Chapter Text
The problem with trying to get over Lando was that he was everywhere, even when he wasn’t around.
That, he supposed, was the problem with falling in love with your roommate, especially one as close as he and Lando were. They were practically inseparable most days, falling in and out of each other’s orbits in a practiced ease. Even when they weren’t together at the flat, their belongings and habits had become so irrevocably entwined that sometimes he forgot what it was like to live without him. It had been that way for years now, and honestly, Oscar didn’t know how to separate the two of them without losing a large part of himself in the process.
He wished he could say it hadn’t always been so simple between them, so comfortable to concede his space to Lando, to tangle their legs together on the sofa as they argued over what to watch on the telly, to work on his assignments as Lando napped in Oscar’s bed. But the truth was, it had. It was part of what had made it so easy to fall in love with Lando, despite all the squabbling and the bullshit. Lando had slipped so easily into Oscar’s life, quieting the parts of himself he often didn’t like with a bump of his shoulder and a fond whisper of ‘Osc’ .
It was a wholly different relationship than he had with any of his other friends. Logan was his oldest friend by far, but even they didn’t share the kind of closeness that Oscar felt with Lando. It was different, somehow.
Before Lando, Oscar had been fine, really. His life had been fine. A bit boring, maybe, but he was still boring. He hadn’t thought that anything was missing until he’d met Lando, until the first time he’d made Lando laugh, like really laugh .
Since then, over time, slow considerations had wormed their way into his habits, slotting into his routine without much notice, without disruption. Now, he didn’t know how to be without Lando, didn’t know how not to be LandoandOscar . They were best friends, roommates, and something entirely undefinable. They were one thought, one word, one breath, and Oscar had long since given up trying to find where he ended and Lando began.
They had become so attuned to each other’s presence over the years, making concessions to one another without even realizing it. They relied on each other more than maybe they should, something that was certainly true for Lando who couldn’t keep his head on straight most of the time, let alone remember his keys or do the shopping. Hell, Oscar didn’t eat salmon anymore because Lando made such a drama out of it the few times he’d tried that he’d deemed it no longer worth it.
And was that kind of codependence healthy? Probably not for either of them, least of all Oscar. But it was comfortable and familiar and sometimes rewarded him with the weight of Lando’s head against his shoulder or a soft, private smile he knew was only for him. He’d been living off those scraps for so long that when they came, it felt like a Christmas feast.
Their whole flat was filled with him, with both of them. Even Oscar’s own room, littered mostly with coursework and Formula 1 memorabilia, bore hints of Lando’s presence (usually a stray sock, his headphones, or a hoodie). And Oscar tried, as he had countless times, to imagine a world where this was how it could be for the rest of their lives. Just the two of them, irreparably tied together to the point where Oscar no longer knew whose socks he’d put in the washing, where he cooked to Lando’s strange and picky habits without even a second thought. Where he could sleep in the comfort of Lando’s embrace, the heat of his breath against his hair. Where Oscar could walk up behind Lando as he stood in the kitchen and wrap his arms around the other man’s waist, pressing his lips to his jaw and Lando would hum contentedly, muttering some odd complaint about something trivial that probably didn’t really matter.
It could be so easy, he knew.
But that wasn’t the world they lived in, so Oscar resolved himself to get over it, to get over Lando once and for all.
-
The morning after the club, when Lando padded out of his room with no girl in sight, Oscar let out a small sigh of relief. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d been forced to make small talk with one of Lando’s hookups, but if he could avoid it, he’d rather not have to converse with someone after he’d heard them moaning the night before. No matter who it was, it made for an awkward interaction.
Lando looked soft and bed-warm, curls in disarray after last night’s activities and the hours of sleep that followed. He still had pillow marks on his cheekbone and Oscar’s fingers twitched with the urge to run his fingers along the lines. He wondered, absently, how it would feel against his skin, if Lando would lean into the touch. He couldn’t help but notice that Lando was wearing his hoodie again, the hem falling just below the line of his boxers. It always made Oscar’s brain go a little bit fuzzy when he did that, scratching some far-off possessive part of his brain.
“Morning, Osc,” he said, his voice just a bit hoarse, the way it always was in the morning.
“Good night?” Oscar asked, stirring a spoonful of sugar into his tea.
Lando sent him a coy smile as he grabbed a glass from the cupboard. “Eh, it was alright. She was moaning like a bloody pornstar. Kind of ruined the vibe a bit.”
I know , Oscar thought.
It’d gone on long enough through the night that Oscar had needed to put on a pair of headphones in order to get any kind of sleep. It was as loud as it was unbelievable, and though he was sure Lando was good in bed, it was just a little too egregious for Oscar to handle last night or any other.
“Uh huh, sure.” Oscar said, sliding into a chair. “Regardless, it seems you didn’t need a wingman after all.”
