#Keefitz maybe?

[bookwyrminspiration]

we know Keefe and Fitz have been friends since early childhood. we also know Keefe tried to spend as much time away from home as possible, and the Vacker household was a refuge. now imagine with me all the sleepovers little Keefe and Fitz had. alright that’s all thanks

#kotlc #keefitz #damned I spelled sleepovers so wrong #spleepoevr #something like that #anyway #littol sleepover… #staying up late giggling with each other #sneaking snacks from the kitchen #(they’re not actually sneaking Della specifically left snacks out for them because she knew they’d do that) #just the two of them without any of the complicated life things #maybe sometimes Biana maybe not

[dreaming-of-the-end]

17: of being made from stone (and learning to let it crumble)

A/N: the chapter you’ve all been waiting for! Please comment/reblog if you like <3 New chapters on Sundays and Thursdays! only a few left 👀

Warnings: swearing... there’s a knife that makes an appearence for like two seconds

Links: [ao3] [wattpad] [masterpost] [previous chapter] [next chapter]  

Tags: @an-ungraceful-swan @likefolksong @gay-otlc @fruityfintanfortythree @synonymroll648 @bookwyrminspiration @skylilac @song-tam @gaslight-gaetkeep-gayboss @abubakr0567 @raeny-nights-and-faery-lights  @kamikothe1and0lny @arsonistblue @daphneishere @lemon-girl-in-devil-town @istanrandomfandoms @sunset-telepath  @s0larismoon

Dear Fitz,

This is not an apology.

Fuck. Fuck this. Fuck you.

…

Keefe opens the door too quickly, alight with an excitement he can’t name, and Fitz jumps from his seat with a curse.

He comes to an immediate halt. “Fitz, why the fuck are you holding a knife?”

Fitz’s hand clenches, flexes, and drops it. The polished dagger lands softly on the navy blue carpet, and when he looks at him, it’s with confusion. Maybe a little relief.

“It’s you.”

“Yeah, it is. Who did you think it would be?”

Fitz shifts on his feet. He looks a little like he did when Keefe first came back; not unsure, not exactly angry, but colder. Distant, maybe. “I just wasn’t expecting you.” His face creases in fear for a split second, but Keefe doesn’t think it’s aimed at him.

“Hey,” he says a little softer, and he takes a step closer. Fitz moves back, away from him, shoulders tensing. “What happened?”

His nostrils flare, but he doesn’t say anything. He just gets colder, farther away.

Keefe wishes he could still feel. He’d give a lot to decipher the stony look on Fitz’s face.

But he can’t. So he sits down on the bed.

Fitz stays standing, but he takes a deep breath. And then he says, “What was it like in the human world?”

Keefe studies him for a second. “You’ve been there. More than I have, probably.”

“Yeah, but as an outsider.” Fitz is acting like an outsider now. Does he realize it? Does he see the wall that’s been built between the two, reinforced by every day (every minute) apart? “You lived there. I was just… a visitor.”

“If I’m going to tell you, you have to sit next to me,” Keefe says, letting a grin spring to his face at Fit’z eyeroll. But he does come, sitting far enough away that he wants to scoot closer but knows he’s testing his luck. It doesn’t matter how he feels, anyway. He’s seen how Sophie and Fitz act together. Cognates, he knows, share a trust bond— something he and Fitz do not have. Something they haven’t had in a long time.

Keefe puts on a storytelling voice and gestures wide with his hands like he’s ready to tell an epic tale, even if it’s not that epic at all. “I rode a whale to the top of a mountain, jumped into an active volcano, became the Queen of England, and, most important of all… tried human food!” He drops the fancy voice a moment later. “It’s really good, actually. They have this thing, pasta and the gnomes don’t grow anything like it. There’s a lot of meat everywhere, but it’s pretty easy to avoid. Remember the gelato we got that one time?”

Fitz smiles. “Batman shirt. I remember.”

Keefe does remember. Remembers with perfect clarity how Fitz looked in his t-shirt with his arms above his head, brown skin lit up in the sun, cool and confident and still flirting with Sophie. But— shit. He’d looked good that day. Biana had laughed at him when he couldn’t stop staring. Of course she’d known even then.

“Talking?” Fitz prompts, and he laughs and continues.

“I read—by choice, mind you. They always told us humans are stupid, but they write some cool shit. And the libraries were quiet. Good place to get away from any—” he hesitates— “emotions that didn’t belong to me.” They were also a good place to write his letters. “There were cafes, too. Like the ones in Atlantis, the cute shop we went to that one time with Biana and Maruca.”

“Was that in Level One?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“We’d only just become friends then, right?” Fitz had moved closer while he spoke, looking at him with a focused gaze.

“About a year before, yeah. Why?”

“Just wondering.” He sits back and watches him more. Keefe wants to figure him out but he can’t possibly understand how.

“I tried more human biscuits, too. You wouldn’t believe how many ways they’ve found to sell the same things in different packaging. The packaging is so shiny, too. I opened a package of it and it was all silver inside and I carried it around in my pocket because it was so pretty.”

“I did that, too,” Fitz says. “I found stones and cans and trash in the road and picked it up to take with me.” He turns to the side and points over at his desk drawer. “It’s all in there. I think there’s an umbrella, too.”

Keefe laughs. “You brought a full umbrella back?”

“And a few movie posters. Normal things to carry around, you know.” Fitz grins, a full grin, and Keefe wants to kiss him so badly it hurts.

“You’re always normal, of course.”

“Compared to you, yes,” he says. “I, for instance, can’t identify a gulon by the smell alone.”

“That’s just my special skill!” Keefe protests, and Fitz laughs. “Come on, Alina could probably do that too with all the gulons I’ve stuffed in her desk—another skill, by the way, those are hard to carry around and they don’t like desk drawers.”

“Who would’ve figured?”

“Not me!” Keefe announces, and he laughs again, so hard the bed shakes a little with it, and he wants to keep making jokes forever.

…

You were sweet. Sweet in a sour, salty, bitter world. Sweet the way that turns your stomach into mush, sweet the way that keeps you wanting more, sweet the way that poison frogs are bright colors so predators know not to eat them. Dangerous sweet. Wicked sweet. Terrifying sweet. You scared me, is what I’m trying to say.

…

But Fitz says, “Wait. You were telling me about the human world,” so Keefe continues.

“I stayed in a hotel in London. The fanciest one they had and it was made of stone and metal instead of crystal. I stayed in a suite on the top floor and walked around the city and talked to people sometimes and went a little numb.” He’s quiet for a moment. “The parks are beautiful, even though you can’t see the stars at night.”

“You can in some places,” Fitz says softly. “You can see them in the mountains. Or where there aren’t that many people. And they really appreciate them there. I think we spend so much time mapping them and bottling them that we don’t see how beautiful they are.” He’s still looking. Keefe wants him to stop and he wants him to continue. His eyes glimmer in the warm lights.

“Fitz, what’s wrong?” he asks softly.

His face freezes over, and he looks away.

“Come on,” Keefe says, frustrated. “I’ve told you everything, haven’t I? I’ve cried in your goddamn arms!”

Fitz laughs. Laughs. His eyes crinkle and his cheeks lift and his teeth glint and it’s far too fake for him to bear. “Keefe, you know I’m not like that.”

“I wish you were!” Keefe stands from the bed and lets Fitz stare at him, shocked and a little insulted. He scrubs at his face with his hands and lets them tangle in his hair. “God, I wish you shared something. You don’t have to tell me your deepest darkest secrets, dammit, but I’d like to know— maybe who the fuck you are!”

“Of course you don’t know,” Fitz says bitterly. “Of course you don’t know me.”

“Of course I don’t know you!” Keefe cries. “Because you don’t tell me shit! I barely know your favorite color! You’re always just so— perfect— the golden boy— Dex was right, wasn’t he? You’re just so put-together, so talented, and god forbid you let yourself slip and admit to some goddamned emotion for once in your life—”

“I’m not the numb one!” Fitz shouts, and Keefe feels his eyes well up with hot tears.

“You could fucking fool me!”

They’re both standing now, fists clenched at their sides. Fitz’s face is tinged red, eyebrows drawn in a line across his forehead.

“Why do you just have to be so fucking perfect all the time?” Keefe’s tears threaten to spill over and he wills them to stay in his eyes with all his might, so hard that his nails dig into his skin. “Perfect grades, perfect life, perfect fucking girlfriend—”

“Don't you think I'm crumbling too?” Fitz cries back, his lower lip trembling slightly. “Don’t you think I know what it feels like to break?”

Keefe blazes past him. “You just do everything right, don’t you. You know exactly what to say, what to do, to convince them you’re all okay! Everything’s normal! Well, you can’t fool me! I don’t know shit about you but I know that everything’s fucked and you can’t fix it this time! You can’t fix anything!”

“Figure out yourself before you come after me—” he starts, but Keefe doesn’t let him finish, throwing his hands up in the air.

“Damn it, you even confessed to Sophie before me!”

“I never wanted to confess to Sophie!" Fitz shouts, hands clenching and unclenching, brown skin darkening in concentrated spots on his cheekbones. "If I'm so perfect all the time, how come I've never been able to confess to you?"

Keefe’s breath stutters in his chest, but the words don’t stop slamming into his chest at the speed of sound, caving in his ribcage until all he can manage is a choked, “What?”

Fitz deflates. He looks so, so scared, but exhausted. He runs a hand through his hair and Keefe thinks of the millions of times he’s watched him do this, a movement so familiar to him that he barely registers it. Hello, Keefe might introduce him. This is Fitz, and he runs his hands through his hair when he’s too exasperated to figure himself out. And, he adds as an afterthought, I’m Keefe, and I don’t know how to deal with myself either.

“Damnit, Keefe,” Fitz says. “I’m in fucking love with you.”

…

I'm going to leave you behind. I meant to leave my heart behind, but sewing it to Sophie's sleeve left needles in my stomach instead of butterflies.

…

He hasn’t breathed in thirty seconds, the time counted by grains of sand in an hourglass.

It’s supposed to be sweet.

Keefe supposes that he’d imagined this moment a million times, and every time he’d imagined it sweet.

What had he written to Sophie?

Fitz is like honey. I feel my feelings dripping down my spine, catching in my hair and tangling it with liquid fingers, gilding my vision.

Honey isn’t supposed to be filled with broken glass. But he supposed that’s how the two of them work: shattered, clashing against each other to smooth their edges.

“Say something,” Fitz says, his voice breaking, eyes creasing with regret. Like he’s already expecting the disappointment of a rejection.

…

This is not an apology.

…

“What do you want me to say? Something as perfect as you try to be?” Keefe asks softly, and as Fitz takes a step back he takes one forward. “That when I look to the clouds I think of you? That the sound of your voice is the only music I ever need to hear? That I could pluck a star from the skies and it still wouldn’t be as bright as your smile?”

Fitz’s lips part ever so slightly, and Keefe takes another step. This time, he stays still.

“Or maybe you want to hear more about the Forbidden Cities. Here: I missed you and hated you there because you were part of the reason I left. I wrote letters to everyone including you but you won’t ever see yours because it’s about how much I can’t stand being away from you and can’t stand it when you’re near me. I ripped it apart and threw it away. I’ve been dreaming of you since we were twelve years old.”

He takes another step, and Fitz meets him in the middle with it. Keefe brings his hands to his cheeks, cupping them gently, bringing them closer. “Or maybe,” he breathes, and Fitz closes his eyes. “You want me to say that I love you.”

Fitz’s fingers go into Keefe’s freshly bleached hair. Their noses bump, breath ghosting over lips, and suddenly he feels again, the forest-green wave of excitement and fear and yearning spreading over him until he’s full to bursting. “Do you?” Fitz asks softly. “Love me?”

Keefe laughs, breathless. “Yes.”

"Oh," Fitz says, and kisses him.

It’s fierce and angry, the only way they know how to be. His face is feather-soft and bumpy beneath his fingers as he comes closer, as Fitz’s fingers tangle in his hair, as their hearts match rhythms in their chests. He’s heating up, a teakettle, asphalt in the sun, a boy in stupid love with the stupidest boy he’s ever known besides himself.

...

What's wrong with me?

...

They turn inside out and lose themselves in their new skins.

#summer's writing #alira(taor) #a lesson in running away (the art of returning) #keefitz #keefe sencen #fitz vacker #angst #keeper of the lost cities #keefexfitz #kotlc #kotlc fic #kotlc writing #angst with a happy ending #<- ACCURATE THIS TIME!!! won't be in like one more chapter but for now it is!! #oh also if u need clarification. the crossed out bits are the letter keefe started writing to fitz in the human world #he tore up the letter and flushed it maybe. use ur imagination. point is he never finished it <3

[synonymroll648]

bro i havent written anything in so long like youre already doing better than me 😭😭 but if you need the push. uhhh i dare you to go write a 100 words??

call me keefe sencen the way i refuse to turn down this dare

#spotify. you're distracting me so badly. yes the song is good. no it's not the vibe i need right now #ok y'know what we're gonna let it finish. before i close the tab #tab is now closed #it's keefitz time fuckers #ask #skylilac #also how much of the 'if i can't have love i want power' album/love & power ep do you know? #because there is a lesser known song on that that i think would be fun to reference. maybe even two songs. maybe more

[uni-seahorse-572]

my heart a fool and yours laid bare (part 3)

*comes back after an accidental month-long hiatus with starbucks the final part of a fic I meant to finish months ago*

they love each other soooo much your honor. anyway this is half angst, half terrible metaphors, and all unedited! enjoy.

also, read on ao3! taglist (aka those who are cursed to deal with my tomfoolery): @song-tam @gay-otlc @xanadausaus @synonymroll648 (lmk if you'd like to be added / removed!)

“Fitz has a point,” Sophie says quietly. Keefe turns, frown etched across his features, the whole world distant: like something seen through the window. He gets the odd sense that he’d like to paint it, the way everything stretches out around him, compress it to still, 2D shapes to match the syrupy slowness with which his head is spinning. He can’t comprehend anything well enough; he thinks he’d like a week or two to catch back up and relearn how to think. “You are kind of an asshole.”

He flinches. Before she’d spoken, he’d forgotten she was there at all. His vision had narrowed to Fitz’s vanishing back and the terrifying lack of his emotions thrumming between them. “I didn’t…” Keefe starts, then stops, falling into silence. Where did he even go wrong?

Fitz is in love with Sophie. Sophie is in love with Fitz. Both of those things are apparent to anyone who knows them. It doesn’t even take being an Empath. Keefe had thought his efforts to get them together were, if not a totally flawless display of matchmaking, a selfless endeavor rooted entirely in his desire to make his best friend happy. After all, none of this had been for him. He knew and knows too well that Fitz will leave him someday. Fundamentally, Fitz is the good one, the golden one, and inevitably he was going to wake up and realize that one day. This mission of Keefe’s had only served to advance that date further, but of course it would always be too soon, so at least he had meant to make up for all the times he’d been a burden by virtue of who he was. That’s what Keefe does: he’s the screw-up, the one who can’t help but bring the world crashing down around everyone foolish enough to get close to him’s ears no matter how well-intentioned he is.

And now he’s done it again. Typical.

Amidst the swirling chaos in his mind, Keefe can’t figure out what to voice, so he settles on, “I don’t understand.”

“Yeah, you really don’t.” Sophie’s sigh errs a little too close to Lady Gisela’s. It’s the same one his mother always makes when she’s internally bemoaning the fact that she’s cursed to have a son who can’t do anything right. At least it’s kinder than Lord Cassius’s. “Look, this isn’t my damn problem. I’d just recommend the two of you work it out sooner rather than later.” Her face softens. “The two of you have something special. I’d hate to see this be the breaking point.”

Keefe watches her go, too. He shakes his head hard, like if he does it violently enough he’ll set it to rights again and things will resume making sense. There are few things he could ever say he knows for certain, but this is one: it was always going to end like this. Melodramatic, that, yet true regardless. He’d figured he had more time. At least solitude is familiar. He’s not the kind of person who can make anyone stick around.

