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hotandcoldest · 7 days ago

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call of the void EPILOGUE

aka: a possible future | 3.3k

Serious spoilers ahead! Go read the main fic first if you haven't!

🖤

"I'm not leaving you on your own now."

The final second stretches for an eternity. The hole in the universe splits open behind Lando's chest, centered right on his heart. In his peripherals, Oscar sees the infinite void, blacker than black, extending forever, folding in on itself over and over again into eternal nothingness. Some primal instinct tells Oscar that if he looks at it, there's no coming back. The same instinct tells him to run straight into it. But he never takes his eyes off of Lando, who throws himself at Oscar faster than physics can stop them, burying his head in Oscar's chest like it's the last thing he'll ever do.

Oscar wraps his arms around Lando as tightly as he can, lets his heels hit the edge of the dock, and tips them backwards into the water.

----

When Oscar resurfaces gasping for air, he isn't breaking the surface of the lake, but thrashing at linen sheets, sitting up in bed in a room he doesn't recognize. He can barely make out the contours with only moonlight streaming through the windows, but the old wooden dresser and chairs are more rustic than anything he owns and too solid to be in any run-down motel he's been through. There are two open suitcases in the corner, two phones charging on the nightstand, and a warm body stirring into consciousness beside him.

"Mmph, Osc? What's wrong? Nightmares again?"

Oscar scrambles for the lamp on the bedside table to make sure his brain isn't playing tricks on him—that the familiar voice beside him isn't a hallucination. He finds the switch, and Lando groans, throwing a hand over his face and squeezing his eyes shut to block out the light.

"It's okay," Lando says, blindly reaching to put a hand on Oscar's knee. "It's just me."

And there he is. Real and tangible—no shadows or black void trying to take him away. Sitting up in bed, bare-chested, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and blinking up at Oscar with complete serenity. Like they do this every day. Like they haven't both been through hell and back.

"Hey," Lando whispers, gently stroking the side of Oscar's face in a passing gesture of comfort. "You alright?"

Oscar is rendered completely speechless. All he wants to do is stare into Lando's eyes—to memorize the color and the shape and the little flecks of pigmentation before whatever sliver of paradise they've lucked into for the moment is wrenched away again. With shaking hands, he takes the sides of Lando's head and holds them together, noses nearly brushing against one another, anchoring himself to the moment and making sure they can't be torn apart.

"Oscar, what—" Lando's eyes go wide, and he lets out a small gasp. "Oh. Is it today? I thought there was a chance this might happen soon, but—"

Lando tries to pull away, to reach for something on the bedside table, but Oscar doesn't let him go, a soft whine escaping as he holds on.

"No, no, it's alright," Lando says, letting himself be pulled back in. "I'm not going anywhere. I— I suppose you probably need a minute, huh? What's the last thing you remember?"

"I— I don't—" Oscar can't stop staring. He can't stop his hands wandering over every bit of Lando he can touch, all the bumps and ridges he never had the chance to explore. The veins in his neck. The slope of his shoulders. The line of freckles across his ribcage. "You're alive?"

He feels his cheeks go wet and his lip start to tremble. He'd built up so much courage just to turn and look Lando in the eyes; now, there's almost too much to take in, and his body doesn't know what to do with it all.

"Oh, baby." Lando wipes away the tears and kisses him softly, in that way that always makes Oscar feel like he's going to break. "Yes, I'm here. This is real." He swoops in for another kiss. "It's all real." And another. "You did it, Osc. You fixed it. I'm...look."

Lando takes Oscar's hand and holds it directly over his heart, pressing so that Oscar can feel his pulse through the palm of his hand. Last Oscar remembers, a crack in the fabric of the universe was splitting open from where Lando's heart was supposed to be. Now, it's beating a steady rhythm—no black necrotic rot, or chasm opening in his chest, or impossible dance happening behind his ribs. Just a normal, consistent beat, keeping a warm body alive.

