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Lando tightens his grip on the glass. The condensation collects, clinging to his fingertips before sliding down in deliberate trails, tracing the curve of his knuckles like a fleeting caress. A bead of water descends, disappearing into the cuff of his sweater. The wool drinks it greedily, and Lando feels the damp imprint against his skin. His mind wanders. He pictures himself as the droplet, absorbed and surrendered to something larger, something irrevocably other.
The air inside is stagnant, the heat amplified by the crush of bodies. Around him, life presses on in sharp, disjointed flashes: a girl dodging the spat words of a man too drunk to contain himself, her friend tugging her away with wide, watchful eyes. Laughter rises in uneven bursts. Glass clinks against glass. Somewhere, someone stumbles, and the music surges to drown out the cacophony. Lando’s focus narrows as he finds himself watching him again.
The man.
He turns just slightly, his shirt shifting to reveal lines and folds that resist and reform with the movement of his body. The creases linger—a record of motion, etched in fabric. Lando’s gaze catches on the exposed skin of his elbow, flushed pink and taut over bone. A mole peeks out near the edge, shy and understated, hiding and revealing itself with the flow of people obscuring the view.
The man laughs, his voice too distant to grasp but resonant in its cadence. His companion—a generic placeholder of a man, all loose buttons and mismatched confidence—mutters something forgettable. Lando dismisses him entirely, eyes tracing upward again, searching for the lines and textures that have burned themselves into his memory.
“Lando, hey, man!”
Charles breaks into his thoughts, clamping a hand on Lando’s shoulder. His grin is wide and familiar, dimples cutting deep, but there’s a faint residue on the corner of his mouth. Something white and slimy that Lando chooses to ignore.
“Who’s doing coke?” Lando asks, not because he cares, but because it distracts.
Charles laughs, loud and unrestrained. “Daniel and the usual crew. Same story, different night.” His shrug is feigned, as if the casualness might mask his need.
Lando sees it for what it is. Desperation hangs off him like a poorly fitted jacket.
“Got any on you?” Charles presses, his grip tightening.
“No.” Lando frees himself easily, slipping away with a murmured see you later. He moves toward the washroom, weaving through the humid tangle of bodies. The music thrums in his chest, and the crowd becomes a single organism, pulsing and writhing in unity. The neon lights blur their faces into something faceless yet alive; a sea of possibilities collapsing into nothingness.
He pauses, setting down his glass. The man is gone. In his place, a woman stands, her presence insignificant in the void left behind. Lando doesn’t see her; he sees the space where the man had been—a small cube in the vastness, still pulsing with the memory of his body, his laugh, his mole.
The need sharpens. Lando’s fixation consumes him. He needs to find him. Needs to touch, to know the heat of his skin, the rhythm of his pulse. His body hums with purpose, an itch so deep he cannot scratch it, not with drink, not with anything else.
At the bar, he downs a glass, then another. The burn slides down his throat, igniting him from within. He imagines himself combusting, consumed entirely by this unnameable craving. His steps veer toward the washroom, away from the crowd’s collective rhythm, away from everything but the promise of release.
Inside, Daniel leans over the sink, splashing water onto his face. He doesn’t speak, sliding the packet toward Lando.
Lando takes it without a word, the silence between them a fragile accord. The powder stings, sharp and biting, as he inhales. His thoughts scatter, his body thrumming with electric heat.
Max emerges from a stall, his hair disheveled, his mouth tilted in a lazy smirk. “Haven’t seen you much tonight,” he says, rinsing his hands.
Daniel chuckles darkly. “With how you’ve been going at it, I’d be surprised if you saw much of anyone tonight.”
A girl stumbles out after him, mascara streaked, her shoulders marked with red imprints of teeth. She doesn’t look at them. Doesn’t pause, just disappears into the pulsating chaos outside.
Lando watches Max, his gaze lingering on the sharp line of his jaw, the rough stubble catching the harsh fluorescent light. He thinks of the man again—his arms, his elbows, the subtle movement of muscle beneath stretched skin. The pale blue of his shirt, the way it clung in all the wrong ways but made him impossible to forget.
The washroom feels impossibly small, the air thick and stifling. Lando leans against the door of a stall, his head swimming. Blood rushes hot and heavy through his veins, a molten current coiling in his gut.