Around him, the party still sways together, Yasmin Hadi being dipped on the dancefloor by a boy he vaguely recognizes. She’s grinning, beaded bracelet glinting proudly around her wrist. The crowds around her share the same subtle jubilance. Keefe wishes he could say he’s happy at least today will end well for someone, for everyone he didn’t sink his cursed claws into, but he isn’t. He wishes, too, that he could scream out this ache onto the universe or that it might let him return to an hour ago.

Wishes, his father would say, are the currency of fools and useless dreamers.

~

Alongside Empathy often develops a skill at reading emotions merely from the face and body language. This is a well-known fact, particularly when regarding those the Empath in question has used their ability on before. Slowly, associations build between what the ability and what the eyes pick up, resulting in an uncanny perception.

As such, Lady Merewyn knows the moment Keefe steps foot into his session that something is wrong, and not only because he’s on time for once in his life. He can see that knowledge on her face, too, and he wonders why Empathy must always feel like a curse rather than a gift. Who ever figured being doomed to know too much could ever end well?

“Is the cataclysm upon us so soon? It isn’t like you to be so early.” Lady Merewyn says wryly, though she gives him no time to respond to the friendly jibe before descending into that dark, dark realm of seriousness. “Keefe, whatever’s going on… is it something I can help with?”

He rolls his eyes resolutely, dropping down across from her into his usual bean bag. “Just a spat with a friend is all. Don’t worry about it. We can get on with learning about, uh…” Wracking his brain about today’s lessons plans, Keefe’s unsurprised to find nothing in there about his Empathy sessions at all—he supposes that no teacher could ever make him truly care about schoolwork. “The, um, thing.”

Lady Merewyn chuckles, seemingly despite herself. “I think ‘the thing’ can wait another couple of days. Whatever’s going on, though, it’s not a ‘just’ if you’re this upset about it.”

“I’m not—”

“Don’t lie to the Empath,” she says sagely. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, but I want you to know I’m giving you the chance now if you want it.”

Keefe stews in silence, engaging in a furious staring match with one of the posters on the wall with its ironically adorable alligator cartoon and idiotic ‘positive message’. He wonders who’d win in a battle of quiet. He could refuse to speak at all for the rest of class, and what could she even do about it? She couldn’t make him talk about anything. He isn’t even convinced she’d go all out to stop him if he decided to just walk out the door right now. Quiet is easier.

Besides, how’s he even supposed to tell anyone else the whole, ugly story when he hardly understands what happened himself?

The minutes tick by. Lady Merewyn can be obstinate when she wants to be. The weight of her gaze prickles against his forehead. He taps against the floor, one-two one-two, and hates that the simple motion reminds him of Fitz. The last thing he wants to do is unload his shit on anyone else. Besides, what’s pushing away one more person now?

Yet the stillness eats at him. It troubles his insides and brings the memories rushing back in, of what Fitz’s love felt like pressed against his shoulder or cradled in their joined hands, of the echo of his voice fracturing with furious hurt. It makes him think, again and again and again, what am I missing?

“Do you ever think,” he starts, slow and careful, “that Sir Richard was right about Empaths?”

Lady Merewyn starts at the question. Her brows march steadily towards each other, curving into curiosity left unvoiced. “I can’t say that I have. Touch is important to most elves’ wellbeing, after all.”

“It’s not about that. It’s not about me.” His voice rises in steady frustration, directed intense at his mentor. His fists curl where they rest atop his lap. Keefe can feel their half-moon indentations in his palm. “What if Empathy does more harm than good?”

This quiets her yet longer, the gravity of the situation evidently clear, and each passing second pushes him closer towards clawing out of his own skin. There’s too much in him to settle easily, the heartbreak bearing heavy down and all he asks is to know whether he really does have only himself to blame.

“I don’t know how to answer that.” She sighs, and the irritation wells up in him again. “Knowing other’s emotions as intimately as we do can certainly create a lot of problems. But if we’re able to train ourselves to control the amount of attention we pay to our ability, there are certainly times when Empaths serve in incredibly important capacities.”

Wrong answer. Keefe needs a yes or no. Is what he can do worth it? Is he worth it? Everything he has ever known or been has made things worse. That can’t be worth it. This isn’t a complicated question; he can divide it easily into black and white. If Sir Richard was right all along… what does that make these last few years of his life? And what does that say about his relationship with Fitz, the one person he’d broken all the rules with? Fitz is the one truly good thing Keefe has. The only thing worse than losing him now would be the knowledge that the two of them never should have existed at all.

“Please tell me,” Lady Merewyn says, firm and slow, somewhere between invitation and instruction, “what happened.” Fire shines behind her eyes. He wonders, idly, what she thinks the answer will be. What she’d do if she was right.

Keefe holds onto his silence. Quiet, for him, is a strange beast. His thoughts have a habit of tumbling off his tongue whether he wants them to or not. He could run his mouth without stopping in an empty room, to someone who isn’t even listening, like his father’s stone wall facade or his mother’s distracted noises of vague disapproval—like she assumes that whatever he’s saying, she doesn’t need to hear it to know it’s not something she’d appreciate. Secret-keeping is a shot in the dark in the best of times, covered up by nonsensical prattle because he can’t keep completely silent. Keefe wrestles with his tongue, the effort of not speaking a battle in his mind, as he stares Lady Merewyn down and tries to figure out how long it’ll be before she gives up.

Everything he wants to say burbles up to the top of his mind. Buried feelings and hidden fears, lined up in the kind of eloquent phrasing he never actually manages to say, the kind of sentences that might just make someone understand. Keefe can play out how he thinks that conversation would go in his head. He can imagine Lady Merewyn or whatever supporting character his brain decides to supply magically knowing how to say the perfect reassurances, the right explanations, knowing how to make everything fall into place. The problem is he wants to. Keefe wants to so badly, to try and untangle what’s trapped within him, but even as the words teeter on cliff’s edge he bites his tongue.

The pain there is sharp. Instant. But it serves its purpose, a cruel reminder. Keefe has to be careful, even here, because the way things play out in his head is a fairytale. Reality would never be half so kind.

In the end, he starts with, “I messed up,” because that’s familiar territory, well-tread ground. It’s probably been years since he could say that sentence and have it be a lie. He twists his lips to one side, heart turning sour. “Bad. I don’t know what went wrong. I tried to help my friend, because of something I figured out through Empathy. Instead I kinda-sorta ruined everything.”

Lady Merewyn doesn’t react, a remarkable feat. He’ll have to ask her for a masterclass sometime. “I can see how that might cause an issue. Keefe… whatever your intentions were, it’s rarely a good idea to act on what your Empathy tells you. It doesn’t give the whole story. And, even with those you’re closest with, I’m afraid it can be a major violation of privacy. That kind of interference is too likely to be off the mark and easily goes too far. Maybe, whatever you thought you figured out, you were wrong.” The lecture lands a little too close to their first session together, the one on ethics. The one on respecting boundaries and approved Empathy uses. Keefe flinches, guilt trickling down from the crown of his head from having disregarded a rule among the most basic of his mentor’s teachings.

“I know that now,” he says, bitterly. Too late, anyway. Why’d anyone even bother to lay out groundrules for his ability? They should’ve known Keefe Sencen has never met a barrier he won’t break through. Especially when he really, really shouldn’t. “But what do I do?”

“To repair the relationship?” She shrugs, as though the answer’s simple. Not like he can carry out simple instructions anyway. “You apologize. You tell the truth. You find out if they’re willing to forgive, and if not, you respect their wishes.”

Keefe wants to say he isn’t sure what truths he has to tell. He wants to say there’s no point in asking if Fitz can forgive him, because he can’t, because they all know that this time Keefe has crossed a line he didn’t even know was there. He wants to say that he’s not even sure that’s a wish he’d be capable of respecting, because what is Keefe without Fitz? What’s a troublemaker without a golden boy, a screw-up without a prodigy, a reckless fool without an anchor?

What he says is “Okay.”

~

When Keefe reaches Everglen, he’s not the only one there; Sophie bumps into him on her way back through the glowing gates.

“Hi,” she says, voice a hair shy of fully flat. This is lucky, he supposes. He does have to apologize to her too. This conversation seems easier than the one ahead of him, at least. And after all, judging by the way she stands, arms crossed and weight resting fully to one side as she settles to standing just far enough away that it’s awkward, Sophie’s still upset too.

Her emotions wave through the air, tugging at the edges of his awareness. Keefe ignores them. “Look,” he starts, words too rushed and crashing together. He can’t look her in the eyes. He doesn’t think he’d like what he’d see there. “I’m sorry. I made a mistake, though I’m not entirely sure what it was. I took all of that way too far.”

“Yeah, you did.” Sophie’s tone runs him straight through. Without meaning to, he can feel the sour twist to the air, the rhythms of her frustration. “Did you even bother to consider what I thought?”

Keefe shakes his head. He hadn’t bothered to really puzzle through if the attraction was mutual on Sophie’s side. He’d just assumed. It had seemed obvious, at the time. Fitz liked her, and who didn’t like Fitz? Fitz has always been so easy to love. Easy when you don’t know him, the Wonderboy reigning over all of Foxfire, yet even easier when you do.

Sophie laughs. It’s not a happy sound. Instead it rings discordant between them, nearing eerie. “I had a feeling. For the record, I’m not interested in Fitz. I never was.”

“I’m sorry,” Keefe repeats, because it’s the best he has. He shifts his gaze upwards again. Her stare pins him down, assessing and dissecting him, accompanied only by the tapping of her fingers against her thigh through the long silence.

“Don’t worry about it. Just never mess around with my nonexistent love life again.” Sophie smiles a crescent moon sliver like a peace offering, finally holding her home crystal up to the light and shimmering away.

Once she’s gone, he breathes a little lighter again, the pressure clamped tight around his chest loosening.

If only this next part wasn’t going to be yet worse.

It’s by no means a short walk from the Everglen gates to Fitz’s bedroom, but at the same time it doesn’t prove long enough for Keefe to figure out what he wants to say. What’s the truth here, anyway? That Fitz was probably right when he called him an asshole? Somehow admitting as much seems an insufficient apology.

Over the course of his life, Keefe can admit he hasn’t apologized to people often. At least not willingly. Most of the people he might’ve said one to don’t matter to him enough to deserve one, and he can be obstinate when he needs to be. He’s mastered the art of gritting his jaw when one of his parents or mentors attempts to prod him into half-hearted remorse. Even with Fitz, all those other times before when Keefe had stuck his foot in his mouth or landed them both in hot water for a prank gone wrong, he rarely voiced any guilt—instead choosing to play it off as a joke or the like. Keefe possesses little experience in this arena.

The hallways of Everglen are blessedly empty, as per usual. For such a massive home, so few people live here that swathes of rooms always remain unused for months at a time (not that he can claim any better, coming from Candleshade, though there every resident generally wants nothing more than to entirely avoid being forced to endure one another’s presence).

By the time he knocks on the door, Keefe’s worked himself into spiral after spiral. It leaves him antsy.

“Go away, Biana,” Fitz calls from within. “I’m trying to focus.”

“Not Biana,” Keefe says, deciding that’s as good of an invitation as he’s going to get. He pushes the door open and steps inside, only hesitating momentarily on the threshold. “Biana wouldn’t have knocked.”

Fitz’s eyes shift, doe-wide, his entire posture stiffening like a glowstick cracking back into place. He sits at his desk, the light streaming through the open window to rest along the tops of his bookshelves and the wind stirring his papers. Various school supplies surround him; ink smudges litter his hands and one even clings to his forehead. It’s an achingly familiar sight, calling to mind thousands of days like it: the distinct feeling that they have been here before and will be again.

Hollow, he asks, “What are you doing here?”

Keefe doesn’t step forward. He figures, this way, with one hand still resting on the doorframe, Fitz can tell him to leave when things go sideways. “Can’t I stop by to visit a friend?”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he catalogs Fitz’s wince. It’s strange, the slight motion not being accompanied by a wave of emotions. Fitz’s face shutters, every trace of feeling vanishing quick as swiping lines drawn in sand back into smoothness. “I’m not doing this right now.”

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” Keefe blurts out. “I am, okay? I know I made a mistake. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Right,” Fitz scoffs. “You ‘didn’t mean it’. Keefe, you can’t do something that—that cruel and expect me to forgive you if you just waltz in here with a skeleton apology.”

The words don’t hurt so much as confound. Keefe can’t puzzle out their meaning. “What are you talking about? I wanted you to be happy. That’s all.”

“If you thought that would make me happy, then you don’t know me at all.” Fitz drops his gaze back to the papers on his desk. It’s final, his expression, the hard set of his face as he returns determinedly to filling lined pages with slanted scrawl.

Internally, Keefe runs through what he knows again. His best friend is furious at him. Sophie’s upset, too, because she hadn’t liked Fitz. What if that held true for both sides? What if Keefe had misread the situation, and now he’s ruined the most important friendship in his life through being too pushy in a plan only meant to make Fitz happy?

That almost makes sense. He can’t tell why it doesn’t.

Keefe steps forward, slowly, watching how Fitz’s shoulders rise up around his ears at his approach. This is a mistake, but that’s never stopped him before. He reaches out, fingertips brushing against the side of Fitz’s arms, and the faint contact gives way to feelings flooding forth.

The first he can pick out is hurt. It drips icy and sharp across his own insides. It swirls in the space around the two of them, choking out the air. There are few of Fitz’s emotions that Keefe isn’t fully familiar with, but this is one. Keefe has sensed it maybe twice before. He can’t begin to guess at what to do in the face of it. It’s his fault. Who else’s would it be? It’s always his fault. His hands aren’t made for holding something gently. His head wasn’t built for letting things go right. He doesn’t know what to do with every trace of goodness he gets close to, and for so long Fitz has been a blinding light against the dark. He makes Keefe feel whole.

Fitz whips out of his chair, stumbling backwards into his desk. “Stop acting like nothing’s changed. Things have changed, okay? I don’t know how else you expected this to end.”

“Not like this. I promise I just wanted to help you.” Keefe drags his fingers through his hair, offering up one of his patented smiles, tinged around the edges with thick smudges of exhaustion. “I swear I’m trying, but I don’t know what to do if I don’t even know what’s wrong.”

“Don’t lie to me like this,” Fitz whispers.

“I wasn’t,” Keefe protests automatically. He’s operating on smoke and guesses, facing his best friend without even knowing the source of the pain flickering behind his words. He digs deeper into what he’d managed to sense of Fitz’s emotions, pushing through the hurt to what’s underneath. His leg flicks out—just enough to brush against Fitz’s—and that’s all he needs to confirm it. The love’s still there, the same as he’d noticed before, drenched with syrupy bitterness that bleeds sour through the both of them. Fitz is in love with someone, but it’s not Sophie. Keefe had misread the situation. No wonder Fitz had been increasingly uncomfortable with each successive matchmaking attempt, though that still didn’t explain the depths of his present anger… And who else could it even be? Who else was Fitz close to, close enough to have that strong and easy bond? Who else could inspire such feelings of affection in Foxfire’s golden boy? Who else did Fitz seek out half as often, smile at a quarter as much, and who else won his rare, precious laughs?

“No. No, you don’t get to do this, okay?” Fitz’s voice rises unsteady in volume, fracturing down the center and wobbling at the edges. It spills over with warm, wet fury. He advances, with Keefe stepping backwards automatically in response, movements jerky in his shock. “Look, I’m sorry about my stupid feelings. Is that what you want me to say? I’m so fucking sorry you’ve had to deal with that all these years, but you crossed a line. You crossed every line. Was it funny, at least? To pretend you didn’t know what you were doing, to try and fix me, your poor little broken best friend and laugh on the inside because all along you knew?”

And all Keefe can think is oh. It makes a terrible kind of sense. All along—could Fitz have really…?

