I started this, like, four months ago and the AU month got be to finish it. Even if it was published on the correct date, I humbly ask for your forgiveness.

Disclaimer: I do not own VLD.

One Way Or Another

Shiro would be livid. Shiro had always warned Keith to stay away from the ocean, stay away from boats, and stay away from anything water related. And Keith, despite the frequent stints of delinquency in his childhood, had obeyed.

Until today, that is, when he got on a boat, alone, and promptly fell over the side into the deepest part of the water.

Keith knew that the moment Shiro discovered what had happened to him, Keith would be facing wrath unlike any other. There would be no way to avoid that wrath either. There would be absolutely no way to escape it unless he stayed here, trapped by this beautiful creature that, he was slowly realizing, wasn't a death induced figment of his imagination.

"Oh, just look at him, Hunk." Two brown hands held Keith's face, more harsh than affectionate (although he was sure that was more to do with the other's excitement). Because yes, this was very, very real, and he was being examined by a real-life merman. "He's so pretty."

"Pretty or not, Lance, we can't just keep him." The merman with the golden tail, Hunk, sighed at his companion, who let go of Keith's face to crowd up in the bigger merman's space, eyeing him sweetly. "Oh, come on, Lance, not the guppy eyes. Please." He groaned before shaking his head and placing both hands on Lance's shoulders, pushing him away. "Okay. Okay. Just give me time to process this, will you?"

Lance swam back to Keith's side with a satisfied noise. His arms hooked around Keith's to hold him steady. His eyes glow, thought Keith as Lance's gaze turned to him once more. He was absolutely fascinating to look at, with his shining blue eyes and glittering, blue scales along his chest. He was straight out of a fairy tale, and Keith could not help but be utterly entranced by him. Lance, for his part, looked just as enamoured in Keith's appearance, eyes admiring the curve of Keith's ears and the length of his hair with interest. They stared at one another, marvelling at the other's features until Hunk's sigh broke them apart.

Both Lance and Keith looked up at the interruption to find the merman himself seeming a little less distressed than he had before. "Okay," Hunk said finally, "so you, panicked and kissed this human-"

"Keith," Keith supplied helpfully.

"Thank you," Hunk said shortly before looking back at Lance. "So you, Lance, panicked and kissed the human, Keith, to ensure he wouldn't drown. Which was very-" Hunk's bright eyes flickered to Keith for a brief moment, "-generous of you, but we still can't keep him."

Another mermaid, one with a green tail and wild sandy hair floated by Hunk's shoulder. "Hunk, we can't let him go either," she said idly, still eyeing Keith. "He knows about us now."

Hunk looked at her worriedly while Lance remained nonchalant. Keith could catch the hints of a smile on the edge of Lance's lips when Hunk mentioned Lance panicking, as if he was holding back laughter at an inside joke that nobody else knew. "Then what are we going to do?"

"Like I said, we keep him." Lance settled in Keith's lap, keeping him down and seated on the deep-sea slab of stone Keith had desperately clung to when he finally came to. He'd been desperate to get away when he woke up to three bright sets of eyes watching him, his body reacting in its natural fight response. However, once Keith realized that he could breathe underwater -once he realized that he was not only very deep underwater but surrounded by creatures that should not logically exist- he was easily shocked into submission. He could hardly remember Lance's literal kiss of life, even if his lips seemed to buzz with energy.

"Keep him?" scoffed the green mermaid. "You don't even know him."

"So what you're saying is that if I know more about him, I can keep him?" Lance swivelled, his bright blue eyes fixed on Keith's face once more. "You want to know me more, right, Keith?" His smile turned sly. "But you already know me a bit. We've met before, so this should be simple."

"Um…" Keith began, wracking his brains. He would know if he'd seen Lance before. The merman was too mesmerizing to forget, but Keith couldn't recall ever seeing a mermaid before in his life. When would he have had time to see a mermaid anyway? He and Shiro stayed far away from the water at all times. They lived landlocked, had lived like that for the last fifteen years.

"What do you mean 'you've already met'?" The green mermaid squawked. "When? I'm with you all the time!"

The smug look on Lance's face returned as he turned to face his companions, completely oblivious of Keith's confusion. "It was before you met me, which is lucky for me since I bet you didn't consider me and Keith here being old rivals and friends, huh?" He puffed out his bare chest and wrapped an arm around Keith's shoulders. "This is going to be easy. I love loopholes."

