Archive of Our Own

Lando Norris was twenty-three minutes late to the editorial meeting, which, in his defence, was only seventeen minutes later than he'd originally intended to be. The distinction was important, although he suspected Oscar Piastri would fail to appreciate it, being the sort of person who considered arriving five minutes early a perfectly reasonable expectation and who had once sent Lando a calendar invitation for a conversation they were already having.

At twenty-one, Oscar possessed the organisational skills of a man who had spent several decades managing other people's retirement funds, whereas Lando, who was a year older and therefore theoretically entitled to a certain degree of seniority, had spent most of the morning searching for his phone while holding it.

The rain had been falling steadily since lunchtime, leaving the university courtyard slick and shining beneath an unpleasantly grey sky, and by the time Lando reached the journalism building, he'd managed to spill iced coffee down the front of his hoodie and acquire three increasingly impatient messages from Oscar.

Oscar: Where are you?

Lando: On my way 

Oscar: You said that fifteen minutes ago.

Lando: And I've been on my way for fifteen minutes. Very consistent of me.

Oscar: We're starting without you.

Lando: Heartbreaking. Save me a seat.

He was still smiling at his phone when he pushed open the editorial office door, which was unfortunate because seven people immediately turned towards him with varying degrees of irritation, and the only person whose reaction he was particularly interested in didn't look up at all.

"Before anyone starts," Lando announced, closing the door behind him with his foot, "I've had an absolutely horrendous afternoon, and I'd really appreciate a bit of compassion."

"You're twenty-three minutes late," Oscar said, his attention apparently fixed on his laptop.

"Twenty-two, actually. I was standing outside for a minute."

"That doesn't make it better."

"Depends how you look at it, mate."

Oscar finally raised his head, and Lando experienced the familiar, mildly infuriating sensation of being examined by someone who had already decided he was guilty. Oscar was wearing a dark blue jumper over a white shirt, his hair falling slightly over his forehead, and he looked offensively put together for someone who had apparently been sitting in the same miserable office since nine that morning. His gaze travelled from Lando's damp curls to the enormous iced coffee in his hand before settling on the stain spreading across his hoodie.

"Is that your lunch?" Oscar asked.

"It's got milk in it," Lando replied, dropping into the empty chair beside Charles. "Protein. Calcium. All sorts of healthy stuff."

"Right. And the coffee?"

"Emotional support."

"Clearly not working."

Charles burst out laughing, and Lando elbowed him in the ribs, although he couldn't quite stop himself from grinning when Oscar's mouth twitched. That was the trouble with Oscar: he could be the most irritating person Lando had ever met, but every now and then he'd say something so unexpectedly funny, with such a perfectly straight face, that Lando forgot he was supposed to be annoyed with him.

"Can we get on with it?" George asked, looking between them with the exhausted expression of someone who had spent considerably too much time in their company. "Some of us have lectures."

"Some of us have social lives," Charles added.

"Not you, then," Oscar said, and Lando laughed loudly enough that Charles immediately kicked him beneath the table.

It was an ordinary sort of afternoon in The Current's editorial office, or at least it would have been if Oscar hadn't closed his laptop a moment later and looked around the table with an expression that made Lando's smile gradually disappear. He was accustomed to Oscar looking vaguely disappointed in him, but there was something different about the tension around his mouth, something that suggested the problem they were about to discuss extended considerably further than Lando's continued inability to arrive anywhere on time.

"Right," Oscar began, folding his hands on the table. "I've had an email from the student media committee, and it's not particularly good news."

"Have they rejected the camera budget again?" Alex asked.

"Worse, unfortunately. They're reviewing the funding for independent student publications, and our readership figures haven't been strong enough to justify what they're currently spending on us."

For a moment, nobody spoke. Then George leaned forward and asked what that actually meant, although Lando suspected everyone in the room had already arrived at roughly the same conclusion.

Oscar glanced towards the noticeboard before answering. "It means that unless we can demonstrate a significant improvement in readership and digital engagement over the next eight weeks, they're considering withdrawing our funding at the end of the semester."

"You're joking," Charles said, sitting up so abruptly that his chair scraped against the floor. "They can't just get rid of the newspaper."

"They can, actually," Oscar replied. "That's rather the problem."

Lando looked around the office, taking in the mismatched furniture, the overflowing noticeboard and the ancient printer that had been threatening to retire for approximately three years. He'd spent so much time complaining about the place that he'd never seriously considered what it would be like if it stopped existing, and the realisation left him feeling unexpectedly hollow.

He'd written his first published article in this room, celebrated his twentieth birthday with cheap prosecco and once fallen asleep beneath the editorial table after an entire night of attempting to meet a deadline. The thought of somebody clearing everything out and turning it into another seminar room felt strangely personal.

"We need something big," George said, already opening a spreadsheet. "A proper campaign. Something that'll get people interested again."

"A photography competition," Charles suggested. "We could get everyone submitting pictures of campus life, publish the winners, maybe organize an exhibition."

"That could work," Alex agreed. "But we need something that'll get people sharing the actual articles, not just liking a few Instagram posts."

Lando watched Oscar making notes, his expression composed despite the fact that he was apparently being asked to save a forty-three-year-old newspaper in eight weeks. It was one of the things Lando found most annoying about him, that quiet ability to appear completely in control even when the circumstances were objectively disastrous, although he noticed that Oscar kept glancing towards the framed photograph of the newspaper's founding editorial team hanging beside the noticeboard.

"Dating," Lando said suddenly.

George stopped typing. "Sorry?"

"We should do something about dating."

Charles turned towards him with immediate interest. "Oh, this is going to be terrible."

"No, listen. People love talking about relationships. Half the university's constantly complaining about their situationships, and the other half are pretending they don't care about being single. We could do a whole series about modern dating, something people would actually want to read instead of another article about the five best places to get coffee on campus."

Oscar raised an eyebrow. "So your plan is to save the newspaper by writing about your inability to maintain a relationship?"

"My relationships are perfectly maintainable, thank you."

"Of course."

"People love me."

"I'm sure they do, Lando."

"You're literally obsessed with me, aren't you?"

"Unfortunately, your deadlines do occupy a rather significant portion of my life."

Charles was laughing again, but Lando ignored him, leaning forward as the idea began to take shape. "Five dates each. Ten dates altogether. We write about them, compare our experiences, talk about compatibility and chemistry and all that romantic nonsense. You can do the boring research stuff, and I'll make sure people actually enjoy reading it."

Oscar considered him for a moment. "You want me to go on five dates?"

"Well, I could do all ten, but that feels a bit unfair on the rest of the university."

"And we'd be publishing these people's personal experiences?"

"With their permission, obviously. I'm not a complete idiot."

"Debatable," Oscar murmured, although he was looking increasingly thoughtful. "We'd need proper consent, and we'd have to be careful about identifying details. We'd also need a central question. Ten unrelated anecdotes aren't particularly useful."

"Whether love is dead," Lando suggested.

"Perhaps something slightly less dramatic."

"Whether Oscar Piastri is physically capable of flirting."

"That one's already been answered," George muttered.

Lando turned towards him. "Has it?"

"Can we please focus?" Oscar interrupted, although the faint smile on his face suggested he was finding the conversation considerably more entertaining than he wanted to admit. He looked down at his notes, then back at Lando. "All right. We'll try it."

Lando blinked. "Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously. But we're doing it properly. I'll put together a schedule tonight, and I want your first draft by Monday morning."

"Monday? Oscar, it's Thursday."

"Very good. You've learned the days of the week."

"You're actually incapable of letting anyone enjoy anything, aren't you?"

Oscar's smile widened slightly. "I thought you wanted to save the newspaper."

And that, Lando thought, was the deeply unfortunate problem with having a good idea in Oscar Piastri's presence: he would immediately turn it into an actual responsibility.

By the time the meeting ended, Lando had acquired three separate deadlines, Charles had announced his intention to photograph every one of Lando's inevitable romantic disasters, and George was already discussing a broader campaign to improve the newspaper's digital presence. Lando escaped with Charles, complaining loudly about Oscar's apparent inability to distinguish between enthusiasm and a legally binding commitment, only to discover halfway down the corridor that he'd left his laptop in the editorial office.

"Go on, then," Charles said, looking delighted. "Wouldn't want to keep your boyfriend waiting."

"He's not my boyfriend, you absolute idiot."

"Didn't say he was."

"You literally just did."

"Interesting that you reacted so strongly, though."

Lando told him to fuck off and headed back upstairs, although he was still smiling when he pushed open the office door. He'd been preparing another unnecessarily dramatic complaint about Oscar's management style, but the words disappeared when he realized Oscar was sitting alone at the far end of the table, staring at the framed photograph beside the noticeboard.

The room was quieter now, illuminated by a single desk lamp and the pale light coming through the rain-streaked windows, and Oscar looked different without the rest of the editorial team around him. His shoulders were slightly hunched, one hand resting against his forehead, and there was something almost painfully ordinary about the exhaustion on his face that made Lando hesitate in the doorway.

"Planning your dramatic resignation?" he asked eventually, wandering over to retrieve his laptop.

"Considering it," Oscar replied, looking up. "Although I suspect George would make me fill out a form."

"Probably create a spreadsheet for it, too."

"Don't give him ideas."

Lando smiled and pulled out the chair opposite him, settling into it with considerably more ease than he'd intended. He should probably have gone home, particularly considering Charles was waiting for him and he'd barely eaten anything all day, but something about the sight of Oscar sitting alone in the office made him reluctant to leave.

"So," he said, glancing towards the photograph. "We're really fucked, then?"

Oscar let out a quiet breath. "Potentially. I've been working on a funding proposal all summer, but I thought we'd have more time. I didn't realize they were already considering getting rid of us."

"Well, they're not getting rid of us. We've got eight weeks, haven't we?"

"Eight weeks isn't very long, Lando."

"Depends what you're doing with them. You could fall in love in eight weeks."

Oscar looked at him. "Is that your professional opinion?"

"Obviously. I'm a relationship expert now."

"Your last relationship lasted three weeks."

"Four, actually. And I was very busy."

Oscar laughed, but the sound faded quickly, and Lando found himself looking at the photograph again. Forty-three years of students had worked on this newspaper, had written articles and missed deadlines and argued about headlines, and Oscar was apparently carrying the weight of all of them on his shoulders.

"You're allowed to be upset about it, you know," Lando said, surprising himself with the sudden seriousness of his voice. "You don't have to do that thing where you pretend everything's fine and start organizing people until the problem goes away."

Oscar was quiet for a moment, his fingers turning a pen absently against the table. "I know. It's just that I've spent almost three years working on this place, and I thought I'd be handing it over to someone when I graduated. I didn't really consider that there might not be anything left to hand over."

Lando looked at him, feeling something uncomfortable settle beneath his ribs. Oscar was only twenty-one, a year younger than him, and yet he seemed to carry responsibility as naturally as other people carried their phones, rarely asking for help and apparently considering it a personal failure whenever something went wrong. Lando had spent most of their acquaintance teasing him about it, but he suddenly wondered whether Oscar ever got tired of being the person everyone expected to know what to do.

"Well, you're not doing it on your own," he said. "I know I'm a pain in the arse sometimes, but I do actually care about this place. I'll do the articles properly, I promise. Research and everything."

Oscar regarded him for a moment before smiling. "Steady on. Wouldn't want you to overexert yourself."

"See, this is why nobody likes you."

"Thought you said people loved me."

"Didn't say they had good taste."

Oscar laughed again, and Lando felt a small, ridiculous sense of satisfaction that he'd managed to make him look a little less exhausted. He was preparing to leave when Oscar spoke again, his voice quieter this time.

"For what it's worth, I think you're a very good writer."

Lando stared at him. "Have you hit your head?"

"I'm serious."

"That's even more concerning."

"Lando." Oscar shook his head, although he was still smiling. "You have a way of making people interested in things they wouldn't ordinarily care about. I just think you could do something genuinely brilliant with this if you gave yourself the chance."

For once, Lando couldn't think of anything to say. He'd spent so long convincing himself that his job was to make people laugh, that his writing was supposed to be entertaining rather than important, that hearing Oscar speak about his work with such quiet certainty made him feel strangely exposed. He looked down at his laptop, tracing the edge of the case with his thumb, and wondered when Oscar had started paying enough attention to him to develop opinions like that.

"Well," he said eventually, clearing his throat, "obviously. I'm incredibly talented. Probably the best writer you've ever worked with."

"Let's not get carried away."

"You're literally obsessed with my work."

"Your first draft is still due Monday."

"Jesus Christ. You really know how to ruin a moment."

Oscar's expression softened, just slightly, and Lando had the uncomfortable impression that he'd noticed considerably more than Lando wanted him to. He stood before the conversation could become any more emotionally dangerous, collecting his laptop and making another deeply unappreciated joke about Oscar needing to get a life, although he was halfway into the corridor when Oscar called his name.

"Lando?"

He turned, finding Oscar watching him from across the room, the warm light from the desk lamp catching the side of his face.

"Thanks," Oscar said.

"For what?"

"For taking this seriously."

Lando smiled, because smiling was easy and because he couldn't think of anything else to do with the peculiar warmth spreading through his chest. "Don't get used to it, mate."

Oscar's mouth curved. "Wouldn't dream of it."

___

At eleven forty-seven that evening, Lando was lying on his bed in yesterday's clothes, eating cereal directly from the box and listening to Charles recount an unnecessarily detailed story about a girl he'd met in the photography department, when his laptop announced the arrival of a new email.

From: Oscar Piastri
Subject: Ten-Date Experiment — Schedule and Editorial Guidelines

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Lando muttered, opening the attachment.

It was a spreadsheet. Of course it was a spreadsheet. There were color-coded deadlines, suggested themes for each installment, a proposed publication schedule and an entire separate tab dedicated to something Oscar had titled Ethical Considerations and Participant Consent. Lando stared at it for a full minute before opening the shared document, highlighting the title and replacing The Ten-Date Experiment with something considerably more appropriate.

OSCAR PIASTRI'S GUIDE TO DYING ALONE

He took a screenshot and sent it to Oscar, smiling to himself as he waited for the inevitable response.

Oscar: Very mature.

Lando: I'm older than you. Show some respect.

Oscar: Then perhaps you could start behaving like it.

Lando: You're so obsessed with me it's embarrassing.

Oscar: Goodnight, Lando.

Charles, who had apparently been watching the entire exchange with increasing interest, leaned back against his pillows and asked whether Lando was planning to spend the rest of the evening flirting with his editor or whether he might consider participating in an actual conversation.

"I'm not flirting with him," Lando replied, although he was still smiling at his phone. "I'm professionally irritating him. Completely different thing."

"Right. And that's why you've been grinning at your screen for the last five minutes?"

"You're genuinely unbearable."

"Just saying."

Lando threw a pillow at his head, which Charles caught with an expression of considerable satisfaction, and returned his attention to the spreadsheet. He scrolled through Oscar's carefully organized notes, feeling increasingly amused by the extraordinary amount of effort he'd apparently invested in a project that had been little more than a half-formed idea several hours earlier.

He was still examining the proposed schedule when his phone vibrated again.

Oscar: For the record, I think the column's going to be good.

 

Lando read the message twice, feeling that peculiar warmth return to his chest, before typing a reply.

Lando: Only because I'm writing it x

Oscar: Go to sleep.

 

Lando laughed, dropped his phone onto the mattress and switched off his bedside lamp, privately deciding that the entire experiment was probably going to be an absolute disaster. He was twenty-two years old, had an article due in less than four days and had somehow agreed to go on five dates for a newspaper that might not even exist by Christmas, while his editor was an insufferable twenty-one-year-old Australian with a deeply concerning affection for spreadsheets and an equally concerning ability to make Lando feel strangely pleased whenever he offered the smallest compliment.

He had considerably more important things to think about than Oscar Piastri, and he was absolutely determined to remember that.

Unfortunately, when his phone lit up once more several minutes later, he reached for it immediately.

Oscar: And Lando?

Lando: Miss me already?

Oscar: Don't be late on Monday.

 

Lando buried his face in his pillow, laughing despite himself, and decided that if he survived the next eight weeks without murdering Oscar Piastri, it would probably qualify as the greatest achievement of his university career.

He had absolutely no idea how spectacularly wrong he was about that.

___

Lando Norris had been on some spectacularly unsuccessful dates in his twenty-two years of existence, including one during which he'd accidentally called the person sitting opposite him by his ex-boyfriend's name and another that had ended with him being asked to contribute forty pounds towards a parking fine he hadn't incurred, but he was fairly certain that nothing in his romantic history had adequately prepared him for Oliver.

Oliver was twenty-three, studied business management and had described himself on his dating profile as an entrepreneur, which Lando had initially interpreted as a mildly embarrassing but ultimately harmless personality trait. He was attractive enough, with dark hair, a pleasant smile and the sort of confidence that suggested he'd never experienced a particularly devastating rejection, and when they'd exchanged messages the previous Friday, he'd seemed perfectly capable of maintaining a normal conversation. Admittedly, he'd referred to his university degree as an investment in his personal brand, but Lando had generously decided that everybody deserved at least one deeply unfortunate character flaw.

By the time their drinks arrived, he was beginning to regret his generosity.

"So, basically, what people don't understand about cryptocurrency is that it's not really about the money," Oliver explained, leaning forward with the enthusiasm of someone who had absolutely no intention of allowing the conversation to develop in another direction. "It's about financial independence. It's about not being controlled by traditional institutions."

"Right," Lando said, stirring his iced coffee with considerably more concentration than the task required. "And is that something you've always been interested in, or did you just wake up one morning and decide banks were your mortal enemy?"

Oliver laughed, apparently mistaking the question for genuine curiosity, and launched into an explanation of decentralized financial systems that lasted long enough for Lando to finish his drink, order another and develop a detailed understanding of why Oscar had insisted they establish an emergency procedure for dates that became uncomfortable.

He'd originally found the suggestion deeply insulting. Now, he was beginning to think Oscar might be the most intelligent person he'd ever met.

"So, what about you, Leonardo? Are you interested in investing?"

Lando blinked. He'd been introduced as Lando, had booked the table under the name Lando and was reasonably certain that Oliver had seen the name Lando written across his dating profile at least six times, but apparently none of these things had been sufficient to prevent him from becoming Leonardo.

"Not particularly, mate. I'm a student. My biggest investment at the moment is a pair of trainers I've been looking at for about three months."

"That's exactly the mindset you need to change. You have to think long-term."

"Yeah, well, I've got a dissertation due in May, so I'm trying not to think beyond Christmas."

Oliver smiled indulgently, as though Lando had said something rather endearing, and began explaining compound interest.

By the time they finally left the café, Lando had learned practically everything there was to know about Oliver's financial aspirations and almost nothing about whether he possessed a personality outside them. He'd attempted to discuss music, films, university life and the deeply questionable weather, but every conversational avenue had somehow led them back to cryptocurrency, and although Oliver had been perfectly polite throughout the evening, Lando couldn't remember a single occasion on which he'd asked a question that wasn't an opportunity to discuss his own interests.

He was standing beneath the café's awning, considering whether it would be professionally irresponsible to describe the experience as a hostage situation, when his phone vibrated.

Oscar: How's the date?

 

Lando stared at the message with the relief of a man who had just discovered an emergency exit in a burning building.

Lando: I've learned more about bitcoin in two hours than I have about my own degree in three years.

