Chapter Text
"I'm so sorry for this, mate."
"No worries," Oscar huffed a laugh. "Not your fault the place is kinda lame. Even if you did pick it."
Lando groaned. It was the end of Oscar's first week in McLaren, and Lando figured it called for some sort of celebration. Him and Oscar were barely acquaintances, but it was soon clear to both of them how both parties were determined to make the relationship work. In his own quiet, subdued way, Oscar put on some extra effort to be friendly towards Lando, who in his own outgoing, almost exuberant way did his best to step into the older driver shoes he'd been dealt.
Zak had seemed pleased when Lando asked Oscar if he fancied an outing, and that's how they ended up in Woking's best option for a night out that Friday. If the greasy glasses and god-awful DJ were any indicator, the boys quickly realised that "best" doesn't necessarily mean "good" at all. In fact, it seems like "Woking's best" should, from then on, mean they'd hop on a quick drive to London, if anything.
Lando reaches back to scratch his own neck, straightening his sunglasses.
Oscar raises an eyebrow. "Are you sure the glasses aren't overkill?"
"Nah, they actually work really well." Lando says. "You should get one of those, you'll need them in a couple of weeks. You know, Formula 1 driver. People won't bother you as much."
Oscar shoots him an annoyed look. "Hate to disappoint, but I'm not much of a going out kind of person. Can't imagine they'd get much use."
"What are you talking about, mate," Lando shakes his head. "At least for the team celebrations. And I also need to make tonight up to you, I promise we'll go somewhere decent in Monaco."
"Ok so that's how many times… not that many."
"I don't know, mate. How many podiums are you shooting for?" Lando nudges him. "Ugh can we sit down somewhere? I think someone dropped their pint here, the floor's sticky."
Lando screens the room, dragging his teammate along as he slowly made his way through the small group of people willing to face the questionable establishment.
"There are some booths over there. And chairs," he points out. "Not too crowded, too."
"Mate, if the floor's in this state I can only imagine what the seats are like."
"Dude, I'm wearing new shoes. I kinda need to sit down for a bit."
Oscar rolled his eyes, looking at the vacant spots in the back of the room.
"You mean there, by that girl who's nearly passing out?"
Oscar points towards a girl slumped on a chair at the corner, resting an elbow on the armrest and a cheek on her fist. Some of her hair has fallen on her face, and her phone is rather precariously balancing on her knee. It's very dark, especially for someone in sunglasses, but Lando notices she keeps seemingly dropping off, waking up startled as her face slides off her hand.
"What? Ah, yes. That's where I meant. Wait, she's–"
"Passed out?"
"Nah mate, that's not what passing out looks like. That's public sleeping."
Oscar eyes him quizzically. "Public sleeping?"
"There's a difference. You'll soon realise I'm an expert."
Oscar huffs a laugh. "Expert on passed out girls? That's creepy."
"No, mate," Lando rolls his eyes, a tiny smile forming on his lips. "Expert in public sleeping."
Oscar shoves his shoulder playfully, as Lando quietly giggles.
Oscar eyes his teammate. Lando is distractedly tugging on his own belt loops, scanning once more the room.
Through the few days they'd actually been working together, Oscar noticed that Lando had a hard time standing still. Always shifting his weight from one leg to another, restless fingers fidgeting with whatever he could get his hands on. Being still clearly didn't agree with Lando.
Oscar was far from being a party boy, but he quickly realised that the deadbeat club was far from Lando's ideal Friday night as well. They'd grown silent, basically people-watching at that point. He looked once more at his teammate, noticing that Lando's gaze had fallen again on the girl. That gave Oscar an idea.
"You should go over there."
"What?" Lando snapped his head towards him.
"You heard me. If that girl truly isn't passing out, then she's as bored as you."
"I don't blame her. I know I could for sure fall asleep if you weren't here."
"Sorry for ruining your nap," Oscar said, his voice laced with irony.
"I'll find a way to forgive you," Lando sighed dramatically.
Oscar looked at him, but Lando kept his gaze on the girl.
"She's probably hating this club too," he pondered.
"Not much to love if I'm honest," Oscar said. "Go."
"It's like you want me to ditch you."
"Mate, you know how fun it'll be to watch you attempt to chat that girl up?"
"Who said anything about chatting anyone up?"
"Well, you are going over there."
Lando shakes his head, shooting his teammate a look of disbelief.
"Osc, Osc… what did Zak sign us all up for, huh?"
Oscar grinned. "It's gonna be a great year."
…
Nora opened her eyes in a halt as she nearly folded into her own lap, the arm propped up on the club's nasty armchair failing to hold her cheek as she dozed on and off.