Max’s laughter echoes faintly as he presses another man against the wall, their bodies colliding with feral intensity. Lando doesn’t move. Doesn’t find it in himself to look away. Sweat gleams on Max’s temple, saliva strings between their mouths, and the sounds—low, guttural, obscene—fill the space between tiled walls.
Lando is a specter, watching but unseen, present but absent. He inhales again, sharp and hard. The sting clears nothing. The itch remains, burrowing deeper.
Elbows. Sinew. Mole. Red, red, red.
Somewhere in the chaos of bodies, the man still exists.
Silent sentinels lurking in the known universe, like black holes. Orbs of void, pulling you in, distorting you into something unrecognizable. Past, present, future; compressed, obliterated, reconstituted as a block of unfeeling dust. You’re here, breathing, and then suddenly you’re not.
Are they portals? Gateways to dimensions where the self is stripped bare, down to its cellular truths? Or are they nothing more than cosmic mirrors, reflecting the gaping voids we carry inside?
Within minutes Lando’s forehead presses itself against the toilet seat, his body convulsing as something solid lurches up with the acidic bile. He can heard the sharp sound of moans drifting from just outside. Another groan gets submerged in the sound of him vomiting again. The tang clings to his teeth, sharp and metallic. Beneath it, faint and insidious, is the taste of something like regret. He spits it out. Fuck regret.
He wonders how many days it’ll take for a meteor to strike Earth. A thousand? A million? Or maybe it’s already happened, and the world is just living out its death throes. Time bends, folds, devours itself. Like a black hole—are they really black? Or are they a riot of colors beyond human comprehension, bleeding together into pixelated chaos? A million shades of everything, crammed into the nothingness.
Thump. Thump.
Max’s hand lands on his back, two perfunctory pats. The touch is clinical, devoid of comfort, and Lando feels the heat of it like a brand. He shrugs it off, shoves Max’s hand away, flips him off for good measure.
“Fuck off,” he spits, voice rough and ragged.
Max doesn’t linger. He doesn’t have to. The night has already done its damage.
Lando wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, the sourness lingering on his tongue. His body is spent, but his mind won’t shut up. The room tilts, blurry and unsteady, as if the world itself were being swallowed whole by some unseen singularity.
He leans against the stall, letting the thought take him. Black holes don’t care. They devour without hesitation. The universe condenses into a singular point, obliterating distinction, erasing meaning.
Just like tonight.
____
Oscar.
The chandelier casts a fractured glow across the room, its golden brass and bronzed steel catching the light in dazzling bursts. Ornate patterns criss-cross through its intricate design, splintering into fleeting images that never quite settle.
The champagne in Lando’s glass mimics the chandelier’s hue, rich and effervescent, specks of gold bubbling to the surface. He cradles the flute in careful fingers, sipping with a precision that feels almost performative.
His throat works around the liquid beautifully. It sloshes inside his mouth, warms up to the internal temperature and smooths its way down to his stomach, a motion that seems to command time to slow.
Oscar. The name lands in his head, heavy as a church bell, reverberating through him.
Lando’s boss, Zak, pats Oscar’s arm in a consolidating manner, and leans in to whisper something. It’s inappropriate, highly unprofessional. You shouldn’t lean in and whisper into the ears of your employees, especially ones who are clad in Ralph Lauren, again.
This time it’s a crisp white shirt that fits too well, taut over biceps that draw the eye like a hook. The sleeves are rolled up, baring golden forearms flecked with freckles, each one a constellation Lando could map with his eyes closed.
It punches its way through Lando’s throat, down his neck till it pools around his feet. It’s a heavyweight, forcing his eyes to stay glued to the figure clad in white shirt and khaki pants. The shirt is tucked in today. Lando can’t see it clearly from his position. He can’t move anyways.
Oscar. Names are the shortest poems there are.
He feels it coil around his throat, snake down his spine, drag him further into the gravity of Oscar’s presence. It’s moving, slithering and coating itself in his blood and liquid. It’s slick and slippery as it travels the landmass inside his body, through his veins and arteries. It slips around the nerve endings and tightens around his pelvic bone, squeezing it till Lando feels so sick he can’t stand anymore.
Oscar. Oscar, Oscar, Oscar.
