This was inspired by prompt #196 from awful-aus dot tumblr dot com: "Sometimes I steal flowers from your garden on the way to the cemetery but this morning you caught me and demanded to come with me "to make sure the girl warrants flower theft" and now I'm trying to figure out how to break it to you that we're on our way to the cemetery."
"It's like catsitting, but you just have to make sure nobody's messing with it. People sometimes vandalise or litter, y'know? Just keep an eye on things," Hunk had said. He'd made it sound simple- hey, Lance, if you're around at new year's, can you do me a favour? Hunk had not mentioned that babysitting his plants would involve getting up at five am to try and catch a thief.
"This is ridiculous," Lance said to the bush-thing beside him. Like nearly everything else in the rectangle of dirt, it was little more than a clump of frosted twigs, and it looked about as uncomfortable in the cold, frozen ground as Lance felt. The other allotments were similarly bare, Hunk the only one bothering to grow anything over the winter.
Lance squinted through the dark at the clump of flowers, pale petals ghostly in the dim light. "Five in the freaking morning," he said to them. "All because someone's trying to steal your pretty faces, and we can't have that."
He didn't know for sure that someone's trying to steal them, but he'd noticed footprints in the scattering of snow on the paths a couple of days ago, and when he checked, some of the flowers looked distinctly ruffled, like someone had groped through them in the dark. He'd counted, just in case, and come back the next day to find another three missing. Lance wasn't a detective by any means, but he watched a lot of CSI and stuff, and he wasn't about to let Hunk's flowers get stolen by someone (especially not since he was pretty sure the only reason they were there at all was to give Hunk's 'just a friend' Shay something nice to look at out of her window (her apartment overlooked the allotments; she'd met Hunk when he'd spent hours there on a hot day last summer and she'd brought him water because they were both the nicest people Lance knew and any other love story could suck it). So yeah. He'd figured out that whoever was stealing the flowers would probably come back again, and he was prepared to sit here all day if necessary (even if he was also hoping that Shay was still in town and might offer to let him keep watch from the warmth of her apartment).
It was nearly half past five before he heard the footsteps; soft and steady, lighter than he'd expected. He couldn't figure out where they were coming from until whoever it was had already crouched down in front of the flowers. They were dressed in black, and a small part of Lance whispered ninja-ghost, and then you're gonna die, and then pale fingertips reached for the flowers and Lance's brain finally caught up, and he jumped up with an inarticulate sound that was a cross between a scream and a yell, and tackled the thief. Or at least he tried to; his legs were stiff from crouching in the cold, and he stumbled and fell onto the path, pulling the thief down with him.
"What the fuck?" the thief snapped, twisting free. Up close, Lance could just make out his eyes, glinting in the dim light above a dark bandanna.
"Why are you stealing Hunk's pansies?" Lance demanded, ignoring the pain in his knee- man, that was going to bruise- and jumping to his feet.
The thief looked from him to the handful of flowers still clenched in his fist, eyes widening slightly. Lance peered at him again, squinting at the little of his face he could see. Dark eyes, pale skin, hair falling out from under a hat knocked squint by the fall. "Hey, don't I know you?" he asked.
"No," the thief said, and then he turned and sprinted down the path.
"Hey!" Lance called after him. "Hey, asshole!" He began to run after him, stiff limbs aching a little. The thief was fast, and the ground was slippery with ice, but Lance had a mission and two track records, and he managed to keep him in sight until they reached the main road. There, the thief had to pause for early-morning traffic, and Lance, only flagging a little, caught him by the arm. "Hey," he said, and then stopped, because the thief turned to look at him, and his bandanna had slipped round his neck, leaving his face bared in the streetlights, and Lance had been right, he did know him. "Keith?"
"Uh," Keith said. He was still holding the goddamn flowers.
"Dude, what the hell?" Keith looked totally blank- not even guilty, just blank- and Lance tugged his scarf away from his face. "You know me, right? Lance? Lance McClain? We had the same math tutorial this semester."
"Oh." Keith blinked a little, and Lance realised that he hadn't actually seen Keith attend class since mid-October. The traffic slowed and stopped in front of them. Keith began to cross the street, and Lance followed him. "What are you doing?"
