Archive of Our Own

Give me, your eyes

I need the sunshine

Life goes on. Though, he doesn’t really know when his life turned into this.

He misses his family, like splinters in his fingers, toothpicks in his heart every time they cross his mind (which is less than he’d like to admit, nowadays, though he tries not to think about them too much anyway). He tries to think positively. He tries to keep his head above the water, and the team helps with it, too, sometimes. When they can. (The tears alone in his room at night and the aching in his heart are for him only, solitary and meant only for the dark, not to be seen.)

Keith is strong, in that way. He never really shows that kind of weakness, not outwardly like Lance does sometimes.

(It’s just that the blue of that one planet in that one solar system they saw is so much like the blue of the ocean, and he just couldn’t help the tears that sprung to his eyes for the sheer yearning of it.)

And Keith doesn’t seem to feel as intensely as him. Or maybe he feels even harder and Lance is just oblivious. But Lance doesn’t often catch him staring at the stars and thinking of home, or maybe Lance does and he just doesn’t realize it--Keith is an anomaly, he likes to think. Keith doesn’t count.

God, if he could just see them. If he could just know that they’re okay, that they’re alive, that they miss him as much as he misses them.

He likes to think they’d be proud. He’s a lot different of a person than he was back then, that night they found Shiro. So much has happened. The little differences in character pop up from time-to-time, the way he thinks about things, the way he talks to someone, the way he listens now. Different for the better? Maybe.

You know, he was never really good with change.

.

He gets sick one night.

Wakes up with his tee-shirt clinging to his back, hot and cold, dizzy and panicking. He feels like he’s choking. Someone is screaming, broken, ugly cries that burst thick in the air.

He realizes it’s him when Keith rushes through his door like some kind of police officer, like some sort of rescue. And Lance can’t help the immense relief he feels that Keith is real, that Keith is here.

Lance feels his skin burning. Keith comes up next to him, sits on his bed, holds his arms and asks if he’s okay, if he’s alright, tells him to talk, to breathe.

Lance starts to cry. Because it was his family, they were… he doesn’t know, but they weren’t okay, and it…

Keith holds him close for a long while. Lance feels his lips curl as he sobs silently, presses his overly-hot forehead into the junction between Keith’s shoulder and neck and weeps.

Coran comes and Lance falls asleep in the medical bay on a cool table with Keith’s hand on his arm and those indigo eyes, deep like the sea, like life in the water, like the hazy purple sunset over the ocean.

.

He’s better in the next few days, and they never talk about it. About the dream, about what was so horrible. Keith doesn’t want to know, Lance guesses. Or maybe he just doesn’t know how to ask.

He really does try not to think about his family or talk about them, from that night on. It just hurts too much, he finds, and although it makes him feel like the worst scum in the galaxy for actively trying to push the happy times away (his mother’s smile and his sister’s gentle voice, his nieces and nephews and his family) he knows that he has to. He knows that it’s really better if he does. Not to forget, just to—to put away. To store until he has the time, the days to be fragile like that, to miss them. To wish that he could hug them one last time.

Maybe he’s going to die up here. It’s a possibility—he guesses that he’s come to terms with it as much as he can. He stands at a castle window in the middle of the night and his heart stutters.

Because--

Well. It’s not every day you come to realize something like that.

.

If he were to pinpoint it to a single day, he would guess it all changed the day that Keith fell. Although, looking back, nothing was really set in stone before that, so how could it have changed?

Lance isn’t sure how these things work.

Really, it wasn’t even that far of a fall, eight or nine feet at most. But the universe just seemed to stop in that moment, that split-second that the ball of Keith’s foot pivoted on the edge, that fragment of a moment that his eyes widened and his hands reached out.

Lance had been too slow, then.

He couldn’t tear his eyes away. Purple met blue, Keith held his gaze with panicked eyes, Lance’s heart stopped beating. His soul split.

