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Chapter Text

“I’m going to fuck someone tomorrow,” Lando announces as he kicks the door shut behind him coming back from his classes and catching Oscar mid-bite eating a sandwich in the kitchen.

“Mmhm,” Oscar mumbles around his bite, not looking at all convinced, leaning back against the counter, watching Lando fling his backpack onto the sofa and pull off his hoodie to throw it on the floor there where the open plan living room turns to kitchen, right where someone is most likely to trip over it.

Oscar’s going to tell Lando to pick it up and throw it in the wash basket any minute now and then Lando will say that he will in a minute and then he won’t and then at some point Oscar do it himself and repeat the process the next time. It’s a thing they do.

Lando heads to the fridge next to where Oscar is leaning, opening it by rote even though he knows there’s nothing in there but an almost empty bottle of coke and a mismatched assortment of condiments. “There’s nothing to eat in this house, we need to go grocery shopping.”

Oscar swallows his bite. “There’s still some bread and noodles if you want that.”

“That’s not food,” Lando says and takes a sip straight from the two-litre bottle of coke before he closes the fridge. He rifles through a cabinet looking for the almost empty packet of spaghetti to make himself some. “And I’m serious about the fucking, I’ve got a gig.”

“We can go grocery shopping tomorrow,” Oscar says. “And not that I believe you about the fucking or anything, but that’s what you said the last five times too. But anyway, if by some miracle you do find someone, you can’t bring them back here, Geraldine will have a fit.”

“Geraldine needs to get fucked,” Lando just says, as he finds the spaghetti.

He probably shouldn’t, because poor Geraldine is the security guard always on duty for night shift downstairs who has seen Lando drunk out of his mind stumbling through the lobby with someone trying to lick his uvula one too many times.

“Geraldine doesn’t get paid nearly enough scrape your drunk ass off the floor again.”

“That was one time,” Lando says as he gets a pot from another cabinet.

“It was so many times.”

“Whatever,” Lando says, nudging Oscar out of his way so he can get to the sink to fill the pot with water.

“You wouldn’t know because you were too drunk to remember.”

“Yes, alright, Oscar, point made, I’m not even planning on getting drunk, I’m planning on getting fucked. I’m driving myself anyway, since you won’t, so I can’t get drunk.”

“Might improve your driving, actually.”

“Shut up, Oscar, not all of us are prodigal engineers magically gifted with driving abilities at birth.”

“M’not an engineer yet and also that’s not how it works. You’d think studying media you’d have time for practicing, yet here you are.”

“I'm a busy guy. Whatever, now as I was saying, you know, trying to be considerate and shit, I wasn’t going to bring anyone here anyway, I wouldn’t wake you up or kick you out in the middle of the night, what do you think of me?”

“Oh, thank you, how very considerate.”

“Yes, exactly, you’re welcome.”

“I’ll still pray for all the poor motorists on the London streets tonight, though, just in case,” Oscar just says and takes another bite of his sandwich.

“Hey, I got my licence fair and square!” Lando plonks the pot down on the stove to emphasize that.

“The poles from the six failed ones didn’t think it was fair.”

“Will you shut up and let me talk?”

“Right, sorry, I was so excited to hear about how you’re going to get fucked tomorrow like you haven’t narrated a new master plan to me five times this month.”

“Shh, no just listen,” Lando says as he sets the water to boil and chucks some salt in. “Everyone wants to fuck the DJ, right? The DJ is cool, the DJ is hot.”

“The DJ seems a lot less cool and hot when he’s saying how cool and hot the DJ is.”

Lando groans and rolls his eyes, “I would never say that to someone I plan on fucking.”

Oscar just sighs. “Of course you wouldn’t.”

“So I’ll finish my set, right, and then I’m going to get just a plain glass of, like, cranberry juice or just a Red Bull and everyone will think I’m drinking because you don’t sidle up to someone in a club sober, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“Right, so I’m just going to do that and this time, I’m just going to find someone decent looking and go for it, no distractions, just pick someone and that’s who I’m going to fuck.”

“Sure.”

“It’ll work, just you see.”

“The last time you did that was with the one who had a foot fetish, right?”

“That’s not going to happen again!”

“That’s what you said last time too.”

“It’s just because I’ve been getting the good times for sets lately and nobody good is left after I leave.”

“Right, I think you’re just saying that to boost your ego.”

“I’m not! What do you know about club hours anyway, you hermit.”

Oscar finishes off his sandwich and throws his hands up in surrender. “Whatever you say, I’m off to class.”

“You have class? But I wanted you to go grocery shopping with me.”

“Go by yourself.”

“I don’t like going by myself,” Lando moans petulantly, throwing the spaghetti in as Oscar rinses off his plate. “Are you busy tomorrow?”

“Nah, no lectures, I’ll work in the evening. I’ve got an applied maths assignment and a physics test coming up.”

“Oh, okay, we can go in the morning, yeah?”

“I still think you should go by yourself.”

“Not a chance.”

Oscar just sighs. “Uhuh.”

“Uhuh.”

“Also pick this up,” he adds, lightly kicking Lando’s hoodie on the floor as he walks past to his room.

“I will in a minute,” Lando promises, lying.

Oscar doesn’t even bother calling him out on it.

Ten o’clock the next morning Lando is slumped against Oscar’s door, knocking incessantly on it while he intermittently calls, “Oscar."

Knock knock knock.

"Oscar."

Knock knock knock.

"Oscar, wake up.”

Knock.

The door is probably not even locked, now that Lando thinks about it.

He hears some vague groans.

“Come on, we don’t have food, let’s go to the store.”

“Eat bread,” Oscar groans through the door.

“No, get up and drive us to the shop.”

“Drive yourself.”

“No, come on, you need to re-park my car anyway, I did it wrong the other day.”

Oscar groans loudly and there’s some shuffling as he drags himself out of bed and opens the door.

“It is ten o’clock in the morning Lando, I'm sleeping, I love sleeping, why are you taking it away from me?"

"Because food."

"Go fuck yourself.”

“Been there, done that, now come on, put a shirt on, you slut,” Lando just says, smacking Oscar’s naked pectoral as he stretches.

His skin is all warm from sleep still, his muscles moving under his skin as he stretches, boxers riding low on his hips. Lando catches a glimpse of the soft trail of hair leading down.

Oscar groans again and mutters, “And I’m the slut... Why do I have to drive?”

Jesus, Lando must really be pent up if he’s actively eyeing Oscar’s happy trail.

“Because,” Lando says distractedly as he shakes the thought away. It’s probably fine. Oscar’s hot anyway, so it’s not like it’s weird.

“You need the practice,” Oscar says as he heads back into his room, leaving the door open as he finds a pair of shorts out of his closet to pull them over his boxers.

Lando takes that as an invitation to come inside, flopping down on Oscar’s bed as he shrugs on a T-shirt.

“I made a grocery list, by the way. You’re welcome,” he says as he watches Oscar slip on and tie his shoes.

“Did you put on that we need drain cleaner?”

“Oh no, I forgot about that,” Lando says, opening his phone to add it to the list.

“And you finished the spaghetti.”

“Oh yeah.”

“This is why I don’t thank you when you make the list because you always forget half the things.”

“Will you just appreciate the effort?”

“Uhuh. Oh, and dish soap.”

Lando groans and shoves the phone in his face. “Oh my god, you do it, then.”

Oscar snorts and takes it, tapping away at the list.

Lando rolls his eyes and snatches a hoodie off the back of Oscar’s desk chair and pulls it on, seeing as the one that had been on the floor had mysteriously found its way into the wash basket without any of Lando’s help.

Oscar has apparently long gotten used to that because he doesn’t even look up at the thievery.

“Come on, I have class at one,” Lando says, smoothing a hand roughly through his messy curls in the mirror on the back of Oscar’s door. He looks like shit, but whatever.

Oscar hums and follows him out of the apartment, still tapping, because Lando apparently had forgotten half the things they need.

Oscar finishes the list as they step out of the elevator, handing the phone back to Lando in exchange for the car keys.

“I don’t know why you still write lube on there like it’s not the first thing you get every time we go into a grocery store.”

“Oh, I don’t, it just stays on the list. It looks weird when it’s not there.”

Instead of answering that Oscar falters in his step as they round the corner to the parking lot where Lando's car stands. “Jeez, mate, you really need to practice your parking, what is this?”

“Hey, it’s in the lines!” Lando defends as he climbs into the passenger seat.

Oscar sighs and gets into the driver's side, adjusting the seat to his freakishly long legs.

“I’ll practice some other time.”

“You always say that,” Oscar says as he pulls away, backing smoothly out of Lando’s atrocious parking position.

“I will!”

“You always say that too.”

The car moves smoothly out of the parking lot into the street, Oscar’s hands gliding over the steering wheel and changing the gears in that smooth, practiced, instinctive way that Lando would find really hot if Oscar wasn’t Oscar, currently busy making fun of his lack of driving abilities.

“It’s not my fault you apparently just came out of the womb one-eight metres tall and able to drive a car. The rest of us have limitations in life, you know.”

“I’m one-seven-eight and for the millionth time, I also learned to drive. You know, by doing it more than twice a month.”

“I’m going to cut up your licence so that you can’t drive anywhere either, then you’ll see how it feels.”

Oscar just laughs. “Yeah, okay, at least you’ll get your practice in then since you’ll be the one driving us to the grocery store.”

“No, we’d walk. Obviously.”

“Uhuh. Sure."

“Oh, haha,” Lando says mock bitterly, crossing his arms. “Shut up and drive, Piastri.”

“We’re already halfway there.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Right, shutting up then,” Oscar says, through a far too amused smile.

Lando huffs primly.

Oscar gets them to the grocery store in that magical way that he has which doesn’t include stalling the car, entering a wrong lane, pissing anyone off or nearly running anybody over even once, which Lando personally just doesn’t understand.

Lando doesn’t tell Oscar that though, he doesn’t need an ego. He just grumbles a little, like he always does.

Oscar ignores him, like he always does.

He parks the car smooth and straight and chucks the reusable grocery bags at Lando to carry before they head inside.

Lando heads to the lube section in the toiletry aisle immediately because that’s just habit.

Oscar groans as he pushes a trolley after him, chucking in some toilet paper, deodorant, and shampoo as he follows him.

“I’m starting to think you should see a doctor about your sex drive,” Oscar says as Lando throws two bottles into the trolley.

“You just think that because you don’t understand how much lube it takes for me to get off since you apparently don’t like getting fucked at all. You know, like a psycho.”

“Can we not talk about our bedroom preferences so loudly, please?” Oscar asks as he picks out a bottle for himself.

“Well, you brought it up.”

“I’m just saying, you talk about sex way more than anyone else I’ve ever met in my life, it’s like at least three times a day, you might have a problem.”

“You’re saying you don’t think about sex at least three times a day?”

Oscar shrugs.

“You see, the difference is just that I just actually talk about it.”

“So it’s physiological and psychological. Great, you need to see two doctors.”

Lando frowns and waves a dismissive hand at him. “Oscar, please, it’s too early in the morning to be talking logicals to me.”

“It’s eleven.”

“Exactly, too early. I’m still waking up from my sex dream.”

Oscar gives him a flat look. “Freak.”

“Ass.”

“Whore.”

“Cunt.”

“I’m having you spayed,” Oscar says as he pushes the trolley forward.

“Eh.” Lando shrugs, jogging after him. “Might be worth it, lube is expensive.”

“I can’t take you anywhere,” Oscar groans in the vegetable section, chucking a criminal amount of green things into the trolley.

Lando leans on the edge of the trolley to give him a conspirational look “See, maybe if I have someone to take it out on I’ll be better.”

“No, you won’t, you’ll just yap at me about fucking someone instead of about wanting to fuck someone, I know you.”

“Ugh,” Lando groans as Oscar picks through the bell peppers. “Fine, I probably would, but wouldn’t you at least appreciate the variety?”

Oscar doesn’t deign to answer that. “Do you want red peppers or green peppers?”

“I want chicken strips and ice cream.”

“You’re going to the gym with me this week,” Oscar says, pointing a green pepper at him with one hand without looking up from his search for a good red pepper. “And they’re for the milano, there’s chicken in it, come on, or I’m not making any.”

“Red. And fine, but you’re not making me do all those weights.”

“They’re good for you, you can’t complain about your noodle arms if you refuse to lift weights with me, and what’s the point if you’re just going on the stairmaster and to yoga twice a week, you might as well cancel your membership. You can just as well walk up and down the stairs at campus and go twist yourself into pretzels in the park.”

“I happen to like my stairmaster there, thank you very much."

"Thirty-five pounds a month kind of like? If you spent that money on a doctor's consultation, maybe you would get somewhere."

"Oh, actually, speaking of doctors, I need to do my STD test again, it’s been six months I think. I’ll go to the gym with you if you come do my STD test with me.”

“Today?”

Lando shrugs.

“Okay, I need to get mine done as well. Besides, I should probably be there so you actually let them do it without running away again,” Oscar agrees as they head to the checkout.

“Hey! In my defence, that was the first time I had to get my blood drawn without my mum there. Having a fear of needles is completely normal, I think it was justified.”

“You were twenty-three years old.”

“Yeah, so?”

Oscar just sighs. “Whatever. We can go when we get home, just don’t make me drag you into the clinic.”

“I won’t!”

One hour later Oscar is dragging a protesting Lando into the clinic, trying to have a conversation with a half concerned, half amused looking nurse while Lando tries uselessly to squirm away from the grip Oscar has on his wrist.

“I don’t have STD’s I can feel it in my soul, Oscar, come on, let’s just go home!”

“We’re both getting STD tests today, is that alright?” Oscar asks the nurse, ignoring Lando’s desperate attempts to escape, barely even moving as Lando puts his weight into it to try and get away.

“Curse my noodle arms,” Lando mutters, ineffectually trying to pry Oscar’s fingers off his wrist. “Oscar, come on, I changed my mind.”

The nurse makes a slightly concerned face and says hesitantly, “Um, we have time for you both to come now, but I can’t draw blood if he doesn’t consent.”

“He’s consenting.”

“No, I’m not!”

“No, he isn’t.”

Lando makes a slightly terrified little sound and puts all his weight into it, digging his heels in.

Oscar rolls his eyes and turns to Lando. “Okay, stop it, you’ve done this so many times and you were fine.”

Unfortunately for him, Lando isn’t nearly heavy enough for his weight to make a difference against the bulk Oscar has built up the past years.

“I wasn’t! I’ve never once been fine, I hate it, it hurts and it’s horrible and it’s all for them to tell me I don’t have diseases like I didn’t already know that, it’s not worth it, I want to go home.”

“I’ll buy you coffee.”

“Not worth it.”

“I’ll watch Love is Blind with you for one TV night.”

Lando stops squirming, considering. He does want to finish the season and it’s so much more fun when he has Oscar to talk to through it. “Five nights.”

“Two.”

“Four.”

“Three, final offer.”

Lando chews the inside of his lip. “Okay, fine.”

“Great, he’ll be going first.”

“What? No!”

“You’ll run away if you don’t,” Oscar groans exasperatedly.

“No, I won’t, where will I even go?” Lando gestures with the arm which Oscar is still loosely holding the wrist of in some kind of precautionary measure. “You have the car keys.”

Oscar sighs and gives him a look. “Promise me I won’t have to come find you afterwards.”

Lando groans. “Yes, alright, I promise.”

Oscar lets his wrist go. “That’s what you said about having to drag you to the clinic. If I have to come find you it’s back to one night.”

Lando scowls and sits down huffily in a waiting chair.

Oscar rolls his eyes and follows the nurse back into the clinic to have his blood drawn.

Lando doesn’t like how they lead people away to do the whole blood drawing thing, it makes it seem all evil science experiment-y, and Lando isn’t completely convinced that they don’t do weird experiments on his blood when they send it away.

He distracts himself by daydreaming about forcing Oscar to watch at least six episodes of Love is Blind, partially succeeding.

He’s just getting nervous again when a cute girl enters the clinic and starts talking to the receptionist about test results.

Lando is about to sidle up to her and ask for her number when Oscar comes out, a plaster over his arm where they’d stuck him, looking unreasonably calm for someone who just had vital fluids removed from his body with a needle and syringe and put into a test tube to be sent away to some obscure laboratory to be inspected under a microscope. He waves Lando to get up and follow the nurse. “Come on, on you go, you’ll thank me tomorrow.”

“No wait,” Lando stalls. “I want to get her number.”

“No, no stalling, get her number afterwards.”

“No, please!”

“Lando, go or there’s no Love is Blind at all.”

Lando scowls at him and jabs a finger into his stupidly broad chest. “You’re manipulating me, don’t think I don’t know that.”

“I don’t care. Go.”

Lando huffs and follows the nurse.

He’s mostly fine up until the nurse opens the needle.

“Okay, no, I can’t do this, I promise I don’t have anything,” Lando tells her desperately as he squirms in the chair, trying to get away from the needle.

The nurse sighs. “It will just be a second of a prick, Mr. Norris, it will hurt less if you sit still and let me do it.”

“No, I can’t, it’s too big, why is it so long? And don’t call me Mr. Norris, it makes it seem like you’re torturing me for science, I’m sorry, please let me go, I really don’t think I can do this.”

The nurse sighs. “Will you be more comfortable if your boyfriend is in the room?”

“My what now?” Lando asks, faltering in his squirming. “Oh, Oscar?”

Lando would be lucky to have someone as patient as Oscar willing to deal with him in the kind of relationship that puts him in danger of potentially being stuck with Lando for the rest of his life.

“Oscar’s not— He’ll make fun of me!”

“I’m sure he won’t,” the nurse says gently. “I can go call him in for you.”

Lando chews his lip. Maybe it would be nice if Oscar were in here. “Okay, fine.”

The nurse makes a face that Lando is pretty sure means she’s trying not to laugh as she recaps the needle and removes her gloves to go back out and fetch Oscar.

Lando sighs.

“Really, Lando?” Oscar says as he comes in and closes the door behind himself.

“See, I told you he would make fun of me!” Lando tells the nurse.

“I’m not making fun of you, come on, just don’t think about it,” he says as he stands on the other side of Lando so the nurse can get a new pair of gloves and put the tourniquet on.

“How am I meant to not think about it, she’s got a needle!”

“I don’t know, tell me about something. Tell me about your classes.”

“I don’t care about my classes right now, Oscar.”

“Uh, okay, tell me about your gig?”

“It’s a gig, what do you want me to say-ow.” Lando flinches, but the nurse is just prodding his arm to find a vein.

Oscar sighs and squats down next to Lando. “Okay, just give me your hand.”

Lando’s eyes dart nervously between the nurse and Oscar’s offered hand. “You’re making fun of me.”

“I’m not, just take my hand, okay?”

Lando whimpers a little, but he takes Oscar’s hand. Fuck his dignity, if Oscar wants to make fun of him later Lando can always smack him on the head about it and refuse to go to the gym with him.

“Okay, good, just breathe.”

Lando moans and squeezes Oscar’s hand tighter as the nurse cleans his arm with an alcohol wipe again and lines up the needle, mostly failing at breathing.

“Hey, don’t look at her, look at me,” Oscar says gently.

Lando looks at him.

It must be the nervous delusion, but for a moment, Lando thinks Oscar would make an incredible boyfriend.

“Yeah, just look at me. Think about how much you’re going to enjoy telling me all about the couples on Love is Blind, okay?”

Lando laughs breathily. “Okay.”

“Yeah, I’ll even listen to you this time. I’ll sacrifice some of my brain cells, I’ll take the brain damage, just for you.”

“Lauren and Cameron are so good together, I’m telling you," Lando whimpers.

“Sure, you can tell me all about it.”

“Yeah, okay. Can we get coffee after this?”

“Yeah, sure,” Oscar laughs. “I’ll buy you one for how brave you were.”

“Brave I was past tense?” Lando asks in confusion, looking back to his arm to see that there’s a plaster there and he can just about feel a little ache. “Oh.”

“See? You didn’t even feel it.”

“Yes, I did, it was terrible,” Lando lies, snatching his hand back.

The nurse just laughs as she scribbles on some paperwork and bags up the tube. “You didn’t even flinch,” she says.

Lando grumbles vaguely.

Oscar laughs and stands up, ruffling Lando’s curls. “Let’s go get you some coffee, drama queen.”

“Yes, actually, I deserve so much coffee,” Lando agrees as he follows Oscar out to reception to fill out some paperwork and go over the ‘come back in two weeks for results’ spiel.

“Uhuh,” Oscar says as he finishes the paperwork and then says friendly goodbyes to the nurse and receptionist.

“Hey, what happened to that girl picking up her results?” Lando says, remembering as Oscar holds the door for him.

Oscar grimaces as he closes the door behind them. “Turns out she has gonorrhoea, so uh… Best not.”

Lando sighs. “Fuck.”

“You’re a magnet for these kinds of things, I'm telling you. So don’t go forgetting a condom tonight, or I’ll have to drag you back in a week for another test.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Not to insinuate that I believe you’re actually getting some today,” Oscar adds doubtfully as they head to the car.

“I will!”

“Sure. You’ll text me if you don’t come home?”

“I won’t come home. Don’t wait up for me.”

“I’ll work on my project, so I’ll be up late anyway. Just text me.”

Lando rolls his eyes while Oscar unlocks the car to let them both inside. “Yes, alright, I will, now can we focus on my reward?”

“Yeah, yeah. Costa?”

“Yes, please,” Lando says, beaming.

Oscar rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling as he starts the car.

“I love you, by the way,” Lando tacks on.

Oscar sighs. "Mmhm."

Lando loves the energy of a club at peak hour, the sputtering lights over a wild crowd, the smell of sweat and alcohol thick in the air, the beat shaking the stage underneath him as the crowd screams, cups raised in the air, drops of alcohol flying every time the crowd jumps up and down.

It’s been a good night. Carlos had abandoned his law books for the evening to keep Lando company on the stage for an hour or two, George and Alex had come out for a bit, Daniel never needs to be convinced, and even Max and Charles had come out to get drunk upon Lando’s request in the group chat. He just wishes Oscar had come too.

It’s one in the morning now, and everyone has gone home except Max and Charles, because Charles is trying unsuccessfully to peel a plastered Max Verstappen off the bar counter with little success.

According to Oscar, an engineering degree will do that to a guy.

Lando wouldn’t know, because he chose media like a sensible human being. Charles in his fashion degree probably wouldn’t know either, which is likely why he’s still trying to argue with Max that life isn’t a lost cause.

“Look, mate, I vote let’s just pick him up and carry him to the car,” Lando says after twenty minutes of watching Charles ineffectively try to argue with Max why his bed is a better place to spend the night than the bar table.

Max is so drunk that promises of sex when he’s sober isn’t a good enough incentive and Charles has moved on to trying to bribe him with promises of buying him the latest FIFA extension pack but Max doesn’t seem to be comprehending anything he’s saying anymore.

Charles sighs. “Yes, maybe. I’ll call a taxi now, please make sure he doesn’t fall off the chair or something.”

Lando cringes at the puddle of Verstappen on the counter and gives Charles a thumbs up as he goes out to find a taxi. Lando doesn’t bother trying to make conversation with Max, instead he just keeps one hand on his forearm in case he feels inclined to fall off the bar and looks around for any potential one-night stands.

He can’t very well ask Max’s opinion, so he fishes his phone from his pocket to see if Oscar’s still up.

gym bro or goth girl?

Oscar only takes a few seconds to reply, but apparently he’s still up.

Goth girl is too good for you

yeah, bit scared of her tbh she’s fucking hot

Just then Charles comes jogging back inside. “Okay, come, the taxi is waiting. Max, we’re going home.”

“No, I live here now,” Max slurs. “Leave me to perish in peace.”

“I’m sorry, chéri, unfortunately for you I love you so I can’t let you do that,” Charles says as he peels Max up from the counter, much to Max’s apparent displeasure because he moans very loudly about it as Charles pulls his arm around his shoulders.

Lando tries to stifle a laugh as he takes Max’s other arm.

“He’s going to be worse in the morning,” Charles laments as they drag Max outside between them. “And I’m telling myself I won’t feel bad for him because it’s his fault, but I always do.”

Lando laughs. “He’ll live, probably. Engineering is tough. According to Oscar at least.”

“Well, Oscar doesn’t feel the need to ruin his liver about it.”

“Trust me, he has his own coping mechanisms. Which mostly include not sleeping and going to the gym too much, which is very inconvenient because he drags me to the gym with him. I think I’d prefer this, honestly.”

“He’s thrown up on me one too many times, Lando,” Charles just says very seriously. “I think I’d take the gym addiction.”

Lando grimaces. “Gross.”

“Agreed,” Charles laughs. Then, after a moment, he says, “You and Oscar are just like me and Max sometimes, no?”

“Like you two? I don’t think so, no offence. You two are disgustingly obsessed with each other. Osc and I are just friends,” Lando waves him off.

Charles just shrugs.

Lando chooses to ignore that.

They manage to shove Max in the taxi without too much of a fuss and luckily the car pulls away, making that Charles’ problem again, which leaves Lando to go back inside and make a move on the gym rat he’d seen ordering a gin at the bar.

He’s just sidled up to the guy, making inane conversation, when his phone buzzes.

So go for her then idiot

What’s-his-name doesn’t seem sober enough to care that Lando is only half listening to what he’s saying to text Oscar instead.

too late, made my move on weights for brains

reminds me of you you gym freak

Weights for brains is now inserting himself into Lando’s space, half pressing him to the wall, still not really noticing Lando looking at his phone and Lando is wondering just how he’s meant to tell when a guy is too drunk for it to be morally justifiable to fuck him.

Ha

You’re joking but sometimes I wish I could be a moron with a rugby scholarship

All I’d have to do was get knocked in the head a few times a week to stay in uni and instead here I am up at one in the morning, suffering  endlessly

Lando bites down his laugh as he reads over the guys shoulder where he’s wrapped his arms around him now that he’s started kissing Lando’s neck. He smells like vodka and a cheap Axe body spray, but Lando can deal with that.

He struggles a little, but he manages to type out a reply to Oscar as he tilts his head, deliberating if the way the guy is licking at his neck feels good or just weird. He’s leaning towards weird.

yeah yeah you’ve got the brains and the brawn it must be so difficult how do you cope?

Do I look like I’m coping?

lol no fair

gtg im gonna go get fucked

Be safe

Lando tilts his head a little more, sparing a moment to tuck his phone away before he starts actually participating and kissing the guy back, wondering if he's supposed to know what his name is or whether they aren't bothering with all that.

But then everything goes to shit in all of two seconds.

Fuck.

He’d been willing to go home with someone and sneak out at four in the morning, or even just get a blowjob in the bathroom if it came to that. He had just been determined to have sex tonight in any way, shape, or form.

But he’s not desperate enough to deal with this man honest to god trying to growl at him right now.

Lando cringes away from the vodka breath of what’s-his-name and slowly weasels himself out of his grip. He doesn’t know how this happened. The plan was flawless.

“Uh… Look mate, wish I had the time, but my roommate’s calling me and I promised to be back tonight. He’s getting pretty annoyed, I'd best head home.”

It’s an absolute lie, but given that Oscar is perfectly fine with being used for the annoyed roommate card every time Lando even remotely needs it, Lando doesn’t feel bad at all.

Vodka-breath doesn’t even seem sober enough to comprehend anything past the fact that his dick isn’t going to get wet anywhere near Lando tonight, so he fucks off at least.

Lando doesn’t know why he even bothers.

He hasn’t successfully fucked anyone he picked up in a club after a DJ gig in more than three months.

Today it was a guy trying to growl at him, last week it was a girl who’d asked if he wanted to come home with her and see her doll collection, another time it was a girl who asked about his shoe size one too many times for it to be normal, and Lando doesn’t even want to think about the guy who fell asleep on him mid make-out because that just hurt his ego.

He should have tried the hot goth girl he’d seen in the corner, he thinks in hindsight, but right now she looks to be pretty busy pressing some other lucky guy into a wall as she sticks her tongue down his throat.

Lando sighs.

At this point he just wants to go home.

Lando loves being a DJ, he loves the attention the wildness of the crowd, the adrenaline high, but he misses when he could just go to clubs and someone else would set the atmosphere and Lando could focus on getting drunk and getting fucked. It used to be so easy.

Nowadays, the only time he can drink and mingle is after his set when they put on the shitty two AM generic playlist and all the decent people have found someone to go home with already.

And now that all his friends’ degrees start getting more serious, he can’t even get drunk after a gig half the time because nobody is there to take care of him.

Lando sighs and heads out of the musty club into the comparably fresh London air outside, which is really saying something about how disgusting the club is inside. He finds his car, makes sure all his equipment that he’d stored an hour or so ago after his set is all there and safe, before he climbs into the driver’s seat.

Oscar had been joking, but Lando is in all honesty still a nervous wreck of a driver, and he still does all his checks twice at every turn and stop sign, stalls the car three separate times and pisses off about eight people on the way home. Usually it's fifteen.

He parks the car mostly in the lines of his designated parking space in a record breaking five attempts, and it’s still pretty skew but Oscar will repark it the next time Lando convinces him to drive his car for him anyway.

Geraldine gives him an assessing look as he comes through the door of the building and seems satisfied enough with Lando’s pathetic state of sobriety.

Lando grumbles something vaguely rude in greeting.

She grumbles something back.

It’s a thing they do.

He presses the button for their floor in the rickety old elevator, and it sounds just about as miserable as Lando feels as it lurches upwards.

He falls gratefully against the 481 plaque of their apartment door, shoving his key successfully into the keyhole on the third try, and groans as he walks through the door.

“I thought you weren’t coming back.” Oscar says amusedly from the couch as Lando locks the door behind himself and tosses the key in the bowl on the table next to the door.

Turns out they both lied, since Lando isn’t getting fucked and Oscar isn’t working on his project.

“Didn’t go as planned, did it?”

The lights are all off in the apartment now, so it’s just the flickering scenes of Law and Order on the television illuminating Oscar lying cozily on the couch under the blanket they keep there.

“Nope,” Lando says, popping the P as he toes off his shoes.

Lando doesn’t really get it. He’s hot, other people are hot, that used to be enough for a fuck every once in a while.

But lately everyone Lando has been trying to chat up is either a freak, or they’re stupid or they have no personality or Lando realises they’re actually ugly ten minutes in or he just plain doesn’t like them. This never used to be so much of a problem before.

Oscar snorts and just lifts the blanket in invitation.

Lando sighs before he heads to the couch and collapses right into Oscar.

Oscar huffs a laugh and catches him in his arms.

He had tried and failed so many times to get back in the groove and remember how he used to just make that work all the time, but all of a sudden, he’s apparently incapable of finding someone appropriate to fuck.

Did he just suddenly get too picky or something?

“Stop watching Law and Order without me,” Lando grumbles as he gets comfortable with Oscar, half facing the TV screen with Oscar’s arm around his middle, Lando’s head pillowed on his shoulder.

“I’m just rewatching all the episodes you were yapping through.”

“Shut up.”

“Mmhm.”

“Do you want to watch some Love is Blind before we head to bed?”

“Mm. No, I want a full night, I’m not wasting this one.”

“I’ll throw in this one for free.”

Lando sighs happily. “You’re so nice to me sometimes.”

“Way too nice.”

“Probably. You’re going to have to carry me to bed though.”

“No, I’ll drag you by your ankle,” Oscar says as he puts on Love is Blind.

“No, please, you have to carry me,” Lando moans. “I’m so dead.”

“Yeah, I can smell that.”

Lando groans and squirms out of his reeking hoodie, mainly for Oscar’s sake, as he laments, “M’not even drunk. You’re smelling the vodka breath of the guy who tried to growl at me.”

Oscar bursts out in laughter.

Lando snorts tiredly and throws the hoodie off somewhere onto the floor where Oscar will pick it up and complain about Lando’s slatternly habits when he does laundry again.

It’s a lot funnier now that he’s home and looking back on the situation. He smiles tiredly. “Yeah, it was pretty bad.”

“See, it’s funnier because you say ‘tried’.”

Lando groans and gets comfortable on Oscar’s warm chest. “He was really bad at growling, okay?”

Oscar laughs some more, chest shaking under Lando’s head.

Lando makes a self-pitying sigh, but if he’s honest he’s not half as miserable as he was before he came home. He complains anyway. “I just want to get laid, Oscar, is that too much to ask?”

“I’m beginning to think the answer to that might be yes.”

Lando just sighs and watches for a second before he realises, missing the warmth of a hoodie, “Fuck, now I’m cold.”

Oscar sighs and sits up to pull his own hoodie off and give it to Lando.

“I love you so much,” Lando sighs as he gratefully takes it.

“Yeah, I love you too,” Oscar sighs.

Lando puts it on, still warm from Oscar’s body heat, before he buries back into Oscar’s comfortable arms to settle in for an episode of trash TV, Oscar's heartbeat steady and familiar beneath his ear on his chest.

In hindsight, Lando’s not even upset that the guy ended up growling at him.

He would much rather be here right now, tucked into Oscar’s arms under a warm blanket with reality TV in the background than having sex with some stranger.

Chapter Text

"I'm horny," Lando announces once again on a perfectly peaceful Tuesday evening from Oscar's twin bed behind him while Oscar is failing to do his assignment by the desk.

"Good for you," Oscar just says, while he's trying to remember just why he wanted to be an engineer in the first place.

Lando says this to him at least three times a week, so Oscar doesn’t feel the need to say anything more.

"I haven't gotten any in, like, two months."

"That's so sad," Oscar deadpans, not even a little sad.

Oscar honestly has no idea why Lando is here, once again making his insatiable sex drive and his lack of time to satiate it Oscar’s problem.

"You're not even listening."

Oscar is, actually, because Lando is there on his bed being all distracting, talking about fucking other people like Oscar isn’t wildly in love with him or something.

Probably because Lando doesn’t know that Oscar is wildly in love with him. Or something.

Besides, Oscar actually has no idea what’s going on with his assignment right now. But Lando doesn’t need to know any of that because then he’ll just be encouraged.

"I don't need to, because the next thing you're going to say is, ‘I just want to get laid, Oscar, is that too much to ask?’” Oscar says.

Right as Lando says, "I just want to get laid, Oscar, is that too much to ask?"

Oscar smiles absently as he scribbles out a sum on his paper.

Lando huffs. Cutely. As usual. Oscar doesn’t even need to look to know how cute he is when he does that. Lando doesn’t even know it’s cute. Ugh.

"Very funny, Oscar."

Oscar’s kind of gotten used to it. The pining.

Every once in a while, he feels abjectly and miserably sorry for himself. Most days it’s just part of the furniture, really. A part of his day.

He should start a weekly bingo card: Lando talking about sex, Lando being annoying, Lando saying he needs to go to the gym, Lando doing something so horrendously cute it makes Oscar want to dissolve in a puddle on the floor. The usual.

"I know I am, that's why you like me."

Right now it’s bearable, because Lando’s just there being a slight nuisance, as usual.

"I like you because you drive me around and pay half the rent, obviously, don't delude yourself,” Lando lies.

"Sure." Oscar scribbles some more.

“Oh, our STD results are here by the way, I picked mine up today, but they wouldn’t let me take yours, so you have to go by yourself. I told you I didn’t have syphilis.”

“Ah, gonorrhoea? Sorry to hear that.”

“I don’t find you funny.”

“Sure you don’t.”

"Anyway, as I was saying, I'm serious, I have no time for actual dating between Uni and the DJ gigs."

"And golf."

"And golf.”

“And modelling and yoga and social media and are you still streaming?”

“Yes, but that’s besides the point.”

"I think you can sacrifice golf."

"I'll get better!"

"You've been saying that for two years."

"I will!"

"Right."

"Can we focus on the part where I'm not getting fucked and how completely unfair that is?"

Oscar would be perfectly happy to fuck him. And bring him coffees in the library and write him sticky notes with heart dotted i’s and walk him to the media building while holding his hand and kiss him goodbye when he goes out for his gigs.

It’s sickening, really.

"You think I have time for those things either? I haven't been anywhere but campus, the grocery store and this apartment for three months, probably. And I can't exactly pick up a date in the grocery store, Lando."

"Well, you could," Lando says.

Oscar gives up on trying to focus on the assignment and spins his chair around to look at Lando instead, throwing his feet up on the bed because Lando's going to start yapping right about now, and Oscar might as well get comfortable.

"I don't see how I could, actually, the cereal aisle doesn't really set a mood.”

Lando rolls his eyes before he pokes at Oscar’s socked foot. "You're hot, Oscar, you could pick up anyone you'd like."

Says Lando who is the one person Oscar would like, and also the person currently lying in his bed lamenting about how badly he wants to fuck other people.

The jokes make themselves at this point.

"Maybe grocery store fluorescents and the dark circles under my eyes just put a damper on my charm, because I’ve never quite managed that."

Or maybe Oscar is just sick of even bothering to make an effort to meet people, go on bad dates and have mediocre sex while trying to get over his stupid lovesickness for this ridiculous idiot lying in his bed right now.

He doesn’t really feel like having sex with anyone else anyway.

“You haven’t tried, but that’s not the point.”

“I lost your point a while ago, mate.”

He will admit that he is a bit pent up, sick of his hand and the fantasies during which he always spends half his concentration trying not to think about Lando, so in the end even wanking is mediocre.

“The point is that I can’t pick someone up in the grocery store because I don’t even have time to do my hair and put on anything other than this." He gestures to his outfit. "So I always look hideous.”

Lando has never looked hideous a day in his life, especially not in a baggy hoodie that he stole from Oscar’s closet and soft sweats and mismatched socks, his curls all messy and out of whack like Oscar imagines they’d look if he ever got his hands in them like he dreams of, so that’s completely untrue.

"True."

Lando just groans and throws his head back onto Oscar's pillow. "I want to order sex like Uber Eats."

Oscar laughs because nobody but Lando would ever say something like that.

Lando grins, because he loves it when people find him funny. Oscar finds him a lot funnier than he should.

“That’s an idea. You should start a business.”

"I just want to have an orgasm delivered without doing all the work to get there and having to worry about it afterwards."

Oscar wrinkles his nose. “Mm.”

“Chatting up to someone for a one-night stand is so much effort, they always turn out to be really weird. I can’t find a decent one half as often as I want to get fucked.”

Oscar’s not complaining, honestly. As much as he respects Lando’s right to sleep with whoever he wants as often as he wants, he’d really prefer not to hear about it so much. And Oscar always hears about it, because Lando doesn’t shut the hell up.

He feels a bit bad for even thinking that though, so in a half-hearted attempt to morally make up for it he suggests, "So just find one person to have casual sex with, then, people do that all the time. Just not in the apartment, please, you always forget the sock on the door."

"And how do I go about asking someone if they want to have casual sex with me? Who would I have casual sex with?"

"I don't know, you know how to flirt, don't you?"

"I thought so, but recently I'm not convinced. The only people I meet are my classmates and the yoga people and the golf people and they all suck or they’re ugly or I hate them. And I might give up on going home with someone from the club after the creepy doll girl, the foot fetish, the guy who fell asleep, and now the growling and don’t forget the vomiting incident.”

Oscar winces at that particular memory. "Yeah, I’m not driving you to a clinic at midnight because someone vomited all over your dick again."

Lando cringes. "Can we not talk about that, please?”

"Sorry."

"You see what I mean though? I don't even see anyone regularly enough to have casual sex with, I mean, do you?"

"The only things that are regular in my life right now are you and the bags under my eyes," Oscar says, because it's true.

"Great, so we're both fucked then."

Some more than others. Read: Oscar, because at least Lando wants to fuck people, unlike Oscar, who can’t even be bothered to pretend nowadays. It’s too much effort between his degree and the effort it takes not to smack Lando over the head sometimes and kiss him right after.

Oscar just hums as Lando flops his head down on the pillows behind him.

He turns back to his assignment, picking the pencil back up to try and get this done and stop thinking about Lando having sex.

Behind him, Lando says, "I'm starting to think we should just fuck each other."

Oscar snorts.

Because that's funny.

"That's an idea, yeah," Oscar jokes and focuses on finding the thread he had going with his sums.

Lando is quiet for a few moments, Oscar hears the sheets move as he shuffles on the bed.

He taps his pencil, scribbles some more, taps it again.

"Oscar."

Oscar hums idly as he focuses on what he’s writing.

Then, Lando stands up, plucks Oscar’s pencil out of his hand, and sits down on the desk on top of his assignment.

Oscar sighs.

He’s not really surprised, Lando just does things like that. A little annoyed maybe. He’d been sort of succeeding in figuring out where he was going with the sums.

He sits back in his chair and raises his eyebrows at Lando.

Lando sits on his desk all too comfortably, thighs on either side of Oscar’s chair, looking at him like he's just gotten the best idea he’s ever had in his life.

Lando is about to tell him the worst idea he’s ever had in his life.

"What?"

Lando looks him up and down and states, "You're hot."

"Yeah, you’ve mentioned that." It’s kind of funny if Oscar pretends it isn’t sad.

"And I'm hot."

Obviously. "Yeah, I guess."

"Let's just have sex with each other then."

Oscar doesn’t even process that for a moment, because surely it’s a joke, but Lando isn’t making his joking face, he’s making his ‘I’m a genius’ face which is without fail followed by complete disaster every single time it crosses his features.

“What?”

Lando, entirely undeterred by Oscar’s very reasonable reaction, just goes on, “I mean if there’s anyone I already know who will be available to fuck me on a regular basis, it’s you.”

“Are you mental?” Oscar is so shocked that, for a moment, he’s apparently turned British.

He’s been making a very big effort not to turn British ever since he got here, and Lando being in his space twenty-four seven with his cute and funny British slang is no help. Lando is never any help with anything, really.

“I might be soon if I don’t get any.”

“You are mental,” Oscar just says while he tries very hard to remember that Lando is just being Lando right now and nothing will come of this.

It’s not an excuse to think about Lando underneath him, moaning and whining like Oscar fucking knows he would because he doesn’t know how to jerk off quietly next door. Not for lack of Oscar trying to alert him to that fact by loudly banging on the wall they share.

“It’ll be weird.”

“It won’t be weird," Lando insists. "It’ll be mutually beneficial. Convenient. You know, casual sex.”

"Uh, considering we've got a perfectly nice friendship going here and you're also paying half the rent, that kind of sounds like a bad idea."

"Look, Oscar, I’m really fucking desperate to get a dick in me right now and I'm already half hard. And you're no better, by the way. I say fuck it.”

For a moment Oscar briefly thinks maybe he’ll come to his senses, but Lando just looks at him. Of course he doesn’t come to his senses, Lando and sense have never even met each other.

Oscar is perfectly aware that he's been in love with this idiot since he was twenty-one and that this is a spectacularly bad idea, so he really doesn't know what possesses him to say, "Yeah, okay.”

"Wait, yes?"

“I need a break from this assignment anyway,” Oscar says, shrugging, because Oscar sure as hell isn't going to be applying math any time soon, considering how badly he’s miscalculated this, so he might as well just say fuck it.

Oscar chalks it up to sleep deprived insanity, but if he looks at it from the right angle, he can convince himself that maybe this is an opportunity to get rid of all his pent up sexual tension and get the idea of Lando out of his system.

Besides, it’s not like it will be serious fucking. It’ll just be casual sex, probably mediocre sex. It’ll give Oscar a reality check and finally make his brain see that Lando isn’t the paragon of boyfriend material.

"I mean, I think it will be fine," Lando muses. "If we don't like it no hard feelings and you’d have no problem telling me I’m doing something wrong, so I don’t have to worry about that. It can just be chill, like if one of us is horny we can just ask and of the other is down, we fuck, and if they're not we just go wank or something. Foolproof."

Oscar is pretty sure that they’re both fools and this idea is neither Oscar- nor Lando-proof in the slightest.

"I already said yes, Lando, don't make me take it back, do you want to fuck now or not?"

"Oh my god, yes, please, I've been dying to get a dick in me,” Lando moans gratefully.

"Gross," Oscar tells him flatly. "You needy bottom."

"Oh shut your trap, and come do something about that then, you muppet,” Lando says, lightly kicking Oscar’s thigh with a socked foot.

Oscar laughs lightly before he rolls his chair in closer to where Lando is still on the table and wraps his arms loosely around Lando’s hips, resting on his thighs.

It’s ridiculous how it’s not even awkward, how the way Lando gets comfortable and wraps his arms around Oscar's shoulders is just so easy.

Lando grins, all sly and sneaky, like the cat that got the cream. He always gets the cream with Oscar regardless, one would think he’d stop grinning so prettily about it all the time.

Oscar looks at his lips. Horrendously gorgeous lips.

"Uh, do we kiss?"

Oscar really wants to kiss.

"Hmm, I don't know, is that weird?" Lando considers thoughtfully, arms draped over Oscar’s shoulders like they’ve been a thousand times when they’ve hugged or when Lando wants something, or when he just feels like it. His hand is toying with the hair at the back of Oscar’s neck. It’s driving Oscar slightly insane.

"I'm about to put my hand on your dick in a second, so I think we're past weird, mate."

"Eh, would probably be weirder if we didn't, actually,” Lando decides. “Okay, kiss me."

If Oscar were to go back and tell his twenty-one-year-old self that the first time he's going to kiss Lando Norris would be on a random Tuesday night, with Lando on top of his applied maths assignment, because Lando's just kind of horny instead of, you know, under the starlight because they’re in love, he'd be very disappointed in himself.

Actually, present-Oscar is disappointed in himself too.

He kisses Lando anyway.

Lando is a good kisser, of course he is, because he can’t just let Oscar have anything that would make him seem any less perfect.

This is going to be a disaster.

Lando tilts his head just right, he takes it a bit slow, doesn’t lick into Oscar’s mouth immediately, just gives it a moment before he opens his mouth just a bit, brushes his tongue over Oscar’s lip.

He hums into Oscar’s mouth and pulls back to take a breath and say, “Mm. You’re good at that.”

Oscar is pretty sure it has less to do with skill than the way it just feels right, because this is Lando and things are just easy with Lando.

That’s all quite unfortunate because Oscar is kind of counting on this not being amazing sex or anything, for the sake of his sanity and the sliver of hope of getting over Lando at some point.

Oscar doesn’t answer him, he just wraps his arms around Lando and pulls him right off the desk and into his lap, because fuck it.

Lando yelps as he falls into Oscar’s lap, knees either side of Oscar’s hips now.

Oscar can’t help but smirk a little, equally amused and pleased with himself about the way Lando looks right now, staring at him a little wide eyed, breathing a little fast already. It does a few things for his ego.

Oscar could get used to this, actually.

“Shit, that was hot.”

Oscar just rolls his eyes. He’s sort of gotten used to the sheer number of times Lando just casually calls him hot. Well, apparently he wasn't lying, which is nice to know, Oscar supposes.

Lando kisses him again, and it’s impossibly even better this way, with Lando on his level, with the way Oscar can smooth his hands over Lando’s thighs and angle his head just right to let Lando lick into his mouth.

Oscar doesn’t know why he always lets Lando do these things.

He’s supposed to be the sane and sober friend who keeps Lando in check. But honestly, how is anyone supposed to control this absolute menace? Especially when he sits down on Oscar’s maths assignment and asks him to fuck him looking all soft like this.

“Come on, Oscar, fuck me already.”

Oscar hums helplessly against his mouth before he says, “Yeah, okay, how are we doing this?”

“Bed.”

“So we’re sacrificing my sheets then? What about yours?”

“Too far. Your sheets will be fine, we’ll just be careful where we come.”

Sometimes, in Oscar’s daydreams, they have sex all soft and romantic, but if he’s being realistic about it there’s no way the first time would ever have gone any way other than this, because head over heels or not, they’re still Oscar and Lando, and that means conversations like this right before they fuck.

“The things that come out of your mouth sometimes, honestly.”

“Want something to come in my mouth instead?” Lando asks cheekily.

Oscar pulls away to give him a deadpan expression. “If you talk to all your hookups like this, I’m not even a little surprised nobody wants to fuck you.”

Lando laughs and smacks him. “Of course I don’t, that’s not even the problem, everybody wants to fuck me.”

Lando is kidding, but it’s absolutely true because look at him, who wouldn’t want to fuck him?

“Oh, so you just say shit like that to me then?”

“Yeah, obviously, because you’re Oscar.”

Oscar is so very aware of the fact that he’s just Oscar. “I’m flattered.”

“Ugh, shut up. Bed. Now.”

Oscar sighs and rolls his eyes as he swirls the chair around and picks Lando up.

“Holy shit, I forgot you could do that,” Lando says as Oscar lifts him up, looking down at Oscar a little wide eyed. “That’s really fucking hot.”

“You’re just light as a kitten,” Oscar says amusedly, right before he drops Lando backwards on the bed.

Lando yelps as he bounces on the mattress. “Take that back, I said I would get back into my gym routine next week.”

“You said that last week too,” Oscar points out as he crawls on top of him.

He’s kind of grateful for this, the casualness of it. It keeps Oscar’s head from spiralling, from thinking about this too much, keeps him grounded, makes this seem almost normal.

Lando huffs. “Can you shut up and fuck me?”

“Yeah, yeah, you needy little shit, get your clothes off then.”

Lando scoffs and sits up to wrestle his hoodie off, while Oscar leans half over him to get the lube and a condom from his bedside drawer.

In his eagerness, Lando gets stuck halfway through taking the hoodie off, nearly elbowing Oscar in the face and there’s honestly nothing sexy about it and it’s completely ridiculous but Oscar is so in love with him about it anyway.

Oscar just looks at him scrabbling on a bed for a second, absolutely heart-eyed, a familiar pang of adoration twisting his heart, before he snorts and helps Lando out of the trap he’s wormed himself into

Lando smacks him over the head for laughing at him and opens his mouth, ostensibly to say something stupid again, but Oscar just kisses him.

Lando seems perfectly fine with that, shutting up as he falls back into the sheets, pulling Oscar with him.

Oscar could really get used to this.

He hums into Lando’s mouth and takes a moment to dip his tongue into it again, tasting the sweetness of Lando’s ridiculously complex coffee order that he probably had at campus earlier, and moves his hand to Lando’s waist like he’s always thought of doing and Lando arches into him a little bit like Oscar always hoped he would.

It’s a brain-breaking mix of normalcy and complete surrealness. It’s everything and nothing like Oscar had always thought it would be.

Oscar breaks the kiss for a moment to take his own shirt off and Lando makes a displeased sound about that.

Oscar huffs a laugh and goes back to kissing him.

Lando hums in approval. It’s ridiculously cute.

Lando doesn’t even give him a second to appreciate it properly before he’s nudging at him and making an insistent noise.

Oscar grumbles and pulls away to tug at Lando’s waistband. “Want me to help you with these? Since you’ve clearly forgotten how to undress yourself.”

“Haha, just take them off,” Lando says and raises his hips like the absolute useless little shit he is to let Oscar get them off for him.

Oscar should have known Lando wouldn’t be anything other than a demanding little brat in bed who does nothing but lie there and wait for Oscar to do all the work. It's alarming how much he doesn't mind it.

He scoffs, just out of principle, and does as he’s asked because he always gives Lando everything he wants anyway.

He’s not even surprised that Lando isn’t wearing anything underneath them. “Seriously?”

Oscar should probably be having some big moment about seeing Lando naked or something, but he’s seen Lando naked so many times it’s honestly not even awkward anymore. It’s not even the first time he’s seen Lando hard either, given how many times Oscar has accidentally stumbled in on him fucking someone in the apartment.

“What? I’m at home.”

“Slut,” Oscar just says, like he has a thousand times before, because who even acts like this?

“You’re no better, you’re fucking me,” Lando says this time, half laughing.

“You’re right, if I’m fucking you then I’ve really turned into a slut, you’ve been rubbing off on me.”

“Ha. Rubbing off on you. Get it?”

Oscar rolls his eyes. “Shut up. Alright, do you want me to finger you, or do you want to do it yourself?”

Lando’s nose scrunches up. Oscar has so many feelings about the way his nose scrunches up. “You. I’m lazy.”

“Of course you are. Turn over, you pillow princess.”

Lando grins and does, all too happy to get comfortable with one of Oscar’s pillows, not even a little bit self-conscious, which, in his defence, he really doesn’t need to be because look at him.

Oscar sighs, mostly pretending to be put upon, and lubes up his fingers. “Tell me if I’m doing something wrong, yeah?”

“Yes, yes, get on with it.”

Oscar sighs and starts circling his finger around Lando’s hole.

“Well don’t tease me, just do it, Oscar.”

“Can you shut up and lie still?"

"No, of course not."

"Just let me do this my way."

“Uh, no, sex is a two-person activity so we’re not just doing it your way.”

“If you don’t shut up, it’s going to be a one-person activity any second now.”

“Why is your finger still not inside me?”

“Because you’re distracting me by arguing with me about something stupid instead of just letting me do it.”

“Well do it then-ah, oh fuck, yep okay, that— Mmhm,” Lando trails off as Oscar finally slips it inside.

Oscar thrusts his finger smoothly in and out. “Happy?”

“Fuck, I missed this,” Lando sighs, half melting into the pillows.

Oscar’s torn between laughing at Lando using the exact same tone he uses when he takes a bite of some particularly good food and shutting the hell up because Lando is really fucking pretty like this, all relaxed beneath him, all bare skin just begging to be kissed.

“Can I, like, kiss your neck and shit?” Oscar asks, ridiculously because who says ‘and shit’ after that sentence but whatever. It’s casual.

Lando doesn’t seem bothered anyway, he just says, “Oh, yeah, that’s good, do that.”

Oscar does, getting comfortable on top of Lando to kiss at his neck while he stretches him.

Lando hums contentedly.

Oscar mouths over the smooth skin of his nape before he moves to the side of it where neck becomes shoulder, grazing his teeth along it.

Lando gasps, a small, quiet inhale, so Oscar does that again.

It doesn’t take much more than that for Lando to impatiently push up a little into the pressure of Oscar’s finger. “Another one, Oscar, come on.”

Oscar hums against his neck and edges two fingers inside, slow so he doesn’t hurt him.

Lando makes a needy whine and squirms a little more, his breath speeding up.

Oscar wonders just how many of those sounds he can pull out of Lando if he does this just right, if he’ll make them louder than he does when Oscar hears him jacking off at random hours in the day or those times he’d brought someone back home when he thought Oscar wasn’t coming home for the night.

He mouths at Lando’s skin, inhaling the scent of him. He smells like his soap from the shower he’d taken this morning, like the laundry detergent they share from the clothes he’d been wearing, like a hint of the cologne he puts on sometimes. He tastes like nothing Oscar can put his finger on, he just tastes like Lando, he tastes good.

Oscar can’t help the way he bites down a little on the meat of his shoulder.

Lando jumps and makes a high-pitched noise. “Oscar.”

“Fuck, sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.”

“No, no,” Lando pants and oh. Has he sounded like this the whole time? Surely not. “No, do it again.”

“Oh,” Oscar breathes, and fuck, this isn’t going to help Oscar get over anything, is it?

He’d hoped that maybe Lando would at least be a little incompatible with Oscar in bed, but here he is squirming under his teeth.

He makes some breathy noises into Oscar’s pillow, hips rutting a little against the mattress, and Oscar’s sheets are going to be so fucked.

It’s more than worth it though for the way Lando feels underneath him, the way he looks, the way he sounds like this, making all those noises Oscar has heard far too many times through his wall. Oscar is having a hard time processing how, this time, those noises are about him.

Oscar prods around a little bit until he hits the place that makes Lando let out a loud whine and babble, “Shit, Oscar, right there, again, right there.”

Oscar exhales an incredulous breath.

He does it again, pressing down a little on the spot where Lando wants him, just to see how he moans and squirms again, panting into Oscar’s pillow.

Oscar wishes he could keep him just like this forever, breathy, whiny, desperate, just letting Oscar make him feel good.

“Another one?” Lando pants impatiently as he bares his neck to give Oscar more places to mouth and bite at.

Oscar nudges his third finger inside and Lando keens and pushes his hips up to meet him.

At this point Lando is dripping with lube and squirming on the bed, rocking against Oscar’s sheets for more friction and fuck, Oscar knew he was a needy little shit in bed, but he didn’t think Lando looked quite like this.

Oscar is helpless but to press into his prostate again and watch the way he writhes, whines, and clutches the pillow.

Oscar mouths at his skin some more, just for the taste of him turning saltier as a thin sheen of sweat starts forming from his writhing.

“Oscar, c’mon, I’m ready.”

“Yeah, okay,” Oscar breathes. “Just give me a second. I’m going to take my fingers out now.”

“Oscar, just— Just hurry up,” Lando’s voice is a little unsteady and that does things for Oscar’s dick he hadn’t expected.

Oscar sighs and pulls his fingers out to which Lando makes such a mournful whine that Oscar immediately wants to put them back in.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Oscar murmurs, wincing.

It’s a shame to see Lando blinking back into focus, like he’s trying to blink away that perfectly good headspace Oscar had just put so much effort into getting him into.

Oscar sighs, slightly annoyed about that.

“Stop saying sorry and get your dick in me," he says, his voice steady again, back to his usual attitude.

“Give me a second,” Oscar says as he slips his pants and boxers off and tears the condom open with his teeth before rolling it on.

“Oscar, I swear to god.”

“Yes, alright, I’m here, Jesus,” Oscar says, watching Lando who’s still on his front in the pillows, half writhing. “How do you want it, like this?”

“Mm, no, the kissing was nice,” Lando says, and turns over before he pulls Oscar down and kisses him.

Oscar just lets him, catching himself with his hands on either side of Lando’s head as he falls, getting lube all over his sheets with his filthy hand of course.

In a fumble of limbs Oscar manages to slot himself between Lando’s thighs and Lando wraps his legs around Oscar’s hips.

“Mm. Inside, Oscar. Now.”

“Yeah, okay, stop being so demanding and just give me a second,” Oscar just says as he lines himself up.

“Osca—” is all Lando gets out before it’s cut off as Oscar slowly pushes inside.

Lando makes a loud, breathy whine into his mouth and Oscar swallows it right down, doing his utmost best to stay still inside of Lando and let him adjust, because Jesus Christ does that feel good.

