Chapter Text
Keith, seated on the edge of his bed, crosses his arms and his legs, tilts his head at a speculative angle, and gives Lance a look. The room isn’t very bright, which Lance would make fun of if he was feeling a little better -- what, you live in a cave now, wolfman? -- but he just can’t find it in himself to try. And the dim lighting gives an added effect to Keith’s glower, already unfairly enhanced by his shaggy bangs.
“A favor?” he asks. “Lance, you’ve barely spoken to me in weeks! Now you --”
“Hey now. Bonds brought on by mutual life saving have an expiration date? You can’t just do a dude a favor even if he hasn’t chatted you up in a teeny little while?”
“No,” Keith growls out, “there’s no expiration date, Lance. But --”
“C’mon,” Lance wheedles, ducking his head to examine his cuticles. They need work. Pidge really was right -- his usual self-care regimen has gone all to shit lately. Lance should probably work on that. For now, he runs his thumb over the slightly ragged edges of his nails, hiding the way his face twists. He says, “Don’t be like that.”
“Don’t you be like this, Lance!”
Lance falls silent.
Because that -- that was fair, and so was Keith’s tone. Aggravated and hurt, frustrated and worried. Lance clenches his teeth, digs his thumb in a little harder, and tries not to think about how much he hates this. Keith is his friend, yes, but he’s -- Lance doesn’t want for Keith to see him broken like this. Doesn’t want Keith of all people to see how weak he’s become, how lost.
The silence between them grows legs, and fur, and teeth, and becomes a cosmic space wolf slipping lithely from behind Keith’s back to the floor. Cosmo prowls close to Lance, presses his face against Lance’s hip, and whines, ears tilted back and sideways in apparent dismay. “Hey, buddy,” Lance says, voice so low it’s barely a sound at all. “I see you haven’t eaten Keith, yet.”
From the bed there comes a sigh.
Then, “Lance. Pet my awesome space wolf.”
Lance does, dropping his hand and rifling his fingers through Cosmo’s awesome, slightly electric feeling ruff. He says, “Only because your space wolf is indeed awesome and not because you told me to. I still can’t believe you’re withholding favors. We saved Earth together, dude.”
“I’m not --”
The way Keith forcibly cuts himself off is kind of hysterical, but worrisome. Mostly because if Lance can’t keep him distracted with aggravation and rage then he might see, he might notice, and Lance knew it, he knew this was a bad idea. He hasn’t slept more than a few hours here and there in a week, hasn’t slept at all in two days, and he actually desperately needs a shower, and --
And --
Keith is up from the bed, at Lance’s side before he can even startle.
A cosmic wolf bookends Lance on the left, a sullen lone wolf bookends him on the right. He’s trapped, and before his breath can finish catching in his chest Lance already has one hand back behind him, groping blinding for the manual switch that will open the door, release him, let him run.
“Lance,” Keith says, obviously pained.
“Sorry,” Lance forces out, and it -- it sounds wrecked. Awful. Entirely too truthful.
Lance doesn’t want to fucking do this again.
He’s so stupid. Why did he come here? He could have -- he should have texted. He has Keith’s number, he could have just sent a few messages and been safe, far from here, far from opening himself up to yet another set of eyes, another pair of hands to pry him open that little bit further, to force him to spew out the hate and pain and self-pity that’s been stagnating inside him for weeks -- for longer -- for --
Keith snaps, “Cosmo.”
A gentle, fanged mouth grips Lance’s hand and then there’s a -- a bleep -- a moment where Lance dissolves into cold and stars and eternity, and then he’s whole and real and in Keith’s bed, cosmic fucking wolf laid out on his chest and pinning him flat on his back. What the --
“Unfair advantage!”
“Like I care,” Keith says, deadpan. He appears in Lance’s vision, arms still folded over his chest, face still set in a scowl. A default expression, like resting “I’ll murder you and all you love” face. But he says, “Jesus, Lance. I’m worried. We’re all worried, and you -- you seriously, seriously need to sleep. I know what you look like sleep-deprived, and you’re like, three hours out from wearing your pants on your head and trying to teach Coran how to do aerial yoga again.”