Lando feels his knees threaten to give, a momentary rebellion against the weight of existence, or maybe just the gravity of him. The room tilts, the world skewing slightly off its axis, and for a fleeting moment, Lando wonders if it would be so terrible to collapse, to let the pull of Oscar’s presence pin him to the ground like a magnet to steel.
Maybe this is destiny.
There’s something profoundly poetic in surrender, in the act of letting yourself plummet into the unknown without resistance. The free fall is terrifying—a disorienting blur of air and emptiness—but there’s beauty in the not-knowing, in the way you gamble on the hope that there’s solid ground waiting somewhere below.
Lando feels the charge of it, an electric pulse ricocheting through his body like static, igniting every nerve. It starts in his fingertips, buzzing faintly, and travels upward, wrapping itself around him like a second skin, coiling into his chest, his throat, until it surges all the way to the very strands of his hair.
The sensation is jarring, unrelenting, and it’s everything. It demands his attention, his breath, his sense of self, until all he can do is give in and let the current take him.
What are the odds, Lando wonders, that the glass touching his lips might someday find itself against Oscar’s? The thought worms its way into him, slow and insidious. It could happen. Objects pass through hands, linger in the warmth of one palm before settling into another. Maybe it already has.
And the napkin—thin, delicate—dragging across Oscar’s mouth, catching on the soft curve of his lips. Could it end up with him? Folded neatly, resting on his lap, as though marking territory. The idea curls in Lando’s mind, a forbidden thought he doesn't want to chase away.
Even the air seems complicit. The breeze that slips over Lando’s skin—warm, faintly damp—must travel onward, carrying some microscopic part of him. Will it break upon Oscar’s body? Slide down his neck, over the golden stretch of his arms, cooling him, touching him? The thought leaves Lando almost breathless. The air knows no boundaries; it wraps itself around them both, unseen but intimate.
He imagines these connections too vividly. The glass against his lips, the napkin against Oscar’s mouth, the air folding them into the same invisible fabric. It’s too much, the weight of possibility sinking into him, sharp-edged and impossible to shake. And yet, he wouldn’t want to shake it.
He thinks of viruses. Microscopic particles so much smaller than bacteria, almost imperceptible in the grand scheme of the living. Not even considered living organisms, no reproduction or replication. Relying on a host cell just to make another of you, a one-sided relationship from the beginning. The attachment, literally and figuratively, to living beings just to be able to gain life. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere. His hands itch.
Someone is walking towards him. It’s Max. He’s wearing a navy jacket over his shirt. The pants stretch across his legs nicely. He moves with the kind of confidence that brushes the air aside, like it’s his to command.
Max gets close enough that when he speaks, his voice doesn’t just register in Lando’s ears—it settles against his skin, a low murmur that lingers.
“Want to sit down with the law team? The ones from NYC. They seem nice.”
Lando doesn’t respond immediately. His gaze drifts to where Max gestures, drawn toward the round table glowing under dim lights. It’s sparsely occupied, two-thirds full, the rest of its polished surface cluttered with dishes mid-arrival. The men there are variations of the same blueprint—white, mid-30s and upward, their appearances tailored to exude ease while betraying calculated precision.
Suited or casually dressed, it doesn’t matter. They’re derived from the same font, a typeface of affluence and arrogance, the only differences in the kerning of their features. But then Lando sees him amid the uniformity, sat between two men in black suits, their cigarettes dangling lazily from their lips. The faint curl of smoke frames him, a surreal haze against the sharp planes of his face. The table, the laughter, the cigarettes—all of it blurs at the edges as Lando focuses in on Oscar.
His presence cuts through the scene like an aberration, something too vivid for the muted tones around him. Lando’s throat tightens. He feels the pull, visceral and magnetic, like the room has rearranged itself around Oscar and Lando is just another body caught in the gravity.
The cigarettes burn down slowly, smoke curling toward the ceiling, but Oscar doesn’t seem to notice. He shifts slightly, his arm brushing the man beside him—a fleeting contact that feels, to Lando, like a silent act of possession.
Lando leans toward Max, his voice dropping into a hushed murmur, as though speaking too loudly might shatter the delicate balance of this tableau. “And Zak?”
Max barely spares him a glance, shrugging in that effortless way he always does. “Zak won’t care. He might even be thrilled we’re cozying up to other branches. Building bridges and all that crap.”
