:~)

“But I’m a guy,” Lando said, a petulant look on his face, lip curled up.  His eyes weren’t angry, though, just questioning.  There was a thoughtful tilt to his eyebrows. 

“I know, Lando,” Carlos soothed.  “You can still be my pretty girl though, no?  If you want?” 

Carlos’ voice was soft - like he was trying not to spook a nervous cat. Lando nearly puffed up defensively before he realised that was exactly what Carlos was expecting, and that unnerved him more.  He didn’t like to give Carlos a visible reaction, though, because Carlos would tease him. He wasn’t in the mood to be teased.  He felt too fragile for it.  

He was holding Carlos’ surprise in his hands - though both hands certainly weren’t necessary.  The silk in his hands was delicate and there wasn’t much to it.  The set of - lingerie, Lando thought, it was definitely lingerie - was pretty.  That was the only way to describe it

“Will you be my girl tonight, baby, hmm?” Carlos pressed, holding one of Lando’s hands in his, his thumb smoothing across Lando’s knuckles.  The difference was stark – though Lando had big hands, Carlos’ were solid.  Hairy, too.  Lando shivered, and Carlos moved them gently, so Lando was on his back, pressed into his pillows, and Carlos was above him.  He didn’t break eye contact. 

The moment felt like it could shatter in a second.  

Carlos looked down at him, from where he was hovering with one arm braced by Lando’s head, and the other making smoothing motions down Lando’s side.

Lando swallowed.  “Okay… I can… I can be your girl.”  The words sounded forced out, but the way his chest was already beginning to heave gave him away.  He shut his eyes so he didn’t have to see Carlos’ too-open face anymore. 

The moment didn’t shatter, instead it shifted, the air around them becoming thick.  Lando didn’t feel fragile anymore; instead, he felt too big for his skin.  He needed Carlos to just touch him, he did what Carlos wanted, he admitted to being his girl, to wanting to be his girl, why wouldn’t he just move already, for god’s sake – 

“Lando, you are so wet already,” Carlos murmured, and his breath was hot on Lando’s dick.  When had he shifted down there?  Lando didn’t know.  He hadn’t noticed.  His eyes were still screwed shut - he didn’t want to see what sort of expression Carlos was wearing.  It would be too much, as it often was, and Lando was already on the precipice of too much already. 

“You can’t, ah, say that,” Lando groaned, his throat a long line up to where his head was thrown back on the pillow.  

His curls were already dampening with sweat and Carlos had barely touched him.  Hadn’t touched him.  His underwear was still on - and Lando knew what Carlos meant, could feel the damp spot on the front of it.  He couldn’t help himself, Carlos was right there.

Carlos shrugged from where he was between Lando’s legs, Lando’s thighs shifting slightly with the movement of his broad shoulders.  There was no friction between them; Lando’s legs near hairless.  It always drove Carlos a little wild, how smooth Lando’s skin was.  Lando liked it, too, how different they looked.  How much Carlos looked like, well. A man. 

“It is true, baby,” Carlos said, his face still too close and far away, “you should look at yourself.”  

Lando didn’t want to.  He put a hand in Carlos’ hair instead of answering, prematurely maybe, but he needed to ground himself.  He felt like he was going to come out of his skin. 

Carlos laughed quietly, pulling Lando’s underwear down, and then his mouth was on Lando.  Gently, softly.  Slowly.  

Lando groaned, the hand that wasn’t in Carlos’ hair fisted in the sheets.  Carlos was only lapping at Lando’s dick, little licks at the head.  It was already so much, and then it hit Lando that Carlos was licking at his dick like it was.  Like it was a–  

He could barely bring himself to think it.  When Carlos had said in his low voice that Lando was his pretty girl and Lando had swallowed and agreed, he thought Carlos was just going to call him pretty and maybe, like, fuck him on his back or something.

Not lap at the head of his dick like it was a.... like it was a pussy.

“Carlos!” Lando gasped out, bringing his spare hand to his face, dragging it down so he could hold his own neck, just a little.  

