______
“You’re quick with that,” Lando says, apropos of nothing.
He’s sprawled across his couch like an especially boneless starfish, close enough that it’s easy for Max to see what he’s talking about when he holds his phone up.
It’s Oscar’s newest instagram post, a cheesy shot of him in sunnies and papaya orange. Some dumb caption Max can’t even remember. Liked by Max Fewtrell and others.
“What, Pasty’s off limits now?” He rolls his eyes. Lando’s face pinches, a tiny scrunch of distaste.
“Just quick, aren’t you? He posted it, like, five minutes ago.”
Max scoffs. “C’mon, mate.”
Lando goes back to his phone. He’s still wearing that same expression, his pissy face, like a kid denied dessert. Sulky. Max sighs, hits his extended shin with the flat of his palm. “Don’t have a strop over this,” he says. He lets his hand linger, curving over the fabric of Lando’s jeans, before he draws it back.
“Not having a strop.”
“Yeah?”
Lando hums, stubborn. He frowns at his dumb little phone. “Would you let him suck you off too, then?”
Max scoffs again, shocked and breathless this time. “Wh—” stops. “You—” stops again. “You can’t hold that against me,” he says finally, blinking. “I told you that in confidence, mate. I was drunk.”
He was drunk, a week ago, when the two of them went over to the bar connected to Alex’s hotel and then out to another bar, one with live music, because it was nice out and Lily wanted to see live music. Alex was drunk too. He’d heard about the breakup, had only met P once but still was nice enough to ask how Max was doing. Whether he’d had time to rebound since.
And Max. Well. He was drunk enough to spill out that he’d let Niran’s school friend talk his way into sucking Max’s cock three weeks ago, when Pietra was still very much on his mind but blurry enough that he hadn’t gotten off in nearly a month.
Alex had laughed, clapped him on the shoulder. “Good for you, mate,” he’d said, while Lando stared sharp daggers into the side of Max’s head. It was like he was personally offended by what Max had said. Not just offended: it was like he was gutted.
Max hadn’t been thinking of Lando when he was getting blown, but Lando seemed to think he should have been. The way he had reacted.
And Lando’s still not over it, been silent and stroppy since then, barely looking at Max when he speaks, even when it’s only the two of them in conversation. Lando hasn’t asked about it since Max told, and he’s been so annoying that Max certainly isn’t going to bring it up unless he asks.
What the fuck ever. Max is allowed to get sucked off, whether it’s by his ex, some stranger, or Niran’s fucking school friend. It has nothing to do with Lando.
But Max isn’t stupid. ‘Course he knows what it’s all about.
It’s about Lando, right after Pietra left Max’s sorry arse, his breath smelling of alcohol and mint gum, pushing Max against the wall of his Monaco apartment—where Max had come to recover—and hitching into his ear, “Want to...d’you want to?” and Lando’s mouth was scant centimeters from Max’s, and he was looking at Max through heavy, slipping-shut eyelids, so close and so warm.
Like Max was going to say yes. To that. It wasn’t even a question, wasn’t anything, all it was was—danger.
It’s about how Max’s head went fuzzy for a second before he shoved Lando backwards, stood there heaving against the wall, and told him to piss right off. Said Lando shouldn’t drink so much if he’s only going to make an arse of himself, like a bloody child, and drag Max into it too. Did he even know what he was saying, or was he too fucking plastered to think? Christ.
It’s about how Lando stared at him for a long moment, then jerked a shoulder in some sort of half-shrug, wiped his nose and said, “Alright. I was just. Just felt sorry for—yeah. Fuck you too.” And went into his room and didn’t talk to Max for the rest of the night.
And then Max let Niran’s school friend suck him off in the pub toilets while they were playing fucking Carly Rae Jepsen on the speakers. While Lando was on a flight halfway across the world.
And yet, here Max is now, in his sad empty little apartment. With Lando.
Lando with him, since Lando hasn’t disowned him for his supposed crimes. He'd still shown up outside Max's door after his flight, three days free to spend wrapped around Max like a messy, half-groomed shadow. He'd come to Max's flat, when he used to go straight to P's and use up all the hot water in the shower and make Pietra threaten to put him out on the street.
Christ.
"Bob," he tries, nudges Lando's leg with his knee. "I was just sloshed. Sorry I told Alex. That. Didn't know it would make you go all." He doesn't know how to end the thought.
Was he thinking of Lando at all, when he spoke? Max can't fully remember, neither consciousness nor ignorance. Lando was just always there. It wasn't like he forgot; it was more like a given.
Lando seems to sink even deeper into the sofa. "Going to shower," he says after a few breaths, and then he leaves Max there, sitting in the armchair like an idiot.
"Don't use all the bloody hot water," Max shouts after him. He hears the door snick shut.
Unseen, he flips Lando the bird. Pathetic, the both of them.
