Deals with Daisy // LN4

78 ~ Painted Nails

Daisy's POV

I think I've known it for a long time but there's one moment in particular that stands out when I realised I was in love with Lando Norris and it probably isn't where most people expect. Ot wasn't Silverstone. Silverstone, for a long time, I sort of excused as a kiss. A drunken mistake, a bit of chemistry maybe just from two people who knew each other so well but there was another moment. One other day in particular I realised that I was probably done for. It didn't stop there from being glimmers or days when I denied it, especially because I did like Laurent - but where I was mentally now, knowing what I know now - that was probably the moment where it was sealed.

When I was done for.

June 2024 - Austria

I could hear the knocking at my door but I was stuck on my bed, beginning to feel the ability to breathe crawling further away from me as tears fell silently down my face between uneven breaths. I don't quite know what had happened but once I'd come back from the track to get ready for dinner ahead of the GP tomorrow I'd noticed that I needed to paint my nails again. Throughout the weekend so far I'd felt the buzzing at the end of my fingers become more and more of an itch and the result was that most of my nail polish was completely chipped away.

I'd just about finished painting them again when I noticed that I'd started picking the first hand all over again. I had chipped several of my nails as the frustration and itching moved from my fingers up my arms and into my heart and lungs. It felt like someone's nail was just softly scratching slowly and painfully in the same place, over and over as they pulled away the skin and muscle tissue slowly but surely. One layer at a time, my lungs burning even though I wasn't doing anything wrong.

I wanted to smoke but it was a non-smoking hotel and with fans and press outside, that option was also not available to me. The stinging in my fingers got worse when I used the nail polish remover to strip them to a blank canvas once more. My nails were brittle as the formula made its way into the cuts around my nails and stripped the nail polish I'd just applied to my nails once more.

The silent tears were rolling, everything feeling hopeless and it was taking all of my attention to focus on my nails and to not totally fall apart. So I couldn't call out to answer the door - I couldn't even tell him to go on without me because I didn't want him to see me like this. My lack of answer, as usual, was not an issue for him though, almost a permission slip as he walked straight into my room, the lecture already beginning as he immediately began to tell me off for being late and spending too much time on my appearance. I just kept my head down, eyes averted.

"Sheesh, you could at least answer the door - or are you too busy not messing up your nails? God knows why you chose now to fix them - we needed to leave five minutes ago," he whines before coming to a stop at the end of my bed as I keep my head down and stare at the two raw nails on my left hand that needed to be repainted still - never mind the makeup that needed to be redone. "This was the restaurant that you wanted to go to Dais..." he reminds me, still not quite getting the mood of the room until I finally lift my head to meet his gaze.

My eyes are watery and while I'm hardly sobbing, there's a clear stream of tears on my cheeks and it stops him in his tracks for just a second before the space immediately disappears and I wipe them away with the back of my hand. "I-I'm sorry."

"Hey, hey, no don't worry. No need to apologise, what's wrong?" He says, voice soothing. He takes the nail polish brush out of my hand and puts it back in the pot as he sits next to me on the bed, hands reaching for mine. It doesn't take even another second before he notices the rawness around them and the questions fade. He doesn't need to ask because he knows and immediately pulls me in closer to him. "It's going to be just fine. I promise. I got you."