Archive of Our Own ^beta

​​​​“You’re not serious.”

Lando’s hands go still around his own calf, where he’d been massaging out the ache with his torso folded forwards towards his pointed toes.

Most things hurt in one way or the other around this time of year, but even when he’s stretching out the kinks, he can never quite shake the technique that sticks in his joints. Knees turned out, ankles arched beneath his socks and his tights.

“I’m quite serious.”

Lewis looks it, too. The little joy lines that crease so easily at the corners of his eyes are nowhere to be found – haven’t been since he paced right over to Lando after the end of class and said I need to talk to you about casting. And Lando knows his own face is doing the ugly, petulant thing Lewis hates, but the voice buried beneath his token protests knows it’s a lost cause already. He might as well get his money’s worth before he gives up and just takes it. What other choice does he have?

“I’m not going to do it.”

“You are,” Lewis says then. Predictable. He folds his arms across his stupid, posh sweater and points a toe at Lando’s ankle, “if that’s still bothering you, you should see your physio.”

“It’s fine,” Lando snaps, drawing his legs back in towards himself, “not like I’m going to need it to keep up with a bunch of fricking six-year-olds anyway.”

“Alright,” Lewis is smooth and calm like always, a counterpoint to all Lando’s spiky-sharp points. It sets his teeth on edge. “Check your email soon. Daniel’s going to send you the schedule of rehearsals he needs you at. They’re mostly evenings and weekends, so they shouldn’t conflict with your responsibilities here.”

Lando bites at the nozzle of his water bottle a bit more aggressively than strictly necessary to pop it open, “I know how the kids’ Nutcracker works, mate.”

“Great,” Lewis finally smiles, “then we’re all set.”

“No, we’re not set. ” Lando regrets not standing up for this conversation. “I haven’t agreed to it.”

Lewis lifts one eyebrow, “Well lucky it’s not up to you, Lando. There’s nothing to agree to; you’re dancing the Nutcracker Prince. I’ve already given Daniel the list of his professional guests and you’re already on it.”

“Well take me off it,” he bites back.

Lewis’ face hardens just past the point that used to scare Lando when he first joined the company, when Lewis was still on his own run at principal, before he slid seamlessly, perfectly, of fucking course, into his place at the head of the program.

“No,” he says down at Lando.

The battle’s lost – there never really was one – so Lando settles back on his hands and curls his lip, content to whine, “But why ?” to prove he’s not actually okay with any of it.

“Because that’s the decision that has been made,” Lewis says diplomatically, “it’ll be good for you.”

“Being miserable for a month is supposed to be good for me?” Lando asks.

“You’re already miserable, love,” Lewis squeezes Lando’s shoulder once, “might as well try it somewhere new.”

He turns to walk back towards his office as Lando frowns about his last sentence.

“Besides,” Lewis turns over his shoulder when he’s halfway there, spinning on the heel of his studio shoe, “the kids’ show closes before the company tour. You’ll have more time off for Christmas.”

Lando chucks his water bottle towards his bag and huffs, “I don’t fucking care about Christmas.”

“Ah,” that sly smile is back on Lewis’ lips, “I don’t think that’s true.”

****

Lando really loves ballet. There’s something about the exact way classes are arranged, with a proper order that stays just the same, and the right way there is to do nearly everything, that settles his scattered brain down. When he gets tired of focusing on the height of his extensions he can focus on his turnout instead. It’s a quick enough variety to remove his anxious ticks whenever he’s in the studio and just enough praise lurking a centimeter out of reach to keep him spinning like a hamster in a wheel, spotting all the while.

Lando also fucking hates ballet.

“Lando-”

“Yeah,” Lando spins on his heel at the end of his pass through Lewis’ new grand allegro combination, tipping his gaze to the corner of the mirror to avoid meeting anybody’s eyes . Bent back leg, he already knows. Can’t say that, though. His ankle aches beneath his tights.

“Come back out, please,” Lewis points to the center of the floor and Lando puffs air out as he goes. Of course he goes.

Lewis had told him once, back when things were less fucking weird between them, that he’d been excited to teach Lando in particular because of the potential Lando had. Raw material, all energy – nothing like Verstappen. Lando had lapped it straight out of Lewis’ hand like a compliment then, but he’d been 19, and Lewis was already the greatest product the company had ever produced. It sounds backhanded now, through the years and the blur of his memory.

Lewis makes him run the combination over, does it again until sweat drips from Lando’s curls down into his eyes, where the burn distracts him from the pains in other parts of him.

Before Lewis can say “good ” or even “better,” the studio door cracks open and knuckles rap at the inside of the frame. Lewis’ face goes carefully blank in a way that tells Lando he’s free before Nico even says, "I need the space, Lewis, you’re over already.”

“I’m finishing up,” he says cooly, but as soon as the door’s shut again he waves the whole class away anyway, nodding at each of their abridged curtsies along the way.

“See you all in a bit. Lando-”

“Yeah,” Lando says again, doing even worse at hiding his irritation than he had the first time. He’s exhausted and sweaty and shaking with hunger, needs to ice his ankle and stretch the technique class out of his muscles all in the three-hour gap before afternoon rehearsal for the late-winter show. His breath heaves in and out as he stares blankly at Lewis from the door he’d been halfway out of already, lips parted to get recovery oxygen faster.

“Daniel wants you for an hour today to go over your choreography before rehearsal with his students.”

“Okay,” Lando says flatly. He checks the clock over Lewis’ shoulder and grimaces. He could dance the prince’s role in his sleep. Or any of them, actually, doesn’t matter. He’s done it all each Nutcracker season since he was in nappies, being dragged across the stage by the hand in mouse ears.

Lewis nicks Lando’s water from its space under the barre and hands it over as they squeeze past Nico on their way down the hallway.

“You’ve got all morning off now, haven’t you?” Lewis lifts an eyebrow at him, fucking pleasant smile, and pats him low on the back. Around them, the company is littered on the floor in their 15-minute gap before holiday tour rehearsal.

“Right, yeah. Just tell me when, I guess.”

****

The November air bites when Lando steps into it. It hasn’t snowed yet, but it’s cold enough to. Everybody’s so bundled up in thick jackets and scarves that the streets seem impersonal for it, just a mass of anonymous bodies jostling Lando on either side as he shoulders his way a street over from the studios.

For as much time as he spends in the company building itself, he doesn’t usually linger in the neighborhood. There’s no reason to, when he’s got a perfectly nice set of takeaway restaurants and coffee shops and laundromats near his own flat across the city. An hour is a weird amount of time, though: not enough to take the bus back home without turning straight around after, but too much to waste away in the lobby of the company floor, too. So he’d swapped his clothes and tugged a beanie far enough over his hair to hide the sweat, then shouldered out into the late morning for- something.

A change, maybe, since that’s what’s good for him these days.

There’s a café just four doors down from the studios that Lando knows the juniors sometimes hang around after rehearsal – fireplace, mismatched ceramic mugs, latte art, the kind of trendy place they all post on their Instagram stories to make their friends back home jealous. It’s quiet at quarter to eleven, though. He hadn’t set out for the place, but his nose is running already by the time he reaches it, and their indoors are as good as any at that point.

“Welcome in!” someone calls as Lando shakes the feeling back into his fingers. He’s been meaning to tuck his fricking gloves into his coat pockets every morning for a week, but he always forgets in the scramble to make morning technique on time.

“Hey,” Lando breathes back distractedly as he hangs back from the counter.

He only ever orders the same two or three things from anywhere, but he looks over the menu anyway because he’s got time to waste and no particular desire to kick himself back out into the cold just yet.

“Do you have questions?”

It’s a different voice than the one from a minute back, accented and bored. Lando snaps his eyes to the register and finds its owner looks just the same: quiet, unimpressed, a bit disheveled with the way his bangs flop fluffy and untamed across the top of his forehead. His eyebrows are raised nearly all the way to the swoop of it. It’s cute. If Lando had a little less dread weighing him down, he might do something about that.

As it is, he rearranges his face into something more polite for the situation and steps in closer, voice neutral when he asks, “What’s good here?”

The man tilts his head sideways, face falling even flatter, “Can you be more specific?”

It shouldn’t be funny and it shouldn’t make Lando feel bad, but it’s a battle between those two things anyway as he presses his lips between his teeth, “What coffee do you get here…” Lando’s eyes dart down to the man’s chest, catch on the smattering of moles at the base of his neck where the collar of his t-shirt is stretched out, and then shoot quickly back up to his face, “Oscar.”

Oscar glances over his shoulder, checking, then leans a little over the register, “I don’t even like coffee, mate. We make a really good hot chocolate, though.”

Lando’s own weak smile catches him off guard. He doesn’t look like a hot chocolate fellow, Oscar, but that’s cute, innit? It’s a work day, though.

“Americano,” Lando tells him, just like he’d already known he would, “It’s not that I don’t believe you, just…”

“Sure it’s not,” Oscar’s face cracks into a smile that feels sort of private, conspiratorial.

“Another time,” Lando bargains, and he doesn’t really mean it, doesn’t plan on ever coming back if he can help it, but it makes Oscar smile again, so it’s worth it.

“Americano it is, then, for…?”

Lando’s so caught up in the movement of Oscar’s mouth when he speaks, the way he can see his accent in the way his lips move, that it takes him a beat too long to realize Oscar’s eyebrows have gone back up. His fingers are poised over the register, waiting.

“Oh,” Lando flushes, “Uh. For Bob.” Easier that way, always has been.

“For Bob,” Oscar repeats with a flurry of quick taps to the screen, “anything else? Pastry or something?”

“Nah, thanks,” Lando waves it away quickly, his afternoon rehearsals and the private – or whatever the fuck it is he’s got with Daniel first – hanging sharp at the front of his mind. He never eats just before dancing, hasn’t since he was a kid.

Oscar cashes him out and Lando can’t help but notice the way his fingers look handing his card back over, too, the long nails, ratty cuticles, pale fingers. Lando blinks himself out of it. Maybe he really does need the caffeine.

“End of the bar, mate,” Oscar sets Lando’s card on the counter, apparently tired of waiting for Lando to be fucking normal, and hooks a thumb down past the espresso machines, “it’ll be out in just a minute.”

It’s a good americano. It keeps Lando’s fingers warm all the way back to the company floor.

****

Lando’s worked with Daniel before – once or twice when he’s run warm-up classes before stage rehearsals, and maybe a few times he’s forgetting – but Daniel’s never properly been his choreographer. He’s friends with Lewis, Lando knows, but it takes less than five minutes of their session for Lando to figure out that Daniel’s not like Lewis. He’s not like the teachers Lando had taken classes with as a kid on this very floor before he’d joined the company, either. He’s not like anything, really.

He's in joggers and socks, sitting cross-legged on the floor when Lando arrives, and he starts right in by blocking out the battle scene vaguely, darting from one side of the auxiliary studio to the other to demonstrate where people will be when. When he coaches Lando through the prince’s bit at the end, he uses gestures and the word vibe about seven or eight times.

“It’s kind of whatever, mate,” Daniel shrugs when he’s finished his ramble, “I’ll put you with my Clara on it eventually, but don’t worry about this part too much until then. She’s good, she’ll get it. Now what about the pas de deux?”

Lando blinks quickly, trying to figure out what Daniel expects out of him, “What about it?”

“You have one already, I assume,” Daniel waves off, “Our sugar plum is a first-year company dancer, so I don’t think she’s done it before, but the three of us can figure that out later, too. I’m not worried about any of it.”

Not worried is another thing Daniel can’t stop repeating. It’s a bit contagious, probably, because Lando shakes out his muscles before running the approximately thirty seconds of actual choreography Daniel’s given him only to realize his muscles are already sort of loose.

By the time Daniel says, “I think that’s probably good for today, mate, I’m set if you are,” it startles Lando right out of the controlled, hyper-focused place his mind goes when it’s too hung-up on nailing timing and controlling his lines to worry about much else.

“Already?” Lando glances back at the clock above the door, surprised, “You don’t want your last fifteen minutes with me?”

Daniel shrugs, “Don’t need it unless you do. If not, I’ll see you Saturday?”

“Right, yeah,” Lando gets halfway through gathering his things before he remembers the formalities and catches himself. His torso twitches a hesitant inch forward. Daniel looks up from the sound system and his eyes sparkle before he laughs – a full belly thing that bends him over a little himself.

“No fucking chance, mate.” Daniel holds out a hand instead for Lando to clap. “You’re not my student.”

And Lando hasn’t technically been anybody’s student, strictly speaking, for five years now. When Daniel says it, though, he finds he nearly believes it.

****

Lando really doesn’t mean to go back to the café. The company won’t shut up about the holiday tour on Friday after technique, though, and Lewis hangs around after to indulge all of their questions for him, and the way he holds court in the middle of the lobby makes Lando’s stomach turn around nothing. He doesn’t eat before dancing.

Oscar’s behind the counter again when Lando bundles himself through the door. He looks impossibly sleepier than he had the last time. Or maybe Lando had just been too hung up on his hands and his neck and his mouth to remember. Stupid, really. Stupid like the way he still hasn’t remembered his gloves, has to breathe hot air over his fingers as he waits by the till for Oscar to finish sorting danishes in the bakery case.

“Morning,” he says when he’s finally behind the register. His hands hang poised over the screen like his eyebrows at his hairline again, “What can I get for you?”

Lando rocks on his heels while he tries to figure out if Oscar recognizes him. He’s not sure he’s entitled to feel any kind of way about it either way, but he does regardless.

“Americano,” Lando says again.

Oscar rings it in.

“For…?”

“For Bob,” Lando says as he hands his card over.

Oscar’s fingers look the same as they did the first time as he runs it and passes it back, “Thanks, Bob. It’ll be at the end of the bar for you in a minute.”

****

It’s been a long time since Lando was in a true kids’ rehearsal. Sure, they run shows with a child or two in the cast every few seasons in the company, plucking the brightest out of Daniel’s bunch to sit shows with them in residence for a handful of weeks. That’s not really the same, though. Nowhere near the chaos of dozens of them at the same time, performing a show where they’re the focus, and he’s the oddity. He’d never guest danced when he was in the company, never needed the money the way others did even when they were all being paid like shit. Thinking about it absently in the lobby of the academy floor, Lando reckons the last time he was around so many kids was probably when he was one. It’d at least been fun, then, on the other side.

“Lando?!”

Lando looks up from his phone to the elevator doors, startled. His face relaxes into an easy grin as the doors clack shut behind Franco, who has already hiked his bag up higher on his shoulder to jog across the gap between them. He’s always earnest, isn’t he, unapologetic energy unlike most of his company class. First-years aren’t usually so brazen . Lando likes it, sort of. Likes what it feels like, anyway.

“Hey,” he lifts an arm easily for Franco to slide under, even though his jacket and his nose are both cold when they nudge against bits of Lando’s bare skin, “You’re in this?”

“Me, of course,” Franco laughs and pats the flat of Lando’s belly, lets his palm linger, “I have rent to make. Why are you ?”

Lando thinks about telling him. Lewis hadn’t ever told him to keep it secret – there’s more in that for Lando than there is for Lewis, probably – and the squirrely, squirmy part of his insides that seeks punishment like absolution longs to tell everybody how bad it’s gotten just so they don’t find out on terms other than his. Franco’s so new, though, eyes so soft where they peer up from Lando’s collarbone where he’s tucked his head.

“Lewis asked me to,” he settles on.

Franco heaves out a wistful sigh and then just as quickly straightens himself back up, “Of course he would, yes.”

It stings a little. Lando squeezes the side of Franco’s neck to get himself through it, and just as he’s about to do something stupid, like promise they’ll have fun together anyway, the studio door kicks open and Daniel backs up into it from within. Smiling, as always.

“Hi,” he says with a cheery little bob of his head, “c’mon in, we’re ready for you.”

To Daniel’s credit, he runs rehearsal with his actual students much more crisply than he had when it was Lando alone. There are dozens of kids – half in ballet pink leotards and tights, looking only just old enough to point their toes, and half in navy blue, older, hanging right around the awkward edge of puberty. They all buzz softly at the start, then fall easily in line as Daniel works through the battle scene bit by bit, inserting first Franco, then Lando into the chaos of choreographed battle.

Lando fights Franco’s mouse army, and he leads his navy-blue soldiers, and he rescues Clara – a girl in red called Molly – and it isn’t tricky, it isn’t demanding, it isn’t anything, really. It’s just the kids’ Nutcracker.

When Daniel calls both guests off to clean up the kids’ exit, Lando falls against the barre by Franco’s side. There’s a weird, shifty void inside of his chest where he’s used to holding Lewis’ or Nico’s notes after dancing almost anything at all, and he can’t decide whether it’s nice or not to have nothing to put there but his own assessment.

“Always a star, Lando,” Franco says nearly on cue, lips close enough to Lando’s ear to startle him.

Lando twists his neck until they’re eye to eye, both grinning, “You were watching me? When you were supposed to be dancing?”

Franco parts his lips in false offense, “Of course not. But they were.”

When Lando follows the line of Franco’s finger, he finds his soldiers in little cliques, palms in front of their faces. Hiding blushes, maybe, or perhaps smothering their whispers where they’re following the adults’ bad example.