It doesn’t seem right. Yet the love Keefe sensed had been there before Sophie. Yet when it comes down to it, there’s no one closer to Fitz than Keefe. There’s no one else who Fitz’s mask comes completely off around with just one word or raised eyebrow. Keefe swallows hard. “I didn’t…”

There’s no sign that Fitz registers his pitiful deflection except for the further tightening of his jaw, the way he always holds back hurt. “You’re an Empath,” he snaps. “Of course you did. Of course you knew. And I tried, alright? I tried. I tried not to inconvenience you with how I felt about you, tried to get rid of how I felt every way I knew how. Maybe it just wasn’t enough for you, but I swear I tried.”

If it wasn’t obvious before, it’s clear now.

Fitz is in love with Keefe. Wherein he’s Keefe, wherein his best friend has been in love with him this whole time. Wherein Keefe’s ruined everything. Just like always. And even now that he knows the truth, he doesn’t know how to fix this.

Right. Fix this. Keefe needs to make this okay again. That’s all he can think of. He refuses to lose Fitz, not after everything. Certainly not like this.

When Fitz is angry like he is now, when everything he’s kept inside rises to the surface, it takes a lot to settle him. And all the while things in his head, Keefe knows, will only get worse and worse, an endless spiral leading him down and down as Fitz’s shame rises and his rationality deserts him yet further.

There’s only one answer, now that Keefe’s thought about it that way.

Without pausing to overthink it, or really to think it at all, in the first place, he leans forward. He kisses his best friend in the entire world—the best friend who’s apparently been in love with him without him knowing—and it’s warm, strange. Sweet.

By the time Keefe pulls away, Fitz has been stunned into silence, staring at him with a strange, raw wonder. It’s so desperately different from how closed-off he was merely a moment ago.

Like always, Keefe’s tongue moves faster than his brain. His words tumble out in a tangled jumble before he’s bothered to grapple with the revelations of the last few minutes. “I didn’t know, Fitz. I promise you I didn’t know, and I don’t know how, but I thought you liked Sophie. And I was sure that the only way I could repay you for having to deal with me all these years was making sure you were happy. I realize now that it was a mistake. Because I’m in love with you, too. I just didn’t know that either, but now that I do, I think everything’s making a whole lot more sense.”

“What?” Fitz’s voice comes out small and fragile as a baby bird, and Keefe knows now more than ever how easily he could break this moment, shatter the both of them more completely than could be repaired.

Keefe takes his hand, holding it as softly as he knows how. Fitz is there tucked next to his own heart once more, his feelings flowing gentle through where their skin meets, and then they’re there again—the two of them. And it’s like being young again. It’s like asking Fitz to be his person, all those years ago, something new blossoming between them, flowers made out of glass. “I’m sorry,” Keefe says. Those are the two best words he can offer. They always taste unfamiliar on his tongue, usually confined to the rhythm of his heartbeat rather than spoken aloud.

Fitz inhales shuddery and slow. “Please don’t be.” The way he looks at Keefe, it’s like he’s afraid hell disappear.

Sweet, cool wonder hums through their hands, Fitz’s emotions warm and heady as always, and that awe’s familiar—hauntingly so. Keefe recognizes it as the same awe that floods him when the light hits Fitz’s face just right, when they stay up into the night with hushed words landing alight in the darkness. He recognizes it now. Fitz carries an angel’s glow in his bones. Whatever he is it’s better than this world deserves, far more than someone like Keefe should ever be allowed to touch, luminescent. As long as Keefe has the honor of his presence e means to cling to Fitz as tightly as he can.

And that’s the strange thing. Why would Fitz feel that wonder too? Keefe has always been the lucky one between them. Sometimes he figures it’s only their friendship that makes him worth something.

“I can’t believe you never realized,” Fitz whispers.

“I guess I can be a bit of an idiot sometimes.” Keefe shakes his head, squeezing Fitz’s hand tighter in his own. He tries to memorize the contours of his fingers, every line on his palm. Sophie told him, once, that some humans believe those lines tell the future, but all Keefe can find in Fitz’s is a map towards home. “I’ll make it up to you, somehow. If you let me.”

His eyes warm, fond, Fitz leans forward on his toes and presses a faint kiss to Keefe’s forehead. “I don’t need any of that. I just need you.”

Heat fills Keefe from his toes to his head, flames flickering gentle against the inside of his skin. A strange lightness bobs in his mind, the faintness he associates with forgetting to drink water. His knees buckle. Fitz catches him, hands curling around his elbows, and then tugs him over to sit on his bed.

Keefe sighs. The world slows. This is the most right he’s ever felt in his own self. “I wish I’d known sooner.”

“Yeah,” Fitz says, “me too.”

His arm curls tighter around Keefe, and Keefe leans into his side. It’s new and it’s familiar, both at once, and—finally—Keefe knows they’re exactly on the same page.

#keefitz #kotlc #ari writes #ari can words #fitz vacker #keefe sencen #sophie foster #i think that's it? maybe?? #been a minute

[thedevilortheangel]

*Me crying over how Keefe and Fitz aren’t friends anymore*

WHY HAS MY LIFE COME TO THIS TO SEE BEST FRIENDS AND MABE LOVERS *Cough* I mean just friends duh, *nervous laughter* HAVE FALLEN APART LIKE MY CHILDHOOD!!??

I mean, they are in a middle of a war and their idiotic teenagers who have no idea what they’re doing, BUT STILLLLLL!!

IM SAAAAAADDD

#*cough* #*cricket noises* #as you can see #I care deeply about their friendship #and maybe romantic relationship #I loved them as friends and I would loved them as lovers #but #we #cant #have #everything #I learned that when I found out that this world isn’t perfact #my childhood is gone because of my depression #so yeah #Fitz Vacker #Keefe Sencen #Keefitz #platonic and romantic

[winterfireice]

Human au where keefe and Sophie are best friends both fall for a vacker and just gush over them while being dramatic gay messes at Sophie’s house

#☕️sophiana coffee au🍕 #Sophie foster #keefe sencen #Sophiana #keefitz #maybe this will happen in the coffee au who knows #still haven’t started chapter two so posting about it and hoping that motivates me

[belovedyareli]

currently writing a kotlc private school au ( i know school aus are done a lot but idc) I will give Fitz the type of character he deserves

#kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #fitz #keefe #sophie #mostly Sophiana #maybe with a side of keefitz #fitz anger is given the attention it deserves

[cowboypossume]

babes i do not think it physically possible for me to have keefitz without angsty background hdudhwe

#like #im sorry #trauma is cannoically how the characters GROW #who am i to break away from cannon /j #if you have song recs though #.... #i am LISTENING #keefitz #maybe poetry is just a thought in cursive #thoughts

[an-absolute-travesty]

Instead of writing about gay cowboys I have to write an essay about school policy. Life is so unfair.

#anyway. after I’m done with this damn thing maybe I’ll get lucky and have motivation to write creatively after school #✨we’ll see✨ #istg I want to get the third part of keefitz cowboy au out my brain is just like mush

[gay-otlc]

In a strange twist of events the keefitz roommate au is leaving room for a potential linhiana roomate au with bonus tiergan being a dad

#have not actually written but #fitz has that protective older brother conversation with biana asking if she'll be ok with alvar #and biana says it's ok and if it gets bad she'll maybe stay with linh #keefitz roommate au

[flori-doodles]

day 4: roommates

I may have preparatory exams essay and God maybe homophobic but it’s Keefitz week besties <3

@when-wax-wings-melt and @skylilac thank you for hosting this!!

Taglist under the cut (ask to be added!):

stopstealingtomatoes @theseasonismerrybutimnot @bylerlve @that-glasses-dog @constant-sapphic-breakdown @katniss-elizabeth-chase @abubble125 @callas-pancake-tree @appleflv @writingandwritten @theseasonalarsonist @isnt-it-delicate15  

#keefitz #keeper of the lost cities #flori-doodles #my art #kotlc #kotlc fanart #flori doodles #art #kotlc fandom #keefe sencen #fitz x keefe #fitz vacker #gay kotlc #I want to gently throw them both in the trauma machine and then watch them kiss #this took me five whole hours please reblog it :3 #keefitz week 2023

[bookwyrminspiration]

“how did you even get sick? you look ugly. come here.”

+ keefitz (platonic or romantic, your choice)

oh what a delightful idea! I love them very much you're honor and have decided to go for an ambiguous relationship, so I hope you enjoy :)

our corner of the world <- ao3 link

-warnings: illness (as expected of the prompt), self-doubt, anxiety

-word count: 6k

It’d been…longer than Keefe wanted to admit since he’d been to Everglen. Without the gate, its shine, the sprawling grounds were missing something, an emptiness echoing and whispering through the grasses as he made his way to the front door.

He wasn’t anxious. He wasn’t. His fingers were tapping against themselves because that was a normal thing he usually did. His hair stuck up in all manner of different directions because he liked to run his fingers through it to fluff it out. No matter that both of those things were dead giveaway nervous tells.

Stopping before the door, he raised his hand partway, fingertip resting on the doorbell. Was anyone home? He hadn’t hailed ahead to check, had leapt over in impatience and fried nerves because--

No. Everything was fine. It was good. Never better, even.

Chimes rang through the whispering, gossiping air as he hugged his arms close to himself, and his foot had begun to tap against the paved pathway when the door swung open.

“Hell--oh, Keefe? I wasn’t expecting you here. Is everything alright?” Della’s head tilted to the side, strands of hair falling from whatever messy-but-somehow-still-flawless style she’d thrown it into.

His mind blanked. Completely unprepared to actually talk to another real person, he floundered about for a moment before his instincts kicked in and he flashed a faux, easy smile.

“Oh, yeah. Just was, uh, looking for Fitz. Sorry. I’m not trying to intrude--” Della waved him off. “Oh, nonsense. Our home is always open to you, you know that. Here, come inside. I haven’t seen Fitz yet today--he’s probably off doing his own thing, but even so, you’re welcome to stay as long as you like and find him.”

Off doing his own thing?

But…today? When they were supposed to…

“Right. Perfect, thanks,” he said, as though his mind wasn’t crumbling his heart into pieces. “I guess I’ll do that.”

Della gave a sweet smile, stepping aside so he could enter, the cavernous halls threatening to swallow each and every fragment of him. Walls loomed towards vaulted ceilings, doorways gaping and empty, the scuff of his feet against the gleaming crystal floors echoing back at him, overlapping itself again and again.

He shivered, and yet the place had, for so long, been the closest thing to a home he’d ever had.

Maybe that wasn’t because of the building though, but rather…

He cleared his throat, feeling Della’s eyes on his back. “Thanks, I promise I won’t break anything too important.”

She laughed, and the success of the interaction softened the tension in his muscles. See? He was making people laugh; he was fine.

Twisting labyrinths of halls and rooms turned the mansion into a trap if you didn’t know where you were going--it’d been years and Foster still struggled to find her way around whenever they got together, playing Base Quest as though the world was still normal. As if it had ever been normal.

His feet moved of their own accord as his mind spun, following the ever familiar path he’d memorized before he’d learned anything else. A right, then another right, a left.

Off doing his own thing.

Past the window in the hall overlooking the expanse of the grounds, trees bordering around the edges where that blaring golden light had made it near-painful to look at. Not anymore.

His own thing.

He stopped outside the door to Fitz’s room, a shimmering golden F inlaid at about eye-level, curling with all the flattery and accessory of a Vacker. There was a fleck of neon green in one of the grooves set with jewels; Keefe had painted it that color when they were kids as a prank, but Fitz had left it until some well-meaning gnome had washed it away, unaware Fitz had left it on purpose.

Some part of himself liked that more than he’d ever admit.

But now it was like it’d never been there.

Rhythmic, frantic pounding was all he could hear, heartbeat drowning out all other noises as he stared stared stared at the letter, at the door, perfectly fine.

He was fine.

Everything was fine.

Fingers running through his hair, he knocked on Fitz’s door.

He didn’t answer.

Keefe knocked a second time, slightly louder, other hand falling from his hair and tapping against his lip.

Fitz still didn’t answer.

Maybe he wasn’t here, maybe Keefe was standing outside an empty room listening to his heart distort and strangle itself and there was no one else in the world to see it. To care.

Della was probably right, and he was off doing his own thing.

Off doing his own thing even though they’d said, they’d agreed--

Keefe stumbled forward, desperate to get out of his own head, pushing down on the perfect golden handle and shoving the door open all at once, blinking frantically as he tried to adjust his sight to the shadows of the room.

All of the curtains were drawn, casting a heavy damper over the light that usually poured through; the brightest beam came from behind him, spilling past his body as he looked around.

Taking a step forward, more confused than anything in that moment at how un-Fitz-like the place looked--clothes on the floor, papers out of order on the desk, discarded vials and dirty dishes beside them.

He let go of the handle.

It rocketed back into place with a startling click, the spring mechanisms clattering against each other loud enough he jerked away.

A sharp intake of breath caught his attention, rustling accompanying movement on the bed as what Keefe had thought was a pile of blankets shifted, a hand and then a head emerging as Fitz blearily rubbed at his eyes, wincing at the light from the hall as he averted his gaze.

“Oh,” Keefe whispered, more to himself than anyone else.

“Hmm?” Fitz hummed, but not in a pleasant way. In a croaking I can’t remember words right now kind of way.

The anxiety Keefe had been denying drained from his body, every vein and artery and passage in his body easing as relief clawed its way through him for a blissful moment, a new worry taking its place.

Puffy eyes, bags heavy under them like bruises, skin flushed and clammy, fingers trembling as he peeled a sweat-soaked shirt off his skin, tattered human clothes matching the mournful state of his hair, which tangled and stuck to his forehead.

“You look awful,” he blurted, then regretted, but it was true.

Fitz’s eyelids drifted closed, then shot back open as he asked, “Keefe?” He squinted through the light, clearly trying to process something, his brain failing him.

Keefe swallowed, pushing the door closed behind him so Fitz wouldn’t have to strain. “Uh, hey. Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.” He hadn’t known he was sleeping.

Fitz didn’t seem to notice the apology, and if he did he ignored it.

“Why are you…” what little color could drain from his face, did. He scrambled for his imparter, shaking hands somehow finding it in the mound of blankets drowning him, Mr. Snuggles tumbling to the side. He winced as the light washed over him from its screen, scrolling through all the notifications he’d missed.

Keefe knew they were there; they were all from him.

Message after message, attempted hail after attempted hail, each of them unanswered until he’d given up and rushed here.

“The lake,” he mumbled to himself. His panicked adrenaline rush gave him the clarity to say, “I’m really sorry, Keefe. I didn’t--I didn’t mean to miss it. Honest.”

Keefe shook his head, tempted to laugh, ignoring the echo of the twinge in his heart. He was fine. “Nah, now that I see you, I’m surprised you’re still alive. You okay?” he frowned, watching Fitz slump back against his headrest, moment of terror passed and the sudden rush with it.

“It’s almost half-way through the afternoon and I slept through the whole day.” His voice rasped with the words, and he looked towards his bedside table, leaning forward slightly.

Keefe took the opportunity and stepped forward, grabbing the half-drunk bottle of Youth and handing it to him, lowering himself down on the edge of the bed. It was large enough there was still a considerable distance between them as their fingers brushed.

Keefe tensed as a wave of broiling nausea and clammy heat passed through him at the touch.

“Sorry,” Fitz got out, grimacing as he took the smallest sip of Youth he could, letting the bottle fall to his lap. He frowned at the clothes on the floor, the untidy papers. “I’m a mess.”

“Sorry, Avery, but between the two of us, there’s only room for one mess and that’s me.” His grin was half a wince as Fitz’s brows scrunched up, eyes lagging as they found his face, looking through him. “But if you’re worried about the chaos, you’re good. My room is way worse, I don’t mind.”

Fitz fanned out his clingy shirt as he shrugged. “I guess. You’re right. I just hate it. Makes me feel worse to see it.”

Keefe scanned the room with new eyes, the echo of that exhausted nausea casting it all in a new light, imagining he were as neat as Fitz, which was hard. Suddenly, the normalcy of clothes on the floor became reminders of lost energy, the papers evidence of things he wasn’t getting done.

