Work Text:
i’m your new school soul — lover boy , phum viphurit
“Aren’t you supposed to turn off the light before you change the bulb?”
The universe loves irony the way late night TV does so the moment Keith asks the question Lance finishes screwing in the light bulb and it shocks his fingers, sending him reeling and wobbling at the top of the step ladder. “Ay shit , you—” he curses, and flings out his hands to the side airplane-style only to hit something solid and be sent toppling from his perch.
“Fuck!” He twists and manages to catch himself on Keith’s shoulders, his weight perfectly shared between Keith and the stepladder. He hadn’t managed to screw the light bulb in tightly enough so it flickers in the tea shop, making everything that little bit eerie just before the sun has risen. “Shit, Jesus Christ.”
Keith glares at him unimpressed, all his angles and hollows sharp and discoloured with the combination of the grey light filtering in through the windows and the faulty light bulb. There’s a red mark on his cheek where Lance hit him. Keith swiftly puts down the mug of tea he was holding, wiping his soaked hands on his apron. The way he shakes them of any lasting dampness is deliberate (delicate).
“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Keith asks. His tone is bored but it’s full of tiny fissures where his slow-growing amusement with Lance nestles.
“Only when I love her,” Lance grins. “Hello again.”
Keith sighs. “You—”
“Fixed the light! Yes, you are very welcome sir. That’ll be $64.99.”
“Someone doesn’t come cheap.” Keith pushes Lance away just enough to send him wobbling back onto the step ladder. “I’m not paying full price for a job half done.”
Lance covers his hand with his sweater sleeve to twist the bulb in the rest of the way. The brightness washes over the whole shop making the wooden chairs and tables warm and mingling with the dawn, overpowering it and turning the grey to that desperately light yellow that’s ugly everywhere but in the sky. It slices along Keith’s edges, like one is bouncing off the other, or like they’re both made of each other. Lance ducks his head and wipes the morning sweat off his face with his mitt-hand, feeling the warmth of the day start to linger. Spring in Miami is already overflowing and tipping into summer’s heated cup.
“How about a discount?” Lance says, climbing down and folding away the stepladder. He follows Keith behind the counter. “I’ll give you fifteen percent since you’ve been so patient.”
“Forty five,” Keith says, a perfect diplomacy in his voice. He slides the mug of tea he’d left on the counter back towards Lance. “Cash okay?”
“Cha-ching,” he says, matching Keith’s dryness but he reaches out for the mug like it’s apt payment. He takes a sip and hums contentedly. Maybe it is.
Keith snorts and silently pours himself his own cup of tea, leaning against the big fancy espresso machine who really is the star of the show in this place. Keith insists she doesn’t need a name but ‘Gaggia D90 Alti’ doesn’t really sit right with Lance. Naming rights technically belong to the shop’s proprietor Shiro but Lance hasn’t met him yet in the two weeks since he’s started frequenting the place. The only other staff members he’s met are Pidge (who is pretty much always on shift with Keith) and Rolo (who just sort of… drifts). They don’t command Lance’s attention like Keith seems to, effortlessly and beautifully as he did on day one.
Lance saw Keith for the first time on another morning before dawn. Hunk’s uncle Laki gave him a small bonus to open the ice cream parlour hours before his usual shift but in a tangle of a prank laid by his brother’s twins, an alarm clock that’s never quite worked right since he left for college, and some wildness in his legs, he’d ended up outside the parlour on the boardwalk at the end of his run, watching as the grey dawn stuck to all things it saw and blurred them out a little on their lines.
Something tickled his ankle just past the lip of his running shoe, and he leaned down to pick the weed poking up from between the paved bricks in front of the parlour. He picked the next one and the next, falling into the task methodically, feeling his uncle in the burn of his muscles. He continued until his breathing started to slow again and his calves started to tap out, aching from the run and holding his position on his honkers. The heat of the day had begun to rise and it trod a steady path around his body as the sun broke past the border of the sea. Its warmth hadn’t touched him before someone was moving to pause in front of him and block his view.
“Jesus,” he gasped, stumbling back into standing up again. “Warn a guy.”
“Shouldn’t I be saying that? It’s my shop.” The stranger cocked his head, half his face hidden by a baseball cap. Mariners. He had on an alarmingly red bomber jacket. Lance had never seen him on the boardwalk before. “What are you doing?” he asked.
Lance, caught, looked at his hands. He felt detachedly embarrassed. “Uh. Weeding. I guess.”
There was a pause from the stranger but it bled suspicion and impatience. “Did Shiro hire you or something?” he asked, pushing ahead to the door to his shop. Arusia.
“What?” Lance skipped awkwardly out of the way as the guy pushed on to the door of what seemed like a café. A tea shop? “No, I—Who’s Shiro?” Lance looked next door to the ice cream parlour and to the clean area of paved bricks it shared with this lot before following after the young man to his shop’s front door. “I work in there, I work for Laki. Laki Lucky Scoops?”
The guy turned back to Lance after he opened the door. With his chin tipped up, Lance’s eyes followed the path up a perfectly straight nose to a shadow that teased dark eyes, still under the cap’s peak.
“You work with Laki,” he said. “Oh. Okay.” He nodded slightly and Lance reeled at the seeming approval, given to him like he’d earned it, like the guy giving this to him was allowed to. Then he continued on his business, flicking on lights and slipping behind the counter.
Lance followed him inside the shop, feeling an insistence or something simmering under his skin. “I’m Lance,” he said. It fell out a little harder than he’d intended but maybe he was tired from his run or the heat or the way this guy moved in this space like Lance wasn’t really existing yet.
Then the dude looked back up at him from behind the counter as he tied an apron around his waist. He removed his hat, revealing the rest of the straight, edging lines that made him up. The only round parts of him were his eyes, big and gently curving over then under, like his maker took his face in their hands and thought, this was where they had better take most care, this was where their thumbs had to pass slowly, softly. “Keith,” he said. He nodded to the weeds Lance was still holding. “Not really sure I want to shake your hand though.”
It wasn’t really an insult, not really the opposite either. “Right,” Lance said.
Keith dug around for something under the counter and proffered him a bin. “Here.”
“Great.”
Keith hummed and looked around as though he could peel something else to say from the walls. “Laki does that for us sometimes too. Weeding.”
“Oh,” Lance said. “Yeah sorry I didn’t mean to intrude or anything. I didn’t even notice I was, ah—” his hand found the back of his neck, comforting the burning that was growing there “—on your lot. Sorry man.”
