Work Text:
The space between coming home and going to bed is ritualistic. For most people, that’s when they’re at the end of their reserves; it’s when people wind down, watch a show, or maybe read a book.
Not for Lance.
For Lance, it means his meds have worn off, and he’s practically shaking with pent-up energy.
It’s a side of him Keith had never really seen before they started dating. Even then, it was fleeting — an endearing quirk he was occasionally privy to. But now, they live together. Now, Keith notices it.
Sleep has always been more of an enemy than a friend to Keith. Before moving in with Lance, he'd filled his evenings with training. He’d go until his head felt cottony and wrong, and he was so physically exhausted that he’d just collapse into bed.
So, maybe it wasn’t the best routine. But it worked. Sort of.
Now, it’s different.
Unfortunately, Lance would notice if he trained himself halfway to the grave every night. So instead, he spends his evenings curled up on their bed, thumbing through trashy alien romance novels.
At first, he thought there was no way he was going to be able to sleep like that — after all, he’s only ever had one method at his disposal.
But now, all that energy he doesn’t get to expend in the training room, he expends just listening to Lance.
Because Lance talks. He talks about whatever he did during the day, makes comments about the lotion he’s putting on his face, and just generally rambles aimlessly.
Their bathroom adjoins the bedroom, so he paces back and forth between the two rooms while he goes about his skincare routine. From his spot on the bed, Keith listens to his voice fade in and out. It’s calming in its way.
Maybe it would bother some people, but the frantic energy is grounding for Keith.
Sometimes, on the particularly bad nights — the nights where shadows linger like cobwebs in Keith’s mind, and Lance has so much nervous energy that he can’t sit down, they’ll go to the training room and spar.
It’s probably not what other people would consider a perfect routine, but that’s fine. It’s theirs, and it works.
Usually.
Keith has just come back from a week-long recon mission with the Blade. It was a bad mission. They came back completely empty-handed, and lost two operatives.
Keith didn't know the operatives, but that doesn’t stop the whole thing from feeling like a waste. A waste of resources, a waste of deaths. The feeling sits angry and gnarled in his stomach, and doesn’t quite go away when he gets back to the castleship.
Hunk makes him goo-brownies as soon as he gets off the shuttle. Everything is fine for a while. Lance is nowhere to be found, but Pidge and Hunk are more than happy to keep him company. Between sloppy bites of brownie, Pidge tells him about her latest robotic project.
Hunk interjects occasionally, and they end up talking over each other, bouncing around ideas for the new speaker that they’re building for Allura’s birthday.
Everything is fine.
Pidge and Hunk are great. But, it’s all kind of a lot after spending a week under the constant threat of violence.
So, he bids them goodnight and wanders out of the kitchen.
He’s so excited for a real mattress. After sleeping on the floor next to strangers for a whole week, all he wants is to peacefully collapse into bed beside Lance.
By the time he gets back to their room, he’s tired, angry, and just a little bit miserable about everything.
But when the door whooshes open, their room is anything but peaceful. Lance is doing exactly what he always does at this time. That is, he’s pacing and mumbling to himself while he goes through his skincare routine.
It takes him a tick to notice Keith. When he does, he whips around and smiles brightly.
“Keith, you’re back! Sorry I couldn’t meet you at the shuttle. Allura needed me for a meeting with the Xylans. That’s those slimy guys we went to the banquet with like a movement ago, remember?” He throws his arms around Keith in an awkward hug.
There’s lotion on his hands, so he has to hold his palms away from Keith’s back.
Before Keith has a chance to answer his first question, he’s already launching into another one, “So? How was it? You guys single-handedly crumble the Galra empire?”
Keith opens his mouth to answer, but Lance mumbles, “Hm, I guess it’s not single-handedly if you’re on a team…multi-handedly? No, that doesn’t sound right…”
He grits his teeth, nails digging into his palms. He’s barely far enough into the room for the door to shut behind him. The bed is right there.
Without a word, he brushes past Lance and flops down on the bed, curling up on his side with his back to the door. He’ll get the message.
