Chapter Text
“Shit, d’you still have that one heavy-duty flashlight?” Lance says.
Which, uh, okay, Lance is being the practical one.
“I can get it,” Keith says. “You okay staying here?”
“Um – ” Lance is briefly illuminated by another flash of lightning coming through the windows, but it's not long enough for Keith to discern his expression. “I’ll be fine. Yeah.” He chuckles, then, quiet and half-hysterical.
Crack of thunder. Real, real loud, this time.
Keith’s sofa actually screeches across the floor a little bit, with how fast Lance stands up. “Okay, nuh-uh, nope, nevermind, I hate the dark, I hate thunder, and when you mix ‘em up together and leave me alone there, then haha, no, I’m not doing that.”
“I thought you liked rain,” Keith says dumbly, squinting his eyes to try and make out Lance’s figure in the darkness. It takes some fumbling, but Lance’s hand lands on Keith’s nose, searching out the rest of his face and giving him a pat on the cheek.
“I do like rain,” Lance says. “And I can handle thunder to a degree, but blackouts are the worst. Let’s find that flashlight, Keith.” He gingerly pokes Keith in the nose, and after a few seconds of Lance murmuring under his breath, a spot of white light emerges from his phone.
“So,” Lance says. He looks washed out and faded in the bright white light – it really, really doesn't suit him, Keith thinks. Darkens the smudges under his eyes, makes his cheeks look pallid and accentuates the leftover redness from when Lance must’ve been crying. It's monster lighting, it's telling scary stories in the dark lighting, like the weird kid who’s into occult shit brandishing a flashlight while surrounded by their terrified friends at a sleepover. Which, uh, that fits Lance pretty well, actually?
Keith stares, and then huffs under his breath as he picks at the threadbare carpet.
Honestly, Lance really looks good in sunshine, with the warm tint in his skin highlighted and some frizzy strands of his hair shining gold. Artificial light, both white LED and flickering yellow bulbs – it doesn't do much for him.
Keith, though – Keith just burns up in sunshine.
Lance shuffles awkwardly, a bare foot accidentally brushing against Keith's fidgeting fingers and sending a brief rush of electrical heat through his veins. “Uh,” Lance says. Pokes him in the chin. “You comin’ with, Keithy?”
Lance doesn't look great in white light, but his lips are still regrettably pretty and his eyes are still shining bright, as he leans down to talk to Keith. And the dead butterflies in Keith’s guts just don’t have the life to move anymore, but Lance’s fingertips are still as soft as ever as they brush over Keith’s cheeks and jaw. The touch still registers as familiar in Keith’s overworked mind, instead of a sensible option like danger, or one of those warnings that always show up on cigarette boxes, smoking causes lung cancer, beware risk of addiction or whatever.
“Where?” Keith asks, his voice strained.
“You still keep your flashlight in your bedroom, right?” Lance deadpans. “We’ll camp out there.”
Last time Lance was in Keith’s bedroom, they were either screaming at each other loud enough to tear through their vocal chords, or fucking so roughly that the walls shook.
Something like that. Keith can't really remember.
( Except, the thing is, he really can remember – Lance struggling to close a cardboard box full of his stuff. He’d only brought the one, and it’s honestly...really pitiful, to watch him struggle to close the flaps down, with tear tracks staining his cheeks and his eyes all red, chest still heaving with minuscule hiccups.
Keith isn't much better, though. His knuckles slathered with a black-blue-reddening bruise, from punching the kitchen counter in frustration. The back of his throat burns hot and wet, and he keeps blinking a little too frantically, sea salt in his head and tear salt in his eyes.
“Need any help?” Keith croaks out, leaning against the door frame. Lance’s shoulders shake, and he sits down on Keith’s bed, taking deep breaths, pulling his knees up to his chest.
“Don't – don’t talk to me, Keith.” Lance inhales sharply. “Gimme a minute. I’ll be done soon.”
