Chapter Text
Dinner is normal. Food-wise, it’s not great–a shared garden salad of nearly white lettuce, slimy cherry tomatoes, pale and soft slices of cucumber, all tossed together in a far too acidic vinaigrette. Along with the depressing excuse of salad, they’re having creamy garlic chicken. Usually, the chicken is one of Lando’s favourite dishes, but tonight, somehow even when doused in thick and heavy cream sauce, the chicken is still tender and tough–too dry as he attempts swallowing it down.
He arranged his napkin over whatever he doesn’t eat so he looks like he finished the majority of the plate off. He’s still ravenous, obviously. He’s a teenage boy with the average insanely fast metabolism of one and the toddler sized portion of food he did eat isn’t going to tie him over until breakfast in the morning.
He’ll sneak down once his parents are in bed to sneak some snacks—they’ll be good for during the game anyways.
Besides food, actually talking to his family is... tense. His parents are overly interested in what Lando got up to with Oscar, understandably so when they’ve haven’t seen their son since the early morning when he set off with the Piastris to collect Oscar from the airport.
Lando goes a bit spacey thinking about that, how only this morning–mere hours ago–Oscar was still under the belief that Lando was straight, that he’d just never had a crush on anyone, much less ever hooked up with someone.
In terms of their questions, Lando answers each one just about as vaguely as he can. Few word sentences, all lacking any type of detail or depth. Luckily, after a while, his parents get the hint and give up on trying to get anything out of him. They go into updating him about his brother, Max, and about all of his ‘adventures at uni’.
For one, Max has decided to stop going by ‘Max’ and begin going by his middle name.
Fewtrell. Fewtrell Norris–what a dickhead name. Maybe is Max had a somewhat normal middle name, Lando would get it. For example, Oscar could–Jack Piastri. Daniel would become Joseph Ricciardo, George to William Russell, Logan to Hunter Sargeant. What a very masculine name, Lando can’t help but think, and obviously very American.
Some people on the other hand, like his own brother, should just stick to their first name. Alex, for a start, kind of has to go by his first name since he doesn’t even have a middle name. He could go by his two last names, but Albon Ansusinha is quite a mouthful, at least to the majority of people in the UK. Max (Verstappen, not his brother) should combine his first and middle names because Max and Emilian being broken into two names is just about one of the stupidest things Lando has heard in a while.
And along with that, some people have too many names to choose only one from. If you heard all of Charles’ name, you’d think it was him and his four brothers; Charles, Marc, Hervé, and Perceval Leclerc. Somehow though, those are all just the names of one man. Maybe that’s how they do it in Monaco—spend exuberant amounts of money on yachts and stale pastries and also have really long last names. Charles aside, Carlos’ name isn’t even impressive, it’s just shocking.
Lando has made up a mnemonic device to try and remember all of Carlos’ many names. ' Carlos Says Verstappen Dated Chap Called Ricky Riccardo But Max didn’t Actually do Anything Towards Daniel. '
It’s a funny sentence to use to try and remember the many many names, but it’s rarely any use. He knows is starts off as 'Carlos Sainz Vázquez de Castro', but beyond that point, he can’t remember for the life of him. The only part of the mnemonic that ever comes in handy is ‘Carlos says verstappen dated chap’.
He knows the next part is about Daniel, but he’s not sure which letter it’s for, or which name comes after it.
But that’s besides the point. Lando’s point is, that despite how stupid some of the middle names are of the people he knows, and how woeful it would be if any of them made the switch to being referred to by it, he does genuinely think any of them would sound better than fucking Fewtrell Norris.
That’s genuinely atrocious.
After a few more minutes of small talk and Lando picking at the last few visible bits of food on his plate under the napkin, he’s finally excused from the table. He scraps his leftovers into the bin, shoving an extra napkin on top of the lump of discarded food in the bin for good measure–an attempt to conceal any trace of the uneaten scraps.
After that, he swipes a bag of mixed lollies from the pantry–a bag that must’ve been there since whenever Oscar was last over for a sleepover. That was during a brief time of their friendship when Lando’s dad made a comment about the boys being too old to be sharing a bed anymore. When that happened, that night Oscar slept on a futon on the floor between Lando’s bed and Max’s. It obviously didn’t last long, because by the next weekend, the two boys were back to being crammed into Lando’s single bed together for a sleepover.
Most of the time they were at Oscar’s house for sleepovers anyway, so it didn’t really matter, and Lando’s dad thought that them sharing was weird.
Lando stuffs the plastic bag up under his shirt, just to cover it from his parents as he sprints upstairs, making sure to call out a quick ‘ goodnight, love you guys!,’ over his shoulder as he takes two steps at a time. Once he’s in his room, he turns on the light furthest from him, shutting and locking his door behind him. Being a pro at multitasking, he takes off his clothes as he walks into his bathroom, being nearly fully stripped by the end of the maybe 7 metre walk from the door of his bedroom to his bathroom door.