“Franco,” Daniel calls. Lando snaps his back straight like a fricking trained dog, chin up and face neutral as he readies himself to be scolded.

But Daniel’s face is pleasant, friendly, “Show them the end once more, please. Then we’ll run the whole thing again.”

****

Lando and Molly have a 15-minute gap after the top of the hour before they’re due back for snowflakes. They’re the only two in both – as it goes for children’s specialty roles and adult punishments – so the lobby is littered with parents when the studio filters out into it. Franco blows kisses to all of his mice and accepts hugs around the legs from several of the bolder ones before they dart back to the safeties of their mums to put leggings and jumpers on over their leotards.

“Thank you, Lando,” braves one of the soldiers just as he’s turning to find his water from his bag. She’s still in her tights and soft shoes, twisting her fingers nervously around one another.

For what? Lando wants to say. But he recognizes it’s sort of just a placeholder for her – an excuse.

So he smiles and says, “oh, you’re welcome,” as he shuffles his fingers through his hair, “what’s your name, then?”

She mumbles it up at him with cheeks so pink he’s a little nervous for her. They get impossibly worse when he holds his hand out for a high-five or a handshake, whichever she prefers, and peak when she reaches her friends again. He gets it – he remembers it – but it still makes him smile to see her collapse on the carpet and start whispering immediately at the center of the circle of navy uniforms.

When the lobby’s mostly emptied, after Franco’s edged his way into a tight hug and promised “I will be missing you every minute until Monday,” Lando turns to the sofa in the waiting area and the small collection of students still waiting. There’s Molly, of course, sprawled in her center splits to stay stretched, so Lando drops down next to her in his own butterfly and smiles.

“Haven’t properly met, have we?”

She blinks up at him, turning her hips in and out in steady rhythm, “Mr. Ricciardo introduced us.”

“He did,” Lando hedges, knocked back by the reception, “what year are you?”

She folds her legs back in towards herself and then slips effortlessly into a right-leg stretch instead, neatly-slicked-back bun turned sideways towards her shoulder, “I’m a level five. I’m only ten, though, I’m ahead.”

“That’s…impressive,” Lando hums, even though he’s getting the impression she doesn’t probably need to hear it.

“Thanks,” she finally smiles a little, “I’ve seen you dance in Giselle over the summer – you were quite good. It’s true you became a principal at only nineteen? That’s young too, isn’t it?”

Lando runs his tongue along his teeth, “A little bit. Max Verstappen did it at seventeen, though.”

She waves that way with a shrug and a wry smile, “Yes, but he’s Max Verstappen. How’d you do it? I want to join the junior program right out of year eleven, then go to company afterwards. How long were you in the corps for?”

He hasn’t thought about it in a long time, not in this way, but the answers come quickly anyway, “Just a year.”

“See? So quick,” Molly lifts herself out of her stretch entirely and crosses her legs, water bottle situated primly in the middle, “What’d you do?”

Nothing , Lando thinks, had fricking ‘potential.’

“Lewis- uh,” he massages the heels of his hands along the muscles of his calves and clears his throat, “Lewis Hamilton promoted me. Right after he was hired as director. He just… liked what he saw in me, I guess.”

Right as Molly’s opening her mouth to reply to that, a small voice from their right gasps, “You know Lewis?”

Small hands grip the ball of Lando’s shoulder, and he turns to see one of Franco’s little pink mice leaning into his back, eyes bright.

“I do,” he smiles at the same time another, older voice snaps “Mae!” from further back.

Lando’s eyes dart from the kid at his side to the other two perched on the couch behind them. There’s one in black sweats and a winter jacket unzipped overtop her navy leotard, gaze fixed up from the book in her lap on the other girl next to her. That one – the oldest – is in a leotard red like Molly’s. Her cheeks nearly match it, and she’s got a hand out towards Lando, urgently waving the smallest one back towards them.

“He’s having a conversation, Mae, that’s rude,” she rushes out, hand getting a bit more frantic.

“Hey, that’s alright,” Lando steps in before the oldest can work herself into an actual fit about it, burst a blood vessel or something.

“I’m sorry,” she says anyway, still blushing through the worried look on her face.

“No worries,” Lando assures her, smiling at each of the girls in turn. They’re the only ones left other than Molly, and when Lando checks the time, he finds it fifteen minutes past the hour, “are you waiting on somebody, by the way? Do you need me to call someone?”

There had been fairly strict unwritten policies about parents and pick-up times, back when they’d applied to Lando.

“Our brother is coming for them really soon,” red-leotard assures him instantly, though, “he’s just a little late off work today. They’ll be good, though.”

“Hey!” Daniel’s voice catches them all out, swiveling all five heads towards the studio door, “We’re ready for you guys.”

“They’ll be good,” red-leotard repeats with pointed, anxious glances at Mae and the other girl. Then she stretches her limbs from the couch and folds her toes under themselves to crack the downtime out of them.

“Are you in this rehearsal too?” Lando asks. He could’ve sworn it was just himself and-

“She’s Clara,” Mae replies proudly.

From his other side, Molly coughs, “She’s my understudy. That’s Hattie.”

****

Snow isn’t too tricky and battle scene isn’t, either. Neither is worse than what Lando would be dancing in the holiday tour. Still, his ankle clicks painfully on every step he takes to his bus stop at half six. He tucks his scarf up closer around his mouth, shoves his bare fingers deeper in his pockets, and wonders why freezing winter air doesn’t work like ice on sore muscles.

****

On the life of his whole career, Lando would swear he doesn’t mean for it to become a routine, the café.

Only, on Monday, Lewis stops warm-up technique to compliment Max’s extensions during centre adage – Max’s – and then directs his stupid, stuck-up, closed-lipped grin at Lando when he fucks up the timing of the same combination during his group’s rotation at it. And Lando can’t sit around the lobby avoiding everybody’s eyes after, feels like he’ll suffocate if he does, so he wraps his scarf around his neck another time and trudges the same four doors down, shoulders through the same door.

“Morning!” Oscar calls from behind the counter.

He’s shaking a metal bottle hard in both hands, and it’s making his biceps flex under the sleeves of his t-shirt in a concerningly distracting way. Actually, the fact he’s in a t-shirt at all when it’s the fucking arctic outside is concerning. And distracting.

“Morning,” Lando says back as he shuffles up to the till.

“So,” Oscar sets the bottle upright next to the register and smiles up at Lando. His hair is sticking to the sides of his forehead just a little, and honestly, how is he possibly sweating?

“How’re you hot?” Lando says before he can engage his brain-to-mouth filter. He can still feel technique in his hamstrings and still can’t feel his fingers in his pockets.

Oscar’s grin tips up and his eyebrows jump, “Good genes, I suppose. Thanks, Bob.”

“What?” Lando’s brain is too wrapped around Bob, the fact Oscar does remember him, that it takes at least five seconds of blank blinking before the realization rushes ruddy into his cheeks. They’re probably already red from the cold, at least, might save him that final scrap of dignity.

“I didn’t mean-” he starts, but, well. He might’ve, if he had thought about it, “Never mind, you’re welcome. What’s that?” he asks with a finger jabbed into the side of the metal bottle. Just fucking brilliant, the whole interaction. Jesus.

Oscar lifts it and gives it a cursory shake, “Whipped cream. Bit of a workout to make them all.”

“You can’t just buy it already made?” Lando lifts an eyebrow.

“They’re better this way,” Oscar assures him, already tapping at the register with his free hand, “I’ll put some on your americano today so you can see what I mean.”

Lando shouldn’t, really, doesn’t need it. Doesn’t eat before dancing, and it’s only an hour and a half to late-winter rehearsals. Oscar’s palm is already out, though, waiting on Lando’s card.

His fingers are warm, too, Oscar’s are. Lando finds out when they brush on the transfer.

“End of the bar for you, mate.”

Lando waits until he’s back out in the cold to lift the lid off his paper cup and lick the whipped cream off, doesn’t want Oscar to see him do it. There are little peppermint pieces sprinkled on top. And it is good – best Lando’s ever had.

Three times isn’t coincidence, but it’s not a habit, either. When Bob shuffles through the café door on Tuesday morning, though, for the second time in two days, that’s not nothing.

Oscar’s exhausted – wrapping up the last two hours of an opening shift he’d back-to-backed with his closing one the night before – but he doesn’t have to dig deep to muster up energy to smile over the top of the espresso machines and call, “Good morning!”

Bob looks cozy, as he always does, beanie tugged low and scarf tucked up high. He’s just a pair of tired eyes and a rosy nose this way, ten pink fingers he’s wiggling in front of him as he approaches the counter.

“Jesus, every year I forget it can always get colder,” Bob breathes out, rubbing his hands uselessly together.

As Oscar watches, he stretches his neck up and hooks his chin over the edge of his scarf, shoving it down in a weird maneuver that should look kind of stupid. And it does look kind of stupid, it’s just that it’s on someone so generally pretty that makes it endearing. He shakes himself out of that train of thought and wanders back towards the register to ring in Bob’s drink – to do the actual job that Mark pays him for.

“Just your usual today?” Oscar asks as he keys Bob’s americano into the system. It normally takes him a bit longer than three trips to remember someone’s usual, what with the array of customers in and out every morning. Bob’s more memorable than the vast array of customers, though.

“Do I have one of those already here?” Bob asks, looking just a touch offended about it, “A ‘usual’?”

Oscar knows he’s turning pink even though he hasn’t done anything that embarrassing, “I reckon, yeah. You’ve ordered the same thing three times in a week.”

Bob grimaces, “Okay. When you put it like that.”

“You could always change it up,” Oscar suggests. For no reason, really. Americanos are so easy; he usually likes it when people order them. In and out in less than two minutes as long as he does it right.

When he looks up, Bob is in the middle of a yawn so wide that Oscar could see his tonsils if he tried. He wipes that thought and focuses on the scrunch of Bob’s nose instead, but it’s only a marginal improvement in terms of focus and heat in his face.

“Sorry, sorry,” Bob flaps one hand in front of his mouth as his jaw snaps shut, “think I might actually need the americano today, mate. Maybe another time.”

“You’ve got it,” Oscar totals out the order and runs Bob’s card.

While the espresso is pulling, he wraps up a croissant in a brown paper bakery bag. Bob frowns when Oscar sets it on the end of the bar alongside his coffee. He checks over his shoulder and comes back even more confused. It’s a cute expression on him, but Oscar hasn’t found one yet that isn’t.

“This isn’t mine,” Bob says slowly, fingers already around his cup.

“Sure it is,” Oscar ducks his chin and stares at the grout between the tiles. Someone needs to scrub the floors. It’s probably going to be him the next time he works anything but a rush shift.

When he peeks back up, Bob is wearing the same baffled expression underneath his hat, chapped lips parted just a little.

Oscar smiles, “Now you’ve gotten something different. Changed it up.”

Bob’s eyes, usually red-rimmed, always tired, brighten right up as he pockets the bakery bag. It’s a look Oscar’s getting sort of used to bringing about on him – something that’s becoming usual.

****

By the time Logan shows up for the afternoon shift, Oscar’s running on fumes. He’s sort of grateful that he hates the taste of coffee, or he thinks working for Mark probably would have bread a caffeine addiction of catastrophic proportions in him.

“Machines are cleaned, whips are made, fridges stocked,” Oscar ticks off on his fingers as he unwraps his apron from his waist and hangs it around the doorframe to back-of-house. “Mark’s doing inventory in the morning, so don’t move shit around back there or he’ll yell at me for it.”

“Right, got it, so same as literally every single Tuesday,” Logan’s already pulling shots into a cup for himself with an amused, long-suffering expression. He hasn’t even clocked in yet. “Go home, mate, you look dead on your feet.”

“Yeah, I’m going,” Oscar steps back out of the backroom, coat already halfway over his arms.

“Oh, and Logan?” he calls when his foot’s in the front door, “Make one of the sixth formers scrub the floors tonight, will you?”

Nobody’s home when Oscar gets there, so he tosses his keys in the bowl and faceplants onto the living room sofa still in his work clothes. He can smell the espresso on himself even with his face buried in a throw pillow, and he really doesn’t want to nap on the couch anyway because he’ll wake up the minute anybody walks through the front door, but he spends so long trying to get himself to move that he loses the option at all.

****

“-not even true, Edie, you don’t even know anything about him.”

Oscar wakes with the slam of the front door. He’s got enough experience napping with sisters around that it doesn’t startle him anymore, though, just gives him warning to drag in one last warm exhale with his face tucked into the space between pillow and couch cushion before someone inevitably pokes him in the eye or the gaps between his ribs.

“I do too!” Edie argues back with every bit of the attitude their mum has been scolding her for every month since her ninth birthday, “he’s, like, the leader of us during the battle.”

“So?” Hattie’s even worse. Actually, she’s probably where Edie got it from in the first place.

“So,” Edie says back. No argument follows.

“Yeah,” Hattie says, “that’s what I thought. You had, like, a single hour in the same room as him. He probably didn’t even talk.”

“Did too!” Edie yells.

“Stop it,” Oscar’s mum finally snaps. Their voices have migrated from the front hall to the living room; it’s only a matter of time.

“Franco talked to us a lot,” Mae says when the lull lasts longer than a single second.

“He’s probably worse, then, because you’re not supposed to talk in ballet, Mae.” Hattie again, all 12 entitled years of her. “You wouldn’t know yet, because you’re still just in level one, and they don’t scold you as much because you’ll cry.”

“Hattie!” Oscar’s mum barks, “enough. Go shower.”

There’s a bit of grumbling as she stomps down the hall, and then a warm, heavy body lands unceremoniously on Oscar’s back. Honestly might be record time.

“Oscar, wake up, it’s dinner soon,” Mae curls her hands around his top shoulder and throws her weight back and forth until he bats at her and – finally – lifts his head up for real.

It’s dark in the apartment. Oscar should have guessed, his sisters don’t get home until seven on Tuesdays, but he’d sort of forgotten to care until opening his eyes. Christ, though, he’d known he was tired, but five hours is a long nap even for him. It’s just been a night’s sleep at this point.

“’m up,” he mumbles, letting his head thump back onto its pillow. Mae’s fingers creep up towards his ear and his palm shoots up quick to catch them all in a fist.

“Oscar, babe, come clean your books off the table, please. We need it to eat.” His mum sounds about as exhausted as Oscar had felt before his couch coma. They’ve both been working a lot – nearly every time they can manage it without leaving nobody free to watch his sisters.

Oscar shoves up on the couch until Mae slides off sideways and he’s properly up, blinking hard in the glow of their overhead lights.

“Sorry,” he says in the general direction of the kitchen, “meant to do it after work, didn’t think I was going to sleep so long.”

“It’s fine,” she says. The hob clicks and ignites.

Oscar’s neck hurts when he stretches it on the walk to the table. He means to bring his notes and textbooks straight to his bedroom after bundling them messily under one arm, but his mum stretches a hand back from the stove towards him.

“What?” he blinks hard, still feeling groggy.

She turns away from the pot at it, face softening through the lines and the dark circles, “Just c’mere, that’s all. Or you’re too old to hug me hello now?”

“No,” he mumbles, shuffling into the one-armed hug she’s offering out. He’s taller than her and has been since about six birthdays ago. He has to duck his head to let her kiss the side of his face.

“Feels like I never see you anymore,” she says after, voice cryptic and arm twitching tighter around his waist.

“I know,” He sighs, tipping his head sideways to rest against hers, “Just until Christmas, though, yeah? Just a few more weeks. It’s worth it for…” he trails into a bashful little shrug.

It makes his mum smile. She ruffles his hair and then nudges him out of her side to return attention to the pot where it has started to boil, “You’re a good kid, Osc. You go shower, too, when Hattie’s done. You smell like coffee all the time.”

****

Sometimes, when he’s working an opening shift, Mark lets him bring his homework to the bar before morning rush. As long as the machines are in good working order and the bakery case is set up nicely, he’ll look the other way as Oscar scrawls out equations in his notebook or thumbs through pages of one textbook or another. Most of Mark’s employees are students of some kind, including all of three of his shift managers, and Oscar’s uni being online gives him the kind of flexibility that Mark falls back on more often than he should. Or that’s what he says, anyway: “I rely on you more than I should, Oscar.” It’s a bit of a theme in his life lately, maybe, but Oscar doesn’t mind; it’s nice to be needed.

It’s just before six, and Oscar’s a chapter deep in his fluid mechanics textbook when the little bell above the door rings. He’s halfway through hiding it behind the stack of cups when he looks up and realizes it’s just Lewis.

“Morning,” Oscar nabs a cup off the top of the stack and flips the hot water tap, “what kind are you having this morning?”

“Just the regular,” Lewis smiles warmly at him over the bar, tugging at the finger of one glove to free his hand to reach into his jacket pocket for his wallet, “How’re you?”

Oscar shrugs as he fishes in their tea cannisters for a sachet of Lewis’ usual, “Good. Tired.”

“I bet,” Lewis’ eyes crease. He clears his throat, “Are you in school?”