So Keith gave him a minute, then an hour, then Lance walked out and it's been days, weeks, months ever since. )
Lance says, “Um, so. It's late.” They stop at Keith’s bedroom door, and Lance almost moves to pull it open – but he stops, hesitating, pulling his hand back. The phone light shakes with his movements.
Keith blearily shakes off the memories of Lance being comfortable enough to open this door; smirking or giggling or heaving breaths as he pushed Keith up against the surface and fumbled with the doorknob, trying to open it even as Keith tugged at the roots of his hair and hiked his shirt up higher, running his fingers up soft brown skin.
Keith’s stomach lurches. He opens the door himself.
“Yeah?” Keith mumbles. God, his voice sounds tired – exhausted and roughed up like he got punched in the throat. “You can sleep here, I guess.”
“I’ll – ” Lance inhales shakily. “I’ll take the floor! Gimme your red blanket, it's the softest one.” Lance coughs awkwardly. “Or, well, don’t? It’s your stuff, man, do whatever you want, you don’t actually have to gimme anything – I’m just joking, y’know? You don’t have to – ”
It’s so dark, and the phone light isn’t shining on Lance’s face, so it’s not like Keith can watch Lance’s facial expression, or anything. But the obscurity just makes Lance’s voice sound even more wobbly, and it makes his audible gulp so much more audible.
“Hey, Lance?” says Keith, stepping through the door frame.
“Yeah?” Lance breathes out. There’s a dull tap-tap-tap jittering through Keith’s ears, and it takes a few seconds to realize that Lance is tapping his feet against the floor.
“Calm down.” Keith sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “You can sleep on the bed, if you want. I’ll take the couch.”
“Stay in the same room?” Lance asks.
“If you really wanna,” Keith says, then thinks, then I want it too.
He shakes it off. Lovesickness might not have a cure, but it's definitely treatable, and Keith definitely needs some sort of medication.
“It'll be like a slumber party,” Lance says weakly. “We can tell each other scary stories and everything.”
Yeah, Lance was definitely that kid who liked to scare the shit out of everyone around him.
“You were that kid who tried to freak people out at sleepovers, weren't you?” Keith says, stumbling over to the bed. “With a flashlight held under your face and everything.”
Lance lets out a bark of laughter, slight and startled. “Uh. Yeah, I guess. I still do it to my little cousins and my siblings’ kids.”
“Wow,” Keith says, snorting. Under the direction of Lance’s phone-light, Keith is able to drag his feet over to his bedside table, flailing around with it until it opens and he can snatch the heavy flashlight out, turning it on with a flick of his thumb.
Where the phone light was white, the flashlight is orange, a beam of photons shot straight up at the ceiling in a pathetic imitation of the sun. A ring of light flares out through the whole room, illuminates it enough to see Lance’s face. Oh, it's still monster lighting, and maybe Lance can embrace his sea monster status – razor shark teeth made for eating hearts, sea-salt eyes searching and lurking in the depths of the sea for his next victim, a new sailor to drag down into the bottom of the ocean –
– but maybe Keith is being overdramatic.
“So, uh,” Keith says, sitting down on his half-made bed, setting the flashlight down on the table and watching the light shake off the walls before it steadies. “This Lotor guy – he’s good to you?”
Lance is looking at the flashlight. His voice sounds tired – “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Keith. It's – whatever. Don't get all stuck on him.”
“I’m not stuck on him!” Keith immediately protests, because, alright, he’s definitely stuck on someone but it's certainly not Lotor.
Lance rolls his eyes, and that little motion – being brushed off, being mocked – it makes Keith grit his teeth.
And then Lance says, “Honestly? He’s a total prick. But, like, I can be okay with that, y’know? It’s mutual.” He slumps down beside Keith, glancing up at the circle of light reflecting off the textured white ceiling plaster.
“Mutual,” Keith repeats, words sour in his mouth. “What's that mean?”
Lance pouts. “It means you ask too many questions ‘bout things that’re none of your business.”