"Do you remember the train?" Lando asks. "I was waiting on the platform and you—"

Oscar shakes his head at first, then gasps as the memories come rushing back. Lando standing on his own. Lando falling to the tracks. Oscar rushing forward and pushing as hard as he could, reaching and reaching and...

He suddenly tightens his grip around Lando's waist, as though he's pulling him back from the edge again. Lando smiles and tosses a leg over Oscar's lap, straddling his hips and pressing their bodies together even closer.

"See? It worked, Oscar. You beat death, you fucking madman."

Lando buries his hands in Oscar's hair, prompting a full-body shiver and Oscar's shoulders going limp. There's something so achingly familiar about the feeling of Lando's fingers rubbing against his scalp, like coming home after a long time away.

"Hmm." Lando presses his lips up against Oscar's forehead as he mumbles, "I wasn't sure if you'd remember. Everything has happened in a straight line for me, but you..."

He leans back with a new weight in his expression, a bit of sadness seeping into his eyes. Now that he's really taken him in, Oscar notices that Lando has changed a bit from when he first saw him. The shaved sides of his hair have grown out, and the mullet has been trimmed at the back. The jewelry is gone, though that might just be for sleeping. There's another small scar, higher up the bridge of his nose, while the first has faded.

"How long has it been for you?" Oscar asks.

"You can do the math. You're good at that," Lando smirks, though the smile doesn't reach his eyes.

If Lando was on the platform the same day as his job interview, and this is somehow the same night that they went to the lake in the forest...

"Over a year?" Oscar asks incredulously.

"Just had our anniversary last month," Lando replies. "Ah, maybe I shouldn't tell you that. Dunno how it works with, like, amnesia patients. Probably supposed to start small."

Oscar pauses where he's been subconsciously rubbing small circles around Lando's hip bone. He can feel it now in the way Lando is holding him, perfectly hitting the sweet spot at the back of his neck that makes his skin tingle. The intimacy that isn't just wanting but knowing. The way his touches glance casually, not because they're meaningless, but because they're a constant. Oscar hadn't even flinched when Lando mounted his lap, or when he started caressing the most tender spots under his jaw, as if his body knew what his mind, at the moment, is lacking.

"Why don't you start from the beginning then?" Oscar says. "How'd you find me?"

"You found me, actually," Lando chuckles, climbing off his lap to put on a t-shirt and grab a leather-bound notepad from the bedside table. "Offered to buy me a drink and asked for my number right on the spot. I had no idea you were such a proper flirt."

Oscar nearly has the words out to protest that he would never be so bold, but then he focuses on Lando's t-shirt carrying the colorful logo of a local coffee shop—the "Star-Crossed Cafe," and their appropriately celestial design—and he sees the memory with perfect clarity. Running into a beautiful stranger who looked oddly familiar. Realizing they had met before on summer vacation, though he supposes Lando already knew at the time. Each of them going back for one more drink or one more pastry until the shop closed, then taking a walk in the park and kissing under the stars.

"You made me try matcha for the first time."

"I did," Lando says, his eyes lighting up. "You took one sip and said it was gross, then let me have the rest."

"I feel like you meant for that to happen."

"Meh. I knew it would work out for me either way," Lando shrugs.

"What's this?" Oscar asks as Lando fidgets with the edge of his notebook, tracing the rather fancy stitching around the outside cover.

"Been working on it for the past few months," Lando says, loosening the strap around the side. "Kind of a journal, except I'm not much of a writer. I also thought, you know, if something like this happened, maybe it would help."

He flips open the front cover, and Oscar realizes it isn't a notebook; it's a sketchpad, each page filled with intricate pencil drawings of their day-to-day life that he catches a quick glimpse of as Lando flicks through the pages, then settles on the first with an extraordinarily detailed portrait of Oscar's face.

"A lot of these are of you, so let's just get that out of the way," Lando says, holding his hands up like he's been caught in a crime. "You're nice to draw, and there was a long time where I didn't get to see you, and now I can look whenever I want, so..."