He was an empath--among other, less positive things--so feelings were his specialty, and he was not about to sit around and let his…let Fitz feel ickier and ickier because his room was a mess. Not if he could do something about it--and he could.

“I don’t like that look,” Fitz said, managing another minuscule sip as he watched Keefe.

“You look worse,” Keefe promised him. “So we’re fixing that.”

“Huh?”

Keefe stood, spinning around and assessing the room. “Whatever illness has claimed you is no match for the powers of the Keefester and his incredible good looks--I have to have enough for the both of us right now, you know--so if you hate this, we’ll fix it.”

He pointed at Fitz, then at the door to his bathroom. “You need a shower. Don’t even try to deny it; I can smell your funk from here,” he added when Fitz opened his mouth to say something. Instead, he flushed an unhealthy, sweaty red.

“It’s so far,” Fitz mumbled, looking across the dim room to the bathroom door as though a marathon stood between them. “I’ll never make it.”

“You survived being impaled in the chest by a giant bug. I think you can walk to the bathroom and take a shower.”

Fitz made a face at him. “The bug wasn’t fun. It nearly killed me.”

Keefe’s heart stumbled at the word, killed killed killed playing on repeat in his head. But he refused to let the cracks show as he rolled his eyes in a big show of exasperation. “Semantics, Fitzy! Do you need me to carry you? Because one way or another this is happening. You can get that refreshing bath you clearly need--hopefully with lots of soap--and I’ll…do something about all this.”

He gestured wildly around the room, not exactly sure what he was planning to do, but determined to do it.

Fitz assessed him, concluded that he was serious for once, and gingerly started moving the covers off of his body, lips pressing together as his body shivered under the rush of cold, a fresh wave of sweat breaking out on his brow.

“Fine. Have your way, Mr…Mr. You,” he said, voice weakening as he stood, which must’ve been the same reason he didn’t bother looking embarrassed he’d fallen short of the teasing remarks they loved to trade.

All it inspired in Keefe was more worry, more concern as he questioned whether Fitz should really be listening to him at all. If he looked so unstable, should he really be standing? Should he be awake at all and talking? Should Keefe have just left him to rest the moment he’d awoken him on accident with that pesky door handle?

Fitz made it to the door without incident, pausing to lean against it as he looked at Keefe, then the room. He offered a weak smile. “Thanks.”

Keefe didn’t have a chance to say anything before the door softly clicked shut behind him, leaving him in the dank, stuffy, dim room Fitz had been sleeping in all day.

Water started rushing, spurring him into motion.

How did cleaning work?

He’d spent so much of his life purposefully messing up his father’s perfectly curated spaces, he’d forgotten how to maintain them. He knew how to leave old clothes on the floor, to crumple all his blankets into a pile impossible to smooth out, how to leave old dishes in the strangest places, fingerprints of charcoal all over the place from his messier drawings.

How were you supposed to undo that?

His nose wrinkled. The sickly smell of sweat and unease saturated the air now that he wasn’t distracted looking at Fitz. Of all his jokes, the funk hadn’t been one of them.

Keefe threw the curtains open, and this time he was the one blinking through the light as warm afternoon flowed through the shutters, unlatching the windows and opening them as far as they’d go.

He’d only have so long before he’d have to close them again, so he should do more now, right? Was that how it worked?

Peering down at the grounds visible from Fitz’s window, he took a breath of the clear air blowing in, free of the weight of the room.

That solved one problem.

He frowned at the clothes scattered on the floor and across the bed, so unlike his…

He was not folding all that, and wasn’t entirely sure how to fold it. Keefe’s eyes drifted from the fabric mess to the closet. Perfect.

Grabbing everything he could off the floor, he shoved it into the closet like it was a black hole that could eat it alive, shirts and pants and cloaks all in a wrinkled pile on the floor as he closed the door with a grunt, shutting it away. Problem solved. You couldn’t even see the mess anymore.

He poked at a corner of a garment sticking out under the door that’d refused to cooperate, shoving it back out of sight.

See? He was super good at this cleaning thing.

Floor significantly clearer, he surveyed the two other problems: the desk and the bed.

He tackled the first, thinking it would be quicker, satisfied when he was right. Pens and pencils back into the cup at the edge of the desk, dishes all combined into one pile to be taken to the kitchen later beside empty vials, all the assortments of papers and assignments in one neat stack in the middle. If they were supposed to go certain places, he definitely didn’t know, so Fitz would just have to deal with this.

After all, Keefe was being super nice and helpful in the first place.

Nevermind that he had offered to do it. Nevermind that he would do anything for Fitz.

Water continued to run in the bathroom as he turned the bed. His final task. The centerpiece of the room.

The blankets were all tangled around where Fitz had been cocooned in the middle, suffocated beneath without even his head sticking out, the innermost layers damp from his sick, clammy body. Mr. Snuggles had been spared the worst of it, so he set him off to the side as he tackled the rest.

He nearly worked up his own sweat rearranging and smoothing everything out to the best of his ability, taking all the blankets off and dumping them on the floor in the hallway to replace the sheets--he’d stayed over enough as a kid to know where the Vackers kept the spare linen and blankets.

Standing back near the breeze of the window to cool himself off, he was fanning out his shirt when the water turned off in the bathroom. Pulse traitorously picking up speed, he scrambled to close the shutters allowing that blaring afternoon light into the room, turning it instead into a muted glow--brighter than before, but hopeful not as painful.

“Um…Keefe?” Fitz’s thick voice called, muffled beyond the door.

“Yes?”

“Slight problem. All my clothes are in my room, and I am not.” Keefe had been so intent on getting him to freshen up that he’d forgotten to check whether or not he’d grabbed a change of clothes. He hadn’t.

Keefe stared at the door like it would keep talking, then flushed and said, “Right! Clothes. One second.”

Rushing to the closet, he cursed himself as the pile of garments started to spill out when he wrenched the door open. He kicked them back into the pile as he searched through the clean clothes hanging above the mess he’d made, grabbing the most comfortable thing he could find in a minute before he shoved the door closed again, that pesky little bit of fabric sticking out under the door in protest.

“I’m going to open the door and pass you an absolutely stunning outfit with my eyes closed, that good?”

“Do I really have a choice?”

“You act like you don’t trust me.”

Keefe put his fingers on the handle to the bathroom, screwing his eyes shut so tight colors danced across the back of his eyelids.

Pushing the door open a crack, he shoved the clothes through, banging his hand against the door frame since he couldn’t actually see where the opening he’d created was.

Fitz took the clothes, fingers once more brushing against Keefe’s.

He shuddered at the warm stuffiness that washed through him, but brightened with satisfaction as he realized it wasn’t as bad as before. Still woozy, still icky, but more alert. Fitz felt less like he was slowly dying in bed and more like he was…less slowly dying on his feet.

His mind recoiled from the word, death, but it was too late to unthink it.

“You really don’t need to punch my house, but thank you,” Fitz told him, and Keefe opened his eyes when he heard the door click shut, wet footsteps retreating away.

Keefe put a hand to his heart, taking a step back in offense. “I’m going to get you back for that one.”

“Am I not suffering enough already?!” Fitz managed between sniffles.

Keefe’s heart stuttered, lips pressing together. Suffering. Was that what he brought, was that what he did to Fitz? Did he make him suffer?

He shook himself off, refusing to let any of his stupid, unimportant thoughts show as Fitz opened the door, warmth from the steam of the shower drifting out behind him as he braced himself on the doorway, finding his path blocked by one awkward blond boy with too many troubles to ever make him worth the effort.

Keefe looked Fitz up and down, taking stock of their new situation--a much cleaner and less gross situation. A loose grey t-shirt with an embroidered boobrie emblem in the center of the chest was slightly tucked into the waistband of darker grey lounge pants, as though it’d gotten caught in the rush to put them on. The fabric still clung to his skin slightly, but in an “I just showered” way, no longer an “I’m sweating all my skin off” way.

“Better?” Fitz asked when Keefe didn’t move, only kept looking and looking and looking.

Keefe opened his mouth to answer, but Fitz started coughing into his elbow, cutting him off.

He rolled his eyes with a sigh. This was his life. “This is ridiculous. How did you even get sick? You look ugly. Come here.”

Fitz’s eyebrows shot up as Keefe grabbed him by the arm, ignoring the rush of feelings surging at the contact, pulling back towards the very-neatly made bed, climbing back onto it as Fitz followed, sagging at the first touch of the mattress and collapsing face first into it.

“I’m willing to forgive you for that one since you’ve made the…are those gulons?” he interrupted himself--which Keefe thought was incredibly rude, since he’d been in the middle of giving him a compliment.

Keefe proudly fluffed up the pillow Fitz was squinting at, which was completely covered in little cartoon gulons like Elwin always wore. If he’d pull back the blankets atop the bed, he’d find more of them on the sheets underneath.

“Well the other sheets were really gross--sorry, but how on earth do you sweat that much? It can’t be healthy. So I checked your linen, and it turns out you still have these. Don’t know why you don’t use them, because they’re clearly the coolest sheets you own.”

Fitz looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Can’t be healthy? Obviously not. Does anything about me look healthy right now? You probably shouldn’t even be here.”

He mumbled the words, letting himself sink into the blankets, eyes closed, wet hair leaving a mark he knew would be cold to the touch. He mumbled the words like they didn’t matter.

And yet they slipped a tiny pin-prick into his heart, touching on that throbbing, anxious wound he’d shoved from his mind the moment he’d seen how unwell his…how unwell Fitz was.

“Trying to get rid of me, Fitzy?” He forced a laugh, but it came out breathy, hurt, too-high pitched to be okay.

“Never,” Fitz responded, cracking his eyes open as he frowned up at him. He tried to school his expression into that careful, carefree neutrality, but it must not have worked because that worry-crease between his brows had appeared, and he pushed himself off his stomach and onto his elbows. “I just meant that I don’t want you to catch whatever this--” he justed to his puffy, red face ”--is.”

Keefe nodded. “Right. Yeah. Smart.”

He averted his gaze, glancing at the papers piled on the desk, the pictures on shelves lining the walls, the unlit lamps, anywhere but the piercing teal he knew studied him.

“Hey.” Fitz’s fingers bumped against his leg, trying to get his attention. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

Lethargy that didn’t belong to him swept through his system as Fitz bumped him again, this time brushing against his hand.

“You’re what’s wrong,” Keefe joked, forcing the mirth from his lips. “I mean, I think it’s pretty obvious you’re all sorts of fucked up right now. Can’t believe you haven’t noticed.”

Fitz shook his head, wet hair falling in front of his flushed face. “No. Stop it. Don’t brush this away--what’s going on?”

Keefe couldn’t stop his traitorous eyes from slipping to the imparter on the edge of the bedside table, screen dark.

Fitz followed his line of sight, twisting over his shoulder to look as he rubbed at his temple.

“Is this about our…? I really am sorry I missed all your messages, Keefe.” He pushed himself from his elbows to a sitting position, the two of them across from each other, knees almost touching in a way that had his breath catching in his throat. “I didn’t mean to. I can’t…I can’t promise it won’t happen again, because I can’t promise I won’t ever get sick and sleep through everything again, but you know it doesn’t mean anything, right?”

“Right,” Keefe repeated, staring down at their hands, each in their own laps, finding it safer than meeting those teal eyes that always saw too much of him.

He watched Fitz’s hand reach towards him but stop half-way, unsure of itself. “Keefe, please. Don’t do this. Talk to me--it’s me.”

Yeah. That was the problem.

It was him. Fitz Vacker . Wonderboy, Golden Boy, oh so far out of Keefe’s world. A prince with a voice and a resolve and a kindness he could never match. A confidence and an ease that commanded a room. Everyone loved to look to him, to look at him, to gape.

Why would he ever look back?

Especially to Keefe.

Keefe Sencen, who everyone only knew as trouble, the one who could never take anything seriously even when his life depended on it, who didn’t even know how to fold his own fucking clothes.

A cough interrupted his thoughts as Fitz turned away, covering his mouth with his arm, other hand braced on his chest. Wet and grating, he grimaced as he readjusted himself and turned back to Keefe.

Keefe, who had been wallowing in self-pity while Fitz was ill. He had no business complaining.

“Still--still waiting for an answer,” Fitz choked out, reaching back for the bottle of Youth on the bedside table as he cleared his throat.

“I thought you’d…” Keefe mumbled, then straightened, eyes widening. That wasn’t what he’d meant to start saying. He was supposed to come up with something witty, something to deflect. Not this.

“I’d what?”

Fitz looked at him so gently, all his attention--even foggy as it was--focused on Keefe, that worry crease more endearing than it had any right to be, pushing his hair out of his face as he leaned closer, unaware of the movement as his lips twisted in concentration.

Pounding pounding pounding away, Keefe worried his heart would bruise his ribs, further destroy his already battered self as his eyes started to burn.

“You didn’t show,” Keefe said, staring at his hands, his fingers through the burn, picking at the skin of his cuticles, anything to give him something to do that wasn’t look at that stupidly lovable concerned face.

Fitz took a deep breath, rubbing at the bags under his eyes. “Yeah, I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

“For being sick? You haven’t done anything. Just me being a mess, like always.”

It was like he could hear Fitz’s jaw working as he took another breath. “Wow, there’s a lot to unpack there. Okay. Keefe?” He waved in his line of sight, and refused to continue until Keefe looked at him. “Hey. We agreed you’d start being nicer to yourself, remember? Like I said I’d wait, and I’d do my best not to push you. And that I’d try to keep my anger under control when it gets bad, and that we’d both try to communicate better. Remember?”

“Photographic memory. I can’t forget,” Keefe said, tapping listless against his temple.

He’d never forget.

Keefe had been lamenting about how he’d never get all the sand out of his hair, how Fitz had doomed him to shed the tiny granules wherever he went, refusing to admit how much he loved the feeling of the sun-soaked beach beside the crystal stillness of the lake, looking as though they were the first to find it in centuries, millenia, maybe ever.

Fitz had shut him up as he turned to him, his hesitation so strong it drifted through the air and killed the words in his throat.

He’d kept looking at Keefe as he spoke, something hesitant about how he’d never told anyone about this place before, a quiet corner of the world he’d discovered on one of his morning runs, the ones he used to take in various places around the globe before Grizel had confined him to Everglen.

He’d had nothing to say, watching the water drip down Fitz’s flushed cheeks from the wet strands still soaked with lake water.

And they’d promised each other things would be different now. That they’d try. That they’d be better. For each other.

And they’d agreed to meet back there every few weeks. Just the two of them in their silent lake, brush and flora crowding the edges with color and unbothered life, warm sand sticking to wet skin, cool waters reflecting the patterns of clouds crossing overhead.

They were supposed to meet there today.

“You weren’t there,” he whispered, breath shaking as he tried to blink away the burn in his eyes. “I waited and you weren’t there.”

Fitz said nothing, wet hair from his shower falling in front of his flushed cheeks, and Keefe could practically picture the beach around them, that day.

It was that image, that reminder, of how earnest, how genuine he’d been when they’d promised they’d try. Fitz couldn’t do all the work trying to hold their broken pieces together. He had to contribute, too.

“I thought you’d finally had enough of me.” The words fell from his mouth as though they didn’t belong to him, didn’t believe he could ever put voice to something that heavy.

“Never.” Fitz reached out again, paused again. Waited for Keefe to lean forward and meet him half-way. He’d back as far away as Keefe wanted without hesitation.

But that wasn’t what Keefe wanted. Not even close.

Their knees bumped together as he closed the gap between them; Fitz’s warm palms cupped his face, thumbs brushing stray tears from his cheeks as he searched his eyes. “I will never have enough of you, okay? That lake, you with me…I love it. I like being with you and spending time with you--even now, when I feel like shit. You showed up and all of the sudden it’s way less miserable being sick. It’s funny, now. The gulons, the boobrie shirt. It’s not perfect, because I still can’t breathe through both nostrils, but it’s better. Because of you.”

