A/N — see profile for contact links! this work is also posted on AO3.
comments / reviews / faves / etc are welcomed! thanks for reading, and i hope you enjoy. — kyt
For his whole life, nights had been quiet, with only him, the steady stream of traffic below the balcony, and the stars, glowing spheres flickering in the distance.
Then, Lance arrived, and the world was spun out of its natural orbit.
At 3:00 a.m. in the morning, the lights would be on, a beacon illuminating the side windows of Keith's room. The incessant banter between children, the occasional enraged Spanish diatribe, the pattering of footfalls from one room to the next — each left a tick of annoyance in Keith's finite patience. All he wanted was to get a good night's sleep, so the bags under his eyes would not be a shallow gray in the morning, and so he would have enough energy to resist the bright, blinding scars the sunlit sky marked upon his eyelids, spotty afterimages that only increased in capacity as daytime dragged on.
Keith dislikes the daytime sky. It gives him the same feeling as dipping a cautious foot in icy-cold water. It shakes his dreams until they break at the seams, reminding him that hey, there's twelve more hours of insipid, wearisome life to get by.
Plus, there are no stars in daylight.
At 8:00 a.m., dawn slides into its transition phase flecked with yesterday night's dew, and the staccato chime of Keith's long-withstanding flip phone awakens his restless form, takes the covers away from his shoulders. He hasn't slept a wink, and, with a weary side-glance at his neighbor, he doesn't seem to care that Lance didn't have a good sleep, either. That guy is used to it, Keith... isn't.
Keith wonders if he will ever get used to it.
.
He remembers the first time they'd met, and Keith swears he's never seen the sky this intense before until that day, under a sweltering sun he finds himself reading a novel, one of the classics, on the lawn chair.
He's three chapters in when a bright, enthusiastic voice nearly pops his ears clean, a cry of "hey, nice to meet you, I'm your new neighbor, Lance, it's nice to see another boy my age living here, just across my balcony —"
Keith snaps his book shut.
His neighbor is olive-skinned, all-smiles, and like a gosh darn puppy, full to the brim with energy.
"Afternoon," he manages, trying to be polite. He reaches for his MP3 player and pops the earbuds in, a comprehensive sign of "I-don't-want-to-talk-please-stop-bothering-me", one Lance isn't able to recognize, apparently.
"Well, aren't you sophisticated, reading a book at 2:00 PM while you could've gone swimming. It's pretty darn hot today."
His voice is too loud, and Keith isn't used to it. "Could you quiet down, please? You're going to wake up all the neighbors in the block." Keith hopes this hints enough.
Besides, Keith can't swim very well.
"Are you kidding me? No one's sleeping at this time of day."
"I'd rather be sleeping so I don't have to hear your voice," Keith grumbles.
"What did you say?" Now, Lance looks like a kicked puppy. Or maybe one looking for a fight. Keith can't tell.
"Do I need to repeat myself?" Frankly, Keith would prefer not, but it's better than saying nothing, in this situation.
"Go ahead."
"Rather not."
"I dare you."
"Can't accept."
"I just moved in, where's my housewarming gift?"
"I have some bread. It matches your dry demeanor."
"Piss off."
The two throw comments at each other until Lance is dragged back into the apartment unit by his mom, but by then, the two have already reached a mutual conclusion: this was the start of a rivalry between two contrary, opinionated people.
And now Keith really wants to sleep.
.
No longer a sacred, isolated place, his balcony awaits, lonely, as Keith sits in the couch of his living room, afraid that if he slid open that glass door, his neighbor would be just across.
There has always been a wall separating Keith's apartment room with Lance's. But out in the balcony, the only thing separating them is the railing. Tonight is a good night, however; the news promised the Perseids would return soon, and this meteor shower is never missed by Keith, even if he has to tolerate it with someone else's presence.
When he steps out, the faint scent of coffee breezes past his nose.
"Good morning," Lance says, leaning on the balcony edge, his dark brown hair disheveled in the wind. There is a slight pleasantness to his tone today, no scathing undertone, no sarcastic wit buried under his tongue. Perhaps he's here to watch the meteor shower, too.
"It's... nighttime?" Keith demurs, crossing his arms and using them as support on the banister. The world opens down beneath him, a shuddering expanse of red-orange-yellow-green on the roads, the indigo-inked edges of the night sky dripping into a gradient, bleeding into black. Cars line up and bright lights are dispersed everywhere, white spots dancing in his vision as one by one the cars comes up, go by, and disappear.
He hears a small hint of a laugh. "Forget about it, it was a joke." Keith turns his head to glare at his neighbor, and catches a glimpse of gold flecks dancing in Lance's dark eyes as they light up; he realizes they must be the stars' reflection but there's something ethereal about how they glint and glimmer, as if a part of Lance himself.
"Here to see the meteor shower?"
Keith gives the idea of conversing a thought, before nodding. "The peak is around August though, I believe."
"What's it like, watching the stars every night?"
The question is startling, never once crossing Keith's mind. The stars have always been with him, after all, so it doesn't feel like anything out of the ordinary to be able to see it tonight, and tomorrow night, and the nights after that. "I sort of... take it for granted, I guess."
