Chapter Text
The city looked different from above. It was much quieter, much cleaner. Much colder. While the distance acted a lot in softening the sharp corners, the grime, and the imperfections, it also erased away most of what made it welcoming—street art and picnic tables and colorful playgrounds and people. Lance had always enjoyed driving up to the hills for the pleasure of watching this contrast, the slow change from micro to macro, like adjusting the scale on a map or zooming out on a camera equipped with good lenses. However, he had recently found a new reason to be passionate about the place aside from the sightseeing.
“Lance?” the reason called, laid down on the reclined passenger seat. They had come straight from Keith’s shift at work and, although he had changed out of his uniform, he still had a faint scent of motor oil to him. Lance was embarrassed to admit he had grown to sort of like it—if not the smell itself, then the familiarity of it, the knowledge that this was what Keith smelled like. The cut on his hand had finished scabbing a couple of days before, the angry red line turned slightly less angry and less red, but to prevent picking, Lance had insisted that he continued bandaging up until the new skin formed, so today his finger was decorated with cartoony lightsabers of assorted colors. The day before, Lance had heard Keith speaking with Pidge and saying, in a mildly disappointed tone, I don’t think it’ll scar . “Would you teach me how to swim?” he asked softly.
For a second, Lance didn’t believe his ears. He raised his eyes from the equations on the book on his lap, and when he turned to the side, Keith was still staring up at the car’s ceiling. But then, as quietly as before, he added, “I don’t want to be afraid anymore.” He propped his head up on his hand and looked over. “And I would like it to be with you.”
Heart beating on his throat, Lance reached for the ignition even before answering. This was not a request he was willing to overlook. As he began backing up the car, Keith sat up and frantically tried to bring his backrest back upright.
“Where are we going?”
“Swimming.”
“I...” Keith held back a smile. Lance was watching him through the rearview mirror and thought that he had never looked as beautiful as he did right then. “I didn’t mean right now.”
“It’s how that saying goes; better now than never.”
“It’s better late than never, Lance.” Always that word on his mouth—Lance.
Lance shrugged. “I like my version more.” The car had been speeding in his usual style, cold air roaring in through the open gaps in the windows, but it suddenly dropped down its rotations, Lance shifting back two gears. “Sorry, this is stupid. It’s eight P.M. on a weekday, what the fuck do I think I’m doing?”
“No.” Keith put a reassuring albeit shaky hand on his knee. “Let’s go.”
Lance didn’t realize he was smiling until he saw his own reflection in the mirror. “Let’s go, then.” He stepped on the gas pedal again.
The sports complex was a huddled assortment of installations set on the farther edge of campus, usually inhabited on either end of a scale from deserted to overflowing. The open stadium was the obvious crown jewel—a large, evergreen field routinely mowed and repainted with lines for American football, soccer, and field hockey—but most types of physical activity could be practiced on campus in some place or another. The lights shone onto the empty stadium, the tsk-tsk-tsk of the sprinklers just barely audible, but Lance took a turn away from it and parked the car by a hangar-like building.
To fill the silence, he threw and catch a keyring which he had somehow obtained after tapping at a window on the female dormitory’s first floor. Keith looked like he wanted to interrogate him about that, but he had become progressively quieter the closer they had gotten to campus and seemed to have taken upon himself the mission of watching their surroundings very attentively. It made Lance more nervous and it made them look considerably less inconspicuous, but he reckoned it would be useful in case anyone did spot them.
After two failed attempts, Lance found the correct key to the front door and the click of the lock sent a rush of adrenaline coursing through him. He ushered Keith into the cavernous dark and relocked the door behind them. While he felt at the walls, looking for the switch panel, Keith’s hand met his wrist, and he flipped up the switch right as they laced fingers. Rows upon rows of fluorescent lights came on and Keith squinted at the sudden clarity, raising an arm to cover his eyes, and for the second time that night, Lance felt an overwhelming fondness at his sheer existence.