"Wait a second. This is Keith?" gaped Hunk. He swam up to Keith's face, golden scales glinting in the moonlight, and poked at Keith's nose experimentally. "Are you sure? He's not the same size as you."

"We used to be the same size, back when I was a guppy," said Lance, shooing Hunk away and tightening his hold on Keith. A spare hand reached into the bag floating at Lance's side and pulled out a seashell. "He even gave me this from the beachside. It's so pretty and red. Look!" Lance shoved the seashell in front of them, like a jewel to be admired. The shell itself was small and slight, pinking along the curve while vibrant red hid in the lines and nooks of it. It didn't particularly remind Keith of anything, but there was a meaning there that he desperately wanted to remember.

"There are hundreds of seashells, Lance. We live in the ocean," noted the green mermaid.

"But this is different. We're different." Lance gazed at Keith warmly. "You're a big kid now, aren't you, Keith?"

For the first time, Keith was being addressed properly, and he needed to respond. He needed to say something besides his own name and sounds of hesitation. This was his chance to actually speak, even if he found it next to impossible to do so. After all, he was still in shock that he was sitting here in this underwater grove, breathing fine and conversing with three mermaids.

Being alive after falling off the boat? Talking to mermaids? Forget that. Actually knowing about the existence of mermaids? It sounded surreal. Years had passed since he was anywhere near these waters, anyway. How could he know Lance? How could Lance know him?

How could any of this be happening right now?

As a result, Keith found himself saying the only question that had been on his mind this entire time. Nothing was adding up, he could hardly think straight, and so his response came in the form of a simple question.

"Who are you?"

A beat passed between them all, and then Lance swam off his lap, leaving Keith to frantically hold himself to the stone slab to prevent himself from floating off.

"I told you that it wasn't him," said Hunk, but Lance seemed too busy being offended at being forgotten.

"You don't remember me?" he gaped. "Are you certain? I'm Lance. L-ance." He sounded it out. "You used to race me across the beach, remember? Lance and Keith, neck and neck?" Keith's furrowed brow had Lance practically lamenting, but his voice did twig something for Keith. Something old and long forgotten.

The more he tried to recall it, the more he could recognize the little Lance shaped hole in his early memories. It was a little shaky, but there all the same. "I do remember you!" said Keith suddenly. Lance's petulant voice had dredged up that hidden memory; a mix of laughter, whining, and shadows under the water. "You're that chirping fish from the beach."

Instead of happiness at Keith's realization, Lance's jaw dropped. "Chirping fish?" He glared at Keith venomously and hid behind Hunk's broad shoulders. "Maybe you're right, Hunk." Lance peeked over Hunk's shoulder to side-eye Keith. "We should just go and let him get eaten by a whale.

Keith flushed, half annoyed and half embarrassed at Lance's behaviour while Hunk spluttered that leaving Keith to be eaten was certainly not what he was suggesting at all. "It was a long time ago, okay?" argued Keith. "I was, like, five years old."

"So?" grumbled Lance, eyes downcast. "I remembered you."

Keith was about to say something else but checked himself. Lance clearly remembered him, remembered Keith more clearly than Keith could recall Lance. And to be forgotten by someone you had known so well… He could only imagine how that could feel.

"I'm sorry I don't remember you more," said Keith instead, trying to appease the wretched expression Lance had thrown him before leaving him for Hunk.

Luckily, his voice drew Lance's gaze, and the merman stared at Keith's expression from behind Hunk's back until he deemed him repentant enough. His pointed chin hooked over the other merman's shoulder as he said, "I guess I'm just the better friend. I'll forgive you. For now."

Keith's shoulders relaxed fractionally as Lance floated back into sight. "I still can't believe this is the Keith," said Hunk to the smaller, green mermaid. "Lance was just a little guppy back then, and this Keith looks nothing like how Lance described him."

"Because he grew, Hunk," said Lance, swimming back to Keith's side and keeping him down again. "He might be the wrong size but look!" Lance ran a hand through Keith's hair, the tips of his human-like fingers flowing through the strands as fluidly as the water itself. There was absolutely no hesitation in his action, and Keith, despite everything, felt something in him stir. "I'd recognize this hair anywhere."

"As sweet as that is, we really can't let him roam around free. Like, at all," snapped the green mermaid. "He knows about us, Lance; about merfolk."

"He's known about me forever, Pidge" protested Lance. "That has to count for something."