Oscar’s eyes dart up and then follow Lewis’ line of sight down to his textbook, still mostly in plain view, “Uh. Yeah. Sort of. Part-time,” he corrects when Lewis’ eyebrows furrow.

“Busy man. How’re your sisters getting on? They’re in the Nutcracker, I assume.”

Lewis is an enigma to Oscar, a weird combination of different parts of his life all mishmashed into one gentle, kind-eyed man. Lewis has chatted enough that Oscar knows he knows Mark somehow, from way back, and Oscar’s chatted just enough back to know Lewis is important at his sisters’ dance academy. He’s got none of the details, just a collection of fascinating assorted facts.

“Yeah, they’re busy, too,” Oscar caps Lewis’ cup, “Hattie’s got rehearsals three times a week now on top of her classes. All three have Saturdays, then the older two have Sundays too.”

“Yeah, that’s Nutcracker season. Thank you,” Lewis nods as Oscar slides his tea across the counter. His hand is already out with cash even though Oscar’s pretty sure he’s never seen anybody charge Lewis for anything but food as long as he’s worked at Mark’s place. When Oscar waves him off, Lewis slips the bills into the tip jar instead.

“Thanks,” Oscar smiles, “Anything else for you this morning?”

“I’m just fine today, mate,” Lewis wiggles his fingers back into his glove and cradles his cup close to his face, “see you tomorrow?”

Oscar sighs, “Depends what time you come in. I’m working mids on Saturdays now; I’ve got to pick up my sisters after.”

“Monday, then,” Lewis smiles.

“Monday,” Oscar smiles back.

****

Bob is back at his regular time later in the morning. Oscar’d finished an entire chapter of fluids before he was bogged down in lattes and cappuccinos and refilling the fucking whips for the millionth time this week, so he’s in a good mood even before he recognizes the beanie and the scarf and the red eyes and red nose in-between.

“Good morning,” he chirps, “you want your usual?”

“Oh, fuck off,” Bob snips back at him, but his eyes are already a little brighter beneath all his winter gear.

Oscar lifts an eyebrow and says nothing else until Bob slaps his card on the counter, rolls his eyes, and says, “Yes, I want my usual.”

“End of the bar,” Oscar smiles.

If he puts whipped cream on the americano and packs up a chocolate chip cookie in bakery paper to set on the lid as he slides it over, well, the one needed testing and the other was broken – not fit to sell. It’s between him and the fond, happy look in Bob’s eyes anyway.

****

Oscar hates midday shifts. He’s not really self-disciplined enough to drag himself out of bed more than two hours before he’s due to clock in regardless of what time of day that falls, but working until half four means he doesn’t get much time on the back half of his day, either. And he gets no free time at all without sisters.

“Hattie, what was he like during your individual with him?” Edie asks as soon as Oscar’s got them all buckled into the car after rehearsal, dance bags in the trunk.

“The same,” Hattie mumbles down at her lap where she’s typing quickly on her phone.

“But, like-” Edie cranes so far forward that Oscar has to shove her back so he can see as he backs out of the car park, “is he funny?”

“He didn’t really talk, Edie, it’s ballet class.”

Oscar shoots Hattie a sharp look out of the corner of his eye, but he’s not as interested in interfering as his mum is. He loves his sisters desperately, enough to know that nothing he says is usually going to improve any situation.

“Molly said he’s nice and that he’s funny. She said it while we were waiting after battle rehearsal,” Edie counters.

“Because Molly lies, Ed,” Hattie glares at the back seat, “she makes stuff up because she wants it to seem like she’s getting close with him, but she’s not. I’m always there. They don’t talk.”

“Molly said he picked her up really easily. Do you get to get picked up too?”

“No . Now shut up,” Hattie slams her phone into her lap and covers her face with her hands, sounding off enough that it concerns Oscar a little.

“Oscar!” Mae calls, and Oscar already knows what’s coming next.

“I know,” he eyes her in the rearview mirror until she quiets. To Hattie, he clicks his tongue, “Be nicer, or I will tell mum. Don’t be mean on purpose. It’s twenty minutes and you can have my room for an hour if you need space after, okay?”

She nods, hands still over her face, and he squeezes her knee tightly with the hand not on the wheel. Twelve is hard, and it’s harder still when she never gets to breathe without a younger sibling climbing down her throat about it. She’s been worse lately, but he thinks it’s probably just the way they’re all run a bit ragged trying to make it through the holidays.

“Oscar, Hattie said-”

“I know,” Oscar repeats, “leave her alone for a second.”

“But I wanna know-” Edie starts again.

“He doesn’t lift me,” Hattie interrupts. Her eyes are shiny when she takes her palms away, but Oscar lets it be. “He always dances with Molly; I just learn the steps on the side.”

“That wasn’t what I was gonna ask,” Edie argues. Oscar sighs deeply.

Hattie lifts both eyebrows pointedly at him – see? – and sighs too, “What were you gonna ask?”

“Isn’t he pretty when he dances?” Edie says, cheerful again.

“He’s very good, that’s why he’s a principal,” Hattie agrees diplomatically.

“He’s quite fit,” Edie adds, “Don’t you think? Elise said that Molly fancies him.”

“It sounds like you fancy him,” Hattie’s voice is sharp and sarcastic again.

Edie giggles, “My whole level fancies him. He’s so nice, and such a good dancer.”

Hattie scoffs, “He’s, like, Osc’s age, Edie, that’s stupid. And he’s probably got a boyfriend anyway. Everybody in the company does.”

Oscar’d been zoning out on the road, content to let them bicker as long as they weren’t shouting, but his ears perk back up at his own name.

“Who?” he finally asks.

Hattie smirks at him, “Yeah? Our Nutcracker prince. He’s a principal in the company. Lando.”

“That’s his real name?” Oscar lifts an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Hattie turns back to her phone, “and Edie and everyone is obsessed with him, it’s embarrassing.”

“Is not!” Edie shouts.

Oscar cranks the radio up a few ticks and drops his head back against the rest behind him. Fifteen minutes to home.

****

Oscar’s mum arrives back from her shift near midnight. He’s at the kitchen table, working on equations again.

“Hey,” she ruffles her fingers through his hair as she passes, and he tips his head up into it.

“Hey,” he says back, “I made rice and stuff. Leftovers in the fridge.”

“Thanks, love.”

While it’s in the microwave reheating, she leans back against the counter and fixes him with a look, “Your sisters are in bed?”

“Yeah,” Oscar mumbles, distracted as he finishes the problem he’s on, “Hattie’s in mine. She and Edie were on each other all night, and I got tired of it. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

The microwave beeps. His mum sighs. “You don’t have to do that, Oscar.”

He doesn’t have to, but she doesn’t have to let him live here either while he finishes school, either, even if he does help with the rent. She doesn’t have to keep the other three in one room while he’s got his own, but she does. And letting Hattie take his bed once a week to keep the peace is less sacrifice than moving on his own would be, and it’s easier on his mind than leaving them all to fend for themselves would be, too. He sleeps just as well on the sofa anyway. It doesn’t matter.

“I know. It’s fine,” he says. He sets his pencil down as his mum drops into the chair across from him with her dinner. After a second of consideration, just staring at each other, Oscar says, “Got paid yesterday.”

His mum nods slowly.

“Almost the first of the month,” he adds, lips ticking quickly to the side and back.

She nods again, eyes dropping down to her rice.

Oscar sighs and leans back against his chair, “You want me to pay the tuition bill? Since their Christmas gifts are all going on your card?”

His mum’s hand goes to her forehead, massaging the space between her eyebrows with her thumb, “Yeah. That’s... Thanks, bud. It’s a bit extra because December’s got their costume fees for the show.”

“It’s alright, I think I should have enough to cover it. I took like four of Logan’s closes in November.” He picks his pencil back up, focuses back on his problem set.

“You shouldn’t have to again after this month, though,” she says after a beat, so quiet he almost doesn’t hear.

“Hm?” he looks up another time, “I thought you said tuition was going up? I can keep helping.”

It’s the reason for all the closes, all the doubles – the reason that his mum gets home at midnight and that the only time they spend together is when they’re trading off car keys. Until Christmas, they keep saying, if we can make it through Christmas, we’ll be alright.

“It is,” his mum says in that same soft, sad voice, “More than I thought. After the Nutcracker, I don’t think they’ll be able to keep dancing.” 

Lando falls in class on Monday. It’s not his ankle, he just sort of catches his own foot during a stupid promenade, but his ankle is the first thing his hands go to when he hits the marley anyway. He hears the gasp and he’s fallen before in technique, obviously, loads of times, but the shame burns anyway, hot in his gut. He drives the heel of his hand into his calf to will it away.

“Lando, you okay?” Lewis asks, clipped.

Lando nods down at his feet from his position on the ground. He needs to get up. His breathing is weird, and he can’t stop swallowing back spit like a weird nervous tick.

“You sure?” Lewis’ studio shoes appear in Lando’s line of sight, “D’you need-”

“I’m good,” he bites out, tipping his chin up to find Lewis standing over him. All the fricking time, it feels like lately, he’s always-

“Why don’t you take a break to ice that?” Lewis’ voice is too loud, everyone will hear.

Lando’s neck twitches, “I said I’m fine .”

“Lando,” it’s sharp enough to spike Lando’s heartrate. When he looks up again, Lewis’ face is complicated – disappointed, or upset, or some other thing that turns his lips down, “That’s enough for you today. You’re excused.”

His ankle aches every step he takes on the way out.

****

“Morning!” Oscar calls as the doorbell jingles. Then, a second after, “You’re here early today.”

Under normal circumstances, it would make Lando smile, knowing that Oscar keeps close enough track of him to notice blips in his schedule like that. Normally, he’d make some joke about how he isn’t a regular, he can’t be early to a place he doesn’t have a routine at, but it doesn’t feel funny now. He’s here every goddamned day, isn’t he? Fucking lying to himself about everything, and still he’d dragged his sorry ass through the front door anyway.

Oscar’s already at the till, fingers curled lazily around the side of it. Lando smudges his drippy nose against the inside of his scarf and steps up in front of him.

“Your usual?” Oscar asks.

“Sure,” Lando mumbles back.

Oscar’s fingers don’t move, and Lando assumes that it’s because he’d already typed the order in when Lando was a bit lost in his head, but then his hand drops entirely from the register. It rests on the counter between them – bruised knuckles, long fingernails.

“We just got peppermint syrup in,” Oscar says.

Lando finally peeks up at Oscar’s face and finds it hopeful and a little anxious. He smiles when he notices Lando looking.

Still, “Would that be good?” Lando wrinkles his nose, “in an americano?”

Oscar shrugs, “I don’t know, mate I don’t drink coffee, remember? It’s good in hot chocolate.”

Lando tries to bite it back, but his own smile is irrepressible. He remembers. And Oscar does, too, after all.

“Okay,” he sniffs, “yeah, you can- put it in, I guess. If it’s bad, you’ll remake it, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” Oscar takes a cup off the top of the stack and sets about pulling the espresso into it.

It’s the wrong order of things, different than usual.

“I haven’t paid,” he reminds Oscar, card already between his fingers.

Oscar glances over, “It’s on the house today. You’re testing a new drink for us, that’s a favor, not an order.”

Lando narrows his eyes. Oscar laughs.

“Here. If it’s bad, I’ll remake a plain one, and you can pay for that one. How about that?”

Lando suspects he sort of knows what Oscar’s doing, and he’s dismayed to find that it’s sort of working. He tucks his stupid smile back behind his scarf and watches as Oscar finishes his drink with a perfect little swirl of whipped cream. Before he slides Lando’s cup over the counter, he takes to the bakery case as well, selecting a slice of something dark and frosted and wrapping it neatly in paper.

“Gingerbread cake,” he explains as he sets everything neatly to the side of the till, “test that, too.”

Lando doesn’t eat before dancing. But he’s not fucking dancing, is he? Not until the afternoon, and that’s if Lewis even lets him in rehearsal after his stupid little strop in technique. He pockets the wrapped cake and blushes under Oscar’s soft stare as he takes an experimental sip of his drink.

It’s good – cheery. He says as much to Oscar and blames the warmth in his belly on the hot coffee and not the happy, proud expression Oscar wears after.

Just when Lando’s backing up to turn and go, Oscar catches his sleeve, “Wait, you’ve got-”

His free hand is out, up, a hand’s length away from Lando’s mouth. Lando can feel the heat off Oscar’s fingers when he breathes in.

“Whipped cream,” Oscar explains. His fingers twitch closer for a fraction of a second, like he might wipe it off, before falling back to the counter.

Lando feels breathless as he licks at his top lip to clear it off, even before he smirks and says, “Whose fault is that, Osc?”

Oscar’s face goes so pleasantly pink as he grins about it, “I’m not sorry. You looked like you needed it today.”

Lando’s smile falters a little, falls into something softer.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Oscar says, “have a good afternoon, Bob.”

Lando’s heart thumps once extra-hard in his chest before he turns and goes.

****

Lando loves ballet. He loves performing, loves the thrill of getting everything exactly right, loves the rush of applause, and the adrenaline of hugging Rebecca in the wings before a pas de deux, and the bows and the flowers and the familiarity of technique – buried so deep in his muscles and bones that he’s not sure he could live without it there.

He’s twenty-five, and he has everything he’s ever dreamed of.

Which is why it doesn’t make sense how fucking empty he feels every night as he tries to fall asleep.

****

“Gingerbread was good,” Lando says on Tuesday, “successful test.”

Oscar runs his card and hands it back, shots already pulling on the machine, “Good, because Mark ordered sugar plum scones, too, and I need a second opinion from somebody I trust.”

Their fingers brush on the transfer, and Oscar’s tongue darts out at the same time to wet his lips. Lando’s stomach dips like missing a step before a grand jete. His heart hammers like waiting in the wings.

When he reaches the end of the bar, there’s peppermint in his americano again, and candy cane pieces on top. He leaves the café feeling settled, warm from the inside-out.

****

He would die before admitting it to Lewis, but as he enters Nutcracker rehearsal later that night, Lando feels nothing but relief. He's focused and loose and smiley as Daniel runs the act transitions over and over with them, tweaking spacing and timing and an odd step on either side. It feels good, like progress, and the buzz in Lando’s brain as he keeps up with it all is so familiar that it’s strange to realize he hasn’t felt it this way in a bit without the dread of Lewis’ eyes on him across the studio.

There’s a knock on the door half-an-hour before they’re due to wrap. Daniel frowns and cracks it open to speak to someone on the other side. Molly marks through their choreography while she waits, head tilted as she examines her own lines in the mirror. Behind them, near the barre, Hattie’s eyes stay fixed on the floor.

“Molly,” Daniel says after a minute, door still propped with his foot, “your mum’s here for you. Family thing came up.”

She pauses in arabesque, eyebrows furrowed. Then it seems to click all at once for her, and she falls back into a more neutral body position, hands folded across her stomach.

“Am I allowed? I don’t want to cut rehearsal.”

Daniel laughs a little, “Well she’s here, so you’ve gotta go. We’re mostly done anyway; we can just finish on Saturday or next Tuesday.”

With a quick curtsy to Daniel and Lando both, then, she’s out the door, leaving Lando at loose ends.

“Should I…?” he hooks a thumb towards the door.

Daniel clicks his tongue as he looks at the clock, tipping his head back and forth. He’s always in sweats, stubble, looking more like a junior during warm-up than the director of the academy.

“Hattie,” he says finally, “do you want to run anything with Lando while we’re here?”

Her eyes go comically wide in the mirror, “Um. I can.”

Lando can’t tell if it’s a question or an offer with the way her voice shakes.

“You don’t have to,” Daniel assures her, “just figured, since we’ve got the time. Duet, maybe? Feels like the most complicated thing.”

“Yeah,” she agrees quickly, voice very marginally stronger, “Yeah, we can. I can.”

“Brilliant,” Daniel retreats back to his spot at the sound system in the corner, “I’m just gonna skip to the end of snow for it.”

As he checks his notes for the time mark, Lando stretches his arms across his chest and smiles reassuringly at Hattie. They haven’t properly danced together yet, but he’s been around her enough to know she’s shier than Molly, more contained, even though he’s pretty sure she’s older.

“Good for the lifts and all?” he checks with her.

Her nod is quick, anxious.

“Mint,” he smiles, “let me know if anything feels off with that, if grip is painful or whatever, I can adjust easily.”

“Alright,” she whispers with another tight nod.

“Ready when you guys are,” Daniel calls from across the floor.

Hattie jogs to their entrance spot, and Lando takes his own mark next to her. On impulse, he gives her shoulder a reassuring little squeeze before offering Daniel his thumbs up. Her smile up at him, nervous but grateful, feels familiar in a way he can’t place.

And she’s good, Hattie is. Not as technically precise as Molly, lines not as clean, but she’s soft and expressive, even where he can tell she’s still wound a bit tight. She stutters once near the middle, just before the arabesque turn, but catches back up when she sees Lando at it. It all goes remarkably well, actually, until the final third, just before the lift.

