misanthropy & co. — chapter four: sage against the machine
pairing: charles leclerc x lando norris x oscar piastri x reader
word count: 1.5k
genre: crack
chapter summary: all's fair in love and war.
masterlist.
things you’d expect from a bookstore: no sentient table. no sections that are actually labyrinths that change every time you walk through. no owners that are possibly millenia-old demi-gods (or demons, or whatever. no one actually knows). no staff polycule.
however… welcome to misanthropy & co.!
-
despite its obscurity—and dislike of being perceived by the general public—the bookstore sees a surprising litany of different patrons come in and out its doors. some only come in once. some return every few months with a different hair color and a new tattoo. and some? they become the regulars, attending events, learning the store's quirks, getting to know the staff.
for the most part, oscar, charles, and lando like the regulars. there's lila, a sixteen-year-old who likes young adult novels and always carries a sketchbook around with her. there's pat, the older gentleman who likes to regale charles with war stories and knows more than anyone else about the ottoman empire.
and then there's sage.
sage is in his mid-20s, with messy brown hair—much like charles'—and a tendency to wear oversized sweaters. he spends most of his time in the poetry section, with a particular fondness for neruda, and usually has a journal tucked under one arm.
truthfully, sage is nice. polite. generous. once, he even brought them cupcakes. they should like sage.
however, when he's your competition for the object of your affections—all's fair in love and war, right?
thus, charles, oscar, and lando have come up with a system whenever the rusty bell above the door rings and in shuffles sage. yes, they call it the "sage system". it's simple, really: they play rock-paper-scissors. loser stalls the poet. winner guards the queen.
it would, admittedly, work better if each of them weren't horrible at rock-paper-scissors (is that even possible?). but charles always throws out rock first and scissors second. oscar tends to overthink himself into a trap that he can never get himself out of. and lando's strategy of "throw first, think later" is the most successful, but that's not saying much when your competition is the former two.
today, it's the early afternoon when sage enters. it's quiet. the chaos table is, for once, silent, and the store only has a few other patrons in it. (y/n) is timing the one in the occult maze to make sure she's not in there for more than twenty minutes, while the other is browsing books on the ming dynasty in the dusty pantheon. oscar, lando, and charles are all standing at the front counter together, gossiping over how xinyi came in with one man last week but another this morning.
"oh, fuck," lando mutters the second he sees the oversized yale sweatshirt walk in. charles and oscar are already holding their hands out, hunched forward as if they're about to take off running.
"rock, paper, scissors," oscar hisses.
charles throws rock—as always. both lando and oscar pick paper.
"fuck," charles grumbles. i'll choose paper next time, he thinks.
he won't choose paper next time.
lando wins—because oscar, in classic oscar fashion, overthinks for thirty seconds and throws scissors to lando's rock.
"yes!" lando quietly fist-pumps as sage approaches them.
"hey," save says, waving the sleeve of his sweater covering his right hand. in his left, he's holding a single rose, carefully wrapped in tissue paper. oscar, who'd just taken a sip of tea, nearly spits it out through his nose.
"what can we help you with?" charles asks politely.
"hey, do you know where (y/n) is?" sage holds up the flower. it's a lovely rose, actually, a beautiful crimson red. "i, uh—brought her something."
luckily, he doesn't notice her stepping out of the occult maze. nor does he notice lando lunging across the floor to shove her back in.
"what the hell, lando?" she stumbles, gripping the shelf to steady herself. seventeen hexes and how to counter them hits the floor with a thud.
"sorry." lando grins like a child caught stealing cookies. "i tripped."
meanwhile, oscar leans against the counter, watching charles attempt to placate sage, sipping his tea with the serene satisfaction of someone watching reality television.
"was that her voice?" sage asks, trying to peer over charles' shoulder.
"non, non," charles blurts, slipping back into french as he usually does when he's panicked. his voice climbs an octave. "ce n'est pas elle. just—un client."
he regrets every vowel instantly.
"oh, really? that sounded an awful lot like her."
"she's in her office right now," charles answers.
"shame," sage sighs. "i can wait, though. i have a poem i'd like to recite to her."
charles' eyes dart to oscar, desperately pleading for help. oscar grins like it's his birthday and takes another sip of his oolong.
of course, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. because, from somewhere in the occult maze, deep within the stacks yet still audible, comes a furious exclamation:
"you need us to hide because the chaos table did what?!"
charles groans, hands coming up to wipe down over his face. oscar actually does spit out his tea, but no one even cares because sage is already striding confidently towards the maze.
