Work Text:
“Here’s an upcoming artist, Carlos Sainz” the radio host announces and suddenly the world stops turning. “Carlos is going to sing his newest title, The Apartment We Won’t Share. Could you tell us a bit more about that song?”
A swear escapes Lando’s lips. Fuck. That can’t be, not right now while he’s driving home to Oscar and hasn’t heard from Carlos in two years. Two years during which he’s just been pretending. (Pretending not to hurt, pretending to get over it, pretending not to miss him.)
Carlos’ fingers caress the strings of his guitar and Lando can’t help but think of the times where those same fingers used to tangle his hair. The radio is not that loud but the sound of the chords instantly fills the small space of the car.
“Well, this is one of my favorite songs I’ve written so far,” Carlos says, his voice accompanied by soft strums. “I started it a long time ago. I had broken up with my partner and we had this no contact rule put in place because we both knew we wouldn’t be able to move on any other way.”
Lando shivers, unable to say if it is because of the cold weather or because of hearing Carlos’ voice, the way his accent still adds a colorful layer to words. Lando can picture him so clearly it’s blinding ; he knows Carlos is sitting with his dark-brown guitar on his lap, the one he says brings him luck, biting his lip because he feels nervous.
The no contact rule had been torture. They had shared everything for so long it seemed impossible for Lando to picture a life where Carlos wouldn’t play a part. He’d felt like throwing up each time Max had told him Carlos wouldn’t be here because he knew Lando was coming. He’d typed thousands of texts in the middle of the morning just to draft and erase them a few hours later, after letting Daniel convince him that it would never be a good idea, that things had ended for a good reason. It’s been four years and Lando still doesn’t know if he was right. (He just pretends he doesn’t wonder if things could’ve been different had they been less stupid).
“And one day I broke that rule and I left him a voicemail after I’d walked past an apartment we’d visited together a couple of weeks before the breakup. And you know, I felt so weird and guilty for crying in front of this building where I could’ve built a life with him but wouldn’t because I was the one to put an end to things. But I couldn’t help it. That’s when I started the song.”
They hadn’t spoken in more than six months when Lando had seen the voicemail notification. He’d saved it for a couple of days, trying to act as if this wasn’t the only thing he could think about, as if his mind wasn’t on the verge of exploding. He hadn’t told anyone anything, what for ? He loved his friends, they loved him, but they all had a pretty bad time understanding why Lando couldn’t stop loving Carlos even after he’d left him so brutally.
“Landito.” Fuck, no one had called him that in ages. It had been only Carlos and his family’s nickname, which obviously had made it very special. Lando had wanted to cry. “I’m sorry, I know we said no contact but I-”
There’d been a silence, as if Carlos had been trying to solve an internal conflict and Lando had pictured his furrowed brows, giving his face an expression that made him look so confused.
“I’m in front of the apartment we visited a while ago and there are people living there now. And, I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel right because somehow this was supposed to be ours.”
The apartment was not as big as they wanted and quite ugly but Lando had fallen in love with it the moment the door had opened. There’d been something special about it, he’d felt like this was going to be home, their home. They’d been slow dancing in the kitchen to the sound of Carlos humming one of his unfinished songs. Lando had fancied them lying lazily on the couch as they’d imagined they would do on Sunday nights. He’d thought about how they would receive their friends and cook them dinner (he could already picture Lewis making sure it was vegan and Yuki judging the setup of their plates), how they would share cigarettes on the balcony as Carlos would play a new rhythm on his old guitar while Lando tried to finish a Spanish classic book Reyes would’ve recommended, how they would wake up with the sun after making love in the small bedroom.
“I wonder who gets to live here now. Maybe it’s an old lady and her cats, you know, like the one who used to feed the pigeons in front of that shabby place you lived in when we met. Or maybe it’s a couple that looks just like what we could’ve been.” Carlos had stopped talking for a moment, breathing loud the way he used to do when he was trying not to cry. “But then maybe this apartment would’ve been a horrible experience to share. So many couples die because of the routine or try to have affairs to make their lives spicier. I would’ve hated that, you know.”