He flicks at the bottom corner of the pages, biting his lip and looking over the portrait with worried eyes.

"It's a really good drawing," Oscar tries to reassure him. "I can't believe how talented you are."

"Maybe this is too much at once," Lando says suddenly. "I mean, you've just been through a hell of a time, and I'm throwing all of this at you so fast. We could...slow down. Let you get used to things a bit?"

Oscar leans over and kisses him on the temple, nuzzling through his curls to rest their heads together. He smells like citrus and worn leather, both brand new and etched into Oscar's bones. For all the trouble he's having accepting that they really are safe, in a way, Lando has just lost the man he spent the last year of his life with. And Oscar promised not to leave him on his own.

"I just need you to jog my memory a bit, Lan."

The nickname is half guess, half impulse, but the way Lando smiles and relaxes into him tells Oscar that he got it right.

"Right, okay."

Lando flips the page to reveal a drawing of a picnic blanket spread out on the grass next to a pond. In the background, two figures are holding hands and running from a flock of geese.

"So, our first date," Lando says. "Umm, wasn't exactly as romantic as I planned, but...well, it was a bonding experience, I guess. The duck pond was the closest thing I could find to a proper lake, because I wasn't sure if you would... Anyway, the ducks all got run off by these dickhead birds who took all of our sandwiches."

Oscar chuckles, first at the drawing, then at Lando's retelling, and then at the memory slowly coming into focus in his head. He'd spent so long that morning agonizing over what sandwiches to make and whether bags of potato chips were acceptable or if he should be a mature adult and make a side salad. It hadn't mattered in the end.

"But it was a nice day, and we got burgers after. Pretty solid date, in my opinion."

"Yeah, you took me to Five Guys. Real romantic, Osc," Lando says with a dramatic eye roll.

"You love Five Guys," Oscar counters, pulling that information from somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind.

"Almost as much as I love my guy," Lando says, blushing immediately after. "Ugh, sorry. So cheesy."

He cringes and crumples in on himself, fidgeting again with the edges of the book, which are already full of bends and tears from how much time he's clearly spent going over the pages, perfecting every detail. Oscar gets a sudden flash of a memory: seeing Lando curled up on the end of the couch with his sketchbook, asking what he's working so hard on, and being told that it's supposed to be a surprise. He poured his absolute heart and soul into those drawings, and that's perhaps the part Oscar is struggling with the most.

Before Lando, Oscar had never been in love before. And it's not his own strong feelings that he's having trouble believing. He accepted those long before he sent them plunging into the water. Oscar has never been loved before—never had someone care so deeply about him.

"I don't mind cheesy," Oscar says, wrapping an arm around Lando's waist and holding him tighter. "I'm trying to...make it fit. I know it's not really new, but—"

"But it is for you," Lando says. "If you don't remember, then I'm basically a stranger to you."

Oscar can't help but let out a shocked laugh. Lando being unfamiliar to him is one of the most comical things he's heard in a long while.

"You've been with me my entire life," Oscar reminds him. "You could never be a stranger."

"Okay, fine. But being a shadow is pretty different from being your boyfriend."

Oscar's heart practically leaps out of his chest at hearing Lando referred to as his boyfriend. Obviously, he's worked out their relationship from context. But hearing the word said aloud is something so magical he has to hide his smile against Lando's shoulder, using every ounce of willpower not to scream into his t-shirt like a lovestruck teenager.

"I'm remembering some. It's a bit strange right now. I've got two whole separate lives to try to stitch together, but we can figure it out. We've dealt with a lot worse."

Lando smiles weakly and nods, grabbing hold of Oscar's hand and squeezing to keep himself grounded. He takes a deep breath and flips to the next page, where he continues telling Oscar the story of his own life, and their life together. How Oscar took a job at a smaller company so he could help do accounting for some of the artists Lando works with on the side. How Oscar's mum came to visit and was so excited to meet Lando that he wondered why he was ever so afraid of coming out to her in the first place. How they're planning on moving in together soon, even though Lando practically lives at Oscar's place already.