Oscar: So it's going well, then.

Lando: He called me Leonardo.

Oscar: Unfortunate.

Lando: TWICE.

Oscar: Have you considered telling him your name?

Lando: Have you considered being supportive for once in your miserable life?

Oscar: I'm supporting your professional development.

 

Lando laughed so unexpectedly that a woman walking past glanced at him, and he immediately looked down at his phone again, feeling considerably more entertained by this conversation than he had by anything Oliver had said all evening.

Lando: I'm never going on another date again.

Oscar: You've got four left.

Lando: I hate you.

Oscar: See you Monday.

It was an entirely ordinary exchange, the sort of thing they'd been doing for the better part of a year, and Lando had absolutely no reason to stand outside the café smiling at his phone for several minutes after the conversation ended. Nevertheless, when Oliver emerged and asked whether he'd like to meet again sometime, Lando found himself thinking that he'd rather spend another evening arguing with Oscar about punctuation than endure a second lecture about the future of digital currency.

He was beginning to suspect that the experiment might prove considerably more exhausting than he'd anticipated.

Oscar's first date, much to Lando's considerable disappointment, was apparently lovely.

He discovered this on Monday afternoon, when he arrived at the editorial office with his first draft, two iced coffees and a deeply unreasonable amount of curiosity about what Oscar had been doing the previous evening. He'd spent most of Sunday attempting to convince himself that he was simply interested in the progress of their shared project, although Charles had rather unhelpfully suggested that normal people didn't spend twenty minutes discussing whether their editor was likely to kiss somebody on a first date.

Lando had informed him that normal people were deeply boring.

Oscar was sitting at his desk when he arrived, wearing a grey jumper with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows and examining a collection of articles with his usual expression of mild concentration. He looked up when Lando dropped into the chair opposite him, his gaze travelling immediately towards the two coffees.

"You're early," Oscar observed. "Should I be concerned?"

"Thought I'd surprise you."

"Consider me surprised."

"I even brought you coffee. You're welcome, by the way."

Oscar accepted the cup, examining it with the faint suspicion of someone who had learned through experience that Lando's generosity occasionally concealed deeply questionable intentions. "What do you want?"

"Nothing. Can't I do something nice for my favourite editor?"

"I'm your only editor."

"Exactly. Very exclusive position."

Oscar smiled into his coffee, and Lando felt the familiar little satisfaction of having managed to make him laugh before remembering that he had a considerably more important subject to investigate.

"So," he began, leaning back in his chair with what he hoped was an appropriately casual expression. "How was your date?"

"Good, thanks."

Lando waited.

Oscar returned his attention to his laptop.

"That's it?" Lando demanded. "Good, thanks? I've spent the entire weekend emotionally recovering from being called Leonardo by a man who tried to convince me to invest in cryptocurrency, and all I get from you is good, thanks?"

Oscar looked up again, apparently enjoying himself considerably more than Lando thought was appropriate. "What would you like to know?"

"Everything. Obviously. That's literally the point of the experiment."

"Right. Well, we went to dinner, had a nice conversation and agreed that we'd enjoyed ourselves."

Lando stared at him. "You're genuinely the most boring person I've ever met."

"Interesting. Your article says the same thing about Oliver."

"Because Oliver is boring. You're just being deliberately difficult."

Oscar laughed, setting his coffee down before explaining that he'd gone to dinner with a postgraduate journalism student named Jamie, who was apparently interested in investigative reporting and had recently completed an internship at a national newspaper. They'd spent most of the evening discussing their respective academic interests, the future of journalism and their plans after graduation, which sounded to Lando like an extraordinarily effective method of ensuring that neither participant experienced anything resembling romantic attraction.

"And did you fancy them?" he asked, attempting to sound considerably less interested in the answer than he actually was.

Oscar tilted his head. "Sorry?"

"Did you fancy them? You know, physical attraction. Chemistry. All that stuff you're supposedly researching."

"They were attractive, yeah."

Lando felt something unpleasant settle in his stomach.

"Right. And did you kiss them?"

Oscar's eyebrows rose slightly, and Lando immediately regretted asking the question quite so directly. There was something deeply irritating about the way Oscar could look at him without saying anything and somehow make him feel as though he'd revealed considerably more than he'd intended.

"Are you planning to include this interrogation in the article?" Oscar asked eventually.

"I'm conducting important journalistic research."

"Of course you are."

"So?"

Oscar smiled, returning his attention to his laptop. "You'll have to wait for my draft."

Lando considered throwing his coffee at him.

By Wednesday evening, their first joint article was still unfinished, Oscar had developed a headache that he insisted had absolutely nothing to do with Lando's continued inability to follow a basic editorial schedule, and Lando was beginning to understand why people occasionally committed acts of violence in office environments.

They'd agreed to stay late to finish the column, which had initially seemed perfectly reasonable until Oscar began making increasingly extensive revisions to Lando's draft. He'd apparently taken particular issue with a paragraph in which Lando described Oliver as possessing the conversational charisma of an automated banking service, arguing that although the comparison was admittedly entertaining, it was unnecessarily cruel and distracted from the broader point Lando was attempting to make about the importance of reciprocal interest during first dates.

"You're taking all the funny bits out," Lando complained, leaning back in his chair and watching Oscar highlight another sentence in red. "At this rate, the article's going to read like a bloody psychology textbook."

"I'm taking out the bits where you're unnecessarily mean to someone who agreed to participate in your experiment."

"He called me Leonardo."

"Yes, Lando. You've mentioned that."

"Twice."

"I'm aware."

"And then he called me Lorenzo in a text afterward. Lorenzo, Oscar. That's not even remotely close."

Oscar pressed his lips together, although Lando could tell he was fighting a smile. "Perhaps he's just very bad with names."

"Perhaps he's just a massive idiot."

"Lando."

"What?"

"Be nice."

Lando stared at him for a moment before leaning forward, resting his chin on his hand. "You know, you're actually quite attractive when you're being all authoritative. Has anyone ever told you that?"

Oscar didn't even look up. "Usually right before asking for an extension."

"God, you're impossible."

"And yet you're still here."

There was something about the casual way Oscar said it that made Lando pause, his gaze lingering on the younger man's face for a moment longer than was strictly necessary. Oscar was still examining the article, apparently unaware that he'd said anything remotely interesting, and Lando found himself wondering whether he'd meant it as a joke or whether there was something else beneath the words.

He decided that he was probably overthinking things.

They continued working for another hour, gradually transforming their separate accounts into something resembling a coherent article, and Lando was surprised to discover how naturally their writing styles complemented each other. Oscar was precise and analytical, particularly good at identifying the broader implications of seemingly insignificant details, while Lando preferred the messy, personal aspects of a story, the little moments of embarrassment and vulnerability that made people recognisable to one another.

Where Oscar provided structure, Lando supplied warmth, and although they disagreed about practically everything from sentence length to the appropriate number of semicolons, there was something unexpectedly satisfying about watching their individual contributions develop into a piece of writing that felt more complete than either of them could have produced alone.

It was during a particularly heated discussion about the article's opening paragraph that Oscar casually mentioned having read every piece Lando had ever written for the newspaper.

Lando initially assumed he was joking.

"Sorry, what?" he asked, looking up from his laptop. "You've read all my articles?"

Oscar shrugged. "Well, yeah. I am your editor."

"No, I mean before that. You said you've been reading them since first year."

"Yeah. I liked your stuff."

Lando stared at him, genuinely unsure what to do with the information. "That's deeply concerning, mate. Have you considered getting a hobby?"

"I've got hobbies."

"Reading my articles doesn't count."

Oscar smiled, apparently entirely unbothered by the accusation. "I liked the one you wrote about the charity football tournament. The one with the student who organised it in memory of his brother."

Lando went very still.

He remembered that article. Of course he did. He'd spent nearly three weeks researching it during his first year, interviewing students, attending matches and attempting to capture the peculiar sense of community that emerged when people came together for something larger than themselves. It had been the first piece of writing he'd ever produced that felt genuinely important, something he might actually have been proud to show somebody outside the university, and he'd been rather devastated when the newspaper's former editor suggested that he might be better suited to entertainment journalism.

"You remember that?" he asked, trying very hard to sound casual.

Oscar looked faintly confused. "Yeah. Why wouldn't I?"

"Just didn't think anyone actually read it."

"I did." Oscar hesitated, apparently considering how best to explain himself. "I thought it was really good, actually. Especially the ending. You didn't try to make it overly sentimental, which would've been easy given the subject, but you still managed to make the whole thing feel quite personal."

Lando looked down at his hands.

It was such a specific observation, delivered with such apparent sincerity, that he couldn't quite work out how to respond. He'd spent years convincing himself that nobody particularly cared about that article, that it had been a perfectly respectable piece of student journalism but ultimately nothing worth remembering, and now Oscar was sitting opposite him casually discussing its structure as though he'd been carrying it around in his head for the better part of two years.

"Well," Lando said eventually, clearing his throat, "obviously. I'm incredibly talented. Surprised it's taken you this long to admit it."

Oscar laughed softly. "You're very good at making people care about things, Lando. I just wish you'd stop pretending that everything you write has to be funny."

Lando's smile faltered.

"What, so you don't think my writing's serious enough?"

"That's not what I said."

"Kind of sounded like it."

Oscar closed his laptop slightly, giving the conversation his full attention in a way that made Lando feel unexpectedly exposed. "I think you're a very good writer, and I think you know that. But sometimes you make a genuinely interesting observation and then immediately undermine it with a joke, like you're worried someone's going to take you seriously."

Lando looked away, suddenly defensive. "Maybe I just like being funny."

"There's nothing wrong with being funny."

"Then what's the problem?"

Oscar regarded him for a moment before answering, his voice considerably softer than Lando had expected. "I don't think there is a problem. I just think you could do something really brilliant if you stopped being so afraid of letting people see that you actually care."

For a moment, Lando couldn't think of anything to say. He'd spent so long convincing himself that his job was to make people laugh, that his writing was supposed to be entertaining rather than important, that hearing Oscar speak about his work with such quiet certainty made him feel strangely exposed.

He wasn't entirely sure when he'd started treating sincerity as something embarrassing.

"Right," he said eventually, forcing a smile. "Well, that's enough emotional devastation for one evening. Can we please finish this article before you start telling me I need therapy?"

Oscar laughed, reopened his laptop and returned to their draft, apparently willing to let him retreat into familiar territory.

But for the rest of the evening, Lando found himself thinking about what he'd said.

They finished the article shortly after eleven, by which point the editorial office had become so cold that Lando was seriously considering filing a formal complaint with the university about the building's heating system. Oscar, who had apparently developed a supernatural resistance to discomfort, seemed perfectly content to continue working, although Lando noticed that he'd begun rubbing his hands together between revisions and eventually took pity on him by suggesting they abandon the office before they both developed hypothermia.

Oscar informed him that he was being dramatic, naturally, but agreed that they'd probably done enough for one evening, and they spent several minutes collecting their belongings while arguing about whether the article's headline was sufficiently interesting to attract readers without descending into the sort of sensationalism Oscar considered an affront to respectable journalism.

"Ten Dates, Two Journalists and Absolutely No Idea What We're Doing," Lando suggested, leaning against the table while Oscar packed his laptop.

Oscar considered it for a moment. "That's actually not bad."

Lando stared at him. "Sorry, could you repeat that? Preferably while maintaining eye contact."

"Don't push it."

"No, seriously. I think I need to record this. Oscar Piastri just complimented one of my ideas."

Oscar rolled his eyes, although he was smiling as he pulled on his coat. "You're genuinely unbearable."

"And yet you're still here."

Oscar looked at him for a moment, his expression softening in a way that made Lando suddenly aware of how close they were standing. There was something almost intimate about the quiet office, the rain tapping against the windows and the familiar scent of Oscar's coffee lingering between them, and Lando found himself wondering whether Oscar had always looked at him like that or whether he'd simply never noticed before.

"Yeah," Oscar said eventually, his voice quieter than before. "I am."

Lando's smile faltered.

For one strange, fleeting moment, he had the absurd impression that Oscar was about to say something else, something that had absolutely nothing to do with their article or the newspaper or the increasingly unreasonable number of deadlines he'd imposed on them both.

Then Oscar glanced at his phone and reminded him that their article was scheduled for publication the following morning.

Lando laughed, mostly because he couldn't think of anything else to do, and followed him out of the office.

___

The article was published at nine o'clock the following morning.

By lunchtime, it had become the most-read piece on The Current's website that semester.

Lando discovered this while sitting in a lecture he had absolutely no interest in attending, attempting to concentrate on a presentation about contemporary media ethics while his phone vibrated repeatedly against his thigh. He initially assumed that Charles was sending him another collection of deeply unfunny memes, but when he finally glanced at the screen, he discovered that Oscar had sent him a screenshot of the newspaper's readership figures.

Oscar: Not bad.

Lando: NOT BAD?????

Lando: Oscar we're literally famous.

Oscar: Let's not get carried away.

Lando: I expect a statue outside the journalism building by Monday.

Oscar: We'll see what the budget allows.

Lando: Make sure they get my good side.

Oscar: Which one's that?

 

Lando laughed aloud, immediately attracting the attention of approximately twenty-seven people and earning himself a deeply unimpressed look from the lecturer. He apologized, attempted to arrange his features into an expression of appropriate academic engagement, and spent the remainder of the lecture trying very hard not to check his phone again.

He failed spectacularly.

By the time he finally returned to the editorial office that afternoon, Alex had already begun planning a series of social media posts celebrating the article's success, George was enthusiastically updating his readership spreadsheet, and Charles had apparently decided that Lando's newfound popularity entitled him to behave like an insufferable celebrity for the foreseeable future.

Oscar, meanwhile, was sitting at his desk with the same quietly satisfied expression he'd worn when they finished the article the previous evening, and Lando found himself experiencing an absurd little flicker of pleasure when their eyes met across the room.

It was ridiculous, really, how much he wanted Oscar to be proud of him.

He'd spent years insisting that he didn't particularly care what other people thought about his writing, that he was perfectly content producing entertaining articles and making people laugh, and yet the simple fact that Oscar had remembered something he'd written two years earlier seemed to have unsettled him in a way he couldn't quite explain.

He wondered whether Oscar knew.

Probably not.

Oscar was extraordinarily perceptive about certain things, but Lando suspected that his emotional awareness had several significant blind spots, particularly when it came to recognizing the effect he occasionally had on other people.

At least, that was what Lando told himself as he settled into his usual chair and opened his laptop, determined to begin working on their next article before Oscar could accuse him of procrastinating.

He lasted approximately twelve minutes.

Then his phone vibrated again.

Oscar: For the record, your opening paragraph was brilliant.

 

Lando stared at the message, feeling that peculiar warmth return to his chest, before typing a reply.

Lando: You're getting dangerously close to admitting you like me.

Oscar: Don't make me regret complimenting you.

Lando: Too late. Screenshotting this for future reference.

 

Oscar, sitting approximately six feet away, glanced up from his laptop and gave him a look of profound exhaustion, although Lando could see the faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

He saved the screenshot to his camera roll.

For journalistic purposes, obviously.

___

By the following Monday, Lando had discovered that there were two particularly unfortunate consequences of writing a successful article about his own romantic life: the first was that practically everyone at university now considered themselves entitled to ask him deeply personal questions about his dating habits, and the second was that Oscar Piastri had apparently become something of an accidental campus celebrity.

The latter was considerably more offensive, particularly because Oscar didn't seem remotely interested in appreciating the magnitude of his achievement, and Lando thought there was something profoundly unfair about the fact that a man who had spent most of his university career actively avoiding unnecessary social interaction could suddenly become the subject of so much romantic speculation simply by appearing in a thirty-second Instagram video.

The video in question had been posted by Alex on Friday afternoon, apparently without consulting either of them, and consisted of several clips of Lando and Oscar arguing about the appropriate headline for their first article. Lando had initially been delighted by the prospect of demonstrating his extraordinary comedic talents to a wider audience, but his enthusiasm had deteriorated considerably when he discovered that the comments were almost exclusively concerned with Oscar's appearance, his accent and the deeply unfortunate possibility that he might actually be romantically available.

One particularly enthusiastic student had suggested that Oscar's ability to maintain eye contact while criticizing Lando's grammatical choices was the most attractive thing they'd witnessed all semester.

Lando stared at the comment for several seconds before informing Alex that the university clearly needed to invest considerably more money in mental health services.

"You're just jealous," Alex said, grinning as he scrolled through the comments on his phone. "Look, somebody's literally asking for Oscar's Instagram."

"That's embarrassing for them, actually," Lando replied, dropping into the chair beside Charles. "Imagine fancying someone whose idea of a good time is reorganizing a spreadsheet."

Oscar, who was sitting at the opposite end of the table and had apparently been attempting to ignore the entire conversation, looked up from his laptop. "Imagine fancying someone who thinks arriving twenty minutes late is a personality trait."

"Twenty-three," George corrected absently, without looking up from his own computer.

"Thank you, George," Oscar said.

"You're all genuinely obsessed with me," Lando informed them, although he couldn't quite stop himself from smiling when Oscar rolled his eyes.

Charles leaned over to examine Alex's phone, immediately bursting into laughter when he discovered a comment suggesting that Lando and Oscar should simply date each other and save everyone the trouble of watching them argue.

"Oh, that's brilliant," he announced, turning the screen towards Lando. "Apparently, the people have spoken."

Lando glanced at the comment and felt a strange, unexpected flicker of something beneath his ribs, although he immediately dismissed it as the natural discomfort of discovering that complete strangers were apparently speculating about his romantic life.

"Yeah, well, the people are idiots," he replied, stealing Charles's coffee and taking a sip before immediately regretting it. "Jesus Christ, what is that?"

"Coffee."

"Tastes like you've filtered it through an old sock."

Oscar looked up again. "You drink iced coffee in November. I'm not sure you're qualified to criticize anyone."

"At least mine tastes nice."

"Does it?"

"You're genuinely unbearable."

"And yet you keep talking to me."

Lando opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again when Oscar smiled at him with the sort of quiet satisfaction that suggested he'd known precisely what he was doing. It was becoming increasingly irritating how good Oscar had become at this, how effortlessly he could turn Lando's own jokes against him without ever appearing particularly invested in the outcome, and Lando was beginning to suspect that their ongoing arguments were considerably more entertaining for Oscar than he'd initially believed.

Unfortunately, he was also beginning to suspect that he rather enjoyed them.

Their second installment was supposed to explore the difference between compatibility and attraction, two concepts that Lando had previously considered more or less interchangeable but which Oscar had spent an unreasonable amount of time insisting were fundamentally distinct. According to Oscar, shared interests, similar values and compatible expectations could provide a strong foundation for a relationship without necessarily producing romantic chemistry, while physical attraction alone was rarely sufficient to sustain anything meaningful.

Lando thought this sounded like the sort of thing people said when they were attempting to convince themselves that their latest romantic interest wasn't actually quite as boring as they'd initially suspected.

Oscar disagreed.

Rather vehemently, in fact.

"You're telling me you'd rather date someone who likes all the same boring stuff as you than someone you actually fancy?" Lando demanded on Tuesday afternoon, leaning back in his chair while Oscar examined the notes for their next article.

"That's not what I said."

"It's basically what you said."

"No, Lando. I said that attraction and compatibility aren't necessarily the same thing."