Lando tilts his head slightly, considering. Zak does love his buzzwords: unity, community, teamwork. Words that tumble out in a rehearsed cadence during every meeting, accompanied by his wide American grin. Too polished, too hollow. It grates on Lando—on everyone, really, everyone who isn’t one of Zak’s handpicked poster boys for corporate solidarity.
His gaze flickers back to Oscar, drawn like a moth to the golden glow of his skin under the low light. Zak’s platitudes be damned. This isn’t about bridges or unity. It’s about him.
Lando places a fleeting hand on Max’s lower back as he steps forward, using the contact as a grounding force. The table is almost full now, plates clinking softly as servers bustle around them. Only three chairs remain. Lando slides into one, deliberately leaving an empty seat between Max and himself. He catches Max’s questioning look and pointedly ignores it.
As he settles in, Oscar looks up. His gaze travels over Lando like the first sting of cold winter air. It brushes against his face, sends shivers down his spine in brushstrokes.
Then Oscar‘s eyes shift to Max for a moment, recognition lighting in them before offering a smile. He nods at him and says, “Max, right? We talked about the 881 Trinity Value case.”
For a moment, Max looks caught off guard, his usual composure flickering. The question from Oscar and the subtle shift in the table as everyone pays attention is perplexing, but Max recovers quickly, his smile sliding into place with ease. “Of course,” Max replies, his tone as polished as his tailored jacket. “Oscar, if I’m not mistaken?”
Oscar’s smile stretches wider, carving into his face with an almost cruel precision. The way it lifts his cheeks, bunching the skin just so, makes something dark and restless coil in Lando’s chest. The kind of heat that makes his fingers twitch, itching for something reckless.
The smile lingers for a moment before it fades, but the ghost of it remains, burned into Lando’s vision like an afterimage. He can still see its shape, its weight, the subtle way it lingers like a taunt. He wants to smash something—maybe a plate, maybe the glass in his hand—just to drown out the echoes of that smile. To break it into something real.
Oscar returns his attention to the men around him, his gestures deceptively calm, almost tranquil in their precision. He moves with an unnerving grace, each tilt of his head or lift of his hand deliberate enough to feel like choreography. His eyebrows rise just slightly in response to something said, and a smile—a small, curated one—takes its place.
To Lando, it’s like watching a script come to life, every movement playing out as if it were rehearsed. There’s an artistry to it, but also an unease, like the scene could shatter if someone spoke too loudly or moved too quickly.
The men at the table lean in, drawn to Oscar’s quiet magnetism, their attention circling him like hook, line and sinker. They seem entranced by the cadence of his voice, the measured way he forms his sentences, the subtle flickers of his expressions.
It reminds Lando of something biblical, something heavy with inevitability. Jesus and his twelve apostles. The image flashes through his mind, unbidden: Oscar at the center, calm and knowing, surrounded by disciples who hang on every word, as if awaiting divine wisdom.
Or maybe, Lando thinks, it’s not the Last Supper after all. Maybe it’s The Sermon on the Mount. Oscar delivering his gospel, while the masses below scramble to grasp its meaning, their reverence twisting into obsession.
Either way, the scene unsettles Lando. There’s something about the way they’re all orbiting Oscar, the way his presence pulls them in so effortlessly, that gnaws at him. It’s power disguised as humility, influence wrapped in charm.
And Lando hates how much he notices it. How much he feels it singing through his insides. It’s a tune that commands him to waltz, awkward and unsure, one step forward and two steps back. It’s a drunken, sideways stumble. A reverse dance in a room spinning too fast.
Oscar locks his eyes with Lando. They’re warm, a chocolatey brown that’s melting in the lights. They drip and pool around his iris and invite Lando for a swim in them. It’s inevitable, the fall. Lando looks. Oscar doesn’t look away. His eyes soften as his lips curl faintly at the corners, a knowing almost-smile that tilts the balance. It feels like a challenge. Like he’s daring Lando to keep looking, daring him to lose.
Lando doesn’t blink. His muscles tense, his fingers curl against the table’s edge. It’s a fight for dominance, and he’s losing before he’s even begun.
The main course arrives without fanfare, placed in front of him with practiced indifference. A lean steak, dark and slick with garlic butter, sits untouched. Its slightly burned appearance looks deliberate, in an effort to appear appetizing.