“I know, babygirl, it is a lot, isn’t it,” Carlos said, his voice still low, no hint of a tease to it now. 

“Yes, you know it is,” Lando ground out. 

Carlos huffed a laugh, and kissed the tip of Lando’s dick, like it was Lando’s mouth, and then closed lips over still only the head, and sucked.  His mouth was solid pressure, maintaining a steady rhythm.  Different, of course, to how he usually did it, but the same pressure Lando liked.  Carlos knew everything about Lando – why would this be any different? 

Lando couldn’t believe he hadn’t come yet. 

He couldn’t stop himself from making little whines, couldn’t move his hand from the sheets to his mouth to keep himself quiet like he wanted to.  His hips were moving, little involuntary thrusts.  Lando hadn’t realised he was doing it until Carlos brought the hand that was on Lando’s side to his hip, and pressed.  The pressure wasn’t much, and Lando could easily move but he stilled, using the last sliver of control he had over himself to keep his hips down like Carlos wanted him to.

“Good girl,” Carlos said, approvingly. 

Lando couldn’t help himself, and came with a gasp, hard, right up his stomach.  His thighs quaked around where Carlos still has his face pressed into his thighs - there’s come on his lips, too, his mouth. 

“Jesus Christ, Carlos,” Lando says, his voice wrecked, even though he wasn’t the one with a dick in his mouth, “get up here, please.”

Carlos was up by Lando’s face before Lando could finish his sentence, kissing him hard and soft and just how Lando liked to be kissed, and Lando pressed his hands into Carlos’ cheeks, not even caring that he was getting traces of himself in his mouth.  

“Can I, uh, get you too?” Lando asked in between Carlos kissing him, even though he wasn’t sure he could even move with how thoroughly and utterly fucked he felt. 

“Ah, I have already finished,” Carlos said sheepishly, a red flush across his cheeks under Lando’s hands.  

Lando had to kiss him.  He loved him so much.  Carlos always knew what Lando needed, and Lando was so happy that he could give Carlos what he needed as well.  A perfect match. 

They were quiet for a moment, Lando content to lie in Carlos’ arms just for a little while.  He would get up in a minute, get a cloth - he hated being sticky, but for now 

“I just realised I never actually got you into the panties,” Carlos said after a few moments, and Lando laughed into his neck.

Max knows he should turn around and go back to where his gaming stuff is set up in Lando’s living room for the fifth (no, sixth) weekend in a row, but he can’t make himself move from where he’s hovering outside the door. He knows without having to hear that she’s talking about him. He had wondered when she would bring it up; his glances at Lando that linger too long; how he couldn't stop himself. Anyone else would have brought it up earlier, any other girlfriend would have questioned the best friend hanger-on that always seemed to be around.

Lando makes a hesitant noise of encouragement for her to continue. Max can almost see the exact expression on his face - petulance, at not knowing something someone else knows, and questioning, even though Max knows what Luisa means, even though he’s known for a long time that Lando doesn’t.

“Max,” Luisa continues, and Max closes his eyes for a second at how much he enjoys hearing his name come from her mouth.

“What about Max?” Lando says, and his tone is something Max can’t place. It’s an unfamiliar feeling - not knowing what Lando is thinking in a particular moment.

“He looks at you like you look at him,” Luisa says, and Max’s heart rises to sit firmly in his throat.

“What way do I look at him.” It’s not a question really. It’s like he’s asking for confirmation of something Max is realising he was wrong about - that he really has known, for a while.

“Baby, it’s okay,” Luisa murmurs, comforting, and Max has to turn around, he has to get himself out of earshot - can’t bring himself to hear what he’s known would happen all along, that Lando would choose Luisa over him. He can’t, could never, hate Lando for it, but it will still hurt. More than anything that’s happened in his life it would hurt.

Luisa takes a deep breath and it’s loud in the otherwise silent room.

“It is okay, of course, because I think that I look at him like that, too,” she says, and Max startles. That’s … not at all what he thought she would say, couldn’t have dreamed it up himself.

“Luisa,” Lando says, and sits up, or at least it sounds like he does, “don’t joke about it.”

