Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Lando was an early riser.

For some reason, that fact tended to surprise people. They’d look at him and his white Monster and his protein bar and his sweatshirt and sweatpants and, apparently, not clock him as someone who liked to rise with the sun, or whatever. That was fine, honestly. He didn’t really care about whether people thought he was a night owl or early bird, or whatever the sayings were. He had classes to worry about, his Twitch channel to come up with content for, housemates to annoy, all that jazz.

Speaking of—

He looked over at his new roommate, still dead to the world, only his swoopy, light brown hair visible above his boring grey-blue blanket. Daniel had found his own place across campus, closer to the business and engineering buildings and further from the media and journalism buildings, and the Grid. The not-quite-frathouse, affectionately called the Grid by all current and former inhabitants, was not technically an official university fraternity house, but the Grid was so well-established at the school that it basically… was? There were articles about it in the school newspaper, at least, like the time a few years ago that all the inhabitants TP’d the vice principal’s house in protest against the decreased support for international students. The Grid tended to be pretty international, at least in all the time Lando had known about it.

That, in turn, led to its secondary nickname: the International (frat)House of Pancakes, or IHOP. Or IFOP, as Lewis tended to correct because he believed that the “frathouse” part of the name deserved to be included in the abbreviation even though the restaurant chain was called IHOP and not IFOP and—anyway.

Anyway, Daniel left, and Lando spent almost the entire month of January with no roommate, the other twin bed in the small attic room bare. Oscar, initially, was supposed to be rooming at Alpine, the predominantly-French uni building not far from Dan’s new place. That fell through, or something, and then Logan told Lando that Oscar was applying to live at the Grid. According to his application, Oscar was an engineering student like Max, but apparently was double-majoring in journalism, too, which was cool. With Lando in journalism and minoring in social media literacy, he thought that maybe they’d have a bit in common.

He thought wrong.

Oscar efficiently moved all of his stuff into the room in under two hours. Lando watched from the couch in the living room as Oscar and a tall, broad-shouldered, vaguely familiar man with the squarest fucking face Lando had ever seen methodically brought in three plastic totes and one duffel bag from the Honda SUV parked in one of the two guest parking places in front of the house on the street (the garage and driveway being otherwise occupied). The pair then took the totes up to the room, Oscar slinging the duffel over his shoulder and carrying one tote while Mr Square Face took the other two.

Lando thought that was it, but then Oscar reappeared, bounded out to the car like he was auditioning for the track team, and came back in with a second duffel, a backpack, and a smaller plastic tote full of bubble wrapped somethings that he put on the kitchen island. Probably plates and stuff, then.

Lando migrated up to his room, curious despite himself. He smiled and waved at the pair when he entered, pretending to busy himself with his own backpack, still a mess from the previous semester. He had a collection of tests that he still didn’t know what to do with. His mum used to take them and sort them into folders, but after he went to uni, keeping non-essential academic papers was… less appealing. Lando had a drawer full of tests and stuff, though, and last semester’s collection would probably be joining the rest.

Oscar and Mr Square Face, whom Lando learnt was named Mark when Oscar addressed him (with a surprise Australian accent!), unpacked Oscar’s things fast. The rooms came with two beds, two desks, and two chests of drawers, plus two small closets set in the walls. Lando watched as Mark made Oscar’s bed with grey bedding, Oscar unpacking the duffels and putting clothes into his chest of drawers and tiny closet. His backpack rested on the chair for his desk, a small cup of pens and a stapler the only items gracing the desktop itself.

It took another fifteen minutes, not that Lando was counting, for the rest of Oscar’s things to be settled. A couple novels, a stack of textbooks, some charging cables, and a small figurine joined the stapler and cup of pens on the desk, and then Oscar rolled up the duffels and stuffed them up onto the shelf in the top of the closet alongside some spare linens and another grey-blue blanket.

And then Mark ruffled Oscar’s hair and left.

Right.

Lando’s roommate was a fucking enigma.

He held himself like he was trying to crack a walnut with his butt, spoke approximately five words each day (though Lando was slowly getting Oscar to warm up to him, and actually held several full conversations with the guy, so basically he was winning at life), occasionally mumbled to himself when working on homework at his desk, and was, frankly, extraordinarily disorganised. Lando wasn’t great, but he liked knowing which drawer held his socks and which held his athletic shirts. Oscar was a “shove it where it fits” kind of guy, and he never made his bed after getting up.

Well, Lando was usually gone before Oscar woke in the mornings, but when he got back from his afternoon classes and went up to the attic to change into yoga clothes for the class he taught at the university athletic centre, Oscar’s bed was always messy, covers thrown back and pillow sideways.

Lando wondered if people thought that Oscar was an early riser. Probably. People probably saw his stick-up-the-arse demeanour and decided that he was someone who went on runs at 5 am, or something.

This was not useful, Lando told himself, stretching and sitting up. He pulled himself out of bed and straightened his blankets before throwing on clothes and taking the stairs two at a time all the way down to the ground floor.

The Grid had three floors, plus an attic and a basement that flooded every other time it rained. The ground floor held a massive kitchen and living room, all open concept, with a bathroom that had an evil shower that only sprayed cold water. Charles and Carlos were on that floor, in the bedroom underneath the stairs. Lando lived with Carlos in that room for a while, before he decided he hated living under the stairs and moved up to the attic when George and Alex decided to move from the attic down to the second floor. Lando was joined by Daniel in the attic, who moved up there from his room with Max on the third floor. Lando still didn’t know what caused Dan to ditch Max, because they were kind of like “The Duo” of the Grid? Anyway, Charles came from one of the dorm halls on campus that everyone heard horror stories about, and Charles definitely had horror stories, but he still worked the front desk in that dorm hall, so clearly he wasn’t too traumatised. Or maybe it was a Stockholm Syndrome situation, who knew? He and Carlos got along like a house on fire, though, and they both spoke Italian, so they were sort of a roommate match made in heaven.

It also didn’t hurt that they had crushes on each other, though Lando was pretending he didn’t know that, for his own peace of mind.

The second floor had three bedrooms, two being big enough for two people and the other one being a single. Currently, the setup was George and Alex in the room at the front, Yuki and Pierre in the room at the back. and Logan Sargeant in the single between them. Logan was on academic probation because he missed a bunch of classes in his first year. Lando wasn’t actually sure what happened there? He knew Oscar, though, and was the one to approve Oscar’s application to move in when Lando was still a bit on-the-fence about it.

Yuki was in the culinary school, and he almost always cooked dinner for the house, unless he was pissed off about something, and on any given day the chance of Yuki being pissed off was, like, at least 25%. Pierre was in business, like Dan, and minoring in art history (the nerd). He worked at the art exhibition on campus, the one that displayed all of the fancy shit that the art students put together. Lando sometimes wrote articles about the new exhibits there for his journalism classes, always happy to put one of his housemates in the spotlight.

The third floor had the same room setup, with two doubles and a single. Max, in engineering, and Liam, a fashion student, were in the front, and Lance and Esteban were in the double in the back (business and chemistry, respectively). Lewis Hamilton, a fashion design graduate student who’d lived at the Grid for so long that Lando was sort of scared of what might happen if he left, was in the room in the middle facing west.

The attic was just him and Oscar.

It was sort of nice being so removed from the rest of the house, not that Lando ever felt alone. God, no. Sound carried in the house like nobody’s business, meaning that Lando could pretty clearly hear when Carlos and Charles got into an argument in the living room about the arrangement of the couches, which happened just about every-other party. Charles was an architect, and Carlos was a double major in graphic design and business. They had conflicting opinions with regards to the couches and armchairs, so everyone else just got used to the living room looking different every so often.

Lando pulled a white Monster out of the fridge and cracked it open. Charles, standing and glaring at his espresso machine, gave him a wave and a French-sounding noise that probably meant good morning.

Max thumped down the stairs, causing Carlos to call out something derogatory in Spanish from his room. Max shouted back in Dutch. It was their standard morning routine.

Lewis walked in the front door wearing running clothes. Lando’s mouth went a little dry, and he sipped his Monster and returned Lewis’ wave with one of his own.

Lewis was a bit of a celebrity on campus. He led several protests and demonstrations a couple years ago when the school refused to say anything about the rising anti-black sentiment in the student body, and he single-handedly raised the standard for all design majors after getting multiple deals with big-name designers that Lando couldn’t ever remember. He was also, crucially, drop-dead gorgeous. Lando was pretty sure that everyone in the house had had a crush on him at some point, and Lewis definitely knew, but he stayed kind and understanding and drop-dead gorgeous and smart and… okay, Lando, calm down.

Lewis greeted Roscoe when the bulldog trotted up to him, and Max, similarly, greeted his two cats when they ran over to him to yell for food.

Yup. Normal morning.

Esteban and Pierre thundered down the stairs, arguing in French about something that was probably football, or maybe business? Or art? Lando could never keep up with what they were mad at each other about that week.