Lando can tell the moment it happens – can see her eyes go panicked when she finishes her chaînés and realizes she’s got no idea what comes next. He keeps going for another phrase, hoping she’ll catch back on, but her hands fall together and they’re shaking, her feet in loose first position and her gaze darting around the room quickly, like she’s searching for an out.

“Stop?” Daniel asks.

Hattie’s lip wobbles. Lando can feel the panic secondhand, so fucking close that it makes his heart ache and his pulse race just watching her nod at Daniel.

The music cuts. There’s a beat of silence before Daniel says, “Do you want to try it again, Hattie?”

Her eyes stay on her toes where she’s curling them compulsively in her soft shoes. So familiar.

“Do you want me to run the choreography with you quick?” he tries again.

She sniffles once and a single, silent tear slides quickly down her cheek.

“We’re going to be done for the day, I think, then,” Daniel’s voice is different when he says it, soft and gentle and understanding, “Go cool down, Hattie, it’s all fine. I’ll see you tomorrow in class. It’s okay. We’ll go back over it later.”

She gives one more quick nod before jogging out the studio door, wrist pressed under her eye.

Daniel deflates as soon as the door clicks shut, “Sucks.”

Lando sets his hands on his hips, “What d’you mean?”

Daniel rubs at his forehead, sighs, “She’s so good, you know? But it’s like… just tough. She’s a tough one. I maybe shouldn’t have cast her how I did, because it’s probably not helping, but...” he sighs again, “She’s got a lot of potential, just not a lot of confidence.”

Something pulls deep in Lando’s stomach like he might be sick. He wipes sweat off his mouth with the back of his hand and takes a deep, deep breath.

“Am I good to go?”

“Yeah,” Daniel agrees immediately, “Yeah, you’re good, Lando. Thanks. See you Saturday.”

By the time Lando tugs on his sweats and his jumper and exits to the academy lobby, Hattie’s on the floor by the sofa. She’s in a hoodie and her uniform, still, boots over her tights and knees tucked up under her chin. She jumps a little when Lando sinks down an arm’s length away.

“Something in the air this week, I think,” he says.

Hattie wipes her nose with a tissue she’s got balled up in one hand, “What?”

Lando tips his head back against the couch, “I fell in class yesterday. Director kicked me out after.”

“Kicked you out?” Hattie turns to look at him just a little, wary.

“Yeah,” Lando laughs at the ceiling, “I deserved it, though. Anyway, that and Molly’s thing, and this weird rehearsal? It’s like the fricking… full moon, or whatever the fuck- Shit. Sorry,” he adds quickly, hand over his mouth.

Hattie laughs into her tissue, “It’s okay. I have an older brother, I’ve heard worse.”

“Well anyway,” Lando shrugs, “do you know about the astro- the, uh,” he waves a hand vaguely, “stars, and stuff.”

“Astrology?” Hattie peeks at him again and cracks a small smile when he snaps his fingers and nods, “Nah. Why?”

“Thought it might be the planets causing this,” Lando explains, “one of our soloists is super into it, always predicting moods, or whatever.”

Hattie’s twisting her tissue between her fingers, shredding off pieces into little specks on her tights, “Think it’s just me not paying close enough attention, actually. Didn’t write everything down after like Molly does.”

Lando breathes through a little laugh, but Hattie doesn’t flinch.

“You’re serious?” he asks, “I’ve never done that in my life.”

She swallows hard. The tissue’s nearly dust in her fingers.

“Look,” Lando says when it’s clear she’s not going to respond to the last bit, “Being an understudy is really, really, really hard.”

Hattie scoffs down at her shoes.

“I’m serious,” he emphasizes, “You never get to practice, not really, because you’re always trying to stay out of the way. And you’re learning, like, twice as much, because you’ve got your own parts in the party scene, right?”

“Right,” she mumbles.

“And even if you do it perfectly, there’s a ninety-five percent chance nobody ever even knows. It sucks. It’s the worst, actually,” and he means it, too, enough that he hopes it’s clear in his voice.

Hattie finally lets out a long breath and tips her head sideways, cheek smushed into her knee, eyes on Lando, “Sometimes I kind of think Mr. Ricciardo gave it to me to keep me out of the way.”

“Well he didn’t,” Lando sets his hand on the carpet between them, “because he literally just told me that he cast you this way because he believes in you.”

Hattie’s face pinches in on itself, “Then why does it never feel like it?”

Lando frowns, everything in him pulling apart in sympathetic nostalgia, “Because ballet is hard, Hattie. It’s hard to ever feel like you’re actually succeeding at it. I know.”

“You?” Hattie scoffs, “You’re, like… amazing.”

Lando pats his hand on the ground, “That’s what I’m saying, though. You think that, but in my own classes, I’m picking myself apart to fricking hell and back. It’s just comparing nonstop, and corrections nonstop, and it’s hard not to take it personally sometimes, right?”

“Yes,” Hattie’s eyebrows jump, “God. That’s why I’m, like…” her nose twitches, “A lot of the time lately, I just want to quit.”

Lando’s breath catches, but he’s not actually all that surprised, really, “Why?”

She heaves out a deep sigh and straightens her legs out at long last, brushing all the tissue debris off onto the carpet, “Because I’m not good enough. I’m, like… wasting my time. And theirs,” she waves a hand in the general direction of Daniel’s office, where there’s light leaking out below the shut door.

“Their job is to teach you; you’re not wasting their time,” Lando says firmly.

“But, like,” Hattie protests right away, “I’m never going to be as good as Molly, or like, ten other people in my class. No matter how hard I work, I don’t look how she looks. How they look.”

“You don’t have to be like anybody else,” Lando argues back, “it’s not about that. It’s about you.”

She rolls her neck back and closes her eyes, nose twitching again around little sniffles.

“Hey, listen,” Lando nudges her knee with his knuckles after a moment, “I’m not saying ‘don’t quit,’ because if you really hate ballet, by all means, get yourself out of it. But you haven’t said that. And I don’t think you hate ballet all on its own. Right?”

She shakes her head.

“Then I think you should keep trying,” he says, palm curved around her knee, “ballet isn’t about being better than other people. You can’t just do it because you want to be better than Molly, or because you want to impress your classmates. That’s not enough. So don’t do that at all. Yeah? Dance because you want to. Because you like getting better. Because you like learning new things, and seeing improvements yourself every technique class, because it’s rewarding for you to feel a little stronger, and a little more flexible.”

She’s still blinking up at the ceiling when he checks over, eyebrows furrowed, so he keeps talking.

“If you want to quit because you’re really done, then do it, yeah. But if you want to quit right now because you think you’re not good enough to keep going, let me be the one to tell you: you are. Okay? I just danced with you. You’re really good, Hattie. You don’t have to be the best to be good.”

There’s a long moment of silence.

“I guess I can think about it,” she says eventually, words directed up at no one, “I’m just tired of never feeling good enough.”

Lando bites the inside of his own cheek, “I know. I get it.”

They sit side-by-side, quiet, until Hattie’s mum arrives to pick her up.

****

Oscar’s not behind the counter when Lando walks in on Wednesday after technique. It’s another man around his age, blond hair and broad shoulders tucked up against the machines.

“Good morning,” he says. An American accent cuts harsh around the consonants.

He looks nice enough, but Lando frowns behind his scarf anyway. It’s just… he supposes it’s fine for Oscar to have days off, but he’s never not been around. Lando’s tucking his icy fingers up to his mouth, steeling himself to order like a regular customer, but the blond man doesn’t make a move for the register.

“Oscar!” he calls over his shoulder instead, “Someone’s here for you!”

There’s a second for Lando to blush about it, then the door to the back swings open and Oscar backs through.

His hair is messy and he’s got a stack of giant coffee bean bags in his arms, muscles shifting under their weight. His face is a bit peeved when he emerges, gaze drifting from the blond man to the door, “Who even- Oh. Hi.”

Oscar’s cheeks might have been pink already from the strain of whatever task he was completing, but Lando likes to think it’s his doing. They both just sort of freeze in place for a beat, eyes on each other and smiles growing increasingly bashful, before the blond man says “Jesus Christ, Oscar” and starts unstacking bags from his arms from the top down.

The shift in weight seems to snap Oscar out of it, and he quickly transfers the rest of the stack over to the counter with a quick mumbled, “Thanks, sorry.”

By the time he reaches Lando at the till, he’s pink as ever, “How’re you?”

“Good,” Lando’s hip is against the counter. It’s closer than he’s probably ever been to Oscar, under a meter separating them, “How’re you?”

“Good,” Oscar says back.

“Brilliant,” the blond man drawls, “Oscar, what else do we need?”

“Uh…” Oscar’s gaze snaps away from Lando’s to dart to his coworker, “Milks? And, uh…”

Blondie raises an eyebrow, then gives up with a pat to the counter, “Cool, let me grab that.”

When he’s gone off through the door to the back, Oscar turns back to Lando, “Americano today? Or can I talk you into something else? Eggnog latte?”

Lando’s whole face screws up, and he gags dramatically, “Mate, that sounds fricking awful.”

Oscar’s grin is brilliant, bunny teeth and scrunchy eyes, and Lando is a little bit fucked, probably.

“It’s pretty awful,” Oscar laughs, “steaming it ruins the machines, too.”

“Then why’d you offer it?” Lando’s face relaxes again until it’s just his nose wrinkled above a stupid, fond grin.

Oscar shrugs, “Dunno. Maybe you have bad taste.”

Lando’s eyebrows jump, “Think my taste is pretty good, actually. People call me picky, but I’m just dis… uh. Choosy, like-”

“Discerning?” Oscar’s turning a paper cup around and around in his fingers.

“Dis-gusting,” the blond man coughs under his breath from the door, a jug of milk under each arm.

Oscar flushes red, red, red and pulls shots without keying anything into the register. Red as the candy cane pieces he puts on top of Lando’s americano again. Red as the little Bob scrawled in festive permanent marker on the side of the paper cup.

****

The holiday tour opens in London on Friday, which means Thursday classes are cancelled while the rest of the company is off in final dress at the theater. Lewis is there too, even though it’s Nico’s show, so Lando, Franco and Abbi take technique with the juniors at the crack-of-fucking-dawn and are free for the day before they’d even usually be getting started.

There’s a headache between Lando’s eyes already as he bows his reverence, and he doesn’t go to the café for the coffee, usually, but he could really use it today. His scarf’s around his neck, coat half-zipped, when Franco ducks in under his arm and bats his giant bambi eyes up from beneath his own winter hat.

“We are getting coffee with a few of our old classmates before their rehearsal,” he says through his cheeky little grin, “you’ll come with, no?”

Lando glances over Franco’s shoulder to Abbi, talking animatedly to a group of fricking- teenagers, is what they are. Christ, Lando forgets how young Franco is, with the way he talks and acts around the company.

“The place is so close,” Franco singsongs, “won’t even get cold fingers.”

Cold hands be damned, Lando’s entire bloodstream feels a few degrees off when he realizes their plans. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but they talk , the juniors always talk, and there’s something a tiny bit nice about the things Oscar doesn’t know. A bit of freedom Lando’s not quite ready to give up.

“That’s alright, mate,” he ruffles Franco’s hair and nudges him gently away, “I’ve gotta get home for some stuff.”

Franco pinches his cheek as he goes, but his arm fits around Abbi’s waist instead before they even hit the elevators.

****

There’s a moment while he’s gathering his things where Lando thinks, absurdly, of going to the theatre to watch final dress. He doesn’t want to go back to his empty apartment, and there’s an achy, itchy appeal to the idea – like pressing on a bruise, or sucking blood from a paper cut. Watching Pato dance the role that used to be Lando’s, hearing Lewis’ notes directed at everybody but him, it might feel cathartic. But it might not, too.

He's turning it over so thoroughly in his sleepy mind that he almost walks directly into Daniel stepping out of the elevator as Lando tries to step in.

“Christ, sorry,” Daniel sets a hand on Lando’s side to steady him, already brushing past on his way deeper into the company floor.

The elevator doors slide back shut without Lando as he cranes his neck to follow Daniel’s progress.

“There’s nobody else here, mate!” he yells down the hall eventually, “Juniors just broke before rehearsal, think they’re all gone.”

Daniel shoves both hands through his hair as he turns around, “Lewis?”

“At tour final dress.”

“Fuck,” Daniel breathes out.

Lando hikes his bag up higher on his shoulder and tilts his head, “What’s going on?”

“My intern, Jack, is sick,” Daniel says, “he was supposed to cover the pre-ballet classes this morning because I’ve got to sort all two hundred Nutcracker costumes with the seamstress tonight before fittings tomorrow. I was hoping Lewis, or Nico, or someone could handle it instead.”

And costumes are easy, really. Just reading a list and writing labels. Lando thinks of his long, empty day and cocks his head sideways, “I can help out.”

****

It’s not costumes, is the thing. The minute Lando gets down to the academy floor, Daniel ducks into the office and emerges with a wrinkled paper packet which he presses unceremoniously into Lando’s hands.

“Curriculum is super easy, mate, just go in order. I’ve got older students who help out too, they’ll know what to do. Just keep everybody moving and you’ve basically got it.”

His smile is blinding, but Lando’s is absent, fled with the anxiety that’s filling his stomach from the bottom up, “Daniel, I don’t think-”

“Don’t stress,” Daniel claps him on the shoulder, “You’ll be brilliant.”

(And here’s the other thing: it works out. It’s not perfect; Lando spends more time preventing chaos than he does actually teaching anybody anything, but nobody cries, and everybody curtsies at the end, at least, and the level sevens who’d been doing all the actual leg work grin when he high-fives them and promises them coffees or whatever they’d like later for their trouble. It feels so far from the thing ballet has become in Lando’s head that he feels nauseous with it, headache back with a vengeance the minute he steps out into the dark. His thoughts are thick as he trudges through the wind, his bare fingers curled tightly around the paper in his coat pocket. They don’t stop the whole bus ride back, not in his shower, not even when he curls on his side in bed, radiator clanging grumpily below the frosted window.)

****

Lando’s resolve doesn’t hold forever.

He wakes from half a sleep to his alarm at sunrise, eyes burning with the stress of too many hours awake, then drags himself to technique with the juniors and drags himself right home again after. Only the embedded routine of it keeps him on course – that and the sting of sub-freezing temperatures that bite at his cheeks every time the doors open and close.

There’s a restless energy that pools in his joints while he hauls his washing to the laundromat and back. He nearly nods off in the hard plastic chair, valse des flocons de neige repeating in his headphones and his choreography repeating behind his eyes, then comes to feeling out-of-place and shaky with it, disturbed. He takes his clothes home half-dry just to get out of the place.

Home doesn’t feel right either, though. The anxiety is familiar, but he can’t quite place it. Pre-exams jitters, maybe, or the shakes before an audition. Before he’s even realized he’s doing it, Lando’s back in his jacket, bag over his shoulder and boots tugged messily over the cuffs of his sweats. There’s bound to be a studio open somewhere in the building.

Dark has already set in by the time he boards the bus a second time, and Christmas lights blur messily passed outside. For the first time in weeks, Lando clocks a bit of the hollow in his chest as nostalgia – the last dying gasps of whatever festive spirit The Nutcracker used to stir up in him as a kid kick violently at his ribs until it sits like a lump in the back of his throat.

And maybe that’s the start of it, really. Maybe it’s the bittersweet taste in his mouth, the lonely way the city feels when he’s wandering in it without a goal. Or maybe he was going to end up at the theater all along. Maybe it was why he’d left home. Not exams, not auditions – opening night .

Like a phantom, it guides Lando through the entrance, past the same security staff that’d seen him through fifty times in the last twelve months alone, round the turn to the viewer entrance and into the very last row, tucked away in the dark of the seating area.

It’s a few hours out from showtime, still. On stage, hair and makeup show-ready, Lando watches the company move in graceful unison through the middle of warm-up class. Pato’s near the back, in his own regular spot and not Lando’s near Rebecca. Max is there, and George too – everybody Lando’d come up with, people he’s seen every day of nearly every week for every year of his adult life, and he feels… distant. Not jealousy, nothing so sharp, but something sore around the edges. Like his eyes after hours of crying, when reality had finally set in. Like muscles the day after he’d pushed them as far as they’d go in class. Like the pain of forcing a stretch the extra centimeter past where he’d already proven he could be – never enough, flexibility, always needing more. Lando remembers, all of a sudden, what Jenson used to tell them in juniors: if it’s comfortable, you’re not improving. Growth is always pain.

“Wasn’t sure whether I’d see you here or not.”

Lando jumps, blinking hard out of his train of thought as his heartrate ticks up in knee-jerk panic in the moments before his brain can place the voice.

“Jesus,” he breathes out. Even once he’s calm, he can’t look – tips his head back to stare at the ornate ceiling instead, “Didn’t plan on it, just…was in the neighborhood.”

Nico smiles in Lando’s periphery, “I thought you’d show. Lewis said you’d be too stubborn.”

Petulant, reactionary fire ignites in Lando, but he drops his gaze back to his lap and stays quiet instead, steely grimace in place. Of course Lewis would.

“So why did you come?” Nico’s voice is conversational when he asks, like he’s genuinely just curious.