Keith tries not to bristle, tries to keep his temper in check. Don’t bare your teeth, ‘cause you're not an animal – even if Lance treats him like a fuckin’ pet. Don't tense up, don't lean closer, don't grab him by the front of his pretty shirt, don't drag him so close that his lips are in biting range –
Even if Lance’s mouth is chewed raw and red from his own nervous habit. Even if Lance probably feels just as soft and tastes just as metallic-sweet as Keith can remember him being.
“You're staring at me,” Lance grumbles.
“You're staring at me.” And Keith knows it’s petulant but it's true – Lance’s gaze is glued to Keith’s mouth, Lance keeps looking at him with those flashlight eyelashes batting and his eyes narrowed with that blue flashfire rage –
“You’re a desperate, lonely fuck,” Lance counters, just as petulant – except it’s – it’s –
It’s true.
Keith’s – Keith’s always been the type who’s better off alone, dumb edgy anti-hero protagonist like Lance always used to make fun of him for being. But – but Keith’s been alone for so long in his life, always been a feisty kid made of scorching sand and lack of life, always been deserted, but then – then Keith met Shiro, when he was a teenager in a new foster home and kept getting grins and waves from the walking-shitpost of a guy next door, Takashi Shirogane. And after Shiro, it was Allura, and after Allura, it was Lance and Hunk and Pidge, and suddenly Keith had friends.
Teasing, joking, but strong and collected Shiro. Cute, excitable, could-kill-a-man-with-her-glare Allura. Beam of pure sunshine Hunk. Pidge the amazing friend who was smarter than anything and also very into Keith’s so-called conspiracy theories.
And – and Lance. Adorable, friendly Lance, obnoxious, competitive Lance, breathtaking, breathtaking Lance. As energized as blue stars with his own goddamn magnetic field, with his own gravity entwining frantically with Keith’s.
Keith was a lonely, deserted kid.
And then, loneliness was just a fading memory of the choking, burning taste of desert sand.
And Keith, Keith had starry blue eyes all to himself for a short while, Lance’s cold fingers clasped in his own overheated hands as Lance giggled about having poor circulation and Keith making up for it, and Keith wasn’t deserted anymore – no, Keith was lightyears away, galaxy-high with Lance, Lance, Lance. A near-obsession rooted in his lungs, entwined around his tar-ruined bronchi; a blistering new component in his rushing blood cells; a flustering, consuming want shaking his teeth.
They were Keith, and they were Lance, and they were rocketeering off to the far reaches of the stars, together.
And then – then Lance left. Went too fast, left Keith to plummet back down to Earth.
Desperate, lonely.
It’s true. It’s true enough to make Keith’s pulse stutter and his tongue go dry and heavy and the taste of sand all comes rushing back.
And – and for some goddamn reason, because Lance works on an entirely different system of physics compared to Keith, Lance is quantum mechanics and inexplanations where Keith is general relativity and familiarity and maybe the two just can’t be reconciled no matter how hard physics tries – but Lance operates on so many different rules that seem so arbitrary and random, and so Lance backs off.
“Sorry,” Lance babbles, back straightening, eyes darting to his own hands, fiddling with pretty friendship bracelets. “Sorry, sorry Keith, that was – ugh. Uncalled for. I know that – that you haven’t been talkin’ to – to – ” Lance gulps, audible still, but diminished by the flashlight and the way his lips tremble. “To Hunk. I think Pidge tried to talk to you.”
“Pidge wants nothing to do with me,” Keith huffs, ‘cause Pidge hasn’t shown up in weeks, no matter the messages left on his phone, but Lance is –
Oh, shit, well, Lance is mad again, pressing his face close to Keith’s – “Keith, what the fuck, Pidge is your conspiracy buddy, I’ve been dealing with her moping ass for weeks ‘cause you won’t call her back, I’m the one who’s supposed to be moping – !”
“What?”
“Keith.” Lance growls in frustration. “Pidge loves you, man, she’s not gonna ditch you ‘cause I can’t get over – get over – whatever. And Hunk, Hunk’s a good guy, such a good guy, he’ll take you back.”
“He hates me,” Keith tries.
