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Lando knows the call’s coming as soon as he hears Max has won the race.
He sees it on the screens first, then Will comes on the radio and tells him the finishing order.
In practice, it happens later than he expects it to—Max’s interviews must have gone long, or the press conference. He’s been waiting in his driver room for around half an hour, trying to watch MotoGP and unable to pay attention. He’d tried out fiddling with his phone for a bit, but all the consolatory messages from friends and family were starting to pour through. It kinda just felt awful.
When his phone rings, he doesn’t bother reading the caller ID. He leans over to the other end of the couch, slides to accept, puts it on speaker, and waits for Andrea to speak.
Andrea takes too long. Lando chews on his thumbnail and huffs, “Yeah?”
“Verstappen has—”
“Fine,” Lando interrupts. He doesn’t need to hear the rest. He’d been expecting it, but there’s still a part of him that’s surprised to be proven right.
Andrea is silent for a moment, before he says, with an infuriating sort of calmness, like he’s speaking to a child, “A steward will arrive in a few moments.”
Lando pulls the inside of his cheek between his teeth, and lets out a long breath. “I know the drill.”
Because he does. The team had him go through the formalities back in Hungary, with Osc, and he was shuttled over to the Winner’s Room by a steward. Practically was mugged, had to hand his phone over and was patted down and half-groped to make sure he wasn’t bringing anything illicit into the room. In the end it was all an anti-climax. He’d sucked Oscar off and that had been it and Oscar had enjoyed it, clearly, from the dazed and torn look in his eyes after Lando was done—even though he’d wasted half their allotted time pretending he didn’t want it.
It’d been better than Lando was expecting, satisfying in the way that the race and the podium hadn’t been. Oscar had it in him, after all.
They cleaned themselves up in the bathroom, separately, and put on the British Open until the hour ran out. They haven’t really talked about it since. There isn’t really anything to talk about.
He’d half been expecting Oscar to pick him again in Baku, but Oscar hadn’t picked anyone at all. Lando couldn’t tell whether to be disappointed or grateful.
Lando honestly considers making a run for it, claiming he’s ill, or simply sprinting away and hiding in, like, Mercedes hospitality, but he knows how that would look. How word would get out about how he can’t take what he dishes out and how his bark’s louder than his bite.
He lets the steward guide him over to the designated room, pat him down, and send him into the room.
Lando licks the corner of his mouth as he steps in and lets the door shut behind him; he keeps his head lowered for now. It feels different than how it’d been with Oscar; he can’t find it in himself to run his mouth like he had. Max would see through it, anyway.
He lifts his head and sees Max grinning at him, crinkle-eyed and flush-faced. Lando swallows, meeting Max’s gaze and forcing himself to keep eye contact. He feels a bit off-kilter.
“Sorry that took so long,” Max says. He’s sitting on the bed, in a white t-shirt and workout sweats. He looks a bit tipsy. Lando’s been around enough drunk and tipsy Max Verstappens that he can tell. “My team, everyone wanted photos and, you know.”
Lando swallows. “Yeah,” he says, because he understands. You had the race of a lifetime. Seventeenth to first in the pouring rain. Just thinking about it makes Lando’s heart skip a beat.
He stays by the door, shifting on his feet. He doesn’t know where to go from here. He licks the corner of his mouth again, then runs his tongue over the back of his upper row of teeth, waiting.
“Ready?” Max asks, lifting a brow, curiously, and Lando falters. He hadn’t—hadn’t been expecting them to get straight to it. These days, it kind of feels like he doesn’t know Max at all.
“Yeah,” Lando says again, and he cringes at how his voice takes an odd pitch. He doesn’t beat himself up over it, walks straight over to where Max is sat, fits himself in the space that Max has left between his thighs, just enough for a body, then gets on his knees.
He tips his head back, and he registers the sight of Max’s mouth splitting into a laugh before he hears it.
“You want it like that, then?” Max asks, amused, and Lando’s face burns.
That’s the whole point of the room, isn’t it?
“I just—” He stops before he gets the rest of the words out, because Max is gliding two fingers over the spit-slick seam of his mouth.
Instinctively, Lando parts his lips, and Max spots the opening and takes it, sliding the digits between his teeth and across his tongue, shallowly. He closes his lips around his knuckles, runs the flat of his tongue along the pads of Max’s fingers, sucks.