Hand in hand, they walked to the edge of the pool, and Keith’s gaze followed the diving platform up to the 33 ft in red paint at the top.
“We’re not wearing swimming shorts,” he realized.
“Swimming shorts are a scam,” responded Lance, trying not to reveal that he was also second-guessing his plan.
“Lance,” Keith said, through gritted teeth, “I’m not skinny-dipping in your college’s pool.”
“Oh my god.” Lance chuckled. “I’m not suggesting that.” He gestured to Keith’s lower half. “Just keep your underwear on.”
Carefully and robotically, Lance began taking off his shoes—laces still untied, like his mother used to berate him for—, shrugged off his jacket, and set them both on the empty bleachers. He was pulling his shirt over his head when he heard the jingle of a belt buckle being opened, and, for some reason, this sound was what cemented what they were about to do. Giving himself no more time to think, he dove into the water, and the temperature shock of the cold water was like getting zapped by electricity.
“It’s pretty cool when you do that,” Keith said, standing half-clothed by the edge of the pool. “Do you think I could do it?”
“I think you could do anything,” answered Lance, and his own corniness made him wince. “But let’s start with baby steps, okay? Come on in.”
He turned around, unsure if Keith’s coyness was born from fear or embarrassment, and soon enough he heard the splash of his klutzy jump into the pool. Lance didn’t want to appear worried, he knew Keith would never forgive him for coddling him, but the story Keith had told him about nearly drowning wouldn’t leave the back of his mind. There were about six feet of space between them, but Lance had to remind himself that, for the time being, they were teacher and student—and still a not inconsiderable part of him wanted to come closer and run his fingers through Keith’s wet hair.
Lance clapped and the sound reverberated so loudly that it felt like the whole campus now knew they were there.
“Well, let’s get started.”
All of his anxiety and all of his other thoughts vanished like in a magic trick. This was easy, this was familiar. As he taught Keith to float— “just keep your head above the water,” he instructed—the memories of having done that before rushed in. Firstly, his sister Raquel, barely four years younger than him, and the fear of something bad happening to her. The tide had been higher than usual, the ocean slightly angry looking, but she quickly showed herself to be the kind of student that surpasses their teacher. Not much later came his two nephews, Silvio perched on his back in fear as Luis helped Nadia. It had taken all of Lance’s child psychology skills to get him to simply stand in the deeper water. And, of course, all of his students from his summers in Varadero, the tourists and the locals, and the permanent spot that their Spanglish chatter occupied in his memories.
“You’re doing good,” complimented Lance.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“That’s kind of the point.” Lance waved around the hands he had positioned under Keith’s body in case he sank suddenly, but he was being an A+ student so far. “You’re doing good,” he repeated.
“I feel a little stupid.”
For a while now, Lance had been taking in Keith in small increments—his voice, his posture, his (gradually less) rare laugh—but soon that had stopped being enough. Taking advantage of Keith’s closed eyes, he spared a moment to unabashedly study him. His eyelashes were long and dark and his eyebrows sat naturally in a furrowed position and he had a slight widow’s peak when his hair was brushed back. His satiny skin was decorated by an assortment of small, faded scars—under the chin, down his right cheek, hidden by the tail of an eyebrow—but none of them quite as interesting as the one under his lip, round and sunken like a healed-up piercing hole. Lance committed all of this to memory. He wanted Keith’s image to be as clear as possible in his mind.
He wanted to tell him how pretty he was.
“You look a little stupid, so it’s fine.”
Keith opened his eyes for the sole purpose of rolling them at Lance.
“For how long do I have to do this?”
“Until you feel comfortable. Safe in the water.”
“Okay.” Keith stirred a bit, kicking up some water while trying to regain his balance. Lance ought to teach him how to do egg beaters next. “But I feel safe because you’re here, how do I know I’m good to go on my own?”
“I could step back and you can try a stroke,” Lance suggested, doing so. He waited for Keith to return to the upright position and mimicked a freestyle stroke, pointing out specifically when he should turn his head to breathe. Then, he swam a few feet towards the middle of the pool, his form pristine. “Come on. If at any point you start panicking, just go into the floating position and I’ll come get you, okay?”