“That bad? Hang on, let me go wash my hands, but I want to hear about it, I swear!”
He just wants to sleep. But then, the sink is on, and Lance is humming some song under his breath, and it all sounds so loud.
When Lance gets back into the room, he plops down next to Keith with his back against the headboard.
He’s still holding some kind of bottle in his hand from the bathroom, and he’s popping the cap on and off of it.
“Alright, okay. I’m good now. So, how was it?”
Keith can feel his expectant gaze against his back, but all he can hear is the bottle’s click, click-click, click.
Click, click-click, click.
Click, click-click, cli—
He sits up and grabs the bottle out of Lance’s hand. “Would you stop that?”
And, yeah, it comes out angry and harsh, but he can’t bring himself to care when it’s making him want to crawl out of his own skin. He throws the bottle down between them.
“Oh, cheese, yeah, sorry. It’s just been one of those days, you know? And, I’m totally in the middle of the med rebound right now, which definitely isn't helping.” He starts rapping his fingers against the sheets. The sound is barely there, but to Keith, it sounds like an airhorn.
Lance continues, speaking so fast that his words almost blur together, “I never really got rebounds when I was a kid. I think I'm getting them ‘cause I’m an adult now, and my dosage when we left Earth was for, like, a seventeen-year-old. But I really don’t wanna let Coran mess around with my dosage. So, I guess it is what it is!" He shrugs. Keith wants to scream. "Anyway, sorry! You were gonna tell me about your mission!”
He finishes with a clap, and his voice is bordering on yelling, and Keith just snaps.
“Oh my god, would you just shut up? For like two fucking seconds?” He gets up on his knees. His hands are fisted at his sides. “I literally haven’t gotten two sentences in the whole time I’ve been back!”
Lance grimaces, eyes narrowed. “Don’t tell me to shut up!” he yells back.
Keith is angry, and tired, and uncomfortable. He just wants Lance to get it. He wants to say something that will hurt. Without thinking, he throws his arms up and shouts, “God, you’re so annoying!”
His breathing comes heavy, face twisted up and mean. The blaring silence rings in his ears.
For a moment, he feels relieved.
Then, the weight of what he's said hits him like a space shuttle. His heart plummets into his stomach, and he claps a hand over his mouth like he can force the words back inside.
With wide, horrified eyes, he looks at Lance in shock. Lance, whose lower lip is caught between his teeth. Lance, who’s looking at Keith with wide, watery eyes, like Keith has just confirmed every one of his worst fears. He’s not crying, but Keith can see him visibly fighting it. And that is so much worse.
“Yeah,” Lance chuckles mockingly, tilting his head and clasping a hand around the back of his own neck, “so I’ve been told.” He takes a few slow blinks, pushes himself off the bed, and turns around. “I’m gonna go take a walk. Or something. I think. I’ll uh, I’ll see you.”
He starts to leave, but before he can get too far away, Keith leans almost off the bed to grab him by the forearm. The movement forces him to drop his other arm onto the sheets for support. “Wait. Fuck. I’m— I didn’t mean that. You’re not— I mean…Shit. I didn’t mean it.”
“I know you didn’t,” he answers, turning around with a self-deprecating smirk. Lance takes a step back, and Keith has to drop his arm so that he doesn’t get dragged off the bed. “I know you didn’t, but I just can’t do this right now. I gotta— I gotta go.”
Keith sits back on his haunches.
“Yeah. Okay. I’ll just. Be here…then.”
The door wooshes closed behind him, and Keith rubs his eyes so hard he sees stars.
“Shit.”
***
Lance doesn’t come back.
The longer he’s away, the longer Keith has to stew. He knows it was a shitty thing to say, alright? He knows people teased Lance for being annoying at the Garrison. So, yeah, it definitely wasn’t his best moment.
But, it’s not like it’s the first time they’ve said stupid shit to each other!
Keith stares at the ceiling. It’s quiet. That’s what he wanted in the first place, isn’t it? Quiet? He wraps his arms around himself in the dim lighting that’s supposed to simulate nighttime. It’s part of what he wanted.
