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“I was in love with you.”
Keith didn’t think it was possible for words to shatter someone’s entire reality and yet here he was. Sitting in front of the man he’d long since accepted his feelings for were- and always had been- unrequited, hearing the words ‘love’ and ‘you’ coming from his mouth. It felt like reality was peeling away, someone had managed to dislodge the sky from its sticker sheet and had begun pulling, leaving an empty, white void of nothing. Nothing but Love. You… Was. Past tense.
Not trusting his mouth, Keith didn’t reply, he didn’t think he could get it to work in the first place. Worried he might say the wrong thing- something about being in love with him but now, in the present tense, today.
“When we were kids.” There was a fondness in Lance’s voice, “before I asked out Allura. I was like, fully head over heels for you.” Lance laughed, head tipping backwards. Keith stared at his throat.
Letting out a sigh, Lance’s head dropped straight down to look at his lap. Keith’s gaze followed, landing on his hands. His long, nibble fingers- all knobby joints. Same as they'd always been, ever since they were kids. Keith had spent a long time looking at those hands, thinking about them. He was fidgeting.
“I think when you left I sort of, I mean I was so mad.” Lance looked at him again. “Y’know, you just up and left like you didn’t need us anymore and you’d barely look at me when you came back. I don’t think I fell out of love with you then but, after a while…” Lance sighed again, “I realised it hurt more than anything- to love you, that is.”
There was a moment of silence.
“I’m sorry.” Keith managed.
Lance smiled at him. That soft, sincere smile that Keith had long ago fallen in love with. It was a private smile, a personal one. Lance smiled a lot but this one was reserved for sincere moments like this, for people Lance really cared about- even if he didn’t present tense capital L Love them. He sighed, hands running down his legs to brush some invisible dust away, head tilting as he watched Keith- just looked at him for a moment. “Can’t change the past.” he shrugged, “Besides, we’re super close now, right? Great friends. Best friends, even!”
That gentle, vulnerable moment began to fracture. Lance’s usual casual, teasing veneer creeped back to pick at the edges until cracks began to splinter across it. Or the sticker was being quickly and ungracefully stuck back to the sheet. The corners not matching properly, wrinkles appearing across the once perfect landscape. Keith’s metaphors were getting muddled. His mind whirled, stuck somewhere between wanting to conserve the moment for as long as he could and wanting desperately for them to move along and pretend this had never happened.
“Right.” Keith hoped and prayed the soft, fond smile he knew was playing across his features wasn’t doing just that. That his eyes weren’t broadcasting every delicate, loving emotion he held for Lance. He knew they were, knew that the expression on his face was betraying every feeling he’d ever held for the other man, but he also knew that he’d stared at Lance so openly, so lovingly for a decade at this point and he’d never- not once- noticed. “You’re- Lance- I mean-” The words got caught in his throat, unsure what they were meant to be in the first place.
What was he meant to say?
Tell him he loves him? That he loved him then, that he loves him now. That every second of every day for the past ten years he’d walked around with a heavy, beating thing in his chest with Lance’s name engraved across it. That he was irrevocably, unconditionally in love with him and probably always would be. That he’d resigned himself to such a fate, to pining from afar, to unrequited love and stolen glances never to be returned (again. They were, once. Apparently).
Did he bare it all? Slice open his chest and watch as every carefully guarded secret spilled out in ugly, gorey honesty? Witness the horror dawn in Lance’s eyes as he processed how this love had been eating him up on the inside. His body hollow except for his love, gnawing and all-consuming. A disgusting, wretched thing that Keith had let fester inside. Grow and grow until it was all that was left.
He couldn’t. He couldn’t put that on him. He’d held this in for so long, he didn’t need to expose it now. Especially when Lance was in such a delicate, tentative emotional state post-break up. It hadn’t even been a month since he and Allura had split. Their relationship had lasted years, several years, a long time. Even if Lance was having this moment, admitting what was obviously something weighing on him so heavily, now was not the time for Keith to do the same. Especially when his secret was an ugly, pulsating mass.
He briefly entertained lying. Smiling, laughing softly and telling him that he felt the same back in the day. That the feelings had faded, eventually. When he realised they wouldn’t work well together or when Lance and Allura finally started dating or when a million and one other things that should’ve resigned Keith’s heart to letting go of this unjustifiable fixation happened.
They could laugh about lost chances, smile sadly at each other as they imagined what could have been.
That would require too much explaining, though. Explaining why he left despite the feelings in his chest that had already planted their seeds. How, at first, the love he felt caused such anger and disharmony that Keith could barely stand to be around the other man. How he’d always regretted leaving so suddenly, not communicating why he’d all of a sudden decided going to college in another state and ghosting everyone was a great idea. Even if in the end he finally got closure with his mother, the fissure it caused in the group due to the way Keith had gone about it was never worth it. The distance it created between Keith and Lance, only made worse by Keith’s stupid decision to try and get over him by completely ignoring him even when he was back,was never worth it. How much it hurt when he finally let himself try again, try and let what he felt grow gently, extend its branches towards Lance only to find him already halfway into Allura’s arms.
How it was Keith’s fault that nothing ever happened. The reason it was past tense, loved, was because of his own stupid misgivings.
He blew his chance a long time ago and while the awful thing inside his chest branding the man before him’s name in emblazoned cursive had planted its roots so deeply inside that it would take a miracle to extract it, it was the life Keith had long ago resigned to living.
So when Lance nodded, eyebrows raised trying to encourage him to continue- to finish his sentence. Keith shook his head. “You’re my best friend.” He told him instead.
Lance grinned. The moment shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. Things continued on how they always did.