Max doesn’t linger—he pulls his fingers out and wipes them dry on Lando’s scalding cheek, sets his hand on his shoulder, not with force, but his grip is firm as always, enough to keep him in place, as if Lando’s going to run away, or something. As if Lando has anywhere else to go.
Lando sucks in a breath through his mouth. Max is looking at him intensely and intently, and Lando lets his gaze drift to the side. He busies himself, and his hands find Max’s thighs, slide up to the seam of his shorts. He looks up again, and Max is still looking at him—rapt, and his cheeks are flushed. Lando bites his lower lip, slips his fingertips beneath the seam of Max’s shorts. Reactively, Max lifts his hips off the bed, mouth parted, and Lando tugs the fabric all the way down.
Max finds the whole Winner’s Room thing a bit of a joke, Lando knows. They’ve talked about it before, and Max had gone on this whole rant, and at the end of it all Lando had pointed at the elephant in the room, “But, like, if you find it so stupid, why’d you use it?”
Max had used it a couple times, years ago, when he still had something to prove. Back when Lando and Daniel were teammates, Daniel had gotten drunk one time and spilled all the details about it, how Max had been staunchly uninterested in the whole thing until 2021, and he and Lewis were using it against each other nearly every single race win. Lewis had been one of the ones campaigning for years to get it removed from the regs—rumor has it, it went wrong between him and Nico, one time, in 2015 or 2016, Lando can’t remember, and Lewis stopped using it entirely, would bring the idea of abolishing it up at a GDPA meeting here and there—but when Max had invoked it for the first time in nearly half a decade in 2021, Lewis suddenly didn’t have any qualms with using it. Eye for an eye, whatever it was, Lando gets that much.
Max had used it a bit in 2022—this part, Lando had heard from Max himself. He and Charles would, at the start of the year, but then it got boring, and Max had decided it wasn’t worth his time.
And Max flushed at Lando’s question, why’d you use it, and he just said, “It’s in the rules, of course. Tradition. Why not?”
There were a lot of reasons why not, Lando thought.
“That’s all?” he asked, and Max pursed his lips, looking out the window, at the wing of his jet, passing through clouds. They were flying to a race together—looking back Lando can’t remember which one it was.
“I guess it’s, like,” Max started. He had a blush high on his cheeks, and Lando felt a bit giddy, seeing Max embarrassed in front of him.
“It’s nice, in a way. Makes you really feel like you’ve won.”
What you do in the Winner’s Room can be pretty much whatever the Winner wants it to be—the one who’s chosen doesn’t really have much margin to argue. You can, of course, say no—there’s nothing in the by-laws saying you actually have to do what you’re asked of. Max had told him this. Lando hasn’t ever cared enough, really, to read the specific article with any sort of carefulness, but Max has read the regs forwards and backwards.
It’s a pride thing, I guess, Max explained. Saying no would be, like, pussying out. He punctuated the words with a dismissive wave of his hand. Lando merely laughed along. He hadn’t ever really thought about it, didn’t really think it’d ever be something that’d happen to him.
Lando makes it good. He knows he’s good at it, knows Max likes it, from the way he’s panting with his head thrown back, the way his hips keep jerking up, and the way he’s got his hands fisted by the sides of his thighs. Lando slides down until the head of Max’s cock is pushing at the back of his throat and he gags, only a bit, fluttering around him, before he starts to pull up, chin messy with his own spittle in a way he loves and hates, and he slides the fat of his tongue along the underside of Max’s dick when he pulls up. Not entirely—he keeps the tip inside his mouth, lets his tongue swirl over the head in the way he knows Max has always liked, and Max shudders beneath him, lets out a soft fuck. Lando’s hands grip the bare meat of his thighs, nails digging in as his mouth hollows around him.
Max is, Lando quickly realizes, being very docile, measured, like he’s holding himself back.
Annoyed, Lando pulls all the way off and when he opens his eyes, his vision’s a bit blurry but he can see how Max is looking down at him with a pink and gaping mouth and he looks—sort of in awe, like Lando’s this amazing thing that’s just fallen into his lap. It’s not a new thing—Max looks at him like this every now and then, and Lando has to pinch himself and tell himself that’s just the way Max is, sometimes, that it doesn’t mean anything, obviously.