Of course Oscar knew it would feel good, because this is Lando and he’s been wanting to fuck Lando since forever, but he hadn’t really had a chance to mentally prepare himself for this.

Oscar has almost forgotten that they were kissing which is probably fine because right now Lando is just panting into his mouth and clutching onto his shoulders anyway, nails scratching at Oscar’s skin.

He hopes Lando leaves marks.

“Hey, are you okay?” Oscar asks, because Lando’s not saying anything, he’s just panting and clutching for some grip on Oscar’s back.

Lando nods vigorously. “Mmhm. Yeah, you’re just, fuck, you’re bigger than I thought you’d be.”

It’s probably the first time Lando has seen Oscar hard, seeing as Oscar doesn’t get himself into situations of the kind Lando seems to be so prone to.

“Uh. Sorry?”

“Shut your face and fuck me you ridiculous ass, who says sorry about that?” Lando snaps breathily.

Oscar laughs and starts moving slowly, gentle so he doesn’t hurt him, watching for any expressions of pain on his face. That at least shuts Lando up for a moment as he just sucks in a breath and arches his back a little.

Lando doesn’t even give him a second to find a rhythm before he makes a face and starts squirming. “Okay, wait, go faster?”

Oscar scoffs but he speeds up, half kissing at Lando’s neck as he does so.

“Okay no, a bit slower.” Lando moves more under him, trying to change the angle which is really not helping Oscar actually create a rhythm that will feel good for anyone.

“Maybe just lie still and let me do it.”

Lando does not lie still, he keeps squirming, and not in a way which is making this any better for either of them, and Oscar can’t really help him if he keeps moving like that.

“Bit to the left?” Lando nudges Oscar’s hip with his hand.

“Lando, just stop moving.”

“Not like that—” Lando tries to move Oscar some more.

“Do I need to pin you down?”

“You’re trying to threaten me, but I actually like that,” Lando dismisses. “Now just move a little—”

“Stop being so fussy, it doesn’t help if you’re just squirming, just lie still—"

“No, just—"

Oscar sighs and just takes both his arms and pins them over his head with one hand while he holds his hips still with the other and holds him right where he needs to be for Oscar to get the angle that he knows they need.

“Oh fuck, Oscar, right there,” Lando chokes.

“I told you,” Oscar says, because he did.

But Lando doesn’t quip back like he usually would, instead he looks like he might be a little out of it as he breathes, “I— Fuck, yeah okay, just don’t stop, keep going, just like that.”

Oscar watches a little entranced as Lando’s lashes flutter and his eyes close as his lips open in a soundless moan when Oscar keeps doing just that. God, he’s gorgeous.

“Yeah, I’ve got you, baby,” Oscar breathes.

Lando’s eyes fly open. "Baby?"

“Shit, sorry, just slipped out,” Oscar apologises, letting his wrists go now that Lando has stopped moving so much.

“No,” Lando says, arms coming around Oscar’s shoulders to pull him closer, nails scraping along Oscar’s shoulder blades. “No wait, say it again.”

“Baby.”

Lando whimpers. “Fuck, yeah, that’s good, call me baby.”

“Yeah? S’that good?”

Lando makes a breathy noise and nods.  “Kiss my neck again?”

“Of course, baby,” Oscar murmurs and does, mouthing at the salty skin of Oscar’s neck.

“Bite me, come on.”

“It’ll leave marks.”

“Fuck it, I don’t care, the world needs to know I’m still capable of getting some anyway.”

Oscar laughs and hums satisfaction as he closes his mouth over the skin of Lando’s neck, biting down down a little, sucking at the skin between his teeth.

Lando whimpers and arches his back a little more.

Oscar angles his thrusts so that he can put more of a drag on Lando’s prostate and relishes in the moan turned whine that Lando makes about that so that Oscar doesn’t even need to ask if he’s found the right spot again.

“Fuck,” Lando breathes, panting. “Osc.”

God, Oscar loves when Lando calls him Osc. It always sounds so impossibly soft coming out of his mouth, even as it tumbles out in the middle of any old sentence.

Right now it’s barely more than air.

Lando’s squirming is concentrated into just the arch of his back, the scrape of his nails over Oscar’s back, the turn of his neck to bare it for Oscar’s teeth as he sucks another hickey right under the first one, taking his time to bite and suck properly so that Oscar will be able to see it tomorrow.

Oscar pulls away then, just far enough to see him, and he’s so fucking gorgeous like this.

He’s all red and sweaty in Oscar’s bed underneath him, hair messy, pupils blown, lips swollen from Oscar’s, biting his lip every so often like he’s trying to stop a noise from leaving his mouth.

“Oscar,” Lando breathes then, and oh, Lando is out of it.

“Yeah, baby?”

“M’gonna come,” he slurs.

“Yeah, me too.”

“Help me?”

And fuck, Lando always knows just how to bat his lashes and weasel whatever he wants out of Oscar, but he’s never looked quite as sweet asking for something as he does right now.

“Fuck, yeah, of course, baby,” Oscar breathes and he’s suddenly right on the edge of his own orgasm, holding on for dear life as he reaches down between them to get Lando off.

Lando is absolutely dripping with precome, barely even needing the lube still on Oscar’s hand from earlier, which is so fucking hot that Oscar cannot possibly hold on anymore, his hips stuttering as his orgasm hits.

Lando whimpers and clutches on to Oscar’s shoulders as he comes too, his legs like a vice around Oscar.

For a moment everything is tight, every muscle flexed, nobody is even breathing.

And then Lando goes liquid underneath him, practically melting in the sheets.

Oscar goes lax too, helplessly collapsing on top of him.

There’s about two glorious minutes of silence where there isn’t a single thought going through Oscar’s head.

Lando’s fingers start to stroke ever so lightly over his shoulder blade, there where it was scraped raw by his nails just a moment ago.

It's just quiet.

And then Lando, like the absolute bane of Oscar’s existence he is, simply says, far too energetically, “Fuck, you're good at that. This is the best idea I’ve ever had.”

Oscar is so completely and ridiculously fucked it’s actually hilarious.

He sighs into Lando’s neck.

“I’m hungry, I want food and Love is Blind,” Lando demands, springing back to his usual hyperactive self far too quickly for Oscar to keep up with.

Oscar just groans.

Lando gives him all of two seconds to process all of this before he’s prodding and nudging at Oscar because he’s hungry and Oscar groans and pulls out of him, a little satisfied at the yelping sound Lando makes about that.

Oscar pulls off and ties the condom before he chucks it in the bin next to his bed and collapses between Lando and the wall so that Lando can fuck off and make his food or whatever and leave Oscar to recover from his own idiocy in peace.

“Come on, Oscar, food,” Lando demands, poking at Oscar’s arm.

“Go make food then.”

“Make food with me.”

“You’re really inconvenient, you know that?”

“Yes, but you love me. Now get up,” Lando insists as he stands and wipes away the come on his stomach with a tissue from Oscar’s bedside table.

Oscar can’t fathom how he has so much energy right now. “Leave me alone.”

“Get up,” Lando tells him as he pulls on his sweats and goes to the kitchen.

Oscar does not.

“I will drag you in here!” Lando yells from the kitchen as he starts rustling around in the fridge and freezer.

Oscar ignores him.

There are a few moments of relative silence as he putters around in the kitchen, just enough to give Oscar a sliver of hope that Lando has temporarily forgotten about him.

“Oscar Jedediah Piastri, what is this?”

Fuck. Oscar had meant to make that yesterday when Lando was gone.

“You know my middle name is Jack, that’s the guy from Night at the Museum,” Oscar shouts from his bed still.

“I don’t know anything about you anymore! Is this— This is fish in our freezer, why is there fish in the freezer?”

Oscar groans and gets up, pulling on some boxers.

“And you hid it under the vegetables, you absolute cunt, how could you, Oscar?”

Oscar pads into the kitchen. "Oh my god, you are not going to get diseases from frozen and packaged fish that isn't even touching any food you eat, will you calm down?"

"Uh, no, I said no fish in this house."

"I never agreed to that."

"I'm throwing this away."

"Don't throw it away, I paid money for that! And I've been craving fish forever,” Oscar says as he snatches the fish out of Lando’s hand.

"I'm throwing you away too."

"You couldn't even pick me up."

"What did I say about the gym? Take that back!"

"No."

"I'm going to go make some roommate wanted posters right now, just you see,” Lando grumbles, wagging a finger at Oscar.

"Yeah, sure, will you be needing your current roommate’s printer for those?"

"Fuck you."

"You just did that," Oscar says as he takes out a pan because he might as well make the fish now.

"You better disinfect that pan afterwards," Lando tells him. He’s got this half terrified look on his face as he eyes the fish Oscar is unpackaging which Oscar finds very hard not to laugh at.

Oscar rolls his eyes. He's not going to disinfect a pan just because Lando has a ridiculous and unfounded fear of fish diseases. "Sure."

"You're lying."

"Uhuh." Oscar's going to end up disinfecting the goddamn pan.

"Please?" Lando looks at him with that face that Oscar will never tell him is so ridiculously cute. It works on Oscar every time.

"Yes, fine,” Oscar groans. “I'll disinfect the pan, I promise. There’s leftover chicken for you in the fridge.”

Lando moodily grumbles something as he gets the chicken out and starts making himself some rice.

There’s a new sense of calm in the apartment though. It’s written all over Lando’s body as he makes food and gripes about Oscar and his fish. He’s no less chatty, no less busy, no less Lando, but he’s looser.

Oscar feels it too, less stressed, less tense.

Huh. Casual.

Oscar thinks, maybe he really could get used to this.

Chapter Text

Lando can’t believe Oscar actually said yes.

When he wakes up the next morning, he thinks maybe he imagined it. Fuck knows Lando has had stranger sex dreams.

But he can’t have imagined it because he’s got a pleasant ache proving otherwise, and a light purple bruise on his neck where Oscar had bitten him, and if that isn’t enough then there’s the pile of Oscar’s stained sheets in the wash basket in the bathroom.

When he’d suggested it, Lando hadn’t actually thought Oscar would say yes. He hadn’t really been thinking much at all, if he’s honest.

He’s not doing much better now.

“Lando, I’m going to the gym, are you coming?” Oscar calls from his room while Lando is still staring a little dumbstruck at the pile in the basket next to the bathroom sink, toothpaste running down the side of his mouth as he tries to make sense of how the fuck he managed that.

“What?” Lando calls through his toothpaste as his brain kicks back into gear.

“Gym." Oscar pops up in the doorway. His eyes dip down to the marks on Lando’s neck just for a second. "You promised. I know you don’t have anywhere to be.”

Lando promptly forgets all about how well Oscar fucked him last night in favour of remembering that he’s still Oscar with his awful habits of forcing Lando to do horrible things for stupid reasons like Lando’s health and wellness.

Lando groans and spits the toothpaste out. “What if I was going to the library?”

“You’re not.”

“What if I was?” he insists as he wipes the trail of toothpaste from his chin and rinses in the sink.

“I know you’re not, now come on, do I have to drag you?”

Lando looks up to meet Oscar’s gaze in the mirror as he closes the tap, narrowing his eyes at Oscar. He doesn’t feel like going to the gym at all, let alone being forced into the weights section and being stiff for three days after. “You wouldn’t.”

Oscar’s eyebrows tick up.

“I think I’ll just be staying here—” Lando starts primly and is cut off with a yelp as Oscar wraps his arms around him, trapping Lando’s arms uselessly by his sides and picks him up like he weighs nothing. “Oscar!”

“You’re coming.”

Lando squirms uselessly in Oscar’s arms, “Let me go! You can’t just pick me up and take me where it suits you!”

“Yes, I can,” Oscar says easily as he kicks the door to Lando’s room open. “Get dressed, come on.”

“No!”

“I think we’ve very recently passed the point in our friendship where I wouldn’t hold you down and put your gym clothes on for you,” Oscar says simply as he puts Lando down in front of his closet.

Lando goes a little pink because Oscar can’t just casually talk about holding Lando down, can he? Making unprompted sexual comments is Lando’s thing, he doesn't know how to deal with people doing it back at him. Personally, Lando is of the opinion that everyone should just shut up and let Lando do the flirting, to save his dignity.

He takes a moment to gather his wits again. “Fuck you. Fine.”

“Thank you,” Oscar says and flops back onto Lando’s bed while Lando gets dressed, grumbling all the way.

“Nope,” Oscar pops as he drags Lando away by the back of his shirt from where he’s trying to make a bee line for the cardio section.

“Oh, come on,” Lando wheedles. “It’s bad enough you made me come here at all, you can’t force me to do heavy lifting too.”

“No, come do weights with me.”

“Do weights on your own.”

“But I’d be so lonely,” Oscar says, adopting a mock pout.

Lando rolls his eyes. “Make a friend.”

“I don't know how to make friends. That’s what I’ve got you for.”

Lando groans and lets Oscar drag him.

“Right,” Lando says moodily, arms crossed as he stands in front of the mirror wall where Oscar has pulled him. “What are we doing?”

“Arms and shoulders,” Oscar says absently as he puts down their bags and picks up a pair of 24kg dumbbells from the rack and sets them on a bench.

“No,” Lando moans. “At least let us do legs.”

“No, you can’t just do cardio, legs and back workouts and then arms only once a month or on a blue moon. We’re starting with curls.”

“Why not? I hate arms.”

Oscar doesn’t answer, he just hands him a pair of 18kgs.

“This is too heavy,” Lando says.

“Either do three sets of ten reps with that or five sets of twelve reps with the fifteens.”

Lando glares at him.

“Or be noodle armed for all eternity.”

“I hate you, actually.”

Forty minutes later Lando can’t feel anything but the burn in his shaking arms. “I can’t, Oscar, I can’t, I’m going to drop it.”

“No, you’re not,” Oscar assures calmly behind him, hands evenly held three centimetres below Lando’s elbows as he’s forcing him to do shoulder presses. “Two more and you’re done, alright? I’ll buy you ice cream.”

Lando grimaces as he pulls the last dregs of his resolve and pushes the weights up again, panting. “Fuck that, I deserve so much more than ice cream for this.”

“One more, one more, come on.”

“No,” Lando moans. “Fuck you, you couldn’t suck my dick to do that one more time.”

Oscar scoffs and then he glances around them to see who’s close by before he says, “You talk about getting your dick sucked a bit too much for me to believe that.”

“Unless you’re offering, that’s not helpful.”

“Sure, if you do two more reps.”

“What?” Lando splutters, because honestly.

He only notices that he’s pushed the weights up when Oscar snorts at him in the mirror. “Seriously? That’s doing it for you? Fine if you do one more, I will.”

Lando whimpers a little. “Really?”

“Yep.”

“Fuck, okay,” Lando bites out and dips his arms again.

“There you go, come on, just one more.”

“Fuck you,” Lando chokes out, watching hatefully in the mirror as Oscar’s hands follow the movement of his elbows, carefully avoiding helping Lando even a little bit.

“Come on, one more for me.”

“That’s sounding very sexual to me right now and I don’t think it’s helping,” Lando says through his panting as he shakes trying to get the weight up one more time.

“I think it is, actually,” Oscar says, laughing at him like Lando can’t fucking see him in the mirror.

Lando makes a squeaking sound.

“Oscar, I can’t,” Lando moans, the weight is halfway up and it’s not going to be moving anymore.

Oscar gives him an assessing look in the mirror before he inclines his head just a little and says, “Come on, baby, one more for me.”

“Fuck,” Lando chokes out and the weight goes up. He pants, staring at himself in the mirror somewhat incredulously, red faced from a bit more than just the exercise. “Fuck.”

“Okay, okay,” Oscar soothes as he immediately takes the weights out of Lando’s hands like they whey nothing, the sexy bastard. “Well done, I knew you could.”

“Oscar,” Lando moans, arms flopping down by his sides. “Fuck, I hate you. Why would you say that here?”

Oscar just laughs as he sets the weights down.

“I’m serious, I think I’m having a problem,” Lando says, looking down at where he’s getting a little hard in his shorts. Fuck.

Oscar looks up and says, like he wasn’t aware that he was fucking hot or something, “Wait, really?”

Lando just swallows and nods.

“Oh. Shit. Sorry?”

“Oscar,” Lando snaps, a little embarrassed now, as he stands up and smacks Oscar on his stupid chest and stalks off to go hide in the bathrooms and try and do something about this situation.

“Hey, hey, I’m sorry, I was just joking,” Oscar says, half laughing as he jogs after him.

But Lando has already decided he’s going to have a strop now, because it’s actually really fucking rude to intentionally turn a guy on in public with no intention of doing anything about it, just to manipulate Lando to do one more rep.

“'I’m sorry', he says,” Lando mocks childishly as he kicks the changeroom door open, ignoring the looks from two other guys in there as Oscar follows him all the way to the bathroom stalls, which are mercifully empty, so they can have their little argument in private.

“I didn’t think you’d actually… You know,” Oscar ends off in a whisper, gesturing vaguely to Lando’s nether areas.

Lando scowls at him before he throws open a stall door and shuts it right in Oscar’s face.

Oscar sighs outside the door as Lando sinks back against the wall. He’s still half hard. “Lando, I’m sorry.”

“Be sorry then, but that doesn’t fix anything.” Lando will get over it in a minute, but he’s rather enjoying his strop at the moment.

“Do you want me to fix it?”

“Unless you’re planning to come in here and fix it, you can go right ahead and fuck off now, thank you.”

Oscar is quiet for a second. “Okay, fine, but only because it’s my fault.”

Lando has never opened a door so fast in his life.

“Okay, I forgive you, get in here.”

“Shut up, Lando, there’s people around,” Oscar says in a whisper, nervously glancing around at the currently empty bathroom section of the change rooms before he slips inside, deftly closing the door behind himself.

“Come shut me up th—” is all Lando manages to say before Oscar has his mouth on him, pressing him backwards against the wall by his waist.

Oh.

All of a sudden Lando is a lot more than half hard.

When Lando had suggested this arrangement he really hadn’t been thinking much further than instant gratification, but in hindsight he doesn’t know why he didn’t think of it before, because this is very convenient.

He just can’t quite wrap his head around the way Oscar is just all in with this whole situation. Two days ago Lando would never have thought that any of this was even a possibility. But he’s not going to question Oscar about it.

“I don’t endorse public sex, by the way,” Oscar mutters against his lips.

“It’s not public if nobody can see—”

Oscar shuts him up again with his mouth as he reaches down to get Lando’s shorts down his thighs, all dextrous hands and Lando has no idea how he multitasks like that while Lando struggles to single-task most days, his mind short circuiting a little bit at the moment.

Oscar pulls away, panting into Lando’s mouth.

Lando looks at him, dumbstruck, because he’s still kind of struggling to comprehend that Oscar would do something like this.

“Not a sound out of you, got it?”

“Fuck, that’s hot,” Lando chokes out. Since when does Oscar just say shit like that in that tone?

Oscar smacks a hand over his mouth which makes Lando’s eyes flutter. “What did I just say? Quiet, Lando, for fuck’s sake.”

Lando nods helplessly under his palm.

Oscar keeps his hand there for a moment before he deems it safe to remove it and gets on his knees.

Lando smacks his own palm over his mouth to muffle the noise he makes at just how fucking hot Oscar looks down there, looking up at him with those glinting eyes of his and a wayward curl falling over his forehead.

Lando really can’t be blamed for the way his cock is already hard and leaking against his abdomen, or the way his hips rock forward at the mere sight of him. 

Oscar just rolls his eyes at Lando before he pushes his canting hips firmly into the wall, which, fuck.

“You’re really lucky that you know you don’t have gonorrhoea,” Oscar says simply, and then he swallows him down.

Lando whines into his palm.

Oscar takes him almost all the way to the back of his mouth in one go, not wasting any time before he sucks hard as he comes back up. Really, how the fuck is Lando expected to be quiet about that?

Oscar reaches up to vaguely smack at him to shut up and Lando can’t help but just grab his hand for something to hold on to.

Oscar seems fine with that turnabout of events because he doesn’t try to move it after that, he just lets Lando hold onto him with the hand that isn’t desperately trying to muffle his noises.

He starts properly bobbing up and down, taking Lando a little deeper and dragging his tongue along his cock.

Lando clutches Oscar’s hand to his chest, inadvertently threading their fingers together for better grip, and Oscar just lets him, using their joined hands to press Lando back into the wall.

That makes Lando a little foggy in the head, but he pulls himself back to the here and now because he's not going down that road, he just isn't.

Lando tries his damnedest to shut up about the way Oscar drags his tongue along the length of him, but it’s really fucking hard and there’s too many things to focus on when Oscar swirls his tongue around Lando’s tip before he sucks him all the way back down right after.

Lando's breathing is an absolute mess, choppy and uneven, heavy through his nose.

He drops his head down, blinking dazedly down at Oscar to see him already staring up at him, that sharp look in his eyes and Lando has no idea how those warm brown eyes can be so piercing that it makes an arrow of heat shoot down his spine.

Lando takes a deep breath before he thinks it’s safe to remove his hand from his mouth to tell Oscar in a murmur, “M’gonna come.”

Oscar pulls off and whispers, “Then come.”

Lando whimpers and smacks his palm back over his mouth.

He can’t do anything, but obey as Oscar sucks him back into his mouth.

Oscar hums quietly around his cock as Lando comes right into his mouth and Jesus fucking Christ that helps nothing at all, because it's solely Oscar's hands on him keeping him still as Lando's hips jerk at the feeling of the vibrarions.

Lando hadn’t expected to come in someone’s mouth today so it’s really all he can do to just try and muffle the sounds he makes about that. He's not doing exceptionally well.

Oscar keeps him in his mouth until Lando goes soft and lax, swallowing once more around him about which Lando twitches in his mouth before he melts completely.

It’s really only Oscar’s hands keeping him upright at this point.

“Good?” Oscar asks as he pulls off which is the stupidest thing he could possibly ask right now, honestly.

Even Oscar’s support isn’t enough to stop Lando from slumping down to the floor and pitching forward to drop his head on Oscar’s shoulder.

Lando mumbles vaguely, “When’d you get so good at this shit? Aren’t you, like, celibate or something?”

“I’m not celibate,” Oscar scoffs, affronted, but he puts an arm around Lando and threads it through his curls to scratch at his scalp regardless because he’s nice like that.

Lando hums appreciatively.

“You seem pretty celibate,” he mumbles, batting away that stubborn fogginess in his head. When had that even gotten there? “Hey, don’t you want to get off too?”

“Uh… I’m all set, actually,” Oscar admits.

Lando pulls away to give him a confused look.

Oscar just sheepishly shows him his come soaked hand and looks down at the streaks of it on his hoodie.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, you’re pretty hot when you’re failing miserably at shutting up.”

Lando stares at him for a second because, well, fuck.

Lando makes a monumental effort to tell that stupid fuzziness in his head to fuck the hell off because what the fuck.

Lando manages, though.

He clears his throat and is finally able to think clearly enough to say, “You’re not making me go back out there, by the way, I couldn’t feel my arms before you decided it was a good idea to suck me off in a bathroom stall and now I can’t feel my legs either, there is no way I am picking up another weight for at least two weeks.”

Oscar sighs. “There he is.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Let’s go home, I’m not winning this argument.”

Lando huffs smugly. “No, you aren’t, I’m glad you know that.”

“Uhuh. You’re driving.”

“What? Why am I driving?”

“Practice. And I sucked you off.”

“Because you owed me.”

“Now you owe me back.”

“That’s not how that works.”

“I ruined my sweatshirt because of you! This is actually massively inconvenient,” Oscar laments as he pulls it off to reveal a tank top beneath.

"You're upset about the sweatshirt. Seriously?"

"Well, I didn't think I'd have to take this off."

Lando can’t imagine why on earth he’d want to keep it on when he looks like he does. “Why?”

“Because I didn’t have any other clean gym shirts and you scratched me to pieces last night,” Oscar just says,.

Lando short circuits, just slightly.

Oscar doesn't seem to notice  turning to look over his shoulder and Jesus, Lando really did scratch him to pieces because there’s raised red lines all over his back and shoulders, disappearing beneath the shirt.

Shit.

Lando feels himself get a little red remembering just how fucked he was in the head last night to have done all that.

"If anyone asks, I'm holding you responsible for the psychic damage I'm going to get from that conversation," Oscar goes on.

He rolls his eyes to hide that thought. “Oh, get over it.”

“I will, if you drive.”

Lando groans and throws his hands up in frustration. “Fine.”

Oscar is seriously way too fucking good at that.

Lando doesn’t piss anyone off or even stall the car once while driving them home because he’s too relaxed to remember to get anxious about it.

He gets so many things done after the gym too. Oscar helps him finally take the DJ equipment out of the car to store it back in all its boxes where it’s safe, he sorts out his streaming schedule for the next week, lines up the next three social media posts and makes plans with Carlos to go golfing.

Oscar has classes from one to five but he’s happy to let Lando study on his bed while he scribbles away at something on his desk until then, a comfortable silence between them as they work.

Oscar has a project and a ton of exams coming up before their spring holidays, so Lando tries not to distract him, but that’s proving easier than usual today, seeing as Lando finally has enough energy and concentration to go through some of his work without being distracted every two minutes, happy to just be in Oscar’s space, really.

They do this often enough, but it’s somehow nicer today, more peaceful. Maybe because Lando doesn’t feel the need to speak every five minutes. It's like magic.

Lando could really get used to this arrangement.

The only problem is that Lando hadn’t actually expected Oscar to be this good in bed.

It's a bit inconvenient actually.

Because Lando will never tell anyone right off the bat, but if the circumstances are right, he is a bit of a pillow princess in bed, he just can't help it. Sometimes, when someone is really good at what they're doing Lando's brain will just clock out. He gets all hazy, floaty and he can't concentrate on anything but the fact that he feels good.

He makes for a terrible conversationalist when he gets like that, all stupid in bed, useless so that unless the other person is getting off on whatever they're doing to him, they're not getting much from Lando to help them along.

It’s a problem.

But if he can just keep his stupid brain online while they’re fucking, it’ll be fine. Lando can do that, so he waves away the worries.

He wonders idly how often would be too often to ask Oscar if he’s willing to get Lando off.

It could just become a regular thing, considering that he’s proven that he’s actually on board with this and this isn’t going to be a one-time thing like that time they decided to do Krav Maga lessons together and went once and never again.

He wonders how long Oscar will indulge Lando and let this go on for, if it’ll last a week or all the way to spring break.

“Hey, are you going home for spring break?” Lando asks suddenly as it pops into his head, because he'd meant to ask anyway.

“Nah, it’s too short," Oscar says. "It’s just two weeks, not worth the flights.”

Lando hums. “You should come home with me for a bit, my mum always asks about you.”

“Mm. Maybe. Would I get free food out of it?”

“Of course you would, stupid. Mum says she misses you. Actually, she says she misses you more often than she says she misses me.”

Oscar snorts. “Can you blame her?”

Lando throws an eraser at the back of his head.

Turns out Oscar is down to indulge him a lot more often than Lando expected.

He says yes when Lando accosts him in the doorway when he comes home after Lando has been half horny all morning and unable to concentrate on anything.

He doesn’t even do more than sigh at Lando greeting him with, “Oh my god, finally, do you feel like fucking?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Mint! My room?”

Oscar proceeds to fuck him on Lando’s bed, face down because Lando had never bothered to turn around after Oscar had pushed him to the bed and the way Oscar threads a hand through his curls has Lando fighting to concentrate.

They ruin Lando’s sheets, which, okay fair, it was Lando’s turn, but it’s worth it for how sated Lando feels afterwards with Oscar collapsing half on top of him.

He says yes again when they’re cuddled up under the blanket watching Law and Order and Lando, like the saint he is, has decided not to mention that Oscar scrolling through his phone with the edge of it supported on Lando’s shoulder is the reason he keeps needing to rewatch the episodes and not Lando’s alleged 'yapping', and Lando turns and says, “Hey, Oscar, I’m horny.”

Well, actually he doesn’t say yes, he says, “Again? Are you always this bad?”

Lando huffs and shuffles around to face him. “No. Well, I don’t know, maybe. I just don’t always tell you about it.”

“Oh, okay, thank you for only telling me about five of the six times a day you want to get fucked, I appreciate it.”

“Well, no, I’m obviously telling you about all six times now, since you’ve volunteered your services.”

Oscar hums, smiling idly. “You should really see someone about that.”

Lando squawks in offence and rolls off the couch. “Fine, I’ll just go wank by myself then of you don’t feel like it.”

Oscar groans and snatches Lando’s wrist before he even makes it two steps away from the couch. “I didn’t say that, get back here.”

He ends up sucking Lando off with Law and Order ignored in the background, pinning Lando’s hips down to the couch while Lando moans and whines and pulls at Oscar’s hair. They're both going to have to rewatch that episode now.

Lando has to fight that hazy feeling again, but he manages, just.

He even says yes when Lando texts him at ten in the evening once.

hey im horny come fuck me?

Come here

no im lazy

It's you who wants to fuck

oscaaaarrrr

Lando knows he's won when he hears a loud groan through the wall before Oscar swings Lando's door open without bothering to knock.

"You're a spoiled little brat, you know that?"

Lando grins as Oscar climbs on top of him in that way he's got, all rippling muscles under his skin as he moves, immediately slotting himself between Lando's legs and kissing him quiet.

He does that thing again that time, that thing where he just moves Lando where he needs him when Lando isn’t listening to him and it makes it so hard to focus and stay present.

The thing is just that Lando always doing great and then, all of a sudden, he just slips and it’s so hard to drag himself out of that headspace and just be normal.

But Lando doesn’t think about that, instead he just picks an argument about who’s turn it is to shower first.

And then all of a sudden it’s been nearly two weeks and Lando has barely noticed the time passing.

Oscar hasn’t asked Lando to fuck once, but that might be because he doesn’t need to when Lando asks so much that he barely gets a chance.

Lando is really trying not to be so fucking needy, but Oscar makes that really difficult by just existing in Lando’s space looking like he does and acting like he does and not saying no any time Lando asks him.

Lando is just doing his best not to ask Oscar to fuck every two hours. He’s just trying not to ask Oscar every day, trying not to inconvenience Oscar, but well, sometimes needs must.

Like when Oscar is gone for lectures and Lando is jacking off and he just can’t find his orgasm, not with a quarter of a bottle of lube gone and his cock raw and three fingers up his ass, he just can’t come.

Lando has been finding it harder and harder to get off on his own, for which he completely blames Oscar because he’s just so fucking good at this shit that Lando’s hand and fingers pale in comparison.

Lando distantly hears the shower turn on, which must mean Oscar is back.

Given that this whole situation is kind of Oscar’s fault, Lando figures he’s going to make it Oscar’s problem, inconvenience be damned, he's desperate right now.

Oscar could always say no.

He spares a split second to wonder if Oscar will smack him over the head and cause a potentially fatal accident in the shower, but Lando is so desperate that it’s worth the risk, so he decides fuck it, he was going to need a shower after this anyway. Two birds, one stone, he supposes.

“Jesus fuck,” Oscar yelps, jumping as Lando enters the shower.

“Oh hi, sorry, it’s just me, thought you’d hear me coming in.”

"What are you doing?"

"Getting in the shower with you, obviously.”

“Uh, yeah, I'd noticed, I meant why?”

“I was having trouble getting off, think you could help me?"

"What?"

"I was fingering myself, couldn't get to it, now will you help me or not?"

Oscar looks at him, bewildered, glancing down at Lando’s aching desperation.

Lando is just about to poke him to check if he's actually annoyed, but then Oscar just sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, and says, "You know with all the wanking you do one would think you'd at least be good at it."

Lando smacks him on the chest. "Hey, that's rude, come on, now help me?"

Oscar looks at him another moment, the water steadily beating down on his shoulders, looking like he seriously wants to smack Lando over the head and tell him to get lost, but he's half hard already, so Lando’s pretty sure he’s won.

Oscar just sighs, "Yeah, okay, come here."

Lando grins as Oscar pulls him in by his waist to kiss him, Lando’s arms wrapping around his shoulders to steady himself as Oscar’s wrap around his waist. “Did you bring the lube?”

“Mm, yeah, s’on the table,” Lando gestures vaguely to where he thinks the bathroom sink table is, a little distracted by the feeling of Oscar starting to get hard against him.

Oscar hums and kisses him once more before he pulls away to get the lube. Lando tugs at him until he gets back, lube in hand, indulging Lando’s pulling as he comes back in to kiss him, pressing him backwards against the cold tile of the shower wall.

“Oscar,” Lando complains impatiently.

Oscar sighs. “Yeah, yeah, turn over.”

“What?” Lando says, a little displeased, because Oscar is really good with his tongue in Lando’s mouth and he was rather enjoying that.

But Oscar apparently doesn’t feel the need to repeat himself, he just flips Lando so that his front is pressed to the cold tile, keeping him there with a hand between his shoulder blades.

Shit.

It’s something about the way Oscar just moves Lando where he wants him, the way he just presses him against the wall to keep him there, the way the cold wall making his nipples peak is juxtaposed with the heat of Oscar and the shower water behind him.

Lando whimpers, hands scrabbling uselessly to steady himself against the slippery tile.

Oscar hums, pleased, and mouths at Lando’s nape, teeth grazing, and between that and the way he’s holding Lando down it’s becoming very difficult to focus on forming any sentence other than, “Oscar, please.”

It always happens so fast. Lando is always fine one second and then all of a sudden he’s slipping and fighting to hang on to awareness and control himself.

Fuck.

He knows how he gets when he’s out of it, so much needier and whinier than he already is and he can never control what comes out of his mouth and he’s absolutely useless.

He hates it.

“Yeah, yeah,” Oscar says, removing the hand pinning him there and that at least allows Lando some space to push away that foggy feeling.

Lando doesn’t manage to move from where Oscar had put him though, doesn’t try to turn back around, just waits for Oscar to slick up his fingers and chuck the lube bottle down on the shower floor.

Oscar is apparently distracted from the goal for a moment because he’s not doing anything except mouthing over Lando’s neck and shoulder.

Lando whines, blinking into concentration again to push back into him and demand, “Would you hurry up?”

Oscar just hums and then all of a sudden presses two fingers all the way inside of him which doesn’t help Lando concentrate at all.

“Fuck. Fuck. Oscar,” Lando breathes, panting, lashes fluttering against the steam condensation there and oh god how does Oscar do that? He can’t even know that he’s doing that, can he?

Oscar’s fingers are longer than Lando’s and he knows just how to tease, how to brush over the place Lando wants him without pressing down on it, letting Lando press back into him just a little before he holds him down again.

“Oscar,” Lando breathes.

“Yeah, s’that good?”

Lando nods. “So good. More, please more.”

“Yeah, I’ve got you, baby” Oscar murmurs, into his skin, and comes back with three fingers and it feels so good that Lando instinctively scrabbles at the wall again, whimpering and trying to push back to get more of him.

“Stay still,” Oscar murmurs into his ear and fuck that’s just driving him a little insane and Lando needs something to hold on to.

Oscar must be some kind of fucking mind reader because all Lando has to do is whimper and scrabble a bit for Oscar to hum in apparent understanding.

He slides his hand up the sensitive side of Lando’s ribs, up his arm to his wrist and pins it firmly there against the wall.

He squeezes it once in a wordless order for Lando to keep it there while he reaches to gather up the other one and finally pin both of them there so that Lando doesn’t need anything to hold on to because Oscar is holding on to Lando.

And Lando can’t do anything but whine and beg, “Please, Oscar, please.”

“Yeah?" Oscar breathes. "What do you want?”

“I don’t know, Oscar, want to come, please, I want to come.”

There’s a split second where Lando thinks he should try and get it the fuck together, but Oscar bites down on his shoulder and all semblance of thought goes flying out the window.

“How do you want to come? Do you want me to touch you?”

“I want— I want you, I want you inside, I want you to fuck me.”

“I can’t, baby, I don’t have a condom," Oscar says mournfully.

“Oscar, please,” Lando moans desperately, squirming in his grip.

“Do you want me to go to the room and get one?”

“No, don’t leave me,” Lando bursts out, half panicked because Oscar can’t leave him right now.

“Okay, okay, it's okay, I’m not leaving you, I'm right here," Oscar soothes gently. "Do you want us both to get out and go to the room?”

“No. No, I don’t want to move, Oscar, just fuck me.”

“I can’t, sweetheart, I’m sorry, I haven’t picked up my results, I just want to be sure,” Oscar murmurs apologetically as his fingers press down again on Lando’s prostate.

Sweetheart.

Lando whimpers. “I don’t care, I don’t care, Oscar, please,” he begs nonsensically because he doesn’t care what it costs, he wants Oscar’s cock inside of him.

“No, baby, I’m sorry, I can't. I'm trying to be the responsible one here and you’re making that really hard.”

“Please, Oscar.”

“It’s okay, baby, I’ll make you come, come here,” Oscar murmurs and lets Lando’s wrists go to pull Lando back into his chest and reach down to wrap a hand around his cock. “You’re doing so good, you can come just from this, can’t you?”

Lando whimpers and squirms between the pressure on his prostate, the tight hand around his cock and Oscar’s lips on the side of his neck. “Come on, baby, come for me.”

“Oscar,” Lando whimpers and he’s going to come, he’s so close, dangling on the edge and he can’t fight it despite how much he wants to argue with Oscar to make him see sense and put a damn cock in Lando.

“You’re doing so well, go on, sweetheart, come for me.”

“Fuck,” Lando chokes out and he’s coming hard and fast all over Oscar’s hand and his own stomach. “Fuck.”

Lando pants in Oscar’s hand for a minute.

Oscar is still holding on to him, fingers now still and unmoving inside him. He’s let go of Lando’s softening cock and is now just holding him, arm around his waist, stroking softly at the dip there.

“Shit, sorry, was that okay? That felt like a lot,” Oscar says after some time.

At this point Oscar is holding him up more than his own legs are.

“No, it was… Fuck. Good. It was good,” Lando reassures him despite that he should probably tell Oscar that yes, it was a lot, and he should fucking stop that if he wants Lando to keep participating in sex instead of just lying there and begging.

“Yeah?” Oscar murmurs into his skin, grinning. “Praise kink?”

“Oscar,” Lando moans.

“Of course you have a praise kink.”

Lando just nods helplessly.

“You did so good for me, baby,” Oscar murmurs, probably just to see it again, nuzzling into Lando’s neck.

Lando whimpers some more and wriggles a little in his arms.

”Can you stand? You want me to let you go?”

“No, don’t let me go,” Lando says too quickly.

Oscar doesn’t, he just holds onto him as Lando turns in his arms to face him and bury into his neck. He kisses Lando’s hair as he holds him up and Lando hums.

Fuck, he needs to pull himself together, he needs to focus.

But all he can focus on is the warmth of Oscar around him and the hardness of him pressing into Lando.

Lando reaches downwards, hesitating on his lower belly. “Can I?”

“You want to— Oh, yeah, okay, if you want,” Oscar murmurs and Lando doesn’t need any more encouragement to wrap his hand around Oscar and if it weren’t for that Oscar has agreed to fuck him with it on a regular basis Lando might be jealous of the way Oscar's cock is just bigger than Lando's in every way, thicker, longer, heavier. But as it stands Lando’s completely fine with that.

Not that he can think about it all that much when Oscar moans, pitching forward and just catching himself with a hand on the wall behind Lando to prevent their teeth from knocking together. “Fuck, Lando.”

Lando’s too floaty still to do anything about that but tilt his head up and kiss him.

Oscar kisses back, gripping onto Lando’s waist for balance, almost hard enough to bruise and Lando wonders if he’d bruise him if Lando asked.

He strokes Oscar the way he likes it himself, because he doesn’t know how Oscar does it, he should probably ask him at some point, but Oscar doesn’t seem to mind the way Lando runs his thumb over his tip every third pass, because he’s moaning into Lando’s mouth.

“Fuck, I’m going to come.”

Lando hums in approval.

It takes just a few more strokes and then Oscar is coming, shuddering into Lando’s mouth. His grip on Lando’s waist gets just a little tighter, maybe it will bruise, Lando is praying it will bruise.

For a moment they’re both just panting, Oscar’s grip on his waist loosening.

Oscar never falters, he just holds Lando’s weight up as he slumps into him, not moving while Lando gathers himself, arms wrapped around Oscar’s waist.

It takes a while, but finally Lando is able to focus enough to come to and remove his head from Oscar’s shoulder.

Oscar just looks at him for a second.

And then Lando’s head clicks back into place and he smacks Oscar on the head, “Fuck you, go pick up your goddamn results!”

Oscar winces groans into his neck. “Ow, Jesus, okay, I’ll pick them up later today.”

By the time they’re both clean the water has run half cold and they’re arguing about who’s responsible for cleaning the bathroom after this.

Lando loses the argument because Oscar claims he needs to leave to pick up his test results before class. Lando lets him have this one.

He tries not to worry about it, the thing, but it worms itself insistently into his head anyway and all of a sudden Lando isn’t sure that it will be all that easy to stay present and normal when Oscar does shit like that.

He keeps trying not to think about it, keeps thinking about it anyway. But the sex is too good to do something about it and potentially ruin this, so Lando will just have to pull himself together.

It won't become a problem, Lando will get used to Oscar, the way Oscar fucks him. Surely it can't keep happening forever. It's just because Lando hasn't had sex in a while, he's just forgotten how good it can be with someone who knows what they're doing.

It'll be fine.

“Oi, Fewtrell, guess what,” Lando says later as he plops down next to Max in the cafeteria. “I’m an actual genius,”

“What?”

“So you know how I’d been saying I have no time for a sex life anymore?”

“Yeah, I recall, you’ve been telling that to anybody who will listen." Max takes a bite of his lunch.

“No, I haven’t,” Lando dismisses. “Anyway, so I’ve found a solution.”

“You mean a relationship?” Max asks, raising a judgemental eyebrow, ostensibly because calling someone Lando is in a relationship with 'a solution' is probably something Lando would do.

Lando scoffs. “No, I mean an Oscar.”

Max's fork pauses halfway to his mouth. “What?”

“Turns out Oscar has the same problem, so we just decided to fuck each other. Brilliant, innit?”

Max just stares at him.

Lando frowns, confused. “What?”

“Oscar Piastri? As in Oscar heart-eyes, your roommate Oscar?”

“Yes, I don’t know any other Oscars. Also, don’t call him that to my face if you won’t tell me why you people call him that.” Lando has picked that argument often enough to know Max and them won’t budge on Lando not being allowed to know why they call Oscar heart-eyes. He's gotten over it, mostly.

Max stares at him some more, which is weird, but Lando’s in a talkative mood so it’s just as well Max isn’t saying anything.

“Anyway, thing is, he’s really fucking good at it. Who would have guessed?”

“Good at fucking?”

“Yeah. Can’t figure out how, since he never goes out with anyone anymore, but man does he know what he’s doing with his dick.”

Max looks a little horrified at this point. “He just agreed to it?”

“Yes, he did, why are you looking at me like that?”

Max drags a hand over his face and mutters, “Oh my god, if he wasn’t being so stupid, I’d feel sorry for him.”

“What?”

“Nothing, just… Why is it that you thought this was a good idea? Isn’t he basically your best friend?”

"Well, yeah, but so are you. It's just casual, you know? Like if you and me had sex."

"Lando."

"Yeah?"

"We wouldn't have sex."

"Oh, yeah, probably not," Lando agrees, shrugging absently. "I can't really see it with you, but you know what I mean."

"No, I don't know what you mean! I don't think you know what you mean! He's your roommate."

“Yeah, that’s what makes it perfect, because we know each other so well!"

"Why would you think this is a good idea?"

"Well, you know. He’s always there so it’s convenient, it’s casual and it’s not awkward or weird because it’s Oscar, you know? It’s just… Yeah, he’s just Oscar.”

Max just blinks at him. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Chapter Text

Oscar doesn’t get used to shit.

He doesn't get used to Lando's insatiable sex drive, he doesn't get used to Lando's goddamn noises and squirming, and he certainly doesn't get used to the way Lando looks underneath him when he stops thinking.

It’s all a fucking mess is what it is, the way this is supposed to be casual, but Lando looks like that in his arms when Oscar fucks him well enough.

None of it is helping Oscar get over his stupid feelings even a little bit. In fact, it’s making it harder than ever to stop finding all of Lando’s eccentricities more endearing than annoying. Oscar is just as bad as he was when he first realised he was in love with this absolute muppet, as Lando would say. Maybe even worse.

He’s kind of in denial about it, idly thinking that as he watches Lando badger Charles to play golf with him on the other side of the library, making an absolute fool of himself, but nobody even bothers to look up anymore because Lando makes a fool of himself in the engineering faculty library at least three times a week, so everyone here is already used to it.

Charles obviously isn’t supposed to be in the engineering faculty library either, he’s only here to stare at Max while he studies, and volunteers that information to anyone who asks, at which point Max will sigh, apologise for Charles’ behaviour and then go back to his books. That conversation happens several times a day, Oscar knows.

Lando is just here because nobody he studies media with will go to their library with him, reason being that none of them ever study, including Lando, who hangs around the library ‘for the vibes’.

Oscar wonders absently if even half the people currently in the engineering faculty library actually study engineering.

“You’re making heart-eyes again,” Logan informs him, who also isn’t supposed to be here because he studies business.

Well, actually, neither of them are studying much of anything right now, seeing as Oscar is staring at Lando and Logan is pointing out that Oscar is staring at Lando.

“Mm,” Oscar hums, fidgeting absentmindedly with his pencil, because whatever, just about everyone except Lando knows about Oscar’s feelings for Lando anyway.

“Earth to Piastri, you said I had to make you work on your project today.”

"Do you reckon friends with benefits actually never works or do you think that's just something people say?" Oscar asks absently, instead of acknowledging that as he watches Lando makes a wild gesture with his arms.

Max throws a pencil at Lando’s head.

Lando throws it back.

Oscar sighs dreamily.

“Oscar.” Logan stares at him for a second, at Oscar who is all moon-eyed again.

Then he looks at Lando, back at Oscar, back at Lando. Sometimes Oscar forgets that Logan has known him ever since Oscar can even remember so of course he knows that Oscar did something stupid immediately.

"Tell me you didn't."

Oscar looks away from Lando to Logan, his face contorting, guilty. "I didn't?"

"Oh my god. Oh my god, what did you do?”

Oscar groans and smacks his head down on the table. “I may or may not…” Oscar mumbles. “Have sort of gotten myself into a casual sex arrangement with Lando.”

Logan is silent for a few seconds too long. “Are you stupid?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my god.”

Oscar makes a miserable noise.

“Why would you think that was a good idea?”

“I don’t know. He’s just— He’s just Lando.”

Logan smacks a palm to his forehead. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

An hour later Lando has miraculously convinced Charles to come play golf with him and Carlos despite the five pencils, two books and one eraser Max had thrown at them during that conversation to shut the hell up and all Charles’ attempts to deny him because nobody short of Carlos loves him enough to voluntarily torture themselves spending a day of golf with him.

Oscar’s excuse is that he doesn’t know how or care to play golf. That doesn’t stop Lando from asking him to come every weekend they go golfing anyway.

He’s doing so again now, perched on the arm of Oscar’s chair instead of the perfectly good one Logan had vacated a while ago, which is really for the best because were he here right now he would be busy kicking Oscar’s shin about the way he’s pretending to ignore Lando in favour of the sum he’s writing down.

“Come on, I won’t even make you play, you can just hang around,” Lando says quietly, only because Oscar had told him to shut up three times already and the librarian had given him a look.

“Why do I need to be there if Carlos and Charles are taking pity on you already?”

“They’re not taking pity on me.”

“Yes, they are, nobody plays golf with you for fun.”

Lando groans, disturbing several people nearby. Again. “Come on, please? You said yourself you haven’t gone anywhere but campus, home, and the grocery store in weeks.”

“I would rather eat beans on toast than watch you swing a stick at a ball and be bad at it. I have better things to do on a Saturday.”

“You need to let beans on toast go, you've lived here for years. And I won’t be bad! It’ll be fun.”

“It’ll be boring.” Oscar is pretty sure he made a mistake in the sum three lines back, but he keeps writing on without fixing it anyway, if only to keep Lando convinced he’s not paying any attention to him because Oscar really doesn’t want to get dragged into golf again.

“No, it won’t,” Lando argues, snatching the pencil out of Oscar’s hand. “There will be snacks!”

Oscar snatches it back but the sum is fucked, really, and Lando knows he’s got his attention now, so he doesn’t even bother. “We have snacks at home. I need to study.”

“You can bring your books and study in the golf kart... While eating snacks.”

“Or,” Oscar says. “I could do that at the comfort of my desk.”

“But Oscar,” Lando sighs dramatically and flops sideways into Oscar’s lap.

Oscar catches him before he breaks his spine hitting the opposite arm of the chair.

He sighs, half at Lando’s antics, half just because he’s got Lando in his lap and he looks very pretty today.

“Please?”

Oscar is going to hate himself for this when he gets there, but Lando’s making those eyes at him and he’s in Oscar’s lap, what is he supposed to do? “Fine. But you’re buying the snacks.”

“Mint!” Lando beams, grinning happily.

Oscar’s heart melts a bit for just about the twenty-sixth time that morning.

“You know I love you, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” Oscar sighs, defeated, shoving Lando back up and off his lap if only to take mercy on himself. “Can’t say the same to you.”

Lando has gotten what he wanted now so he’s apparently happy enough to flop down into the other chair and give Oscar his space now. Well, mostly, since he’s poking him with his shoe as he says, “Liar.”

Ha. If only Lando knew.

How is he supposed get used to things anyway, what with Lando being all Lando one second and the next he’s just saying, ‘hey, fuck me’, in the middle of making dinner or brushing their teeth or watching TV?

And Oscar really can’t be expected to get used to the way Lando is all chatty and demanding in bed one moment and then Oscar will do something and Lando will just be gone.

And the thing is just that it’s so hard to keep him there, to keep him in that headspace where he stops thinking a mile a minute and just shuts up and lets Oscar make him feel good and all Oscar is doing is chasing that blissed out Lando because fuck does that do things for him.

But sometimes Oscar just tries something and stumbles on something else that Lando likes completely unintentionally, something new that makes him go all hazy-eyed and needy for Oscar a little easier, and Oscar ferrets away all those little things that do it for Lando in his head like a hoard of rare jewels.

This time is one of those where Oscar wasn’t even trying.

He doesn’t really understand why Lando asks, doesn’t really understand why this of all things is what he wants today.

Lando is just finishing up a stream, the loud chattering and laughter coming to an end and Lando pops up in the living room, the energy still visible in him as he hops over the armrest to throw himself onto the couch next to Oscar who was having a lovely time watching Netflix in peace a moment ago, and has already accepted that his peace is about to be irretrievably disturbed.

“Hi,” Lando says.

“Hi,” Oscar says back, not thinking too much of it as he keeps watching the movie, mostly pretending. “What’s up?”

“Oh nothing. Got a big test tomorrow.”

“And you’re streaming?” Oscar asks confused, because Oscar can’t quite fathom doing anything but studying the day before the test. “Shouldn’t you be studying?”

Lando shrugs. “Yeah. Bit stressed, couldn’t concentrate.”

“Oh, maybe you should—”

“Can I suck your dick?”

“What?” Oscar says, like he does most times because Lando always says this shit right out of the blue.

“I asked if I could suck you off," Lando repeats, like Oscar couldn't hear him or something.

“Why?”

“What do you mean why? To get you off, obviously.”

“Uh, yeah, I get that, but I’d have thought you would want something that gets you off.”

“Oh, yeah, I will,” Lando says unhelpfully. “Y’know, in the process, or after.”

“I can just get you off if you want, you don’t need to do that,” Oscar tells him, still confused.

“No, no, but I want to,” Lando insists. “It’s like, I think it’ll just help me— Just— Can I?”

Oscar doesn’t know what to say except, helplessly, “Yeah, okay.”

Lando doesn’t waste any time before he’s down on his knees and oh god, really, how is Oscar meant to be normal about that?

Oscar’s breath hitches at the sight of him there, looking up at him with those eyes of his that will never settle on a single colour, through those long lashes of his, tilting his head into the touch of Oscar’s hand at his jaw. When had that even gotten there?

He doesn’t even say anything before he pulls at the waistband of Oscar’s shorts. “Off, Oscar.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” Oscar mutters as he pulls off his shorts and his shirt too.

Lando goes for his cock right away, but Oscar holds him back because Lando really doesn’t think. “Hey, just wait a second, put something under your knees, would you?”

“Ugh, Oscar, stop wasting time being considerate,” Lando groans, but Oscar refuses to be responsible for Lando bruising his knees, he’d feel too bad, and besides, he won’t stop thinking about whether Lando’s comfortable the whole time if he doesn’t make him put something under his knees now.

“Here, come on.” Oscar grabs the folded-up blanket and nudges Lando to put it under his knees.

Lando huffs, impatient. Fuck knows why, because it’s not like he’s waiting for Oscar to do something about the tent in his shorts, but anyway, Lando lets him do it, albeit very put upon.

“Okay, there, go for it-ah, oh my god,” Oscar chokes out as Lando swallows him down, hand flying to Lando’s hair just for something to hold on to. “Fuck.”

Lando just hums, holding on to Oscar’s thighs for grip and fuck he’s good at this.

Oscar moans helplessly, trying not to fist the hand that’s in Lando’s hair because he hasn't asked.

Lando bobs up and down, almost far enough to be taking Oscar into his throat right away, which— Just— Jesus.

“Lando,” Oscar breathes, for lack of anything else to say in between the moans he’s making.

Lando keeps going just like that, taking a little more every time like he goes down again, like he’s trying to slowly take Oscar into his throat and Oscar doesn’t know how the fuck he’s supposed to handle that.

Oscar’s breathing speeds up and soon enough he’s panting between his moans and breathy sounds and choked off ‘Lando’s.

He looks down at Lando’s face, entranced.

Lando’s eyes are closed, long lashes all pretty as they lie over his cheeks like this, spit dripping just a little from the sides of his mouth as he fails to swallow it all around Oscar’s cock and he looks so blissed out Oscar doesn’t even wonder why he asked anymore because anybody with eyes could see that Lando loves this.

“God, you’re gorgeous,” Oscar breathes.

Lando hums back before he goes down again and drags his tongue along the underside of Oscar’s cock.

Oscar chokes out a groan at that and accidently tightens his hand in Lando’s hair, pulling on his roots.

He’s about to apologise, but before he can get a word out Lando makes a high-pitched whine, hands going tight on Oscar’s thighs as he blinks up at him.

Oh.

Oh, Lando likes that.

Oscar can tell by that look he gets, the way his pupils dilate just a little more, he gets all hazy, eyes half lidded, his whole body goes just a little looser as he swallows Oscar down again like he’s hungry for it, like he needs it.

“You like that?” Oscar breathes, just to make sure.

Lando pulls off for a second, and fuck, there’s a line of spit running down the side of his mouth and he’s looking up at Oscar through lashes that are just a little wet from the beginnings of tears as he’d tried not to choke. “Yeah.”

“Fuck,” Oscar breathes and tightens his hand again.

Lando’s mouth opens in a nearly soundless moan, just a choked little thing escaping his throat as his head moves a little toward where Oscar is pulling. “Oscar, please.”

“You want me to pull your hair, baby?”

Lando nods against the pull on his hair. “Yeah. Yeah, please, fuck my mouth, just… Please.”

“Is that what you want? You want me to move you where I want you?”

Lando nods again. “Yeah, in my throat. Just— Just slow.”

“Fucking Christ,” Oscar breathes. “You want me to make you take my cock in your throat and you’ll just sit there all pretty taking whatever I give you, won’t you?”

Lando doesn’t answer save for a loud whine and the way he reaches for Oscar’s cock again. Oscar’s pretty sure it’s the longest he’s managed to keep Lando like this.

“Alright, sweetheart, I can do that for you. Tap me twice if you need me to let go, just in case I don’t realise, okay?”

“Yes. Yes, Oscar, please.”

“No, wait, just show me, show me what you do if you want out?”

Lando looks up at him for a second like he’s still processing, and then he taps Oscar’s thigh twice.

Oscar relaxes. “Good, thank you, baby.”

Lando just nods, eyes fluttering. He likes being called good, likes knowing he’s doing well, Oscar knows because he always gets this little dip, goes quieter, hazy for a second when Oscar says something like that before he’s back again. “Please?”

“Yeah, of course, go on, baby,” Oscar murmurs, entranced as he guides Lando down onto his cock, just barely nudging the back of his throat and Lando just sighs and goes all lax. 

His thighs spread just a little more, shoulders going loose, and he just relaxes into Oscar.

Oscar keeps a careful eye on Lando’s body language, the way he keens when Oscar pushes a little further into the back of his throat, eyes watering just a little, but god, he’s loving it, lashes fluttering and Oscar had no idea he liked sucking cock this much.

He looks so fucking gorgeous like this and it’s all Oscar can do to keep himself from coming, just to let Lando just stay in this headspace, to make him feel good just a little longer.

But he can’t exactly hold on when Lando is being so good, breathing through it and blinking away the water on his lash line when Oscar presses further into his throat, almost taking all of Oscar.

“Lando,” Oscar mutters helplessly. “I’m going to come, baby.”

Lando whines again and the vibrations have Oscar gripping his hair even tighter and biting his lip just to keep himself from falling over the edge of his orgasm, to ask, “Don't you want to pull off?”

Lando’s answer is another moan around his cock and his hands tightening on Oscar’s thighs.

“You want me to come in your mouth?”

Lando whines his yes, looking up at Oscar through his wet lashes again and he’s so fucking gone just the sight of him makes it impossible for Oscar to hold on.

“Fuck, baby,” Oscar chokes out as he holds Lando in place so that he doesn’t move when Oscar comes. “Fuck.”

Lando whimpers and swallows around him as Oscar spills in his mouth, trying to nudge forward to get him deeper again, but Oscar is too afraid that he’ll really choke to let him, holding him back by his hair.

Not that Lando seems to mind, since that just makes the pull on his hair a little tighter and he whines a little at the sting.

“Fuck, that’s good, baby, you’re so good, so fucking good at that,” Oscar mutters, panting as he comes down, cock starting to go soft as Lando swallows the last of his come while Oscar slumps backwards into the couch pillows.