If Lando, Charles, Max, George, and Lewis were the early risers of the house, then Esteban, Pierre, Logan, and Carlos were the… the medium-risers? Was there a word for people who woke up at a normal time? Anyway, they were the next wave. Then the late risers were Liam, Alex, Lance, Yuki, and Oscar. Lando actually didn’t know when that group woke up, because his first class was at 8:00 am, and they were almost never up when he left.

Anyway.

Esteban was on pancake duty, and he shooed Charles to the other side of the kitchen to wait for his stupidly-slow espresso machine to finish pulling a singular shot of espresso.

Lando liked this silly tradition, borne after the TP debacle. Daniel came up with it, which tracked, writing a pancake assignment chart next to the chore assignment chart. The next morning, he made enough pancakes to feed the whole block, or, perhaps, one house full of 14 extremely hungry college students.

The next day was, according to the story, Nico Hulkenberg’s turn, and he burnt two pancakes before getting the hang of it and making edible ones. As the story goes, he gave the burnt ones to Kevin Magnussen and ended up being chased down the street by one angry Dane brandishing two burnt pancakes and a broken plate.

Lewis took pictures and got them printed out, and they hung on the memory wall in the living room, in the place of honour above the mantle of the fireplace.

Hulk and Kevin ended up moving into a flat together afterwards when they both got into the school’s graduate kinesiology department. Lando was invited to the celebratory party that turned into a karaoke competition halfway through.

Good times.

Esteban was good at making pancakes, Lando quickly learnt after moving in. Daniel’s tradition lived on no matter how many people moved in and out (at one point the tradition was in jeopardy because a French student with no cooking experience set fire to most of the kitchen and almost himself, but then everyone had mandatory pancake-making lessons after that, so it was fine), but certain inhabitants were assigned to pancake duty more than others.

Esteban, despite claiming that he had no prior cooking experience, was very, very good at pancakes.

Lando accepted his plate and retreated to the living room to eat them as fast as possible—he had to leave soon. More footsteps on the stairs made him look up.

Oh.

Oscar stood at the foot of the stairs, hair in disarray, still in his pyjamas, his sweatpants slung so low on his hips that a strip of skin was visible between the waistband and the hem of his faded T-shirt.

Right behind him on the stairs stood Logan, looking characteristically stressed.

“C’mon, Osc, move,” Logan muttered, poking him.

Lando ate another bite of syrup-soaked pancakes and watched, along with half the rest of the house, as Oscar slung himself onto one of the barstools at the island and slumped onto his arms.

Logan shook his head and went to the fridge.

Lando couldn’t stop looking at the bit of skin on display. What the hell.

He glanced at his watch, then sipped his Monster, then looked at his watch again, wide-eyed. Fuck, he needed to leave now or he’d be late.

Max was in a similar state of distress, shoving his feet into still-tied shoes while shovelling pancakes into his mouth at an unholy rate. Lando slapped his half-finished plate on the counter by Oscar with a “sorry” directed to Esteban, who looked like he did not care in the least.

Oscar lifted his head and blinked at the plate. Lando knew he should be rushing, but he paused for a moment.

“You can finish them, if you want. I’m not going to be home until, like, three, so. Yeah.”

“Oh.” Oscar was still staring at the plate.

Lando had to go. “Yup. Right. Bye.”

He pulled on his trainers and bolted, Max barely a step behind them. Lando went left at the end of the street, Max went right, and all thoughts of Oscar and pancakes and swoopy, messy, light-brown hair left Lando’s mind as he raced for the media building.

~

Look. Oscar didn’t mean to fall in love with his roommate only four hours after meeting the guy.

Okay, well, let’s back up a bit.

Ever since he was little, Oscar had been called “well-behaved” and “reserved” and “quiet” and pretty much every other word that meant “almost dead fucking silent and painfully introverted.” And he was, for most of his life, dead fucking silent and painfully introverted. He didn’t have much to say about anything he didn’t find important, which was basically all things outside of family, cars, and Tim Tams. He had exactly one friend, then exactly two friends, no more and no less. Lily was sweet and understanding and talked more than enough for the both of them, and Logan was funny and thoughtful and really, really pretty.

Oscar figured out he was gay when he was 11 years old and confused about the jokes his parents made about him and Lily crushing on each other.

He didn’t really care about sexuality—his or other’s—and he never officially came out. At one point, he brought Logan home and introduced him as his boyfriend, and his parents had both nodded after a moment of shock and asked if Logan would like anything to eat or drink.

Oscar and Logan were together for a while before going back to being best friends, and they went to the UK together for boarding school when they had the opportunity. Logan didn’t like to talk about why he was in Australia to begin with, so all Oscar knew for a while was that his home life wasn’t great and it was best for everyone that Logan was in Australia and not in Florida.

England was pretty great, too.

They got into the same university, Logan in marketing and Oscar in engineering physics and journalism. That was reassuring, that they’d know each other still in a new, unfamiliar place.

Then Logan befriended this Thai-British guy, Alex Albon, and Alex said that there was room in his “house” if Logan needed a place to stay, and Logan accepted and asked if there was room for Oscar, and there was, but only after the first semester.

That was fine for Oscar. He had a flat in one of the buildings full of pretentious French people, sharing the space with a TA named Fernando who had the most bizarre working hours and acted sort of like a criminal, not that Oscar cared. A roof was a roof and a bed was a bed.

But he moved into Alex’s “house” which was apparently called the Grid, and also the International (frat)House of Pancakes? There wasn’t any sort of interview process besides the usual application, which had a little box labelled “able and willing to make pancakes in the morning on occasion” that probably had something to do with the IHOP nickname. Oscar checked the box, because he did know how to make pancakes, and forgot about it.

And then he met Lando, his roommate.

At first, he didn’t register the guy sitting on the couch in the living room as he and Mark carried things in from Mark’s SUV. He wanted to get out of the blistering cold as soon as possible, and Mark had to get back to his job at the mechanic’s before the guy he didn’t like, Sebastian or Stephen or whatever, told on him to their boss.

So Oscar was focused on that and not Guy On The Couch, until Guy On The Couch turned into Guy In His Room.

Oscar had just finished putting away his stuff when he turned and locked eyes with the prettiest person he’d seen since… well, ever, actually. Tan skin, curly brown hair, wide, easy smile, nebulous eyes—yeah, Oscar was kind of done for, at that point. He’d smiled his usual awkward smile, aware of the fact that he had all the expressiveness of a particularly mundane brick wall, or perhaps a stained mug with some sort of stupid slogan on it like “don’t talk to me before I’ve had my coffee.”

“Hey, I’m Lando. Lando Norris!” Pretty Guy said, holding out his hand, still grinning. Oscar could see white, minty-smelling gum held between his molars. Was that a weird thing to notice? Probably.

Oscar shook his hand. “Oscar Piastri. Your, uh, your roommate now, I guess.”

“Yeah. What’s your major, again?”

And listen, normally Oscar avoided small talk like the plague. He was really good at getting out of conversations he didn’t want to be in, and he had a prepared list of excuses for when he wanted to leave an awkward situation.

But Lando Norris asking him his major didn’t really feel like small talk. It felt… well, it felt genuine, like Lando actually wanted to know.

“Engineering physics and journalism. I’m, uhm, I’m double-majoring.”

“Oh, wow. Busy then, huh? Why engineering?”

They spent the next four or so hours talking about their respective majors and choices and childhoods and interests and just about everything else under the sun. At least, that’s what it felt like to Oscar. He hadn’t talked this much in his life, surely, not even when he and Logan got high and reminisced about their karting times.

By the time Lando looked at his watch and cursed and ran out, yelling about yoga, Oscar was a goner. Totally, completely done for. He’d fallen for his roommate, for Lando Norris, and there was nothing to be done.

He’d just have to deal with it.

Unfortunately, “just deal with it” was easier said than done.

In that first month rooming, Oscar learnt a lot about Lando. First, Lando got up at the crack of too-fucking-early-in-the-morning. While he was usually pretty quiet—getting out of bed and putting on clothes that were honestly barely a step up from pyjamas—some days, Oscar would wake up when Lando accidentally kicked his bed frame and blink as Lando hopped around clutching his foot, cursing, or see him disappear down the stairs, always taking them two at a time. Most of those days, he could fall back asleep pretty quickly, getting another couple hours of shut-eye before he had to get up and go to class.

Some days, though, he tossed and turned until he had to get up and go down to the second floor to Logan’s room and flop onto his best friend’s bed to watch him work. Then, only after Max and Lando, and Pierre (on Wednesdays), and George (on Thursdays) went to their 8:00 am classes, Oscar went down to the kitchen to get some pancakes.

Lando in the mornings was cute. It was very inconvenient for Oscar.

But he dealt. Logan told him that even when they were dating, he never knew what Oscar was really thinking or feeling except in extreme situations. Besides the high-highs and low-lows, Oscar was a bit… let’s say inexpressive.

