Chapter Text
Lando didn’t believe in magic. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. Sure, he liked games with elves and trolls, always making jokes in the stream with Max Fewtrell as to who looked like what ugly creature on their screens. Spells were limited to practiced attacks that would lower either of their health bars. Potions were items in their inventory to heal after facing a particularly nasty boss.
In Lando’s opinion, the only real magic happened when he reached the checkered flag first, managing to maintain all 800 kgs of papaya machinery on pole for 52 laps. The feeling was euphoric and unbeatable.
So euphoric in fact, that he failed to notice that engine failure was happening a curve ahead in time to get out of the way of Ollie’s Haas. It must’ve just happened because there was no warning of a red flag. He’d slammed into his car head-on, managing somehow to only break an ankle and pull a few muscles. That had been the end of his contention for the 2025 championship.
The sudden crash was a good enough representation of how it felt to go from winning his home race to suddenly dropping out for the remainder of the season. Ollie had refused to get out of the Haas, probably thinking Lando would’ve taken out his anger on him, until he noticed Lando limping his way.
They both walked away with help from the stewards. The standing ovation from the grandstands was clouded by the pain and the dawning horror of feeling his dream slipping between his fingers.
The following weeks were a whirlwind of hospital visits, meetings with McLaren, a short surgery and well wishes from the remainder of the grid and fans.
A downward spiral would be a better description than a whirlwind. Lando had worked on himself with his therapist enough to recognize the early signs of his depression rearing its ugly head around the corner.
Through the very same angel from above he hired as a therapist is how he came to his new living arrangements for the foreseeable future. He’s still got a contract for 2026, and how Pato and Daniel seemed to be doing in terms of points was a near guarantee of his seat the following year. For now, he has a couple weeks to “step down for physical and mental health reasons” or so the press release had said.
She had recommended he step away from anything Formula 1 related for at least a week or two, which is why he brought all of his gaming equipment to the quaint cottage in the Kingcombe Meadows. It was two and a half hours away from the McLaren factory in Woking, which wasn’t much for the man that hopped from continent to continent every weekend. Max F. was excited to hear just how involved Lando planned to be at Quadrant and streaming his playthroughs.
The first few days were uneventful, getting himself situated, setting up his gaming kit and getting groceries delivered. His hand itched to see how the media was reacting to his “break,” but he knew he’d get trapped in that spiral again. So he cooked basic breakfasts, reheated frozen dinners carefully planned by Jon and his team, and picked slow games to ease his way back in. Moving about was hard, especially with the broken ankle, but he had already tried to rot in bed and wallow in his depression back in Monaco, so he forced himself to use the stupid crutches that hurt his armpits to get around the space.
The cottage itself was fairly cozy, a small structure of weathered limestone walls giving the exterior a soft, warm tone, glowing gold in the late afternoon sun, a small porch with two wooden chairs and a small tea table, laden with empty glass vases, things of beauty that would catch the sunlight and refract it in multiple hues of gold. This is where Lando found himself, sweaty on the floor, heaving himself against a wooden panel to work through the physical therapy instructions sent by Jon. His ankle was on fire, but he had a few reps left until he could call it a success. He ached to be back on track, to be in the place where all drivers became equal.
Jon had explicitly instructed him to stop at any point if his pain went from mild discomfort to any form of swelling. Lando couldn’t, he felt this was the only way to speed up his return to racing. The fear in his brain quieted down when he was doing anything racing related. He wouldn’t (couldn’t) stop.
Which is exactly how he ended up with a grapefruit for an ankle, huffing and puffing while splayed out like a starfish, staring at the sky. The edge of the roof was decorated with pieces of fabric and string, he noted. The sweat running down his neck made the curls there slick down in obedience.
He felt watched, the cool breeze from the meadow making the hairs in the back of his neck stand up. He glanced over to the treeline, only to see the tail end of what seemed to be a doe darting away.
It would be a couple of days later, when he would run into a man of myth and magic, and find out that dangers more perilous than racing lurked in the shadows.
For tonight, he soaked his swollen foot in an ice bath, hopping onto a stream with Max on the sim. They laughed and joked, reading well wishes from fans in the comments. He napped and slept a healthy amount for the first time in 19 years, hearing the skittering of animals and the rustling of leaves outside.
