Chapter Text
One-Shot: I Knew It Was Going to Be Our Last Dance
Barcelona, 2:13 a.m.
The electronic beat makes the floor vibrate under Oscar’s feet, but he barely registers the sound. Leaning against the bar, fingers twisting the straw of his half-melted drink, his eyes are locked on the center of the dance floor.
There, in the middle of red lights and bodies colliding without shame, is him.
Lando.
Black shirt unbuttoned at the top, sweaty curls stuck to his forehead, a smile Oscar knows better than he should—the one he wears when he’s pretending he’s doing just fine. He spins his body to the rhythm of the music, dancing with a tall, handsome guy who laughs too loud into his ear. The guy’s hands rest on Lando’s waist. And Lando… lets him.
Oscar looks away, his chest tightening, but it’s too late. When his gaze returns, Lando’s eyes are locked on his.
Time freezes. The music fades into static.
All that remains is that look.
Lando hesitates for a second, then pulls away from his dance partner. He heads straight toward Oscar, walking like someone who knows exactly the effect he has. Oscar stands his ground, even as every one of Lando’s steps explodes in his chest like a memory set on fire.
“I thought you didn’t like places like this,” Lando says, his voice too low for the noise around them, yet somehow clear as an intimate whisper.
Oscar shrugs, trying to sound light.
“I changed. Happens with time.”
“Not everything changes.” Lando holds his gaze. “You still look at me the same way.”
Oscar lets out a dry laugh.
“And you still dance with someone like you’re trying to provoke me.”
Silence. The tension between them swells like steam trapped in a sealed glass.
Lando leans against the bar beside him. His skin is warm. His scent achingly familiar.
“It wasn’t about you…” he pauses. “…but then you showed up. And now it feels like everything is.”
Oscar turns to face him.
“You always knew how to do that. Mess everything up with half a sentence.”
Lando steps closer, almost touching.
“Dance with me.”
“Why?”
“Because…” he swallows hard. “…dancing only ever made sense with you.”
Oscar hesitates. Every part of him wants to say no. But his body, that traitor, is already moving. Already turning. Already going.
They fit together on the dance floor. And they dance.
It isn’t fast. It isn’t for show. It’s intimate. A hand at the nape of his neck. Fingers gliding across a waist. Eyes closed, faces pressed together. They remember. Each other’s rhythm. The warmth. The ache of longing.
For a moment, it’s as if they never broke apart.
The song ends. But they don’t let go.
Lando murmurs,
“You know what hurts? I still love you in every chorus.”
Oscar takes a deep breath, his eyes shining.
“And I still dance with you in every nightmare.”
The silence between them throbs louder than any beat. Oscar feels his heart pounding in his throat, his pulse, his lips still burning for a kiss he tried to forget.
Lando looks at him like before—as if the world was only livable when Oscar was around.
“Do you still love me?” Lando asks, his voice laced with fear and hope.
Oscar doesn’t answer with words. He simply leans in, a hand rising to Lando’s face, his thumb tracing the line of a cheek he could recognize blind. His gaze is steady, intense.
Then he kisses him.
It’s a kiss without hesitation, brimming with longing, with pent-up anger, with unspoken promises. Lando’s hands grip Oscar’s waist like he might slip away. Oscar kisses back like he’s finally home. The club vanishes. The noise turns to smoke. It’s just the two of them, and what never really left.
When they pull apart, breathless, Lando rests his forehead against his.
“Does this mean…?”
Oscar smiles—the kind of smile only Lando has ever seen.
“That you’re going to have to take me out of here. Now.”
They leave the club without looking back. Hands laced, like an old addiction come rushing back. On the way to the car, they don’t talk. They just look at each other, laugh nervously, touch in silence. Lando starts the engine with one hand while holding Oscar’s with the other.
The drive to the apartment is short. The night, long.
They rediscover each other between kisses and memories, between whispered apologies and clothes scattered across the floor.
The apartment door shuts with a muffled click. The key doesn’t even leave the lock. Lando pins Oscar against the wall the moment they step inside, their bodies still breathless from the run—or maybe just from what they feel for each other.
The kiss starts again, hungrier. Hands roaming, pulling, clutching like lost time could be reclaimed in touch. Layers of clothing fall along the way: Oscar’s jacket, Lando’s shirt, belts tossed without care. They stumble toward the bedroom between soft laughter and urgent sighs.
Oscar pushes Lando onto the bed with a look heavy with want.
“Still remember what I like?”
“Never forgot,” Lando replies, tugging him closer by the waist.
Their bodies collide with urgency and reverence. Lando trails his mouth down Oscar’s torso like he’s kissing a shrine. Oscar moans softly when his lips touch skin—the sound Lando missed most these last eight months.
Oscar’s hands tangle in messy curls, hips arching in response to kisses, teasing bites, the glide of a tongue. The bed creaks low, complicit in their surrender, their obscene whispers, the pleasure that rises without restraint.
They fit together like they always had. As if the world had been waiting for this moment.
And when they finally unravel into each other, bodies pressed close, hearts beating out of sync but somehow together, Lando kisses the curve of Oscar’s collarbone and whispers:
“I’m home.”