In this case, that was in his favour. No one knew about his tiny (massive) crush (by this point, definitely more than a crush) on Lando Norris, least of all Lando himself.

At least, that’s what Oscar thought.

As he worked his way through the pancakes that Lando left, rushing out the door with Max (it was a Monday, so Pierre’s first class was at 11 am and George had no classes, just an afternoon lecture), Lewis slid onto the stool beside him.

Esteban had disappeared back up the stairs for his online class, Charles had taken a plate of pancakes into his room for Carlos, and everyone else had dispersed, leaving the two of them relatively alone.

Oscar eyed Lewis suspiciously.

“So,” Lewis began, tapping his tattooed fingers on the counter top, “Lando, huh?”

Fuck. Oscar went through the five stages of grief and settled reluctantly on acceptance as he turned his body towards Lewis. “Yeah,” he sighed, forlorn.

Lewis nodded sympathetically. “You’ll be okay man.”

“Says you,” Oscar shot back before his brain-to-mouth filter could catch up.

Luckily, Lewis just laughed, his “hehehe” giggling more than enough to raise Oscar’s spirits again.

Lewis stood, clapping Oscar on the shoulder in a friendly bro-manner. “I’m here if you need to talk, man. I know it’s rough.”

“Yeah. Right. Thanks.”

And Lewis left, scooping up his bulldog and heading up the stairs cooing at Roscoe like he hadn’t just left Oscar’s head spinning.

Pierre appeared at the door to the basement, an armful of laundry hiding most of his body. “Lewis, huh?” he said understandingly. “We’ve all been there.”

And then Pierre, too, disappeared upstairs.

Oscar clunked his head back down onto the counter top.

This is why he usually slept in

~

“Alex. Alex, you need to get up.”

Alex did not want to get up. He was sinfully comfortable, warm, sleepy, and it was just cold enough outside of his covers that the prospect of leaving his bed sounded like abject torture.

“Up, come on, if you miss this class you know you’ll get a passive-aggressive email from the professor, mate.”

“Don’t mate me,” Alex said.

George made a small scoffing noise. “That’s what you respond to?”

“Georgie.” Alex held out the last syllable until a pillow whacked down on his head. He couldn’t contain his laugh and finally rolled over and opened his eyes, blinking into the light coming in from the window.

George, clad in pyjama pants and what looked like Alex’s ugly Christmas sweater from last year’s Christmas party, looked positively radiant in the morning light. He was sitting on the edge of Alex’s bed, hair perfectly mussed, blue eyes sparkling.

Fucking hell. No one should look that good this early in the morning.

George laughed. “You should see yourself then.”

Oh, Alex said that out loud. Whoops.

“You know, it’s Esteban’s turn for pancakes.” George sounded faux-casual, but Alex could hear the smug bite in his tone.

And fuck, it worked. Alex stretched and sat up, groping around his bedding for the socks he yanked off in the middle of the night when they got too annoying. He pulled them on, wrapped his blanket around his shoulders, kissed George good morning, and went to get pancakes.

He never missed Esteban pancakes.

Oscar was slumped on the kitchen island, maybe asleep, maybe having some sort of crisis. Carlos, in biking gear, was poking him with a pencil, phone on the counter as he undoubtedly waited for a response from Valtteri, his biking buddy and former member of the Grid. He waved at Alex and then went right back to the poking.

Okay then.

Alex pulled a few pancakes from the stack kept warm on the back of the stove. An empty plate of former-pancakes rested at Oscar’s elbow, so Alex grabbed that and put it in the dishwasher, where a row of similarly-syrupy plates stood already.

Two forks later, because George would beg for a bite until Alex gave in, Alex headed back upstairs. Carlos had stopped poking Oscar, mainly because he was glaring at Carlos like a cat contemplating the best way to get away with murder, and was now quickly typing on his phone. Oscar gave Alex a half-hearted wave and then returned to his glaring.

Only a month into the semester and those two already had a fantastic little rivalry going on. That was probably a record?

Alex dodged Logan thundering down the stairs, backpack slung over one shoulder, and finally made it back to his and George’s room, pancakes intact and blanket undisturbed from his shoulders.

“Has Yuki gotten up yet?” Alex asked, flopping onto his bed and crossing his legs.

George didn’t look up from his law textbook. “Not sure. I didn’t see him when I was down there earlier. How many pancakes were left?”

Alex thought about it, chewing a mouthful of delectable pancake. “He must be still asleep, then.” Esteban always made extra so that Yuki could trial multiple. He was trying to reverse-engineer Esteban’s recipe, because Esteban, the over-achiever that he was, didn’t use the box mix that almost everyone else resorted to. (Lewis had a vegan recipe that tasted like cinnamon and home, and Oscar was surprisingly adept at crepes, so when he deigned to get up early enough to cover his shift, he made those and not the thicker pancakes that the rest of them did.) Yuki made good pancakes, too, but he was rather fixated on Esteban’s secret recipe. Esteban made extra to help Yuki figure it out. He was nice like that.

Alex liked to make sure that Yuki didn’t sleep in too late, or else he’d miss pancakes (which was always a travesty but especially on Esteban mornings). He’d also have to miss out on his usual morning exercise, and that would make him cranky for the rest of the day, and if he was cranky, then the chances of him making dinner for everyone went down, like, at least 20%. So Alex took on the self-appointed job of Get Yuki Up. The job execution would wait until after his own pancakes, though.

George hummed and looked up, eyeing Alex’s plate keenly.

Alex held out his extra fork and the plate over the small gap between their beds.

George accepted both.

In the silence of the morning, Alex thought that he would never get bored of George, or the Grid, or their always-entertaining morning routines.

~

Lance woke up and listened to Esteban’s professor talk about… something. The tinny sounds of Esteban’s laptop speakers was a common wake-up alarm for Lance, to the point where it was kind of becoming a problem? It was Pavloving him, or something. They were watching a YouTube video the other day and Lance was so awake and alert he had to take melatonin to fall asleep that night.

Anyway.

He stretched and rolled over in bed, almost-but-not-quite tumbling off of his bed in the process. Stupid twins. One of these days, Lance would sit down with Charles and figure out a way to give everyone double-size beds, even if it meant knocking down walls and reorganising the current bedroom setup. Charles would probably agree, too, and then all Lance would have to do would be text his dad about it.

“Pancakes are on your desk,” Este said softly.

Lance said thank you into his blanket and didn’t move for another solid minute, until a student in Este’s class asked something and made the speakers ring with feedback. Then he sat up and grabbed the plate—still warm. With a lecture on organic chemistry in the background, Lance ate his pancakes.

He checked his phone, noting that Pierre had sent a text to the Grid group chat about them being low on laundry detergent. There was a period of time when everyone supplied their own, but then the Detergent Debate of 2019 caused Max and Charles to almost implode the internal relationships of the Grid, and Lance decided that he would get all of their laundry necessities alongside covering groceries, to keep the peace.

Lance liked that he could do things like that.

He wasn’t the most outgoing of the current Grid inhabitants, not like Charles or Carlos or Lewis. He liked his solitude, and he liked his Esteban, and he was self-aware enough to know that his social awkwardness deterred most people from getting close to him. He tried to show his appreciation for his housemates in other ways, then. His first year, that was through getting takeout every Friday, and then takeout every Friday turned into covering groceries when he thought he could get away with it, and then that turned into the official setup they had. There was a magnetic whiteboard attached to the fridge that held an ongoing list of groceries (though people often stuck sticky notes to the fridge instead of using the whiteboard), and Lance would buy them every other week, or really whenever he noticed something new added. Necessities like detergent, dishwasher pods, milk, and pancake mix were immediate buys, though.

Lewis told him once that he didn’t have to single-handedly cover groceries for everyone. Lance actually laughed in Lewis’ face, then, before feeling bad about laughing.

“I want to,” Lance said, “I’m doing it because I want to. It’s not—I don’t feel, like, obligated to.”

Lewis accepted that, and after a while, he stopped trying to wire Lance money. Lance got that enough from his dad, who, bless his heart, was rather a bit out-of-touch with regards to just how much money was reasonable for one university student.

I have enough time to run to the store before classes, he thought, glancing at his phone and dragging himself out of bed to change out of his pyjamas. He could get detergent now, and then place a grocery order to be delivered when Yuki got home from cooking class.

“Headed out to the store,” Lance told Esteban, who was doodling scribbles in the margins of his org chem notebook. The hexagonal pattern was pretty mesmerising.

“Okay. Have fun,” Esteban replied, looking up when Lance brushed a hand across his shoulders, heading for the door.

“Always do.” Lance grinned.

He wasn’t lying when he said that. Maybe he wasn’t outgoing like some of the others, or big on hugs like Lando, or stupidly smart like Max, but he did enjoy providing for the Grid.

~

All of the art-related buildings were clustered right to the north of campus, sandwiched in between the sprawl of business to the east and the massive music building that tripled as a concert hall, auditorium, and conference space to the west.