Keith shrugged and tinkered around the counter. “Means I don’t have to,” he said. He filled up a cheap-looking plastic kettle at the sink and clicked it on. “Would you like some tea?” he’d asked.
“Thanks,” Lance had said then, the same way he does now as he nurses the tea Keith made him. He’d taken the gesture as an olive branch at the time but now that he’s known—well, not quite known, more like hung around—Keith a little longer he realises Keith was never apologising for any behaviour. He was just being kind. He also realises Keith’s kindness and his being nice don’t overlap often. He’s quite—honest. Lance stirs his tea and debates pretending to himself that he’s not watching Keith make his own.
“Thanks, Lance,” Keith says, measuring his oolong against the light from the window. His tongue pokes out between his lips; it’s redder than the swell of them. Lance decides to pretend.
“Sorry about your face,” he offers, stirring his own lemon and ginger.
Keith shakes his head ever so slightly. “It’s fine.”
Lance pauses for just a second, watching the red mark glow loud and pouting on Keith’s taut cheekbone. Pretending. “No, I meant like in general, I’m sorry you have that face.”
“Oh my god.” Keith closes his eyes and sighs.
“Quite unfortunate really.”
“Really.”
“Oh yeah, I mean—”
“Do you ever—”
“Of all the faces to be blessed—or cursed with, if we’re being honest—”
“—just know when to—”
“—yours is really just—”
“—shut up.”
Lance snaps his mouth shut but he doesn’t stop smiling. Keith gives him the usual glower, looking at Lance like he knows Lance is going to get the last word but he’ll be surprised when he does anyway.
“I’m a voice that needs to be heard,” Lance says primly.
Keith scoffs from behind his fresh mug, eyeing him.
Lance laughs, huge and loud and moving. “I don’t know why you ask, man,” he says, “when you already know the answer.”
~
The door to Laki Lucky Scoops has a bell that rings every time time it’s opened which was charming for the first couple of hours of his very first shift but is now the bane of Lance’s existence. Now all it is for him is shrill and insistent, the only exception being when his brother drops by with his kids to visit him.
“One large americano, one rooibos,” Keith says, over the sound of the bell, walking in. (Two exceptions.)
Lance abandons scrubbing burnt batter off the waffle machine to meet Keith at the counter before Kia does. He takes two of the three coffee cups he’s holding off his hands, one for Laki, one for Hunk. “Thank God,” he says. “Tom screwed up inventory this morning and Laki has spent all day trying to fix it. This’ll take the edge off, probably.”
(Laki gets a daily coffee order from Arusia that they’d worked out when the place opened at the beginning of the year. Lance had raised his eyebrows at Hunk after Laki had told him to expect Keith with his order later, and said, “We serve coffee here.”
Laki had nodded gravely. “Yes,” he’d said. “But I respect Shiro as a neighbour and a competitor in a different sport.” He’d taken a large gulp of steaming coffee and sighed. “That and no one else can make a cup of coffee like him. Or Keith. I don’t even think it’s the machines they use. They’re just wonderboys.”
Lance had hardly been able to wait for Keith to come in with the coffee to tell him Laki called him a wonderboy. Keith had flicked his forehead.)
Keith’s mouth turns up, amused. “I don’t see what god has to do with any of this,” he says. “I made them.”
Lance snorts. “You’re right, sorry Wonderboy. And anyway, what would my Roman Catholic Cuban grandmother think of me—” he switches to a Southern accent “—takin’ the Lord’s name in vain?”
Keith moves to flick his forehead but Lance reacts just as quickly to catch his wrist. “Hey!” he protests, squeezing Keith’s wrist lightly a couple of times. “Unnecessary. What is it with you and physical violence?”
“Right,” Keith says, his voice a little tighter than usual. His fingers twitch a little and Lance lets go of his wrist quickly. Keith clears his throat, “Well, troubled youth and all.”
Lance grins extra wide to cover the awkward moment, that skip in the air and time. “Don’t you have to be like at least in your teens to be considered a youth?”
Keith rolls his eyes and says, dryly, “It’s all in my dark past.” Lance wonders. “But if it counts,” Keith continues, resting his elbows on his side of the counter and playing with the third coffee cup he brought, “Shiro says I look fifteen sometimes. I think that’s just because he’s bitter I’m in college and he’s not anymore. Well.” Keith tilts his head. “About to start college.”
“Here in Florida?” Lance asks, far too pleased about the idea than he should be, and Keith nods. He looks at Keith, with his high cheekbones, his big, black, frowny eyebrows, his eyes that seem to catch everything. He looks for the softness of youth in his strong nose and jaw, his chin; he doesn’t find it exactly, just a sort of gentleness that isn’t a gift of immaturity. Keith is as young as Lance but he’s not any younger. “I think Shiro’s definitely bitter,” Lance says, a little late.
“Yeah,” Keith shrugs. “I was eleven when we met so he probably just still sees me as a kid.”
“I feel that, man. My aunt still thinks I’m in elementary school. I got Hot Wheels for Christmas.”
“Ooh.”
Lance laughs, leaning on the counter to match Keith.
“That’s pretty bad,” Keith says.
“Yeah. My seven year old nephew got a razor set. I was so jealous.”
The corner of Keith’s mouth quirks. “They really start ‘em young these days.”
Lance opens his mouth to reply when a huge bellow comes from the back of the shop, hardly muffled by the closed door, and they both whip around to the source.
“IS THAT KEITH? IS THAT MY COFFEE?” Laki’s voice near shakes the room.
Lance grins, turning back to Keith. “Duty calls.” He hands Keith the money Laki keeps by the cash register for this purpose. “Thanks Wonderboy.”
Keith doesn’t react to the nickname this time, taking the money quietly and biting his lip. “This one’s yours,” he says, sliding the coffee cup he was holding across the counter. “On the house. Lavender honey tea. It tastes good, I promise.”
Lance looks at him, feeling his ears heat. “Yeah I trust you.”
Keith meets his eyes, strong and wide open, but only for a moment. “Okay,” he says, his hands fumbling at the pockets of his jacket. He can’t seem to hold eye contact with Lance but he keeps looking back up anyway. “See you tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” Lance confirms.
Keith nods his head and smiles the slightest bit, then he’s gone.
“Hey.”
Lance jumps at the sound of Hunk’s voice behind him. “Jesus Christ you can’t just do that.”