This went on for a couple of days. He would wake up, try to read, try to meditate, and stream his games with Max. He only succeeded at the last one of the three.
“Mate, the fans are saying your eye bags are gone. I reckon they were part of your personality.” Fewtrell had been with Lando for the longest time, in the ups and downs of racing. It was comforting to be connected to him during his break.
“What can I say, a few days in the same time zone does wonders for my sleeping schedule.” He joked back, pulling his phone out after it pinged in his pocket.
-Hope you’re doing better. Ollie is inconsolable. x
That was from Ocon, Ollie’s teammate. Lando was surprised that in all the time he wallowed in the despair of dropping out of contention for the drivers’ championship, he hadn’t even once blamed his fellow Brit. Ollie was young, a 20 year old rookie, and Lando had made plenty of mistakes in his early career. He just didn’t have it in him to hate him for a mistake he easily could’ve made at the same age.
No worries mate, I’m healing. Tell him he can come see me if he’s in the Dorchester area after Hungary. No hard feelings. - x
He hoped that would settle the matter. Lando truly felt bad about the incident and he truly hoped this wouldn’t put a damper on Ollie’s rookie season. He found that focusing on others made him wallow less about his own situation. He doesn’t know what his therapist would say about that, probably being confronted with Lando using “healthy coping mechanisms” but also his “shifting the focus outwards to avoid wallowing in his own sorrows.”
It was as healthy as he could, for now.
The rest of his gaming session felt uneventful. Max made jokes, carefully avoiding making comments about the media outlets and their coverage of Lando’s situation, he bid Lando goodnight after a couple of hours. Lando shut off his computer as soon as he logged off, avoiding the rabbit hole he so desperately sought to fall headfirst into.
Later that night, as he warmed his protein pasta, he noticed someone go past further down the road. The meadows were very secluded, so he assumed it must be a professional athlete practicing for a marathon or something, because they were gone from sight in seconds.
‘You’re a professional athlete, and here you are, eating reheated pasta and gaming your time away’ supplied the ugly side of his consciousness.
With that, he hoisted himself up, walking away from the beeping microwave and onto his porch, the crutches digging painfully into his armpits. His arms had gotten sore lately from dragging himself from side to side. He had his stretches and rehab moves listed on his phone, carefully organized by Jon and the other physicians at Mclaren.
He walked out onto the porch, firmly determined on working himself back into being an elite athlete through sheer force and determination.
He spread out the mat, feeling the last 15 minutes of sunlight warm his skin. He used those 15 minutes to stretch and bend, letting his blood circulate in a way that flushed his cheeks and made sweat drops race each other down his back.
Lando was somewhere on the last couple of hamstring stretches, ankle on fire and muscles warmed up when he heard a rustling on the trees above. A few labored breaths later, he noticed a small bird dropping from the tree and onto the dirt below. Lando saw it struggle a moment, tangled up on some hunting wire and struggling desperately. He sympathized with it, probably injured and struggling against something holding it back, its tawny feathers getting darker and darker with the rich dirt below. He hoisted himself from his mat, quickly grabbing one single crutch as he made his way to the bird.
He didn’t know what to do exactly, his years in racing precluded him from pet ownership since the age of seven, but he couldn’t just do nothing. He hobbled over, clumsily attempting a straight line towards where the bird still writhed and flapped against the line. Lando had thought hunting was prohibited in a natural reserve, so the hunting line was multiple levels of wrong.
He fell onto his knees once he reached the bird, clearly not used to using a single crutch to move so quickly. He pretty much just shoved his hands into the general area of the bird, feeling soft feathers flapping desperately in his grasp. He used one hand to grab the bird’s body, careful to not crush the delicate bones in its wings, and the other to try to remove the snare.
“Sorry. Oop-sorry, mate. Fuck, no. Wait- Sorry” he muttered a litany of curses and apologies, feeling bad for the poor animal that had no one else but Lando to try his best to free it. Albon would be so much better at this than him, his house is pretty much a zoo at this point.
Eventually, he managed to remove the snare, hoping against hope the bird wouldn’t peck his eyes out for the mistreatment.
It’s not like he could run away if so, his ankle would probably snap in two.
The bird seemed to flap around some more once Lando let it go. He bit his lip, hoping he wouldn’t have to drive back to town to get a veterinarian to check it out. He could already read the headlines, “Formula 1 driver Lando Norris, now a bird enthusiast after crashing and burning in his home race.”