Lando thinks there’s probably a right answer, though, or at the very least a wrong one.

He lets out a long breath through his nose and focusses back on the stage. Lewis never demonstrates his combinations full-out, always hand gestures and self-assured little head movements instead.

“Don’t know,” Lando answers finally, honestly, “just… felt weird not to be here on opening night, I guess.”

Nico’s face settles into a knowing smile. It looks just like the achy thing in Lando’s chest feels, even before Nico says, “I was the same way for a long time after.”

After, Lando thinks, is a terrifying word.

“I used to buy tickets to shows because I didn’t want to ask anybody I knew for comps and have them know I cared enough to see,” Nico continues, “but it was impossible to stay away. It’s like I was trying to prove to myself that I made the right choice by forcing myself to picture it the other way.”

“Did you?” Lando asks, “Make the right choice?”

On stage, Max Verstappen is executing perfect, perfect grand battements .

There’s a pause, then Nico sighs, “I don’t know if there was a right choice. I loved dancing, but I loved other things too.”

When Lando takes his eyes off Max, finally, he finds Nico’s on Lewis.

“Do you ever regret it?”

Nico steeples his fingers in front of him. “Not now,” he concludes after a beat, “But I guess that’s the best part of making a decision, isn’t it? You’ll never know how it would have worked out if you hadn’t. Anyway, I was going to have to give up something regardless. I’m happy with what I’ve got left.”

“Nico.”

Lando’s attention shifts back to front of house at the call. The company is loose and scattered between the barres as they fold their warmups and stretch a final bit of heat into their muscles. Lewis is downstage, palm shielding his eyes as he squints through the performance lighting out towards the seats, searching.

“That’s me,” Nico plants a hand on Lando’s thigh and pairs an equally warm smile with it, “Will I see you after the show?”

Lando smiles back. Small. Sentimental.

“No. Not tonight.”

****

The café is warm when Lando steps through the doors – not just in the heat the vents above the entrance are pumping out, but the low lighting, too, and the fireplace flickering across the empty lobby. He’s never been at night, never been the only one in. Without the hum of other customers and the ceaseless gurgling of the machines at work, Lando notices for the first time that there’s Christmas music playing. The bell above the door jingles as he shakes the shivers out of his shoulders and shuffles towards the front. He knows Oscar won’t be in, but the memory of him at the counter makes the whole place cozy anyway. Comforting. Better by far than the lonely dark of his own apartment.

“Hey, sorry about the wait-”

Lando perks up immediately, an unidentified feeling settling so strongly in him that he feels, for a weird second, like crying.

“Hi,” Oscar says as soon as he’s far enough through the door to the back that their eyes catch, “why are you here so late?”

He sounds pleased – fond, nearly – and Lando feels like a fricking cartoon snowman melting right there in the lobby.

“I was just around,” he says again, “Didn’t feel like going home yet. Didn’t, uh-”

He coughs around the caught end of his sentence, but Oscar just tilts his head, smile gentle under his pink cheeks.

“Didn’t really want to be alone?” Lando finishes.

Oscar’s expression shifts, but not into pity like Lando’s afraid of. Instead, it’s more of the other stuff. Gooey, blushy.

“Well, you’re welcome to hang out anywhere,” Oscar waves an arm at the empty lobby, “Let me know if the other guests give you trouble.”

Lando giggles as he unwinds his scarf from his neck and steps in closer to the till, “What do you recommend?”

“Couch by the fireplace is quite cozy,” Oscar picks up a pitcher and sets it on the counter with a quiet clang . Lando watches as his hand stutters halfway through filling it from the milk jug, “You’re not lactose intolerant, are you?”

It makes Lando laugh again. The sick, unfulfilled chasm Nico’s words had left under his chest fills rapidly with something warm like latte froth.

“No,” he assures Oscar, “why?”

“Because I’m not making you an americano at half seven, mate. No offense, but you look like you could use a good night’s sleep.” It comes out through a smirk and a throw-away glance sideways through Oscar’s lashes, like he’s not even really trying to look any kind of way. His hair is as messy as ever and he’s got the sleeves of his hoodie shoved up to his elbows.

“What’m I getting instead?” Lando plants both palms on the counter and stretches on his tiptoes to peer back behind the machines at where Oscar’s still working on the pitcher. The movement shifts his ankle uncomfortably under his sweats, but the pain hardly registers anymore.

Oscar lifts an eyebrow this time when he checks over to find Lando folded nearly in half next to the register.

“Hot chocolate,” he says as he puts the thing to steam, “you promised you’d try it eventually.”

Lando falls onto his heels, knocked back by the quick, hot expansion of feeling inside of him again. He feels warm all the way to his toes.

“Go sit,” Oscar urges after a quiet second, “I’ll bring it to you when it’s finished.”

So Lando sets his bag on the floor and tucks himself into the corner of the sofa closest to the fire, coat, hat and scarf dumped on the cushion next to him. Over his head, some singer he doesn’t know the name of is crooning out a rendition of White Christmas that’s slow and nostalgic. Lando gets so lost in the liminal feel of it as he watches the flames shift behind the hearth that he doesn’t notice Oscar approach until they’re nearly on top of one another.

He hears him first, a low “got this for you” that’s so close to Lando’s ear that he swears he can feel Oscar’s breath against the side of his face. Oscar’s leaned over the back of the sofa to reach the coffee table in front of it, and this near, Lando can smell him, too – like coffee, but like something else under. Warm and spiced, like cinnamon, or mulled wine.

“Thanks,” Lando’s head shifts sideways in one hitched movement.

Oscar’s already looking when their eyes meet. Lando’s never noticed, but Oscar’s shade of brown fits him – warm. He’s got long eyelashes, a nice nose, and Lando thinks, absurdly, about how soft Oscar’s lips might be if he were to touch them.

“Welcome,” Oscar murmurs back, “all good?”

He’s still so close, hands curved easily around the back of the sofa just off Lando’s shoulder. If he shifted just a little, they’d be touching.

“All good,” Lando says back. It comes out like a whisper.

“Cool.” Oscar’s knuckles drag just barely against Lando’s bicep as he straightens up. Lando misses him immediately.

“Let me know if you need anything,” Oscar adds as he moves away.

Lando twists further still to watch Oscar back towards the machines, fingers tucked into his apron strings as he straightens it out.

When he finally remembers to call his “okay,” in response, Oscar’s already behind the counter again, but Lando can see him smile prettily about it anyway.

Time passes in increments as Lando taps lazily between apps and the carols shift smoothly into one another over the radio. Every ten minutes or so, the bell jingles the arrival and departure of other evening customers. Oscar’s the only one who ever helps them. His accent curls familiarly around syllables as he takes orders and hands them off, but he doesn’t linger on anybody else. He doesn’t tease them for their orders, or offer them special recipes, and his voice is polite in a way Lando doesn’t remember hearing in a few weeks. He thinks about it sort of smugly as he switches from TikTok to Instagram for the fourth straight time.

Cisca’s home from uni already, posting neat, aesthetic photos from their parents’ place on her story. Some girl he barely remembers from juniors, one who hadn’t made the company, has gotten engaged. Rebecca’s posted the empty theater with a white heart in the corner. Charles, their pianist, has up a tasteful photo of his cuff links against the keys. Pato backstage. George backstage. Empty theater-

Ceramic clinks against the coffee table in front of Lando. His gaze snaps up from his phone screen to the plate in front of him, then follows the thin fingers up their forearm to the scrunch of a hoodie cuff, up, up to Oscar’s face, eyebrows up, smiling.

“Cleaned out the bakery case, didn’t want this to go to waste.”

Lando glances back down to the plate, back up to Oscar. Back to the brownie, frosted in chocolate and candy cane bits. The sugar from the hot chocolate is already sitting heavily in Lando’s stomach, making his consciousness a bit fuzzy around the edges, but Oscar’s face is earnest and hopeful. Lando straightens up just enough to see around his side to the counter – empty – and the smattering of tables and chairs across the lobby, neat and untouched.

“Split it with me,” he says quickly, “I’ve already had the whole drink.”

Oscar laughs a little, “I’m on the clock.”

Lando huffs, already grabbing his winter gear from the seat next to him and tipping it off to his other side, “C’mon, Oscar, whatever the customer wants, right? Isn’t that what they teach you at these jobs?”

Oscar’s nose twitches once and he shrugs, smile edging from eager to smooth and sly, “Will you tell my boss that if he shows up?”

“Course,” Lando agrees instantly.

Just one pat the empty seat, then Oscar’s laughing again, rounding the edge of the sofa to fall into it.

“Do you, like, live here?” Lando asks as he hands the plate off to Oscar to divide for them, “I thought you worked mornings?”

Oscar’s eyes stay fixed firmly on where his thumbs are digging into the soft edges of the brownie, “I do work mornings. Picked this shift up from somebody else.”

“Why?” Lando wrinkles his nose, “Not that I’m not happy you’re here, obviously.”

Oscar’s smile shifts into something wry, and his laugh is little more than an extra-loud exhale.

“I, uh. Take all the hours I can get, usually.” His eyes dart quickly up to Lando’s, then back down to the mess of crumbs he’s created on the plate, “I’m getting my degree. Gotta pay for it somehow.”

“Oh, that’s mint, mate,” Lando knocks his knuckles into Oscar’s knee and grins, “What’re you studying?”

“Take that,” Oscar mumbles first, nudging the plate back at Lando. He’s already balanced one half carefully in his palm. As soon as Lando makes the exchange, Oscar brings the side of his free hand up to his face and his tongue darts out to clean a bit of frosting off his finger.

It’s distracting, the way his lips chase it, like a chaste kiss he’s giving himself. Lando’s own tongue wets his lips in mirrored action, and he imagines again what it would be like. Kissing Oscar.

“Engineering.”

“Hm?” Lando blinks hard.

Oscar blinks back at him, “Like, um… designing mechanics?”

Lando could have bullshitted enough that he wouldn’t have needed to ask, but he takes the easy out with just a little flush in his cheeks about it and licks frosting off the top of the brownie to buy himself an extra second to boot.

“What d’you wanna do?” he prompts when he’s swallowed, “Other than keep making really fricking brilliant hot chocolates, I mean. Like with your degree.”

The pink in Oscar’s cheeks goes a little brighter as he mumbles “ told you ” down at his lap.

“I want to work in motorsport,” he adds when they’ve finished blushing at each other for the time being, “Like efficiency, I think. Making things run cooler, and faster, and using less energy. It’s fascinating thinking about how to work around the new requirements all the time, you know? Like a puzzle you’re never done solving, like…” he trails off with a little shrug, shoving another corner of brownie into his mouth like punctuation.

And Lando has never wanted to touch somebody so badly. The way Oscar’s eyes go bright, the little aborted movements of his hand against his thigh, the sideways grin like he’s trying to scale all of his big ideas down to Lando’s level. He wants to brush the floppy fringe off Oscar’s forehead, wants to fit their fingers together and squeeze Oscar’s hand whenever his voice ticks up like that – passionate. He wants to curl up like a cat in front of this fireplace, set his head on Oscar’s knee, and let his easy, calm voice wash over him for hours on end. Which is a stupid set of thoughts to have about somebody he doesn’t really even know.

“That sounds sick,” he says instead.

The corner of Oscar’s mouth ticks up, then back down, “Hopefully. What do you do, by the way?”

Oscar puts most of his remaining brownie in his mouth directly after asking it, which gives Lando just enough cover to wipe off the reflexive grimace the reminder draws out of him. The void Nico had picked at inside him opens up like a vacuum, sucking the syrupy contentment back out of his veins.

“Uh,” he laughs humorlessly, setting the rest of the brownie back on the table, “exactly the job I’ve wanted to do all my life.”

Oscar’s eyebrows twitch together quickly and then back out, “You don’t sound happy about that.”

Enough time has passed since he was outdoors that Lando feels okay about tucking his knees up under his chin, heels propped on the very edge of the couch. He heaves a sigh into them and then shakes the melancholy out.

“My job’s alright,” he concedes, “I’m lucky that I get to do it. I like it a lot of the time. I’m just… not sure that it’s the best thing for me. Anymore.”

Lando can feel his heartbeat in his temples and his throat and his lip where it’s caught between his teeth. He’s never actually said it out loud, that. Not sure who he’d even say it to.

Oscar twists a little on the sofa so they’re facing each other more directly, “Can you not do something else, then?”

“I don’t know,” Lando doesn’t really want to talk about it, even if the soft, attentive look the conversation’s put on Oscar’s face is sort of nice, “It feels too late to just switch for no reason.”

Oscar lifts an eyebrow, “Well it wouldn’t be for no reason. It would be to make you happier. That’s a good enough reason.”

Lando puffs air out through his lips. His feet drop back to the floor, tension going out of him in a fell swoop that leaves him sort of curled on his side, blinking up at Oscar’s warm brown eyes. Steady.

“Scary, innit? Making a choice like that?” he whispers up at them.

Oscar’s tongue dips back out of his mouth, tracing the line of his top lip. Lando’s pulse has settled back into one heavy beat in his chest, and it kicks up as he tracks the movement of Oscar’s mouth, the gentle way it closes, resetting, before parting again to say, “Yeah, but sometimes scary’s worth it for something that’ll make you happy.”

It washes over him like the calm before entering from the wings – all of his nerves settling at once into the thrilling, pulsing rush of performance. He parts his lips to take the same steadying breath he would then, watches as Oscar’s eyes dip, and it’s just like dancing, the way muscle memory takes over, guides the tilt of his head and the brush of his eyelashes against his cheeks as he leans forward just enough-

The jingle of the bell above the door hits Lando like a physical blow, the way he flinches away and up, eyes open in an instant.

Oscar looks just as stunned when Lando catches his eye. He glances over his shoulder at the woman shaking warmth into her body near the door, then back at Lando with something like regret in his eyes.

“Shit,” he says, “I’ve gotta-” he hooks a thumb over his shoulder, then scrambles to his feet before Lando has a chance to do anything at all.

“Be with you in just a moment!” Oscar calls quickly over.

The woman waves and nods, still drawn up with the cold, and Oscar turns back to gather Lando’s empty hot chocolate mug off the coffee table.

“I should get back to work,” he says, “and you should finish that brownie.”

Lando eyes the plate mournfully and chooses to believe that the laugh Oscar directs at him is sympathetic and fond, and not pitiful. He feels a bit better about the whole thing when a reassuring palm lands on his shoulder over the back of the sofa, squeezing gently just below his neck before it draws away.

While Oscar takes the woman’s order, Lando stares at the fireplace. There’re stubborn bits of restlessness left in him that squirm every time he remembers the circumstances, but there’s a sugary, heavy calm closing slowly over them every time he stops thinking about it. The flames flicker nearly in time with Oscar’s voice and the whir of the espresso machine as he works on whatever the customer had ordered.

Lando means to pick up his phone and go back to Instagram stories. He will in a minute. As soon as he’s done watching the shift of the fire. As soon as the shop goes quiet again. As soon as the song shifts, as soon as the soft swish from somewhere behind him stops chuffing so pleasantly in his ears. He blinks his eyes open at some point and Oscar’s across the way, broom in hand. There’s a layer over the radio like Oscar might be singing. Lando’s not sure he’s the type. The next time he remembers to focus, he notices the plate in front of him is gone. S’fine, really. He was never going to finish the brownie.

“There you are, really sorry, mate.”

Lando can feel his inhale all the way down into his lungs, like the air, impossibly, is hotter than his insides. He swallows twice, grimaces when he finds his throat dry. He’s got water, probably, always keeps it near his bed. Only when he forces his eyes open, he’s not in bed, he’s-

“Fuck,” he groans. His awareness gradually reaches a level that forces him to notice the crick he’s put in his own neck from the awkward angle his head’s been at for- god even knows how long, honestly. His knees ache.

“Sorry,” Oscar repeats.

Lando jerks upright, finally clocking that, too. Sofa. Oscar, perched on the coffee table in front of it with his hands in his lap. He’s got a winter coat on. There’s a backpack on the ground next to him. When Lando finally props himself up properly, he notices the fireplace is out, and the lights behind the bar are off, too.

“Fuck,” he repeats, shoving the heels of his hands into his eyes, “Sorry. Shit.”

Oscar’s face is softly amused when Lando blinks the pressure spots out of his vision.

“Don’t worry about it. Looked like you needed the sleep.”

And Lando would like to argue, except his brain is clinging so desperately to the tail end of his nap that it’d be kind of useless to try. And impossible, too, with so little coherent thought available. He nods, resigned – even more so when a yawn forces his jaw open halfway through.

“Point proven,” Oscar laughs, hand on Lando’s knee. Once it’s there, it feels sort of familiar, like maybe Lando’s felt it before. Dreamed of it, or something.

Gone again. Lando frowns.

“Hate to do it, but I’ve gotta lock up, and I can’t leave you here overnight or I’ll scare the openers,” Oscar stands as he says it, swinging his backpack up and over one shoulder. “C’mon. Up.”

It takes Lando a few odd blinks before he realizes that Oscar’s hands are out because he’s trying to help Lando off the couch. With as little fuss as he can manage while every joint in his entire fricking body cracks out loud about it, Lando takes him up on it. Oscar’s got warm palms, dry with the winter. They squeeze reflexively around Lando’s before letting go.

