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“Can I help you?”
Lance nods at Keith curtly. “Yes,” he says.
“Okay…?” Keith raises an eyebrow, prompting a response.
There’s a long pause, and then: “You were looking at me. The whole time,” Lance says, as though it’s a proper answer to Keith’s confusion, which it sort of is. He flourishes with one hand. “Staring, is a better word, actually. The whole time , which is–anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that you’re not subtle.”
Keith merely smiles. Lance’s skin has darkened slightly upon their return to Earth even though they don’t spend a large amount of time in the sun. There are freckles on the bridge of his nose now. He carries himself with more confidence than ever, self-assured in ways that he’d never been before. Keith had known that a lot of Lance’s bravado was false, but everything about him these days is honest and his eyes are remarkably blue.
Keith wonders, briefly, if it’s something he should be embarrassed about. He’s not. “Does it make you uncomfortable?” he asks, tucking his hands into his pockets casually.
“What kind of question is that?” Lance asks, and it’s almost teasing. “Where is your shame? Aren’t you scandalized at the thought of being caught red-handed? As far as everyone else is concerned, it’s only been a week since we started dating, and you look at nothing else.”
Keith replies without hesitation. “I can stop if you want me to.”
Lance’s gaze becomes laser-focused. That’s not what he wants at all, and Keith knows it. “Well…why?”
“Why?”
“Why do you stare?” he clarifies expectantly.
He’s really fishing for it today, isn’t he? Keith’s mouth quirks at the side, indulging Lance, because honestly, what else can he do? “I like the way you look.”
Lance is extremely satisfied by the answer, evidenced by the look of giddy bliss on his face, and it makes Keith feel bold, as these things always do. He takes a step forward, heat blazing through him when Lance stays put and maintains eye contact. Keith thinks he could drown, thinks he could happily die there, in the ocean of his eyes.
“I knew it,” Lance grins, mirroring Keith with a step backwards.
“Of course you did; I’ve told you before,” Keith says plainly and his stomach flutters. He’s told him a thousand times and he’ll tell him a thousand more.
Lance raises an eyebrow at that. He’s teasing again. “I’m sorry, told me what?”
Keith rolls his eyes, smothering a laugh. “Lance, what is this about?”
Lance takes another step back and his gaze remains fixed on Keith in that come-hither way that he’s perfected over the last several months. “What? I’m just wondering if there’s something you wanna share with the class.”
Keith follows him, something warm delighting deep in his stomach when Lance’s back meets the wall, when the look on Lance’s face is undiluted anticipation. Keith wants to reach out and touch him, but he keeps his hands tucked into his pockets for now, perfectly content to draw this out as long as Lance will let him.
“You know,” Lance says conversationally, tucking his hands behind his back, “this is like, second-best case scenario. A part of me maybe worried that you were going to tell me I just had something on my face, like last time. Because you like to torture me, apparently.”
“You make it easy.” The warmth in Keith’s stomach spreads up to his chest, out towards his fingers. He chuckles, shifting his weight, knowing that he’s standing really close. Maybe too close, but maybe not close enough, either. “What’s the first-best?” he asks.
Lance relaxes against the wall, smiling sweetly up at Keith, his face still flushed. The bright, keen look in his eyes is exhilarating; it steals Keith’s breath clean away. “Considering the way you’ve been eyeing me - a known four-course meal - like a starving man, I thought you might kiss me.”
“Is that what you want?” Keith’s eyes drag over Lance’s open expression, along the slope of his nose, over the dip of his cupid’s bow, shiny with chapstick. He tracks the edge of Lance’s jaw with a heavy gaze, examining the length of his neck, the sweet spot against his pulse where it meets the fabric of his shirt. It’s true; he’d looked good enough to eat all day.
Lance tilts his head to the side a little, but his voice isn’t as strong as before. “Was I not being obvious enough?”