Lando had lost his smile. He couldn’t imagine a life in which Carlos did not satisfy him. He’d known from the very first time he’d seen him that his heart could never stop beating a bit faster each time he’d hear his voice. There probably was a world where Lando and Carlos weren’t as happy as they could be but it was still better than not being together at all.
“Who am I kidding, joder. Getting to share this apartment with you was the only thing I’ve ever truly wanted” Carlos had whispered before hanging up as if he was realizing what his entire voicemail implied.
Lando has parked his car on the side of the road, his heart beating faster than it should. His phone rings and even though he knows that it is Oscar, probably asking him to buy something on his way home, he turns it off. There’s no way he can think about Oscar when the man he has loved for years is about to sing a song he wrote about the two of them.
“I wrote the first verse that day and then I just left it in my notes. And I didn’t think about it for two years, until I saw him two years later. That was the first time we met since we had broken up and it was so strange to discover how much he had changed that it took me a little while to recover from it.”
Lando can picture this day crystal clear. He’d been on the subway heading towards his office as he did every morning when his eyes had met Carlos’. He could never forget the very specific color of his big brown orbs, not like Danny’s, not like Oscar’s, not like any other men he’d been with anyway.
He’d been so shocked, so surprised to see Carlos on this train, the one he took every single morning and yet, his first reaction had been a smile, probably because that was the way his body naturally reacted to Carlos. he’d felt his lip stretching without really knowing why. There were so many things he’d wanted to tell Carlos. He had needed to ask him why he’d left for so long, he had needed to yell at him, to hit him and make him regret throwing their love to the trash for so long. And yet, he hadn’t been able to do anything else but smile.
“He no longer looked like he did when I left, he was older but it suited him. He wasn’t a confused young man anymore, much more like an accomplished one. But when he smiled at me, it brought me back to our first dates when his smile would give me butterflies. That was crazy. We talked for a few minutes, just to catch up on how we were doing and it was enough for me to know that I would never love someone the way I loved him.”
Lando hears his heart breaking. He doesn’t want to but he can already feel the tears running down his cheeks. They’ve missed out on so much, he thinks as he grabs a tissue. He feels stupid for not staying in touch with Carlos after that day. He feels stupid for ever thinking he could ever get over something so overwhelming, so breathtaking, so heartbreaking. He knows he loves Oscar, they’ve been together for a while now, but he also knows Carlos will always keep that special spot in his heart and his mind.
“I started thinking about what our life could’ve been had we not broken up and I remembered that song that I had started writing. I picked it back up and I continued it but it took me a while to finish because it was painful. I didn’t want it to be melodramatic and to sound like I wanted him back because I don’t. I knew I needed to let him go because I heard through one of our friends that he is now in a perfectly healthy relationship. I’m pretty sure nothing will ever compare to what we had together but things don’t always need to be so intense. Lando (he shivers when he hears Carlos pronounce his name the way only he does, with a mix of care and tenderness that still lingers through the years), he is happy now and I didn’t want him or people to think that I wanted to be a homewrecker and that I had the audacity to come back after so many years. So, yeah, it’s not exactly what I wanted, but I think that this is what both of us needed” Carlos says so fast he runs out of breath.
Lando’s tears stop running down his face. His breath steadies and his heart slows down. There’s a small smile floating on his lips, not because he’s happy to hear that Carlos still wants him despite what he’s saying but because he finally got the closure he needed to move on with his life.
Carlos finally starts singing and Lando lets his soothing voice lull him back to a perfectly normal state the way he used to do back in the days, when life felt a bit too much for him and Carlos held him in his arms, singing in his ear the songs his mom used to sing him as a kid.
The song eventually comes to an end and he realized that he's somehow feeling lighter now, like he's ready to really start a new part of his life, one in which Carlos is just a good memory.
This time, when Oscar calls him back, he picks up.