Lando swallows once more and pulls off with a slick sound.

Oscar’s eyes flutter open to look down at Lando, still hazy, mouthing at his softening cock. “Come up here, baby, come on, let me make you come, yeah?”

Lando blinks up at him dazedly before he nods and crawls up into Oscar’s lap.

He’s so fucking hard, straining against the fabric of his shorts, instinctively trying to find friction against Oscar’s abdomen as Oscar pulls him closer by his hips, foreheads pressed together, panting into each other’s mouths.

“What do you want? Hand or mouth?”

Lando seems to need a second to regain his ability to speaking before he manages to say, “Hand? Like this?”

“Yeah? In my lap?”

Lando nods.

“Of course, baby, anything you want, anything for you,” Oscar tells him, which is truer than Lando need ever know, but he doesn’t seem to be in danger of thinking too much about what Oscar is saying right now, it doesn’t look like he’s thinking at all.

Oscar doesn’t expect Lando will be keen to move to the bedroom to go get the lube, so he just spits in his hand and holds it out to Lando to do the same.

Lando, dazedly, adds his own spit to Oscar’s, clinging tighter to Oscar’s shoulders now.

Oscar reaches down and into Lando’s shorts and underwear to get his hand around him.

Lando whines loudly into Oscar’s mouth, nails digging into the skin of Oscar’s shoulders, Oscar is getting used to having scraped-raw shoulders most days now. “Fuck, Osc, please.”

“Yeah, I’ve got you, sweetheart, is this what you need?”

Lando nods, panting into Oscar’s mouth, his hips moving in short thrusts to meet Oscar’s hand while his nails leave fiery lines over Oscar’s back and fuck that feels so good Oscar can’t help but groan into his mouth as he runs his thumb over Lando’s tip.

Lando makes a small noise, hips starting a bit. “Oscar, please.”

Oscar doesn’t know what Lando is asking for. “What do you need, baby?”

“I need— Need to come.”

“So come, baby,” Oscar says.

And that is apparently what Lando needs because all his muscles tighten up and he clings to Oscar’s shoulder as he whimpers into Oscar’s mouth and finally comes, all over Oscar’s hand and both his shorts and his shirt.

“That’s it, you did so good, you were so good,” Oscar murmurs, because it feels like the right thing to say, because Lando was good.

Lando stays tensed up like that for just a moment and then all his muscles go loose and he just melts into Oscar.

Oscar is right there to catch him, wrapping his arms around Lando as he buries into Oscar’s neck, sighing in contentment.

Fuck, Oscar should put a dick in his mouth more often if he’s this relaxed right after. But maybe that’s Oscar’s selfishness talking because it means Oscar gets to have Lando in his lap afterwards, buried into his neck, gets to hold him close like this and brush a kiss to his hair.

Oscar’s not really sure if he should, but he takes the chance and dips his hand under Lando’s shirt to stroke over the skin of his back.

Lando doesn’t seem to mind, he just hums, nuzzling into his neck a little bit more.

Oscar holds him a little tighter.

Lando stays like that for a good few minutes and Oscar can scarcely believe it, that he’s managed to make Lando just stop thinking for so long just by putting a cock in his mouth.

He wishes he could just hold Lando like this forever, pretend it’s real, that it’s not just casual, that it’s not just needs being met.

But it can’t last forever.

It’s almost like Lando is physically wrenching himself back into place as he pulls back, blinking at Oscar. “Shit.”

“Hey there, are you okay?”

His hand is still under Lando’s shirt, spread over the small of Lando’s back. Oscar focuses very hard on not moving it so that maybe Lando won’t notice.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, I don’t know what that was,” Lando says, looking down at the mess of them both.

Oscar frowns in confusion. “Don’t be sorry, it was good.”

Lando doesn’t look all that convinced, not quite meeting Oscar’s eye. He’s being weird.

“Are you okay?”

Lando swallows. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

Oscar frowns at the odd tone in his voice, the strange, almost cagey look in his eye. He opens his mouth to say something, but Lando beats him to it.

“I’m going to shower and go study,” he says, climbing off of Oscar’s lap. He wobbles a bit.

Oscar’s hands automatically fly to his hips to steady him before he falls. “Woah, hey, you need some help?”

Lando blinks, still half dazed. Oscar doesn’t quite understand why he wants to remove himself from his lap right now at all, he should just study here. “Fuck. Mm. No, m’fine.”

Oscar gives him another confused, concerned look, but Lando seems determined to go. Oscar gives him one more assessing once over before he can deem it safe to remove his hands from Lando’s hips.

Lando chews his lip. “Are you sure it wasn’t— Like weird?”

“Yes, Lando, I’m sure.”

Lando just sighs and squeezes Oscar’s bicep as he says absently, sounding not quite convinced, “Mm. Okay. Thanks, Osc,” before he’s off in slow, unsteady movements, half liquid.

Oscar stares after him, itching to pull him back to the safety of his arms, to pick him up and just carry him wherever he could possibly want to go right now instead of letting him walk like this.

Lando disappears into the bathroom and Oscar gets dressed again, listening to the water pattering in the shower as he thinks himself into circles about what the fuck just happened.

Afterwards, Lando comes out of the shower, towel around his waist, looking so sated, warm and relaxed and Oscar just doesn’t understand why he’d been in such a hurry to get up leave just now instead of staying in Oscar’s lap where he’d clearly been comfortable and where Oscar wanted him anyway.

Oscar watches from the couch as he shortly hesitates by the door and glances back at Oscar and Oscar knows him, so he knows that’s the look he gets on his face when he wants Oscar’s company.

But Lando says nothing, just disappears into his room and shuffles around getting dressed.

Oscar thinks himself into several more circles as he listens to the strange quiet coming from Lando’s room, before he decides he really has nothing better to do than go see if Lando wants Oscar to come insert himself into his space.

He pops his head into Lando’s room where the door is slightly ajar and catches him actually studying. Weird. He likes to study on his bed instead of the desk like a psychopath, which Oscar is sure fucks up his sleeping psychology, but he’s picked that argument enough times to know he won’t change Lando’s mind.

“Oh, hey, what’s up, Osc?” Lando asks from the bed and, now that Oscar’s concentrating, his voice is a little hoarse from their activities earlier, which, fuck.

Oscar dithers a little, tapping a finger on the edge of the door. “Nothing, just bored. Hey, do you, uh… Do you want company?”

“Yeah?” Lando’s smile is so warm that it’s blinding as he moves some books to make space for Oscar on the bed. Oscar doesn’t need an actual answer to know he’s hit the mark on what Lando wants.

“’Course.”

He just doesn't understand why Lando didn’t just ask him to come keep him company if he wanted him to. He knew Oscar wasn’t busy. He doesn’t get why Lando went and left him at all, why he didn't just let Oscar carry him to his books and keep him in his lap while he studied if he needed to.

Oscar settles down in the space Lando has made for him, taking the pillow Lando tosses to him and sits back against the wall against which Lando’s bed lies, legs crossed while Lando props himself up at the head of the bed and throws his legs over Oscar’s lap.

Something in Oscar’s chest settles now that he’s here.

Lando seems to lose a little more tension too, strangely enough, because he was already so relaxed after that to begin with.

Oscar rests his arms idly on Lando’s shins as he messes around on his phone, tracing shapes into the fabric of Lando’s sweats.

It’s thirty minutes later that Oscar realises Lando has been oddly quiet, not even looking up once to tell Oscar whatever random though had popped into his head now.

Oscar looks up and catches Lando concentrating of all things. Lando is not in the habit of concentrating. Not on his study work at least.

It’s a bit like magic, actually, the way Lando is so relaxed and concentrated, calm.

So what Oscar really doesn’t understand is how Lando seems to be doing everything in his power to avoid the headspace that makes him this relaxed and concentrated and calm. Oscar can’t be imagining it, he’s sure he isn’t.

But he can’t very well just ask, because that’s weird.

It goes on for almost two hours, and then Lando is looking idly over at what Oscar’s doing on his phone just as Oscar likes one of Quadrant’s Instagram posts.

“Oh, shit, I forgot to tell you something.”

Oscar looks up.

Lando’s got this shifty, guilty look in his eye that he also gets when he steals all of Oscar’s hoodies and doesn’t put them in the wash. “So don’t be mad, or l you can be mad, that would be fair, but I sort of told Max we were fucking?”

Oscar taps the corner of his phone lightly on Lando’s calf. “Okay, well I accidentally told Logan so I don’t think I get to be mad, but whether or not I’m annoyed depends very much on which Max because Max Fewtrell is fine, but if you told Max Verstappen then Charles knows and if Charles knows then everyone knows.”

“Oh, okay great, because I meant Max Fewtrell. Also, I have to tell Carlos, that’s kind of non-negotiable.”

“Sure. But no Charles.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll tell him not to say anything.”

And with that, Lando’s concentration on his study work is lost and he’s off on a tangent about golf.

Still, Lando got a lot done while it lasted.

Oscar should really figure out how to get him like this more often.

Oscar tries. Oscar tries so damn hard, but no. It’s like Lando is actively refusing.

Really, how the fuck is Oscar supposed to act normally knowing there are ways to get Lando to let go, but Lando just won’t.

After that day, Lando is more slippery than ever. Every time he asks for sex that week it’s just a quick hand job or a rushed fuck and it’s like Oscar can’t do anything to get his brain to shut off, like Lando refuses to put himself into a position to let him.

He’s chatty all the way through Oscar fucking him over the kitchen counter after he’d gotten horny when Oscar had picked him up and physically moved him out of reach of the chicken curry he was fucking up in an attempt to ‘help’.

The hand job Oscar gives him against the hallway wall is quick and efficient and Lando doesn’t even say much, but Oscar can tell by the way he holds himself and the clarity in his eyes that he’s not letting go, he’s just taking care of a need.

And Oscar really tries on Thursday evening when Lando just keeps getting up to get something from the room or the kitchen or do something while Oscar is trying not to complain about Lando cashing in his third night of watching Love is Blind and Oscar just says, "Sit down and be quiet."

Lando shuts up. Only for a second. And then he says, "Okay, that was hot, fuck me."

"Lando, that's the third time today."

"If it bothers you, then you shouldn't say shit like that."

Oscar tries so hard, pulls out all the stops, picking him up to carry him to the bedroom, pinning him down to the bed, telling him he’s pretty, but no, Lando keeps dipping, only for seconds at a time when Oscar does something he likes, but then he’s back and telling Oscar ‘faster’, ‘slower’, ‘not like that’, like he isn’t the one causing the problem because he keeps moving and talking and distracting Oscar.

It's driving Oscar a little insane. A lot insane. Completely insane.

But Oscar can’t afford to think about that all day. He can’t really afford to think about anything but his project coming up, to the point that he really can’t even afford to leave his books at home when they go out golfing.

Lando looks a little guilty when he sees Oscar packing them, fidgeting with the strap of the golf bag that’s slung over his shoulder.

“You don’t actually have to go, you can really stay here if you need to work.”

But Oscar isn’t fooled by Lando pretending to be unbothered by that. He knows full well Lando will be a little disappointed if Oscar backs out and Oscar hates disappointing Lando.

Because Lando is the definition of an open book sometimes, he always makes this sad face that makes Oscar want to throw himself off a roof in self-hatred because he already hates when Lando makes that face, he can’t handle him making it because of Oscar.

“Nah, you were right, I need to get out of the house.” It’s true enough, Oscar is kind of getting cabin fever.

Lando’s blinding smile is proof enough that he was vying for that outcome.

Oscar just smiles, because it’s infectious and he loves making Lando happy. “You’re driving.”

“Oh, come on!”

Lando grumbles about it all the way through the hitching stops and starts on the way to Carlos’ apartment.

Oscar tries not to grip the seat beneath him too tightly as Lando almost drives when he’s not supposed to at a four-way stop and continues to make a lot of mournful and self-pitying noises about being hooted at, like he fully deserved.

Miraculously they make it to Carlos’ alive and Lando promptly forgets about the six near death experiences they just had to turn and say, “Oscar, I have to tell him right now, I can’t not tell him and I haven’t seen him in weeks because he was busy with exams.”

Oscar groans as Carlos comes out the door of the apartment building and jogs towards the car, dressed in a similar outfit to Lando and carrying his own bag of golf clubs.

“At least tell him when I’m not there,” Oscar begs.

“What? Why? Come on, how am I meant to keep it a secret for hours?”

“I don’t know, just shut your mouth, it’s not that hard!”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why is this my problem, why didn’t you tell him sooner if you were going to anyway?”

“He was busy!” Lando argues as Carlos opens the backseat door.

“Don’t you dare, Lando, I swear to god.”

“Don’t he dare, what?” Carlos asks as he chucks the golf clubs inside and climbs in after them.

Lando bites his lip so hard it looks painful, looking genuinely tortured.

Oscar gives him a glare.

Lando’s face contorts impossibly more before he finally bursts and blurts out in a quick rattle, “Me and Oscar are fucking.”

Oscar smacks his palm to his forehead and groans as he sinks down in the passenger seat and corrects instinctively, “Oscar and I, Lando.”

Lando smacks him absently and says, “Oh, fuck your grammar.”

Oscar sighs.

Carlos is very silent for a moment. “You mean like, you are together? Like boyfriends?”

“No,” Oscar snaps.

“Lando,” Carlos says, very suspiciously.

“No, no, no, look, so…”

Oscar sits there with a hand over his face the entire duration of Lando’s explanation while Carlos listens in the backseat, Lando miraculously less of a road safety hazard when he’s distracted as he drives to Max and Charles’ place to get Charles.

“So, yes,” Lando finishes off as he parks in front of Charles and Max’s building. “Mint, innit?”

“Lando, cabrón… No.”

It’s a little funny how literally everyone except Lando sees how this was a shit idea.

“Oh, and Oscar says we’re not allowed to tell Charles.”

“Ah, okay. Fair.”

Oscar sighs some more.

“So you really just say ‘hey Oscar, do you feel like fucking me?'”

“Yeah, and then he does! Isn’t that brilliant? He’s really good at it too—"

“Okay,” Oscar interrupts, slapping a hand over Lando’s mouth. “That’s enough detail, now can you two please shut up and continue this conversation without me present?”

It’s no use asking them not to have the conversation at all, Oscar already knows that.

Lando rolls his eyes and removes Oscar’s hand from his mouth. “Yes, fine, we’re here anyway. Nobody tell Charles.”

Oscar and Carlos make remarkably similar groans that Oscar thinks are a very specific noise that everyone makes in the exact same way when having to deal with the idiocy that is Lando Norris.

The golfing, mercifully, does turn out to be quite fun.

Nobody really expects Oscar to do anything but look up every few minutes at the bickering between Lando, Carlos, and Charles while he makes some notes in his books and calculates some of the logistics of the project.

They’re making a miniaturised Formula 1 car, since most of them dream of getting into Formula 1, but Oscar thinks it might be ruining the dream for him personally since somehow between him, Arthur and Rob they’ve thought and scribbled themselves into circles, and the rest of the group doesn’t seem to be faring much better with their aspects of the project.

Oscar is just about to stab another hole through a page of his calculations when Lando makes another groan.

Carlos and Charles are convulsing with laughter, holding on to each other to keep from collapsing on the grass as Lando’s ball goes soaring straight into a lake.

“Shut up,” Lando snaps.

Oscar bites the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing too as he closes his book, hopelessly distracted. Half the distraction is that Lando looks ridiculously good in his golfing outfit, white polo tucked into a well-fitting pair of khakis. Oscar tries not to look at him too much.

“I hate you two,” Lando announces. “You three, actually, I can tell you’re laughing, Oscar.”

Oscar snorts as Lando climbs into the golf cart next to him while Charles and Carlos finish their laughing fit, crossing his arms and sinking into the seat beside Oscar in exaggerated offence.

“What were you saying about getting better?”

“Fuck off, Oscar.”

“Right,” Oscar says as Charles climbs into the drivers’ seat and Carlos into the passenger in front of them. Oscar gives Lando a commiserating pat on the shoulder. “Sorry.”

Lando grumbles something as Charles drives them along.

Oscar goes back to his textbook, but he’s more focused on the way Lando is leaning into him, feeling sorry for himself as he pillows his head on Oscar’s shoulder.

It goes on for about another two hours, weaving between other golfers moving along the course.

And then Lando is struggling to hit another ball, missing it thrice before it finally goes soaring in the completely wrong direction. Again.

Charles and Carlos dissolve in a pile of laughter again as Lando groans. Oscar smiles into his books.

There’s another group of golfers close by, watching the commotion.

Charles and Carlos are wheezing now, half on the floor and Oscar smiles absently as he turns a page in his textbook.

“You’re pretty bad at golf, aren’t you?” a voice comes then.

Oscar looks up to see a girl resting an arm on her golf club as she addresses Lando.

“Yeah,” Lando says, and he’s got that almost weak tone that he gets when he’s being flirted with. “Think that’s been, uh, repeatedly proven today.”

She’s pretty. Blonde, blue eyes, smart looking, just a little shorter than Lando, clad in an all-white ensemble, skirt falling smoothly around her hips, reaching just halfway down the thighs of her long legs.

“Yeah, I saw,” she says. “I have to get back to my friends in a minute, but do you think you’d want to be bad at golf with me sometime? I promise I won’t laugh as much as those two are.”

Oscar’s not jealous, he’s seen Lando flirting with people loads of times. He’s used to it.

He's used to that twinge in his chest, that tick in his jaw.

“Uh…” Lando says, going a little pink. “Yeah. Yeah, sounds great. Fair warning though, it’s pretty difficult not to laugh.”

Oscar’s grip on his book tightens just a little. 

She smiles and holds out her phone for Lando’s number. “I’ll do my best.”

Fuck.

Carlos is looking between the two of them, gauging Oscar’s reaction. Charles is frowning at Oscar in confusion.

Fine, Oscar is fucking jealous, he isn’t used to shit and it’s probably written all over his goddamn face.

Of course Oscar is jealous, because Lando is stuttering just a little and he’s going a bit pink and Oscar would personally prefer Lando stuttering and blushing for nobody but Oscar, let alone some random girl he’s literally never met before.

Oscar is having far too many unjustified feelings about this girl that Oscar has, in fact, also never met before.

“I’ll see you around,” she says, waving Lando goodbye as she heads off.

“Yeah,” Lando just says. “See you.”

Oscar grinds his teeth and looks back at his books, ignoring the looks he’s getting from Charles and Carlos. He’s not reading anything.

“Hey, you alright, Osc?” Lando asks as he climbs into the golf cart next to him again.

Oscar sighs, some of the tension draining from his muscles as Lando sits pressed up next to him. “I’m fine. You going to text her then?”

Lando frowns at him another moment. “Yeah, probably.”

Jealousy twists in Oscar’s chest.

It hurts.

Oscar wishes he was used to it.

Chapter Text

Lando had been doing so well being normal during sex. He’d been doing so well right up until he decided fuck it and asked to suck Oscar’s dick.

He should have known it would make him like that.

But he'd just thought it would help him burn off some nervous energy and he'd already been wanting it so bad, because Oscar has a gorgeous, perfect cock and Lando had just wanted a taste of him, he’d been dreaming about it forever.

How was he supposed to know Oscar would go and pull his hair and tell him he's gorgeous and move him like that? Fuck, did that make it hard to think.

But Lando is proud to say that he’s been nothing but normal ever since then. It took a monumental effort, but he's managed. And on top of that he’s definitely going to find someone else to fuck soon and get out of Oscar’s hair.

Besides, Lando has been relieved of much of the effort he’s been making since Oscar has been spending more and more time holed up in his room or out at the library working on his project with his group.

Lando has mostly been trying not to bother him, staying quiet around the house, and only knocking on Oscar’s door to bring him some coffee and food every once in a while.

He knows Oscar is busy, he knows his project is stressful and his exams are coming up, but Lando selfishly misses Oscar anyway.

He doesn't try inserting himself into Oscar's space and promising to be quiet, because Lando knows himself well enough that it wouldn't be two minutes before he started talking and distracting Oscar from his work, and Oscar doesn't look like distraction is what he needs at the moment.

He’s pretty sure that fucking would help Oscar feel a lot less stressed, but Oscar hasn't asked. If he really wants to, he probably will. Oscar’s probably just not as needy for sex as Lando is.

Lando hasn’t brought it up either, unwilling to bother him with all that because he doesn’t want to distract him from his project to take care of Lando’s incessant wants and needs.

Lando is pretty busy himself between social media and streaming and a few more exams coming up. He’s also got a gig in a few days, so he has enough to take his mind off of his libido. He makes do with his hand, mostly. It isn’t nearly as good as Oscar’s and it's getting harder and harder to be satisfied with it, but Lando manages, mostly.

Unfortunately he does have needs, though, so that lasts about a total of two and a half days before he can't take it anymore and accosts Oscar on one of his kitchen runs as he's on his knees on the floor, rooting around in the freezer compartment of the fridge for something edible.

"Hey, do you want to fuck?" Lando says as he hops up on the kitchen counter behind Oscar.

Oscar jumps and hits his head on the fridge door. "Ow, Jesus, Lando, a warning."

"Sorry." Lando grimaces in sympathy and hops off to check if Oscar's head is okay. "You okay?"

"I'll live," Oscar sighs and shuts the fridge doors, sitting back on his heels. "I thought you were talking to that girl from Saturday."

"Who?"

"From golf."

"Oh, her? Yeah, sort of. It's not serious. There's also that guy who came into my economics class this semester, he's pretty cute, might become a thing, I don't know. What's that got to do with anything?"

Oscar sighs. "Nothing, come here."

Oscar doesn't bother getting up from the floor, he just sucks Lando off against the fridge and lets Lando get him off afterwards once he too has slumped to the floor with Oscar.

Oscar does seem slightly less stressed after sex, but he never asks for it. Instead he spends eight hours of the day scribbling down sums or inspecting a textbook like he's expected to know it front to back, and occasionally bangs his head on the table, at which point Lando will knock on his door and ask if he wants a cup of coffee. He's learned which groan means yes and which means no.

Sometimes, when Oscar is taking a break and not looking horrendously exhausted, Lando will ask, not demandingly, just casually, so that Oscar doesn’t feel like he has to.

But Oscar never denies him, that’s just the problem.

It’s starting to make Lando feel bad, because he just never asks back.

So Lando kind of just starts asking less, because Oscar hardly ever looks like he isn’t busy or distracted or stressed anymore and Lando should really write someone in the engineering department a sternly worded email because it can’t be healthy to be this stressed about a degree, not even in assessment season.

Oscar starts secluding himself more and more as his project due date draws nearer, to the point that Lando is half convinced that if it wasn’t for him bringing Oscar food and drinks semi-regularly, Oscar might actually starve.

In honesty, Lando is a little worried.

Lando had realised Oscar was stressed, which is why he’d tried to stay out of his hair this week, but he hadn’t realised just how stressed he was until they run of Oscar’s favourite chocolate just before midnight on the Thursday night before Oscar’s project is due and Oscar looks like he might actually have a breakdown.

Lando shuts off the show he was quietly watching in the living room as he watches Oscar sink to the floor with his back to the kitchen cupboards, the kitchen light filtering through the doorway to the darkened living room.

Oscar stares up at nothing, looking like he’s not quite convinced life is worth living.

“Oscar?”

Oscar makes a miserable sound and drops his face into his hands as he tucks his knees up to form a ball of tragedy.

“Your project only needs to be in by three tomorrow, right?”

Oscar nods into his knees.

Lando chews on his lip. “Don’t you think maybe you should take a break? I haven’t seen you come out of your room since five this afternoon. That was, like, seven hours ago.”

Oscar flops sideways onto the kitchen floor in a puddle of despair. “Probably.”

Lando gingerly pads into the kitchen to come sit beside him and gently stroke his arm. “We can go to the twenty-four-hour store and get you some more chocolate?”

Oscar drops his hand from his face to look up at Lando, miserably. “I do want more chocolate.”

“Okay, come on, let’s go, yeah? I’ll even drive.”

"In the dark? You hate driving in the dark."

"I will, just for you, and also because I'm concerned that your brain isn't currently in any state to be operating a vehicle."

"Probably," Oscar agrees, smiling a little about that as he pushes himself off the floor. It's not a laugh yet, but Lando will get him there in a few minutes.

“Are you going to sleep tonight or are you just going to work until the deadline and sleep after?” Lando asks, getting up and helping Oscar stand, a little afraid of the answer because he knows he can’t really say anything because he has no idea what Oscar’s project entails and he can’t tell him how to live his life.

“What do you think?” Oscar just says as he goes to find a pair of shoes from under the coffee table in the half dark living room.

Lando had honestly never known what was going on with Oscar’s thing, but somehow it had escalated from piles of calculations and other scribblings littering Oscar’s desk, pages making it all the way to the kitchen sink this past week, to Lando walking in on the living room being full of cords and a weird looking contraption surrounded by a circle of extremely caffeinated engineering students close to tears yesterday.

No sleep then.

“Right…”

Lando doesn’t know what they’re doing now but there’s a group chat open on Oscar’s phone, which is lying on the kitchen floor still, going off with messages every two seconds with terms Lando can’t hope to comprehend.

“Uh, will they live if you take thirty minutes to stop thinking about this?” Lando asks, pointedly holding up the phone to show Oscar the messages popping up every two seconds.

“It's nice how you imply any of us qualify for being alive right now, that's very flattering and also not true, I think," Oscar mumbles absently.

"Uh."

"It’ll be fine, " Oscar sighs. "I think Maya and Tina sort of have their shit together. Rob and Arthur can go fuck themselves if they want to ask me something in the next thirty minutes, I think.”

“Okay, great,” Lando says, switching off the phone and chucking it on the couch next to Oscar as he ties his shoes. “We need milk, by the way.”

“Oh. Do we?”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t know since you haven’t perceived the world since last week.”

Oscar sighs sadly, “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Lando says, patting Oscar on the head. Oscar absently leans into it, just a bit. “Come on, let’s go be human for a few minutes and then you can go back into your engineering coma.”

Lando lets Oscar text the group that he’s taking a break on the rickety elevator ride downstairs before he confiscates the phone as they walk past Geraldine on the way to the car.

Oscar gives her a tired wave.

Lando mumbles something rude, she mumbles something back, the usual.

They get to the grocery store with minimal hitches in Lando’s driving, mostly because he’s too distracted by Oscar gazing miserably up at the dark sky as he drives them there.

Lando makes him hold the basket while he chucks too much chocolate and some other necessities in it, trying and failing to draw Oscar into intelligent conversation as he follows Lando around the store in a knot of stress.

Lando gives up on conversation as a cashier with a dead look rivalling Oscar’s rings up their things.

He’s almost out of ideas when they climb back into the car, chucking the bag of groceries to the backseat floor, but then one comes to him.

He looks over at Oscar hopelessly sprawled in the passenger seat, calculations visibly whirring behind his eyes.

“Oscar?”

“Mm.”

“You need to stop thinking.” This is a spectacularly bad idea, Lando knows, but fuck it.

“What is a thought?" Oscar mumbles. "Do you have a reference for that?”

“Uh, okay, feel free to tell me to fuck off, like please tell me to fuck off if it’s not going to help, but I’m just going to put the offer on the table to suck your dick right now, because I feel like that might help you relax.”

Oscar just looks at him for a second. He does that a lot, Lando thinks. “You mean like right now? In the car?”

There’s nobody else in the parking lot. It’s almost completely dark out, because the closest streetlamp isn’t working, and they’d parked pretty far from the store because Lando was scared of being watched while he tried to park straight so the storefront lights don’t quite illuminate them either.

Lando shrugs.

Oscar all of a sudden looks like he’s no longer thinking about the project at all, which was kind of the goal, but now Lando’s not sure if it was the right thing to do because of course Oscar wasn’t going to tell him no. “Yeah, fuck it, why not?”

Lando suddenly gets a pang of unsurety because he was trying to make Oscar feel better, not himself.

But Oscar’s already going loose, turning in invitation and Lando knows that Oscar hasn't even started with exams yet, but he's already so busy Lando barely sees him and Lando has missed him, a whole knot of tension draining from his shoulders as he pre-emptively relaxes just from knowing he’s going to get it. 

So he just sighs in relief and crawls half over the gearbox to kiss him.

It’s an awkward angle, but they manage and fuck Lando had missed this, Oscar’s hand cupping his jaw, the other steading him by his waist, the hum he makes into Lando’s mouth, the way his tongue brushes over Lando’s lip.

Lando is half in the drivers’ seat and half in the passenger seat, supporting himself with a hand on Oscar’s shoulder, the handbrake digging into his shin a little, but none of that matters. All Lando focuses on is Oscar’s hands on him, Oscar’s tongue in his mouth, just Oscar everywhere.

Lando hums appreciatively and tugs at Oscar’s sweatpants.

Oscar pecks him two more times before he pulls away to take off his hoodie and shirt and tug his sweatpants down.

Lando has missed it too much not to just go for it right away and Oscar doesn't stop him, he just lets him have it.

God, he hasn’t been able to quite stop thinking about what Oscar’s dick had felt like in his mouth ever since the first and only time he’d let himself have it, and it’s just as good as it was then, the taste, the smell, the feeling, the warmth of him.

Oscar gasps, hand flying to Lando’s hair. “Fuck.”

Oscar's got this taste of salt and a smell of musk not quite like anyone else’s and it doesn’t even matter that Lando has only ever gotten one opportunity to memorise the weight of him in his mouth before, he’d be able to recognize it blind and deaf, it’s tattooed in his brain.

Lando hums around him and sucks him down as far as he can take right away, too eager to take it slow.

It’s a bit awkward over the gearbox, but that doesn’t deter Lando at all. It’s worth it for the fullness in his mouth and the way everything just feels right when Oscar is here, the way his hand fits just perfectly where it's cupping Lando's head.

But Lando can’t give in to that feeling too far or his brain will go all bloody foggy again and he’s trying to concentrate and do this perfectly for Oscar, because Oscar really needs a good blow job right now and Lando will be damned if he wasted his time.

Oscar’s hand is gently holding onto the curls on the crown of Lando’s head now, not quite pulling.

Lando is torn between asking Oscar to pull and just being grateful that Oscar isn't so that it’s easier for Lando to stay focused.

Oscar, at least, doesn’t seem to be doing mental calculations anymore since all he’s saying is, “Fuck, that’s good, baby.”

Lando really missed having all of Oscar’s attention to himself.

He’s starting to go hazy regardless of his determination not to, starting to find it hard to concentrate on technique, so he pulls himself into focus again, dragging his tongue along the underside of Oscar’s cock, flicking it over his tip.

Oscar gasps and clenches a fist in his hair.

Fuck.

That wasn’t really the goal, but Lando can’t exactly bring himself to tell Oscar to fucking stop that, because it feels too good, but Lando can't, and it's just a mess of thoughts and feelings and sensations and Lando is thinking too much and not enough all at the same time.

Lando pulls off a moment to mouth at the shaft, get the weight of him out of Lando’s mouth to try and stop feeling so goddamn spacey again.

In a desperate effort to avoid slipping into that stupid state of mind that Lando just can’t seem to avoid, his brain apparently decides to settle on, "Oh fuck, we forgot to buy milk."

Oscar makes a justifiably confused noise as Lando gets distracted, because they actually do need milk now that he thinks about it.

“Don't fucking talk to me about the milk when I have my dick in your mouth, Lando, seriously," Oscar moans.

"We do have to go back though."

"Right now?"

"No, stupid, afterwards."

"Well, that's what I thought, so shut up about the milk now, Lando."

"Yeah, okay, but—”

Oscar makes an exasperated little sound before he tilts Lando’s jaw up to look at him as he says, “Lando. Be good and quiet for me now and do something useful with that mouth, baby.”

Lando whimpers.

And gone is any and all success Lando was achieving at being even remotely normal because those words, that tone, sends him right down like a lead balloon.

Lando just nods dazedly.

Oscar hums in approval and gently guides him back down his cock, looking down at Lando with an entranced expression.

Lando’s eyes flutter shut as Oscar guides him up and down, hand tight in his hair. “There you go, that’s good.”

Lando hums, and sucks more of him into his mouth, sighing in contentment at the weight of him in his mouth, the salt on his tongue, the fullness there.

“God, you’re so good at that,” Oscar mutters. “So pretty like this, baby.”

Lando can't think of anything other than Oscar, the taste, the sound, the feeling of him all around Lando, that unerring guidance of his hand in Lando's hair, moving him where he needs him because Lando is absolutely useless at the moment, nothing more than an open mouth, dripping with spit, no technique to speak of.

Lando whimpers a little more and swallows around him in a useless instinct to try and curb the excess of saliva, a line of spit escaping from the side of his mouth.

He nudges a little further, trying to get Oscar deeper.

“You want more, baby?”

Lando moans his yes. Of course he wants more, he wants all of it.

“Yeah? Okay, come on, take some more,” Oscar mutters and Lando can’t look at him, can’t make eye contact as Oscar guides him a little further down, the tip of him nudging into Lando’s throat, Jesus fucking Christ.

His eyes water with the pressure at the back of his throat and he blinks them away, lashes wet.

“Fuck, baby, you have no idea how gorgeous you are like this."

Lando is aching in his boxers now, but he doesn't even think of doing anything about that, too busy using his hands to clutch at Oscar's thighs, his hips, his waist, anywhere he can reach.

"Fuck, baby, look at you," Oscar murmurs and Lando makes a sound between a whine and a whimper around his cock, dragging his tongue along it just to taste more. "God, you're taking all of me, do you even know?"

Lando didn't know, actually, and is now slightly disappointed that there isn't more to take, wishing there was enough of Oscar to fill him all the way to his guts.

He makes a little noise about that, blinking away the tears from the gag reflex he's ignoring and they drip down the side of his face in hot trails of salt, all the way down to pool in with the spit dripping down Lando's chin.

"Jesus fucking— Lando, baby, I'm going to come, where do you want me?”

Lando makes an insistent noise and swallows him down because he can't take it away from Lando now, not before he gets his come in his mouth, Oscar just can't.

"Lando, I'm going to come," Oscar repeats, pulling Lando back and off his cock by his hair.

"No, no, no," Lando moans. "No, please, give it back."

"Christ, baby, listen, I'm asking where you want me to come."

Lando blinks away the blur of tears to focus on what Oscar is trying to tell him and it's so hard to comprehend words right now, let alone string them together himself. “Mouth? Please?”

“Fuck, yeah, of course, sweetheart, whatever you want,” Oscar murmurs and finally puts his cock back in Lando's mouth, letting Lando have it, sighing in contentment around him as Oscar moves his head where he needs him. 

Lando sucks him a little harder, tries to get him as far down his throat as he’ll go, tries to get as much as possible of Oscar before this ends.

The way Oscar helps him get more of him, presses him down to get his cock just a little further into Lando’s throat and then holds him there, just for a moment, is so incredibly fucking arousing that Lando is almost convinced he’s going to come untouched in his pants.

He whimpers, helpless, breathy, desperate.

“Fuck,” Oscar chokes, and then he’s coming.

Lando hums and swallows the salty spill of him in his mouth, trying to get him deeper again but Oscar won’t let him move, which is probably for the best, since coming into his throat might actually make Lando choke in a bad way, but fuck if the way Oscar holds him in place so firmly doesn’t make a line of heat shoot right down to his stomach, tightening that knot there just a little more.

“You’re so good baby, so good at that,” Oscar mutters breathily.

Lando whimpers around him, swallowing the last of him before he mouths at his softening cock.

Oscar’s hand loosens in his curls until he’s just stroking though Lando’s hair. “Do you want to come?”

Lando looks up at him with heavy eyes, lashes still wet. “Yes, please.”

Oscar’s breath hitches and his hand slips out of Lando's hair down his jaw to wipe away some of the mixture of spit and tears running down his chin.

“Can I give you my mouth, baby?”

Lando nods dazedly.

“Okay, baby, get in the backseat for me?”

Lando nods, head empty save for what Oscar is telling him to do, and languidly crawls into the backseat while Oscar rights his sweatpants.

Lando falls into the backseat none too gracefully and Oscar follows him with an enviable amount of dexterity that Lando can't really comprehend at the moment, climbing on top of Lando without knocking teeth or kneeing him in any odd places.

Lando wraps his arms around his shoulders just to hold on to him, because god he really did miss having all of Oscar’s attention to himself.

Oscar smiles softly and tilts Lando’s head up to kiss him, even though Lando just had his cock in his mouth and probably tastes like come. Oscar doesn’t seem to mind, he just licks into his mouth, his hand slipping under the hem of Lando’s shirt to spread over his waist.

He gets distracted dipping his tongue into Lando's mouth, but Lando likes it too much to remove his mouth from Oscar's long enough to beg for more.

Oscar's thumb traces circles into Lando's waist, the other hand at Lando's jaw, holding him in place as he pecks Lando's lips and then kisses away the wetness trailing down the sides of his mouth, kisses along the trail of tears all the way up to the corner of one eye, then kisses the corner of the other all the way down the matching trail until he's at the side of Lando's lips again.

"Please?" Lando asks breathily.

"Of course, baby," Oscar murmurs, giving him one more kiss as he tugs at Lando's waistband before he shuffles down to pull Lando’s sweats off.

Lando’s breathing was never very steady, but it speeds up even more now as he lifts his hips to let Oscar pull his pants and underwear down.

Oscar apparently has time to waste because he doesn’t take Lando into his mouth right away, instead he mouths at the inside of Lando’s thigh.

Lando gasps and grips onto Oscar’s hair for something to hold on to. “Oscar, please.”

Oscar hums and sucks a bruise there into the sensitive skin before he moves onto the other, teeth just grazing the sensitive skin there.

Lando whimpers and bucks forward to try and find friction.

Oscar just smirks into the inside of Lando's thigh and presses his hip back down. “Patience, you’ll get it.”

Lando makes a breathy noise as Lando holds him there while he sucks another hickey into his skin. Lando swallows and slurs out, “Please, Osc, need it.”’

“Yeah, okay," Oscar murmurs as he presses a few more kisses there. "I’ve got you, baby,” 

At first Oscar just presses his lips to the bead of precome on Lando’s tip and Lando yelps and fists Oscar’s hair, trying desperately to buck upwards for friction but Oscar won’t have it, just keeps him pinned down for a moment.

Lando whines and pleads, “Please, please, Oscar.”

Oscar just hums and then finally sinks down on Lando’s cock.

Lando gasps and drops his head backwards to the window, breathing heavily as Oscar starts bobbing up and down.

Oscar swallows around him and sucks him down a little deeper.

Lando’s brain is so fuzzy with the way Oscar is just holding him down and giving him exactly what he needs.

How the fuck does he even know what Lando needs?

Lando can’t do anything to control the noises he makes at the way Oscar drags his teeth lightly along his cock every few times he goes down and the way he hums occasionally, the vibrations making Lando gasp and try uselessly to buck his hips under Oscar’s firm hold.

He can't form any thought except Oscar, Oscar, Oscar.

Oscar’s other hand comes to glide up the inside of Lando’s thigh and spread his legs just a little more, keeping it still as if Lando's about to fucking go somewhere or something, the thumb digging just a little into the place he'd bitten just now, just a little painful, just a little perfect pressing into the fresh bruise there, making sure it'll stick.

"Oscar, please," Lando begs then, breaths heavy. “Please.”

Oscar hums and pulls off for a second, much to Lando’s dismay. "Please what, baby?"

"I— I want—" Lando pants.

"What do you want, sweetheart?"

"Want to come."

"Yeah?"

Lando breathes a few more times, looking dazedly down at Oscar now stroking the inside of his thigh with his thumb before he swallows and says, "Tell me to?"

Oscar’s eyes widen a fraction. “Fuck, baby, you need me to tell you to come?"

Lando nods. "Please."

Oscar’s hand closes around his spit slick cock then, mouthing at the side of his shaft. "Go on then, come for me, sweetheart.”

The vibrations of it against the sensitive skin of Lando’s come are electric.

Lando whines and arches into Oscar who’s still holding his hips down just where he wants them as he jerks Lando off.

“Come on, be good and come for me.”

Lando whimpers and grips Oscar’s hair tightly as he finally comes, all over his stomach, staining his shirt. “Fuck.”

“That’s good," Oscar murmurs, stroking him through it. "Good boy.”

“What?” Lando chokes.

“Fuck, sorry, you don’t like that?”

“No, I do,” Lando moans tragically as the last of it spills on his stomach while Oscar strokes his hip, because shit, Oscar can't just say these things like they don't make everything worse.

“Yeah?”

Lando nods helplessly as he tugs at Oscar for no reason other than that he wants him closer.

Oscar obliges, kissing Lando’s forehead before he lies down next to him, Lando squished between Oscar and the back of the seats and it feels like the warmth of his lips lingers there on his forehead for a moment too long.

Lando is too out of it to think about any reasons he shouldn’t sling an arm around Oscar and pull him in to bury his face in his neck like he wants to right now.

Oscar lets him, pulling him closer with a hand on the back of his neck.

Lando just lays there for a minute, incapable of moving, thinking, anything.

And then that minute turns into several minutes and all of a sudden it feels like it might have been a solid half an hour until Lando finally pops his head up from the safety of Oscar’s neck and clocks that they are, in fact, both mostly naked in a twenty-four-hour convenience store parking lot in a car that anyone could look into if they came close enough.

Oscar doesn’t seem too worried though. There’s nobody as far as Lando can see, but he’d have thought with Oscar’s aversion to adventurous sex locations he’d at least say something other than, “Do we really need that milk?”

Lando takes a few seconds to process the question before he sighs sadly, “Yeah.”

Because Lando is really comfortable in Oscar’s arms right now despite the fact that there’s nowhere near enough space for them both to be lying comfortably in the backseat.

Oscar laughs as he rights Lando’s sweats for him. “You want to go get it then?”

“No,” Lando says honestly as he lets him.

“You wanted the milk.”

“You use it too.”

“You finished it.”

But Lando doesn’t want to go get the milk, he doesn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone but Oscar right now, too vulnerable, too raw, still not quite there.

He swallows and pulls away to look at Oscar. “Please?”

“Oh,” Oscar says, thumb drawing circles on the side of Lando’s neck as he looks at him with an unreadable expression, looking at whatever is happening on Lando's face right now. “Yeah, ‘course, let me go get it, I’ll be back in a second, alright?”

Lando sighs a little wistfully at the thought of Oscar leaving, but he just nods. “Thanks, Osc.”

“Yeah, of course,” Oscar says, shuffling to sit up and grab his wallet and his shirt from where he’d dropped that, pulling it on before he opens the backdoor to get out, none too gracefully this time, seeing as Lando is being very unhelpful just lying there.

He looks back at Lando still dazedly lying there, too cold now without Oscar’s heat, and then he leans forward to pluck his hoodie from the backseat floor and says, “Here, put this on. I’ll be back in a minute.”

And then he’s gone, shutting the door behind himself and leaving Lando with just his hoodie.

Lando groans and smacks his forehead.

Fuck.

This is exactly why he doesn’t let himself get like this, because he gets all fucking needy and now Oscar has to go take care of things and they’ve probably been gone for an hour while he’d promised his project group he’d be gone for thirty minutes.

How had it even ended up with Oscar sucking Lando off and then also indulging Lando's insatiable need for physical affection afterwards for half an eternity too? It was supposed to just be a quick blow job to make Oscar feel less tense and now somehow Lando is here trying to bat away that stupid lingering fog with a mental cricket bat.

Lando sighs and sits up to pull off his shirt and wipe away the come from his stomach before he replaces it with Oscar’s hoodie, inhaling the familiar scent of Oscar, wishing he didn't like it so much.

He’s going to be better, he’s going to get over himself, and he’s not going to do stupid shit like suck Oscar’s dick and chuck his brain out the window while he’s at it and leave Oscar to deal with all his needy bullshit.

Lando is needy enough in general as it is, Oscar shouldn’t have to worry about Lando’s freakish sex needs too.

Just as Lando is really starting to miss him, Oscar comes jogging back to the car with a few cartons of milk, opening the passenger door to chuck them on the seat. He leans over the passenger seat to look at the mess of Lando tucked into the backseat. “I take it you don’t feel like driving.”

“No,” Lando admits, even though he shouldn’t, Oscar has done enough for him between the sucking his dick and getting the milk like the saint he is.

But Oscar just snorts and closes the passenger door before he walks around to go climb into the driver’s seat, buckling his seatbelt.

Lando sits up, leaning between the seats.

“Are you annoyed with me?” he asks in a small voice and he sounds so fucking needy he wishes he could swallow the words back down.

Oscar looks back at him with a confused frown. “Hey, no, not at all, why would you think that? Did I say something?”

“No... I was just— I made you get the milk.”

“I don’t care about the milk.”

“And you’re driving.”

Oscar frowns some more. “Yeah, I’m always driving, Lando. I like driving. I just make you drive because you need to practice, you know that, right?”

That makes Lando laugh a little. “Yeah, okay.”

Oscar seems happy enough with that response to finally start the car and get them home, Lando’s cheek pressed into his shoulder as he leans forward in the backseat, giving Oscar all of zero personal space, fucking hell, but Lando can't bring himself to move away.

Oscar waves at Geraldine again when they pass her in the entryway and Lando doesn’t really feel like exchanging unpleasantries with her now, just sticks a little too close to Oscar’s side as they head up the lift. She gives him a weird look about it, but Lando ignores it.

They pack away the milk in the fridge and then Oscar sighs, motioning to his room and says, “Well, I have to get back to it. Thanks for that, by the way, that really helped. The whole thing, not just the dick sucking part, I mean, just— Uh, yeah, thanks.” Oscar turns to go.

“Hey, wait," Lando blurts before he can leave. "Can I… Can I ask you something?”

Lando is being stupid. He’s being annoying. He’s being insecure and needy, but he can’t quite stop thinking about it.

“What?”

“You do like… W-Want to fuck me, right? You’re not just doing it just because I ask, are you?”

“What? Of course I do. Why would you think not?”

Lando relaxes a little, but he can’t quite let it go. “It’s just— You never ask me to, it’s always me asking you. Do you never… Feel like fucking until I ask you to?”

“Oh. No, I do,” Oscar says quickly, shifting from one foot to the other. “I just… I don’t know, I just feel weird, I guess. I don’t know how to just like… ask you."

Lando frowns in confusion. “Oh. Well, you can really just ask me, don't worry about it. I’m always horny. If I really didn’t feel like it, I’d just tell you no, yeah?”

Oscar stares at him for a second. And then his voice is a little thin as he just says, "Mmhm."

Lando clears his throat.

“Right, yeah, project!" Oscar says. "Uh, night, I guess.”

“Night,” Lando says reluctantly, fidgeting.

Oscar apparently really isn’t annoyed because he takes one look at Lando’s small fidget and smiles softly. “Hey. Come lie in my bed while I work?”

Lando can’t stop himself from grinning. God, he loves Oscar sometimes. “Yeah, okay.”

Oscar chuckles amusedly at Lando half bouncing after him to his room and just smiles as Lando crawls under his blanket to make himself comfortable there with his phone, quietly watching Oscar scribble and text.

He doesn’t even realise he’s fallen asleep until he wakes up the next morning with his head in Oscar’s pillow, breathing in the smell of Oscar’s shampoo and body wash that sticks to it. It smells good, it smells like Oscar. He's strangely a little disappointed when he blinks into awareness and finds that it isn't actually Oscar himself, the room empty now save for Lando.

He groans and fishes his phone from beneath the pillow where he’d fallen asleep with it.

He’d meant to go back to his own room before he conked out. He doesn’t know if Oscar ever wanted to go to bed or not, but he feels bad for taking up his space regardless.

He finds two texts from Oscar sent at five this morning.

Went to Arthur’s to finish the project

Sweet dreams sleeping beauty

Lando smiles. There’s something fluttering in his stomach for a moment.

Weird.

Before he can identify that and worry about it, his stomach growls. It must just be the hunger making his stomach feel weird.

Good thing Oscar went and got milk for cereal.

Chapter Text

Oscar is being tortured.

Because Lando has been nothing but distant the past few days and then in the span of one hour Lando was under him asking him to tell him to come, then telling him Oscar should just ask to fuck him, and then falling asleep in Oscar’s bed looking all freshly fucked and pretty.

And fine, maybe Oscar has been a little distant too, because Oscar has been doing nothing but torturing himself by thinking of Lando maybe setting up a date sometime in between Oscar fucking him in the shower and sucking him off against the fridge.

He hasn't gone on a date, that Oscar knows of, but that doesn't deter Oscar's imagination much.

Between his goddamn project and the horrible sleep deprivation he’s given himself because of it, it doesn’t even occur to Oscar to ask about it, because fuck everything and the engineering faculty in particular.

And maybe Oscar doesn't want to ask, because he doesn't really want to know. He's going to find out whenever Lando breaks this off anyway.

But after that Oscar is just having so many thoughts and feelings about so many things all at once that it’s really hard to not just dissolve into a pile of what.

He’s still confused about what all that was last night when he got back to the car and Lando asked if he was annoyed with him after Oscar finally got Lando back into that headspace where Oscar likes him and then, all of a sudden, he was so insecure.

And Oscar can't push, because he knows Lando, and he knows that does nothing but make him deflect.

And then he’d just gone and asked if Oscar really wanted to fuck him like that wasn’t the stupidest question that could possibly have come out of his mouth. Oscar’s pretty sure that he’s made it abundantly clear that he likes fucking Lando and yet Lando looked like he genuinely wasn’t sure.

Sometimes Oscar seriously wonders if a good smack to the head might not shake his brain back into working order because honestly.

And he has no idea where that question even came from, or why the only thing he said after it was just offhandedly telling Oscar to just ask. Like Oscar is capable of such things.

Oscar doesn’t really need to ask. He’s perfectly happy with how often he gets to fuck Lando because of Lando’s whims, he doesn’t need more than that even if he kind of feels like just bending Lando over the kitchen counter or pinning him to the couch at least five times too many a day.

But he doesn’t know how Lando expects him to just ask.

Oscar can’t just say things like ‘Hey, do you feel like fucking?’ out of nowhere like Lando does. Oscar doesn’t just say things like that, they just don’t come out of his mouth.

And on top of all of that, Lando is probably still talking to that girl from fucking golf.

“Oh, hey, are you finally done?” Lando asks from the kitchen when Oscar comes back from uni at four in the afternoon, running on the five hours of sleep he got two nights ago. He doesn't even know how that happened, Oscar loves sleep.

“Handed it in, still have to do the presentation,” Oscar sighs.

Lando is still wearing the hoodie Oscar gave him yesterday, loose on his smaller frame, so terribly soft looking that in Oscar’s sleep deprived delirium, he briefly wonders what Lando would say if he just skipped all the conversations and blurted out ‘marry me’.

“Fuck, really? When is that?”

“They start tomorrow, but ours is only next Friday,” Oscar moans tragically as he digs a microwave meal out of the freezer.

“And you have to go to all the presentations?”

“Yep,” Oscar says, sighing as he shoves the carton of frozen alfredo pasta in the microwave and then promptly sprawls over the kitchen counter to wait either until the microwave beeps or Oscar perishes, whichever comes first.

"Why?"

"Because they hate us."

"Ah."

Lando hops up onto it next to him and strokes a hand through his hair, because he likes to do horribly sweet things like that just about every two seconds, you know, just casually, in between telling Oscar how badly he needs to fuck other people and how great of a friend, roommate, casual fuckbuddy Oscar is.

Oscar sighs at the feeling of Lando’s fingers carding through his hair, half nodding off on the counter.

“I think you might desperately need to go to bed.”

“Mm.”

“Please go to bed now.”

“I’m already asleep, I think.”

“Hey, your food’s done.”

Oscar hadn’t even heard the microwave beeping. He groans. “Put it in a blender and give it to me in an IV. I can’t move.”

Lando laughs and tugs at him. “Hey, come on, up you get, muppet, you need sustenance.”

Oscar moans some more as he lets Lando pull him up.

Lando is nice enough to get the carton of alfredo from the microwave for him and put it in a bowl before he gets a fork for Oscar and puts it in his hands.

Oscar is so in love with him sometimes. “I love you.”

Lando just laughs. “Yes, I know, now eat.”

Oscar wolfs down his food as Lando makes idle conversation at him while he washes some dishes even though Lando hates dishes, but Oscar hasn’t had a moment to do that for them in the past week.

Lando is being very cruel today and Oscar is too tired to do anything but sigh wistfully at the mere existence of him around his mouthful of alfredo.

Lando takes the bowl from his weak hands when he’s done and washes that too before he pats Oscar on the head and says, “Come on, off to bed with you,” and pulls Oscar to his room.

Oscar is already yawning before he even gets there, holding on to Lando for balance as he toes off his shoes and takes off his hoodie. Thankfully he didn’t have the energy to change out of his sweatpants before leaving this morning.

Oscar is definitely too tired to be reasonable right now because when Lando pushes him down onto the bed, he just pulls Lando with him.

Lando laughs and goes. “Okay, sleepyhead, that’s a new one.”

“Missed you,” Oscar admits as he sleepily pulls the blanket over both of them. He’s going to regret this when he wakes up, but that’s future Oscar’s problem.

“I was here the whole time.”

“Mm. Didn't see you though. Feels like you aren't.” He's not sure who's fault that is, really.

“Go to sleep, Osc."

Oscar hums.

He hates it when Lando calls him Osc.

It always sounds so soft coming out of his mouth that it makes something so absolutely painful twist in Oscar’s chest.

He loves when Lando calls him Osc.

Lando scratches Oscar’s hair as he gets comfortable on Lando’s chest. “I love you too, Osc.”

Oscar wakes up warm and comfortable, warmer than usual.

He raises his head from his pillow to see that said pillow is in fact Lando, still in Oscar’s hoodie, looking torturously beautiful in the light of the bedside lamp that's still on.

He’s asleep, his phone loosely gripped in his hand on Oscar’s shoulder.

Oscar fumbles for his phone on the bedside table to check the time and see that it’s three in the morning. Oscar’s sleeping schedule is so fucked.

But Oscar doesn’t care about that, he cares about why the fuck Lando is here letting Oscar use him as a pillow, why he had stayed here all afternoon instead of doing whatever he probably needed to do like maybe work, eat, shower and participate in his thousands of hobbies and side jobs.

Lando frowns and shifts in his sleep.

Oscar gently manoeuvres them so that he can take Lando’s phone out of his hand before it falls off the bed and puts it on the bedside table with his own before he tries to shift into a more comfortable position.

Lando huffs and blinks half awake.

Oscar freezes and whispers, “Hi. Sorry.”

Lando just frowns and pushes Oscar down before he cuddles into him, making a pillow of Oscar’s shoulder, sighing as he goes back to sleep.

Oh god.

Oscar is perfectly aware of how pretty Lando looks in his sleep given how often he naps on the couch or on Oscar’s bed while he’s at the desk, but it’s an entirely different feeling to have him looking like that on top of Oscar.

Oscar stops breathing for a minute.

Lando’s breath is even and undisturbed now, lashes long and wispy like this, a wayward curl falling on his forehead, lips parted ever so slightly.

Lando is the most beautiful person Oscar has ever had the misfortune of meeting in his life.

And he just goes about his days like he isn’t, casually calling himself a mess, fretting over his hair or an imaginary pimple or his under-eyes being the wrong shade like he isn’t always gorgeous no matter what he does. It's oddly contradictory, the way that one second Lando doesn't have a care in the world and he's perfectly aware of how gorgeous he is and the next it's like he isn't quite sure.

Oscar gently brushes the curl off his forehead, heart twisting in his chest.

He doesn’t really need to sleep any more, but he sighs, switches off the bedside lamp, and closes his eyes anyway, because he’s not going to move now with Lando so peacefully sleeping on top of him. Of course he isn't, he would skip lectures, miss deadlines and possibly fail his degree if it meant keeping Lando asleep on top of him just a little longer. Lando isn't going to find out about that, though.

He half dozes for a few more hours before he really can’t sleep anymore and stares at the ceiling in the dark.

The sun is slowly starting to rise, a little light filtering through the curtains, allowing Oscar to see Lando’s sleeping features again, the golden light making Lando’s lashes cast shadows that fan over his cheeks. His breaths are soft against the fabric of Oscar’s shirt.

Oscar wishes that Lando would always sleep in Oscar’s bed instead of his own, that he would throw away his pillows and use Oscar instead, that he could wake up to Lando in the morning and kiss him awake as he makes that sleepy blink that he always does when Oscar wakes him up on the couch when he needs to be somewhere.

Lando isn’t a particularly heavy or light sleeper, so Oscar doesn’t know how likely he is to wake up, but he takes the risk anyway and reaches up to stroke his thumb over Lando’s cheekbone before he slips his hand into his curls.

Lando just sighs in his sleep as Oscar runs his fingers through his hair, he doesn’t wake up when Oscar tilts his head down to press a soft kiss to his forehead either.

He’s torturing himself, Oscar knows.

He probably could just get up and leave Lando to sleep, save himself some heartache, but he doesn’t want to wake him up, he doesn’t want to let him go and exchange himself for a pillow for Lando to rest his head on, so he doesn’t, he just keeps petting Lando’s hair as he stares at the ceiling and thinks himself in circles.

Lando starts shifting into wakefulness around seven in the morning.

Oscar quickly removes the hand he’d had in Lando’s hair before he fully blinks awake, vaguely humming in confusion until he says, “Oh. Hi.”

“Morning.”

Lando blinks sleepily. “Didn’t mean to fall asleep here again, sorry, mate.”

“It’s fine.”

Lando looks so pretty when he’s waking up, eyes still dazed and Oscar wonders if he’d be amenable to being pushed down into the pillows with Oscar on top of him, if his eyes would stay so dazed and dreamy if Oscar held him down and opened him up slow while he squirmed for more.

Oscar is just trying to gather the courage to ask when Lando stretches, Oscar’s hoodie riding up to expose his lower belly, and says,  “D’you want to come to my gig tonight?”

Lando would probably let him, he’s a little hard from his morning wood, either unaware or unselfconscious about that.

“Hmm?” Oscar says, because he didn’t comprehend a word Lando just said, salivating at the sight of Lando’s hip bones.

He should just ask, just say it.

