Chapter Text
🎵 Conan Gray — Vodka Cranberry 🎵
Lando clicked the key into the lock like he was opening a new life. Or—if we’re being honest—slamming the door on the old one.
She’d told him she hated him. That she wished they’d never been together. That he’d ruined everything they had.
Right now, drunk on cranberry Finlandia on the dorm’s front steps of an Italian arts uni, Lando fully agreed.
Screw her.
The shared room greeted him with darkness. And yeah—definitely not as cozy as it had been with her. Not as warm, not as familiar, not as home. If being next to someone you love makes the space soft—this was the opposite. Cold. Stripped. Wrong.
Just… bleak.
Another wave of cranberry-vodka nausea crawled up his throat. Lando barely dropped his things before stumbling into the pathetic little bathroom that rattled with every old tile.
He let the tap run until the water turned cold and splashed his face. His neck.
God, please don’t wake up the roommate.
His eyes were cranberry-red—puffy, raw. From crying, from puking… from everything. He slid down onto the floor next to the sink and cried. Quietly, shaking, drowning in his own self-pity.
Please, please, don’t wake up the roommate.
Let him at least not ruin that too.
After a few minutes he managed to drag himself to the narrow, squeaky bed. Yes, smaller than hers. Yes, the sheets smelled like damp abandonment. And no, there was none of her vanilla scent on the pillow.
He curled up tight, as if shrinking could somehow dull the pain. It didn’t.
Poor boy Lando. She’d been cruel. Too cruel.
His body trembled with sobs, head ringing like a thousand bells begging her to come back.
No. He had some pride. Probably.
Another sniff came out too loud.
“Hey. I have an exam tomorrow,” a sleepy voice mumbled from across the room. “Save the drama for morning.”
The guy’s bed creaked, like it agreed.
“Let me sleep now—and I promise, I’ll listen to you in the morning.”
He rolled over to face the wall.
Between them stretched three, maybe four meters of moonlight—cold, silver, impersonal. Space he now had to share with a stranger. Two beds, two nightstands, one ancient kitchenette only good for breakfast sandwiches. The fridge was a round-bellied antique that probably knew Michelangelo personally.
Slowly, Lando’s sobs faded.
He reached for his phone, opened “Recently Deleted”—and froze. Her photos. Those damn fox-brown eyes. Her perfect vanilla-scented hair. The skin he missed so painfully it felt stupid. He couldn’t delete any of it.
Tears flooded again, hotter this time, pooling at his nose before soaking straight into the pillow.
Screw her. Screw her. Screw her.
In the morning, Lando regretted everything. But who doesn’t? Nighttime offers no mercy—morning collects the payment.
His roommate wasn’t home. Or—well, “home.” This creaking box of a room.
Lando’s head split in two, his stomach turned itself inside out, and the sunlight stabbed straight into his eyes, lighting every dust mote in the air like confetti.
The door squeaked open—far too loud—and Lando blinked at the person who walked in. “Hey,” the guy said, giving a small wave. He sat at his half of the desk so old the varnish was peeling off.
“I…” The guy hesitated. “Look, I can see you feel like crap, so I won’t push, but…” He sighed, got up anyway, and crouched beside Lando’s bed. “I’m Oscar.”
Lando buried half his face in his sweaty hoodie, trying not to breathe vodka fumes on the poor man.
“—Aando,” he muttered, hand awkwardly reaching out while the other held the hoodie tight over his mouth.
Oscar frowned.
“Sorry, what?” But he still shook Lando’s hand—firm, steady.
For a second it felt like someone was putting Lando back together.
“…Lando,” he corrected from under the hoodie, cheeks warming. And that was enough.