"Right, but surely you've got to fancy them first."

"Well, yes, generally."

"So I'm right."

Oscar looked up, his expression completely deadpan. "Congratulations. You've successfully misunderstood the entire point."

Charles laughed from the other side of the table, and Lando informed him that his continued participation in this conversation was neither necessary nor appreciated.

The argument might have continued indefinitely if Oscar hadn't glanced at his phone and announced that he needed to leave for his second date, at which point Lando experienced a sudden, deeply inconvenient sense of irritation that he immediately attempted to disguise as professional curiosity.

"Where are you going?" he asked, trying to sound casual.

"The museum."

Lando stared at him. "The museum?"

"Yes, Lando. It's a building where they keep old things. You might've heard of them."

"Very funny. What are you going to do, then? Hold hands in front of a dinosaur?"

"It's an exhibition about the history of political journalism, actually."

"Christ. You're going to have the time of your life, aren't you?"

Oscar smiled as he packed his laptop. "Hopefully."

"And who's the lucky victim?"

"Morgan. They're studying history."

"Of course they are."

Oscar paused, looking at him with an expression of mild amusement. "Is there a problem?"

"No, mate. Absolutely no problem. Have a lovely time looking at old newspapers together. Very romantic."

"Thanks. I will."

Lando watched him leave, feeling increasingly annoyed by the fact that Oscar appeared genuinely pleased about the prospect of spending an entire afternoon discussing historical documents with somebody else.

Charles waited approximately three seconds before turning towards him.

"You're being weird."

"I'm literally sitting here."

"Yeah, being weird."

"Fuck off, Charles."

"Just saying. You asked about six questions in the space of thirty seconds."

"I'm conducting research."

"Of course you are."

Lando returned his attention to his laptop with considerably more enthusiasm than he actually felt, although he managed to produce approximately forty-seven words before giving up and checking his phone.

There were no messages from Oscar.

He decided that he was probably just hungry.

His own second date had taken place the previous Saturday at a party hosted by a group of music students, and although he'd initially been concerned that the entire evening might involve another prolonged conversation about somebody's deeply questionable career aspirations, he'd been pleasantly surprised by how easily he'd got along with Daniel. Daniel was twenty-two, played guitar in a university band and possessed the sort of effortless confidence that Lando generally found attractive, and they'd spent nearly three hours together discussing music, terrible student accommodation and the increasingly unfortunate romantic histories of their mutual friends.

They'd kissed outside the student union shortly after midnight, an entirely pleasant experience that had left Lando feeling reasonably optimistic about the possibility that his dating life might finally be improving.

Unfortunately, he'd then spent most of the journey home wondering whether Oscar would find Daniel interesting.

He'd eventually dismissed the thought as a perfectly natural consequence of spending so much time discussing romantic compatibility with his editor, although the explanation became considerably less convincing when he found himself opening their messages at half past one in the morning.

Lando: Second date was actually good btw

Oscar: Congratulations.

Lando: You're supposed to ask questions.

Oscar: Was it good?

Lando: Wow. Incredible journalism.

Oscar: I'm trying to sleep.

Lando: We kissed.

 

There had been a considerably longer pause before Oscar replied to that particular message, and although Lando was perfectly aware that normal people didn't necessarily respond immediately to texts received at half past one in the morning, he'd found himself staring at the screen with an increasingly unreasonable amount of anticipation.

Oscar: That's nice.

Lando: That's nice?????

Oscar: What would you like me to say?

Lando: Idk. Congratulations. Well done. Very proud of you Lando.

Oscar: Very proud of you, Lando. Now go to bed.

 

Lando had laughed, sent him an entirely unnecessary collection of heart emojis and finally gone to sleep, although he'd spent considerably more time thinking about Oscar's response than about the actual kiss.

He wasn't entirely sure what that said about him.

He suspected he didn't particularly want to know.

Oscar returned from his museum date shortly after five on Tuesday afternoon, carrying a paper bag from a bakery near the university and looking so offensively content that Lando immediately decided the entire situation was deeply suspicious.

"Well?" he demanded, abandoning the article he'd been pretending to write for the past hour.

Oscar glanced up. "Hello to you, too."

"How was it?"

"Good, thanks."

Lando stared at him. "You're doing this on purpose."

"Doing what?"

"Being deliberately boring. You can't just say good, thanks. We need details."

Oscar settled into his chair, apparently entirely unbothered by the interrogation. "We went to the exhibition, got coffee afterward and had a nice conversation. Morgan's really interesting, actually. They knew quite a lot about the history of the press."

"Right," Lando said, feeling something unpleasant settle in his stomach. "So you basically went on a date with a walking Wikipedia page."

Oscar smiled. "Something like that."

"And did you fancy them?"

"Lando."

"What? It's literally relevant to the article."

"Yes, they're attractive."

Lando looked down at his laptop, suddenly irritated by the fact that he'd asked a question he apparently didn't particularly want answered.

"Right. Brilliant. Good for you."

Oscar regarded him for a moment, his expression becoming faintly curious. "You all right?"

"Yeah, obviously. Why wouldn't I be?"

"No reason."

Lando returned his attention to his article with an enthusiasm that was almost certainly unconvincing, although he couldn't quite stop himself from glancing up when Oscar's phone vibrated several minutes later.

Oscar smiled at the screen.

Lando immediately decided that he disliked Morgan.

It was an entirely irrational conclusion, particularly given that he'd never actually met them, and he was sensible enough to recognize that the feeling probably had more to do with the increasingly uncomfortable realization that Oscar possessed a romantic life entirely separate from their shared project than with anything Morgan had personally done.

Nevertheless, when Charles leaned across the table and asked whether Oscar had secured himself a second date, Lando experienced an inexplicable urge to leave the room.

Oscar merely shrugged, informing them that he and Morgan had exchanged numbers and might arrange to see each other again, although he hadn't made any definite plans.

Lando returned his attention to his laptop.

For the next twenty minutes, he managed to produce approximately forty-seven words.

He blamed the weather.

Their scheduled interview with a relationship researcher was cancelled on Thursday evening, which was unfortunate because Lando had spent most of the afternoon preparing a series of increasingly elaborate questions about romantic compatibility and had even arrived at the editorial office on time for once. Oscar, who had apparently been expecting the cancellation since lunchtime, received the news with his usual composure and suggested that they reschedule for the following week, although Lando could tell from the way he closed his laptop that he was considerably more disappointed than he wanted to admit.

They'd been planning to interview a postgraduate researcher from the psychology department about the role of shared interests in romantic attraction, and Oscar had spent several days preparing questions that Lando privately suspected were more appropriate for a doctoral dissertation than a university newspaper column. Nevertheless, he'd found himself looking forward to the conversation, partly because he was genuinely interested in the subject and partly because it meant spending another evening working with Oscar.

The latter was becoming an increasingly inconvenient habit.

"Well," Lando announced, closing his laptop and stretching his arms above his head, "since you've dragged me all the way here for absolutely no reason, I think you owe me coffee."

Oscar looked up. "I didn't cancel the interview."

"Still your fault."

"Naturally."

"Come on. There's a little place near campus I've been meaning to try."

Oscar glanced towards the rain-streaked windows. "It's absolutely pouring outside."

"You're Australian. Surely you're used to a bit of weather."

"That's not how Australia works."

"God, you're difficult. Do you want coffee or not?"

Oscar considered him for a moment before finally sighing and reaching for his coat. "Fine. But if I get soaked, I'm blaming you."

"Wouldn't dream of expecting anything else."

They ended up at a tiny secondhand bookshop several streets away from campus, a place Lando had walked past countless times without ever feeling particularly compelled to investigate. It occupied the ground floor of an old terraced building, with enormous windows that were permanently obscured by elaborate displays of books and a narrow wooden door that rang a little brass bell whenever someone entered.

Inside, the shelves stretched almost to the ceiling, arranged according to a system that appeared to make sense only to the elderly woman sitting behind the counter, and the entire place smelled of old paper, freshly brewed coffee and the faint, comforting dampness of a building that had probably been standing for considerably longer than anyone currently occupying it.

Oscar looked delighted.

It was such an unexpected expression that Lando stopped just inside the doorway, watching as Oscar wandered towards a particularly crowded shelf and began examining the books with the quiet enthusiasm of someone who had just discovered an entirely new source of happiness.

Lando had always known that Oscar liked reading, obviously, but he'd generally assumed that his literary preferences involved investigative journalism, political biographies and the sort of deeply depressing nonfiction that people displayed prominently on their bookshelves to convince visitors they were intellectually superior. It therefore came as something of a shock when he discovered Oscar standing in front of an entire section dedicated to romance novels, holding a particularly ridiculous paperback with an illustrated cover depicting two improbably attractive people embracing beneath a suspiciously dramatic sunset.

Lando stared at him.

Oscar looked up.

For a moment, neither of them spoke, and then Lando began smiling with the sort of delighted malevolence that Oscar had presumably learned to recognize as an immediate threat to his personal dignity.

"Sorry," Lando said, attempting to sound considerably more serious than he actually felt. "Is that The Billionaire's Accidental Bride?"

Oscar glanced down at the cover. "Apparently."

"You're actually going to read that?"

"Thinking about it."

"Jesus Christ. Oscar Piastri reads terrible romance novels. This is genuinely the greatest day of my life."

Oscar rolled his eyes, although he was smiling as he returned the book to the shelf. "They're entertaining."

"They're absolutely horrendous."

"Have you read one?"

"Obviously not."

"Then how would you know?"

Lando stared at him, momentarily offended by the entirely reasonable question, before reaching for another paperback with an equally ridiculous title.

"Married to the Secret Prince," he read aloud, holding the book up between them. "Oscar, mate, please tell me you haven't read this one."

Oscar glanced at the cover.

Then, with the sort of perfectly straight expression that made Lando want to strangle him, he said, "Actually, that one's quite good."

Lando nearly dropped the book.

For the next twenty minutes, they wandered through the shop arguing about the literary merits of increasingly absurd romantic premises, with Oscar defending the emotional satisfaction of predictable happy endings and Lando insisting that any story involving a billionaire who concealed his identity to find true love was fundamentally incompatible with basic human intelligence.

Oscar countered that Lando had apparently spent the previous week participating in an elaborate dating experiment for a university newspaper and was therefore in no position to criticize fictional characters for making questionable romantic decisions, which Lando found so offensive that he immediately threatened to include Oscar's reading habits in their next article.

Oscar reminded him that journalistic ethics generally discouraged publicly humiliating one's colleagues.

Lando informed him that certain exceptions were clearly necessary.

Their argument eventually attracted the attention of the elderly woman behind the counter, who asked whether they intended to purchase any of the books they'd spent the previous half hour discussing so enthusiastically. Lando apologized with considerably more sincerity than he ordinarily reserved for such occasions, while Oscar quietly selected two paperbacks from the pile and carried them towards the counter.

Lando was still laughing when they left.

It was only when they stepped outside that he realized the rain had started again.

London rain possessed a particular talent for arriving at the most inconvenient possible moment, and by the time Lando and Oscar had walked halfway down the street, what had initially seemed like a harmless drizzle had developed into something considerably more aggressive.

They hurried towards the nearest available shelter, eventually taking refuge beneath the narrow entrance of a closed antique shop, where Lando immediately began complaining about the weather while Oscar examined his newly purchased books with the expression of someone who had somehow managed to have a perfectly enjoyable evening despite the increasingly miserable conditions.

The street was almost empty, the occasional passing car sending ripples through the puddles collecting along the pavement, and the orange glow of the streetlights reflected against the wet cobblestones in a way that made the entire scene look rather more romantic than Lando considered strictly necessary. He was beginning to regret having left his jacket in the editorial office, particularly when a cold gust of wind swept beneath the awning and made him shiver.

Oscar noticed immediately.

"You're cold."

"No, mate. I'm shaking because I'm absolutely delighted to be standing in the rain."

Oscar rolled his eyes, already shrugging off his jacket. "Here."

Lando stared at him. "What?"

"Take it."

"You're literally going to freeze."

"I'm wearing a jumper."

"So am I."

"Yes, and you're still shivering."

Lando accepted the jacket with considerably more reluctance than he actually felt, pulling it around his shoulders and immediately noticing that it was still warm from Oscar's body. It smelled faintly of laundry detergent and something else he couldn't quite identify, something clean and familiar that made him suddenly, uncomfortably aware of the fact that he was wearing Oscar Piastri's clothes.

"Careful," he said, attempting to recover some semblance of composure. "If you keep doing things like this, people are going to think you're trying to seduce me."

Oscar looked at him.

Then he smiled.

"If I were trying to seduce you, Lando, I'd probably be a little less subtle."

Lando forgot how to speak.

It was a deeply unfortunate development, particularly because he was generally quite proud of his ability to maintain a conversation under practically any circumstances, and he found himself staring at Oscar with the sudden realization that he'd apparently been underestimating the younger man's capacity for causing serious emotional damage.

Oscar, meanwhile, looked entirely unbothered by what he'd just said.

Which was frankly offensive.

"Right," Lando managed eventually, clearing his throat. "Well. Good to know."

Oscar laughed, leaning back against the wall beside him, and Lando found himself experiencing the peculiar sensation of wanting to move closer despite the fact that they were already standing considerably nearer to each other than was strictly necessary.

For several minutes, they watched the rain in comfortable silence, occasionally commenting on the unfortunate weather or the increasingly ridiculous titles of Oscar's newly purchased books, until Lando found himself returning to the question that had occupied most of their conversations over the previous week.

"Do you actually believe in all that stuff?" he asked eventually, glancing towards Oscar.

"What stuff?"

"Love. Soulmates. The whole idea that there's one person out there who's somehow perfect for you."

Oscar considered the question for a moment, his expression becoming unexpectedly thoughtful. "I don't know about soulmates. I think people probably put too much pressure on the idea that there's supposed to be one perfect person."

"So you don't believe in love?"

"That's not what I said."

"Very romantic of you, mate."

Oscar smiled slightly before looking out towards the rain. "I think love's probably more about choosing someone than finding someone who's magically perfect for you. You know, all the little things you do for each other. Remembering how they take their coffee, listening when they've had a bad day, deciding to stay even when things aren't particularly easy."

Lando looked at him.

Oscar continued, apparently unaware that he'd just said something Lando was almost certainly going to spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about. "I don't think compatibility's about finding someone who agrees with you on absolutely everything. I think it's about finding someone you actually want to understand, even when they're being a complete idiot."

"Sounds exhausting."

"Well, yes. I imagine loving you would be."

Lando laughed, although there was something strangely warm about the way Oscar said it, something that made him wonder whether the joke had been quite as casual as it appeared.

"You're genuinely obsessed with me," he informed him, pulling Oscar's jacket a little more tightly around his shoulders.

"Unfortunately, you do make it rather difficult to forget you exist."

Lando turned towards him, preparing another appropriately sarcastic response, but the words disappeared when he realized how close they were standing. Oscar was looking at him with an expression that seemed almost unfamiliar, his usual composure softened by the warm light spilling from the shop window beside them, and for one strange, fleeting moment, Lando had the absurd impression that something important was about to happen.

Then a car drove through an enormous puddle, sending a spectacular wave of water across the pavement and narrowly missing both of them.

Lando yelped, Oscar burst out laughing, and whatever strange little moment had been developing between them dissolved into the sort of ridiculous chaos that seemed to follow Lando wherever he went.

"You're laughing?" Lando demanded, staring at him in genuine disbelief. "I nearly died!"

"You didn't nearly die."

"I could've drowned."

"In approximately three centimetres of water?"

"You're actually a terrible person."

Oscar was still laughing when they finally stepped out from beneath the awning, the rain having eased enough for them to make their way back towards campus without risking immediate hypothermia. Lando kept Oscar's jacket around his shoulders for the entire walk, despite the fact that he was no longer particularly cold, and when they eventually reached the intersection where their routes home diverged, he found himself unexpectedly reluctant to hand it back.

Oscar, however, merely told him to keep it until the following morning.

Lando stared at him. "What, so you've got an excuse to see me again?"

Oscar smiled. "Something like that."

And then, before Lando could think of anything remotely intelligent to say, he turned and headed towards his apartment, leaving Lando standing beneath a streetlight in the middle of London, wearing his editor's jacket and feeling as though something rather significant had just happened.

He wasn't entirely sure what.

He suspected he didn't particularly want to know.

By the time Lando finally returned home, Charles was sitting on the sofa watching a football match and eating what appeared to be the remains of somebody else's takeaway. He glanced up when Lando stepped through the door, his gaze travelling immediately towards the unfamiliar jacket before settling on Lando's face with an expression of such immediate delight that Lando considered turning around and leaving again.

"Whose jacket is that?"

"Mine."

Charles raised an eyebrow. "Since when do you own a jacket that actually fits?"

"Since always. Shut up."

"Is that Oscar's?"

Lando stared at him. "Why would you immediately assume it's Oscar's?"

"Because you've been out with Oscar for the last three hours, and you look like you've just been on the best date of your life."

"It wasn't a date."

"Didn't say it was."

"You literally just did."

Charles grinned, returning his attention to the television with the deeply irritating satisfaction of someone who had apparently discovered something extraordinarily entertaining and intended to make it everyone else's problem.

Lando informed him that he was being ridiculous, disappeared into his bedroom and spent several minutes attempting to convince himself that the entire evening had been perfectly ordinary. He'd gone to a bookshop with a colleague, discussed their ongoing journalistic project and borrowed a jacket because the weather had been unpleasant. There was absolutely nothing unusual about any of these things, and the fact that he could still smell Oscar's laundry detergent whenever he moved was entirely irrelevant.

He was just about to hang the jacket over the back of his chair when his phone vibrated.

Oscar: Home safe?

Lando stared at the message for a moment, feeling that increasingly familiar warmth settle beneath his ribs.

Lando: Unfortunately. Charles is being unbearable.

Oscar: So nothing unusual, then.

Lando: He's convinced we went on a date.

 

There was a pause.

A considerably longer pause than Lando thought was strictly necessary.

Oscar: Did you tell him we didn't?

 

Lando looked at the message.

Then he looked at the jacket hanging over his chair.

Lando: Obviously. Wouldn't want people thinking you've got terrible taste.

Oscar: Bit late for that. You saw the books I bought.

 

Lando laughed, dropping onto his bed and staring at the ceiling for several minutes before opening the notes app on his phone.

He wasn't entirely sure what possessed him to do it. Perhaps it was the lingering embarrassment of having spent the better part of an evening discovering that Oscar Piastri was considerably more interesting than he'd previously allowed himself to believe, or perhaps it was simply the increasingly unfortunate realisation that his editor had somehow become the most entertaining part of his university life.

Whatever the reason, he created a new note.

TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT OSCAR PIASTRI

He stared at the title for a moment, smiling despite himself, before beginning to type.

1. He thinks he's funny. He is, unfortunately, very funny.

Lando read it twice, feeling an entirely unreasonable sense of satisfaction, before locking his phone and pulling Oscar's jacket a little closer to his pillow.

It was just a joke.

Obviously.

He was absolutely not developing feelings for Oscar Piastri.

That would have been a spectacularly terrible idea.

___

By the time Lando returned Oscar's jacket on Monday morning, he had spent approximately four days pretending that he hadn't thought about the evening outside the bookshop at all, which was becoming a rather difficult performance to maintain considering he'd thought about it while brushing his teeth, sitting through lectures and attempting to write an article about romantic compatibility that had somehow acquired an unreasonable number of references to brown eyes.

