life just makes him gleeful.

Before Martim or Carlos can respond, someone appears at the edge of the table, slides each of them a glass of something clear, on the rocks.

Martim leans close. "Lando always throws these," he tells Carlos. "Sorta known for it."

Carlos can see why. It's like Lando is the personification of the party. Even as he clearly commands the table, he looks debauched, hair so ruffled and shirt slightly wrinkled Carlos thinks maybe he already hooked up with someone here, and upon closer inspection, perhaps that is exactly what Lando wants everyone to think. Carlos doesn't know which is more intriguing.

As Carlos is wondering if Lando's buttons are offset--third button in the second hole of his plain, white shirt--Lando catches him looking. Carlos tries to play it off, lifts his glass to sip without immediately looking away from Lando, but the strength of the drink catches him off guard, so he coughs as it goes down. It's the least cool thing he could have done. Lando smiles.

"Carlos, are you having a good time?" he asks. Only, he says his name like Cah-los and it's clearly a British accent but mutated into something else, something gathered and Frankensteined across travels. Stamped dozens of times in his passport.

"This is... not my usual kind of party," Carlos admits, gesturing to the room. He's hyper aware of the people between them listening, all a part of the conversation even as Carlos and Lando do not look away from one another. "Is... unbehaving. For me."

Carlos swallows hard. He doesn't want Lando to think he disapproves, or is making fun. But he wants to be truthful. Boys on their knees in his quarters is as deviant as Carlos is, but Lando has cornered the market on something else.

"Are you having fun?" Lando asks with a head tilt that's so puppyish, Carlos almost reacts.

Carlos shrugs. He has not been here long, can still be entertained by simply letting his eyes wander the room, even if they've been fixed on Lando for some time now. He's more entertaining.

Lando pulls his arm off of the back of the booth and leans forwards, a pout-ful frown painting over his smile. "I like my guests to have fun," Lando says, sweeping three empty glasses out of the way and revealing a mirror sitting on the table top, a curled twenty beside it.

Carlos slowly looks back up at Lando. He doesn't know what his face is doing.