Keith hit the ground with a sick slap, his helmet cracked, Lance might have yelled but they all yelled, so he couldn’t tell.

Limp and lifeless, Lance would have really rather seen the bags under those open indigo eyes than not see them at all through the spiderwebbing glass of a cracked visor..

Pidge held his hand tightly as they stared at the pod hours later, at his bruised face and his too-still hands. His fingers were curled slightly, lips parted, feet bare. The calluses on his palms were visible from the angle that Lance sat. Those were pilots hands, Lance realized, those calloused thumbs and those too-short fingernails were meant to fly.

Keith was meant to fly.

Lance, though? He’s…

He’s never really been sure, to be completely honest.

And right now, it seems like he’s in a very wrong place.

.

They didn’t speak to each other for a week after that.

Keith would come up and open his mouth, and Lance would bolt.

And, yes, he was still totally freaked out from what was a very traumatic moment, but it’s not that he couldn’t take it, it’s that he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to know that it was okay that he was too slow, that he didn’t reach out in time. He didn’t want to know that it wasn’t his fault. That these things happen.

Because admitting that things like these happen is just giving the universe more power to make them happen, he thinks. In some backwards way, it makes sense. And considering that a lot of things don’t seem to make sense nowadays, well.

He’ll hold on to what he can get.

.

“I think you should get some rest,” Pidge had told him that night.

Lance had nodded, for the sake of playing along. They should all get some rest, he agreed, but it’s not like that was really going to happen. Pidge would play video games, Allura would comb through files and folders of dignitary-esque nature, Hunk would think, Lance would stare at his wall, until their eyes blurred, until their muscles cramped and their heads throbbed, until they all wound up back here regardless. So they stay in the medical bay, unrested but at least together.

At least.

But in the aftermath of such a strenuous mission, both physically and emotionally, they’re bound to pass out. First goes Pidge, then Allura, curled up in chairs that they pushed into the med bay hours before, eyes closed and faces serene for the time being. Lance is the last to go, still staring at that stupid cryopod, that stupid boy in the cryopod.

Keith had said his name. As he fell.

“Lance!”

And now that’s all Lance could hear, that echo, that faith, that desperate trust, vocal infliction, and it echoes in his head even long after the mission has burnt.

Keith’s wide eyes, his hand, reaching out —

“Lance!”

And his name is yelled. All the time, his name is yelled by his friends, by his family, but there’s something in the way... Maybe because it’s Keith, maybe because Lance feels more lost than ever, maybe because it’s still his fault, after running the scenario in his head millions of times, still his fault, still his fault, still his fault.

Lance isn’t responsible, yet somehow he’s responsible for the fate of the entire galaxy.

.

It’s after a sleepless night that they somehow both end up on the couch in a room that feels too empty to be real.

Lance stares at the ceiling. The damage is measured in the bags under their eyes, he realizes that this should be odd since they haven’t carried a real conversation since Keith stumbled out of a pod a week and-a-half ago, but it somehow isn’t.

Maybe they’re just too worn for social boundaries right now.

“Are you okay?” Keith asks from the other end of the couch, for the first time since Lance walked into the room with tears in his eyes and a tee-shirt damp with sweat from a nightmare that left him feeling hollow.

His voice rasps when he says, “Yeah,” even though he’s definitely not. Even though his eyes burn and his head hurts, and Keith shouldn’t be up at this hour either.

Keith nods.

Lance wonders if they’re going to do this, if they’re about to do this, if the brushstrokes of Keith’s hair on the couch cushion are a comfort or a hindrance. He wonders if he wants to cry or yell, if he would feel better in someone’s heart or in someone’s arms.

Keith gets up and Lance lets a single pathetic tear for the stupid nightmare drip into his hairline before he drifts. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand. It feels like the universe is in on a very big secret and Lance is just lost in translation.

He registers someone draping a blanket over him, and he dares to crack open an eye a moment later to find Keith lying against the other side of the couch, eyes closed, settling to press his cheek into the cushions.