----
The room is bathed in the bluish light of dawn. Oscar sleeps beside Lando, lying on his stomach, lips parted with a soft snore slipping out. His tattooed back rises and falls with slow, steady breaths. Lando traces the tip of his fingers over it, recognizing every line, every drawing he’s mapped with his mouth so many times before.
He leans in, presses a gentle kiss to the back of his shoulder, lips brushing over a small constellation of ink. He smiles against the skin.
The phone buzzes on the nightstand. Lando stretches his arm slowly, careful not to wake Oscar. A message from Franco lights up the screen:
Franco: “You disappeared. Did something happen?”
Lando stares at the screen for a few seconds, then types firmly:
Lando: “Yeah. I went back into the arms of the one I love.”
He locks the phone, exhales deeply, and lies back down beside Oscar. His hand drifts tenderly over the nape of his neck, he kisses his tattooed back again, and whispers:
“I should’ve never danced in the arms of someone who doesn’t love me.”
Oscar shifts slightly, his eyes still half-closed, his voice hoarse and sleepy:
“You’ll never have to dance like you’re not mine again.”
Lando smiles. Closes his eyes. And for the first time in a long while, he falls asleep in peace.
The reconciliation came like a warm wave in the middle of a winter that had felt endless. But the next day—as always—brought the weight of reality.
Lando wakes first. Oscar still sleeps, tangled in the sheets, hair a mess, a faint reddish mark on his neck that Lando doesn’t know if it came from him or from longing itself.
He gets up, makes coffee, tries not to think too much. But it’s useless. Franco’s message echoes. The questions from friends, the contracts, the stares. The world outside hasn’t stopped just because they found each other again.
Oscar walks into the kitchen in one of Lando’s shirts, his face creased from sleep.
“You’re thinking out loud,” he mumbles, grabbing a mug.
“Just… trying to figure out how we’re gonna tell the world that we’re still us,” Lando answers, turning his back, fussing with the coffee.
Oscar leans against the counter, eyes half-closed.
“And do we have to? Can’t we just… live for a bit, first?”
Lando turns, his gaze softening on him.
“You’ve always been the sensible one.”
“And you’ve always been good at feeling too much.”
A comfortable silence. Oscar smiles, walking up to him and wrapping his arms around his waist.
“We’ll talk when it’s time. For now just… dance with me again.”
Lando holds him tight, burying his face into the curve of his neck.
“Promise this is our last first dance?”
“I promise. But only if you let me pick the song.”
----
The Lisbon sky is painted in shades of orange as Lando and Oscar cross the square toward the old warehouse where the show is about to begin. The trip had been decided on during a lazy midnight, between kisses and maps open on a phone screen. “Let’s go somewhere no one knows our mistakes,” Oscar had said. And Lando had said yes with his eyes.
Now, surrounded by voices in different languages and the salty breeze drifting in from the Tagus, they lose themselves in hand-holding and knowing glances.
The show begins with lights pulsing in blue. Oscar’s favorite band takes the stage, and he lights up like a child. Lando watches him with a smile, his heart swelling with something good and rare: peace.
The crowd starts to dance—free, fearless. Lando tugs Oscar’s hand, even knowing he’ll protest.
“I’m a terrible dancer,” Oscar murmurs, laughing.
“Not with me,” Lando answers.
They draw close, bodies pressed together to the rhythm of the music. Their eyes find each other more than their steps do. Oscar buries his face into the curve of Lando’s neck, his arms wrapped around his waist. They sway together, slow, even when the beat quickens.
Between the heat of the music and the muffled sound of the world, Oscar whispers, voice rough against Lando’s ear:
“Don’t ever dance like you’re not mine again.”
Lando closes his eyes. Smiles. And replies, steady, almost like a vow:
“I’m yours forever.”
The lights flash. The band plays louder.
But they hear nothing but each other.
And, for the first time in a place unknown, they dance like they had always belonged there.
-----
Their new apartment isn’t big, but it has enough: a window with a view of the city, a shared shelf full of messy vinyls and books, two mugs with each other’s names written by hand.
It’s Saturday night. Oscar came home earlier from his tattoo session. Lando’s on the couch, a guitar resting on his lap, strumming loose chords.
“Is that new?” Oscar asks, dropping his backpack on the floor.
“Maybe.” Lando smiles sideways. “Maybe I wrote something for you.”
Oscar steps closer.
“Is it about me being a bad dancer?”
“It’s about you saving me,” Lando replies, and starts to play.
The melody is soft, intimate. It doesn’t need complex lyrics. It’s just the sound of what they are now: two pieces that found each other again, and this time chose to stay.
Oscar sits beside him. Lando stops playing and looks at him, serious:
“I almost accepted that we were a mistake.”
“And I almost accepted that we were over.”
“But?”
Oscar smiles.
“But we’d only hit pause on the music.”
Lando leans in and kisses him, calm, certain. As if they had danced through lifetimes and finally, the right song was playing.
And this time, there’s no one else on the floor.
Just the two of them.
In perfect rhythm.
In the last dance that never ends.