“Where are you headed?” He asks as Lando struggles into his coat and his hat.

“Home.”

Lando hopes it doesn’t sound as bitter as the thought of walking back out into the freezing cold feels as a prospect.

Oscar laughs again, “Well, yes, I figured. Where d’you live?”

Lando pauses with his scarf half on. He wonders for a second if he’s not really awake after all, if this is some weird half-dream that the sugar has spun him into.

“Why?” he asks anyway. If it’s a dream, he’s not sure why they can’t just do whatever they’d like here . Nobody’s ever walked in on Lando in a dream before.

“Because I’ll drive you home if it’s on my way,” Oscar answers slowly. Lando’d be offended about the prospect of Oscar thinking he’s stupid, but he sort of is acting it at the moment, so.

“Oh,” he says. Stupid. “Mint.”

If there’s a single pro to the freezing-fucking-cold winter, it’s that the night air snaps Lando right back to full awareness the minute he steps into it. It stings his throat and clutches at his lungs as all of his muscles tighten right back up, every ache slammed into sharp focus. The soft, dumb places in his brain finally click on, too, and if it wasn’t for the desperate desire to get anywhere warm, Lando thinks he might feel vaguely embarrassed about some of the last few minutes. Hours, really.

As it is, he shoves himself into the passenger seat of Oscar’s car just as fast as he can once the doors are unlocked, pressing his icy fingers to the air vents before Oscar’s even turned the engine over. Once the car’s on and the heat is cranked up as high as it goes, Lando finally settles against his seat and only then notices the tickled smile on Oscar’s face.

“You know,” Oscar says, “they do have things made to keep your fingers warm.”

Lando levels Oscar with the most unimpressed look he can manage when his teeth are still chattering, “I know what gloves are, fuck off. Just can never remember mine.”

“I’ve noticed,” Oscar says, which is-

“Shut up,” Lando bites out to distract Oscar from whatever’s happening on his face.

“Here.” Before Lando can process it, Oscar’s hands are in his pockets and back out again, depositing a mass of red fabric into Lando’s lap, “I never wear them anyway.”

It feels oddly intimate, fitting his fingers into spaces warm with Oscar’s body heat. The cotton stretches a bit between Lando’s fingers like it sort of always does with gloves, making his hands feel webbed like a fish, but they’re soft on the inside and worn at the pads of the fingers, like Oscar’s lying about how often he puts them on.

“Thanks,” Lando says, folding his fingers together. Wearing Oscar’s gloves, it could almost be like holding hands.

Oscar’s already navigating out onto the street, eyes on the road and not Lando like a good, attentive driver. He sneaks a glance over while he waits to turn, though, and his cheeks are pink from the cold or something else when he says, “No problem.”

They don’t talk much after that. Lando’s flat is closer by car than it is by transit. Usually, while he’s on the bus, he’s wishing it’d skip stops, get him there faster, and he finds it a little disconcerting when he realizes that they’re halfway back and there’s an anxious twist in his gut like he’s not ready to be home.

He’d been sort of drifting again, but the shape of that thought is familiar enough to remind him why he’d been dwelling on it originally all those hours ago. Why he’s in Oscar’s car at all. White Christmas is playing over the radio again. Oscar’s humming very, very quietly along, fingers shifting slightly on the wheel. They’re pink, like they might be cold. Lando knows how they feel against his bicep, on his knee. He knows now, abstractly, the shape of Oscar’s fingertips. How they compare to his own.

There’s a lump in his throat and a gaping hole in his chest. Unsolvable. Immovable.

“This it?”

Lando can feel his lashes stick a bit when he blinks to refocus. Outside, a faulty streetlamp flickers. It’s visible through Lando’s window while he’s falling asleep, has been like that as long as he can remember. He can recall how he’d been staring at it as he’d phoned his mum the afternoon after Lewis had promoted him. How his chest had felt funny then, too.

“Bob?”

Lando’s insides jump like an electric shock. It settles, though. Calm, bittersweet. Like waiting for curtain call.

“Lando.”

“Hm?” Oscar’s eyebrows furrow.

Lando’s tongue darts out against his lips, “I’m not- Bob’s a fake name. My name’s Lando.”

Oscar’s face does something confused, then he shakes his head like he’s clearing a thought and smiles a little instead, “Lando, then. This is you?”

His finger is lifted vaguely off the wheel towards the curb. The streetlight flickers again.

“Yeah.”

Lando’s got a hand on the door handle already, poised, but he pauses for a moment instead. In the glow from outside the car, Oscar’s features look softer than ever, rounded around edges Lando can’t quite make out in the dim interior. His eyes are gentle, sleepy like they always are, and his lips are still caught up in the tails of his last grin, like he’s forgotten to move his face. Like he hasn’t needed to. With a pang, Lando realizes he can picture it even in the dark, knows exactly what the ghosts of Oscar’s amusement look like.

He is cute, Oscar is.

Lando takes a final breath of warm air, then nudges the handle and steps into the cold again.

As he’s turning to shut the door, he’s caught up by fingers in his coat cuff, stopping him short.

“Wait-” Oscar says.

Lando’s heart beats loud in his ears.

“Don’t forget your bag,” he finishes, nodding down at the footwell where Lando had stowed it back at the café. His fingers fall away from Lando’s arm.

“Right,” Lando says, hoisting it up and over his shoulder, “Thanks.”

“Of course,” Oscar’s voice is careful. There’s a beat, both of them waiting, then, “Goodnight, Lando.”

Lando takes another deep breath and lets it go, “Bye, Oscar.”

“Oscar.”

Something hits the back of Oscar’s neck and catches in the hood of his sweatshirt, damp and unpleasant against his nape.

“Dude,” he whirls around to glare half-heartedly at Logan, his shoulders scrunching up around his ears as he fishes the wet dish towel out from his collar.

Logan looks just sheepish enough to keep Oscar from chucking the rag back at his face. Guilty enough that Oscar’s scowl deepens, though.

“Go home,” Logan repeats, at least twice as exasperated as he’d sounded the first time he’d said it, nearly twenty minutes ago already.

“I will. Just…” Oscar slaps the towel on the counter and scrubs at a spot on the counter. He’s already cleaned the machines, stocked the fridges, counted down the till, and half a dozen other tasks that aren’t really his responsibility after an open, but…

“Oscar,” Logan tugs on his apron string until the knot gives, leaving the fabric hanging loose around Oscar’s neck, “everything’s done. Go home.”

The spot on the counter’s still there. Oscar scrapes at it with the edge of his thumbnail until it flakes off, and by the time he’s finished, Logan’s still hovering over his shoulder. When Oscar’s hand stills, Logan eases the towel out from under his palm, lifts the apron all the way up and over Oscar’s head.

“Out,” he urges firmly.

“Yeah,” Oscar finally sighs. He tosses one final look at the door and the bell above it, wishing for the first time in his entire damn life, probably, to hear it jingle, then shoves Logan back with his forearm so he can slip past. “Will you, like…”

Logan lifts both eyebrows, “Will I…?”

Oscar scrapes his teeth against his lip. He’s known Logan longer than he’s known nearly anybody in the city. They’re not best friends, but Logan’s a really good friend – he’s the one who covers when Oscar has to duck out early to drop off his sisters, and he’s been handing Oscar a shift a week at least for two months flat and never saying a single thing about it, too. And on top of the rest of it, Logan has seen already, has already teased Oscar about it before. About Lando. But it doesn’t really feel like a joke. Oscar doesn’t really feel like laughing.

He balls up his apron in his hands and shoves it against Logan’s stomach, “Will you throw that in the wash bin for me?”

“If it gets you out of here, yes,” Logan agrees with an incredulous, long-suffering huff of a laugh.

Oscar’s sure the bell jingles on his way out the front door, but the wind sweeps the sound away before he can really hear it at all.

****

Lando doesn’t usually come in on weekends, Oscar reminds himself Wednesday morning. At least he doesn’t during Oscar’s shifts. And it’s only quarter-past, there’s still time today. Which means it’s only really two days skipped, and that’s a normal amount, isn’t it? Lando could be busy. He could be sick, with the way he’s always walking around with freezing cold fingers and a bright red nose. There are whole weeks that their other regulars have skipped before because normal people have lives that don’t revolve around espresso beans and whipped cream.

It's fine. It’s normal. It’s probably nothing. If it’s anything at all, it’s a coincidence.

Only… Lando hasn’t texted, either. Oscar had pictured it over and over Friday night with his face smushed into his pillow: how Lando’s face might look when he opened his bag and saw Oscar’s number in shiny red marker, looping around the edge of the bakery paper he’d wrapped the last brownie in. He’d tried to guess what Lando might send, whether he’s a hi type of messenger, or whether he’d try an in-joke, or a smiley face, or something.

He’d turned it all over in his brain for minutes on end, trying to refit all of the places Bob had occupied with the smooth curl of Lando instead. The name suits him, Oscar had thought. It had tickled an unreachable place in his memory, too, like déjà vu, but there’s no way Oscar’s actually heard the name Lando before. Just a trick of the mind. In his in-between state as he’d clung to the last whisps of consciousness, Oscar had entertained stupid thoughts about what that might mean – tasting dumb words like fate just before he’d dropped off for good.

But it’s not fate, clearly. It’s just Wednesday. Just past noon, just past Lando’s usual window. And he’s just not coming in.

****

When Oscar meets Hattie in the lobby of her dance studio Thursday night, she’s got a smooth manilla folder in her hands that she dumps immediately off onto him the minute he’s close enough.

“That’s for Mum,” she mumbles over her shoulder as she pushes out the door onto the street.

She doesn’t seem in a mood to wait on him, so he shoves the folder into his backpack without even looking and jogs after her towards the car.

He only remembers it hours later, after Hattie’s fed and showered and in his bed again. She’d taken one look at the state of his notebooks on the kitchen table while he shoveled pasta into his mouth and said, “If you’re going to be up all night anyway, can I have your room?” He’s switching from fluids to thermo for a change of pace when he finally catches sight of the corner again, a little crumpled from how it’d been crammed between a textbook and his jumper.

“Oh, Mum,” he waves it out in front of him until it catches her attention, “for you. Hattie had it after class.”

He tunes out again the minute it’s out of his hand, attention shoved begrudgingly back on his work. Less than 24 hours left, and then he’s free of textbooks until the new year. And Mark’s given him the late morning off to take his finals, too, which means it’s eight hours to revise, half a shift of work, and then two straight weeks of ignoring his backpack even exists.

The folder lands again on the table with a force that makes his notebook pages flutter. He lifts his eyes up quickly, concerned, and finds his mum with her palm on her forehead.

“What is it?” he asks carefully, nudging the folder with the back of his pen.

He’s been trading off Most Exhausted with her for weeks, but the circles under her eyes look extra dark in the kitchen light, darker still when she sighs and says, “Spring registration.”

“Ah,” Oscar squiggles little circles in the margin next to his notes, “Bad?”

She levels him with a look he can’t decipher, one she’s been directing his way a lot since they’ve been on their own, “Higher.”

“Okay. How much?” he fits a finger under the folder’s edge, but she stops him from opening it with her knuckles on the other end.

“Enough,” she says, tight like she’s scolding him.

Oscar sets his pen down and directs his own murky expression at her, “But what does that mean? Because if it’s close to what it was this month with the performance stuff, I can probably keep…”

“No,” she cuts him off before he can offer, “you can’t. You’re not responsible for it.”

Oscar frowns, “I mean… I can. I don’t want them to have to quit.”

“Oscar,” she sighs, “you’re a kid. You’re in school. You shouldn’t have to worry about this.”

“I’m going to worry about it regardless,” he counters, irritation simmering a little hotter inside him, “you’re my family, I’m obviously going to worry about it. I can do both, I’ve been doing both.”

“But you shouldn’t have to,” she repeats more vehemently.

“It doesn’t matter,” Oscar argues back, “You shouldn’t have to, either. But that’s just how it is.”

“For me,” his mum sets her palms on the table in front of him, face stony, “It’s that way for me, because you’re my kids.”

“And they’re my sisters,” Oscar waves a hand back at her.

“Oscar,” she says again.

“What?” he crosses his arms over his chest, homework abandoned, “I’m 23. I can make my own choices. Why can’t I choose to keep helping out?”

“I don’t want that to be your life,” her voice is sharp, louder than it had been.

“And I don’t want this to be theirs!” he bites back, “The whole point of this was to keep things normal for them. I don’t get why you’re upset about this; I just want them to have a childhood, to be able to do things like other kids, like-”

He stops, gaze rigid on her as he swallows the brutal end of his sentence.

She stares right back, “I’m not letting you be responsible for this after Christmas. If I can’t make it work, they’re going to have to quit.”

Oscar feels something hot burn behind his eyes, but he categorizes it anger and moves on. Moves back to his notebook, pen nearly bending under the force of his grip when he picks it back up. The figures twist in front of his eyes, blurred by the intensity of his own pulse in every artery, but he forces his gaze to stay fixed resolutely on his work anyway. He’s got finals in less than 24 hours.

Even though he’s not looking up, he can feel his mum shift nearer to his chair. It’s not a surprise when her palm lands on his shoulder, but he can’t help but flinch a little anyway.

“Okay?” she asks, thumbing along the seam of his t-shirt.

He shrugs her hand off.

“I have to study.”

****

Before he’d taken the job with Mark, Oscar could probably count on his fingers the number of times he’d been up before six in the morning. He’d spent all of boarding school rolling out of bed at the last possible second, sleeping away his evenings and his mornings alike, and it wasn’t until he’d set his first alarm for four o’clock a.m. that it’d set in what he’d gotten himself into.

Now, though, he can admit there’s something nice about it, watching the sun rise blearily through the frosted windows of the café. He hadn’t slept more than thirty odd minutes with his face smushed into the spiral binding of his notebook, but the exhaustion won’t really set in until after lunch. He knows that from experience. For the moment, blinking lazily out at the street while he waits for the morning rush to take, Oscar just feels distant – far removed from all the emotions he knows are sitting just behind the formulas he’s repeating over and over in his mind. Mornings are lonely in a different way than nights are.

“Morning,” Lewis smiles when he sweeps in from the chilly outside. He’s got his braids bound back behind a pair of chic earmuffs, eyes sparkling above his neat grey scarf. Oscar bets he’s always been a morning person.

“Morning,” Oscar repeats back, already pulling the tea tins out.

“How’re you?” Lewis asks. Ever polite, always asking.

“Good,” Oscar replies, “Your usual today?”

“Thanks,” Lewis agrees, “What’ve you been up to? How’re your studies?”

He always asks like he really wants to know, always remembers the answers to follow up later. Oscar tries, then, to give him real responses most of the time – diplomatic as he can, obviously, but it feels like the right thing to do in the face of someone generally important. And important to Mark, maybe. Oscar’s never asked.

“My finals are today, actually. This afternoon, after I’m done here.”

Lewis’ eyebrows go up, “That’s brilliant, mate, good luck. Will you get time off over the holidays, then?”

Oscar tosses a grin quickly sideways as he sorts out Lewis’ tea sachet, “From school, yeah, I guess. I’ll still be here. And bringing my sisters around.”

It makes Lewis laugh, but in a way that feels sympathetic, like he understands. Maybe he does. Lewis is the type of person who’s friendly in just the right way that Oscar nearly always forgets they don’t actually know anything about each other.

And maybe that’s why, a moment later, after Lewis says, “at least they’ll be back down to just classes after the new year,” Oscar looks right over the counter and says, “If they’re in them, yeah.”

The next bit happens at once: Lewis’ face goes a little off – an expression Oscar’s never seen – and at exactly the same time, the hot water tips over the rim of Lewis’ cup and hits the top of Oscar’s fingers.

“Shit,” he hisses, flicking the lever and reaching for a rag to mop up the worst of the spill. The water’s not hot enough to cause real damage, but it hurts bad enough that he has to resist the urge to stick his burnt finger in his mouth to suck the pain out.

“Are you okay?”

Oscar’s nodding before Lewis has even finished, dumping the tea bag and the rest of the water into a new cup for him, “Yeah, I’m alright. Sorry, just forgot to watch it. I must really be tired,” he forces out a little laugh as he finally braves a look back up.

Lewis’ face is back to the way it always is, neutral and vaguely pleasant, “No worries. Your sisters won’t be around for spring?”

Oscar’d sort of been hoping the fuss had at least distracted Lewis enough to forget his weird comment. He sucks his teeth and lids the tea, then shrugs as he slides it across the counter properly.

“Not sure yet,” he answers carefully, “just some, uh… stuff to figure out, I guess.” His brain feels slow, like he’s searching for words in a mass of molasses, and he wonders whether the exhaustion might have arrived already in a sneakier form than he’d expected.

“Sometimes kids grow out of it.”

Oscar swallows. He’s not sure what Lewis’ job is exactly, but the watches that peek out of his coat cuffs could probably pay for Oscar’s entire education and then some, and it feels important, urgent, that he know: “It’s not them. They’re not asking to quit, or anything. It’s…different.”

