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Lando hated those stupidly expensive and 'high quality' drinks they offered in those overpriced and shitty restaurants. They always made him feel like utter dog shit, the liquid swimming in his stomach, not stopping, never stopping, like it was on the run from the police, like it wanted to be out of his body in the quickest time possible, a goddamn F1 car trying to find the most optimal line across the corner.
And they never really got him drunk, either. His brain wasn't stupidly going from a thought to thought, the movement slow and quick at the same time, making close to no sense to anyone but him. He wasn't talking to random people and yapping about Formula 1 or whatever he was interested in at that moment, he wasn't flirting with a random hot guy, he wasn't trying to get a cheaper drink by telling a sob story to the bartender. He wasn't doing anything, really.
He just sat there, at the bar, the fucking Jamaican Mohito or whatever in hand, a want and a need to go back home rummaging through his head, yelling at him, pulling him away from that stool he sat at.
Yeah, he hated those drinks with all his might.
He took the last sip of the sickly red liquid, it being not any better than the first one, still vile and sweet and not really alcoholic (why did he order three of them? Did he delude himself at first into thinking they were good, or did he just not want to think about having to make a choice here?). When he put the glass down it made a loud noise, and because the bar was empty (because obviously it was empty) everyone heard it, and he truly couldn't bring himself to care about it. May they get the worst possible impression of him here, it's not like he was coming back (not for the drinks, that's for sure).
He really wanted to reek, his stomach turning and turning and turning, like a punishment from the deepest depths of hell, like a fucking washing machine, the vomit already in the back of his throat, waiting there, trying to escape the second it got the chance.
He swallowed it down.
Lando asked the bartender for the bill, the guy giving him less attention than to a horse entering the bar (although it would be quite extraordinary, and if Lando thought about it, the horse deserved well more attention than he ever did).
Fucking whatever.
He didn't give two fucks about the number on the bill. It could be a fiver or fifty euros for all that mattered. It's not like he was there to save money (if he was, he would've just bought a bottle of vodka and drowned his insecurities in it. And maybe he fucking should've, because this was obviously not working).
Lando put his card to the reader as fast as he could, because he wanted to be out of there now, out of the poshy and tory ass building, away from the shithole, away from the 'you will think you won't have a hangover, but it will be the worst you ever experienced' drinks, away from everyone and everything. He didn't want to be anywhere, if he was being honest.
He stumbled out onto a street, the alcohol making him a little bit wobbly, a little unsure on his feet. It was trying to pretend like it was in his veins and in his head and not only stuck in his stomach, and god, he fucking hated it.
Lando sat down on the pavement a few streets down from the bar after walking for a longer while, thinking, thinking whenever he should find some cheap bar with drinks that were actually made to make you drunk or if he should just go back to the hotel room, back to Oscar, who had to be waiting for him (because obviously he was, because he cared like that and it only made Lando feel like a fucking moron in disguise, an asshole that didn't deserve anything).
And god, Oscar - he himself was the reason why Lando found himself in this situation. He wouldn't be drinking the shitty, too expensive drinks in the middle of Santa Susanna, sitting on the not-so-cold pavement, waiting for the second appearance of Christ or whatever the fuck if it wasn't because of Oscar.
Because it was always about him.
Always.
Lando felt a tear run down his cheek, and he just felt so pathetic and hopeless and he kinda just wanted to run across the semi-busy street in front of him and get hit by a car or something.
Because.
Because Oscar was so awesome and amazing and so smart and pretty, and his humor? He was such a funny guy, delivered the most devastating lines to whoever offended him, to whoever offended Lando (nobody before Oscar even tried to stand in his defense, because obviously Oscar was his first. He was his first with everything).
He was also so responsible and caring and whenever Lando was acting like a fucking weirdo ('It's your ADHD,' his therapist said one day. He stopped going to therapy after that) he would make sure that Lando was doing well and.
And Lando, the stupidly drunk Lando, just didn't deserve him. He didn't deserve Oscar when he was sober, either.
He whimpered, the sound escaping his mouth before he could stop it, the absolute feeling of being pathetic completely overtaking his body, making everything seem more and more like shit.
He wanted to go home.
He didn't really feel like he had anywhere to call his home, and yet he wanted to go home.