"Hmm." Lance takes a sip of his coffee, then puts it down on a faux wood table, beside a potted plant, a camellia variety of some sort.
"It's... the night sky... it's like a sea," Keith says, putting his hand in his pocket. He shifts a little closer to his left, a little closer towards the other balcony. "And these stars, they're like droplets of water glistening with the waves."
"Hmm," Lance murmurs, for the second time. "I've never thought about it that way. Maybe I should watch them more closely..."
And then, the stars begin to fall.
The two succumb to a never-to-be-seen-again sort of silence, and for an instant, it feels right, this lapse of time, the exact smattering of stars above, the two people who had not even the thinnest of similarities between them talking about celestial events, only to be stunned silent by a ribbon streaking, weaving, in the sky, like a raindrop streaking down the window glass. It is only transient, but there is a earnest fondness in the atmosphere, one Keith wants to keep forever in his memory.
If only photographs could capture feelings.
"I can see it, a little," Lance says.
Keith can see it too.
"Aren't we lucky," he whispers, as the shooting star dissipates somewhere far, far off of this earth, its tail a path of shining dust.
He cups the dust in his hands, then places it to his chest. It feels like blue fire.
.
A few times, Keith has been met with a paper airplane hitting his window, its nose smashing onto the impenetrateable surface before plummeting down, gyrating until it lands, undamaged, on the sidewalk.
Sometimes, Keith lets it be carried away by the elements, whether whisked by wind, pelted by a light afternoon rain, or eaten by a squirrel. But as soon as people approach the paper, Keith is there, chest heaving hard, to claim it, having skipped down five flights of stairs only to retrieve a note.
Usually, it's only a retaliation, some remainder of an argument he and Lance had got into. Lance's handwriting is like chicken-scratch, and the ink has bled through the thin sheet from pressing on the pen too hard. Sometimes, there's a coffee stain on the lower quadrant.
Today, he unfolds it, careful not to rip the edges, and flattens it on the kitchen table.
Do the stars really look like the sea to you?
Keith holds his temples between his fingers, shaking his head. "You forgot the sky around it, you dummy."
You know the last time I borrowed your notes? Well, this paper airplane is made of – you know what – one of your math review sheets. Take care of it; I wouldn't want to see it fall into a puddle again.
Keith flips to the back and finds out that, indeed, there are trigonometry rules written on the backside.
P.S. Your handwriting is too swirly and cramped. Is it cursive? I can't read a bit of it.
Keith groans, crumpling the paper into a ball and walking briskly to the balcony, throwing the paper back to its original sender, who is waiting for him on the other side. When Lance catches the paper expertly, he snickers and says, "It's not winter, Keith. Why are we having a snowball fight?"
"If it was winter, I'd wing a snowball right into that cheeky mouth of yours," Keith replies, before slamming the glass door behind him, stomping back into the conjoining living room.
"Oooh," Lance waves his hands above his head in mock fear, "what a scary person."
Keith throws his hands up into the air.
.
The air is slick with the smell of an impeding rain, so stargazing is out of the question.
His neighbor apparently acknowledges this fact as well, because loud music blasts out of the unit next door, drumming against the windowpanes and rattling them.
Keith palms his ears and focuses his bare-threaded concentration entirely on the book on the edge of his bed, but the music, the boisterous yelling, it's too much.
"Could you tone it down a little bit?" he shouts, closing the sliding door.
His neighbor's rooms are lit up, the whole nine yards of it. "Yeah, yeah, onto it," a voice, muted by the glass door splitting the outside from the inside, yells. Keith hears the snick of a latch, then the door sliding open, revealing Lance's face.
"What's up?"
Keith motions to the hubbub and the thump of subwoofers. "That's up."
"Too wild for you? Man, you're such a letdown."
"It isn't just me, Lance," Keith says, "the whole apartment complex is going to be after you and eliciting curses at your front door. And a party? Who allowed you to have a fucking party this late?"
Lance smirks, fanning his face in an exaggerated manner with a flat hand. "My parents are out on a business trip, my noisy siblings are at my aunt's up in Vermont for the weekend, and my big sis moved into the dormitories last university semester. Voilà."
"Just turn it down," Keith says, through clenched teeth. He didn't need an explanation.
"Y'sure you don't want to join us? Hunk and Pidge are here. Oh," Lance halts, reacting to the tinny sound of the doorbell, "and here's Shiro."
"I'm not familiar with any of them," Keith responds surly.
"You will be if you join us," Lance suggests. He is interrupted by a cry of "hey, Hunk's going to spew! How many jalapeños did you put into this chili?" followed by a giggle and "Now, now."
Keith sniffs. "No thanks."
"You sure? It'll be fun."
"I said, no thank you."
Lance drops his insistence, walking back inside. "Whatever, hasta la vista, weirdo."
Keith doesn't comment. He doesn't manage to sleep, either.
.
School days become a routine.
It had always been a routine, Keith's mind would debate. But what Keith had considered as the norm has significantly changed, become stilted and something unknown, after Lance's arrival.