“Sorry man.” Hunk hooks an arm over Lance’s shoulders, pulling him in close for comfort. “You get the coffee?”
Lance nods absently, hooked on the smooth curve of Keith’s smile and the way the strong white lights of the parlour didn’t temper his beauty in the slightest. Lance wonders how someone can make light look like it’s cupping them, soft as air. He feels Hunk reach for his own tea and take a sip.
“So Keith’s the dude,” Hunk says, and Lance can tell he’s looking at him.
Lance shrugs weakly, pulling a hand down his face. “He’s—a dude,” he concedes partly, the half-confession weak even to his own ears.
~
To Wonderboy:
(16:37) [sent photo]
(16:37) delicious!!!!! im a lavender honey boy now
From Wonderboy:
(16:58) :) (Y)
(16:58) *(Y)
(16:59) Thumb(s) up
~
There’s a giant, ancient pinball machine in the corner of Keith’s shop. It’s right at the back and near the door that leads to the tiny alley between Arusia and Laki Lucky Scoops. Lance plays every time he’s in the shop and only ever during the morning rush because that’s when the dings and bangs and general puttering of the machine doesn’t crack into the tea shop’s otherwise softer mood and also when Keith’s busy and can’t tell him to stop. Lance has argued that the noise coming from the machine only adds to the atmosphere with the jukebox on the opposite wall and the nostalgic love songs from the 50s and 60s Shiro insists on playing. Keith argued that Lance should just shut up.
Despite him, Lance has made it his mission to beat the high score—it’s mockingly high, at least one hundred thousand above Lance’s current average and thirty thousand more than the second highest score. This morning he’s managed to start the game smack bang in the middle of the early morning rush, determined to put his name at the top. Pidge, Keith’s coworker, is concentrating her waiting efforts to the side of the shop nearest the machine to keep up with Lance’s progress.
“I hate you,” she hisses at him from table five. Lance beat her high score four minutes ago.
He doesn’t move his eyes from the ball, grinning in concentration. “Bitter.”
“You’re dead to me.” She aims a soft kick at his ankle but Keith calls her back to the counter just before it lands. “I will be back for revenge.”
Lance laughs. “Looking forward to it.”
His eyes don’t move from the machine until he hears Keith approaching after the rush.
“Hey weirdo,” Lance says, glancing briefly at him. Keith’s holding a mug in his hands, its contents a familiar smell.
Keith rests his hip on the machine. “Is it your intention to scare off all my customers and distract my coworkers?”
“What do you mean?” Lance frowns at a particularly difficult pass. “I’m seducing more potential customers with the sounds of innocent fun and laughter. And I’m just spicing it up a bit for you and your employees. Work gets boring sometimes, don’t you think?”
Keith looks pointedly at Pidge who has taken to cleaning the mugs so vigorously in the sink she’s spilled half the dish water on the floor. “Instilling a sense of fair play while you’re at it.”
Lance waves his hand in dismissal. “She’s just mad she’ll never get me back for beating her high score. Speaking of high scores, I’m going to be busy for the foreseeable future beating the next highest one.” He moves to start his next game without expecting Keith to leave.
“You can try,” Keith says, taking a sip from his mug.
Lance’s hand pauses, hovering over the start button. “I—” he begins, turning his head to look at Keith, catching his coffee-bright eyes and his cheeks kissed pink with the steam and heat. “Hmm? What?” He’s really only half-annoyed for losing his train of thought.
“Lance,” Keith insists, all impatience in his hardly-concealed smirk. Keep up, says that smile and the way his toes tap on the floor and the way his fingers find the crook of his elbow only to unwind again. Lance initially thought Keith was still and kept still but he thinks now mostly he just wasn’t looking closely enough. Keep up, keep up. “Who do you think set the score?”
“Great,” Lance says. “I love watching my enemies fall from grace.” He raises his voice for the last part and hears Pidge’s annoyed huff from somewhere close by. “Watch me win, Wonderboy.”
It takes him less than a minute to lose the next round. Lance allows himself a second of disbelief and embarrassment in which he hears Keith take a breath and he cuts him off.
“If you say even word I’m going to shove that mug so far up your face your nose is going to be leaking tea for a week.”
Keith blinks at him, his mouth landing open on a half-grin. “And they call me violent.”
“I mean it,” Lance frowns but he’s having a hard time holding it. “Punk.”
Keith presses his lips together tightly but his eyes are crinkling happily. “That’s a hell of a threat for someone who just lost at 3000 points.”
“3006!” Lance objects. Without thinking, he says, “As if you could do better.”
Keith laughs. “Lance.” He looks at Lance and tilts his head, his eyebrows softening up high on his forehead.
“Shut up, I heard myself.” Lance’s ears burn.
“If you want me to prove myself so much, move over,” Keith says, but he’s already nudging at Lance with his shoulder. Lance folds easily, moving out of the way and holding his hand out for Keith’s mug.
“Lavender honey,” Keith mutters absently, setting the game back to start
“Ooh!” Lance inhales deeply from the rim of the cup. “My favourite.”
He feels Keith’s eyes on him for a long moment but when he looks up Keith is already looking back at the pinball machine, a furious sort of concentration about him. Lance doesn’t have time to ask him if he’s okay before he releases the ball and starts the game.
It’s difficult to see Keith’s progress from anywhere but right beside him so Lance stays right there, the heat off Keith a brand burning in the air between them, the impression just as hot on Lance’s skin. Keith remains movement and friction, and Lance stills to prolong it. The corner of the top of his shoe is touching Keith’s and he curls his toes at the feeling of it. He watches the score climb higher and higher with every tinny sound effect until Keith beats his own high score with a happy noise, aiming for the highest score there is.
“Come on, come on,” Lance mutters, unable to find himself jealous anymore, just desperate for Keith to win. He doesn’t; Keith loses a couple of hundred points away from the highest score, his grip tight on the controllers and his teeth bared.
“Ooh,” Lance says slowly into the tense silence. “Rough.” He coughs. If he’s being honest, for all he was supportive of Keith winning, he can’t completely say he doesn’t feel a little vindicated that Keith couldn’t beat the high score. Keith’s frown is loud on his face and Lance has to work hard to hide the smile behind his mug.
“Fuck,” Keith snarls. “Fuckin’ hell I was so close. Fuck!”
“Language,” Shiro drawls from behind them both. Keith rolls his eyes. Lance jumps and the mug slams into his lip. He muffles his moan quietly into his hand, missing Keith’s concerned glance, thankful for Shiro’s next short exchange with Keith in rapid Japanese.