“I’m DJing tonight. Pretty early. Would you come?” Lando asks, sitting up so that all that skin is gone again as the fabric of the hoodie drops back down while Lando picks up his phone to check the time. “You could use some socialising. And it’s at nine so we can stay afterwards for a while.”

Oscar, like the coward he is, accepts that he has no courage to speak of and groans as he flops face first into the pillows. “I hate clubs.”

“It’ll be fun,” Lando insists, throwing himself on top of Oscar. “You can be on the stage with me if you don’t want to mingle.”

“But why do I need to be there?”

“Because I want you there. Unless you're busy?”

Oscar groans. He would have come whether he was busy or not, but Lando doesn't need to know that.

“Please?”

“Ugh, fine. But no wingmanning, and I’m not dragging you back home drunk.”

“I won’t drink!” Lando insists. “Much.”

Oscar sighs. “Fine.”

Lando is in his element on the stage. Oscar doesn’t understand how he controls the crowd like this, how he just creates music seemingly out of thin air, it’s like magic.

Oscar watches mesmerised from his corner on the stage, watches the lights play over Lando’s delighted features, watches the energy vibrate in him as he jumps to the beat, the crowd moving and shouting to his very whim.

Lando finally finishes his set still buzzing with electricity, his smile infectious as he drags Oscar down into the crowd once his replacement takes over the stage.

“Let’s play have you met Lando!” Lando shouts over the music as they make their way to the bar.

“What did I say about wingmanning? Besides, that never worked for you, or Ted to my knowledge.”

“You didn’t even watch How I Met Your Mother.”

“You never finished it.”

“Besides the point! Come on, I need a drink.”

“One drink.”

“We’ll see how the night goes,” Lando says dismissively.

"If I have to drag you back home drunk it's across the floor and by your ankle, I'm warning you."

"Yeah, yeah." Lando just waves him away, completely unconcerned by that threat.

They find Carlos, Max, and Charles conversing near the bar.

“Ay, Lando, that was so good!” Carlos shouts over the music, accent thickened by the buzz of inebriation, clapping Lando on the shoulder.

“Thanks,” Lando says, bouncing on his heels, grinning. “I’m going to go get a drink.”

With that Lando is off, leaving Oscar to make conversation on his own.

He finds something engineering related to talk to Max about, leaving Charles and Carlos to their own conversation. Oscar is so distracted by Max explaining what Oscar is going to learn next year that he only realises thirty minutes later that Lando hasn’t come back, and that only thanks to Charles pulling Max away from Oscar to go dance.

He spies Lando talking to a girl in a corner, he’s got his flirting face on, throat exposed as he laughs.

Oscar grinds his teeth and tries to will away the jealousy as he heads to the bar to get himself some alcohol-free beer because he’s got to be the responsible one, he supposes. He doesn't enjoy drinking all that much anyway.

Carlos follows, taking up the seat next to him.

Oscar doesn’t say anything.

“You love him, don’t you?”

Oscar sighs, swirling his beer. “Of course I do, he’s my best friend.”

Carlos hums. He taps the rim of his glass a few times before he says, “He’s my best friend too, but I don’t look at him like that.”

Oscar sighs. “Don’t tell him. Please.”

“I won’t. I’m just saying you’re hurting yourself.”

Oscar trails his thumb through the condensation on the bottle. “I know.”

He sees Carlos frowning at him before he gulps down the last of his drink, pats Oscar’s shoulder and heads off towards the crowd.

Oscar throws another glance Lando’s way, just to see if he’s still there, but he regrets it immediately because he catches Lando just as he tilts his head, lashes fluttering in that familiar way he does when he wants something and Oscar looks away, grip tightening on the beer bottle.

He tells himself he won’t look again. He shouldn't watch Lando like this, he's just torturing himself, but he just can't help it.

He can't help watching every micro-expression of Lando's flirting face, that face that Oscar has been on the receiving end of every time Lando has wanted to be fucked the past few weeks, the one he wishes would be reserved only for him forever.

Oscar has nearly downed his whole bottle, sitting at the bar like the boring geriatric Lando says he is, watching Lando’s every movement, so it's only natural that he sees the exact moment Lando loses interest. His face drops, he starts looking slightly uncomfortable.

Oscar is two seconds away from rescuing him when Lando makes polite excuses and says his goodbyes.

He weaves his way back to Oscar through the club and that sickening jealousy now settles back down in Oscar.

Lando flops down in the stool next to him.

"Didn't go well?"

Lando shrugs, he’s half buzzed. "Didn't like her."

“What ever happened to the girl from golf?” Oscar asks as Lando leans over the bar beside Oscar to order himself another drink. He shouldn't have asked, he knows better, he's been avoiding asking on purpose, because he knows he's going to get his feelings hurt.

“Who?” Lando asks, half slurred, his brow creasing in confusion. “Oh her? Well we texted a bit, but we weren’t going to work out.”

Honestly. If Oscar had known that he would have saved himself a great deal of overthinking. He sighs. “Right.”

"And did I tell you that that new guy from class turned out to be a flat earther?" Lando makes a ridiculously cute little pout.

Oscar snorts.

“Stop laughing, he was kind of cute!" Lando defends. "You know, if you squint..."

"Whatever you say, Lando," Oscar says fondly, smiling at Lando with what he knows are cartoon level heart-eyes.

Lando gives him a light smack to the shoulder. "Do you want to come dance with me?”

“Uh, no, mate, I can’t dance to save my life, you know that.”

Lando groans and rolls his eyes.

The bartender sets a shot and something toxically pink looking down in front of Lando and Lando downs the shot in one go and snatches the other drink before he says cheerily, “Well, anyway, I’m gonna go try that guy over there, wish me luck.”

“Wait,” Oscar blurts out before Lando can leave, catching him by the wrist.

Lando turns, a questioning look on his face.

Oscar wishes he could say something to make him stay, but Lando has the right to fuck whoever he wants, and Oscar isn't going to deny him any opportunities to find someone, whether that's someone to fuck or someone to love. It wouldn't be fair. Oscar loves him too much to do that to him. “Just… Text me if you leave with someone, yeah? Let me know you’re safe.”

Lando smiles, soft. “'Course, Osc.”

With that Oscar lets him go, sighing after Lando finding his weaving path through the wild crowd.

Oscar promptly orders another beer, hoping that if he doesn’t look at the 0% alcohol label on it, he can pretend it’s helping him forget about all this.

It doesn't work.

Oscar spends another half an hour or so polishing off his second beer, intermittently scanning the crowd for Lando and scrolling on his phone, keeping one eye on his messages.

Soon enough, the clock reads half past twelve and Oscar looks up to find that Lando has abandoned his last potential victim and is now leaning on Carlos, laughing very hard at something while Carlos smiles at him in the way that people do when Lando is being Lando, patting Lando’s arm.

Oscar makes his way over to them.

“Oscar!” Lando shouts as Oscar joins them. “I missed you!”

Lando is drunk.

Oscar sighs as Lando grins up at him, most of his weight supported by Carlos, who’s looking like his arms are getting tired from holding Lando up. “Hi there. What happened to your guy?”

Lando scrunches his nose up. “He was a Gemini.”

“A what now?”

Lando just scoffs and waves it off. “Not important, Carlos saved me, I told him he was my husband.”

Oscar snorts. “Right, well, there’s always other fish in the sea.”

Lando frowns. “I hate fish.”

“Okay, I think Carlos’ arms are getting a bit tired, how about we head home, yeah?”

"Nooo, Oscar, don't make me leave my husband,” Lando moans.

Behind him Carlos mouths, beggingly, “Please take him.”

Oscar bites down a laugh and opens his arms for Lando to fall into, because he can never resist a good hug. "He’s not actually your husband, mate."

"He's like… My work-husband, kind of. He goes to the library with me ‘nd makes me work," Lando mutters, looking up at Oscar from where he's now slumped into his chest.

"Your what?”

“You know like– Like work-wife, work-husband.”

“I don’t know, actually.”

“Ugh, right, because you’re a freak who’s barely on the internet,” Lando dismisses.

“Uhuh. You do know that you live with me, right?” 

"Tha's a good point, actually, you're better, you're my home-husband."

"Home-husband?" Oscar narrowly stops himself from pointing out that that’s just a regular husband because that seems like a slippery slope. Oscar should add 'torturing myself' to his CV. He's very good at it.

"Yeah. Because you do the dishes and the laundry, so I don't have to and you throw out spiders for me and take me home when I'm drunk and you cuddle me and stuff. And fuck me. Actually you should fuck me more ofte—"

"Right!" Oscar interrupts, clearing his throat. "I'm bringing the bucket for you tonight, because you're definitely going to throw up."

Lando giggles. "Yeah, tha's gonna suck."

"For you and me both, mate." Oscar waves to Carlos and Max and Charles in the background before he starts heading outside with Lando leaning into his side.

"Speaking of sucking…" Lando says pointedly, waggling his eyebrows.

"Absolutely not. I know better. I don't need my own vomit incident."

Lando deflates. "Aw, but Oscar.”

"You're drunk anyway, it might be an unpopular opinion here, but I believe in safe, sane, and sober consent."

Lando huffs. "You're being annoyingly considerate."

"Yep. Let’s go.”

“Mm, okay, take me home."

"Lando, come on, use your legs,” Oscar says as he half drags Lando across the parking lot to the lobby of their building.

Lando stumbles some more. "M'not sure I've got legs..."

Oscar sighs. "Lando, come on, just walk."

Lando makes a disagreeable noise.

"The things I do for you," Oscar mutters before he decides fuck it and just scoops Lando up bridal style to save himself the trouble.

Lando yelps. "Oscar!"

"Yeah, yeah. Sorry, but I'm not dragging you all the way up, you’re enough of a pain as it is.”

Lando seems to take a moment to think about that, even as Oscar is already carrying him across the parking lot.

“Mm, okay, fine. You love me, though," he finally says and fully relaxes in Oacar's arms, head tilting sideways to rest on Oscar's chest.

"Unfortunately," Oscar admits as he carries him through the lobby doorway.

"Norris, are you kidding me, you absolute nuiscance, coming in here a mess at one in the morning—" Geraldine shouts immediately.

"Fuck you, Geraldine!" Lando calls without opening his eyes, chucking a middle finger in the vague direction of the security guard.

"Hey! Lando, be nice," Oscar scolds, knocking away Lando's middle finger. "Sorry, Geraldine!"

"Fuck you too, Norris!" Geraldine shouts after them heading into the lift instead of answering Oscar.

Oscar sighs at Lando's amused smile, eyes still closed. "Press the button for me?"

Lando opens his eyes and fumbles a little but he manages to press the right button before he snuggles back into Oscar's arms.

"You'd make a..." Lando slurs. "A really good husband, y'know?"

One would think after so many times of feeling it there, the twist in his heart would start to hurt a little less, but it never does.

It's almost a relief that Lando's going to remember fuck all about this tomorrow.

Oscar looks down at Lando's serene features and whispers, "You know, you say the cruellest things sometimes."

Lando's brow scrunches up in confusion as the doors slide open. He slurs, "What?"

"Nothing."

Lando lets it go, happy enough to just let Oscar struggle with the keys as he idly traces the edges of the 481 on the door until Oscar finally succeeds, lets Oscar carry him all the way to Lando’s bed.

He doesn’t move much when Oscar sets him down, so Oscar takes it upon himself to take Lando’s shoes off for him and ask, “Are you sleeping in your jeans?”

“Mm. No. Off.”

Oscar takes the fact that Lando is making no moves to take them off himself to mean that he wants Oscar to do that for him.

Oscar sighs and does, Lando being of minimal help.

“Are you sure you can’t fuck me?” Lando asks as Oscar pulls them off all the way, leaving Lando in just his boxers and a shirt, which smells like nothing but club air and alcohol.

“I’m sure,” Oscar tells him as he pulls Lando into a sitting position to take his shirt off too.

Lando makes a disappointed sound.

Oscar just pats his head before he gathers up his dirty clothes and says, “I’ll be back in a minute with your bucket.”

Lando hums and flops over in his bed.

Oscar throws Lando’s clothes in the wash basket and finds the bucket they keep under the sink for mopping. He takes a glass of water and some aspirin too before he heads back into Lando’s room.

Lando is fast asleep.

He’s only half covered by his blanket which is a terrible idea since the nights are still a bit nippy and Lando’s not wearing much right now.

Oscar sighs and smiles helplessly at the sight of him. He sets Lando’s water and pills on the bedside table and the bucket down where he’ll find it next to the edge of the bed in the morning before he covers him up properly with the blanket.

He’s going to miss Lando in his bed tonight.

He doesn’t know where the thought comes from, but he’s been spoiled with two nights of Lando in his bed, even if for the first one didn’t count since Oscar was never in it with him.

“You should stay,” Lando says then, slurred, but apparently not as asleep as he’d looked. He doesn’t bother opening his eyes.

Oscar briefly wonders if he just said that out loud. Or if Lando is a mind reader.

“What?”

“Sleep here? You make a good pillow. ‘Nd you’re warm.”

Oscar chews his lip. This is such a bad idea. “You’ll throw up on me.”

Lando huffs a laugh, eyes still closed. “Mm. Maybe, but you’ve seen me worse and you’re still here.”

Oscar shouldn't. But he's missed Lando these last few days. And he's getting worse and worse at this whole self-denial business.

Oscar sighs.

Fuck it.

Oscar groans as he wakes up to the sound of Lando retching. He opens his eyes to find that Lando has thrown up half on the bed, some of it on Oscar’s shirt, but he has now at least located the bucket.

“You couldn’t wait just one more hour before chundering all over the bed?” Oscar complains, because he’s still completely sleep deprived and he was really enjoying his sleep, but he sits up and sympathetically rubs Lando’s back as he throws up regardless.

“For fuck’s sake, Oscar, don't be all Australian this early in the morning,” Lando moans, retching as the last of the contents of his stomach leave him.

"If you didn't already have a headache, I'd smack you over the head and give you one,” Oscar jokes, hoping to make Lando feel a little better.

Lando chokes on a laugh.

Oscar strokes his back some more.

Finally, he moans and spits before sitting up to down the two aspirins and the entire glass of water before he asks, “The fuck are you doing in my bed anyway?”

Oscar pulls off his soiled shirt and sighs. Well, he was right about Lando remembering next to nothing at least. That’s for the best, really.

“You know what?” Oscar says honestly. “I have no idea.”

The problem is that it keeps happening.

The next night it’s Lando being horny at ten in the evening and falling asleep in Oscar’s bed afterwards.

Then it’s Lando forgetting that he was supposed to hang the laundry up to dry so Oscar doesn’t have any clean sheets left and instead of lending him some, Lando tells him to just come sleep in his bed with him.

And then it’s a bunch of other reasons and all of a sudden it’s nearly been a week and Oscar hasn’t slept alone in his bed in days.

Lando is all over the place, uni, streaming, yoga, another golf day with Carlos.

Oscar is no better, attending the presentations all day while studying under the desk and going to the library or studying in his room afterwards, going over his part of the presentation every so often in between studying for the exams coming up after it.

Oscar barely sees Lando save for when there’s some excuse for them to sleep together.

It’s getting weird.

Lando is getting weird.

He's avoiding Oscar.

He'd been distant for a while before it already, asking for sex less and less as Oscar's exam season drew nearer and Oscar hadn't really thought about it because in his jealousy he'd been avoiding Lando a bit too.

But now Lando has stopped asking entirely.

Sometimes he’ll find Oscar in the kitchen, the living room or the bathroom and open his mouth and Oscar can tell he wants to ask, but then he’ll suddenly say something completely different and, well, what is Oscar supposed to do but reply to what he actually ended up saying?

What does Lando expect him to do, just go and say, ‘Good morning, can I fuck you’?

If Lando does that, great, cool, he’s Lando, he can just do things like that, but Oscar doesn’t know how to just say shit like that without it sounding weird, or more importantly, without it sounding decidedly not casual.

Maybe it’s just that Oscar feels like if he starts being able to do that he’s never going to stop and it’s all going to spiral so much faster than it already is.

But it already feels like it’s all slipping out of his hands way too fast with the way Lando has just been sleeping in the same bed as him for an entire week and he’s been a little off and now he’s upset with Oscar and Oscar doesn’t know how to fix this and he doesn’t know why Lando can’t just come tell Oscar he’s annoyed with him and how to fix it.

Oscar's not sure what it's about.

He has a sneaking feeling that Lando isn't as okay with Oscar still not initiating things as he'd pretended, that that offhanded way he told Oscar to just ask was harder for him to say than it seemed and Oscar hadn't realised how much it bothered him.

Maybe it's about that, but then there's also this tangible weirdness in the way they keep sleeping together without talking about it.

Or maybe it's just because this whole thing was a terrible idea and maybe that's catching up to them now.

Oscar doesn't know what it's about, but here they are now and he doesn't know what to do.

Oscar isn't used to this. He knows how Lando is when he fights with people, all confrontation until it's important, then it's all deflection, all damage control, all avoidance.

But he's never fought with Oscar.

Lando starts getting quieter and more elusive around Tuesday, he doesn’t even come home until eight in the evening.

Oscar is starting to freak out a bit about the presentation on Friday, so he doesn’t seek him out, spends his night rehearsing his part of the presentation instead. It's easier than trying to figure out why Lando is avoiding him.

He doesn’t devote too much thought to the way he has one ear tuned in to Lando moving around the apartment, always aware of just where Lando is, aware of the way Lando is avoiding him, annoyed with him.

He should do something about it.

He should go and ask Lando if he wants to watch something, ask him if he wants his dick sucked maybe, but Oscar doesn’t know how to say that like Lando always does, so easily, so casually, or whether that's even the problem.

So in the end Oscar just thinks himself in circles and reads over their calculations for the project for the hundredth time, rehearses his part of the presentation over and over and doesn’t leave his room, forgets to eat dinner.

Eventually Lando’s door shuts with a decisive click and Oscar groans and smacks his forehead down on the desk.

He’s being stupid.

Because now he’s starting to get a little annoyed with Lando for avoiding Oscar which is completely unfair since Oscar has kind of ever so slightly been avoiding Lando a little since golf which was almost two weeks ago.

And all this while his stupid project presentation is starting to replay in his head over and over like a broken record and he can’t stop thinking about what if it doesn’t work and it’s terrible and they all fail because they’re all stupid and they don’t deserve to get their degrees or become engineers ever and then he's fucked up his friendship and his degree all in one fell swoop of idiocy.

Oscar sighs and pushes himself up to get changed for bed.

He flops mournfully onto the mattress and wraps himself up in a blanket feeling abjectly sorry for himself before he fumbles for the switch to turn the light off and finally moans tragically into the pillow as he tries to go to sleep.

It’s the first time Oscar has had to try and sleep without Lando’s warmth in the bed with him in days.

But he’s going to have to suck it up and deal with it, because he didn’t go and fix whatever silent fight they’re having about something Oscar doesn’t even fully comprehend.

He’s pretty sure it’s about the sex, but it feels like there’s something there about the sleeping too and maybe just a bit about the way Oscar doesn’t even have time for the gym this week.

Oscar tosses and turns until he finally just flips onto his back and stares miserably into the dark.

He closes his eyes and pretends he’s dreaming in hopes that maybe if he fakes it hard enough he’ll actually convince himself everything is fine and normal and he’ll just fall asleep and find some peace.

He doesn’t know how long he just lies there, decidedly not sleeping, before suddenly his doorhandle turns quietly and there is Lando, silently opening his door without knocking, quietly closing the door behind himself.

Oscar doesn’t move. Maybe he is dreaming.

“Are you awake?” Lando whispers quietly.

Oscar doesn’t know why he doesn’t answer.

Maybe because if he says yes then they’ll have to talk about it and Oscar doesn't know how to talk about it because he doesn't know what it even is.

Lando dithers there for a moment and then, for some inexplicable reason, Lando just sighs before he crawls tentatively into the bed.

He slots himself carefully under the blankets between Oscar and the wall, lies there for a moment, unsure, before he shuffles closer, wrapping an arm around Oscar’s middle and laying his head on Oscar’s pectoral.

Oscar wishes he could hear what the hell Lando is thinking right now.

Because what the fuck?

Oscar tries to keep his breathing steady as Lando relaxes into him, sighing as he shifts his head to get comfortable.

Lando is torturing him, he really is, Jesus fucking Christ. Oscar wants to cry and scream and maybe throw himself out of a window, because what?

But he doesn't do any of that. Oscar hopes it comes off as moving in his sleep as he wraps his arm around Lando and shifts just a little to get comfortable.

Lando doesn’t move, just holds on to Oscar’s waist a little tighter.

And all of a sudden Oscar isn’t thinking about projects or exams or even whatever strangeness has been in the air between them, he’s just calm.

Because this is what he was missing. He was missing the weight, the warmth, the movement of Lando’s chest expanding and contracting with each slowing breath, the feeling of his hand loosely holding on to the fabric of Oscar’s shirt.

And Oscar wants him here forever, he wants him in Oscar’s bed, in Oscar’s space, all the time, forever.

What the hell is Oscar supposed to think? What is he supposed to make of all this? What the fuck does it mean that apparently Lando wants to be in Oscar’s bed instead of his own, enough so that he's coming here despite whatever fight they're having? That doesn’t exactly foster casualness, does it?

Oscar is kind of going insane.

He always thinks that he’s fallen for Lando as far as he can, and then Lando goes and finds another metaphorical cliff to shove him off so that Oscar falls even harder and what makes it worse is that he never realises what he’s doing.

But Oscar can’t focus too much on the ache in his chest when the very presence of Lando is making his pulse slow, his anxiety ebb away, all his muscles relax and his spiralling thoughts finally drift off towards sleep.

Lando is gone when Oscar wakes up, and if it weren't for the lingering smell of him in the sheets Oscar would think he’d imagined it.

They’re still fighting apparently.

And you know what, honestly, fuck Lando.

Because Oscar has this sickening irritation scratching at his chest about all of it, about the way Lando is avoiding him, about the way he crawled into his bed like that and left before Oscar woke up, so that Oscar was presumably not even supposed to know about it, because that wasn't fair.

What does that mean?

Lando shouldn’t get to do that, he shouldn’t get to sleep in Oscar’s bed thinking Oscar is asleep and leave before he wakes up just because they’re annoyed with each other, he shouldn't get to.

Lando can be such an exasperating little shit sometimes, honestly, and Oscar just can’t get rid of the sickening irritation at him bubbling under his skin.

Sickening because it’s not quite fair to be irritated with him if Oscar is half the problem.

Sickening because he’s using the irritation to avoid thinking about what he felt when Lando crawled into his bed last night thinking Oscar was asleep.

Sickening maybe because Oscar’s going to get his heart broken and he knows that.

But he shoves the thought away in favour of dragging himself out of bed to uni to sit there avoiding thinking about Lando in favour of daydreaming about slowly and painfully killing whoever designed his curriculum.

He comes back to an empty apartment. There’s stack of dirty dishes that has grown the last few days and the kitchen floor is visibly unswept.

Oscar was supposed to wash the dishes, Lando was supposed to sweep the floor. Oscar is being a hypocrite, but he’s annoyed about the floor anyway as he washes the dishes in irritation.

He focuses on that irritation, focuses on how he’s mad at Lando.

It’s easier than thinking about how Lando is going to break Oscar’s heart without ever realising it, and it’s not even going to be his fault.

Chapter Text

Lando doesn’t know when or how the fuck this happened, but all of a sudden, he can’t fucking sleep without Oscar in the bed with him.

It was weird from the beginning, that odd feeling the first time he woke up in Oscar’s bed, then a similar feeling the next morning, when he woke up still dreaming that Oscar was stroking his hair after Oscar had dragged him into bed in a moment of sleep deprived insensibility at four pm the afternoon before, and he doesn’t even know why Oscar was there that one morning after the gig, but Lando got the best night’s sleep right before he retched his guts up.

Lando doesn’t really think about it, all the reasons he invents to keep sleeping with Oscar, or why he feels like he needs to invent reasons at all.

Because, all of a sudden, Lando feels like it’s all too much.

It's too much with the way Lando is so needy with the way he wants to be fucked all the goddamn time, with the way he needs Oscar's attention in a way he didn't the last exam season, and the way he can't sleep when he's not in Oscar's arms.

And the thing is, Oscar isn't needy. 

He spends most of his day at campus and the rest of it studying, never seeking Lando out. Lando feels like he's been in that damn room of his twenty-four seven for weeks. `

And Lando has kept seeking him out, once or twice a day, occasionally just asking if he feels like fucking, trying to nudge Oscar to ask for it too, but he just doesn't.

So at this point Lando isn't sure whether he believes Oscar really does want to fuck him, because it sure doesn't look like he does. And honestly, if Lando is bothering him with all this neediness, he should really just fucking say so.

But he doesn't. He says nothing. 

Lando doesn’t want to fight about it and ruin something, but he can’t quite pretend it isn’t real either.

So he avoids it.

He makes too many plans, practically overbooks himself come Wednesday so that he’s so tired he can’t even come up with any reason to convince himself it’s not a good idea to just climb into Oscar’s bed, phenomenally thankful that Oscar doesn’t wake up when he does, because they’re fighting.

And Lando is painfully aware that he’s kind of fucking up because Oscar is getting properly annoyed with him now. He knows Oscar hates how Lando avoids his problems like this, so it’s inevitably just makes him more annoyed than he was in the first place.

And maybe Lando should just talk about, maybe he should just ask and fix this, but he can’t quite bring himself to ask Oscar if he still wants to fuck him, not even when he wakes up on Thursday morning with Oscar’s hand under his shirt, splayed between his shoulder blades, pressing Lando into him so that his morning wood is pressed into Oscar’s hip.

Lando allows himself a very quiet whimper before he dislodges himself from Oscar’s grip and gets the fuck out of his room, not sparing much thought for the frown on Oscar’s sleeping face as he leaves.

Lando doesn’t know why it irritates him so much when all he gets from Oscar by three in the afternoon is one text.

Will you sweep the kitchen when you get back pls

Lando ignores him.

He can hear the irritation through the text and it just makes Lando grind his teeth.

Oscar’s well within his rights, really.

Lando has been neglecting his chores. The floors are Lando’s job, just like the dishes and laundry are Oscar’s job because Oscar hates sweeping and he also doesn’t know how to dust and wipe down counters properly so Lando does that too.

It’s not a hard and fast rule. Lando did the dishes when Oscar was dead on his feet with his project, and Oscar will sweep often enough if Lando doesn’t get a chance, but Lando has had plenty of chances and he’s mainly neglected it in a ridiculous attempt to annoy Oscar.

So he really shouldn’t be more irritated now that he’s succeeded in annoying Oscar.

Maybe Lando is just trying to invent reasons to justify being irritated with Oscar, but fuck him, after a whole day of not seeing Lando, after several days of barely seeing him, that’s all he has to say?

Lando doesn’t usually make a habit of ignoring Oscar so he knows it will annoy him more when he leaves him on read.

He doesn’t feel like going home after his classes, so instead he resorts to the worst of the worst, desperate measures and all, and texts Carlos to see if he’s in the library.

Mercifully, he is, so Lando heads to the Law building and ignores Carlos’ suspicious looks as Lando studies for his exams coming up.

A few hours later there’s a sick twist of satisfaction when he gets another text.

Are you coming home soon?

Lando ignores him again.

That lasts until eight in the evening when Carlos announces that he’s done and Lando sighs.

“What is wrong with you?” Carlos asks finally, bluntly, as Lando reluctantly packs up his things, because Lando has probably never been reluctant to pack up his things and leave the library in his life.

“I don’t want to go home,” Lando admits.

“Why?” Carlos asks as they head out of the library.

“I’m annoyed with Oscar. Well, Oscar is annoyed with me. Actually both.”

“Okay. Why?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Ah. Is it the uh, the sex thing?”

“Yes. Not entirely. Mostly yes. Maybe? I don't even know."

“You are making no sense, cabrón,” Carlos says as they come to a stop outside the library.

Lando looks around to check that there’s nobody close enough to hear him before he launches into his explanation. “Okay, so it is about the sex thing, because I’m always the one saying ‘hey, you wanna fuck?’, so I told him I feel like that’s weird and needy, well sort of, not really, it was implied, and I thought he got it, but maybe he didn't because he still hasn’t asked.”

“Right…”

“And, okay, I know he’s probably busy with his project presentation that's tomorrow, but he’s been doing nothing but that for, like, weeks and he's just so busy he never pays any attention to me and it's stupid, but I miss him, but I also keep feeling like I’m bothering him the whole time.”

“Uhuh.”

“So I stopped asking for sex and now we haven’t fucked in like five days which should be fine, but I don’t know, I’m getting desperate and he's just, like, fine, so maybe he doesn't need the sex, maybe he doesn't want the sex anymore, but he just can't admit it—”

“Okay, Lando, I think you’re really overthinking—”

“No! Because you see the fucking isn’t the only thing, the thing is that somehow we’ve sort of accidentally slept in the same bed for like a week and now we’re sort of fighting so I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“Accidentally... For a week?”

“Yes, alright? So I snuck into his bed last night and left before he woke up and it was really weird, but like, you know, I slept, so...”

Carlos blinks at him. “Do you hear yourself?”

“What?” Lando asks innocently.

Carlos pinches the bridge of his nose. “You are such an idiot—”

“Anyway, so I’ve been avoiding him and he’s been avoiding me and he won’t say that he’s annoyed, but he totally is, and now he’s barely seen me in days and all he texts me is that I need to sweep the floor.”

“The sweeping is what is upsetting you now?”

“Well…" Lando chews his lip. "A little.”

“Lando.”

“What?”

Carlos is about to say something else, but then Alex comes jogging up to them from the library, which makes sense because he studies law and all, but Lando is still a little surprised to see him anyway. “Hey, guys.”

Carlos is looking at him like he really wants to say something, but he can’t say something because for some reason Alex is here.

“Are you coming to the party tonight?”

“No,” Carlos says pointedly, less like he’s saying no to the party and more like he’s saying no to Lando who is obviously going to say yes, because he’s willing to take literally any excuse not to go home right now.

“Yes,” Lando says.

Carlos smacks his forehead.

Alex looks on very confused.

“What is this party again?” Lando asks, ignoring Carlos.

“Oh, it’s the arts faculty, most of them are finishing assessments tomorrow, so they’re throwing an end of semester thing at one of the student housing buildings. I can take you, we just need to get George.”

“You, my friend, are a lifesaver,” Lando tells Alex very sincerely while Carlos mouths various variations of ‘Lando, no!’ off to the side.

Alex frowns and blinks in confusion. “If you say so.”

Alex and George don’t say anything, but they look a little confused as Lando gets himself a glass of plain coke instead of something alcoholic.

It’s not weird.

Lando is just kind of spiralling in a whirlpool of thoughts about what if he gets drunk and walks into the road and Oscar has to identify his body for the morgue all because Lando refused to tell him where he was because he was annoyed about being asked to sweep the floor.

Maybe it’s a little weird.

Lando’s phone vibrates again around ten as he’s sipping on his drink standing silently in a circle of Alex and George’s friends from law and arts respectively.

Where are you?

Lando ignores him again.

But it’s harder now, because Lando is anxious and bored and he doesn’t know any of these people and he’s not interested in getting to know any of them and honestly he just wants to go home.

He just doesn’t want to come home to Oscar being mad at him.

But it’s too late for that because Lando has gone and made him mad, mostly on purpose, so he really doesn’t have any right to be upset about the consequences of his actions now, but here he is.

He can stand about another twenty minutes before he gives in and heads home, telling himself that maybe he can just slip inside unnoticed and then Oscar can be angry with him tomorrow.

He gets an uber home because he doesn't want to take Alex and George up on their offer to drive him home and have to deal with their looks.

He tells Geraldine to go fuck herself and heads up to their apartment miserably watching his muddy reflection in the old metal inside of the elevator. He just wants to go to sleep and forget all of his problems.

But that in and of itself is also a problem because apparently Lando can’t do that without Oscar either.

Lando groans kicks the wall of the elevator. It hurts. He doesn't know what he expected, honestly.

He really does his best to turn his key in the lock quietly, praying that Oscar has gone to bed already since it’s nearly eleven.

"Where were you?" Oscar says from the couch, immediately. No such luck.

Fuck.

For a second Lando gets a pang of guilt.

But then he shoves it away because, actually, fuck Oscar and all his worrying bullshit, all his other bullshit too, just fuck Oscar in general.

Lando grinds his jaw as he locks the door behind him. "Lots of places. Went to a party.”

“Are you drunk?”

Lando turns to glare at him. “What if I was?”

“Are you?”

“No, but why do you need to know anyway? What do you care?”

“I need to know because we're out of aspirin so I'd need to buy you some," Oscar snaps. "And I care because I was wondering at what point I should start calling people to ask if they’d seen you.”

And that just makes something twist in Lando’s gut, something guilty, but he shoves it away to replace it with annoyance as he chucks his keys on the coffee table.

“Well, I’m fine,” Lando just says as he heads to his room, slamming the door behind him.

Oscar’s door closes a few seconds later and the way it closes with such a dignified, pointed click feels like it’s engineered to point out just how much more mature Oscar is being about this than Lando is.

Lando takes his frustration out by throwing his clothes on the floor way too hard as he changes into something to sleep in, refusing to leave the safety of his room and go shower now.

He climbs moodily into bed and switches the light off, too irritated to even mess around on his phone before trying to sleep, desperately hoping that maybe tonight he’ll just fall asleep and be able to forget about all this stupid shit.

He tosses and turns for about ten minutes.

Then he puts on some music to see if maybe that will help him sleep.

He turns it up just a little loud in a childish hope that it will filter through to Oscar’s room and annoy him. He does this all the time, so there's a slim chance Oscar will actually be irritated, but maybe if he's already angry with Lando he will be.

Ten minutes later Lando hears the rolling wheels of Oscar’s chair sliding across the floor, and that makes the irritation flare because that means Oscar is needlessly obsessing about his project again.

There are three loud bangs on the wall they share.

Lando glares at the wall and turns his music up a little louder because fuck Oscar, and then he buries himself under his blankets, pulling them over his head and curling into a ball beneath them, no longer certain whether he’s more angry or miserable.

Two minutes later Oscar is barging into his room without knocking. “Could you play that music any goddamn louder?”

Lando growls and sticks his hand out from under the safety of his blankets to fumble for the pause button before he snatches it back in and pulls the blankets tighter around himself.

Oscar sighs.

“You know what, if you're annoyed with me, you can just fucking say that,” Lando mumbles from beneath the blankets.

“Fine,” Oscar says, presumably from the doorway. “I'm annoyed with you.”

“No shit.”

“Fucking hell, alright, will you just shut the fuck up, I have things to do," Oscar says. He doesn't yell, because Oscar never yells. 

“I know you have things to do!” Lando yells, because he doesn't have those kinds of principles, still from beneath his blankets because he feels delusionally safer in here. “I wish you would do them instead of demanding my whereabouts.”

Because Oscar’s not going away to go do said things, he’s stepping further into Lando’s room instead.

“Whereabouts," Oscar repeats mockingly, and Lando can hear the way he’s rolling his eyes. "Well, I’m sorry, next time I’ll hold off asking where you are until after the obituary comes out.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“Lando,” Oscar groans, and pulls the blankets off of Lando.

“Hey! Give those back!” Lando yells, scrambling to snatch them back, but Oscar is too quick.

“You can’t even breathe in there!”

“I don’t want to breathe!” Lando shouts, getting up to try and get his damn blankets back, but Oscar holds them out of reach.

“Lando!”

“What?”

At least Lando is standing now, so he can yell at Oscar eye to eye. Sort of. Because Oscar, the bastard, still has a few centimetres on him.

“Just tell me what’s wrong.”

“Oh, well, besides you stealing my blankets, I suppose what’s wrong is that you don't give a shit that you've barely seen me for days on end and then demand to know where I am like it isn’t a miracle you even noticed I was gone.”

Oscar drops the blankets on the floor and crosses his arms, tilting his head just so to give Lando a look. “Elaborate.”

“Oh, fuck you, and your stupid vocabulary!"

“Do you not know what elaborate means or someth—”

“I do, but I still think you're a pretentious ass—”

Oscar makes a frustrated noise, half growl as he latches onto the front of Lando’s shirt, and all of a sudden Lando's brain is short circuiting and he has no idea what he was about to say.

Oscar uses the hold on Lando's shirt just to pull him closer so he can scowl at him as he bites out, “Stop avoiding the problem, why are you avoiding the problem?"

Oscar isn't going to do anything with that grip on Lando's shirt, Lando knows that, because Oscar is functionally incapable of physical conflict, he doesn't get worked up over things enough for that, so it isn't exactly fear making Lando's breath speed up.

“I-I don’t want to argue,” Lando stutters, because, well, shit.

“We’re already arguing! You always do this, I push you and you avoid the problem, I don't push you and you also avoid the problem, there's no winning! Why can't you just stop being stubborn for no reason and just tell me your problem so we can fix it?”

The problem, right now, is that all of a sudden there’s a heat that isn’t anger pooling in Lando’s stomach and the way Oscar is holding him in place is making his head do that stupid spinny thing again and that’s really the crux of the whole fucking problem.

The problem being that Lando is too fucking needy.

But Lando isn’t going to say that, because he doesn’t want to fix the problem, he wants to avoid it until it goes away, obviously. So he deflects.

"Make me."

Lando regrets it immediately. But he refuses to whither under Oscar’s gaze, that cold, flat look that’s inexplicably making Lando a little too warm, his jaw hard, eyes sharp.

And then Oscar makes a frustrated noise and yanks at Lando’s shirt and oh.

Oscar is kissing him.

Lando gasps into his mouth, holding onto the arm that’s keeping him in place by his shirt for balance, because fuck that’s hot and Lando hasn’t been fucked in five days so it’s really difficult to even try and come up with any reason he shouldn’t just melt into Oscar right now.

What else is he supposed to do? Because Oscar is finally fucking doing something and Lando doesn’t even remember what he was yelling about.

Oscar pulls away to look at him for just a second, eyes flicking all over whatever expression is on Lando’s face and he’s still holding Lando in place by his shirt, his breaths heavy against Lando’s lips.

“God, you can be such a pain sometimes,” Oscar bites out before he starts pulling at Lando’s clothes.

“I know," Lando breathes, abjectly confused, but that, at least, he knows for a fact.

“Tell me to stop if you need to.”

Lando hums vaguely as Oscar pulls his shirt off for him and Lando is incapable of understanding how he has the dexterity to do all that right now while Lando is struggling to focus on standing upright.

“But…” Lando starts, trailing off distractedly as Oscar catches his lips again and he does that thing where he tilts his head and dips his tongue into Lando’s mouth just so as he trails his hands up Lando’s bare ribs, up until his thumb is smoothing over Lando’s nipple and Lando is gasping into Oscar’s mouth.

“But what?” Oscar prompts in a murmur between kisses.

“But I thought you were annoyed with me,” Lando manages before he tilts his head up to chase more tongue.

“I am.”

“So why are you fucking me?”

“Are being annoyed with you and wanting to fuck you supposed to be mutually exclusive concepts? What do you mean why?”

“Because— Because you’re annoyed with me,” Lando bursts out, smacking Oscar’s chest as he pulls away to talk, because it all just had to spill over at some point, didn't it?

"What—"

“Because I ask you to fuck like six times a day and I keep being weird and I made you get milk and I can’t drive—"

"Lando—"

"And I was being really annoying on purpose and you never ask me to fuck and I know you’re annoyed about it, but you never say anything, so if you don’t want to fuck me anymore, you should really just say that instead of just saying yes because you're nice—”

“Lando,” Oscar says then, firmly, his hands coming up to hold Lando’s face as he looks at him with that exasperated expression of his.

“What?” Lando asks miserably.

“You’re thinking about this way too much.”

“No, I’m not!” Lando insists, just to argue, really.

“Yes, you are,” Oscar murmurs and pulls Lando back in towards himself by his waist to kiss him. “Of course I want to fuck you, I’m fucking you right now.”

“You’re really not,” Lando trails off breathily against his lips, a little distracted.

“If you shut up for a second, maybe I can get there.”

“But—"

“Lando. I’m so fucking annoyed with you.”

“That’s what I said, so why—”

“I am annoyed with you, because sometimes you’re annoying,” Oscar goes on.

“Oscar,” Lando whines into his mouth, his hands trailing up to hold onto Oscar’s shoulders, one moving up to pull at his hair. "That explains absolutely nothing."

“It’s not the end of the world that you’re annoying sometimes," Oscar explains in a murmur against his lips, pecking him again before he goes on. "But I need you to understand that you’re not annoying because you need attention all the time and you want to be fucked every two hours, I like that about you, actually.”

“Oh.”

“So, yes, I am annoyed with you, but I’m going to fuck you anyway, now do you have a problem with that?”

“N-no.”

“Good."

God, it's like a light switch, the way Oscar switches between that gentle reassurance and that sharp control and it shoots a bolt of heat right to the pit of Lando's stomach. "Now you can keep arguing with me all you want, but you will tell me to stop if you need to, do you understand?”

Lando's actually currently a bit distracted from the argument by the pressure of his cock straining against the fabric of his pants. “Mmhm.”

Oscar slips one hand into Lando’s hair to pull at it and force Lando’s head up. “Answer me properly.”

Lando whimpers, eyelids fluttering. “Y-Yes, I understand.”

God, Oscar can't even know he's doing that, can he?

He can't know how that makes Lando's cock twitch and leak, straining against the inside of his pants, he can't know how it makes an arrow of white hot arousal shoot down his spine, how it makes Lando's head spin.

“Good,” Oscar just says, and then he’s turning Lando around without warning and shoving him face first into the bed.

“Jesus fuck—" is all Lando manages, whimpering as he grips onto a pillow for stability as Oscar pulls his own clothes off behind him.

“You’re an absolute pain in the ass, you know that?” Oscar just says, in an enviably composed tone, before he crawls on top of him, snatching the lube from the bedside table as he makes space for himself between Lando’s legs.

Lando needs a second to focus enough to say, “Yeah, well, what are you going to do about it?”

He's not going to give in today, he isn't.

Oscar doesn’t say anything else before he simply pulls off Lando’s pants and underwear with next to none of Lando’s help, and then lifts Lando’s hips up for him so that he’s on his knees, back arched, head still in the pillows, unable to make any sound other than a surprised little whimper.

Lando has been in this position often enough without any problems, but today it makes him feel oddly more exposed than usual. At Oscar's mercy.

“You’ve been avoiding me for no good reason for days, instead of just talking to me," Oscar starts.

“Well, yeah, because—"

"You had more than enough time to sweep the floor, you just didn't because you wanted to annoy me."

"Maybe I did—"

"And don’t think I don’t know you were ignoring my texts just to irritate me.”

Oscar doesn’t let him even start another sentence before he’s pressing one lubed finger all the way inside.

It was going to be more breath than words anyway, might as well take away the words entirely so it's just a breathy little whimper as Lando fists a hand in the sheets to hold on to something.

It's something about this unflappable control of Oscar's, the way he just moves Lando where he wants him, the way he knows exactly where to press to avoid his prostate for a moment, to give him a second to feel the way Oscar isn't paying attention to the place Lando wants him most, give him a moment to get desperate for it.

"Oscar, please," Lando begs, and god, he's wet, he can feel it, dripping onto the sheets beneath him, his cock trapped in aching nothing with the way Oscar is holding him now. "Please."

His plea falls on deaf ears as Oscar skirts around that spot, fingering him more for efficiency than pleasure at the moment, because he's set on torturing Lando right now.

"Oscar, please, I'm sorry."

Oscar makes a pleased hum and gives it another second before he finally presses down, just so, because he knows exactly where Oscar needs that finger, and says, “Next time I ask you where you are in the middle of the night you fucking answer me. Even if it’s just to tell me to go fuck myself.”

Lando is already panting, clutching for any kind of grip in the sheets, desperately trying to push away that hazy feeling all of a sudden.

"Yes, I'm sorry, I will, I promise," he babbles, panting into the pillows.

And oh god, Lando isn't supposed to be giving in, what is he doing?

“You fucking scared me, you know?"

"I'm sorry." Shit, shit, shit.

"I just wanted to know if you were still alive, is that too much to ask?”

Lando fights off the clouds in his head, drags himself out of that awfully needy headspace.

It's still barely more than air. "Oh, yeah, like you didn’t barely notice I was g-gone, seeing as all you’re doing is looking at your books like you don’t already kn... know how your stupid project works and saying your goddamn speech again for the billionth f-fucking time.”

“Don’t be stupid, I always notice when you’re gone," Oscar says as he drags his finger along Lando’s prostate again and Lando makes a stuttering whine. "I'm sorry that I was stressed, but I can’t really do anything about that. If you have a problem with it then take it up with the engineering faculty.” 

"It's not ab-about that," Lando stutters.

“Well, what is it then?" Oscar asks, exasperated, and the way he's pressing down properly now really doesn't help Lando focus at all. "If you wanted attention, then you could have just said so and I would have taken a break and sucked your dick for you.”

“I don’t w-want—”

Lando’s argument is cut in half by Oscar pressing another finger inside, barely giving Lando time to adjust, letting it sting like he knows drives Lando a little insane.

And Lando is so distracted he says exactly what he wasn't supposed to. “I don’t want to bother you, alright?"

Oh god. Lando was supposed to be avoiding the problem, this is not avoiding the problem, he wasn't supposed to say that.

But it's out there now, and there's nothing he can do to take the words back because they were said loud and clear.

Oscar scoffs. “You wouldn’t have bothered me.”

“Yeah, well, how am I supposed to know that?" Lando shouts, incapable of controlling his volume when he has to focus so hard on keeping his brain functioning at all. "It doesn’t exactly look like you want to fuck me when you’re sitting there crumpling up your fiftieth sheet of paper.”

“I always want to fuck you, you idiot,” Oscar just says as he presses a third finger inside.

Lando makes a breathy noise at that and whimpers into the pillows, scrabbling for better grip in the sheets. “You’re just— You’re so busy. And you’ve been distant for weeks, it’s like I barely saw you, of course I thought you didn’t want to fuck me anymore, what else was I supposed to think?”

“I was distant because I was confused as to how this fucking thing is going to work if you keep trying to fuck other people!” Oscar says finally.

“But I’m not fucking other people!”

“But you’re trying to!”

“Because I’m trying to get out of your hair, Oscar, Jesus f-fucking…” Lando trails off in a whimper as Oscar presses down on his prostate.

Oscar reaches forward then, his fingers threading through Lando's hair and then he pulls.

Lando yelps and whines at the sting in his scalp and he can't do anything but go where Oscar pulls him up so that he's sitting in Oscar's lap, thighs spread over Oscar's, gravity pushing Lando down impossibly further on Oscar's fingers.

“I don’t want you out of my hair.”

Lando whimpers and squirms, but Oscar doesn't let him move, he can't move his legs with the way his thighs spread over Oscar's, can't get back to the safety of the sheets with the way Oscar is holding his head in place by his hair, can't do anything but sit there, all exposed for Oscar to see how this argument has done nothing but make Lando admit things he didn't want to admit and how that hasn't detracted from the desperate arousal between his legs at all.

“Well, I thought you did, because you were annoyed with me.”

“I wasn’t annoyed with you before you were annoyed with me.”

“Well, it seemed like you were!”

“How?” Oscar asks, sounding just as confused as Lando is now as he pulls his fingers out and shoves him down to the bed to collapse with a pitiful whine about the gut punching emptiness as he flips Lando over to look at him.

And that gaping emptiness hits twice as hard now because there's an ache in his chest as Lando finally admits,  “It just— It seemed like I was a chore to you."

He can’t really look at Oscar, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he squirms a little under Oscar’s gaze and all of a sudden all that roughness is gone.

And it should help Lando calm down, but it's replaced by this piercing concern that drives Lando just as insane.

“What?”

The hurt is palpable in his voice, the hurt at having caused Lando any amount of pain, and it's just not right, because it's not Oscar's fault and he shouldn't have to feel bad and this is exactly why Lando was supposed to just shut up.

It's just so gentle, so juxtaposingly soft contrasted against the way Oscar was fucking him just now that it's all the more apparent how it's twisting right in the soft spot of Lando's heart and stinging at the corners of his eyes.

"Lando, baby, what?"

How is he meant to stop himself from saying everything he wasn't meant to when Oscar asks him so sweetly?

“You never ask me for sex, it’s always me asking you, and I know I’m more needy than you, okay?” Lando babbles then, his vision blurring. “But it felt like you were just completely unbothered when I stopped asking, so I thought maybe you actually didn’t want to fuck me anymore, and you know what, if you don’t, then I’d really appreciate if you just said that!"

“Of course I want to fuck you, I'm fucking you right now."

“Only after I went to c-considerable lengths to irritate you enough that you grabbed me by the sh-shirt like you don’t know me well enough— Fuck— To know I’d be turned on.”

"I wasn’t thinking about that when I grabbed you, alright? I'm sorry, I only realised when I already had you."

"The point is you want to fuck me once or twice a week, probably, not six times a day like I do and— And— And, Oscar, just— Please put those fingers back, or I'm going to cry."

"That's what you think?" Oscar asks as he absently hikes one of Lando’s legs over his shoulder so he can press three fingers inside of him, just like Lando asked, because he's apparently pathologically inclined to give Lando everything he wants regardless of his own desires.

Lando gasps and arches on the bed, his hands flying to Oscar’s shoulders to hold on to him as he gets used to the stretch, eyes fluttering shut so that he doesn’t have to see that odd look Oscar has on his face at least.

Lando needs a second to focus on what the hell he was about to say, especially with the way Oscar keeps grazing his prostate and then pressing just a little with no warning.

God, sometimes Oscar makes this so unbearably difficult for him, pressing down right when Lando has gathered his thoughts and scattering them all to the wind before Lando can catch a coherent one.

"It's true, isn't it?" Lando chokes out breathily as his nails scrape over Oscar's scapula when he presses down just right, squirming beneath him to get more because he's wet with lube down there and dripping onto his own stomach too and god, he's having such a hard time focusing and Oscar hasn't even put his cock inside of him yet, Lando is fucked.

"I want to fuck you all the damn time, are you stupid?”

“Well maybe I am!" Lando shouts breathily, squirming to get Oscar's fingers deeper, pulling to get him closer. "Because I don’t get it, if you want to fuck me all the time, why don’t you?”

“I don’t know, Lando. It feels weird, I don’t know how to just ask,” Oscar sighs. “Does it really bother you?”

"Yes, it bothers me! Why should it feel weird?” Lando asks, still panting, because Oscar’s fingers feel so damn good inside him and the argument isn't detracting from that in the slightest.

“I don’t know, it just... I don't really care what I want, I care about what you want, so I don't really know how to go about asking."

"Well, I care what you want! And I know you, I know you're shit at taking care of your wants and needs sometimes and asking for things you want, so if you don't know how to ask, maybe just don't."

Oh god. This is going to be a disaster.

Oscar pauses for a second. "What?"

"If you feel awkward asking then just don’t fucking ask, just take what you want and fuck me."

“I’m sorry, what?” Oscar says, very politely, as he  falters in his movements and really, that’s not what Lando was trying to achieve at all so he whines and squirms underneath Oscar to get him to damn well move, but Oscar just holds his hips down to make Lando focus and look at him as he says. "I can't do that."

"Yes, you can, you did it just now and it was fucking hot," Lando pants, his nails scraping over Oscar's shoulders again and god, it must hurt, but Oscar just makes a gut punched sounding groan.

"Lando, that's a shit idea." He's still not moving.

"Why?"

"Because if I do that I'll never be able to stop and we'll actually be fucking six times a day because you have no idea what you look like, oh my god, I want to fuck you all the fucking time."

If he wants to fuck so badly, Lando really doesn't understand why his fingers are still not fucking moving.

"But I want to fuck six times a day!"

"Lando."

“Oscar, move your damn fingers, or I swear to god."

Oscar sighs exasperated, but he moves his fingers. “You know what, nobody is thinking clearly right now, I think that’s enough arguing for now.”

“But—”

“But nothing,” Oscar says, “Lie still and be quiet now.”

And fuck, Lando really doesn’t get how things like that just fall out of Oscar’s mouth in that tone, but he can’t just ask Lando if he wants to fuck.

That tone suddenly makes it that much harder for Lando to concentrate and argue petulantly, “I don’t want to lie still and be quiet.”

Oscar hums and takes Lando’s lip between his own to shut him up, tongue dipping into his mouth. “No, I guess you can’t shut up and lie still, can you? You’re always whining and squirming, hm?”

“Oscar,” Lando whines, squirming.

He’s a little embarrassed about that now because fuck, Oscar just says a few little words and then Lando is practically gone.

All the marginal success Lando was achieving at keeping his thoughts together is being unravelled too fast to make up for when Oscar talks to him like this and it's like Lando is slipping and he's supposed to be holding on and focusing, but he just can't.

“I w-wasn’t done arguing.”

”What did I just say?” Oscar growls into his mouth before he moves to Lando’s shoulder, biting into the muscle there.

Lando can do nothing but make a breathy sound and tilt his head further even though that helps nothing at all, that pressure of Oscar’s teeth.

“I can’t make you be quiet unless I put something in your mouth and my fingers are a little preoccupied, baby, but I can help you lie still.”

Lando whines as Oscar gathers up his wrists and presses his hands down firmly to the mattress above Lando’s head.

“Oscar, f-fuck.”

No, no, no, he can’t, Lando won’t.

He blinks away the haze, bats away the fog, tries to grab onto any coherent thought, but it's like catching smoke and he can't think.

It keeps coming back, this useless fucking headspace, but Lando can’t let it stay, can’t let it take over, because he can tell that if he lets go now he’s going to go down so fucking far it'll be a disaster.

Oscar quirks his fingers downwards into Lando’s prostate one more time, humming in satisfaction at the sound Lando makes about that.

He grips Lando’s wrists a little tighter for a moment and says simply, “Keep these here or you’re coming on my fingers or nothing.”

Lando whines desperately, squirming under Oscar as he lets go and Lando has to focus so damn hard not to move them and do as Oscar said because if Oscar doesn’t give him his cock Lando might cry.

He might cry anyway, because it's so damn much with the way Oscar takes his sweet fucking time slicking up his cock as he watches Lando panting and struggling to stay still for him, making Lando wait.

Finally, he leans back over Lando his hand brushing lightly up over Lando’s forearm before it finds its place on his wrist again and presses down, just as he bites down on Lando’s neck and Lando can feel the satisfied smile there.

“Now all of a sudden you can be a good boy for me, hm?”

Fuck.

"Oh, for fuck’s sake, stop that!" Lando begs then suddenly, desperately, trying to squirm out of the grip Oscar has on his wrists, to get away from the teeth on his neck, that tone, those choice little words that Oscar just throws around like he’s trying to make Lando lose it.

"What? Shit, I’m sorry, what’s wrong?” Oscar lets him go right away and, really, that’s not what Lando wants at all, even though it’s exactly what he’d asked for. “I thought you liked that?"

"I do," Lando moans, taking several deep breaths to try and focus.

“Hey, hey, Lando,” Oscar murmurs, pushes himself up to look at Lando still half squirming beneath him, and Lando hadn’t even realised there were tears until now when Oscar is thumbing away a drop of wetness at the corner of his eye. "What’s going on?"

"I'm trying not to be so goddamn needy, alright Oscar? I'm trying to keep participating here and that makes it really fucking difficult,” Lando moans, trying to discretely wipe away the tears.

Oscar doesn't let him hide them though, he just gently turns Lando's face back to himself with a hand on his chin to make Lando look at him.

"What, because it makes you go all spacey?"

"Yes," Lando moans, squirming beneath him, but there's something about that gentle hold on his chin that he just can't escape. "Can we not talk about that, Oscar, please?”

"Lando,” Oscar sighs, exasperated, dragging a hand over his face before he looks at Lando and says, “I like you being spacey."

Lando stills. "You do?"

"Yes, baby, now will you lie still and let me make you feel good?” Oscar asks, gently taking Lando’s wrists back in his hand and that makes Lando’s breathing come a little too fast and his brain work a little too slow.

"But— But I want to make it good for you too,” Lando argues, because he can't just lie here and beg, that's not helpful to Oscar.

"Oh, trust me, it is.”

“But—”

Oscar gets this genuine, tender look on his face then before he says, “Lando, hey, look at me, baby.”

Lando looks up at him, chewing the inside of his cheek and those tears are stinging the corners of his eyes again and there's nothing Lando can do except admit, “I'm scared."

"What?" Oscar lets go of his wrists immediately to cradle Lando’s face, his hands spread so comfortingly over Lando's skin. "Hey, hey, it's okay, we don't have to if you don't want to. What's wrong, sweetheart? Why are you scared?"

With the way he's holding Lando's face in his hands Lando can't look away from him as the tears spill over and Lando starts properly crying. "I'm just— It's a lot, Oscar. I'm a lot. That’s the whole fucking problem, isn’t it? I’m just too much.”

Oscar’s face goes impossible soft, a scrunch between his eyebrows that's so concerned. “Hey, hey, hey, no. Lando, you're not too much, you're never too much, baby, I like how needy you are."

 Lando chews his lip. He can't quite not believe Oscar, but he's not entirely convinced either, can't stop the babble of his racing thoughts, "But I'm useless in bed and it's annoying it's really fucking weird and like, six people have broken up with me about it.”

“What? Well, then six people are really fucking stupid, because you're not useless, it's not annoying, and it's not weird."

“Oscar,” Lando argues.

"Hey, look, maybe it just wasn’t some people's thing, Lando, but that doesn't make it a bad thing."

"How do you know?"

"Because it's my thing.”

Oh.

Lando chews on the inside of his cheek. “Is it?”

"Yes, Lando. We don’t have to if you don’t want to, but please don't avoid it just because you think you're too much, because you're not, you're perfect."

Lando should probably really not still be crying about this, but Oscar keeps wiping new tears off of Lando's cheek while he talks.

"Knowing that you feel good is what makes me feel good."

Oh.

“Oh.”

“Yeah," Oscar says, so, so gently. "I just— I want to take care of you, okay?”

Oh, of course Oscar will take care of him, if there’s anyone Lando could trust to take care of him when he’s like this, then it’s Oscar.