Charles jogged up the main steps towards his building, tugging his wool coat tighter as a gust of wind whipped down the thin corridor that the two buildings on each side of him created. One was a painting studio, he knew, and the other might’ve been something to do with digital art? He’d never been in there, but Carlos had a class in there on Wednesdays, at the same time that Charles had his blueprint class.

Today, though, Charles was TA-ing the introductory architecture class that was 50% “here’s what not to do” and 50% “draw a design and your peers will rip it to shreds while you try not to cry.” It was pretty good for filtering out the people who weren’t passionate about architecture or design, but Charles still had nightmares. When he applied to be a teacher’s assistant, he sort of expected to get one of the intro to design classes, because those were the softballs that non-majors could take to fill out their general requirements. Intro to architecture was also a non-major class, but there were enough horror stories about it that most non-majors steered clear. But, when Professor Prost reached out and asked for him specifically to TA the architecture class, Charles screamed a little and then accepted, because being Prost’s TA was every architecture student’s dream.

Charles slipped into the classroom, closing the door quietly behind him. He peeled off his wool coat and headed for the little desk in the corner meant for TAs and the administrative people who came in once per semester to assess the class. A few students were already there, spread out amongst the giant tables overlaid with graph paper that they used for their designs. Ollie Bearman, a first year with an unshakably positive attitude, smiled and waved at Charles from the table in the front. Next to him sat little Kimi Antonelli, who always looked about two seconds away from quitting the class.

They were still early enough in the semester that quitting wouldn’t show up on transcripts, but Charles knew that Kimi had a massive crush on Ollie, so he expected the kid to get at least halfway through the semester before bailing. Kimi was in physics, taking the architecture class to fill one of his requirements. Technically, Prost did talk about the logistics of building design from an engineering standpoint. Obviously, if your design couldn’t actually exist in real life, it wasn’t a good design. Kimi got into quite a few arguments with Prost over it. Charles considered bringing popcorn to the class, as the arguments were guaranteed free entertainment, but Prost had a strict “no messy foods in the classroom” policy that apparently included popcorn, so.

Charles got out his tablet and flicked through the designs he’d been grading. Students filtered into the classroom over the next five minutes, before Prost entered, quietly as always, and stole the attention of everyone in the room.

Alain Prost was a tenured professor at the university who got into arguments every other Sunday with one of the tenured engineering professors, Ayrton Senna. They had an ongoing debate over the best building material to use—or something like that, Charles never fully listened to their arguments—and were often seen walking around campus together, bickering and greeting students in the same breath. Few people had both professors, given that Prost was in the art department and Senna was in engineering, but architecture students had to take classes in both departments, meaning that they were prime subjects for both professors to interrogate about the other.

Charles vividly remembered the engineering class he had with Max in his first year. When Professor Senna learnt that he was in architecture, he—rather casually—asked if Charles had any classes with Prost. Charles did, and at that point in his academic career, he was not yet aware of the rivalry between the two. He said yes. For the entire semester, Senna constantly bothered him about whether Prost said anything about Senna. It was sort of endearing in a weird way, but most annoying.

Prost was quite short, but he had a presence about him that easily commanded every room he entered. He wasn’t loud or particularly mean, but he was strict, no-nonsense, and expected the best from each and every one of his students. Charles loved him to bits and pieces, and they often spoke French over the heads of the students during in-class brainstorming sessions.

Charles stood and started moving about the room as the students brought out their designs that they were supposed to work on over the weekend. Ollie’s looked quite promising, Kimi’s was just on the cusp of being physically impossible to build, and everyone else looked like they wanted to cry already.

Prost clapped his hands together and began speaking.

~

Despite what his housemates might think, Max did not, in fact, have an 8:00 am class on Monday and Wednesday mornings.

At the beginning of the semester, he’d left alongside Lando and went over to the east side of campus to meet up with Daniel for coffee and a much-needed debrief post-winter-break. Everyone just sort of… assumed that he had a class. Max never said anything to convince them otherwise. He knew, of course, that no one would judge him for meeting up with Daniel for coffee. Everyone loved Daniel, and when he announced that he was moving across campus, they threw him a going-away party of such proportions that Max was pretty sure everyone was still a little hungover.

So it wasn’t like Max was scared of being judged.

He wasn’t.

Okay, maybe he was, a little. He just didn’t see why it was any of their business what he did on Monday and Wednesday mornings! It’s not like he outright lied, and no one ever directly asked about what he was doing, what class he was going to, so it was fine.

Daniel pulled Max into a tight hug, almost lifting him off his feet, when he got to the student-run cafe that served all of the ever-exhausted engineering, physics, and chemistry students. Max sat at their usual table, an Americano already waiting for him next to Daniel’s always-changing order of some kind of latte that had too much milk and too much syrup.

“Thanks,” Max said, dragging the Americano closer to him and allowing the warmth of the drink to defrost his fingers. He’d forgotten his gloves that morning, made late because of Esteban’s pancakes.

“Course, mate,” Daniel said, sipping his sugary coffee and leaning back in his seat, always casual, always smiling.

Well, usually smiling.

Max hadn’t wanted to say anything last semester, when Daniel’s smiles turned brittle and fixed, when Max knew he was struggling with the graduate programme he was in and with the idiot professor who wanted Daniel gone from the department for some stupid fucking reason. Max hated Helmut Marko with a burning passion, and he’d never even met the man. The way Daniel talked about him, though, made him think that the guy was some sort of Satan-incarnate, sent to earth to torture Dan and other business students.

Then again, Daniel probably felt the same about Max’s advisor, Christian Horner, so they were about even in terms of murderous intent towards authority figures.

Daniel asked about his discrete maths class, and Max talked and waited for the ever-present tension in Dan’s shoulders to slowly seep out, sip by sip, word by word. Max was good at talking. He wasn’t good at a lot of things, but he was good at talking, good at distracting Daniel from his worries.

They went back and forth, exchanging anecdotes, until Daniel checked his phone and sighed softly.

“We’ve got to get going now,” he said, and Max wanted to chuck his phone across the room and say No, stay with me here, please, because the tension had returned to his shoulders and Max couldn’t bear to see Daniel unhappy, not like this.

Instead of saying that, though, or reaching across the table to pull him close and kiss him, Max just nodded, draining the rest of his Americano and standing up. He shouldered his bag and took their cups back to the counter while Dan collected his things. Together, they walked north. Dan’s class started a couple minutes before Max’s, because the science classes were on a slightly offset schedule from the rest of the school in order to allow student enough time to get from one side of campus to the other. It meant that Max could walk Dan to his building and then turn right back around and go to his own, without being late.

Daniel was saying something about his visit to New York City that winter break, with Lewis and a couple other graduate students who used to live at the Grid. Max just listened, until they got to Daniel’s building and had to part ways.

“Same time Wednesday?” Daniel asked, tone light-hearted but expression a little anxious, as though he was scared that Max might say no, that Max might say “actually I don’t want to see you every Monday and Wednesday morning.”

“Of course,” Max replied. “Wednesday.”

“Right. See ya, Maxy.” Daniel pulled Max into a side-hug and then jogged off, disappearing into the building.

Max stood there until someone brushed by him with a muffled “excuse me.” Then he turned and headed to his own class, thoughts of Daniel and New York City and Americanos waiting hot and ready swirling through his head.

~

Lando glared at his backpack, sitting on the slope of the hill leading down from the media buildings towards the student centre and dining hall in the middle of campus. To his left, a friend group set out a couple picnic blankets and were chattering away about their winter breaks. He watched them for a moment, envious of their spread of food, and went back to glaring at his backpack.

In his distraction and haste that morning, he’d forgotten to grab the sandwich he made the night before. He could picture it vividly in his mind, sitting wrapped in plastic on the shelf in the fridge next to Yuki’s latest attempt at beef ragu in a glass container.

Fuck.

He didn’t have time to go home and get it and come back and eat it, but he also didn’t have time after class to eat, because he had to get to yoga and only had enough time to change and grab his yoga bag.

Maybe, if one of the guys was still home, he could ask them to put the sandwich in his yoga bag?

Lando reached for his phone, pulling up the Grid group chat.

“Lando!”

His head shot up and swivelled around. Someone definitely just called his name, but he couldn’t tell from where. Did he imagine it—?

“Lando! Hey!” Oscar appeared from the crowd of students filing up and down the stairs set into the hill that led directly from the media building to the student centre.

And he was holding—he was holding Lando’s sandwich.

“Osc! Is that my sandwich?”

Oscar presented it to him. “Yeah, when I grabbed my lunch I noticed it still in the fridge. Thought I’d bring it to you.”

Lando grabbed it and started unwrapping it. “Thanks, mate, you’re a lifesaver.”

“Yeah, well.” Oscar rubbed the back of his neck, still standing awkwardly above Lando. “I know you don’t have, like, time, you know, before your class at the gym, so. Um, yeah.”