“Seriously,” Shiro says in English again, shuffling his grip on the box at his hip. Even in a simple t-shirt and jeans hidden behind the shop’s apron, Shiro looks imposing. The first time Lance had met him he’d thought Shiro was a real life Japanese Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson from the Baywatch movie. He’d nearly asked where his red swimming trunks were. Even after knowing him for a while, Lance still isn’t convinced he was wrong with his first impression—he’s still a little starstruck. “Keith you’re on shift. Back to work, come on. Good morning, Lance. Nice to see you up to your usual business of distracting the staff.”
He says it firmly but he’s smiling so Lance knows he’s not too serious about it. Lance mumbles an embarrassed and apologetic half-greeting through his hand, nodding his head awkwardly. His mouth really hurts, actually.
“He thinks he can boss me around because he got married a few months ago,” Keith sighs, rolling his eyes, “and he thinks it makes him a grown up.”
Shiro turns around at the counter. “I basically adopted you and I’m your employer, dipshit.” He grins. “And it’s going to take a lot more for you to beat my high score.” He winks at them and then he’s gone.
Lance snorts and Keith turns to pout at him, which makes Lance laugh harder but only because he wouldn’t be able to help it even if he wanted to.
“It was a big brother programme,” Keith mutters. It’s not truly a pout but Keith usually looks harder when he frowns and this expression rounds out his whole face as he blushes a pretty pale pink. The image of him sinks into Lance until his throat doesn’t work and the throbbing in his mouth matches one in his chest, aching and full.
“Oh,” Keith says, his tone very different, his eyes on Lance’s mouth. “Your lip is bleeding.”
“Is it?” Lance asks, but he can already taste it, raw and rusty on his tongue. He tries to lick it away but it begins to flow more freely and his teeth smart when he runs his tongue over them. “Ow.”
Unexpectedly and delightfully, Keith reaches up to gently hold Lance’s jaw with just the tips of his fingers and the ache in Lance’s mouth and in his chest spread to meet at each point of contact between Keith’s skin and his. Keith tips his head up with the least bit of pressure, Lance’s neck moving automatically to accommodate. Lance hopes that Shiro is holed up in his office in the back and that he doesn’t come out see Lance mooning obviously over Keith, his heart tripping over every one of Keith’s seven freckles (five light, two tiny moles) to the timely and annoying soundtrack of Dion & the Belmonts.
Keith hums. “Where hurts?”
Before Lance can answer, somewhere in the shop Pidge yells, “Heads up!” Lance gets a tea cloth right to the face, effectively breaking Keith’s hold on him. He feels unstuck and unbalanced; disorientation rocks him the way it would when, as a child, he would drop from a tree branch that was slightly too high off the ground, the shock of it his ankles, knees, chest, shoulders, head. Of course, the only time his mother ever caught him doing it was the time he fractured a couple of small bones in his ankle and the only things he remembers feeling were the concentrated pain, the guilt of making his mother take the day off to drive him to the hospital, and the sting of embarrassment that comes when you can achieve something on your own every time except not in front of who matters.
Lance blinks as the tea cloth falls slowly into his raised hands. “My eye,” he says lamely.
Keith laughs.
~
Late in the evening, night-time café goers bring a dimmer, sleepier mood to the place. A flower beginning to close as the sun takes its leave. Lance loves this time of day here equally and differently to how he loves it in the morning. The first time he came in after one of his shifts at the parlour he’d ordered a hot chocolate and had nearly fallen asleep on Hunk’s shoulder as they waited for Keith to finish up in the slow-moving, warm currents of the shop. (It was nice of Keith to have kept the teasing to a minimum.)
Now, to keep himself awake and occupied he plays pinball when he can, or helps to wipe down tables and tidy the pastry display. Sometimes, when he’s lucky and when Shiro’s busy in the back office, Keith lets him hang out with him behind the counter, prepping coffee filters and keeping up a quiet but constant stream of conversation that tides them both through the last hour or two of Keith’s shift. It’s a rhythm to their friendship that adds in its own way to the current of the shop. Some of the time he, Keith, Hunk, and Pidge will all walk the boardwalk for the games and treats when they all get off at the same time, but just as often Lance will just hang around Keith’s shop until he gets off, or even until closing. He became a fast staple in the morning routine of most regulars, but that’s a different tide and it moves more quickly. In the evening, his butt plonked comfortably between Gaggia and her sister Bezzera, Lance is invited now into the cycle of smalltalk with customers as Keith and Pidge—or Rolo or whoever else is working—smoothly move to complete orders and perform good service. Lance sometimes worries he could be a nuisance when there’s a slight spike in customers, but Keith always seems to catch those thoughts before he’s voice them and stops him from leaving with the gentle press of his hip to Lance’s knee for a moment as he passes. Mornings in the café are some of Lance’s favourites, but the evenings are precious and savoured.
This evening he is again behind the counter, even if Shiro is on the floor and can see everything. (He has caught Lance out here and Keith has defended his presence too often for Shiro to even bat an eye anymore.) He’s wiping down Gaggia with a damp cloth, alternately listening to Keith tell the story of the time stole a teacher’s car radio only to tinker with it and present it as a science project in class two weeks later, and dodging Keith’s hands as he tries to grab the rag back every so often between making coffees.
“The only person who probably saw me do it was the caretaker but he was cool with delinquents, so it wasn’t a problem,” Keith says, his expression proud.
Lance snorts. “Obviously you weren’t as sneaky as you liked to think you were.”
“I was fourteen, I’m willing to forgive teen-Keith.” Before he can react, Keith has Lance’s rag ripped neatly from his grip. “I’m a lot better now.” Lance’s mouth works without noise, torn between giddiness and competitive frustration. Keith tucks the rag into the cloth rack.
“How dare you,” is what Lance lamely comes up with, watching Keith move back to the French press, his steps bouncier than before.
“Your shift at the parlour ended an hour ago.”
“Yeah, but it’s hardly fair for me to just sit here and mess around while you do all the work. Help vs hindrance. My mamá raised me better than that.”
Lance watches Keith struggle to flatten a smile. “I know,” Keith says. “That’s what she said last time when she picked you up.”