He curls up with his back to Lance.

.

They talk, after that.

Lance notices a few things.

He wants to trace his thumbs along the bags under those indigo eyes. He wants to run the pad of his thumb over the thin, bruised skin and tell Keith that it’ll be alright. Even though Keith would hate him for it, because, hello , pessimist. And maybe that’s weird. But Lance can’t help but stare when Keith talks, when he thinks, Lance sits and stares, tries to figure out a puzzle, when they’re at dinner and he’s only half-listening to a story.

“Go to sleep,” Lance would say if he could. Or, “Get some rest.”

Funny the things he thinks about when only running on three hours himself.

Keith catches him staring sometimes, stares back or scowls, but Lance doesn’t mind anymore.

He doesn’t mind, because those indigo eyes are open.

.

Deduction: Keith’s inability to show vulnerability is something that Lance really does resent him for sometimes.

.

He likes to make people laugh. It’s something that he figured out at an early age, and it might stem from him being painfully awkward around sad people and learning how to twist the situation, liking to twist the situation until he gets a watery smile or a small, wet chuckle at one of his stupid jokes. He likes to be in control like that, and it’s a lot easier than confronting the bitter reality.

Maybe that’s why realists like Keith don’t seem to like him very much. Because he’ll skirt around an issue for days with light-hearted quips, he’ll lighten the mood so may shades before actually coming to terms with something. He’ll look at the world through his speckled lens and tell himself that it’ll all be okay in the end, because that’s how he was raised. He was raised to look on the bright side.

Space is dark. Keith looks a lot more tired than Shiro ever did. Maybe it’s the fact that Shiro was older and had more experience when he was leader, Lance doesn’t quite know. All he knows is that when he says that the bags under Keith’s eyes are bigger than his future, he really does mean it.

Once in a while, a joke lands, and they’re graced with Keith’s unmistakable, raspy chuckle, and Lance feels like a million dollars then. It’s worth all of the flubs if you’re able to eventually make them laugh, he thinks.

.

They fight, still.

Not out of character for either of them, especially after long days, but there’s something a little too real about it this time.

This time it’s not even bickering in front of their peers. Something’s wrong, and Lance knows it. They’re alone and arguing about the mission and Shiro and the protocol and the team and the life, and Lance stops mid-sentence when the flooding realization hits.

There’s no point.

Keith looks at him, eyes narrowed, waiting for a retort, and Lance suddenly feels like he’s about to tear up, struggling to swallow past the lump in his throat.

He inhales shakily, drops his shoulders, voice comes weary and soft,

“Aren’t you tired, Keith?”

There’s a long beat.

Keith’s eyes look so far away when he whispers “Yes”.

And maybe that’s when they start to actually breathe for the first time since Shiro went missing.

Lance exhales.

“Then let’s just go to bed, okay?”

Keith blinks and nods after a second, and the argument sits in pieces and ropes and strings on the floor as Lance waits for Keith to follow him out of the room.

They end up back on the couch, two sides of a magnet. This time Lance gets the blankets.

.

A mission went awry and a boulder in his stomach, the tears sit behind his eyes and threaten to spill, the sobs cram inside his chest like racehorses behind a gate, flinging themselves at walls.

He manages to keep it in until the mandatory debriefing called by Keith to make sure everyone was alright, since tensions were high and the mission was technically a failure. And, yeah, they’ve almost died before, and they’ve seen some shit, but none of them have slept in a while and this… this was bad. Keith understands and tries to pick his team up. (He’s getting better at these things, Lance notices, he’s beginning to become a better leader. Lance watches, sometimes. He wonders when he himself started to pay attention.)

Lance takes measured breaths and stares at the table, avoids eye contact with Hunk who’s been sending worried glances ever since Lance felt the tears well up in his eyes.

Keith continues debriefing and Lance wrings his hands in his lap.