In a splash of water, Keith attempted his first few strokes. His arms were not nearly extended enough and Lance could see he was barely moving his legs, yet it was an immense step forward from sinking to the bottom of a pool. When he stopped and realized Lance was right in front of him, he gasped and looked back at the edge from where he had come.
“I did it! That was kind of a swim, right?”
Lance smiled. He knew how much inner strength it took to conquer a fear like that, and he couldn’t be happier that Keith had asked him for help with his. “Dude, that was definitely a swim. You’re practically a pro already.”
“Well...I had a pretty good teacher. I can see now how you made the fortune that got you stopped at TSA.” With a giggle, Keith ruffled Lance’s hair. He probably looked the most excited Lance had seen him in a while. “Thanks, Lance.”
“It was my pleasure.” Lance swallowed hard. “Maybe...someday I could take you to visit the place where I learned to swim.”
“Lance McClain, are you inviting me to go to Cuba?”
He shrugged. He wanted to take a gulp of pool water, his mouth was so dry. “It’s a great place, I think you’d love it.”
“Would you take me to see...Varadero?”
Lance wanted to scream at the way he had purposefully rolled the Rs to match Lance’s pronunciation. “Varadero, Havana, Cárdenas...I would take you anywhere you wanted.”
In a fraction of a second, Keith’s eyebrows went up then down and came back to their neutral position. Some of the water droplets running down his face made it seem like he was crying but his eyes couldn’t look brighter.
“You just...say shit sometimes, don’t you?” he joked, and no matter how much this could be misconstrued by someone less acquainted, Lance didn’t, because he had caught the hint of awe in his voice. Keith’s preferred language was subtlety, harder to navigate but much more rewarding to learn. He clicked his tongue. “Anywhere?”
Lance shivered, although he could not say for sure it had to do with the chilly water. In fact, his body felt burning in comparison. “Just not somewhere too cold,” he joked back.
“My apartment?”
“Your—” he choked. He ought to have misheard it. “Your apartment? What, like, now?”
A flush covered Keith’s face and chest, yet he didn’t look one bit embarrassed. “Yeah. I have a dryer and we wouldn’t have to sneak into anywhere. And you could say hello to Cosmo.”
The corners of Lance’s mouth twitched. “Cosmo? Not Dog?”
“He refused to answer to Dog,” Keith explained, which was only partially true.
“He’s a man of refined tastes. Of course he didn’t answer to Dog.”
Keith scoffed. “He was literally looking through the trash behind Marmora’s before I scared him and he ran into the middle of the street.”
“Well, have you not watched Ratatouille? That little guy was making five-star meals with trash.”
He shook his head absentmindedly. “I don’t think I have, actually.”
“Please tell me you’re kidding.” Keith started laughing. “Oh, thank god. I was about to get real angry at you. A preference for plain toast and never having seen Ratatouille?”
“The toast thing really messed you up, huh?”
“It’s...abhorrent, honestly.”
“Then pray tell me, Mr. McClain, how do you like your toast?”
If Keith’s preferred language was subtlety, then all he had to do to fully destabilize Lance was use words. It was pathetic how effective it was, and even if it seemed like he was doing it on purpose, Lance thought that he didn’t really know how hard it hit every single time.
“Is this flirting talk?” he asked, sheepish, unsure if it was even possible for him to have misread the room this badly. The speed of his heartbeat was mildly concerning.
“Only if it’s working.”
There were so many things that Lance thought about doing at once that his mind went completely blank.
“If you swim back to that wall,” he said, “we can go to your place and I’ll tell you how I like my breakfast.”
Keith’s swim still had the dexterity of a four-year-old stuck in a six feet tall body, but he shone a proud smile at Lance when he tapped the edge of the pool.
Lance wanted to tell him how pretty he was. He wanted he wanted he wanted.
Fortunately, he already knew his way to Keith’s house.