_____
The problem is the lines have always been so blurred.
Well, not blurred. Malleable. Unfixed. Like all it would take was one night of poor decisions, too much to drink or too much time without girls or too much time spent in each other's personal space to avoid a collision. Max doesn't think about it often. That's for the weirdos in chat and on the internet who want him and Lando to be pretty little boyfriends holding hands, even when they have literal fucking girlfriends. It isn't, like, real. It's not real, the idea.
It's just that the lines don't seem very noticeable sometimes, like they could forget there were lines at all, keep going until they have a toe over. Once you have a toe over, it's all over. There's a reason people become racing drivers, and it's a lot about skill but more about having a very poor sense of self preservation and very little ability to keep from taking risks.
Lando let himself forget the lines that night in Monaco. Max isn't about to let him do it again.
"Looking smart," he says when Lando comes out of the spare room. It’s an olive branch. And then, looking closer, "Is that my fucking jumper?"
It is. It's the off-white Percival one with the nice knit texture, 300 fucking quid. Lando's paired it with dark jeans and white tennis shoes. The jeans are probably Lando’s, but still.
Lando shrugs. "Was on the floor."
"It's not even clean," Max protests. He doesn't even know why he bothers. The floor, bloody Christ.
"Smells fine," Lando says. He looks at Max like he's forcing himself to, down Max's body. "You're wearing that?"
"What's wrong with this?" Max is in the same hoodie and joggers he pulled on that morning.
Lando shrugs again. "Nothing." Max can hear the gum moving inside his jaw, like an ironic little comment.
He feels hot, moving towards irked. "Wasn't aware meeting at the pub was an occasion."
Another shrug. "'S not," Lando says, and shoves his phone into his back pocket. "But maybe Nik will be there. Wouldn't want to look like a twat."
He walks past Max to the door.
Max stands in place, staring stupidly at the wall. So that's. Yeah.
Bit dumb to think that they'd have some peace. He sees that now. Lando's got a piss poor memory except when he feels mugged off, and then he can hold a grudge like a madman.
Lando is already out the door, maybe already in the elevator, like he doesn’t care if Max is coming or flying to the fucking moon. Everything is quieter like this, when he’s gone.
There isn't much to say to an empty apartment, isn't much to say at all. So Max takes a breath, locks up, and follows him down into the cab.
_______
Lando isn’t the most social of animals.
That’s not true. He’s social when he wants to be, easy to get on with, could pass for any aimless uni student at the pub if he wanted to. If he wasn’t Lando Norris. Wearing Max’s 300 pound jumper.
There are moments, though, when he’s clumsy around people. Almost childish. So’s Max, obviously, but the way he acts in public is different from the way he acts when it’s just him and Lando, or even him and Lando and the squad.
Lando, well. Lando is always the same. Heart on his fucking sleeve, that’s Lando.
“You’re doing it again,” Max says, when Lando interrupts his conversation for the third time that night. Nik isn’t here, thank Christ, but that hasn’t stopped Lando from sticking to him like glue since they stepped in the door.
Lando takes a swig of Max’s pint, makes a face. Max swats his hand. “Could’ve told you, mate, it’s a fucking stout.”
“Rank,” Lando says. “Who’s...?” He jerks his head to the right.
He means Max’s former conversation partner, the bloke who was waiting to order around the same time Max pressed up next to him at the bar. Who was friendly enough to fill the silence of waiting, asked Max where he’d bought his hoodie.
Max is nearly certain Lando had elbowed him in the side when he edged in between them. The man is still there, not that Max can even end the conversation, not with a mid-sized Lando blocking the way. He sends over a mental apology.
“Just some guy.” Max pitches his voice high and nasal. “Bought me a stout, didn’t he? You’d hate him.”
Lando makes a face.
“What?” Max watches him. “You’re doing it again,” he repeats.
“Doing what?”
There are so few ways Max can answer. Lando just doesn’t catch on to things, has to make Max explain how to be a fucking person. “Don’t you have other people you want to talk to?” he says, a bit cruel, maybe, but come on. Lando had elbowed the bloke, for fuck’s sake. There has to be a line.
Lando blinks at the scratched wood of the bar. His mouth tightens. Max’s tongue is bitter and wheaty, thick against his teeth.
“Yeah, s’pose I do,” Lando says, and walks away.
Max breathes out. Inelegant, but efficient.
The stout-buying bloke is gone, fucked back across the room to stand laughing with a pack of his mates. Forgotten all about Max.
That’s fine. Max isn’t looking to pull tonight anyway. And if he was, it’d be a girl, easy and uncomplicated even with Lando sleeping in the spare room. Not like they haven’t done it before, getting a leg over while the other’s around. Easy.
Max orders another drink.