A woman started talking to him, loud loud loud, her voice breaking through his eardrums, making him want to scream and rip his hair out. Lando didn't even try trying to understand her because she was so speaking in Spanish and Lando was not one of those linguistically gifted people.
He mumbled some collection of sounds in her direction, hoping that they would come across as something close to a 'I am fine' (even though he wasn't), so she would just like, go away or something. It was none of her business, anyway. And it's not like Lando needed any help.
She looked at him with narrow eyes, her head tilting just a tad, but she didn't bother saying anything more. Instead, she left him alone (which Lando was thankful for). He rubbed his eyes, drying them with the collar of his T-shirt. He knew that it was now stained, the weird glue-y liquid from before still spread all across his face, but he didn't even like this shirt that much in the first place so. So it was fine.
He stood up, his legs working less with him and more against him than before. Even his own body was fighting him, for fuck's sake. He really couldn't catch a break if he wanted to.
He started walking back, trying to remember where to go, where was the goddamn greek-like hotel. The whole fucking hotel district or whatever it was felt so incredibly dystopian, and he couldn't shake the feeling that it was the final stage of capitalism, that the next one would be apocalypse and killing each other for money just because.
Ugh, he really was done for when he got stupidily philosophical.
"Lando!" he heard someone (someone? Oscar, it was Oscar, he could recognize that voice anywhere) yell from behind him, making him stop in his track, almost collapse, almost trip all over his legs and land on that heated fucking road.
Lando turned around, slowly, not really sure on his feet, not really sure of anything. He narrowed his eyes, the vision just a little more swimmy than normal, a bit more blurry, a bit more grieving (grieving what? He wasn't even sure, but it had to be something. He couldn't be feeling so shitty from nothing.
Right?).
Oscar was running towards him (not jogging), the red T-shirt he wore that morning still on, shining underneath the streetlamps, making him pop out from the dark blue surrounding him.
Lando smiled at the sight, a droopy expression on his face.
He really liked Oscar.
"Fucking hell, would it really kill you to pick up your phone for once in your goddamn life?" Oscar retorted once he was a few meters away from the Brit, close enough for him to hear, the tone aggressive, loud, scolding. Bad.
Lando felt the tears pricking at the corner of his eyes again, his cheeks (which were still not-really-dry) getting all wet again, the fuckass of the job of trying to dry his face from before completely pointless.
"Sorry," he mumbled, looking down, his hands playing with his belt. It was way too tight, but he couldn't exactly fix it in public spaces so. So it stayed the way it was, hugging him around his stomach, making the whole sensation of his abdomen feel so much worse than it should've.
He had three drinks in him, for fuck's sake. This wasn't normal.
Oscar did quite a few things in the next seconds. He sighed, the sound more of a disappointment than anything else, while not really expressing anything. Then, he rubbed his hand all across his face, his fingers ending in his hair, tugging the ends just a tad, frustrated.
And then he took a step forward, and took the hands out of the clump of his brown hair, and he put them on Lando's shoulders, the weight of them heavy, grounding him.
And then he tugged Lando forward, grabbed him, made Lando stumble into his arms, the said limps hugging him in a span of a second. Holding him, securely, like he mattered.
Lando didn't want to matter. Not to Oscar. He didn't deserve that.
The Brit couldn't stop his hands from going around Oscar even if he wanted to.
"I- you scared the shit out of me," Oscar murmured into his hair, squishing him harder for a few seconds, the heat from his body promptly warming Lando even more (he already felt like he was burning, but he didn't hate the sensation of Oscar's warmth).
Lando hid his face in Oscar's neck, hiding himself (and his soul), hoping that it would at least dull down his low whimpers, that it would help him hide his embarrassments in some way.
God, he had to get a fucking grip.
"I didn't mean to," he whispered back, the words being more of a murmur than anything else. But Oscar looked like he understood him (he always did).
Lando felt that he was wetting Oscar's T-shirt, and he knew that it was his favorite, so he wanted to pull back (he was not about to destroy it, he wasn't that much of an asshole), but Oscar didn't let him. Because obviously he didn't.
Instead, he tugged him even closer, bringing him closer.
Lando felt himself crumble even more at that, the invisible dam he wasn't aware of before suddenly breaking. He didn't even know why he was crying, didn't have a clear reason to, but it felt correct.