He’s shucking his underwear off by the time he’s reaching into the shower to flick the handle, running the water to let it heat up. He stands in front of his sink, looking at his features in the mirror. His hair is frizzy and crusty from laying down in the dirt today, smears of caked on mud decorate his neck and arms, little bits of grass stick to the backs of his previously sweaty knees too. He looks just about as gross as he feels, unsurprisingly.
Once the water is sufficiently warm, at least enough so that Lando won’t turn into a icicle while trying to clean off, he steps into the shower. He pumps some curl enchancer shampoo into his palm, one that, actually, Daniel , recommended to him. He’s got a whole routine now, all sparked from one drunken conversation about taking care of curly and frizzy hair that stemmed from Lando drifting his fingers through Daniel’s curls, admiring the perfect coil of each one.
Lando misses that—the safety and intimacy he had with Daniel. He knows it what they had was more built around being a ‘helping-hand’ friendship and both of them acting on pure drunken lust than it was ever any bit romantic or loving, but he did enjoy the few moments when they would sit on the ground with their knees overlapping or up on a bed with their bare chests touching, when they would just talk about everything and nothing.
They thought they were wise, all so profound on those nights, when in reality the most intense conversation they ever had was probably about why objectively Zayn should’ve been the face of One Direction.
But even then, all those pointless and absolutely nonsensical conversations still all felt a whole lot more meaningful then the majority of interactions Lando had with Oscar nowadays–spare a few moments from earlier today.
Lando reaches for a bottle of some bougie body soap from the farmer’s market—oatmeal and almond—and pours it onto his hand, sudding it up before scrubbing his body clean with it. The dried mud flakes off pretty easily, leaving his skin slightly red in its wake.
Maybe he’s expecting too much.
In all fairness, his relationship with Oscar has never been any bit like what he had/has with Daniel, so he shouldn’t expect that they’d be similar at all. Daniel and him got close because they decided from the get go that they’d be eachother’s ‘fuck buddies’. Oscar and Lando are friends, strictly friends. Also, Oscar—despite Lando’s secret and desperate wishes for otherwise—is straight and has a girlfriend. Therefore, Lando can’t genuinely be shocked that his straight-taken-uninterested-bestfriend isn’t acting the same towards him as an openly gay and interested Daniel was/is.
By the end of his shower, Lando has made peace with Oscar’s lack of... Oscar-ness. Well, to an extent at least. It’s computed in his mind that he can’t expect Oscar to be everything and more that he’s dreamed about since coming to terms with the fact that he’s desperately inlove with the Aussie, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. Lily hurts, Oscar’s lack of awareness hurts, their quickly fading friendship hurts, and coughing up blood and flowers hurts.
There’s a lot hurts in reality, but it’s not like Lando isn’t used to that.
He taps his phone as he gets out of the shower—7.56. He’s got four minutes to dry off, style his hair, get dressed, and then join the game. Drying off and getting his clothes out takes 3 minutes alone, and he’s doing up the tie of his black sweatpants by the time he basically throws himself into his gaming chair, clicking to accept Oscar’s call request as the clock hits 8pm.
“I’m shocked you actually made it on time,” Oscar’s deadpan voice comes from the other end of the line as Lando puts his headphones on, quickly regretting it due to his still wet hair.
“Yeah, about that,” Lando grimaces as his shoulders become wet once again due to his dripping wet hair, “you start the game, I’ve just gotta dry off my hair real quick,” He tosses his headphones back off, grabbing a towel and his hair cream from his bathroom. Once he’s satisfied with how dry his hair is (which is barely), he runs curl cream through it, scrunching until he’s happy with it. “Alright,” He sits back down, situating his bulky headphones back over his ears again, “I’m set,”
After a few seconds of silence, Lando pushes his chair back to give himself a better view of his monitor from not so close up, and a better range of motion when using his keyboard. In the time while he’s waiting for Oscar to start the game, he stretches his arms high above his head, groaning softly. He didn’t bother to put on a shirt for this, so as he’s stretching, he gets a view of his own unshaven armpits .
Oscar makes a weird, high-pitched noise on the other end, like he’s sucking on his teeth. Lando pulls a face, eyebrows pinched and lips pursed out like a duck. “What was that ?” Lando asks, leaning over towards his bed, his fingers spreading far to try and grab the bag of lollies.
Oscar scoffs, “Mate, I’ll ask you the same–what the hell was that weird kissy face you just pulled?” Lando pulls another weird face–this time, his top lip curls up and his face shifts into what looks like disgust, “That too!” Oscar adds on.
“You can see me?”
“Guilty,” Oscar replies, his voice switching back to deadpan again. A few seconds of silence crackle past, before, “Are you hiding something, or...” He pauses again, “Why are you so shocked that I can see you?”
Lando considers it for a moment, then gets an eyeful of himself as he looks down at his bare chest. He looks naked like this—his laptop camera is angled low enough that Oscar can see his waist, and even the very tops of his hips. Just below where the camera captures though, he is wearing clothes—just really low-hanging sweatpants in all fairness. “You just got a view of my hairy pits!”