His face feels hot and flushed, and he’s a bit dazed, always gets this way, and has to reel himself back in, clear his throat, his lower lip rubbing against the tip of Max’s cock when he says, voice still rough, “You can—if you want,” and finds Max’s hands, still furled into fists, and tugs them up toward his head.
Max’s eyes blow open. “Yeah,” he says, voice hoarse and cracking, “fuck,” and his hands are loosening and flying up to the tangle of Lando’s sweaty hair, twisting in his curls, painfully, a good sort of painful, and he’s pulling Lando all the way down, all pretense of gentleness finally dissipating. Lando, honestly, is thankful for it.
One of the worst things—not the worst, not nearly, but at least in the top five—about this whole Brazil thing is that Oscar doesn’t seem miffed about the sprint win. It kind of sets an itch under his skin, that Oscar doesn’t seem annoyed at him at all. He’d been agreeable back after Monza, when they’d reassessed team orders; had easily consented to giving up points and positions for his sake. He hadn’t fought at all. He only nodded, and said he thought it was a good idea. Was all cool and logical about it. Lando’s the lead driver, Lando has seniority, Lando’s ahead in the championship, Lando has a real shot at this.
Sometimes, the truth is, Oscar seemed like the only person who believed Lando actually had a shot.
But maybe that’s not fair. Max had said and had been saying all along that he’d always believed Lando would win a championship. That one day it’d come. That he’d have the car, and he’d win, and he’d win, and win, and keep winning. Max isn’t a liar—he never says things he doesn’t mean. Over the years, he’d invite Lando over to Red Bull, and it’d sound like a joke, but Lando knew it wasn’t. It was kind of hard to reconcile, how serious Max was about wanting Lando in his team and by his side.
Max isn’t a liar, but he’s careful with his words. He’s way more measured than people give him credit for. Never says anything he doesn’t mean and he only ever says what he means, but that doesn’t mean he always says what he means. It doesn’t really matter, though. There’s a lot you can say in what you choose not to say. Lando always hears it all anyway.
Max comes in his mouth and it spills hot into his throat. Lando was ready for it, swallows over him, and Max is groaning above him, running his mouth off about how good Lando feels, how good his mouth is, how he is, and it’s kind of bleeding together in Lando’s ears, until Max is pulling him off and stroking at his cheeks, then his thumbs start brushing over his ears, almost with care, before saying, “Here, come on, I’ll get you.”
Lando blinks. It takes him a long moment to register what Max has said but as soon as he does, he finds himself climbing up onto Max’s lap. He doesn’t give it any thought. His jaw kind of aches, and his knees do too, but it’s all a good sort of ache.
Thighs closing around Max’s hips, their chests pressing together, Lando feels a bit flayed open, like his insides are all spooling out in the space between them. He presses the side of his face, before he can help it, into Max’s shoulder. Max’s hand finds his back, starts stroking along his spine. Lando breathes in deeply. Max doesn’t smell like champagne anymore—smells a bit citrusy. He must’ve found the time for a shower.
Max’s hand, the one not on his back, slides down along his side and slips between them, slipping firmly under Lando’s joggers, and Lando pants under Max’s ear, mouth pressed to his neck, as Max’s hand curls around his dick, wrapping around the base. Lando bucks into him, and he can feel his heart beating in his chest, wild and catastrophic.
Mouth pressed into his hair, Max is laughing, softly but enough that it’s rumbling through Lando’s skull, but not unkindly.
“Bit like old times, yeah?”
Lando can’t do anything else but nod weakly into Max’s shoulder as Max’s hand starts to work him up. He hasn’t been touched like this by another person, skin-to-skin like this, in a while. He’s blood-hard and buzzing deep under his skin, and over the rough rustling of fabric, he can hear all the wet noises from down below.
It’s not something he’s really let himself think about, not for a long time.
