Chapter Text
Keith had said he was fine.
He’d sat down on the couch with Lance, had put his hands in his pockets, had smiled blankly as Lance told him that it wasn’t his fault, that it was Lance, that he wasn’t happy, that he didn’t like Keith in that way anymore, that it was fun while it lasted. Keith had smiled so hard it felt like his face was permanently etched in stone, pretended his eyes weren’t watering, let Lance give him back whatever had accumulated at his apartment over the past four months, and walked out on shaky legs.
Keith was a liar.
It was not fine; it was so, so not fine. But what was he supposed to do? He couldn’t just demand that Lance not break up with him; it wasn’t a relationship unless both parties were invested. And there was no way he’d be able to ask Lance what Keith did wrong, what made him change his mind, what caused him to want out of what had seemed like a great arrangement. So he’d just… let himself get pushed out the door. Walked unsteadily to his car, sat down in the driver’s seat, and stared blankly as he wondered what had just happened.
It had been going great! Or, at least, Keith had thought so. He’d been happy - so goddamn happy. How could he not be? Lance was… Lance. He was loud and excitable and affectionate, had the stupidest sounding laugh but somehow managed to land in the best jokes when he wasn’t even trying, somehow exuded safety and got Keith to open up. He was Keith’s best friend since high school, crush since freshman year of college (let’s just say that being roommates had been a mistake - close quarters, cuddles, and Lance being... generally shameless - not that he had anything to be ashamed about - was not a good mix for Ketih’s mental health), boyfriend since four months ago. Keith had been freaking ecstatic when Lance had asked him out right after finals last year; Pidge still had the texts and voicemails he had spammed them with, citing that they were saving them for the wedding but Keith really knew that it was for blackmail. Of course, those were probably useless now.
Keith picked up his phone, turning it on, still sitting in Lance’s parking lot because there was no way he was going to be able to drive right now. It would be like ripping off the window wipers of his car and expecting to be able to drive through a thunderstorm. A suicide mission, basically.
“Pidge?” he said into the receiver, and they must have picked up on the complete misery in his voice because they didn’t make fun of the way his nose was overflowing and his throat felt slimy with flem.
“Keith?” they asked. “Where are you?”
“Can you come get me?” Keith asked, hiccuping slightly (it always happened whenever he had to cry, much to his chagrin).
“I’m getting into my car now,” they promised. “Tell me where you are. I’m worried.”
“I’m, uh, I’m in Lance’s parking lot.”
A pause.
“Did you guys have a fight?” Pidge asked. Keith could hear the sound of a door opening and closing, small feet pounding down the stairs (though everything about Pidge was small, so it wasn’t really a fair comparison), their car starting and their blinker going off as they pulled out of the parking lot.
“No,” Keith said. He sniffled, reaching up to rub some snot from his face with his shirt sleeve.
“Did something happen to him?!” Pidge demanded.
Keith tried to chuckle but it just sounded watery, like when old people drank water down into their lungs and then coughed it back up. “No,” he croaked. “I would have called 911 first.”
“Do you want to tell me?” Pidge asked, softer now. Keith had been friends with them for a long time, and they could likely tell when he was upset.
Keith shook his head, whimpering a little into his sleeve. “When you get here,” he promised.
“Okay,” Pidge agreed smoothly. “I’m like five minutes away. Hold on, okay? And then I’ll bring you to Coldstone and you can sit in the car while I go get you that ice cream you like, alright? Brownie pieces and cookie dough in cake batter. And we can watch that mothman documentary. Hang on.” Which just made Keith want to cry more, because it was such a Lance thing to say. And such a Lance thing to do.
Which was the worst part. Keith had always been too scared to ask Lance out because he was worried about messing up their group dynamic, but when Lance had asked him first he hadn’t even thought about whether or not they’d break up. He’d been too elated, too distracted by all of Lance’s shininess, about the fancy new relationship he had just entered. And Keith had never even thought of a possibility in which he’d want to break up with Lance, and since Lance had asked him out, had never entertained the possibility of Lance wanting to break it off himself. Sure, he had been expecting fights, and he knew that relationships could get messy, but he and Lance had already been such good friends before hand that he’d assumed that the two of them would simply act the same, just with more hand holding and kisses and cuddles at night.