Between a one-man struggle of tugging his shirt on while brushing, to spilling the milk of his cereal down the table edge, Keith miraculously makes it to the front door of the apartment. And standing there, right next to him, is that one variable that threw a curveball at Keith's definition of normal — Lance wheels his navy blue bicycle from the rack and stops when he sees Keith do the same.
"Hiya," Lance begins, and with a drop in the pit of his stomach Keith knows, with absolute certainty, that this is a conversation starter.
Not feeling up to engaging, Keith ignores Lance's fervent attempts at catching his attention, strapping the helmet strap under his chin, and, placing his foot on the pedal, starts to move forward.
"I'm your neighbor," Lance says, right behind him. Keith brakes abruptly, and turns around.
"I know, Lance," Keith growls, "you've reminded me for a whole three months." The red light switches on at that very second, and Keith can't help but groan. This means a full 30 seconds of wait time, and a full 30 seconds of small talk Keith would prefer to avoid.
Red gives way to green, and upon the signal, Keith pedals as fast as he can, around the block to school, barely giving Lance the satisfaction of either beating him or making conversation. He's pleased when he doesn't spot Lance anywhere in his peripheral vision, though, Keith supposes the taller boy could have gone another route, and was already at school.
But it isn't worth it to waste his energy musing about the many routes to school, so Keith leaves it off for another time, snapping the lock shut and taking his helmet off. Sweat clings onto his short hair, forming clumps which Keith rakes back into shape.
Already, a collective group of students chatter in the hallways; like a flock of birds they swoop in and around the corners, bustle through intersections. Keith's locker is on the other side, and it can't get any worse than a whole classroom-size clamor of people smack dab in the middle of his path.
It gets worse as Keith notices who, exactly, is in the center of the fray. It's Lance, of course; he's making a joke and the crowd laughs with him in startling unison. The mass is impossible to plow through, there are no teachers on sight, and Keith's fingernails are carving indents into the wall, furiously trying to keep his anger in check.
Two minutes tick by, and Keith almost wills himself to storm through that thing, grab Lance by the cuff of his neck, and drag the noisemaker to the opposite end, then perhaps bind him to the staircase banister. The inconvenience and incompleteness of his half-drawn plan does not stop him as Keith follows the angry buzz in his throat into the crowd, pulling Lance aside.
"You're in my way," he says hotly, acutely aware of the sudden drop in noise.
Lance raises one eyebrow. "You know, Keith, this is why you have no friends."
"Shut up. Like that's any of your business."
Lance only continues to mock him, unaware of the dangerous situation he's creating. "Aww, so you're getting defensive now. Do you know what that means?"
Keith only has a vague understanding. "I don't want to hear anything that comes out of your stupid mouth. Shut it."
The other boy smirks, and leans close to Keith's ear. "It means I hit bullseye. You're lonely, aren't you?"
A lump builds inside Keith's throat. As quick as lightning, he's got his hand wrapped around Lance's wrist, pinning his arm to the wall, then the other hand as well, until Lance is immobile, stuck to the spot. "Listen," Keith snarls, "I would appreciate —" he emphasizes this with just the right amount of stress — "if you kept yourself within your own boundaries, you – you useless piece of shit. The only thing you're good at is getting in my way." Chest heaving and feeling light-headed, Keith rips his hands off, heading towards his locker in what could only be described as that fleeting moment after a thunderstorm passes, where the tension breaks from the air, the relief resulting in an unsettling disquiet, a point in time not quite real.
Keith rarely cries. He likes to keep his profile low, and bursting into tears would sully his reputation of being cold, detached from the rest. Because he has never been able to talk without ruining something, he keeps to himself, and he would prefer it to be that way for the rest of his life.
But there is the telltale prick on the corners of his eyes, ones that Keith frantically, brusquely, brush away. And he isn't sure why, but something, something urgent beats in his heart, a warm ache pulsing; something that says, with the quietest of voices, that he'd ruined it all.
Keith does not question what, exactly, he had broken.
.
At the bell ring, Keith stops partway, the heel of his foot latched to the floor by invisible thread. His hand is warm from the contact, his cheeks red from exertion. There is lead weighing the bottom half of his torso, and when he looks up to the drywall ceiling, all he hears is voices of the past, that lingering memory of watching the stars with someone else, that mutual companionship that had warmed his heart on a blustery night –
No, that... that never happened. That's in the past.
But the twinge in his chest says otherwise.
Behind, the crowd surges in volume, conversation ignited by the ruckus. If Keith had turned around then, he would have witnessed the bite of Lance's lip in hurt, but Keith is in no mood to face his neighbor ever again.
If he had turned around, he would have caught the bare whisper, a falter of breath due to some time taken in consideration, coming from Lance's lips. It would have tasted something like sorry.
.
"Soulmates don't exist."
His father chuckles. "They do, if you believe in them hard enough. Close you eyes for a moment."
Keith covers his eyes with his hand, and counts to three. His fingers come apart, and he peeks through the slit it creates —
It happens in a surprisingly subtle way. As Keith walks into the classroom, a hot tremor begins to build at the pit of his stomach, coursing upwards to his arms and shoulders, up to his neck. By holding his books and binder close to his chest, the pressure against his torso slightly helps push the urge to vomit out of the way.