“I’m not,” she says, and sounds solid and certain in her reply. Honest.

The windows are open. Before, Max would have been worried about the cats getting out.  Daniel had helped him put up wires on the windows too, after Max had sworn his way through getting the balcony cat-proofed.  Daniel had complained and sworn as well, but when Max tried to take the pliers off him, he refused, saying that he “couldn’t let his Maxy lift another finger,” in a stupid accent, like a butler or something in a show. Even though Max knew Daniel was only joking, it made him smile anyway. It made Max happy knowing that Daniel was happy here. 

The whole apartment makes Max happy now, instead of being only the place he sleeps in a city he loves.  The sheets are nice on his skin, where he’s mostly naked against them. They had picked them out together. Something about Daniel picking sheets for Max’s bed had made him nervous in the store, until Daniel had paid for them, and told the cashier that he couldn’t sleep another night on his boyfriend’s terrible sheets.  Men, she had said knowingly, and Daniel laughed along with her. Max’s heart unsqueezed in his chest from where he was lurking by the nearby counter with gaudy, brightly coloured impulse items.  He wondered if they needed spoons with little pigs on the end.  In the end he’d left them behind, but the following week they’d appeared on the counter anyway. Max smiled every time he saw them on the table.

Almost as soon as Max thinks his name, Daniel appears in the doorway, holding a tray that’s been unearthed from god knows where, a sheepish and soft smile on his face. "Finally awake,” he says, with a waggle of his eyebrows, moving toward the bed where Max is stretching.  He’s sore, he realises quickly, but in the way that he’s come to know as the good kind of sore. He can tell he’s been with Daniel, that Daniel’s been with him, too. Max likes the reminder. 

Daniel sets the tray next to Max on the bed, and sits next to it.  He’s sort of shielding the contents of the tray with his body, waiting for Max to sit up, so Max does, moving so his back is against the headboard and he can shift the tray closer to see.   

On the tray is what appears to be lunch – spaghetti with a red sauce on it, and a fork and one of the pig spoons next to it.  Daniel has a can of Red Bull tucked under his arm.  Max can’t help but smile, one of his Daniel smiles that sometimes make Daniel poke a finger into a dimple.

“It looks very delicious,” Max says, meaning it, and Daniel half-smiles back. 

“It’s just from a jar,” he says, in the same tone of voice he sometimes uses about racing now.  It’s his ah well, I tried, maybe it was enough, maybe it wasn’t voice.  Max doesn’t like that voice very much. 

Daniel knows Max hates that voice, so he nudges Max’s shoulder with the cold can and Max looks up at him, glaring a little.

“I said it looks very delicious,” Max says, firmly, and Daniel’s expression shifts into his I’m not going to bother arguing with Max face.  Max much prefers this face and has spent years cultivating Daniel’s resignation to arguments with him. 

Max picks up the pig spoon. “When did you learn to cook like this?” 

“Well, Mum said I should know how to cook before I left home,” Daniel started, looking down at the bowl on the tray, “and obviously that didn’t exactly stick. But I can make pasta from a jar and it usually does the trick, so.”

Max knew he liked it when Daniel looked after him, of course. It was obvious to him right away, right from the start. When Daniel would make him laugh so easily after a tough race, when Max first started racing and took everything so much harder.  When Daniel would steer him away from his dad in the garage. When Daniel would have to tell him over and over on the phone that he wasn’t leaving because of Max. 

This was something different though, Max thought. This was Daniel looking after him just because he wanted to cook Max something to eat for lunch. This was Daniel looking after him, after he had said, Let me take care of you tonight Maxy into Max’s ear the night before. This was Daniel cooking something for Max in the place they had made theirs. This was just for Max.  For them together.

“Do you have lunch for you too,” Max says, because he needs Daniel to know that Max can look after him, that Max knows what Daniel needs as well.

Daniel smiles down at him like he knows what Max is really meaning, says something like he’s not having Red Bull past noon though, and goes to get his own bowl.  When he comes back, he doesn’t have a pig spoon but that’s okay, they’re mostly for Max anyway.