He needed it.
All the time in the world could've passed, seconds and minutes and hours combining into each other, and Lando wouldn't even know.
He felt safe. Scarily so.
Oscar rubbed his hand on his back, carving stars and circles and squares into it, the palm ending on the nape of his neck, resting there. It was all so caring and calming and it only made Lando want to cry even more and more.
"Why did you run away like that?" Oscar asked, pulling away slightly to have a better look at Lando. Lando didn't look up.
And why did he run away? He- well, he didn't exactly run away, just more... walked out randomly. Without a reason (not one that Oscar understood, anyway).
The evening had been going on fine, they had ordered some pizza delivery to their room (too lazy to go out after a whole day of walking around some random picturesque village on the coastline) and it had arrived some minutes ago. It was just a simple margarita, since both of them were more picky eaters than anything else (being neurodivergent would do that to you).
They had sat down on the weird, brown leather couch, the AC blasting from the corner of their room, the temperature perfected to a notch. They finished eating, leaving the dishes on the coffee table, both silently agreeing to deal with them in the morning.
Lando had moved around on the sofa for a minute or two, trying to get himself comfortable, ending up with his legs tugged underneath him, his whole torso leaning towards Oscar.
They watched the movie sitting close together, but not really touching - until Oscar's hand wandered down his back, ending on his waist, grabbing him closer, tugging him so Lando basically ended up on his lap.
Lando didn't bother moving away, accepted the closeness of their bodies (a while ago, they had a chat about it. Lando was always more than happy to accept any kind of physical contact, and Oscar had the need to control whenever he was being touched or not, and really, the perfect solution was for the Aussie to just touch Lando whenever he felt like it. It worked out well for them, and Lando would prefer to stab himself with a fork than to complain about their deal).
The rom-com became a background noise, a silent buzz of people talking while not really saying anything, and Lando welcomed the state his body got into, the one where he wasn't thinking, just lying there, with Oscar, nothing else mattering.
They had been doing that for quite a while, now. Being like that. Close. Too close to be normal, but not close enough to be weird. Never weird (not to Lando, anyway).
He let out a contempt sigh, moving his head a little, his face ending up on Oscar's thighs, right where the seam of his shorts ended, the smell of his perfume (and his body) filling Lando's nostrils. It was such a welcome smell, something that always brought him comfort and safety and always helped him come down from a meltdown.
And that's when it hit him, on that goddamn couch, the couple on the TV sharing their first kiss, emotional music playing in the background, but all Lando could hear in his ears was a loud buzz.
They were way too close - not in a way Lando minded, no - but they were closer then friends should be, and that was the problem.
It's-
Fuck.
And the worst part was that Lando liked it, the way they behaved not-so-platonically, the way they were always so close together, the way his friends (or Oscar's mates, for that matter) always assumed they were together. Lando always thought they were joking. He didn't think so anymore.
But it did make so much sense for them to think so, considering that they had been acting like a couple for the last few months. They fucking shared kisses before, half of them being dares, the other half not so much (they never kissed sober, though).
Lando scrambled to his feet before he could think otherwise, before he could think at all, making Oscar flinch (flinch? He never flinched) at the sudden movement. A drop of guilt ran through him, but he ignored it as well as he could.
He told Oscar he was going to go and buy water in a market (his words rushed, said as quickly as he possibly could), a poor excuse rather than anything else. The shops were already closed, and he and Oscar had enough water to fill up a family of five.
His reasoning was stupid and not sensible. Both of them knew it.
And yet Oscar, while looking confused out of his mind, didn't say anything about it (just accepting, always accepting Lando's weird shit). All he did was ask him to be back as quickly as he could and to take his phone with him. Lando almost forgot to do so.
When he left, he didn't think, didn't analyze what happened, didn't want to. He could do that later. Not now.
And that's was the end of the story, really. He got drunk in the first bar that didn't look like a mafia coverage, which he later learnt to regret (he should've gone to the fucking mafia boss and drink whatever he had to offer instead of that goddamn Jamaican Mohito).
And now he was there, once again in Oscar's arms, the place he (like a coward) ran away from. And he couldn't get rid of the happiness that filled him, the comfort and safety that made him panic just a few hours prior.