Lance shrugged. "I'm not leaving until you tell me what you were up to," he said. "Nobody steals my buddy's flowers and gets away with it."
Keith looked at the flowers in his hand and kept walking, picking up the pace a little. "I'm serious," Lance threatened, lengthening his stride to match. "Or I'll guess. I'm a bit of a detective, you know." Keith was either glaring at him or smirking; it was difficult to tell between the streetlights, but Lance guessed it was probably a glare. "Okay. So I'm guessing they're not for you, because, well-" That was definitely a glare. "-you're not exactly a flower guy, are you? I can tell by the aesthetic. Also, what the hell, dude? Who steals flowers dressed like an actual thief? You scared the shit out of me."
"You screamed and tried to tackle me to the ground," Keith said, absolutely deadpan. "And this is how I usually dress. It's December, if you hadn't noticed."
"Wow, three whole sentences. Good going, buddy. Okay, so the flowers aren't for you. So... I'm guessing a significant other? Man, that's ironic, considering Hunk was growing them for Shay in the first place." He rubbed his hands together, more to warm them up than anything else. "So, who's the lucky girl?"
"What?"
They turned a corner, and Lance noticed that Keith was limping slightly. His own knee ached in sympathy; maybe they'd both hit the ground harder than they thought. His hand- who wears fingerless gloves in December, honestly- was still clenched tightly around the flower stems, and Lance felt a slight stab of guilt. "Okay," he said again. "I'm not leaving until I find out who this girl is. I want to know if she's worth grand theft flora, because Hunk asked me to keep an eye on his patch, and I feel like he'd be okay with a sappy romantic gesture like this, but I gotta check it out, you know?"
Silence. Keith didn't even look at him, footsteps- still oddly light, even with the limp- pacing in and out of the streetlights. Lance waited as long as he could bear, and then said, "You know, if it was me I'd do something a little nicer than a handful of stolen flowers. There's a really cute florist in town, near the bank? They're pretty cheap, but it's a lot classier than just, y'know." He gestured to Keith's hands, and suddenly found himself falling, feet sliding out from under him in a split-second, and that one part of his brain went shit I'm gonna die for the second time that morning.
An arm caught his shoulders in a grip that was surprisingly strong, and Lance blinked and looked straight up at Keith. They were directly under a streetlight, and Keith's face was all light and shadow, eyes almost purple and cheekbones like paper creases, chapped lips pursed in irritation. He was startlingly beautiful, Lance realised, but he looked ill, pale and tired with bruise-dark bags under his eyes. "Oh my god," Lance said, not quite sure what he was responding to.
"The flowers aren't for a girl," Keith said, and let go of him. Lance hit the ground and scrambled up again, casting a glance back at the damned icy patch while his brain tried to process like three things at once.
"Oh?" he said, as the implications of that hit him. "Oh, dude, you're totally fine- I mean you're- no, I mean, that's fine, I'm bi, are you okay?"
"What?"
"What?"
They walked for the next few minutes in silence. Lance was trying to mentally word how he'd explain this to Hunk- so a guy was stealing your flowers, but it's okay, they're for his boyfriend, and also he's really cute and also he looks really sad, Hunk, I want to hug him- and every time he glanced at Keith, the other boy was frowning like something had personally offended him. Probably Lance, which honestly shouldn't matter, because they'd literally barely met and he had a boyfriend and-
"Oh man, am I going to crash your date?" Lance blurted. "It's like... what, six AM? That's dedication right there."
Keith didn't even look at him, and Lance seriously considered turning back, abandoning this whole shitshow of a conversation and admitting defeat because he was cold and tired and his knee was really starting to hurt and he hated the fact that he developed crushes as quickly as he did.
"Look, I'm sorry," he said, at the same time as Keith stopped walking and reached for a gate set into the wall beside them.
"In here," he muttered, opening the gate and leaving it for Lance to shut behind him.
Lance stared around him for a good ten seconds, trying to process what he was looking at. Leafless trees, gravel paths, Keith already striding away down one of them between rows and rows of cold stone markers. "This- this is a graveyard," he said, and then it hit him. "This is- oh my god."