Keefe’s eyes closed as he listened, resting his hands atop Fitz’s and holding his breath as the concern, the earnest, the care, the love washed over him. Golden and glowing, feelings that didn’t belong to him but were for him lit his body from the inside out, washing out all the decrepit, icky things lurking in his mind.

That churning, frantic anxiety he’d held so close to his chest, away from Della’s eyes, away from his own, mellowed under the light and melted away, his shoulders sagging from the relief of a burden he hadn’t known how to set down on his own.

“Are we good?” Fitz asked, teal eyes better than the blue of their lake.

The corner of Keefe’s lips curled up as a wet laugh choked out of him. “Yeah. Yeah, we’re good.” He almost said sorry, but knew he wasn’t supposed to, so instead he went with, “Thanks.”

Fitz hummed in satisfaction, leaning closer so their foreheads touched as he held Keefe, the two of them breathing in tandem as Keefe regained his composure, strengthened by the reminder that whatever the two of them had, it wasn’t going anywhere.

Foreheads pressed together, he frowned. “You’re burning up.”

He pulled back, freeing one of his hands to press the back against Fitz’s forehead, teal eyes falling closed as he did so, like they couldn’t stand to fight against the pull anymore.

His other hand still on Fitz’s, the intense wave of overwhelming love was shadowed by a thrumming, deep seated ache of exhaustion.

“What a surprise,” Fitz mumbled, half the syllables near unintelligible. “Only been burning up the whole entire day.”

“Have you taken anything for it? Should we call Elwin?”

Fitz shook his head, slow, lagging motions. “Nuh-uh. I don’t wanna talk to anyone else. Besides. We’ve got basic elixirs here--I took one…” he trailed off, thinking. “What time is it?”

“About three.”

“Then it’s been long enough. I can take another dose. For the everything,” he gestured halfheartedly at himself, still leaning into Keefe’s hand, still holding his face.

Keefe scrunched his brow. “Okay, where’s that?”

“Bathroom counter. Purple.” His words had started to blend together, more of more of his weight leaning forward, muscles retiring for the day.

“Perfect,” he said, even though he wasn’t sure what that meant. “I’ll get it for you. You should lay down. I’m usually all for breaking the rules, but you really look like you could use some rest like you’re supposed to.”

Fitz only hummed again in response, offering no resistance as Keefe guided him to lay back on the covers, his legs curling in a little on instinct, hugging Mr. Snuggles tightly to his chest as Keefe placed him in his arms.

Quickly, he crawled over the bed, crossing to the bathroom, stuffy, damp air hitting him as he opened the door and scanned the counter.

A handful of glass vials had been haphazardly piled next to the sink, as though someone had rifled through them without bothering to clean up after them.

A particular handful were bright purple in color in the same shaped glass as the ones left on the desk, so he grabbed one and returned to Fitz, who’d already started to succumb to the throes of sleep, all his energy spent in that quick burst of affection.

“Hey. Fitzter. Don’t fall asleep on me just yet--I got your feel better elixir.”

Fitz grumbled something he couldn’t understand, but after another attempt, his eyes cracked open, brows softening as he saw it was Keefe, taking the vial he offered and propping himself up long enough to gingerly swallow the contents.

Despite the sweet aroma, he grimaced. “This sucks.”

“Yeah, I can feel that.” Keefe took the empty vial from him, setting it on the bedside table besides the Youth.

“Is that…what is that?” Fitz looked towards the closet, squinting at the bottom, that dastardly corner of fabric that had refused to cooperate with the rest continuing to stick out from under the edge of the door.

Keefe smiled. “I cleaned for you, Avery. You’re welcome by the way, doesn’t it look so nice in here now?”

“You just shoved everything in the closet, didn’t you?”

“Like I said, I cleaned for you.”

Fitz laughed, a soft, gentle thing, rubbing at his eyes. “Wow. Well, thanks, Keefe. I’ll fix it later, I guess. Too tired to even think about that right now.” He shook his head, sighing.

“Then stop thinking--that’s always when I do my best work.”

“Oh yeah, we can tell.” His eyelids started to fall shut, body wobbling as his muscles tried to give up. “I don’t think my brain can take anymore,” he admitted.

Keefe straightened. “Right. I, um, I’m sorry I interrupted your nap. But also you look better now, less like a disgruntled rat. So you’re welcome for that part, but I’ll just…” he cut off before he could ramble himself into any more of a corner, getting up, running his fingers through his hair as he looked to the door.

He’d only taken a step before Fitz said, “Wait.”

Turning back, Fitz had dropped his hands into his lap, looking at Keefe, something inscrutable in his gaze.

He held out his hand. “Stay? Please. If you…if you want to.”

Body refusing to cooperate as his mind caught up, he stood there mouth falling open for a few moments. Words failed him, so he stopped trying to find them.

Instead, he took Fitz’s hand, exhaustion and annoyance and comfort and soft sunsets and warm wind passing over hills and love flooding through the touch as he let himself be pulled into the bed, stopping only long enough to kick off his shoes.

Fitz grabbed Mr. Snuggles again--he’d set him aside to uncork the elixir--his fluffy body held close in one hand, the other holding Keefe’s.

Keefe said nothing, refusing to interrupt this peaceful bliss, as still and clear and breathtaking as the view at their lake.

Almost immediately, Fitz’s breathing evened out, grip loosening in his as sleep claimed him once more, his battered, worn body in need of a break. But he could’ve sworn the flush of his cheeks had dimmed, the heat radiating from his skin softened.

Taking a deep breath, he squeezed his fingers in reassurance, a smile curving the ends of his lips as he lay in the dim light, just the two of them in their little corner of the world. They’d have to emerge from it eventually, to brave the rest of their lives.

But Fitz hadn’t had enough of him yet, and he’d be there by his side.

He let the thought warm him like golden light as he breathed, heart content in his chest, hoping Fitz could feel the love through their fingertips.

His Fitz.

#kotlc #kotlc fanfic #keefitz #quil's quill #quil's queries #gay-otlc #i know you're less of a touchy person so I tried to go for less touch. and more permission for touch. though there is one touch that keefe #doesn't ask about. but fitz didn't mind so hopefully thats alright #this one also turned out longer than I expected but I think it's exactly the amount of time they needed :) #i am holding them gently in my hands #i would shake them violently around in ecstasy but fitz is unwell #so I will be gentle with him

[strawburrymeadows]

god randomly found something i wrote months ago but holy fuck did i like writing keefe and fitz. like literally some of the best writing i’ve done and holy shit? maybe its just them. maybe its just keefitz. but STILL

#like why are they just the right amount of fucked up to make me write good #its not even a full thing its half a scene and DAMN i knew where it was all going to go #kotlc #writing #keefitz #berryspeaks

[darkchocolatedimples]

endings are bittersweet (for you and me)

ngl its 11:00pm on saturday but i did want to make something for keefitz week considering the brain rot sorting through taylor swift's albums threw me into, but i was super busy so i just finished right now. i think this loosely follows the prompts for days 2 and 3. thank you @when-wax-wings-melt and @skylilac for hosting this!! its such a fun idea!

heavily taylor swift inspired fic under the cut!! (songs in the tags)

Hindsight is the clearest rearview mirror, and it’s in hindsight that Keefe should’ve known there was a flaw in his plans for the day. Afterall, Fitz being open to hearing him out wasn’t entirely in his cards.

Maybe when they were younger, before he’d ran way (twice), it would’ve been. But now, Fitz seems to have less to say and more scores to settle. Keefe guesses that's fair. He's not beyond owning up to what he did.

Yet he doesn't entirely expect Fitz to simply nod hello and cut to the chase of whatever he wanted to say. Although, Keefe had probably relinquished the luxury of speaking first when he tore Fitz’s heart in two and walked away. 

At least, he assumes that’s what he did. And it was, if Fitz had actually cared. But maybe Keefe miscalculated that as well.

“You know, I was thinking…” Well that was wonderful, Keefe had been thinking too, over and over again, over the words they’d said and if they’d meant anything at all and if it was fair to ask for it all again- “And I want my bramble jersey back.”

Keefe blinks. “What?”

“You took it like, years ago? Remember the one?” Fitz prompts, accent crisp and unforgiving.

The bramble jersey. The one he forgot he still owned- no, the one he’d forgotten he’d stolen from Fitz’s closet ages ago, before they drifted apart, before everything got complicated, before Sophie even. Though some of those things were related.

“Do you seriously want it back?” he asks underneath his breath, lowering his head towards the ground so Fitz wouldn’t see the water beginning to gather in the corner of his eyes, as if he didn’t already know it was one of his nervous tells. Why was it so tough for him to imagine? Whatever this was between them fell apart ages ago. So why did returning the jersey feeling like sealing their tragic fate?

They’d always known they were bound to burn in the end.

“If you still have it,” Fitz confirms, digging his heel into the ground. Keefe can't tell what his face looks like, but if he had to guess, he’d imagine a perfect ‘gosh, I’m sorry’ grimace that doesn't look half as mean as it should on someone. Fitz is better than everyone else, anyways.

Keefe used to be able to contest to that. Keefe used to know the taller like the back of his hand; understand him better than he understood himself. Keefe knew Fitz, and even if he doesn't anymore, he knows what this must be to him. A last little loose end to wrap up so they can leave this decaying chapter of their lives in the past and move on. Be mature and embrace new beginnings. Ones that might last. But Keefe just feels like a weed being plucked.

He probably is a weed, infecting the perfect garden of Fitz’s life since the moment he’d taken his hand that day when they were kids. So if it's better to leave, if it's better to move on, why is it so hard? Why can't he let them die?

"I'll try to find it," Keefe mumbles beneath his breath.

Fitz shrugs, "Thanks," and then it's over and he's light leaping away like he didn't tear Keefe's plans to rekindle their relationship down the middle and leave him in sprinkles from the sky, slowly gaining weight. Only fitting, considering Keefe left first, and the weather was worse.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

Raindrops the size of bullets pierced Fitz's skin, drenching his hair and tunic and blurring his vision as he tried to find the right lock to click open the way Keefe had described to him years ago. A useless piece of information, considering he'd never intentionally brought Fitz to his home, but the request of "Tell me something I don't know about you," had arisen under lazy pink skies and that was the only thing the blonde could think of. They'd already known everything there was to know about the other at age twelve.

The door creaked and Fitz pushed it out of the way, fumbling into the foyer as his clothes dripped water onto the mat. He only rubbed his boots against it for moment before leading himself up to Keefe's bedroom.

If Lord Cassius was home at the moment, he didn't run into Fitz as he made his way through the halls. He wouldn't have much to say if he did, although his reason for the impromptu visit was innocent enough. Cassius probably wouldn't believe it.

Would anyone?

Maybe that's why Fitz was here: because he had something to prove. He needed to convince everyone he didn't consider his relationship with Keefe a hopeless cause.  

He needed to convince Keefe himself.

So really, shuffling around in his closet for his favorite sweater wouldn't hurt. It would show him he cared, he remembered, maybe even help him remember-

A cluttering noise caught Fitz off guard before he could start ruffling through the clothes in the chest before him, and the man flitting quickly down the stairs shocked him cold. 

Days later, Fitz would be stuck wondering why he didn't give up sooner; why he hadn't thrown Keefe away like a broken record when everyone had expected him to. At least then he wouldn't have been present for this. His heart would've been spared.

"Keefe?" he asked tentatively, making the blonde boy flinch as he raised his head, spotting him. "What are you doing here?"

Keefe shrugged, holding up the elixirs he was carrying, but he didn't speak. Fitz hadn't entirely expected him to.

"Back to pulling pranks already?" The empty smile Keefe gave him sent chills through his body. It almost felt...mournful. "I thought you're supposed to be at Elwin's."

At that, Keefe couldn't hide his grimace, and Fitz couldn't help but sound accusatory when he noticed. "What's the bag for?"

His hunch must have been right if it made Keefe curve into himself in shame. "No, you can't seriously be- Again?"

"Keefe, don't," he pleaded, abandoning the open chest to make his way towards his friend. "They said they'd help you, Alina and Oralie and whoever else."

"It's not enough," Keefe croaked out, facing the floor, and Fitz sighed.

"How would you know that? Have you even tried?" He shook his head, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "Keefe, please don't leave on all of us again."

The noise that left the younger’s throat sounded equal parts distraught and irritated, like he couldn’t deal with any of this much longer. That was probably why he was leaving anyways; maybe everyone’s nagging to just try and just believe wasn’t working, and maybe Fitz was only making things worse. So he tried a different approach. “Please don’t do this to us.”

Us was a large term in broad daylight; but like this, in the rain, alone, Keefe had to have known who Fitz was referring to. “Us” was Fitz and Keefe, like it should’ve always been. But things got too complicated for “us” to be just them anymore.

And it was probably those same things that made Keefe push back the hoarseness in his throat from lack of use just to say, “I’m sorry.”

But Fitz couldn’t give up. Giving up was giving in to everyone else’s idea that they were falling apart, and Fitz would be damned to call himself a Vacker if he gave up. “Please stay Keefe. For me.”

It was a stretch, but the words hung between them for a moment, vulnerable, open, and targeted, and Fitz almost wished he could snatch them back and fashion them into a more formal request, something that better fit the current state of their relationship. 

And then Keefe shook his head.

“Oh…oh.” Fitz stumbled back, tripping into the bed. “Carry on, then.”

Keefe didn’t waste a second before exiting the room.

Fitz only wondered if he’d felt his heart splintering as he’d rushed past.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

The question itself was unfair. How could Fitz have expected anything else when there were bigger things at play than just the both of them? Keefe had a reason for leaving, and he doesn't entirely regret it.

But that wasn’t what hurt him. Fitz wasn’t stupid, he knew it wouldn’t work. Alas, he still put himself out there, waiting for some sort of signal or sign that Keefe cared. And he didn’t give it to him.

He walked out. Without a second thought. And he’s regretted it everyday since, because if he had to go back and pinpoint a moment when their lives stopped being intertwined and became two lonely strands of bitterness, he’d say it was right then, when he’d shaken his head and said nothing. That was his mistake. This is his fault.

He hadn’t said anything, and now Fitz is done waiting. He wants his jersey back. He wants this to be over.

So Keefe digs through his room and finds it buried under tunics he’d never liked and capes he wanted to tear to shreds for years. A piece of fabric that held more memories than he’d like to admit. Sifting through the emotions tied to a simple jersey shouldn’t feel like a landslide, but maybe Keefe’s empathy is still oversensitive. Or maybe Fitz just means much more to him than he should.

Keefe doesn't want to think about it anymore. He doesn't want to think at all, about how everything is falling apart, about how stupid he is for having this occupying his head when there was a war to be worrying about. But even if they won, what was he coming back to?

He slipped the jersey over his head, watching it fall down his frame in the mirror and wondering how it was still big on him. He'd always been smaller than Fitz, but he assumed he'd grown. Apparently, not half as much as he'd thought. He tore his eyes away from his reflection before he dwelled on it for much longer.

It became habit, at some point along the way, to flip open his gold journal to a fresh, blank page and cover it with the sparkle in Fitz’s teal eyes as he looked at someone else, the swoop of his hair and the angles of his jaw. Today, however, when Keefe let the pencil in his hand guide him to whatever image his mind was creating, the slopes of nose smaller, his jaw softer, and his hair longer and slightly more unruly. Fitz was younger, and asleep, in the same jersey Keefe was wearing now.

If he closed his eyes it almost smelled like him.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

“Fitz…Fitz wake up.” 

It was a solemn thing, to have to wake up the boy when he was so blissfully passed out, gentle features rounded out by the pillow underneath his head.

Keefe considered letting him sleep, but being only six years old made him increasingly impatient, and there wasn't much to do with his best friend snug asleep in the bed next to him. He sighed, sitting up and letting the blankets pool around him.

"Fitz. Fitz. Wake up loser," he whined, pushing the elder's shoulder. He only let out a groan in response.

After another shove and tearing off the covers to expose him to the cold air, Fitz blinked groggily, rubbing his eyes to make them focus on the blonde boy next to him. Keefe reached over to the bedside table and handed him his glasses.