Lando breathes, “You do?"

"Of course I do. Will you let me? Please?"

Lando nods, brain going fuzzy and this time he doesn’t try to stop it, he just breathes, “Yeah, okay.”

“There you go, baby, good boy,” Oscar murmurs, pecking Lando on the lips once before he moves on to his jaw, hand going back to hold Lando’s wrists in place and fuck that feels good. “There you go, doesn’t that feel better? Isn't that easier?”

“Yeah,” Lando breathes, nodding and turning his head to the side so Oscar has space to mouth at his jaw and neck.

His free hand trails up Lando's fluttering abdomen, his heaving chest, tracing a nipple and a collarbone just once before it settles at his neck, fingers splayed out at the side of it, spread all the way down from his shoulder to the hinge of his jaw, Oscar's palm placed just right to feel the hitch his Adam's apple as he swallows, thumb pressed into his pulse point.

Lando whimpers and tilts his chin up to bare some more of his neck for Oscar. "Fuck."

Oscar hums in approval.

"So pretty like this, baby, so pretty when you've got no thoughts in that pretty little head of yours, no thinking, you don't need to think, you just need to lie here and look pretty for me."

Oscar's hand doesn't move from the vulnerable softness of his throat, doesn't press down, but doesn't leave either, he just keeps it right there and something about it makes Lando feel owned. Like Oscar will take responsibility for him when he's like this, like Oscar will think for the both of  them and Oscar will take care of him.

“You’ve been driving me insane trying to stop yourself from going spacey like this, you know? While all I’ve been trying to do is make you let go,” Oscar goes on in a murmur, pressing kisses to Lando’s neck with hints of teeth, biting just a little between his words.

Lando's cock is leaking onto his abdomen still, forming a proper puddle of precome there on his stomach with how long he's been pent up like this now, but he doesn't even think about touching himself, because if Oscar wants him to, he'll tell him to.

“Oscar, please?” Lando asks so that Oscar will finally get his cock inside of him, because he needs it.

“Yeah, baby, you’re getting it,” Oscar murmurs indulgently, and moves to comply.

Lando makes a mournful sound as Oscar's hand leaves his throat, but it's cut off by a gasp as Lando gasps as Oscar finally lines himself up, nudging him to wrap his legs around Oscar’s waist.

Oscar just breathes into Lando’s mouth for a moment. “I thought you didn’t need to be told how gorgeous you look like this, but apparently you do, hm?”

Lando whimpers, “Oscar, please.”

“Look at you, listen to you, and you think I wouldn’t like you like this, you think I haven’t been trying to get you like this the whole time?”

“Please fuck me, Oscar, please,” Lando begs, trying uselessly to pull Oscar closer with his legs, hands clutching at nothing with the way Oscar is pressing down on his wrists.

Oscar gives it another second before he takes mercy and finally pushes all the way inside.

Lando makes a high-pitched whine, breathing hard as Oscar comes to a stop so deep inside him it feels inexplicably deeper than he’s ever been.

Oscar, because he knows Lando better than he knows himself, takes a moment to entwine their fingers, slipping his between both sets of Lando’s so that Lando still can’t move, but he can hold on to Oscar’s hand now.

“And what was your argument anyway? You want to make it good for me? Like it’s not good when you stop fucking thinking for a minute,” Oscar murmurs against Lando’s lips, breathing in Lando’s air.

Lando whimpers and arches up into Oscar to get him to move. “Move, please move.”

Oscar obliges, moving in measured thrusts that drag along Lando’s prostate.

Lando whines and tilts his head up for a kiss and Oscar gives it to him, of course he does, swallowing down all of Lando’s noises at the sheer fullness of Oscar all the way inside him, filling him up again and again.

Oscar mouths at Lando’s lip a few more times before he murmurs, “I don't need you to participate and do things, baby, you're perfect when you just lie there and beg for me, you're so perfect."

Lando arches up into Oscar to try and get him just a little closer as he makes a breathy noise right into Oscar's throat.

"And if I need you to do something I'll just tell you to and you'll do it for me, won't you?"

Lando makes a noise of helpless agreement, trying to pull Oscar in just a little deeper with every thrust now and Oscar helps him by a steady hand on his hip, pulling him just a little closer.

"Yeah, you would, you'd do just about anything I wanted, let me have you however I want."

Lando nods hazily because of course he would, he would do anything Oscar asked right now. “Whatever you want, whenever you want, doesn’t matter,” he slurs.

“Yeah? Don’t even want me to ask.”

“No, just fuck me,” Lando babbles.

“Fuck, baby, you don’t even know how hot that is, do you?” Oscar murmurs as he pushes in just a little harder this time and Lando lets out a punched-out moan.

“Fuck, Oscar, like that, harder, please?” Lando begs, writhing underneath Oscar to get more of that.

Oscar complies, snapping his hips inside harder with a breathless sounding moan. “You like that?”

Lando nods desperately. “Yes, yes, please, more, don’t stop.”

Oscar doesn’t, he just keeps a steady rhythm of those deep, hard thrusts that have Lando breathless despite how much he’s panting, making nothing but high pitched, breathy noises.

"Oscar, can you— I want— Your hand—"

"Hand? What do you want, baby?"

"Put it back?" Lando asks, nudging his chin up to indicate what he's asking for.

"Of course, baby," Oscar breathes, and puts his hand right back on Lando's throat where he wants it. "You like that?"

"Yeah," Lando breathes.

Lando is incapable of finding the motor control to kiss Oscar properly at this point, which Oscar seems fine with because he latches on to Lando’s neck instead, tilting his head with an easy nudge of his thumb to Lando's jaw and Lando’s going to have so many hickeys in the morning.

“Oscar,” Lando breathes. “Please, m’so close.”

“Yeah?” Oscar breathes against his neck.

Lando nods, clinging onto Oscar’s other hand still intertwined with his. “Please, I need— I need…”

Oscar looks at him now and Lando, panting and squirming on his cock, shuts his eyes under the weight of his gaze.

“You need me to tell you to come?” Oscar asks softly, understanding.

Lando nods desperately, whimpering. “Please.”

“Yeah? Look at you being good for me, too good to do anything without being told, aren’t you?”

“Oscar, please.”

Oscar gives it another moment, presses all the way inside him one more time before his hand flexes just the smallest bit around Lando's neck as he murmurs, “Go on, come for me, baby.”

Lando whines and arches up as he finally comes and Oscar holds him right there, hand never leaving Lando’s, the other steadily stroking his cock through the peak of his orgasm.

It feels like it lasts forever, that high, that plateau, and Lando can feel everything all at once, the pressure of Oscar inside him, the breath of him on his neck, the heat of him all over Lando’s body, the sweat sticking between them, the tight grip on his hand, the strain in his arms, the heat of his own come spilling over his stomach.

And then all of a sudden Oscar is coming too, filling Lando up just a little more, painting his insides and Lando whines and arches up into him, tries to get him closer, closer, closer.

Oscar wraps an arm around him to help, holding him so tight that for a second Landon can delude himself into believing they're merging into one.

He doesn't let go of him, not even a little bit. Oscar keeps holding on to him just like that, so close that Lando can't tell where he ends and Lando begins.

He only lets go when all the muscles in Lando's body go loose and he's nothing but liquid in Oscar's arms.

He lets go of the grip he still has on Lando’s hands above his head and Lando bites back a mournful sound about that, only a little soothed by the kiss Oscar presses to his jaw.

Lando can’t bite back the pitiful whine he makes when Oscar tries to pull out of him. "No, no, no."

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Oscar murmurs, and stops moving.

Lando wraps his arms around his shoulders and pulls him back down on top of him. “Stay inside? Please?”

“’Course, baby, anything you want,” Oscar agrees, kissing the tear tracks on Lando’s cheek.

Lando, with his newly freed hands, pulls at Oscar to lie down with him and Oscar doesn’t deny him, lies down right on top of him where Lando is pulling him and lets Lando wrap his arms around him and breathe in the scent of Oscar’s hair.

Oscar presses a few kisses to the place where Lando’s jaw meets his neck before he just nuzzles into that space and sighs.

Lando is still floating, hazy, high, and he doesn’t know how long he stays like that, but Oscar never moves, he just stays right there where Lando needs him, just lets Lando float there.

His hand is tracing featherlight up and down the cooling skin of Lando’s hip, waist and ribs. Slow, smooth, soft. He keeps intermittently kissing Lando’s neck, brushing his lips there again and again and again.

Lando tilts his head to give him more space, to let him press those soft brushes of his lips all the way from his shoulder to his jaw.

And god that feels good, the way he just lets Lando stay here, in this headspace, here where he’s warm and safe.

Lando doesn't have a coherent thought for what could be minutes or hours, and Oscar doesn't rush him, he just stays right here for as long as Lando needs, even as time ticks long past midnight.

His brain comes back slowly, inching into functionality.

But the first thought Lando has is fuck. 

The first thought is that Lando doesn't know how this happened, but he fucked up.

The way Oscar fucked him just now, the way he held his hand, the way he’s staying right where Lando needs him now, the way he takes care of Lando, the way all that is fucking with Lando's head, body and soul is just not...

It's just not casual anymore.

And maybe it hasn’t been casual for a while now and Lando doesn’t know when it stopped being casual and all of a sudden Lando isn’t sure what the fuck he's doing.

But Oscar is here and he’s holding on to Lando and Lando can’t let him go.

“You okay, baby?” Oscar murmurs.

There’s something so sweet about the way Oscar says baby, something that makes Lando’s stomach flutter at the same time it makes high pitched screeching noise echo through Lando's head, but he's not coherent enough to think about this rationally.

He nods.

Oscar lifts his head from Lando’s neck to look at him, his hair all tousled, just to look at Lando and make sure.

Lando’s breath hitches at that little wrinkle between his eyebrows, that soft concern, the way he always makes sure Lando is safe.

God, had he always done that? Had it always felt so inexplicably intimate? More so than Oscar's cock inside of him ever could be?

“I’m okay," Lando breathes, dazed and confused.

Oscar releases a breath and tucks himself back into Lando’s neck, murmuring quietly, “Are we okay?"

And that makes Lando's heart clench in slight panic because Oscar and Lando have to be okay. "Yes. Please. I want to be okay. I need us to be okay."

"We're okay."

"Okay."

"Okay," Oscar repeats.

Lando hums.

"Did you mean what you said?"

"Hmm?"

"About not asking?"

Lando's breath hitches. "Yeah."

Oscar sighs. "Fine."

"Hmm?"

"I won't ask, but I do have one condition if we're going to do it like this."

"Yeah?"

"I want safewords. Especially if you're going to go into subspace like that, I need safewords."

It's scary, putting a name to it like this, saying it like it is. But Oscar is right here and there isn't any place in the world where Lando would be safer than in his arms. "Okay."

"You know the traffic light system?"

"Yeah, with the colours? Green for good, yellow for slow down or change something and red for stop?”

"Yeah, that's good," Oscar agrees.

"Okay."

"Great, we're good, everything's good," Oscar says, relieved, tension seeping from his shoulders as he is reassured.

With the way the sweat and come is cooling on his skin now as some time has passed, it's becoming rather apparent that this is going to become uncomfortable any minute now.

He must have been shifting in discomfort or something, because Oscar notices immediately and says, "Oh, hey, should I pull out?"

It's only now that Lando realises they'd been having this whole conversation with Oscar's cock still very much inside of him.

He makes a small little whimper. "Mmhm."

Oscar strokes a soothing hand through Lando's hair as he finally pulls out and Jesus that emptiness is hitting Lando today.

"Sorry, sorry," Oscar murmurs in sympathy.

Lando makes another noise. 

"God, I need a shower," Oscar mutters. He pushes himself up a little, presumably to get up and go shower.

Lando is not quite ready to let go of him though. “Wait. Can I…”

“Hmm?”

“Can I come shower with you?” Lando asks, pointedly still holding on to Oscar’s shoulders in hopes of making it clear that he isn’t ready to be let go without having to say that.

Oscar looks at him for a second, like he’s just a little surprised, and for a moment Lando is afraid he’s going to say that that’s weird, but then Oscar just smiles softly and says, “Yeah, of course.”

Lando pushes away any urge to pretend he isn’t needy right now, since Oscar has made it clear that he’s fine with it and says, “Mint. Okay, carry me.”

“Useless is what you are sometimes,” Oscar says, but he’s smiling as he picks Lando up.

Lando breathes a laugh and doesn’t bother arguing, just lets Oscar carry him to the shower, lets him keep a steadying hand on Lando’s hip as he sets him down on weak legs and reaches behind him to turn on the water, keeping Lando tucked into himself even though there’s no want for space for them both to stay out of the initial cold spray.

Had Oscar always done things like this?

Lando doesn’t complain, especially not because Oscar is still holding most of his weight, letting Lando lean on him, keeping him there as he moves them both under the water.

He makes some rude comments about all of Lando’s hair products, but they all fall flat because they’re said in this awfully soft tone still left over from the sex and Oscar’s the one carding all of them through Lando’s curls at Lando’s demand.

It feels too good to come up with any good comebacks as Lando leans on Oscar, arms loosely wrapped around his waist.

God, it's so easy, the banter. It's like muscle memory. Everything about Oscar is muscle memory to the point that Lando hadn't even been paying attention to what they're doing.

Lando doesn't know why he's so wistful when he’s finally forced to get out and towel himself dry, why it's still so hard to let Oscar go even now when his brain is more than back online and he should be back to regular levels of neediness.

They both finish in the bathroom and head out. Lando bites his tongue as Oscar heads into his own room to get dressed.

Because it’s weird.

So he shuts up about it and he gets dressed in his room, puts his curl cream in and pats his hair dry, trying not to think too much as he climbs into his bed and switches the light off.

Surely he’ll be able to sleep now.

It’s nearly midnight and Lando just got well and properly fucked which should make for a great combination to get him to sleep, and yet here he is, tossing and turning, unable to find a comfortable position to sleep in.

And he knows exactly why.

It’s because he’s been sleeping in the same bed with Oscar for nearly a week, coming up with all kinds of excuses to do so and avoiding thinking about why he feels the need to even do that.

He’s not going to try the music again.

Lando groans as he flops over onto his back again, staring at the ceiling.

He’s being ridiculous.

Oscar probably needs his space for once, Lando should just let him have it.

But he can’t fucking sleep and Lando really wants to sleep, he wants to sleep so badly, and he wants to sleep with the comforting weight of Oscar’s arm pulling him into his warm chest, breathing in the scent of Oscar’s freshly washed fucking skin like a maniac.

Well. Oscar had just said he didn’t mind Lando being needy.

So fuck it.

Lando throws off his blanket and silently leaves his room, telling himself that maybe Oscar is already asleep and Lando can do a repeat of last night and just climb into his bed and get out of it again before Oscar wakes up and he never needs to know about it.

But that plan goes flying out the window when he walks straight into a wall of Oscar in the dark corridor.

Lando jumps and bursts out, “Jesus Christ, Oscar, what are you doing?”

“What are you doing?”

Lando can just barely make out his face in the dim light of the moon filtering through the curtains of the windows in their rooms, just barely reaching the corridor through the open doors. “Nothing.”

“Well, I’m not doing anything either.”

“Great.”

“Okay,” Oscar agrees. But Oscar doesn’t move and Lando doesn’t either because he can’t come up with a decent lie for why he’s in the corridor.

Lando sighs and gives in to the urge to toy with the hem of Oscar’s shirt.

“Lando.”

“Oscar.”

“Lando.”

Lando tilts his head up to try and make out the features of Oscar’s face, but it’s hard to see what Oscar is thinking with the dark muddling his expression.

“Would it be weird…” Lando starts. “If I said I’m finding it hard to sleep without you?”

There’s a near silent sound, just a small inhale from Oscar and a few seconds’ silence. Oscar clears his throat. “Can it get weirder than my dick in you?”

Yes.

“No.”

“Then it’s not weird."

It’s so weird.

“Okay, it’s not weird,” Lando breathes.

“Okay.”

“Great.”

“Glad we cleared that up,” Oscar says casually.

“Mmhm,” Lando returns.

They’re still standing in the middle of the hallway and it’s so goddamn weird and Lando is just holding on to that little piece of Oscar, the fabric of his shirt, too afraid to ask for more because Oscar has given him so much today and Lando can’t move.

But then Oscar, because he always knows what Lando needs, just sighs and says, so softly, “Come here.”

And then he’s picking Lando up, gathering him into his warm arms and it’s all Lando can do to hold on to his shoulders and sigh in relief as he carries him back to Oscar’s room.

Lando doesn’t even laugh as Oscar drops him on the mattress and Oscar doesn’t either, because somehow it’s not funny.

It should be funny.

But it’s not funny and light and friendly, the way Oscar crawls in after him and pulls Lando into him, tucking him into the warmth of his chest so that Lando can pillow his head there, legs tangling together as Lando pulls the blanket over them and Oscar turns off the bedside lamp.

Oscar doesn’t say anything.

Lando doesn’t say anything.

Oscar’s heartbeat is a little fast here where Lando can hear it with the way he has his ear pressed over the apex of Oscar’s heart, maybe it’s the exertion of carrying him, maybe it’s just that there’s something strange in the air between them, but it’s a little faster than it should be.

Lando’s not sure when he started knowing how fast Oscar’s heartbeat should be.

It kind of hits him all at once, like a brick to the head, like a picture finally making sense now that he’s looking at it from the right angle, just like this as he’s lying on Oscar’s chest in the dark, listening to his familiar heartbeat.

Lando hasn't been able to let go of this neediness for Oscar and find another relationship because he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to fuck someone else, he doesn't want to sleep in someone else's bed, he doesn't want to learn what someone else's heartbeat sounds like.

Oh, yeah, Lando has well and truly fucked up. He’s an absolute idiot, just like everyone has told him he is.

Because he’s gone and fallen in love with Oscar.

And, fuck, Lando’s down bad.

Chapter Text

When Oscar wakes up Lando is already awake, staring at Oscar as he blinks into consciousness.

Lando’s legs are still intertwined with his, his arm over Oscar’s waist, toying absently with the hem of his shirt, but his eyes are relentlessly focused on Oscar’s face, a little furrow between his brows, like he’s studying him.

Lando’ pretty bad at studying so Oscar is a bit concerned he might be hurting his head.

“Uh, hi,” Oscar says, frowning in confusion.

“Hi.”

“Are you alright, mate?”

Lando takes a second too long to respond, and when he does his voice is a few pitches too high. “Yep.”

Whatever this is, is at least, is a very effective mechanism of distraction from just how much deeper Oscar dug his grave last night, because at least he can compartmentalise that now to freak out about later.

“You’re being weird.”

“I’m not being weird.”

“You’re being so weird.”

“Don’t you have to go obsess over your project?”

Oscar promptly groans and collapses back on top of Lando because why not?

“Yeah,” he mumbles tragically into his neck. “In a minute.”

Lando doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even move for a moment, presumably because he’s not sure how to deal with the palpable aversion to life itself radiating off of Oscar right now, and then he just puts his arms around Oscar and slips a hand into his hair to scratch his scalp.

Oscar sighs in contentment and seriously considers just going back to sleep right here and ignoring all his problems.

Lando is unusually quiet this morning, silent for what’s probably a few minutes as Oscar dozes and procrastinates getting up and leaving this warm cocoon of blankets and Lando, but then he says, and it sounds oddly vulnerable for a second, “Hey, Osc?”

Oscar looks up, frowning, trying to read Lando’s face.

For a moment it looks like he wants to tell him something imortant.

Oscar gets an arrow strike of panic thinking what if he fucked up and they actually didn’t solve this thing last night, but then Lando just clears his throat and says, “You’re still coming home with me for break, right?”

And just like that the strange edge is gone from Lando’s voice and Oscar is left wondering if he’d imagined it.

“Yeah. If you want me to.”

“Yeah. My mum says you have to.” Oscar currently has all his weight on Lando so he can physically feel the way Lando relaxes under him now. He hadn’t quite realised how palpable the tension was.

He’s not sure if there’s something else still bothering Lando, whether that was a brief moment where Lando wanted to tell him something, but he’s distracted as Lando goes on.

“Sav and Oliver will be over as well by the way, so you can meet my nieces. Flo and Cisca as well.”

Oscar has been home with Lando a few times, so he’s met his parents often enough, but never when his siblings were home. Maybe Lando’s just a little nervous about that.

“I have to meet the whole family?”

“Yeah, ‘course. You had to at some point.”

Or maybe Oscar completely imagined that glimpse of vulnerability he thought he saw.

He doesn’t have very long to wonder about it though because all of a sudden his brain record screeching to a stop as he processes the actual conversation.

Because oh god in a few weeks he’s going to meet Lando’s entire family together and he’s going to have to look at his mother with the knowledge that he has been inside the woman’s son.

Shit.

Turns out Oscar and his group aren’t completely stupid or undeserving of an engineering degree or complete failures at life like Oscar’s stress riddled brain had convinced him, because the project presentation is literally just fine.

It’s over so quickly that Oscar really has no idea why everyone was so stressed about it, but that’s always how it goes, the stress building and building and when he gets to the actual thing he's not even stressed at all.

He could have saved himself a good deal of sleep deprivation had he not worried about it so much. This happens with literally every project, but Oscar never learns.

With the weight of all that off his shoulders, Oscar now has all the brain space he needs to properly freak out about everything that happened yesterday.

Because fuck.

It’s weird.

It’s weird how Oscar is so incredibly shit at acting like he isn't absolutely deranged about Lando, it's weird how Lando doesn’t seem to notice, and maybe that’s just because Oscar has always kind of acted like this, always been shit at pretending like he doesn’t just want to take care of Lando and give him whatever his heart desires, but it’s still weird how Lando just lets him, how he’s letting him now more than ever.

It’s weird how Lando keeps letting Oscar carry him around and wash his hair and tuck him into bed with himself and all these things that aren’t really about the sex, but they aren’t quite normal friend things either.

It's weird how Oscar can't sleep without Lando and Lando can't sleep without him either and it's weird how they’re just pretending it isn't weird.

And it’s weird how this was supposed to be just sex, but that argument wasn’t just about the sex, it was about all these little things that are intertwining themselves into the sex thing and god, the fucking sex thing.

The sex thing might be the weirdest thing of all because Jesus fucking Christ.

It’s really fucking weird just how gone Lando is when Oscar fucks him right, and it’s weird how much more of a sensitive topic it was for Lando than Oscar could have ever guessed with how much Lando had been hiding it, how vulnerable that part of him actually is and how he just gave it to Oscar like it wasn’t something fragile.

It’s weird how he just gave Oscar all of it, how he let go of any inhibitions when Oscar told him he’d take care of him, how he just trusts Oscar with this enough to throw all caution to the wind and tell Oscar to not even ask before he takes what he wants.

It’s breaking Oscar’s brain a little, all of it.

Because, god, Oscar could do anything. He could just fuck him whenever he wanted, he could just press him into a wall or a bed or the couch or the kitchen counter any time he feels like it, he could just take anything he wanted and Lando would like it and it’s all spiralling out of hands and Oscar can’t control himself.

And that’s exactly why Oscar didn’t want to start asking for what he wanted, because he’s never going to stop taking and taking and Oscar knows damn well that he wants more than Lando is willing to give and at some point he’s going to hit that dead end and Lando is going to have to break his heart.

It’s just all spiralling out of hand far faster than Oscar can't slow it down, it's all slipping through his fingers too fast to catch.

And Oscar always knew it was probably going to end this way, but that doesn't mean the depth of this grave and that clock ticking down to an inevitably shattered heart doesn’t scare him.

But you know what, fuck it.

If taking what Oscar wants means giving Lando what he wants, then fuck it.

Because it’s already out of hand. It’s been out of hand ever since Oscar decided to be an idiot and agree to this in the first place.

So maybe Oscar will just let it be weird, maybe he’ll just it spiral out of hand.

Maybe he’ll just let himself fuck Lando whenever and wherever he wants.

And maybe he’ll also let himself sleep in the same bed as Lando for as long as he’s allowed and stare at his sleeping face as often as the opportunity presents itself, maybe he’ll just let himself kiss Lando’s forehead and wash his hair for him and thread his fingers through Lando’s, maybe he’ll let himself go home with Lando and meet his family.

Maybe he’ll just let himself be hopelessly and irreversibly in love with Lando and let the chips fall where they may.

Hearts are meant to be broken, and if it was going to break anyway, then Oscar might as well make sure it breaks properly.

So when he comes back to the apartment to find Lando making a mess of something on the kitchen stove, Oscar just stands there and watches him for a moment and thinks god he loves him.

“Oh, hi,” Lando says as he notices Oscar is here and stops poking around in the pot to turn to Oscar, shifting to the side, likely trying to hide whatever mess he’s made behind it. “How’d your presentation go?”

“It was fine. Good.”

“Oh, great,” Lando says, voice a bit thin, ostensibly due to whatever he’s trying to hide.

As Oscar walks to the kitchen he nearly trips over a hoodie thrown on the floor there, right where someone was obviously going to trip over it, and Lando makes a guilty wince.

“Pick this up,” Oscar sighs, out of habit, and the fondness in his voice is so loud.

Lando is going to say something, but today Oscar doesn’t even let Lando get further than opening his mouth to say his usual lie of ‘I will in a minute,’ before he’s simply inserting himself into Lando’s space and pulling him into a kiss by his waist.

Lando makes a high-pitched little squeak that’s honestly painfully cute.

And then it takes all of a moment before he’s melting into Oscar and oh god, this is going to become a thing and it’s going to be terrible and lovely all at once, Oscar just knows.

Lando just makes a small sigh into Oscar’s lips and opens his mouth for Oscar’s tongue to slip inside as he slides his arms around Oscar’s shoulders and a hand into his hair, threading through the strands there just to hold on as he tilts his head just right, like it’s instinct. He’s already getting hard, Oscar can feel it against his hip.

“This okay?” Oscar murmurs, just to be sure.

“Y-yeah,” Lando stutters, and that stutter is more than proof that this is doing something for him, but he’s also tilting his head up again to catch Oscar’s lips and whispering into his mouth, "Green."

Oscar smiles against his lips at that, the easy use of the safeword system.

Things are always so easy with Lando when they just let them be easy.

With that Oscar gives him one last proper kiss before he slips a hand into Lando’s hair and pulls his head to the side to get to his neck.

Lando’s breathing is starting to speed up and his fist is clenching and unclenching in Oscar’s hair as he presses kisses down the line of his neck, tilting his head to the side to give Oscar space to do whatever he wants.

Over Lando’s shoulder Oscar spots the mess he’s made of what was possibly an attempt at Bolognese.

The minced beef is still mostly frozen and it looks like he’s thrown all the other ingredients on top of it all at once and neglected to add any oil or even water.

Oscar is pretty sure Lando’s cooking method is just reading the recipe ingredients, throwing it all in a pot and turning on the stove in hopes that it magically turns into food.

Oscar’s heart makes an enamoured clench in his chest about it.

“Is that supposed to be Bolognese?” Oscar asks breathily in between a kiss to Lando's neck and sucking a hickey there.

“Yeah,” Lando breathes distractedly after a moment, making a little noise as Oscar digs his teeth in just a bit. “Sorry.”

Oscar sucks a bit longer to make sure there will be a mark, in some ridiculous hope that the world will see it and know that Lando doesn’t need anyone else, he’s getting fucked well enough already.

“I’ll fix it after,” Oscar murmurs fondly into his neck as he reaches behind Lando to turn the stove off.

"But I was trying to be—” Lando cuts off for a second to make a breathy noise. “To be helpful and m-make dinner.”

God, he's cute when he stutters like that, all weak and flustered.

“You can help make the spaghetti.”

“But I wanted to make proper dinner so you wouldn’t have to after your thing.”

He’s being all cute and considerate again. God. At least Oscar is already kissing him about it.

“You don’t know how to make proper dinner.”

“Yes, I do, I know how to make lots of things.”

Lando can make a total of approximately three things which are rice, noodles and fried chicken and that being when he doesn’t completely forget he put something on the stove in the first place and sets off the fire alarm again. Oscar is ridiculously endeared by the whole situation every time he does that.

“Not Bolognese.”

“Yes, alright, not Bolognese,” Lando snaps breathily. “Come off it.”

Oscar shuts him up by kissing him again and reaches down to pick him up by the backs of his thighs.

Lando makes a shallow gasp before he hops up to wrap his legs around Oscar’s waist.

He carries him to Lando’s room, because it’s Lando’s turn to have his sheets ruined and even while they were sort of fighting they’d taken to wordlessly switching who’s room they sleep in every night and tonight it’s Oscar’s.

Lando bounces on the bed as Oscar drops him, breathing heavily.

For a second Oscar thinks Lando is looking at him strangely, all wide eyed, like he’s never seen him before.

But the thought goes flying out of his head when Lando just pulls Oscar on top of him and back to his lips.

Oscar straddles his hips and gets comfortable on top of Lando, trying to smooth out the messy kiss into something more tongue and less teeth.

Lando is desperate today, acting like Oscar didn’t just fuck him last night, hands everywhere, tugging at Oscar’s shirt one moment, pulling his hair the next, wrapping a leg around him one moment before he changes his mind, trying to make everything happen faster, which is really just making things happen slower, as usual.

Oscar sighs. “Stop that.”

“Hmm?”

“You’re trying to concentrate and do things. I don’t want you to concentrate, I want you to lie there and look pretty.”

Lando whimpers, stilling for a moment, but his hand is still absently pulling at the hem of Oscar’s shirt. “But—”

“Am I really going to have to argue with you about this every time?” Oscar cuts him off. “Stop moving your hands.”

"Oscar." Lando tugs some more at his shirt. 

“Lando.”

“Oscar.” Lando pulls at his waistband. 

“Lando.”

“Oscar, come on.” Lando pulls at his hair. 

“I should tie you up, you’re a real nuisance with these hands everywhere.”

Lando freezes.

Oscar stops, confused, because telling Lando to stop doing something annoying has never once worked the first time ever since he’s known him. He frowns. “What?”

Lando goes a little red. His breathing turns heavy, he chews on the inside of his cheek, he toys with a piece of Oscar’s shirt at his back, fidgeting with it between his thumb and his forefinger. "Fuck, okay so..."  

“What is it?”

"So don't ask me any fucking questions about it but there's some bondage rope in the box under the bed."

Oscar blinks at him. "You want me to tie you up?"

"Yes, Oscar, now will you shut it?"

Oscar shuts up, leaving Lando panting and squirming on the bed for a moment to fish the box Lando is talking about from under the bed and find the rope.

There isn't just rope in the box.

"I have so many questions."

“No questions,” Lando snaps.

Oscar makes a breathy, disbelieving little, “Uhuh.”

“Oscar, come on, please.”

“Right, yeah, I'm here,” Oscar says as he takes the rope and drops the box back to the floor because there really isn’t time for this conversation right now.

Lando’s squirming has entirely changed now. It’s insane, honestly, how quickly it happened. Instead of trying to move into new positions, trying to do things, all of a sudden he’s just squirming because he’s rock hard in his sweatpants and trying to find friction against Oscar, trying to pull Oscar closer and get Oscar’s hands on him.

Oscar kisses him, just to give him something, or maybe just because he really needs to kiss Lando right now.

He slips one hand under Lando's shirt to stroke his waist, blindly unravelling the rope with the other.

“Okay, baby, give me your hands,” Oscar murmurs then, pulling away to look at him and god, he’s gorgeous.

There’s a flush on his cheeks, his eyes already starting to go hazy as Lando whimpers, and he holds out his hands, wrists up for Oscar to tie them, so obediently it makes Oscar's cock twitch in his pants.

Oscar presses a kiss to the sensitive inside of Lando’s left wrist, just because he’s beyond caring about all the reasons he shouldn’t, and Lando’s breath hitches at the brush of Oscar’s lips before it turns into a quiet whimper as Oscar starts tying his wrists.

He ties them in a quick cuff knot while Lando squirms beneath him, getting nowhere with the way Oscar is straddling his hips.

“Where the fuck’d you learn to do that?” Lando asks breathlessly when he's done, staring incredulously at the way Oscar tied his wrists together, testing the give. There isn’t any.

Instead of admitting that he’d looked it up because he just thought it was neat, like most things really, Oscar simply shrugs and asks, “Can I tie you to the headboard?”

Lando makes a desperate nod. Oscar is just about to ask him for words when he babbles, “Yes, yeah, please, Osc, green.”

Oscar kisses him to distract him a little as he slides his hand up to the knot he’d made to press Lando’s wrists down to the bed by the headboard, and Lando moans into his mouth and arches up into him like his dick isn’t untouched and straining against the confines of his pants and all he’s getting is a tongue in his mouth and Oscar holding him down.

God, he knew it was easy, but Oscar has barely touched him. 

He ties Lando to the headboard with an easy set of knots and Lando's distracted squirming isn't much help, but Oscar manages, securing the last of the knots before he asks, “Good?”

Lando tests the give a little and makes a helpless little noise before he stutters, “Y-Yeah.”

Oscar smiles at that, pleased, before he yanks him down on the bed a little so that there’s more strain in his arms and Lando can’t move them at all.

Lando yelps and stares up at Oscar, panting, not a single thought behind his eyes now.

Oscar grins and pecks him on the lips. Just to check, he says, “You’ll use your safewords if you need to, yeah?”

“Mmhm.”

“Words, please?”

“Yes, yeah, safewords if I need to, I promise,” Lando babbles, eyes fluttering shut, his breath turning faster and heavier.

“Alright, now you’ll stop thinking, yeah?”

Lando makes a breathy little noise and nods, his eyes are already hazy and oh, yes, Lando’s gone.

“Good boy.”

Lando makes a soft little exhale and Oscar swallows it into his mouth.

Lando doesn’t tell him to hurry up again, so Oscar takes his time licking into his mouth, hitching one of Lando’s legs around his hip as he tugs at his bottom lip with his teeth, breathing in the little sounds Lando makes about it.

He trails his hand over Lando’s waist to still him a little, less because the squirming is bothering him than because he knows Lando likes the way he holds him down.

He’d forgotten to take Lando’s shirt off before he tied him up, so he slips his hand under it and absently pushes it up to Lando’s chest.

He leaves off of Lando’s lips to let him breathe for a moment because it seems like he’s forgoing doing so in order to keep Oscar’s tongue in his mouth.

He moves over to press kisses the side of Lando’s jaw, a line of them up to his earlobe and then all the way down his neck, lingering over the fluttering pulse of his carotid.

Lando arches into his palm as he trails his hand up from his hip, over his stomach, up until it’s brushing over his nipple.

“Fuck, Oscar, please,” he breathes as Oscar’s thumb traces the hardening nub of his nipple, startling up into his touch.

“Mm. You like that?”

“Yeah. Yes. Please?”

Oscar presses another kiss to his throat before he moves down to close his lips over Lando’s nipple.

Lando gasps and squirms beneath him, straining uselessly against the rope on his wrists. “Fuck.”

Oscar smiles and scrapes his teeth over the sensitive skin just a little and Lando whimpers and jumps under him. Oscar pushes him back down to the bed by his hip to keep him still and sucks on his nipple a little more, a little harder, until it starts going warm and red, until he’s sure Lando will feel it rubbing against his shirt later.

“Oscar, touch me, please touch me,” Lando begs, squirming under where Oscar is pressing him down to the bed by a hand on his stomach, muscles shifting beneath his palm as he tries to move.

“I am,” Oscar teases, just for the sake of it as he switches to the other nipple, running his tongue over it and relishing in the high-pitched little noise Lando makes.

“I meant touch my cock, Oscar, obviously, you muppet,” Lando moans, pleading.

Oscar breathes a laugh against his skin and Lando startles at the cold breath against his spit slick nipple, hard and sore-looking now that Oscar has finished with this one too, his skin pebbling.

Oscar takes mercy and slips his hand down and into Lando’s sweats to close it over his leaking cock and god, he’s wet.

“Jesus,” Oscar murmurs reverently as Lando whines and tilts his hips up into Oscar’s touch.

“Please, please, please.”

“What do you want, baby?”

“I want you to fuck me, Oscar, please, you know what I want,” Lando babbles, more breath than words between his panting.

Oscar breathes a reverent exhale against his skin before he pulls away to finally get Lando’s sweatpants off. “Yeah, alright, baby, I’m getting there.”

“Get there faster,” Lando breathes, but he dutifully lifts his hips for Lando to get his pants and underwear off.

“Shh,” Oscar just says as he finds the lube and shifts down to slot himself between Lando’s legs, throwing one of them over his shoulder. “Be patient.”

Lando doesn’t argue now, throwing his head back to the pillows. “Oscar, please.”

Oscar hums his agreement into a kiss to the inside of Lando’s thigh.

Lando makes a desperate little sound about it right before it turns into a proper whine when Oscar presses a finger into him.

“More, please, Osc, I want more,” Lando begs and Oscar hasn’t even had one finger in him for a minute.

“Give it a second,” Oscar murmurs into his thigh as he starts moving his finger in and out.

Lando whines and pants above him, the headboard creaking with the tension he’s exerting on it against where he’s tied up.

It’s quite convenient having him tied up like this, actually.

There’s nothing stopping Oscar from taking his time. It’s just so easy to keep Lando where he wants him like this, whether he likes it or not. He seems to like it well enough regardless.

“Oscar, please,” he begs again.

Oscar closes his teeth over Lando’s thigh and sucks a bruise into it as he presses a second finger inside him.

Lando whimpers and strains against the headboard.

Oscar sucks a whole line of bruises down the inside of his thigh as Lando adjusts to two fingers. He mostly avoids Lando’s prostate, but every so often he lets his fingers brush over it and Lando gasps and whines every single time.

Lando seems to have forgotten that he was busy begging, so Oscar goes off the feeling of him to see when he’s ready for a third. He drags it out longer than he needs to, but Lando is seemingly too distracted by Oscar’s bruising teeth to really notice.

He only gasps and keens back into his begging when Oscar presses in three fingers, dripping with lube at this point. “Please, please.”

“Please what?”

“I don’t know, just— More, please, touch me?”

“I can give you my mouth, but you’re not coming before I fuck you.”

Lando’s hips buck and he makes a helpless whimper, but he babbles, “Yes, okay, yes, please, I won’t.”

“I’m not worried you will, because I won’t let you, I’m worried you’ll throw a fit about it,” Oscar clarifies.

“I won’t, I won’t, I promise,” Lando breathes.

He’s probably lying, but Oscar indulges him anyway.

Lando makes a gut punched moan as Oscar takes him into his mouth, slow so that Lando doesn’t get too worked up about it.

“Oscar,” Lando breathes not because he wants to tell him something, just to say it.

Oscar hums around his cock and trails his tongue along the underside just so.

Lando gasps and squirms between his mouth and his fingers, like he’s too confused to know which he wants more. Oscar crooks his fingers down on his prostate just to make sure he stays confused.

And it’s all just the slick sounds of Oscar’s fingers moving inside of Lando now, the wet sounds of the way Oscar takes his cock into his mouth over and over, the breathy gasps and whimpers Lando makes about it all, the rustle of the sheets beneath him as he squirms, and the creak of the wood as Lando pulls on the rope that’s keeping him right where Oscar wants him.

God, Oscar could listen to it forever.

But it’s not long before Lando is more than loose enough and if he doesn’t stop soon, Lando is going to come before Oscar gets his cock inside of him and then when his cock can stand it again Lando will want Oscar to fuck him again, to fuck him properly, and Oscar will never get around to rescuing dinner and they do have to eat.

So Oscar sighs, a tad reluctant, but he pulls off of Lando’s cock.

“No, no, no, come back, Oscar, please,” Lando moans, a writhing mess beneath Oscar, all breath and begging.

Oscar hums. “It’s either my mouth or my cock, you can’t have both, baby, sorry.”

“That’s not fair,” Lando moans, trying to get Oscar’s fingers back on his prostate, but Oscar doesn’t let him.

“You promised you wouldn’t throw a fit,” Oscar reminds him.

“Well, I lied."

Oscar huffs a fond laugh. “Which one do you want, baby?”

“I want your cock, obviously," Lando demands, still uselessly trying to squirm in a way that gets Oscar’s fingers where he wants them, like Oscar doesn’t know how to avoid that by now.

Oscar hums. "That tone isn't particularly incentivising me to give it to you."

"Please?" Lando begs then, instantly changing his tone because getting fucked is infinitely more important to him than standing on principle. "Please fuck me, I'm sorry."

Oscar hums in approval. “Now was that so hard?”

“Yes— No— Oscar,” Lando breathes distractedly.

He yelps as Oscar pulls his fingers before he makes a mournful moan as Oscar finds the lube to slick up his cock, and god he's desperate.

There’s something a little more desperate in his voice now as he begs, “Oscar, please, hurry up.”

“I’m here, baby,” Oscar murmurs as he leans over him to find his lips in a kiss.

Lando moans into his mouth and wraps his legs around Oscar without needing to be prompted, trying to pull him closer. He pants into Oscar’s mouth and murmurs breathily against Oscar’s lips, “Please, Oscar, I need— Need you, please, I just need you.”

God, the things he says sometimes. How is Oscar meant to cope?

“Hey, I’m here, you’ve got me,” he murmurs, reaching down to line himself up where Lando wants him.

“Oscar, please,” Lando begs again. “Please, I need you, inside, please, closer.”

Oscar doesn’t waste another second before he’s pressing inside. “I’m here, I’m here.”

Lando whines and Oscar can see every single outline of the muscles in his arms as he tenses them pulling on the rope as Oscar disappears inside of him and he’s panting into Oscar’s mouth, nothing but breathy little noises escaping his lips now as Oscar comes to a stop all the way inside.

“There you go, baby.”

“Fuck me, Oscar, please,” Lando breathes, desperately.

Oscar is helpless but to give him what he wants, couldn’t deny him the world if he asked for it right now.

“Of course, baby,” he murmurs against Lando’s lips as he moves, drinking in the whimper Lando makes about it. “Anything you want.”

“Just you, just want you,” Lando babbles and he doesn’t even know what he’s saying, god, Oscar is going insane. “Just you, please.”

“I’m here, you’ve got me.”

Lando looks like he’s about to say something, but he changes his mind and swallows it instead.

Oscar brushes a curl away from his forehead, damp with sweat at this point, just to see his face, because, god, he’s beautiful.

Lando looks up at him all dazed, lips parted just so, and Oscar can do nothing but kiss him, barely able to keep the rhythm he’s setting.

At this rate nobody is going to last very long, but they both knew that as soon as Lando mentioned there was rope.

Oscar doesn’t bother trying to make it last, he just focuses on making Lando feel good now, on setting that familiar rhythm that works for both of them, not too slow, not too fast, scraping against Lando’s prostate just the way he likes and cataloguing Lando’s noises, the way he arches up into Oscar and pulls against the rope, the way his legs tighten around Oscar to pull him closer.

He can barely even kiss Lando like this, so it’s more just panting into each other’s mouths, Lando making a punched out kind of sound that Oscar breathes right in as he hits his prostate again and again, Lando’s hands opening and closing around nothing above his head, searching uselessly for something to hold onto.

Oscar slips his fingers through Lando’s to give him his hand.

Lando’s breath hitches to a stop as he gratefully grips Oscar’s hand, like someone is going to take it from him and tilts his head up to Oscar to chase another kiss.

Oscar gives it to him, gives him everything he wants.

“Oscar,” Lando breathes then.

“Yeah, baby?”

“M’gonna come,” he slurs.

“I haven’t even touched your cock, baby, Jesus,” Oscar breathes incredulously, the rhythm of his hips faltering.

“Please?”

“Please what?”

“I don’t know. Just— Please? Make me come, please, I want to come.”

God, he’s sweet when he asks for things all politely, like he doesn’t know Oscar is subject to his every whim, like he doesn’t know Oscar wouldn’t hesitate to jump out of the window for him if he so much as suggested it right now.

“Of course, baby,” Oscar breathes into his mouth, reaching down to close his hand over his dripping cock.

Lando makes a gut punched whine against his lips.

“Go on, baby, come.”

It takes all of two seconds for Lando to comply and come all over Oscar’s hand and his own stomach.

“There you go, good boy,” Oscar murmurs breathlessly against his lip, hips stuttering.

“Oscar, come, I want you to come,” Lando babbles, even as he’s still all tensed up, his orgasm still spilling over his stomach. “Inside, please.”

Oscar groans into his mouth as he finds his lips again, hips hopelessly faltering.

“Oscar, come.’’

Oscar can never deny him anything he wants, so of course he comes, shuddering into Lando’s mouth.

For a moment there’s nothing but the sound of their breathing, everything tight, every muscle flexed.

And then Lando melts into the sheets and Oscar is helpless but to groan and collapse on top of him.

Lando makes an appreciative noise at the weight on top of him, he always likes that.

Landk is absently pulling at the rope still tying him to the headboard, eyes still hazy, dazed like he doesn’t quite understand why he can’t move his arms and wrap them around Oscar’s shoulders as is his wont.

Oscar gives him a gentle kiss, kisses that pretty daze of his that Oscar has been chasing for so long as he reaches up to fix that.

He probably shouldn’t. They don’t kiss after sex, but he does it anyway, because he’s stupid like that, and hadn’t he decided screw it anyway?

He doesn’t break that kiss as he releases the knots from the headboard, only pulls away to look at what he’s doing as he gently undoes the ties around his wrist and chucks the rope is off to the side in a tangle.

He checks Lando’s wrists and softly rubs the redness Lando had caused with his pulling despite the quality of the rope that’s supposed to minimise it, pressing a kiss to the vein just under his palm there.

Lando makes a dazed sigh before he wraps his arms around Oscar’s shoulders and nudges Oscar’s head down to bury in his neck where he always puts it afterwards.

Oscar goes, getting comfortable in Lando’s arms, on top of him, the sweat and come slowly cooling between them.

Lando buries a hand in Oscar’s hair to stroke through it as he lies there, his breathing slow and even. Oscar doesn’t complain, he just half dozes on top of Lando, his breathing slowing to match Lando’s.

Lando seems content enough to stay in his spacey mood for a good while longer than he ever has before, and it’s a crying shame they hadn’t been doing it like this the whole time if he’s going to be like this every time.

It’s a good twenty minutes of Lando’s slow, syrupy, liquid movements as he strokes Oscar’s hair.

Oscar shifts on top of him, shifting so that his cheek is pressed to Lando’s pectoral now. He spots the rope still lying in a tangle next to Lando on the bed.He reaches out to lazily toy with the tangle of it.

“You really like this, yeah?”

“Mm.” Lando nods dazedly above him, Oscar can’t see it so much as feel it above him.

“And all of these?” Oscar slides an idle finger along the corner of the box where he can reach it with the way his arm is hanging off the bed.

“Yeah.”

“We could have used these before. Why didn’t you tell me?”

"I don't know. " Lando shrugs and the movement is still mostly liquid. "Didn’t want to weird you out, I guess." His voice is still a little weak, but it’s not as slurred as it was now.

Oscar hums and leaves the rope and the box to stroke his lazy fingers over Lando’s cooling skin there where his ribs turn to waist instead.

Lando makes a content sigh and buries his hand deeper in Oscar’s hair.

“Why’d you tell me now?”

“Just… Trust you.”

Oscar’s breath hitches. He lifts his head to look at Lando. There’s an odd expression on his face. Oscar can’t quite place it, which is weird, because he thought he knew all of Lando’s expressions.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Lando breathes, his face relaxing, that strange expression gone. “’Course I trust you.”

It’s something fragile, that trust, something so very delicate that Lando is just casually placing in Oscar’s hands, believing he won’t break it.

Oscar suddenly feels the need to wrap it in ten layers of bubble wrap to keep it safe because he won’t— He can’t break Lando’s trust.

Lando doesn’t seem even remotely aware of the emotion roiling inside Oscar’s chest about that because he just pushes Oscar down, maneuvering them into what is essentially a switch in positions as he makes himself comfortable on top of Oscar now.

“Hey, Osc?” Lando says after a minute, looking up at him, looking like he wants to tell him something.

“Yeah?"

Lando looks a moment too long.

But then he just says, “I’m hungry. Come fix the Bolognese?”

And, oh, does it become a thing.

When Lando said he didn’t need to ask, apparently he meant that.

Because Lando goes down so fucking fast when he’s cuddled up in Oscar’s arms to watch Law and Order on a Friday night and Oscar doesn't ask before he sneaks a hand under the hoodie Lando stole from Oscar despite the perfectly good one he's left on the floor again, hand splaying over his stomach to yank him closer and he can feel the way Lando's breath speeds up so fast as he melts into Oscar and bares his neck for Oscar's teeth.

He gives into it so easily as Oscar's hand moves up to find his nipple while the other finds the remote to press mute that it's nothing but 'please's as Oscar presses him face down into the pillows while he opens him up too fast and fucks him too slow with the muted scenes of the tv casting flickering lights and shadows over miles of Lando's bare skin gathering sweat as he squirms beneath Oscar and begs, “Please, please, please.”

So Oscar doesn’t ask before he kisses that sleepy blink of Lando’s as he wakes up in Oscar's arms in the morning, and turns out that dreamy expression stays on his face all the while Oscar presses a line of open mouthed kisses all the way down to his navel, pressing two fingers inside where he's still loose from the previous night as he takes Lando's cock into his mouth.

That dreamy look stays long after he comes too, stays there as Lando pushes Oscar to the bed to get Oscar's cock in his mouth and he barely even bothers attempting to control the movements himself before he lets Oscar take over and move him where he wants him.

Oscar doesn’t ask before he pulls Lando away from the perfectly good dinner he keeps on fucking up trying to help, pulls him away by his hair and bends him over the kitchen table, fucks him so hard his hips bruise against the counter, but he just begs for more of it as his nails try and fail to find scraping purchase on the counter, leaves him fucked out and panting afterwards, barely more than a puddle on the kitchen counter, come dripping down the inside of his thigh while Oscar rescues dinner, absently stroking his back every so often so as not to leave him with nothing as he flits around the kitchen fixing things while Lando slowly gathers himself, conveniently in Oscar's space where he wants him, but out of his way with the way he's functionally incapacitated for a good twenty minutes.

When Lando is back in the land of the living he complains about the 'manipulation' for all of two minutes before Oscar makes him try the sauce he'd ruined with all the wrong spices and he spits it out immediately and wisely shuts up as he gets some from the new pot Oscar had made.

Oscar doesn’t ask before he finds Lando in the shower and doesn't even let Lando get out a squeak before he's picking him up to pin him to the shower wall.

He complains about the cold on his back for all of two seconds before he forgets all about it in favour of chasing Oscar's tongue and begging for his hand on his cock, please.

Oscar doesn’t ask when he catches Lando struggling to reach something up in the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet, pajama pants riding low on his hips while his shirt is slipping up and Oscar just slides his hands onto his hips there where there's a torturous strip of skin exposed between the hem of his shirt and the waistband of his pajamas and Lando gasps as he's pulled back onto the hardness he's causing Oscar.

In the process he accidentally knocks a packet of flour off of the cabinet shelf and it spills all over the counter and ends up leaving such gorgeous imprints of where Oscar had pressed Lando down onto the table, lines dragged through the powdery white where Lando's fingers tried and failed to find grip on the counter.

It's almost a shame to clean it up after, as much as it is to brush the thin white layer of flour from the side of Lando's face where his cheek had been pressed into it, to thumb the pretty white particles off his lashes before it gets into his eye and kiss the last of it off the corner of his lips.

Oscar doesn’t ask when he’d put on Lando's gaming livestream for background noise as he studied, even though he can mostly hear him through the wall, and Oscar doesn't make it forty minutes of looking at him being all pretty before he barges into Lando's room without knocking and keeps just mostly out of the camera frame as he drags Lando away from his setup, spinning chair and all, and he needs nothing more than "green" to pick him up and carry him to Oscar's room.

He fucks him over the scribbled practice papers while his laptop is still open on Lando's stream next to him, so they can both see the chat rolling with questions about who the fuck that was and where Lando just went.

Afterwards, Lando goes back on his stream all loose and sated, in Oscar's hoodie instead of his own and between the loose fit of that stolen hoodie, the languid movements of his limbs as he loses at whatever game he was playing, and the absolute mess that is his hair the chat is going absolutely wild and Oscar can't help but smile as he glances over at it every so often between flipping pages of his textbook.

Oscar doesn’t ask before he drags Lando into the gym bathrooms again and gives him a rushed, desperate kind of hand job, because he'd just looked so fucking pretty all sweaty and tired after Oscar had forced him to do a leg workout with him and Lando had retaliated by dragging Oscar to the stairmasters with him, not thinking of how much harder it is to climb stairs after a leg workout and, god, the way the sweat had been dripping off his parted lips while he made those tortured faces as his legs started shaking were just too hard to resist.

Afterwards, Lando's legs are completely useless, so he makes Oscar carry him to the car and Oscar doesn't even pretend to mind.

Oscar doesn't ask before he dips his hand under Lando's pajama pants in the evening and slips one lubed up finger right inside, letting him squirm in Oscar's arms and cling to him as one becomes two and beg, “Please, please,” as two becomes three until Oscar finally slips a thigh between Lando's for him to grind on and he comes panting into Oscar's mouth, and Oscar can see that dazed expression of his even just by moonlight filtering through the curtains.

He doesn't stop begging once he's come, keeps on begging until Oscar gives him his cock and fills him up slow, and then he's reduced to just making those cut off little gasps, punched out sounding whimpers, always like it's the first time again, keeps making those beautiful little noises while he scrabbles for grip on the sheets as Oscar fucks him, slowly, until he's drooling onto the mattress, so gone even Oscar's name comes out slurred.

And after he’s got permission, he doesn’t even need to ask before he makes use of anything he feels like in that box under Lando’s bed, because, god, those things make it so easy sometimes, sometimes he barely even has to touch him, practically just has to hold him down as Lando squirms himself to an orgasm on a vibrator.

So he doesn’t ask before he finds Lando on his bed in the afternoon after an exam, scrolling through his phone, and climbs right on top of him and doesn’t even let him get a word out before he pulls Lando underneath him and into a kiss, distracting him with his lips as he reaches down to where that rope is still peeking out from the corner of the box and pulls it out as he murmurs, “Give me your hands.”

And Lando loves that rope, he loves his hands tied to the headboard, or behind his back, loves the rope wrapped all the way up to his elbows so he can't move his wrists an inch, loves the way Oscar uses his tied wrists to move him and keep him where he wants him, always holds out his hands so prettily for Oscar to put the rope on him, and Lando’s already gone before Oscar has even finished telling him to give him his hands.

Oscar doesn’t ask when Lando can’t shut up and let Oscar focus until Oscar bends him over the desk and puts a plug in him, and all of a sudden he’s very quiet as he stays curled up in Oscar's lap for a good three hours while Oscar studies and waits patiently for him to put his pen down before he moves to straddle Oscar's lap and asks so politely for Oscar to please take it out and replace it with his cock.

Oscar doesn't ask when Lando makes a nuisance of himself being horny in the middle of the damn day while Oscar is supposed to be studying, doesn't ask before he just bends him over his desk and presses a bullet vibe inside of him before he pulls his pants back up and tells him to be quiet and not to touch himself as he squirms on it in Oscar's bed behind him.

It's not particularly conducive to studying because Lando doesn't even know how very much not quiet he is, but he’s trying so hard so Oscar says nothing and does his best to cover a few pages in the thirty minutes it keeps Lando entertained before he gives up and just begs and Oscar has to take mercy on him before he starts crying, because if he does start crying Oscar is never going to get back to his books.

Because Lando doesn't know how ridiculously arousing those pretty tears of his are when he's worked up enough to cry and Oscar would never know the end of it because Lando knows how to cry on command if he really wants to and he would have absolutely no qualms using that talent against Oscar.

Oscar doesn’t ask when he’s so sick of his books he’s considering setting them all on fire, but settles for just shutting his textbook a little too aggressively before he finds Lando watching a show in the living room and doesn’t ask before he grabs him and picks him up to carry him off to his bedroom.

Oscar ends up forgetting all about his exams for a good two hours when he has Lando tied up and blindfolded and so, so sensitive like this, to every brush of Oscar’s lips and every touch of the barest fingertip and he barely even needs to touch his cock before Lando finally comes and that dazed, trusting blink of his when Oscar takes the ropes and blindfold off for him makes Oscar’s heart flip in his chest.

Oscar doesn’t ask in the morning when Lando just can't sit down and study for his exam, he just pulls his clothes off and fucks him face down on the bed, hard and fast, more efficiency than anything else and shoves a plug inside of him before any of the come can leak out and drip down his thigh, which is a shame really, because it's always so fucking pretty to see.

And Lando is so good and quiet and studious on the bed behind Oscar after that, going through his work for a record time of three hours now that he isn’t getting distracted every two minutes, incentivised to stay focused by Oscar's promise to fuck him good and properly if he finishes the section of work.

And Lando does, of course he does, because he's so, so good for Oscar, and when he’s done he climbs into Oscar's lap and says please so fucking sweetly before Oscar removes the plug for him and lets him ride him in the desk chair until his thighs are shaking and he can't move anymore and all he can do is let Oscar move his hips for him until he's satisfied enough to let Lando come.

He doesn't move off of Oscar's cock for another good hour before he gets hungry and makes Oscar carry him to the shower to get clean before they make dinner and watch an episode of Law and Order and then it's back to the books.

That’s not to say Lando doesn’t still initiate things the other half of the time.

Oscar doesn’t even remember the last time they fucked less than twice a day, because when it isn’t Oscar finding Lando for sex then it’s Lando finding him in the kitchen and hopping onto the counter looking all pretty as he asks Oscar to fuck him please.

He makes a nuisance of himself in the library with whispered pleas for Oscar to just get a hand job between the bookshelves in the back, just quickly, because everyone does it, and Oscar is so close to giving in, but he just manages to resist and drag him into an empty lecture hall instead and suck him off against the door of it in case anyone else has the same idea at eight o'clock on a Tuesday night, thanking god for the copious sexcapades Lando has gotten up to in his past because he knows exactly which lecture halls have cameras and which don't.

He tells Lando he's a slut for that anyway, just for the sake of the old bit, and Lando just laughs and tells him he'd better be grateful he is. Oscar is really grateful he is.