Right. Oscar knew that… how? He usually wasn’t home when Lando was flinging himself through the house racing against the clock. Pierre was, and he always laughed when Lando inevitably had to run up and down the stairs an extra time because he forgot something. Everyone else was either in classes or tucked away in their rooms. Oscar, Lando knew, had his photojournalism class during that time, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

“Thanks,” Lando said again, instead of something horrible like “how do you know that” or “why do you care if I eat.”

“No problem. Um, yeah, I’ll—I’m gonna go—” Oscar turned away, and before Lando could think, he reached out and grabbed his wrist.

“You don’t have to. C’mon, I know you have the same lunch break between classes that I do. Sit down, mate.”

Lando… actually didn’t know how he knew that, really. He and Oscar had never talked about their class schedules beyond the occasional “in my engineering class today…” or “my media literacy prof said…” so Lando didn’t actually know Oscar’s schedule for certain, but last week he’d seen Oscar climbing the stairs around this time, headed from the science section of campus towards the media section, and hadn’t Oscar mentioned once about eating his lunch, his stupid chopped salad, in the photography building because it had a nice view of the cherry blossom trees? They weren’t blooming, but even the bare branches were pretty.

Okay, so maybe Lando did know how he knew that Oscar had a break now. Weird.

Oscar looked genuinely surprised at the invitation. “Oh. Uh, sure. Thanks. Yeah.”

Lando refocused on his sandwich, painfully aware of the slight brush of Oscar’s shoulder against his as his roommate sat down on the grass and reached into his bag for the Tupperware of salad he always had for lunch. They ate in mostly-silence, broken by Lando pointing out when a particularly interesting person went by.

See, the thing was that Lando knew he wasn’t straight. You didn’t share a room with Carlos Sainz Jr. and not learn a couple of things about yourself. Or, honestly, Lando had things figured out by the second time he looked at George’s stupid, carved-from-marble face and went “oh, he’s pretty” so, like, he was quite comfortable in his sexuality, and stuff. He liked girls, he liked boys, he liked whatever, it was all good.

But Oscar was so… he was so different from anyone else Lando had found attractive. Carlos was all intense, dark features, Lewis was a god in human form, George had possibly the most expressive face Lando had ever seen. Even Lando’s baby crush on Max was based in the fact that the guy was so blunt it hurt, but still thoughtful as hell.

Oscar was very, very bland in comparison.

At least, that’s what Lando tried to tell himself as he brushed bread crumbs off of his coat. It was too cold for these thoughts, honestly. The weak, almost-March sun had tempted a lot of students out onto the green spaces on campus, but whenever the wind blew, just about everyone shivered and eyed the warm buildings around them for possible shelter.

The click of Oscar’s Tupperware closing brought Lando back out of his thoughts. Right. He still had one more class, then yoga, and then he could panic about his maybe-crush on his roommate.

Jesus Christ, what kind of idiot developed a crush on their roommate?

~

Oscar was such a fucking idiot.

He thunked his head down on the table and very pointedly did not scream into his folded arms. Next to him, Zhou Guanyu, a photography major and fashion minor, laughed at his anguish.

“Bad morning?” Zhou said, once Oscar had lifted his head back up.

“No, just—” he cut himself off. Zhou was nice, funny, a good listener, all the makings of a great friend. Oscar hadn’t talked to him much at first, not even when they were both in a photojournalism class last year being taught by Lewis and a very stoic, non-talkative Finnish guy whose name Oscar couldn’t remember. Oscar was silent, Zhou was scarily good at photography and had a lot of opinions on fashion (which is why he eventually picked up the fashion minor, at Lewis’ encouragement), and they didn’t talk.

Then they were in this class together, the history of photography, and Zhou seemed intent on dragging Oscar out of his self-imposed shell.

“Just—just a crush,” Oscar said, deciding that it would probably be good for someone to know about his crush. He couldn’t tell Logan, because Logan lived at the Grid, too, and was dealing with his own troubles, anyway. Zhou would be a good, neutral party.

“Rough,” Zhou said, sympathetic. “Do they not like you back, or…?”

“Well, he’s my roommate, to start with,” Oscar said, and yeah, it was just a stupid said aloud as it was in his head. Zhou winced. “And he definitely does not like me back.”

“How did that all happen?”

So Oscar told him about moving in and talking with Lando for four hours, how easy it was, how low-pressure it was. Oscar didn’t feel obligated to contribute, not with Lando seemingly capable of holding a conversation with a brick wall. Oscar was a great brick wall. But he also felt just as comfortable talking about himself, something that very rarely happened with complete strangers. And Lando was, unfortunately, exactly Oscar’s type. Handsome and pretty at the same time, funny, easy-going, smiley, smart, matching Oscar’s dry humour with his own often over-the-top jokes and mannerisms.

Zhou was a good listener, even as the class started and the droning of the rather lacklustre professor filled the room. He let Oscar get everything off his chest, humming and nodding and making understanding, sympathetic noises every so often.

“That really is rough, man,” he said, once Oscar finished his rambling story with a “so, yeah” and a shrug. “If you ever need to get out, I have a place right off campus with Val, close to the Grid, yeah? You know, we both lived there last year, when we were waiting for the lease on our place to start.”

Val, or Valtteri Bottas, was a student athlete who could often be seen cycling all over campus and leading tour groups around. Oscar knew that he used to live at the Grid, in the room that George and Alex now inhabited, but keeping track of all of the former inhabitants and moves that had been done was sort of impossible. George probably had a spreadsheet somewhere, keeping track of everything. Max, too, or maybe he just had it all memorised.

“Thank you,” Oscar said, genuine. Logan would be proud of him making another friend. Lily, too.

They took notes in silence for a few minutes before Zhou spoke again. “What is your schedule after this class?”

“Multivariable calculus, then writing and rhetoric, then nothing. You?”

“Ah, geography of art and then I am going to Schumi to work out.”

Schumi, or the Schumacher Athletics Centre, was the university’s gym that boasted two swimming pools, a whole floor of treadmills, stairmasters, and stationary bikes, multiple rooms of weightlifting equipment, a dance studio, and Lando’s yoga class. Oscar went every other evening, sometimes doing cardio and sometimes doing weights, always avoiding the mirrored room by the basketball court that held daily yoga sessions. Sometimes, when Logan was able to join him, they would do laps in the pool, the two of them racing each other or just going back and forth, enjoying the other’s company without needing to say anything.

“Did you want to come over after your last class? We could get a head start on this project.”

Oscar was not surprised by the invitation (why else would someone ask what your schedule for the day was?) but he was slightly surprised at the feeling that Zhou was being wholly genuine. He actually wanted to have Oscar over.

“Sure. I mean, I’d like to.”

“Great.” Zhou slid his phone over to Oscar, open to a blank contact. “I will text you the information, yeah?”

Oscar put in his number and texted himself from Zhou’s phone so he’d have his number.

It would be nice, he thought as he left the class to run across campus towards the mathematics building, to have another friend outside of the Grid.

~

The culinary school was not on campus with all of the other departments, not mixed in between business and art or whatever. It was technically an old offshoot of the university, stationed several train stops away from the main campus in a large, industrial-looking building that used to be a massive restaurant-office combination.

All of Yuki’s cooking classes were in the afternoon and evening, in order to give students adequate time to fill their general education requirements. Yuki, however, crammed almost all of his gen eds into his first year, meaning he could double up on the cooking classes without worrying about anything else. It was a suggestion from Pierre, actually, when Yuki was lamenting having to go from campus to the culinary school and back every day.

So, now in his second year, Yuki was able to waste away the morning sleeping, eating, and working out at Schumi, before getting his coat and knives and bag and taking the train three stops away to the culinary school.

He swayed slightly with the movement of the train, watching buildings pass and half-listening to a conversation between two of his fellow culinary students about the dessert section that just about everyone was struggling through.

The train car swayed again, and someone bumped into Yuki, almost sending both of them tumbling. He turned, mouth open to tell them off, and then paused.

“I am so sorry,” the guy said, French accent curling around his syllables the same way Pierre’s did. “I am not—I didn’t mean to.”

“It is fine,” Yuki said, shortly.

Isack Hadjar was a first year, Yuki knew, in food science and not the culinary school, but still taking a cooking class, probably to fill some sort of requirement or something. He was almost as short as Yuki himself, and he charmed just about everyone he talked to. Yuki was not exempt. Isack was weird, sort of loud, and very funny, and Yuki was weirder, louder, and just as funny, in his opinion. They were supposed to be paired together for some of the exec chef and sous chef lessons later in the semester, so Yuki held back the rude remark about looking where you’re going and let Isack’s semi-nervous chatter wash over him. He was smart, Yuki could tell, but somewhat unsure of his place in the food science track. Yuki wanted to tell him to just commit fully to the culinary school, science be damned, but they probably weren’t at that level of familiarity. Yet.