Subtle moves in turn to let intense come to the surface. Keith's veins suddenly ignite with magma, burning him inside out, and he drops his books, crumples over to the floor, no longer able to ignore his obvious discomfort. Somewhere, a voice full of concern confronts him, asking him if he feels fine; does it look like I feel fine? Keith wants to shout, but by then, even his lips are numb, detached from the rest of his body. Sparks appear in his muddled vision, and momentarily, they look like fireworks.
"What's happening?" Keith rasps; the sun through the windows hit his face at perfect angles, and his confused mind kept commanding his arm to bat at the ray of light, to get it away from his eyes. A cluster of voices surround him, someone lifts him up —
— and then it's burning, his flesh is burning from the contact; Keith tears the hand away from his arm, breathing hitched.
"Dude, I'm trying to help you." Lance shakes his head, a tone of disappointment inflecting his voice.
Get away. "I don't need your help," Keith hisses, standing up on jelly-like legs, then doubles over again. His skin feels tender and raw under his fingertips.
"A soulmate connection," Pidge states; Keith balks.
"A what?"
The school's resident technology genius (and hacker) restates their claim. "You know that story where one soulmate receives a part of their other half when the two connect? It's relatively rare, but it happens. Fascinating." A flip of paper, then a crazed scratch of pen as Pidge takes note of Keith's suffering.
"That can't be right," Keith huffs. His ears drum against his skull, as if a stampede of wild horses were trampling over his body. "That's only an old wives' tale —"
"It happened, and it happened now." Pidge flips their notebook closed.
Dazed, Keith trembles beneath his classmates' intent gazes, forehead burning up a fever, which would render him useless in bed for the rest of the week. When Keith's breathing returns to standard, the eyes of his classmates leave him, and thank goodness they had left, or else they would witness a crackle on Keith's shoulder, a faint blue glow of words that had painted itself onto the skin there, saying
please be okay.
As if it'll ever be okay ever since.
.
Keith keeps his hair long now.
He doesn't mind when Lance calls it an "ugly mullet" (actually, he does mind, he minds a lot and thinks the world's better off if Lance would just mind his own business), because anything's better than letting him, of all people, see the words inscribed there, just above the base of his neck.
He remembers when they first appeared, a white-hot pain, then a dull thump of his heart, and lastly, that same blue glow, which Keith sees reflected on the glass door when he steps out into the balcony. The cool wind blows, ruffling his shirt, and as Keith places his hand on the banister, he swears he sees another figure, dark and silhouetted by the dim shine enveloping the night air by the crescent moon, standing there, across his balcony.
The figure lifts his head to look upon the sky. His arm reaches upwards, fingers brushing invisible strings, and he seems to be looking for something out there in space, something that has been lost and could never be reclaimed. Keith tilts his chin up and watches the sky as well, searching for whatever Lance is so intent upon finding, but is only met with the familiar, distant glimmer of stars staring back at him.
When he turns to the side, Lance is gone.
.
"See those stars?" Keith's father points out to the night sky. Keith nods.
"What do you think they feel like?"
Keith drifts off into deep thought, then resurfaces with an answer on his tongue. "Blue fire."
His father smiles. "That's what it feels to fall in love."
Keith knows his suffering has come to an end when he overhears Lance's voice past the gym doors.
He presses his back against the wall, and positions himself so he could see better. Lance is there, as well as his friend Hunk and the omnipresent Pidge, who had their arms crossed and lips jutted out in displeasure.
"– you're moving?"
At the mention of moving, Keith's heart skips a beat. No more sleepless nights, no more pointless arguments and petty bickering. It's almost a dream come true.
Lance scratches his head sheepishly. "It was sudden," he admits, "but yeah."
"Where are you going?" Pidge pipes up.
"Colorado. One of my uncles live there, and we'll be living in the house beside his. My two sisters, my younger brother, my parents — all of us, except for Andrea, she's staying to complete her studies. She said she can't afford to switch places in the middle of her university term."
Colorado is far. So far from the Northeast that Keith is tempted to rejoice.
The conversation trickles down to a stop after that, and Keith discreetly slips into a nearby classroom, which is thankfully empty, when Lance and company pass by, having moved onto another subject matter.
Keith can barely contain his relief. No more yelling from next door while he's doing his homework, no more sentence starters exchanged across the balcony, no more deep, philosophical quotes recounted at 2:00 a.m. past his bedroom window. Nights would be silent, just like it should be.
It'll be just him and the stars again, like it had always been before.
Keith is so out there, dreaming of the life he used to have and will have back very soon, he doesn't notice the words I'll be alone again scrawled straight up his back.
.
When Keith returns home after taking a late-night shift at the café, the sky is vivid pinks and oranges, a hint of blue-violet creeping up from the depths of the horizon. Its canvas holds no indication of being riddled with pinholes later in the day, and there are traces of silvery clouds.
On the balcony, Keith's alone. No stars peek out, shrouded by the clouds.