Lance runs his slim fingers through his own hair and tugs, exasperated, ruffling that brown hair up even more, and what the fuck Keith shouldn’t be thinking about Lance’s thing for hair-pulling – “Oh – c’mon, look at me.” Slim fingers grasping at Keith’s jaw, cold and clammy against his hot skin. “Hunk and Pidge – they're good people, too good for me. You’re too good for me, honestly – maybe that’s why I always forget how much of a wreck you are.”
“I’m surprised you’d forget,” Keith practically wheezes. Lance raises an eyebrow, leans even closer – and this is bad because Lance is on his bed again, Lance is so close that he’s all Keith can breathe and his touch is spiraling across Keith’s skin, and Keith is drowning all over again. Drowning in wet, wet desert sand, smothered by sunshine –
“You really shouldn’t’ve come here,” Keith breathes out, voice wrecked. “Just tell me, okay? Why d’you come here?”
Lance blinks, eyes wide. “It's stupid.”
Keith frowns. “It's still a reason.”
Lance nods, unexpectedly agreeable for just an instant, knees touching Keith’s, his breath fanning out over Keith’s nose.
“So, like,” Lance hums, his voice low and weary. “Me ‘n’ Lotor got into a fight, okay? A bad one.” A bitter laugh rises behind his words. “What else can you expect from me? I'm always like this, I dunno why I always – always pick fights.”
Keith – kinda blanks out, because, because –
There’s still that wreck of addiction that spirals through his lungs – cigarettes and Lance – still that mess of want that lurks in his throat. And Keith thinks about Lance’s red-splotched-bruised cheeks and icewater eyes and and and –
Anger tightens up around his lungs and he can barely breathe.
“Did he hurt you?” Keith rushes out. “Lance, did he – ”
“Whoa, Keith.” Lance chuckles, but it’s half-hysterical and weak. “Calm down. It’s whatever.”
“You’re crying,” Keith counters. “You were crying, it’s not – it’s not whatever, Lance.”
And Keith doesn’t know who this guy is, doesn’t actually know who Lance is with, now. But there’s something – something in his throat, stuck and burning hot, when he thinks about someone else’s hands on Lance, someone else keeping starry eyes to their self.
“I wasn’t crying,” Lance grumbles.
“You were,” Keith says, a bleary, rageful calm settled over his head. “You were, and I swear to god, I’ll hunt that guy down for you, Lance, he hurt you, didn’t he? And you’re – you don’t deserve that – ”
“Keith, stop it – ”
“You’re too good for that, Lance.”
Calm down, Lance said.
But any pathetic semblance of calm, it fractures – ‘cause Lance is shaky, broken sea glass, and he always snaps and splinters and shatters.
“I hate you,” Lance suddenly chokes out, voice wet. “You won’t talk to our friends and you keep staring at me like you still want me and – you’re the worst, and you keep saying my name, you’re the worst – ” Something frosty and furious flares up in Lance’s voice, just for a second, a brief flicker of ice so cold it burns.
“Keith, you fucked me up, badly,” Lance rasps out, flashlight shining in his reddening eyes, and then he presses a haphazard kiss to Keith’s lips.
Somehow, it barely registers.
Keith, you fucked me up.
This isn’t true. Because Lance, Lance, Lance fucked Keith up, badly.
Sea glass snaps, storm clouds crackle, desert sand scatters, and Keith breaks.
Lance goes down easy when Keith pushes him. Keith spreads him out against half-made bed covers, and Lance even lets out this all-too-familiar gasp and it drives Keith crazy. The butterflies in his stomach are buzzing at a high, head-pounding frequency, flitting up into Keith’s ribs and tangling their gossamer wings in the ridges of his vertebrae, leaving insect parts and organs scattered and clinging to his bones.
Blue butterfly wings catch in Keith’s throat, his brain, his heart – and his body just isn’t gonna work properly, not anymore, never again. Not with flutterflies infesting his guts, not with bugs in his head.