Fitz mumbled something like a thank you, slipping them on and looking at him with tired confusion on his face. Keefe misses the look of it, he hadn't worn his glasses in years, but they'd always hold a special place in his heart, nestled right next to the beginnings of their friendship. "Is it the middle of the night?"

"No, I think it's morning," Keefe answered. "And I'm bored."

"Well, I think we should go to sleep again," Fitz decided, turning over and burying his bed head back into the pillows. Keefe wonders how he hadn't changed in the ten years since.

"No!" And he hadn't either. Not by much, besides their friendship holding on by a single thread.

Fitz groaned as Keefe pulled the blankets away again, bothering him as much as he could. "Keefe, you know if we sleep in a little longer Mom and Dad will let us just eat mallowmelt instead of breakfast?" he mentioned.

Keefe stopped his meddling abruptly. It never really was a hard task to get his attention, especially with food involved. "Really?"

"Oh yeah," Fitz confirmed. Keefe considered it for a moment, about to settle back into the bed before they heard footsteps coming down the hall. The boys widened their eyes at each other.

The two dove under the covers, doing their best attempt of faking sleep before the door unlocked.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

The door swings open as Biana twirls in with at least six different cosmetics in her hands and a flowing purple dress barely hanging onto her shoulders. “Ah! Fitz, zip me up, will you?”

Fitz does as asked, moving her hair out of the way as she set all the products down on the bathroom counter and tries to find the lip gloss she wants. She settles on a light tint of purple that matches her dress.

“Where are you going?” Fitz questions, leaning back against the wall when he’s done.

“Dinner with the Dizznee’s. Haven’t really been able to spend time with them since school started,” she explains, rubbing her lips together.

“Right,” Fitz agrees, watching her flit about the bathroom, getting ready. 

“How was Keefe earlier?”

“Oh.” Fitz doesn’t remember telling Biana what he was doing that morning, and something about her nonchalance was unsettling. He probably hadn’t told her at all. It wouldn’t be surprising, Biana knows everything there is to know about him anyways. Perhaps more than himself. “He was… Alright, I guess. I asked for my jersey back.”

Biana freezes. Her eyes fly across the mirror to look into his. “You did what?”

“I asked for it back. The jersey, from when we were kids,” Fitz clarifies. 

She sighs, turning back to herself in the mirror. Her words are almost exasperated when she reminds, “You still are kids, you know. We all are. That’s why none of this works.”

Fitz could ask what she was referring to; the war? Being members of the Black Swan? Their friendships? He could ask, but he can tell with the tired look in her eyes that she means the latter.

“I don’t think I like Sophie,” he admits softly out of the blue. The words dance across the fragile ice in the air, like they’d break it and send everything crumbling if they wanted to. “No, I know I don’t.”

Biana’s responding chuckle melts the ice before they have a chance to crack it. “I think we knew that.”

Fitz freezes as the words flow through him. “You- what? Was I that much of a jerk?”

“Oh, she doesn’t know,” Biana corrects, working her deft fingers through her hair as she braids it back into a twisted bun. “You should let her know, kindly. But how could you have, honestly, with Keefe around.”

“I- I don’t know what you mean,” Fitz stutters, looking at her in the mirror with furrowed eyebrows. “Keefe’s my…friend.” Hardly. Was that really the message he sent to him earlier?

His sister’s hands drop from her hair as she spins to look him straight in the eyes. “Friends don’t use kisses as currency, Fitz.”

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

“If you come, I’ll kiss you.”

Fitz raised an eyebrow, making no move to get up from his arm chair. “And if I don’t?”

“I’ll never kiss you again!” Keefe decided, sitting on the chair’s arm. “It would be a shame though, I thought you said it was fun.”

“You’re seriously giving me an ultimatum about this?” Fitz questioned, dropping his book into his lap. Keefe nodded shamelessly, and the elder couldn’t help the smile growing on his face.

“It’s just a party, Fitz,” he pleaded, slipping down from the couch arm and landing next to Fitz. “We finished level 3, we deserve to celebrate a little.”

“We can leave after two hours if you get bored,” he added softly, studying the elder’s eyes. “I just wanted to go for a little bit. And I wanted to go with you.”

Fitz pretended to think for a moment, watching Keefe look up at him, wide-eyed and waiting patiently. Three years later, Fitz isn’t be able to remember the last time Keefe looked at him like that. He just misses it.

“I mean, a kiss?” he said after a moment, scrunching his nose. “You drive a hard bargain. How could I say no?”

Fitz doesn’t miss parties. He doesn’t miss the fake smiles and empty greetings, nor does he miss the noise and the lights and the small flaring headache afterwords. He does, however, miss Keefe.

Surprisingly for such a usually shy person, parties were Keefe’s scene. It was like all his introverted qualities flew out the window once he was in, and in contrast to Fitz, he loved the lights and the music. In the end, Fitz grew to like seeing the younger surrounded by it all.

Keefe also used parties as an even better excuse to flirt with anything that breathes. And more often than not, that ended up being Fitz. Not that he’d ever complain.

“Do you want to leave?” Keefe whispered quietly, leaving the crowd towards where Fitz sat blissfully alone. His hair was messier than when they’d arrived, like someone had run their hands through them, and Fitz’s jaw almost clenched until he remembered that no matter how confident Keefe got under bright lights and crowds, he wouldn’t let people get that close. Well, not anyone but him, of course.

“No I’m fine, go dance,” he waved off, sipping his lushberry juice. Keefe pouted instead.

“I want to dance with you,” he complained softly, tugging at the elder’s arms to get him off the chair.

“I don’t dance,” Fitz reminded, but his words didn’t match his actions as he put the glass down next to him and let Keefe pull him off the chair with a joyful smile. 

The younger pulled him close, his lips almost brushing against Fitz’s ear as he whispered, “Thank you,” and Fitz would’ve kissed him again right there. Alas, there were people around, and he didn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea. 

He’d also rather not have his second kiss have a crowd. Everything was sweeter in secret, wasn’t it?

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

It was. It had to be. It was the same mantra Keefe had been repeating in his head that whole summer. 

There was a reason they weren’t telling anyone. And it wasn’t because they were doing anything wrong. It was just a fun little joke. They tried it once, it felt nice, so they did it again. And again.

It was simple. It was a normal thing to do. No one would say otherwise if they knew. But…they didn’t really need to know either. Best not confuse them.

Keefe was confused enough already.

Fitz was growing taller. He had a few inches on Keefe already, and the younger despised it. Maybe he would’ve hated it less if the other didn’t constantly lord it over him, standing just close enough so Keefe had to tilt his head up to see him, resting his arm around Keefe’s shoulders like it belonged there. They’d been the same height since forever, and Keefe was not going to let himself go down like this.

Especially not considering the way his heart rate sped up when Fitz was leaning over him. He couldn’t let the elder hold that power against him, and he couldn’t let him know. So he took a deep breath and stayed calm when Fitz pushed him into a tree halfway through his tangent about how cool Alvar was.

“Well, that was rude,” Keefe huffed, trying not to shy away from the elder’s bright teal eyes as they stared down at him. “I was talking.”

“I don’t want to talk about Alvar,” Fitz responded, as if it was an excuse. His hand didn’t move from where it was pinned above Keefe’s shoulder.

“You know Fitz, there’s this thing called communication, where you use your words-”

The elder cut him off by layering his lips over Keefe’s in a sweet, chaste kiss that still left Keefe stunned and a little breathless when he pulled away. “I don’t really want to do that either.”

Keefe rolled his eyes, avoiding his gaze. “Yeah I can see that.” But he didn’t stop him from kissing him again.

Kissing Fitz was a pleasant thing when it didn’t leave Keefe spiraling down a hole of Why do you care so much? It was easy not to think, with Fitz’s lips on his, about his father, or his mentors, or any of the small things plauging his life when they pulled away. Kissing Fitz made it feel like he’d never have to go home, like this was his home, and he’d never have to leave. He never wanted to leave.

But those were the same thoughts that kept him up all night that whole summer, as relieving as they were in the moment. Fitz had always felt more like home than anything Keefe had ever called home his entire life. And if he was honest, he never wanted that to change. He never wanted them to change.

He never wanted whatever this was that they were doing to change. He didn’t like the thought of Fitz doing this with anyone else, being this comfortable with anyone else, or sharing his space this much with anyone else, but he had to face that that was the reality. Someday, Fitz would go marry some girl, and all of this, all these remenants of them would be left behind in the past. But Keefe didn’t want to think about all that. He just wanted to enjoy it while it lasted.

Now, Keefe wishes it had lasted a little longer. But then they were in Level 4, and Fitz finally found Sophie, and their lives began to change so rapidly that Keefe just felt like he was along for the ride as everything he’d ever known turned upside-down and faded away. 

Maybe Keefe had known back then too, that it wouldn’t last long, and that that day would have their last kiss, because when he’d pulled away, he’d asked, “You won’t forget me, right?”

Fitz had raised an eyebrow. “What? Where did that come from?”

“Nowhere, just-” Keefe looked back down at the ground as he caught his breath and sorted through his thoughts. “You won’t, right? Ever?”

The elder was only silent for a moment before he admitted, “Keefe, I couldn’t forget you if I tried.”

He was charming, Keefe would give him that. And it made him feel like a shy and red-cheeked kid all over again. 

Sitting in his room years later, with the blush faded and rose-colored glasses lost, Keefe wonders if mememories like those haunted Fitz now, as he tries his hardest to forget him. If those promises meant nothing, and now both of them are nothing, it’s honestly better that they hadn’t told anyone. Looking back, they probably wouldn’t have understood anyways.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

“Just because you didn’t tell me doesn’t mean I never knew,” Biana continued on, ignoring Fitz’s frozen stare. 

“But…how-”

“I’m your sister Fitz. And you kissed outside my bedroom once,” she admits, turning back to the mirror. "My point being, friends don’t do that.”

“Just because yours don’t-” Fitz cuts himself off as Biana gives him a sharp look in the mirror.

“You hear how ridiculous you sound, don’t you? There’s no point.” She continues pinning up her hair as she adds, “You love him."

Fitz gulps, watching himself go pale in the mirror. “That’s a strong word.”

“Yeah, and the right one," she agrees. "You’ve loved him since we were little kids, and you still do."

“You’re not an empath-" Fitz starts to argue, but Biana doesn’t want to hear it.

"I don’t have to be. I’m your sister," she reminds quaintly. "But he is an empath."

Fitz bites his lip subconsciously, going over the implication. "You think he knows?"

"No. I don't think he ever understood what your emotions meant, and he probably still doesn’t," she admits, looking through the products in front of her. "Especially not with you asking for the jersey back. Honestly, Fitz, what was that?"

"I just wanted all of this to be over," he answers shamefully, looking down at the floor so Biana's eyes in the mirror won’t rip him to pieces.

She slides over next to him, leaning against the wall as well. Her voice is the calmest thing wafting through his head when she speaks. "This is never going to be over unless you face your fears and try to figure out what you actually mean to each other."

It’s easy in theory. But the thought of actually acting on it is giving Fitz a massive headache. “How do I do that?”

“You think, Fitz. It’s a foreign concept, I know,” Biana chuckles, nudging him in the side to make him look at her. “Just sort through your memories. You have millions, we’ve been friends since he was 7. There has to be answer in there somewhere, even if its from when you were little.”

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

Keefe always considered himself a strong eight-year-old. He held his own even when his father battered him down, and he dusted it off with a sigh and moved on. No one helped, definitely not his mom, but that was okay. Keefe could handle it.

He was sure of that. He really could handle it, he had so many times before, watching his father tear up his doodles and drawings, scold him for his childish acts when in the back of his head he couldn’t help wonder, Am I not still a child?  but was too terrified to ask. He would draw more. They would get ripped up again. It was a fine, easy cycle.

He practically lived with the Vackers, regardless of how much his father nagged at him. It was the one thing Keefe liked that he supported.  Keefe didn’t know why, but he learned early on not to question the good things. Fitz and Biana were a safe space, and he would take that gladly. Being at Everglen practically erased whatever distressing moment had taken place right before, and it was easy to laugh, move on, and play bramble without a second thought. It always was.

So why wasn’t it today?

Maybe it was because the drawing was a special one. Him and Fitz, sitting by the edge of the lake, small feet swinging over the water and wind brushing through their hair. He hadn’t even gotten to finish coloring it yellow and brown before his father had snatched it up without a second thought and shredded to pieces without even looking at it. He wouldn’t dare encourage any sort of  foolishness.

The drawing stayed pinned in the back of his mind though, he had his photographic memory to thank for that, and he couldn’t help but feel the slightest remorse as he thought about it, even in Fitz’s room, far away from the man who’d ruined it all in the first place. It was a pretty drawing. It would’ve looked even better finished.

Fitz might have liked it.

Keefe didn’t notice the tears dripping down his cheeks until Fitz made a surprised noise, sitting in front of him with concern etched between his brows, looking far too mature for a nine-year-old.

“Oh,” Keefe realized, wiping his cheek with small hands. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Fitz responded, teal eyes peeled open wide as he watched him. “Are you upset?”

“Only a little. It’s not a big deal,” Keefe tried to wave off. But Fitz, even at this young of an age, was always a gentlemen, and waited silently and encouragingly for Keefe to explain further.

“It’s just…my dad tore apart a drawing I made,” he elaborated, eyes steaming as the tears started coming down faster. He wiped his hands against his cheek more furiously. “I didn’t even get to finish it.”

“Why would your dad do that?” Fitz asked catiously, tilting his head with the curiousty of a young kitten.

Keefe wonders how, even at eight years old, he’d known that Fitz was a Vacker, and because of that he’d never truly understand. “He doesn’t like it when I draw.”

Fitz was silent then, and Keefe was too busy trying to stop his crying to realize, but suddenly small arms were pulling him into a warm embrace and the tear gates flooded, making him give up. “I think it’s really cool that you can draw.”

The younger tried to choke out a thank you, but the tears were choking him and he couldn’t do anything but cry into his friend’s shoulder, letting him hold him and save him from everything that waited outside of his arms, in this room, and back at home. None of it mattered if he had this, anyways. His parents didn’t matter, if there was still someone willing to hold him together. And of course that someone was Fitz.

And of course he’d ask, like always, “Want a blitzenberry muffin?”

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

“Make me blitzenberry muffins.”

“Is that an order?” Fitz questioned, his eyebrow raising as he continued folding his tunics.

Keefe sighed dramatically, throwing himself across the elder’s bed and distracting him. “Can it be? I’m so sick of these books and I need something to bring my dampened spirits up.”

“Dampened spirits, wow, you’re a poet, Keefe,” Fitz applauded, sitting down next to him. The empath flipped his head up towards him, blonde splashing against the green sheets. “What do you even read about? Isn’t empathy kind of straight forward?”

“Not really. Just because I can feel what you’re feeling doesn’t mean I know what it is. For instance-” Keefe laced his hand through Fitz’s, startling him. “Something creepy crawly is going on in your stomach right now, but you’re head’s kinda fuzzy. I think that’s happiness?”

Fitz stopped himself from blushing. “I think so too.” Keefe grinned.

“See, it’s not like the words just come flying at me. People feel emotions differently, which makes it harder to decipher what someone else is feeling. Some emotions are easy, but others, not so much.” He sat up, keeping their hands intertwined. Fitz tried not to stare. “All those books are just theory, trying to teach you certain tells so you can guess emotions more easily. And then like…philosophy or whatever.” 

“Sounds atrociously boring,” the elder commented, tearing his eyes away from their hands and getting lost in the sharp blue of Keefe’s eyes instead. 

He didn’t seem to notice, huffing. “It is. That’s why I want muffins.”

“Valid.” Fitz stood up, yanking the younger along with him towards his room door. “Do you know where the kitchens around here are?”

“Calla showed me one the other day when you were staring into Sophie’s eyes or whatever,” Keefe grumbled. Fitz wonders if it was jealousy, or maybe that was just his wishful thinking. Just because he’s reinspecting their story didn’t mean he can add in details about Keefe that were never really there.

