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Keith had always been good at leaving.
He told himself it was a skill. A survival instinct. Something sharp and necessary, like a blade he kept tucked under his ribs. You don’t stay where you’re not wanted. You don’t wait for people to decide you’re too much, too strange, too broken. You go first.
It worked. It always worked.
Until Lance.
The problem with Lance wasn’t that he made Keith feel welcome. Keith didn’t trust welcome. Welcome could be temporary, conditional, fake.
The problem was that Lance made it feel easy to stay.
It started small. It always did. Lance would lean over the back of Keith’s chair during strategy meetings, talking too close, too loud, like Keith wasn’t already hyper-aware of him. Or he’d throw himself onto the couch beside Keith after missions, their shoulders bumping, his voice filling the silence Keith never knew how to handle.
“You did good today, you know that?” Lance said once, casually, like it didn’t matter.
Keith didn’t answer. He never did.
But he remembered.
That was the other problem. Lance stuck.
Keith could ignore most people. Let their words slide past him, let their presence fade into the background noise of the castle. But Lance—Lance lingered. In the doorway. In conversations. In Keith’s thoughts, long after he was gone.
Especially then.
Because Lance left, too.
Not in the same way. Lance didn’t disappear or shut people out or pretend he didn’t care. He stayed. He laughed. He talked. He made himself impossible to ignore.
But when it came to Keith, he pulled back.
Just enough.
Keith noticed it slowly. The way Lance would joke with Hunk, but hesitate before saying anything to him. The way he stopped leaning so close. The way his smiles didn’t quite reach his eyes when Keith walked into a room.
At first, Keith told himself it didn’t matter.
Then he started wondering why.
Then he started noticing everything.
“Did I do something?” The question came out sharper than he meant it to.
Lance froze in the hallway, halfway past him. “What?”
Keith hated this part. The not knowing. The way it felt like standing on the edge of something with no idea how far the drop was.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I haven’t—” Lance stopped, exhaled, ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not avoiding you.”
Keith didn’t say anything. Just looked at him.
Lance laughed, but it sounded wrong. “Okay, maybe a little. But it’s not— Look, it’s not your fault.”
There it was. That phrase. The one people used when it absolutely was.
“Then what is it?”
Lance hesitated.
And that was enough.
Keith felt it settle in his chest, heavy and familiar. He knew this. Knew the shape of it, the way it pressed against his ribs until breathing felt like work.
Regret. Distance. Leaving.
“Forget it,” Keith said, already stepping back. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Aren’t you even going to—” Lance cut himself off, frustration flashing across his face. “You know what? Fine. Yeah. That’s what you do, right? You just walk away before anything gets real.”
Keith stilled.
Something in Lance’s voice cracked, just slightly. Not loud. Not obvious. But enough.
Keith turned back.
“Then say it,” he said. “If there’s something to say, just say it.”
For a moment, Lance didn’t move. Didn’t joke. Didn’t deflect.
He just looked at him.
And Keith felt it again—that awful, fragile thing Lance had built between them without Keith even noticing. Something soft. Something dangerous.
“I like you,” Lance said finally.
Simple. Direct. No humor to soften it.
Keith’s chest tightened.
Of course.
Of course that’s what it was.
“Okay,” Keith said, because he didn’t know what else to say.
Lance blinked. “Okay?”
“I mean—” Keith swallowed. “You’ll get over it.”
The words felt wrong the second they left his mouth. Too sharp. Too dismissive. But he didn’t know how to fix them, didn’t know how to say anything else without making it worse.
Lance stared at him.
And there it was again—that shift. That pullback. The moment something closed off behind his eyes.
“Yeah,” Lance said quietly. “That’s kind of the problem, Keith.”
Keith didn’t understand.
Or maybe he did, and he just didn’t want to.
“I’m trying to,” Lance continued. “That’s why I’ve been—” He gestured vaguely between them. “This. Less of this. Because every time I’m around you, I—” He stopped, shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
It did matter.
It mattered too much.
Keith felt something unravel in his chest, slow and painful. Because he knew this, too. Knew what it was like to feel something you couldn’t fix. Something that didn’t have a clean ending.
“You don’t have to avoid me,” Keith said, quieter now.
Lance huffed a small, humorless laugh. “Yeah, I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Keith,” Lance said, and there was something tired in his voice now, something worn down. “You just told me I’d get over it. You don’t even—” He stopped again. “You don’t feel the same. That’s fine. I’m not blaming you for that. But I can’t just stand around pretending it doesn’t hurt.”
Keith flinched.
Hurt.
Of course it hurt.
He knew that.
He caused that.
“I didn’t mean—” Keith started, then stopped. He didn’t know what he meant. Didn’t know how to explain the mess in his head, the way everything felt too close, too much, like if he reached out he’d break something he couldn’t fix.
“You don’t have to explain,” Lance said, already stepping back. “I get it.”
That was worse.
Because he didn’t.
Because Keith didn’t get it either.
“Lance—”
“It’s fine,” Lance cut in, forcing a smile that didn’t stick. “Really. I’ll just… give it some space.”
And then he was gone.
Just like that.
Keith stood there long after the hallway went quiet, the silence pressing in around him.
He’d always been good at leaving.
But this—
This felt like being left behind.
And somehow, that was worse.