i didnt proofread this

Lando always likes to lounge around in Oscar's bedsheets any opportunity he gets. Oscar can hear him shuffling around the blankets now while he finishes brushing his teeth in the bathroom; there isn't a lot of space to work with in his tiny apartment, anyway. He could probably hear Lando wipe his ass from the front door if he tried hard enough.

So of course, Lando is exactly where Oscar expects him to be once he returns to bed, his legs tangled around the bulk of his comforter with his face smushed into Oscar's pillow. 

"Having fun there?" he asks as he comes in. There's a muffled yeff in response that makes Oscar feel uncomfortably warm. He doesn't understand how a grown man can be cute. 

Lando always surprises him, though. He untangles himself to look at Oscar properly, pushing the blanket away from himself to sit up and look at him directly. 

Oscar expects something cute or quippy, but instead his brows furrow a little and he seems to take in a breath before speaking.

"Hey, um. I wanted to tell you something, Osc."

Oscar's heart is heart is still open from all the touching and kissing from earlier, and the high he's riding has completely erased the experience of fear from his mind. It's why it's easy enough to brush off Lando's preemptively nervous tone as he says it—though in hindsight, Oscar isn't really sure he would have clocked it anyway.

"What is it?" he says lightly.

Lando shuffles backwards to make space for him, and he's immediately reaching out for Oscar's hand, curling their fingers in together and holding it to his sternum warmly, loosely. 

"I just thought you should know," Lando starts, then shakes his head. "I mean, I want you to know. Because I want to be honest."

"Okay?" Oscar snorts in his naivety, as if he no longer knew all the ways people could hurt him. Lando continues.

"When I first asked you out, I only did it as a bet. Five dollars."

"Huh?" says Oscar, confused about the wrong thing. "Five dollars?"

"Not that I got it," Lando says, placating. "But yeah. It was a bet. It was supposed to be a joke."

That's where it all crashes into him. That terrible word—joke. Oscar takes a moment to picture that night they first met, Oscar in a dark corner scrolling his phone and feeling like a loser when Lando, in his sheer crop top and thigh-highs, had appeared in front of him with a bored expression and a hand on Oscar's wrist. There had been a sleeve of cuffs and bracelets on that arm, square letters reading corny things like talk dirty to me and good boy.

"A joke?" he doesn't mean to say out loud. 

"But I'm really lucky I talked to you, Osc, I really do like you," Lando starts to talk quickly, squeezing Oscar's hand tighter as if he expects him to pull away.

Maybe he should. Maybe he wants to. Lando has been on Oscar's lock screen for a week now, and they've been together for barely a month. He can feel his tongue trying to shrivel up and die in the back of his mouth the longer he sits with what Lando is telling him.

"So you wouldn't have talked to me if someone hadn't dared you," he intones. His gaze hasn't left Lando's since he's started talking, and he's surprised at himself. It's only ever been the easiest thing in the world to shrink away and hide when people demean him like this, but with Lando he thinks he's prepared to claw a different answer out of him with his own hands if need be. 

"No, probably not," Lando shakes his head. 

"So then what?" he pushes. "I say yes and we go on a date and then what?"

Lando blinks his eyes once at him, pale blues wearing an unfairly innocent expression, as if confessing his sins were the same as being completely absolved of them.

"Then I get five dollars," he says simply. 

"And a nice boyfriend," he tacks on after a few moments of pregnant silence. Oscar doesn't know what expression is on his face but he can't imagine it's anything less than a frown.

He isn't sure what he's supposed to say. Lando still has his hand caged in his own, so Oscar uses the other to reach over to Lando's waist and rest there for a moment, feeling the skin lower around his hips and the tops of his thighs; then further back towards his asscheeks, where he squeezes them lightly. Slipping his fingers in between them carefully he tries to think about where the feeling of being inside of him is supposed to slot into Oscar's memory now; if he pressed just a little harder, it wouldn't be difficult to slip the tip of his index finger in again. 

Lando lets himself be fondled for reasons Oscar doesn't understand. Because he's used to it, maybe. Oscar thinks he should be angry but the feeling just won't come. It used to be all he could feel before. It wasn't until Lando came around that he grit his teeth and tossed all the alcohol in the apartment. He's sort of regretting the decision to be better, now. 

"Let's just go to bed, Osc, you don't have to think about it that hard," Lando murmurs once Oscar extricates his fingers again. "I don't feel the same way now as I did then. I just don't want to have any secrets from you if we're going to keep doing this. And I'd really like to."

Oscar can't understand it. Oscar is made of secrets. If he gave them all away then what the hell would the name Oscar Piastri mean anymore? He wishes Lando had just kept his mouth shut. Oscar doesn't want to know anything about him ever again. 

"Okay," he concedes anyway, because he is weak-willed and thoughtless in the wake of any kind of affection.

Lando reaches over him to flick the bedside lamp off and then they're invisible to each other, barely even silhouettes as their eyes slowly adjust. It's Lando who crawls on top of him to press their bodies in again, the firm kiss being pressed into Oscar's lips a sensation that elicits none of the feeling it usually does.

"I love you," Lando murmurs into his lips in the darkness, and the darkness does help a little. He doesn't have to look at Lando touching him, doesn't have to see his own body being touched. 