The more he thinks about it, the more he feels like Lance overreacted. It wasn’t that big of a deal, right? He’s the one who just came back from a week of getting shot at.
He feels bad, but he’s also angry. Lance should apologize, too.
***
It’s a few vargas before they’re supposed to wake up, and Keith is starting to get antsy. He’s tried to sleep — he really has. He’d been so tired, too, but now he just feels queasy, and a little alone, and a lot confused.
This isn’t their first fight by any stretch of the imagination. It’s not even their first fight since moving in together! But this is the first time Lance hasn’t come home. And, damn it, Keith is confused. And maybe a little worried.
He turns onto his side. And then flips over onto his other side. And then rearranges the pillows. Finally, he kicks off the covers and jumps up to his feet. Fine. Lance doesn’t want to talk about it like an adult? He’ll be the adult, then.
He throws on his shoes, and stomps out the door.
The first place he checks is the lounge. Maybe Lance fell asleep on the couch? But, no. The lounge is empty. It’s eerily dark as he makes his way around the castle. He checks the observatory, and the bridge, and the kitchen. He even checks the pool!
After walking around the halls aimlessly for a while, he finally admits defeat.
He wraps his arms around himself as he walks back, lips pursed and eyes far away. It's just — he just doesn't get it. Why didn't Lance stop after the bottle? Why didn't he understand? They wouldn't be here if Lance had just been paying attention to him!
Yeah.
Maybe he wasn't nice. But, isn't that what partners do? Pay attention to each other?
On his way back, he stops into the kitchen for a glass of water, expecting to find it empty.
But when he walks in, he sees a figure crouched down and rifling around the bottom cabinet. At first, he thinks it’s Lance. His stomach bottoms out while his heart does a weird roll in his chest.
Then, the figure stands up, and he realizes it’s not nearly lanky enough to be Lance.
“Hunk?” He gasps.
A pot clatters to the ground with a loud bang, and Hunk answers frantically, “Keith? Oh, man, you scared the quiznack out of me! What’re you doing up, buddy?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” he says in a flat voice, leaning up against the entrance to the kitchen.
“Couldn’t sleep. So, I’m starting breakfast a little…” He looks at a watch on his wrist, “Well, a lot early. But, you didn’t answer my question.”
“Uh, yeah. Have you seen Lance?”
Hunk bends over to pick up the pot he dropped. After setting it down gently on the tabletop, he answers, “That depends. Why don’t you know where he is?”
Part of Keith is glad Lance has a friend like Hunk. The other, larger part of him is really fucking annoyed.
“We got into a fight. He left, like, early evening last night. Hasn’t come back since.” Keith crosses his arms. “So, do you know where he is, or not?”
“Still depends. Did you do something?”
He rolls his eyes. “I said some stuff I didn’t mean, yeah. But, I didn’t think it was this big a deal!”
“Well, what did you say, man?” Hunk hops up onto the table, pulling his legs up into a crisscross.
“I called him annoying. Uh…and I may have also told him to shut up. And,” he cringes, “I maybe grabbed a bottle of lotion out of his hands because he was playing with the cap.”
Keith is feeling markedly worse about himself. Why did Lance owe him an apology, again? Oh, yeah, for ignoring him and storming out and refusing to talk about it. Like an adult.
“Yikes.”
“I know, I know. But how can I fix it if he won’t talk to me?”
“Well, do you know why he won’t talk to you?”
Keith throws his arms up in aggravation, “I just told you why he won’t talk to me!”
“Dude, chill. I’m trying to help you.” He holds his hands up in a placating gesture. “But, that’s not what I mean. Like, why did it bother him?”
Keith just looks at Hunk in confusion, so he elaborates. “Right. Okay, think about it this way. Imagine if Lance said something like ‘you deserve to be alone forever’ in the heat of an argument. If he said that to me, I’d probably be pissed, but like, I’d get over it. You know? But, you’d probably storm out and not come home. You get it?”
“But that’s different! My dad literally died, my mom left, and like, Shiro—" he cuts himself off, here. "It’s different.”