He doesn’t know what point in the mission his hands started to shake—possibly the point where the planet crumbles, when Red panicked and Lance couldn’t control him, possibly the point where Pidge’s scream sounded like his sister’s, where Hunk’s voice sounded like his brother, when he thought of all of the families torn apart by a war and realized that he was part of one. And he shouldn’t compare himself to families that have lost loved ones, who have been tortured and murdered, he shouldn’t —but he spins out into an abyss of space and his lion is screaming and he realizes that if he died right here, right now, that he--

He would never see his family again.

And that was probably the point where his hands started to shake.

“The planet was unstable, there was nothing we could have done,” Keith says, voice strained like he’s still trying to convince himself. Lance hears him sigh. “I know this is…I know this is bad, guys, but…please don’t blame yourselves.”

Why, so you can blame yourself? Lance finds himself thinking, and a tear falls out from his eye and drops onto the table. He doesn’t know if anyone sees, he takes the most measured breath he ever has in his life and sits like a stone, unmoving. The shudders are at bay, crushed into his chest, the sobs are under his tongue and behind ground teeth, he can’t let them out.

Another tear falls.

Keep it together, he’s screaming at himself, keep it together keep it together

Keith stops mid-sentence now.

“Lance?”

There’s a beat where every head in the room turns to look at him.

“Lance.”

His chest is being ripped apart. He can hear his pulse in his ears. He still doesn’t move, like a stone, frozen my medusa herself.

Greek mythology, huh, he thinks, and another tear falls onto the table, and another, and another.

He doesn’t exactly know what the tears are for. His family? The mission? The genocide of an entire race that he just watched? The fact that Keith is undoubtedly going to sit up awake in the room next to Lance and blame himself for said genocide when he genuinely wasn’t at fault?

“Can I take a minute?” he asks in a voice that fights too hard to remain level, as he stands on knees that feel weak and walks out into a hallway that feels like its two feet wide.

The door slides shut and he hears murmurs of his team’s voices.

God, he misses his family.

And that’s exactly how it is. It will be nothing, and then all of a sudden, god, he misses his family. And it’s an ache that rolls over him like waves, squeezes his chest like a vice and he sees their faces, he strains to remember his mother’s gentle touch, he forgets what his sister-in-law’s voice sounds like, he wonders if the kids still ask where he is. It hits him like that all of the time, out of nowhere, and it’s a blow that manages to bring him to his knees every time, until he’s crying over the bathroom sink, until he wakes up from a nightmare over and over again, until he realizes that he doesn’t know if he’ll ever really make it back.

Until he’s sitting on the observation deck and quietly shaking apart in front of a galaxy he’s supposed to be protecting.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there with his knees drawn to his chest, slowly drowning in his own tears and messy sobs until Keith’s tired footsteps make their way up from behind him.

Lance doesn’t turn around. He wipes his face on his sleeves, he exhales and feels like he can’t inhale again.

Keith lowers himself to sit next to Lance. “Whatcha looking at?” he asks, staring out at the exact same window that Lance is.

“Space,” Lance says dully, voice wrecked. He’s not pitiful, just…so tired. He’s so tired. And-- look, he knows. He knows this is weak, and that he’s supposed to be second-in-command or something, and he knows that everyone else was able to keep it together, he knows it’s stupid.

Keith is silent for a moment. “Is it your family?” he asks softly, like he’s not allowed to, like he doesn’t have the qualifications.

And sometimes Lance thinks about that. It’s hard to talk about a whole family that’s waiting for him back on earth when Keith’s only living connection is missing in a universe that never ends. It’s hard to complain to someone about something they don’t have. That was taken from them.

So technically, Lance doesn’t have the right.

“Lance?” Keith asks again, and he’s persistent tonight, maybe because of the clusterfuck of a mission, maybe because he’s just as lost as Lance feels right now--Lance just doesn’t know . Lance doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t know what to think when all he wants to do is press his face into his hands and sob again for it all, for the whole thing, the whole fucked universe, the genocides and the crushing lump in his throat that he hasn’t been able to swallow for weeks. Keith doesn’t even have a family, you know?