Lance’s mother only brings him home from work when his brother’s kids are out for a beach day and they come in for ice cream afterwards. The last time that happened Lance had had an early shift and was teasing Keith from the pinball machine as Keith manned the floor. Telling Lance she’d raised him better than that was immediately what she did when she walked in with the kids to to catch him hurl a tea cloth right at Keith’s face and zeroed in on him with Glare #4 (a grade 1 burn, but still formidable). That’s part of how Keith can freely assume what Lance’s mother would think. The other part is that Lance talks about her all the time anyway—she is intrinsically linked to every story that involves him, so it’s probably not hard for Keith to extrapolate what she’s like. (Keith later told Lance he’d never met someone who felt like the definition of a hearth. And—as Lance hypothesises must be the case for probably everyone in his family—she took to Keith almost as quickly as Lance did.) And even if Axel spilled his whole cup of warm milk on Keith’s shoes, or if Laetitia did let slip to Keith that Lance “thinks your hair is funky but he likes it anyway” (he’ll never forget how Keith’s smirk somehow looked both self-satisfied and bashful at the same time), it all fills Lance with fondness and giddy delight to think about.
“Then you understand why I’m doing this.” Lance grins triumphantly, trying to reach around Keith to grab the rag again.
Keith catches his wrist and holds onto Lance’s other wrist too for good measure. His thumb taps lightly against Lance’s pulse point and it’s enough of a trigger to change the rhythm of blood flow entirely.
“I understand,” Keith says, gently pushing him away, “that if our roles were reversed, your mother would have raised you not to even let me look at a dishrag.” Lance pouts, but they both know he’s right. “Besides, Shiro always says—”
“Shiro is currently so tired of trying to call your attention back to your job , Keith,” Shiro sighs from the other side of the counter, “that he’s letting you off ten minutes early so he doesn’t have to deal with that anymore.” He looks at the pair of them pointedly. “And I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting your mother, Lance. Keith’s right. It’s part of what makes her so wonderful. But Keith you know damn well if the roles were reversed there’s not a chance Mrs Carreras would let Lance have you behind the counter.” He looks wryly at Lance. “For obvious reasons.”
It’s innocent, probably. Shiro’s probably alluding to the fact that Lance just makes his job as boss harder as he distracts Shiro’s employees. He’s probably talking about how Lance doesn’t work here and insurance doesn’t cover him once he goes behind the counter. But Lance can’t help but feel transparent and guilty about the tender tug of his heart every time he looks at Keith (or talks to him, or hears him, or stands in the same roon as him). He does not have the good fortune of first blushing at his neck—something easily overlooked or explained away—so when his cheeks heat at Shiro’s words he almost feels like a beacon of a badly hidden crush and helpless feelings. No amount of trying to will the flush away works.
Keith doesn’t seem to notice and immediately opens his mouth to come to Lance’s defence, but Lance interrupts by grabbing Keith’s elbow with one hand and pulling the knot of his apron out with the other. “ThankyouShirosirokaysorrybye!” he says, steering Keith to the employee’s only door. He pushes Keith through. “Come on, Hunk just texted me that he and Pidge are going to be at the arcade in five minutes. I don’t want to let them get extra practice in before we destroy them at air hockey.”
Keith rolls his eyes and scoffs but he pulls off his apron and goes to get his things anyway.
“You’re still welcome back here, Lance.”
Lance turns to Shiro who has joined him behind the counter, an easy smile making his gentle words more gentle.
“Oh,” Lance says, instead of something grateful or reciprocative in any way.
Shiro puts down his own tea cloth before laying his hand on Lance’s shoulder, showing he understands that Lance’s brain cells just aren’t available for intelligent interactions today. “I mean it,” Shiro insists. “I’ve never seen someone get just as close to Keith’s high score on that pinball machine before.” He says this like he wants Lance to decipher a meaning that isn’t literal but Lance is still fully immersed in his embarrassment from before and the warmth of Shiro’s comforting affirmation so all there is upstairs is a faintly swinging ‘Closed’ sign at the door to his brain. He thinks he understands now, the pure and strong devotion Keith conveys whenever he talks about or to Shiro.
“Yeah,” Lance smiles. “I was only 10 points away this morning. But I bet I can beat him tomorrow!” He feels his smile widen. “And then it’s your turn to go down.”
Shiro laughs. “You talk big, kid.”
Lance puffs out his chest because it keeps Shiro amused. “I win big too.”
“Win big how?”
Both of them look to see Keith blinking confusedly at Lance’s shoulder, the easy atmosphere between Shiro and Lance teasing an automatic half-smile out of him.
Lance elbows him ever so slightly, feeling his hand inadvertently brush at Keith’s wrist. “Let’s go play some games and you’ll find out, Wonderboy.”
Keith rolls his eyes and grabs the nearest tea cloth to toss it at Lance’s face. “We’re on the same team today, Hotshot.”
“Hey!” Lance grouses, pawing the cloth off his heated cheeks. “Why does this keep happening to me here?”
Keith ignores him. “If you’re going to be winning, I’m going to be winning too.”
~
To Wonderboy:
(9:47) im sick today :(
From Wonderboy:
(9:48) :( sorry to hear that
(9:48) What’s wrong
To Wonderboy:
(9:49) like a mild cold
(9:49) or flu u know whatever
(9:50) dont worry my mom has me hooked up real good here
From Wonderboy:
(9:51) I trust her. If u want to try something soothing go for lemongrass or ginger
(9:52) Also apparently if u drink five cups of black tea every day you’ll produce ten times more cold/flu virus fighting cells so u could try that
To Wonderboy:
(9:54) sounds fake but ok
(9:54) thanks
(9:55) if i die from too much black tea tho im blaming u
From Wonderboy:
(10:38) :(
~
Lance has a first choice of who here he would ask for the Lost & Found (or talk to or smile at or even just see). He likes everyone who works in Arusia but Keith is a glowing core here, his own gravitational force. There is nothing like him the way there is nothing like the rhythm of blood in Lance’s veins when he’s around his family, or at the beach, or rereading his favourite childhood books; there is nothing like Keith the same way there is nothing like how Lance’s heart decides to be almost painfully made new every time he sees him again.
The only member of staff he can see is Pidge sweeping the floor by the pinball machine.
“Pidge!” Lance calls, getting her to turn around and, “Oops, nope, not Pidge. Boy Pidge. Um.”
Pidge 2.0 laughs good-naturedly, laying a tray on the counter. “I’m going to guess you’re Lance.”
Lance smiles. “The one and only.”
“I’m Matt,” says Pidge 2.0. “Pidge’s older brother. Shiro called me in just to cover.”
