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Lando disagrees.
He is well aware of the reputation he carries, the facade he has created, the curse he spells on his own name.
He disagrees with the penalties he receives, the strategy decisions the team makes, the questions he receives in the media pen. Lando disagrees with the colour of the carpet in the hospitality, the food that Oscar eats at the engineering table, he disagrees with his parents.
Lando, despite the opinion of vast majority, isn’t stupid. Sometimes he worries that his tendency to please and satisfy will drive him to madness, with the way he entertains everything everyone believes.
There are days when people believe he is funny, so he makes jokes and spends hours in the garage retelling stories to his mechanics. Some days people think he is going to be a world champion, so he goes out and wins. Sometimes people say he is washed so he leaves the garage and crashes his car in Q3. There are days when people claim he is sensitive, so he beats himself up on the radio and then lands some stray punches in the media pen afterwards. Most of the days people call him cantankerous.
Each and every single one of those days Oscar calls him baby.
Lando disagrees - he thinks Oscar is one of the most emotional, passionate and vivid people he has ever met. In some ways he knows that they are cut from the same cloth, they both run with the narrative of what everyone wants them to be. Just like Lando, Oscar doesn’t try to correct the direction, once he had been crowned an ice-man, he started keeping all his warmth and passion behind his teeth.
But there are days like today, when Lando wakes up before his dream is really over so he can’t really remember what it was about. When Lando wakes up like this, though, he believes that the reason he can’t recall his dreams is because he has died in his sleep and woken up in the place he had been dreaming about.
His mum thinks it’s because he used to get breathing spells at night when he was younger, she says it must have been so confusing to his tiny mind that it decided that it’s possible to die in your sleep but wake up in the morning. His therapist believes that’s why he gets night horrors - once he starts dreaming, and if the dream happens to be a nightmare, his brain gets so terrified of waking up in it and having to live it, that it spirals and sends him into a hysteria.
But it doesn’t really matter, because today Lando doesn’t wake up in frenzy - today Lando wakes up with a deep breath and curled fingers.
He knows the smell of the sheets and the press of cotton against his cheek, he recognises the warmth on his back and the rhythm of breath against his spine.
Lando decides he loves this life before he has opened his eyes.
It takes him just about four heartbeats to turn around and open his eyes. He can tell that Oscar is only halfway asleep, about to wake up but not exactly there yet. There is happiness in burrowing in his chest and knowing that Oscar will pull him closer even in sleep. There is happiness in the knowledge that once he will wake up, he will refuse to open his eyes for two minutes but when Oscar will have made his peace with the day and finally face the morning, his eyes, squinting and heavy, will crinkle in the corners as he will find Landos own eyes looking up at him.
But Oscar isn’t there yet, so Lando takes his time daydreaming, remembering.
He knows it’s not a race weekend, his stomach isn’t jittering and his mind isn’t clouded in the haze that the sleeping pills he takes on race days usually leaves.
So it must be an off week. He does, however, feel an ache in his bones and sorta fluttering feeling in his chest so he has raced recently. The next thing that Lando acknowledges is the lack of movement in his feet, so he isn’t restless - it must have went well.
It is once his body has bloomed in this pleasant calmness that a rough, but rich voice hums somewhere in his hair.
“G’mornin.”
Sometimes Lando wonders if Oscars habit of calling every single morning good is his way of manifesting, because god knows he doesn’t believe it. Oscar hates mornings just about as much as he hates loosing.
Lando has to put all his effort into retreating from his hiding place in Oscars chest to look up at him. To look up at squinting, heavy eyes that crinkle in the corners as they meet his own.
“Hi.” Lando doesn’t even really recognise his own voice, but Oscar is smiling and sighing and pulling him back into his chest so Lando goes easy.
He knows that they could easily waste a day just like this, tangled in each other, covered in cotton and rustled only by the breeze that occasionally escapes through the window. But Lando has woken up in a life that he loves, a life that he knows, so he decides that he will let the day pass by in a different life - this one, he is going to live.
Oscar is gently rocking him side to side and leaving tiny kisses on the crown of his head so it comes out muffled, when he says “we are going to live today, Oscar.”
“Hm, baby?” Oscar mumbles against his temple so he has no choice but to wrestle out of his hold, roll Oscar on his back and take a seat on his stomach.
“We are going to go today.”
Lando can see the confused glint in his eyes, but there is happiness in the way Oscars smile doesn’t fade, his hands keep drawing circles on his hips and he nods his head. “Alright, where to?”
Usually Lando would open his mouth and words would tumble out, and he would roll with whatever his mind has decided he wants. But today he turns his head, looks outside the open window and watches the wind pulling the branches on the trees, considers the dark gray clouds rolling in and searches his body for a feeling, a pull for anything at all.
Lando thinks about the way, if he were anywhere else, his body would ache to feed the expectation. If Oscar were anyone else, his mind would rack itself, trying to decide what Oscar wants him to be like, what Oscar wants him to want.
Lando thinks about that place. The one, that everyone believes they live in.
He knows that living the lives they do, doing the job they do, people create reputations around them, run narratives that feed their minds.
When people think about Lando and Oscar, they imagine them in a place that craves and aches and wants. In that place they always want. A championship, a win, a trophy, a calm day, a pitying glance, an admiring crowd, a loud praise.
Lando disagrees. In this place he doesn’t want anything at all. Where he is, where they are, he is already pleased.
“You choose. I don’t mind.”
Lando thinks about that person, the one that everyone believes they are. Somehow, most people consider them all to be a storm, a lightning, an earthquake.
Lando disagrees. He thinks that they are more like an ocean. Not in its power and unpredictability, but in its possibility.
“Ok, baby.”
Oscars smile is all sunshine, all warmth and emotion as he looks up at Lando. The fluttering feeling spreads like honey from the tip of Landos ears to the soles of his feet.
When he leans down to kiss him, Lando thinks about this place. This life that he wakes up in and doesn’t have to care about whether or not he has played the part, doesn’t have to worry if he has fed the beast, doesn’t have to wonder if he has been what people wanted.
He doesn’t have to wonder if Oscar is pleased.
“I love you.” He murmurs against Oscars lips and basks in the happiness of knowing that in a place where he doesn’t have to be anything, he still wants to be loudly in love.
“I love you more.” Oscar whispers.
Secretly, Lando disagrees.