#okay i am newly obsessed w this i am chilling at the goddamn bit no one let me forget about it

[autisticlancemcclain]

The phone rings, and rings, and rings, and Keith swishes the wine in his glass and lets it. He doesn’t count the minutes but he feels the stretch. He waits and listens until the rings seem to thin out, until they sound muddled and far away, until they finally pause, until there is a click in place if the incessant bells, until there is a break in the pattern that narrows Keith’s attention back to the sound.

“…Hello?” A pause, a beat, a moment. “Hi? Hello?”

Keith doesn’t answer. He knows this sound, this sequence of sentences, more intimately than anything else in the world. He hears this in his sleep.

He takes another sip of his wine, swallowing slowly, and for the first time he feels it go all the way down, imagines the way it splashes into his stomach to join the rest of the bottle, swishing and gurgling like a water skin.

“Can you hear me? Hello?” There’s a peculiar quality to voicemail Lance’s voice; a strain, almost, the feeling of holding back. Keith counts the seconds, one finger at a time.

Exactly four and a half seconds later, right in cue, is breathless laughter; muffled, as if Lance has attempted to hold the phone away from him. It doesn’t work very well, and the sound of his wheezy giggling takes up all the air in Keith’s lungs.

“Gotcha!” voicemail Lance crows, gleeful and corny and clear. “This is my voicemail. I’m terrible at checking it, honestly, so just call later, okay?”

Keith had not dialled Lance’s number with a plan. There was no goal in mind. There was nothing in his mind, actually; his fingers had worked without his explicit permission and by the time he caught up with them he was too far gone to stop.

But now he downs the last of his wine in one go, hoping to wash down the massive lump in his throat, and tosses the phone carelessly somewhere beside him. He hears it bounce and breathes for a moment before speaking.

“You know what your goddamn problem is, McClain?” he says, and his voice is slurred slightly and drawling like it does when he’s drunk but he’s not drunk so he doesn’t care. He doesn’t wait for an answer before continuing, because there won’t be one. “You are too fucking endearing.”

Now he waits, although there’s no point in it. That or he runs out of steam.

His next words are softer, dulled.

“You are so convinced you’re annoying,” he sighs. Nothing he says is at all legible. “You delight in it, actually. Nothing makes you grin harder than when you’re sure you’re pissing somebody off.”

Without thinking Keith smiles, too, at the thought of it. He realises then that it’s hard, that his chin trembles too much to curve his lips right. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and he gags at the salty bitterness of it.

“But you’re just…you’re so goddamn bad at it.” It’s mean and he knows it is and he lets the sentiment draw out and linger. “You do stupid shit like pretend your voicemail isn’t a voicemail and no one is ever mad. Never. They can groan and roll their eyes all the goddamn want and it don’t mean a damn thing, McClain, you fucker, because you wrap your fingers ‘round peoples’ hearts and grip and squeeze and stay put like the fuckin’ parasite you are. No one hates your voicemail. Nobody.”

His voice cracks on the final syllable and he refuses to let himself cry but something escapes his throat anyway, a garbled mess if a sound, the sound a bullfrog makes as a heron shoves it down his throat. A bitter resignation kind of sound, a giving up kind of sound. Vaguely Keith registers the sound of a thump and a cracking pain in his skull. When he opens his eyes again he’s staring at the ceiling.

“Look at me,” he says, and his voice is hoarse and torn and rough as desert sand. “Look at what I fuckin’ do to myself. Can’t even blame you right, McClain, ‘cause it would be a goddamn lie.”

He registers at this point that there’s no way the voicemail is still recording. Good. He doesn’t care.

“You’re the only phone number I got memorized,” he confesses. “Sometimes I call when I know you won’t answer from a phone that ain’t mine. I got a burner phone, you know. ‘Sposed to be for when I run away but I only use it to call you and hear you pretend to answer.”

The massive lump is back in his throat and the wine makes his eyelids heavy. He doesn’t fight either.

“You have endeared me heart and soul, Lance, and I will never forgive you for it.”

His voice tapers off ‘til there’s no sound left to it.

“‘M sorry.”

The last thing he registers is a click, and the grating sound of a phone being left off the hook.

#okay i am newly obsessed w this i am chilling at the goddamn bit no one let me forget about it #vld #voltron #lance #lance mcclain #keith #keith kogane #klance #pre klance #klangst #keith angst #langst #hurt no comfort #hsm #hsm au #yes i know shut up #my writing #fic #wip tease #longpost