_____
Cruelty works on Lando like it does on a puppy, cringing away from a sharp word. He doesn’t go near Max the rest of the night, even though Max can see him, hanging around Steve and Aarav with his hair a mess, arms crossed loosely over his chest.
It makes it so Max can’t exactly go talk to Steve and Aarav, but Niran’s still around, and Ria too. He likes Ria’s mates much more than he’d ever liked Pietra’s—crooked and loud and normal and vulgar, just how Max likes people. He likes that they want to get smashed too, and they’re matching Max pint for pint, as Ria slurs laughter in his ear.
“‘S going on with you’n Lando?” she says sometime past midnight.
Max had almost, almost forgotten Lando was even there. He holds in a burp. “Nothing wrong with me’n Lando,” he says. Ria rolls her eyes. “What? He’s right there.”
Max gestures with his pint, a bit sloppy, over to where Lando is still sucking down his daft little gin and tonic, letting fucking Steve do all the talking for him.
He’s still here. Well. ‘Course he is. Max is his lift, isn’t he? His lift and his temporary flatmate. Lando’s leaving with Max tonight. He’s got to, no way around it.
“He’s sad,” Ria says. “Look at his face. You take the piss out of him, Maximilian?”
“Not more than usual.” Max downs his drink. He looks at Ria, her big eyes, mascara starting to gather under her lashes as the night stretches on. “Swear, I dunno why he’s. Y’know.” There’s nothing but froth at the bottom of his glass, sliding reluctantly when Max tilts his hand.
“He’s a sensitive boy,” Ria says softly.
“The sensitivest,” Max agrees. He puts the glass down. “I’ll kiss it better, all right?” Ria laughs on cue.
Most of them leave after an hour, even though the pub doesn’t close for two more. Max is stuck on the left side of the crowd saying goodbyes; he can spot Lando’s ear, his neck across the slew of bodies.
Lando, who has to leave with Max, stands like a crisp ghost in the middle of the pub when everyone’s gone. “Fucking herd mentality,” Max says, falling towards him. “Have a drink with me, bob.” It’s been a long night. Max doesn’t want to go back to his flat. He just doesn’t, doesn’t question it too much.
Somehow, his hand has wrapped itself around Lando’s upper arm. Lando shakes it off. “Don’t you have other people you want to talk to?” he says.
Oh, hell.
“C’mon,” Max tries, but Lando is stalking to the door. So that seems to be a firm no to more drinking, then.
He follows Lando outside, into the slight chill of the night air.
“I can get a hotel,” Lando says, phone in hand. His face is twisted, all mucky and shuttered like it is when he’s trying not to cry.
“Come on,” Max says, frowning. “Hey now.” What is Lando going to do, book a room on his fucking phone, right here and now?
Maybe he is.
Max clears his throat. “Mate. Don’t be stupid. You’re sleeping with me, yeah?” Shite. He backtracks. “Mean you’re staying with me. At mine.” He doesn’t touch Lando’s arm, though he almost does. Reach out and. Christ, Max is drunk. “Look, I want you to, all right? Don’t want you to get a fucking—hotel.”
Lando sneers. “You wanted me to piss off earlier.”
“That was earlier,” Max says quickly. He swallows, deflates a bit. “Don’t make me beg.”
Lando looks at him, mouth open. Then he turns his attention down and types on his phone, bottom lip caught like a piece of meat in his teeth. Max’s stomach lurches with a sudden nauseated twist. “I said—”
“Just getting a lift,” Lando cuts him off. His thumb taps. He shoves the screen in Max’s face. “Two minutes, see? So shut up. Christ.”
“Oh,” Max says. He sways a little. “Oh. Thanks.”
______
When they’re in the car, Max decides he doesn’t really like how much Lando drives him insane.
“Sorry,” he says.
Lando’s playing some idiotic game on his phone, a fuzzy mess of moving shapes on the screen.
“I said sorry, mate.” Max risks a hand over, shoves his palm at Lando’s shoulder. “You listening?”
Lando grunts. He keeps playing. Fucking iPad kids.
“It’s just,” Max says, tongue still swollen. “It’s just like. Why d’you have to be wherever I am?” He licks his lips. “‘S like you’re trying to piss on me or something, make sure I’m not—doing anything without ya.”
He glances over. The game is still a bright color on Lando’s screen, but he isn’t playing anymore. He’s glaring down at the phone instead, like it personally drowned his favorite pet fish.
Max’s hands are clammy.
“I just like you,” Lando says finally. “Is that such a crime?” His voice catches on the last word. “We’re mates.”
“We—yeah. We are.” The sky is like a blanket of black outside the window. If it wasn’t chilly, Max would’ve liked to roll down the window, feel the breeze on his skin.
Yeah. Yeah, he thinks. They’re mates.
It’s one of the things they are.
“Sorry,” he says again. Lando looks out the window.
_____
“Should we have it out then?” Max locks the door and turns.
