Chapter 1

There was sweat on Lance's palms, the hot sun only giving him the thinnest veil of an excuse for the prickling of sweat beneath his arms or the constant rub of his hands down the front of his jeans in an effort to keep them dry. The pavement radiated heat up from beneath him and he considered for a moment, crossing over to walk on the crunch of burnt grass instead. It would be a way to stall, at the very least. He licked at his lips, feeling their dry crack caused by his nervous habit and glanced at the torn corner of a piece of notebook paper pinched between the fingers of his left hand. Apartment 126.

Strange how something that could take up so much of his thoughts and eat away at him for the past month could be shrunken down and summed up with nothing but the three numbers written in his small lettering with a leaky ballpoint pen that had left smudges of ink across the bottom of the paper. He folded the scrap again, letting the sweat from his hands soak into the page, further sullying it before pressing it into his pocket again. 126. He scanned the doors in front of him, the first row of apartments in his search listed as 100-105, and therefore not where he needed to be.

He could feel his stomach clenching nervously as he pressed further in, passing more doors. One of these doors would bring him face to face with Keith Kogane again for the first time in seven years. Seven years since their high school graduation, and seven years since the week after, when the boy had so thoroughly crushed Lance's heart. He wasn't sure if he should be thanking his friend Shiro or cursing him for giving him the chance to see him again.

Slowly Lance's scuffed knock-off converse scraped themselves to a halt in front of a faded red door, the golden numbers nailed to the front reading 126 and Lance gulped. This was it. Deep breaths. He took a moment to wonder if Keith would even recognize him since he certainly didn't look eighteen anymore. He'd grown another three inches, his face had hollowed slightly in his early twenties poverty and his hair had gotten lighter while his skin had grown darker, the side effect of working a job out under the harsh California sun, the only light patches left showing the outline of his watch or his shoes. He looked older, he supposed, it was understandable. But he couldn't help wondering if Keith would be able to understand. He licked his lips again, ignoring the dull sting of cracked skin before rapping his knuckles against the door.

A good thirty seconds passed, and Lance was beginning to think he'd written the wrong number down, but just before he was about to turn away he heard the scrape of metal on metal as the latch was pulled back. He sucked in a breath and put on a smile for the man in the doorway.

"Keith?"

Keith, or who he assumed was Keith, looked up at him through the thick black hair growing down in front of his eyes and suddenly Lance was aware of the smell of tobacco and leather and memories wafting into the space between them, hot and stagnant in the summer sun.

"Yeah. Lance?" His voice was rougher than Lance remembered, lower and quieter, like he didn't actually want to be heard. He supposed a lot of things would be different.

"That's me," Lance's smile moved from forced to good-natured, his shoulders relaxing beneath his thin t-shirt. "Ready to go?" He could see a suitcase sitting just inside the door, prepared for Keith to grab and go, presumably whenever Lance showed up.

"As I'll ever be."

Lance stepped aside for the other, letting him lock up after pulling on his jacket and grabbing the worn handle of the case.

"You know we could be there in a few hours if we just took a plane, right?" With the door firmly locked behind him, Keith turned to follow Lance out to the parking lot. The older man just shook his head.

"The only way you're getting to New York is with me, and I'm driving." Lance was relieved. He'd been scared things would be awkward. These things tended to be.

Keith shrugged. Of their little group, Lance was the only one who'd even ended up the same state as him after graduation, and with no vehicle of his own and no money to drop on a plane ticket, he was more or less at lance's mercy if he wanted to make it to New York City.

Lance led them through the maze of cars in the lot to his beat up blue pickup, unlocking the driver-side door and gesturing behind him to Keith for his bag. Keith handed it over, raising his eyebrow as he watched Lance stuff the bag behind the seat beside his own suitcase.

"You still have this thing?" He gestured at the truck. "It's like, what, thirteen years old now?"

"Twelve," Lance corrected. "If it's not broken don't fix it, am I right?"

"As long as it doesn't die on us halfway there."

"Don't insult old Blue, she can make it, easy peasy. Come on, hop in." Lance pulled himself up into the driver's seat and glanced over at his passenger. Seven years without so much as a phone call and now they would be spending nearly a week and a half sharing the less than roomy cabin of his pickup. It was a little surreal.

He turned the key in the ignition, turning in his seat as he backed out his parking space. "Shiro's finally tying the knot, huh? Took him long enough." It was an effort to prevent Keith from shutting him out for the drive and get him talking. The old Keith would do that a lot, go off into his thoughts and get lost enough that he wouldn't respond to much of anyone for the rest of the day.

"Yeah, I just wish they didn't live across the entire country. It'd make my mandatory appearance a little more realistic." Keith's arms crossed in front of him over his seatbelt.

"Well, you can't really argue that NYC just sort of fits those two better than Cali. I'm pretty sure Allura would be miserable here."

Keith slid down in the seat, the same way he did when they were teenagers and he was sulking over something. "People are miserable everywhere, Lance. I don't think location has much to do with it. In fact, I think married people are even more miserable than the rest of us." Lance snorted. So maybe Keith hadn't changed all that much.

"So you think Shiro and Allura shouldn't get married?"

"That's not what I said," Keith spoke quickly, looking out his window. "Marriage is just impractical."

"Alright." Lance had learned long ago when to just let go of things with Keith. They could argue about something for days if they felt stubborn enough. After a while, Lance pulled them onto the interstate, flipped on the cruise control, and leaned back some in his seat. "Still, you're Shiro's best man. I'm a little jealous."

Keith shrugged. "I think it's weird, I mean, I haven't even seen Shiro in years."

"We all haven't seen each other in years." Lance let his eyes wander from the road, this time deliberately seeking out the differences between seventeen-year-old Keith and twenty-four-year-old Keith. He'd filled out, his shoulders broader and his jawline squared where Lance's was pointed. He could make out the ever-present dark circles beneath his eyes, more prominent now in adulthood. Keith caught his look and pressed further against the door of the truck. Further away from him. Lance looked away.

They were silent after that, watching the road and the gradual movement of the sun across the sky above them. He was glad for the air conditioner. At one point he'd turned on the radio and softly hummed along to some of the songs he recognized. He wanted to talk with Keith more, he'd thought that seven years of a life without each other would give them so much more to talk about together. And yet he couldn't really bring himself to discuss the mundaneness of his adult life with the man who had at one point been his whole word.

What could he even say? That he'd followed Keith to California on the barest hope that they might run into each other again? That his hope had been wrung out and faded through the daily drone of work eat sleep, work eat sleep, work eat sleep? He didn't want Keith to know him like that.

When Shiro had first suggested he and Keith drive to the wedding together, Lance had been excited, and a little nervous. His hope rekindled with the fact that he would see Keith again, not on accident and not without purpose, that he'd have another shot at what they once had. But now, with Keith beside him slowly nodding off in the passenger seat, the drop of his chin nearly in time with the soft bass of the pop song playing through the car stereo, he wasn't as sure. Keith was different. He was different. Their high school romance had ended with good reason.

Change likes to come when you least expect it, and change had certainly come for the two of them in the time they had lost. But maybe, Lance thought as the sign for the city limit was left in a cloud of exhaust behind them, maybe change wasn't always a bad thing.