Hunk just raises his eyebrows.
Keith sighs, “I know people teased him at the Garrison for being annoying, but it’s just not the same.”
This time, it’s Hunk’s turn to look confused. “I mean, yeah, but it’s goes deeper than that, you know?”
“Uh, no?”
“Dude. Seriously? It wasn’t just the Garrison. When he was a kid, the bullying got so bad that he had to switch middle schools like three times! And that’s just, like, the tip of the iceberg. I don’t even know all the stories. He doesn’t really like to talk about it. Haven’t you ever talked to him about his ADHD?”
Keith bites his lip.
“I— I mean, I know he has it? And Coran did some wacky Altean stuff to copy his meds. But, I guess we never sat down and talked about it or anything. It's not…" He shifts from foot to foot nervously. "It's not really that big a deal…is it?"
Hunk covers his face with his hands. “Oh, man. Like, I wanna be mad at you, but you’re both just so freaking stupid. How are you guys functional adults? Like, actually? Okay, c’mon. Lance is in my room, and you guys need to have this talk, like, yesterday."
He jumps off the counter and grabs Keith by the arm, dragging him out of the kitchen like a misbehaving child.
“You left the light on.”
“Don’t care. If you guys aren’t gonna be adults, then I am.”
The irony of that punches all the wind out of Keith’s sails.
When they get back to Hunk’s room, he opens the door to reveal a definitively Lance-shaped blanket on the floor.
Sounding very much like a disappointed parent, Hunk says, “Lance. I know you’re awake. And I know Keith was totally a dick, and he definitely deserves to feel awful about what he did,” he says, this part pointedly directed at Keith, before continuing, “But, you both need to talk about this.”
He sees the Lance-blanket slowly stand up and shuffle over to the door.
“Hey, Keith.”
And, suddenly, Keith feels infinitely worse. Lance looks distressed — his hair is messy in the definitely unstyled way, and he's looking at Keith like someone might look at a catastrophic supernova.
“Hi. I was a little worried."
“Just a little?” Lance teases quietly.
Keith huffs a breath. “Oh, shut up.”
He makes a wounded noise, and just like that, the tension is back. Lance is giving him this look, and Keith doesn’t know what to do.
Hunk interrupts, “Okay, shoo, both of you. I might still be able to get a couple vargas of sleep in.”
He shoves Lance decisively out the door.
Then, Lance and Keith are left totally alone. They stare at each other in silence for a moment.
Keith asks, “So…where do you want to go?”
***
The observatory is quiet at this hour. Well, the whole ship is, really, but it feels more pronounced surrounded by starlight. Or, maybe it’s because Keith is used to the observatory being filled with the sound of Lance’s chatter. He doesn’t want to think about it too hard.
They sit beside each other, backs leaning against the wall. Together, they watch the starlight.
Lance leans his head against Keith’s shoulder, grabs his hand, and starts fidgeting with it.
He gets the feeling that Lance is waiting for an apology, but this whole thing has gotten so far away from him. He’s not even sure where to start. Still, he knows that he has to offer something.
After another few doboshes of uncomfortable silence, Keith just goes for it.
“I have a stupid question,” he begins.
Lance huffs a breath that might be a laugh. “Okay?”
“Okay. Right,” he stalls for a moment. “What does ADHD feel like? Hunk, uh, implied that I don’t really get it. So…”
Lance goes quiet, like he's giving it legitimate thought. He traces patterns on the back of Keith’s hand mindlessly. Then, he sits up and looks at Keith.
His eyes are wide. Even in these moments — the ones where guilt and anger churn like spoiled milk in Keith's gut, he can't help but be a little mesmerized.
“That’s a hard question. It’s not like it’s something you can catch, you know? Like, I’ve always had it. And, sure, I take meds, but they don't make it go away. So, I don’t have a great point of reference, but I’ll try.”
He flips Keith’s hand over, and continues tracing patterns. He’s quiet again, this time for so long that Keith almost interrupts. Just before he can interject, Lance says, “Okay. So, you can control your breathing, right?”