“Oh! That makes sense.”
“Are you looking for someone?” Matt asks, the second unspoken question an obvious add on.
“Um, no,” Lance says, blushing despite Matt’s kind intentions. “I left my jacket here earlier and I just got off my shift next door. Do you have a Lost & Found?”
“Oh,” Matt nods, “yeah we do. It’s over—”
“Lance.”
Lance thinks Keith could say his name in the middle of an intergalactic space battle and he’d still hear him, he’d still respond. He and Matt look to where Keith is coming out around the counter, something soft and dark clutched in his hands. He has his baseball cap on again, no apron, and his red bomber, looking somehow more rumpled and fresher, a callback of early summer mornings.
“Hey,” Lance says. He feels strangely self-conscious now talking to Keith in front of Matt having been so easily seen through. He wonders if Keith can see the same.
“You left your jacket here this morning,” Keith says, holding it up. “Where’s Hunk?”
Lance smiles at him automatically. “Yeah, sorry. Hunk had to help his mom out at the shop tonight.” He holds eye contact with Keith for probably a bit too long before turning to Matt again. “And thank you for your help.”
“Anytime, Lance,” Matt says, giving a little salute as he leaves. “It was nice to meet you.”
“Yeah, you too.”
Lance takes his jacket from Keith when he offers it. “Thanks. This is actually my brother’s, and I would’ve gotten a lot worse than a wedgie if I’d lost it, let me tell you.” His self-consciousness fades softly.
Keith nods easily. “I’d have gotten it to you tomorrow anyway, if you were tied up tonight.”
“Isn’t tomorrow your day off?”
Keith shrugs, the gesture a simple warmth.
“Ke-eith,” Lance whines, following Keith to the door. “Seriously man, don’t do that. Just text me that you have it and I can pick it up from the shop myself.”
“Like you said, Lance,” Keith holds the door open before following Lance out, “you can’t really afford to lose it.”
“I didn’t! I didn’t lose it.” Lance pulls the jacket around his shoulders and stuffs his arms in vigorously; it acts as a barrier against the cold night air and Keith’s implied accusation. Keith takes his jacket off, stretching his neck. “I’m perfectly responsible and I don’t lose things.”
Keith, his features flickering in and out of focus in the boardwalk lights, grins wickedly. “I thought you told me you lost your pants at recess in second grade.”
“That was an exception to the rule! And I regret telling you that story.” He doesn’t really. He’s quite fond of elementary school Lance. That guy went on adventures. Plus the space rocket underwear he’d been wearing that day were worth showing off. “Also I was like 8.”
“That’s not fair. I told you an equally embarrassing story about my childhood.”
“That barely counts!” Lance skips ahead to walk backwards. “You told me last week that Shiro burned embarrassment out of you by age 14.”
Keith makes a noise of assent. “So? Do you still get embarrassed about losing your pants?”
Lance, aged 20, looking at Keith with his bare arms and sharp jaw and his lips cloud-full, can confidently say that, “No,” he does not still get embarrassed about losing his pants.
Keith gives him a weird look. “Good. Nothing to be embarrassed about. You were a kid, it’s cute.”
You’re cute, Lance thinks but he rolls his eyes anyway. “I was an adorable child. My mother has so much photographic evidence—oof!” Keith either underestimates his strength or overestimates how much Lance weighs because when he pulls Lance back quickly to avoid walking into someone Lance slams into him quite hard.
“Watch where you’re going,” Keith says, voice neutral, eyes soft.
“Yeah, well,” Lance says, hoping the breathiness in his voice comes off as faux-haughty and not desperately affected by Keith’s hands circling his arms and the sudden proximity of every point of their bodies. “You just try to keep your hands to yourself, Wonderboy.” He grins, pushing for teasing to swallow back the bruising beat of his heart, but the taste in his mouth lingers, washing up insistent as the pounding sea. He wants for the taste of something else.
Keith knows him better now; he doesn’t let go too quickly, he waits to see Lance standing straight and walking alongside him. “I’ll let you fall next time.”
“Mm no,” Lance sings. “Your reflexes are too good, you can’t help it.”
Keith raises his eyebrows, sort of like a challenge but only because it’s what he does and not because he thinks Lance is wrong. It’s an expression that’s nice in the pink and blue flashing lights of the boardwalk carnival rides, half-hidden like Lance is seeing him through a classroom door.
“Let’s go on the Waltzer,” Lance blurts.
“What?” Keith follows Lance towards the ride, only slightly slower than him. “We went on it a couple of days ago.”
“Yeah,” Lance says to the air, “but you’ve done the spinning three times out of four. It’s my turn. What else are we going to do anyway?” I don’t know how to explain to you that sometimes the only way I can look at you is if the rest of the world is spinning too.
Lance doesn’t know if it’s inadvertent when Keith’s shoulder brushes his. “Alright,” Keith says. “I’ve got time to kill.”
“Hey.” Lance makes a wounded noise. “That’s offensive, frankly. I thought we were friends. The time we spend together is special .”
Keith looks at his watch as he waits patiently for the vendor to give him the tickets. “You have used up exactly twelve minutes of our ‘special time’.”
“Wow. Generous. I can just feel your appreciation for me right in this moment. You know, sometimes I think to myself—”
Keith holds up the tickets he paid for and rolls his eyes in a way Lance wants to describe as fond (but it does funny things to his stomach so he just ignores it). “Just get on the ride, dummy.”
Lance makes a happy noise and finds his favourite car. “Fine, but if you really want things to be interesting, next time we go skinny dipping in the ocean.”
“Won’t that be cold,” Keith says, scrunching his nose and checking the security bar over them both.
Lance looks at him for a moment before laughing. “This isn’t Washington, but if your pale ass is too chicken—”
“How do you know my ass is pale?” Keith turns to smirk at Lance so he looks straight back, lightly and carefully.
“Lance,” Keith says.
“Yes, dear.”
“Shut the fu—”
The start of the ride jerks the rest of Keith’s breath out of him and Lance laughs at the look on his face.
“If this were Washington there is no way you’d be able to take it,” Keith says, trying obviously to wipe the smirk from Lance’s face. It doesn’t quite work.
“I can take your freezing cold waters any day.” Lance meets Keith halfway and leans in as much as he can too. “Just try me.”
“No way,” Keith says smiling back, a lot softer than necessary for their situation and location. It sparks a tension in the air simultaneously brick-heavy and intangible, sitting independently from the increased air pressure on Lance’s skin. He knows it would take an action to break but he can’t quite move with the ride at full speed so he just releases the feeling into the air; it comes out as a laugh.