Keith leans in close, removing one hand from his pocket to brace it against the wall near Lance’s shoulder. He still holds back from touching him; he’ll make Lance want it enough to take before he gives in. The sound of his voice is deep and warm, the way he knows will crawl under Lance’s skin and stoke the heat there. “Where do you want me to kiss you?”
Lance drops his gaze, letting out a big breath. It almost has enough feeling behind it to be a groan. “Y-You are lethal . Did you know that? Christ.”
“Mm.” Lance smells good. Keith’s eyes flutter closed at the warm, generic-clean scent of soap, the potency of it. He’d laugh at how easily Lance folded under the rumbling thunder of his words if he wasn’t feeling so drunk on the proximity. As it is, he just feels happy. That they’re here, like this. That Lance thinks of him, and wants this too..
“Uncle! I-I’m calling uncle.” Lance’s voice is kind of wobbly and rough around the edges. Catching and snagging on nearly every word. “Man, I should–I should know better than to start this shit with you. I never win.”
Keith thinks it’s because Lance wants him to win. “Lance.”
“What?”
“Where?” Keith breathes out, opening his eyes just enough to see Lance still looking down. “Show me.”
Lance swallows and then looks up, his hair brushing against Keith’s. His eyes are dark in Keith’s shadow, but no less blue. “You’re going to kill me.”
Keith merely hums, a low, low thing, half-amused. “Show me.”
Lance doesn’t move for a long moment, and Keith is almost certain that he’s going to insist that he get some breathing room, that maybe they pick this up later or something. But then he slowly raises his hand and taps the side of his neck, just above the collar of his shirt, twice, with two fingers. “Here, maybe,” he says.
Keith leans in, the tip of his nose skimming across the warm stretch of Lance’s pulse before he presses his mouth there, chaste, but lingering. Lance shivers under the touch, and hunger gnaws at the pit of Keith’s stomach when he already hears the sound of approval that catches at the back of Lance’s throat. He pulls back before he can get carried away, before he becomes insatiable.
“Where else?”
Lance just looks for a moment, and then taps his chin. “Here,” he whispers.
Keith obliges.
“Where else?”
“Here.”
The other side of his neck.
“Here.”
The edge of his jaw. Lance’s breath stutters again there and it’s so good that it has Keith humming.
“Where else?” Keith’s mouth skims along now, gently, not bothering to pull away.
“Here.”
The corner of his mouth, the dimples that show when he smiles his widest. He parts his lips slightly at the contact, his breath warm against Keith’s mouth when he stays there longer than any other place Lance has asked him to kiss. Still chaste. Both of them just reveling in the contact and heat of it.
“Anywhere else?” Keith murmurs, and his hand finally finds Lance’s hip, his thumb brushing tenderly over the soft spot above the bone.
Lance responds by reaching up and cupping Keith’s face with both hands, guiding him down to his mouth at last. Keith sighs into him, and every sensation is so bright and warm and Lance that he hardly even feels like himself anymore. He’d live here, if he could. He waited for so long for even the slightest hope of kissing Lance that the act of it seems like nothing short of a religious experience every single time.
His hands find Lance’s waist, holding him steady against the wall as Lance pulls Keith’s weight into him a little frantically by the collar of his jacket, desperate for more contact. His mouth opens and he can feel it the moment Lance’s knees go weak under him; Keith laughs against his lips and pulls away marginally, pressing their foreheads together, catching his breath.
“I know it’s been like three months,” Lance says unevenly, eyes still closed, and Keith thinks two months, three weeks, and 5 days while absently admiring his long eyelashes, “but I still don’t know how you, of all people, are this good at kissing.”
Keith reaches up and brushes some of the messy hair back from Lance’s cheek, watching as his eyes flutter open slowly, as though he’s still savoring that kiss, even moments later. “You promised me you wouldn’t make this into a competition,” Keith says, and the words are exasperated but the tone of his voice is only fond. “Let me be good at things that make you feel good, Lance.”
“Please, by all means! Don’t let my ego stop you.”
Keith laughs again and leans back in.