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Daniel doesn’t really know why he’s here.
Like, he knows the order of events that led to him being here, but at the same time he really doesn’t know what he’s doing here.
He’d asked off-hand when he and Lando were leaving the factory on Thursday if Lando had anything planned this weekend, and Lando had turned to him and said, “Yeah, actually. There’s this, like, small party at my friend’s house. You can come if you want.”
Daniel knows Lando was just humoring him, since he’s been on Lando’s case about hanging out outside of work, but he agrees, and Lando cocks his head, smiles, and says he’ll text him the address.
So now he’s at Lando’s friend’s house, hanging out with people he assumes must be someone’s older brothers, and Lando is all the way across the yard with his own friends and they haven’t really spoken since the first ten minutes they were here.
It’s alright, though, he’s been holding down the far corner of the yard with five other guys, and they’ve set up some drinking game that involves a frisbee, he’s learning as he goes, and he’s not the worst one of the bunch at it.
There’s a Kyle, and a Jayce, and three others whose names Daniel can’t remember off the top of his head. What awkwardness he’d felt at the beginning has mellowed out as they’ve worked their way through the 24-pack sitting on the sideline, and by the time his team is crying victory over the losers he’s settled enough that he doesn’t feel weird being here anymore. Well, maybe he’s just tipsy. There’s not many bonding activities that work faster than drinking games. Daniel stands by this.
He and Kyle and Jayce and Brothers One and Two kick a soccer ball around for a bit, one that had been abandoned by the group who are now sitting around together on the other side of the pool no one’s using, spread in a loose circle of deck chairs.
The sun has just touched the horizon, and dusk is setting in, so Daniel’s group gravitate towards the house as well, flinging the soccer ball ahead of them.
Someone flips it up in the air and Jayce laughs, catches it, pops it up again.
Brother One nearly goes sideways into the pool.
It goes up in the air again and Daniel jumps to catch it, but nearly falls on his ass trying to catch it and fling it back towards Kyle, and he stumbles, sprawls sideways, and lands against one of the chairs at the near side of the circle.
Lando’s hands come up to catch him before he can do too much damage and Daniel laughs from his new seat on the arm of the chair, relieved that he’s not going to have to apologize for flattening someone he doesn’t even know.
Lando had caught him before Daniel could go over entirely into his lap, and has a hand on his shoulder where he’d snapped it up to stop his momentum. Lando’s other hand is braced on Daniel’s waist, and Daniel spares a second to muse that this is probably the most innocent, familiar touch they’ve ever shared. Just Lando’s hand planted solidly around his side right below his ribcage.
Lando’s got a bottle sitting on the opposite arm of the chair which somehow hadn’t been disturbed when Daniel came crashing onto the scene, and he reaches for it now, but Daniel doesn’t recognize the brand. There’s nothing on the colorful label to clue him in as to whether it’s alcoholic or not.
Daniel doesn’t really care either way, he’s feeling pretty good. He sits back, one shoulder against the back of the chair and one leg thrown over Lando’s that’s closest to him. He lets Lando’s conversation with his friends wash over him, and focuses on the warm pressure of Lando’s right arm that’s adjusted to wrap around his waist. His hand is resting on Daniel’s hip, but not quite holding onto him.
Daniel’s practically sitting on his lap.
The thought makes him tense on the arm of the chair, surprised at the realization that he wants to slide that bit farther so he’s entirely in Lando’s lap instead of just halfway.
He levers himself up a bit and just does it, shifting his hips a few more inches to the left and swinging his right leg over Lando’s once he’s sitting on Lando’s right quad, still leaning against the back of the chair, Lando’s arm still snug around him. He lets his own arm stretch across the top of the chair back and kicks his foot back and forth a couple times.
Lando looks up at him just for half a second and smiles, then goes back to chatting. Daniel takes it as acceptance, surprised that he hadn’t gotten more of a rise out of Lando.
Daniel relaxes into their new position and notes that Lando’s hand is higher up on his hip now, closer to the small of his back, a comfortable heat. Lando’s still slouched a little, even under Daniel’s weight. He wonders what the rest of the group thinks of them right now.
Max Fewtrell is the one who had invited Lando in the first place, and these are his friends, so Lando had only been introduced as Max’s friend. Lando seems familiar with a few of them, at least, but Daniel only recognizes Max. Daniel had been introduced as “Lando’s weird Australian friend”, and then after Lando kicked Max in the shins for that, he’d been clarified as a coworker of Lando’s.