Lando snorted, pouring himself a glass of water and drinking the entire thing down in one go. Oscar focused intently on the mug in his hands, trying not to track the way Lando’s throat moved as he drank, nor pay mind to the mottled bruises that marred his tanned skin.
He tried to ignore the jealousy that burned in his chest, an angry, shameful thing. Lando wasn’t his and he never would be, so there was, frankly, no reason to be jealous, especially not of some girl that Lando would likely never see or speak to again, considering he hadn’t allowed her to even stay the night. But it didn’t stop the feeling from clawing its way up his chest and into his throat.
“ You clearly do,” he said, pointing a finger at Oscar. “Mission: Get Oscar Laid isn’t something I take lightly, but you don’t make it easy. How are you supposed to find anyone if you sit in the booth all night talking to Logan.”
Oscar rolled his eyes, thinking back to last night. To the way Lando’s body had looked, pressed against the girl’s, to the pity clouding Lily’s eyes.
“I’ve got plenty of options, mate. I’m fine on my own,” Oscar said.
Lando made a disbelieving noise, poking his head into their mostly empty fridge. “Speaking of, I saw you talking to Lily last night. Is that happening again?”
Oscar’s stomach turned unpleasantly. He’d thought Lando had been too preoccupied to notice that interaction, to notice how Oscar’s eyes kept drifting toward him as he swayed on the dancefloor, his body moving alongside the girl’s.
He huffed out a laugh. Lando didn’t know how wrong he was and Oscar certainly wasn’t going to tell him what Lily had really wanted to speak to him about. He was more than happy to let him believe quite literally anything other than the truth.
“No,” he said. “She just wanted to catch up a bit. It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. Introduced me to her new boyfriend.”
Lando closed the fridge empty-handed, throwing Oscar a strange look. “That’s a little fucked up, don’t you think?”
Oscar shook his head.
That, by far, was the least uncomfortable part of his run-in with Lily.
“It’s fine. He seemed like a nice bloke, all things considered.” He took a sip of his too-hot tea. “Besides, I wasn’t looking to get back with her anyway. We ended things for a reason.”
Lando hummed as he made his way to the snack cupboard, brushing his fingers against the back of Oscar’s arm. “If you say so, Osc.”
After a moment of contemplative silence, Lando flopped into the chair beside Oscar, throwing his feet across his lap.
“We’ve got no food, mate,” he said dramatically. “This is desperate.”
Oscar nodded, making a half-hearted attempt to push Lando’s legs back to the floor, but the other man simply dug his heels in, crossing his ankles in an attempt to get more comfortable. “Yeah, I know.”
Lando reached over, pulling Oscar’s mug from his fingers and taking a sip.
He wrinkled his nose in a way Oscar tried not to find endearing. “Ugh, Oscar. This isn’t nearly sweet enough.”
Oscar stole it back from him, flicking Lando’s cheek. “My tea preferences haven’t changed in the last three years. I don’t know why you expected it to be any different.”
Lando crossed his arms over his chest, throwing his head back to look at the ceiling lights. “It’s not my fault you’ve got bad taste.”
Oscar snorted. “It’s not my fault everything you drink has to be filled with about a hundred sugars. One day, your teeth are going to fall out of your head.”
“I like it much better when you’re drinking hot chocolate,” Lando said.
Oscar snorted. “You would.”
“Spare me the lecture,” Lando said. “I’m starved. I’m going to keel over if I don’t get something to eat in the next fifteen minutes.”
Oscar sighed fondly, “There’s a Greggs’ sausage roll in the bottom drawer of the fridge. I was saving it for myself, but if the situation is that desperate, I guess you can have it.”
Lando shot up straight in his chair, leaning over to smack a wet kiss against Oscar’s cheek. “Ugh, fucking mint , Oscar. I love you. Have I told you how much I love you lately?”
Lando stood, rushing to the fridge before Oscar could really process what had happened. His fingers found his cheek, wiping at the dampness left against his morning stubble. It was moments like this that often hurt the most, the casual touches that left his skin scorching, the loose language that felt both like a slap to the face and a balm to his aching heart.
Lando was so cruel sometimes, even if he didn’t know it.
“Yeah,” Oscar said, softly. “Love you too, mate.”
-
Over the next few weeks, life continued in the way it had for the last three years.
When Oscar wasn’t working on his coursework until it felt like his brain was melting out of his head, he was spending his free time with Lando, watching whatever trashy television show Lando had chosen on the sofa, cooking while Lando pretended to be helpful by simply getting out of the way, arguing about what kind of milk to buy at the grocery store.
Sometimes, even when he was working on his coursework, Lando kept him company, babbling along about something or other while Oscar tried to parse out a difficult sum or string a competent sentence together. He never seemed to mind that Oscar wasn’t really listening, responding only with occasional hums or one word answers. He seemed to just like that Oscar was there, that he could exist comfortably in his space without being asked to leave.