"i'm never letting lando win again," oscar mutters as he uses his sweatshirt to mop up the droplets.
she comes stalking out of the occult maze, lando hot on her heels. he's tugging urgently on her hand-knitted cardigan, so hard he might rip the poor thing, but she ignores him.
she nearly runs right into sage.
"oh—hello." she calms down instantaneously, brushing through her hair and putting on her best customer service face (she is going to murder lando later).
"(y/n), just the woman i wanted to see." sage grins. behind him, oscar and charles are glaring daggers at lando. "i brought this for you." he hands her the rose.
"oh!" her eyebrows raise as she takes it. however, her expression is entirely unreadable. she holds it gingerly between her thumb and pointer finger as sage continues.
"i also wrote you a poem. it's called stanza for a girl who walks like storms."
"that's nice," she hums. she steps forward to walk past him, but sage does not get the hint at all.
"your eyes hold storms,
but the gentle kind—
the kind that rains, not rages.
your silence is a sonnet.
your voice:
a candle in the cathedral.
i watch you like the moon watches the tide—
distant, but devoted.
aching, but aesthetic.
i wrote this for you
on the back of a receipt
at 3 a.m. in a laundromat.
i think
you'd understand
what that means."
silence falls over the front of the store like a velvet curtain. you could hear a page turn in hell.
charles looks physically ill. oscar is biting his lip hard to keep from laughing. lando is mouthing, "what the fuck does 'aching, but aesthetic' even mean?"
"oh." for once in her life, she seems genuinely speechless. not the intentional silence that she usually weaponizes to make the room incredibly awkward, but charles can practically see the gears spinning in her head as she tries to figure out what to say.
"that's... nice." she holds up the rose. "thank you for the rose."
"i have another one," sage says eagerly. "would you like to hear it?"
charles lets out a snort of laughter and then immediately claps his hand over his mouth as oscar hits him on the shoulder. it's times like these when charles doesn't regret working here for eight years, because he can physically see her dying inside. her shoulders wilting, her eyes darting back and forth in panic, her lips pressed together in a thin, taut line—tears are welling up in charles' eyes. he decides not to kill lando for fucking up later.
"um, i'm—" her and charles make eye contact. "i need to see charles in my office."
that shuts charles up immediately, and he can tell that she's satisfied, because her smirk is surgical, controlled, like a scalpel she only unsheathes when necessary. however, lando and oscar look absolutely horrified. lando's mouth falls open and oscar takes a reflexive step back like he might get caught in the blast radius.
"oh, no problem." sage is grinning, clearly placated. "i'll come back in soon. with my notebook."
he saunters out, evidently proud of himself. the bell above the door jingles once again as he leaves. meanwhile, lando looks like he's about to throw up and oscar is chugging his tea in anxiety. charles just really fucking hopes she doesn't mean it, because he'd rather off himself than get terminated by the store.
at least one is painless.
"do you really need to see charles in your office?" lando's voice comes out as a frightened whisper.
she taps her chin with her finger, eyes glancing at the ceiling.
"mmm, i'll think about it."
with that, she vanishes back into the occult maze, leaving the scent of jasmine and lily-of-the-valley behind her.
and three very, very traumatized men. they remain in place, stunned. even the chaos table stays quiet. for once, it knows better.
LEWIS HAMILTON | X7 WDC (in/sp)
"Don't ever compare me to anybody else. I'm the first and only Black driver that's ever been in this sport. I'm built different." - Lewis Hamilton
misanthropy & co. — chapter three: uh oh! you suck at your job
pairing: charles leclerc x lando norris x oscar piastri x reader
word count: 3.6k
genre: fluff, crack
chapter summary: it's everyone's favorite time of the year: performance reviews.
masterlist.
things you’d expect from a bookstore: no sentient table. no sections that are actually labyrinths that change every time you walk through. no owners that are possibly millenia-old demi-gods (or demons, or whatever. no one actually knows). no staff polycule.
however… welcome to misanthropy & co.!