Which made Keith the one at fault here. What person didn’t think about whether their boyfriend was going to break up with them? What signs had he missed, what talks had Lance tried to insinuate to save their relationship that Keith had somehow brushed off or ignored? Was it because he’d refused to watch the old, old version of Legally Blond with him two nights before? Was it because Lance didn’t like how clingy and physically needy Keith could sometimes get at night, when they were sleeping in the same bed and he became an octopus of a person, wrapping every arm and limb around the other boy? Keith needed answers. Not that he was going to ask for any, probably, since that would make him look needy and sad and like a liar, since he’d told Lance that he was perfectly fine with them breaking off and yes, they would still be friends, and no, there would be no hard feelings between the two of them.
Keith must have zoned out, because in no time at all Pidge was there, knocking a small freckled fist on Keith’s window. “Open up!” they mouthed through the glass, and so Keith reached for the door, clicking open the lock.
Pidge immediately opened it, grabbing his arm and tugging on it. “Come on out,” they said, sighing. Keith threw himself out of the car, collapsing on top of them. They had grown over the years, going from a gangly little teenager to a… okay, admittedly not-so-mature 5’3” gremlin, and Keith and Lance liked to make fun of their height, seven inches below Keith’s 5’10” and nine and a half below Lance’s 6’.5” (the .5 was very important, or so Lance liked to claim). Now they could fully support his weight, even when he leaned completely on them.
“My car’s right here, stupid,” they told him. “Don’t fall down on me now.”
“Be nice,” Keith mumbled into their ear. “I’m going through a breakup.”
Pidge froze. “A what?”
Keith pressed his face closer to their hair and neck. “Lance broke up with me,” he murmured, sighing. He wondered if they could feel the stickiness on his cheeks from the tears that had streamed down his face unbidden.
“I’m sorry,” Pidge said, “I don’t mean to be insensitive, but Lance broke up with you? I - I really can’t see that happening. Are you sure it wasn’t -”
“Nope,” Keith said gloomily, straightening but keeping his arms thrown over their shoulders. “We’re done, apparently.”
“Jeez,” Pidge let out a breath. “Shit, Keith, I’m really sorry.”
He laughed, unhumorous. “It’s fine.”
Pidge led him over to their car, opening the passenger seat door and depositing him gently down into his seat. When he remained unmoving, staring down at his hands in his lap, they sighed and leaned over him to buckle the seatbelt as though he was still five. It was kind of funny, if Keith could even fathom the idea of laughing, that Pidge, who could barely keep theirself alive, was taking care of him as though they were the Mom friend and not Hunk.
“Let’s go get your ice cream,” Pidge said once they were both settled. “I locked your car and put the keys in my computer bag. Do you need anything else?”
He shook his head, and they sighed, pulling out of the parking lot. “Right. I’ll get you the 12 oz one. And maybe a pint.” He could see them glancing dubiously out of the corner of their eye, and squeezed his eyes shut, leaning against the window and smushing his cheek into the cold glass.
“Hey, Keith,” Pidge said, so softly he could barely hear them over the loud clunking of their fifteen year old car (it used to belong to Matt, until he got a better one, and sold it to their for probably too little, but it wasn’t worth much anyway and Pidge and Hunk had fixed it up). “Are you alright? For real? I’m sorry - I don’t have much experience with… comforting people.”
“I’ll be fine,” Keith rasped. “I just need to… drown my feelings in ice cream and mothman documentaries first.”
Pidge didn’t sound convinced, but they made a small noise of agreement. “Do you have your lactaid pills or do you need me to get some?”
“I’ll be fine without them,” Keith said, finally sitting up and crossing his arms over his chest like a petulant teenager.
Pidge snorted. “Keith, I took you out for ice cream two year ago and you spent the rest of the night throwing up. Take your damn pills.”
“They make everything taste bad though,” Keith grumbled. “And I want my ice cream.”
“Wash your mouth out with soap after,” Pidge said. “I don’t care. You’ll thank me later.”
“Whatever,” Keith said. But he took the pill that they handed to him and swallowed it dry.
“Not yet!” Pidge yelped. “I haven’t even gotten the ice cream yet.”
“That way the taste will be gone,” Keith said. “And we’re here anyway.” He pointed; Coldstone Creamery had appeared a few buildings over, industrial with one of the light bulbs burned out so that it cast an eerie shadow on the rest of the sign.