Inside, Lando’s unhooking his watch from his wrist, rubbing over the skin there. “Just want to go to bed, honestly.”
Dickhead. “Sleep in my room,” Max says, like a dull sort of thrill. At least it makes Lando look at him from across the room, pausing his dickheadedness. Max nods to the spare room. “Haven’t changed the sheets in there.” It’s not not true.
But it is an excuse, even if they don’t need one.
They both know Lando frequently fails to sleep in the spare room. Always has. Ever since quarantine, they’d just sort of—fallen into it, the habit of staying up until the wee hours of the morning, laid out on their phones side by side until the screen turned to mush and Max fell asleep without remembering to send Lando off to his own bed. Just easier, wasn’t it. Back then it made the nights more bearable, made the mornings less frightening, when the days stretched on and on and the world seemed like it could end any day.
Lando had slept in Max’s bed even when he was with Luisa. Max didn’t say anything, even if he was surprised. But then P was different, and Max was—he was different too. It wasn’t quarantine anymore. It felt weird. So he successfully kept Lando out of his bedroom while he had a girlfriend, kept it from Pietra, even, the fact that they used to sleep together whenever Lando crashed in London. She would’ve eaten him up for it, he knew.
And as soon as she was gone—not even buried, still very much fresh in Max’s mind—Lando snuck his way back in. Like a conniving little snake. Like a dog, more like.
And Max. Maybe he’s lonely, maybe he’s fucking stupid, but since the breakup, he hasn’t bothered to boot him. Lando’s body is a nice warm distraction, snuffle-breathing against Max’s pillows, making Max feel. What. Less alone.
Rightfully, Lando raises his eyebrows. “You want me to sleep in yours?” he asks.
“You want to, you clingy little octopus,” Max retorts.
Lando crosses his arms. “What if I don’t?”
Jesus fucking Christ. So stubborn.
Max’s head hurts. The lights are too bright in his flat, artificial and overwhelming. He’s not buzzed anymore. That had sapped out sometime during the ride home, exhumed in the prison of the backseat.
So.
So he’d been kind of a prick tonight. To Lando, specifically. To his very sensitive, very boyish Lando.
Max really should know better, to expect Lando to get over it without making Max sweat first. Without Lando being a prick himself.
All that is true. But right now, Max really wants to have it fucking out.
“Is this about Nik?”
Lando uncrosses his arms, and then doesn’t seem to know where to put them. “What?”
“Nik,” Max says, irritated. For fuck’s sake. “He blew me. Last month.”
Lando’s face does something weird, ugly. “Oh, right.”
“So you’re upset about that,” Max presses. “That I did that, with him.”
“You can do whatever you want, mate,” Lando says, scowling, ugly-sounding. “I don’t fucking care, all right?”
Ah, yes. Clearly Lando doesn’t care at all.
He’s so irritating Max wants to cross over to him and shake him like a bottle, Max’s hands gripped on his shoulders, shake shake shake, until Lando explodes. Boom. It’s a pretty thought, and Max feels restless under his skin. So he indulges the urge. He goes closer, right up to the still figure Lando cuts, standing there like a solid unmoving statue.
Lando has his arms folded across his chest again, staring back at Max with his chest puffed out.
“Tee time’s at eleven tomorrow,” Max says. At this close range, he probably smells. He feels grimy, must look it, too.
It’s infinitely vexing that Lando doesn’t look grimy at all, still rather pristine with his haircut and his curls and his pressed-together mouth, and the grey-blue of his eyes that won’t look away from Max at all. What being a millionaire will buy you, Max supposes. Not looking like a muppet after an evening at the pub.
“Yeah, I know.” Lando straightens up even higher, like he’s trying to max out the three centimeter advantage he has on Max. “So?”
“So I don’t wanna golf while you’re being an arse,” Max says.
“Not being an arse,” Lando shoots back. “You’re being an arse.”
He’s like a human bristle, Lando. Staring at Max like he’s daring him to protest. There’s a tinge of red on his tanned cheeks, the color of heat. For someone who doesn’t want a row, Lando really is acting like he wants Max to keep on arguing.
All of a sudden, Max doesn’t want to fight anymore. “Look,” he says softly, and doesn’t miss the way Lando twitches at the change in his tone. “Mate. Lando.” It’s like talking to a skittish horse. “I should. Er. Apologize.”
Lando goes ruddy, twitching harder. “Don’t—”
“I’m trying to—”
But Lando cuts him off with a quick, frustrated noise. “Going to wash up,” he says, and pushes past Max before Max can finish his sentence.
Lando still smells strong after a night out. Even after he’s left, Max’s nose is full of him and his expensive cologne, like a parting shot.
Max sighs. So. A loss. They’ll fix it in the morning, after a night’s sleep.
Exhausted, he makes himself go to the bedroom.