Thankfully, the bird figured itself out. It seemed to check Lando out for a second or two, then it seemed to shake itself off, looking a bit miffed for, like, a bird.
“Yup, you’re welcome I guess?” Lando said as it flew away, already reaching out for his forgotten crutch. He did his best to lift himself up, careful to put all of his weight on his right leg and none on his injured ankle. With a careful, wobbly push, he got himself back up, hands now grimy after struggling with the bird. His ankle was on fire, he had absentmindedly put weight on it as he rushed to help the bird. So the return back to the porch was more of an undignified drag.
He huffed as he made his way across the dirt, thinking about how his own insecurities had made him abandon his protein pasta in favor of pushing his body into healing itself faster by stretching on the porch. The people on social media were right, he really was his own enemy.
Being so deep into his own destructive thoughts, Lando didn’t notice his sole crutch catching on a rock as he neared the steps onto the porch, but he definitely did notice when he fell chest first onto the dirt as the air was pushed out of his lungs. He felt the familiar sting of tears in his eyes. He truly had reached rock bottom. A month ago he had been McLaren’s top driver, today he was an injured nobody laying on a dirt path in a cottage his therapist had forced him to get to avoid the comments from the many people that had seen him fail epically in his own home race.
At least no one would see him in his current state, scraped up, panting, and cursing to high heaven as he scrambled to turn around and reach for the crutch.
“Need some help?” said a voice, distinctly male, from right behind him.
‘Fuck me,’ Lando thought, hoping this stranger wouldn’t just happen to be paparazzi, already snapping what could prove to be the picture that causes an F1 driver to abandon the racing world and fall off the face of the earth entirely.
“No,” huff “I just need to get myself together.” Another huff.
“Well, it’s easier to get yourself together if someone helps you up. Come on” the voice had an interesting accent, one that Lando couldn’t associate with any of the ones used in the UK.
More interesting than the accent was his face, Lando noted. The man had walked around Lando to offer him a hand, and Lando caught sight of the duality of man. This stranger had the hands and build that he would expect from a fellow driver (maybe this was the jogger he spotted earlier?), but the moles that dotted what seemed to be his entire being and the soft swoop of his hair seemed to belong more in a poem. He moved with fluid grace as he helped Lando up, the crutch already held in his other hand.
The man refused to give it back to Lando, instead motioning for them to finish the last couple of steps to the edge of the porch. Lando was mortified to feel the man offer his arm to steady himself on his way to the porch, but he didn’t seem to know Lando.
Small mercies.
Once he sat with a gentle “oof,” he was able to look up at his hero for the day. He couldn’t have been the jogger, Lando mused, unless he went home and changed really quickly in favor of some linen pants and a dark blue raw cotton shirt. His eyes darted upwards, finding that the stranger’s brown eyes were already set on his, seemingly allowing him to check him out while he stood there, unblinking.
Lando’s face flamed, which he rushed to cover up with, “I’m Lando by the way.” He tried to cover up the fact that this stranger found him on the verge of tears laying on the dirt and met him with calm collectedness. Maybe now he understands why the bird had looked miffed after he helped it get free.
The stranger cocked his head to the side, surprised. “You offer your name so easily.”
“Well, plenty of people know it, so it’s not like you couldn’t find it out easily.” Lando grumbled, checking the scrapes on his knees.
“Oh, is it? Are you like, known?” Oscar seemed genuinely curious, face inquisitive.
“Not right now, but I guess I am.” Lando answered, hissing as he tried to brush the dirt off from a particularly nasty scrape on his elbow.
“Mate, that needs more than your already dirty hands, I reckon I could help.” He said, again in that accent Lando was trying to place. Was it New Zealand? He did sound a bit like Lawson, but the vowels drew outwards instead of inwards.
“Sure, but I need to know your name if so. I’m not receiving help from a nameless person when the sun is almost down.” He joked, watching the stranger move towards where his phone, water bottle, and sweat towel lay abandoned on the porch. The man with the accent picked the towel up, squirting water from his McLaren bottle onto the towel.
“Let me think, do I want you to have my name?” The other man seemed to question it for a bit, seeming to have an internal discussion before simply blurting, “Oscar.”
Huh. Oscar. Lando liked how he said it, replacing the R with an H. It made something click in his brain.