“Wait here,” Pidge said, getting out the car and tossing the keys onto the armrest, heading into the building after slamming the driver’s seat door. He saw them head up to the counter, the worker inside getting the ice cream and smashing up the ingredients inside, putting it into a huge cup. Coldstone servings were really excessively big, not that Keith was complaining. He saw Pidge also get a smaller cup of what looked like vanilla something else (if he had to guess it was probably Reece’s and peanut butter) before paying and heading back out.
“Here’s your ice cream, heathen,” they said, holding it out. Keith took it eagerly, taking the spoon out from where the employee had stabbed it and licking it eagerly. “I can’t believe you eat that. You have a crazy sweet tooth.”
Keith grinned at them, ice cream smeared in his teeth. They made a gagging sound, turning away. “Gross. Keep it in your mouth.”
God, that was such a Lance thing to say. It was obvious that the three of them, Keith, Pidge, Lance (and Hunk, but he came along a year after they had first met because he’d been in another school that had closed down) had been friends for years. Which made Keith’s stomach churn, because Lance and he were “still friends,” apparently. Which meant there was no excuse to miss out on the big dinners that they three of them always had on Mondays, and it meant that Keith still had to go to Hunk’s house this Thursday and hang out with them and pretend that he was fine and that he wasn’t grieving and going through a Lance withdrawal. Because he and Lance would text constantly, FaceTime every night if they didn’t stay over at each other’s apartments, call each other during their lunch breaks.
Keith probably wasn’t ever going to see him again.
Or, he would, but only when Hunk or Pidge were there. And it would be stilted, awkward, like when they first met and Lance was convinced that Keith was aloof and stuck up and wanted nothing to do with him (which was just - so wrong. Keith wanted everything to do with Lance). And Keith would just have to stick to being sad and lonely and an outsider.
Neither of them said anything as Keith followed Pidge up the stairs to their apartment, still spooning large mouthfuls of ice cream into his mouth as they opened their door and led the way inside.
Pidge disappeared into their room, and Keith could hear the thud of something hitting their floor (hopefully their neighbors downstairs weren’t home). He walked over to the couch, plopping down and leaned back, staring up at his ceiling. He placed his ice cream on the table next to the armrest, groaned and buried his face in his hands.
He could hear Pidge moving around, and then the door to their room opening and their footsteps on the carpet as they came over to Keith.
“Hey,” they said, “you good?”
“Fine,” Keith mumbled.
They sighed. “C’mere,” they said, adding, “I don’t do this for just anyone, so you better feel special, Kogane,” and then wrapped him up in their arms, letting him fall back to sprawl across the couch in his boots.
Pidge was small but still solid, a good wall for Keith to bury his face into, a soft old t-shirt for him to soak with his tears. “It’ll be okay,” they murmured, rubbing his back in small circles and cradling him in his arms.
And so Keith cried and cried and cried and his ice cream half-melted on the side table and Pidge sat there, legs probably going numb, just holding him.
-
The next day, Keith felt oddly slimy. His cheeks were sticky and he raised himself from the couch, body protesting, slightly lightheaded. He walked into the kitchen, snatching a dirty mug from the sink and pouring tap water into it before chugging it down.
The clock on the counter said that it was 10:56 am, which meant Pidge was at their job because it was a Thursday. Keith was so lucky that he didn’t need to go in today; his coworkers loved asking about Lance, and he really didn’t want to deal with that at all.
Instead, he took a shower to try and wash away some of the sliminess, and collapsed back on the couch, this time with a soft blanket he stole from his bed. Using Pidge’s Netflix, he pulled up his favorite cryptid documentary and sighed, curling up into a little ball underneath the heavy fabric.
As the narrator droned on and on about the creepy sightings of dark humanoid figures and creatures swooping in and attacking people, Keith rolled over onto his back, closing his eyes.
He didn’t know whether he should contact Lance or not. He’d never really dated anyone besides Lance seriously, and wasn’t sure of the correct etiquette to call your ex who had also just dumped you but said that you were still friends. Maybe he should just text him?
But Keith wasn’t really sure what he would say, anyway. “Why did you leave me? What made me not good enough for you?” That just sounded sad and desperate and Keith didn’t want Lance to know that he wasn’t fine, because that would be going back on what he’d already said and he liked to keep his word. He was fine, and he would keep that promise, and he would support whatever Lance decided to do, whether it be jump into another relationship or come back to Keith.