____
He’s just tucked himself into the bed, lamplight spilling golden over the bedspread, when Lando nudges open the door. Max looks up, watches him walk inside like he owns the place, plug his charger into the wall next to the bed, and climb on the mattress.
Silent as a ghost, Lando opens up that stupid game again.
Max is staring.
“What?” That flush still hasn’t left Lando’s face, worsened, maybe, by the shower.
“Still hate my fucking guts, or what?”
Lando grimaces. “Basically,” he mumbles. “I’m here, all right? Don’t—just don’t talk to me. I’m tired.”
Baby. What a baby, Max thinks.
He swallows an amused noise, because that would cause even more consternation. “Sure, bob,” he says, biting down his smile, and turns back to his phone.
They sit like that for an hour, the minutes ticking by like sand flowing through an hourglass. Every so often, Lando will huff, let out a slight grunt. He shifts on the bed and Max feels him move, even if Max isn’t touching him, any part of him.
It’s good. It’s brilliant, actually. Max sort of wants to put his phone down and pillow his head on Lando’s shoulder, watch him play, type, scroll, whatever he does on that bloody phone.
But he doesn’t. Lando doesn’t want to be bothered, he’d said.
Eventually, Max finds his eyelids drooping. “Gonna turn in,” he whispers, putting his phone aside. Lando hums in acknowledgement. As Max sneaks under the covers, Lando plugs his phone in on the other side, and then he’s switching off the lamp, and the room is nothing but darkness split by moonlight.
Lando sleeps curled on his side. So does Max. They’re curled towards each other, close enough that Max can see the half-dry sweep of hair against Lando’s forehead, the soft skin of his lips.
Max swallows. “You gonna let me talk to you tomorrow?” he asks quietly, because he can never leave well enough alone. “Or we just doing the silent treatment till you leave?”
Lando’s eyes slit open, a tired jumble of eyelashes. “Depends what you want to say.”
“What d’you want me to say?”
Lando closes his eyes. He doesn’t say anything.
Max’s heart squeezes, beating, beating. “I won’t—”
“Did you do you him, too?” Lando interrupts, his voice hoarse.
“What?”
Lando’s eyelids raise, revealing murky blue. “Did you, y’know, do him? Nik?” He says the name like he’s spitting. No love lost there, though Lando’s been nothing but cordial when he’s seen Nik before.
“Didn’t,” Max says quickly. “Er, I did wank him off though.” He winces. “Full disclosure.”
Lando’s face does something strange, like a shiver. His eyes slip closed for a moment, then flicker open again. “Did you like it?” he asks.
Jesus Christ. Max gulps in the dark, feeling blind. “Having a dick in my hand?” He considers it. “Dunno. Was weird. Touching a—yeah. Wasn’t bad, I s’pose.”
“And the blowjob?”
Max breathes out. “Mate, I dunno...” He blinks. This is weird, isn’t it? This situation is weird. For them, even. “Yeah, it was fine.”
Lando scoffs. With his eyes closed, Christ. “Just fine?”
“Wasn’t anything special,” Max flings back. “Just wanted to get my rocks off, didn’t I? He was trying it on me all night, once he heard ‘bout P. Niran told me he’s thought I was fit for forever.” He shrugs, feeling hot. That’s detail, if Lando wants it, which he seems to. God, these questions.
Lando makes a disgusted face. “Fit? You?”
“Oh, fuck off,” Max says, rather too offended. “I’m fit!”
In response, Lando rolls over with a muttered noise.
Max pokes him square in the back. “Anything else you want to know?” Lando grumbles again, squirming away from his hand. Max pokes him again, a mean twist in his gut. “Got a lot of questions, don’t ya?” No response. Max scowls. “Can tell you how long I lasted—wasn’t long, he was really into it. Even on his knees in the toilets, sucked me like he was starving for it, choking and moaning and all that—”
“God, shut up,” Lando hisses, low and vicious, and then—
Then he’s rolling over, too quick for Max to register the movement, and his palm is fitting itself over Max’s mouth like a gag. Lando hovers over him, propped on an elbow, staring down at Max with a heated expression. “Shut up,” Lando says again, unsteady this time, wavering. “Don’t want to hear about it. Stop.”
He removes his hand. Max catches his wrist, shocked breathless. “Mate,” he says.
“Don’t wanna hear about it,” Lando repeats, soft and bleak. He doesn’t try to take his hand back.
Oh hell. “It didn’t mean anything,” Max tells him. Lando’s wrist is solid and bony in his hand. “Really, didn’t mean shite.” He’s squeezing, he realizes, squeezing Lando’s wrist without meaning to. He lets go.
It really didn’t. Mean a damn thing.
Max doesn’t know how to say that in words, how to convince Lando of it, to sound sincere. Nik was just there. He thought Max was fit. He didn’t want to date Max, or have his babies. He was offering something easy and uncomplicated, no strings attached, and he also happened to be a bloke.