He's been coming home from a day out filming with Quadrant or a modelling shoot or a yoga class or an exam, all energy, practically vibrating, and then all he does is he comes and finds Oscar and tugs at his waistband and says, “Please?” And of course Oscar lets him have it, lets him suck him off on the couch or his bed or his desk chair and marvels at the way Lando just relaxes and all that vibrating energy just drains out of him.

He’s stopped worrying about Oscar being busy studying because if Oscar can’t take a proper break, Lando will just suck him off under the desk while he studies, slow, all spit, with less of an intent to make Oscar come than to just have him in his mouth, so sometimes he’s there for up to an hour and the only thing that allows Oscar to actually sort of focus on his work when he does that is the frequency with which it happens forcing him to learn to do so.

Otherwise he just climbs into Oscar’s lap for Oscar to put his cock inside him, doesn't even need Oscar to move, just to keep his cock there as he stays in his lap while Oscar studies, or tries and fails to study, Lando half wrapped up in a blanket against the chill on his bare skin, but it does nothing to hide how hard he gets about it, not when Oscar can feel how wet he is against his abdomen.

And he keeps asking for Oscar to put a hand on his neck, right over his throat like that isn't the single most vulnerable part of him, he just keeps tilting his chin up for it and asking for Oscar's hand there so fucking sweetly and his eyes shouldn't be able to get any more cloudy at some point, but somehow, every time Oscar puts a hand on his neck, they always do.

And it’s just like Oscar predicted, they’re fucking all the goddamn time.

At some point he thinks it should be enough, but he just never gets tired of Lando and Lando is never satisfied either so they’re just fucking again and again and again. It can’t be healthy, Oscar must be insane, but at least Lando is insane with him.

There's lube in every corner of the house for easy access at this point, half-full bottles in the shower, between the couch pillows, in the cutlery drawer, under the coffee table, in Oscar’s desk drawer, under his pillow, chucked haphazardly in Lando’s blankets and poking Oscar in the side when they’re trying to sleep. Oscar even found one in the fridge the other day.

And it's all green, green, green.

Oscar barely has to ask, Lando throws the safeword around like confetti, and green is Oscar’s new favourite colour, he loves that colour, he’s started getting a Pavlovian reaction every time he so much as sees it.

Lando hardly ever uses yellow to stop something, mainly just to get Oscar to touch him or hold him or turn him over, and as much as Oscar gets the fright of his life the one or two times Lando says red, he's so endlessly comforted by the fact that Lando does use it when he needs to, that he trusts Oscar enough to do so.

And god, Oscar is fucked.

He’s so, so fucked, because all that’s going through his head is exams and the rest of the time it’s just Lando.

Lando, Lando, Lando.

Oscar doesn’t think about eating, sleeping showering, all those things he just does by rote because all that brain space is just taken up by Lando.

He’s driving Oscar absolutely insane now, because he hasn’t just lost his compunctions about being needy during sex, he’s stopped trying not to be needy altogether now and he’s just in Oscar’s space all the time.

He’d spent the entire last week of project presentations sneaking into Oscar’s lecture hall with him to watch the last of the presentations, claiming he was just there to see if anything exploded, but actually he was there to tuck himself into Oscar’s side and draw little doodles in the margins of the textbook Oscar was using to study under the table, and the professor so very much did not care that he never got into trouble for being there.

He’s always in his bed behind him while Oscar studies now, or tagging along to the library or making Oscar come to the grocery store with him and he barely even protests being dragged to the gym, because he doesn't like when Oscar suggest that he’ll just go alone, because he doesn’t want to be left alone at home, out of Oscar’s space.

And Oscar doesn’t want him out of his space, he wants him glued to his side forever, to a degree that can’t even be healthy.

Lando is doing it again right now, being needy in this way that’s not about sex, but that’s also not something he ever did before the sex either.

It’s weird and awful and torturous and Oscar loves it so much it’s driving him insane.

“This can’t be fair, there can’t be so many,” Lando groans.

Sometimes Oscar feels like his exams are more of an inconvenience to Lando than they are to him, because he’s always grumbling or making a face about Oscar having to study when he could be busy fucking Lando instead if it weren’t for the want of a future career.

“It’s literally just one more.”

“You’ve already written like fifty exams,” Lando complains as he flops down onto Oscar’s bed and promptly messes up all the work Oscar did to make it up this morning as he squirms around to make himself comfortable, kicking away the half packed duffle bag that had been lying on there into a corner, probably messing up everything inside there too so that Oscar will have to repack it.

“It was only twelve papers,” Oscar corrects. “If you’re bored you could go pack your things.”

They’re only leaving for Lando's house the day after tomorrow, but Lando always leaves these things for the last minute so an attempt to change that can’t exactly hurt.

Lando groans and flops over onto his stomach. “I’m not bored. I’ll do it in the morning when you’re writing.”

“Mmhm,” Oscar says absently as he scribbles a practice sum, because Lando is lying, but Oscar can’t be bothered to call him out right now.

“Oscar,” Lando says from the bed, batting at the back of Oscar’s chair with his foot which means he wants attention.

“If you need to suck my dick you can,” Oscar just tells him.

Lando huffs. “I don’t want to suck your dick.”

“Okay. Do you want me to take a break?”

“No, Oscar, it’s eng math, I'm letting you study.”

Oscar puts the pencil down and spins the chair around to look at Lando pouting at him from the bed. “I can take a few minutes if you want attention.”

Lando flops onto his back and huffs again. “I don’t want attention, I want…” And then he just looks at Oscar a moment before he simply tugs Oscar’s chair closer to him with his foot and then he climbs off the bed and right into Oscar’s lap.

Oscar should be able to handle this.

He’s had Lando in his lap while he’s studying tens of times for sex reasons, but somehow he can’t handle this at all.

He should be used to these kinds of things, but every time he thinks maybe he’s sort of gotten used to one thing, Lando goes and does something even worse.

“You don’t need to pay attention to me, I just want to be here.” Lando says, looking down at Oscar now where he’s sat perched on his lap, knees on either side of Oscar’s hips.

Oscar kind of wants to laugh, scream and cry all at the same time. He settles for just saying, “Yeah, ‘course.”

Lando’s whole body seems to loosen at that and he just gets comfortable there as Oscar rolls the chair back to his work, wrapping his arms around Oscar’s middle and tucking his head into the crook of Oscar’s neck.

Lando makes a contented sigh.

Oscar swallows down a tortured groan and instead just tugs Lando a little closer with an arm around his back and breathes in the scent of his hair.

Lando stays there for what simultaneously feels like forever and also no time at all.

His breathing goes soft and even, and he doesn’t move save for shuffling around every ten or twenty minutes to get comfortable again.

Oscar has most of his attention on his work, but he can’t quite ignore the feeling of Lando melting into him, the smell of Lando’s hair, the sound of the soft breaths Lando is making into his neck and the way that it’s different than how they sleep together, the way that Lando is conscious and Oscar is conscious and nobody is saying anything and it doesn’t quite feel like the normal cuddling, it feels weird.

It's different to the way they cuddle for movie nights too because there’s no show Lando is focusing on, nothing he’s focusing on other than this.

It’s something about the way Lando is here for no other reason than to be here.

Oscar practices his sums for a good hour or so before he feels like he needs a break, but he doesn’t move Lando, he doesn't want to move Lando. Instead, he just puts his pencil down and wraps his arms around Lando and for what could be a minute or an hour and they just stay like that.

Oscar doesn’t say anything and neither does Lando.

He’s completely incapable of noting the passage of time now, so he has no idea how much of it has passed before Lando finally pulls his face out of the crook of his neck to look at Oscar.

“Hey, Osc?”

“Yeah?”

Lando gets that look on his face, like he wants to tell Oscar something important.

Oscar is about to ask if he’s okay, but then Lando just says, “One episode of Law and Order?”

And Oscar just sighs, “Yeah.”

With Oscar’s last exam finally done, Lando seems happier about it than anybody else and instead of packing his bags for tomorrow like he's supposed to, he promptly calls for an end of semester celebration movie night, which seems to involve just about everybody they’ve ever met.

Oscar doesn’t need to do much except find and hide all the lube bottles scattered around the house which end up totalling a concerning number of fourteen.

Lando does the rest, because he decides Oscar isn’t allowed to be helpful because he’s just supposed to be relaxing after all his exams. It's ridiculously sweet of him.

Oscar doesn’t really understand how on such short notice Lando has managed to get Max Fewtrell, Max Verstappen, Charles, Daniel, Carlos, Logan, Rob, Arthur, Alex and George all into their apartment to watch Grown Ups of all things. Lando barely even knows Rob, Arthur and Logan, but he’s managed to get them all here for Oscar without Oscar’s help in a show of thoughtfulness that’s genuinely hurting Oscar's chest because god, he's so in love with Lando sometimes.

But Oscar doesn’t really get a chance to mope about that because Lando is currently standing in the middle of the living room arguing with Carlos about whether they should watch the first Grown Ups movie or the third one.

Max Fewtrell is the first to sigh and escape to the kitchen to find himself a snack, because he knows Lando well enough to know that this is going to take a minute, and is promptly followed, in that order, by Daniel, George, Alex, Logan, Rob and Arthur until it’s just Oscar trapped between Max and Charles as they look on to the argument.

He’s not sure exactly why he’s trapped between Max and Charles, but the gist of it, he thinks, is that Charles had ignored one too many ‘fuck off, Charles’s as he clung on to Max and kissed his cheek and called him mon sucre and is now banished to the other side of the couch with Oscar between them as punishment for his crimes.

Lando is busy making all kinds of hand gestures to illustrate the point he’s failing to make and Oscar is kind of waiting for the remote which he’s still holding onto and using to point at an imaginary something, to go flying out of his hand and break something any minute now.

Oscar just looks at him, tormented by lovesickness, thinking of how tomorrow he’s going to go home with him and meet the whole family, thinking of how he’s bringing Oscar home with him and how it’s not like that, but it’s so, so close to being like that and he wishes he could spend Easters and Christmases taking turns of who’s family they go to for the holidays and wishing he could watch Lando argue about which movie to watch a thousand more times, in their living room back in Australia and Lando’s living room back at his house, in the house they’d buy when they both have their degrees and stable jobs.

He sighs, staring at Lando, tortured, enamoured.

Charles leans over slowly, quite comically, and clears his throat before he whispers, “I’m just checking, but are you aware that every time you look at him your eyes make little heart shapes?”

He makes a heart shape with his fingers to illustrate his point, like Oscar needed the clarification.

Max leans over from his other side. “Yeah, he’s not joking, it’s like your eyes literally turn into hearts, it’s a bit embarrassing, mate, like seriously, are you aware?”

Oscar just makes a miserable groan and sinks into the seat between them. “I’m aware.”

“Oh, okay good,” Charles says, sitting back. “Do something about that.”

“Kiss him, maybe,” Max adds unhelpfully.

Oscar sighs, because believe it or not, he's actually tried that one.

It takes a good thirty minutes until they settle on the first Grown Ups, which Lando and Carlos had somehow both wanted to watch to begin with anyway, so Oscar's not sure how they managed to spend thirty minutes arguing.

Lando accidentally threw the remote when he was gesturing to hard a while ago and lost a battery when it flew open on the floor, so he’s now fiddling with the buttons on the side of the TV to get things started while everyone else gets comfortable on the couch or the floor where they’d made a nest of blankets and pillows, snacks and drinks scattered randomly between everyone.

Lando finally finishes with the fiddling and makes a triumphant 'aha' as the movie starts playing.

He turns.

There’s an open space for him on the blanket on the floor next to Max Fewtrell, right next to where Oscar has his legs crossed to the left of where Max is leaning back against the couch, but that doesn’t quite feel right.

He can tell Lando feels weird about it too, because for a moment he freezes and eyes Oscar’s lap.

But that’s even weirder.

The thing is just that it shouldn’t be weird.

Because they cuddle all the time, and they always have. It’s not like everybody in this room doesn’t know what Oscar and Lando are like. Nobody would bat an eye.

But it is weird.

And there’s something so, so weird in the way that they won’t talk about how it’s weird, how Oscar knows that Lando knows it and Lando knows that Oscar knows it too, but they won't talk about it. Because that would be weird.

Maybe Oscar is imagining it, but it feels like it has something to do with the way they keep going to sleep together in a way that's not quite normal, but they both pretend it is.

Something to do with the way they've been gravitationally pulled to orbit closer around each other these past weeks than they ever have before, in a way that's not quite normal, but they both pretend it is.

Something about the way that Lando keeps looking at Oscar so weirdly, in a way that's not quite normal, but they both pretend it is.

So Lando looks away now and just comes to sit down next to Max, shoulder pressed to Oscar’s knee there in an oddly discrete way, because they're not supposed to be doing this.

He catches suspicious looks at the two of them from Logan, Carlos and Max Fewtrell, all of which go pointedly ignored.

Lando stays like that all throughout the movie, not moving. He doesn’t even poke and bother Max Fewtrell next to him for conversation, he just leans into Oscar in the dark, pillowing his head on Oscar’s thigh.

Oscar doesn’t move much either, just slips his hand, ever so discretely into Lando’s curls, breath hitching at the way Lando turns his head into the touch just a little.

Max Verstappen, who had given in to Charles’ badgering and switched seats with Oscar, watches that exchange with a raised eyebrow where he’s leaning his head on Charles’ shoulder.

Oscar is so fucked if even Max Verstappen is picking up on whatever weirdness is in the air between them.

Later, when everyone is gone, Lando doesn’t hesitate to follow Oscar into his room and crawl right into his arms without asking or being asked.

And Oscar desperately wants to ask, ‘What was that? Why couldn’t you sit on my lap in front of everyone like you always do? Why was it weird? You promised it wouldn't be weird. Why is it so goddamn weird now?’

But instead he just says, “You haven’t packed your bags, have you?"

It’s this old familiar pattern of talk, so much easier than saying what Oscar really wants to say.

Lando says, lying, “I’ll wake up early and pack them tomorrow.”

Oscar answers, also lying, “You’d better, because I’m not waking up early and helping you.”

“It's like you don’t even love me.”

“Of course I don’t.”

Nowadays Oscar is lying to Lando more than he ever has before, and somehow he’s more shit at in than he’s ever been.

“Hey, Osc?” Lando says then.

Oscar can’t even see his face in the darkness, so it’s strange to note that Lando has said ‘Hey, Osc?’ in such a specific tone of voice so many times these past weeks that Oscar instinctively knows he’s got that look on his face that’s been bothering Oscar.

“Yeah?”

That look like he wants to tell Oscar something really important.

“I love you.”

Oscar's breath hitches.

There’s something about the way Lando says it that breeds wishful thinking, that just fosters Oscar’s imagination, because for a second it sounds like he means it like that.

And god, that hurts.

Oscar should be used to this, after years of hearing those words, of saying them back. It shouldn’t hurt this much when Oscar knows he’s on the path to heartbreak and that he’d signed up for it all the way back when he’d decided to be stupid and fuck Lando on a random Tuesday evening.

But it does hurt.

It hurts so damn much, because Lando is just unwittingly chipping away pieces of the thin strings that are holding Oscar’s heart together every time he says something so cruel it stabs and twists in Oscar’s chest like a knife.

Something cruel like ‘You’d make a really good husband’, like ‘You’re just Oscar’. Like ‘I love you’.

“I love you too.”

Chapter Text

Is it casual now?

Is it casual if Oscar keeps fucking him like this, if he keeps asking Lando for a colour to check if he's okay, if he keeps switching between that sharp control that Lando so loves and that gentle care and attention that Lando so craves?

Is it casual if he keeps talking to Lando so, so softly, if he keeps saying his name like that, if he keeps saying baby and sweetheart like that, if he keeps letting Lando attach himself to his side twenty-four seven, if he keeps slipping his hand into Lando's like that when he needs something to hold onto, if he keeps putting a hand on Lando’s throat like that, right at the most vulnerable part of him, is it casual if Lando keeps asking him to?

Is it casual if Oscar is giving him everything he wants and needs, like he always has, if he’s never once treated Lando any different than before, but all of a sudden Lando can’t stop wishing it was something it isn’t, if he can’t quite stop seeing all the ways in which Oscar is perfect except for the way he isn’t in love with Lando?

Is it casual if he's coming home with Lando, is it casual if it feels different to all the previous times he's come home with Lando, is it casual if Lando is wondering whether his sisters will like him and his brother will approve?

Is it casual if Lando is in love with him?

And all Lando can do is keep doing this, because he’s not sure what he’s going to do when this ends, because it has to end at some point, doesn’t it?

It has to end at some point, but Lando can’t stop digging this grave, can’t stop letting it happen, this disaster of a subspace situation, because Oscar is willing to give him everything he needs and Lando just can’t stop putting himself into a position to need him.

So he just keeps doing this, keeps letting go for Oscar to take care of him and give him everything he wants and needs, everything except that one little thing he isn’t going to give Lando, that one little thing which is everything.

Because yes, Lando is in love with Oscar and yes, at some point this is going to end and Lando’s heart is going to break, but somehow all that still manages to coexist with the fact that Oscar is still his best friend and currently forcing Lando to operate a vehicle with absolutely no healthy respect for his own life.

“I don’t see why I’m being forced to drive,” Lando complains for the fifth time at least, high pitched and terrified.

“Partly because you owe me for packing most of your bags for you this morning,” Oscar says, far too calm for this kind of situation. “But mostly because you need to practice.

“Not on the highway.”

“You’re doing great, Lando, just stop thinking about it so much.”

“I can’t stop thinking, how am I meant to turn my thoughts off Oscar? I’m going to crash.”

“You’re not going to crash.”

“And I’m going to kill us.”

“You’re not going to kill us.”

"We are going to die."

“You’re going fifty kilometres per hour. Forty, actually.”

“Oscar, please, I’m going to cry.”

“Jesus, no you aren’t, you’re manipulating me.”

“Is it working?”

Oscar sighs. “Of course it is. Pull into the petrol station there’s an exit to it in two kilometres.”

That’s probably for the best, because Lando wouldn’t be able to see properly if he tried getting out of this by crying about it and then he might actually crash and kill them and that would be quite unfortunate.

“Okay,” Lando squeaks and finds the exit. “Are you going to drive?”

“No,” Oscar just says as Lando drives into the station.

“So why am I doing this then?” Lando moans as he parks the car horribly skew and shuts it off. “This just means I’m going to have to start the car again, you know I’m bad at stops and starts! So not only am I going to kill us and several other people on the highway, but I’m also going to stall the car seven times and embarrass us both before we get there. At least then I’ll want to be dead.”

“You’re really overthinking,” Oscar just groans as he gets out of the car.

Lando follows. “I think I’m thinking a completely normal amount.”

“You’ve never thought a normal amount in your life, so you wouldn’t know.” Oscar heads off to the building as Lando jogs to catch up to him after locking the car.

“Where are we going?” The automatic doors woosh open to let them both into the store.

“The bathroom,” Oscar replies as he weaves through the aisles to find the bathrooms in the back.

“Why are we in the bathroom?” Lando asks as he follows Oscar into the bathroom.

“Because you need to stop thinking,” Oscar says finally, and before Lando can even say anything Oscar is pulling him into a stall by the front of his shirt, pressing him into the wall and kissing all the thoughts out of his head while he smoothly locks the door with the hand that isn’t currently pressing Lando to the wall by his sternum.

Lando makes a high pitched little whimpering noise into Oscar’s mouth, because Jesus fucking Christ.

He should be used to the way Oscar always just goes for it nowadays, but it still makes his head start spinning so fucking fast.

“Quiet,” Oscar murmurs against his lips as he slips one hand beneath Lando’s hoodie and up to toy with one of Lando’s nipples which does absolutely nothing to help Lando shut up in the slightest.

“Fuck, Oscar, please, green,” he says before Oscar can even ask.

“Lando, quiet.”

“I can’t be quiet, are you joking?”

“Yes, yes, I’m going to help you. On your knees.”

Lando makes a weak whimper as he falls to his knees because Jesus fucking Christ and all this in a highway goddamn petrol station.

“Still green?”

“Mmhm,” Lando chokes out weakly because Jesus Christ, he’s going to get whiplash from how fast Oscar switches from being sweet and encouraging about the driving to ordering Lando to get on his knees. “Very green.”

Lando remembers a time when he sort of cared about his dignity and didn’t permanently get reduced to stuttering, choking and whimpering during sex. He doesn’t really miss it, but he just likes to remember that he used to be capable of such things once.

Lando immediately tries to go for the button of his jeans, but Oscar bats his hands away. “Hey, no, hands to yourself.”

Lando whimpers as he drops his hands, letting Oscar undo his jeans and get his cock out himself.

Lando is already rock hard in his own pants, straining against the seam. He reaches down to adjust himself, to find any kind of relief, but Oscar grabs his chin to make him look up at him and says, “Did I say you could touch yourself?”

“N-No, m’sorry.”

“Good. No touching, you’ll come when I say you can.”

“Fuck,” Lando whimpers and puts his hands on his thighs, away from where they’re not allowed.

“Better,” Oscar murmurs absently as he uses the hand on his chin to brush a thumb over Lando’s bottom lip.

“Oscar, please,” Lando begs, automatically opening his mouth just at the touch of a thumb on his lip.

“Yes, yes, alright, here,” Oscar just says and slides his cock into Lando’s mouth.

Lando makes a yelp turned whimper around it, muffled now by the fullness in his mouth.

“Shh,” Oscar says anyway.

Lando does his best to shut up as he starts moving back and forth, because Oscar told him to and Lando wants nothing more right now than to be good and do what he’s told. He’s not doing too well, but Oscar apparently sees he’s trying and doesn’t bring up his failure.

Oscar just slides his hand into Lando’s hair, tightening just enough to pull, not to guide him yet, just because he knows Lando likes having it pulled.

Lando pulls off a moment to ask breathily, “Can I touch you?” Because Oscar hadn't been very clear about what no touching meant and the details matter to Lando more than they should.

“Yeah, ‘course, baby,” Oscar murmurs.

Lando swallows him back down as his hands fly to Oscar’s thighs to hold on to him, to feel the muscles there shifting under his hands as Oscar strains not to move too much and fuck into Lando’s mouth.

Lando wouldn’t stop him if he did, but his mouth is full so he can’t currently tell Oscar that.

His dexterity doesn’t last long. Soon enough he can’t think about skill and technique anymore and it’s all just fog in his head and spit dribbling down the side of his mouth, forgetting to even swallow.

Lando sighs around the fullness in his mouth, one hand reaching up to tangle in Oscar’s shirt there over his stomach, just for something to hold on to.

Oscar reaches down to give him his own hand to hold on to and it’s so much better than the shirt.

God, he always does that, he's always done that, even before they started having sex, always just offered his hand when Lando needed something to hold on to, every time he got blood drawn or scared at a horror movie or just couldn't stop fidgeting. It drives Lando unreasonably insane nowadays.

He grips onto that hand a little too hard, and at this point he's lost any and all focus to speak of.

Oscar takes over moving for him now that Lando is forgetting how, starts guiding him properly with the other hand that he's got in Lando's hair.

He’s quiet above Lando. His breathing is choppy and uneven, but the most noise he makes is a quiet groan. Lando has no idea how he just shuts up like that.

Lando tries to keep his noises to a minimum, keep them a little quieter, but it’s probably solely the cock in his mouth muffling them enough to prevent anyone from coming in here to see if someone is getting murdered.

Lando doesn’t even realise Oscar is close before the rhythm he’s setting starts getting a little uneven and he murmurs quietly, “Baby, I’m going to come.”

Lando hums in encouragement and nudges forward to take Oscar’s cock just a little further into his throat in a wordless entreaty to please not take his cock out of Lando’s mouth.

“You want me in your mouth?”

Lando hums around his cock and squeezes his hand yes. Lando always wants him in his mouth, what kind of stupid question is that?

Oscar knows well enough that that’s always the case, so he mercifully doesn’t require further elaboration before makes a gut punched kind of sound and drops his head back to the bathroom wall as he finally comes in Lando’s mouth.

Lando dutifully swallows all of it down, mouthing at Oscar’s softening cock and whining mournfully about this ending so soon.

“You’re shit at being quiet, you know that?” Oscar mutters, panting as he comes down from his orgasm, his hand soft and loose in Lando’s hair.

“Oscar,” Lando begs.

“Yeah, baby, come here, can you get up for me?”

He needs some help from Oscar, but he gets up and lets Oscar press him to the wall, less urgent now that Oscar has found his orgasm and despite his desperation, Lando can’t beg for him to hurry up because he’s too distracted by Oscar’s knee between his legs and his mouth on Lando’s muffling the little moans he’s making about this to even get out a please.

“I’d offer my mouth, but you wouldn't shut up,” Oscar murmurs against his mouth.

“No,” Lando breathes in agreement.

“Hand?”

“Please.”

“Alright, baby,” Oscar murmurs.

He doesn’t detach himself from Lando’s lips as he reaches down to push Lando’s pants and underwear down far enough to get to his cock out. He spits in his palm and closes a hand over it all while he uses the other to push Lando’s shirt up his chest in an enviable show of dexterity. “Hold here.”

Lando complies, holding his shirt for Oscar as he makes a little whimper.

Oscar pulls off his mouth, because his lips aren’t nearly enough to shut Lando up with the echo of this bathroom, and puts his hand over Lando’s mouth before he starts properly jerking him off.

It’s a good thing because the whine Lando makes into his palm about that is honestly embarrassing.

He lets his head fall back to the wall behind him, breathing heavily through his nose, eyelids fluttering shut.

Oscar keeps going just like that, stroking him the way he knows Lando likes, just tight enough, just fast enough, thumb stroking over his tip every third pass.

He buries himself in Lando’s neck there where it’s exposed for him to kiss and bite at with the way Lando has his head thrown back to the wall.

He doesn’t suck bruises now when they’re going home to Lando’s family, but Lando wishes he would anyway, but he can't beg for it with Oscar's hand over his mouth.

Lando makes an insistent noise against Oscar's palm.

Oscar, immediately, takes it off to ask, "What is it? You okay?"

"Yeah," Lando pants. He was going to beg for Oscar to bite him, but he finds himself requesting instead, "C-Can you— Hand? Neck? Please?"

Oscar needs no further clarification, because he just puts his hand on Lando's throat, his thumb just gently resting over Lando's fluttering carotid.

"Of course, sweetheart."

And god it makes Lando's head so fuzzy.

It's not quite as effective, but Oscar keeps the hand there and muffles Lando's noises with a kiss. “That’s it, baby," he murmurs against Lando's lips. "Good boy, come on, come for me.”

It doesn’t take much more, five seconds maybe and Oscar saying, “Lando, I said come.”

Lando whimpers loudly into his mouth as he spills all over his stomach.

It's a miracle nobody hears it outside.

Oscar strokes him through it, unmovably steady all around him, keeping him upright as Lando goes limp against the wall, pecking his lips again and again.

He doesn’t remove his hand from Lando’s throat until Lando has gone soft in his hand.

Lando is still holding his shirt, his panting breaths deafeningly loud now that Oscar has stopped swallowing his breaths.

“That’s it, good boy,” Oscar murmurs and taps at the hand weakly clutched in Lando’s own shirt, before he says, “Keep holding this." He takes Lando’s other hand and places it over his mouth for him. “And quiet now, do you hear me?”

Lando has no idea what’s going on, too dazed to even bother trying to connect any dots, he just does as he’s told as Oscar gets on his knees.

It’s a very good thing Oscar put that hand of Lando’s on his mouth for him because it’s the only thing saving them both from the absolutely debased whine Lando makes as Oscar licks up the come from his stomach.

He grins against Lando’s skin about it, the bastard, while Lando’s eyes roll back in his head as he drops it back against the wall because honestly what the fuck.

Oscar licks it all up until Lando is clean and it’s like nothing ever happened, all evidence erased.

Finally he tucks Lando back into his boxers and does up his pants for him, before he gets up off his knees and removes Lando’s unmoved hand from his own mouth for him and gently untangles the hand Lando still has fisted in his shirt so that it drops and covers his stomach back up.

“Feel better?”

Lando nods.

“No more thinking?”

Lando shakes his head.

“Good. Now you are going keep not thinking and you are going to get into that car and you’re going to drive, because you know how to drive, and not forty kilometres per hour, because we have places to be today. Do you understand?”

It's just so insane how he just knew this would work, that this was exactly what Lando needed. Lando nods quickly and makes a weak, “Mmhm.”

“Do you understand, yes or no?”

“Yes, driving, got it, uhuh.”

“Good. Just as well, really, we’re going to have a really hard time trying to fuck this often in your parents’ house.”

Shit.

Lando hadn’t even thought of that.

Lando doesn’t have a single incident all the way to his parents’ house. 

Lando is barely even out of the car before his mother is practically suffocating him in her arms. “Lando, my baby!”

“Hi, Mum,” Lando chokes out as she’s squeezing him so hard Lando can’t breathe, slightly embarrassed even though Oscar has been here often enough and she did this every time.

“I missed you!”

“Yeah, I missed you too, Mum.”

“And you drove here all on your own? I’m so proud of you!”

Lando blushes a little. “Mmhm, yep.”

“And Oscar!” She spots Oscar climbing out of the passenger seat and making an awkward wave and immediately goes to latch onto him and attempt to break his ribs instead.

“Hi, Mrs. Wauman,” Oscar manages thinly as she squeezes his breath away too, awkwardly patting her back.

“I told you to call me Cisca.”

“I’d really rather not, Mrs. Wauman.”

“Oh, you,” she says fondly, finally letting Oscar go to pat his cheek. “Always so polite.”

“What’s all this, then?” Lando’s dad asks as he comes out the front door to follow the sound of the commotion and pull Lando into a hug.

“Hey, dad.”

“Hi there, love,” he says and pulls Lando into a hug, kissing his cheek because he likes to embarrass Lando like that. “And who’s this?”

Lando groans. “Oh my god, dad, you’ve met Oscar a million times.”

“Who?”

“Oscar. My…” Best friend, fuckbuddy, cause of all my woes. Love of my life. “Roommate. You've met him.”

“Have I?”

“Yes, dad.”

“If you say so,” Lando’s dad just says and promptly pulls Oscar into another hug despite apparently remembering nothing about him. They have this conversation every single time Oscar comes over.

“Hi, Mr. Norris,” Oscar says.

“Adam,” he says, clapping Oscar’s shoulder as he pulls away.

“Right…”

“He’s too polite for all that, Adam, I’ve told him a hundred times and it’s still all Mr. and Mrs. with him,” Lando’s mother says as she shepherds them all into the house, fondly patting Oscar’s back because he’s the favourite child here apparently.

“Oh, I do remember you, the polite one,” Lando’s dad muses.

Oscar laughs awkwardly. “Uh, yeah, that’s me.”

“Only boy with manners this one has ever brought home, and you always find the strangest girls too—”

“The girls were also rude, he just doesn’t want to say that because he knows he’d better respect women,” his mum clarifies for Oscar.

“Alright, alright, that’s enough,” Lando cuts them off before they can embarrass him more. “Everyone here yet?”

“Not yet. They’ll all be here by dinner, love, let’s get your things in your rooms.”

Lando falters in his steps. “Uh. Rooms?” Plural? There aren’t enough rooms for everyone who’s coming, Lando’s pretty sure.

“Oh, yes, since Sav and Oliver are married now, they’re allowed to share, remember? And their girls are both still sleeping with them, so Oscar’s in the guest room,” his mum says cheerily.

“Right...”

This is going to be very inconvenient, but Lando will worry about that after dinner.

Oscar has never met his siblings before, but they all love him immediately.

Oscar can barely get a forkful of food into his mouth at the dinner table between the relentless questions and conversation directed at him and Lando finds that a little unfair.

“Hey, you know you haven’t seen me in, like five months, right?” Lando points out to the room in general.

“Yes, and I don’t care,” Flo says dismissively. Bitch. “Oscar, are you coming to the Maldives with us in December?”

“Uh, probably not, I think I’m going home,” Oscar says, still a little awkward, but it’s fading already and Lando is trying really hard to focus on staying annoyed and not thinking about how happy he is that everyone loves Oscar and Oscar is starting to get along with everyone so quickly and how that all means nothing because he isn't Lando's boyfriend.

“Ugh. Well, in that case, take Lando with you, we don’t want him if it’s not a package deal,” Flo goes on.

“Hey!”

“Flo, be nice to your brother,” his mum says absently.

“No.”

“I think we should just all go to Australia with Oscar and leave Lando here,” Cisca muses. “I’ve always wanted to fight a kangaroo.”

“Well, that’s an interesting item on your bucket list,” Oscar just says. “Sure, why not?”

“Hey!” Lando exclaims. “Why can’t I go with to Australia?”

“Because you suck,” Oscar says simply and pops a forkful of peas into his mouth.

He’s already teaming up with his siblings to bully Lando, god, it’s all too easy for it not to be real.

“Why is everyone bullying me, what have I done to deserve this?”

Savannah, who has just forced Oliver take over dealing with Athena refusing to eat her food in the highchair and has now joined the bullying as she sits to Lando’s left, simply pats him on the shoulder and says, “Poor Lando, give him a break, it’s not his fault he’s annoying.”

“I’m not annoying,” Lando squawks.

“Yes, you are,” Oliver says without looking up from where he’s fighting with his one-year-old daughter about a bowl of peas. Athena is clearly winning as she smacks the bowl over and they go flying all over the floor. Oliver sighs.

“You’ve literally never met this guy before and you’ve already decided you like him more than me. He could be a serial killer,” Lando points out.

Cisca shrugs. “Eh.”

“You’d still take him if he was a serial killer?”

“Well, I mean, look at him,” Cisca says, gesturing to all of Oscar which, well, fair, but still. “Look at his face, I’d take him over you even if he was a serial killer any day, considering your face.”

“What about my face?” Lando yelps offendedly.

“Your face sucks,” she elaborates simply.

“It does not suck,” Lando argues.

“It absolutely does,” Oscar says, just to join in on them all ganging up on Lando.

“Muuum,” Lando whines. “They’re bullying me.”

“Children, be nice to your brother,” his mother says absently.

“No,” Oliver, Flo and Cisca say at once. He’s pretty sure Sav tunes in too, because she's decided sisters-in-law get these kinds of rights.

“Oh, you know what, I’ll just go eat in my room and you can all enjoy your new favourite brother, and your favourite child, Mum and Dad, don’t think I don’t see it!” Lando adds, snatching up his plate and cutlery.

He’s not actually planning on leaving, but Oscar is apparently still a bit too terrified by the socialising to risk being left to do so alone.

“Wait, wait, no, don’t go." He pulls Lando back to the table by his wrist and babbles quickly, “I’m sorry, I lied, I love your face, don’t leave me.”

Lando huffs and smugly sits back down in the chair next to Oscar’s. “Don’t think I don’t know you just need me as social support.”

“Aw, and he’s sweet too!” Flo coos at Oscar, completely ignoring what Lando just said which is the blatant truth. “You’ve never brought someone this sweet home for us.”

Oscar goes a little red. Serves him right.

“I should leave you to the wolves,” Lando grumbles.

“The one time you bring someone nice home and it turns out he’s your roommate,” Flo laments. “Oscar’s the one you said was going to be your best man someday, right? I’m just saying I don’t get it! Look at him, do you really want all that to be at your wedding and he’s not even your husband?”

God, Flo doesn’t even realise how much what she's saying is suddenly making Lando's heart twist and ache.

Because he hadn’t wanted to think about this, he'd kind of been deliberately avoiding this train of thought, which starts with how at some point this arrangement is going to end and ends with how one day he’s probably going to have to marry someone else.

He swallows away a little lump in his throat and says, “Well, he’s my best friend. He’s got to be best man, right?”

“But he’s such marriage material! And you have, like, so many best friends, Lando, you have plenty potential best men,” Cisca points out.

Lando clears his throat, carefully looking at nobody as he wills away whatever expression is on his face about the marriage material who still hasn’t let go of his wrist.

“Maybe I do have too many best friends, but at the moment Oscar’s my favourite," he settles on. "Only because he does the dishes for me, though.”

“Haha,” Oscar says sarcastically and removes his hand from Lando's wrist. Lando misses it.

“It’s true,” he lies.

“Oh, Lando, love, I wanted to ask,” his mother says. “You still haven’t found anyone since— What was her name? Louise?”

“Luisa.” Lando sticks a petulant fork into his food and avoids everyone’s eyes as he says, “And no, Mum.”

“Well, I was chatting with Adeline the other day and she says her son is recently single. He lives just west of your campus, love, he’s in law, don’t you think you two should meet?”

“Mum!” Lando has no idea who Adeline even is. "I’ve been here for all of three hours and you’re already trying to set me up!”

Next to him Oscar is eerily silent.

“Alright, alright, I was just asking! Sue me, I want more grandbabies,” she says, dreamily looking between where Oliver is gathering up peas from the floor and Savannah is craning her neck to see that their oldest, Mila, is still alive and staying out of trouble where she's playing in the living room.

“We’ll get a cat,” Lando just says grumpily. “There’s your grandbaby.”

Oscar smiles.

After dinner Oscar gets the bathroom first because he’s got Aussie privilege or something and after that it’s chaos.

Sav and Oliver manage to get his parents’ bathroom to themselves, leaving Lando to fight with Flo and Cisca about who gets to shower first. He ends up last because they pull the gender card and he can’t very well tell them they’re useless bitches who don’t deserve outdated gender privileges in front of Oscar, because he's not sure Oscar knows that Lando and his sisters just talk to each other like that.

In the whirlwind of arguments and shouting between his sisters and his parents downstairs shouting at them to stop shouting, Lando entirely forgets about Oscar until he’s gotten out of the shower, gotten dressed and is climbing into his bed, and immediately feels wrong footed.

Right.

The sleeping situation.

Lando doesn’t even bother trying to sleep before he gets out of the bed, pops his head out of the doorway of his room and looks left and right to see if the coast is clear, which it is since everyone else has long since showered and gone to bed, of course.

He scowls at his siblings’ closed doors before he silently leaves his room and pads downstairs to the guest room, where Oscar had probably been shown to while Lando was busy fighting with his sisters.

He doesn’t knock before he turns the handle and slips inside.

“Jesus, Lando, you scared me,” Oscar says, jumping as Lando closes the door behind himself. He’s still got the bedside lamp on and has now dropped his phone where he was scrolling on Instagram, not even trying to sleep yet.

“What are you doing?” Lando asks, because he’s honestly not quite sure how this situation transpired at all. Oscar might be stupid.

“Uh.” Oscar’s brow furrows up in endearing confusion. “Existing? I think?”

Sometimes it’s hard to wrap his head around the fact that this is the same boy who told him to be quiet and get on his knees just this morning.

“I meant what are you doing here?” Lando huffs and grabs on to Oscar’s wrist to pull at him. “Come sleep in my room.”

A kind of tension seems to drop from Oscar’s shoulders as he smiles and says, “Yeah, okay, I’m coming.”

He grabs his phone and switches off the bedside lamp before he lets Lando pull him, closing the door of the empty guest room behind themselves to cover their tracks, because Lando’s family will never let him forget about it if they find out he and Oscar sleep in the same bed.

Oscar lets him pull him all the way up the stairs, like he isn’t perfectly capable of following Lando without being pulled by the wrist, all the way down the hall and into Lando’s room and into his bed.

They tumble into bed in a tangle of limbs and blankets and cuddle up together with practiced ease, Oscar switching off the bedside lamp like he always does and Lando pulling the blankets over them both like he always does.

They lie in the dark for all of two minutes before Lando says, “Oscar?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m horny.”

“Oh my god, are we actually going to do this in your parents’ house?”

“Oh, come on, I’ve done much worse in this house.”

“I’m not even going to ask what that means.”

“Oscar.”

“Lando.”

“That’s my name, it’s not a no.”

“Lando.”

“Ugh. Fine, I’m letting it go tonight, but only because I’m sleepy and you’re not desperate enough not to worry about it yet. I’ll ask you again tomorrow.”

“Really?” Oscar sighs.

“So, what, we’re not going to fuck for two weeks?”

“You’ve survived it before.”

“Oscar.”

Oscar doesn’t answer.

“Oscar.”

“Shut up, I’m sleeping.”

Lando wakes up to something poking his foot.

He opens his eyes and immediately gets the fright of his life, because the poking is, in fact, a child.

“Oh my fu-udging crackers, Mila,” Lando groans and flops his head back to the pillows just as Oscar lifts his, adorably floppy-haired and sleepy-eyed at this time of the morning. "What are you doing in here?"

“I’m saying good morning,” Mila says, like that’s obvious. Even with half her words still mixing together as she learns to talk, she manages to sound just as sassy as her mother.

“Good morning,” Oscar says kindly, smiling at Lando's niece. It’s kind of making Lando’s heart do a flip, because oh god, Oscar likes children. Lando’s barely just figured out that he’s in love with the man, he can’t already be imagining children.

“Morning, Mila,” Lando sighs exasperatedly.

“Okay, bye!” And with that she’s off, her little feet pattering as she runs off. She’s quite inconveniently cute.

Oscar blinks.

Lando realises only now that he’d grabbed onto Oscar’s hand when he’d gotten a fright and has yet to let go. Oscar doesn’t say anything about it. “Uh, so how old is Mila?”

“Mila is three and she is about to tell her parents everything.”

“Right. Uh. Shit?”

“Yep.”

Lando lets go of his hand.

The corner of Oscar’s lip twitches downwards, but he says nothing.

Nobody else had actually seen Oscar coming out of Lando’s room, but by the time breakfast is ready absolutely everyone has already heard about it because the breakfast table goes dead silent as they come down the stairs.

“Morning,” Lando says grumpily.

Oscar waves.

Lando narrowly stops himself from smacking him over the head, because Jesus, who does that?

His mother pointedly clears her throat and with that everybody promptly picks up the chatter again and the moment is gone.

It’s going to be a very long two weeks.

Lando spends the next days avoiding questions and conversations left and right, until everyone finally figures out that Lando isn’t going to talk about it and explain himself and mostly gives up for the moment, sticking to gossiping amongst each other.

The situation does not deter Lando from dragging Oscar into his bed every night after that whatsoever, all it really does is remind him to lock his door.

Which is just as well, because the second night, after a whole day spent with the family and no opportunity to fuck, Oscar is more than desperate enough to get over his aversion to sex in Lando’s parents’ house, because he’s hard before Lando has even gotten out his third ‘please’, and agrees to get Lando off if he promises to be very quiet.

Oscar still has to keep a hand over his mouth the whole time, of course, doesn’t even need to ask before he slips his palm over Lando’s mouth to muffle his noises as the other slips into his pants.

He lets Lando suck him off under the blanket after, murmuring quiet sweet nothings between panting breathes, cradling Lando’s head as he swallows everything Oscar has to give.

Afterwards, as they come down, Oscar doesn’t even need to ask before he puts some weight on Lando, he just pulls him beneath himself and lies down on top of him, burying into his shoulder.

Oscar is just so good at this, Lando thinks then, threading his fingers through Oscar’s hair and scratching his scalp. Oscar sighs, lips brushing Lando’s neck and for a moment Lando deludes himself into thinking it was a kiss.

He always know just what to do, just what Lando needs.

Lando has been wondering where he learned how to do this since they started this. He’s never really thought of asking, asking if he used to take care of someone else like this, like he takes care of Lando.

Lando, suddenly, is hit by a sickening wave of jealousy.

He doesn’t want to think of anyone else touching Oscar like he does, anyone else scratching marks into his shoulders, anyone else threading their fingers through Oscar’s hair, anyone else crawling into Oscar’s arms to go to sleep.

“Did you use to do this with someone else?” Lando blurts out in the soft light of the bedside lamp illuminating his childhood room. “Before me?"

Oscar will think he’s referring to the sex, but it’s more than that. It’s less ‘Did you fuck someone like this before?’ than it is ‘Did you let someone hold you like this before? Did you let someone else stroke your hair like this before? Did you let someone love you like this before? Love you like you don't even know I love you?’

But Oscar doesn’t know that so he doesn’t even lift his head from Lando’s shoulder as he just murmurs, “Not really. Lily was pretty vanilla.”

Lando’s fingers pause carding through Oscar’s hair, jealousy clawing at the inside of his ribcage just at the mention of Oscar’s previous relationship, the one that was real.

Oscar lifts his head to look at him. “Why?”

“No reason.”

Oscar hums tiredly and drops his head back to Lando’s shoulder, fumbling blindly for the bedside lamp switch to turn it off, and luckily then the dark saves Lando from Oscar seeing his facial expression.

Oscar is quiet, probably trying to sleep.

“Do you think you’ll do it with someone else?”

“Hmm?”

“In the future? After me?”

Oscar is quiet a moment too long.

“I don’t know.”

It becomes a routine. Every night Oscar will climb into the bed and turn the light off and it won’t be two minutes before Lando is shifting against Oscar for friction or Oscar just pulls him closer and starts kissing Lando’s neck and sliding his hand downwards.

It’s driving Lando absolutely mad, because they haven’t fucked properly in days, because they both know it would be so hard for Lando to stay quiet if they did.

So it’s just hands and mouths.

It’s Oscar keeping him quiet with nothing but kisses as he slides a knee between Lando’s thighs to let him grind himself to an orgasm.

It’s Oscar struggling to keep his palm pressed over Lando’s mouth while he’s busy between Lando’s thighs sucking him off, until he just gives up and shoves the blanket into Lando’s mouth.

It’s Oscar slipping a finger into Lando’s mouth when he can’t be quiet about the way Oscar is jerking him off and pressing his hardness into Lando’s ass, two fingers when Lando gets even louder as he nears the edge of orgasm and by the time Lando is finally coming, he's whimpering around three fingers dripping with spit.

Oscar always makes Lando come first, and then, while Lando’s still all dazed, he just lets Lando press him backwards into the sheets and get his mouth on him, sucking him off either fast and quick, trying to get him deeper and deeper, or slow and wet and loose, just trying to prolong the feeling of him in his mouth.

Afterwards they’re always sneaking into the shower together to quickly clean up, sometimes getting off just one more time while they’re there, because they can.

But Lando desperately misses getting fucked properly.

It scares him a little, how Lando's already so tired of just hands and mouths, how he just wants Oscar inside of him again, how he just wants to be full, how much he needs it.

There’s really no point in keeping the door locked after they’ve showered and gone back to bed, because it’s not like everybody doesn’t know about them sleeping in the same bed now and nobody dares try the door since they know full well Lando would throw a massive fit, but it makes Lando feel a little better anyway.

Oscar doesn’t say much on that subject.

In the daytime Lando is slowly starting to get tired of being forced to keep normal distances apart from Oscar all day, forced to resist the urge pull him in for a kiss every time they’re alone in a room even for a moment, forced to sit next to Flo when she and Cisca have Oscar between them when the family is all together in the living room watching a movie and Lando can’t even follow it because of how distracted he is by the wrongness of not being cuddled up in Oscar’s arms.

Everyone keeps giving Lando looks about it. They've stopped trying to bring it up, because Lando shuts down the conversation as soon as someone opens their mouth, but it's unavoidable.

It's just so devastatingly obvious how much Oscar and Lando love each other.

And the problem is that it's becoming increasingly more noticeable how Lando loves Oscar in the way he shouldn't.

They had always been told, before this whole disaster, how much they kind of act like a couple, what with Lando always having been just sort of needy and tactile and gravitating into Oscar's space, and Oscar always having just sort of let him.

Lando had always laughed it off and not thought too much about it, because they were just Oscar and Lando, weren't they? But now Lando can't stop seeing it, the way they're a couple in all the ways except the one that matters, the way in which all the things they're doing would make them a couple if it was on purpose.

And maybe everyone else here sees that too.

Despite the elephant in the room, the topic is successfully avoided save for the pointed looks Lando gets twelve times a day.

The family’s favouritism persists, of course, and Oscar is constantly being dragged here or there to come watch a movie with Flo and Cisca or come out to get groceries with Sav, Oliver and the kids or to come look at Mila’s drawing or to come help peel carrots for dinner with Lando’s parents while gossiping about Lando.

Lando isn’t even annoyed about it.

He should be, but instead he keeps thinking about how perfectly Oscar would fit into his family, how easy it would be if it weren’t for the fact that Oscar isn’t quite his boyfriend, that he’s sort of everything except his boyfriend.

And it's starting to slowly chisel a hole into Lando's heart, but he can't focus on that too much because every time he gets a little sad someone comes and latches on to Oscar to show him something or ask him to come do something with them and Oscar complies with that soft smile of his that makes Lando’s heart flip in his chest, and for a second he forgets again, forgets how it's hurting.

But it keeps hurting nonetheless.

Lando has never quite missed their little apartment this much before and this bubble of overlap between family and Oscar ends up simultaneously being the longest and shortest two weeks Lando has ever lived through.

It’s always at the dinner table.

The dinner table is starting to feel more like an interrogation chamber than a meal, honestly. Lando had probably jinxed it when he thought he was home free and he just had to avoid the conversation through one more dinner and breakfast before they left for home.

“So, Oscar, have you got anyone at home?” Lando’s dad asks between his bites of English roast.

Oh no. Here it comes.

“You mean like… A family?” Oscar says. He’s long past being awkward around Lando’s family for social anxiety reasons, he’s just awkward now because he’s Oscar. Lando has so many feelings about that endearing awkwardness of his. “I do have one...”

Most of them laugh. Lando does not. Lando just slams his forehead down on the table and tries very hard to send a sincere pre-emptive apology about the impending conversation to Oscar with his brainwaves.

“He means a girlfriend or boyfriend, dear,” his mum clarifies, because they’re in cahoots about this, of course they are.

“Oh,” Oscar says. There’s a moment of silence. Lando can physically feel Oscar looking at him for a second and he kind of wants to crawl into a hole and die. “No, not at the moment.”

“Alright, enough,” Lando says, wrenching himself upright. “Stop interrogating him, he’s only twenty-three, he really doesn’t need the 'when are you getting married' talk yet.”

“So what, will you two just stay in your little two bedroom apartment forever?” Oliver asks, rather pointedly.

“Maybe we will,” Lando says shortly.

“Well, you’re twenty-five and not getting any younger. I say just get married to each other,” says Oliver, and he’s giving Lando a look.

Lando feels his expression cracking just a little. He’s pretty sure most of them miss it, but his mother sees it because of course she does.

Instead of saying something stupid, Lando settles on, “Can we stop trying to marry me off, please?”

His tone is a little off.

There’s an awkward silence lingering a moment too long before someone finally changes the subject.

It’s later that same night, when Oscar is downstairs watching a Disney movie with some of the others and Lando had declined and gone to hide in his room, that his mum silently pokes her head into his doorway.

“Lando, love?”

Lando, who was lying curled up on his side avoiding his problems in favour of scrolling on Instagram, drops the phone and sighs.

He knew this conversation was coming.

She quietly closes the door behind her before she comes and sits down on the edge of his bed.

Lando pulls a blanket over his head.

“Darling.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

His mother sighs and strokes his shoulder through the blanket. She’s quiet for a moment, and then she asks, quietly, “Do you love him?”

“Of course I love him, Mum,” Lando mumbles miserably from beneath his blanket. “He’s my best friend, isn’t he?”

She's quiet for a moment, like she always is before she says something important.

“But you don’t love him like you love your other best friends."

There it is. And that is important, isn't it? Because Lando has always loved Oscar, but all of a sudden the important thing is how he loves Oscar.

Because Lando doesn’t look at his other friends like he looks at Oscar, he doesn’t circle around them in the kitchen making dinner knowing their next move off by heart like he does with Oscar, he doesn’t sneak into their beds at night because he can’t sleep without them and he doesn’t take them home praying his family likes them because he doesn't know what he’d do if they didn’t. Like he’s done with Oscar.

Tears prick at the corners of Lando’s eyes.

“Lando,” his mother sighs.

“He doesn’t like me like that,” Lando bursts out then and it’s cracked right in the middle and Lando is so close to crying he can taste the salt.

“Come here, darling,” she sighs and Lando wants nothing more than his mum’s arms right now, so he lets himself be pulled out from beneath the blanket and into her hug to press his face into her shoulder to stop himself from crying, trying to will away the sting from the corners of his eyes. “Are you sure he doesn’t, love?”

“Pretty sure, Mum,” Lando mumbles through the lump in his throat.

He doesn’t elaborate, because he can’t very well explain the weird abomination of a sex situation to his poor mother, and he also can't explain how he's already thought about this too much.

He's already catalogued all of Oscar's actions and mannerisms, and has come to the devastating conclusion that nothing about the way Oscar acts around him had fundamentally changed between now and the start of this stupid thing they're doing. Oscar's feelings haven't changed.

“Alright, love, I’m just saying—“ she starts, like she can’t quite let it go.

"Mum—"

“I’m just saying have you seen the way he looks at you?"

“He doesn’t look at me in any kind of way, he just looks at me like Oscar looks at me.” Oscar looks at him all the damn time and he's looked at him the same way ever since Lando can remember.

“Darling, he looks at you like he’s in love with you.”

“Stop it, Mum,” Lando pleads.

He can’t start hoping now, can't start deluding himself, because if there’s anything that could hurt more than whenever Oscar tells him that he’s not in love with him, it would be having even slightly believed he was.

Because at some point Oscar is going to have to tell him that.

Because it's getting weirder and weirder and Lando's feelings are fucking this all up and they aren't talking about it, but Lando knows they both feel it, how all the pretenses are starting to fade and at some point all that's going to be left is the stark truth that Lando is in love with Oscar and how that isn't going to work.

“I know him. I would know if he felt like that about me, Mum. I just… I would know."

He would know, if somewhere between moving in with Lando two years ago and kissing the last bit of come off the corner of his mouth last night, Oscar had fallen in love with him.

He would have seen the change, just like Oscar is undoubtably seeing the change in Lando, how he keeps noticing.

But Oscar has never once acted any differently around Lando ever since they became roommates. Lando knows him.

His mother sighs. “Alright, love, you know him best. I just think—”

“Mum, please,” Lando begs then. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to cry.”

She lets it go then.

She just lets Lando hold on to her for a while, until he stops feeling so fragile, like a gentle breeze could set off tears, and pulls himself away from her shoulder and tells her he’ll be fine.

She gives him a concerned look, but she leaves him be, quietly closing his door behind herself before she heads back downstairs.

It’s a little while later that Oscar softly slips into his dark room to come to bed, locking the door behind himself.

Lando’s really not sure why they’re even still doing that since all of his things have migrated from the guest room to Lando’s and there’s at least one person a day seeing Oscar coming into his room in the evenings or leaving it in the morning and he’s pretty sure Flo keeps checking to see if the guest room is empty before everyone else gets up in the mornings and reports back to literally everybody about it.

The light is already off, but Oscar knows exactly how many steps it is from the door to the bed in Lando’s childhood room because he doesn’t even stumble. Of course he doesn’t.

“Hey, you awake?” Oscar whispers very softly as he climbs under the blankets with Lando.

“Yeah,” Lando whispers back.

Oscar shuffles into position, pulling Lando into his chest the way they always sleep. He strokes at Lando’s waist just for a second, before he asks, “Do you want—”

“Can you fuck me?” Lando asks, before he thinks better of it. “Properly I mean. Please?”

Oscar pauses.

“It's fine if you don't want to—"

“Of course I want to,” Oscar says instantly.

He doesn’t say no, because Oscar hardly ever tells him no for anything and he has yet to ever tell him no for sex.

"You'll be loud though, I know you."

“I don’t— I don't care, Osc. I just— I’ll try my best to be quiet, but I just— I just...”

“Just what, sweetheart?”

He’d been desperate for it for two weeks, but all of a sudden it’s not that, burning, frantic kind of desperation, it’s just this aching need.

“I just need it, Oscar, please?”

"Okay, baby, whatever you need," Oscar murmurs. It's all he needed to hear to pull Lando underneath him and kiss him, in that way that has always been so awfully easy, ever since the first time, and Lando is just thinking now about how it’s never going to be this easy with anyone else.

But it’s so, so easy, the way Oscar knows him, and Lando knows Oscar. The way they don’t bump any limbs while taking their clothes off anymore, the way Oscar knows just how to kiss and touch and Lando knows just how to wrap himself around him and tilt his head to bare his neck, the way Oscar already knows there’s lube in the bedside drawer, because he knows Lando put it there.

It’s the easiest thing in the world. So why is this all so difficult?

Why is it so difficult to be satisfied with the way Oscar kisses his stomach while he’s down there opening Lando up, practiced and perfect, the way he bites hickeys into the skin of his hips and waist so well, and the way he's so good at anticipating just when to slow down and ease up a bit before Lando gets loud.

Because Oscar is already perfect, he’s already giving Lando so much with the way he’s learned Lando, mind, body, and soul, the way he lets Lando hold on to him and pull his hair as he struggles to stay quiet with three fingers in him, the way he knows just how to move his fingers to press and drag along Lando’s prostate just the right amount that Lando doesn’t moan any louder than the volume that the piece of the blanket he’s biting down on can muffle.

Because Oscar is just so perfect the way he presses a palm over Lando’s mouth to cover that moan he knows Lando is going to make when he presses inside all at once.

He’s just so perfect with the way he knows when it’s safe to let go and replace that palm over Lando’s mouth with his lips as Lando wraps all his limbs around Oscar as tight as he can get.

He’s so perfect with the way he swallows all of Lando’s noises when he starts moving and doesn’t even wince about how Lando is scratching lines all over his back and shoulders, so hard that they’ll still be red come morning.

He’s so perfect with the way he tells Lando how good he feels and how gorgeous he sounds and how well he’s doing, the way there are ‘baby’s and ‘sweetheart’s thrown so copiously between his words, like there's an endless surplus of them to give, like Lando doesn't know that one of these days Oscar is going to call him sweetheart for the last time.

He’s so perfect with the way he hushes Lando so gently when he can tell that he’s starting to get close to his orgasm, and the way he just knows Lando is trying, but he won’t be able to stay quiet, the way he just kisses Lando when it becomes obvious that he can't be quiet anymore, the way Lando doesn't even need to ask, he just needs to slightly nudge his chin up for Oscar to know he wants his hand on his throat.