Keith grins next to him and they don’t speak to each other for the rest of the ride but with every knee knocked and every gaze met, it’s almost as if they do anyway. This is a side of communication easy to them and well-worn, stretched out by mornings beginning too early with dawns too bright, and molasses-thick humid evenings where breaths are efforts they hold close to their chests. There is an ineffable comfort in knowing that these parts of his dynamic with Keith travel outside the tea shop and the ice cream parlour, all the way down the boardwalk, to the ocean and back again. Both silence and electric raucousness between them; comfort in two parts.
Lance wins at the shooting gallery—three in a row, then five, then seven. For his valiant efforts, he wins a stuffed bear; a simple one, rich chestnut brown with French vanilla feet and snout, finished with a holly-red bow. He immediately wants to give it to Keith, who keeps up until the end of the second round then has to bow out with a roll of his eyes, a clenched jaw, and a small, corny, stuffed heart keyring. He tries to quiet the urge.
“Don’t feel too bad, Wonderboy,” Lance grins, waving his bear. “I’ve been doing this for longer than you’ve been playing pinball.”
Keith bats at him with his keyring. “Shut up. And we brought that pinball machine from Seattle. Shiro’s had it for years.”
“Oh I get it now. You spent your gaming teenage years on a retro pinball machine instead of rotting your brains in front of a normal video game like the rest of us. Explains some—” Lance looks deliberately at his hair and choice of jeans “—aesthetic choices.”
“I’m still going to kick your ass at fortnite, Lance. Last time you won was a fluke.”
Lance laughs. “Yeah, and so were the other eighty times before that? Right.”
“Seventy six,” Keith corrects, smiling. He knows he’s kind of shit at it. “But if we played Airforce Delta Strike I would win every time. Adam had to stop playing with me because he kept losing. I mean, he wasn’t really competitive at video games to start with, but it still sort of irritated him I think.”
Lance watches him tell a couple of stories about Seattle and before Seattle out of the corner of his eye, listening attentively and chiming in with stories of his own different, short, but immeasurably full life. He grows fuller every time Keith laughs or divulges another part of himself or listens to Lance equally as intently. Keith’s hand swings gently next to the bear, and Lance holds it tightly, tangling his fingers in the fur. Everything in him wants to give it to Keith, his hand keeps extending towards him unconsciously before he figures out what he’s doing and disguises the movement as something else. He eventually stuffs it in his jacket, refusing to embarrass himself.
Sometimes, when Keith forgets how much time is passing and Lance is contrarily hyper-aware of every minute at his side, they’ll stay past when Shiro closes up and Adam is due to take them home. On the rare occasion that Keith doesn’t come in with his bike and Adam doesn’t take him home, Lance has the pleasure of giving him a ride instead and this comfort—this thick heartbeat and unearthly fire in Lance’s belly, chest, cheeks (in Keith’s eyes)—curls in and out of the gaps of their conversation and Lance’s wild singing. Sometimes Keith will tell him he’s sorry for letting the time slip and Lance will smile and not tell him that he was keeping count.
~
They do go skinny dipping. Well they dip; they keep their briefs on.
It’s Lance’s birthday and it’s the plan for the end of the night. Both Keith and Pidge have taken the afternoon off, hanging around the ice cream parlour until Lance and Hunk finish their shift. They arrived with a special cake baked in the tea shop’s kitchen, safe in its beautiful brown box for later. Lance nearly cried when he saw it (less because he’s rarely appreciated, more because of how much he appreciates his friends) and somehow gets a tea cloth to the face for it.
Pidge spends her time trying to persuade Laki and Hunk to invent their own drink in the tea shop with Keith’s sparse but supportive suggestions, and Lance spends his time trying not to be distracted by the way thin strands of hair that have fallen out of Keith’s bun peek out from under his cap and gently curl on his neck and jaw. That and Keith reads to him the string of jokes Shiro texted him last night that are so terrible they both end up doubled over in crippling secondhand embarrassment and legitimate amusement.
Lance catches Hunk’s eye after a particularly wacky joke and tears in eyes, and he knows immediately what Hunk’s thinking. Hunk is far from blind and Lance can’t exactly hide all of his feelings for Keith. He doesn’t push Lance on it but he does give him very pointed looks every time Keith comes into the parlour with Laki’s order and a surprise for Lance, or when Lance generally has what Hunk calls his “Keith face”. And while Lance hasn’t waxed poetic to Hunk about every time his heart skips a beat, they have talked about it, and about whether or not Lance will do something about it. But tonight is not a time for him to strangle himself with the anxiety of spilling on Keith what he thinks about him (including thoughts of wanting to kiss Keith’s knuckles just after he’s washed them with the shop’s delicate pomegranate or rose soap). He wants to enjoy himself with his friends.
And he does. The four of them start out with candyfloss and choosing their favourite boardwalk games.
At the arcade Keith points out, “We did these exact games last night.”
“Come on,” Lance says through a cloud of candyfloss. “It’s my birthday, and I feel like winning.”
“Winning what?” Keith gives Lance’s chin the barest of touches with the tip of his finger. “Messy.”
Lance licks his chin with his tongue just to gross him out a bit. “Thanks. A stuffed toy or something, I don’t know. Extra tickets. One of those oversized bubble blowers.” Lance throws a wink at him. “The favour of a fair maiden.” He has the good fortune to see Keith’s skin blossom a soft pink despite the garish lighting and dark pockets.
“Gross,” Pidge says, embarrassing Lance but it makes Keith smile. “I’m with Lance.”
Lance shoves the rest of the candyfloss in his mouth and high fives her. “Yay.”
“What?” Hunk pouts. “But Lance you’re the best DDR player and you know I need the help.”
“Pidge,” Keith says, crossing his arms. “If it’s DDR I need you on my team.”
“Sorry, Wonderboy,” Pidge says, making Lance proud his nickname is spreading. “Like Hunk said, Lance is the best DDR player.”
“Pidge,” Keith says.
Lance reaches to Pidge and squishes her neatly against him. “No, she’s my best friend.”
“You met three months ago. You’ve never even been to her house! Pidge come on.”
“No, he’s my best friend.”
Keith groans. “What is even happening.”
Hunk pouts. “Wait who am I then?”
“My angel, obviously,” Lance says, “my best man.”