And Max had always wondered, hadn’t he. Not seriously, but every so often. Maybe when he saw big hands, heard a scratchy laugh, or inhaled cologne at a weak moment. He wondered what it would be like to touch a man there, really and truly, no longer joking at all.
And so, when Nik offered, he’d said yes. If anyone found out, he could chalk it up to being pissed, or being curious, or whatever he wanted to say.
Max hadn’t, honestly, been thinking about Lando when he said yes. Or if he had, it was pushed so far back into his brain that he just couldn’t think about it at all. He couldn’t think about Lando’s face when he found out, if Niran took the piss out of Max about it later on, if Nik was touchy and obvious when they all got together again. Max didn’t think about Lando’s face. He didn’t think about Lando’s face, how it would look when Lando was thinking about Max getting sucked off by a bloke.
He especially didn’t think about Lando touching him there. The thought was—had always been—too big and too dangerous, the slightest flicker of a match held over spilt gasoline. Max never thought about it. He just didn’t think.
“I swear,” Max says, voice rusty, like he hasn’t spoken in years. “I’m telling you, it didn’t mean anything.”
Lando blinks in the dark. His face is like a bleeding heart, open and miserable. “But you wouldn’t with me,” he accuses. “You don’t want to, with me.”
Ah. Right, then. Yeah. That’s it. That’s what all of this is about, isn’t it? Right.
“I’m fit,” Lando is saying, defiant, like he expects Max to deny it. “I’m not worse looking than fucking—Nik. And we see each other all the time, literally. We’re best mates. We’re, like, basically dating. Even your girlfriend said so. And you like me. You like me more than anybody, Max. You let me sleep in your bed—” Max makes a sound in protest, lets him, that’s not exactly—and Pietra’s his ex, not his girlfriend—but Lando continues on: “And you look at me. Like, mate. I can’t stand it, I swear. You look at me—like you—”
Jesus Christ, he can talk. “Jesus Christ,” Max says, and surges upward and kisses him.
____
Kissing Lando is like bathing in fire.
Max is in control for an instant, his mouth pressed to Lando’s, and then Lando—he makes a shocked sound under Max’s mouth, and then he’s kissing back with his tongue pushed inside Max’s mouth, messy and eager and so lacking finesse that Max feels brainsick with it. He has a second to remember Luisa saying: he’s so horny all the time, like a private joke even though the three of them were sat at breakfast together, years ago at this point—and Lando flushing red and muttering, and Max filing that away nowhere, not thinking about it at all.
But Lando’s sort of desperate for it. At least he kisses like he is, pushes Max onto his back and holds Max’s wrists against the mattress and kisses Max open-mouthed and sloppy, like he’s been driven mad. Fucking mad. His body is hard and firm, legs bracketing Max’s hips, and all of it’s like a drug, all-consuming and endless.
Lando’s making little noises as they kiss, keen and broken. He smells good. He smells soft and warm, and when Max’s hands wrap around his sides, curving around the breadth of his back, Lando’s hips thrust down, and there’s too little space between them for Max not to feel how hard he is. And Max is hard too, so turned on he’s light-headed.
All the sudden Max feels—too much. Lando all around him, pressing him into the mattress, it’s too much. Too fucking much. All the bottled want slams through him in a stunned instant, spilling out around him, and Max feels like he’s about to explode.
He shoves Lando off, and Lando goes easily, rolling to the side with a questioning sound. “‘S wrong?” he pants.
Max can’t look at him. He rubs his face with both hands, trying to breathe.
“Max?”
“Sorry. Sorry.” Max inhales, exhales. His heart is racing louder than his thoughts. “Just. Doesn’t it feel weird to you? It feels...” He searches for the word. “Big. Too big.”
Lando huffs. “I’m not that big, mate, sorry to disappoint.”
“Fuck you,” Max says, and tilts his head to the side. Lando’s laid out on his back, and Max catches a quick glimpse of the bulge in his pants before he looks back at his own knees, stomach jumping. Christ.
“Feels like a bloody wet dream to me, to be honest.” Lando touches his side, and Max shivers, nearly shakes to pieces. Lando’s hand retreats. “What’s wrong?”
Max wants to claw out of his own skin. Instead, he makes himself swallow. “Just really fucking turned on right now, mate.” Inhale. Steady, now.
“Oh.” There’s a light of revelation in Lando’s voice. “So you do want...”
“‘Course I fucking want it,” Max grinds out.
Lando squawks, shifting on the bed. “How’m I supposed to know! You were all fucking—”
“I just needed a moment, all right—”
“Fine,” Lando says fervently. “You can have a moment, that’s fine.”
Max lies down. He lets his thigh touch Lando’s, lining up side by side like the worst sort of tease. His arm is snug against Lando’s arm. He breathes. In and out, in and out.
