Archive of Our Own

Lance stumbles down the stairs from Keith’s apartment and has to stop and sit on the bottom one for ten minutes before he can keep walking. Part of him wants to run back up there and make Keith explain, make Keith take it all back and tell him that he doesn’t really feel that way, because this -- this changes everything.

But part of him also knows that this is what Keith has been trying to avoid, so he sits on the freezing cold stone step and breathes in and out until the shaking in his stomach has stopped enough to let him move. It’s only a ten minute walk from Keith’s apartment complex to the one Lance lives in, but it feels like it takes an eternity. He keeps pausing and remembering Keith’s devastated expression as he said, I like you. Like it was something terrible. Like it was a confession of some kind of sin. Like he hated it.

He thinks of every single thing he could have done to make Keith feel that way about liking him, and he wants to throw up.

When he finally makes it to his own apartment, he can hear Hunk humming to himself through the door and is thankful he doesn’t have to dig his key out to let himself in. He pushes the door open and Hunk turns away from whatever he’s doing at the stove, takes one look at Lance’s face and says, “Oh shit.”

Lance laughs, and it sounds like rust scraping against his throat. “Yeah, pretty much,” he says.

Hunk turns off the burners and approaches Lance carefully, brow furrowed. “Lance, you didn’t -- you didn’t go to Keith’s, did you?”

“How could you tell?” Lance asks, and collapses onto the couch, curling into himself. There’s something jagged clawing at the inside of his throat. He keeps hearing the hitch in Keith’s voice, the way he’d said I don’t expect anything from you, the way his fists had clenched until his knuckles were white. Everything in him hurts at being the cause of that.

“I told you to give him space, Lance,” Hunk says, hovering above him. “Is he -- did he tell you--”

“Yes,” Lance says, because he doesn’t want Hunk to say it out loud. He doesn’t want to talk about this, like they’re gossiping about Keith’s feelings, like -- like --

“Are you okay, Lance?” Hunk asks, cutting into his frantic thoughts. Lance focuses on the sound of his voice and makes himself uncurl a little, because the last thing he wants to do is make Hunk upset too.

“I just -- hate that he -- I hate that I was -- and I didn’t know,” he says, stopping and starting as thoughts burst and die on his tongue. Hunk seems to understand anyway, touching him gently on the shoulder. It’s a comfort Lance doesn’t deserve, but he leans into it anyways. “I wouldn’t have -- I wasn’t leading him on,” Lance says desperately.

Hunk tightens his grip on Lance’s shoulder. “No one thinks you were, dude. Seriously, not even Keith.” The words should be comforting, but that still means that Keith knew that Lance didn’t feel the same way, and he’d just been dealing with Lance’s weird moods the entire time without saying anything.

“It’s kind of Pidge’s and my fault that it’s happening like this,” Hunk says slowly, and Lance looks up at him as Hunk pulls away. “He overheard us talking and realized you didn’t -- have feelings,” Hunk says, grimacing a little. Lance’s stomach clenches. “So I guess he decided he needed to move on, finally.”

Move on, Lance thinks, and his heart throbs in his chest. Could they go back to the way things were, if Keith moved on? Would they be able to put this behind themselves, would he be able to go back to behaving the same way around Keith? What if he couldn’t?

“Lance,” Hunk says, “Just give it some time. Nothing is gonna get solved by worrying about it tonight.”

He sounds so reasonable, Lance thinks, but he’s not the one responsible for whatever Keith is going through right now. He swallows all the bitter words he wants to let out and tries to smile at Hunk. Hunk doesn’t seem convinced, but there’s not a lot he can do to change that. He’s been pretending to be fine all year, and he’s finally reached his limit. “I’m going to head to bed,” Lance says.

“Okay,” Hunk says, cautious. “Do you need anything?”

To not be such a mess, Lance thinks, but all he says is, “I’m okay.”

They both know it’s a lie, but Hunk doesn’t stop him from making his way to his bedroom and closing the door firmly behind him.

His mother had sat them all down at the kitchen table to break the news; he’d spent the entire afternoon wondering where his father was, why there was this frosty chill lingering in the way she closed cabinet drawers, why his father’s favorite mug was missing from the stand. Why his youngest brother and sister were grim-faced and subdued when the holidays were everyone’s favorite time of the year.

The words wash over his ears and don’t quite sink in until he registers his older sister is crying. He blinks at his mother, blinks at all four of his siblings in various states of shock and anguish, and tries to reconcile the family he’d hoped to come home to with what he’s looking at now.

“We’ll go stay with your grandmother for a while,” his mother says softly. “We can spend Christmas there, if that’s okay.” Her eyes are very red, but they’re dry. She looks older than he remembers, but he doesn’t know if that’s because it’s been a few months since he’s seen her, or if this has irrevocably taken something from her.

For Lance, the worst part is knowing that there’s another family out there; knowing that he’s been replaced by something newer, shinier, more important. The worst part is knowing that he still has a father, but it doesn’t really matter now.

Christmas break is a terrible experience, mixing genuinely happy moments with the constant knowledge that his life is changed forever now. He watches his little brother and sister bicker over who gets to ride their shared new bike first, gets to watch them both cheer for each other as they take turns; he watches his mother sneak into the bathroom when they aren’t looking during movie marathons and come back with fresh makeup; he watches his older brother and sister trade quips and laughs about the terrible joke presents they get each other, but he also watches them trade dark looks at every reminder that they’re missing someone when they sit around the dinner table.