But the tightening grip on his hand was there, ever present, and Fitz hopes that Keefe didn’t notice his heart rate spike right then and there. Had he been that obvious all along? With an empath no less.

Keefe pulled him out of the treehouse and ran down the steps, pulling along Fitz just like he would when they were in Everglen, young and blissfully unaware of how dangerous the world really was. The worst problem at the time must have been Keefe’s parents.

In a bitter, unsurprising way, Fitz remembered they still were.

“There we are, the splendid gnomish kitchens,” Keefe presented with a flourish, cheeky smile flitting across his face as he walked over to the pantry. It was a kitchen alright, but everything was draped in browns and greens, giving the area a  very much earthy vibe to it. Fitz loved it immediatley.

Blitzenberry muffins were routine, and soon enough the batter was being mixed together in a bowl with Keefe sitting on the counter, licking the finger he’d just dipped in without permission and Fitz shaking his head with a smile, always unable to put on a stern face at the younger’s antics. They made him feel rather normal, anyways. Like they weren’t teenage runaways or rebels or anything of the sort.

Keefe stared off into the distance as his finger left his mouth, and Fitz stared at him, watching his eyes glaze and something hard to decipher appear in them. It wasn’t the first time. Something about Keefe had been off lately, like he’d been thinking too much. There was enough to think about anyways, with his mom captured by ogres and his dad waiting back home. Even the pendant around his neck was enough to send him spiraling. 

It was silent for a little too long, and Keefe’s eyes were getting a little too glassy, making the elder feel the need to interupt. “Are you okay-” Fitz started, then a tuft of white blurred his vision like a bakery-smelling blizzard. He coughed, daring to open his eyes wide to a sheepish looking Keefe with flour-stained hands. 

“Sorry.” He didn’t look sorry at all. “Intrusive thoughts.”

Fitz smiled right back, acutely aware of how ridiculous he must have looked as he slowly raised a large handful of flour from behind Keefe using telekineses, then promptly dropped it on his head. “Sorry. Intrusive thoughts.”

Keefe wiped his eyes in disbelief. “Don’t start with me.”

“You’re the one who started it!”

The younger didn’t seem to hear as more flour flew through the air, soon beginning to cover the entire kitchen in white. They ducked and hid behind the counter, laughed loudly like no one could hear them, smiled so hard their cheeks hurt from the motion. Fitz misses the feeling, misses being the cause of Keefe’s ectastic smiles instead of his nervous frowns. He misses the freedom, the moments they shared like this where there wasn’t a single other person in the world but each other, not another pair of eyes he’d ever care to look into. There wasn’t anything to see.

He misses Keefe. And his hair and his smirk and everything he’d been working hard to ignore and weave into their history just to leave them there, where they belong. But how could they belong there if Biana was right?

How could he forget about Keefe when he’d known him since they were kids?

“You’re my best friend,” Fitz spoke, breathless watching the white powder float down in the air around them like snow, like the winters they’d spent as children by the lake with ice skating and never ending adventure. Keefe was his best friend then too. Hadn’t he always been?

Hadn’t he always loved him?

“Yeah. Obviously.” Keefe smiled, shaking the flour out of his hair in Fitz’s direction, but the action was boyish enough to make his foolish heart long for a past they couldn’t reach back into. At least they had moments like this. 

Not forever though.

“Nothing’s going to change, not for me and you,” Keefe added, smile softening and making the other’s heart melt right out of his ribcage.

Fitz wishes he hadn’t lied.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

Leaping to Everglen is something Keefe is used to, but leaping straight onto the property will never fail to catch him off guard now that the gates have been taken away. Just another testament to how much has changed. 

The way to Fitz’s room didn’t, however, so Keefe’s steps are a trail he’d walked many times before, straight down to the same door he had spent so much his childhood hidden behind. The jersey in his hands weighs more than it should, like instead of just giving back a piece of cloth, he’s about to hand over their past and everything they’d ever known. His place behind that door. 

Or maybe he’s just overthinking it. Maybe he’s spent the whole day overthinking it, like the dramatic little boy he is. Things change, Keefe, the voice in his head reminds. You have to too.

He takes a deep breath, steels his face, and knocks before he can back out and leave it in Biana’s room with a note like a loser.

“Come in.” Keefe does.

The room is dark. His eyes take a moment to adjust before he notices Fitz buried underneath the blankets of his bed, staring blankly at the dark ceiling. Teal eyes lift themselves up to catch his. “Oh.”

It isn;t a bad oh, but it certainly not a good one either, and Keefe finds himself wanting to leave even faster than he came. “I found the jersey, I just thought I’d drop it o-”

“No, keep it,” Fitz decides, pushing himself up to a sitting position so he’s leaning against his pillows. 

Keefe blinks in confusion. “What?”

“Keep the jersey, I don’t want it back,” he repeats, but Keefe still doesn’t understand. That isn’t what he had said that morning. All he said was that he wanted it returned!

“But you-”

“I was wrong,” Fitz shruggs. The younger can’t see him too clearly in the dark but if he’sstill wearing his nonchalant perfect Vacker smile, Keefe’s going to have a meltdown.

Or maybe he is regardless. “What do you want from me?”

Fitz might frown, Keefe can’t tell, but he sounds startled when he responds. “What do you mean?”

“I try to go and apologize to you for everything, and you don’t even let me start before you’re asking for the jersey back, and now you don’t want it anymore?!” Keefe catches his breath, eyes burning. “What were you wrong about? I wouldn’t want to be around me either.”

“I never said tha-”

“You didn’t have to.” Keefe drops the jersey to the ground, trying to keep the tears from falling out of his eyes. “I can’t even pretend to know what’s going on in your head anymore, Fitz, but that’s exactly what you wanted. And I can’t blame you, I’ve screwed this up two more times than I should have.”

“I missed you. Both times, but especially this last one. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I left and…” Keefe shakes his head, sighing under his breath. He’d practiced this more than enough times before today but here he is, and the words have run off once more, leaving his mouth dry. “I didn’t mean it like that. I would do so many things for you, Fitz, but I couldn’t stay. And I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I can’t be someone you still want.”

“Keefe that’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.” A record player scratches in Keefe’s mind, prompting him to look up again. Fitz is climbing out of his bed as he speaks. “Of course I still want you. I spent so much time missing you, and convincing myself you would be okay, and that all of this would be okay that I didn’t even stop to notice that it wasn’t. I don’t want the jersey back, because I want it to be with you. I want you to have the memories-”

“I don’t want memories,” he interrupts. Fitz stops right in front of him, looking down at his eyes and making Keefe gulp. That godforsaken height difference will never go away, will it? “I… That summer, I don’t know if I was imagining it but-”

Fitz grabs his hand and suddenly Keefe is hit with purple butterflies and crimson vines wrapping their way around his chest tight enough to suffocate him. “You’re not imagining anything.”

If those are Fitz’s emotions he’s feeling, and if he’s looking into his eyes like that, and if he’d meant it all back then, then maybe there isn’t much to make excuses for anymore when he leans in.

Keefe had missed it, the feeling of Fitz so close, his emotions flowing through the younger’s veins, so much stronger now, so much more desperate. Like they’d been starved for too long. Even the stupid bend in his neck when Fitz tilts his head up with a hand on his chin is nostalgic in a way.

It’s still dark, but that doesn’t stop Fitz’s eyes from twinkling when they separate, noses so close they were touching. Keefe could feel his breath hit his cheek as he whispered, tracing a finger along his cheekbones. “It’s always been you.”

#i should've been writing my novel instead of this #but i couldn't resist #inspired by: #all too well #holy ground #last kiss #if this was a movie #back to december #wildest dreams #you are in love #this love #6.8K words is like 3 times what i meant to write #the last time i wrote a keeper fic was during the height of quarantine but lowkey i think that was an incredible writing phase #keefitz week 2023 #keefitz #keefe and fitz #keefe sencen #fitz vacker #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #kotlc stellarlune #taylor swift

[ravs6709]

Letters From The Heart (They Spell Out Love)- Marelliana

Word count: 4.7k words

to avery @skylilac !!! your late birthday gift is finally here!!! and also now the last of these bday fics is done! marelliana pining angst... iove letters... (also minor keefitz)

warnings: swearing

enjoy!!!!

•~•~•~•~•~•

It was no secret that Biana liked Keefe. It was as clear as day. The longing stares that contained awestruck eyes, the truth or dare that ended in a near-kiss. It'd been the case for years, so really, Marella should have known better, but, she couldn't help but fall for Biana anyways.

Whenever it was just the two of them hanging out together, she could live in her own delusions. But of course, fantasies couldn't last forever.

It was during English class, when their poetry assignment had been returned.

"What'd you get, Marella?" Biana asked, putting her own paper on Marella's desk. High eighties, a good mark.

Marella herself had always been average at English, but she proudly took out her paper that had been marked with a 98.

"Oh, damn," Biana said, "can I read it?"

She let her read it, taking a delight at the impressed smile that graced her face.

"I didn't realize you were so good at poetry," Biana remarked.

I wanted to be good at poetry so I could write letters to you, Marella very carefully did not say. I wanted to be able to put my feelings to words, she also didn't say.

Instead, she said, "It was a recent hobby."

Biana looked at her with a complicated expression that she couldn't decipher.

And she wouldn't be able to figure out why until later that evening, while they hung out in Biana's room.

"Marella," Biana said, looking at her with a serious expression. "I want you to help me write a love letter to Keefe."

They'd had never had the best friendship, they'd gotten off to a rocky start, making petty jabs and insults, and when they got along it didn't take long before one of them would say something to let them drift apart.

But no matter what they'd say to each other, they'd always come right back to each other, they'd never truly leave the other's orbit.

After all of those years they've known each other, at this moment, all Marella could think was, you have never hurt me more than you have now.

She shook off the thought. Obviously it wasn't intentional, and obviously she didn't even know. Still, it doesn't hurt any less.

Any delusions that she'd had were shattered like glass. Biana wasn't in love with her. She probably never would.

"Marella? You don't have to if you don't want-"

"I'll help you with it." The words escaped from her own mouth before her brain could even think.

Biana's face brightened. "Thank you! I'll do as much as I can, I don't want it to feel disingenuous, and I'll even pay you for it if you want-"

"You don't need to pay me."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm your friend," Marella told her, "I can do this for you."

Refuse to do this, it wouldn't be too hard. Aren't you the one who usually ends up having to be the one to give in, to suck in your pride? a traitorous part of her brain told her. Why do this to yourself? You'll only get yourself more hurt.

Marella held back a sigh. I love her too much.

Biana pulled her in for a hug, and her damned heart beat rapidly in her chest as she tentatively returned the embrace.

"I'll start writing it later tonight, I guess," Biana said, pulling away. "I'll text you when I share the doc with you."

"Alright," Marella said with a nod of her head. She probably just got rid of her last chance of backing out of this.

•~•~•~•~•~•

-- I shared the doc with you! Biana texted.

"Dear Keefe Sencen,

From the very moment I met you, I've fallen in love with you. Not just for your looks (though I can admit it definitely doesn't hurt), but your fun personality, for the jokes that I hear that bring a smile to my face. For your  presence which  lights up the room whenever you walk in. I just couldn't help but fall for you. Maybe I'm a  coward, for  not being able to tell you this straight , but I wanted you to know.

Love, Biana "

-- for someone who reads and watches so many romantic dramas, youre surprisingly shit at love letters, Marella texted.

-- What's wrong with this?

-- not charming enough

-- too forward

-- want something that captures attention. have an air of mystery

" Dear Keefe,

I'm  sure you get letters  like these  all the time. Maybe to you, this piece of paper will be  like all  the rest. But to me, this mere  piece  of paper holds my heart and soul.

I'm  a fan of yours.  I have  been, for many years. From the moment you walked into my world,  it's  been lit up in a kaleidoscope of  colours . I  can't  help it , my  heart is drawn to you,  I can't  stop myself from looking your way, seeking out  your  smiles, listening to your jokes.

You're as warm as sunshine. Your presence is blinding,  I'm  captivated. And like the sun, you're so high up in  the sky , it  feels as if  you're  unreachable.  I'm  too  much  of a coward to  tell you  all this in person,  I'm  much too  afraid to  come too close. All I can do is bask in your radiance, and  hope  that this letter might mean  something to you , even just a little.

From one  letter alone , I don't expect  you to  make a decision, or to even  fall in  love immediately. But if you'll allow me,  I'll  offer you my heart, again and again, until you are sure  that you  can make your choice, whether it's to accept me, or reject me.

If you should wish to write  back  to me, in the back of the field is a tree. On that tree is a piece of flaky bark, and underneath is a little cranny large enough to fit a letter. Deliver it before 3:30 pm, and every day,  I'll  check there. Any letters I write  I'll  slip into your locker at 8:30 am, so I request that you please do not try and uncover my identity.

Your greatest fan, Anonymous"

-- Isn't this also extremely forward?

-- You took out my name? Why? And also this was... more than I was expecting

-- I thought it'd just be one letter

-- you think hed fall in love with one letter???

-- dont be naive

-- its not a romantic drama

-- the anon is to prevent any bias

-- if hes gonna fall in love it needs to be done right

-- trust me

-- I guess. It makes sense

-- Thank you Marella. Ilysm

Marella smiled despite herself. She had Biana's love in this way, it was fine.

-- ilyt

•~•~•~•~•~•

"Huh?" Keefe asked as he opened his locker.

"What's that?" Fitz asked, pointing at the envelope.

Marella snuck a glance at Biana, who was standing on her toes, fidgeting with her fingers.

She elbowed her. "You're being too obvious," she hissed.

"Is that a love letter?" Tam asked. "For you?"

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean? Who can resist the Keefester?"

"I can," both Marella and Tam both said in unison, and then they smiled at each other and high-fived.

"Uh-"

"You sound very cringe when you call yourself that," Sophie said, a hand over her mouth.

"Foster!"

"Are you..." Fitz said, "are you going to read it?"

"It'll be rude if I didn't. I'm wondering if I should read it now or at home."

Before Biana could do something like get more nervous and give herself away, Marella replied, "Read it here. In a hallway with no one else, and we'll be quiet and respectful towards whoever wrote the letter."

As they settled down and began eating in one of the school's hallways, Keefe took out the letter from the envelope. He read it out loud as everyone else stayed silent.

"So..." Fitz began once Keefe finished reading, his voice slightly off, "what are you going to say?"

"It's quite the heartfelt letter," Keefe said, "I like that they're willing to respect any boundaries that I might set."

"Are you going to write back?" Biana asked, eyes shining.

"I think I will. What do you think, Fitzy? Should I write back and see what this person is like?"

"It's... your love letter. Do what you want."

"I think I'd like to see how it goes. Who knows, maybe I'll fall in love with the person who wrote the letters."

Marella felt her heart writhe, her nails digging into her palm. She never actually got the vibe that Keefe had a crush on Biana.

Who could resist her? Of course he'll fall in love. That was the whole point of this.

•~•~•~•~•~•

It was decided that Marella would send and collect any letters, just in case anything happened. She knew a lot if people, and even more of the gossip, so it wouldn't be unreasonable if someone had asked her to help out. And unlike Biana, Marella was very good at lying.

At Biana's place, they opened up Keefe's reply letter.

"Dear Anonymous,

You're right, I have gotten a few love letters. But none quite like the one you've given me. It read as very sincere and heartfelt, and I like that.

To have your heart offered to me like this, to trust that I'll either treasure it or return it to you back safely, it's an honor. I'll continue writing to you, I hope to get to know you a little better.

Sincerely, Keefe"

"Damn, he can be really eloquent when he wants to," Marella said with an impressed whistle. "A shame that he ends up talking the way he does."

"Hey, it's charming," Biana defended. "Besides, you're the same. I've never seen you write the way you did."

"You also have barely seen the way I write in general."

"That's true, I guess."

•~•~•~•~•~•

Marella read Biana's next reply, this time, on paper, since they were with each other.

"Oh my god, you're so lucky you have me here to fix this."