His neighbor comes, though, at dusk. The matte orange of twilight only gives his face an unhealthy pallor, and his lips, pursed and full, linger on a sliver of a sentence, words that don't quite make it past his mouth —
Eyes twitching, lips moving, but nothing stirs, not even the air; Lance does not make a noise as Keith glances up, closes his eyelids for an insignificant minute, and walks back into the confinements of his room, leaving only a late wind to scatter those unsaid words left hanging.
.
The stars are out tonight, and so is the moon, a circlet no bigger than a dime in Keith's palm. It grows with each day, and wanes after it reaches its full potential, like the mercurial tides.
It's not a particularly good night to go stargazing, but the stars give Keith some sort of reassurance, fitting bits and pieces of his crumbling ego back into place. It fills the void of his neighbor's stead.
On nights like these, a bit balmy and characterized by a playful wind from the South, Keith used to water the plants hanging off the ledge, fix himself a cup of green tea, and recline in the fabric backing of the lawn chair he'd taken off of someone else's property to place it on his own. (Of course, it had not been wanted; Keith would not dare to steal.)
Today, however, the tingles on his thigh, giving off a lucent glow in the darkness, disturbs him just enough for Keith to decide, Maybe I should read all of them.
So he does, and it's like diary entries. It reminds him of the thin, scraggly writing he scribbled out, with crayon, onto multiple folds of newspaper, back when he was young: they are unreadable, have indescribable meanings only a child would understand, but surely, they meant something dear to his five-year-old self. And same to the writing on his palm, forehead, and everywhere else on his body, writing only he could see, writing he now delves into, digests the information presented, keeps to himself.
On his thigh,
Please notice me.
On his arm,
I wish they'd listen.
On his forehead,
I'm not okay.
And on the back of his neck; it's one Keith wonders about the most, drifting off into daydreams to imagine who these words belonged to. And a part of him nags, wishing those words had been for him.
.
He wakes up in the middle of the night, belly exposed to the cold wind, still sitting on the balcony. Sitting up, the stars blink back at him, though their light is considerably muted through fogged eyes.
A thump echoes in the still of night. Keith rubs his eyes and looks around for the source. A shadow flits across the balcony next door; the streetlights carve his outline and it sticks there, hovering in the space between them —
That idiot! One day, he's going to get himself killed.
Keith leans over the balcony. Lance's foot dangles off the balcony floor, precariously, before he jumps to the balcony below him, repeating his maneuver until he touches solid ground. He vanishes round the building corner, and Keith is right there behind him, having hastily slipped a warm red coat, and a cashmere scarf draped unsightly around his neck, barely giving a thought to tighten it.
One one hand, he's mad at Lance, and talking to him after not exchanging words for a week seems all too sudden.
But on the other hand, he remembers the falter of the other boy's hand, of unsaid words swelling, filling the tension in between their respective balconies, and he can't help but care to find out whatever insane antic Lance is up to now.
When the tires revolve and Keith hears the gears whirring, he leaps onto his own bicycle and pedals after the retreating form.
They pedal for a straight 30 minutes, Keith staring at Lance's back the whole way, in which there is a guitar, perhaps made of alder wood, strapped snugly between his shoulderblades. On either side of the road, trees as thin as toothpicks whisk by, their leaves a shadowy conglomerate coming in focus, then slipping into a blur. After a while, even they reach an endpoint, as Lance turns sharply to the left, following a hidden, long-forgotten trail buried in mounds of grass extending far out to the skyline.
And then even Lance is out of reach. Keith thinks he sees smoke coming from the gears, and the whirring drops out of consistency, breaking into full throttle one second and edging close to the speed of a pedestrian the next, like a faulty metronome. Before his head can vanish beyond Keith's sight, he opens his mouth as wide as possible and shouts into the hush of night —
"What are you doing, you dumbass?"
A skid, then a yelp. The bicycle in front of him crashes to the side, wheels spinning. Keith squeezes his brakes and hops off.
"What was that for?" Lance chokes, lifting his bike back upright, his eyebrows drawn inwards in irritation. "And why the hell are you following me?"
"Why the hell did you fricking jump down the balcony of your apartment unit at midnight?"
At this, Lance's voice loses all anger, falling limp. He dips his head low, and mumbles a reluctant, "I'm running away from home."
There is no apartment wall separating them here, only a trivial cognizance of the hours ticking by, and an insidious temptation to rend this awareness, this silence, this uncomfortable strain —
Keith's brow furrows, his throat is hot... but his lips betray his vexation, creasing at the edges in concern. Finally, he speaks. "So, you decide to run away in secret, but you get caught by me."
Lance looks up; Keith thinks there's a glimmer of a half-smile. "Aren't I pathetic," Lance laughs, mirthless, close to wheezing.
"Don't say that."
Lance plows forward, knuckles on the handlebars. "I'll say what I want to, you ugly mullet."
For once, Keith doesn't object, swallows his dissent down.