“When you’re done with the moment,” Lando says into the silence, “can I suck you off?”
Max whole body jerks. “Fucking hell, Lando—”
“Fuck off, I’ll do it. I want to.”
Max stares at the ceiling.
Sometimes he has dreams like this. Where he wants something that’s just out of reach, and he’s running towards it, lungs pumping, adrenaline as high as when he’d be in the car. Sometimes he reaches out and almost wraps his hand around it. Almost. Sometimes he reaches out, but before he can touch, the thing turns around and he sees it has fangs.
Well. If Lando has fangs, it’s going to hurt. If he sucks Max’s prick, that is. God.
But. But, Max decides, in a lightning impulse—he’s going to reach out anyway.
“Rather gay of you,” he says, and clears his throat. “Yeah, all right. Go on then.”
“Don’t kill yourself with enthusiasm,” Lando mumbles, but then he’s springing over Max without a second more hesitation.
____
“Slow down,” Max says.
His hand is gripped tight in Lando’s hair, buried in half-curls, and Lando draws off his cock with a gasp.
Didn’t take long for Max to get hard, did it, not with the way Lando tugged his pants down and held his prick in hand for one fucking second before he leaned down and swallowed it whole.
And it was a lot, all the wet heat of Lando’s mouth—Lando’s mouth—so good Max convulsed upwards and let out an embarrassing noise, hips thrusting into that heat. Fuck, Lando’s mouth was good. He was sucking Max all eager and desperate, just like how he’d kissed, and it was fucking brilliant, the sounds Lando’s throat made around his cock, but also. Lando was bobbing his head quite quickly and his caterpillar eyebrows were scrunched tight, and Max expected clumsiness but it looked like:
“It looks like you’re in pain,” Max forces out, petting Lando’s head. “Just slow down, all right? Not like there’s a—a rush.”
There’s a string of spit connecting Lando’s wet mouth to his cock, like they’re in a fucking porno. Lando breaks it when he wraps a hand around Max, starts to stroke nice and slow, making Max’s belly go taut and his breath die in his throat. “Want it to be good,” Lando says, low and fierce. “Want it to be...”
There’s an edge in his voice that clearly says, better.
“You done this before?” Max asks suddenly. Lando’s hand is rather comfortable around his shaft. If Max had, maybe Lando had—
But Lando flushes, shakes his head. “Nah. Thought about it though.”
Max doesn’t think about the flash of relief that sparks when Lando says it. He just grunts, lets his head fall back onto the pillows. “You’re good at it, then,” he says to the ceiling. “For a rookie.” When Lando hums it’s almost a purr, and he squeezes Max’s cock. In threat or thank you, Max doesn’t know or honestly care.
Lando does slow down, because sometimes he can follow directions. He sucks Max’s cockhead back into his mouth and slows down, and then he’s bobbing his head in steady smooth movements, tongue hot and tight under Max’s cock, humming around him.
So Lando slows down. He sucks and uses his hand when his jaw gets tired, and Max’s hand stays on top of his skull, even when Lando takes him deep enough that Max’s cock hits the soft wet back of his throat and Max whines, abdomen going rigid in the effort not to thrust too far.
“Fuck,” he pants, “fuck, fuck—”
Lando pulls off, thank Christ, because Max was about to. Fuck.
And then Lando wipes his mouth and closes his fist around Max and strokes him off, uses spit and pre-come to ease the friction of his palm. “You like this?” he asks. Max nods, nods, more of a shudder than a coherent response.
“Yeah, yeah, obviously.” He can barely think. “Can you, can you please, just—where d’you want me to come?”
“Already?” Lando looks like a cat with cream. He doesn’t answer, because he’s a bloody minx, isn’t he, just leans down and flicks his tongue around the throbbing head of Max’s cock, and sucks, hard.
“Fuck you, fuck—have to, gonna, oh God,” and Max is coming into his mouth without warning.
It’s sick that Max likes it, watching Lando choke inelegantly on his come, his throat working to swallow it anyway. It’s good, fucking good. Fuck.
“Christ, mate,” Max says when he’s spent. He’s breathing so fast he thinks his body’s going into fight or flight.
Lando pulls off, wipes the dribble from his chin with a swipe of his wrist. Coughs wetly. Then he falls to the side, onto his back, finally silent.
_____
Dimly, once his brain comes back online, Max registers movement to his left.
“Didn’t waste any time, did you?” He moves his heavy head on the pillow. Beside him, Lando’s got his left arm thrown over his eyes, the right one snuck under the waistband of his pants, moving in slow unmistakeable jerks.
“You gonna, hah, give me something to wank to?” When Lando removes his arm, his face is all scrunched and dumb and flushed pink. “Or should I put on a porno or something?”
God. Max rolls his eyes so hard they nearly break.