He'd deleted those, obviously.

He wasn't completely insane.

He had also developed a deeply unfortunate habit of checking whether Oscar was online before going to sleep, although he maintained that this was a perfectly reasonable precaution when working on a collaborative project with someone who occasionally sent editorial comments at eleven forty-seven in the evening. The fact that their conversations had gradually expanded to include photographs of terrible university cafeteria food, complaints about George's increasingly elaborate spreadsheets and an ongoing argument about whether The Billionaire's Accidental Bride constituted a legitimate literary achievement was entirely incidental.

He was therefore feeling relatively confident in his ability to behave like a normal human being when he arrived at the editorial office shortly after ten, carrying two coffees and the jacket he'd spent an embarrassing amount of time debating whether to wash.

Oscar was sitting at his usual desk, examining an article with the sort of concentration that suggested he'd been there for several hours, and Lando experienced the familiar, inconvenient little rush of pleasure when he looked up.

"Morning, sunshine," Lando announced, dropping the jacket onto the table. "Miss me?"

Oscar glanced at his watch. "You're six minutes early."

"Thought I'd give you a heart attack."

"Nearly managed it."

"You're welcome. Brought you coffee as well."

Oscar accepted the cup, looking faintly suspicious. "What have you done?"

"Nothing. Why does everyone keep asking me that?"

"Experience."

Lando grinned, settling into the chair opposite him while Oscar unfolded his jacket and draped it over the back of his own chair. For some reason, watching him reclaim it produced a peculiar sense of disappointment that Lando immediately decided was ridiculous, particularly because he'd spent the entire weekend complaining to Charles about how inconvenient it was to have someone else's clothes taking up space in his bedroom.

"Thanks, by the way," he said, attempting to sound casual. "For the jacket. Very heroic of you."

Oscar looked up, his expression softening slightly. "No worries. Didn't want you dying of hypothermia."

"Would've been tragic. University loses its most talented journalist."

"Think we'd manage."

"You're actually incapable of being nice to me for more than thirty seconds, aren't you?"

Oscar smiled into his coffee. "Apparently."

Lando was still smiling when Alex arrived several minutes later, carrying his laptop and announcing that the second installment of their dating series had officially surpassed the readership figures of the first. The news was greeted with considerable enthusiasm by George, who immediately began discussing the possibility of approaching the student media committee with their updated engagement statistics, while Charles suggested that they celebrate by purchasing a new coffee machine before the existing one finally committed an act of industrial sabotage.

Oscar, naturally, insisted that they needed several more weeks of consistent growth before making any significant financial commitments.

Lando informed him that he was the least exciting person alive.

Oscar reminded him that he was still waiting for Lando's latest draft.

And just like that, everything was perfectly normal again.

Or at least it was until Wednesday.

Lando's third date was with a psychology student named Sam, who had suggested going bowling after several days of exchanging messages about the increasingly questionable activities their university considered appropriate for social events. Lando had initially been skeptical, mostly because he possessed approximately the same level of bowling ability as an unusually uncoordinated Labrador, but Sam had assured him that they were equally terrible and that the entire point was to have fun rather than demonstrate any particular athletic competence.

It was, much to Lando's surprise, an excellent date.

Sam was funny, easy to talk to and possessed the sort of relaxed confidence that made conversation feel effortless, and by the time they'd finished their first game, Lando had laughed so hard that his stomach hurt and developed an entirely unreasonable competitive streak despite the fact that he was losing by a margin that could only reasonably be described as humiliating.

"You're genuinely terrible at this," Sam observed, watching as Lando's latest attempt disappeared directly into the gutter.

"Actually, I'm letting you win. Very different thing."

"That's incredibly generous of you."

"I know. I'm a lovely person."

Sam laughed, and Lando found himself enjoying the easy rhythm of their conversation, the absence of any particular pressure to impress each other and the pleasant realization that not every romantic encounter needed to involve some sort of profound emotional revelation. They played two games, shared an enormous plate of chips and spent nearly an hour discussing everything from terrible childhood haircuts to the deeply unfortunate experience of accidentally liking somebody's Instagram photograph from four years earlier.

By the time they finally left, Lando was feeling considerably more optimistic about the experiment than he'd anticipated, and when Sam suggested taking a photograph together to commemorate his spectacular defeat, he agreed without hesitation.

Unfortunately, he made the deeply questionable decision to post it on Instagram.

The photograph showed him standing beside Sam with an enormous grin, one arm thrown around their shoulders and the bowling alley's ridiculous neon lighting casting everything in an unflattering shade of purple. It was an entirely harmless photograph, accompanied by a caption informing his followers that he'd been robbed of a perfectly deserved victory, and Lando thought absolutely nothing of it until he arrived at the editorial office the following morning.

Oscar was being weird.

Not obviously weird, admittedly. He was still sitting at his desk, still wearing one of his offensively sensible jumpers and still examining articles with the same expression of quiet concentration he adopted whenever he was attempting to ignore the rest of the world, but there was something different about the way he greeted Lando, a faint distance in his voice that hadn't been there the previous afternoon.

"Morning," Lando said, dropping into his usual chair. "You look miserable. Everything all right?"

"Fine, thanks."

"Wow. Enthusiastic."

Oscar glanced up. "Did you finish your draft?"

Lando blinked. "Nearly."

"Right. Could you send it over when you're done? I'd like to get it edited before tomorrow."

"Yeah, obviously. What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing's wrong with me."

"You're being all weird."

Oscar regarded him for a moment before returning his attention to his laptop. "I'm working, Lando."

It was a perfectly reasonable statement, and Lando hated it immediately.

He spent the next hour attempting to provoke Oscar into a normal conversation, making increasingly elaborate complaints about his bowling performance, asking whether he'd ever been bowling himself and eventually informing him that he'd apparently developed a serious sporting injury after attempting to demonstrate an entirely unnecessary amount of athletic enthusiasm.

Oscar responded politely to everything.

Politely.

It was horrifying.

By lunchtime, Lando had become convinced that he'd somehow offended him, although he couldn't remember having done anything particularly objectionable over the previous twenty-four hours. He'd arrived on time for their last meeting, submitted his article only slightly later than agreed and refrained from making any genuinely inappropriate jokes about Oscar's taste in romance novels, which, in his opinion, constituted an extraordinary demonstration of personal growth.

Charles, unfortunately, appeared to find the entire situation hilarious.

"He's jealous," he announced when Lando cornered him beside the coffee machine, demanding to know whether Oscar had mentioned anything about being annoyed with him.

Lando stared at him. "Don't be ridiculous."

"All right."

"He's not jealous."

"Didn't say he was."

"You literally just did."

Charles grinned. "Interesting that you're so bothered, though."

Lando informed him that he was an absolute idiot and returned to his desk, although he spent considerably more time than he wanted to admit wondering whether Charles might actually have a point.

It was ridiculous, obviously.

Oscar Piastri didn't get jealous.

He probably had a spreadsheet for managing his emotions.

The newspaper's celebration party took place on Friday evening at George's flat, which was an objectively terrible location for a party given that George considered the presence of more than six people in his living room a potential violation of several fundamental health and safety regulations. Nevertheless, Alex had insisted that their continued success deserved proper recognition, Charles had volunteered to organize drinks, and George had eventually agreed on the condition that nobody touched his record collection or attempted to use the balcony as a smoking area.

Lando arrived approximately forty minutes late, carrying a bottle of wine he'd purchased from the nearest supermarket and wearing a shirt that Charles had spent the better part of an hour insisting was considerably more attractive than the collection of oversized hoodies he ordinarily considered appropriate for social occasions.

He was feeling reasonably pleased with himself until Oscar arrived.

It was deeply unfair, actually, how different someone could look simply by wearing something other than their usual collection of sensible university clothes. Oscar was dressed in dark jeans and a plain black T-shirt beneath a light jacket, his hair slightly messier than usual and his expression considerably more relaxed than it had been throughout the previous two days, and Lando found himself staring at him with the deeply unpleasant realization that he'd apparently forgotten how to construct a normal sentence.

Charles noticed immediately.

Of course he did.

"Close your mouth, mate," he murmured, appearing beside Lando with two drinks and an expression of profound satisfaction. "You're embarrassing yourself."

"Fuck off."

"Very eloquent."

Lando accepted the drink with considerably more aggression than was strictly necessary and attempted to convince himself that Oscar's appearance was entirely irrelevant to his evening, although this became increasingly difficult when Oscar wandered over several minutes later and smiled at him with an expression that made Lando's stomach do something deeply unfortunate.

"All right?" Oscar asked, glancing towards his drink. "Started without me?"

"Obviously. Some of us actually know how to have fun."

"Is that what you call it?"

"You're just jealous because I look incredible."

Oscar's gaze travelled briefly over his shirt before returning to his face, and Lando experienced the sudden, deeply inconvenient sensation of being considerably warmer than he'd been several seconds earlier.

"You look nice, actually," Oscar said.

Lando stared at him.

Then, because he was apparently incapable of responding to a sincere compliment without immediately making the situation worse, he grinned and informed Oscar that he was welcome to continue admiring him for as long as he liked.

Oscar rolled his eyes, although he was smiling as he moved towards the kitchen.

Lando watched him leave.

Charles appeared beside him again.

"You're fucked," he observed cheerfully.

Lando considered committing a crime.

By half past eleven, George's living room had become considerably more crowded than its owner had originally intended, Alex was attempting to convince everyone to participate in an increasingly elaborate drinking game, and Charles had apparently developed a personal vendetta against the concept of moderation. Lando had spent most of the evening moving between conversations, laughing considerably more than was strictly necessary and attempting to ignore the fact that Oscar seemed to be avoiding him.

It was becoming increasingly difficult.

They'd spoken several times, obviously, but every conversation had been interrupted by somebody else demanding Oscar's attention, and Lando was beginning to feel the sort of irrational frustration that usually accompanied a particularly unsuccessful attempt to assemble flat-pack furniture.

Eventually, he escaped onto the balcony.

The air was cold enough to make him regret leaving his jacket inside, but the quiet was a welcome relief from the increasingly chaotic atmosphere of George's living room, and he leaned against the railing for several minutes, watching the lights of the city stretch into the distance beneath a dark, cloudless sky.

He was considering whether to go home when the balcony door opened behind him.

"Thought you might be out here."

Lando turned.

Oscar was standing in the doorway, holding two bottles of beer and wearing an expression that was considerably softer than the one he'd been subjected to throughout most of the previous forty-eight hours.

"Miss me?" Lando asked, attempting to sound casual.

Oscar handed him a bottle. "Something like that."

Lando accepted it, feeling that familiar little warmth settle beneath his ribs, and watched as Oscar moved to stand beside him at the railing. For several minutes, neither of them spoke, the distant noise of the party filtering through the closed balcony door while they watched the city beneath them.

Eventually, Lando glanced towards him.

"So, are you going to tell me what I've done wrong, or are we just pretending you've not been weird with me all week?"

Oscar looked at him, apparently surprised by the question. "What?"

"You've been acting like I've personally offended you. Which, to be fair, I probably have, but I'd quite like to know what I've done this time."

Oscar was quiet for a moment, his fingers turning the bottle absently between his hands. "You haven't done anything wrong."

"Right. Very convincing."

"I'm serious, Lando."

"Then what's going on?"

Oscar looked out towards the city, and Lando had the strange impression that he was considering several different answers before eventually settling on one that revealed considerably less than the others.

"Just been thinking about things," he said.

"Very specific. Love that."

Oscar smiled faintly. "The newspaper. Graduation. What I'm going to do afterward. All that."

Lando looked at him, suddenly aware that Oscar would be graduating at the end of the academic year, that the newspaper they'd spent so much time attempting to save would eventually belong to somebody else, and that there was an entire future waiting for Oscar that might not include the familiar routine of their editorial meetings and increasingly ridiculous arguments.

It was an unexpectedly unpleasant thought.

"What are you going to do afterward?" he asked, attempting to sound considerably less interested than he actually was.

"Hopefully a postgraduate journalism programme. I've applied to a few places, but they're quite competitive."

"You'll get in."

Oscar glanced towards him. "You don't know that."

"Yeah, I do. You're annoyingly good at everything."

"That's not remotely true."

"Mate, you make spreadsheets for fun. You're basically every university's dream student."

Oscar laughed softly, although there was something almost vulnerable about the way he looked down at his bottle afterward. He admitted that he wasn't entirely sure what he'd do if none of the programmes accepted him, that he'd spent so long working towards a particular future that the possibility of things not going according to plan was considerably more frightening than he liked to acknowledge.

Lando listened, unusually quiet, as Oscar explained that he'd always felt a certain pressure to know what he wanted, to make sensible decisions and demonstrate that the opportunities he'd been given were being put to good use. He wasn't complaining, exactly, but there was something exhausting about the expectation that he should always have a plan, particularly when he was beginning to realize that the future was considerably less predictable than he'd once believed.

"You're allowed to not know what you're doing, you know," Lando said eventually, surprising himself with the sudden seriousness of his voice. "You're twenty-one, Oscar. You don't have to have your entire life sorted out."

Oscar looked at him, a faint smile appearing at the corner of his mouth. "That's rather rich coming from you."

"Excuse me?"

"You don't exactly seem comfortable with uncertainty yourself."

Lando laughed, although the observation landed considerably closer to something he'd been attempting to ignore than he particularly appreciated.

"Mate, my entire life is uncertainty. I don't even know what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow."

"That's not quite the same thing."

"Isn't it?"

Oscar regarded him for a moment before asking what he actually wanted to do after university, and Lando found himself hesitating over a question he'd spent the better part of two years attempting to avoid. He'd originally joined the newspaper because he wanted to become a sports journalist, had spent countless hours watching races and football matches and imagining what it might be like to write about something he genuinely loved, but somewhere along the way he'd become the person everyone expected to produce entertaining lifestyle articles and make people laugh.

He wasn't entirely sure when he'd stopped telling people what he actually wanted.

"Journalism, hopefully," he admitted eventually. "Proper journalism, I mean. Sports, maybe. I've been looking at a few internships, but they're ridiculously competitive, and I don't really know if I've got a chance."

Oscar turned towards him. "Of course you've got a chance."

Lando smiled faintly. "You don't know that."

"No, but I know you're good enough to apply."

There was something about the quiet certainty in Oscar's voice that made Lando look at him properly, and for a moment he found himself remembering their conversation in the editorial office, the way Oscar had spoken about his writing as though it was something genuinely worth taking seriously.

"What if I don't get in?" Lando asked, attempting to sound considerably more casual than he actually felt.

Oscar shrugged slightly. "Then you apply somewhere else. Or you try again. Not getting something doesn't mean you weren't good enough to want it."

Lando looked down at his bottle.

It was such a simple observation, delivered with such apparent sincerity, that he found himself feeling strangely exposed, as though Oscar had somehow managed to identify the exact thing he'd spent years attempting to disguise beneath increasingly elaborate jokes.

"God," he muttered eventually. "You're actually quite good at this emotional support thing when you're not being a complete bastard."

Oscar laughed. "Thanks. I think."

"Don't let it go to your head."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

They stood together in comfortable silence for several minutes, the distant noise of the party filtering through the balcony door while Lando watched the city beneath them. He was beginning to feel considerably more relaxed than he'd anticipated, although he remained uncomfortably aware of how close Oscar was standing, the occasional brush of their shoulders sending an entirely unreasonable little flicker of warmth through his chest.

Eventually, Oscar turned towards him.

"Can I ask you something?"

Lando glanced up. "Depends. Is it going to be embarrassing?"

"Probably."

"Brilliant. Go on."

Oscar hesitated for a moment, his expression becoming unexpectedly serious. "Did you actually like Sam?"

Lando blinked.

It was such an unexpected question that he found himself staring at Oscar for several seconds before remembering that he was supposed to answer.

"Yeah," he said eventually. "He was lovely. Why?"

Oscar shrugged, looking down at his bottle. "Just wondering."

Lando watched him for a moment, suddenly remembering Charles's deeply irritating suggestion that Oscar had been jealous, and felt something strange and rather hopeful begin to develop beneath his ribs.

"Are you jealous?" he asked, attempting to sound teasing.

Oscar looked up.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then Oscar smiled, although there was something rather different about the expression this time, something that made Lando's stomach do an entirely unnecessary little somersault.

"Would it make you happy if I was?"

Lando forgot how to breathe.

It was a deeply unfortunate development, particularly because he was generally quite proud of his ability to maintain a conversation under practically any circumstances, and he found himself staring at Oscar with the sudden realization that he'd apparently been underestimating the younger man's capacity for causing serious emotional damage.

"Well," he managed eventually, clearing his throat. "Depends how jealous we're talking."

Oscar laughed softly, taking a small step closer.

Lando became abruptly, painfully aware of the fact that there was now very little space between them, that Oscar's eyes were considerably warmer than he'd previously appreciated and that the entire situation was beginning to feel rather less like an ordinary conversation between colleagues and considerably more like something he wasn't entirely prepared to acknowledge.

"You're being very quiet," Oscar observed.

"Just enjoying the view."

Oscar glanced towards the city. "It's quite nice, actually."

"Wasn't talking about the city."

The words escaped before Lando had properly considered them, and for one spectacularly terrifying moment, he genuinely contemplated throwing himself over the balcony rather than dealing with the consequences.

Oscar looked at him.

Then, very slowly, he smiled.

"Right," he said quietly.

Lando laughed, mostly because he couldn't think of anything else to do, and looked down at his bottle with the sudden realization that his face was probably turning an entirely inappropriate shade of red.

Oscar moved a little closer.

"Do you ever stop talking?" he asked, his voice considerably softer than before.

Lando looked up.

For a moment, he forgot about the party, the newspaper, their increasingly complicated dating experiment and the fact that Oscar was supposed to be the irritating little bastard who corrected his grammar and complained about his deadlines.

There was only Oscar, standing impossibly close beneath the cold November sky, looking at him with an expression that made something deep inside Lando's chest ache in a way he couldn't quite explain.

"I could be persuaded," Lando murmured.

Oscar's gaze dropped briefly towards his mouth.

Lando stopped breathing.

And then—

"LANDO!"

The balcony door flew open with such spectacular force that Lando nearly dropped his beer, and Charles appeared in the doorway wearing the deeply unfortunate expression of someone who had absolutely no idea that he'd just committed an unforgivable crime against humanity.

"Mate, you've got to come inside. Someone's thrown up in George's kitchen, and he's genuinely about to have a nervous breakdown."

Lando stared at him.

Oscar closed his eyes.

For several seconds, nobody spoke.

Then Lando turned towards Charles with the sort of expression ordinarily reserved for people who had committed particularly serious acts of betrayal.

"I'm going to fucking kill you."

Charles blinked. "What?"

"Actually going to murder you."

"Mate, what have I done?"

Oscar made a strangled noise beside him, and when Lando turned, he discovered that the younger man was laughing so hard he had to lean against the railing.

Which was, frankly, deeply unfair.

Lando stared at him for a moment before beginning to laugh himself, partly because the entire situation was objectively ridiculous and partly because he was fairly certain that if he didn't laugh, he might actually start screaming.

Charles looked between them, his expression gradually transforming from confusion into something considerably more delighted.

"Oh," he said.