Keith was already several rows away by the time he had collected his thoughts enough to move, and he had to run to catch up. His footsteps crunched on the gravel, too loud, too harsh. "Keith-" he said, and didn't know where to go from there. I'm so sorry, was what he tried to say, but instead he blurted, "God, I'm a massive dick."
Keith turned left, heading to one of the far corners of the graveyard. "Yeah, you kind of are," he said. There wasn't any accusation in his tone; just a sort of sad acceptance, which made it worse, in a way. He stopped in front of one of the newer stones, simple grey granite.
Takashi Shirogane, it said. February 29th, 1992-October 16th, 2017. 'Patience yields focus.'
Lance didn't say anything; he didn't have the words. He just stood and watched as Keith brushed the snow away and laid the battered handful of pansies down in front of the cold stone. There were half a dozen wilted flowers already there, every one of them like a punch in the gut to Lance.
It was several seconds before Lance realised that he should probably let Keith have some privacy, and he stepped away, feet painfully loud on the path. Keith crouched in front of the stone, a hunched dark figure bundled up against the cold.
"Hey, Shiro," Lance heard, and tried to block it out. "Uh. Sorry about the guy. He caught me stealing the flowers and I didn't know how to shake him off. It's fine. I'm... I'm not fine, I guess." Something in Lance's chest went cold with guilt, and he stumbled down the path and out of the graveyard. His coat snagged on the gate as he passed it, and something made him stop and wait, leaning against the wall until the streetlights turned themselves off and he could see dawn streaking its way across the sky. Then he heard light footsteps and the clank of the gate shutting behind him, and Keith walked away down the street without even seeing him.
"Hey," Lance said, falling into step with him.
Keith looked genuinely surprised to see him. He'd taken off his hat, and his hair fell around his face, dark and messy and longer than Lance remembered. "What are you doing here?" he asked. His voice was hoarse, and Lance could tell he'd been crying.
"Uh. I was- I didn't want to just leave you," Lance said, realising that he probably should have done exactly that. "I mean- I wanted to give you some privacy, but I also wanted to make sure you were okay. I- I said some really shitty things earlier. I'm sorry."
"It's fine," Keith said. "You didn't know. I should have explained."
"You should have just told me to fuck off," Lance said without thinking, and Keith made a strange noise between a cough and a laugh. "I'm serious. Nobody should have to explain something like that, not to a stranger."
"You're not a stranger." It was so quiet Lance almost missed it, but it was there. He glanced at Keith, and was struck again by how exhausted he looked.
"I'm not?"
"You were in my tutorial. You fell asleep sometimes."
"Oh. Oh, yeah. That was me," Lance said, still thinking about that look in Keith's eyes, like all the life had been drained out of him. "When you stopped coming- was that because-"
Keith sighed, heavy and hollow. "Yeah," he said. "Shiro-" He cut himself off. "I'm sorry."
"You don't have to talk about it," Lance said. There was a beat of silence. A car passed them in a spray of slush. "But you can if you want."
"I-" Keith was fidgeting with his fingerless gloves, pulling at a loose thread.
"You don't have to," Lance said again. "Especially not to me. But I'm a pretty good listener when I'm not running my mouth, and no offence, dude, but you kind of look like you need someone to talk to."
Keith didn't answer that, but he didn't make any move away from Lance. They walked in silence for a few more minutes, until Keith gave an abrupt yelp and pitched sideways into Lance. Lance caught him, just, instinctively wrapping his arms around the other boy and holding him upright. "Ice," Keith gasped into his shoulder.
"Shit, yeah, I fell on it earlier, I should have warned you- you okay?" He could feel Keith's body through his coat, all sharp angles barely softened by the layers. "Are you okay?" he asked again. "Do you want me to let go?"
Keith made a move that might have been a shake of the head, and Lance tightened his grip without quite thinking about it. They stayed like that for a while, Keith huddled against Lance's chest, until one of them- Lance wasn't sure who was first- let go.
"He was my cousin," Keith said softly. "Not my boyfriend, or anything like that. Family."
Lance nodded. It didn't feel like a proper response to that, but it seemed better than trying to come up with the right words.