"He didn't risk our exposure because he forgot you," she said bluntly, her green tail flicking beneath her in sharp movements. "What does that say, huh? Humans can't be trusted with this kind of stuff. Maybe we can't keep him, but sending him back to the surface isn't a good option either."

"But Pidge-"

"Don't I get a say in this?" said Keith, his voice cutting through the argument like a knife.

All three mermaids looked at him with a variety of expressions. Pidge's face was a mix between suspicious and curious; Hunk seemed more worried than anything; Lance, sitting in his lap again with his pretty blue scales, wore an expression that warred between hopeful and resigned.

"Yeah," Lance said first, "yeah, you do."

"No, he-" began Pidge, but Lance shot her a warning look.

"Keith can go home if he wants to go home," said Lance. "Besides, he's still mine. I get the final say, and I want what Keith wants, of course."

"Didn't you used to say that you and Keith got into a lot of fights? You disagreed a lot." Hunk piped up but Lance hushed him.

"Go on, Keith," Lance said gently. "What do you want to do?"

For someone that 'wanted what Keith wanted', Lance looked pretty upset. Keith swallowed hard, his hand resting tentatively on Lance's back. His pinky finger brushed some of the scales there. "You think I want to go home," he began carefully, "don't you?"

"You always want to go home. For Shiro," said Lance matter-of-factly. "When we played together, in the past, you always left me to go home and see him." At this, Lance's features grew softer somehow in the water. "Because he was sick, and you needed each other."

Trying not to gape every time something surprising came up was starting to get more challenging, because how long had it been since Shiro had been bedridden? There were days, before Shiro left to train at the Garrison, that had scared Keith into leaving home. The doctors that would visit Shiro, the nightmares he would have, frightened Keith enough that he would leave home. Never for long periods of time, but they must have been long enough to make friends with the resident merman living in the water, it seemed. There was no way that Lance would have known that unless he'd been there all those years ago.

"I did that?"

Lance hummed. "Yeah. We played together every day. You would come when the sun was at its highest, and we would play in the water and race and find seashells on the far side of the beach. It was really fun, even though you went home when the sky pinked and the sun set. You even stayed in the rain once," Lance laughed softly at a memory that was so far out of Keith's reach. Something in him longed for that memory. Lance sounded so happy as he described a Keith so unlike what Keith himself could remember of his own childhood.

"One day, you swam in the water with me," he continued, "and for the first time, Shiro had come to get you from the beach. He got scared. He saw something in the water, something he thought would hurt you. Maybe he feared me." Lance shrugged, and Keith saw the subtle shift of hurt in his eyes. "He took you away from the water. You told me to come back, that you would meet me at the beach again, but I never saw you. Until now," added Lance, a little more jovially. "Luck has brought you back to me."

Luck huh? That was certainly one way to think about this. It was probably the best way to think about it, too, considering that Keith was being handed an answer (a rather fantastical one albeit) to the questions Shiro had never answered.

There was nothing in Keith's memory that could have alluded to that day. It was fuzzy. He barely recalled leaving for their new, landlocked home. He knew that they had been raised on the coast of the beach but had suddenly packed up and moved away from the water. Shiro had never disclosed why that had moved, evading the question until Keith inevitably forgot about it. Shiro had also never said anything about Lance… but could he have known? "Was there actually something in the water that could have hurt me?"

"I looked around after you'd both left, just in case Shiro was right. I was a guppy, sure, but I wouldn't have taken you into the water if I didn't think it was safe. I guess it didn't matter though. There was nothing there but me." Lance looked at his tail, at the way it brushed against Keith's human legs in the water. "Sometimes I think that maybe Shiro wasn't scared of me. You always told me that you knew how to swim, but Shiro said that you couldn't when he saw you in the water."

"Oh. Well, Shiro was right." Keith looked away, feeling silly and embarrassed to admit this in front of merfolk. "I, uh, can't swim at all, actually. I never have."

"What?" all three of them exclaimed, and Keith's faced reddened.

"I just never learned. I was never put in swimming lessons or anything."

Hunk looked at his companions in awe. "What does this mean?"

"It means that Keith here really needed that kiss, otherwise he definitely would have died," said Pidge.

"Oh, Keith, I didn't know you couldn't swim." Lance touched Keith's other hand and squeezed it. "This whole time, and you couldn't swim? No wonder you always wanted to hang on to me. That's so sad."