Lando pointed at him. "Don't."

"Oh, my God."

"Charles."

"OH, MY GOD."

Oscar was still laughing when they finally returned to the party, and Lando spent the remainder of the evening attempting to convince himself that the entire incident had been a perfectly ordinary moment of temporary insanity brought on by alcohol, cold weather and the deeply unfortunate fact that Oscar Piastri apparently looked extraordinarily attractive in a black T-shirt.

It was an entirely reasonable explanation.

He was absolutely sticking with it.

At two seventeen the following morning, Lando was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and attempting to convince himself that he hadn't spent the previous three hours replaying the moment on the balcony in increasingly unnecessary detail, when his phone vibrated.

Oscar: You get home all right?

 

Lando stared at the message, feeling that familiar little warmth settle beneath his ribs.

Lando: Unfortunately. Charles is still alive.

Oscar: Shame.

Lando: Honestly considering moving out.

Oscar: Seems a bit dramatic.

Lando: He ruined my entire evening.

 

There was a pause.

A considerably longer pause than Lando thought was strictly necessary.

Oscar: Did he?

 

Lando looked at the message.

Then he looked at the ceiling.

Then he considered throwing his phone out of the window.

Lando: Obviously. Was having a perfectly lovely conversation before he interrupted.

Oscar: Right.

Lando: Very rude of him actually.

Oscar: Terrible timing.

 

Lando stared at the screen for several seconds before typing a response, deleting it, typing something else and eventually deciding that the entire situation was becoming considerably more emotionally dangerous than he'd originally anticipated.

Lando: Anyway. You looked nice tonight.

He immediately regretted sending it.

Then Oscar replied.

Oscar: So did you.

 

Lando buried his face in his pillow.

He was absolutely fucked.

The following morning, he opened the notes app on his phone and returned to the list he'd started after their evening at the bookshop.

TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT OSCAR PIASTRI

1. He thinks he's funny. He is, unfortunately, very funny.

He stared at the screen for a moment before adding several new entries.

2. He remembers absolutely everything, which is deeply inconvenient when I'm trying to pretend I don't care about something.

3. He's always right, and I genuinely think he should consider being wrong occasionally for the sake of everyone else's mental health.

Lando hesitated over the fourth entry, remembering the balcony, the way Oscar had moved closer and the brief, terrifying moment when he'd genuinely believed they were about to kiss.

Then he began typing.

4. He has absolutely no understanding of personal space.

He read the sentence twice, feeling a ridiculous little smile spread across his face, before adding a final observation beneath it.

Not that I'm complaining.

He stared at the words for several seconds.

Then he deleted them.

Then he put his phone facedown on the mattress and decided that he was never, under any circumstances, allowing Charles Leclerc to read that list.

___

By Monday morning, Lando had developed a rather complicated relationship with the concept of eye contact, which was unfortunate because Oscar Piastri apparently considered it a perfectly normal component of human interaction and had absolutely no intention of making Lando's life any easier. They'd exchanged approximately forty-seven messages since Friday evening, neither of them had mentioned what had almost happened on George's balcony.

Lando had thought about it constantly.

He'd thought about it while brushing his teeth, attempting to finish his latest article and sitting through an entire lecture on contemporary media ethics, during which he'd managed to take approximately three lines of notes before realizing that he'd spent the previous twenty minutes staring at the same slide and remembering the way Oscar had looked at his mouth. It was becoming a rather serious problem, particularly because he'd spent most of his adult life priding himself on his ability to maintain a perfectly casual attitude towards romantic attraction, and the sudden realization that he might actually want something considerably more complicated than an enjoyable evening with somebody attractive was deeply inconvenient.

He was therefore feeling relatively confident in his ability to behave like a normal human being when he arrived at the editorial office shortly after nine, nearly an hour before their scheduled meeting, carrying two coffees and an entirely unreasonable amount of nervous energy.

Oscar was already there.

Of course he was.

He was sitting at his usual desk, wearing a dark green jumper with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and Lando experienced the familiar, increasingly irritating sensation of forgetting precisely what he'd intended to say when Oscar looked up and smiled at him.

"You're early," Oscar observed, glancing towards the clock. "Again."

"Thought I'd surprise you."

"Beginning to think someone's replaced you with a considerably more responsible version."

"Wouldn't go that far, mate."

Oscar's smile widened slightly as Lando placed one of the coffees beside his laptop, and there was something so unexpectedly domestic about the little exchange that Lando immediately felt the need to make it worse.

"Careful," he said, dropping into the chair opposite him. "If you keep accepting coffee from me, people are going to think we're dating."

Oscar looked up.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then Oscar smiled into his coffee and replied, "Wouldn't want that, would we?"

Lando stared at him.

It was deeply unfair, actually, how easily Oscar could say things like that and then return to his laptop as though he hadn't just caused a minor cardiovascular incident. Lando spent the next several minutes attempting to think of an appropriately devastating response, eventually settling on the observation that Oscar would be extraordinarily lucky to date someone as charming and talented as him, but the moment had already passed, and Oscar merely informed him that his latest article was due before lunchtime.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to determine whether Oscar was flirting with him or simply possessed a particularly sophisticated talent for psychological warfare.

Their dating experiment was continuing with considerably more success than Lando had anticipated, although he was beginning to suspect that the most interesting part of the entire project had very little to do with the people they were actually dating.

Oscar's third date had taken place on Tuesday afternoon, a visit to a little independent bookshop with a literature student named Taylor who apparently shared his interest in contemporary fiction and had suggested they spend the afternoon browsing before getting coffee. Lando had initially been delighted by the opportunity to make several deeply inappropriate jokes about Oscar's increasingly predictable romantic preferences, particularly when he discovered that Taylor was apparently interested in the same sort of deeply depressing literary fiction Oscar occasionally insisted on recommending to him.

Unfortunately, Oscar had seemed genuinely pleased about the prospect.

"So, another bookshop?" Lando asked on Tuesday morning, leaning against Oscar's desk with the sort of casual confidence he was increasingly struggling to maintain in his presence. "You're really branching out, aren't you?"

Oscar glanced up. "It's a different bookshop."

"Wow. Very adventurous."

"Thought so."

"Going to buy some more terrible romance novels?"

"Possibly."

"Should I be jealous?"

Oscar looked at him.

Lando immediately regretted opening his mouth.

"Of the books?" Oscar asked eventually, his expression entirely too innocent.

"Obviously. You've got a deeply concerning emotional attachment to fictional billionaires."

Oscar smiled, and Lando found himself wondering whether the younger man was deliberately avoiding the question or whether he'd simply developed an unfortunate habit of interpreting everything Oscar said as evidence of some elaborate romantic conspiracy.

He decided that he was probably just tired.

Unfortunately, Oscar returned from the date looking perfectly content, which Lando found deeply irritating for reasons he had absolutely no intention of examining.

Taylor had apparently been lovely, intelligent and easy to talk to, and they'd spent most of the afternoon discussing their favourite books before getting coffee at a little café nearby. Oscar described the experience with his usual understated enthusiasm, occasionally smiling as he recalled something particularly entertaining Taylor had said, and Lando found himself experiencing the familiar, increasingly unpleasant sensation of wanting to ask considerably more questions than would have been appropriate for a normal professional conversation.

He settled for asking whether Oscar had kissed them.

Oscar raised an eyebrow.

Lando immediately wished he hadn't.

"You're very interested in that particular aspect of my dating life," Oscar observed.

"Journalistic research."

"Of course."

"So?"

Oscar smiled, returning his attention to his laptop. "No."

Lando felt an entirely unreasonable little rush of relief.

He was absolutely not going to think about that.

His own fourth date took place on Thursday evening at a little Italian restaurant several streets away from campus, the sort of place with candlelit tables, an unnecessarily elaborate wine list and a menu that appeared determined to charge people twenty pounds for a plate of pasta. His date, a media student named Jordan, was attractive, charming and perfectly capable of maintaining an interesting conversation, and Lando had absolutely no reason to spend most of the evening thinking about somebody else.

Unfortunately, that was precisely what he did.

He thought about Oscar when Jordan asked what he was planning to do after graduation, remembering their conversation on George's balcony and the quiet certainty with which Oscar had insisted that he was good enough to apply for the journalism internships he'd spent months avoiding. He thought about Oscar when the waiter brought their drinks, wondering whether he'd complain about the restaurant's deeply questionable pricing strategy, and he thought about Oscar when Jordan made a joke about the university newspaper, experiencing a sudden, entirely inappropriate urge to explain that his editor was actually considerably funnier than people gave him credit for.

By the time dessert arrived, Lando had begun to suspect that he was developing a serious problem.

"So," Jordan said, leaning forward with an expression of genuine interest, "what's your type, then?"

Lando blinked.

It was such an ordinary question, the sort of thing he'd answered countless times before without giving it any particular thought, that he was momentarily surprised by how difficult it suddenly seemed.

"Don't really have one," he replied, attempting to sound casual. "Someone funny, I guess. Someone I can actually talk to."

"That's quite vague."

"Yeah, well, I'm a complicated man."

Jordan laughed, and Lando smiled automatically, although his mind had already wandered somewhere considerably less appropriate.

Someone funny.

Someone he could talk to.

Someone who remembered things he'd written two years earlier and somehow made him feel as though he might actually be capable of becoming the person he'd always wanted to be.

Someone with brown eyes and a deeply concerning affection for spreadsheets.

Jesus Christ.

He was absolutely fucked.

At twelve forty-three that evening, Lando was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling and attempting to convince himself that he'd had a perfectly enjoyable date, when his phone vibrated.

Oscar: How was dinner?

 

Lando stared at the message for a moment before smiling despite himself.

Lando: Very romantic. Candles and everything.

Oscar: Sounds nice.

Lando: You jealous?

 

There was a pause.

A considerably longer pause than Lando thought was strictly necessary.

Oscar: Of the candles?

 

Lando laughed, burying his face in his pillow before typing a response.

Lando: You're genuinely impossible.

Oscar: How was the actual date?

Lando: Good. Jordan's lovely.

Oscar: That's good.

Lando stared at the message, suddenly feeling rather dissatisfied with the entire conversation.

Lando: What are you doing?

Oscar: Trying to finish an article.

Lando: At nearly 1am?

Oscar: Some of us have deadlines.

Lando: Some of us have lives.

Oscar: You've been texting me for the last ten minutes.

 

Lando grinned.

Lando: Maybe you're my life.

He immediately regretted sending it.

Then Oscar replied.

Oscar: That's a bit concerning, actually.

 

Lando laughed so hard that Charles shouted at him through the wall to shut up, and he spent the next two hours exchanging increasingly ridiculous messages with Oscar about everything from the newspaper's latest readership figures to the deeply questionable romantic decisions of the characters in Oscar's current novel.

By the time he finally went to sleep, it was nearly three in the morning.

He hadn't thought about Jordan for approximately four hours.

The following Friday, Oscar's laptop crashed.

Under ordinary circumstances, Lando would have considered this a perfectly reasonable opportunity to demonstrate the extraordinary comedic potential of a man who had spent most of his university career lecturing other people about the importance of organization suddenly discovering that technology was not, in fact, entirely under his control. Unfortunately, the crash occurred approximately six hours before their latest article was due for publication, and Oscar's expression when he realized that the most recent version of their joint draft had apparently disappeared was sufficiently alarming that Lando immediately decided this was probably not the appropriate moment for jokes.

"Right," Oscar said, staring at the screen with the sort of controlled horror that suggested he was approximately thirty seconds away from committing a serious act of violence against an inanimate object. "That's not ideal."

Lando leaned over his shoulder, examining the frozen laptop with considerably more concentration than the situation probably required. "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Oscar looked at him.

Lando raised both hands. "Sorry. Sorry. Just trying to help."

"I've got a backup at home," Oscar muttered, already reaching for his phone. "It's from yesterday evening, so we'll lose some of the edits, but we should be able to recover most of it."

"Right. Brilliant. Let's go, then."

Oscar glanced up. "What?"

"Your place. Come on. We've got six hours, haven't we?"

"You don't have to—"

"Mate, it's our article. I'm not letting you sit here having a nervous breakdown on your own."

Oscar looked at him for a moment, something unexpectedly soft appearing in his expression before he finally nodded and began collecting his belongings.

Lando tried very hard not to think about the fact that he was about to visit Oscar Piastri's apartment for the first time.

He failed spectacularly.

Oscar's apartment was considerably nicer than Lando had anticipated, which was particularly offensive given that he'd spent most of their acquaintance assuming the younger man's living space would resemble some sort of aggressively minimalist office environment. Instead, it was a small, comfortable studio several streets away from campus, with enormous windows overlooking a quiet courtyard, bookshelves that appeared to be approaching a serious structural crisis and a collection of mismatched mugs that suggested Oscar possessed considerably more sentimental tendencies than he generally allowed people to see.

There were photographs of his family arranged along one shelf, a ridiculous little ceramic koala sitting beside his television and several framed prints of Melbourne that made Lando suddenly, unexpectedly aware of how far Oscar was from home.

"Right," Lando announced, dropping his bag beside the sofa. "This is actually quite nice. Very disappointing."

Oscar smiled as he plugged in his laptop. "Sorry to let you down."

"Was expecting something considerably more depressing. Maybe a single chair and a calendar."

"I've got a calendar."

"Of course you have."

Lando wandered towards the bookshelves while Oscar attempted to recover their article, examining the impressive collection of political biographies, investigative journalism and deeply questionable romance novels with increasing amusement. He was halfway through making another joke about Oscar's literary preferences when he noticed a small stack of old newspaper editions tucked between two shelves.

The Current.

He pulled one out, recognizing the familiar front page from nearly two years earlier, and felt something strange settle in his chest when he discovered that the edition contained his charity football article.

He looked at the next one.

Another article he'd written.

Then another.

"Oscar?"

"Hm?"

"Why have you got all these?"

Oscar glanced up from his laptop.

For a moment, he looked genuinely startled.

Then he stood, crossing the room with considerably more urgency than the situation appeared to require, and Lando suddenly realized that he'd apparently discovered something Oscar hadn't intended him to see.

"They're just old editions," Oscar said, attempting to sound casual.

Lando raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, mate. I can see that."

"I keep quite a few of them."

"Right."

Oscar looked at the stack in Lando's hands.

Lando looked at Oscar.

Then, very slowly, he smiled.

"Are these all the ones with my articles in them?"

Oscar closed his eyes.

"Oh, my God," Lando whispered, feeling a ridiculous little rush of delight. "You're actually my biggest fan."

"Don't start."

"You've been collecting my articles?"

"Lando."

"This is genuinely the most romantic thing anyone's ever done for me."

Oscar looked at him, and for one strange, fleeting moment, Lando had the uncomfortable impression that he'd accidentally said something considerably more significant than he'd intended.

Then Oscar shook his head and returned to his laptop.

"Can we please finish the article before you become completely unbearable?"

Lando grinned, although he carefully returned the newspapers to their place on the shelf before joining him at the kitchen table.

For the next several hours, they worked with an efficiency that would have shocked practically everyone who had ever witnessed one of their editorial meetings. Oscar recovered the previous evening's backup, Lando reconstructed the missing sections from his own notes, and together they gradually transformed the damaged draft into something considerably stronger than the version they'd originally intended to publish.

By the time they finally submitted it, shortly after midnight, Lando was starving, Oscar looked as though he hadn't slept in approximately three days, and the entire apartment smelled faintly of the takeaway noodles they'd ordered several hours earlier and subsequently forgotten to eat.

"Right," Lando announced, closing his laptop with considerable satisfaction. "We're officially geniuses."

Oscar leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. "Speak for yourself. I'm never doing that again."

"You're welcome, by the way."

"For what?"

"Saving your entire professional career."

Oscar laughed softly. "Thanks, Lando."

There was something about the sincerity of it that made Lando pause, his gaze lingering on Oscar's face for a moment longer than was strictly necessary.

Then his stomach growled.

Oscar burst out laughing.

"Come on," he said, standing and collecting the abandoned takeaway containers. "Let's eat before you actually die."

They ended up sitting on Oscar's kitchen floor at nearly two in the morning, eating cold noodles directly from their containers because neither of them could be bothered finding plates. It was an objectively ridiculous situation, particularly considering Oscar possessed a perfectly functional dining table approximately six feet away, but Lando had settled onto the floor while waiting for the microwave and Oscar had apparently decided that joining him was considerably easier than attempting to persuade him to behave like a normal person.

The apartment was quiet around them, the distant sounds of traffic drifting through the slightly open window, and Lando found himself feeling unexpectedly comfortable in a space he'd only entered several hours earlier.

He glanced towards the bookshelves.

Then towards Oscar.

"So," he began, attempting to sound casual. "Those newspapers."

Oscar groaned. "Oh, God."

"Why'd you keep them?"

"Because I liked your articles."

"All of them?"

"Most of them."

Lando stared at him in mock outrage. "Most?"

"The one about the university's best hangover cures was questionable."

"That was award-winning journalism."

"It recommended eating an entire pizza before bed."

"And I stand by that."

Oscar laughed, shaking his head, and Lando found himself smiling at the sight of him sitting cross-legged on his kitchen floor, hair slightly disheveled and wearing an old university sweatshirt that was considerably too large for him.

He looked younger like this.

Softer.

Considerably more dangerous.

"Seriously, though," Lando said after a moment, his voice quieter than before. "Why?"

Oscar looked at him.

For several seconds, he didn't answer, and Lando had the uncomfortable impression that he was attempting to decide how much of the truth he was willing to reveal.

"Because I thought you were brilliant," Oscar said eventually. "I still do."

Lando felt something warm and terrifying settle beneath his ribs.

He looked down at his noodles, suddenly finding the entire situation considerably more emotionally dangerous than he'd anticipated.

"Right," he murmured. "Well. That's embarrassing for you."

Oscar laughed softly. "Yeah. Bit."

Lando looked up.

Oscar was watching him with an expression he couldn't quite read, something quiet and unexpectedly vulnerable beneath his usual composure, and for one strange, fleeting moment, Lando found himself wondering whether he'd been misunderstanding their entire relationship from the beginning.

"Is that the only thing you like about me?" he asked.

The question escaped before he'd properly considered it.

Oscar went very still.

For a moment, neither of them spoke, and Lando experienced the sudden, deeply unpleasant realization that he'd apparently asked something he wasn't entirely prepared to hear answered.

Then Oscar set his takeaway container aside.

"No," he said quietly.

Lando looked at him.

Oscar moved closer, slowly enough that Lando had every opportunity to move away, and there was something almost unbearably gentle about the way he reached up and brushed a stray curl away from Lando's forehead.

"Can I kiss you?" Oscar asked.

Lando forgot how to breathe.

It was a deeply unfortunate development, particularly because he'd spent the better part of two weeks imagining precisely this situation and had nevertheless apparently failed to prepare himself for the possibility that it might actually happen.

"Yeah," he managed eventually, his voice considerably quieter than he'd intended. "Yeah, you can."

Oscar smiled.

Then he kissed him.

And Lando, who had spent most of his adult life convincing himself that he was perfectly capable of maintaining a casual attitude towards romantic attraction, discovered that there was absolutely nothing casual about kissing Oscar Piastri.