Really . That’s what Lando landed on in the end? Speaking about his hairy armpits?
Oscar sighs, not an exhausted one or of relief, but like he’s bracing himself to answer that. “Lando. That is... okay.” He replies, voice completely void of emotion. “I am not going to judge you for not be apart of the armpit shaving community. I understand the practice of taking some shaving cream and a 5 dollar razor to your axilla isn’t for everyone, I won’t treat you differently for it.”
Lando grimaces, "Well, aren’t you funny, Mr. dry-and-pretend-serious humor?” He fiddles around with his camera, pointing it upwards so Oscar can’t see anything below Lando’s nipples. He then re-angles it up again, figuring that was a slightly weird place to stop.
Oscar gasps, feigning offence, “I actually find that quite rude that you would assume I was joking in any capacity,” He goes silent for a while, tapping something onto his keyboard. There’s a whoosh noise that follows, like he’s sent a message. Lando doesn’t get anything, so it’s probably Lily who’s on the receiving end.
He doesn’t care.
He shouldn’t, atleast.
Lando twists a still semi wet curl around his finger, tugging it slightly. “Yeah, alright, keep going. I’m loving this little TED talk you’ve got going on about body hair. What’s next? A lesson on the intricate art of shaving your legs?” His voice is dripping with teasing sarcasm and his comment is met with a breathy little chuckle from Oscar. There are few things in the world that he likes more than that sound.
“Only if you’re willing to take notes,” Oscar replies, “I mean, I’ve got a whole regimen I can walk you through, starting with exfoliation, obviously.” Lando looks at his screen, the call log, when he watches Oscar’s call icon (which is a picture of him in a kart race with the quality making him about 4 pixels) disappear and be replaced with Oscar himself. “I know this stuff–I take pride in my hairlessness,”
“Is that even a word?” Lando pulls a face, sitting back in his chair and tucking his legs up so his shins hit against the edge of his desk. His feet half hang off his seat, his body not able to contort as easily as it once could. “Hair-less-ness,” Lando repeats, making it sound as unconventional as possible. “Surely not, and as an absolute nerd with a straight A report card, you should know better, Oscar” Lando tuts.
Oscar pulls a face, all scrunched up and judgy. “ Mate, search it up,” Lando does just that, switches tabs and types in the word. Hairlessness–the condition of being void of hair. “Yeah, yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“Bullshit. No way that’s a dictionary approved word,” Lando swats his hand dismissively, shutting the tab. “Anyways, this is a pointless conversation, how about we just play the game already, you muppet,”
Oscar laughs again, his face twisting up as he smiles with all of his features–eyes crinkling, a little wrinkle forming at the top of his nose, all of his teeth bared on display, his head tilting back. His room is pretty dark, only his face illuminated by the light of his computer screen, but his smile is bright enough to light the whole place up.
Lando hates how warm and content just the sight of Oscar genuinely happy makes him. He feels so proud of himself for making Oscar happy all by himself—he can’t help but wonder if Lily ever gets Oscar like this, wonders what she’s like when it’s just the two of them–if she’s ever able to make Oscar laugh like this, or if she’s the type who sits back and lets Oscar entertain her.
So along with that bright and fulfilling joy, there’s always that tiny ache, gnawing at the edges of his chest. Because even if Lily doesn’t get Oscar this giggly, she gets ’s him in every way that Lando wants. Maybe she’s not funny at all. Maybe she doesn’t need to be. She gets Oscar's love either way, doesn’t she? The feeling’s like the dull throb of a bruise you forgot about until you bump into something. A reminder that, at the end of the day, this is all he’ll ever get.
Best mates, gaming buddies, like another son to each other’s families, basically roommates from how much time they spend in one another’s houses–anything but a lover.
Oscar is everything Lando wants, but he’s also completely out of reach. He wonders how many times he has to remind himself of that before it finally clicks, and he stops being so depressed each time he remembers it. No sulking or self pity is ever going to change that fact, so he needs to put less energy into feeling sorry for himself and more into accepting that rarely things ever go how people want them to.
A sigh escapes him before he can stop it, and he shifts in his chair. He puts his feet on the ground, his whole body suddenly too big to fit. He can’t pretend like he’s still a small and scrawny Lando who could scrunch up into a ball and sit in this chair with enough room for a whole other person to join next to him, or who could fit in Oscar’s bed next to the Aussie, their bodies bumping and overlapping, but never too big to spill off the beds.
“You good, mate?”
“Yeah,” Lando lies, forcing a smile that looks real as can be over his shitty camera quality. “Just... game’s taking forever to load.”
Oscar chuckles softly, oblivious to Lando being on the genuine verge of tears, his eyes burning as he keeps them pried open. “Tell me about it. Should’ve upgraded your setup ages ago.”
Lando must be a really good liar, must be super convincing.
Or maybe Oscar’s just an oblivious dickhead. Lando laughs completely hollowly. It’s passable as genuine though.
Hopefully
. Well, actually, he doesn’t really care anymore. Oscar can know he’s having a breakdown over him at this point, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get right on that.”