Chapter Text
"Come on, you have a return flight to cancel." Keith said, standing up and offering Lance a hand. Lance threw his head back and laughed.
"Ugh, do we have to go so soon?"
"You like it here?"
"Yeah, it feels like our little hiding space in the world. A little overgrown train track tucked away in the woods of Washington - also where I lure you and convince you to date me."
Keith rolled his eyes.
"It can also be where you lure me to kill me when you get sick of me." He suggested.
"Ooh, good idea." Lance laughed again, taking his hand and standing up. They automatically dropped hands once Lance stood up and Keith began walking towards somewhere easier to climb up. Lance waited and hesitated before catching up to him and taking his hand again, walking along side him.
"If I ever do lose my temper and murder you can you promise to haunt me so I don't get lonely?"
"I really am stuck here with you forever, aren't I?"
Lance offered a boyish grin that said yes.
_____________________
July 28th:
Lance carefully adjusted an orchid, fitting it nicely between two bright yellow flowers - a stark contrast to the gray just past the window display where rain had started falling. As he drew back into the store he felt his phone buzz in his pocket.
He pulled it out as he went behind the counter.
K: 'Thinking of you.'
Lance smiled and typed out his reply.
L: Because of the rain?
K: Always.
The sound of a bell made him put his phone away and look towards the source of the noise - the front door of the flower shop opening.
"Good afternoon, can I help you?" He asked, cheerily rocking on his heels as he leaned across the counter. A man in his forties stumbled in, taking down his umbrella and shaking it. He recognised the man from Valentine's Day, picking up another bouquet for his wife a few months after Lance had started working there.
"Afternoon. I have an arrangement to pick up? Under the name Moore."
"I'll get that for you now." Lance smiled, letting the man dry himself off as he went to collect a bouquet that had been ordered.
He only had another hour until closing time, eventually taking off his sunflower apron and hanging it up in the back and locking up the colourful little store. He got into Keith's black pickup truck which he had given Lance to use despite much protest and picked up another cheap car for himself. He noticed Keith's car already in the driveway as he pulled in. He normally expected Keith to get home an hour or two after him - if Keith got working on a car he could end up focused on it for hours on end. He unlocked the front door key and walked through to the lounge.
In the lounge hung a photo frame of dried pressed flowers - just a little collection of common wild flowers you could find alongside the streets. Keith had picked them and brought them home to Lance about a month beforehand. Despite of all of the beautiful bouquets he helped create and sold every day, these were his favourites.
"Keith?" He called out, shaking off his coat and leaving his keys on the coffee table.
"In the kitchen!" Keith called back. Lance wandered through, peering in.
"Hey stranger." Lance said nonchalantly, leaning against the doorway.
The room was dim, the warm flicker of candle light dancing across the walls. Keith, still in his garage uniform, was knelt with his back to Lance, lighting the last candle before picking something up and turning to him.
He held a homemade cake, messily iced in pale blue icing and a few lite birthday candles out of the top.
"Happy Birthday, Lance."
Lance felt his stomach flip.
"Keithhhh." He swooned, feeling his face flush but hoping it wasn't visable in the candle light. He stepped forward and looked at the little cake lovingly. Upon closer inspection he noticed a heart drawn in darker blue in the middle of the circle of candles.
"Don't get all soppy on me - you have to blow out the candles I think or else your birthday isn't right or something."
"It's to make a birthday wish, Keith."
"Ohhhh. Right, yeah. Make a wish."
Lance rolled his eyes giggling at Keith's little mess up and then closed them, thinking of a wish to make. He leaned forward and blew out all of the candles.
It left them in a now dark gray room, the sound of the rain pattering just outside.
"What did you wish for?" Keith asked.
"I thought we weren't doing anything for my birthday." Lance enquired.
"Well we can't really afford to go out to dinner or anything right now, I think you already guessed I made this cake. I'm not sure if it's edible." Keith looked at it quizzically. He turned to put it down, calling back to Lance as he did so.
"What did you wish for?" He repeated.
"I'm not allowed to tell you Keith! It means it won't come true."
"Really?"
"Honestly, I didn't wish for anything."