“Oh, I know, Daniel!” Lando blurted it out quickly, seeming quite pleased with himself at having made the connection.
“Do you not like my name? Why are you assigning me a new one?” asked the other man, a new light of humour shining on his face.
“No, it’s not that. My friend, Daniel, he talks like you. You’re from Australia right?” Lando let the other man hold the wet towel up to his scrapes, gently wiping away the dirt. It stung a little, like little sparks of discomfort, but Lando was too entertained by having made the connection to notice it.
“I am.” Oscar supplied. He seemed content with his short answers, like he didn’t feel the same anxious pressure to fill the silence like Lando. Lando prodded further, only to find out the man was from Melbourne and he was here on what he called an “undefined” holiday. Lando himself was surprised to find out this information, he knew the other cottages in the area were not booked at this time, but Oscar did not seem to elaborate further. Lando himself supplied that he was born in Bristol, a solid 98km away.
“Well, Oscar. Nice to meet you.” Lando said, reaching out for the other crutch when he suddenly had an idea. “Wait, are you the guy that ran past my house earlier? That was a very fast pace there mate, are you a pro?”
“Not an athlete, definitely. Wait, you saw me?”
“Yes, you were very fast!” Lando answered, surprised at how easy it was to speak to this stranger, how quickly his humiliation went away.
Oscar seemed genuinely surprised that Lando had been able to see him. He seemed to easily pivot away from the topic, he told Lando, “Based on the crutches, I assume the ankle is not recent?”
As if on cue, Lando seemed to remember how much pain his ankle was in. He looked down and the thing seemed to pulse, almost mad at Lando for ignoring how much it hurt. It was swollen, turning a faint hue of purple. He hissed, holding the leg just a bit above it, as if he couldn’t even bring himself to touch it.
“No, it's the reason why I’m here.” he responded, grabbing the water bottle from Oscar’s hand, feeling his cool fingers as they exchanged the item. He told Oscar about his accident. How he’d run straight into a stalled car, how he’d been pressing all of his weight onto the brakes, careful to not let himself lose the car. Oscar listened, captured by the way Lando described the speed, the crash, the ambulance ride.
“Oh, so you race cars professionally?” Oscar asked, he seemed to like the concept of speed.
“I guess you could say that,” Lando responded, a smile that tinged itself with bitterness without him letting it spread on his face. He did like talking to someone that was so unfamiliar with Formula One, with his fame, his recent failures.
They spoke a little more, Lando found out Oscar had three sisters that still live in Australia. Oscar found out Lando’s parents live in a house in London, purchased by Lando himself. His older brother refused financial help out of principle, so Lando sent more to his parents so they could just “happen” to have things for his racing organization to take off.
Oscar seemed comfortable in the silence, letting Lando lead the conversation.
He looked down at Lando’s ankle, grimacing at the look of it.
“Bit of a grapefruit, ya reckon?” Oscar asked, gesturing to the ankle. He put his hand on it in a burst, like he himself hadn’t expected to just touch Lando.
Lando yelped, expecting the familiar burn, and motioned for Oscar to remove his hand. However, his cool hand did not sit heavy on the swollen articulation. It was comforting.
“I have a plate of cold pasta sitting in the microwave, and more options in my fridge, would you like some? You can come in if you have nowhere to run back to right now.” Lando gestured to the cottage, thinking about the reheatable plates and which one Oscar would pick.
“You invite me inside so carelessly, aren’t you concerned about who you grant access to your space?” Oscar asked, genuinely concerned.
“Well, when you’re me you get used to having no privacy. Besides, you ask strange things, Oscar.” Lando joked, already heaving himself upward. Oscar followed, his backward steps already telling Lando that the answer would be no.
“I’ve got to go back to my duties, but I can take you up on that offer some other day?” Oscar offered. It sounded genuine, like he did want to see Lando again in whatever context shorter one wanted, so Lando agreed.
They parted ways, Lando peeked behind him, trying to see in what direction Oscar disappeared. Oscar, however, did not stick to a specific path. Instead, he disappeared straight into the bushes.
Lando went to bed that night, questioning if the whole interaction had been real. Oscar seemed like a pretty cool, quiet guy.
When he woke up the following morning, his ankle feeling the best it had been lately, he really wondered if he had met Oscar at all. The fall had happened, right?