It was gentle at first, almost tentative, Oscar's hand resting against the side of his face while Lando leaned forward with the sudden, overwhelming certainty that he'd been waiting for this considerably longer than he'd allowed himself to acknowledge. Then Oscar moved a little closer, his fingers slipping into Lando's hair, and something in Lando's chest seemed to loosen all at once, leaving him feeling strangely breathless and entirely incapable of remembering why he'd spent so much time pretending that he didn't want this.

When they finally pulled apart, Lando was smiling so hard that his face actually hurt.

"Right," he murmured, looking at Oscar with the deeply unfortunate realization that he was probably about to make an absolute idiot of himself. "Well. That's one way to improve our working relationship."

Oscar laughed, resting his forehead briefly against Lando's. "You're genuinely incapable of being serious for more than thirty seconds, aren't you?"

"Actually, I'm being incredibly serious. That was excellent. Five stars. Would recommend."

Oscar shook his head, although he was smiling as he leaned forward and kissed him again.

This time, Lando didn't bother pretending that he had anything clever to say.

They eventually relocated to Oscar's sofa, although Lando couldn't have said precisely when or how, only that at some point he'd found himself curled against Oscar's side with his head resting on the younger man's shoulder and absolutely no intention of moving anytime soon.

It was strange, how quickly something that ought to have felt unfamiliar had become almost painfully comfortable. Oscar's hand was resting against his waist, his thumb moving absently over the fabric of Lando's shirt, and Lando found himself thinking that he could probably spend an unreasonable amount of time like this without ever becoming particularly interested in doing anything else.

"How long?" he asked eventually, tilting his head to look at Oscar.

Oscar glanced down. "What?"

"How long have you wanted to do that?"

Oscar smiled faintly. "Does it matter?"

"Obviously. I'm conducting important research."

"Of course you are."

"Come on. Tell me."

Oscar regarded him for a moment before admitting that he'd wanted to kiss him for considerably longer than Lando probably realized, which was such an extraordinarily unhelpful answer that Lando immediately demanded further clarification.

Oscar merely laughed and kissed him again.

Lando decided that he could probably live with the uncertainty.

"For the record," he murmured several minutes later, his face still pleasantly warm, "I've wanted to kiss you since the bookshop."

Oscar looked at him with an expression of genuine amusement. "Only since the bookshop?"

Lando stared at him.

"Sorry, what?"

Oscar smiled, pulling him a little closer. "Nothing."

"Oscar."

"Go to sleep, Lando."

"You're actually the worst person I've ever met."

"Yeah, you've mentioned that."

Lando kissed him again, mostly because he could, and eventually fell asleep with his head resting against Oscar's chest, feeling so ridiculously happy that he decided it was probably best not to examine the situation too closely.

Unfortunately, the morning had other ideas.

Lando woke shortly after eight with a stiff neck, a mouth that tasted faintly of cold noodles and the deeply alarming realization that he'd apparently spent the night sleeping on Oscar Piastri's sofa.

Oscar was already awake, sitting beside him with a cup of coffee and wearing an expression of quiet amusement that Lando immediately found deeply suspicious.

"Morning," Oscar said.

Lando blinked at him. "Jesus Christ. You're actually real."

"Unfortunately."

"Thought I might've hallucinated the entire thing."

Oscar smiled, leaning forward to kiss him gently. "That help?"

Lando stared at him for a moment before grinning. "Bit. Might need another one, though. Just to be sure."

Oscar laughed and obliged, and for several minutes, everything felt wonderfully uncomplicated.

Then Oscar set his coffee down.

"Can we talk about last night?"

Lando's stomach dropped.

It was ridiculous, really, how quickly four perfectly ordinary words could transform an otherwise lovely morning into something considerably more terrifying, and he found himself sitting up with the sudden, unpleasant certainty that Oscar was about to explain why kissing him had been a spectacularly terrible idea.

"Right," he said, attempting to sound casual. "Yeah. Obviously. Very important research. We should probably include it in the next article."

Oscar's expression changed.

Only slightly, but enough for Lando to notice.

"That's not really what I meant."

"Well, I mean, technically it's relevant, isn't it? Romantic compatibility and all that. Could be an interesting case study."

"Lando."

There was something in Oscar's voice that made him look up, and for one uncomfortable moment, he had the distinct impression that he'd said something genuinely hurtful without entirely understanding why.

Oscar looked away, reaching for his coffee with an expression that had become considerably more guarded.

"Never mind," he said quietly. "We should probably get ready. George wants the next article outline by lunchtime."

Lando stared at him, suddenly unsure how the morning had gone so spectacularly wrong.

He wanted to ask what Oscar had meant.

He wanted to tell him that last night had been the best thing that had happened to him in months, that he'd spent weeks thinking about kissing him and had woken up feeling so ridiculously happy that he hadn't known what to do with himself.

Instead, he made another joke about Oscar's deeply unreasonable editorial schedule.

Oscar smiled politely.

And Lando, who had spent most of his adult life convincing himself that he was perfectly capable of maintaining a casual attitude towards romantic attraction, discovered that there were apparently considerably worse things than wanting somebody who didn't want him back.

There was wanting somebody who might have wanted him, and being too frightened to ask.

That evening, Lando opened the notes app on his phone and returned to the list he'd started after their evening at the bookshop.

TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT OSCAR PIASTRI

1. He thinks he's funny. He is, unfortunately, very funny.

2. He remembers absolutely everything, which is deeply inconvenient when I'm trying to pretend I don't care about something.

3. He's always right, and I genuinely think he should consider being wrong occasionally for the sake of everyone else's mental health.

4. He has absolutely no understanding of personal space.

He hesitated for several minutes before adding another entry.

5. He makes terrible coffee, and I think somebody should probably inform him that owning a coffee machine doesn't automatically make you a barista.

Then he stared at the screen, remembering the warmth of Oscar's hand against his face, the gentle certainty of his kiss and the way he'd smiled when Lando admitted that he'd wanted to kiss him since the bookshop.

Slowly, he began typing.

6. He kisses like he means it.

Lando read the sentence twice.

Then he deleted it.

Then, after approximately three minutes of staring at the blank space where it had been, he typed it again.

He put his phone facedown on the mattress and closed his eyes, feeling something unpleasantly tight settle beneath his ribs.

He was beginning to suspect that he'd made a very bad mistake.

He just wasn't entirely sure which part of it had been the mistake.

___

On Monday morning, Lando arrived at the editorial office seventeen minutes late, carrying an iced coffee he didn't particularly want and an elaborate collection of excuses for why he hadn't answered Oscar's message the previous evening. He'd spent most of Sunday convincing himself that he was simply busy, that there was nothing particularly unusual about taking several hours to reply to somebody he'd spent an entire night kissing, and that the increasingly unpleasant sensation in his stomach whenever he thought about Oscar's expression on Saturday morning was probably the result of eating an unreasonable amount of takeaway food.

It was an entirely convincing explanation, provided he didn't think about it for more than approximately three seconds.

Unfortunately, Oscar was sitting at his usual desk when he arrived, wearing a dark grey jumper and examining an article with the sort of concentration that suggested he had absolutely no intention of acknowledging the fact that they'd spent Friday night curled together on his sofa. He glanced up when Lando entered, his expression briefly softening before something more guarded settled over his face.

"Morning," Oscar said.

"All right, mate?" Lando replied, dropping into his usual chair and attempting to sound considerably more relaxed than he actually felt. "Miss me?"

Oscar's mouth curved slightly. "You're late."

"Thought I'd keep things interesting."

"Very considerate."

Lando grinned, although the familiar rhythm of their conversation felt strangely fragile, as though they were both carefully avoiding something that had previously seemed impossible to ignore. He wanted to ask whether Oscar had thought about Friday night, whether he'd spent the weekend remembering the way they'd kissed and whether the sudden distance between them meant he'd decided the entire thing had been a terrible mistake.

Instead, he opened his laptop and began complaining about his latest assignment.

Oscar listened politely.

It was horrifying.

By Wednesday afternoon, Lando had developed a comprehensive understanding of the various ways in which two people could avoid discussing something while continuing to spend an entirely unreasonable amount of time in each other's company. He'd attended three editorial meetings, exchanged approximately forty messages with Oscar and spent nearly six hours working on their latest article, all without either of them mentioning the kiss, the sofa or the deeply unfortunate fact that Lando could still remember precisely how Oscar had sounded when he'd laughed against his mouth.

Oscar, meanwhile, had apparently decided that the most effective response to emotional uncertainty was to become even more professional than usual.

He sent meticulously organized editorial comments, reminded Lando about upcoming deadlines and began addressing him in meetings with a level of politeness that Lando found considerably more offensive than their usual collection of insults.

It was driving him absolutely insane.

"Right," Lando announced on Wednesday afternoon, leaning against George's desk while Oscar discussed the newspaper's latest engagement figures with Alex. "What's wrong with him?"

George glanced up. "Who?"

"Who do you think?"

George followed his gaze towards Oscar, who was apparently explaining something about the university's proposed digital media strategy with the sort of quiet concentration that made Lando want to throw something at him.

"Nothing's wrong with Oscar," George replied, although his expression suggested he knew considerably more than he was willing to admit.

"He's being weird."

"You're both being weird."

Lando stared at him. "Excuse me?"

George sighed, closing his laptop with the weary resignation of someone who had apparently spent far too much time dealing with other people's emotional problems. "Lando, I don't know what's happened between you two, and frankly, I'm not sure I want to. But you've spent the last three days looking at him like he's personally offended you, and Oscar's reorganized the publication schedule twice because apparently that's what he does when he's upset."

Lando looked towards Oscar again.

He was smiling faintly at something Alex had said, but there was something tired about the expression, something that made Lando feel unexpectedly guilty.

"Right," he muttered. "Well. That's helpful."

George raised an eyebrow. "Have you considered actually talking to him?"

Lando stared at him.

Then he laughed.

"Jesus Christ, George. Let's not get carried away."

His final date was cancelled on Thursday afternoon, approximately three hours before he was supposed to meet a student named Max for drinks at a little bar near campus. The message was perfectly polite, explaining that Max had recently started seeing somebody else and didn't think it would be fair to continue with the arrangement, and Lando was sensible enough to recognize that this was an entirely reasonable decision.

Unfortunately, he was also apparently incapable of receiving a romantic rejection without immediately interpreting it as evidence of some profound personal inadequacy.

He stared at the message for several minutes before replying that he completely understood and wished Max the best, then dropped his phone onto his bed and lay staring at the ceiling with the deeply unpleasant realization that he was considerably more upset than the situation reasonably warranted.

It wasn't Max.

He barely knew Max.

It was the increasingly familiar sensation of being somebody people enjoyed spending time with but apparently struggled to imagine choosing for anything more permanent, the fear that he'd somehow become very good at being entertaining without ever learning how to make himself genuinely important to somebody else.

He thought about Oscar.

Of course he did.

He thought about the way Oscar had kissed him, the quiet certainty with which he'd admitted wanting to do it for considerably longer than Lando realized, and the expression on his face when Lando had suggested turning the entire experience into material for their next article.

Lando closed his eyes.

He was beginning to suspect that he might have made a spectacularly terrible mistake.

Oscar's fourth date took place that same evening, a film night with a politics student named Riley who had apparently suggested watching a documentary about contemporary media before getting dinner. Lando had initially been delighted by the opportunity to make several deeply inappropriate jokes about Oscar's increasingly predictable romantic preferences, but the enthusiasm had disappeared almost immediately when he realized that Oscar was apparently perfectly capable of continuing with their experiment while Lando was struggling to remember how to behave like a normal human being.

He discovered what had happened the following morning.

Oscar was sitting at his desk when Lando arrived, looking considerably more tired than usual and apparently attempting to concentrate on an article that had been open on his laptop for nearly an hour. Lando dropped into the chair opposite him, offering the sort of casual smile that had become increasingly difficult to maintain over the previous week.

"Morning, sunshine. How was your incredibly romantic documentary evening?"

Oscar looked up. "Fine, thanks."

"That's it? Fine?"

"Yeah."

Lando leaned forward, attempting to recover some semblance of their usual conversational rhythm. "Come on. Give me something. Did you fall asleep halfway through? Did they spend the entire evening explaining political theory to you? Did you finally meet somebody who loves spreadsheets as much as you do?"

Oscar smiled faintly, although the expression disappeared almost immediately.

"Actually, I told them I wasn't really interested in pursuing anything."

Lando blinked.

"What?"

Oscar looked down at his laptop. "It was a nice evening, but I didn't think it would be fair to carry on when I've got feelings for somebody else."

For a moment, Lando forgot how to breathe.

It was a deeply unfortunate development, particularly because he'd spent the previous week attempting to convince himself that Oscar had probably regretted kissing him, and the sudden possibility that the younger man might actually have been thinking about him all along was almost too terrifying to consider.

"Right," he managed eventually, attempting to sound casual. "Someone else?"

Oscar looked up.

Their eyes met across the table, and for one strange, fleeting moment, Lando had the distinct impression that Oscar was giving him an opportunity to say something important.

"Yeah," Oscar replied quietly. "Someone else."

Lando stared at him.

He wanted to ask.

He wanted to ask so badly that it almost hurt.

Instead, he smiled and informed Oscar that he was apparently becoming a proper romantic, which was deeply embarrassing for everyone involved.

Oscar's expression closed.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "Something like that."

Lando looked down at his laptop.

He was beginning to hate himself a little.

That evening, Lando sat alone in his bedroom and opened the notes app on his phone.

He'd spent the previous week attempting to convince himself that the entire situation was perfectly manageable, that he simply needed to maintain a reasonable professional distance from Oscar until the experiment was finished and everything would eventually return to normal. Unfortunately, the increasingly unpleasant sensation in his chest whenever he thought about Oscar's expression that morning suggested that normal might no longer be a particularly realistic possibility.

He opened the list.

TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT OSCAR PIASTRI

For several minutes, he stared at the entries he'd already written, remembering the bookshop, the rain, the balcony and the quiet warmth of Oscar's apartment in the middle of the night.

Then he began typing.

7. I hate that he makes me want things I don't know how to ask for.

He stopped.

Read the sentence again.

Then continued.

8. I hate that he makes me feel like I'm actually good at something, because now I'm terrified he'll realize he's wrong.

Lando swallowed, feeling something unpleasantly tight settle in his throat.

9. I hate that he kissed me like he meant it, and I hate that I don't know whether he still does.

He stared at the screen for several minutes, his fingers hovering over the keyboard, before finally adding something beneath the list.

I think I might actually be in love with him.

The words looked ridiculous.

Terrifying.

Entirely too real.

He immediately considered deleting them.

Instead, he copied the entire document onto his laptop, intending to expand it into something resembling a proper piece of writing, the sort of thing he might eventually use to understand precisely how he'd managed to make such a spectacular mess of his own emotional life.

Unfortunately, he was tired, distracted and apparently incapable of remembering which folder he'd opened.

He saved the document.

Then he went to sleep.

Oscar discovered the file shortly after ten the following morning.

He'd been looking for the latest version of their final column, which Lando had promised to upload before midnight, and when he opened the shared project folder, he discovered a document titled Ten Things I Hate About Oscar Piastri sitting beside their usual collection of drafts and editorial notes.

He initially assumed it was a joke.

That would have been entirely consistent with Lando's usual approach to their professional relationship, particularly considering he'd spent the previous several weeks threatening to publish an exposé about Oscar's deeply questionable literary preferences.

Oscar opened it.

And immediately wished he hadn't.

Lando discovered what had happened approximately twenty minutes later, when he arrived at the editorial office to find Oscar sitting alone at his desk, looking as though somebody had just informed him that the university had decided to cancel the newspaper after all.

"Morning," Lando announced, dropping his bag beside his usual chair. "You look absolutely miserable. Everything all right?"

Oscar looked up.

For a moment, he didn't answer.

Then he closed his laptop.

"Lando, I need to tell you something."

Lando felt his stomach drop.

There was something in Oscar's voice that made the entire room seem suddenly, unpleasantly quiet, and he found himself wondering whether the younger man had finally decided to explain why he'd spent the previous week behaving as though their kiss had been an unfortunate administrative error.

"Right," he said, attempting to smile. "Sounds ominous."

Oscar looked down at his hands.

"I opened a document in the shared folder this morning. I thought it was the latest version of our column."

Lando frowned. "Okay?"

"It wasn't."

For a moment, Lando didn't understand.

Then he did.

The realization arrived so abruptly that he felt almost physically sick.

"What document?"

Oscar looked at him.

Lando already knew.

"Oh, my God."

"Lando—"

"You read it?"

Oscar hesitated.

And that was somehow worse than anything he could have said.

"You actually read it?"

"I didn't realize it was private until I'd already opened it. I should've stopped sooner, and I'm sorry."

Lando stared at him, feeling a sudden, overwhelming rush of humiliation that made it almost impossible to think. He'd written things in that document he'd never intended anybody to see, things he'd barely been willing to admit to himself, and the thought of Oscar reading them—of Oscar knowing precisely how frightened and inadequate and desperately in love Lando apparently was—made him want to disappear.

"How much?" he demanded.

Oscar looked down. "Enough."

"Enough?"

"Lando, I'm sorry."

"Jesus Christ."

He turned away, running a hand through his hair as he attempted to process the spectacularly awful realization that Oscar had apparently seen the most embarrassing thing he'd ever written.

"Why would you keep reading?"

"I thought it was part of the article at first."

"Yeah, well, it obviously wasn't, was it?"

"I know. I should've stopped."

Lando laughed, although there was absolutely nothing funny about the situation.

"Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. So now you know everything. Congratulations."

Oscar stood, his expression becoming increasingly distressed. "Lando, please. Can we just talk about this?"

"Talk about what? The fact that you read my private fucking diary?"

"I didn't know it was private when I opened it."

"But you worked it out, didn't you? And you kept reading."

Oscar went quiet.

For several seconds, neither of them spoke.

Then Oscar nodded.

"Yeah," he admitted. "I did. And I shouldn't have."

Lando looked away, feeling something unpleasantly hot gather behind his eyes.

He hated this.

He hated the fact that Oscar had seen him like that, hated the possibility that he'd read every pathetic little admission and was now standing there feeling sorry for him, and hated most of all that some deeply embarrassing part of him still wanted Oscar to reach for him and explain that he felt exactly the same way.

Instead, Oscar looked at him with an expression of quiet devastation.

"I wasn't trying to hurt you," he said.

"Well, congratulations. You've managed it anyway."

The argument that followed was considerably worse than anything Lando had anticipated, partly because Oscar refused to respond with the sort of irritation that would have made it considerably easier to remain angry with him and partly because Lando was apparently determined to say every deeply unfortunate thing he'd spent the previous week attempting to avoid.

Oscar apologized again, acknowledging that he'd crossed a boundary and that Lando had every right to be upset, but when he attempted to explain that he'd been trying to understand why Lando had spent the previous week avoiding him, Lando felt something inside him snap.

"Oh, right. So this is my fault now?"

"That's not what I said."

"Kind of sounds like it."

"Lando, I've been trying to talk to you since Saturday morning."

"Yeah, well, sorry I didn't immediately know what to say after you started acting like kissing me was some sort of administrative inconvenience."

Oscar stared at him.

For a moment, he looked genuinely hurt.

Then his expression changed.

"I was trying to talk to you about what happened," he said quietly. "You're the one who turned it into a joke about the article."

Lando looked away.

He knew Oscar was right.

That was the worst part.