Lance squints at him in betrayal, says, “We promised to never speak of that!” but inside he’s --
He’s breaking again.
Funny how powerful kindness is, he thinks. How a single warm touch of it is enough to shatter a whole barrier, all the defenses Lance had tried to pull around him, all the casual distance and glib responses. He hadn’t wanted Keith to see it, to see his twisted insides, and Keith still hasn’t seen it yet, but apparently he doesn’t need to -- he can see the superficial bruising well enough to guess.
Shame licks up Lance’s spine, twisting it; shame and fear and brutal, agonizing grief.
Because there may be a part of Lance that hates Keith a little for going to save Shiro and failing Kuron instead. And because there may be a part of Lance, too, that desperately wants to beg Keith to fix it, to fix all of this, to find a way to make it okay, because he’s the Black Paladin and their leader and he’s always managed to pull off the impossible before, but this --
There is no fixing this.
Lance feels too many complicated things, and they’re all a snarl in his chest. He didn’t unspool in the halls but that’s because he’s tangled up inside, a vicious knot impossible to unpick. He never should have come here. He never should have faced Keith, he’s not brave enough or strong enough to withstand this, he --
Just breathe.
It might be weakness, but Lance imagines, just for a moment -- just for now, when he needs it so badly -- that he’s in one of the training rooms on the castleship, before everything went to shit. He imagines lining up his rifle to take the shot, and Kuron at his back, steady and patient, murmuring, “Just breathe, Lance. You’ve got this.” with absolute, unshakable certainty.
It doesn’t help as much as he wants it to, but it helps a little.
Clears darkness from the edge of his vision, lets him draw in breath in a way that isn’t quite knife-sharp agony. Lets him hear Keith as he says, “Cosmo’s going to sit on you until you get at least four hours of sleep. Come find me when you wake up, then we’ll talk about this favor. Okay?”
“What? No, no Keith, just let me --”
Another sigh -- aggravated on the edges, concerned all the way through its core -- and then Keith’s gloved hand is hesitantly resting across Lance’s brow, covering Lance’s eyes. “Please. Just -- sleep, Lance. You’ll feel better.”
A bitter, choked up laugh tries to emerge at that -- you’ll feel better -- as though Lance hasn’t been trying and trying and trying, as if sleep is a magical cure-all that can end pain and suffering. Maybe, maybe if he slept a thousand years, lost to dreams and memories, maybe then, but --
Cosmo’s weight keeps the laugh trapped; all that emerges is a faint wheeze.
Keith’s hand is warm, uncertain but willing to try, to try and be here for Lance, who is busted up and broken and Keith doesn’t even know why, or how, but he’s trying anyway, and fuck, fuck Lance has some really good friends, has a family that loves him, that cares, that will do anything they can to help, in whatever little way possible, and it -- fuck, it --
The shame is still licking up along his spine, saturating him. But he’s dealt with worse.
“Okay,” Lance says, and turns his head away.
Keith’s hand disappears with the motion but the warmth of it still lingers, the sentiment. “Great,” he says, voice gruff. “Pet Cosmo if you have trouble drifting off. It’s, uh. Really soothing.” And then Lance listens to him stride across the room, the door opening, shutting, Lance alone in a strange bed with an alien wolf on his chest, warm and heavy.
“Yeah,” Lance sighs. “All right, sure. Why not.”
He pets Cosmo because it is soothing, and the repetitive nature of the act helps keep him from thinking of anything too deeply. But he doesn’t expect to fall asleep. He hadn’t fallen asleep last night with Hunk, warm and wrapped up and exhausted from crying, so why would --
* * *
Lance sleeps for six hours.
When he wakes, he feels like shit. Clammy with half-dried sweat, a horrible taste in his mouth, gunk in the corners of his eyes. He’s exhausted straight through, body aching with it, and he groans as he forces himself upright. “Here,” says Keith, and presses a cool glass against the side of Lance’s hand.
