Work Text:
Lando sighs, wiggling deeper into his couch.
It’s post-race, post-debrief, DNF for him and a P5 for Oscar. Not ideal.
He swipes open his phone, flicking open Twitter. He’s got crazy notifs on his own account, but more often than not, he ignores those in favor of switching into his burner, cause there’s one thing that always makes him feel better.
Lando giggles at the timeline. Already one of his mutuals is scream-posting about how he hugged Oscar pre-race. Yeah, him too. Lando likes it, commenting about how hot it is, how Oscar had so effortlessly pulled Lando into his side.
Yeah, so…
This is his guilty pleasure, secretly thirsting over his unattainable teammate on Twitter. Or, X, whatever, no one calls it that.
He scrolls, saving a cute fanart of them both as aliens. Oscar's adorable in any form.
It's not all fun and games, though. Lando shoots out a reply in his latest cat fight, a girl posting an interview clip and claiming Oscar should be staying out of Lando's business. As if! That's exactly where Lando wants him.
Lando's halfway through typing another reply when there's a knock on his door.
"Come in," he calls, not looking up from his phone. The door opens and Oscar pads in, still in his race suit but with the top half tied around his waist, revealing the fireproof underneath that clings to his shoulders in a way that makes Lando's mouth go dry.
"Hey," Oscar says, settling into the chair across from him. "Rough one today."
"Yeah, tell me about it," Lando mutters, thumb hovering over the tweet button. He's written something scathing about people who don't understand that Oscar can do whatever the hell he wants, but he deletes it instead. Doesn’t wanna deal with this today, but he keeps the draft.
Oscar stretches, and Lando catches himself staring at the way his teammate's back arches. Christ. He quickly looks back at his phone, liking a thirst tweet about Oscar's post-race interview instead.
"Wanna get dinner?" Oscar asks. "Thought we could grab something, debrief properly. Kim has me off the leash since we’re going on break."
Lando's heart does something stupid in his chest. "Yeah, sounds good."
They sit in comfortable silence for a moment. Oscar's scrolling through his own phone, probably checking his texts or emails like a normal person instead of... whatever the hell Lando's doing.
Lando's about to go back and fire off that reply when Oscar speaks up.
"Oh, weird. Someone's tweeting about me from your account."
Huh?
No.
Lando's blood turns to ice. "What?"
"Yeah, @LandoNorris just retweeted 'the way oscar's fireproofs cling to his shoulders should be illegal 🥵' with a bunch of… emojis." Oscar's voice is carefully neutral. "That's... that's you, right? Your official account?"
Lando looks down at his phone in horror. He’s an idiot, a total nonce, biggest idiot to ever exist.
Lando is still logged into his main account. He never switched. He's been thirsting over Oscar from his verified, official, McLaren-tagged Twitter account.
"Oh fuck. Oh fuck fuck fuck." Lando frantically starts deleting, but it's too late. Oscar's staring at him with raised eyebrows.
"Lando, mate, there's... there's a lot of these."
Big mistake.
Huge mistake.
"This isn’t– I wasn't supposed to–" Lando's face is burning. "I have a burner account. I was supposed to be on the burner account."
"A burner?" Oscar's scrolling through Lando's liked tweets now. "Jesus, Lando. 'Oscar's hands gripping the steering wheel 🔥🔥🔥' 'the neck reveal in today's interview I'm deceased' 'OSCAR PIASTRI IN FIREPROOFS IS A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE.'"
"Stop reading them!"
"You retweeted fanart of us kissing!"
"I thought I was on my burner!"
"You've... you've been thirsting over me on Twitter?" Oscar's still using that same neutral tone, but there's something in his eyes that Lando can't quite read.
"It's not– it's just–" Lando's face is burning. "Everyone does it. It's normal. Fan behavior. I'm not being weird about it."
“You’re my fan?”
“I…” Lando opens his mouth, then closes it. "I mean... yeah, kinda? You– We’re teammates. Can’t have one without the other."
Oscar stares at him for a long moment. Then he gets this look on his face– like he's done something equally stupid and is only just realizing it.
"Oh," he says quietly. "Oh no."
"What?"
Oscar fidgets with his phone, not meeting Lando's eyes. "What's your burner handle?"
"I'm not telling you that!"
"@notnorris. That’s you, yeah?"
Lando's mouth falls open. Sue him, he thought he was funny. "How did you–"
Oscar winces. "Because I might... I might also have an account."