He knew he'd panicked, knew he'd said something stupid because the possibility of Oscar wanting something real had frightened him considerably more than he'd been prepared to acknowledge, but admitting that now would mean explaining precisely how much Oscar mattered to him.

And he wasn't sure he could survive that.

"Well, sorry I'm not as good at this as you are," he snapped.

Oscar frowned. "As good at what?"

"Feelings. Relationships. All this serious emotional bullshit. You always know exactly what you want, don't you? You've got everything planned out. Must be nice."

Oscar went very still.

For a moment, Lando had the deeply unpleasant impression that he'd finally managed to say something genuinely unforgivable.

"You think this is easy for me?" Oscar asked quietly.

Lando opened his mouth.

Then closed it.

Oscar looked away, his jaw tightening slightly. "You think I've spent the last week having a brilliant time wondering whether you regret kissing me? Whether you actually meant anything you said, or whether it was just another joke you could turn into an article?"

Lando stared at him.

"I didn't—"

"No, you didn't. That's rather the problem."

Oscar took a breath, apparently attempting to recover some semblance of composure, and when he spoke again, his voice was considerably more controlled.

"I shouldn't have read your document. I'm sorry, and I understand if you don't want to forgive me for that. But I can't keep trying to have a conversation with someone who acts like caring about me is the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to him."

The words landed with such unexpected force that Lando felt something in his chest twist painfully.

He wanted to tell Oscar that he wasn't embarrassed by him.

That he was embarrassed by himself.

That he'd spent most of his life trying to become the sort of person everyone wanted to spend time with, and the possibility that somebody might actually see all the things he normally kept hidden was considerably more terrifying than he'd ever anticipated.

Instead, he looked down at his hands.

"Maybe we should just finish the project," he said quietly.

Oscar was silent for several seconds.

Then he nodded.

"Yeah," he replied. "Maybe we should."

Lando left the editorial office approximately ten minutes later, having agreed that they would finish their remaining articles separately and communicate through George if necessary. He managed to make it halfway across campus before the increasingly unpleasant pressure in his chest became impossible to ignore, and he eventually ducked into an empty stairwell behind the library, sitting on the bottom step with his face buried in his hands.

He felt ridiculous.

Absolutely ridiculous.

He was twenty-two years old, had somehow managed to fall in love with his own editor and had just spent the better part of an hour shouting at him because he was too frightened to admit that the possibility of being loved in return was considerably more terrifying than the possibility of being rejected.

And Oscar had read the list.

Jesus Christ.

He'd actually read it.

Lando pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, attempting to convince himself that he was simply exhausted, that the entire situation had been an unfortunate misunderstanding and that everything would eventually return to normal.

Unfortunately, the tears arrived anyway.

Oscar remained in the editorial office long after everyone else had gone home, sitting alone beneath the harsh fluorescent lighting with his laptop closed and his phone facedown on the table.

He'd spent most of the afternoon attempting to convince himself that giving Lando space was the most sensible thing he could possibly do, that he'd already crossed a boundary he had absolutely no right to cross and that attempting to force another conversation would only make the situation worse.

He knew that.

He understood it perfectly.

Unfortunately, understanding something and being able to live with it were apparently two entirely different things.

Eventually, he looked towards the framed photograph of the newspaper's founding editorial team hanging beside the noticeboard, remembering the countless evenings he'd spent in this office with Lando, the increasingly ridiculous arguments, the shared coffee and the quiet, unexpected moments when he'd begun to believe that perhaps the younger man wasn't entirely alone in the way he felt.

He'd wanted to tell Lando that he'd liked him for years.

He'd wanted to explain that he'd kept those old newspaper editions because Lando had been the first person at university whose writing had made him genuinely excited about the possibility of becoming a journalist, and that somewhere along the way, admiration had developed into something considerably more complicated.

He'd wanted to tell him that the night on the sofa hadn't been a mistake.

That he'd meant every kiss.

That he still did.

Instead, he sat alone in the empty editorial office, staring at a photograph of people who'd founded a newspaper forty-three years earlier, and wondered how he'd managed to become so extraordinarily good at organising everyone else's lives while apparently being completely incapable of explaining what he wanted from his own.

___

By Monday morning, George Russell had developed a profound and entirely justified hatred of romantic relationships, which was unfortunate because he'd never actually been involved in the one currently making his life miserable. He'd arrived at the editorial office at half past eight, discovered three separate messages from Lando concerning the latest article and another four from Oscar about the publication schedule, and spent approximately twenty minutes attempting to reconcile two sets of editorial instructions that were apparently written by people who had never met, let alone spent the previous three months arguing about practically every conceivable aspect of student journalism.

It was, in George's professional opinion, an absolute fucking nightmare.

"Right," he announced shortly after ten, dropping into the chair opposite Lando with an expression of such profound exhaustion that Charles immediately began laughing. "I'm going to say this once, and I'd really appreciate it if you could both behave like normal human beings for approximately thirty seconds."

Lando looked up from his laptop. "Morning to you, too."

"Whatever's happened between you and Oscar, I don't care."

"Brilliant. Neither do I."

George stared at him.

Lando looked away.

"Right," George continued, apparently deciding that acknowledging the lie would require considerably more emotional energy than he currently possessed. "Well, Oscar wants your latest draft by lunchtime, and he says the introduction needs another paragraph explaining the central question."

Lando frowned. "I literally sent him that paragraph yesterday."

"Yes, and apparently he thinks it needs another one."

"He's taking the piss."

"Probably. Can you just send it to him, please?"

Lando sighed dramatically, opened his document and began typing with considerably more aggression than was strictly necessary, although he was uncomfortably aware that George was still watching him.

"What?" he demanded eventually.

George hesitated for a moment before leaning forward, his expression becoming unexpectedly serious.

"Look, I don't know what happened, and I'm not asking you to tell me. But Oscar's miserable, you're miserable, and the rest of us are getting a bit tired of pretending we haven't noticed."

Lando looked down at his laptop.

"Right," he muttered. "Well. That's helpful."

"Have you considered actually talking to him?"

Lando laughed.

George closed his eyes.

"I'm going to lose my mind," he announced.

Charles found Lando approximately an hour later, sitting alone in the corner of the student café and staring at a cup of coffee he'd apparently forgotten to drink. He dropped into the chair opposite him without asking permission, stole one of the biscuits from his plate and spent several minutes examining him with the sort of expression that suggested he'd already decided precisely what was wrong.

"You're being a miserable bastard," he announced eventually.

Lando looked up. "Cheers, mate. Really appreciate the emotional support."

"Just saying."

"Well, don't."

Charles ignored him, taking another biscuit before asking whether Lando intended to spend the rest of the semester avoiding Oscar or whether he might eventually consider behaving like somebody who possessed a functioning emotional range.

Lando stared at him.

"Jesus Christ. Has George sent you?"

"No. Although he's genuinely considering resigning."

"Bit dramatic."

"Mate, you made him pass a message to Oscar about the font size in your article yesterday."

Lando looked away.

In retrospect, that had perhaps been slightly unnecessary.

Charles leaned back in his chair, his expression becoming considerably less amused. "Look, I don't know exactly what happened between you two, but I do know Oscar's been absolutely miserable since Friday. He barely spoke at the photography meeting yesterday, and when Alex made a joke about your latest article, he looked like somebody had kicked his dog."

Lando felt something unpleasant twist beneath his ribs.

"Right," he muttered.

"And you're not exactly doing brilliantly yourself."

"I'm fine."

"Yeah, obviously. That's why you've spent the last three days wearing the same hoodie and looking like you're about to cry every time somebody mentions the newspaper."

Lando looked down at his coffee.

For several minutes, neither of them spoke.

Then, quietly, he admitted that Oscar had read something he wasn't supposed to read, that they'd argued and that he'd said several things he was beginning to regret rather spectacularly.

Charles listened without interrupting, which was sufficiently unusual that Lando found himself becoming increasingly concerned about the seriousness of the situation.

Eventually, Charles sighed.

"Right. Well, that's shit."

"Thanks. Very insightful."

"I'm serious. He shouldn't have read your private stuff."

"I know."

"But you also can't spend the rest of your life pretending you don't care about people just because you're scared they might not care about you."

Lando stared at him.

Charles shrugged, looking almost embarrassed by his own sincerity. "Mate, I've watched you spend the last two months talking about Oscar like he's the most interesting person you've ever met, and every time somebody suggests you might actually like him, you immediately start making jokes. At some point, you're going to have to decide whether being funny is more important than being happy."

Lando looked away.

He hated it when Charles was right.

It was becoming an increasingly frequent problem.

Oscar, meanwhile, was discovering that there were apparently several disadvantages to being an extraordinarily organized person, the most significant of which was that emotional devastation did not respond particularly well to the creation of increasingly elaborate spreadsheets.

He'd spent most of the weekend attempting to distract himself with the newspaper's latest readership figures, the university's proposed digital media strategy and a collection of postgraduate journalism applications that he'd been avoiding for several weeks. Unfortunately, none of these activities had been particularly effective at preventing him from thinking about Lando, and by Monday afternoon, he'd developed a rather serious headache and an increasingly unreasonable resentment towards the entire concept of romantic relationships.

George found him sitting alone in the editorial office shortly after four, examining the same paragraph of an article he'd apparently been attempting to edit for nearly an hour.

"You're doing it again," George announced, dropping into the chair opposite him.

Oscar looked up. "Doing what?"

"Pretending everything's fine when you're obviously having a terrible time."

Oscar sighed. "I'm working, George."

"Yes, and you've been working on the same sentence since I got here."

Oscar glanced towards his laptop.

Unfortunately, George was right.

"Look," George continued, his expression becoming unexpectedly serious, "I don't know exactly what happened between you two, and I'm not asking you to tell me. But Lando's clearly upset, you're clearly upset, and the rest of us are getting a bit tired of communicating through increasingly elaborate editorial notes."

Oscar looked down at his hands.

"I made a mistake," he admitted quietly.

George waited.

Oscar hesitated for a moment before explaining that he'd accidentally opened a private document in their shared folder, realized what it was and continued reading for longer than he should have. He didn't describe the contents, partly because they weren't his to share and partly because the thought of repeating Lando's private admissions to somebody else made him feel physically ill.

George listened without interrupting.

Then he sighed.

"Right. Well, you shouldn't have done that."

"I know."

"And you apologized?"

"Yes."

"Properly?"

Oscar looked at him. "Yes, George."

"All right. Then I think you probably need to give him some space. But you also need to stop pretending that being professional is going to make the entire situation disappear."

Oscar looked away.

He hated it when George was right.

It was becoming an increasingly frequent problem.

On Tuesday afternoon, Lando received an email from Carlos Sainz.

It was an entirely ordinary message, asking whether he'd considered applying for a sports journalism internship at a national newspaper and mentioning that one of his former colleagues was apparently involved in the recruitment process. Carlos had been the editor of The Current during Lando's first year, before moving on to postgraduate study, and although they'd occasionally kept in touch, Lando hadn't expected him to remember his increasingly vague ambition to pursue sports journalism.

He stared at the email for several minutes before replying that he was interested but wasn't entirely sure whether his current portfolio was strong enough.

Carlos called him approximately ten minutes later.

"Mate," he announced without preamble, "what are you talking about?"

Lando blinked. "Hello to you, too."

"Your portfolio. Why are you acting like you've never written anything decent in your life?"

"Because most of my recent stuff's been about dating disasters and terrible university accommodation?"

"And?"

"And I'm not sure that's exactly what they're looking for."

Carlos sighed with the weary resignation of someone who had apparently spent several years dealing with Lando's increasingly unreasonable tendency to underestimate himself.

"Listen," he said, his voice becoming considerably more serious. "I read your latest article. The one about compatibility."

Lando looked down at his laptop. "Right."

"It's good. Really good, actually. You're funny, obviously, but the bits where you stop making jokes and actually talk about what you're feeling? That's the stuff people remember."

Lando swallowed.

He thought about Oscar.

Of course he did.

"You should apply," Carlos continued. "Worst thing they can do is say no. But if you don't even try, you're making the decision for them."

Lando stared at the internship application open on his laptop.

For the first time in several weeks, he found himself wondering whether being frightened of something was actually a particularly good reason not to do it.

___

That evening, Lando opened the notes app on his phone and returned to the list he'd started after their evening at the bookshop.

TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT OSCAR PIASTRI

He stared at the title for several minutes, remembering the rain, the balcony, the quiet warmth of Oscar's apartment and the way he'd looked at him on Friday morning when Lando had apparently managed to make the entire situation considerably more complicated than it needed to be.

Then he deleted everything beneath the title.

And started again.

1. I hate that he thinks he's funny.

Because he's the only person who can make me laugh when I really don't want to.

2. I hate that he remembers absolutely everything.

Because he remembered an article I wrote two years ago, back when I'd almost convinced myself nobody was paying attention.

3. I hate that he's always right.

Especially when he tells me I'm good enough to do things I've spent years being too scared to try.

4. I hate that he has absolutely no understanding of personal space.

Because now I know what it's like when he stands close enough to kiss me, and I can't stop wishing he'd do it again.

Lando stopped typing.

For several minutes, he stared at the screen, feeling something unpleasantly tight settle beneath his ribs.

Then he continued.

5. I hate that he makes terrible coffee.

Because I think I'd happily drink it every morning for the rest of my life if it meant waking up beside him.

6. I hate that he kisses like he means it.

Because I can't stop wondering whether he did.

7. I hate that he makes me want to be brave.

Because I've spent most of my life pretending I don't care when things go wrong, and suddenly there's something I want badly enough that the thought of losing it makes me feel sick.

8. I hate that he knows me.

Because he notices all the things I spend so much time trying to hide, and somehow, instead of making me feel like I'm not enough, he makes me want to be better.

9. I hate that I can't stop thinking about him.

Because I don't actually want to.

Lando stared at the screen for a long time.

Then he scrolled down to the empty space beneath the ninth entry.

He tried to write the tenth.

He couldn't.

Not because he didn't know what he wanted to say.

Because he knew exactly what he wanted to say, and he was beginning to realize that writing it down would mean finally admitting something he'd spent weeks attempting to avoid.

He put his phone facedown on the mattress.

Then he opened his laptop and began filling out the internship application.

Oscar received the invitation to interview for his preferred postgraduate journalism programme on Wednesday morning, approximately fifteen minutes before the editorial meeting.

He stared at the email for several seconds, reading it twice to make absolutely certain he hadn't misunderstood, before experiencing the sudden, overwhelming urge to tell Lando.

It was such an instinctive reaction that he actually opened their messages before remembering that they hadn't spoken properly in nearly a week.

He stared at the empty conversation for several minutes.

Then he closed his phone.

George, who had apparently been watching him from across the table, raised an eyebrow.

"Good news?"

Oscar looked up. "Postgraduate interview."

George's face immediately brightened. "Oscar! That's brilliant. Congratulations."

"Thanks."

"Have you told Lando?"

Oscar looked down at his phone.

"No," he admitted quietly.

George regarded him for a moment before returning his attention to his laptop with an expression of profound resignation.

"Right," he muttered. "Well. That's depressing."

The final article was due on Friday.

By Thursday evening, Lando had managed to convince himself that he was perfectly capable of sitting in the same room as Oscar without immediately experiencing some sort of emotional catastrophe, although this confidence deteriorated considerably when he arrived at the editorial office to find Oscar sitting alone at their usual table.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then Oscar looked up.

"Hi."

Lando swallowed. "All right?"

Oscar nodded, gesturing towards the empty chair opposite him. "I've got the latest draft open. Thought we could finish it together, if that's okay."

Lando hesitated.

Then he sat down.

For the next hour, they worked in almost complete silence, exchanging occasional comments about the article's structure and the increasingly unreasonable word count while carefully avoiding anything that might resemble an actual conversation. It was an exhausting performance, particularly because Lando was uncomfortably aware of how much he missed their usual arguments, the ridiculous jokes and the easy familiarity that had somehow become one of the most important parts of his university life.

Eventually, he closed his laptop.

"Oscar?"

Oscar looked up.

Lando took a breath.

Then another.

"I'm sorry."

Oscar went very still.

Lando looked down at his hands, suddenly finding it considerably more difficult to speak than he'd anticipated.

"I'm sorry about Saturday morning. And about what I said when we argued. I was being a complete idiot, and I know that's not exactly unusual for me, but I really didn't mean any of it."

Oscar was quiet for a moment.

Then he nodded.

"I'm sorry too," he said. "I shouldn't have read your document. I knew it was private, and I should've closed it immediately. I didn't, and I understand why you're upset."

Lando looked up.

Oscar was watching him with an expression of such quiet sincerity that Lando felt something in his chest begin to loosen.

"I wasn't trying to make you feel embarrassed," Oscar continued. "And I wasn't treating what happened between us like some sort of professional inconvenience. I just wanted to know whether you actually wanted it to happen."

Lando stared at him.

"Of course I wanted it to happen."

Oscar's expression changed.

"Then why did you act like it was a joke?"

Lando looked away.

For several seconds, he couldn't think of anything to say.

Then, quietly, he admitted that he'd been frightened.

He explained that he'd spent most of his life being the person who made everyone laugh, the person people wanted around because he was entertaining and easy to talk to, and that somewhere along the way he'd become convinced that the moment he stopped being those things, people would eventually realize he wasn't particularly interesting after all.

He'd wanted Oscar for weeks.

Possibly longer.

And the possibility that Oscar might actually want him back had been considerably more terrifying than he'd anticipated.

"Because you know me," Lando admitted eventually, his voice barely above a whisper. "You know all the stupid stuff I do, and you know I'm not always funny or clever or whatever, and I just kept thinking that eventually you'd realize I'm not actually worth all this effort."

Oscar looked at him.

For a moment, he didn't speak.

Then he reached across the table, resting his hand beside Lando's.

"Lando," he said quietly. "I've liked you for years."

Lando stared at him.

"What?"

Oscar smiled faintly. "Years."

"Sorry, what do you mean, years?"

"I mean I've liked you for considerably longer than you've apparently been aware of."

Lando looked at him with the deeply unfortunate realization that he'd apparently spent most of his university career being an absolute idiot.

"Jesus Christ."

Oscar laughed softly. "Yeah. Something like that."

Lando looked down at Oscar's hand.

Then, slowly, he reached across the table and took it.

"I love you," he said.

The words escaped before he'd properly considered them, and for one spectacularly terrifying moment, he genuinely contemplated retracting them, pretending he'd been joking and fleeing the country.

Then Oscar smiled.

Not his usual little expression of quiet amusement, but something considerably softer, something that made Lando feel as though the entire world had suddenly become a little less frightening.

"I love you too," Oscar said.

Lando stared at him.

Then he laughed, because apparently that was what his body had decided to do when confronted with the most emotionally significant moment of his entire life.

"Right," he managed eventually. "Well. That's embarrassing."

Oscar laughed, leaning across the table to kiss him.

And Lando, who had spent most of his adult life convincing himself that he was perfectly capable of maintaining a casual attitude towards romantic attraction, discovered that there was absolutely nothing casual about being kissed by somebody who had just told him he was loved.

They finished the article shortly after midnight, although Lando would later admit that they'd spent considerably more time kissing than actually writing during the final two hours.

Oscar had apparently received an invitation to interview for his preferred postgraduate programme, which Lando celebrated with an enthusiasm that involved nearly knocking over his coffee and immediately demanding that they organize some sort of ridiculous celebration.

