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The stars are gorgeous, here. Almost like earth, but not quite. The sky’s a little lighter, stars a little dimmer.
Keith feels the wetness from the ground soaking into his back, but he doesn’t sit up. Neither does lance. Neither of them care. Right now, the stars are captivating.
“They’re pretty.” Lance speaks, breaking the silence.
“Yeah.” It’s only half a response, Keith knows. But he can’t come up with anything better. They’re both silent, again, staring at the stars.
“Y’know, usually, this is when you’d say something silly like ‘not as pretty as you, though’ and I’d laugh, and you’d kiss me.” Keith says. He laughs, but there’s no humor in it, his smile fades from his face too quickly, and there’s no happiness in his voice.
“It’s still true. It’s just not my compliment to give anymore. You aren’t mine to kiss.” Lance doesn’t smile, doesn’t laugh. His eyes never move from the stars, never meet Keith’s eyes. Once, Lance had said Keith’s eyes contained their own constellations, ever changing, but always just as beautiful and mesmerizing. He had said nothing would ever come close to what he could find in Keith’s eyes.
“I want to go back to how it was then.”
“We can’t. You know we can’t.” Lance turns to look at Keith, a sad smile on his face. Keith’s face twists as he feels the tears start, so he turns to look at the stars again.
“I know.” He says through a shaky breath. He folds his hands, hiding the shaking. Lance will know what he’s doing. Lance always knows what he’s doing.
He misses them. Who they used to be. He wants to go back to bickering and laughing and kissing and cuddling. To crying after battles and holding each other close, to locking eyes during meetings and smiling. To hanging things up in each other’s room, playing rock paper scissors for whose bed they’d sleep in that night. He wants to go back to making pinky promises of never leaving, of sticking with each other through thick and thin. He wants to go back to late night conversations about meeting Lance’s family, the beach, christmas traditions.
Keith misses the time they were so close. He misses having Lance that way, loving Lance that way.
Now, they sit on a hill in the grass, gazing at the stars, so close. Inches. But Keith has never felt farther away from the boy he loves. He looks at him, so far away.
“Do you think we’ll still talk, years from now?” Keith asks.
Lance hums. He purses his lips. Sighs.
“Yeah, maybe.”
No, probably not.
Keith feels another tear fall.
“You’re my family, you know? I’ve never had one of those, not really. You mean a lot to me. Always have. I’m really scared to lose you.” Tear after tear.
“I know. You’re mine, too.” Lance says. His lips turn up just a little. Keith almost feels hope. But he feels his heart sink, and he closes his eyes and turns his head away.
“Not in the same way that you’re mine, though. It’s different for you.”
“How so?” He can hear Lance face him, but he doesn’t move his head.
“This ending,” he waves his finger back and forth between the two of them, “it sucks for you. It hurts.”
Lance hums again.
“But you’ll go back to Earth, when all this is over, and get your room back. You’ll get those big family breakfasts you promised me I’d be a part of,” Keith laughs bitterly, “those ‘good nights’ and ‘good mornings.’” Keith feels the wetness, still. His back is soaked, and itchy. He’ll have to change, he thinks.
“I won’t,” Keith continues, “I’m your family now, but I won’t be forever. You have people to replace the loss of me. I don’t have anyone to replace the loss of you.” Keith wipes away the tears that have fallen and breathes in. He looks at Lance, and forces a smile.
For a moment, he lets himself think it’s how it was. That he’s looking at the boy he’ll marry. Then, it’s back to reality.
“I’m sorry.” Lance whispers. He doesn’t know what else to say.
“I know.” Keith smiles, still, a fake smile. “I know you are, Lance. I am too.”
“I wanted you to be that. I wanted you to be irreplaceable.” Lance says. He chokes on his words. Keith believes him.
There are so many things Keith wants to say. He wanted to talk to Lance for the rest of his life. How does he choose what to say, now? He was supposed to have a lifetime to say everything under the sun. He was supposed to say anything he wanted, because he’d get to wake up and say more tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day.
“I think that’s the difference between me and you, Lance.”
“What is?” Lance knits his eyebrows together, confused. He’s now turned his whole body towards Keith, lying on his side. Keith still stares at the stars. He can’t look at him.
“You make yourself irreplaceable. You worm your way into people’s lives, whether they want you there or not, and you make a permanent home. You put your mug in their cabinet, your socks in their dresser, your pictures on their wall.” A sob works its way out of Keith’s throat.
“You leave traces of yourself everywhere you go. You don’t do it on purpose. You couldn’t, even if you tried. But it happens anyway. You have a place, you’ve had a place, so you create a place for yourself in others. You know how to form lasting relationships. Lasting connections. You and I both know that I haven’t.”
“But I won’t ever forget you.” Lance says.
“You won’t ever forget my name or my face, or what we were. But you’ll forget my birthday, or my favorite animal, or why I wear fingerless gloves,” He holds his hand up and spins it around, examining it. “You’ll forget the way you loved me, the way I loved you. The way our hands fit together, or the way it feels to kiss me. Eventually, I’ll be drown out by someone else. Eventually, I’ll be nothing but a ‘remember when.’”
They look at each other for a long moment.
“I’ll always love you, Keith.” And he sounds like he means it, truly. He sounds like he really, really will.
“No, you won’t. But that’s okay,” Keith’s head turns away again, for the last time.
In the sky, he sees a thousand different universes, a thousand different lives. He lets himself see the one where he loves Lance until the end of time. Where they grow old. Where Keith is happy.
“It doesn’t make me love you any less, Lance.”