When he gets back to school, he feels relieved to be away from the constant reminders that his home isn’t really the same anymore, and guilty that he feels that way. He knows it’s an inescapable reality for his mother and youngest siblings, that they have little they can do to distract themselves from it all, but he’s grateful that school is so busy, that his friends are so cheerful and warm. His mother calls him every Friday and it’s strained but he loves her, so he tries to sound upbeat and happy. He keeps his grades up so she won’t have anything else to worry about, he keeps up a steady stream of conversation with his siblings, he tries his best to pretend that everything is fine.  

He knows he’s spending more time with Keith this semester -- they’ve always all hung out a lot, but he finds himself drawn to Keith more than ever. Keith doesn’t have Hunk’s questioning eyes, or Pidge’s frown; Keith smiles whenever Lance walks up like Lance just being there is enough, and he craves that kind of easy affection more than ever.

Looking back on it, he knows he should have been aware of what was happening. Keith has always been more comfortable with him than the others, but Lance chalked that up to his own tendency to be touchy, and how close he and Keith were as friends. He’d made Keith promise to let him know if he ever did anything that made him uncomfortable, and Keith had rolled his eyes and agreed.

It’s different, Keith’s voice insists in his head. It’s different because Keith likes him.

Lance rolls over in bed on Sunday and clutches a pillow close to his chest, wishing he could think about something else for five minutes. He’s spent the entire weekend running back over the semester, over his entire friendship with Keith. Had there been signs he’d missed? Why hadn’t he ever considered Keith’s feelings for him? He’d never even thought about the possibility that Keith, the same annoying, funny, considerate Keith he’d known since freshman year, might like him as more than a friend.

Why can’t he let this go? Just give Keith the space he’d asked for and wait for them to become friends again?

He buries his face in his pillow and sighs. Hunk is right, as usual. All of his thinking has gotten him nowhere, and he still feels terrible. He hasn’t left his room for anything but food and one long, miserable shower, and the walls are starting to loom over him. He sits up in bed and contemplates making himself go outside for fresh air, just to make an effort to distract himself, but as soon as he leaves his nest of blankets, he starts shivering. It makes him remember a few weeks ago, giving Keith his jacket in the library, actually tucking it around his shoulders.

He covers his face with his hands and groans.

He’s such an idiot.

He frowns, lowering his hands and looking around his room. He doesn’t think he’s seen that jacket since he let Keith borrow it, which means -- which means Keith still has it, which means Keith kept it on purpose.

Lance’s heart skips a beat.

He clutches his pillow and only barely resists the urge to scream into it.

He doesn’t know how he makes it through classes, doesn’t know how he even pretends he’s not weighed down with exhaustion and anxiety. Hunk watches him like a hawk but doesn’t interfere with him when he refuses to leave his room. Pidge texts him funny jokes and keeps him updated on Shiro’s slow breakdown over his master's degree, and he responds, but the group chat has been stilted and very obviously lacking, since Keith hasn’t said anything for four days.

Tuesday is cold and cloudy, and he spends the entire day with an eye on the sky, praying it holds off until he can get home. Thankfully, someone out there takes pity on him; about ten minutes after he makes it back to his apartment, the sky opens up and rain starts falling. It’s a good rain, heavy but not wild, and he leans his head on his arms against the window sill and stares as the entire world goes soft and out of focus. Gray lighting fills the room, soothing him.

This is his favorite kind of weather. It’s Keith’s too, he remembers, and he thinks of the way Keith had laughed when he said It’s like you’re wrapped up in a feeling, trying to describe the way rain made him feel. It hadn’t been a mean laugh -- it had been soft and understanding, the way Keith could be sometimes. Keith had laughed and said I can’t believe that makes sense to me, and Lance had felt known.  

Lance doesn’t realize he’s smiling until his mouth hurts from it. He doesn’t know if he’s really smiled in weeks, ever since Keith first started avoiding him.

I miss him, Lance thinks, and the truth of it aches like a physical pain.

The sound of the rain is like a building tempo in his head, and he realizes that he’s digging his fingers into his arms. His mind is racing. Keith has been a constant in his life for almost three years now, and it’s only taken a few days of being without him for Lance to completely fall apart. Keith is -- is late nights studying, early morning coffee runs, texting him in the middle of class because they were fighting over some dumb fact and Lance just had to have the last word. Keith is warmth tucked under his arm and the soft scent of fabric softener and smooth, dark hair. Keith is -- something he can’t lose, something he can’t do without.

He stands up, pulling on a jacket and rushing out of the apartment before he really registers what he’s doing, before he can stop think about what he’s doing. He knows what he promised, he knows that Keith probably still needs time, but he misses him, and that feels important; Keith’s smile feels important, Keith’s eyes and laugh and ridiculous hair are important and Lance needs to see him.

He’s already halfway down the street before he realizes that he’s soaked through by the storm, but it feels good -- he feels like he’s awake, like he’s finally doing something that means something instead of going through the motions.

The stairs rattle under his feet, water splashing everywhere as he runs up them, and it’s only when he’s standing outside Keith’s apartment, gasping for breath, dripping water everywhere, that he really stops to think about what he’s doing. Everything is going to change if he does this.

I have to know, he thinks, and he takes a deep breath and raises a hand and knocks on the door.