Half the car got off at the culinary school’s stop, students spilling out onto the platform and heading towards the ominous building a block away, visible from the raised track.

“You are a culinary student, yes?” Isack asked, interrupting himself and looking at Yuki closely.

Yuki nodded. “Second year.”

“And you—you like it? All of the…?” Isack made an all-encompassing sort of gesture.

“Yes,” Yuki said firmly. He did like it, truly. He knew his parents and some of his friends expected him to do something else, like business or media or maybe something in athletics, but to him, food was everything. You could say a million things with a single dish, pour all of your emotions into your creation, and not have to speak a single word. Yuki didn’t learn English the usual way, sitting in a classroom conjugating verbs or whatever. He learnt from cooks, sitting in the back of kitchens while his uncle rushed around giving orders and finishing plates. He picked up habits from those kitchens, saying “corner” and “behind” and “milk on the stove” when he didn’t actually know what any of those words really meant. Yes, cooking was everything. He couldn’t imagine doing anything else, really.

“Yes,” he repeated, when Isack still looked pensive. “I like it. It is—it is very fulfilling, you know? To make something for someone else, and knowing they enjoy it.”

Isack nodded. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

They entered the building then, everyone going off to their lockers to prepare for class. Yuki bumped against Isack’s shoulder, friendly, supportive, understanding, and got a smile in return. Maybe Isack would not need his convincing to stay in the culinary school for good, after all.

~

Esteban learnt that he got into the physical chemistry graduate programme two months ago. He’d been sitting on that information ever since, unsure of who to tell, and how. He wasn’t really close to his family, not after getting a scholarship and leaving to pursue his dreams at university. They weren’t—it wasn’t bad, but they just didn’t talk very often. Maybe his parents might like to know that he got into graduate school, or maybe they’d sigh and exchange a look and talk passive-aggressively about how he’d be away from home even longer if he did graduate school there and not in France.

Lance would want to know. Of that Esteban was sure. Lance put up with the late nights of studying for organic chemistry tests, the rants about how stupid quantum chemistry was, the stained lab coats that smelt like sulphur hanging on the back of their bedroom door.

Yes, he would want to know. Esteban just didn’t know how to tell him.

The current inhabitants of the Grid were a bit of an oddball group in terms of their spread of ages. When Esteban first moved in, in the second semester of his first year, there were second and third years living right alongside PhD and graduate students. Lewis was a fourth year, Max was a first year, Lance hadn’t moved in yet, Daniel was a third year, Nico and Kevin were sharing a room, Romain was talking about moving to the states, and Sebastian still dropped by every other Saturday to make sure their boiler hadn’t exploded yet, and then when it did explode, he came around to replace it, poking fun at Kimi, then sharing a room with an Italian student, and ruffling Esteban’s hair good-naturedly. At that point, Lewis wasn’t yet the celebrity that he was currently; no, Sebastian was. And now Seb worked at a local car mechanic shop and occasionally gave lectures to the engineering students, and those lectures drew literally hundreds of non-engineering-track people to the big lecture hall Seb used.

Anyway.

A lot had changed since Esteban first moved in, and he felt a little out-of-place, to be going into graduate school when guys like Oscar and Logan were only just moving in and working through their second year. Should he move out, like Daniel did? Lewis was still around, but he was Lewis, and Esteban was… well, Esteban was just Esteban.

Maybe it would be for the better if he announced his moving out when he told everyone about his graduate programme spot.

He could do it the next time he was on pancake duty. People liked him better on those days. He could get up early, too, earlier than even Lewis or Lando.

Yeah, that would be good.

He should still tell Lance first, though.

Esteban glanced over at the rumpled, empty bed across the room. Daniel had gifted a massive Canadian flag to Lance as a bit of a joke welcoming gift, and Lance pinned it to the wall above his bed so it was the first thing you saw when you entered their bedroom. When Esteban moved in a semester later, taking Hulk’s spot, he begged Lance to take it down, or at least move it to a different wall. Lance, the cheeky shit that he was, refused.

In retaliation, Esteban got a massive French flag and hung it above his bed, so now anyone who glanced in their room thought that they were, like, really passionate about their nationalities, or something.

How to tell Lance? Esteban gently pushed away the magnetic flux problem he was fruitlessly working through. He’d put off taking the mandatory physics classes until now, and he was paying it back tenfold. He liked chemistry—he was good at it, even—but physics was a whole different can of worms.

Oh, wasn’t Oscar a physics major, or something? Maybe… well, maybe he could ask for help?

God. Esteban ran a hand through his hair, grimacing at the feeling of gel on his fingers. Maybe he just needed a break. He’d been up early, or at least, early for him, in order to make pancakes for everyone before he had to log on to his online class. Online org chem was not his idea of a fun morning, but it was, in his opinion, better than in-person org chem. He could turn his camera off and fuck around instead of pretending to listen for one-and-a-half hours knowing full well he’d go on YouTube later and look for video essays that explained the topics better.

Yeah, a break sounded good.

Mondays were odd days at the Grid. Lando and Max had classes early, Yuki had his cooking class until, like, 4:00 pm, Lance and Liam and Oscar were usually out pretty late, Pierre had his internship in the middle of the day, Lewis was teaching, Carlos and Charles were both out until 5:00 pm consistently because they got dinner together at the dining hall on campus, Daniel was- well, Daniel didn’t live there anymore. Logan was hiding in his room, George had his lectures, and Alex was basically nocturnal at this point. It was a rare couple of hours in the middle of the day where Esteban was home completely, or almost completely, alone.

He left his room and padded down the stairs, keeping quiet in case Alex or Logan were sleeping, and dug through the kitchen pantry for a snack. In the Grid, snacks were for everyone, and if you finished something, you put it on the grocery list to be replaced as soon as possible. Lance handled the groceries, because he decided that if his dad was going to give him a fuck-off massive allowance, he’d put it to good use. Before then, Lewis was the one to organise groceries, and everyone chipped in to the food fund bit by bit.

So the pantry was a bit of a free-for-all, and any personal food was either kept in bedrooms or labelled with sticky notes.

Esteban drifted over to the living room with a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. There was an ongoing war between Carlos and Pierre regarding the validity of salt and vinegar as a flavour. Carlos was pro, Pierre was against. Esteban kept his nose out of the arguments, and kept adding the crisps to the grocery list.

Just as he flopped onto the plush dark green couch that had been a Lance addition after the putrid yellow couch broke two years ago, the door slammed open.

Max skidded into view, kicking his trainers off one at a time and getting them sort of near the shoe rack. He waved at Esteban, who raised his snack as Max ran up the stairs. This, too, was common. Max went on runs after his classes, usually remembering to check in if he was out for longer than an hour, and Esteban had heard this exact sequence of sounds (front door opening, shoes being kicked off, footsteps on the stairs, bedroom door being flung shut, then open, then more footsteps, another front door slam) from the safety of his bedroom.

It was nice to have a different perspective on it.

He ate a few more crisps and then got up to check the pancake chart. He was on duty in… ten days. Right, so he had ten days to figure out how to tell everyone and find a place to live for next year. And tell Lance first.

God, he wished everything was as black-and-white as arguments over salt and vinegar crisps.

~

Max was running late.

Okay, well, technically it was impossible to be running late to something that he did completely voluntarily on his own time, but he liked to keep a routine on Mondays and Wednesdays, and that meant that he was running late. He changed into running clothes at light speed and hopped down the stairs pulling on his running shoes. Esteban was now standing in the kitchen studying the pancake chart—Oscar was up next, with Charles as backup in case Oscar slept through his shift—and didn’t acknowledge Max as he finally got his running shoes on fully. He checked that he had his phone and earbuds in his pocket and then ran out the door.

Max didn’t really exercise like the other guys exercised. Lewis had his morning runs and afternoon weightlifting sessions at Schumi, Lando did yoga, Liam weightlifted with Lewis, Esteban and Lance had their callisthenics that they did in the basement when it wasn’t flooded—it seemed like everyone but Max had, like, a thing. Even Oscar worked out, just late at night instead of at any normal time, and the guy was, like, scarily buff.

But Daniel went on runs and occasional bike rides, and Max knew that if he wanted to keep up at all, he’d have to start running on his own.

Someone once told him that in the first couple of months of someone’s crush, they’d do just about anything for the object of their affection. Max scoffed then, but God, they were fucking right. Max hated running—hated most forms of exercise, actually—but Daniel liked running, and Max liked Daniel, so he thought things like “oh no I’m late for my daily run” and tried not to cringe at himself.

Max’s usual route took him around campus, all the way to the outskirts of the sprawl of art buildings and then around the business side back towards the chem labs. Then back around west, to the Grid.

Coincidentally, the route took him right past Dan’s new flat.