Daniel’s fairly sure none of them know what their job as coworkers entails, but it plays into his hands in that he’s able to sink into Lando’s gravity without worrying about who’s watching. He can pretend to be some pretty girl Lando just picked up at a party. He’s certainly playing the part, listening in on the conversation without saying much, perched on the easy spread of Lando’s thighs, one of Lando’s arms around his waist. Lando’s mostly ignoring him, just talking to his other friends. Daniel’s surprised again to find he doesn’t actually mind that he doesn’t have to make the effort to conversate with anyone here. All he has to do is pretend he’s a little easy, a little dumb.
He drops his arm down from the chair to rest across Lando’s shoulders and Lando shifts with him, leaning his head back on Daniel’s forearm.
The topic of conversation switches from COD to electric cars.
Before he knows it, someone’s getting up to turn on the yard light, and it’s nearly pitch black out.
Lando glances up, as if to check in with him, and in the same movement he slips his hand under Daniel’s shirt.
Lando’s fingers trail along his skin and Daniel doesn’t think he even realizes he’s doing it. Daniel shivers.
“Hi,” says Lando quietly.
“Hi yourself,” Daniel says, refusing to look away from Lando’s eyes.
“You good?”
Daniel nods and hums.
“Cool,” says Lando, and his hand is still under Daniel’s shirt. He must feel Daniel’s goosebumps by now. Lando turns away from him again and his hand stays there.
As much as Daniel’s been cool with sitting on the sideline and occasionally interjecting in the conversation, he doesn’t want to stay here all night. He’s bored of not being paid attention to, so the next time Lando turns his head away to the left, he curls a hand around the back of Lando’s neck and tugs gently at his hair.
Daniel's hoping for a reaction, hoping to get a little bit of the upper hand here, but what he gets instead is Lando lazily tipping his head back and smiling up at Daniel, and wow. Daniel is definitely not winning whatever's going on right now. Lando leans into his hand a bit, his skull knocking against the bone of Daniel’s wrist, and Daniel stops breathing, because Lando’s smile is all the way up in his eyes, and he looks really nice in the half light, and it doesn’t take a huge stretch of the imagination to think that maybe Lando’s about to kiss him.
Lando’s about to kiss him, here in front of all these people, in this plastic deck chair on the back deck of this yard with the pool no one’s using.
Lando blinks slowly like he’s never felt more content and then tips his head back down, no kiss, and Daniel feels sort of stupid for being disappointed that he didn’t get one after all.
Lando goes back to his conversation and Daniel, at a loss, just keeps petting his hair.
The next time Lando’s head turns back in his direction, Daniel ducks his head down to press his nose into Lando’s hair above his temple like he’s about to ask a question, just to be distracting. Lando leans into that, too, just like he did with the hair tug.
Daniel starts to wonder if Lando is going anywhere with this, or if they’re just going to leave at the end of the night and that will be it.
He doesn’t get very far into that spiraling train of thought before people start actually leaving, and then Lando is laughing up at him, his face still so close to Daniel’s, and complaining in a soft voice about how his leg’s fallen asleep.
“Babe, can you get up?” Lando asks with his face wide open, and Daniel’s brain catches on the pet name.
He gets up, and stays standing close as Lando gets up, too.
Daniel’s brain is still stuck on the “babe”, and stuck on thinking that Lando’s been taking this seriously all night long. Or he’s really good at acting. Probably not, though.
He thinks Lando might be trying to take him home.
They make it to the front of the house without raising their voices above a murmur, and at the entryway, Lando stops just inside the door to call an Uber.
Lando looks to Daniel before he enters his info on the app, like he wants to ask if Daniel’s going to give him an address. It’s the first time all night Daniel’s seen him second-guess himself.
With this, Lando’s shattered the game they’ve been playing a little bit. They’re not Lando Norris and his arm candy right now, they’re just Danny and Lando. Lando’s looking to him for approval, and it should feel like familiar territory, but Daniel’s at a loss for words.
He really can’t tell if Lando’s offering him an out, or an in. He just settles for shaking his head, throat dry, and saying, “You’re calling the shots tonight.”
He sees Lando swallow, and then he tilts the phone back towards himself and enters just one address.