It hadn’t been a slow progression. Lance had just -- suddenly been wide awake, achingly sober, even with his eyes shut tight and his brain soft from forgotten dreaming. He takes a moment to settle, still reeling a little, like he’s trying to catch up to himself, trying to realign with the shape of who and what he is, how he feels.
Doesn’t take long -- he feels like shit, and sad, and like a thousand showers wouldn’t be enough to wash him clean. But he doesn’t feel quite as fragile. The sleep had helped, even if he doesn’t feel better, exactly.
Keith nudges insistently at his hand again, so Lance takes the glass. Without opening his eyes Lance sips at the water, tepid and metallic, but better than the cottony murk his mouth had been.
“Thanks,” he croaks when he’s done.
Keith takes it back carefully, sets it aside with a gentle thunk. “No problem. It’s just after nineteen hundred, by the way. Do you need to call anyone?”
Shaking his head, Lance slowly opens his eyes, keeping his gaze down on his fingers, the knuckles tight where they’re grasping Keith’s bed spread. Sometime during his nap, Keith had tucked him in. Jesus. “No,” he says, a second later. “No, it’s fine. It -- thanks, dude. For the nap. You were right, I kind of needed that.”
“Mm. You still look like hell.”
Lance snorts, rolls his eyes. “Annnd thanks for that, too, I guess. So kind.”
“Any time,” Keith says, in that perfectly deadpan, dry way he has that makes Lance crack up, now, when once long ago it would have sent him into a spitting rage. With a sigh, Lance drags himself up and back, to rest against the headboard. Keith mirrors him, climbing in to sit cross legged at the foot of the bed, facing him.
“So,” says Lance.
Keith quirks his eyebrows, as if in question. But what he says is, “Is this about… Kuron?”
Lance has to blink, because when he came up with this plan it was mostly just find Keith, tell him to keep an eye out for Shiro in the next few days, get the fuck back home and eat a tub of ice cream and also all your feelings -- there wasn’t much else, to be honest.
Lance is trying.
Apparently, that doesn’t mean he’s adept at it.
“No,” he answers, a little stilted. “It’s -- Shiro. About the -- the real Shiro.”
Slowly, Keith replies: “I think, at this point, we can all just agree that -- that Shiro is Shiro. And Kuron was… Kuron.”
Huh.
Lance really hadn’t expected that, but maybe he should have. He finds that he’s rubbing at his chest, like his heart really is just a muscle, and it’s cramped up and if he can just massage it right it’ll relax, ease up. Keith’s watching the motion of his fingers with a pinched mouth, belligerent as always in his concern. Lance asks, “Have you been talking to Pidge?”
“A little,” Keith admits with a flickering gaze, up then back, tracking Lance’s insistent fingers. “I don’t -- hm.”
“...You don’t…?”
Pensive, Keith shakes his head. But he is trying, too, it seems, even if he’s not any good at it either. And so Keith also says, “I don’t know that -- that I can ever understand. Not like the rest of you. I -- I tried so hard to get Shiro back, every time. But when he was there -- when Kuron was there -- I wasn’t, not really. Not for long. So I didn’t -- I didn’t have the same experience. The same disconnect all of you had, when Shiro really did come back.”
When Kuron didn’t.
It echoes through him, scraping against every vulnerable, defenseless place inside of him. Lance has to swallow, and it hurts and is too difficult, because there is -- so much. So much to say to that, so many things, but also nothing at all. Because Keith is right -- he doesn’t know. He wasn’t there. He --
Keith says, grimly determined: “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. For a lot of reasons, but also for -- for this. For not knowing Kuron like you did. Not knowing what you’re going through. I’m... I’m sorry I don’t understand. But I’ll try and -- and be understanding anyway. So if you -- uh. If you need to talk, or anything. If I can help, I’ll --”
And Lance can’t help it, he --
He laughs.