-
the staff of misanthropy & co. have been through many trials and tribulations. the mirror in the occult maze that you should look at too long. the punishment chair that lando has to spend time in at least twice per week. the ghost in the history section that charles has named "gérald" and with whom he argues with in french. the chaos table is fifty trials in itself.
however, there's one thing they fear above all else.
even inventory day.
it's the performance reviews.
it's a calm tuesday. the store is empty since it's an early morning on a weekday. oscar is reorganizing the european literature, charles is flipping through old records behind the counter, and lando is perched on the edge of the chaos table, idly building a house of cards. she is in her office, as she has been for the past few hours.
"it's a little too calm," oscar observes, stepping out from his section with a copy of w.g. sebald's vertigo in his hands.
charles glances over at him. "don't you know what day it is?"
even though oscar has been here for four years, he shakes his head. he can never really tell what the day will bring at misanthropy & co. yesterday it was a ghost from charles' section (not gérald) that floated over and engaged in a vicious tug-of-war with oscar over kierkegaard's fear and trembling.
charles snickers, although he's a nice man and tries to cover it up by staring into the records a little too hard. right now, he's staring at a vinyl that has to be from the 1930s and is definitely not in english.
"it's performance review day."
"what." the word comes out of oscar's mouth as a flat statement rather than a question.
performance review day is the kind of day that brings out immense dread in you. the kind of day you have nightmares about. the kind of day you'd try to call in sick for if you could.
which is why, of course, she never tells them in advance.
"how can you tell?" lando scoffs, gathering his cards back into a pile. his house of cards had just collapsed again.
charles points to the mural on the back wall and says, "julius caesar is blinking."
oscar looks over at the painting. today, it is depicting the ides of march—a fantastic scene of caesar collapsing to the floor in vibrant robes while he's descended upon by a hoard of angry senators. he can't tell if anyone is blinking or not.
he looks away before he can recognize the faces in the mural.
"no way that's how you can tell," lando says, wrinkling his nose as he begins stacking cards again.
charles nods seriously. "the intersection of the ides of march and a subject blinking means performance reviews are upon us."
oscar wants to ask charles if he's been staring into the mural for too long, but he decides against it. after all, charles has been at the bookstore longer than anyone except for her. instead, oscar files this in his head behind quirks of the bookstore and resolves to note it down in his journal later.
it's been four years, and oscar's not sure when he'll ever stop writing down quirks.
suddenly, her voice comes over the loudspeaker. they don't have a loudspeaker.
"charles, can you come to my office, please?"
the three of them exchange shrugs as charles hesitantly leaves the front counter. behind him, a potted plant swivels to stare at his back.
"good luck, mate," lando says as the chaos table rumbles, knocking over his cards.
no matter the length of his tenure, charles' hands begin shaking as he crosses the bookstore and climbs the staircase to the employees' only second floor. his palms are cold and clammy; he nervously wipes them on his jeans three times as he passes by the doors to the bathroom, the breakroom, and the stairs to the apartments. the hallway seems longer than usual with every step, but he barely notices. his eyes are affixed on one last door, the one that faces him, wood against the white walls. the door seems to stare back at him, foreboding, as if daring him to enter.
he knocks once.
immediately, the door swings open. finally, the one time all year he gets a peek at the inside of her office.
it is, for all intents and purposes, gorgeous. tall ceiling, the sun shining through the windows, dark wooden walls. in the middle is her desk, perhaps larger and more ornate than even the chaos table, the lamp on top of which looks like an old tiffany. behind her, the wall is lined from floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves, so high that there's a ladder propped up against them. neatly organized on them are knickknacks and the store's archives, binders and journals and god-knows-what-else from the decades or centuries that the bookstore has been open. paintings and photographs cover the walls, although when charles tries to focus on them, he can't see anything but the blurry outline of whatever subject should be in them. the room is filled with plants and flowers—most of which were supplied by oscar—on the floor, on her desk, on the shelves, hanging from the walls and the ceiling, so many plants that the room feels half like a jungle. they nearly obscure the eames chair sitting in one corner.
she is sitting behind her desk in a black chair, much more understated than the rest of the room, although charles is pretty sure it also came from herman miller. today, her hair is pinned back by a pair of sticks, charms dangling from each of them. her bangs still fall into her face, framing it just so. her blue shawl, which oscar, charles, and lando pooled their money to buy her last christmas, is draped over her shoulders, golden threads sewn through it that glimmer in the sunlight. her lips are faintly tinted a deep wine today. the color suits her.
wordlessly, she gestures for charles to sit on the dark green couch across from her desk. he sits, posture a little too straight. the air in her office smells faintly of lavender and ozone, like something old and delicate on the verge of lightning.