It started back after Max had won his second championship, and it was a bit of an accident. Kelly had left the club and gone back to the hotel early, since she was flying out separately from and earlier than Max, and Lando had gotten dragged along by Max and Martin and Daniel to one of the after-afters, and Daniel kept topping off his and Max’s champagne glasses, and Max was so drunk that he’d actually been dancing. Maybe Lando had been dancing too—that part of the night is harder to remember. It was 5 AM when Daniel convinced Lando to let them bring the party back to Lando’s hotel suite, and Lando hadn’t really questioned why he had to be the one to host. Them and Max’s whole entourage stumbled out of the club, laughing and making a ruckus as they waited for their Ubers, and Max and Lando had shuffled into one together. They slid in and Max and the driver were talking in choppy English, and Max had his arm slung around Lando’s shoulders, squeezing his upper arm, tugging him closer. Lando liked it, being close to Max. The more championships Max won the farther it felt like Max was getting away from him. Two world championships, a girlfriend, a kid, and a part of Lando kept wondering if Max was going to get bored of him. A part of him kept wondering when the shoe was finally going to drop, and the scary part was, it didn’t seem like it was going to.
Only about half of them actually made it to Lando’s suite. The few of them that were there broke open the minibar and they’d kept the party alive for another hour, before everyone, Daniel included, started to call it. But Max alone had stayed, not wanting to end the night quite yet, even though the sun was starting to come up. Lando hadn’t wanted to end it either. It was nice, having Max all to himself. Lando had met a lot of people since joining F1. Max was still the coolest person he’d ever met.
At a point, Max had to piss, so Lando told him to just use the en suite in the bedroom. A few minutes had passed, but Max still hadn’t come out. Worried, Lando went to check in on him, make sure he wasn’t sick and hunched over a toilet, and he found Max dozing off on the bed, so he groaned loudly and grabbed Max’s ankles, trying to wake him up and pull him off the mattress. They ran out of alcohol and they were both starting to sober up, exhaustion settling in.
“Mate, c’mon,” Lando huffed, even though he didn’t really mind.
Max still had his eyes closed, and he was pouting. “Just for a second,” he said. Lando found it hard to believe him, so he started yanking harder. Max retaliated, had kicked and lightly shoved, and somehow he got a leg wrapped around Lando’s thighs and the heel of his foot started pressing into the back of Lando’s knee, and Lando yelped and was tumbling forward.
When he landed, he barely caught himself from elbowing Max in the face. He managed to catch himself with his forearms propped up beside Max’s ears. His knees were bracketing one of Max’s thighs, and it was so warm, Max’s body was. That was the first thing Lando recognized.
“Um,” he said, and he felt heat crawl electric up the back of his neck when he met Max’s eyes, found that Max was already looking at him—with awe, like he was something wonderful. Lando’s eyes darted away.
Max still wasn’t saying anything, so Lando made to get up and off him, but then—he sucked in a sharp breath when he felt hands on his waist—gentle, almost hesitant. Lando felt like there was no air left in his lungs. He opened his mouth anyway, and he sucked in another shuddering breath when Max’s hands grew more firm, and Lando became even more aware of the position they were in—he was flush to the front of Max’s thigh. He felt a rush of blood rocket down and his heart was roaring like an engine in his ears.
“Max,” he said, and hated the way his voice came out—it made his cheeks burn even more. He found the courage to meet Max’s eyes, and they were lidded, pupils a bit blown, and his mouth smelled like gin. They were so close, Lando was aware, that he could feel Max’s breath against his cheek.
“Yeah?” Max responded, and they were still frozen, like that. With Lando pressed up against Max’s thigh and Max’s hands steady on his waist.
Max’s eyes started to drift, and Lando knew where he was looking, and knew what he was thinking. It’s never been easy, figuring out what’s going on inside Max’s head. He’s more opaque than most, when he wants to be. But in that moment, it felt like Max was putting it all into the open, cards face up, ball in Lando’s court. That was the thing. That’s always been the thing about Max. He’ll push and he’ll push, but he’ll never force you to act a certain way. He’ll set the conditions, he’ll draw the lines, but every decision you make around him will be your own.
Lando was kind of a wreck, the morning after. He’d barely slept, and Max was snoring beside him. It’s not like they’d done much, but it was still—
Luisa had broken up with him a few weeks before, and Lando had admittedly been kind of a mess ever since. He figured, maybe, that this might’ve been a new low and his head was reeling with it, and Max was sleeping soundly, shirtless and in his boxers, a two-time world champion.