Keith pulls Lance’s wrists high above his head, nudging friendship bracelets up and aside with his thumbs. He’s pressing down on each radial pulse to create one frantic, irregular heart rate. An arrhythmia that twitches and flinches against Keith’s grip, heartbeats fluttering in time with the hummingbird-flitter of Lance’s wet eyelashes, flared gold in the flashlight. Blue irises afire with artificial sunshine.
Lance’s shoulders shudder softly – a tiny little hiccup ripples out of his fragile throat, as though something went wrong with the oxygen in his lungs, as though there's brine flooding his trachea.
That hiccup gets stuck in Keith’s brain, grafted and glued inside his mind and making sure he can’t ever claw it out, no matter how hard he tries. “Lance?”
“‘M sorry,” Lance says again, with that goddamn little hiccup still clinging to his pitiful words.
Keith needs to bite down on his tongue to keep from shouting at Lance, shut the fuck up – and he counts down, ten-five-four-three-two-one ‘cause Shiro always says that Keith can be a temperamental fucker and sometimes he needs to take a good few seconds to calm his shit.
But Keith’s voice is still stained with a growl when he says, “Stop repeatin’ that.”
When Keith tightens his grip – almost bruisingly hard – Lance flinches, his wrists starting to strain against Keith’s hold. Keith loosens his hold immediately, but he keeps clutching at Lance’s wrists like he’s got no safety belt and he’s free-falling down a drop tower.
“Just keep going,” Lance grits out, his fingertips pawing at the back of Keith’s hands as he shifts his hips against Keith’s – it all makes Keith’s blood flare up with hot choking smoke, tastes like cotton candy blue and cigarette ash on his lips.
“Listen,” Keith tries, his voice quieter. “Lance, I’ll stop if you want me to – ” He starts to back away, but Lance wrenches his hands from Keith, throwing his arms around Keith’s shoulders and dragging him back down.
“No, wait, don't stop – !” Shiny yellow-blue eyes pleading, lips pursing and pouting. “Keith, please.”
“What do you – ” Maybe this is the wrong question, but it's direct and Lance needs to answer for his crimes, so Keith asks, his voice breaking, “What’d’you want from me, Lance?”
Lance huffs, suddenly pulled away from being totally shipwrecked into becoming the sea monster himself. “Convince me.” His voice is so close to being sob-ruined, though, and that fire in Keith’s stomach whirls dangerously. He’s not mad at Lance, necessarily, except he kind of is, but he’s mad at Lotor, too, and it makes his chest heave.
Keith grits his teeth. “Convince you to what?”
Lance looks him dead in the eye, lips chewed near-raw, eyebrows furrowed. “Why I shouldn't go runnin’ back to Lotor.” At Keith’s growl, Lance snorts. “See? You’re too – too fuckin’ fixated!”
“You said it yourself, he's an asshole, Lance, he hurt you,” Keith hisses – and it's fuckin’ obvious, isn't it? Lance knows that his shiny new fuckbuddy is a total tool, that’s why he’s here, that's the goddamn game he's playing with Keith, Lance can't not know, he's not dumb, even if he pretends he is, sometimes.
Lance says, “Well, w-well, I’m an asshole too, aren't I?”
Oh.
Okay then.
“You’re not,” Keith says, a dull rage sliding in between his teeth, making his mouth fill with static and bad word choice. “You keep talkin’ ‘bout – ‘bout Hunk being too good for you, ‘bout Hunk and Pidge – ” and somehow me “ – being too good, but, Lance, you're too good. Lotor doesn't deserve you.”
“Right,” Lance says, glancing at Keith through dark-as-night, long-as-light-years lashes. “Yeah? Y-you're not just sayin’ that?”
“I'm not just sayin’ that,” Keith whispers.
“That’s funny,” Lance snaps. “You’ve said t-that ‘bout a lot of people in my life, Keith, baby.”
Keith’s heartbeat damn near stops – his stomach’s shaking up and down his body and the length of his esophagus feels slick with sickness, like that time Shiro dared him to eat a whole pound of cotton candy and then dragged him onto the featured roller coaster of the amusement park.
So Keith really doesn't like amusement parks.