"Show me."
"No."
"Oscar."
"Absolutely not."
"You've seen mine!"
"That's different!"
"How is that different?"
Oscar's cheeks are going red. "Because mine is... it's worse."
"Worse how?"
"Just worse!" Oscar clutches his phone to his chest like Lando might grab it. "This is so ridiculous."
"More ridiculous than being caught thirsting over your teammate from your official account?"
"Yes!"
"Oscar, show me right now or I'm tweeting about this conversation from my main."
Oscar's eyes widen in horror. "You wouldn't."
"I’ve already right embarrassed myself. You know they’d find it."
A long pause.
Oscar slowly, reluctantly, turns his phone screen toward Lando.
@never.icyy. The bio’s short a rep list, just a ‘481' and a profile pic of Oscar’s hand on Lando’s waist. Oh, the bastard.
"Oh my god," Lando whispers, snatching the phone and scrolling through. "You're the one who's been fucking nonstop beefing with me!”
"Don't look at the tweets!" Oscar lunges forward, trying to grab his phone back, but Lando holds it out of reach.
"lando’s driving today was absolute shit, he doesn't deserve p1 when oscar's out here being perfect,'" Lando reads. "And you replied... 'literally shut up, lando's having a great season, you're just mad he’s actually giving oscar a good fight.'"
"I was defending you!"
"From me! I was having a bad day!"
"I didn't know it was you!" Oscar's face is bright red now. "You were being horrible about yourself!"
"And you were being horrible about yourself!" Lando scrolls frantically. "Look, here's where you said 'oscar's racecraft during fp2 was sloppy, how does he expect to keep the lead up’ and I called you delusional!"
"Stop reading them!"
"I blocked you last week because you said you were 'trying too hard to be the team leader!'"
"I unblocked you to tell you that my overtakes lack aggression and you called me a fake fan!" Oscar covers his face with his hands. "This is mortifying."
"We've been having beef with each other for months."
Oscar’s hands drop. “Well, none of this is relevant now, how are you gonna cover your ass after those retweets?”
Lando shrugs. “I’ll say it was an admin who forgot to log out, who cares? Apart from my PR team taking away my social privileges I’ll be fine. You’ve seen what the Merc admin gets up to, no one will believe this was me.”
“Classy.” Oscar snorts.
Lando glances over. They still haven’t talked about it.
"Show me your thirst tweets."
"No!"
"Oscar."
"They're really bad, Lando."
"How bad?"
Oscar throws his head back. "I... I wrote a thread about your hands."
Lando blinks.
“You thirst over me?”
“You– you asked! You have access to my account!”
“Yeah, but like– I meant general thirst, how am I meant to know I was the subject?” Lando smirks. This– this is very good intel, yeah.
"Can we please never speak of this again?"
"Are you kidding? This is the best thing that's ever happened to me." Lando grins. "Wait, what else is on here? I couldn’t stand to look at your account unless we were fighting, ha."
“Nothing, hand it over!”
"Oscar, why do you have a drafts folder with like fifty tweets in it?"
"Those are nothing!"
Lando clicks on it before Oscar can stop him. "Oh my god. 'Chapter 1: Dishevelled.' Oscar, is this—"
"NO!" Oscar lunges for his phone, but Lando's already reading.
"'Lando pushed Oscar against the motorhome wall, their racing suits still damp with sweat–' Osc!"
“Get out, get out of there!"
"You wrote fanfic about us! It's got chapters!"
"I was going to delete it!"
"There's twelve chapters!"
"I got carried away!"
"'Oscar's breath hitched as Lando's fingers traced the zipper of his race suit–' Oh my god, this is so detailed!"
Oscar's face is practically purple now. "Stop reading it!"
"Does it get smutty?"
"I'm never speaking to you again."
Lando scrolls some more, reading as quickly as his dyslexia allows. It’s–
It’s kinda hot, actually.
"Oscar, this is amazing. You're actually a good writer."
"I'm changing my name and moving to Australia."
"You're already Australian."
"Then I'm– ugh."
This is the most embarrassed Oscar has ever been in front of him, but he’s not…
Not leaving. Not taking his phone back. And he’s been– he’s been wanting Lando, defending him, praising his racing and antics and–
"Oscar," Lando says, finally looking up from the phone, "are you aware that we're idiots?"
"I'm starting to get that impression, yeah."
"Good," Lando says, and leans over to kiss him.