And Oscar remembers it all, not as though it happened to someone else, but as true and as real as he lived it. There are moments that overlay in strange ways—things that happened in both timelines but ended differently because he wasn't quite the same person. Those are hard to make sense of, and it's difficult to fit everything in when he's lived twice as long as he should have. But then, it was always hard for him to fit all of his feelings inside. All of the pain he couldn't share and the love with nowhere to go. With Lando, it's much easier.

"Did you ever try to tell me?" Oscar asks when they're nearing the end of the sketchbook. "About...dying, and being a ghost?"

"No. I thought about it sometimes," Lando says, closing the book and running a finger over the engraving. "I wondered if talking about it would make you remember. But either you'd think I was crazy, or I'd be reminding you of something sad. Figured you were better off not knowing."

Oscar leans back so he can look Lando head on. It seems terribly lonely, having all of those horrible memories with no one to talk to about them, even the person who was with you the whole time. Perhaps Lando tried to convince himself he could forget, but again Oscar sees that faint flicker of sadness behind his eyes, the one he couldn't quite place when they were dating, and understands the heavy burden he's been carrying.

"I disagree," Oscar says definitively, lightly putting a finger under Lando's chin to tilt his head upward. "Wouldn't change a thing."

When he kisses Lando this time, nothing gets held back. Oscar presses their lips together with total conviction, leaving not a flicker of doubt that he wants this with every fiber of his being. And when Lando leans in further, Oscar brings a hand to the back of his neck and holds him even closer, mouths parting against one another like they could mold their bodies into one.

It's only the need for air that forces Oscar to pull away, and they fall leaning against the headboard, wrapped in each other's arms, hands wandering lazily over the familiar planes of one another's bodies.

"Where are we, anyway?" Oscar asks. He knows the room isn't either of their apartments. From the rustic feel and the heavy wood scent, he'd guess an old family home in the country. Or a cabin in the woods.

"Just outside of Sapphire Valley. It's not the same cabins," Lando clarifies as Oscar sits up straighter. "You were right, those are gone now. But I tried—we tried—to get as close as possible. You wanted to see the old sights. And I wanted to make sure we were around when— when it happened. Thought there might be a better chance of…getting you back."

"Lando…."

"I thought—" Lando sucks in a trembling breath, on the verge of tears. "I don't know how this parallel universe shit works. If you didn't have your memories, I figured the other version of you might have died pulling me off that platform. Or that you'd be a shadow, like I was, lost and scared somewhere."

"But I was with you," Oscar protests. "You had me the whole time."

"Weird, innit? Missing someone when they're right there with you."

"Yeah. I think I know the feeling," Oscar says. His memories of Lando as a shadow are already going fuzzy, overshadowed by happier times of kissing under the stars or wasting the morning away in bed together. But he remembers the contradiction of wanting him so bad, even though they were never truly apart.

"I could barely fucking take it," Lando admits. "Imaging any version of you that—"

"Hey, I'm right here," Oscar says, holding him tight, reiterating the words Lando said to him so many times. "I'm here. All of me. And you're here. Somehow."

"Somehow," Lando repeats, a tear falling from his eye. "Got the place right and everything."

"It was never about the place. We'd find each other anywhere in the world, I reckon."

Lando chokes out a laugh and buries his face in the crook between Oscar's shoulder and jaw, pressing his nose against his jugular and lips across his throat. Tucking himself into any crevice that Oscar can make.

"Don't need to go looking anymore," he mumbles into Oscar's skin. "Got a lot of lost time to make up for."

Oscar cradles the back of his head and dips his chin to tuck Lando in even closer, working his other hand into the perfect spot at the small of Lando's back. It's like coming home, the past a solid foundation beneath them and a secure future stretching out ahead. Oscar plants a kiss on the crown of Lando's head and whispers into his curls.

"We've got all the time in the world."

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#owww 🥺#call of the void #bittersweet #but mostly happy 😭💕#landoscar #fics #fav

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