Lance...

Lance kind-of doesn’t either, it feels like.

The tears won’t come. His voice is dry when blinks swollen eyes in the light of the universe that stretches beyond the window and says, in an off voice, “I think I’m losing my mind.”

Keith huffs a laugh and leans back on his elbows. “Maybe you are.”

Lance runs a fingernail along a broken callous on his palm and doesn’t take his eyes off of the window.

Keith looks at him for a second. “For the record, I think we all are,” he says after a long moment, voice a notch softer than Lance is capable of handling right now.

“I’m sorry for leaving,” Lance murmurs. He doesn’t know why he feels the need to apologize, but he does.

“It’s alright,” Keith says. “I get it. Well, I mean—like. You know. I get it.”

Lance knows that Keith gets it. And he wonders how that understanding was formed, when they started to relate, to comprehend each other. Lance wonders when he became Keith’s right hand.

When he started to care so painfully much.

And the fact that Keith is awkwardly fumbling for words right now somehow makes Lance feel the smallest bit better. And maybe that makes him a terrible person, but he forgets sometimes that Keith is so fantastically human despite his other heritage. And it makes him feel…better.

Better that Keith tries, at least.

But the grief still stays.

“I know it’s really hard,” Keith tries.

“I know it’s really hard for you, too,” Lance says back.

The sit in warm, thick silence for a while, and Lance wonders when they became able to do that.

They stay until Keith suggests they go to the lower level, some immeasurable amount of time later.  Lance nods, because the observation deck tonight is only managing to make him feel more and more lost.

They stand outside of the elevator. Lance doesn’t know what to do.

“It’s really late,” Keith says, and Lance knows that, at least.

But he doesn’t quite know how to respond, because suddenly, in this muddled mindset, when his mind is fucked and his emotions are spun out, being alone seems terrifying. His dark room seems terrifying, crying himself to sleep again seems terrifying.

He holds an indigo gaze for a long moment and doesn’t say anything.

Keith blinks. He holds the stare, neutral, capable, yet so inexplicably exhausted.

Lance wants to trace the bags under his eyes again.

Keith sighs.

“It’s really late,” he says again. He turns and takes a few steps, stopping to check if Lance is following.

Lance steps forward when Keith waits.

Those indigo eyes hold understanding, stress, pain that resonates so deeply in Lance’s chest it makes his teeth hurt.

They walk side-by-side until they reach their rooms, and Lance figures they’re going their separate ways.

Keith watches him when he stops at his door and falters, until his hand settles on Lance’s wrist. They look at each other for a long moment, two sides of the same, tired coin, and Keith gives his wrist a squeeze, still not breaking eye contact.

Keith sighs again and closes his eyes. “I’m not going to sleep, yet.”

Lance nods.

“Do you wanna just…?”

Lance nods again. Keith leads him away from the door. He follows numbly down the hall until they reach the common room, until Lance curls up in one end of the couch and Keith lies on his back and stares at the ceiling.

It’s only the third time they’ve done it, yet it feels like the eightieth.

“Are you okay, Lance?”

“Are you, Keith?”

And again, the silence.

It breaks.

“I’m sorry for saying your name when I was falling.”

“Why?”

Keith looks caught off guard. “I… I’m not sure,” he admit after a moment’s hesitation. “I freaked you out, and I shouldn’t have said your name, there’s no possible way you could’ve reached that far and it wasn’t your fault, and—“

Lance doesn’t quite understand why the connection between his mind and his mouth is severed when he says, “You mean a lot more to me than you think you do.”

They freeze. Keith looks at him for a moment with his mouth slightly ajar, and then he closes it.

Lance gets the feeling he might have just shattered something very important.

Keith turns his head to look at the ceiling and Lance does the same.

