Chapter Text
“Lando. Listen. I know, and I’m sorry, and I can’t really explain what I did, I just. Call me back, okay? We can’t just leave things like this.”
An automated voice chimes in. “This voice message has been saved for 379 days.”
With a shaky breath, Lando presses the button. “Message deleted.”
Alex claps Lando’s shoulder. “This guy,” he says to someone Lando doesn’t recognize, “threw the best parties in uni. The best.”
“Hey,” Lando laughs, “I still throw a damn good party.”
They’re standing in Alex’s dingy London flat. The air is electric; nearly everyone is at least tipsy. House music plays faintly over the speakers Alex set up (in a last ditch effort to make people actually want to show up, with Lando’s help). Lando really misses the atmosphere of a club– at smaller, intimate parties, everyone notices everything. Except, maybe, the fact that Lando really, really had to pee, because this conversation is impossible to escape.
Someone taps Alex on the shoulder, and both Alex and Lando whirl around. It’s George, of course– wasted, flushed, and most importantly, Lando’s way out.
“Hey,” George slurs. “Alex, Lando, mate, you have to see this. Charles is going to– hic– he’s in a drinking contest with Max. They’re going until one can’t stand. Come on.” He grabs Alex by the elbow and marches away, and Alex is all too happy to go with.
Despite being his best mates, they only have eyes for each other. Neither notices Lando slip off into the peace and quiet of the bathroom. A piss, a quick scrub of the hands, and a splash of water on his face was all it took for Lando to feel comfortable enough to go back into the fray. But first, he thinks, a drink.
Gunning for the refrigerator, Lando carefully pushes his way through the crowd. Upon reaching his destination, he finds something slightly better than Alex’s shitty beer. A man Lando’s never seen before is standing directly in front of the fridge, lost in thought. Lando follows his line of sight and lands on some word magnets. Placing himself right beside the man, Lando points at the magnets. “Nice poem.”
The man jumps, clearly surprised, and his shoulders sag in slight embarrassment. “This was supposed to be an anonymous fridge magnet poem,” he says, in an accent much different from Lando’s own.
“I’m not judging,” Lando grins, taking two beers from the fridge. He passes one to the mystery poet. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” The poet slinks out of the kitchen, and Lando is left alone with the refrigerator magnets.
Lando gets now why the poet was so enamored with the magnets. After 10 minutes, he finds himself in the exact reverse of his earlier situation– the poet coming side by side with him as he blocks the fridge. “Sorry I moved your poem. This is, like, weirdly addictive,” Lando blushes.
“Don’t worry about it,” the other man snorts. “Always glad to see other people with an appreciation for the art of magnet poetry.”
Lando is about to respond with something equally quippy when an unseen force backs into him, holding two cans. “Oh, hey!” Alex says brightly, turning around. “You two met!”
Lando shrugs. “Kind of?”
“Oh, well! Lando, this is my cousin Oscar, the engineer. He’s Australian, if you couldn’t already tell. Oscar, this is Lando, my roommate back at university.”
The poet-- Oscar–- gapes. “You’re Lando?”
“Jesus, Alex, mate, what have you said about me to garner that reaction?” Lando says, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Aw, nothing much. Just that you have a broken heart and a penchant for revelry and debauchery. Lucky he’s here and not at the club.” Alex drunkenly cups Lando’s face and begins to stroke it.
“Don’t tell people I have a broken heart, mate. And quit stroking my face.”
Abruptly, George, in all his glory, stumbles into the kitchen. “Alex, there’s been an incident. Max pushed Charles into that painting” – he gestures sloppily to a very broken glass frame– “and yeah. Glass everywhere.”
“Shit. Host duty calls.” Alex and George make their way into the war zone, leaving Lando and Oscar alone yet again.
“I don’t really like parties.” Oscar shifts his weight. “Awkward small talk is not really my thing.” “
From what I’m gathering, talking in general is not really your thing.”
Oscar’s mouth twitches upward into an almost-smile. “Your assessment isn’t incorrect.”
“So, what is your thing? Oh, let me guess. Holing up in your flat poring over your fuckin’ engineering blueprints and shit and eating soup out of a can?” That sounded mean.
“And is your thing going up to strangers at parties and making weirdly specific and kind of mean judgements about them?”
“Actually, my thing at parties is usually drinking until my face hurts and being carried home.” Lando pauses. “Or maybe it’s oversharing.”
Oscar laughs, and turns to Lando. “Want some more drinks?”
By one, the party began to fizzle out, leaving only a select few. Alex and George had the couch to themselves, their sudden sloppy make-out session leaving most unwilling to spend more than four seconds around the pair. The only difference in Lando and Oscar’s position is that they now laid slumped on the kitchen floor, talking and laughing against the refrigerator.
“You didn’t–” Lando wheezes– “you did not really catch your last boss jacking off in his office. That can’t be true. Seriously, I’d have killed myself the second I got home.”
“Oh, it’s true,” Oscar nods fervently. “I stared at my belt for a long while once I got home, but then I realized I had a cat to live for, of course.” He begins to stand up. “Actually, I’m going to go to the bathroom. Do you need anything from Alex’s bathroom? Like, expired aspirin or used dental floss?”
Lando leans in, suddenly very serious. “Actually, I have a small dish in there I was hoping to use to collect everyone’s spit. Test paternity and all that. I want to see whose moms are lying.”
“Of course,” Oscar says, matching Lando’s energy. “I’ll just go around with a party tray.”
Lando waves him off. “Don’t worry about doing all that. I’ll get them to spit.”
Oscar laughs. “Alright.”
A few minutes pass by, and George and Alex have finally taken their escapades to the bedroom. Footsteps approach Lando, still sitting on the kitchen floor, and he looks up. “Hey,” Oscar says. “I was thinking of unceremoniously and rudely leaving without saying goodbye. Just a warning.”
“You okay to walk home?” Lando asks, slowly rising to his feet.
“Yeah, mate, I’m fine. I’m only, um, around the corner, you know? Just west.”
Lando smiles. “Actually, I’m also going west. Do you want to maybe walk together?”
Oscar smiles back, a real smile. “That would be great, Lando.”
“This is actually me right here.” Oscar stops in front of a nice-looking flat, and turns to Lando. “Thanks for walking me home.”
“Anytime. You know, I really had, like, a great time talking with you.”
“Me too. Which is rare, because like you said, I’m not much of a talker.”
“Right. Of course.” Lando laughs. “We should really do this again sometime. Like, for real. A full-blown hangout.”
“For sure.” Oscar turns towards the door, and turns back suddenly. “Wait, hold on. Pull out your phone.”
Lando quickly yanks his phone out, and gives it to Oscar. “So I’m going to give you my number real quick. Top secret. If you leak it, the government will be on my ass since I’m, like, a wanted international criminal.”
“Of course. No leaks here.” Lando feels his cheeks heat up. When he gets his phone back, the time flashes across the screen– 1:45. “Jesus, I did not mean to stay out that late.”
Oscar nods. “Yeah, me neither. My boyfriend is going to think I died.”
And that’s when Lando’s world stops.
“Boyfriend.”
“Yeah. Logan. He’s great,” Oscar says, with a strange, faraway look on his face. “Anyway. See you around, Lando.”
“You too,” Lando stutters out, before the door shuts in his face.
It’s a long, slow trudge back to Lando’s flat. He’d lied earlier– he lives the opposite direction, and much farther. He just didn’t want this opportunity to slip away, and now he’d found out there was no opportunity at all.
I can’t do this to myself, he thinks. Not after Carlos.
The second he gets home, he goes into his contacts app, and deletes Oscar’s number.