#lancierre

Pierre moves back in with his parents.

It’s not like he’s got a choice.

He was barely making ends meet living with Lance - with Lance and his stupid money paying most of their overpriced, overinflated rent and Pierre’s entire life really while Pierre dumped EVERYTHING into traveling and promotions and last minute club nights.

Because Lance believed in him and he loved him.

And yeah, no one expected the two of them to last - not even Pierre - but, he hadn’t expected the two of them to go out like THAT.

Pierre can’t think about it too long or he starts to feel nauseous. And he can’t think about the impossible trek he’ll have to make from fucking Sacramento into the city so he can still DJ at the few nights he’s managed to secure in advance.

He’s decidedly not thinking about it now, standing in line at the grocery store down the street with an armful of last minute things his mom needed for their dinner party, trying not to feel like a loser while he clutches the 40 dollars she slipped him.

He can’t even pay for some whole grain mustard and some lemons and a bottle of wine.

It’s shameful and ridiculous and he is burning alive with the need to…go.

To burn off this rage. This nastiness that he’s feeling towards his friends in the city. The bubble under his skin that dancing or DJing or fucking would release.

Instead, he’s watching a cashier move slower than the melting glaciers and clutching a bottle of wine.

“Pierre?”

Pierre is lucky he doesn’t die on the spot because that voice…

“Pierre,” he says again, as Pierre turns towards the voice to find Charles behind him, smiling in that brilliant way he does, already moving around the side of his own cart - a cart piled high with fresh vegetables and normal person food - reaching out to hug Pierre.

Pierre desperately wants to hug him, but Charles sees all of Pierre’s armful of groceries and he laughs, bright and high, shifting to tug the wine from his grip, placing it in his own cart.

“I did not know you were in town,” Charles says, taking the mustard from him too. “I just had dinner with you mom two weeks ago and she was talking about you getting booked into this festival in Ibiza.”

He says Ibiza like his mom does. Eeeeeebeeeeezah. Pierre finds, in the face of it - in the face of Charles - his oldest friend, the person who went to prom with him, the guy he thought was lost to him after that drunken hookup during Pierre’s freshman year of college - he doesn’t mind so much.

“Cha,” Pierre hands him the mustard, “you look -“

Charles laughs as he throws himself into Pierre’s arms. “All grown up?” He asks in Pierre’s ear, “or were you going to tell me how beautiful I look now?”

He pulls away and bats his eyelashess and Pierre throws his head back and laughs.

“Well, I am grown up.” Charles says, pinching the skin of Pierre’s wrist.

They stare at each other.

Pierre has so much he should say.

He should apologize for what happened between them. He should ask why Charles was having dinner with Pierre’s Pascale. He should ask what Charles is doing in Sacramento when last he heard, he was in San Diego.

But Charles reaches over again, soothes his thumb over where he just pinched Pierre, and Pierre stares down at the contact.

“I know your mom is doing that dinner party thing tonight,” and then he says softer, “but I’d like to see you while you’re in town.”

Pierre looks up at him. At his blush. At his eyes.

“Catch up.”

Pierre shouldn’t.

But.

“If you drop me by my parents, I’ll run this stuff in and then we could -“

“Yes,” Charles cuts him off and then Pierre watches as the blush deepens. “I can’t promise my cooking is near as good as your mom’s but -“

Pierre has to fish his bottle of wine from Charles’ basket because the conveyor belt now has space for his items.

“I’d love to catch up.”

“What are you doing?”

Pierre holds up the tiny flower crown he’s carefully braiding together - those little yellow flowers that Pierre had pulled from the edge of the forest.

Lance has his eyes narrowed on him when he meets his eyes and Pierre bites down on a smile before turning back to Taylor - sitting up on her soft blanket, working hard to fit two blocks together.

“For the princess,” Pierre says in a soft voice, placing the crown on Taylor’s head before looking back up at Lance to gauge his reaction.