He's so perfect with the way he knows Lando isn't going to need help from Oscar's hand to come today, and how he uses that hand to slip his fingers through Lando's instead, how he just knows Lando needs that grounding, and doesn't complain about how Lando is gripping it like a lifeline.

He's so perfect with the way that this is all still happening in the dark so Oscar doesn’t even need to see Lando’s face to know when he’s on the edge of his orgasm, he knows just based off of the feeling of him, off the way the vibrations of Lando's voice hit his palm over Lando's throat, the way he just knows when to say, “Go on, sweetheart, come for me.”

He's so perfect with the way he knows to put his weight on Lando afterwards, the way he just stays there, head pressed into the crook of Lando’s neck, fingers still intertwined with Lando's in a way Oscar probably doesn’t even notice, but Lando cannot stop thinking about, and the way he knows seemingly just by the shift in Lando’s body underneath him when Lando is back in the land of the living and raises his head to ask, “Shower?”

Maybe it’s just so difficult to be happy with this because the way Oscar is so perfect casts into such blinding contrast the one fact about him that isn’t.

The one fact that ruins it.

The fact that Oscar doesn't love Lando the way Lando loves Oscar, and the fact that that is going to ruin everything.

Because as soon as they’re done and sneaking into the shower, there are no more kisses and there aren’t any sweethearts or baby’s and Lando wants to cry.

Because the way Oscar supports Lando’s weight and washes his hair for him and gives Lando the larger part of the warm water's spray is just what Oscar has always done.

Because Oscar has always been nice and had always taken care of Lando and he's always given him everything he wanted ever since he’d decided he apparently liked Lando when they first moved in together.

Oscar just does things like making sure Lando isn’t going to fall if he lets him go to wrap a towel around himself, and he just does things like close the door for Lando as they slip back inside the room and he just does things like offer Lando his last clean hoodie because Lando doesn’t have any left, and he just does things like tuck Lando into his arms as he switches off the bedside lamp.

Because this is just what Oscar does.

And all of a sudden Lando is crying.

There’s barely even a single tear that has escaped the corner of Lando’s eye, barely even a single hitch of his breath before Oscar notices and immediately scrambles to put the light back on and says, “Hey, hey, hey, Lando, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Lando lies, terribly, because the answer, really, is everything.

“Lando, hey, hey, was it the sex? Did I do something? What is it?”

“No,” Lando reassures him. “No, it's not you.” Oscar isn't the problem, Oscar is never the problem.

“Lando.” Oscar's voice has a panicked edge to it and god this would all be so much easier if Oscar loved him a little less.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Lando sobs and god he needs to stop crying, he needs to stop thinking about this, he needs to get over himself and go to sleep.

“Lando,” Oscar says, and it’s so achingly soft that it’s just making everything worse as he pulls Lando close into his arms, pressing a kiss to his curls as Lando wraps his arms around him so tightly Oscar must be struggling to breathe, hands fisting in the fabric of the shirt over Oscar’s back. “Tell me what’s wrong, Lando, come on, you know you can tell me anything.”

And that just kind of hurts.

Because Lando remembers when he used to tell Oscar everything, and suddenly wishes nothing more than to be able to tell him this too, he wishes he could just tell him and that Oscar would simply give him a hug and pat him on the shoulder and tell him everything would be alright, like he would have a few months ago if someone else broke Lando's heart, back when he had just been Lando's best friend, before Lando had gone and fucked it all up.

And now he can’t even cry on his best friend’s shoulder about his heartache, because his best friend is his heartache.

He wishes he could have that Oscar back, he wishes he didn’t have all these stupid feelings about him, wishes there was none of this messy weirdness between them, this fragile, unspoken thing between them threatening to break not just in and of itself, but threatening to break everything that was before it too.

He wishes they could just go back to being Oscar and Lando.

"You'll still be my best man one day, right?” Lando chokes, because he can’t stop thinking about it now, when he’s been back home to all the ‘when are you getting married' talk and ‘when are we getting more grandbabies’ talk and ‘we don’t want you to be lonely, Lando, love,’ and he can’t stop thinking about how one day he’s going to get married and Oscar is going to be there and Lando will be standing on the altar kissing his new husband or wife and the only thing he’ll be thinking about is that it should have been Oscar, but he needs Oscar to be there anyway. “Whenever I get married, you’ll still be my best man, right?"

Oscar pauses a moment too long. "Yeah, if you want me to, of course. What's that got to do with anything? Tell me what's wrong, Lando."

But Lando had gone and fucked it up, and this is the one thing Lando can’t tell Oscar. His voice is thin and fragile, cracked. “I can’t.”

“Lando,” Oscar murmurs, anguished, and presses another kiss to his hair as he scratches softly at Lando’s scalp. “Please, why not, Lando?”

At least with the way Lando is tucked into him Oscar can’t see the way his face screws up about it and the tears soak into Oscar's shirt. “I just can’t talk about this, I can't."

God, this is all such a mess.

And the thing is that everyone had told him it was a bad idea and Lando just hadn’t listened.

He should have known it would never work, he should have known he could never keep Oscar his best friend and Oscar the guy he’s fucking as two separate concepts in his brain, because the problem is that they’re not separate. They’re not separate concepts, it’s all an awful, entangled mess of concepts.

Because Lando has always loved Oscar and he’s always sort of wanted to fuck him and maybe he’s actually always sort of wanted to stay in that little two-bedroom apartment of theirs and have idle arguments about dinner forever.

Maybe Lando has kind of been in love with Oscar the whole time and he was just too stupid to see it.

There’s nothing he can do about it except bury a little further into Oscar’s arms and cry.

“Lando.”

“Just leave it,” Lando chokes out.

“But Lando, you’re crying.”

“I know.”

“Just tell me what’s wrong, so I can help,” Oscar begs.

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“So what do you want me to do, Lando, I just want to help, just tell me what this is about, please.”

“I’m never going to have the relationship I want, Oscar, that’s what it’s about,” Lando finally bursts out.

“Is this about all that marriage talk? Lando, you’re still young, you don’t have to get married yet, you know that, right?"

“Yes, but Oscar at some point in the next five years I want to get married!”

“I— Okay, but—"

“And I’m never going to find the person who’s perfect.” Because it doesn’t get any more perfect than Oscar, the only thing more perfect would be if Oscar were in love with him back. “Because nothing ever works out for me, it all eventually just goes to shit, inevitably, every single time, and I’m just never going to be happy.”

“Of course you will, Lando,” Oscar says then, into Lando’s hair and he sounds so sure, like it’s an inevitability. “There’s thousands of fish in the sea, anybody would be lucky to have you.”

But that’s not what it’s about.

“I don’t fucking like fish though, do I?” Lando shouts and suddenly his vision is blurring all the way and his voice is cracking too much and Lando isn’t just crying, he’s proper sobbing. “I hate the fish, fuck the goddamn fish.”

It's about how he doesn't want to hear about fish in the sea because he doesn't want to try and go on dates anymore or try to find a one night stand anymore or bring someone else home for his family to meet.

Because fuck it if he can't have Oscar.

“Hey, hey, Lando,” Oscar soothes immediately, cradling Lando’s face to make him look at Oscar. “It was just a metaphor.”

“I know,” Lando cries and closes his eyes, because he can’t handle Oscar looking at him like that, with that devastating concern on his face, because he loves Lando so much, but just not like that.

“But why are you so worried about this, sweetheart?”

He hates it when Oscar calls him sweetheart.

“B-Because— Because— Just because, Oscar.”

"Sweetheart."

It always sounds so soft coming out of his mouth that it makes something so absolutely painful twist in Lando’s chest.

“Lando, sweetheart, you could have anybody.”

Lando loves when Oscar calls him sweetheart.

"I don’t want just anybody.”

“You’ll find whoever is perfect for you, of course you will.”

But Oscar is perfect for Lando and Oscar is already right here, he’s just so completely unreachable even when he’s so close that he’s touching Lando everywhere, Lando just can’t have him.

“I-I just want someone to be with me,” Lando sobs.

“Who wouldn’t want to be with you?”

“I want someone to want me.”

“Who wouldn’t want you?”

“I want someone to be in love with me.”

“Who wouldn’t love you?”

“I said in love, Oscar,” Lando sobs finally, burying impossibly deeper into Oscar’s arms.

And that encompasses the entire goddamn problem.

“What’s the difference?”

There’s a world of difference.

“Who on Earth would look at you and not fall in love with you?”

And Lando is so close to saying it, he almost says it, almost says, ‘You wouldn’t.’

But it’s easier to just cry.

“Are you sure you can’t just marry Oscar,” Cisca pleads, just one more time.

Lando's pretty sure.

It's at the damn table again, of course, in the morning over breakfast.

“Can I ask that we please not talk about my relationship status this morning?”

Lando's voice is a little cracked, still weak from last night.

They're all trying their luck one more time to convince Lando and Oscar to just get married, because they all like Oscar far too much not to be devastated that they’re leaving after breakfast and Oscar isn't going to come home to them every single holiday from now on.

None of them, except maybe his mother, have any idea how much Lando wants that too.

There’s a good five seconds of silence at the table at the strange sound of Lando's voice.

“Lando, darling,” his mother says then, at the head of the table just to Lando’s left. “If you don't want to get married, that's fi—"

“Of course I want to get married someday, Mum,” Lando shouts, slamming his hand down on the table so hard that several dishes rattle and a knife clatters to the ground, deafening in the silence around it. “I don’t want to die alone, I like being in a relationship! I just can’t bloody well find one at the moment!”

Everyone stares.

Oscar's stare is inescapable with the way he's placed right across from Lando, just more than an arms length away, just out of reach.

Lando suddenly feels a bit like crying again. He swallows the lump in his throat and pokes dejectedly at his food, mumbling, “Sorry, Mum, I didn’t mean to shout.”

His mother sighs. “Lando, love... Are you sure you don’t want me to give you Adeline’s son’s number?”

Lando stares miserably down at his plate. He knows everyone is already looking at him, but he feels Oscar’s eyes on him like they’re burning. 

But Oscar says nothing.

His mum reaches over to lay a hand on his bicep. “I’ve met him. He’s lovely.”

And Oscar isn't going to say anything.

And Lando can't keep doing this forever.

“Yeah." Lando says, with an awful kind of final acceptance. "Okay, Mum.”

Chapter Text

Something about this time hurts different.

It’s something about the way Lando was in tears in his arms last night about how nothing ever works out for him, how he’s never happy in any of his relationships, how he just can’t find the person who’s right for him, because even if, logically, Oscar already knew it, it still hurts to confirm that the idea of Oscar being the right person never even crossed Lando’s mind.

Because Oscar has been right here the whole time and Lando had never even considered it.

He would have brought it up, if it were a possibility, surely he would have, if it had crossed his mind.

If it had, he would have noticed, the way Oscar has acted around him ever since he’s known Lando, would have noticed that Oscar is so completely and hopelessly in love with him that it’s ruining his life.

Lando has tried to find someone to go out with probably a dozen times since they started doing this, and it always bothered Oscar, but something about this time feels real.

Oscar barely has the capacity to speak.

He’s not sure if Lando even notices, because he seems no less miserable than he did last night.

They’re both equally quiet, in a way that’s palpable between them, and it’s weird because they’re not fighting, they’re not annoyed with each other, they’re both just miserable.

They pack up their things in Lando's room in near silence.

There’s nothing of Oscar’s even left in the guest room at this point, it had all just eventually been drawn into Lando’s room.

It’s strikingly visible in this way, the way they started off as two completely separate people once, but now Oscar can’t even control the way he always gets sucked into Lando, the way he can’t even tell where Oscar ends and Lando begins anymore because he has no idea whether the hoodie he’s packing is even his anymore, Lando has worn it more than Oscar ever has.

The Norrises seem to tiptoe around the two of them, speaking quietly, treating them gently.

It’s unsurprising that everyone can tell that something is going on, that there’s this audible, visible, palpable thing between them, but nobody has any idea how to put it into words, it’s too complex for words anyway and how do you fix something like that?

Because the prodding and the nudging hadn’t fixed it, the talking hadn’t fixed it, and giving Lando that final out hadn’t fixed it either.

Oscar could probably be upset about that, the way them trying to help had made everything worse, but Oscar is pretty sure it would have fallen apart regardless of their input, and Oscar can’t be upset with them, because he’s going to miss them.

As he hugs Lando’s parents goodbye, Oscar’s heart is twisting viscerally in his chest, because he’s thinking about how in the next break, Lando is probably going to bring home Adeline’s son the lawyer instead of Oscar, and Adeline’s son the lawyer is going to be the one Lando’s siblings are pleading to bring with them on holiday and dragging to the grocery store and watching movies with, and in five years, at the anniversary of Lando’s wedding to Adeline’s son the lawyer, they’re going to sit on the couch scrolling through old photos on Lando’s phone and Mila and Athena are going to look at a picture of Oscar and Lando and ask ‘Who’s that?’

It doesn’t help that they’re all going to miss him too, that all their hugs are a bit too tight, and the goodbyes a bit too quiet and Lando’s mum kisses Oscar's cheek in a way that’s a little too motherly, and god, Oscar wants to cry.

For a second it had all seemed so perfect, the way Oscar fit into Lando’s life, it was all perfect except for the way it was just temporary, except for the way Oscar wasn’t here to stay.

These two weeks Oscar had missed their little apartment more than he ever had before, but all of a sudden, he doesn’t want to go home, wants to stay in this little bubble of pretence instead.

But all things end, and uni starts the day after tomorrow, the bags are already packed, the goodbyes already said.

He doesn’t even argue with Lando about the driving. He just holds out his hand for the keys and doesn’t think about the way Lando hesitates briefly before he hands them over, something loosening in his shoulders which doesn’t look quite like released stress, but Oscar is too blank, too empty inside to think about as he just gets into the driver's seat and Lando doesn’t say anything about it.

They’re silent the whole way home.

Oscar watches out of the corner of his eye as Lando fiddles with his phone, fiddles with the message, turns it on, off, on. Off.

They unpack the car in silence, head up to the apartment in silence, pack away their things in silence.

Lando throws his hoodie down on the floor, muscle memory, right where someone is going to trip over it.

Oscar doesn’t tell him to pick it up.

Lando makes them some chicken and rice while Oscar gets the first load of laundry started. They eat in silence, Oscar washes the dishes in silence, Lando packs them away in silence and wipes down the counters in silence.

They don’t talk. They don't need to. They do this all the time, it’s practiced, familiar.

But there’s cracks in it, little things that are spreading out, getting bigger, more conspicuous, until it’s all half a crack away from breaking completely.

Because Oscar is supposed to tell Lando to pick his hoodie up and throw it in the wash basket and Lando is supposed to say ‘In a minute,’ and Oscar is supposed to roll his eyes, but pick it up for him when Lando isn't looking.

Lando is supposed to say, ‘Look, I told you I can make proper dinner’ and Oscar is supposed to say, ‘mmhm’ and Lando is supposed to argue with him until Oscar gives up and just agrees.

And then Lando is supposed to cash in that final night of Love is Blind that Oscar promised him all those weeks ago and Oscar is supposed to complain about it, but cuddle up on the couch with Lando anyway, because maybe he secretly kind of likes Love is Blind if Lando is talking through all of it.

It’s all a familiar normalcy except for how it isn’t, how all the small things that should happen just kind of don’t.

It’s all a familiar on the surface, all the muscle memory things that are suddenly throwing into stark contrast all the things that never were just muscle memory, all the rituals that Oscar had never noticed were always intention instead of just habit.

What’s so very much not familiar is what happens instead of those things, the way Lando closes his door behind himself, quietly, the way he doesn’t come out all afternoon, and the way Oscar doesn’t— Can’t go and ask him what’s wrong, because he already knows and there’s nothing more he can say.

There’s nothing more Oscar can say about Lando thinking he isn’t going to find love except the one thing he can’t say.

That Oscar is right here and Oscar has loved him since he met him, since he had simply knocked on the apartment door after he'd torn the first apartment advertising his eyes landed on off a pinboard and neglected to even call the number before he just showed up and and inserted himself into Oscar's space like he belonged there, and Oscar didn't stop him because Lando always belonged there.

That Oscar had started falling in love with him ever since he first poked at a piece of wet food with a dish sponge, making an adorably nauseous face of regret where he thought Oscar couldn’t see him the first week they lived together with the diplomatic agreement to take turns washing dishes, because Lando, in typical Lando fashion, had looked at Oscar and the apartment for all of two minutes before deciding he's moving in and left all the details to figure out later.

That Oscar has been falling in love with him ever since, every time he complained about Oscar sweeping the floor wrong until he decided that was his job and dishes were Oscar’s, every time he argued with Oscar about dinner, and grocery shopping, and going to the gym, every time he came into Oscar’s room trying and failing not to distract him from his study work, every time he fell into Oscar’s arms for TV night, every time he laughed, smiled or even breathed near Oscar.

Every time he did something so quintessentially Lando that there was no way not to fall in love with him.

And Oscar is still falling in love with him, falling a little more in love with him with every groan and huff and nose scrunch, with every movement, every look, every ‘Osc’.

Oscar can’t say any of that.

Because that’s not what Lando needs.

What Lando needs is a relationship that’s real. Someone else. What Lando needs is someone he can fall in love with.

And if he hasn’t fallen in love with Oscar by now, by now when they’re doing all the things they would do if they were in love, if they're together in all the ways except for the way it isn't on purpose, if Lando hasn’t fallen in love with Oscar by now then Oscar being in love with Lando just isn’t what he needs.

And Oscar always tries to give Lando what he needs.

It’s nine in the evening when Lando silently comes into his room and climbs into Oscar’s arms without needing to ask.

It’s nothing but darkness when Lando inserts himself into Oscar’s space, like he belongs there, like this isn’t all temporary, all pretence, all needs being met until someone else can take care of all of Lando’s needs and wants, like this whole predicament wasn’t the consequence of a whim, like a whim won’t end it.

It’s everything and nothing like usual the way Lando tugs at his shirt and says, “Please?”

Because Lando has said please a thousand times since they started this, but it has never sounded quite like this.

It’s a little too soft, a little too rough around the edges, a little too broken and just a little too wrong for Oscar not to know that this isn’t what Lando needs right now.

Because Oscar knows Lando.

So for the first time since they started this, for the first time since Oscar can remember ever saying this to something Lando wants, for the first time Oscar says, “No.”

Because it’s not fair.

It’s not fair to Lando to give him what he wants when it isn’t what he needs.

It’s not fair to Oscar to keep doing this to himself if it isn't going to help anyone.

And it’s not fair to either of them to keep holding Lando like this, to keep kissing him like this, to keep touching him like this. Not when Lando isn’t Oscar’s to hold and kiss and touch. Not when he never will be.

Because if they keep doing this, then at some point Oscar is going to break, at some point everything is going to break and he loves Lando too much to lose him like that.

Lando freezes. “You don’t want to?”

And that’s not it, that’s never it, that’s the entire problem, Oscar wants far too much.

“No, it’s not that. It’s just…” Oscar’s voice is so much steadier than he expects it to be, because he doesn’t feel steady at all, but he’d always been told he has three facial expressions and two and a half tones of voice, which Oscar had never quite understood, but is now incredibly grateful for, because at least Lando isn’t going to hear how loudly Oscar’s heart is breaking. “Did you text him?”

Oscar already knows the answer, because Lando had been sitting in the passenger seat all the way home, typing and backspacing, typing and backspacing again and again, and just as Oscar had looked over, Lando’s thumb had softly tapped the send button and ten minutes later he’d looked at the reply and Oscar already knows.

Maybe he just needs to hear it.

“Yeah.”

And Lando doesn’t need to ask who, because maybe they both kind of know this is all about that guy neither of them have ever met before, maybe they both know this is just about the concept of someone else.

“Are you— You’re going to go out with him?”

Lando swallows. “Yeah. Day after tomorrow.”

“Don’t you think maybe— Maybe we shouldn’t? If you’re really going to try?”

Lando is silent a moment too long, his hand going slack in its grip on Oscar’s shirt, his forehead dropping to Oscar’s chest, taking a breath that’s not quite even.

“Y-yeah. Okay. We shouldn’t.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Lando is silent a moment.

“Can I— Can I stay? Just tonight? I just need to sleep.”

“Of course,” Oscar says, around a lump in his throat. “Whatever you need.”

And with that, Lando goes lax against him again, but something about the way he goes loose against Oscar tonight feels less like releasing tension than it does like falling apart.

Oscar is sure he imagines it all, sure that he’s projecting, but for a second, right before he falls asleep, he could swear he feels some kind of wetness seeping into his shirt right there where Lando is pressing his face into Oscar’s shoulder.

But Lando isn’t moving, it doesn't feel like he’s even breathing where he’s pressed into Oscar, so he must be imagining it.

He must be imagining it when he thinks, just for a moment, that maybe Lando is crying about this, maybe he's just as miserable and broken hearted about this having to end as Oscar is. Maybe it meant something more to him, like it did to Oscar.

For a second Oscar thinks maybe Lando felt something for him too.

But he knows better. If Lando wanted it too he would have asked. He knows Oscar would never deny him anything he wanted, anything he needed. Oscar has done this long enough to know wishful thinking when he sees it and pushes the thought away.

He focuses instead on savouring this, Lando’s warmth, his weight, his presence.

Because Lando isn’t going to be in bed tomorrow night, and Oscar is going to have to take the sleep he can get.

It’s weird.

Oscar doesn’t know why he’s so surprised about it, but it’s starkly obvious now.

Oscar had never really noticed, because it had been a little weird since the beginning, because weird is simply what having casual sex with your best friend is inherently obligated to be.

Oscar had never quite thought about how the weirdness had just kept growing, how things got weirder with every baby and every sweetheart and every touch and kiss and every time Oscar let himself hold Lando’s hand to ground him and every time he let himself put his hand on Lando’s throat and every time he’d let himself look at Lando and forget to remember that Lando wasn’t Oscar's to look at.

Maybe he’d always known it and simply ignored it, the way things got weirder and weirder, always felt in the back of his awareness how that weirdness grew and changed until now when it isn't just the sex thing that’s weird, it’s everything that’s weird, because this godawful thing had woven itself into every facet of Oscar and Lando until Oscar and Lando from a few months ago are a completely different concept than Oscar and Lando now.

And Oscar, delusionally, had thought maybe it would all just stop being weird once this ended.

But instead of the end of the sex arrangement bringing an end to the weirdness, all that’s happened is that the absence of the sex arrangement leaves nothing but the weirdness.

Nothing but the unspoken obviousness that it wasn’t just a sex arrangement.

That it was Oscar being in love with Lando, and letting himself fall in love with Lando a little more every day and, like an idiot, expecting that not to fuck things up.

Because Oscar keeps forgetting about the fact that Lando always has something else up his sleeve, something that makes Oscar love him just a little more, so many little things that accumulate so unnoticeably that Oscar is startled when he looks back at that first night, when Lando sat down on his applied maths assignment and told Oscar to kiss him, back when this heartache was just a part of the furniture and not this gaping, Lando sized hole in his chest, and it’s shockingly apparent how naïve he was back then, to think that he was as in love with Lando as it could get, and he doesn’t know how he ever even managed to convince himself there was hope for getting over him.

Because Oscar is never as in love with Lando as he can get, there’s always space for just a little more.

And it was never just a sex arrangement, it was Oscar knowing better and letting himself take and take and take anyway, letting himself love and love and love, and it was Lando, accidentally, just letting him.

And of course that was weird.

Of course things don’t just stop being weird because they decided to stop having sex, because Oscar hasn't stopped loving him.

Of course Oscar can’t even avoid it this time, because he loves Lando too much nowadays to be able to withstand that inescapable gravity of him. It foils every attempt at keeping any form of distance between them, Oscar just keeps getting pulled back in.

So of course he wakes up clutching Lando like a lifeline, and of course Lando opens his eyes just as Oscar is loosening his grip on him, of course he says nothing, just blinks, looks away from Oscar as he sits up and gets out of bed, oddly hitching movements, somehow looking like he’s forgotten how to do it as he disentangles himself from Oscar, doesn't quite have the muscle memory down as he stands and leaves, leaves Oscar there alone, cold.

Of course Lando comes into the bathroom without knocking when Oscar is about to take a shower in a vain attempt to soothe that bone-deep cold, doesn’t knock, knows he doesn't need to, that there’s no such thing as privacy between the two of them, comes in quickly to fetch the phone he'd forgotten in there and catches Oscar staring at a stain on his shirt, not sure what it's from, but too distracted by how aware he is of Lando's skittish movements as he grabs what he needs and leaves to remember to try to figure out how that stain got right where Lando laid his head last night.

Of course he needs to do the second load of laundry from the last two weeks today, of course he needs to go into Lando’s room for it, where Lando is streaming, camera on, but abnormally silent, microphone muted, of course Lando notices Oscar is there, turning his head away from his stream to glance at Oscar right as he’s pulling his own hoodie out of Lando’s bag, the one he’d been wearing that last night, when he broke down in Oscar’s arms, right as something flashes across Oscar’s face at the sight of it.

Of course he bumps into Lando in the hallway as Lando is coming out of the shower, towel around his waist, and Oscar is heading to the kitchen, of course he sees Oscar's eyes dipping to the bruises he'd bitten into the skin over his waist, his hips, his stomach, probably catches the moment Oscar realises he's never going to renew them after they fade and that the dull ache of Lando's lingering scratch marks over his own back and shoulders isn't going to stay forever and Lando isn't going to scrape his nails over his shoulder blades like that ever again.

Of course Lando is busy making a bowl of cereals at ten in the evening, right as Oscar comes into the kitchen with dirty dishes from their rooms, of course Oscar had already filled the sink with water so he can’t even pretend he wasn’t going to wash the dishes, can’t come up with any reasons to get out of the kitchen, out of Lando’s space, can’t bring himself to even try, because he knows it won’t last.

Oscar nearly drops the dish he’s washing when Lando speaks.

"We're out of milk."

In the corner of Oscar’s eye he sees Lando sitting on the counter now, yet to take a bite of the bowl of cereals just sitting in his hands.

His voice is startlingly normal contrasted to the backdrop of this unspoken and yet completely unmissable weirdness between them. It’s right in every way except for how it shouldn’t be right, because nothing is right, because everything is just wrong.

Oscar needs a moment too long to remember that he needs to answer, to remember how to use his voice at all.

"Are we?"

Lando too takes a beat too long to say, "Yeah."

It’s oddly comforting, that extra beat, the wrongness of it taking away just a little of that clash between the weirdness of the situation and the normalcy of the conversation.

"I'll go get some for us in a bit," Oscar says, falling back on familiar patterns of conversation, but it’s harder now to remember how to do this, how to have conversations about the milk like there aren’t cracks between every word, like there isn’t this gaping something between them that should have ended last night along with everything else, but is somehow still alive and writhing, like the cracks aren’t spreading too fast, like they don’t both know that there’s something there, that there’s something they’ve never talked about, that there’s something about to break.

"I'll get it," Lando says, and there’s something off in his tone. He puts the bowl of cereals aside.

Oscar turns to look at him, to see if he can spot it in his face, and he keeps losing all these little muscle memories so he forgets to put down the glass he was busy washing, and it drips sudsy droplets onto the floor, every drop echoing.

"Don't worry about it, I will,” Oscar says, to fill up the silence.

"I need to go to the store anyway, I need some things."

"So give me a list of your things then."

"They're hard to find kind of things."

"So what?"

"So it’ll take ages."

"So that's fine, I have the time—"

"Jesus, Oscar, just let me get the damn milk," Lando shouts.

Oscar flinches.

The glass in his hand slips with the movement, drops, and shatters, deafeningly loud in the silence between them.

And suddenly it's in a thousand little pieces on the floor between them.

Oscar stares at it for a moment, Lando too. He waits for Lando to say something about the broken glass. Lando waits for Oscar to say something about the broken glass. Nobody says anything about the broken glass.

"Am I not supposed to get milk anymore?" Oscar asks.

They're not arguing about milk.

"I'm just saying you don't have to do it for me, I should— I can do it myself, I can do things myself, Oscar."

There’s something about the way that by ‘can’ Lando actually means ‘should’.

"I know you can do things yourself—"

"Then why do you do them for me like I can't do them myse—"

"Because you don't have to do them yourself if I can do them for you—"

"Yes, I do!"

"Why?"

"Because it's weird."

Ah.

There it is.

It's awfully clear how intentional it was that neither of them had ever said it out loud before until now, because now it's just hanging between them like this, exposed, just the raw truth of it.

"It's weird, Oscar."

Oscar needs a breath before he can speak again. "I know."

"It was always weird, wasn't it, this whole goddamn thing is— Was weird."

There's something about the way that by ‘was’ Lando actually means ‘is’.

"I told you it would be weird,” Oscar says then, and it’s less of an accusation than it is a plea for acknowledgement that Oscar was right. That he wishes he hadn't been. “And you told me it wouldn't be."

"Well, apparently I was wrong.”

The silence is deafeningly loud, so Oscar has no idea how he can seemingly hear every single breath Lando is taking, how he can hear that every single one of them sounds wrong.

“You started it." And this is an accusation.

“Yeah, and you let me.” And so is that.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you knew this thing wasn’t going to work, right from the start, and you let me do it anyway, you just kept letting it happen, and fine, maybe we both knew it was weird, and maybe I should have said something sooner, but you could also have said something before it got to this.”

“And what is this?”

“I don’t know what this is,” Lando shouts then. “I don’t know what this is, but Christ, Oscar, you can’t just fuck me like that and then expect things to just go back to the way they were.”

“Fuck you like what?”

Like I love you?

“Like that,” Lando says, which clarifies nothing.

“Like you needed?”

“Yeah, Oscar, like I needed. You can’t just fuck me like that and expect it not to change things.”

“Things like what?”

“Things like you always doing shit for me! Why do you always insist on doing things for me, I don’t need you to take care of me, why do you always have to take care of me?”

“Because I love you!”

“Well then don’t!”

“What?”

“Don’t fucking love me." Oscar had been too distracted by the conversation to feel it up until now, but oh. Oscar's heart is shattered, and every crack of Lando's voice is throwing salt into that gaping chest wound. "Not like this. Please.”

And god, Oscar knew he wasn't allowed to be in love with Lando, he knew he'd always have to live with pretending he wasn't, but how is he supposed to not love him at all?

There are tears brimming on his lash line and Lando’s face goes tight as he blinks them away and moves to get off the counter and go to his room.

And there's glass all over the floor and Lando is in socks, so of course Oscar opens his mouth to reflexively offer to carry him back to the safety of his room.

It doesn't quite make it out of his throat before Lando just says, broken, "Don't," and hops off the counter to find his way through the shards by himself.

Because he's rather risk walking on glass than letting Oscar take care of him.

Right before Lando disappears Oscar manages to ask, broken, "So what does that make us then?”

Roommates, best friends, not quite lovers, almost lovers.

Lando lingers in the doorway for a moment.

"It makes us fucked."

There's something about the way that by 'fucked' Lando means nothing else.

Oscar doesn’t sleep, doesn’t try to, knows he won’t. He’s not sure how he ever will again, without Lando.

He doesn’t even get into bed, leaves with just his car keys, takes them out of the bowl by the door where they always lie cozied up right next to Lando’s, thinks about how wrong it looks when they aren’t.

And when he knocks on Logan’s door at midnight, blurry eyed, a sob stuck in his throat, Logan doesn’t even ask. He just rubs the sleep out of his eyes and sighs as he waves Oscar inside and says, “I told you so.”

He had, but that hadn't helped. Oscar had been told it was a bad idea, but he'd never even needed to be told, he knew the consequences right from the beginning and he had decided to do it all anyway.

Oscar keeps forgetting, keeps forgetting how he doesn't get to decide what happens, how every attempt to prevent the inevitable is inherently doomed to fail, so he shouldn't have been surprised that ending it was never going to stay that spreading of the cracks, that that feeble attempt was never going to stop that inevitable shatter and all this was unavoidable from the start, it had to happen, the path to this end set in stone the second Oscar put his lips on Lando.

Oscar doesn't sleep, he doesn't eat, doesn't drink, doesn't talk, all night.

He just cries.

How stupid and naïve Oscar was, to believe even for a second, that there was a way to break his heart himself, to get to it before Lando could, that last night was even a blip on the radar for heartbreak, because hurting is just like loving, isn't it? You can always hurt a little more. 

Last night was nothing compared to this.

Because it hurts and it hurts and it hurts.

And having known it would doesn't make it hurt any less.

Chapter Text

He’s fucked it all up.

Of course he has. Every relationship Lando has ever had has somehow gone to shit and he really shouldn't be surprised that that extends to whatever this thing with Oscar was too. Somehow Lando always fucks it up.

He’d already known it that night, instinctively, when Oscar had said no. Not because of what he said, but the way he’d said it. That something in his tone, barely even there, but Lando knows all the nuances of Oscar’s tones.

Lando had already felt things starting to break in the dark as he cried himself to sleep in Oscar’s arms, silent and unmoving so Oscar wouldn’t know.

Maybe it had started going to shit even before that, and maybe they'd both known it.

But Lando just had to go and fuck it up properly, didn't he?

He'd fucked it up properly when he’d pointed out how this whole thing was just fucking weird, how none of it worked, and how Oscar just never stops fucking loving Lando like that.

He’d fucked it all up when he’d told Oscar not to love him.

He'd regretted it as soon as he'd said it, wished he could swallow the words back down his throat, wished that he could have just shut up and been happy with what Oscar does give him, but he isn't happy with just that, he can't be.

It just hurts a little too much to bear, having so much of Oscar's love, but just not the way Lando needs.

And there was nothing Lando could have done to stop the words from being ripped out of his throat.

Because Lando can't handle it, he can't live like this, he can't let Oscar do things for him like that, take care of him like that, love him like that if he isn't going to be in love with Lando.

It would all hurt so much less if Oscar didn't love him so much.

And Lando knows it doesn't work that way, that Oscar can no less stop loving Lando than Lando can stop loving Oscar and being asked to stop, wanting to stop, trying to stop, changes nothing.

But god, Lando wishes it did, that Oscar could do that for him, that Lando didn't know him well enough to know he couldn't.

But they both know there's simply no such thing as Oscar and Lando not loving each other.

And asking Oscar not to love him was nothing but a useless, last ditch attempt at saving them both some of this hurt.

But the thing about loving and hurting is that you don't get to decide how much you love, and you don't get to decide how much it hurts.

You just love and you love and you love.

And it hurts and it hurts and it hurts.

Lando wakes up cold and alone in Oscar's bed.

It’s half past seven now and Oscar technically has class eight, Lando knows this because he knows Oscar's schedule off by heart nowadays.

Oscar isn't going to class, because his room is undisturbed, everything untouched, from the freshly packed closet with the door still half open to Oscar’s backpack with his books and laptop left unmoved, propped up against the leg of his desk. It all looks achingly normal and domestic, except it's nothing but, because there's this stinging feeling of cold over all of it.

The apartment is eerily silent and Lando knows instinctively that he’s alone in it.

It's only now, really, that Lando realises that he’s so attuned to Oscar that he knows every little noise and feeling of him in Lando’s orbit, that he just knows when Oscar isn’t in it, isn’t where he’s supposed to be.

It’s jarring, like a punch to the gut, this bone-deep absence of Oscar.

He's not there for Lando to pillow his head on his chest, he's not there to have an idle argument about breakfast with, he's not there to weave around the apartment in frequency with Lando as they go through their morning routines that are based just as much on each other as they are based on other needs like food, brushing teeth and getting dressed.

He’d never even realised how intwined Oscar is into Lando’s routine, into every little thing he does, every movement, every action, every thought pattern, until now, when he can feel the absence of him like a knife to the gut.

So he doesn't get up out of bed, cannot leave this cocoon of the memory of him, the smells, the sights, and if Lando uses his imagination, the lingering touch.

He'd heard Oscar leaving last night and climbed into Oscar’s empty bed not ten minutes after he’d left.

Because he's absolutely pathetic and has no principles to speak of, Lando had gone and told Oscar to stop loving him and then, like the hypocrite he is, climbed into his bed right afterwards because he already missed him so much.

And Oscar had just left.

And hadn't come back.

Lando knew he wouldn't, not that night. They both need some kind of distance.

But it doesn't matter how much they need it, it hurts anyway.

So Lando had simply buried himself in the blankets, in the smell of Oscar, hadn’t bothered to even try to sleep, had simply given in to the tears and cried, cried all night until he fell asleep solely because he’d cried so much that he’d exhausted himself too much to stay awake.

All that’s missing from the apartment is Oscar’s car keys, his set of apartment keys, and Oscar himself. It’s strange how disproportionate the small volume of things missing is to the gaping whole it impacts in Lando’s chest.

It’s all jarringly real in the cold morning light, the way it’s all over.

Had it ever been this cold and dreary in Oscar’s room before? Lando doesn’t remember the early morning sunrays ever looking quite so bleak in here before, but maybe he’d never paid attention to anything about Oscar’s room except Oscar in it.

Lando curls deeper into the blankets, inhaling the scent of Oscar lingering there, closing his eyes in hopes to delude himself into believing, just for a moment, that the scent is coming from Oscar himself, that Oscar is here and he’s warm and nothing is wrong.

It doesn't work.

Because Oscar isn't here and everything is wrong.

He feels like crying again, but he doesn’t have any tears left at the moment. Instead he just lies there, unwilling to remove himself from the blankets that still smell like Oscar.

He picks up his phone from the bedside table. There aren’t any texts from Oscar. Lando doesn’t send one to ask where he is.

He’s pretty sure they don’t do that anymore.

Lando doesn't know what they do now.

Because that's just the thing now, isn't it? What are they? Not lovers, not friends, just... roommates. Maybe they're just nothing.

But that's not true, and maybe that's the problem.

They can never be nothing. No matter what, Oscar and Lando are always Oscar and Lando and maybe it doesn't mean the same thing as it did a few months ago, maybe the meaning of Oscar and Lando can change a thousand times, but it can never not mean something.

Oscar is too intwined with Lando for it to even be possible to take him out of Lando’s life, he's too rooted into every crevice of Lando, filling up all the gaps, keeping Lando whole, and without him Lando falls apart.

There’s no such thing as Lando without Oscar.

There’s no such thing as not seeing him anymore, not loving him anymore, and there’s also no such thing as not being in love with him anymore, and Lando doesn’t know what that makes them except fucked.

Maybe what it makes them is just two people who love each other in all the wrong ways.

Because he can’t be Oscar’s friend, and he can’t be Oscar’s lover, but the thing is, Lando could never not be Oscar’s.

Oscar doesn't make a habit of skipping class, so it's really just gut-punchingly obvious how much Lando must have hurt him for that calm, regular, placid Oscarness of him to be so disturbed that he doesn't even think about going to class, because he's not back by eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

Lando doesn't text him to ask if he's coming back. He doesn't need to. Of course Oscar will come back.

Because he lives here. Because distance never lasts between them. Because he loves Lando.

He has to come back.

The call comes through at one in the afternoon. He picks up without looking who’s calling, hoping that it’s Oscar, hoping that it isn’t. Of course it isn't.

“What did you do?” Charles says immediately.

Lando pauses. “What? I didn’t do anything. What are you talking about?”

“You and Oscar. I’m sure it’s both of your fault, but what did you do?”

“How do you even know about that? You weren’t supposed to know about that.”

“Everyone knows about it.”

“How?”

“Oscar told Logan, Logan told Rob, Rob told Arthur and Arthur told me.”

“And you told everyone.”

“That is beside the point. Nobody told me not to.”

Lando groans.

“What happened?” says Max, which means Lando is on speaker phone and they’re both passing the phone back and forth like an old married couple fighting about who gets to talk. Lando wants to cry again because he wishes he had Oscar to act like an old married couple with.

“Nothing.”

“You’ve been crying,” Max observes. Christ, it must be obvious if even Max can tell.

“Go away. Leave me alone.” Lando should probably hang up the phone.

“You will be here in fifteen minutes?” Charles says, completely undeterred.

“I what?”

“We have chocolate,” Max adds. “We’ll exchange it for the story.”

“Don’t say it like that, chéri,” Charles whispers, very loudly. “We just want to make sure you’re okay, Lando. And also please, we need to hear the story, please, please, please!"

“Guys—"

"Just come. Actually, no, we will come fetch you, you can’t drive. Especially not like this.”

 "I’m not—"

They hang up before Lando can say anything more. He groans.

Chocolate doesn't sound terrible.

Twenty minutes later Lando is face down on Max and Charles’ couch, sobbing around a mouthful of chocolate while the two of them pat him in sympathy after he explained what happened.

“Why don’t you just ask him to be your boyfriend?” Max asks, in abject confusion because he apparently has no idea that nobody just does shit like that.

He pats Lando’s shoulder, quite awkwardly and only because Charles told him to because everyone knows that Max’s emotional literacy is equivalent to that of a spoon and he might have an actual fear of people crying.

“Because Oscar doesn’t like me like that,” Lando sobs as he turns his head to look at them both through blurry eyes.

“Of course he d—” Max is cut off by Charles slapping a hand over his mouth.

Max frowns at him in confusion.

Lando is too miserable to care to ask, he just cries a little more.

“Uh… I say talk about it! Tell him how you feel!” Charles looks a little pained as he says quickly, “Max, chéri, I need to talk to you for a minute.”

And then the pair of them are gone, Charles pulling Max a small distance away to have a whispered argument which involves a lot of confused frowning on Max’s side and a lot of sighing and hand gestures on Charles’.

He’s not sure why they don’t go into a different room, possibly because they think Lando might perish if he gets out of their eyesight. They’re not wrong, Lando is seriously considering it.

“It’s not our place, Max,” Charles whisper-shouts.

“Charles, come on, they have so many dots, all the dots, and they haven’t managed to connect a single pair of them!"

Charles grimaces. “Give them a little more time, let them do it their way.”

"But Charles! They’re being stupid!”

"Yes, I know, but I think they just need a little more time!"

“I can hear you,” Lando croaks, not because he's really processing anything they're saying, or cares to try, but because he's annoyed about the whispering and wants them to go back to feeling sorry for him now.

“Ah. Right,” Charles says and turns back to Max. “Not a word out of you, you hear me?”

Max sighs and rolls his eyes. “Fine.”

“Good. Lando, will tea help?”

“No,” Lando moans. “But make some anyway.”

Charles makes a slightly concerned face, but he leaves to go make tea. Max, looking rather awkward, pulls a blanket from the arm of their couch to drape it over Lando before he pats him some more.

Lando sniffles gratefully.

Two minutes later someone is knocking at the door.

Lando makes a miserable little moan and curls deeper into the blanket as Max gets up to see who it is.

“Morning, idiot,” says Max Fewtrell a moment later, squatting down next to the couch at the level of Lando’s face to flick him on the forehead.

“Shove off,” Lando croaks through his sobs. “How did you even know about this?”

“Everyone knows,” says Max, and strokes Lando’s shoulder to soothe the sobbing down to sniffling.

“Of course they do,” Lando moans.

Charles comes back with three steaming cups of tea. “Ah, hello.”

Lando makes a grabbing hand for his tea, which Charles hesitates to give him for a moment until he’s assessed the state of Lando enough to be convinced he isn't going to drop the steaming hot tea on himself because he’s crying too much to retain motor function or something. In Charles' defence, that's not unlikely.

“I will go get more tea and biscuits.”

Lando takes some miserable sips through his blubbering explanation to Max Fewtrell.

Two more minutes later there’s another knock on the door.

“Jesus, Charles, did you make a university wide announcement about this?” Lando shouts out towards the kitchen where Charles is busy.

“Hi,” Alex says gingerly as he pulls George inside behind him. “We’re just coming from Logan’s. Oscar is there.”

“What, avoiding me? Because I went and made it fucking weird, yeah?”

“No, because—” George starts, but Alex puts a hand over his mouth before he can finish.

“Oh, are you also on team romance?" says Max Verstappen. "I voted we lock them in a room and don’t let them out until they’ve talked about it, George, but apparently we’re not allowed to interfere.”

“Well, I suppose that would be dreadfully unromantic,” George concedes once Alex gives him back his speaking privileges.

“And the only reason we’re not allowed to knock any sense into them is for the sake of romance?” Max is looking rather tortured at this point.

Lando has no idea what they’re arguing about or why failing friendships and broken hearts are apparently so romantic, but he’s a bit too miserable to even give a shit about what they’re saying because all he's thinking about is how everything is fucked and the only person who could possibly make him feel any better right now is Oscar and how that isn't an option.

“Yes, of course,” says Charles to that as he comes back with more tea. “Oh, hello.”

Alex and George sit down on the edge of the couch Lando is lying on to offer their condolences.

Lando cries some more.

Charles makes a face and says, “I will go make more tea.”

Three more minutes and there’s another knock, about which Lando makes an embarrassing moan into the couch pillow, before there’s another hand on his shoulder and Carlos is there, quietly murmuring, “Hey, you little muppet.”

“Hi,” Lando moans. “Please don’t make me tell the story again.”

“Ah. Okay. I brought you soup?”

Five minutes later everyone has tea and is still looking at Lando with a mixture of faces at the sight of him somehow managing to keep putting spoonfuls of soup in his mouth while never once having stopped crying.

They’ve now formed a half circle around Lando, looking at him with expressions varying from slightly annoyed in Max Verstappen’s case to a pout two seconds away from also crying about this in Alex’s case.

“Alright, people, I’m not a bloody zoo animal, can we all stop staring at me like this?”

Nobody stops staring at him.

Max Fewtrell sighs. "Look, mate, it's not our place to sort this out for you, and it's probably not our place to assume how Oscar's feeling right now, but I'm pretty sure the words 'like shit' just about sum it up."

"Yes, I know, and that's all my bloody fault." Lando sobs.

"Well, I won't lie to you, mate, it partly is."

Lando simply cries harder.

"Lando, mate, come on. You know damn well that you and Oscar aren't just going to not be friends anymore, you know damn well you aren't moving out of that beloved little apartment of yours, and you know damn well that you aren't just going to stop being in love with him."

"Yes, I know. And that's the whole damn problem, I can't have all those things at once, it just doesn't work."

"Have you asked if it could work?"

"No, Max, you muppet, what do you want me to do, just tell him that I'm absolutely, ridiculously, moronically in love with him?"

"Yes."

"And how the fuck is that supposed to fix things?"

"The things you already completely fucked up?"

"Yes, Max, thank you for clarifying, I do mean the things that I fucked up."

"Lando, mate, listen. You've both tried to fix things, and you've both fucked up.Oscar tried fixing it by ending the fucking and you tried fixing it by ending the loving and be honest, neither of those are particularly appealing, are they?"

Lando sniffles. "No."

"Exactly. Now if I follow the mental gymnastics you both made to even think that either of those ideas would solve things I do see where you're coming from, but at the end of the day you both tried and it didn't fix shit, yeah?"

"Yes, Max, are you going to keep making a detailed outline of how completely and utterly we fucked this up or are you going to make a goddamn point in the near future?"

"The point is that you both tried to fix it one way and you fucked it up. So it's fucked, congratulations, it can't get any worse."

"That's a shit point, Max."

"The point is that you haven't tried fixing it by telling him what the actual problem is. You haven't tried fixing it by asking for what you really want, idiot."

Lando takes several seconds to consider that. "So you're saying I'm actually supposed to tell him that I'm absolutely, ridiculously and moronically in love with him?"

"Yes, mate. It can't exactly make things worse."

Lando blinks.

And blinks again.

"Absolutely the fuck not, are you joking?"

Everyone, collectively, groans.

Max throws his hands up in frustration at Charles, who makes a tortured face, but just shakes his head a little. Alex and George exchange raised eyebrows. Carlos simply finds a wall and smacks his forehead into it.

"What level of idiocy does it have to come to for me to be allowed to physically knock some sense into him?" Max Verstappen whisper-yells.

"Surely he won't go, will he?" George says quietly. "Not with someone else..."

Lando pulls the blanket over his head and stops listening. 

"Well, I don't know, he's stupid," Carlos says.

"But surely Oscar won't let him go. Not without trying..." Alex says, trailing off unsurely.

"I don't know, he's also stupid," Charles says.

"Oh, yeah... Give it until tomorrow?" Alex suggests. "For the sake of romance?"

Max Verstappen groans.

"You know what, fine," Max Fewtrell says to the lump that is Lando under the blanket. "Just keep the idea in mind then, but if you won't listen then can we all, just once, say that we told you so.”

“Fine, go ahead," Lando moans miserably.

“We told you so,” says everyone in remarkable synchrony.

“Yes, alright, you told me so, get fucked," Lando says miserably. "Someone go get me more chocolate.”

“I will go get more chocolate,” says Charles.

Lando ends up staying there for a good four hours until he can't stand all the hovering anymore and requests to be taken back home.

He doesn't think he'll be any less miserable there, of course, not when that space is still nothing but theirs, not when it's just the same as it always is except that Oscar isn't in it, not when Lando doesn't know how he's going to fix that.

But he has to go home. It's home.

Everyone offers their last sympathies before Max and Charles pack Lando into their car to take him back home.

Max keeps giving Charles looks as they take Lando up the lift which Charles ignores because he’s too busy assessing whether Lando will live if he’s left alone and Lando ignores it all because he’s heartsick and miserable and honestly wishes the earth would simply eat him.

Oscar isn’t there when they get back. Lando doesn't know whether it would have been better or worse if he had been.

Max and Charles have another whispered argument as they help Lando into a cocoon of blankets in his bed, but eventually they say their goodbyes and go home.

He stays in bed the rest of the afternoon, too afraid to get into Oscar's now when there's a chance he could be back any minute.

But he's not back when Lando curls up deeper and wishes he could fall asleep without him.

He's not back when Lando starts wondering he'll never be able to sleep again.

He's not back when Lando starts worrying that he won't come back.

He's back right at the most inconvenient time he could possibly choose to come back, right when Lando can't avoid him.

He's back when Lando has finally dragged himself out of bed to take care of all the basic necessities at once, food, water, bathroom, shower, washing hours of dried tears off his skin.

He's back right when Lando is getting out, when he's finished his feeble attempt at looking human again and took one look in the mirror and knew he'd failed.

Of course that’s the moment Oscar chooses to come home.

Lando knows he’s in the apartment as soon as he enters it, hears the quiet rattle of his keys in the keyhole, the quiet shutting of the door, and something all along Lando’s body relaxes just a little, every muscle loosening just a bit now that Oscar is back in his orbit, back where he should be. 

Lando isn’t even surprised when he bumps into him in the hallway.

Because this always happens, he’s always pulled to Oscar like gravity, so of course Lando bumps into him in the hallway as he gets out of the shower.

Well, almost. It’s more a thing of deliberately not bumping into Lando because Oscar stops right before Lando hits his chest, stops right before they touch, and Lando realises suddenly that the last time they touched was the last time he woke up in Oscar’s arms and how this is the longest he’s gone without touching Oscar since Lando can even remember.

Oscar clears his throat. “Sorry.”

Oscar’s voice is completely fucked, in a way Lando has never heard it before, his eyes red, his clothes rumpled, the entire way he’s carrying himself just wrung out, exhausted, and wrong, and Lando barely even needs a glance to see how much he’s hurting.

God, Lando hates how that's the first thing Oscar says to him, even if it's just about bumping into Lando in the hallway, hates how he said it first, before Lando could, like anything is Oscar's fault.

And Lando wants to scream and cry and tell him he's sorry and beg for Oscar to please stop loving him, if only so that Lando could have the small comfort of not hurting Oscar.

But all he can say is a weak echo, his voice no better than Oscar's, “Sorry.”

Something flashes over Oscar's face, whether at how Lando sounds, how he looks, or what he says Lando doesn't know.

Oscar’s hand twitches, just once, like it’s going to reach up to brush away the sting from the corner of Lando’s eye where he suddenly feels like crying again, and then, instead, it just… drops.

Because Oscar isn't allowed to do things like that anymore.

Lando feels his face tighten as he resists the urge to cry, because he doesn't get to cry, not about the situation that's all his fault.

This is the part where they’re supposed to go separate ways, but Oscar doesn’t move and Lando doesn’t either, for long enough that they can’t even pretend there's not some palpable unspoken awareness about the way that there’s an uncrossable ten centimetres of space between them, so much more than there usually is and so much less than there ever should have been between just friends.

"Y-You're going then?" It's awfully wrong, quiet, hesitant, like he's not sure how to speak to Lando anymore and fucking hell, Lando did this.

And Lando doesn't know how to speak to Oscar anymore either, so his voice sounds no more normal as he asks, "What?"

"On your, uh, date?"

Lando had completely forgotten about the date, honestly. “Oh." He should go, maybe, just to distract himself. “I guess."

It’s not going to work out, of course, Lando doesn’t want it to. Lando doesn’t want anything to work out that isn’t this. But it's too late for that.

Oscar stands there for another moment, looking like he wants to say something, but it won't quite come out of his mouth.

"What?" Lando prompts, maybe just to hear his voice again.

Oscar swallows, exhales and says simply, "Nothing."

And with that he moves out of Lando’s way and leaves him there, still warm from the shower, but suddenly so very cold.

Lando takes a shuddering breath and pulls himself together to go get dressed.

He gets dressed by rote, doesn’t even know what clothes he’s putting on, doesn’t know what his face or hair looks like, doesn’t care, he just needs to get out of this apartment.

He'd been waiting for Oscar to come back all day, but all of a sudden now that he is here Lando just can't be here with him, he just needs to leave.

And because the universe can never give him a damn break and Oscar apparently does not understand that they're supposed to try and avoid each other right now, of course Lando catches him on the couch right as he's leaving, stops in his tracks a moment on his way out, there where Oscar can't see him for now, watches Oscarscrolling aimlessly through shows, watches they way he lingers on Law and Order, skips it, the way he lands on Love is Blind and subsequently shuts the television off.

And Lando suddenly wishes nothing more than that he didn't have to leave, that he could just curl up in Oscar's arms and make him watch Love is Blind with Lando all night.

He can tell exactly when Oscar notices Lando is there because there’s this little flinch of the fright Lando gave him, this tightness that stays in his shoulders after, but he says nothing about that, just stands and clears his throat.

“You going then?”

Lando swallows. “Yeah.”

"Okay."

"Okay."

Oscar sighs and steps a little closer, fidgeting, oddly, because Oscar doesn't really fidget. "Is he good looking then?”

“He’s…” He doesn't know what it has to do with anything anyway, but Lando can’t exactly admit that he barely remembers what he looks like from his Instagram because all he knows is that he doesn’t look like Oscar, he hasn’t got that stupid floppy hair that’s never seen a brush or those warm eyes or that smile that lights up Lando’s entire being. “Fine.”

“Is he nice?”

Lando has no idea if he’s nice, nor does he care. “Probably.”

“Could you be happy? With him?”

No.

“Maybe.”

Something flickers over Oscar’s face at that and his eyes drop away from Lando’s face, land instead somewhere just below it.

Hand twitches to move the string of the hoodie that’s skew back into place, and Lando realises only now that the hoodie he’d put on isn’t his, now when Oscar’s hand twitches like he wants to touch him, adjust his own clothes on Lando, and again decides not to instead.

Lando wishes there wasn't this canyon of distance of his own creation between them, uncrossable even when they're so, so close.

“Where is it?”

“What?”

“The date?”

"Club a few streets off of north campus," Lando says absently, just to say something, because he thinks he remembers vaguely something about the date being supposed to be there.

"North campus? You driving yourself?"

Oscar knows damn well Lando hates driving, especially in the dark, and he's never driven that far without someone in the car with him, and this is the part where Lando is supposed to ask, 'You offering?'.

"Yes," he says instead. "Why?"

Oscar fidgets some more, opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again.

"What?"

"Don't go," Oscar blurts out.

And god, Lando wishes there were another reason Oscar were asking him not to go.

“Oh, fuck off, Oscar!" Lando shouts then and, fuck, he always does this, always speaks before he thinks and then it's too late to stop any of the words from coming out if his mouth. "I'm not going to crash the damn car, I don't need you to drive me everywhere anymore, I don't need you to keep worrying about me and I don't need you to keep—"

'To keep loving me,' Lando was going to say, but he can only lie to Oscar so much.

“I wasn’t saying—"

“Just— Just fuck off Oscar! I'm going! I don’t—" 

“Lando, if you want to go then go, just call me if—”

"Don't you dare say call you if I need you—"

"Lando, please—"

"Oscar, I can’t need you," Lando says then, and it tears a hole all the way up his windpipe as it comes out and it stabs in the corner of his eyes, twists in his chest, presses a lump in his throat and Lando needs to just leave. "I can't need you, okay?”

"Lando, wait—"

But Lando is already going, he just needs to go, shuts the apartment door between himself and Oscar and just leaves.

He catches his murky reflection in the metal of the elevator doors closing to carry him down, can see even in that blurry reflection how absolutely wrecked he looks, and looks away.

He says none of his usual profanities to Geraldine, catches her confused frown at the state of him and just looks down at the floor as he hurries to get out of here so fast he's almost stumbling over his feet.

He just needs to get to the car.

He just needs to get into it.

He just needs to drive.

He just needs to leave.

But then all of a sudden his wrist is caught and Lando is stuck in his tracks and he can't go anywhere.

He doesn't need to turn around, he knows exactly what Oscar's hand on his wrist feels like.

"Don't you dare," Lando says around the lump in his throat.

It occurs in the back of Lando’s mind that the only way Oscar could be here so fast is if he ran down the stairs for this, because there’s no way he would get here if he had to wait for the elevator to get back up again, listens now for the tell tale little uptick in Oscar's breathing at the exertion. He hates how well he knows Oscar's body.

"Call me," Oscar says then, barely loud enough to be heard. "If you need me. Please."

And what the hell is Lando supposed to say?

He goes a little slack in that grip of Oscar’s, leans some of his weight into it, not to try and get out of it, because he can't do that anymore, he's just too tired.

He leans into it just because he needs to take some of his own weight off of himself, and he knows Oscar can hold him, and won’t let him fall.

Oscar doesn’t let go.

Lando releases a breath.

“If I called you every time I needed you," Lando says, quietly, and in the night air, in the circle of light under the single lamp in their apartment parking lot, it comes out so clear that the quiet of it can't possibly prevent Oscar from hearing every word. "You'd never stop hearing from me, Osc."