"No, not at all." Keith reassured him. Though he could recall little of his time with Lance, he could not remember a single instance of fear. His early memories of playing at the beach with Shiro, with his father, with the chirruping fish, had all been lighthearted and enjoyable. The water was not uncertainty but safety. And now, it made sense why. "You were always there, and I never felt afraid even though I couldn't swim. I didn't have to know how if you were with me." Lance's cheeks pinked at that. "I'd never felt afraid until Shiro and I moved away from the beach."

"Moved to where?"

"Arizona," tried Keith, and when Lance's only response was a puzzled frown, he simply said, "far away. I can kind of remember not wanting to go, and I never really knew the reason why we moved, but Shiro made us. And after we moved, I never felt safe in any body of water again. I stayed away from pools or beaches." Keith chuckled to himself. "I distinctly recall hating bathes around that time too."

Lance let out a soft, mournful sound. "So sad."

"You were afraid of water-" Keith looked over at Pidge, whose narrowed eyes made him feel like he was a bug under a microscope, "-but you willingly got onto a boat. Not to mention that you weren't wearing one of those orange, life jackets the other humans wear."

"You know what life jackets are?"

"We know that humans need to wear them to ensure they don't drown," Pidge shot back, "but you weren't wearing one. What kind of idiot who doesn't know how to swim does that?"

Keith allowed the memory of that bad decision to grace him once again. "A drunk one, I guess," he admitted. "I wasn't really thinking clearly when I got on that boat. I know I told you all I live far away, but I wanted to come back for the summer to visit some family that still lived here while I'm on break from college." Keith swallowed. "Not just that, though, I wanted to face my fear of the water. I'd intended to take it slow and just visit the beach today, but after drinking with some people at the bar and realizing that the people here don't tie their boats down properly, I sort of took it into my own hands." His fingers moved nervously. "It wasn't exactly the smartest idea."

"I'll bring you back to the surface if you want," Lance offered. "If you don't feel safe, then-"

"No, I-" Keith exclaimed a little too quickly and tried to calm himself. "I mean, no, I don't feel unsafe here. Nervous, yeah. Who wouldn't be? But I'm not scared. Not of the water."

Not of you, he wanted to say. Lance beamed at him as if Keith had said those words anyway.

"So you'll stay here?"

"I didn't say that either," Keith corrected, and the rate at which Lance's face fell was astonishing. "I just, I don't know, need time to make a decision. I don't really know exactly what I want. I can't just leave Shiro. He's my family. But I-" Keith swallowed water and felt nothing. It was almost like air. He watched Lance's expression return to its original optimistic hopefulness. "I can't leave without exploring more." Which wasn't untrue, but it was not necessarily the most honest he could have been either. The Lance he saw now was not the same Lance he recalled in fragments and shadows. This Lance was whimsical and competitive and so much more breathtaking than he could have ever conceived. Lance was alive. He couldn't be a figment of his imagination.

that said, Keith had been apprehensive about the ocean for a long time. He'd always found himself looking at it with a mixture of longing and nervousness, curiosity and fear. With Lance's presence beside him now, Keith supposed that it was obvious that his comfort in the water correlated perfectly with being friends with a creature who lived there. Why should he fear the water when that was where Lance lived? Why would he not want to return to the place that his friend lived in?

"I don't want you to go," said Lance finally. Pidge and Hunk watched him with careful eyes, anticipating what their friend was going to say. "But you always do. I've had a lot of time to understand that, Keith." His shoulders drooped slightly. "Hunk and Pidge are right. You don't belong down here."

"What if I promise to come back?" asked Keith with his own degree of hopefulness. "Could I do that?"

"The promise of humans mean nothing," cut in Pidge. They all looked at Pidge with unease. "You're asking us to allow you to roam two worlds, to carry the gift of a merman and remain on land with full knowledge of us." She scoffed. "What's worse is that you claim you'll return. What happens when you don't come back, hmm? What then?"

"Yeah," said Hunk, finally speaking up. "You say you'll come back, but what happens when you don't? Is Lance just supposed to wait on at the beach every day for four whole moon cycles just like he did-"

"Okay, we can stop now," said Lance quickly, getting off Keith to cover Hunk's mouth with his own hands. The scales along his torso shifted so gracefully, a gorgeous blue like Lance's eyes. His tail brushed the underside of Keith's arm. Thin and translucent, it felt like silk against his skin.