The end of the trail looms before them, opening its jaws wide to an expanse of grass and flora. Downhill, a stream trickles over grey pebbles, the only sound in earshot. And as Lance pushes his bicycle to the side and plops down, guitar in hand and eyes to the sky, its pewter surface is dotted, brilliantly, with intricate patterns and embellishments, signatures written by a heavenly hand.
"I can see it. A bit more, now," Lance says, two fingers thrumming the guitar strings absently.
Keith lays himself down, capturing the starlit view with a rectangle frame made from his index fingers and thumbs. He zooms in, highlighting the constellation Orion, locates his belt and arrow. "See what?"
"The sea."
Keith's imaginary camera frame falls apart, as he stares into the limitless scope of the night sky. A sea of rain and suns, pulsing. "You ever wish you could scoop a part of the sky in your hands?"
Lance turns over to his side. "Not really."
"I'd put it into a jar," Keith says, "and place it by my bedside."
The olive-skinned boy hums. "That'll be nice." And some point later, "...seems like I still like the ocean more."
Deep down, Keith is grateful of the small talk. Judging by Lance's obvious avoidance of his reason to run away, it'll be better to discuss that at a later time. "What's so great about the ocean?" Keith inquires. It's just a collection of water.
"Seriously?" Lance is in rapt attention, and he sits up. "When I used to be in Cuba, we saw the ocean almost constantly. The water is bluer than the daytime sky, froth whiter than the clouds, and the sea spray, the mist..." He fades into a nostalgic whim, a desire to go back in time, back to those days surrounded by water.
"I've... never really liked the sky during the day," Keith admits, propping himself upright by two palms.
"What's wrong with the clear blue sky? I don't get you at all."
"There's... no stars."
He expects Lance to break out into a snort; in fact, it would be better if he did, to mask the fact that it truly was Keith's odd way of thinking. Lance, however, doesn't take it as a joke. Remaining his unsettling, serious self, he leans back, cheek pressing on the grass.
"There's stars. If you look hard enough."
"And where exactly would you find them?"
Lance spreads his arms out. "Everywhere. Each person you meet, each 'hello' and 'goodbye'. You meet a family, and they're connected, correct?"
Why is Lance so philosophical during the night, but a dumbass the rest of the time? "Um, yeah. By blood, I guess."
"See?" Lance says, and smiles, childishly happy. "Just like stars."
"By... blood."
"No, silly. Constellations. Constellations, Keith."
Keith pauses his train of thought before it crashes. "...Oh."
"And sometimes..." Lance bites his lip, retreating into the safety of a secret. Keith decides he doesn't like not being in the know, and presses forth.
"Sometimes what? You know, lately there seems like there's always something on your mind, something you want to say, but you don't. Spit it out."
"And how would you know those words are meant for you?"
Keith hesitates. It had been an assumption, and it had been dangerous to take it to heart. "Because you're always staring at me with those beady eyes of yours when —"
"They're not that small," Lance huffs, puffing his cheeks. "Yeah, they're for you."
His chest feeling light, Keith whirls around. Lance's eyes light up in the darkness, cat-like slits dilating, adjusting to the dim ambiance.
"I wanted to ask you... about those words," Lance gulps, chin shrinking into his chest meekly, as if he knows he's approaching a hazard, touchy topic. His voice gains characteristic confidence the second time he says, "The words on your shoulder."
"You can see them?" Keith sputters out, like an old car engine.
"A bit more, today," Lance clarifies. "I try to squint at them, but sometimes they're so far away, thin strips of lights, like the aurora borealis in the North. But other times, they're just there, and I can make out a few letters."
"Is... is that all," Keith echoes blankly, still dizzy from the revelation that Lance, Lance, of all people, could see the markings, the markings that had become his own little secret, the markings that had been unduly exposed.
"You haven't even told me anything about them," Lance whines.
"They glow," Keith says, curtly. "They hurt a lot when they appear, and sometimes after that, too."
"Like physical pain?"
"Yeah," he begins, but remembers the one stuck at the nape of his neck, the one others could see as clear as day, and takes back his word. "Well, no, um, not this one." He points to vaguely where that one exception lay. "Are you done now?"
Lance's expression softens, a pale shadow crossing his face. "Almost."
Keith huffs, a pout forming on his mouth. "What else is there?"
And then, without a word, Lance tugs at the collar of Keith's jacket, pulling himself upright, and kisses him.
Blue fire, Keith thinks numbly, his mind detached from his body, which is lapsing between reality and a sort of sleep paralysis, hovering in and out. Lance's hands are soft against his own calloused ones, and Keith blankly traces, with a weak finger, the heart line on the other boy's palm.
He only registers the danger of it all a moment too late, and Keith scrambles backwards, the thump in his chest replaced by something far more hot. "What was that for?" he yells hostilely, the back of his hand grazing his cheek and lips gingerly, hesitantly, despite his bout of anger.
Unfazed, with a pale blush painting his cheeks, Lance smiles in triumph. "I knew it," he breathes softly. "What Pidge said, the soulmate connection and whatnot, these... heartbeats all over me, they aren't mine." He stumbles into a crying relief, tears mixed with laughter. "Your heartbeat just went up crazy high, man. They're yours, they're freaking yours."