Lewis’ gaze feels extra sharp on Oscar as his cup exchanges hands. There’s money already in the tip jar and Lewis’ gloves are already on when he cradles the tea to his chest.

“Well,” he says, “things have a way of working out. Thanks for this,” he lifts the tea in a little salute.

Oscar feels a little like a deflated balloon, weird, misplaced adrenaline clanging around inside of his body with nothing to soak it back up. He passes the rag limply over the counter and nods, “Course, mate. Have a good day.”

Lewis’ head tilts the smallest bit and the corner of his lip turns up a centimeter, “Tell your boss I said hello, would you?”

“Sure,” Oscar nods, relieved at least that the interaction’s over, “We’ll see you later, Lewis.”

****

“You’re moping,” Logan accuses Oscar on Saturday during the afternoon lull.

The lunch rush is long past, and usually Oscar would be stocking or catching up on cleaning, trying to set Logan up with an easy close during their hours of overlap. Instead, he’s perched on a milk crate behind the bar, head tipped back against the fridge and eyes blinking blankly up at the ceiling tiles.

“I’m tired,” he corrects irritably. The hangover from his all-nighter is sitting acrid in his stomach, and he hasn’t been home enough with his mum since Thursday to completely right that situation, either.

Logan steps in close enough that his body blocks the nearest light, casting Oscar into shadow that’s probably a bit too on-the-nose, “You’re always tired. This is different. This is moping.”

Oscar smacks at Logan’s knees, but he just shifts his feet instead of moving.

“He didn’t come in at all this week, huh?” Logan continues when Oscar refuses to humor him.

It surprises Oscar enough that he straightens up a little, eyebrows knit, “Who?”

“You know who,” Logan snaps the rag in his hand at Oscar’s shoulder, “your cute little elf boy.”

Oscar chokes on his inhale, “That’s not- his name is Lando. And he’s normal sized.”

“Is he?” Logan waggles his eyebrows. Oscar kicks at him properly until he backs up to lean against the opposite counter, “Maybe he’s a student and he went home for the holiday.”

“He’s not,” Oscar says.

Logan twists the towel, eyebrows stilling near his hairline, “You’ve talked to him about it?”

“Not… it doesn’t matter,” Oscar shakes his head.

Logan nods slowly, “Maybe he’s out-of-town visiting family.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he repeats.

Logan perks up again, “Maybe- ”

“Logan,” Oscar snaps finally, shoving up off his milk crate, “it doesn’t matter. If he was away, he could have just texted.”

Logan arranges his face carefully out of its excitement, “Wait, what? You gave him your number?”

Oscar can’t even think about it. He kicks his milk crate towards the back door and turns towards the counter so he won’t have to look at Logan’s sad puppy face about it. He’s got enough tragic feelings of his own already.

“Yeah,” he says to the espresso machine instead, “And he hasn’t texted me. I fucked it up.”

****

Hattie’s in a mood when Oscar gathers her and the other two up outside the studio ahead of dinner. It’s fine, because Oscar’s sort of in one, too, and Edie and Mae are more than happy to fill conversational space as he gets them all sorted in the car.

“We tried on our costumes again,” Mae says as Oscar buckles her into her car seat, “we get ears and tails too, and Mum is gonna put whiskers on my face with makeup.”

“Cool,” Oscar says, checking on Edie’s buckle situation before he rounds his way back to the driver’s side. It’s dark already, nearly the shortest day of the year, and he can see his breath fog in the glow from the dome lights.

“Edie has a hat!” Mae adds loudly as he finally puts the car in gear.

The majority of Hattie’s face is covered by the collar of her coat where she’s tucked her chin far down into it, but Oscar can still see the dangerous look she tosses his way. And he hates parenting them properly, it makes his skin crawl when he feels like he is, but he turns and says, “Don’t yell,” anyway. To keep the peace.

“Sorry,” Mae whispers, “Edie has a hat.”

It makes Edie giggle. “Hattie’s costume is the prettiest of ours,” she chips in as Oscar starts towards home.

“It’s Molly’s costume,” Hattie responds automatically.

“Nuh uh,” Edie draws out the final vowel provocatively, “your party dress is pretty!”

“Whatever,” Hattie mumbles, face stony, eyes red-rimmed in a way that stresses Oscar out just a little.

“Do you think Franco has ears and a tail too, to match us?” Mae asks nobody in particular.

“Obviously he will since he’s a mouse,” Edie answers.

Mae kicks the back of Oscar’s seat in her excitement at the prospect, “I can’t wait to see him on Thursday for costume rehearsal.”

It draws a long, regretful sigh out of Edie. And the thing is, Oscar spends enough time around the three of them that he’s good at letting conversation wash over him. He’s good at zoning out, at tuning in only when somebody’s voice hits a pitch that forces him to intervene, when somebody says his name, or trigger words like telling Mum , or bathroom , or “I’m so sad we won’t get to see Lando in his costume now. I bet he would look so good in it.”

There’s a moment between the second he hears the words and the second they hit the proper place in his brain – a final moment of calm – and then everything inside of him chills so fast he has to clench his hands on the wheel to keep from reacting. At the same exact moment, Hattie’s breath catches next to him. Like they’ve frozen in unison.

She recovers quicker, hissing, “What ?” as she whirls over her shoulder, hands on the arm rest. “What d’you mean?”

Edie’s laugh is specific enough that he knows she’s smirking.

“I know something you don’t know,” she sing-songs proudly.

Hattie swats at her shin, “Edie, I’m serious, why did you say that?”

The blood is still pulsing hard enough in Oscar’s veins that he doesn’t do more than say “sh” when Edie whines out a loud “ow, Hattie!” in response.

Because he also sort of wants to shake her himself, actually, until she wipes the cocky look off her face and keeps talking, keeps explaining. He wants it almost as badly as he wants to shove his fingers in his ears and pretend that he’s misheard and none of it’s real at all.

“He’s not dancing with us anymore,” Edie continues right on anyway “I heard Franco talking to Mr. Ricciardo about it before battle, because he was saying that he could learn Lando’s part fast. And Mr. Ricciardo said he was gonna figure it out later, because he only just learned that Lando was leaving, and we had to start rehearsal.”

Pieces are slotting into place in Oscar’s mind the whole time she’s talking, things like ‘exactly the job I’ve wanted my entire life’ and the bag Lando’d nearly left in his car a week back. It makes enough sense that he can’t explain it away, has to swallow instead around the growing pit in his stomach.

“What?” Hattie says, voice fragile.

And yeah, Oscar thinks, chest aching in a similar way.

“He’s leav-ing,” Edie enunciates, “Gone, actually.” Cruel.

Hattie drops back against her seat. When Oscar glances over, her face is set stiffly. Her lashes are wet, lips tight around the things she’s holding in, and he realizes then that the reason he’s so gentle with her still is that she’s the softest parts of him less neatly contained, like an inside-out mirror image of his beating, bleeding heart.

“That’s not fair,” she says down at her lap after a second. It’s quiet enough Oscar’s not sure if he’s supposed to react to it.

“Wasn’t he at your rehearsal on Tuesday?” Edie asks.

Hattie’s fingers are twisting so tightly around each other that they’re white at the knuckles, “No. But we just thought he was sick, or something, not that he’s, like…”

Oscar almost wants to laugh at the irony.

“Gone?” Edie suggests.

“Quitting,” Hattie corrects sharply.

Oscar can’t reconcile any of it, not the things his sisters have been saying about their Nutcracker Prince – about Lando – all month, not the look in Lando’s eyes on the sofa a week back, not the fact he’ll never get another chance to see it. He closes it all off and counts the minutes left in the drive like it’ll make it go faster.

“Maybe he can come dance next year,” Mae pipes up hopefully from her side.

“No, Mae,” Edie shuts her back down, “he’s gone.”

“Well maybe he’ll come back.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hattie counters.

“But what if-” Mae tries again.

“There’s not going to be a next year!” Hattie interrupts with a snap.

Oscar’s blood runs cold all over again. The backseat falls deathly quiet, until the only sound left is the road beneath them and Hattie’s deep breaths from beside him.

“Why not?” Edie gets brave enough to ask after a moment.

Oscar can feel Hattie staring at the side of his face, even though he never takes his eyes off the road.

“Because we have to quit. I heard Mum and Oscar fighting about it on Thursday night.”

And it wasn’t supposed to end like this, Oscar thinks hopelessly. None of it. Not for his sisters, not with Lando, not the thin line he’s been treading with his mum since their dad walked out. They’d been trying so hard to make the holidays perfect, and instead it’s all come crumbling down in the span of a single drive home. And he needs to pull it back together, because he still needs to get them back, needs to make them dinner, needs to talk to his mum just as soon as her shift lets out, needs to salvage any part of it before it’s too late.

What he really needs, Oscar thinks, is a Christmas fucking miracle.

When Lando was in year eight, he’d failed an exam just before the holidays. It was English, his least favorite, and he’d hid the paper, but his mum had found out anyway. When she’d sat him down at the kitchen table to talk about it, he’d crossed his arms and hardened his will; it didn’t matter , he’d argued, because he didn’t care about school, he cared about dancing . He’d just been promoted to level six at the academy – midyear and ahead of his age group. He was good at ballet. He loved ballet.

I know, she’d said, but what if some day you don’t?

And in a way, he feels the same now as he had at the table then. Determined. To prove her wrong, to make it happen for himself, to work so hard, and be so good, that he’d never have to consider what he might do instead. There’d never been an instead for Lando. He’s never been great at back-up plans.

Which is why he’s nearly jogging the minute he’s off the train and onto the slick pavement. The pace keeps him warm in the cold of near-dusk anyway, and the focus of keeping his boots under him over the spots of ice keeps his mind occupied, too. There’s no room to second guess even if he’d wanted to. The nearest he can get is replaying Lewis’ words from hours back, on the other side of his journey. They beat like an eight-count timed up with his footsteps: the right choice is the one you can live with.

He'd called on the platform. His breath had fogged in front of him then like it is now as the call had rung through, and the first words out of his mouth, before Lewis had even said hello, were “I think I made the wrong decision.”

Lewis is patient in a way Lando has never been. Or maybe in a way he just hasn’t learned yet how to be.

“I can’t choose for you,” Lewis had said when Lando had finished his breathless explanation, “if I tried, I think you might just do the opposite anyway on principle.”

That’s not true, Lando had wanted to protest, except it is, maybe, and maybe that reply would be proof.

“Look, Lando,” he’d said a little later, “you’re a brilliant dancer, always have been. I’d be sad to lose you. But if you’re not happy, that doesn’t matter.”

Lando had tried to keep the bitter edge out of his voice when he’d replied, “How am I supposed to be happy when you’re never happy with me anymore?”

There had been a pause so long Lando had checked twice to make sure Lewis hadn’t hung up on him.

“I’m not unhappy with you,” Lewis had said finally, “I’m just worried about you.”

“But in technique, you’re always…” Lando had trailed off, regretting the start to a sentence he couldn’t finish. He couldn’t say correcting me without sounding stupid like the whiny child he’s suspicious Lewis thinks he is. “Singling me out,” he’d settled for quietly.

Lewis’ voice had been steady as ever, “Not any more or less than I ever have.”

And Lando had racked his brains, but he couldn’t remember what Lewis had said to George, or Rebecca, or Pato, or how often it had been others at the center. All that was there in his memory was his mistakes and his name in Lewis’ smooth, calculated tone.

“Feels different,” he’d whispered into the cold.

Then, while Lando stared down the platform, Lewis had paused again and said, “My opinion of you hasn’t changed, Lando. It’s your expectations for yourself that have.”

And Lando doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the way it had blanketed right over the aches in his insides. His breath had hiccupped in and he’d been so caught up in processing it word-by-word, trying to suck every bit of meaning, that someone had knocked into him from behind as they hurried by, mumbling a sorry that he’d barely even heard through the intensity of his focus.

“I think I messed up,” he’d repeated after.

And Lewis had hummed. “Then I’m probably not the person you need to call, mate.”

By the time Lando’s train had arrived, he’d been off the phone with both of them. He’d hefted his bags into the seat next to him, queued up the first overture of Act I, and closed his eyes for the journey. Warm. Determined.

The mood had held all the way back, and it lingers still as he hurries through the late afternoon crowds towards the station’s exit. His phone buzzes once just as he steps onto the street. It’s Daniel: ETA?

In the moment after he’s answered, Lando’s thumb hovers over another contact for a second – just a first name – before he locks the screen and pulls bright red gloves back over his fingers. There will be time later. Right now, he’s got a show to get to.

****

There’s something specific in the energy of the theater as Lando slides past security that tugs at the strings of distant memories and stirs nostalgic excitement in his belly. It thrums in his veins as he hurries through the halls – an anticipation he knows, but one he’d forgotten the feel of. Like a kid on Christmas morning. Or a dancer on Nutcracker opening night.

He hadn’t had time to stop home, so he dips into the guest dressing room to drop his bags before hunting Daniel down. Franco’s there already, makeup and hair done, lounging on the couch with Abbi sprawled on the floor below. They both look up at once to the sound of the door, and Lando can’t help but grin watching their expressions shift from confusion to surprised delight instead. He hadn’t actually thought to be worried about how they might react and he hasn’t got time to do it now retroactively, so he’s glad they’re alright.

“Oh my god,” Abbi says at the same time Franco tosses his phone aside to sit up and gape.

“Hey, merry Christmas,” Lando rushes out. He props his suitcase against the far wall and tosses his bag into an empty corner. When his hands are free, he uses one to take Abbi’s and the other to splay on Franco’s neck quickly, affectionate, “where’s Daniel?”

“Stage. Just finished warm-up class,” Abbi says as Franco pinches Lando’s cheek.

“Mint,” he breathes out as he backs away from them, “see you after!”

And then he’s gone again – back down the hall, in the wings, breathing hard.

Daniel’s downstage when Lando arrives. He’s got a dozen kids in a half-circle around him, and Lando can see from their cherry-red cheeks even at a distance that they’re his soldiers.

“-rehearse once more if we need to,” Daniel is saying, “but I think you guys will be alright, especially once-”

Lando’s eyes catch Daniel’s, and the final lingering bit of anxiety dies in the light of Daniel’s wide, welcoming smile.

“-your Nutcracker Prince is back,” he finishes with an arm out towards the wings.

It’s overwhelming even before they meet him halfway. Fifteen sets of arms overlap after the first girl works up the nerve to wrap around his legs and waist, and then everyone’s talking at once, so loud Lando can’t hear his own laugh in the middle of their impromptu group hug.

“Lando!” the first one calls over the commotion. It’s the girl who’d introduced herself the very first rehearsal, he thinks. “We thought you weren’t coming!”

Lando meets Daniel’s eyes again, but Daniel just shrugs, smile gone small and amused.

“Changed my plans,” Lando says down at them. His hands shift from shoulder to shoulder, passing his affection around before it bubbles over, “Couldn’t leave you all on opening night.”

After a second, Daniel butts gently back in, “Hey, soldiers. He’ll still be here later. Doors are opening in half-an-hour, though, so I need you all backstage. Go get dressed, let the volunteers know if you need help. Stay warm, please, keep stretching.”

The group disperses reluctantly around them, filtering back through the wings towards their dressing rooms. Lando squeezes a few more hands, pats a few more backs, then shuffles forward until it’s just him and Daniel alone on stage.

“I’m sorry,” Lando says when he’s sure the soldiers are all out of earshot.

Daniel claps him on the shoulder, “Not gonna pretend you didn’t give me a scare, mate. But you’re here now, yeah? Let’s have a good opening.”

Lando cradles his palm in his cheek and fights to keep the emotion in him balanced between only guilt and none at all.

When he gets brave enough, he tips his chin forward hesitantly, “I think there’s something I want to talk to you about after.”

Daniel smiles like he already knows, “I think we can do that, yeah. After. You all ready for the show?”

“Will be,” Lando nods.

When Daniel’s taken a step back, Lando remembers the other half: “Oh! Where’s Molly? I want to check in with her, too.”

Daniel’s face switches quick then, like snapping his fingers, “Oh, fuck, mate, forgot to say. Molly’s got the flu, she can’t dance tonight. It’ll be Hattie on. Edie!” he calls before Lando can get a word in.

The first soldier turns from the of the group at attention, jogging back towards the edge of the curtain with her eyebrows raised, “What?”

“Will you go get your sister? Lando wants a word.”

**** 

Hattie’s pale when she appears in the wings a minute later. She’s dressed already in Clara’s red party dress, a matching bow tying up half the neat brown ringlets that fall around her shoulders.

“Hi,” she starts cautiously, “my sister said you wanted to talk to me?’

“Hey, yeah.”

Lando’d folded himself into a progression of stretches on the floor in the meantime, lingering just out of sight of the audience. He pats the space next to him and smiles warmly when Hattie sits carefully in it.

It takes a second. The conversation he’d planned out had been for Molly, not Hattie, and they don’t need the same things.

“How’re you feeling?” he settles on after the silence stretches far enough, “When did you find out?”