Once again, the sensations Lance evoked in him bordered on familiar. "That's not going to happen," promised Keith. "I won't say anything about mermaids or them existing. I just want to learn more about guys and learn more about the ocean. I still want to get over my fear." I want to remember Lance. "That's all."

"I don't know," said Hunk.

"Please," begged Keith. "I won't tell anyone. I know you can't guarantee that, but I'm honest. I swear. No one will know."

If he thought he would see the same conviction reflected in Lance's expression, then he was mistaken. "Not even Shiro?" asked Lance.

Keith almost laughed. "Especially not Shiro." If Shiro ever found out he'd been swimming with mermaids, one of which had kissed him and allowed him to breathe underwater, Shiro would smite him where he stood. Shiro had always hated the ocean, and he hated to allow Keith anywhere near it. "I don't think I ever told him anything about you. I wouldn't know."

"Maybe," said Lance, removing his hands from Hunk's mouth, "maybe not. You said you'd return last time, but you didn't," said Lance slowly, "and it took you almost fifteen years to come back. What if you disappear again? I certainly can't do anything about that."

"You saved me, Lance," said Keith firmly. "I could have died up there, but I didn't. I owe you my life." Keith felt like there was more he had to thank Lance more, but he couldn't remember what it was. Knowing, feeling certain, that there was more to say but being completely unable to scrounge up the words was beyond infuriating.

"Really?" Lance's eyes drifted to the vast expanse of water behind Hunk. His gills glowed hauntingly, reminding Keith that each new breath was thanks to Lance. It was Lance that had rescued him from certain death.

"I'm not going to let you down again, okay?"

"We'll see," said Pidge skeptically. "Humans don't have good track records, and you are no exception. Maybe we should just steal your voice. That'll ensure you never talk about it."

"We're not going to do something as crazy as that," exclaimed Hunk.

"We're not going to do nothing either," noted Pidge keenly. She swam up to Keith and prodded his chest. "You realize that you're a liability down here, right? No human is supposed to know about us, and now here you are. We should probably undo Lance's spell to ensure that you can't breathe."

"You can take it back?"

"It's difficult, but definitely possible. He just has to kiss you again, draw the spell away from you, and ensure that your next breath is that air you're always breathing."

"If I lose it, I can't ever get it back?"

"Not from Lance, no."

"Well, I don't want Keith to lose my gift," said Lance stiffly. "I gave it to him. Besides, Keith's known about merfolk for a long time. He's met me before."

"That argument doesn't last, Lance, you know that. Even back then, it was a blatant violation of the rules," said Hunk.

"Maybe a little spell," murmured Pidge, her eyes glinting with promise as she drifted closer to Keith. "Just a tad. I've got one that'll be useful, but I've never used it on a human before."

Lance swatted her away. "Back off. Keith is my human, even if he didn't really remember me."

"I remembered parts of you," offered Keith. Lance made a noise of curiosity and Keith carried on, a flush on his face. "I remember your voice and sitting in the water with you. Little things, here and there. Isn't that enough?"

Lance opened his mouth to say more before Pidge swam up to him with a firm frown affixed to her face. "No," she said. "It really isn't. It isn't enough to keep us safe; that's for sure. If anything, you could have exposed our whole culture by now and are just pretending to be confused so we'll let you go."

"If humans knew you existed already, wouldn't they have done something by now?"

"Hard to say," said Pidge, "considering that we're supposed to stay away from the surface." She gave Lance a pointed glare, but he merely shrugged his shoulders. "Most people know we exist, and by most people, I mean not humans. The humans that do know are so tightly bound to merfolk that they usually just end up living down here. Regardless," she said, looking at him seriously, "if you're intent on coming and going as you please, then we're going to need you to come back tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"We'll need to test you," said Pidge thoughtfully. "You think you'll come back, but Hunk and I don't. We go off what we know, and Hunk knows that you left Lance before."

"It was not my fault," Keith protested.

"We don't care whose fault it was." Pidge's brown hair floated wildly around her as she circled him. "The point is that you left him. You promised to return, and you didn't. And you can do that again." She paused in front of Hunk and Lance, her arms lying across her chest. "You have the upper hand if we let you leave, but while you're down here, you're at our mercy."

"Pidge, don't scare him," said Lance, but Keith tightened his grip on Lance's hand, trying to reassure him.

He kept his voice steady. "I'm not scared."