"This isn't damn funny," Keith scowls, forgetting what he's here for in the first place, only wanting to forget that warm press against his lips. It was a mistake to follow Lance all the way here, a mistake; everything that happened between them was a mistake. He picks himself up in haste, staring up the road before him that will lead him back home, away from his neighbor he no longer wants to see —
— for a hand to grab his arm, cling to it for dear life. For the thud of heartbeats, Keith's heartbeats, only faintly but surely there, to emanate from Lance's fingertips.
"Please don't go," Lance whispers, and Keith is sure he's heard wrong.
And he would have continued to believe that way, had it not been for the painful rip of skin on his chest, an ember glow of don't leave me said with sore, cracked lips, and the static crackle of a flame igniting as the nape of his neck flares a brilliant blue, pulsing gently in the restless breeze.
.
A white U-Haul is parked in the skinny driveway. Voices float up, as well as sounds of furniture scraping across the lot.
Keith isn't there to say goodbye. He'd convinced himself already that he isn't interested in anything that has to do with Lance anymore. From this day on, he's no longer a part of Keith's routine, or his nights — he feels the slightest, infinitesimal twinge of satisfaction to knowing that his world is back to being only him and the stars.
The thrum of the truck driving away resounds in his ears. His heart beating at three million beats per second, he stays motionless in his bed until the last hint of the truck all but fades away.
Keith pops his head out of the covers, exhaling deeply. It'll be okay now, he thinks, smiles lightly. Everything is back to normal.
After all, stars never existed in the daytime.
.
Keith goes to school.
"I hope Lance is happier now that he's back with his entire family," Hunk sighs, playing with bricks of Lego while eating a sandwich. Pidge only shrugs, and keeps skimming through their book.
Finally, they lift their head up, only to say, "I don't think he'll ever be happy, moving around so much."
Keith returns home.
The coffee that comes out of the brewer doesn't smell as good as the ones made by his former neighbor next door.
Keith sips on his cup noodles while watching the news.
It's quiet, alarmingly quiet, with each tick of the clock accentuated by the silence.
The time reaches 10:00 pm. Keith puts down his cup and chopsticks, intent on watching another paper airplane make its way to doom, but when he reaches the glass door, he suddenly remembers —
— that airplane won't be there anymore.
It didn't matter, anyways. He'd known what would happen after Lance left, and he'd let go of any remnants of his neighbor already, on that night.
Keith turns off the television, and plugs in a pair of earbuds into his MP3 player. He picks up the cup of noodles again, swallowing a couple of mouthfuls, before choking as the music plays in his ears. It's the very same song that had played, over and over, at Lance's party.
No, no no no no no.
He switches the player off, but it's too late; the effect of it had implanted itself into Keith's chest, like a thorn. The kitchen table is where he'd sleepily eaten breakfast, only for a loud yelling next door to cause him to nearly send the plate crashing onto the tiles. The closet, left open, used to contain one of Lance's scarves, in which that idiot left behind the last time they'd exchanged notes. And the balcony, where they had shared a moment together...
Stop it, his conscious mind cries, but Keith can't help it; he can't help it anymore.
He's supposed to be happy now! No longer anyone around to bother him, no one pestering him into participating in social events he knows he'll embarrass himself at, no one beside him, gazing at the wonders of the night sky —
"No," Keith half-gasps, eyebrows knit in disbelief. Dropping to his knees, he wonders just when he'd fallen so low, so full of himself that he can't even recognize the most important things in his life.
Him, and the stars. For his whole life, Keith believed that the juxtaposition of the two was synonymous with "his whole world", until now. Where his heart had been is now a gaping hole, his world is missing — missing something.
Missing someone.
His knuckles white, Keith forces the sliding door open —
— a note, in the shape of a paper airplane, on his balcony.
.
At first, moving from one place to another had been fun.
Meeting new people! Traveling to new places! Lance had thought there wasn't anything better in the world.
But, after a while, he began to notice the friends he's been making all disappear after he's gone someplace else, as if he's never made any connections at all. He began to notice that no one picked up on his calls, answered his texts, asked him how he was adapting to his new home.
It wasn't fun anymore. It was... lonely.
"So that's the sitch. It's pathetic, I know, but... I was tired, I was tired of moving, I just wanted to stay somewhere and stay there for the rest of my life. That's why I ran away.
I hope you can understand, and not take it too harshly. It's not your fault I ran from home, Keith. It had never been.
Adiós, dipshit.
— Lance.
P.S. Watching the stars with you have been fun. I mean it.
P.P.S. Sorry about last night.
P.P.P.S. You threw away your crumpled trigonometry notes last time, so here. This paper airplane was made from – you guessed it – a hand-copied note by yours truly. You might not be able to read it, but, sucks to be you."
Keith's hands tremble, and they move the paper up, but there's no more of the note. That can't be it, but it is, it's the only thing left of Lance here.
He stumbles drunkenly to the balustrade, note fluttering in the wind. The lights are off next door, the windows draped with a dark black blanket, empty. And so is the night sky, devoid of twinkling lights that so often scintillated like waterdrops off of a misty ocean spray —
"Lance," he says, and when it echoes back to him, he shouts again, almost a plea. "Lance, Lance! Lance!"
