for the love of all things unholly

Most of the embassies are filled this week, visiting for the World Cup. It means this party in the back of a club in one of the more elite parts of Madrid is about as debaucherous as it gets outside of a private home. Carlos practically gapes at what some of the women are wearing, didn't know the children of foreign dignitaries even had dresses like that in their closets. At least his outfit doesn't stick out amongst the men, just a button up and slacks. He runs his hand through his hair, to mess it up even more than it naturally is. To look less put together. It's fitting.

Martim leads him and Teto around, introducing Carlos to people he can't hear the names of over the music bass. The whole room is clouded with smoke, enough he assumes there is a fog machine until he puts two-and-two together with the smell. It's vape smoke and cigarettes and cigar all mixed into one, sickly sweet but also biting and rancid on the tongue when he dares to speak.

Martim leads them to a big booth on the edge of the room, velvet cushions covered in people who barely look older than teens at a glance; girls wearing a pound of makeup and the boys bright-eyed and posturing so much it circles back around to make them seem young.

There's a boy in the middle of it all, one arm across the back of the booth behind his buddy as he rubs his jaw with the other, futile mustache on his lip. He's chewing gum slowly as he tells a story, and everyone seems to be paying attention to him, hanging off of each word as he articulates them for maximum impact, working his crowd.

Martim slides into the end of the booth and Carlos follows. The boy stops himself mid sentence, huge grin cracking across his face as he spots them.

"Martim! And who's this?" He asks. As he turns, the thickness of his neck flexes, the teenage thought in Carlos's head suddenly gone. Carlos can see the gum trapped in his teeth beside his pointy canines, something simultaneously so boyish but succubus about him.

"Lando, this is Carlos. Carlos, Lando."

Lando leans across the people between the drinks on the table to shake Carlos's hand.

"Man needs a drink," Lando says, the smile still on his face. It seems permanent, like life just makes him gleeful.

Before Martim or Carlos can respond, someone appears at the edge of the table, slides each of them a glass of something clear, on the rocks.

Martim leans close. "Lando always throws these," he tells Carlos. "Sorta known for it."

Carlos can see why. It's like Lando is the personification of the party. Even as he clearly commands the table, he looks debauched, hair so ruffled and shirt slightly wrinkled Carlos thinks maybe he already hooked up with someone here, and upon closer inspection, perhaps that is exactly what Lando wants everyone to think. Carlos doesn't know which is more intriguing.

As Carlos is wondering if Lando's buttons are offset--third button in the second hole of his plain, white shirt--Lando catches him looking. Carlos tries to play it off, lifts his glass to sip without immediately looking away from Lando, but the strength of the drink catches him off guard, so he coughs as it goes down. It's the least cool thing he could have done. Lando smiles.

"Carlos, are you having a good time?" he asks. Only, he says his name like Cah-los and it's clearly a British accent but mutated into something else, something gathered and Frankensteined across travels. Stamped dozens of times in his passport.

"This is... not my usual kind of party," Carlos admits, gesturing to the room. He's hyper aware of the people between them listening, all a part of the conversation even as Carlos and Lando do not look away from one another. "Is... unbehaving. For me."

Carlos swallows hard. He doesn't want Lando to think he disapproves, or is making fun. But he wants to be truthful. Boys on their knees in his quarters is as deviant as Carlos is, but Lando has cornered the market on something else.

"Are you having fun?" Lando asks with a head tilt that's so puppyish, Carlos almost reacts.

Carlos shrugs. He has not been here long, can still be entertained by simply letting his eyes wander the room, even if they've been fixed on Lando for some time now. He's more entertaining.

Lando pulls his arm off of the back of the booth and leans forwards, a pout-ful frown painting over his smile. "I like my guests to have fun," Lando says, sweeping three empty glasses out of the way and revealing a mirror sitting on the table top, a curled twenty beside it.

Carlos slowly looks back up at Lando. He doesn't know what his face is doing.