When Keith walked out of the bathroom, towel thrown over his head to dry his hair, he didn’t find Lance in the bedroom where he had left him. His heart skipped a beat, incredulous that he would have simply walked out, but before he could properly spiral, he heard cooing noises coming from the living room. On the tip of his toes, Keith walked over and peeked around the corner of the hallway.
Lying stomach-down on the floor, surrounded by the toys Keith had bought, Lance attempted to charm Cosmo, making grabby hands at him and calling him over in a high-pitched voice. The dog, although entertained, his tail wagging fast, seemed to be more confused by Lance than anything else. He would run a lap or two around him before lunging forward to smell him or nibble at his fingers—Keith was trying his hardest to teach him not to bite, but they both looked so happy that he couldn’t bring himself to protest.
Cosmo spotted him lurking first. In a happy trot, he evaded the trap of Lance’s hands and sat at Keith’s feet. He yelped, his eyes big, and Keith lowered himself to pick him up. Dog snug inside his arms and against his chest, he stepped fully into the room and made himself known to Lance.
“I’m sorry to spoil your fun.”
“It’s okay.” Lance rolled to his back and smiled at Keith. “His teeth are like razor sharp.”
“I found one stuck on my socks the other day.” Keith sat on the couch, Lance on the floor in front of him. After scratching Cosmo’s chin, he balanced him on Lance’s stomach. “Cosmo, sit. Come on, sit.” The dog laid down, claws getting caught in Lance’s shirt, and Keith wasn’t sure if he was supposed to praise him for it or not. Before he could decide, Lance buried his fingers in the thick fur of Cosmo’s back.
“Good boy. Yes, good boy. Very good sit.”
Resigned at his location and happy for the attention, Cosmo lowered his head and closed his eyes.
“Could you imagine,” Keith asked in a low voice, “falling asleep this easy?”
Combing Cosmo’s fur diligently, Lance looked up. “You slept pretty well in my room.” There was room for smugness or lewdness in these words, but he refused to cheapen them by doing so.
Keith attempted to find a way to describe the expression which Lance wore on his face, but the only word that came to mind was “adoring” and he was pretty sure that this was just his own feelings seeping in.
“Well, I had Señor to keep me company then,” he joked, the only way he knew how to ease familiarity back at their conversations.
“He is a pretty good sleep companion; I’ll have to admit. Did I ever thank you for winning him for me?”
“I think you did, yeah.”
“Just in the case that I haven’t: thank you, Keith. That was really nice of you.” Lance looked like he was going to say more, however, all that came out of his mouth was a sudden laugh. “I’m sorry, it’s just that you look like a nun.”
Raising a hand to his head, Keith remembered the towel draped over his hair. “Oh, right.”
With one last vigorous rub for good measure, he got up and set it to dry on the backrest of a chair. Immediately upon hearing Keith’s steps on the floor, Cosmo abandoned his spot on Lance’s stomach to follow him closely along the five steps in and out of the kitchen. Keith clicked his tongue in annoyance; however, his tone was tender when he spoke.
“I’m not going anywhere, buddy. You don’t have to follow me around all day.”
Cosmo barked, as if arguing in response—“yes, I do”—and turned back to lie on the bed Keith had improvised out of old clothes and a pillowcase.
Standing over Lance, Keith asked, “Are you just going to stay there?”
“I suppose I could get up if you helped me,” answered Lance, reaching up with both arms.
With an eye roll, Keith grasped his hands. “You’re impossible, did you know that?” he asked, with the same gentle voice he had used to reprimand Cosmo. The very tips of his fingers were right on the soft spot of Lance’s wrists, and he had the brief impression of feeling the delicate pound of his heartbeat when Lance smiled and he realized he had walked directly into a trap.
Quickly and with force, Lance pulled him down and swiped one of his legs, and Keith had no option but to crash on top of him in a confusion of lanky limbs. He laid there for a second, chest-to-chest in a near embrace, before rolling to the side. Failing to refrain himself from a breathless laugh, he nudged Lance’s shoulder with his.