Every so often, but more commonly on Mondays and Wednesdays than other days, Max would spot Dan leaving the business buildings and walking back to his flat. On those days, Max would jog over to him and pretend to need the excuse to walk and catch his breath. When he was first starting out running, it wasn’t so much an excuse as the plain truth, but he’d built up quite a bit of endurance, and stopping to walk really was an excuse now. Not that Dan noticed either way. He always just seemed happy to see Max.

Max could, probably, try to read into that a little bit more. Maybe, if he looked at it from the right angle, he’d see that Dan liked him as more than a friend, more than a coffee buddy, more than a former roommate.

Max did not read into it.

On this cold, kind of sunny day, though, he was in luck.

“Maxy! Time for your run, eh?” Dan clapped a warm hand to Max’s sweaty, clammy shoulder.

“Yes,” Max said, stupidly. Even more stupidly, he added, “I think that there might be buds on the trees in the quad, now.”

Daniel hummed, hand dropping from his shoulder. “S’that so?”

Max nodded, stopping for a moment to stretch his leg up, intertwining his fingers to hook his hands around his knee and pull it to his chest. He stepped forward and did the same to the other leg. Daniel paused as well, waiting for Max.

No, he wasn’t going to read into it.

Daniel started talking about the intro to business class he was teaching, how it was sort of awkward because he knew one of the guys in it because they were on the same padel team last semester when Schumi put together a bunch of friendly competitions of different sports. Max would’ve joined Dan, but he promised Liam and Yuki to join their football team, and they were going to be up against Charles and Carlos’ team, and Max couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

Well, that, and he was trying to convince himself that he didn’t have a crush on Dan at the time, so he was rather avoiding his best friend as much as possible.

In retrospect, that probably didn’t help with the whole, like, stressful graduate programme thing for Daniel. Maybe he should try to apologise in some way…?

Daniel whistled back at a bird perched in a bare, bud-less tree, and Max thought that maybe he didn’t need to apologise. Maybe things were good the way they were now.

~

There were people in the house.

This was fine.

George slipped off his Oxfords and put them away carefully, righting Max’s trainers from where they were strewn across the entry hall. He could hear talking in kitchen, at least one voice he didn’t immediately recognise, and he took a moment to centre himself before continuing on. He had some unread messages on his phone—maybe he’d missed the warning about people being over.

He came into view of the living room and kitchen, smile already fixed to his face.

“Ah, hello, George,” Yuki said, standing over a cutting board, knife in hand. Next to him, an unfamiliar boy lent against the counter, hands stuffed in the kangaroo pocket of his university sweatshirt.

“Hello,” the boy said, French accent familiar.

“Oh, Isack, this is one of my housemates, George.”

George gave a little wave. “Nice to meet you.”

“I am in Yuki’s cooking class,” Isack explained. “He is telling me to switch to culinary school.”

“You are already decided!” Yuki burst out, knife moving rapidly over the cutting board, dicing an onion with precision. “You have made your mind, you are just—”

He said something in Japanese that sounded mildly frustrated, and George assumed that this was an ongoing debate.

“Are you doing dinner, then?” George asked, dropping his briefcase by a stool and taking off his suit jacket.

“Yes. I am going to get the ragu right this time, or else I am quitting school.” Yuki threatened to drop out every other time he made dinner. George had stopped worrying over it.

George unbuttoned the cuffs of his sleeves and started rolling them up. Isack’s gaze was following the movement in a rather amusing fashion. Alex would want to stake his claim, if he were here seeing this.

“Georgie!”

Speak of the devil.

George turned and caught Alex’s hug, allowing the bit of tension that had crept up his spine to melt away. “Hi, Alex.”

“Good class?” Alex asked, pulling back to peck him on the lips quickly. They weren’t big on PDA, not even in the comfort of the house—not that anyone had ever told them off.

“Normal class,” George answered. His lecture was well-received, as usual, and Professor Hakkinen seemed pleased with his work.

George finished rolling up his sleeves and went to see what leftovers they had. Yuki was good at making enough food for everyone, and they usually had some amount of leftovers. George took it on himself to eat the leftovers so nothing went bad, and he gave his feedback to Yuki with his opinion on how everything reheated and tasted after sitting for a day or two.

Alex struck up a conversation with Isack about something, and George glanced at the clock on the stove right as the door opened, voices spilling in along with bodies and a brush of cold air.

Oscar appeared from the entryway first, cheeks and nose red and leading—

“Zhou! Oh, wow, haven’t seen you in a while!” Alex embraced him tight, ruffling his straight black hair lightly. “How have you been? Miss us?”

Zhou laughed, pushing off Alex’s hand. Behind him, Carlos and Charles were talking in what was probably Italian, leading Liam, Pierre, and Lance in as well.

“No, no, I am here for Oscar,” Zhou replied, gesturing to where the Australian was sorting through his backpack for something. “We are going back to mine to work on a photography project.”

“History of photography,” Oscar said, half-buried in his bag. “Something to do with the Pulitzer prize, or something.”

George hummed. He knew that Oscar was also majoring in journalism, but he didn’t strike George as the type of guy to be interested in that sort of thing. Engineering physics? Yes, of course. Journalism? Not really. It required a level of personableness that Oscar didn’t really seem to have, but then again, to each their own. Zhou, on the other hand, had a creative eye that was perfect for photography and fashion. Did he know Liam…? No, George, stop trying to network for people.

He pulled out the beef ragu from the night before and popped it in the microwave to reheat. The sharp smell of onions permeated the kitchen—Lewis wouldn’t be happy.

Pierre and Lance were talking in French, and George could pick up just about every other word. Living in an international house meant that everyone could speak a little of a lot of different languages, but they stuck to English was a baseline.

It seemed to be something about art? Pierre’s art history minor and Lance’s anthropology minor had a lot of overlap, after all.

Alex came over and draped himself over George’s back, mostly out of the way of Yuki and Isack, now dicing tomatoes. Oscar and Zhou moved over to the living room to talk about something too quietly for George to hear, and Liam went up the stairs with a wave and a “be down in a little bit” to Yuki. Liam often helped Yuki, who deemed him the only person competent enough to handle his fancy knives. Pierre and Lance had claimed two of the bar stools at the island counter, and Charles and Carlos were still speaking in Italian, their voices just audible from the open door of their bedroom.

It was nice, the feeling of everyone alive around him. George didn’t like not knowing when unknown people would be in the house, but even still, the sound and the sense of life and connectedness was grounding.

Alex sighed, the sound reverberating through George’s own chest. “I’m glad we live here.”

Seemed like he was feeling the same things as George. “Me, too.”

~

Oscar ran up to the attic to grab his computer charger and then ran back downstairs, not wanting to keep Zhou waiting. He was talking to George and Alex, the former of which now eating reheated beef ragu, and he nodded to Oscar when he held up the cable to him. They gathered their stuff and said their goodbyes, Oscar telling Yuki to save him a portion to have when he got back. He’d be out late, in order to work on this with Zhou and also get some time in at Schumi, but he was always going to make time to eat Yuki’s cooking. At this point, he was basically their personal chef. God bless Alex for making sure he was always in the mood to cook.

Oscar wondered vaguely, as he pulled on his coat, whether the other inhabitants realised that Alex specifically ensured that Yuki was happy to cook every day.

Maybe?

“Ready?” Zhou asked, fidgeting with the fingers of his gloves.

“Ready.”

Oscar went to open the front door, only for it to open almost into his face. Lando spilt into the entry hall, and Oscar, working off of instinct, reached out to steady him.

They looked at each other for a long, silent moment.

Oscar stepped back and let go of his roommate, who shuffled to the side to let Oscar and Zhou leave. It was horrible. It was awkward. Was it just Oscar’s crush making it awkward for himself, or was there something more? Did Lando—fuck, did Lando know? He must’ve realised today, when Oscar showed up with his forgotten sandwich and then stayed and ate his own lunch. Shit. Fuck. This was not good. He’d have to leave—he’d have to move back in with Fernando the maybe-criminal.

“Hey, Lando!” Zhou said, greeting him with a hug.

“Oh, Zhou, hi! What are you doing here?”

Zhou slung a friendly arm around Oscar’s shoulders, and Oscar allowed it because he was still reeling. “Photography project with Osc. We are going to my place to work together!”

“Right.” Lando’s gaze seemed to shift from Zhou to Oscar to somewhere in between them, and back again. “Have fun, then.”

“Thanks,” Oscar croaked out before mentally slapping himself. So unsuave, honestly. What even the hell.

“Catch you later!” Zhou said, and then he dragged Oscar out of the house and let the door shut behind him. “Man, you are such a lost cause.”

Oscar groaned and buried his face in his hands, trying not to scream from frustration and anguish. That would be decidedly too dramatic. “I know.”

“Come on, I will make you hot cocoa and we will talk. And Valtteri, too. He is very good at talking.”