Biana made a half irritated pout, one that Marella had to admit looked really cute. "What's wrong with it?"

"The stuff you say is fine, but the tone, the tone is just lacking," Marella said, crossing out some words in favour of some better synonyms. "Did you just pick words out of a thesaurus?"

She huffed. "And reuse basic vocabulary?"

"You're going overboard. You've gotta write like you're actually in love."

"Are you in love, that you can do that?"

Fuck. She walked right into that one.

It seemed that she didn't mask her panic fast enough, because Biana noticed.

"Wait, Marella. You're in love? And you didn't tell me?"

"I didn't think I needed to," Marella said, and even she knew that it sounded way too snappy.

"We're best friends, Marella," Biana said, taking a hold of her hand. "You let me talk about Keefe, what about you and your crush?"

"It's unrequited," she said, hoping Biana would then drop it.

"Oh. Seriously? Are you sure?"

"The person I love is in love with someone else."

"Who wouldn't fall for you?" Biana asked, looking at her with a strange expression.

Marella clenched her jaw at the irony of such a question. You. You wouldn't fall for me.

"So, who is it? Is it someone I know?"

Hesitantly, Marella nodded. After a few seconds, she sighed. "Let me fix your letter."

"Dear Keefe,

Words cannot explain how happy it makes me to know that at the very least,  you're  willing to give me a chance. My heart will be safe in your hands, I know it will."

Marella paused, eyes wandering to Biana for a moment.

"I feel as if for the first time, I might be able to stand level to you. That maybe,  you're  not so unreachable. It's so warm by you, I  can't  stop myself from drifting closer and closer. Maybe, by the end of this, you'll be within arm's reach.

There's so much  I want to say  to you, but I  don't  know  how  to say everything it is that I feel. But  maybe , we should go slow about this, until I can finally figure out just  exactly  what to say.

You like art, and from  what I've  seen, the art  you've  made is breathtaking. I make little crafts on occasion, maybe  I'll  make you something."

"What are you doing?" Biana asked.

"Helping you woo him? Who doesn't like gifts? Besides, it doesn't have to be much, just a little bracelet. I know you love making them."

Marella would know, she was wearing one of the bracelets that Biana had made at the very moment.

"Would he wear it?"

"Probably."

"If I ever make you a bracelet, I hope you'll like it.

Love, Anonymous"

•~•~•~•~•~•

"What is that?" Fitz asked.

Keefe held up his arm proudly, a bracelet made up of colourful beads on his arm. Marella hated just how easily this was working. "My secret admirer made it for me!"

"And you're wearing it?"

"Why not? It's really pretty!"

Fitz's voice was slightly off again, but once more, Marella couldn't pick up on what was off. Marella looked towards Biana, who was giving Keefe incredibly obvious heart-eyes.

"I'll go make sure our eating spot isn't taken," Linh said, taking Biana by the arm as they started chatting away.

The others followed, and Marella turned to follow.

"Hey, Marella," Keefe called out.

She turned around to face him, and Fitz was also there too.

"You wouldn't happen to know anything about the secret admirer, would you?"

She forced on a grin. "Even if I did, I wouldn't tell you."

"Of course, of course," he said casually.

"Do you... want to meet this person?" Fitz asked.

"It'd be nice to meet them, whenever they're ready. My heart is quite moved by the letters I've been receiving."

•~•~•~•~•~•

Even though Marella would read through Keefe's replies with Biana, she couldn't stop herself from trying to catch him whenever he was writing back. She needed to know. That love-struck expression, was it on his face whenever he was writing?

Sometimes, Biana would slip the unedited copy of her letter in Marella's locker, because she said that handwriting made it easier to think.

Biana and Marella actually hung out more than ever because of this whole thing, Biana seemed insistent on trying to write the letters herself, despite Marella telling her that she'd be able to do it better.

"If you had to write a love letter to your crush, how would you write it?"

"The things I helped write to Keefe, many of them are my genuine feelings. My crush is unreachable, I long to see them smile at me, I want to be the reason why they're happy. All sappy stuff."

"You say your crush is unrequited, but how come you won't tell me who it is? It's someone I know, you confirmed that much."

"Don't feel like saying, that's all," Marella said casually.

"I haven't even seen you flirt much lately," Biana pointed out. "This person, are they a serious crush?"

"Head over heels."

"How long have you had this crush?"

"A long time," Marella admitted. "But I only realized it recently."

"I hope this person gets to realize how much they mean to you. You're really fun to be around, they're missing out."

•~•~•~•~•~•

"The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that you know the identity of my admirer," Keefe said to her, later.

"And why would you say that?"

He shrugged. "Just a feeling."

The two of them were walking through the hallway together, and she expected him to say more since he seemed so enthusiastic, but instead he kept his mouth shut, humming under his breath.

They passed by Fitz and Biana, and it was only then that Keefe spoke up again.

"Ah, can't get the idea that I have such wonderful admirer after my heart," he said, grinning. He leaned over, using her as an arm rest—damn his tall genes. "I wonder what I should write this time."

Marella was honestly just willing to let him do his thing, but Biana's weighted look at them had her shoving his arm off.

•~•~•~•~•~•

"Dear Bia—"

Marella sighed, scratching out the name. Biana's desk was right beside hers, she couldn't risk something like that.

" You're in my mind, more often than not. It drives me crazy, but I like it. I like being crazy  for you . Just being near you, just being able to see you has my heart racing, it's exhilarating.

Sometimes I wonder if I should just stop hiding, and just tell you  my  feelings, consequences be damned. To tell you that you're the most beaitiful person I've ever seen. To hold you close in my embrace, to run my hand through your hair, I want to have a life  filled  with soft moments with you.

What do I do? What do I say to make you look my way, even though I'm so close to you—"

"Marella?"

Her heart leapt, and she scrunched the paper in a ball, pulling it toward herself.

"Class is over—what's in your hand?"

Marella glanced up at the clock, and shit, class really was over, had she been doing this for fifteen minutes now?

"Helping you," she said confidently.

Maybe too confidently, because Biana raised an eyebrow. "You looked lovestruck. That wasn't for my sake."

She sighed. "Fine. Yeah. It wasn't."

"Can I read it?"

"No," she said, trying very very hard to not sound defensive. "It's too raw."

She grabbed her backpack from off the floor and shoved the crumpled ball of paper in. She ignored Biana's stare and instead walked with her out of the classroom and to their next class.

•~•~•~•~•~•

"Hey, Marella, let me do it this time."

Marella briefly glanced over the words that Biana had written down this time.

"You still need my help."

"Am I not doing better?"

Marella reread the words again. "You are." She really was. Biana was quick to learn. "Still, it's not enough."

It's easier for me, if  I  do this. Anyone would fall for you if they received a letter like the one you just wrote.

"I have to be able to do them on my own at some point, I think you know that. Why are you so insistent on writing all of them for me?" Biana asked.

"This is for your sake."

"They're my letters. I can't deceive him forever and use your words. I want him to fall for me, not you."

Before Marella could laugh at the idea that Keefe would fall for her, Biana continued on.

"You enjoy writing letters to Keefe, don't you?"

Marella blinked. "Wha—"

"That's it, isn't it? You're in love with him, right? You said your crush is someone you know, and I saw a little bit from when you were writing that letter. You want him to look your way, even though he's so close to you."

"Wait wait wait," Marella said, taking in a breath to calm down the irritated feeling that was building up in her chest, only for it to grow more. "You think I'm in love with him."

"I've seen the look on your face. Maybe you started this for my sake, but I know you're only continuing to be selfish."

She'd been trying to keep the irritation together, but she snapped, and irritation turned to anger. "Are you kidding me? Are you actually fucking kidding me? I took my time go help you out and this is what you have to say to me?"

You're right! I'm being selfish! She wanted to say, almost manically.

Marella picked up her backpack from the bedroom floor and turned to leave.

Biana caught her arm. "Explain, then!"

You, damn it!  I'm  in love with you!

"I don't owe you anything," she said with gritted teeth. "I am done. Don't talk to me."

"Marella—"

She wrenched her arm out of Biana's grip, and left the house. She practically stomped her way home, because what the hell was that? Did Biana seriously think she'd jeopardize everything over a guy?

She just couldn't believe this. They had their fights, but this? This was just nonsense, and the fact that Biana believed it for even a second...

She wasn't going to go crawling back to Biana.

•~•~•~•~•~•

Biana had sent a few messages, but Marella wasn't having it, so she blocked her. She sat with the friend group at lunch, meaning that she still did have to see Biana's face every day, feel Biana's stare on her every day. The others probably noticed that something was wrong between them seeing that they weren't talking, but Keefe's questioning gaze on hers was the most obvious.

A few days later, Marella opened her locker and found an envelope. A familiar patterned one that she knew Biana owned.

She had the urge to open it, to read it, but really, what was she going to see? All that would ever be contained inside those letters would be Biana's words to Keefe.

What did Biana think she was doing, giving her another letter to read? Marella held the envelope in her hands, ready to just tear it apart, but instead, she shoved it in her bag.

•~•~•~•~•~•

The letters persisted. Day after day, no matter how many times Marella kept shoving them in her backpack without reading them.

How many letters were Biana going to write? The pile on her desk at home was growing larger, almost concerningly. She wasn't going to read any of them though. Biana had crossed a line.

•~•~•~•~•~•

Marella was walking down the halls and into the stairwell to get to her next class, when she saw Keefe. She only saw the back of him, only saw a brown hand tangled in his blond hair. She couldn't see the other body, hidden behind the stairs, but that position was obvious.

Keefe was kissing someone. And it was pretty obvious who it was.

They were so absorbed in it too, that they didn't even notice that she'd opened the door. Or that she was climbing up the stairs.

Wasn't this what you expected to happen? Of course it'd turn out this way. Who'd reject her?

"Keefe," a voice whispered, echoing in the stairwell, and what the hell, that wasn't Biana's voice—

"Yeah yeah, I know, you gotta get to class," Keefe said with mock irritation.

Marella looked down from the railing above as Keefe came out of the little alcove behind the stairs.

—and then Fitz followed.

Marella practically ran to her next class.

Unfortunately, Biana was in this class with her, sitting in front of Marella.

Keefe kissed Fitz. Had feelings for Fitz.

Did Biana know? Was she heartbroken?

Then she fought off those questions. Doesn't matter. We're not friends anymore.

•~•~•~•~•~•

The letters still kept coming. Whenever she looked to Biana, she would've thought that she'd continue to send those longing glances towards Keefe, but Biana was never looking at him every time she'd looked.

No. Biana was looking at her. Every time.

Almost as if Biana had moved on from Keefe already.

Why are you looking at me like that? Are you  just  gonna sit there and stay silent?

When the next letter came, she wasn't sure why, but Marella opened the envelope, holding the paper in her hands.

"Dear Marella Redek,

I know you  won't  read this, like I know you  haven't  read the rest. You said for me to not talk to you, so I  won't . So until you tell me to stop sending you letters, I  won't .  I've realized  that I  can't  give up on  our  friendship, I  can't  give up on you.

I'll  keep writing,  I'll  keep desperately hoping that one day,  you'll  read one.

I've  taken you for granted, Marella. This  isn't  our first  fight , but this is the one  I've  felt most guilty for, because  I've  really disrespected you. I want you to know that I miss you. That I never  realized  how much your  lack  of  presence  makes me feel  lonely .  It's  not the poetic letter  I've  been trying  to write  all this time, but  these  are my feelings,  pure , raw, and unfiltered.

I miss you, Marella. I hope one day  you'll  forgive me.

Love, Biana Vacker"

Sitting alone in her room, Marella felt her eyes water. Without thinking, she grabbed at the pile of envelopes and started reading through each of them.

"I revealed myself to Keefe. I thought that'd I shouldn't hide behind your words anymore. Keefe told me that he's in love with Fitz. It hurt to hear, but somehow, it didn'thurt as much as it did when I watched you leave.

I'm sorry, for what I said. I'm so, so, so sorry."

So many letters. Just how much had Biana written to her?

" I've  done a lot of thinking. Part of me wonders if  I'd  ever been in love with Keefe, or just the idea. I think I probably was, maybe  I'd  be more heartbroken if I  hadn't  lost you. But I've done a lot of  thinking , and  I've  decided on something.

I love you.  I've  told you this before, many  times , but it  might  mean something different this  time .  I'm  not entirely sure  yet . It just feels different, compared to when I usually say it. I  can't get  you out of my head, I want to hold you close. I want you to look my way."

Tears were falling as she kept reading, a hand at her mouth to muffle the sounds of crying.

"I thought about things some more.  You've been  in love with me,  haven't  you?  I'd  thought that you liking Keefe would be weird, but I was too  blinded  by jealousy to see it.

I'm  not sure how I came to that conclusion, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. And  that's  why you acted the way you did. Someone would probably say  that  it was an act of self-sacrifice, to give it up to help your friend. I  don't  disagree, but  I'm  sure that you helped me so much  because  you were scared.

And  that's  fine.  I'm  scared too.  I'm  terrified, that the time when you left could be our very last conversation with each other.  I'm  terrified of losing you.  I'm  terrified of telling this to all of you in person, which is why  I'm  sending letter after  letter ."

A sob came out from her, her hand had been long dropped. She rose to her feet, blindly grabbing at her desk for a paper and pencil.

•~•~•~•~•~•

Marella stood there, frozen at Biana's locker, envelope in hand. After a few moments of deliberation, she slipped it in through the gap, then waited nearby.

Biana opened her locker, and while Marella couldn't see her face, she could see her her freeze, gently pick up the envelope, open it, then bounce on her feet. She could see Biana look around, but Marella pulled her head back.

A mere sentence was what her letter contained.

"Meet me by the tree where the love  letters  were delivered after school."

•~•~•~•~•~•

Biana had gotten there first, pacing around, and Marella could see her fiddling with her fingers. When Biana saw her, her face lit up with a gorgeous smile that made her heart flutter, even if she wanted to be mad for a little longer.

"You read them?" Biana asked, voice quiet.

"I read them," Marella replied. "That conclusion you came to, you were right. It was—" no, that wasn't right, "—it has been you."

Biana reached out and slowly grabbed her hand, gripping loosely. "I'm glad, that it's been me. I'm sorry."

"I know. You said it a lot in your letters."

"I know," Biana agreed, her thumb brushing against Marella's knuckles. She couldn't figure out whether to look up at her gaze or look down at their hands. "But I'll say it again, because you deserve to hear it."

"I missed you," Marella said, and she was sure that Biana could fill in the rest.

I miss you, I want to continue staying by your side. I forgive you.

"I missed you too."

"Where do we go from here?"

Biana smiled. "I don't know. But I want you with me as we figure it out."

Then she brought Marella's hand to her lips, a gentle brush, but even that was enough to leave her breathless.

"Okay," she said, heart pounding, "okay."

•~•~•~•~•~•

Kotlc taglist: @stellarune @my-swan-song @impostertamsong @subrosasteath

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#marella redek #biana vacker #keefe sencen #marelliana #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #kotlc fanfiction #ravi writes a thing

[thatonesongyouretryingtoremember]

honestly romo sokeefe with qp-cognate sofitz and friends-with-hashtag-undertones keefitz has THE MOST potential as a relationship if they would all get over themselves and maybe move past some of the amatonormativity. they're all so reasonable AND so reckless and at any given time two of them are egging eachother on to do some dangerous shit while the other is like "maybe we wanna live through this" because each of them draws the line in the same for a different reason, they all have something different that makes them the safe-option guy. If they each would give the orbe two am equal voice in their minds at a given time they could probably come up with some really great compromises in priority, and then throw in the rest of the gang and you've got plan-making central.

If each of these three deleted the idea that only one of the others must have their full attention, or that they have to hold back what they're really thinking to preserve whatever precarious bullshit they have going on, they'd be literally unstoppable. I know it takes alot of work to get there and they v aren't really in the right place for that and they aren't meant to be perfect, but like that's what character growth is for and I'm confident the b the of them are smarty enough combined to get there in the end.

#kotlc #sokeefitz