“What the fuck, Lance? How did you learn to do this?” he asked, turning to face the boy keeping him company on the floor.
“I have four siblings,” responded Lance courtly. He looked amused, but he hadn’t laughed, and when Keith met his gaze, he still had the same doting expression as before.
Blue eyes enthralled, Lance reached for him and Keith froze. He kept still, afraid to disturb the almost religious care with which Lance traced the outlines of his face—the high of his flustered cheekbones; the low arch of his brow; the tense line of his jaw; the bump in the bridge of his nose, broken in a fight at age nine. The seam of his chapped lips. Keith sucked in a sharp breath, eliciting a tug at the corners of Lance’s mouth.
“I...” Lance started, this half-smile on his expression, but rather than finishing his train of thought, he just ran the pad of his thumb along Keith’s bottom lip again.
“Do my ears deceive me?” asked Keith, the gentlest graze of Lance’s touch still resonating against his skin. “Or is Lance McClain speechless?”
“Yeah, I...that’s just...you.” Lance took a deep breath. “It’s what you do to me.”
There was something trapped in Keith’s chest begging to be set free. “You can borrow some of my words then.” Inching closer, he cupped Lance’s jaw. “I really like you, Lance.”
“ God. ” Keith saw Lance’s Adam’s apple bob up and down, then brought his eyes back up. Neither of them remembered moving, but they were almost nose to nose now. It would only take one small movement. Yet, Lance still took a second to ask, “Can I?”
Then and there, it was impossible to imagine that the answer could have been any different. “Yes,” Keith responded emphatically, the flutter inside of him bubbling out in a laugh. Breaching the distance, he kissed the laughter into Lance’s mouth.
Softly, almost tentatively—lips touching more than kissing in earnest. Hesitation, born not from fear but sweet, unbelieving shock. A second went by like this, the two of them trapped in this puerile show of affection until a hand freed itself to travel to the back of a neck. Suddenly, they were very close, closer than it felt possible. The entire world was teeth clashing, shared breaths. There hadn’t been a time before this, before the meeting of their mouths, and there might not be one after.
Lance pulled away gently, their foreheads touching, his fingers still entwined in Keith’s hair.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
Keith couldn’t understand how he had found enough air to speak. Moving back just enough so that he could properly look Lance in the eyes, he nodded.
“I like having fruit,” said Lance, unprompted.
Keith was afraid that he had lost some part of the conversation in his haze. His chest rose and fell in a dangerous staccato. “What?”
“My breakfast.” He ran his fingers tenderly through the hair on the nape of Keith’s neck as he spoke, which made it very hard for him to focus on the conversation at hand. “I like having fruit,” Lance repeated, “or like bread with some jam. Cereal’s also good. And black coffee. No sugar.”
Keith tried to fight back a giggle and lost. Being with Lance made him want to laugh all the time, and he found himself giving in more and more to that inclination. Why should he fight happiness? “Noted.” He lifted Lance’s chin with a hooked finger. “Can I kiss you again now?”
“Please.”
There was no tentativeness left. There was only this, them. Keith’s hand up against Lance’s chest, the heartbeat right below his fingers, the certainty of knowing he was truly there. Lance laying under him, the body hovering above commanding him to buck up or bring him down closer, or both. A hand slipping inside a t-shirt on accident, thumb near hipbone, laughter from the contact of cold to warm skin.
Kissing Lance was oneiric. Keith couldn’t find any other words to describe it—it felt akin to his wildest dreams, incredible and overwhelming, the ones from which he’d wake up with a racing heart. It was like drowning, like his ever-present desire to watch the world from the bottom of a pool, the first gulp of air-turned-water once you can no longer hold your breath. It was too much of everything at once—the contrast of hard tile floor and supple flesh, their clothes still dampish from the dryer, the reassuring caress on the small of Keith’s back, the whine from the back of Lance’s throat, the parts of their bodies touching ever-so-slightly—lips, teeth, hands.
If this was a dream, he didn’t want to wake up.