Lando, meanwhile, admitted that he'd finally submitted his internship application, prompting Oscar to look at him with such obvious pride that he found himself feeling unexpectedly emotional.

"You're actually going to get in," Oscar informed him.

Lando smiled. "You don't know that."

"No," Oscar admitted, leaning forward to kiss him again. "But I'm very proud of you for trying."

Lando looked at him for a moment.

Then he grinned.

"You're genuinely obsessed with me, aren't you?"

Oscar rolled his eyes, although he was smiling as he pulled him closer.

"Unfortunately."

And for the first time in several weeks, Lando found himself thinking that perhaps the future didn't need to be particularly predictable to be worth looking forward to.

___

The final article went live at nine o'clock on Monday morning, and by nine seventeen, Alex Albon had already sent seventeen messages to the editorial group chat, three of which consisted entirely of capital letters and one of which was a photograph of George Russell looking as though he'd just discovered that somebody had set fire to his entire collection of carefully organized spreadsheets.

Lando, who had spent the previous evening at Oscar's apartment and had consequently arrived at university wearing yesterday's hoodie, was halfway through an extraordinarily unsuccessful attempt to concentrate on a lecture when his phone began vibrating with such relentless enthusiasm that the student sitting beside him eventually leaned over and asked whether somebody had died.

"Quite the opposite, actually," Lando whispered, opening the group chat beneath the desk.

Alex: WE'VE HIT TEN THOUSAND VIEWS.

Charles: In seventeen minutes?????

George: Can everyone please stop sending messages while I'm trying to update the readership report.

Alex: GEORGE WE'RE LITERALLY FAMOUS.

Oscar: Please don't describe us as famous in the report.

Lando: Too late. Already contacted my agent.

Oscar: You don't have an agent.

Lando: Not with that attitude.

Lando grinned at his phone, feeling a ridiculous little rush of satisfaction as another message appeared from Oscar.

Oscar: Also, you're supposed to be in a lecture.

Lando: Stop stalking me x

Oscar: Pay attention.

Lando: Make me.

There was a pause.

Then—

Oscar: Don't tempt me.

Lando nearly dropped his phone.

He spent the remainder of the lecture attempting to look like somebody who hadn't just received an extraordinarily inappropriate message from his editor, which was considerably more difficult than he'd anticipated given that he was apparently incapable of thinking about Oscar without smiling like a complete idiot.

It was becoming a rather serious problem.

Fortunately, he was beginning to suspect that he didn't particularly want to solve it.

Their final article was titled Ten Dates, Two Journalists and the Problem with Perfect Compatibility, a headline that Lando had initially described as unnecessarily academic before Oscar pointed out that his own suggestion—We Went on Ten Dates So You Don't Have To—made the entire experiment sound like an elaborate public health warning.

They'd eventually compromised, which was becoming an increasingly familiar component of their relationship, although Lando maintained that Oscar's continued insistence on using semicolons constituted a deeply unreasonable abuse of editorial authority.

The article itself was considerably more personal than anything they'd written before.

They'd discussed the difference between attraction and compatibility, the strange and often uncomfortable process of getting to know somebody new and the increasingly complicated realization that sharing interests with another person didn't necessarily mean wanting to build a life with them. They'd written about the importance of honesty, the danger of confusing emotional self-protection with independence and the peculiar courage required to allow somebody else to see the parts of yourself you ordinarily preferred to keep hidden.

Lando had been particularly proud of the final paragraph.

Perhaps compatibility isn't about finding somebody who fits perfectly into the life you've already planned. Perhaps it's about finding somebody who makes you willing to change the plan.

Oscar had read it three times before looking up from his laptop and informing Lando that it was brilliant.

Lando had immediately accused him of attempting to seduce him through positive editorial feedback.

Oscar had replied that he'd already managed that perfectly well without it.

They'd subsequently accomplished approximately twenty minutes of absolutely no work whatsoever.

By Monday afternoon, the article had become the most-read piece in The Current's digital history, and Alex had apparently decided that the only appropriate response was to create an increasingly elaborate collection of social media posts celebrating their success. The newspaper's Instagram following had nearly doubled since the beginning of the experiment, several other university publications had contacted them about possible collaborations, and George was already preparing a detailed presentation for the student media committee.

Oscar, naturally, remained deeply suspicious of anything resembling premature celebration.

Lando found this profoundly offensive.

"Mate," he announced, dropping into the chair opposite him shortly after three. "We're literally saving the newspaper. You're allowed to look happy."

Oscar glanced up from his laptop. "I am happy."

"You look like you're preparing somebody's tax return."

"That's just my face."

"Tragic, really. Such a handsome man, absolutely no understanding of joy."

Oscar smiled faintly, reaching across the table to steal a chip from Lando's lunch.

Lando stared at him.

"Excuse me?"

"What?"

"Those are my chips."

"Very observant."

"You're actually the worst boyfriend I've ever had."

Oscar looked up.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then he smiled.

"Boyfriend?"

Lando froze.

It was a deeply unfortunate development, particularly because he'd spent most of the previous three days referring to Oscar as his boyfriend in his own head and had apparently failed to consider the possibility that the younger man might actually want to discuss the terminology.

"Well," he began, attempting to sound casual. "I mean. Unless you've got a particularly strong objection to the title."

Oscar's smile widened.

"No objection."

"Right. Brilliant. Very professional."

"Extremely."

Lando looked down at his lunch, feeling a ridiculous little rush of warmth settle beneath his ribs.

Then he glanced up again.

"Just so we're clear, being my boyfriend doesn't entitle you to steal my chips."

Oscar stole another one.

Lando considered filing a formal complaint.

The university media committee announced its decision on Thursday afternoon.

Oscar had spent the entire morning behaving as though he was perfectly calm, which Lando recognized as an extraordinarily elaborate lie given that he'd reorganized his desk twice, checked his email approximately forty-seven times and apparently forgotten to eat breakfast despite having reminded Lando to do precisely that at half past eight.

They were sitting in the editorial office when the message finally arrived.

George saw it first.

"Oh, my God."

Lando looked up. "What?"

George stared at his laptop.

"Guys."

Oscar went very still.

"What?"

George looked up, his expression gradually transforming into something resembling disbelief.

"They're continuing the funding."

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Then Alex screamed.

It was an entirely unreasonable noise, particularly considering the editorial office was approximately the size of a moderately ambitious storage cupboard, and Lando nearly knocked over his coffee as Charles leapt out of his chair and began shouting something in French that nobody particularly understood.

Oscar remained perfectly still.

Lando looked at him.

"Mate?"

Oscar blinked.

Then he looked down at the email again.

"They're continuing the funding," he repeated quietly.

Lando grinned.

"Yeah, Oscar. We heard."

Oscar laughed.

It was such an unexpected sound, so full of genuine relief that Lando felt something warm and almost painfully affectionate settle beneath his ribs, and before he could think better of it, he stood, crossed the room and pulled Oscar into an enormous hug.

Oscar made a startled noise.

Then he hugged him back.

And Lando, who had spent most of his university career pretending that he didn't particularly care about anything beyond his next deadline and the increasingly unfortunate state of his bank account, discovered that watching Oscar Piastri finally allow himself to be happy was apparently one of the most satisfying things he'd ever experienced.

"You're actually smiling," he murmured against Oscar's shoulder. "Should I call somebody?"

Oscar laughed, pulling back just enough to look at him.

"Shut up."

"Very emotional moment. Really think you should say something inspiring."

Oscar considered him for a moment.

Then he kissed him.

The editorial office erupted.

Charles made a noise that suggested he'd just witnessed the greatest sporting achievement in human history, Alex immediately reached for his phone, and George closed his eyes with the expression of somebody who had apparently decided that surviving the next several months would require an extraordinary amount of patience.

Lando, naturally, was delighted.

"Right," he announced when Oscar finally pulled away. "That's going in the next article."

Oscar rolled his eyes.

"Absolutely not."

The funding came with conditions, naturally, because universities apparently considered it their sacred duty to transform every moment of genuine happiness into an administrative responsibility. The Current would receive another year of financial support provided the editorial team maintained its improved digital engagement, developed a sustainable social media strategy and submitted quarterly readership reports to the media committee.

George immediately began creating a spreadsheet.

Alex immediately began planning a celebratory Instagram post.

Charles immediately suggested that they organize a party.

Oscar, meanwhile, sat at his desk examining the email with an expression that Lando couldn't quite read.

He noticed it later that afternoon, when the others had disappeared to purchase drinks and George had finally abandoned his spreadsheet long enough to attend a lecture.

"What's wrong?" Lando asked, leaning against Oscar's desk.

Oscar looked up. "Nothing."

Lando raised an eyebrow.

Oscar sighed.

"Just thinking."

"Very dangerous habit. Wouldn't recommend it."

Oscar smiled faintly before looking towards the framed photograph of the newspaper's founding editorial team hanging beside the noticeboard.

"I've spent nearly three years worrying about what would happen to this place when I left," he admitted. "And now it's actually going to be fine."

Lando looked at him.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "It is."

Oscar smiled, although there was something unexpectedly bittersweet about the expression.

"I suppose I don't really have an excuse to keep running it forever."

Lando felt something unpleasant twist beneath his ribs.

He'd spent so much time concentrating on the immediate future—the article, the funding, the increasingly extraordinary fact that Oscar was apparently his boyfriend—that he'd managed to avoid thinking too seriously about the fact that Oscar would be graduating in a few months.

The newspaper would continue.

Oscar would leave.

And Lando would still have another year of university ahead of him.

It was an unexpectedly uncomfortable realization.

Oscar apparently noticed.

"Hey," he said, reaching for Lando's hand. "What are you thinking?"

Lando looked down at their joined hands.

"Just that you're going to graduate and become some incredibly successful journalist, and I'll still be here writing deeply important articles about the university's best hangover cures."

Oscar laughed softly.

"Firstly, that article was terrible."

"It was groundbreaking."

"Secondly, you're going to get that internship."

"You don't know that."

"No," Oscar admitted, squeezing his hand. "But even if you don't, you'll keep trying. And I'll still be here."

Lando looked at him.

"Yeah?"

Oscar smiled.

"Yeah."

It wasn't a promise that everything would be easy, or that their respective futures would somehow arrange themselves into a perfectly convenient collection of plans and schedules.

But it was enough.

For now, it was more than enough.

Oscar asked Lando on their first proper date the following Saturday.

Lando initially assumed he was joking.

"Mate," he said, staring at him across the kitchen table. "We've literally been dating for about a week."

Oscar raised an eyebrow. "Have we?"

"Well, technically, yeah. Unless you've been kissing all your colleagues recently."

"Only the particularly annoying ones."

"Very exclusive club."

Oscar smiled, setting his coffee down.

"I'm serious, Lando. We've spent the last two months going on dates with other people and writing about it. Thought it might be nice to go on one together without having to produce an article afterward."

Lando looked at him.

Then he grinned.

"Are you asking me out, Piastri?"

Oscar sighed.

"Unfortunately."

"God, you're obsessed with me."

"Beginning to regret this already."

"Too late. I'm saying yes. Where are we going?"

Oscar smiled.

"It's a surprise."

Lando immediately became suspicious.

The surprise was the secondhand bookshop.

Of course it was.

Lando recognized the little brass bell above the door the moment they arrived, and he turned towards Oscar with the deeply unfortunate realization that his boyfriend was apparently considerably more sentimental than he'd originally anticipated.

"Oh, my God."

Oscar glanced at him. "What?"

"You've brought me back to the bookshop."

"Very observant."

"You're actually such a romantic."

Oscar rolled his eyes, although there was something faintly embarrassed about the way he looked towards the window.

"Thought you might like it."

Lando stared at him for a moment.

Then he reached for Oscar's hand.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "I do."

They spent nearly two hours wandering between the shelves, arguing about the literary merits of increasingly ridiculous romantic premises and attempting to find the most spectacularly unfortunate book covers in the entire shop. Oscar eventually discovered a paperback titled The Duke's Inconvenient Fiancée, which Lando immediately declared an affront to literature, while Lando selected a deeply questionable crime novel whose protagonist apparently solved murders through the strategic application of astrology.

Oscar informed him that he had absolutely no right to criticize anybody else's reading habits.

Lando informed him that he was being deeply judgmental.

They were still arguing when the elderly woman behind the counter recognized them.

"Oh, it's you two," she announced, looking up from her newspaper with an expression of mild amusement. "Back again?"

Lando grinned.

"Unfortunately. He won't stop buying terrible books."

Oscar sighed.

"He's got absolutely no taste."

The woman looked between them.

Then she smiled.

"Well, at least you've finally worked out that you're on a date."

Lando nearly dropped his book.

Oscar closed his eyes.

For several seconds, neither of them spoke.

Then Lando turned towards his boyfriend with the sort of delighted expression that suggested he'd just discovered an entirely new source of entertainment.

"Sorry," he said, attempting to sound serious. "Finally?"

Oscar looked as though he was considering fleeing the country.

The woman laughed.

"Oh, love, it was obvious last time."

Lando stared at her.

Then at Oscar.

Then back at her.

"You're genuinely my favourite person in the entire world," he informed her.

Oscar groaned.

Lando spent the remainder of the afternoon being absolutely unbearable.

They returned to Oscar's apartment shortly after seven, carrying takeaway food, three new books and an entirely unreasonable amount of enthusiasm for an evening that apparently involved absolutely no professional responsibilities whatsoever.

Lando had been looking forward to the prospect of spending an entire evening with Oscar without having to discuss the newspaper, although this ambition deteriorated considerably when he discovered that Oscar had apparently framed their first joint article and hung it above his desk.

He stopped in the doorway.

"Oscar."

Oscar glanced up from the kitchen.

"What?"

Lando pointed towards the wall.

"What's that?"

Oscar followed his gaze.

Then he smiled.

"Oh. Had it framed."

Lando stared at him.

"Why?"

Oscar shrugged, apparently attempting to look considerably more casual than the situation warranted.

"Thought it was worth keeping."

Lando looked at the article.

Then at Oscar.

Then back at the article.

He felt something warm and unexpectedly emotional settle beneath his ribs.

"You're actually ridiculous," he murmured.

Oscar smiled.

"Yeah. Bit."

Lando crossed the room and kissed him.

It was becoming an increasingly effective method of expressing things he wasn't entirely sure how to say.

They ate dinner on Oscar's sofa, arguing about the increasingly ridiculous romantic decisions of the characters in his latest novel and discussing their respective plans for the coming months. Oscar's postgraduate interview was scheduled for the following week, and although he was attempting to maintain his usual composure, Lando could tell that he was considerably more nervous than he wanted to admit.

Lando informed him that he was going to be brilliant.

Oscar reminded him that he didn't know that.

Lando informed him that he was being deeply irritating.

Oscar laughed.

They discussed Lando's internship application, the possibility of spending the summer together and the increasingly unfortunate fact that Charles had apparently begun referring to Oscar as his future brother-in-law, which Lando considered a deeply unreasonable development given that they'd been officially dating for approximately nine days.

Oscar, naturally, found the entire situation hilarious.

Eventually, Lando found himself sitting cross-legged on the sofa with his phone in his hands, staring at the notes app he'd been avoiding for most of the previous week.

Oscar noticed immediately.

"What are you doing?"

Lando looked up.

"Nothing."

Oscar raised an eyebrow.

Lando sighed.

"Right. Fine. I've got something to show you."

Oscar's expression changed.

For a moment, Lando saw the familiar flicker of guilt cross his face, and he suddenly remembered the argument in the editorial office, the terrible humiliation of discovering that Oscar had read something he hadn't intended anybody to see.

He reached for Oscar's hand.

"Hey," he said quietly. "It's okay. I want you to read this one."

Oscar looked at him.

"Are you sure?"

Lando nodded.

"Yeah."

Then he opened the list.

TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT OSCAR PIASTRI

1. I hate that he thinks he's funny.

Because he's the only person who can make me laugh when I really don't want to.

2. I hate that he remembers absolutely everything.

Because he remembered an article I wrote two years ago, back when I'd almost convinced myself nobody was paying attention.

3. I hate that he's always right.

Especially when he tells me I'm good enough to do things I've spent years being too scared to try.

4. I hate that he has absolutely no understanding of personal space.

Because now I know what it's like when he stands close enough to kiss me, and I can't stop wishing he'd do it again.

5. I hate that he makes terrible coffee.

Because I think I'd happily drink it every morning for the rest of my life if it meant waking up beside him.

6. I hate that he kisses like he means it.

Because he does.

7. I hate that he makes me want to be brave.

Because I've spent most of my life pretending I don't care when things go wrong, and suddenly there's something I want badly enough that the thought of losing it makes me feel sick.

8. I hate that he knows me.

Because he notices all the things I spend so much time trying to hide, and somehow, instead of making me feel like I'm not enough, he makes me want to be better.

9. I hate that I can't stop thinking about him.

Because I don't actually want to.

Lando stopped scrolling.

Oscar looked up.

"There's only nine."

Lando smiled faintly.

"Yeah. Been having a bit of trouble with the last one."

Oscar regarded him for a moment, his expression becoming unexpectedly soft.

"What's the tenth?"

Lando took a breath.

Then he began typing.

10. I hate that I'm in love with you.

Because I've spent my entire life trying to be the kind of person everyone likes, and somehow, without even trying, you've become the person whose opinion matters most.

Because you make terrible coffee and you steal all the blankets and you correct my grammar when I'm trying to tell you something important.

Because you make me feel like I don't have to be funny or clever or interesting every second of every day.

Because you see me.

And because I think I could spend the rest of my life finding new things to hate about you, and I'd still never manage to stop loving you.

Lando stared at the screen for several seconds.

Then he handed Oscar his phone.

For a moment, the younger man didn't move.

Then he took it.

Lando watched him read, feeling that familiar, terrifying sense of vulnerability settle beneath his ribs, although this time there was something unexpectedly wonderful about the knowledge that Oscar was seeing precisely what he wanted him to see.

Oscar read the final entry twice.

Then he looked up.

His eyes were suspiciously bright.

Lando grinned.

"You're crying."

Oscar immediately shook his head.

"No, I'm not."

"You're literally crying."

"Allergic reaction."

"To what?"

"Your appalling punctuation."

Lando burst out laughing.

Oscar laughed too, although there was something unsteady about the sound as he set the phone aside and reached for Lando's hand.

"You're an idiot," he murmured.

Lando smiled.

"Yeah. But I'm your idiot."

Oscar looked at him.

Then he kissed him.

And Lando, who had spent most of his adult life convincing himself that he was perfectly capable of maintaining a casual attitude towards romantic attraction, discovered that there was absolutely nothing casual about being loved by Oscar Piastri.

___

Later that evening, they lay curled together on Oscar's sofa, the framed article hanging above his desk and the city glowing softly beyond the windows. Oscar was reading one of his new books, Lando was pretending not to be interested in the increasingly ridiculous romantic decisions of its protagonists, and neither of them appeared particularly inclined to move.

Eventually, Oscar glanced down at him.

"For the record," he said quietly, "I think you're going to be an incredible journalist."

Lando smiled.

"You're genuinely obsessed with me."

Oscar laughed softly, brushing a stray curl away from his forehead.

"Unfortunately."

Lando leaned up to kiss him.

And for once, he didn't feel the slightest need to turn the moment into a joke.