Lando didn’t really like being alone, Oscar knew. He was a very social person and often struggled to sit in his own head for too long before things got too loud, too real. Generally, Oscar liked being the person that Lando turned to when it got like that, the one he sought out late at night or defaulted to in the interest of convenience or whatever else. He certainly never minded the company, especially from Lando, but it did make it exponentially more difficult for his efforts to finally get over his feelings when he was always within reaching distance, always doing things or looking at him in a way that made Oscar question if maybe he was wrong in his endeavor and if he should just walk right up and kiss him, just to see what Lando would do if he did. But he couldn’t say no, not when Lando looked at him like that, smiled at him with pleading eyes and gapped teeth. He’d never been very good at saying no, not to Lando.
Like just now, with the two of them settled on the sofa in their living room, flicking through streaming services as they aimlessly tried to figure out what to watch. It was a dance they did at least three times a week, but the decision never seemed to get any easier. Oscar sat slumped across the left side of the sofa, and despite the space he’d left on the other side, Lando had immediately settled with his head against Oscar’s thigh, toying with the edge of his shorts with idle fingers.
It had to have been intentional. He had to know he was driving Oscar insane, that the feeling of his breath against his leg hair sent a jolt of electricity straight to his insides. It was a miracle he wasn’t hard yet, his dick only centimetres from Lando’s head. He chalked it up to his being used to Lando’s behavior by now.
Despite what his elevated heartbeat told him, Oscar knew it didn’t mean anything. Lando was a very tactile person, something he’d become very familiar with in the time that they’d lived together. A brush of fingers against his back, a tug at his hand, a head against his shoulder had all become commonplace a long time ago, but this was toeing the line between casual and heartbreakingly intimate.
“Just pick something,” Lando whined, tugging at the hem of Oscar’s shorts.
Oscar sighed, shifting slightly. “We both know that you’re going to groan and complain about whatever I choose anyway, so why even bother?”
Lando gasped in mock disbelief. “I would never.”
Oscar reached out and smacked Lando’s forehead lightly, fingertips grazing his curls.
“Sure, arsehole.”
He clicked around with the remote through the television section for the next fifteen minutes, hovering over a few series to varying degrees of disapproval from Lando, who was splitting his attention between Oscar’s plight and texting Max Fewtrell. If he was going to be so opinionated, Oscar didn’t know why he couldn’t dedicate his full attention to it. But that was Lando, and Oscar couldn’t find it in himself to be truly annoyed.
He tossed the remote onto Lando’s chest. “I give up. By the time you finally approve one of my choices, we’ll both be half asleep already.”
“Yeah, well,” Lando said, reaching blindly behind him in an attempt to pass the remote back to Oscar who just pressed it further into his hand. “It’s going to be the same result if I pick something. We both know it.”
Oscar snorted. “I’ll probably hate it, but at least I won’t whinge about it like you will, so put on whatever reality show I know you’re itching to watch and I’ll just deal.”
Lando lifted his head off Oscar’s leg and smiled hopefully. “Really?”
Oscar’s heart squeezed at the excitement in Lando’s eyes.
How could he deny Lando anything if it meant that he would look at him like that?
“Yeah,” he said, resigned to his fate. “Go for it.”
Lando dropped his head back onto Oscar’s thigh harder than strictly necessary, immediately clicking onto a show that Oscar knew would make both of them lose whatever collective brain cells they had left. He shoved a handful of crisps into his mouth before passing the bag over to Lando, who made a delighted noise.
As promised, he didn’t complain and even paid mild attention to the program. He listened idly while Lando explained how the show worked and what was going on at any given moment between chewing on his crisps, gesturing wildly and saying things like, ‘I cannot fucking believe that he just did that. Oscar, can you believe he did that?’
He still didn’t really understand what was going on because Lando was kind of shit at explaining things, but it didn’t really matter. It was enough to just sit there and know that Lando was enjoying it so thoroughly. Though he could only see half his face, Oscar tried to make out the facial expressions that Lando made as he watched, his nose crinkling in utter shock or judgment at any given moment. In complete honesty, he had probably spent more time watching Lando than he did watching the actual show, laughing at his over-the-top reactions, eyes sparkling with something akin to affection.
Here, in their little two-bedroom flat, Oscar could allow himself to pretend that he could have Lando like this. He itched to card his fingers through Lando’s curls, to settle against his scalp and hear him hum in contentment at the touch, the way Oscar was sure that he would. The thing was, Lando probably wouldn’t even find it weird. It was too easy, too dangerous a thought, as he lie there with Lando’s head pillowed against his thigh, his fingers absently stroking his leg like it was fucking normal, like it didn’t mean anything. Because to him, it didn’t.
To Oscar, it was everything; everything he wanted, everything he couldn't have, so tantalizingly close that he could taste it, graze it with his fingertips without ever truly grasping hold of it.