"hello," he says nervously, trying to avoid staring directly into her eyes. most of the time, he likes her eyes. they're big and intense, like staring into a swirling whirlpool. however, on days like performance review day, charles feels like he's staring into the eyes of a lion.
"it's time for your performance review," she says crisply, fountain pen tapping against a document before her. like her eyes, charles avoids looking at that, too. "let's get started, shall we, charles?"
she says his name like it contains the weight of centuries.
he nods. he can't bring himself to say anything else. his fingers are clasped in his lap, hands trembling.
"performance review for charles leclerc, head of historical and political works," she reads. "conducted, of course, by myself, (y/n).
"first, section management. the history section is in... working order. mostly. time loops have been largely contained. and the rogue copy of the prince has been caged-well done."
she looks up at him like she's evaluating his response. charles just sighs in relief. any "well done" from her is a sign that the review won't go too badly.
"emotional regulation," she continues. "you only cried twice this quarter. however, it is noted that the second time was justified. beloved always does that to people."
another look up. charles feels his face twitch slightly.
"next, conflict mediation. you attempted to de-escalate an argument between gérald and lando over the proper dating of the renaissance. instead, you escalated it by suggesting gérald never got a degree. he has still not forgiven you."
"i don't think university degrees existed when gérald was alive." the words automatically fly out of charles' mouth. immediately, he places a hand over his lips, cheeks heating up in mortification. she looks at him impassively.
"lastly, you no longer hide under the counter during tarot week and you have stopped trying to remove the runes from the antique globes. they like it there." she sets the paper down. "any thoughts?"
charles swallows. "the globes bit was one time."
her expression doesn't change. he thinks, perhaps, that the corners of her mouth almost twitch.
"you're doing well," she says finally. "but i do have some notes. firstly, you and the mural have been... spending time together again. the chaos table caught you reenacting the napoleonic wars with oscar's annotated bookmarks. you sold a customer a book that erased the memory of their childhood dog. that was not ideal. and you haven't eaten lunch before three in five months."
they stare at one another without speaking. charles doesn't have anything to say. what is there to say?
"i'm worried," she says, quietly now. "not about your performance, charles. but about... you."
that gets him. his eyes widen slightly. she doesn't blink. she's looking at him in that way she has—like she's seeing straight through time and bone, into the quietest parts of his mind.
"i'm fine," he replies, too fast.
she lifts a brow. "you are many things, charles. but 'fine' has never been your brand."
he exhales shakily. "it's just been... a hard few months. the store's shifting more. the archives are rearranging themselves. and i..."
she waits.
"i think i'm dreaming in french again."
she hums. "do the dreams end in the guillotine, or begin there?"
"...begin."
"progress," she murmurs, and makes a note.
he relaxes just slightly.
she flips the page and slides it across the desk to him. "please sign."
he reads it.
despite frequent philosophical outbursts, interdimensional digressions, and poor sleep hygiene, charles continues to serve as a foundational presence in the store's historic ecosystem—and in mine.
he bites his lip to hide the smile on his face as he signs his name. she adds a small wax seal to the bottom.
before charles can stand, she reaches into the drawer and pulls out an envelope.
"for your performance," she says, sliding it across the desk.
his fingers are trembling less as he opens it. it's £200, wrapped with a baby blue ribbon.
his eyes go wide. "(y/n)..."
she tilts her head. "it's a performance bonus."
charles nods, reverent. "thank you."
she smiles faintly. "send in oscar, please."
and just like that, charles leaves, clutching the money to his chest, feeling a little less like a man facing down judgement, and a little more like someone who's been seen, and loved anyway.