Pidge snorts. “So is Keith your bride to be?”
Keith makes a choking noise, his eyes wide enough to swallow the moon. “I’m—What?”
Lance reaches impulsively for his hand, playing with the mood, and kisses his knuckles. “Sweetheart if you’re getting cold feet you can always talk to me.” Rose.
“Motherfucking Christ,” Pidge hisses.
Hunk clasps his hands. “Cute, man.”
Lance represses his amusement as he continues to look at Keith. “Tell me honestly, light of my life, apple of my eye, do I make you happy.”
Keith pulls a face at the terms of endearment, pushing Lance away. “That’s not new information.”
Lance’s cardiovascular system rearranges itself quietly and intently. He runs a hand through his hair and laughs shakily. “Sure. Ok, let’s get started then I guess.
“Motherfucker,” Pidge says again, getting herself ready beside him.
Lance glances at her, then glances at Keith. Keith meets his eyes briefly before smirking competitively at him. Lance can’t even muster anything past what he knows is a helpless, hopeless smile, before he returns his attention to the screen in front. He knows he flirts with Keith, Hunk knows he flirts with Keith—hell, Keith knows he flirts with Keith. The concept somehow became infinitely broader and more intricate in the last two minutes.
Lance sighs. “Motherfucker,” he agrees under his breath.
He and Pidge win at DDR, Keith and Pidge win at air hockey, and when Lance and Keith finally partner up they are unstoppable for every remaining game at the arcade.
(Keith jumps up and hangs off Lance’s shoulder when they win at F1, his waist barely, gently cradled by Lance’s hand and his victorious grin a mirror of Lance’s own.
“I guess we do make a good team,” Lance says, his eyes sliding from Hunk back home to Keith.
Keith throws his head back and laughs, exposing this throat, royally long and smooth, purple in the arcade’s light. Lance swallows down whole beats of his heart.)
When they realise it’s almost midnight they all sprint to the beach before the hour turns, Pidge holding the cake in front of her like the Olympic flame and Hunk awkwardly patting all the pockets in his cargo pants looking for a lighter as he runs. Somehow Keith ends up tangled in Lance’s movements with cuffed elbows and ankles and knees, until eventually one of them trips the other up, or they both do, and they go sprawling in the sand, laughter lighting the air the way the distant few lamp posts don’t. Keith’s wet and hot breath against his shoulder is a match on his red phosphorus skin and pulled away from him before he can do anything more than feel the sensation in its presence. But Keith continues to strike against him: sat on the sand with their knees pressed together when he is serenaded a Happy Birthday, a thumb full of frosting smeared on his cheek, a shove on their way to wash in the ocean.
Lance is a blaze, his heart a hearth. Keith throws him into the waves and he grows warmer yet, taking on the life of the Earth and sea and the light in Keith’s eyes. The water is rushes up to match Lance, still tepid from the day and the Florida current. He feels it move with him and the life in his chest. The waves break on the sharp and exact beauty of Keith’s smile the same way Lance does, over and over at the insistence of the moon and the world. He is raw with it.
(“I think,” Keith begins, floating gently on his back.
Lance watches the moonlight melt into his skin and he wonders how even now the sunlight manages to reach him and kiss him just as gently. “You think what?” he says. He clears his throat.
Keith raises his head to blink at Lance. “I think. Something bit me.”
Lance straightens and treads water, his eyes on Keith’s. “Something bit you.”
“Something bit me. In my pale ass.”
“Oh my god,” Lance says. Then he laughs.)
Steadily, the night remains warm for the four of them. They lay on the sand to look at the stars and talk about everything but. The smell of sugar slowly melts from the air, overpowered by the hard and comforting smell of salt. The sounds of the boardwalk and of themselves yield to the constant tide. The sky turns to blue, to green, to yellow, to red, to blue again. (Hunk, who has taken pictures all night long, turns away from the sunrise and lazily takes one of the four of them. It’s easy to smile for it through contented fatigue.) There is a point at Lance’s shoulder, and one at his wrist, that are warmed the whole way through.
~
Lance pushes his nose out of the nest of his arms resting on the table, shifting his position yet trying not to dislodge Keith’s jacket on his shoulders. His eyes are half-mast and slow-moving as they watch the way Keith’s dark hair drips full and silky around his face like acrylic paints when he cleans the table. The sun hasn’t quite risen yet; the world has crested well past the summer solstice, and the pale pastel yellow of the sky somehow still dim. The shop hasn’t opened yet, but everything inside feels open, simple, and plain. Lance looks at Keith and he thinks of everything he’s said to anyone about him, and then he thinks just about him. It’s easy to begin.
“Hey Keith?”
“Mm.”
“You know dates?”
Keith stops wiping Lance’s table and looks at him. Lance looks right back, still sleepy in his limbs but his heart is wide awake and banging a frenzy in his chest.
“Like… the fruit.” There’s a shadow of a question in his words.
“No,” Lance snorts lightly, closing his eyes because he’s too comfortable to roll them. “Like the activity. Food, fun, conversation.”
“Okay. Yeah.”
Lance opens his eyes again, fully this time, taking in how Keith has stopped cleaning to watch Lance speak. He moves to half-sit on the table, carefully pushing away the pastry and tea he’d given Lance when he’d arrived, leaning on his arm.
Lance’s tongue in his mouth as he speaks feels honey-heavy, honey-sweet. “Would you like to?”
Keith’s head tilts. “To?”
“Go on one.”
Keith raises an eyebrow, silently asking for the last couple of bites to the question.
“With me?”
Dawn blushes, the sun begins to rise, and Keith smiles. It’s simple and big and appears so fast on his face that Lance’s lips stretch as a natural response, even without an answer. He lifts his head from his arms and the jacket slides off his shoulders to pool at his waist.
“Food,” Keith murmurs, leaning down to Lance a little and poking at the edge of his disregarded plate. “Fun, conversation. Sounds like a pretty regular activity around here.”
“Keith,” Lance says, drawing out the vowels a bit, drawing himself straighter. He pokes at Keith’s finger and Keith’s face brightens even more, a rosy mirror of the sprawling, yawning, beautiful dawn.
“Yeah, Lance. Yes.”
The rhythm of Lance’s heart doesn’t change, it doesn’t stop firing wildly in the confines of his body, it doesn’t love any less erratically, hopelessly, surely, but when his fingers circle around Keith’s wrist, and when Keith leans down all the way it becomes a feeling that spreads big enough between them for both to carry.