And this is why Lace isn’t allowed to talk after emotionally-fueled sobfests and no sleep, this is why he can’t trace the bags under Keith’s eyes, because it’s stupid.

“I don’t know,” Lance says, because he feels like that’s something he needs to say.

Keith stays motionless. “Yeah.”

Damage control kicks in and Lance attempts a smooth chuckle, but it comes out frantic and nervous. “I think we should both probably get some sleep,” he concludes. Keith agrees.

And so he lies there, heart beating faster than it should be, mind spinning, thoughts mostly incoherent, until Keith’s voice cuts through the heavy air, gravel and sand under a layer of clean water, clearly,

“You mean a lot, too.”

God.

Lance stares at the ceiling until his eyes burn.

He wakes up to pitch black and peels his face from a couch cushion. Judging by the dim lights along the floor of the castle, they’re standing on the bridge between late night and early morning.

Lance curls up on his side and watches Keith breathe, the shift of his eyes under his eyelids, the rise and fall of his chest under his thin black tee-shirt. Yesterday’s events run through his head like an unwanted film that he can’t tear his eyes away from.

Lance doesn’t realize the peaceful look on Keith’s face has gone until the rise and fall of his muscled chest becomes uneven, shallow, before his throat contracts and his hands twitch, before his mouth presses into a thin, uncomfortable line.

More than anything, Lance feels the urge to kneel and run his fingers through the mess of dark hair, he wants to ghost his fingers over the pale dip in Keith’s collarbone, smooth the wrinkle out of his dark brow until all that remains is peace, even just for a fleeting moment.

His fingers twitch. What if he did? What would the worst case scenario look like, would he even wake up? The spontaneity of it makes his veins buzz.

Lance watches with tired eyes for a moment longer and pushes himself up on slightly unsteady arms. The night is liquid. He walks across the room in only socks, knees creaking and body stiff.

Keith starts to breathe heavier, and Lance kneels down next to the couch, anxiety prickling the back of his throat, reaches out his hand to hover over the dark locks of hair splayed over a pinched face. With painstaking care, he lowers slightly-trembling fingers, inches, centimeters--

Keith inhales sharply the second Lance’s fingers touch his forehead. Indigo eyes snap open, his breath is coming out in short bursts, small gasps that rip Lance’s chest apart.

Shit.

Lance yanks his hand back, jumps out of his skin. Keith stares at the ceiling, and then at Lance, and Lance’s heart races, skips a beat, he feels the dread pool in his stomach as Keith’s glassy eyes stare into his, as the pain and the anxiety and the fear and the tired hurt thump between them in beats that don’t line up, might not ever.

Keith’s eyelids flutter and he relaxes a fraction, but the panic in his eyes still lingers.

Lance sucks on his bottom lip. “I—“

Keith abruptly turns back to the ceiling and reaches an arm down, grappling for something until he finds Lance’s hand. He drapes an arm over his eyes, breathing gradually slowing. His hand is cold and clammy, thrusting pale fingers into Lance’s palm, curling around the back of a tan hand.

He squeezes like Lance is the one that needs comforting, which isn’t that far off, but then again, they both have gaping holes in their chests, it seems. In this odd moment, Keith seems just as lost as Lance.

Lance kind-of doesn’t feel like this is real. He tries to swallow past the lump in his throat and brings his other hand up to curl on top of Keith’s, feeling the callouses of Keith’s fingers, traces the edge of Keith’s wrist with his thumb like he’s done it a million times before.

Keith exhales and stares at the ceiling. “Sometimes I want to go home too, Lance,” he whispers in a voice that Lance hasn’t ever heard. Gravel and melancholy longing that doesn’t sit right.

And it scares him.

All Lance can bring himself to do is whisper, “I know,” and squeeze Keith’s hand even tighter.

He presses his temple into the side of the couch, staring at the dark floor, feeling the bone-deep ache of a weary body and the thump of his heart as it beats harder and harder for something that he didn’t even realize until now.