-
as oscar approaches her door, sweat is already beading on his brow and he can feel his whole body shaking in anticipation. really, he doesn't know why—he's never gotten a bad performance review—but every year, his brain tells him "this is the year you get fired. this is the year you get fired. this is the year you get fired."
it doesn't matter how many books he's reshelved or ghosts he's calmed down or flowers he brings her. what if he actually fucked something up really bad (he can never name any specific scenarios) and he's going to get terminated?
there is a non-zero percent chance of that happening. maybe it's only one percent, but it's still not zero.
and oscar hates that.
her long fingers are steepled together, showing off the two centimeter-long black stilettos she calls nails (oscar, charles, and lando call them "claws"). as usual, her face is completely blank, betraying no sign of how positive or negative oscar's performance review might be. he wipes his hands down on the couch fabric before he sits down without shame, before offering his right hand out for her to shake.
he does it like it might save his job.
with one brow slightly raised, she accepts the handshake like it's an unfamiliar ritual she's indulging for his sake.
"so, oscar," she begins, voice crisp. "it's your performance review."
he nods, because he doesn't know what else to do. "so it is."
she stares at him in silence. he stares at the wall behind her head. those are the hyacinths he got for her on sunday. she can't possibly fire the guy who brings her hyacinths, can she?
his knee bounces. he clenches his fists in his lap. he blinks too fast.
finally, she clears her throat. "oscar piastri, head of classics and general literature. as always, i, (y/n), am conducting your performance review.
"first off, section management. your section remains unnervingly organized and the books appear to have developed a grudging respect for you. yet, when you finally filed the haunted edition of if on a winter's night a traveler, you did not inform me that it was whispering about me. you will explain that."
she looks at him expectantly.
oscar's voice comes out cracked and raspy. "it, uh, was just saying that you 'walk like you've walked a thousand kilometers before this.'"
"interesting." she doesn't flinch. oscar doesn't even think she blinks. "next, emotional regulation. you have not snapped at lando in six weeks, which i can tell is effortful. but you once locked yourself in the breakroom to finish crying about a customer who said they 'don't really read.' i am not judging, merely observing."
another pause. oscar coughs.
"now for conflict mediation. you took the chaos table's side in an argument about who deserved a free lunch, and now the table is smug. we are all suffering. you also keep diffusing tension by citing kafka. this is confusing to customers and emotionally compromising to charles."
"and?" oscar asks softly, his gaze fixed on the edge of the table in front of him. he can feel her eyes boring into the top of his head.
"again, i am not judging, merely observing. lastly, for personal growth—you have stopped trying to 'logic' the store into obeying euclidean geometry. you now greet gérald in the morning. he has expressed that this is 'acceptable'. and you brought lando a coffee when he forgot his wallet. he still brings it up. he's weirdly sentimental about it."
she sets the paper down. oscar shrugs, arms now crossed over his chest. he's still staring at her desk.
"i don't know what you want me to say."
"you're not in trouble."
"you never say that unless i am."
she flips the page. "i have some notes."
oscar sighs through his nose and prepares to be emotionally dissected.
"you reorganized the existentialism shelf by 'how sad it made you personally'. you keep pretending you don't like it when the customers ask you for poetry recommendations, but you beam like a child every time. you still haven't admitted that you know the chaos table is in love with you. you leave notes in charles' books correcting his footnotes. i'm not taking sides. i'm just saying that you're both exhausting."
she pauses.
"you are, as always, better than you think you are. you are not alone in this building, even when you pretend you are. you are seen. deal with it."
oscar finally lifts his eyes to stare into hers, beautiful, radiant, yet no emotion in them. leave it to her to have his performance review be both somewhat positive and entirely threatening.
"did i do a good job?" oscar's voice is quiet. he feels like he's asking his mother if she liked his macaroni necklace.
for the first time in a while, she cracks a smile. a real smile. her eyes soften, crinkling at the corners. he hadn't realized how badly he needed to see her smile until she did.
"you did a good job, oscar." she flips the page over and slides it to him. "please sign at the bottom."
oscar's eyes scan it.
for all his nervous habits, apocalyptic self-doubt, and tendency to overwater the ferns, oscar remains a steady pulse beneath the store's surreal rhythms—and one of the reasons it still feels like home.
he can see the shakiness in his writing as he signs the page, but he can't help but smile, too.
he hears the sound of a drawer opening and shutting before an envelope, sealed shut with a wax stamp of a lilac, enters his field of vision. with steady hands this time, oscar opens it.
he nearly drops it. "two hundred pounds?!"
she seems amused. "for your performance."
"but—"
"shush. send in lando, please."
"okay. uh, thank you. (y/n). miss."
oscar stumbles to the exit of her door in a daze. as it shuts behind him, he swears he can hear her giggle.