"Mhm," he responds listlessly into Lando's mouth. He goes easily when Oscar rolls his body into him, can feel him smile as he's pulled closer into Oscar's body hard, hands curling into his sides roughly in just the way Oscar himself hates being touched. 

Of course Lando wants him. He doesn't disbelieve that for a moment. But knowing the kinds of people Lando has spent his time with, flirted with, slept with, Oscar can't help but be keenly aware after his confession that he really did end up being the lowest common denominator after all.

~

Lando thinks he looks nice in the staff bathroom. 

Not that he doesn't look nice in any other place, but the lighting is nice in here, with a mirror that's cleaned twice a week and even settings to adjust the color if need be. 

It's an unassuming black button-up he has on, but he'd done the extra work to trim the hairs on his chin and clean up the slit in his brow. His curls had set nicely in the shower, dark rolling waves atop his head that look like they have streaks of brown where the light reflects atop it. 

I don't revel in love, he thinks to himself. It was a mantra he'd told himself after he'd walked out on Charles, weeks spent dashing around corners and staring at the dark crack of his bedroom door waiting for some kind of cruelty to find him. 

Lando doesn't revel in love. He just isn't that kind of person.

"Hey, Lando," Arvid greets him cheerily back at the front desk. "How are you this morning?" 

Lando purses his lips in thought on the other side of the tall counter, fiddling with the tray of rewards cards and coupons from the other businesses in the mall. Between Charles and Oscar, he isn't quite sure what the word love even means to him anymore.

"I don't think anyone's ever made me come that hard before," is what he says to Arvid with an air of thoughtfulness. Arvid's face twists up, grossed out by the oversharing.

"That really isn't what I asked, mate," he sniffs and turns away to fiddle with the computer. Lando takes the opportunity to wander away himself. There's still fifteen minutes to opening and his mind is quite firmly settled in a gutter he's never once cleaned in his life.

He lets his feet carry him by the long aisle of face masks and cleansers idly, turns and follows the next aisle down foundations and highlights. It's this one he's most familiar with; Arvid said he just has a good eye, but Lando thinks it doesn't take much effort to look just slightly far enough beneath the skin to pick out a good match. There's little more painful to the eye than a foundation that looks like they're wearing someone else's skin. 

He helps people at his work, this way. He's doing good. So when he stops at a shade of bleached sand and feels his stomach twist, he keeps expecting that old mantra to save him. He doesn't revel in love. He just doesn't.

But it isn't like Lando doesn't feel bad. He really hadn't expected Oscar to take it so personally. Nobody else he's hit on as part of a bet had, and Lando was his damned lock screen, for Christ's sake. 

If Oscar could cry, maybe he would have. If sex is how he needed to get his feelings out, if sex is how Lando had to prove that he really meant it when he said he wanted to keep doing this, then what does it matter that Oscar had dug his fingers in a little harder than he needed to? If their touching had been less for pleasure and more for pride?

Everybody's a little cruel sometimes, Lando thinks. It's just how people are.

Back at the till, Lando can see Arvid scrolling through Spotify with furrowed brows and fingers curled up at his chin, as if the playlist they'll have on for the next hour is the most serious decision he'll have to make all day.

Lando's never had it that easy. A guy can wish.

"Don't put on anything trash like you usually do," he teases, but finds his heart isn't really in it. Arvid snorts and seems to come to a decision.

"I'm putting on brat and you already knew it," Arvid says smugly.

Of course he is. Gonna be a long day, Lando guesses.

It takes a while for the customers to start streaming in, and Lando does his best to be his normal friendly, flirty self. It's another pinprick in the back of his mind each time someone's eyes linger on him a little longer than they need to, or stand a little close to him than is strictly necessary as he prattles on about this or that brand or pretends to care more about so-and-so's upcoming wedding or breakup; it just feels like they shouldn't be allowed anymore. Lando glances down at his crotch while a mom and her daughter argue about some eyeliner and can just faintly make out the outline of his own flaccid penis as he half-listens to them talk; just remembering how it had been in Oscar's mouth only a few hours ago makes him feel beautiful all over again.

~~~

hi ^_^

ummm...idk about gabi <3 however his thing with nico does interest me. here what if nico was gabi's sugardaddy that sounds pretty funny. and he has a max thing too so maybe theyd be friends somehow...lando also

i said b4 in the other ask that lance runs the chinese place with nando..i think he got that job when he was young and doesnt really have any life prospects so he just hangs around to stick with fernando (scared of change maybe?)

https://www.tumblr.com/notsocreepycripy/821966392781864960/based-on-this-post-this-time-by-tetswithah-and

estie and pierre were childhood ride or die best friends but pierre was repeatedly held back/didnt graduate (bad at english maybe?) meanwhile estie has been a gifted kid for his whole life and swiftly got ahead in school and work where pierre fell flat on his face. estie still considers pierre a friend but pierre doesnt answer his "happy [holiday]" texts and is daily tormented by how much of a smarter better kinder wealthier etc person esteban is than himself. literally living in his head rent free. he's furiously insecure and daydreams about esteban's downfall

genuinely it has filled my heart and soul so much that you guys (im under the impression it's two anons here. maybe three.) fuck with loserverse because i thought it was completely fringe shit unrelatable to anyone but me so thank you for having fun with me <3