Keith nods, unsure of where he’s going with this. “Right…”
“But, when you’re not controlling it, it just kind of…." he blows out a breath, hands forming a fake explosion, "happens. Like, you don’t need to tell your lungs to breathe air, they just do it. That’s kind of what it’s like for me. Make sense?”
It doesn't make sense. Not even a little bit.
Lance continues, “The point is that I can pay attention, right? Well, duh, I shoot a gun. But…more than that. I can also sit quietly, and I can listen to people, and I can stop bouncing my leg or drumming my fingers or fiddling with your hand.”
Here, he puts Keith’s hand down pointedly. “But it’s like holding my breath. As soon as I’m not thinking about it, I go right back to doing it.” He picks Keith’s hand up again and continues.
“I think that’s what really drives people nuts, actually. Like, if someone tells me they hate when I bounce my leg, I can stop bouncing my leg. But, only for as long as I can consciously think about my leg. As soon as I stop thinking about it? I do it again. Like letting your lungs take over after holding your breath. So, by the second or third time they tell me to stop, they’re pissed, and they don’t understand that I’m not doing it on purpose. It makes me feel horrible, because like, I get it! They told me to stop like a million times, so why can’t I?”
Keith bites his lip, feeling his annoyance and guilt melt into something sinister. He hadn't known it was like that for Lance.
It's just — he can't imagine ever being so out of control of his own body. For most of his life, the only thing he could control was his body.
When his foster homes inevitably decided he was too much: too angry, too violent, too broken, he'd be taken away with nothing but the clothes on his back and a small, black trash bag.
Sure, sometimes he acts before thinking. Always quicker to throw a punch than to hold a hand. But, it's a choice. Every time someone's ended up on the other end of his fist, they've done something to deserve it.
It's hard for him to wrap his head around the enemy being his own body.
He asks, "Is that why you take meds?"
Lance shrugs. "Medication doesn’t make it go away. But it helps me, like, metaphorically control my breathing better. Oh, it’s like a meditation tape!”
He quirks a small smile at Lance’s rapid tone shift.
“Anyway, I think we should probably have a conversation that we should have had way earlier in our relationship. Definitely before we moved in together. I, uh, honestly should've brought this up a while ago…" He purses his lips. "But, to be fair, you're not exactly what I’d call a master communicator either.”
Keith says grumpily, “Shut up.”
“Case in point!”
They smile at each other for a moment, and Keith presses a kiss into the curls of Lance’s hair. He thinks briefly: Yeah, this is worth it.
Lance says, “Whatever, mullet. The point is, it’s hard for me to, like, hold my breath all the time.” At this, his joking tone turns more serious. “And, since we live together, you definitely see that side of me a lot more than anyone else. So, I really, really need you to talk to me. I’m not a mind reader, man. You usually don’t mind my rambling before bed, so— shit, wait, you don’t mind it, right?” He interrupts himself nervously.
“Not…not usually.”
“Right. What was different?”
Keith pulls his hand out of Lance’s to cover his face. He groans. Tries to think of a way to say it that doesn’t make him sound like a massive dick, or like he’s just out for sympathy. He can’t.
“It’s stupid.”
“Okay. Tell me anyway.”
And, well. What’s he supposed to say to that?
He starts, “I was just so tired, I guess. I hadn’t slept in a real bed in like, a week— actually. I still haven’t,” Lance looks like he wants to interject, but Keith continues pointedly, “Anyway. The mission was awful. All day, I just kept telling myself that once I got back, we could curl up, and I could sleep in a real bed and just be done.”
“Oh, cheese. And I just kept talking, didn’t let you get a word in, and then stormed out when you snapped at me," Lance says.
“Yeah…”
Keith reaches back down and squeezes his hand.
Then, Lance says, “Well, you were still a dick, and I’m still very mad at you,” Keith loosens his grip on Lance’s hand like he means to break it, but Lance holds on tighter, “But, I get it, too. Next time, please just tell me that you need some quiet.”
“That’s the thing, though. I don’t think I even realized what I wanted until I didn’t have it.”