"I think I love you," he mumbled into Oscar's shoulder, not really wanting to say the words out loud, but they escaped him, anyway. He frowned and cringed a second after, realizing what he just said, but he didn't think about it for too long. He never did while drunk (the words were out, anyway. And having a heartbreak at the start of their relationship (?) would be easier to take than a heartbreak later down the line, when they were even closer, when it would start to feel like something more than just a mere romance).
Oscar's whole body tensed up, every movement from before stopping. Waiting. Too scared that it would break the bobble they found themself in. The fingers he planted on Lando's neck moved, twitched. His pinky landed under the collar of Lando's T-shirt.
"I don't..." he started, but cut himself off after half of second. He cleared his throat. "We should talk about this tomorrow, yeah?"
"But I won't want to, then," Lando murmured, pulling away, this time successfuly. Oscar wasn't holding him securely. Not anymore. "I hate confrontation."
"It's not confrontation," Oscar reasoned. Lando huffed.
"It is, though," he argued, a frown taking a permanent place on his face. He wanted to say a 'if you don't love me, then just say so', but that felt like too much even for his drunken brain.
Oscar sighed, his expression going through every stage of grief, and if Lando was sober he would remember every single one of them to hyper-analyze later (if Lando was sober, he wouldn't have confessed his long-time crush).
Oscar exhaled again, his body slumbing just a tad, the tensed shoulders from before disappearing. He relaxed in Lando's arms.
"Mate, I love you too, alright?" he said, the words way too sincere to be a lie to appeal to a drunk person. And they kind of felt like something Lando's sister would say to him (something platonic, that is), but Oscar wasn't an asshole. He wouldn't say that if he didn't mean it romantically, not in this situation, not after Lando had cried his eyes out in his arms. "But I have to get you to bed before you collapse on your feet right in front of me."
Lando didn't really have a reaction to the words. He just nodded, the movement more sad than anything else, before he was being tugged towards somewhere (Oscar was holding his hand, his pale one so much smaller than Lando's, and it looked so comical that he couldn't contain a small snort at the view).
They ended up in their hotel room in less than half an hour (maybe...? Lando never really knew how much time had passed when drunk), the number being a (unfortunate? fortunate?) 113, right next to the hotel restaurant.
Lando really didn't want to take care of himself. All he wanted to do was throw himself on the bed and go to sleep. But Oscar didn't let him. Because obviously he didn't.
The Aussie made him drink a shit ton of water, and brush his teeth, and even helped him change into his pijamas. Lando didn't deserve Oscar, like, at all. He had to be an angel, the way he just did all these nice things without ever seeming like he minded. And he looked absolutely angelic, too.
Oscar snorted when he told him so, dropping Lando's sock by an accident.
They got into their bed, on the same sides as always, more far away from each other than ever before ('While I would love a cuddle, I feel like you are gonna reek all over me in the middle of the night,' Oscar informed. Lando didn't argue)..
When a few minutes of dark silence passed, he started crying again, the guilt overcoming any other emotion in his body, and Oscar hugged him again, not letting him go until he was calm again. He mumbled quiet words of reassurance, ones, that Lando didn't understand, and yet they brought him comfort.
God, he really didn't deserve him.
Lando passed out in a brisk, his eyes closing the second he felt Oscar's hand combing through his hair, Oscar's smell surrounding him.
He woke up with a fuckass of a hangover the next day (because obviously he did), water and painkillers already on the nightstand. He downed them as quickly as he could, still not getting up from the bed, barely moving his head (because any movement felt like a death wish from the satan himself).
"Did you mean it?" Lando asked Oscar the second the man entered the room, making the Aussie immediately stop in his tracks. He tilted his head, confused.
"What?" he asked after a few seconds, after Lando didn't continue, taking another step into the room, a hot cup of powdered chicken soup in his hand. It wasn't steaming.
"When you said you loved me," he added, tone hopeful, wishing. If Oscar didn't mean it back then, if he just said it to make the drunk Lando feel better - he would've shot himself right then and there. Because he assumed, back there. He knew Oscar, sure, but he didn't know Oscar in and out. He didn't live inside of Oscar's brain. And he could've been wrong. And the simple thought of that made Lando want to cry once again.
But before Lando could start grieving, Oscar smiled, his eyes soft. He nodded, his words quieter than a whisper, "yeah. I have loved you for a while, I think."