She adjusted her seat, hands smoothing over her hair and dress as she attempted to pull it together. She'd been to bad parties, but this one was just plain boring. She tried to somehow excuse the club, pondering that she had, in fact, spent nearly ten hours testing breaking tube configurations earlier and was probably just tired.
Maybe it's my fault, I should've just called it a day and watched something stupid at home, she thought.
But then again, she knew her mother's voice would stay ringing in her head. The backhanded comments about how she poured herself so much into her new job that it was a shame she hadn't managed to make new friends yet. The reminders of how much everyone missed her back in Milan. How she should've stuck with Ferrari.
Nora shook her head, partly trying to wake herself up but also somehow physically shaking away those thoughts.
The thing was, she absolutely knew all of that. All the pros, the cons, the reasons why she should've or shouldn't have taken the gamble of moving to the UK right before the new season. Resigning from her aerodynamics internship for what would be, yes, a full-time engineering job, but no longer in her preferred area, as she would be in testing most of her days. She was rational, objective – sometimes too much for her own good, but she had absolutely weighed in all of that before taking the leap.
Andrea Stella had called her himself. She didn't know how he had even caught word of her existence, back then her best gamble being on him having retained some friendships in Ferrari from before he left, following Fernando Alonso to McLaren. Turns out that he knew everything; how she'd been best of her class all throughout university, engaging in new and exciting research even as an undergraduate before being quickly scooped by Ferrari's ever-efficient talent scouts. How she wanted to move up from her intern position, and trying to achieve that by contributing much more than what was expected of any intern.
He'd seen the designs she worked on in her spare time and uploaded to a personal blog, way too detailed for drawings that weren't effectively going any further than that. He'd seen everything, and he wanted her on his team. And she realised how special that was.
So she went for it. Packed up her things and landed in Woking; new apartment, new job, new team. And she was getting along really well with her team – the T&D guys were nice, funny and actively involved her in their inside jokes and the occasional happy hour. She settled in well at the job itself, managing even to stick her nose in some of the more design-centric bits of development and add in her two cents. The team was happy and so was she.
Until it was Friday night, all her friends were out together back home and she was slouching over takeout in her tiny flat, watching it all go down on Instagram. The big, bad FOMO monster rather unusually knocked on her door, and it got to her.
One hour, she promised herself. She'd be out for one hour by herself, long enough to tell herself that she did it , and maybe take a couple of pictures to let everybody else know that she did it as well.
And damn, was that hour taking it's sweet sweet time to pass.
Her vision darkened as she fell herself lean further into her own hand, the club disappearing from sight as her eyes grew heavier…
"Great party, huh?"
Her eyes blinked open. "Huh?"
She lifted her head from her fist, blinking a couple of extra times as the DJ had found that to be the perfect time to drop the lights even further. Following the voice that'd woken her, she turned to see a figure barely more distinguishable than a shadow.
"Great party, I said," he raised his voice, trying to speak over the music. "You look like you're having fun."
She blinked. "Do I?"
"I'm trying to be ironic."
She mentally slapped herself. Of course.
"Ah, got that. I doubt I actually look like I'm having a blast."
The boy grinned, the action only noticeable from the way the dim blue light reflected off his teeth.
"Been there, done that," he responded. "I'm a big sleeper myself."
She squinted at the boy, trying to make out any type of information on him apart from his shiny teeth. It took her a moment, but she finally noticed something.
"What's with the sunglasses?"
She heard him laugh. "Don't you like them?"
"Dude, I can barely see them. I can barely see you . How are you seeing anything?"
"I'm not."
"So you're just trying to be cool then," she raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, something like that, you could say. So what are you doing in here then, if it's this bad?"
"New in town, seeing what the social scene's like," she said. "Waiting for some work friends," she quickly added, realising it probably wasn't very smart to let a complete stranger at a club think she didn't know anyone there.
"Ah, nice. I'm here with my work mate as well. He's new in town too, though I don't think he's getting the best impression of Woking right now." He pointed towards a guy at the bar, nursing a drink but also clearly trying to be discrete about looking in their direction.
"Neither am I, to be honest with you."
He laughed. "Ah, it's not that bad. It grows on you. So where's the accent from?"
"The accent?" She smiled. "Same place as me, Italy."
She thought she could see his eyebrows rising above the rims of his sunglasses.
"Oh,I wouldn't have guessed. It's not really the stereotypical accent, is it?"
"Boarding school kinda messed it up for me," she explained.
He looked at her for a moment, though she doubted he could see much.
"Boarding school? Posh."
"Eh, I won't say–" she began, but was cut short.
"I'm just messing with you, I boarded too."
"Oh," she shook her head. "Posh."
"Fine, I deserved that."
She squinted once more at him, but the visibility wasn't getting any better. It seemed as if the more her eyes adjusted to it, the more the DJ lowered the lights.
"And are you from here?"