“Alright.” Oscar followed Zhou down the street and to the left, a couple of blocks west. They stopped by a house not dissimilar to the Grid, just smaller, and fewer stories. Zhou unlocked the door to the right and led him up a flight of stairs tot he second floor. Ah, so instead of being all one connected house, like the Grid, it was separated into individual flats. That would probably be smart if the Grid ever had a massive falling out, or something. Not that Oscar thought that would happen. No, everyone was way too intertwined. He’d only just begun to understand the complicated dynamics between Esteban and Pierre, and Lance and Lando, and Max and Charles. It was sort of like a sitcom, really. Everyone knew everyone from something or other, whether it be a random shared first year class or years of childhood friendship. Even Oscar’s sort-of-rivalry with Carlos was nice, in a weird way.

“Ah, welcome. It is a little messy right now, but the Grid is worse, so. You will deal.”

In all honesty, it wasn’t that bad. Two racing bikes lent against the wall to the left of the door, a couple abandoned water bottles beneath them. A shoe rack and carpet finished the entryway, which was completely open into the living room. It was cosy- homey, really. The Grid was homey in the sense that it was so full of people that you really didn’t have a choice, but this was homey like the inhabitants actually wanted to live there long-term.

Maybe they did.

A hallway led to the back, to a connected dining room and kitchen. There, they found Valtteri cooking pasta and glaring at the boiling water like that would make it cook faster.

“Val, this is Oscar. Is it okay if we work in the living room, or do you need it?”

“No, living room is okay. Oscar… you are Oscar Piastri?” Valtteri was giving Oscar a completely inscrutable look.

He nodded. “I am.”

“Yes, Lewis mentioned you.” Valtteri did not explain that, which was fine. Oscar didn’t really want to know more about what Lewis Hamilton might be saying about him to former Grid members.

“Right.” Zhou grabbed Oscar’s wrist and dragged him back to the living room. “I will make hot cocoa, and you will sit here.”

They set themselves up on the couch, Oscar’s laptop displaying the project requirements on the coffee table. Zhou, apparently, already had a list of ideas. Oscar was happy to let him take the lead on this. Photography wasn’t really his strong point- he much preferred writing and reporting over anything to do with pictures and video. But photojournalism was required for his major, so Oscar grit his teeth and bore it.

About halfway through their session, Zhou put his laptop on the coffee table as well, studying Oscar with a keen gaze. Oscar focused on the mug in his hands, freshly filled with another helping of hot cocoa.

“So. Lando.”

“Lando,” Oscar repeated, having a moment of deja vu. Hadn’t he just had this conversation with Lewis this morning? “I know it’s—well, it’s a bit embarrassing, honestly.”

Zhou shrugged. “I do not think he knows, if that is what you are worried about.”

Oscar gave him what he hoped was a disbelieving expression. “Right.”

“Really. I think—honestly, I know you are not believing me, but I think he may like you, and he may not know it yet.”

Oscar stared at Zhou. What? How could you… not know you liked someone?

As though hearing his thoughts, Zhou continued. “I think maybe things are clearer for you, but it can be… difficult, I think. It was difficult for me.”

Valtteri appeared behind Oscar like a wraith or something, scaring him when he spoke. “It is difficult, yes. You don’t always realise at first that what you’re thinking and feeling is romantic, you just feel… weird, I guess.”

That sort of made sense. But—“Lando does not like me. He doesn’t.”

Zhou shrugged, and Valtteri shooed them to the sides of the couch so he could sit between them, a bowl of pasta in hand. Oscar sipped his drink and pondered it for a moment. He’d always been pretty good at figuring himself out. Maybe it didn’t show on the outside, but his emotions were just… simple, really. When he liked Logan, he knew he liked Logan. With Lando, the whole “falling in love” process happened so rapidly that it was impossible to misconstrue.

Maybe… maybe there was some merit to what they were saying. Maybe Lando was settling in to… to everything. Oscar wasn’t exactly an easy person to know, or to like, even as a friend. He probably wouldn’t like himself that much.

“Alright,” he said, after a while. “Thanks.”

‘No problem,” Zhou replied, smiling. “Now, I was thinking that if we take non-Pulitzer photos and break down what made them unworthy—”

~

God, yeah, Lando is so fucked. He was an idiot. An idiot who fell for his roommate, who was currently “working on a photography project” at Zhou’s flat.

Listen, in his defence, he’d been thinking about Oscar all goddamn day, working himself into a frenzy trying to figure out if it was just the proximity doing things to his head. He was not expecting to open the door to the Grid and immediately be confronted with Oscar in his stupid coat and with his stupid hair and stupid eyes. He wasn’t expecting to trip over the threshold and be caught, he wasn’t expecting the sudden closeness, and he definitely wasn’t expecting Zhou to pop up right behind Oscar’s shoulder.

He shouldn’t feel jealous, but Zhou was touching Oscar, holding him close (in a friendly way, Lando told himself) so casually, like—like he was allowed to touch him, and Lando was not.

It was something Lando had noticed early on.

Lando—and he half-blamed Carlos for this—was a very touchy-feely guy. He liked giving his friends hugs, liked sitting close to others during parties, liked when Carlos or Max or Charles or George or Alex tucked him under their arms against their sides. When he was feeling down, he sought out Alex or Carlos specifically because they, too, liked to ground themselves with physical touch, which meant that between the two of them, Lando was usually able to get some good old fashioned cuddle time. He’d feel better within minutes and then go about his day, business as usual.

The Grid was good overall about non-toxic masculinity. Lando had a whole period of his life where he felt like he had to be really macho, to make up for being bisexual. Yeah, internalised homophobia is fucking rough. Luckily he grew out of that, and when he started working at Schumi, specifically leading the yoga sessions, he got even more in touch with his more feminine side. Sue him, he looked great in skorts.

Anyway.

What was the point?

Right. Oscar. Touch. Or, well, the lack of.

Oscar, Lando noticed, was really good at holding himself separate to the others, even in big groups. The start-of-year party that they held, which was less of a party and more of a sit-down-and-eat-dinner-and-watch-Glee event, had a lot of former Grid members crowded into the living room and kitchen. Lando remembered skirting around the edge of the room, headed towards Max and Charles on the Lance couch, before he was distracted by Oscar.

Oscar, who stood perfectly in between the two rooms, in the area where no one else wanted to stand because it wasn’t “living room” enough to be counted at the living room, but too awkwardly far away from the kitchen for one to comfortably hold a conversation from there. Everyone, like Lando had just done, passed from one room to the other without lingering in the in-between. Somehow, Oscar had noticed this and perfectly positioned himself to be excluded from both groups.

Was it on purpose?

Maybe.

Lando changed plans, then, heading back towards the kitchen as nonchalantly as possible. He paused by Oscar, giving his roommate-of-ten-days a wide, alcohol-easy grin. “Hey, mate. Enjoying the party?”

A loud debate about the validity of one of the Glee characters arose from the living room, and Esteban, Lance, Seb, and Checo stomped into the kitchen, each holding far too many cups, probably for refills. The movement caused Lando to step closer to Oscar and out of the way, and Oscar, in turn, swayed ever-so-slightly away from Lando, maintaining a good amount of space between them.

Lando wasn’t hurt, really. Some people liked their space, and that was okay.

Once the group passed, he stepped back. Yes, Oscar was there on purpose, he decided.

“Good party,” Oscar said, then, when Lando looked back at him from the group in the kitchen. Checo was pouring more tequila into the punch bowl that already held an entire bottle. Right.

“Yeah, good party,” Lando agreed. He held his hand out for a fist bump, turning away casually like he was distracted and about to leave.

Oscar gave him the fist bump. Cool. That was cool.

Lando smiled to himself and made his way over to the Lance couch.

So, yes, Lando noticed that Oscar didn’t like touch, and Lando did like touch, and that was okay. But then Zhou—and honestly, when did Oscar even get to know him? They had, like nothing in common, right? Besides photography?

Anyway, Zhou was able to touch Oscar. He was able to sling an arm around Oscar’s (broad, literally what the fuck) shoulders casually, like he was used to doing that. And Oscar just… let him.

Right.

So.

Lando definitely had a crush on his roommate.

He could deal with this.

No, shut up, he could totally deal with this. His and Carlos’ friendship was still intact and strong as ever despite his embarrassing crush, and Lando was occasionally known to keep his hands to himself no matter how strongly he wanted to hug someone. Lewis only let Max and occasionally Valtteri touch him, and that was a-okay.

God.

What the fuck was he getting himself into? Barely a month into the semester and he already had a crisis on his hands.

“Eh, Lando—you good, mate?”

Lando shook himself slightly and tore his gaze away from the now-shut front door. George was looking at him with big, concerned eyes.

“I’m good. Just—long day. Cold as fuck outside, honestly.”

As he expected, that set off Pierre on a rant about how much he hated the cold, and Lando was able to toe off his shoes and hang his coat up on the rack in peace. He needed to be alone for a bit, to process this realisation. Then he’d probably find Alex and lay on him for a while, and then he’d be okay for whenever Oscar came back. From Zhou’s. Fuck. How was he going to deal with this?