The urge to wrap his arms around Keith is overwhelming, it comes in waves as Lance listens to every hitched breath, every wavering exhale as Keith tries to keep it together, as Lance thinks of his own family, this whole mess, and he squeezes Keith’s hand, hard.

He hears Keith choke out a sob behind his hand, and Lance turns his face to press against the couch as a tear slides across the bridge of his nose. And while the only stoic one of them crumbles, in the wee hours of another miserable morning, Lance crumbles too. For Keith, for his family, for the lost hours of sleep.

Keith shakes harder and Lance can’t help the tears that slip down his face, more and more, as his heart breaks little-by-little. Each one of Keith’s shuddered breaths twist the knife in his gut, they’re squeezing each other’s hands so hard it hurts, and it’s not enough.

It’s not enough.

His knees creak softly as he sits on the edge of the couch, and Keith moves his arms and pulls him closer and Lance pulls Keith flush against his chest until they’re lying, tangled in arms and jackets and tears, until Keith’s face is pressed into his shoulder and his fingers are fisted in the back of Lance’s shirt, pulling, holding.

God.

Lance’s heart is beating out of his chest, shattering into a billion pieces, his mind is buzzing because this doesn’t feel real, this can’t even be happening, everything is happening --

“I want to go home too,” Keith cries softly, and it’s the saddest sound Lance has ever heard.

He slips his fingers into Keith’s hair, cradles him to his chest and whispers words that are useless. Keith’s home is in the stars, lost in a lion or a crystal or a galaxy. Keith’s home is gone, Lance’s home is somewhere they might not ever go back to again.

Lance runs his hand along the tee-shirt fabric, murmurs, “You’ll be alright,” around choked tears and heavy emotions that sit thick in the back of his mouth. “We’ll be alright.”

Will they, though? Lance can’t help but feel like maybe they’re drowning in these endless vacuums, these listless galaxies. Will they make it out alive? The stark fear that comes with such a statement is a cold, wet layer of mud that coats the bottom of his chest. It’s a waiting game, a holding pattern that has him breathing harder and harder.

Will they make it out alive? Maybe it’s because he hasn’t slept, maybe it’s because he’s already broken down today, but he can’t help but think that their possibilities are getting slimmer and slimmer by the minute. Shiro is gone, the Galra still thrive, every day the exhaustion in their faces becomes more prominent, as the days wear on into weeks, months, as he falls a little bit more, he can’t--

“Lance.”

He realizes that he’s stuttering on his breaths, that the tears are coming out in twos, fours, that his heart is in a vice. That he’s drifting to the place that usually sparks the spirals.

Keith’s thumb moves at the base of his neck, Lance realizes that he can feel Keith’s heart beat against his.

He stops. Focuses on the steady rhythm, of Keith’s head against his shoulder, their legs tangled. Breathes. Listens to the quiet hum of the castle, feels Keith’s chest rise and fall.

Keith tightens his embrace, drags his thumb along the bumps of Lance’s spine, sniffling. He tucks his head into the space between Lance’s neck and his shoulder like he fits there, Lance’s heart squeezes, but not like before.

Breathe.

He sniffles. Eyes slipping shut, Lance buries his fingers in those dark locks once more, tucks his cheek against Keith’s temple and he whispers, again, “We’ll be okay.” For Keith’s sake, for his own sake. For the sake of the universe, he guesses.  

There are beautiful thing in space. He can’t deny that. There are things that make his head spin and his soul bloom and his eyes gloss over. There are things, that despite the chaos, seem to always poke him right in that soft spot in his chest (like the blues of that planet or the smiles of his team).

(Like those indigo eyes that he just can’t seem to shake.)

Lance hasn’t felt this comfortable in a while. He hasn’t felt this safe in a while. Keith is solid and warm.

They hold each other like they’ll drift away if they let go.

And Lance thinks, if that’s what it takes, then he’ll hold on as long as he can.