"What a waste of candles. Why not?" Keith shook his head.
Lance shrugged.
"I'm afraid of anything changing. I want it to always be like this."
Lance knew it was imperfect. They barely made rent, Keith still smoked at the end of the driveway and Lance still wasn't always fully alive and Keith knew that.
Last Sunday Keith had sat curled up in the bath as Lance carefully rubbed his skin with soap and used a cloth to wash him down - his body providing no energy to do it himself in days. Lance didn't mind, something in him liked washing Keith and humming a song he had heard in the radio.
Lance liked how Keith carried him to bed every time he fell asleep on the sofa with his head in Keith's lap - watching one of those nature documentaries. H pretended to like them because Keith did but they always bored him to sleep. He liked how Keith would drop by the flower shop with Cosmo on some days when he wasn't working and blame it on Cosmo missing him.
He liked how Keith kept a photo of them both in his wallet, a photo taken by Coran when everybody met up at Pidges for New Years - silly party hats on their heads. He liked how when Lance went home for a week to see his family Keith called him every single night and they would talk for hours.
Keith cut a slice of cake as Lance wandered over and wrapped his arms around his waist, resting his head on his shoulder.
"How was your day?" Lance asked.
"Jeremy let me leave early today so I could make this stupid cake. Why do they use different measurements for every ingredient? Cups and grams and millilitres." Keith complained, slipping a piece onto a new plate and turning to Lance to give it to him. Lance laughed.
"Well it LOOKS pretty. I like the blue. And the little heart." He commented, taking the plate. He took a fork from Keith's hand and tried a piece.
... something was definitely off.
Not enough sugar or something. Lance hid the look of confusion at the taste and swallowed the bite as Keith watched anxiously.
"This is great. This is all so sweet - thank you, Keith." He said, watching Keith relax and smile.
"There's some letters on the sofa for you to open - from Hunk and Shiro and well... everyone. I think some are from your family too."
"Really? There's a whole bunch?" Lance lit up, grinning. Keith nodded. Lance took this as an opportunity to subtly put down the plate of cake.
"Yeah. Althoughhhh.... I was wondering if I could be selfish for a bit."
"What do you mean?"
"Can I have just a few minutes of your precious birthday time?" He asked, putting his hands together in a mock pleading type of way.
"I might be so kind." Lance took one of Keith's hands, noticing it was a little clammy. He smiled at the thought of Keith really being that nervous over Lance liking his cake.
"Well I know we can't have a full party but-" Keith turned to the counter again and tapping on his phone a few times.
Soft music began playing, a familiar tune filling the room. Keith lit another candle which returned the room to soft hues of gold.
"Lovers rock - nice choice." Lance commented. Keith hummed in response, starting to sway a little bit with Lance.
Lance had pulled Keith into dancing in the kitchen a few times - whether it was Sunday mornings with the smell of bacon or coming back late from the beach with sand in their hair.
When it rained Keith would always send him messages to say he was thinking of him - and in Washington that meant a lot. On overcast days they would take Cosmo to the beach and walking the line between the water hand in hand and the sand letting the tide wash up against their rain boots. When skies were clear Lance could never wait for nighttime, to look up at their two stars together against the dark night sky.
Why would he wish for anything else?
Keith encouraged Lance to spin under his arm as the chorus ended and it came to a quieter part of the song, Cosmo carefully moving around them in an attempt to join. Lance laughed.
The song looped a few times and they kept swaying and spinning around the kitchen, pretending to not even notice it was on a loop. And eventually, when all the cards were opened and displayed around the house and Keith sussed out that the cake tasted awful they sat outside of the house at the edge of the driveway, lying back so they could see the sky. The rain had stopped for just a bit - a gap between heavy clouds that allowed the moon to shine through. He fully leaned against Keith, their hands intertwined in his lap.
The moon was really beautiful that night. And while Lance wasn't always fully alive yet he was far from being ready to die.
The moon was beautiful and Lance was going to die happy one day as an old man wrapped in warm blankets Keith never failed to give him - fifty years of Goodnight kisses lingering on his lips and a hundred birthday wishes for nothing to change at all.
Nothing to change at all.