“This morning,” she worries the hem of her dress restlessly between her fingernails, “Mr. Ricciardo called my mum to say.”

She smooths her thumb neatly along the line of lace at the bottom, then finally, at long last, meets Lando’s eyes, “I’m so nervous.”

He nods, “I’d be surprised if you weren’t.”

She sniffs quietly, eyes darting from her own lap, out past the curtain, and back to Lando, “Just, like. Worried I’ll forget the whole thing. I’ve been running through it all day, but it’s not…” she shrugs.

“Right,” Lando nods again, “I’m pretty sure you won’t, though. You know the part. And if you forget, make something up. Nobody will know. I’ve done it before.”

Hattie’s chest stutters in what he hopes is a laugh, “You keep using your own mistakes to make me feel better.”

It surprises a laugh out of Lando himself. He hadn’t even noticed.

“Well I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” he says, “might as well use them for something, hey?”

Hattie’s lips twist up in a tiny, guarded smile.

“Mistakes like,” he continues, “not being around for you this week. I’m sure that hasn’t helped.”

Her next blinks come extra quick and she sniffs another time before speaking. “Would’ve been for Molly anyway. Not me.”

Lando sighs, “I didn’t mean just the extra rehearsal.”

After a pause, Hattie swallows, “I thought you were quitting.”

He can barely hear it under the buzz of the crowd as they start to fill in on the other side of the curtain. They’ve only got a few moments left, and he’s already pushing the limits of his actual preparation time.

“Can I tell you something secret?” he asks anyway, before he’s decided whether it’s smart to, “So did I.”

Hattie’s chin jerks up. The furrow of her brow is extra noticeable in her stage makeup, her surprise magnified the way it’s meant to be.

“Why’d you change your mind?” she asks.

Lando folds his knees in from his butterfly and draws them towards his chest until they’re toe-to-toe, mirror images.

“I realized what I really wanted,” he says, “and remembered what’s important to me.”

Hattie lifts an eyebrow, “The academy’s The Nutcracker ?”

Lando shakes his head and giggles at her. He’s got a suspicion she’s really funny when she wants to be. When she opens up.

“I mean… yeah,” he shoves at her ankle, “Dancing. Being here with all of you. Watching you absolutely smash it tonight as Clara.”

Hattie blushes and ducks her chin towards her chest, hand over her mouth, “Only I’m not sure I will.”

“That’s fine. I’m sure,” Lando nudges her foot another time with the back of his hand, “You’re going to be great, Hattie.”

She sighs and folds her arms on top of her tucked-in knees, “You actually think so?”

“I know so,” he infuses as much confidence as he can into it, every speck he’s ever craved so badly himself. “And I’ll be right here cheering you on,” he pats the ground next to himself, “and right there,” he points center stage, dark for another 45 minutes, “dancing with you. Good?”

“I guess,” she mumbles at her feet.

Time’s ticking, and he still has to get dressed and warm up properly and beg Abbi or Franco to put his makeup on for him, so he hoists himself up and onto the balls of his feet.

“Say you’ll do great,” he prompts with a tap to her toes.

She laughs sort of nervously and wiggles them against the wood floor.

“I’m serious,” he urges, “gotta – what’s the word? Think about it so it happens.”

“Manifest?” she tries.

“Manifest,” Lando agrees, “do that. Say it.”

She shakes her head at him, eyes narrowed, but presses her lips together and then does it anyway: “I’m gonna do great.”

“You are,” he grins, “merde.”

He says it again an hour later, pressed back against the wall so he’s out of the way as the party scene dancers take places in the wings – mouths it over the top of the crowd at her through the blue light.

Again before she enters for battle scene in her nightgown and after he’s gone through his own pre-show rituals. And again – under his breath, to himself – before he makes his entrance to rescue her from Franco and his army of little gray level ones in mouse ears.

By the time the curtains close after snow, there’s no luck left to wish her, just giddy, sweaty delight as Lando catches her up in his arms for the second time in ten minutes. He remembers the weight of her from the lift they’d only just finished, but she feels lighter still when he hugs her so tight her toes come off the floor backstage.

There’s still half a show to get through – his pas de deux included – but it’s nothing for her after the marathon of Act I. He says so when her feet are back on the ground and she’s laughing up at him with a smile he’s never seen on her before.

“I did it,” she says before he even gets the chance to.

“You did great,” he says anyway.

Intermission’s not long, and the performance endorphins sending his brain to the fricking atmosphere make the break before their Act II entrance feel even shorter. It’s a blink until the curtain’s rising on entr’acte. As they shake out in the wings, just before they’re due on stage, Hattie smiles up at him and whispers “merde,” into the anticipatory air.

He holds that one with him until it’s Abbi at his side backstage instead, until it’s her in his arms and he as her cavalier.

It’s different with her, but familiar, too. He knows how to dance The Nutcracker. He’s done it a million times every winter since he was in nappies, after all. But there’s something new about dancing it now, less than 24 hours removed from a job offer in a fucking office building a hundred miles away. The only person threatening to take it from him ever had been himself, but he supposes that’s sort of how it’s always been – since the mouse ears, since the failing grades, since the moment Lewis had called him into his brand-new office and said “I’m going to cast you as a principal next season.”

It tastes sweet anyway. Like hot chocolate. Like peppermint candy. Like the smile he can’t help taking over his entire face as he steps back and guides Hattie forward at the very end of curtain call to accept her sold-out standing ovation with a deep, gratified curtsy.

It’s still sticky in his bloodstream when he collapses into Franco’s side in their dressing room a long while later. The kids will be clearing off makeup and rushing out to meet their families, but nobody comes to the academy show for the guest dancers. Their parents are in other countries, or at least in cities far away, and their friends are all off performing Christmas shows of their own across the continent. It doesn’t bother Lando, though; he hadn’t been dancing for anybody but himself and the fifteen kids who’d hugged him in glee after the curtains had snapped shut.

“Drinks?” Franco mumbles hopefully into Lando’s hair.

It’s a possibility for sure, a really normal thing for them to do, but Lando’s not sure he’s in the mood. All of his focus from the moment he’d opened his eyes before eight in the morning had been on righting his wrongs and getting his ass to the theater on time. He’s got luggage to cart home and a conversation to have with Daniel and a new contact with no last name burning a fucking hole in his jacket pocket on the rack across the room. The performance high is settling gradually into something comfortable in his joints, too. Satisfied. When Lando stretches his limbs in front of him, he realizes for the first time that he’d gone the whole day without his ankle hurting at all.

“Let me relax for a fricking second,” he mumbles at Franco’s collarbone.

While his eyes are still closed, the door to their room clicks quietly open – “Are you dressed?”

Abbi. She leans against the door when it’s shut again. Lando knows because he cracks his eyelids open and squints through them at the way she’s already in sweats and a jumper, like magic.

“Lewis is here,” she explains, “he wants to say hello to us when you’re ready.”

The words drag Lando right out of his post-show haze. He separates himself regretfully from Franco’s chest and sighs deeply, scrubbing his hand over his forehead best he can without smearing his makeup irreparably.

“Wants to say hello to us or to Lando?” Franco teases with a squeeze to Lando’s nape.

Lando’s heart jumps and his stomach drops, leaving a familiar hollow in the middle. He buries it under a put-upon laugh as he moves to shimmy out of his top.

“Well, he asked us along to be polite, probably,” Abbi adds on. When Lando’s got his costume in his hands, she takes it right out of them to hang up for the next day’s matinee.

“Right,” Lando deadpans, “Other way around, you mean.”

He shouldn’t, probably, but the conversation from earlier still feels foreign, like he’s learning yet how to fit it back over his world view.

Abbi coughs around a laugh and Franco shoves him by the shoulder, holding him at arm’s length to grin airily across the sofa, “You know, sometimes I almost think you’re serious.”

“About what?” Lando hedges, feeling restless under their scrutiny.

Franco lets him go, “About Lewis. Acting like you don’t know about the huge soft spot he has for you.”

Lando buries that feeling under something else, too.

**** 

The back halls are congested as they make their way towards front-of-house and kids filter back in to gather their things and shrug into their coats to head home for the evening. Lando deals out little “great job”s and high-fives along the way, feeling sort of out-of-body about the way they send nearly everybody blushing.

The lobby’s mostly emptied when they arrive, save for the scattered groups of people waiting out kids in the dressing rooms, or chatting with friends, or – in Lewis’ case – squatting down to speak to a trio of students while their mum looks on. She has a hand on her own cheek but a smile so wide Lando can see it even through that. Lewis has always been good at that sort of thing, he thinks, at charming people in a single conversation.

As they draw nearer, Lewis catches Lando’s eye over the shoulder of the middle girl and lifts his chin in recognition. Whatever he says next makes them all nod and crowd in close, then he’s engulfed in three tight hugs at once.

“Say ‘thank you’ again,” Lando can hear the mum say when they get close enough.

“Thank you!” all three recite. In accents Lando recognizes, actually, and it takes him long enough to place them that they turn around at the same time he realizes.

“Lando!” Edie shouts to the chagrin of her mum, who’s got a hand out and her tongue between her teeth. It doesn’t stop Edie from plastering herself to his side anyway, and it’s only a second before Mae joins her on his other hip.

“Lando, guess what?” Edie begs. Behind her, Hattie grins behind her fingers.

“What?” he humors them.

Edie bounces excitedly on the balls of her feet, like she’s letting the excitement build to its proper peak before she blurts out, “We don’t have to quit dancing!”

Lando hasn’t even processed the fact that was even on the table to begin with when she props her chin against his stomach and adds, “Mr. Hamilton is giving us a scholarship for spring semester!”

His gaze darts up from her face to Lewis’. Lewis’ eyes are sparkling the way Lando remembers from his very first show in the corps , back when Lewis was still on stage with them, wishing them merde in the wings. The look is so familiar he can’t help wondering whether it hasn’t been there all along, and Lando just hasn’t been looking in the right way.

“We got a late donation,” Lewis says softly, “in the spirit of Christmas.”

Lando’s throat feels inexplicably tight, his cheeks uncharacteristically warm. Next to him, Franco whispers something to Abbi so softly even Lando can’t hear it.

“We should go,” the girls’ mum says after a beat, “Will you all go get your things? I’m not even sure where-”

“Yes,” Hattie interrupts, the intermission smile back on her lips, “Lando, will you come with?”

Caught off guard, Lando glances quickly from her to Lewis, “I think… Lewis, did you need…?”

“Just wanted to say congratulations,” Lewis dismisses pleasantly.

Before Lando can think, though, Lewis’ arms are around him, drawing him in tight against his chest easily, like it’s natural. Lando doesn’t think they’ve ever hugged before. The lump is back in his throat and his eyes ache when he tucks them into the shoulder of Lewis’ coat.

Still, he’s got a good hold on it until Lewis’ arms tighten. Until Lewis puts lips right at his ear, stills a hand on Lando’s spine, and whispers, “I’m proud of you.”

Lando doesn’t know what the feeling inside of him is then. Only that it makes him shake a little in Lewis’ hold. Only that he has to squeeze his eyes shut tightly to keep them dry. Only that his fingers press deeply into the wool at Lewis’ back as the words sink through his skin and settle into his muscles, his bones, his blood, until they replace the air in his lungs.

He’s not ready when Lewis’ palm runs up his spine – doesn’t think he’ll ever be – but Lewis’ fingers curve around his shoulder enough to draw him up and into the bright light of the lobby anyway. Inhaling feels like he’s doing it for the very first time. Everything’s shifted, hazy. Or maybe that’s just the damp left in his eyes.

“Lando?” Hattie says tentatively from behind him.

“Huh?”

When he turns, she’s got Edie and Mae on either side and a hopeful look on her face.

“Go on,” Lewis laughs, “whatever it is seems important.”

So Lando pats Franco and Abbi each on the shoulder and then jogs after the three girls back towards the dressing rooms, swiping the back of his hand under his nose to clear the last of the emotion from his face.

It’s been a long, weird day and a strange, overwhelming night, so he hardly even blames himself for not realizing they’ve passed every dressing room without entering until they’re nearly at the exit.

“Wait,” he tries, but Hattie just laughs as Edie tugs him by the hand.

“We have a surprise for you,” Hattie explains – only it doesn’t explain anything, really. “You’ll see.”

And he’s feeling lightheaded, feeling impulsive, so he lets them drag him all the way to the stage door and heave it open in front of him.

It’s snowing. That’s the first thing he notices. It must have started almost immediately after he’d entered before the show, because it’s heaped already on the railing of the stairs and the eaves of the buildings across the alley. It’s the thick, floaty kind that mesmerizes him as he watches it float past the streetlights and down towards the sidewalk.

It’s so enchanting, so magical, that he thinks that’s all there is to Hattie’s surprise until a voice from the bottom of the steps says, “Lando?”

Lando’s heart leaps into his throat.

Oscar’s glowing in the bright lamp above the stage door. He’s in his coat and a hat, cheeks rosier than Lando’s ever seen them as his face shifts gradually into a smile that’s soft and delighted.

The feeling in Lando grows and grows until it’s bursting out of him as a disbelieving laugh, because how -

“Oscar.”

The door slams behind him as he scrambles down the steps, sliding in the wet snow, and around the corner until he’s just a breath away. He hadn’t stopped to grab his coat, so he wraps his arms around himself instead. Just breathing, just grinning, just trying to get his brain around the fact Oscar’s here, in front of him, outside his theater.

“Your sisters,” Lando realizes out loud, “Hattie and Edie and Mae.”

It makes so much sense he has to laugh again at the fact they’d never stumbled upon the fact on their own. Or he hadn’t, anyway.

Oscar’s grin goes bashful, “Yeah. I didn’t ask them for this, I swear. It was Hattie’s idea. I don’t even know how she got it out of me, honestly, about you.”

“About me?” Lando repeats hopefully.

“About you,” Oscar confirms quietly, “I guess maybe I was kind of obvious once I realized who you were.”

“I didn’t mean to keep it from you, I honestly just didn’t know,” Lando clarifies. He’s shivering in the snow – the way it’s already soaking through the tops of his boots and into his socks – but he can’t be arsed about it with how warm he feels in Oscar’s presence.

“And I only found out a week ago,” Oscars says, “after you- when they told me you were leaving.”

The bubble in Lando’s chest deflates just slightly. “I’m sorry I never texted. I didn’t think I was coming back. I didn’t want to start anything with you if it couldn’t be anything.”

Oscar’s lip makes its way between his teeth as he waits Lando out. “But you’re back?” he says when he’s ready.

“I’m back,” Lando nods quickly with his whole body to try to force some warmth into it.

“For the rest of the shows?” Oscar asks hesitantly.

Lando smiles, “For a lot longer than that.”

“Come here,” Oscar murmurs, and finally, finally Lando steps into his arms.

He practically melts into Oscar’s chest, cheek squeezed up against the collar of his jacket and feet nudged between Oscar’s in the snow. Oscar’s neck is warm against his forehead and he smells the same as Lando remembers, like spice and coffee – like Christmas.

“You’re freezing,” Oscar mumbles into his hair. And Lando is , but he doesn’t care, he’s never cared less. He squeezes Oscar tighter around the middle and sighs into his chest. Content. Happy.

He could stay here forever, he thinks, with Oscar’s hands shifting up and down his back like he’s trying to rub warmth into it. It’s only when they reach Lando’s neck and catch the bare skin above the hood of his sweater that Lando realizes Oscar’s fingers are cold, too.

“Your gloves,” he remembers all of a sudden, pulling back to put them face-to-face, “I never gave them back. I have them inside, they’re just-”

“Keep them,” Oscar shakes his head. They’re so close their noses nearly brush. “Call it a Christmas present.”

“But I didn’t get you anything,” Lando protests.

Oscar’s hands tighten on his back and his smile goes so fond that Lando’s stomach flips like the lift in a pas de deux .

“Yes you did,” Oscar murmurs back.

It’s cold enough that their exhales fog up between them. Lando expects his cheeks are as pink as Oscar’s are when he tips their foreheads together and laughs, breathless. He can’t help it – overwhelmed, delighted, taken with the way Oscar’s hands fit at his waist. It feels too good to be true, like a dream he’s about to wake up from.

“Psst.”

Lando’s attention jumps at the same time as Oscar’s to the stairs above them. Outside the stage door, Hattie’s got a hand over Mae’s mouth and Edie’s giggling as she hangs half over the railing. In her mittened hand, just over their heads, is a sprig of mistletoe.

“Christ,” Oscar mumbles.

It’s okay, though. Lando’s made a living leading.

His hand covers Oscar’s cheek entirely when he cups the side of his jaw. The skin there is cold and damp from the snow, but it warms under his fingers as he draws Oscar in, in, to press their lips together.

They kiss forever, for no time at all, until Lando’s head spins and his hair drips freezing cold snowmelt down the back of his neck – until Hattie and Edie and Mae giggle elatedly from above them and it sounds like bells. Like holiday magic.

“Merry Christmas, Lando,” Oscar whispers when they finally separate.

Lando kisses him again on the mouth – because he’s here, because he can – and slips his bare fingers into the pockets of Oscar’s warm winter coat.

“Merry Christmas, Oscar.”