"I still say we spell him," began Pidge, but at Hunk's reproachful look she switched gears, "or we take something from him." Her eyes pierced Keith's as she spread out a hand in front of him, the scales curling up her wrist. "Hand over something you value, something worth coming back for."

"Pidge!" cried Lance, but Pidge remained firm.

"We need leverage, the closest thing to proof we can get of your intentions. Give me something you cherish and don't even think of handing me something insignificant. I will know if you lie."

"This isn't right. I don't like this plan at all." Lance's grip on Keith's hand grew painfully tight. "Keith, you don't have to," Lance was saying but Keith was already pulling out the small, sheathed dagger he always kept on his hip. It was the last thing he had from his mother, the last piece of a past life he would never recall.

"Hold on to this. I'll be back for it tomorrow." Keith pressed the handle of the knife into Pidge's palm.

She blinked with surprise. "Interesting."

"Interesting how?" asked Hunk.

The look in Pidge's eyes changed to something far more inquisitive and…appreciative maybe? It didn't feel like she wanted to immediately shank him, at least. "You're pretty confident that you'll be coming back tomorrow, huh?"

Feeling Lance's bright eyes on him, Keith didn't dare move. His heart thundered louder than ever, and he grew more aware that his lungs were filtering the water to allow him to breathe thickly in a strange and wonderful way.

"He can leave," said Pidge, her gaze sharp and pointed.

Lance's arms wove around Keith's body as he spun Keith up in excited circles.

"I can?" Keith gasped, despite feeling dizzy and giddy.

"He can go?" exclaimed Hunk.

Pidge's arms crossed her chest, the green scales at her neck shifting in the "If he stays true to his word, then we'll see him tomorrow, and he'll get his precious item. And if not?" Pidge let Keith's blade balance on the edge of her finger. "Well, I'm sure I'll figure out how to keep us safe."

"Keith," said Lance, his face breaking out into a huge smile. His cold hands cupped Keith's face and gazed at him. "Keith."

"You've made your choice," said Pidge, raising her hand. Suddenly, the green scales at her wrist began to glow a green so bright that Keith had to shut his eyes to avoid being blinded. "See you tomorrow, Keith."

Keith woke up gasping on the beach. His lungs seared with pain as he coughed up water, wetting the cool sand around him. He regained his bearings slowly and rolled onto his stomach, heaving a couple more times. Once he was back in control, he got to his knees and surveyed the beach. The sun was beginning to rise on the far side of the water, and the beach was practically clear of any bodies.

He glanced out at the water and used his sore throat to call out, "Lance," as if expecting to see him rise from the near still waters and join him beach side. Nothing greeted him. The ocean was calm, his lungs burned, and he was alone.

"Damn it."

Was it a dream? Bleariness clung to Keith's brain like a fog. Even now, his own words sat heavy on his tongue. Trying to reason with himself was turning out to be harder than he thought, because as much as it seemed to be a dream, he didn't want it to be. It was more logical to think that he'd drunkenly taken a boat into the water, that he'd fallen, nearly drown, and then washed up on shore, alive by some miracle.

But he wanted to believe that the miracle was Lance. He wanted to believe in mermaids and magic and a young merman who had befriended him in his darkest time, who'd remained his friend ever since, who'd remembered someone as undeserving as Keith. Was that so bad?

He waited at the shore before standing and stretching out his limbs. Some of the sand stuck to Keith's hands as he dusted off his clothes, but that was hardly what he could focus on. He jolted a bit at the familiar feeling of his safely fastened blade at the back and let out a sigh. A dream then, surely. He still had his blade. Nothing had changed after all. His first trip back to this beach, and he was washed up like a castaway, just as empty as before.

A buzz in his pocket drew Keith's attention, but as he reached for his cellphone, his fingers caught on something else. He pulled it out, the breath held hopefully as he held it up in the dawn light and smiled.

It was a shell, small and chipped, looking just as red as it had in his dream; in his dream that maybe wasn't a dream at all. Something lifted from Keith's chest and he was able to breathe again. Lips tingling, he ran his fingers over the shell and thought of the ocean. He thought of Lance, of wanting to see him and those beautiful eyes again and smiled at the prospect of it. Keith tucked the shell back into his pocket, delicately, like it was secret, and stretched one more time before turning his back on the ocean. He'd be in town for a while longer, he reasoned, and he would return to the beach later today. After all, he'd promised Lance he'd come back.

And there was no Shiro here to stop him this time.