Lando scuttled off into the en suite and turned up the heat until it was scalding hot, pulled off all his clothes and stepped into the burning spray of the shower, tried to clear his head. The awful hangover hadn’t helped, and he spent maybe thirty minutes going through the motions.
He came back out in a towel, rummaged through his suitcases for a spare set of pyjamas, slipped the fabric on, and when he turned around, Max was starting to stir, his hair like a bird’s nest, sticking up awkwardly, and there was a bit of dried drool running down the corner of his mouth, red and swollen. Lando flushed.
“What time’s it?” Max groaned, sitting up and rubbing at his eye.
“Uh,” Lando squeaked, and his eyes flitted to the alarm clock on the bedside table. “Ten,” he replied, and Max instantly flopped back down onto his back.
“Can sleep in a bit more, then,” Max said, completely unbothered.
“Max—” Lando started, but Max was steamrolling over him, saying, “Our flight’s not until three.”
And Lando was planning on saying something, arguing, but it all floated away when he saw Max tug at the duvet, uncovering the dip in the mattress where Lando had been. Max hadn’t even said anything. He didn’t need to. Lando made the decision all on his own.
Then it just kept on happening, and it wasn’t like anything really changed between them. They still got on well, on-track and off of it, in the paddock and outside of it, but they sometimes got each other off, also, especially after shared podiums, and mostly in hotel rooms after the after-after. There was that one time in a Jimmy’z restroom, at Max’s twenty-sixth, but they’d almost gotten caught by Charles, of all people, and they’d been more careful about it going forward. It wasn’t like it was a thing; it wasn’t like they were in love and it wasn’t like it especially meant anything, of course—it just happened when it happened, and it was all good fun. It was something to look forward to.
Lando didn’t find out until halfway through 2023 that Max had told Kelly about it the morning after the first time; that for almost a whole year Kelly had known about them, and hadn’t given a single shit.
It was vindicating. It was also kind of disappointing. Lando didn’t want to think about why.
When he won for the first time in Miami, he didn’t need the Winner’s Room. He was the Winner, but he didn’t need the room to have the driver he wanted.
And then Austria happened, and he needed to clear his head. Max came up to him afterward, grinned widely, and invited Lando to his hotel room, so Lando gave him a look, tried to communicate as much possible, Are you fucking joking?
Max got the message after that—it was scary, how quickly he got the message, is the thing. A part of Lando always thought Max would fight harder for it, but he just gave Lando his space. They made up after Austria, but they hadn’t—talked about it, the other part of it.
In Silverstone, Lando was half-expecting Max to pull him aside and tell him to stop being a pussy, but he’d kept his distance, laughed with Lando in groups, but never came up to him privately. In the end, there wasn’t really anything to talk about. It wasn’t like there was much to repair.
And then there was a title for Lando to win. No matter what anyone says, it was there, and it was real.
“Fuck,” Max is saying, as Lando’s biting at his lower lip, hips bucking into Max’s grip. They’re not really kissing, mostly panting into each other’s mouths. “I’ve missed this.”
Lando groans, fingernails scratching the sides of Max’s neck. He thinks about how long it’s been. Barcelona was the last time. As long as it had been since Max last won a race, until today.
Maybe that’s also not quite fair. In the end, there was Zandvoort, and there was also Singapore. But that was different too.
Lando isn’t sorry about it. He doesn’t really see a need to be, even now, after the dust has settled. And maybe he’d been a bit of a dick about the whole thing, especially in the room, but it’s the name of the game, competition and winning and reaping what you sow, but also reaping the rewards. He knows Max gets it, anyway.
Lando had just been better. He’d beat him. It was in the rules. It was tradition. Oscar had been the one to bring it back into fashion, in the first place, the Winner’s Room, even if he’d gone on and on how the team made him do it. Besides, this year’s been different. No holds barred. Back in Zandvoort, because it was now an option, because he knew that after Hungary, after word got out that Oscar’d used it on Lando, that all the winners of the season were using it, after it was pulled back into fashion, no matter how much they’d pretended they weren’t, Lando had thought about it, who he wanted to choose. He considered Oscar for a second, a quid pro quo, but it’s not like there would’ve been any point to that. Really, there was only ever one option.