“Huh,” Lance clicks his tongue.
He leans his head back down on Keith’s shoulder and huffs out a breath. Then, he mumbles, “Man, your stupid romance novels make it seem like— like happy couples never fight. And that like, when they do, it must have been avoidable. And, I mean, we’re happy, right?” Keith nods seriously. “But that doesn’t seem like it was super avoidable.”
Keith smiles. “First of all, I can’t believe you read my books.”
“They were right there!”
“Second of all, rule number one of reading trashy romance books is to never take dating advice from trashy romance books. Duh.”
Lance crosses his arms over his chest, but he’s still holding Keith’s hand, so he has to twist his shoulder a bit awkwardly. “Man, this sucks! Being mad at you sucks.”
Keith shrugs, not really sure what to say to that, but smiling along with Lance anyway. He shifts back to the topic abruptly. “Yeah. But…I still don’t get it. It’s deeper than I thought it was, isn’t it?”
Lance hisses a breath. “It is.”
Keith nods patiently. He can tell that Lance isn’t quite sure how to answer. After a while of silence, he lets out a shaky breath.
“Alright, here goes the childhood trauma shtick. Usually your department, I know, I know. Sorry to step on your toes, samurai!”
Keith gives him a meaningful look. You’re deflecting. After a moment, Lance gives an uncharacteristic shrug. He continues, “I was a late diagnosis kid. That is, relatively speaking. I wasn’t diagnosed ‘till I was like twelve. Actually, it’s kinda crazy looking back, because I was totally textbook…” he rambles, and then refocuses. “Anyway, I didn’t understand what was wrong with me. I couldn’t sit still at all, I’d jump up in the middle of class, interrupt the teachers, interrupt the kids. I was just, like, a general nuisance. So, obviously, I got bullied a lot. But…it wasn't just the kids. I was pretty much failing all my classes, so the teachers all thought I was stupid, too."
He pauses to breathe for a moment. “The worst part is that I believed them, you know? I mean, if literally everyone in your life is telling you that you’re a stupid, annoying, good-for-nothing preteen, it’s hard not to believe them, and—” he stops short.
Keith can hear his throat click in the way that it does when you’re blinking back tears. He squeezes Lance’s hand. After another few ticks, Lance takes a breath.
“I tried so hard, Keith. I loved space, and I wanted to be a pilot so bad. But, no matter how hard I tried, I just kept failing. It was so frustrating. I’d try to pay attention, but it was like my brain was fighting me, and suddenly, the school day would be over, and I’d learn nothing.”
He takes an angry breath and adds, “I got held back. That was when the bullying got really bad.”
Keith interjects here, “Wait, you what?”
“Uh, yeah. That’s why I was older than everyone in our grade?”
“But— you’re only older than me by like three months!” He throws his free arm up.
“I have a summer birthday, remember?”
“Oh my god. What?”
Lance laughs, but it’s a bit humorless. “Well, anyway. That’s when it got bad. That’s, uh, when it got physical.” Keith sucks in a breath, because he suddenly realizes where this is going. “I mean, people had always told me I was annoying and stupid. But then they started telling me I was annoying and stupid, and beating me up. Wasn’t a great combo, if I’m totally honest.” He quirks a wry smile. Keith’s heart breaks a little bit.
“When I came home with my first black eye, my family decided it was time for me to switch schools. And, thank god, because that new school looked at me and said, ‘Gee, you know, all of these disciplinary issues look a whole lot like ADHD. Maybe you should test this kid,' and my family was just desperate enough to do it.”
Keith wishes he could go back and punch those kids a little bit, age be damned. So, he says it. “I wish I could punch them.”
“You and your violence, man! I know you’d punch the world for me, and I’m touched, really, but violence is not the answer,” Lance teases, as though he’s explaining something very delicately to a child.
“We’re literally in a war.”
“I stand by what I said!” he shrieks.
They settle into a long silence. It’s the kind of silence that’s not quite comfortable, but not quite uncomfortable, either. Lance loosens his hold on Keith’s hand a bit and goes back to tracing patterns.