Oscar is silent for a few beats too long, before he says, equally quiet, “What does that mean?”

“It means I'm not going on the bloody date, Oscar!” Lando shouts then, turning to Oscar, and his face is screwing up and Lando is about to cry. “Are you mental?"

It's dark out, so it's just the two of them lit up in this halo of the streetlamp, the rest of the world dark.

Lando yanks his wrist out of Oscar's hand to wrap his arms around himself in a vain attempt to curb the blurriness in his vision, the tremble of his lips.

He should leave, but he can’t make himself move, trapped in this circle of light with Oscar.

The movement makes Oscar stumble a little closer, and suddenly he's so close that he has to look down at Lando, his breath ghosting over Lando's trembling lip.

“You’re not?”

“No, Oscar,” Lando shouts and grabs onto the front of Oscar’s shirt and Oscar looks completely unconcerned about that because he’s perfectly aware Lando never goes to the bloody gym so he could hardly even move Oscar.

Besides that, Lando wouldn’t, and Oscar knows that, because Oscar knows him better than anyone has ever known Lando in his life.

Well. 

This can't exactly make things worse.

"I don't want to go on a date with anyone else, or fuck anyone else or hold hands with anyone else, or kiss anyone else, or go grocery shopping with anyone else or watch Law and Order and Love is Blind with anyone else, I want to do all that shit with you and only you, you absolute idiot, and I don't want you to be my goddamn best man at my wedding I want you to be my husband," his voice cracks finally and he's sobbing.

Oscar blinks.

And then he blinks again.

And now he's just fucking staring at Lando.

"This is the part where you say something, because the lease is technically in your parents' name, so if I need to make other plans I need to know," Lando says unevenly, thin and hitching and Lando is crying and Oscar is just standing here looking at him, not saying anything as his hands come up to hold Lando's face, looking at Lando like he's never bloody well seen him before.

"Did you just... propose to me?" Oscar says then, all breath, stupidly, instead of anything helpful at all.

"No, Oscar, but I did just tell you I'm in love with you, if you missed that, and maybe I didn’t just want to have a stupid sex arrangement, maybe I actually want an arrangement that involves proposing sometime in the future.”

“You what?”

“I’m sorry, okay? I know it’s fucked up because we’re friends, we're roommates and I’m being stupid, but I just can’t stop thinking about you that way and I’ve messed everything up and I’m sorry, but I— I— I miss you and we’re always fucking fighting nowadays, ever since we started this stupid sex arrangement and it’s all my fault because I should have never suggested it in the first place—”

“Lando—”

“I hate fighting with you, I don’t know why we’re always fighting now, I just want my friend back, I want you back, but I’ve fucked it up because I can’t think of you as just my friend anymore, because—”

“Lando—"

“Because it was— It was supposed to just be casual sex, it was supposed to be casual, but it wasn’t fucking casual, not to me, not when it was like that, not when you touched me like that and looked at me like that and took care of me like that, because you’re just so perfect, you’re just— You’re just Oscar, and I love you, but I’m also so stupidly in love with you—”

“Lando, I love you too, you idi—”

“And I can’t handle that! I can't, it would be so much easier if you didn’t love me at all, it would be so much easier if I had none of that goddamn love of yours instead of almost all of it—”

“Lando—”

“I just can’t handle the way you love me so fucking much, but you’re not in love with me—”

“Lando,” Oscar says then.

He doesn’t shout, because Oscar never shouts, but it’s said just right to make Lando pause in his babbling and gesturing.

“What?”

And all of a sudden he can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t think, because Oscar’s hands are cradling his face and he’s looking at Lando with those soft eyes of his and—

“Lando, sweetheart, what's the fucking difference?”

Lando’s brain stops functioning, entirely, it's just blank. Because— Because—

“What?”

“I’ve been in love with you for as long as I’ve loved you, you idiot, it’s the same damn thing.”

Chapter Text

“You— Wait, what? No, you haven’t—”

“Oh my god, you’re so fucking stupid, I love you so much," Oscar says, and simply kisses him.

Oscar doesn’t get to find out what Lando was going to say to that because all Lando manages is, “Hmm?”

“I love you,” Oscar murmurs in a breath against his lips before he kisses him again and murmurs between kisses. “I love you, I love you, I don’t— I don’t even understand how— At some point I shouldn’t be able to love you more.”

Lando’s brain has apparently not caught up with what Oscar is telling him yet, but Oscar is pretty used to that, so he reckons he’s going to give it another minute before he starts getting concerned about the way Lando is just kind of standing there.

“But every time I think I can’t love you more you do something else and I do, I love you more and more and more and I can’t stop.”

“You’re in love with me?” Lando asks dazedly between the kisses, like that wasn’t fucking clear.

“I’m so in love with you,” Oscar confirms.

Lando is silent for a few more seconds, kind of just letting himself be kissed while he tries to form intelligent thoughts.

“Mint.”

“Oh my god,” Oscar groans into his mouth and he’s still got his hands on Lando’s face and he should probably let go and put them somewhere better, but Lando doesn’t make any move to indicate that he wants to be let go. “Don’t be all British at me after I tell you I’m in love with you, Lando, please.”

And then it’s like Oscar can audibly hear Lando’s brain click into gear.

“Oh my god, you’re in love with me.”

And then Lando is kissing him back, and suddenly everything is just right. 

It’s all warm, and Oscar hasn’t felt this kind of warmth since the chill that Lando’s absence left settled into his bones the other night and it’s like getting out of an ice bath, it’s like standing in the sun after winter, it’s like everything that was wrong just melts away and it just leaves Oscar and Lando clicking into place.

And Oscar doesn’t want to let him out of his arms ever again, doesn’t want to let him go on the stupid date or in the stupid car or anywhere else ever and Oscar doesn’t care if he never graduates, he’s going to skip all his classes, he’s not going to eat or sleep or do anything that doesn’t involve Lando’s lips on him ever again.

Lando seems to agree, seems to want Oscar closer, closer, closer, pulling at Oscar anywhere he can reach, one hand in his hair, the other desperately clutching his shoulder as Lando kisses him so hard it’s like he’s trying to climb into Oscar’s mouth.

“I’m in love you,” Oscar says just to say it again, and kisses him just to kiss him again. “I love you.” Again. “I love you.” Again. “I’m so insanely in love with you it was going to ruin everything.” Again, again, again.

“Ruin it,” Lando begs. “Please ruin it.”

“It’s so ruined,” Oscar breathes and removes one hand from Lando’s face finally, to pull him closer into himself by his waist. “Completely ruined.”

"That’s…” Lando says, and needs to pause to kiss Oscar again and it’s just as well, because Oscar doesn’t want to breathe, he just wants to kiss Lando until he suffocates and dies happy. “That's really convenient."

"Not a single thing about this situation has been convenient for me even once,” Oscar tells him emphatically, because Lando really needs to know that.

"Sorry," he just murmurs absently, completely unhelpfully, as usual, just how Oscar likes him.

“You’re so inconvenient, I love you, I hope you inconvenience me forever.”

“Mm," Lando says, rather inconveniently.

“You really just—” Oscar kisses him again. “Couldn’t have opened your damn—”  Again. “Mouth and said something before we both had to have—”  Again. “Extensive breakdowns on people’s couches about it?”

Lando pulls away then with a squawk. “Hey, no, wait a minute! You mean to tell me you’ve been besotted with me since you met me and first of all expect me to be able to process that and second of all try and tell me I should have said something?”

“Yes, okay, I didn’t claim to have been smart, did I?” Oscar groans, throwing his hands up.

“So what, did you just expect me to magically know how you felt or something?”

“It wouldn’t have been magic, it would have just been opening your damn eyes for once, like, Jesus, Lando, have you seen the way I act around you? It’s downright embarrassing. Literally everyone knows that I’m in love with you except you.”

“What? No they don’t— Oh," Lando says, and Oscar can physically see the puzzle pieces being put together in his brain. "Oh my god, fucking bastards, the lot of them!”

“Yes, I know, bastards, agreed, and okay, in hindsight it was really stupid of me to expect you to have realised I felt the same way because no offence, but you can be really dense—"

“You! You knew I was acting weird and instead of thinking ‘Oh, I wonder why Lando is looking at me weird and telling me he loves me weird and crying in my arms about how he’s never going to be happy?’ and think, ‘Well, maybe he’s in love with me and he thinks I don’t love him back and it’s ruining his life’ you simply, what, don’t think?”

Oscar makes a guilty grimace. "Okay, in hindsight..."

“Oh my god, shut up, shut up, you idiot, I can’t— Years, Oscar, are you joking? Literal years!”

“Well," Oscar says helplessly. "Yeah, I mean, look at you, you’re just… Lando.”

“And you never said anything?”

“Well! In my defence I’m kind of just used to assuming you’re not in love with me given that for most of the time I’ve known you your main objective in the day is to get fucked by someone who isn’t me, so it’s not like you were in love with me.”

“I— Well— Well, I don’t know, I’m starting to think maybe I kind of was! Besides, I wasn’t exactly subtle the last few weeks either, you could really have opened your eyes too, you hypocrite!”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry! I think I just assumed you were acting weird because the thing was weird—”

“Of course it was weird, because I was absolutely, ridiculously and moronically in love with you! And you were in love with me! And you never bloody well said anything! That's weird!”

“I didn't say anything because I was scared!" Oscar admits then. "I was scared of losing you, I was scared of ruining our friendship, and also you were kind of trying to fuck other people for half the time of the sex thing and then I kind of just assumed if you wanted something, you’d ask me for it because obviously I’d be your boyfriend if you asked me to and then you never did and also you were literally just about to go on a date with someone else so not to say I’m not sorry for never opening my mouth, but you do see how none of that particularly helped, right?”

Lando opens his mouth, closes it. “Okay, in hindsight... that also makes kind of sense.”

“Yeah,” Oscar says softly, looking at Lando, absolutely heart-eyed, as usual.

“Yeah,” Lando echoes, looking back, and Oscar has no idea how he missed that that look means he's in love with Oscar because it's blindingly obvious in hindsight.

“I think we forgot to factor in that we’re both absolute idiots, didn’t we?”

“Yeah…” Lando agrees, all the energy draining out of him as his arms just flop to his sides and suddenly he’s looser than he’s been for weeks.

It’s like the weight of all of it has been visible taken off his shoulders as he pulls Oscar back in to himself by the hem of his shirt.

Oscar goes where Lando pulls him, of course he does, and now that Oscar is looking at him again he can see the lingering redness of tears around his eyes, the mess that is his hair, the mismatch of socks he’d put on, the hoodie that’s technically a ratty old one of Oscar’s and just the tiredness in his frame.

“I’m sorry,” Oscar says then, taking Lando’s face back in his hands, somehow still gorgeous despite all the tears and stress and misery, and finally lets himself brush a thumb over that redness at the corner of his eye. “I’m so sorry that I never said anything, I’m so sorry it came to this, and I’m so sorry you were hurting because I let you believe that I didn’t love you the way you want me to.”

“Need,” Lando corrects. “Not want. You— Osc, I think— You kept trying to give me what you thought I needed instead of what I wanted, and I think you trusted me to tell you what I needed and I didn’t and I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, it’s not just your fault, it was both our fault, I'm sorry, I— You know, if I loved you any differently it might have been easier for me to tell you how I loved you, but I just— I couldn’t put this into words, how do I tell you how much I love you?”

And then Lando’s hands are coming to Oscar’s face in a mirror image of Oscar’s hands on Lando’s. “Oh god, oh god, and then I told you not to love me, fuck.”

“Yeah,” Oscar breathes.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Lando says desperately and the grip he’s got on Oscar is so tight it’s like he thinks someone is going to try and take Oscar away from him. “Please don’t tell me that’s what you were trying to tell me that night, don’t tell me you were trying to tell me you were in love with me and I told you not to love me at all, please.”

“No,” Oscar admits and tips his forehead down to Lando's and closes his eyes. “I wasn’t brave enough. I think— I knew there was a difference to you, between love and in love, you know? But I thought you needed me to just love you and I thought— I thought I could do that, or at least pretend, but that’s not what you wanted.”

“No. No, not like that.”

“No,” Oscar agrees. “Because I can’t love you without being in love with you.”

“And I couldn’t handle you acting like you were in love with me, but you were telling me you just love me.”

“Yeah. Funny,” Oscar says then, quietly. “I’ve never talked to anyone as much as I’ve talked to you, but somehow it still took us this long to talk about it.”

“Well,” Lando agrees with a huff of a laugh and Oscar can feel it flutter over his own lips. “How do you talk about something you can’t put into words?”

“Yeah,” Oscar agrees. "It's breaking my brain a little, to be honest. There just... aren’t words for how much I love you, or how much it hurt not to be allowed to love you.”

Lando makes a noise and tugs Oscar a little closer. “I’m sorry, I'm so sorry I hurt you like that, I'm sorry. I don’t know why I couldn’t take it, I just couldn’t live like that, with you taking care of me like that thinking you were just doing it because you loved me and not because you were in love with me— I couldn’t, it just hurt too much.”

“I’m sorry too, I’m sorry I didn’t open my mouth and tell you I was in love with you even when there was almost nothing left to lose.”

“There wasn't nothing, there would never have been nothing, Osc, you know that. I regretted it as soon as I said it. I climbed into your bed right after you left because I missed you so much, I cried all night—”

“I know, I know, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry you had to cry all night, I’m sorry I left, I’m sorry, I’m sorry you had to climb into my bed because I wasn’t there for you, and at least I was just as miserable, but Christ, I couldn’t even be in my room just now because all of it just smelled like you, and I didn’t know what that even meant because you were going to go on a date with someone else—"

“I’m sorry—”

Oscar breathes a laugh. “I forgive you.”

“But Oscar.”

“Lando,” Oscar sighs and pulls his waist into his own, so much that Lando has to wrap his arms around his shoulders just to stay upright as Oscar wraps his arms around him. “It’s not all your fault, I get it, I don’t blame you, I forgive you.”

Lando makes another wounded noise, but he lets it go in favour of fisting his hands in the fabric of Oscar's shirt.

“Speaking of that stupid guy of yours,” Oscar remembers. “Maybe text him that you’re not coming.”

“Who?” Lando says absently as he tries to pull Oscar a little closer, just a little more.

"The guy. As much as I want him to die, I think that might be rude."

Lando pulls away to look at Oscar, grinning. "You're jealous?"

"Shut up, I am so jealous,” Oscar groans and pulls him back.

“You’re being jealous so politely, how do you even do that?” Lando breathes and pulls Oscar back to his lips. “Come here and kiss me.”

Oscar groans in vague annoyance, but he can’t very well deny himself the pleasure of Lando’s lips right now. "I’ve been very politely jealous for years, I have lots of practice. Text him though, it’s good manners."

"Oh, I did,” Lando informs him absently between kisses as he threads his fingers through Oscar’s hair and tilts his head. “Like two hours ago."

"What?” Oscar asks, slightly distracted by Lando threading his fingers through Oscar’s hair as he nudges his head up for another kiss. “Where the hell were you going then?"

"I have no idea."

"Oh my god, Lando,” Oscar sighs and puts his mouth back on Lando’s so he can stop saying stupid things. Of course he wasn’t even actually going on the date, of course he needed to give Oscar just that extra bit of heartbreak before he managed to open his mouth and save them both some for once. “Give me those goddamn car keys, you're not going anywhere."

"Mmkay," Lando mumbles into his lips as he lets Oscar take the car keys from his loose grip.

"Not without me. I'll drive you wherever you want to go forever," Oscar murmurs into his mouth as he drops the keys safely in his pocket before they get dropped and forgotten on the floor and Lando’s car gets stolen. "Wherever you want, whenever you want."

"You’re really going to regret saying that,” Lando tells him, grinning into his mouth. "I’m going to be really annoying about it."

"Mm. Probably. God, you’re so annoying, I love you, you’re an absolute rollercoaster of emotions, you know that? I’ve never had so many different feelings about one person in my life.”

"Mm.” Lando smiles into his mouth. “But you love it, because you love me. Tell me again?”

“I love you.”

“Tell me how,” Lando breathes.

“I’m in love with you, so in love with you, baby.”

“Oscar?" Lando breathes then, smiling.

"Yeah?"

"You’re really fucking perfect.”

“Whatever you say, sweetheart,” Oscar breathes.

“Mmhm.”

"Can we go back inside now?” Oscar asks absently. “Can we go home?”

“Yeah,” Lando breathes and he’s smiling into Oscar’s mouth and god, Oscar loves making him happy, he hopes he can make Lando happy for the rest of his life. “Home.”

And it is home, they’re home, and they’re happy and everything is finally where it should be and Oscar cannot wrap his head around it.

And Lando can’t stop smiling and Oscar can’t either so the kissing is barely more than a mess of lips and teeth and they’re just sort of moving to the lobby and Oscar isn’t sure if it’s more him pulling Lando forward or Lando pushing Oscar backwards, but neither of them is putting any distance between them or detaching their lips from each other, so it's less walking that stumbling through the doors of the building.

There's a clang of the doors as they enter, not looking where they're going.

It goes against most of Oscar's principles to make out with someone in public, but it's probably only Geraldine around and she was going to have a fit regardless who was trying to lick Lando's uvula in the lobby tonight, so it might as well be Oscar.

"Norris, not agai—" Geraldine starts before she abruptly cuts off. "Oh. Well, I suppose that's alright. It's about time."

"Fuck you, Geraldine," Lando calls, grinning against Oscar's lips, flipping her off as they stumble in the vague direction of the elevator, refusing to fully detach their lips to find their way.

"Sorry, Geraldine," Oscar calls absently, smacking Lando's middle finger away because that's rude.

Lando laughs into his mouth and uses the hand to pull Oscar in by the collar of his shirt, which doesn't particularly help with all the stumbling.

“Carry me?” Lando asks.

Oscar huffs in fond exasperation before he simply reaches down to pick Lando up. “’Course, baby.”

Lando is a little distracted, but it’s long practiced instinct to hop up and let Oscar pick him up and wrap his legs around Oscar's waist.

Oscar carries him into the elevator without looking where they're going so it's mostly luck that they don't walk into a wall. He puts a hand on Lando's head so he doesn't hit his head on the way into the lift, holding him up with one arm which Lando makes a tortured sound about because he's a little crazy about Oscar being able to carry him so easily.

Lando pulls away just a second to look that he's got the right button before he kicks it with his shoe and goes right back to Oscar's lips.

Oscar presses him to the wall of the elevator as it lurches upwards. Lando sighs contentedly and tilts his head to lick deeper into Oscar's mouth and Oscar is so distracted he barely even registers when the elevator stops and the doors ding as it opens.

It's nearly half past eight in the evening so there's luckily nobody but the two of them to witness Oscar carrying Lando down the hall, to their doorway and pressing him into the 481 in a way that probably makes the edges of the numbers dig into his back.

Lando doesn't complain though, and Oscar hopes he can press him into this apartment number of theirs a thousand times, thinks that they should stay in this little apartment forever with just the two of them and possibly a cat.

He fumbles for the door handle and it flies open, the two of them stumbling inside and narrowly missing a collapse to the floor.

Oscar feels around to throw the door shut and lock it behind them, locking them both in here in each other's space, right where they're supposed to be.

“My bed,” Oscar says, with Lando pressed back against the other side of the door now, because he wants Lando in his sheets, wants him to look like, smell like, feel like Oscar’s, wants him as deep in his space as he can get and stay there.

“Yeah,” Lando breathes. "Careful of the glass still around the kitchen by the way, nobody ever cleaned that up."

“Mm, we can clean it up together later,” Oscar mutters. "Kind of symbolism about it, isn't there? Poeticism or something."

"Oh, shut up, Oscar, it's too late to be talking -isms to me. I don't want to hear about the symbolism, I want your tongue in my mouth."

Oscar simply laughs and carries Lando off to his room. He’s just past the couch when he stumbles on a hoodie Lando had thrown on the floor.

“Oh my god, pick that up,” Oscar groans, so exasperated and so, so fond.

“I will in a minu—”

“No, you won’t,” Oscar cuts him off as he carries him to his room.

“No, I won’t,” Lando agrees as Oscar drops him on the bed, looking up at Oscar so softly and oh, he loves Oscar, he’s in love with Oscar, what the actual fuck.

“I’ll pick it up for you, of course I will, because I love you,” Oscar says emphatically as he climbs on top of him to kiss him, kiss that gorgeous smile of Lando’s.

“Yeah.”

Oscar hums, distracted for a moment, thoughts coming too slow, and then pulls away to be sensible and ask, “Wait, wait, wait, do you want to like… have sex?"

"Oh my fucking god,” Lando groans. “No wonder you never asked, you awkward muppet. I always want to fuck, what kind of question is that? Of course I want to ‘like, have sex’"

Oscar groans and rolls his eyes, “Yes, well, I know that, you insatiable slut, I meant—”

“Your slut,” Lando interrupts with a grin.

“My slut,” Oscar breathes and kisses him as he absently murmurs. “Stop it, you're distracting me, I meant that I know that and yes, I also always want to fuck, but I'm asking whether the correct order of things to do is crying for twelve hours straight, figuring out that we’ve been in love with each other, and then immediately fucking five minutes later.”

“Who cares? None of this was done in the correct order of business anyway, Oscar, I accidentally proposed twenty minutes ago. Besides, I’m already half hard, and you’re no better, by the way. I say fuck it.”

"Yeah, alright, fair enough,” Oscar concedes and goes back to kissing him. “Sluts, the both of us.”

Lando makes a pleased hum as he gets comfortable beneath Oscar as he slides his hands under the hoodie Lando stole from him to get at some skin.

“Can’t believe you let me think you were going to go out with someone else while wearing my hoodie,” Oscar says, just to say it, because that was honestly just psychological torture. "Fuck you."

“Sorry,” Lando breathes absently.

Oscar huffs a laugh. "Sure you are"

“About hurting your feelings, very sorry, about stealing your clothes, not even a little.” That checks out.

“Okay, fine by me. I don’t care about the clothes, you can have all my clothes.”

“Perfect, but what I want right now is for the clothes to be off, please and thank you,” Lando says and then proceeds to lie there making absolutely no attempt to remove his clothes by himself, because of course he doesn’t.

Oscar huffs a laugh into his mouth and pulls him to sit up and let Oscar take off the hoodie for him. “Useless is what you are.”

“Yeah,” Lando murmurs as Oscar drops the hoodie off the side of the bed and presses Lando back down to the sheets and kiss him, hand stroking up and down his familiar waist. “Fair warning, I'm about to be really useless."

"Perfect,” Oscar murmurs, smiling into Lando’s mouth.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. So perfect, you're so fucking needy, I love it, I love you,” Oscar says and kisses him again while he blindly gets Lando’s shoes, socks and shorts off for him. “I love being needed by you.”

“You love how I’m needy?” Lando breathes as he lifts his hips for Oscar to get rid of his shorts and underwear, like Oscar hadn’t told him this before.

"Of course I do. I need you to need me forever. I love that you need me as much as I need you."

"You need me?" Lando murmurs and pulls away to take a breath and look at Oscar.

"Of course I need you. Baby, I can't sleep without you, I can't breathe without you, I can't think without you, I can't exist without you.”

“Oh,” Lando breathes, and his eyes are already going a little unfocused, god he’s so fucking perfect Oscar still hasn’t quite wrapped his head around the way Lando is his. “Really?”

“Yeah, baby,” Oscar says softly and gives him a kiss before he pulls his own top off and another afterwards. “I was a mess without you.”

“Yeah,” Lando agrees, just letting Oscar press kiss after kiss to his lips. “Me too.”

Oscar makes a noise about that as he presses kisses to Lando’s cheekbone and his jaw.

“You know your safewords, right?” he checks as he presses kisses anywhere he can reach now, listening to the way Lando’s breathing is starting to get a little uneven.

“Yeah, ‘course.”

“Okay,” Oscar breathes and presses a kiss to his jaw. “Good.” Another. “I just—” Another. “I really need you to be safe." Three more kisses for good measure.

"I am, I know my safewords, promise, I’m green,” Lando babbles, nodding, just to assure Oscar that his consent is enthusiastic too as he tugs at Oscar while Oscar fumbles to get off his own shoes and pants. “I’m safe, of course I’m safe with you, you always keep me safe.”

Oscar makes a punched-out noise at that because he does, of course he keeps Lando safe, he can’t believe that he’s allowed to. "Of course I do, sweetheart."

"Of course you do."

Oscar makes a moan that's a little embarrassing but he's past caring at this point, so much so that he doesn't even hesitate to ask, "Are you still green if I want everyone to know that you’re mine so I want to bite the shit out of you? Is that okay?”

Lando makes a needy whimpering sound as he nods, his breaths coming faster. "You'll mark me up?"

"Yeah, baby."

"Everywhere?"

"Yeah, baby."

"Yours?"

"Mine, baby."

“So green, so green,” Lando breathes. “Jesus fuck."

“Okay, baby,” Oscar murmurs, slotting himself between Lando’s thighs to kiss him, cradling his jaw.

Lando blinks up at him afterwards, all trust as he asks, quietly, “Take care of me, Osc?”

And Oscar is still having so much trouble just wrapping his mind around the idea that he’s allowed to take care of him, Oscar is allowed to love him, Oscar is allowed to love him as much as he wants, what the actual fuck.

“You want me to take care of you?” He breathes, just to check, just one more time. “You’ll let me?”

Lando nods dazedly. “Please take care of me.”

“Of course, sweetheart,” Oscar murmurs, and that’s all Lando needs to let go and he’s gone.

God, Lando has let him do this dozens of times before, but it will never stop making Oscar’s heart flip in his chest about the way Lando just puts himself into Oscar’s hands like this and blindly trusts him not to hurt him.

Oscar makes a punched-out moan and wraps Lando’s legs around his own waist for him, catching his lips to dip his tongue into his mouth.

Lando makes a gasping little exhale about it and simply tilts his head the way he just knows how to do with Oscar, letting Oscar lick into his mouth as he slips one hand into Oscar’s hair and wraps the other arm around Oscar’s shoulders, and Oscar just knows those scratch marks on his back are going to be replaced today, that they’re going to be replaced so often from now on that they might just stay there forever.

Oscar makes a noise at the thought and kisses Lando one more time before he moves on to his neck to start sucking all the bruises he wants to into the soft skin there, all the bruises he's allowed to.

Lando tilts his head to the side to let him mouth and bite to his contentment.

He’s already starting to squirm underneath Oscar, it’s barely been two minutes, but he’s already looking for friction, hands looking for grip on Oscar’s shoulders, back arching to get closer to him, Lando doesn’t even know how he looks.

Oscar hums appreciatively into the skin at Lando’s neck that he’s busy biting and reaches down to press his hips back to the bed. Lando’s breath hitches around a whimper and his nails start scratching over Oscar’s shoulder just a little.

Oscar has barely even done anything.

“Oscar, please,” Lando starts begging already as Oscar moves on to suck another bruise over his collarbone.

Oscar hums and strokes circles into the skin of his hip where he’s holding Lando down and bites down a little harder on the skin there to make sure the bruise sticks before he moves on to make another one.

“Osc,” Lando begs, breathing fast now, one hand finding its way into Oscar’s hair, not making any attempt to move Oscar any more than pressing him a little closer to the skin of his pectoral where he’s busy sinking his teeth in now.

“Yeah, baby,” Oscar answers when he’s satisfied with the hickey there.

“Please.”

“Please what?”

“I don’t know, more, I want more, Oscar, please,” Lando begs.

“I'll give you more, baby, I'll give you everything you want, just be patient,” Oscar murmurs over his skin as he finds another place to bite down.

“But Oscar,” Lando breathes, squirming a little under where Oscar is holding him down.

Oscar just hums and sucks another bruise at the bottom edge of Lando’s pectoral, rendering Lando is a little too distracted to remember to beg for a moment as he bites down a little harder to make sure there will be a proper bruise in the morning before he lets go.

“Oscar, come on, please,” Lando begs in the small reprieve between distractions. “Please, I’m so hard, just touch me, please touch me.”

Oscar is just as hard and desperate as Lando is, but the taste of Lando’s skin, the sound of his whimpering and the feeling of him squirming beneath Oscar is enough of a distraction that Oscar can ignore it in favour of dragging this out as long as he can.

Oscar hums in consideration and lets go of his hip to slide that hand up to Lando’s nipple. “Touch you, baby?”

“Oscar, fuck…” Lando trails off in a whimper, arching up into him as Oscar takes his nipple between his fingers. “Fuck, please.”

Oscar can’t help but want to draw it out and keep him like this, so desperate, but useless in all his attempts to find friction, any attempt to get something other than what Oscar is giving him.

“You’re so pretty like this, you know?” Oscar breathes before he tips his head down again to catch Lando’s nipple between his lips, take it gently between his teeth.

Lando makes a breathy whine and arches up into Oscar’s mouth. “Oscar, fuck, please.”

Oscar grins into his skin. “In a minute.”

“But I want it n-now,” Lando argues breathily, his hand fisting in Oscar’s hair as he sucks on his nipple, the other trying and failing to find grip on his shoulders, nails digging in.

“Be patient, sweetheart,” Oscar murmurs before he switches sides to take the nipple he’d been toying with in his fingers into his mouth too and turn it just as hot and red as the other one, rubbing in the sting where his tongue and teeth had just been with his thumb.

“Oscar, please, please, I don’t want to be patient, I want you to fuck me.”

Oscar hums, keeps the skin there between his teeth just a little longer before he pulls off to answer, “In a minute, I said be patient.”

“Be patient for what? Just fuck me,” Lando demands.

Oscar takes a moment to answer. “Be patient because we have all the time in the world and I’m going to take it.”

“But Oscar,” Lando argues desperately, changing his tone to try a different strategy again. “Please, I just want you to touch me.”

“And I want to keep looking at you all pretty and desperate,” Oscar says, maybe just to wind him up a little.

“Oscar, please, please,” Lando begs.

“Can you believe you’re just letting me do this to you?” Oscar breathes as he presses Lando back down to the bed with a hand on his stomach. “Can you believe you’re just going to let me do this again and again?”

“Of course I’ll let you,” Lando chokes as Oscar keeps him pressed to the bed and leans down to find Lando’s lips and murmurs between kisses, “Just you, always you, forever.”

“Just me,” Oscar repeats disbelievingly.

“Osc,” Lando begs again, panting into Oscar’s mouth.

“You want my fingers, baby?”

“Mm,” Lando hums desperately into Oscar’s mouth and he’s refusing to let Oscar go even a centimetre so Oscar has to blindly fumble to find some lube in his bedside drawer.

“Yeah? You’ll let me finger you open slow while I mark up your thighs for you?”

Lando gasps and cants his hips up underneath Oscar, finding just a little friction with how they’re pressed together like this, but it’s nowhere near enough to find any relief, just enough to make him a little more desperate. “Yes, please.”

“Of course you will, you’ll let me do just about anything,” Oscar murmurs before he swallows another noise from Lando’s lips as Lando makes a little nod.

He gives him another kiss and then just one more before he finally leaves off to lube up his fingers and move down between Lando’s thighs.

Lando makes a gut-punched kind of noise at the sight of him before he simply drops his head back to the sheets and lies there doing nothing but looking pretty, just like he should.

Oscar makes a weak noise about it as he spreads Lando’s thighs, throwing one of his legs around his own shoulder and finds a place to bite at while he circles one finger around Lando’s hole.

Lando makes a sharp inhale turned whine as Oscar teases him just for a second before he gives him what he wants and presses inside.

“Fuck,” Lando breathes, and god he’s so hard it’s dripping onto his stomach.

Oscar has no idea how he thought he was never going to have him like this again and managed to convince himself he could ever live without it.

“Look at you, baby, Jesus,” Oscar murmurs into his thigh right before he bites down on it and Lando whines and arches up, his hands flying to find grip twisting in the sheets beneath him.

“Fuck, Oscar, Osc, please,” Lando begs as Oscar finds a slow rhythm with one finger, sucking at the mouthful of Lando’s thigh to make sure it will stay mottled purple for a few days for Lando to press at when he misses Oscar, not that Oscar plans on giving him a chance to miss him.

God, he’s sweet like this, just writhing beneath Oscar, precome dripping onto his stomach as Oscar presses his finger in and out too slowly for it to help, just a teasing brush over his prostate to give him something.

And he just lets Oscar, of course he does, nothing but ‘please’s now, less to try and get more than just to say it.

He just lets Oscar keep going like that, licking and biting at his thigh, ribs fluttering with his uneven breaths, Oscar's finger moving in and out so slowly for so long that two fingers slide in with next to no resistance at all and Lando makes a breathy little noise or a moan every time Oscar’s teeth come down on a new patch of skin, never getting tired of the feeling.

He lets Oscar keep going like that until both the insides of his thighs are bitten red and raw and there’s a pool of precome on his stomach and he’s had three fingers in him for so long that he’s nothing but a puddle beneath Oscar, nothing but “Please, please, please, Oscar, please.”

Oscar crooks his fingers down on his prostate just to see the way he jumps and whimpers and begs, “Oscar, please, I can’t.”

“Please what, baby?” Oscar murmurs, just to prompt him to beg some more as the thumb of his free hand finds the yellowing remnants of one of the last hickeys he left just at the edge of Lando’s hip bone, never quite faded away, and the pressure must still hurt a little because Lando makes a breathy moan about it.

“Fuck me, please, Oscar, please, I want you inside, I need you, need you, please.”

“Yeah? Need me?”

“Need you, need you, please, I need you, Osc, please, just you, just need you.”

“Just need me, baby,” Oscar repeats breathily, disbelievingly, reverently.

“Oscar, Oscar, please, I can’t, I want to come," Lando begs as Oscar replaces that fading bruise with a fresh one.

Oscar hums, sinks his teeth into the skin just a little more before he lets go and says, “I know, baby, you will.”

“Please.”

“In a second, baby,” Oscar murmurs and watches him writhe and squirm beneath him, just a little longer. “Be good and just let me look at how pretty you are like this for a second.”

“Oscar,” Lando whines. “Oscar, please, I was good, I am good, please, just fuck me, please, I'm being so good.”

"Yes, you are," Oscar murmurs and presses a kiss to the pool of precome that’s been dripping onto his stomach.

Lando’s hand flies into his hair and fists tight as he gasps about that and begs, “Jesus, Oscar, please.”

Oscar smiles and presses one more kiss there before he takes mercy, too affected by the base instinct to give Lando what he wants. “Alright, baby, I’m taking my fingers out now, okay?”

Lando nods desperately, but he still makes an absolutely miserable sound as Oscar pulls out his fingers and leaves him empty to find the lube and slick up his long forgotten cock, hissing at the sensitivity.

“Oscar, please,” Lando begs instinctively. “Please, come back, please."

“I’m here, baby, you’re getting it,” Oscar murmurs, placing a hand on Lando’s hip for him to feel that Oscar is there while he slicks himself up with the other.

“Oscar, please, I want you, need you, need you now," Lando begs, writhing with desperation.

“I know, I’m getting there, sweetheart, just a second.”

“Oscar, faster—”

“Calm down, baby, I’m right here,” Oscar murmurs as he slots himself on top of Lando, between his legs and wipes his hand clean on the sheets.

“I don’t want to calm down, I need you to fuck me—"

“Lando," Oscar says firmly this time, placing a hand on his throat, right where he likes it. "I said calm down." 

And that instantly makes Lando go still beneath him.

God it always does, makes all the tension and energy melt out of him and he just goes lax under Oscar’s hand, it's like magic, it's insane, and Oscar's cock is twitching because Christ.

“That’s it, baby, calm down, just let me take care of you, that’s a good boy,” Oscar murmurs.

Lando is still panting, but he swallows under Oscar’s palm and nods.

He lies still now as Oscar lines himself up, easy now when Lando is only moving to wrap himself around Oscar and to tilt his head up for a kiss, just patient, just trusting, nothing but a puddle beneath Oscar's hand politely saying, "Please?"

Oscar wouldn't dream of denying him that kiss as he presses inside, slow.

He swallows the stuttering gasp Lando makes about it into his own mouth, makes a groan of his own about the way Lando’s fingernails scrape over his shoulder blades as he slots himself all the way inside.

Oscar removes his hand from Lando’s throat. He receives a mournful, desperate whine for it, but Lando isn’t going to be able to think, much less speak, if he keeps it there while he asks, “You still okay, sweetheart?”

Lando nods vigorously, panting, babbling, “Yes, yeah, I’m okay, give it back, please, your hand, please, need it.”

He’s not even asking for Oscar to move, he’s just asking for his hand on his throat, Jesus.

“Yeah?" Oscar breathes. You like that, baby?”

“Yes, yes, love it, need it, please,” Lando begs, trailing off in a slur as Oscar puts his hand back on his throat where he wants it. “Makes me feel like yours.”

“You are mine, baby,” Oscar murmurs in reverent agreement. "Just mine."

And then he can’t bear to stay still anymore, not even for a second.

Lando makes a series of noises as Oscar starts moving, but he only moves to rock his hips up into Oscar’s and to scratch his nails over Oscar’s shoulders in an attempt to find grip, otherwise useless.

Oscar presses kiss after kiss to his lips, then his cheekbone and his temple and his forehead. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Lando slurs.

“I love you so much, you're so perfect, I love you, I love you, I love you,” Oscar breathes, over and over again.

“Osc?” Lando says then, swallowing under Oscar's palm.

“Yeah, sweetheart?” Oscar murmurs, taking his hand off of Lando’s throat so he can form a sentence.

Lando squirms and makes a sad little noise, but he takes a breath and says, “Don’t stop if I cry, okay?”

Oscar makes a punched out noise at that, because fuck. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, don’t stop, promise they’re good tears, s’just a lot, I just love you a lot, don’t stop, please."

“Okay, sweetheart, I won’t.” Oscar presses another pecking kiss to Lando’s lips. And then another and another and another. “That’s perfect, so perfect, you're so pretty when you cry, drive me absolutely insane.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t supposed to tell you that, I think, because now you’ll use it against me, but I’m telling you all the things I’m not supposed to today, I don't care," Oscar babbles.

“Yeah. Like that you’re in love with me,” Lando repeats smiling, his eyes starting to glisten and oh god, he’s going to cry.

“Yeah. I’m so in love with you,” Oscar repeats as he puts his hand back on Lando’s throat. "So, so in love with you."

“Hold my hand?” Lando asks then, his hand dropping from where it had been mutilating Oscar’s shoulders.

“’Course, baby,” Oscar complies and slips his fingers through Lando’s.

And then Lando is making a hitching little breath as Oscar intertwines their fingers, and god he's actually crying, a combination of all the feelings from today and then Oscar dragging out his orgasm too, of course he's crying.

Oscar groans and tilts his head down to kiss a tear escaping from the corner of his eye. “God, you’re pretty, you’re so beautiful, so fucking gorgeous when you cry for me.”

“Osc,” Lando breathes, desperately.

"God, I love when you call me Osc, sweetheart," Oscar mutters, pressing kiss after kiss to Lando's cheekbone.

"Love when you call me sweetheart," Lando slurs in return.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Osc, m'going to— Want to come, please let me come?"

“Just a little longer, sweetheart?" Oscar begs, because Lando has never felt quite this good, never been quite this dazed, never held on to Oscar quite this tightly, and Oscar has never loved him quite this much. "Let me keep you like this just a little longer,”

“Yeah, just for you, Osc,” Lando agrees, nodding.

And Oscar doesn't stop, doesn't change anything about the rhythm, the pace, because Lando is writhing beneath him and clutching his hand like he wants to meld their bones together, because he's making these noises, because his eyes are so, so hazy and there's nothing but trust in there.

And Oscar wishes he could keep him like this forever, that he could drag this out further and further and never leave this place, but it just feels too good and he's hurtling towards his orgasm far too quickly and the only consolation he has is that he's going to get to do this again and again and again, that Lando is going to let him.

"Please," Lando begs then and Oscar can't hold on either, as much as he wishes to. "Please, please, please."

Oscar doesn’t remove his hand from Lando’s, Lando isn’t going to need it to come today, but he checks anyway, maybe just to hear him say it. “Can you come just from this, baby?”

“Yes,” Lando says instantly. “Yes, but please, I need— I need—”

“You need me to let you?"

"Yes, please, please let me," Lando begs. "Please tell me I can come."

"Yeah? You're so good, baby, fuck, go on, come for me.”

Lando makes a high-pitched little noise, so, so desperate, so close. And then he begs, “Tell me you love me.”

“I love you,” Oscar says instantly.

And that’s enough for Lando to come.

And fuck, with the way Lando is holding on to him, the way he feels around him, the way he's panting into Oscar's mouth and whimpering as he spills over his stomach, Oscar can't help but follow.

And it's all tension, all desperate hands and mouths, all heat, Lando clutching Oscar as close as he can get, clutching his hand so tight that it hurts, but Oscar is clutching back and he's just holding onto Lando's throat, the only thing about this that's still soft, because Oscar would never hurt him, his palm just gently placed there where he can feel the vibrations of Lando's panting breaths and his quiet whimpers as every muscle in his body stays tensed.

And then Lando just melts.

And Oscar goes loose too, panting into Lando's mouth.

"Do you want me to pull o—"

"Don't you dare," Lando says immediately, clinging to Oscar to prevent any attempt Oscar could make to pull out of him. "Don't move."

"Okay, okay, I won't," Oscar breathes.

Lando makes a needy noise and tugs at Oscar to lie down and put his weight on him and Oscar goes, of course he does, finally releasing his hand from Lando's throat, which he gets a sad little noise for, but Lando seems content for Oscar to make up for it by nuzzling into the crook of his neck and press a soft kiss to the redness he'd bitten into it earlier.

And god, Lando is going to be pink and purple everywhere. Oscar can't help but smile about it as Lando wraps his arms around his shoulders to pull him further into his neck, pressing a kiss to Oscar's hair.

He still can't wrap his head around the way he's just allowed to do this now, allowed to lie here on top of Lando and kiss his neck and stroke his waist, the way he's pretty sure he isn't allowed not to with the way Lando stays wrapped around him.

"I love you," Oscar sighs, and he can't believe he can just say that now, in all the ways he means it and Lando just knows.

"I love you too."

Oscar just can't wrap his head around it, the way it's real, the way he just gets to do this now.

He'd had never really paid attention to it, but Oscar is just as spacey as Lando afterwards, there's just nothing in his head except Lando, Lando, Lando. 

He absently pulls a blanket over them to keep them warm, keep them tucked into a cocoon of each other, because he doesn't plan on moving any time soon.

Lando sighs in contentment, pressing another kiss to Oscar's hair. The pads of his fingers start idly tracing the lines he left on Oscar's shoulders. "Sorry about the scratch marks," he murmurs after another minute. It's barely more than a breath. Oscar wouldn't even hear it were he not pressed into Lando's neck like this. "Does it hurt?"

Oscar hums. "Yeah, but I like it. Feels nice."

"Oh," Lando breathes. "Okay."

Oscar hums and presses another kiss to his neck. "I was having a whole breakdown this morning thinking you'd never put them back."

Lando makes a wounded little noise and holds Oscar a little tighter. "I'm sorry. You looked so tired, and your eyes, you were crying, I hate when you cry."

"Mm. Yeah. I think Logan was about two more tears away from calling me a psychiatrist.”

“Well in Logan’s defence, it's very unsettling, you never cry.”

Oscar presses another kiss to his neck. “I do about you.”

“God, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I think I needed it. Or we needed it, you know? Or we would never have talked about it.”

"Probably. Still hurt though," Lando admits.

"I'm sorry," Oscar whispers.

"Yeah. It's okay, I forgive you too. 'Sides, you probably needed some time apart before I inflict myself on you forever."

Oscar grins into his neck and tightens his grip on Lando just a little more. "Promise?"

"You're never getting rid of me now,” Lando promises.

"God, I hope not," Oscar sighs into his neck, content, presses a few more kisses there, just because he can.

He feels Lando's smile in the kiss he presses to Oscar's hair.

Oscar has no idea how long they lie there, time passing unnoticed around them, probably a good hour before either of them is ready to leave the bed.

It should be weird, the way Oscar is allowed to keep pressing kisses to Lando's neck, the way he's allowed to stay here long after the sex is over, but it's nothing but comfortable, nothing but right.

It's just right, the way Lando makes Oscar carry him to the shower, the way he keeps clinging onto Oscar to hold him upright and lets Oscar wash him and card his hands through his hair, the way the 'baby's and the 'sweetheart's don't need to stop, the way he lets Oscar wrap him up in a towel when they get out and kiss his forehead.

It's just right the way Lando makes him carry him back to Oscar's room and dresses in just Oscar's clothes, the way he lounges on Oscar's bed, lazily watching Oscar get dressed, making a grabbing hand for his attention to carry him to the kitchen because he's refusing to go anywhere without Oscar carrying him there and Oscar absolutely loves it.

It's just right, the way they circle around each other with just soft touches and easy movements as they clean up the shattered glass together, leaving just home, the way it should be.

It's just right, the way Lando hops up on the counter afterwards and pulls Oscar between his thighs to kiss him, the way it's not for sex and it isn't going to lead to sex, it's just kissing for the sake of kissing.

And Oscar just can't fathom how he just gets to kiss Lando now, whenever he scrunches up his nose like that or says something stupid or smiles at Oscar or looks at Oscar or even breathes at Oscar, Oscar can just kiss him whenever he wants.

Oscar capitalises on that immediately, picking Lando up to carry him off to the couch without ever pausing the kissing, wrapping them both up under the blanket wrapping them up in each other to kiss him again and again and again, slow, languid things with Lando demanding his last night of Love is Blind halfway through and Oscar helplessly admitting he's perfectly happy to watch the entirety of Love is Blind with Lando twice if he wants.

They don't actually watch any of it of course, too distracted by each other, and they're going to watch it again anyway, but it makes a lovely background noise for the way Oscar's lips are getting sore, but he just can't stop, and Lando refuses to let him take more than two breaths before he pulls him back to his lips again and again and again.

It's getting past twelve now, the night hours passing lazily around them, when Lando's phone vibrates somewhere in the blanket between them. 

Lando makes an annoyed little noise into Oscar's lips as he digs around for it to look at who dares disturb them now.

"Oh my fucking..." Lando says then.

"What?" Oscar asks distractedly, contenting himself with Lando's neck for the moment.

"Fucking bastards, the lot of them," Lando just says, turning the screen for Oscar to see the group chat.

Charles:

11:24 ... did you guys figure it out...?

Logan:

11:48 Guys this isn't funny anymore

Carlos:

12:04 please say you figured it out before 12 I bet 40 euros and i don't have that money lando

Max V:

12:07 No, say you haven't figured it out so that I'm allowed to knock your heads together pls i've been dreaming about it all night, it would be so therapeutic

Max F:

12:19 Guys I am begging you somebody please say something we're all waiting in max and charles' apartment for an answer and it's getting weird

Lando sighs.

Oscar also sighs.

"I vote we go knock on their door, kiss with tongue so they all shut up, and then go back home immediately to kiss some more."

Oscar huffs a laugh. "I'm not sure about the tongue, babe, but okay."

Oscar takes a second to realise that Lando is just staring up at him with a blinding smile on his face.

"What?"

"You just called me babe," Lando squeaks with abject glee.

Oscar groans and drops his head to Lando's shoulder slightly embarrassed. "Oh, god, I've never called anyone babe in my life."

"Except me, because you're embarrassingly in love with me and you can't even lie about it," Lando says, completely truthfully.

Oscar sighs and gazes down at him, absolutely heart-eyed. "Yeah."

"Okay, let's go— Oh, wait, wait, actually, can we call my mum and dad first?" Lando asks.

"Yeah, sure, whatever you want. I'll text mine tomorrow I think, but we can call yours now."

"Okay. Be prepared though, they're be insufferable."

Oscar snorts. "Yeah, I know."

Lando presses another kiss to his smile as he searches up his mum's number and presses call.

"Lando? Honey, are you alright? It's past midnight."

"Oh, yeah, sorry, Mum. I'm great, I just, uh, have some news."

There's an apprehensive silence. "What kind of news?"

"Uh, so... Turns out you were right... Me and Osc are kind of... uh, boyfriends."

"Lando," his mother says, quite slowly.

"Mmhm," Lando answers, quite cautiously.

"I told you so, you little hellchild, the grief you put me through bringing that boy home again, that lovely boy of yours and making me think I wouldn't get to keep him, convincing me I'm crazy for thinking those eyes of his mean something—"

"Mum, oh my god, he can hear you, he's right here—"

"Good! And here I was thinking Adeline's son might be an answer, meanwhile I probably caused you both nothing but heartbreak—"

"Lando, love, I'm very happy for you! And Oscar, of course" Lando's dad cuts in, who has finally managed to learn Oscar's name now, just in the nick if time.

"Thanks dad—"

"Your brother and sisters have been moping around the house ever since you left about that boy never coming back, your nieces inconsolable!"

Lando cringes.

"And you slept in the same bed the whole two weeks! I would never have let you—"

Lando clears his throat. "Alright, alright, look, Mum, I'll be completely honest with you, if not letting us sleep in the same bed is supposed to stop us from having sex you're unfortunately way too late—"

"Lando, oh my god," Oscar groans, abjectly mortified as he drops his head to Lando's shoulder, because only Lando would voluntarily bring up the fact that he and Oscar are fucking to his mother while Oscar is right here.

"Also, you can't enforce that unless you want us suffering and sleep deprived, Mum, turns out we're incapable of sleeping without each other because we're ridiculously in love and we can't function without each other."

"Lando—"

"Bye mum and dad, love you, sleep well!"

And with that Lando hangs up.

"I hate you," Oscar deadpans at the elated grin on Lando's face.

"Liar, you've never loved me more. Okay, let's go, you're driving."

Oscar sighs dreamily. "Mmhm."

"Lando, no, don't just—" Oscar tries uselessly.

"Why not?" Lando whisper shouts back at Oscar as he fights him for the doorhandle of Max and Charles' apartment, winning.

"Because that's not how you tell people you're dating—"

"Of course it is—"

"No, it isn't—"

"Yes, it is—"

"No, it isn't—"

"Me and Oscar are fucking!" Lando announces very loudly as they tumble through the doorway, right into the living room where everyone is sitting in varying states of anxiety about this, staring at the two of them, understandably a little shocked for the moment.

“Oscar and I, babe,” Oscar sighs, exasperated, and drops his forehead to Lando's shoulder as he wraps his arms around him, if only to hide his smile.

“Oh, fuck your grammar,” Lando says, lightly smacking Oscar, but he leans his head into Oscar's anyway.

There's three seconds of solid silence before Carlos says, in a tone that is very pointedly saying 'don't fucking test me', "You mean like boyfriends... Right?"

Oscar smiles and sighs, "He means like boyfriends."

"Oh my god, we fucking told you so!"

And then there's a deafening cheer. 

Oscar honestly can't even be mad about all of it, too distracted by the buzz of the room around him and the thousands of questions of 'Was it romantic?' and 'Who confessed first?' and 'I can't believe it was Lando,' and 'Jesus, look at the state of his neck, did you try to eat him?' and 'I love you, but for the sake of thirty-six euros I'm begging you to tell me you either confessed before twelve or lie.'

And finally Nax Fewtrell claps Oscar on the shoulder and says, "Now was that so hard, heart-eyes?"

“Oh my god!" Lando gasps, a tad dramatic, really. “Heart-eyes!"

Max Fewtrell groans. "Lando, mate, you really are the pinnacle of intelligence."

Lando shoves him.

“Shut up,” Oscar says, his face flushing a bit in embarrassment.

“Oh my god, oh my god, Oscar!” Lando is practically vibrating, and it's honestly just instinct to simply steady him so he doesn't fall over as he bounces into Oscar's arms.

“Yeah, yeah," Oscar says, rolling his eyes, heart-eyes, of course.

“You’ve been looking at me like this the whole time?” Lando asks then, miraculously quiet in the buzz of everything around them.

“Yeah, stupid,” Oscar murmurs, equally quiet, besotted.

“God, I’m such an idiot,” Lando says, adoringly.

“Yeah,” Oscar agrees. “Me too.”

"We're never going to hear the end of this, you know?"

"That's okay. Worth it. Hey, boyfriend?"

"Yeah?" Lando breathes.

"Will you go on a date with me?"

"Oh my god, oh my god, yes, I have the perfect idea."

"Please don't say—"

"Golf."

"You couldn't drag me to golf kicking and screaming, you're shit at golf, it's boring, I'd hate every minute, I'm breaking up with you—"

Lando scoffs and lightly smacks his chest. "Shut your lying mouth, heart-eyes, you're already planning the wedding—"

Oscar simply kisses him quiet, and it's just so, so easy, so simple.

You know.

Casual.

Chapter Text

They end up going to Australia for the December holidays and the Maldives in January.

The entire band of Norrises ends up tagging along to Australia, and they get on with the Piastri's like a house on fire, so much so that the Piastri’s all tag along to the Maldives.

In Australia Oscar has to stop Cisca from trying to fight a kangaroo on three seperate occasions because the Norrises have no healthy sense of danger. In the Maldives Lando has to stop Oscar’s sisters from drowning him, because apparently they’re all just as bad with fighting as Lando is with his own sisters and only stop when Lando intervenes, because they like him better than Oscar.

They take turns who's family they go home to for holidays now, and Lando is far past being even pretending he's bitter about Oscar being the favourite at his house because the Piastri's immediately adopt Lando as the favourite in theirs, much to Oscar's apparent annoyance and thinly veiled enjoyment.

There's nothing anyone can do to make them sleep in separate rooms, Lando weasels himself out of anything to get into Oscar's bed every time.

When they're home again, Lando does indeed make Oscar watch not only Love is Blind again, but several other nonsensical reality-shows that Oscar couldn't be paid to watch on his own. Oscar gets back at him by making him watch a bunch of How It's Made, not that Lando is very bothered because whenever he's bored, he just flops over in Oscar's arms on the couch and starts something that ends TV night then and there. It's pretty unfair, according to Oscar, but he keeps getting distracted before they can have that argument.

Lando's hoodie is still thrown on the floor more days than it isn't, Oscar still tells him to pick it up like he won't do it himself.

Lando still can't cook for shit and still has an unrelenting determination to delude himself that he can, which doesn't change no matter how many times he ruins perfectly good food with bizarre spice combinations or by leaving it in the oven so long that it's black or taking it out so quickly it's still raw.

After two years, Oscar is also now entirely convinced Lando is perfectly capable of driving, without even being nervous about it because he drives to fetch Oscar from work often enough, he just can't confirm because unless it's some kind of emergency or he feels very sorry for Oscar he can't be coaxed into the driver’s seat for love nor money when Oscar can drive instead. Oscar is starting to forget to argue about it.

Lando's mother pretty much calls every other day, desperate for a grandchild to the point that Lando has to tell her, "Oh my god, Mum, what do you want me to do, get pregnant? Believe me Oscar's tried that."

Oscar gives him a proper smack to the head for that, face burning with embarrassment, and promptly snatches the phone out of Lando's hand to say, "Sorry, Mrs. Wauman, bye, we love you," and hangs up.

Even though Lando has a stable job in marketing and design he still does his DJ gigs and yoga classes, he still streams at odd hours of the day and is building up Quadrant, and there’s nothing that can convince him to give up any of his hobbies and side jobs.

He still drags Oscar to golf far too often, miraculously finding the time, refusing to take no for an answer half the time because as the boyfriend it's apparently Oscar's duty to support him in his ridiculous endeavours to hit a ball into a hole.

As Lando's boyfriend who is also his best friend Oscar takes it upon himself to regularly remind Lando that he is in fact shit at golf. Not that that helps.

They have idle arguments about dinner most evenings and they argue about the chores and the colour of new curtains, they argue about what to watch on TV nights, and Oscar being dragged to the supermarket and Lando to the gym.

But they don't fight.

They never fight in a way that can't be solved either by having a ten-minute conversation or simply fucking about it.

Lando never gets any less needy, still likes to insert himself into Oscar's space as often as he can, always hanging off of him, crawling into his lap or fumbling for his hand to hold. Oscar never loves it any less.

Lando also never gets any less annoying, still makes a nuisance of himself twenty-four seven. Oscar never manages to be a normal amount of annoyed about it, seeing as he's in love with him and all and Lando damn well knows that now.

According to everyone else they're just as sickeningly besotted with each other as Max and Charles. It's not a competition, but sometimes they might actually be winning.

At the moment, Lando is lying on the bed poking Oscar with a socked foot as he's on the phone making a reservation for them.

They’d had an argument five minutes ago about why it’s Oscar’s job to make the booking, but he’s doing it now anyway, because he loves Lando and all.

They'd only gotten around to getting a bigger bed just the other day, even though it's been more than two years since Lando’s room had turned into a kind of office when they broke his bed that one time. It's not like they really needed the space of a bigger bed anyway, considering they're always sleeping on top of each other.

They'd been looking at new apartments too, something that isn't in the middle of all the university students, seeing as they've both graduated and found jobs closer to the city centre. They haven't found anything yet, seeing as the quest is slightly complicated by Lando's insistence that the new apartment number also he 481.

Lando kicks him again.

Oscar absently smacks his calf as he makes an inquiry about the place they're booking.

"We have some discounts and deals for certain groups of people,” a tinny voice says through Oscar’s phone. “May I ask who this booking is for and what your relation is?"

"Oh, it's for me and my boyfriend."

Lando kicks him a little harder, making an affronted face.

Oscar laughs and corrects, "Sorry, I mean me and my annoyance."

Lando kicks him again and Oscar puts an end to the kicking by yanking Lando into his arms, kissing that offended look off his lips.

"I'm sorry, can you please confirm your names and relation?" the voice at the other end of the line asks, justifiably confused.

"Sorry," Oscar says softly, half into Lando’s mouth. "Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris."

"Relation?"

Oscar smiles and pecks Lando's lips again. "Fiancés."

Lando's grin is absolutely blinding. He never gets tired of hearing it. Oscar never gets tired of saying it.

Lando snatches the phone out of Oscar's hand to say, "But at the time we're coming we'll both be Norris-Piastri. You know, seeing as we'll be husbands."