-
as opposed to both oscar and charles, lando walks into her office with his head held high and her back straight. he even flashes her a confident smile as he sits down on the couch, ignoring the way her eyes pierce through his soul and instead slouching like he owns the place. he even slides her a plate with some of the baklava charles had bought earlier (to celebrate a successful performance review), which she accepts wordlessly.
lando feels like he's about to throw up.
yeah, maybe the store loves him. maybe, for all of his faults and meltdowns and chaos table-related incidents, the store will never let him go.
but will she? does she feel that way, too?
"lando norris." he likes the sound of his name when she says it, soft yet stoic. "chaos manager and curator. it's your performance review."
he coughs. "so i've heard."
there's a pause. she flips idly through the pages of the packet. lando pretends that his heart isn't in his throat.
"first, section management. the chaos table has been fed, praised, and emotionally validated. well done."
lando smiles at that—a genuine smile, full of relief.
"as usual, your collection continues to defy categorization, physics, and common sense. for instance, you filed a cursed pop-up book under 'self-help' and claimed it was 'for the vibes.' someone's eyelashes got longer. we can't prove it was the book, but also, we can't not prove it."
her eyes flick upwards, as if they're judging his reaction. lando's still floating on cloud nine from her saying "well done."
"emotional regulation. you cried during a children's book reading. the children did not. you were banned from the staff group chat for twenty-four hours after sending seventy-three cursed memes in a row. you've started holding the door open for the ghosts. i don't know why they tolerate you, but they do. and you still pace when i'm mad at you. bu the store keeps turning the lights red in solidarity.
"next is conflict mediation. you poured glitter on the floor to stop a customer from fighting oscar. it worked. but also, why? on the other hand, you encouraged a customer to 'fight the chaos table for dominance.' this was not ideal. then, when charles got stuck in the occult maze again, you told him it was 'character-building'."
"in my defense, it is character-building."
lando swears to god the corner of her mouth twitches upwards.
"last but certainly not least, personal growth. you now use the label-maker correctly. most of the time. you've only tried to kiss the chaos table once this quarter. you are slowly learning to ask before emotionally attaching to haunted objects. and you covered oscar's shift when he was sad and didn't ask for credit. this is noted."
she sets the paper down.
"do i pass?" lando grins, bouncing slightly on the couch.
"you're not graded," she replies flatly.
"but if i were?"
she sighs. "you'd pass. barely. with an asterisk."
lando fist-pumps.
she flips the page. "unfortunately, i have notes. you built a shrine to my coffee mug in the backroom. you named it—and gave it a biography. you replaced the store playlist with gregorian remixes of taylor swift. again. you keep asking if the chaos table is jealous when you talk to other furniture. you also gave yourself a promotion last week by editing the employee handbook. the handbook is now sentient and confused.
"additionally, you are not, contrary to your own belief, an agent of chaos. you are just a boy who feels too much and masks it with noise. you are not alone, either. even when you think they're annoyed by you. they aren't. they're just tired. of you. but also with you. you're loved. try to survive it."
lando doesn't stop bouncing, even through his brain is processing those words. he knows he'll curl up in the breakroom later and ponder them for three hours.
she hands him the final page, along with a fountain pen.
"sign at the bottom, please."
despite reckless table-based behavior, frequent emotional pyrotechnics, and a total inability to follow shelving protocols, lando remains the store's most inexplicable asset—unruly, radiant, and entirely irreplaceable.
he scrawls his name in something resembling a signature. then, he hears the sound of a drawer shutting before an envelope is tossed in his direction, which he deftly catches. in typical her fashion, it's entirely too fancy and has his name scrawled on the back in spencerian script.
he opens it.
"holy fuck."
she raises an eyebrow. "for your performance."
"(y/n)—holy shit! no fucking way!"
"yes fucking way."
silence.
"do you know how many funko pops i can buy with this money?!"
she closes her eyes like she's considering vanishing into mist.
"please don't tell me. now, get out. i'm tired of you three."
she doesn't have to tell him twice. lando's already halfway out of his chair, eager to find charles and oscar and ask them what they're going to do with the money.
however, as he opens the door to leave, he glances back.
she's smirking.
lando almost says something. something real. but he doesn't. he just grins like an idiot and bolts.