“I mean, there’s lots of random, tragic stories. But, that’s basically it. You just really hit a sore spot, I guess…”He trails off, and Lance leans further into Keith’s space.
They shuffle around a bit. Keith ends up dropping Lance’s hand to wrap an arm around his shoulders, while Lance lets himself rest fully against Keith’s chest.
It’s a little awkward, given that they’re both around the same size. Lance has to stretch out a little further on the floor to make it work. But Keith doesn’t care. It’s the most comfortable he’s been in a whole week.
He yawns. The daytime lights kick in, and it somehow makes the silence louder.
Lance picks up the thread of his earlier sentence. His voice drops a little lower, and he sounds small in a way that Lance so rarely is. “You’re just the one person, you know? I mean, we always had our differences. But I never thought you found me annoying, not really. I’d do stuff, like, purposefully to get under your skin. I just wanted you to look at me,” his voice breaks, finally. He turns his face further into Keith’s chest.
Keith, for his part, is burning. He’s just a maelstrom of guilt, and sadness, and anger. Because there’s always anger. He can’t remember a time when his first instinct wasn’t to fix things with his fists.
It hits him, then. His enemies have always been physical. The social workers, his crappy foster parents, fucking Iverson. While he'd grown up fighting people, Lance had been fighting with his own body.
Lance says, “And I know you didn’t mean it. But, for a second there, it was like…like every nervous thought I've ever had was true.”
There's a pressing silence. Keith wraps Lance more fully in his arms, as though he could protect him from everything bad in the world with his own flesh and bones and blood. As though words don’t cut just as deeply as knives.
He’s not a words person. He never has been. His love has a way of bleeding out of him — of being a critical wound. Once he’s cut open, he’s flayed in a way not even a tourniquet could save. When Lance looks at him, he feels like he’s seeing the gooey, bloody, organy insides of him, and he’s not sure he can ever go back.
How could words compare to the beating, bloody heart of him that Lance is holding in his hands?
So, he’s not a words person. But Lance is. For Lance, he’ll try.
He takes Lance’s face in his hands, wipes his thumbs over the places where silent tears have fallen.
“I am so, so sorry. You’re like— shit, okay. How do I say this?” He closes his eyes. Opens them.
Thinks of bloody knuckles and Lance's hand in his. Of black trash bags and the ocean.
“So, sometimes I feel kind of like this darkness. Like if I’m around people too long, I suck them in, and I mess them up, and they leave. But, you’re like— you’re like this light!” He exclaims, wrapping his arms all the way around Lance, caging him in.
His eyes sting with the effort of melting his marrow into words. “I think what I’m trying to say is that you’re my light. And I love you exactly the way that you are. Even when we fight like this, because,” he laughs wetly, “we really are so different. And if I’m honest, I'm probably gonna mess up, and we'll have this fight all over again. But I love your light. You’re not annoying. You balance me out in the best way.”
Lance laughs into his chest. It’s an ugly, half-laugh, half-sobbing sound. “You should write one of those trashy romance novels you’re always reading. You’d be good.”
He chuckles. “Nah. I’m not good with words. You know that.”
Lance shoves at his chest.
They sit together. Keith lets his head fall forward onto Lance's shoulder, and he closes his eyes.
Here, in the tentative morning light, the feeling of safety wraps around him heavily. Even on the knife's edge of a fight, Lance makes him tired.
And maybe that's it after all. Maybe it's never been Lance's rambling that helps him sleep — maybe it's his presence.
Keith squeezes his eyes shut. Feels the place where Lance has reached into his chest and stolen the gory mess of his heart.
“Hey, Lance?”
“Yeah?”
He asks quietly, voice muffled by Lance's shirt, “Can we go to sleep now?”
“Oh my god, yes please. Hunk’s floor sucks.”
When they get back to their room, Lance takes out the trash. Lance has always insisted on using Allura's stupid pink trash bags instead of the black ones the rest of the castle uses. He says they smell nicer.
Keith tastes bloody love on his tongue as they fall asleep.