"My apartment is like ten minutes walk away," he said eventually. "I have coffee and stuff, and there's a pretty good bakery on the way, and I want to make sure you didn't hurt yourself when I knocked you over earlier." Please come, he almost added, because their breath was hovering like ghosts in front of their faces and he had a horrible feeling that when Keith said family, he meant that Takashi Shirogane was all he had.
Keith agreed.
They walked back together, and in bits and pieces Lance found out that Takashi Shirogane lost his parents in a car crash two years ago, and that Keith moved in with him when he started college because they needed each other, Keith the angry foster kid who'd finally outgrown the system and found himself with nowhere else to go, and Shiro the orphan in his twenties with no one left to love. He doesn't tell him how Shiro died, and Lance doesn't ask.
They stopped to buy fresh doughnuts at the bakery. Keith was definitely limping by the time they reach Lance's apartment- for the first time, he was glad of Hunk's absence- and by the time they reached the fourth floor, Lance's knee was beginning to ache again. He kicked off his shoes and gestured to the kitchen table, noting Keith's stiff, uncertain posture as he sat down.
"Tea or coffee?" he asked. "Also, do you need like, frozen peas or something for your ankle?"
"My ankle?" Keith tugged at one of his shoes and winced. "No, it's fine."
I'm not fine, I guess, echoed in Lance's memory, and he shook his head. "Dude, if you ignore it, it'll just get worse," he said. "Just put my mind at rest, even if it's nothing, yeah?"
Keith insisted it was only a mild sprain with the sort of tone that comes from experience. Lance didn't argue- he did enough sports in high school to recognise basic injuries himself- and offered him a doughnut.
"Uh, I have coffee," he said. "Hunk has a bunch of herbal teas, if that's your sort of thing."
Keith craned his neck to see the cupboard. "Is that red berry?" he asked.
"This one? Yeah."
"That, please. With sugar."
"You put sugar in herbal tea?" Lance asked. "Man, Hunk will be horrified if I tell him about this." He turned round to see Keith frowning. "What's up?"
"I'm sorry about the flowers," Keith said quietly. "I- I don't know why I took them. I shouldn't have done that." He looked lost suddenly, a thin pale creature swallowed up by his dark coat, and something in Lance's chest swelled and hurt.
"No, no no no no, Keith, it's fine. Hunk won't mind. He's like, the nicest person I know." He sat down opposite Keith, passing him the steaming mug. "Here, take your coat off. Make yourself at home."
Keith did as he asked, and without the coat, Lance could see how thin he really was. He looked at Keith, long skinny fingers wrapped around Hunk's ray of fucking sunshine mug like it was a lifeline, and that same dumb impulsive part of his brain that suggested things like ninja-ghost suddenly changed tack, started sounding like his mother, and said goddammit, Lance McClain, you had better do your best to take care of this boy, so help me.
"Hunk planted the flowers for Shay," he said awkwardly. "He pretended that they aren't for her, but they are. She lives up in one of the buildings overlooking the allotments, and he wanted her to have something nice to look at, instead of everything just being de- cold and empty. He rambled about it for days, man, you have no idea. They're winter pansies, and yeah, it sounds kind of dumb, but they're really tough. They bloom in midwinter, and keep going until everything else kicks in. There's not a lot of stuff that can do that, you know?"
"Shiro said something similar when I was younger," Keith said, after a pause. "He told me that anything that can keep going through the winter can keep going through anything. I guess that's why-" He swallowed hard, face tightening, and shook his head. "I thought he was the strongest person I knew," he said, voice strained. "And I can't- it's not fair-" His voice cracked and shook, fingers clenching around the mug before he pushed it away, and Lance stood up, shoving his chair backwards so quickly it clattered to the ground behind him.
"Keith," he murmured, trying to keep his own voice steady. "What do you need?"
"I need him back," Keith gasped, like a diver surfacing for air, like a toddler in the second before it starts to scream. Lance moved around the table gently, wishing he had Hunk's instinctive ability to do the right thing straight away, before thinking fuck it I don't think I can make this any worse and lunging in for a hug, the biggest bear hug he could muster, pulling Keith close against his chest and running a hand over his back as if he could smooth out the too-prominent bones like paper. Keith made a choked noise somewhere deep in his throat, and then another.
"It's okay," Lance said. "I mean, it's not okay. You're not okay. But you will be, I promise, I promise."