He takes Lando’s stupid wrist and drags his hand out of his pants. Then he pushes the waistband down, far enough that Lando’s cock flies upwards, and yeah, he’s not huge—Max already knew that—but he fills out prettily in Max’s hand when Max wraps his fingers around him. “You’re so fucking irritating,” he says.
“‘M not.” Lando arches with a groan, pushing into his hand. “Just wanna come.”
Max ignores him. “You’d like that,” he says, making his fist a nice tight tunnel for Lando’s cock to fuck. He’s feeling chatty, maybe a touch vindictive. “A porno, if I put one on. That’s your problem, bob. You watch so much of that crap you probably can't fucking finish without pretending we’re stepbrothers or some shite.”
Lando huffs a breathless laugh. “Prefer the teacher ones, actually,” he says, and moans on a particularly fast series of strokes.
“Seriously?” Eyebrows raised, Max watches him.
It must feel good, brilliant even. He watches Lando, watches his own hand moving on Lando’s cock, watches Lando’s teeth dig deep into his lower lip and his hips jerk up beautifully. Brilliant. It’s brilliant, seeing him like this.
Lando nods. “Or, erm, like, footie players. In the changing room, sort of, ah, thing. It’s hot, don’t deny it.”
“Never watched it.” Max is kind of obsessed with the wet push of Lando’s cock into the circle of his fingers. “I watch the normal kind. Girls, tits.”
“Sorry I don't have tits,” Lando says, which is so bloody daft Max has to smile.
“Close enough.” In a fleeting, powerful urge, he pinches Lando’s nipple.
Lando emits a tortured sort of whimper. His eyes are dark and wide on Max’s face, grimacing whenever Max tightens his hand. “What kind of,” he breathes, “would you wanna do—with me—”
“What d’you mean?” Max thumbs over the head of his cock. “What, like, if we made a porno?”
“Like, f-fuck, like a fantasy.” Lando groans, loud and rough. “Christ, just forget it—”
Max considers it. He speeds up, up up up until Lando is panting nonsense into the air, his cock a hot heavy weight in Max’s hand. “Probably blow you on stream,” he says finally, making it sound blithe even though his ears are painfully red.
It works, though. Lando does a full-body shudder, his fingers grasping uselessly at the bedspread. Then he’s coming all over Max’s fist, all over his tan little stomach, gasping and breathless and beautiful.
“Yeah,” Max says, warm with pleasure. “Yeah, that’s it.”
____
“You should come to more races,” Lando says the next morning, when he catches Max staring at his arse for the third time. He’s blushing, the tint of it nearly obscene under the washed-out gray of the clouds.
Jon is taking his time to set up his shot, far enough away that he’s out of earshot.
Max busies himself doing nothing with his clubs. “What, like a bloody escort?”
Lando squeaks a laugh. He’s even redder now. “An escort? What are you on about?”
“You want me to come to your races,” Max says slowly. “To do what?” He’s taking the piss, and it’s awfully satisfying to see Lando fluster himself in public. “Good luck suck?”
“Christ—”
Jon hits his drive, and it rolls right into the sand traps. “Have a do over!” Max shouts, and he nods back gratefully.
Lando flips his club over in his hands, standing there like a gangly awkward bird. “You’re such a bastard. I didn’t mean—that. You absolute wanker.”
“Huh,” Max says, considering. “Would you let me fuck you?”
Lando drops his club. It must hit his foot, because he curses and hops, though Max isn’t looking. Like a proper golfer he’s watching Jon line up his next shot, taking practice whiffs next to the tee. Max is watching Jon, and he’s smiling like he’s fucking insane.
“What the fuck,” Lando breathes. He’s edged closer to Max now, still a very proper half-meter away. “Don’t take the fucking piss. You’d want to?”
Max shrugs. “Would try it.” He has been looking at Lando’s arse, to be fair. It’s a good arse, great even, nice and round and tight even in Lando’s terrible khakis. “Or you could do me.”
Beside him, Lando makes a sound like a pained laugh. “Jesus Christ.”
“Don’t get a stiffy on the fucking course, mate,” Max says, grinning.
“Hard not to when you’re talking like that,” Lando says under his breath. “Pissant.” Max laughs, bright and resonant in the quiet.
Jon’s second shot bounces straight down the fairway, stopping right before the green. “Go on then,” Max says, and puts a hand on Lando’s shoulder, shoving him towards the teeing ground as Jon comes towards them.
The way Lando looks at him, turning back for just a split second, almost has Max popping a semi right there. Lando’s flushed, vexed and frowny, holding his club in front of his body like it’ll cover him up. Max wants to eat him whole.
“Good shot,” he tells Jon when he comes close. And then, loud enough for Lando to hear, “I think Lando’s going right in the traps, too. His head’s not quite on today. Shame.”
“Fuck off!” Lando calls.
His ball goes into the bushes. Just brilliant.