"Me? No, I'm from Bristol," he pushes the sunglasses up the bridge of his nose.
"Is that far from here?"
"Eh, not as much as Italy," he shrugged.
"Ha. Of course."
"Sorry, that wasn't good. You're throwing off my game."
"Your game?" It was her turn to raise her eyebrows.
She saw his shadow reach an arm up to scratch the back of his head.
"Yeah, you're cute."
Nora's cheeks grew red. She wondered if he could see that.
"Stop, you're taking the piss," she laughed, attempting to brush him off. "Also it's pitch-dark in here, you can't see how cute I am."
"I can tell though!"
She merely shook her head in response.
"But true, it's too dark here," he said. "Do you want to dance?"
"I, well… I'm not exactly the most skilled dancer."
A million things were going through her head, most of them centred around how that was not exactly how she meant for that evening to go. She was supposed to pretend to have a good time for an hour, capture and post the evidence and that should make her feel a bit better about herself.
She hadn't exactly expected to strike conversation with a faceless stranger. She hadn't expected said stranger to ask her to dance either.
"Skilled? Who even is skilled at this type of thing, it's for fun," the boy suddenly stood up, extending her a hopeful hand. "Do you want to?"
Do I want to? , she thought.
She took his hand. "Let's do it."
The club wasn't too packed, which at least made sure they weren't bumping too much into other people as they made their way out of the lounge area.
Somewhat unbelievably, the dance floor was pretty much as dark as their little corner had been. The difference then, though, was that they stood much closer. The boy's teeth glowed in the dim blue light as he grinned at her, not having let go of her hand from when he'd lead them to that spot. She could then appreciate that he was taller than her, and his faintly backlit silhouette seemed to have curly hair.
As she tried to dance, she had a newfound appreciation for how bad the DJ actually was.
"I love Carly Rae Jepsen, but this shouldn't be played at a club in 2023." She half-shouted.
"Huh?"
The dance floor was never really great for conversations , she reminded herself.
She leaned in to speak near his ear. "I said–"
Damn, he sure smells good .
She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts.
"I said I love this song, but why is it being played in 2023?"
Even if she wasn't touching it, they were so close she could feel his chest vibrate as he laughed.
"At least you like it. If you like it, you can dance to it."
She shook her head. "Thank you for the fabulous input. I'm still terrible at this."
He beamed. "Come on."
He tentatively rested his free hand on her waist, pulling her closer as he attempted to make her move with him. She quickly came to the realisation that the boy's perfume so close to her, plus his hand newly resting on her side were positively clouding her judgement.
As in she couldn't think of anything else.
Great job, Nora, she thought. Can't even see his face and you're already… captivated? Charmed? Keen? Whatever that is.
His other hand was still holding hers, his thumb absentmindedly playing with the charms in her bracelet. Catching Nora off-guard, he leaned in to speak closer to her ear.
"I like your hair."
Nothing. She could think of nothing to say. She felt the warmth from where his hand was resting on her waist spread, feeling like she was about to melt into a puddle.
"Can you see it with those glasses?" It was the best she could muster.
"Yeah, it's shiny," he responded.
"Well, you smell really nice." Nora mentally facepalmed, not having meant to say that out loud.
"Thank you," he grinned.
His attention then shifted to a small strand of hair that managed to fall over her cheek. Almost automatically, the boy dropped her hand and moved to tuck the strand behind her ear.
"There you go," he muttered.
He seemed to have forgotten to move his hand back, as it was still resting against her hair. Their eyes were both wide as they met.
"Thank–"
"Can I–"
He chuckled as they spoke at the same time.
"You first," she smiled.
"I was going to ask if I could kiss you."
She was glad it was so dark he couldn't see how red her cheeks were. Or at least she hoped he couldn't.
"I, uhm…"
"We don't have to," he quickly added. "I just… I really wanted to."
She couldn't see well at all, but from his tone she suspected he might've been blushing as much as she was. At that moment she wished she could see a bit more of the boy's face.
Ah, fuck it, she thought. Her mind went blank as she reached her hand to his shoulder, heat seeping through their new contact spot. She stood on her tiptoes, their faces so close now she could almost make out the outline of his eyes behind the lenses. She brushed her nose against his, her skin tingling from where they touched.
Well, here goes nothing.
He slid his hand to her cheek, lightly cradling her jaw. He closed his eyes as he lowered his face to finally press their lips together.
She slid her hand from his shoulder to the back of his neck. She suddenly felt very weak, as if an electric shock had struck through her and holding onto him was the way to not fall to her feet. She trailed her fingers through his jaw, feeling the tiniest bit of stubble as she deepened the kiss. The poorly selected pop music seemed to fade into the background.