So Keith’s throat is very, very dry. “Have I?”
And then, of course, there's the outrage barely blazing in Lance’s eyes, shining in the glare of the flashlight – the kind of fire that's so hot it's blue, the kind of heat you find only in lightning and star plasma.
Another tone of thunder shakes the windows.
“You have,” Lance mumbles. “You – jealous jerk.”
The lights flicker on for half-second, illuminates Lance’s pink cheeks and angry eyes in full, for just a second, then it all shuts off again and there’s only flashlight orange reflected in sea-black irises.
“Fine,” Keith says numbly. “I am a jealous jerk. And I’ll convince you.”
“See, Keith,” Lance drawls, tilting his head back and letting yellow light shine across his throat, lets his hair shine gold against Keith’s too-gray bedsheets. “That’s an impossible task I gave you. Y’know, for the f-fun of watching you try and f-fail? But I’m tellin’ you right now, that no, you probably shouldn’t try, ‘cause it’s dumb and it’s bullshit and I’m sick of trying, too.” Lance thumbs the back of both of Keith’s hands, bitten nails scraping slightly along his flesh. “I mean, I guess you – you could try. But I guess you could fuck me, too. Or, like, just tell me what a – a horrible person I am. That’s fun. I guess you could do a lot of things.”
“I don’t get you,” Keith breathes.
“I’m kinda the w-worst,” Lance says. He’s not looking at Keith, gaze focused on the ceiling. “I shouldn’t’ve showed up, ‘cause I knew it’d fuck you up. But I wanted to, and I wanted to fuck you up, so I did.”
“Fine,” Keith says. “Fine.” His voice is all throat-sore and glass-shattered again, ‘cause maybe –
‘Cause maybe Keith just gives the fuck up, maybe he’s just gonna go ahead and stand outside in lightning storms with his broken blue umbrella, gonna take his safety restraints off these stupid, vomit-inducing amusement park rides.
“You’re the worst,” Keith snaps. “Lance, you’re the worst, you – you’re fuckin’ greedy and selfish, y-you asshole, and you left me alone, L-Lance, you left me alone and now Hunk and Allura won’t talk to me and I b-barely have the nerve to see Pidge anymore and you took apart my apartment and all I can think of is the empty, empty – t-the fuckin’ empty space you left me with!”
“Uh-huh,” Lance says, and it’s like he’s trying to be smug but god, that smile is so fake, so messily stitched-on with a shaky hand and fraying thread. “I’m the worst.” And his lips tremble and his thumbs stop caressing Keith’s hands.
“I’m the worst, too,” Keith finally breathes out, his chest drained of anger and his eyes stinging just the tiniest bit. His throat is wrecked and his heart is ruined even worse. Before Lance can turn his head to the side, Keith presses their foreheads together. “I’m a jealous fuck, I’m too fuckin’ possessive, I think I used to scare you sometimes.”
Lance blinks, stunned. “Keith – ”
“And sometimes I loved it when you were greedy,” Keith continues, because he’s actually throwing sanity off the train car right now, killing it off with velocity and inertia and leaving its corpse to rot beside the tracks. “You know that? I liked it, I liked it when you took and took and took ‘cause I loved being the only one you wanted to take from, I liked it, and – ”
He chuckles roughly, presses an all-too gentle kiss against Lance’s forehead, feels soft skin flinch minutely against his lips. “I don't like it anymore, but you’re only happy when you have everything and I’m only happy when you are.”
Lance takes a shivery little breath. “Keith?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m gonna be greedy again, just one more time. Last – l-last time, I promise.”
And Keith can only say, “Yeah, okay.”
Lance bites his lip, eyes fragile, heartbeat still thrumming so fast beneath Keith’s thumbs.
“Kiss me,” Lance murmurs. “Fuck me, fuck me up.” Fragility disappears like a switch has been flipped, and Lance’s eyes start gleaming again, with cold, desperate, blue-blue-blue mania. “Gimme what I want, Keith.”
And Keith can only do exactly what Lance asks for.