His throat raw and hoarse with his cries, Keith slumps down, the crook of his arm resting on the railing, his heart whipping up a storm, a blue fire he's denied through and through but now isn't able to resist, and the words don't leave me smoldering on his chest.
.
Nights feel a little odd now that Lance isn't here to make comments.
The tea tastes bitter, but it's warm, at least; its fragrance is soothing as Keith bites off the cap of his pen, and starts to write.
He writes of school events. How Pidge recently snatched the top score in a computing competition, and one of Hunk's architectural designs was featured in a novel science magazine. How during a rainy noon, Shiro beat Pidge at chess, resulting in a lot of squabbling and sulky "I-don't-want-to-see-you-anymore"'s. How Shiro himself performed quite well in the student council elections, landing himself as one half of the council president duo, the other slot taken by Allura, last year's undefeated all-round female athlete and chemistry prodigy.
He writes of the stars. How Venus glowed so brilliantly one night, it was like a diamond in the sky. How he'd mistaken an airplane in flight for a shooting star, and the actual comet he saw, a minute later, blazing with a fiery trail.
(What he doesn't write is the emptiness in his stomach he is hit by whenever he glances at the balcony beside his own.)
He writes of the new word that had appeared on his ankle. It spells I miss you, in handwriting that was neither Lance's nor his own, but a combination of both their styles, a hasty cursive script that Keith notes, really is messy beyond comprehension.
Finally, he signs his reply off, with a sweet (but considerably sappy) I miss you, too.
He lifts his head up, spotting another shooting star burn up in the atmosphere, and Keith revels in the fact that somewhere, in another land, Lance is watching the same star as he is.
.
"Are you sure I can be here?"
Lance chucks a beachball at Keith's face. The ball rolls off towards the lapping waves while Keith screams various colorful obscenities, seething under his teeth.
Lance cackles, tapping on the keyboard of his phone. "You should have seen that expression, oh my god I'm going to send this to Hunk right now —"
"Don't you dare!" Keith lunges for the phone, but is cut short, having tripped over his own feet. He stands up, face covered with sand.
"Don't... don't laugh," Keith warns, coating his voice with what he believes to be a threatening tone. Lance doesn't buy it, and starts laughing anyways.
"You're so ugly, I swear."
"Say what?"
"Aww," Lance coos, "did I ruin your self-confidence?" Before Keith could raise his voice and snap back with a smart-ass comment, Lance continues, "And yes, to answer your question, yes you can be here. We only see each other during the summer now, so doesn't it make sense that you should enjoy it as much as possible?"
After Lance moved away, it was true that only summers were left for them to meet. It was such an inconvenience, such a bother, that it constantly wracked Keith's brain during the school semester, this longing to see his boyfriend again.
(Of course, Keith doesn't forget that day where he'd gone to the mailbox on a dreary Wednesday morning, only to find a letter stuck in the crevice. From then on, those letters had been his only source of companionship, though Keith does admit that after Lance had left, his friends had tried to approach Keith through a symbol of friendship. They took it slow, unlike a certain someone he knew.)
Now, along Varadero Beach, with Lance and the rest of his extended family, he's finally able to feel complete, with the daylight flooding his face, the soft wind tickling his nose, the crash of the ocean, and that voice, that voice.
In a way, Lance had made Keith fall in love with the sea, too.
(The stars were by no means replaced, however.)
Keith's hand grips the handle harder, his dark eyes searching Lance's, ever unaware. His lip quivers into a shadowed smirk as he pulls out a small watergun from behind his back, one he's hid carefully and remained unseen by his opponent until now. "Get a taste of this, you asshole," he yells, spraying Lance head-on, from a point-blank range.
Lance sputters, wiping his face. "It's on," he says, looking around for a lethal weapon he can arm himself with. Under the sun, water droplets on his skin glisten, and when he laughs, it's as if Keith's heart ignited from a spark on the embers, and he's amazed at how bright it is, a blue fire raging —
"Hey, Lance," he shouts, over the din of the waves hitting the shore. "I can see it now!"
"See what?" the taller boy asks.
Keith is unusually giddy from his sudden enlightenment, and when he speaks again, he can barely manage to keep it from trembling —
Maybe I fell in love with you —
(It glows, a scorching passion along his neck, and he keeps his hair short now.)
"You," Keith says, breathless. "A daytime star."
A/N — a little explanation on the concept of soulmates in this world, because i didn't have the chance to go into full detail within the fic (and didn't want to edit the fic afterwards either):
"you receive a part of your soulmate when you connect with them"
lance received heartbeats, just like how you can feel your pulse on your thumb, your wrist, lance can feel keith's heartbeats in many many places.
keith received lance's innermost thoughts + insecurities, written in a combination of both their handwriting styles across his skin. only the one on his neck is visible to the public. they glow and cause some pain (they're pretty hot) when lance thinks them, they re-glow when either one of the two think them again.
— the sequel, nighttime sea, is up on AO3!
— please have a wonderful day and thanks again for reading! — kyt