The soup, long forgotten, has lost its heat. The faint curl of steam has vanished, leaving the surface flat and unremarkable. Pieces of mushroom float idly, their presence more decorative than functional.
Lando picks up a spoonful. The cream coats his tongue, smooth and vaguely rich, and settles down heavily on top of it. The flavours are subtle enough. The kind of thing someone spent too much time perfecting for people who’d barely notice.
He swallows and sets the spoon back down, his gaze drifting to the tablecloth. There’s a hum of conversation around him, but it’s all white noise, blurring into the background. He doesn’t dare look up as he mouths another spoonful. It feels too intimate, somehow.
Someone has sat down beside him and is engaging in idle conversation with Max. They talk about the deal with the rival company under Vasseur’s leadership. They skirt around the topic of racism inside the office, don’t talk about how the dating scandal nearly destroyed Archive Tech’s reputation and what their boss had to say about it. It’s boring, mostly. Office talks and mild sexism as they critique their female colleagues.
Lando tries to tune it all out. Chases the feeling he gets after a line of coke. Can’t replicate it enough under a chandelier-lit corporate dinner, so he cuts a slice into his steak, the meat yielding easily. It’s tender, the meat moist and flavoured. The sides are up to his standard as well. Nobu has certainly raised his expectations regarding general cuisine. He mouths the third slice and accidentally makes eye contact with Oscar. Feels a jolt of electricity so sharp it stings painfully as he finds Oscar’s eyes already on him, watching, unblinking, as if waiting for something.
Lando stays. The time tickles, every nanosecond, millisecond, thousandth of a second. He watches the way Oscar's fingers curl around the stem of the wine glass, how the liquid inside swirls like something forbidden and sinful. The deep red catches the light, glinting briefly before settling back into shadow.
Oscar lifts it to his lips, his gaze staying on Lando’s as the glass tilts, the wine spilling gently against the edge. It coats his lips, a faint, slow drip as he holds the glass close, savoring it—deliberate, almost ritualistic. The wine seems to linger there for just a moment too long before he swallows, and Lando feels the action more than he sees it. The movement is languid, almost sensual, and it makes Lando’s breath catch. He can feel himself growing under his pants.
Oscar doesn’t flinch, doesn’t break the weight of Lando’s stare. He places the glass down with a deliberate slowness, the motion almost too calculated, too smooth. The soft click of the glass against the table feels like a promise hanging in the air, like the faintest brush of skin. Then he stands, slipping away with the grace of something liquid—his white shirt catching the overhead light, glowing against the dark. It slides over him as he moves, a second skin, something that hides nothing, leaving everything exposed.
Lando's breath catches, his eyes tracing the curve of Oscar's back, the way the fabric clings to the shape of him. He can't look away. There's something about the way he moves, like a slow ripple across the surface of a quiet pond. It's hypnotic. Lando feels the pull, something tethering him to that exit, to the path Oscar’s footsteps have carved.
A minute passes. Two. Three. Lando picks up his fork again, but the bite doesn’t taste the same. The food is suddenly too heavy, like it’s all there to weigh him down, to stop him from doing what he knows he has to. He sets it down, his hand shaking slightly even though he tries his best to hide it. There’s a weight in his chest, a pressure building. His throat tightens, but he doesn't know why.
His chair scrapes against the floor as he stands, each movement too loud in the quiet chatter of the room. He doesn’t look back, but the thought of turning around almost feels like a sin. He excuses himself, his voice too soft, too low, as if speaking aloud would ruin the fragile tension that stretches between them. His steps follow, deliberate, slow, as if each one is inching him closer to something that he’s already too deep into.
The washroom door swings open with barely any resistance. The muffled flush of a toilet reaches Lando's ears, grounding him, tethering him to the present. Oscar stands by the sinks, his hands under the stream of water, eyes fixed on the mirror. The movement is all Lando can focus on for the moment.
By the time he’s drying his hands, another man emerges from a stall, brushing past Lando without so much as a glance. That small interaction jolts him forward, propelling him to the sinks, to stand beside Oscar.
