“I am so in love with you.”
The words rush out of him, all in one breath, and he can no more hold them back than he can stop a star from going supernova. Than he can stop the Earth from spinning. The sun from rising. His love for Lance has taken over slowly, pricking it’s way under his skin — much like the man himself, he thinks wryly — until it became all-encompassing, until it ran in tandem with the blood through his veins.
A flush lights up Lance’s face, and his expression goes mushy even as he tries to look scolding.
“I’m — I’m not even doing anything, Keith. Where did that come from?”
Keith shrugs helplessly, because the answer to that is that it doesn’t come from anywhere and Keith just loves him so much, all the time, but if he says that now Lance might explode.
“I dunno. Sometimes I look at you and I — I just have to say it. It’s everywhere, y’know? I love you so much I can’t think. You’re distracting.”
Lance is a little embarrassed, Keith knows he is. He gets overwhelmed easy. But his lips quirk up anyway, and his brown eyes soften. (Beautiful brown eyes, warm and kind and strong and God, the soul really is reflected in the eyes, and he thinks of Lance every time he sees the colour on the cover of a book or the endless height of the trees of the heady power of the earth or the heat of his coffee, Lance Lance Lance everywhere all the time.)
“I love you too, you know. You’re — you’re important to me, too.”
“I know.” Keith says it quietly. Quickly, matching the rapid beat of his heart: I-know, I-know, I-know. Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump.
Do you know, he whispers in his head, the lengths I would go for you? The mountains I would move? Do you know how I look at you and I see the future glimmering before us?
Lance had once looked at him, in front of their friends and family and an omnipresent sociopath, determined and nervous all the same and said with a steady voice I choose Keith. He’s the future. And Keith felt his heart pound in his fingertips and his toes and the very hairs in his head and he’d said with his whole body trembling I choose Lance because I followed him across the universe and I know everyone else will too.
It’s the most honest he’s ever been. The truest truth he’s ever spoken aloud. The biggest part of himself he’s every shared, terrified but determine to follow Lance’s example, to stand by him, because when Keith thinks of who he is he thinks he’s the person who will stand next to Lance, always, every time, until the end of the Earth and the universe and beyond.
Lance smiles at him, now, before glancing away, twinkling of the stars reflecting in the whites of his eyes, earrings shining gold to mirror the fire he coaxes to life between them. Keith clenches his fists in his lap and forces himself to be patient, to wait until Lance is ready. He can wait. He can wait as long as it takes.
He knows it won’t be long, anyway, although he would wait if it was. He would wait for Lance for the rest of their lives, sustained only by the quiet affection always bubbling between them. (Sometimes he thinks of how angry and miserable and hopeless he was, for so many years of his life, and imagines how he would tell that kid that he grows up to love so many people unconditionally and be loved unconditionally in return, and how one man will be the beat of his heart and the surge of life that runs through his body.)
“You make me excited to keep going,” Lance whispers, after what feels like years have passed, time stretched thin around them, and it sounds like a confession. “It’s, um. It’s been a long time since I was excited for my future. But I think of you and it’s — joyous, I guess. You made me feel joy again.”
Keith’s next inhale shudders, lungs trying to accommodate the sudden growth of his heart — I think of you and it’s joyous. You make me feel joy again — because he was right, before; it is a confession.
“Lance.”
Lance keeps his face trained on the dancing flames of the campfire he’s brought to life.
“Lance, look at me. Please.” He’s begging, he knows, but he can’t bring himself to care.
Lance, he thinks, can’t deny him anymore than Keith can deny Lance.
He knows he’s right when Lance swallows, waits a beat, and looks up at him.
“Yes?”
Keith doesn’t bother with words again. He’s said everything he needs to say. Instead he reaches over — slowly, so Lance can pull away if he’s not ready, but Keith feels the buzzing in the air and knows he is — and cups rough, calloused hands on either side of Lance’s face.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” he says, thumbs stroking carefully over Lance’s cheekbones. Lance’s hands come up to rest on top of Keith’s long fingers wrapping carefully around his wrists.
“Please,” Lance says, and Keith doesn’t waste another second.
(He sighs, when their lips finally touch, because it feels like peace. Relief. Like the moment your sorrows melt away, like the moment you realize you’ve been holding your breath and you can let go, like the moment you’ve dreaded passes and you came out just fine, like the moment you realize everything is going to be okay. He taps his fingers where they rest on Lance’s temples, three times in succession over an over again: I-love-you I-love-you I-love-you.)
(Lance sighs, too, and squeezes his wrists gently, twice in a row, over an over again: I-know I-know I-know.
Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump.)
———
based on this art by @intrepid-class
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