He brought the hand that was holding her cheek back into her hair, running his fingers through it and finally resting on her neck. There was no sign of the reality of the situation in his head, there was nothing else he could think about but right there, right then…
Until that damn DJ decided to – with absolutely no notice, mind you – drop the loudest bass known to man, making them both jump apart from each other.
"Jesus Christ," she managed to tear her hands from the boy, resting both hands on her temples as she closed her eyes.
"What the fuck is wrong with this guy," he slid his fingers behind his sunglasses, rubbing his eyes in frustration.
Looking back at each other, they both started laughing at the ridiculousness.
"Can't even make out with a stranger anymore," she rolled her eyes, "without being rudely interrupted."
He wheezed, reaching a hand to her shoulder to help stabilise himself, clearly much more comfortable with the contact now. "I don't even know your name, still."
"I don't know your name either," she grinned. She reached out to fix the collar of his shirt. "I'm Nora. Eleonora, but everyone calls me Nora."
"I like that," he smiled. "I'm Lando, nice meeting you."
"Lando? That's different. Lando with an L, like Lando Norris?"
The boy burst into a coughing fit.
"Lando Norris?", he managed.
"Yeah, the racing driver. Haven't you heard of him? He's the only other Lando I've heard of."
He scratched the back of his head. "I didn't realise it was this dark in here."
"What do you mean?" She frowned, looking at the boy but still seeing very little apart from darkness.
As if on cue, the DJ decided that, for the first time that evening, it was time for some strobe lights.
It was as if everything moved in slow motion, while reality finally came knocking in flashes of who she'd actually been hanging with. He removed the sunglasses, her eyes widening at the realisation.
"Wait, it's you?"
"Well, I mean…" he let out a nervous laugh. "I figured you just didn't know who I was. Um… I didn't realise you did, but couldn't tell I guess?"
"I– I'm sorry, I think I should go–"
"Wait, what?"
Nora took a hasty step back, bumping into someone's back and dropping her bag, its contents immediately spilling across the filthy club floor.
"Fuck," she kneeled to the floor, trying to catch her belongings before oblivious pairs of feet kicked anything beyond her reach.
Lando kneeled down in front of her. "Shit, let me help."
She looked up from the floor to the boy kneeling in front of her. Why was it so obvious now?
"I– I think I should get going," she took the things he'd picked up from his hands, tossing them into her bag as she rose. "Thanks for the help."
"You're really leaving?" His eyes widened as he rose too.
"Bye, Lando. Have a, uhm… have a good weekend?" She stepped back, clutching her bag in both hands.
He reached out and grabbed her elbow. "Wait, why are you leaving? I thought we were–"
"I'm fine," she responded a bit too quickly. "I should go."
He stood there watching her as she rushed to the front door, utterly confused by what'd just happened.
…
Lando only managed to snap out of it when he felt another hand on his shoulder.
"Everything alright, mate?"
"Oscar!"
He turned towards his teammate, shock still plastered on his face. "Did you see any of that?"
Oscar raised his eyebrows. "I saw her running out. What did you do to the poor girl?"
"I don't know. I– we kissed."
"Damn mate, that bad?" Oscar teased him, but quickly caught on to the expression on his friend's face and sobered down. "So she just left, out of nowhere?"
Lando nodded. "We didn't even know each other's names. We introduced ourselves and she panicked. I think she hadn't realised who I was."
"She didn't recognise your face?" Oscar frowned.
"It was pretty dark, mate. And I had the glasses on," Lando said as he reached to finally remove them from his face.
Oscar rolled his eyes. "I'm still not convinced about them. I think it was just the darkness."
Lando looked back towards the door.
Oscar reached a hand to rest on his shoulder. "Try not to take it personally. Maybe she's just a huge Mercedes fan."
"Shut up mate," Lando huffed a laugh.
As they made a start away from the dance floor, Oscar's foot slipped on something, nearly bringing him to the floor. Lando jumped out to catch him, stabilising him by the shoulders.
"Easy there, mate. Not sure how I'd explain to Zak that his new driver got injured under my watch."
Oscar fixed his shirt, brushing down on his sleeves. "I think I stepped on something."
The boy kneeled down, feeling at the floor until he emerged with a plastic black card. Oscar squinted at it, trying to read despite the awful lighting. Suddenly his eyes widened, his head snapping back towards his friend.
"What?" Lando asked.
"You did get her name, right? The girl's name?"
Lando nodded. "It's Nora. Eleonora."
Oscar eyed him carefully.
"Mate, is this your girl?"
Lando nearly jumped at the card, grabbing it with both hands as he squinted at the tiny words, like Oscar had.
Eleonora Rossi
Test and Development Engineer
McLaren Racing
The ever-chatty Lando, for once, was rendered speechless. He glanced at his teammate, the guy he'd only properly met that week. Oscar didn't seem to know what else to say. But then, Lando wasn't sure what he wanted to hear.