Lando doesn’t speak, doesn’t even think he should. The silence between them is taut, stretched thin but not yet breaking. Oscar finishes drying his hands, the paper towel crumpling between his fingers before being tossed into the bin. He smooths a hand through his hair, tucks his shirt in with the kind of careful deliberation that makes Lando's stomach knot. Then, leaning casually against the sink, Oscar turns to face him.
His eyes are sharp, his mouth curved into something that might pass as a smile if it weren’t so cutting. An eyebrow arches—perfectly, infuriatingly like a sculpture—and the soft lilt of his voice almost undoes Lando completely. “Logistics?”
The question feels almost absurd in its simplicity after all the hours spent agonising over what cadence his voice might be. Lando has to clear his throat, buying himself a second before answering. “Production, actually.” His voice comes out steady, but only just.
Oscar laughs. The sound isn’t loud, but it feels like it reverberates through the tiled walls, crawling over Lando’s skin. It’s the kind that knows too much, that pries you open just enough to remind you how fragile you are. Lando hates how much it affects him, how much it feels like the sound could unravel his mind if he let it.
“You don’t look the type,” Oscar says, his tone light but his eyes anything but.
Lando glances up, meeting those eyes in the mirror. There’s a sharpness in them, something dangerous, something alive. “No?” he replies, his voice quieter now.
Oscar shakes his head, the movement slow and deliberate, like he’s weighing every inch of Lando with his gaze. “Could pass as Marketing,” he muses, gesturing vaguely with his hand. “But only slightly.”
It’s nonsense. Charles is in Marketing. He’s got friends over at Logistics as well. He doesn’t remotely look like them. He thinks of calling bullshit, but there’s something in Oscar's eyes, something in his expression; something molten and lethal, like boiling blood, like poison pooling behind the surface. He lets the comment hang in the air, unchallenged.
Oscar, though, has no interest in letting the silence settle. He steps closer, just enough to blur the boundaries of personal space. His presence is a weight, pressing down, suffocating and magnetic all at once. The air between them grows heavier, and Lando realizes with a jolt that all he’s breathing in is Oscar’s exhale—warm and intoxicating, like it’s meant to unnerve him. And it does.
There was an invisible string between them but it isn’t as transparent anymore. It pulses redder with every exchange, thickening into something visceral, something tangible. The crimson of it burns in Lando’s mind, a ruby glow so vivid it feels like it could sear his skin. His gaze locks onto Oscar’s, and the air thickens between them, heavy and heady. It’s a spell, a curse, a promise of destruction. It’s a trance and a fistfight rolled into one, the kind of connection that leaves bruises, both seen and unseen.
He imagines the aftermath—a split lip, blood staining perfect skin, the hollowness of a stomach punched too hard. It’s obscene, and it leaves a gaping hole inside him waiting to be filled. He wants to know how soft Oscar’s skin is beneath his own knuckles, how fragile and real he could make him feel.
The thought fractures as his fingers shift, barely touching Oscar’s. A slight brush over the counter—a whisper of contact, nails grazing, the roughness of knuckles brushing against unyielding skin. The touch is fleeting, almost imperceptible, but it feels like a spark, like static crackling in the dead air between them. Lando doesn’t pull away, doesn’t break the thread.
Oscar doesn’t either. The string between them tightens, crimson and bright, binding them in a way that feels both inevitable and impossible to sever.
When Oscar’s hand closes over the back of Lando’s nape, Lando thinks of the seventh circle of hell. It must be red—blood red, blistering and alive, swallowing everything in its path.
Their lips meet like a cataclysm, a delicate tsunami rolling over fragile shores. It drowns everything. Bridges collapse in the wake, towers crumble, the landscape scorched and reshaped by the force. It’s the end of a civilization and the birth of something darker, something that festers beneath the surface.
It feels viral, like an infection clawing its way through his veins. It’s a cacophony of viruses, melting from existence only to be brought back through the touch of another. A parasite that attaches itself and feeds, destroys, and lingers. Every touch is an incision, every breath shared a siphon. It’s the consequence of hearts that beat too loudly, of gazes that refuse to look away.
The moment brands him. The heat of it sears his skin, carves itself into his bones like a sacrament. It shouldn’t feel this divine, this reverent. It’s a sin—an exquisite, unholy act wrapped in a tapestry so radiant it defies guilt. Lando tilts into it, surrendering to the crimson glow that consumes them both.