And Max had understood that too. He’d cracked a joke here and there even though it was clear he was kind of pissed the whole time. Max’s irritation had been lukewarm at best, but it was there, and it was hard to tell whether it was targeted at Lando or his team—maybe both. It didn’t exactly matter, not to Lando, at least. Max hadn’t complained, was the important part. Did everything Lando told him to do. And he made it good. That was the best part, how easily he’d gone along with it, in Zandvoort and in Singapore. It gave Lando a head rush, having a world champion on his knees. Most importantly, it was easy. It wasn’t like it was anything they hadn’t already done.
In the end, Max was right. It really did make him feel like he’d won.
Lando groans, and he kisses Max harder, with teeth, before he says something stupid, like, I’ve missed you too.
“Guess we’re even now,” Max says, when Lando’s rolled off of him and is lying face-down, panting into the sheets, ignoring the uncomfortable stickiness in his boxers. At some point, Max had gotten his shirt off. Lando’s sweating into the sheets.
Into the sheets, Lando shakes his head. His ears hurt from how loud his heart is thumping. Max is silent for a long moment. There’s a buzzing in his ears. When Lando turns onto his side, he sees Max staring down at him, brows furrowed, looking confused.
“I owe you one more,” Lando says, swallowing, licking his lips. They feel cracked and he feels cracked open, watching as Max’s face opens with realization.
Lando sucks in a breath, waiting for Max to say something, then he thinks, fuck it. Decides to draw the lines himself. “In Vegas,” he says, shakily, but holding Max’s gaze, “when you win.”
And Lando knows that Max knows he isn’t talking about the race. That it’s not about the Room. It’s not even about the championship, really. They were playing two different games, from the start.
Max purses his lips, but doesn’t say anything stupid about how it’s not over yet. He’s not a liar. Max, the one thing Lando can know for sure, isn’t a liar.
He’s not stupid enough, either, to believe there’s still a fight. Lando isn’t either.
For a long time, Lando stares, watches, observes. It’s always hard to tell what’s going on inside Max’s head. But right now, in this moment, if anything, he seems—happy.
“I would really like that,” Max says, after a moment of hesitation, with a bleeding sort of honesty. He sounds embarrassed. He sounds—vulnerable, almost, but maybe Lando’s just imagining it. In any case, it feels a bit like an olive branch.
Despite himself, Lando—for the first time in a long time, laughs. He can’t help it. It just comes out of him, like he’s just been punched in the chest. His whole mouth splits. He presses his face into the bed. “Course you would,” he says, chest filling and ballooning with warmth, relief flooding his shoulders. For a moment, everything else stops mattering.
Then there’s a hand on his shoulder, rolling him over so that he’s on his back, then Max is swinging his knee over Lando’s thigh. Lando blinks his eyes open. Max hovers above him, glowing victorious. Lando holds his breath in his lungs. The light halos around Max’s head. Lando looks up with reverence.
“Lando,” Max says.
Lando swallows, feeling chosen. “Yeah?”
Max’s throat bobs. Lando watches in slow-motion as the skin around Max’s eyes crinkle, then smoothen out, how his mouth purses, with hesitance, like he’s trying to figure out, ascertain, whether he means it or not.
“One day,” he says, and Lando shudders out a breath. If Max is saying it, it must be the truth. The thing is, Lando also hears it—what he isn’t saying, what he can’t bring himself to say.
Lando closes his eyes. Inhales, then exhales.
“Yeah,” he says, thinking about how Max had hugged him with every muscle in his body, back in 2021, Abu Dhabi, like Lando was all he had; thinking about how Max had invited him to Red Bull, over and over and over, no ulterior motive behind it, just wanting to see Lando on the top step of the podium, wanting him to have the car to fight for it; thinking about Austin, then Mexico City, how Max hadn’t apologized, had stood his ground, that he didn’t need to; thinking about how Max had worked his way through the field today, the greatest driver Lando’s ever known, and will ever know; thinking about when they’d first met, in person, how tall Max had been, how tall Max still is; thinking about how, at the end of the day, Lando feels lucky, that Max, in a way, has chosen him, how Max, in his own way, wants him by his side, always, but not always, only where it counts, only where it doesn’t—just one step below.
“I know,” he says, and he means it.
He’ll just have to wait.