In the end, it was decided for him. An hour into the first season of the Office, Keith got a phone call from Lance himself.
“Hey, man,” was the first thing Lance said to him, and Keith had to stop himself from swooning or fainting because of the rush of blood from his brain to his face.
“Hi,” Keith croaked. He coughed, clearing his throat, and then repeated, “Hi, Lance.”
“You okay?” Lance asked. “You sound sick.”
Keith laughed nervously. “Yeah. I lost my voice, uh, yesterday. Got a cough.”
“Right,” Lance said doubtfully. “Sure. Um, anyway, I just wanted to make sure you were okay? Your car is still here. I thought you might have been kidnapped, or something. I was a little worried.”
Keith felt kind of like crying right then and there. Their friendship in the past few years had always been cheerful, happy, open. Keith was getting freaking whiplash from how fast their dynamic had changed, how it had gone from sweet and affectionate and soft to this , jagged and sharp, like he’d taken a fist to a mirror and then walked all over the shards with no shoes.
“No, yeah, it’s fine,” Keith mumbled, “I called Pidge and… got them to pick me up.”
An awkward pause, only broken up by their breathing.
“Well,” Lance said, “good talk.”
Keith straight up snorted, like a pig, and then rushed to spit out, “Hey, wait! Um…”
“Yeah?” Lance asked.
“You wanna go hang out or something? I haven’t eaten yet today,” Keith blurted, and then immediately wanted to facepalm and dig himself a hole to bury himself into. Oh, God. What was he thinking? Lance had just broken up with him, probably because he didn’t want to hang out with him anymore, especially not one on one at some diner or fast food place. “Just as friends,” he said quickly, trying to clarify and not scare Lance off, but he doubted he was succeeding.
He held his breath as Lance said nothing, fidgeting under his blanket, picking at the skin peeling off of his fingers.
“Sure,” Lance said. “Want me to drive my car over, and then you can pick up your’s after? I’ll drive you back to my place.”
“Okay,” Keith said, relieved. He was going to hang out with Lance! Maybe now he could get some answers, or at least get an idea on this new, awkward situation he’d thrown himself into. It couldn’t go too badly, right? The worst case scenario would be that Lance wouldn’t want to hang out with him ever again and tell Keith that he hated him. Which, admittedly would be… It would be really freaking terrible, but Keith also should have known that this was a possibility when he’d first agreed to go out with Lance. Now he was just facing the consequences of his actions, and he shouldn’t act like a surprised pikachu (one of Lance’s favorite memes) when it wasn’t going how he wanted. “You wanna go to… Dolton’s?”
“Yeah, sounds good,” Lance said absentmindedly. “I’ll be there in like twenty minutes. See you.”
“See you,” Keith said softly, grinning down at his lap.
Lance’s car was blue (of course) and older, one of the models from before automatic driving had gotten popular. He got it for a really cheap price a couple of years before since no one else wanted a manual, and had almost crashed it probably fifteen times. It was dented and dirty on the inside, and the trunk was stained by some mysterious green liquid from its previous owner, but Lance refused to get rid of it no matter how unsafe it was or how many times Hunk, Pidge and Keith had tried to find him a better one. He called her Blue and stated that she was his lady and that he would never pass her up for a better car until she could no longer work, which Keith feared would be sooner and sooner each day because Blue’s engine sounded like someone hacking up their lungs along with their stomach.
The car was tense and silent as Keith got in. Lance didn’t have the radio on, for some reason, and the air conditioning was off as well, though that wasn’t surprising considering Blue would probably kneel over and die if she had to do anything more than driving.
They arrived at Dolton’s in a little under six minutes, and Keith spent the entire car ride staring blankly at the clock and sneaking little peaks of Lance’s profile. His face was set, jaw tense, and he looked angry, his eyes focused on the road.
Dolton’s was a little hole in the wall of a restaurant, discovered by Hunk (of course), that served really good, thick crust pizza. Keith was always more of a thin crust guy, but for Lance he was willing to eat the extra bread. Thick crust had grown on him (just like Lance had). Lance went up to the counter and ordered for both of them, as usual, and Keith headed into the back of the little restaurant to find them a table.
The floors and the walls of Dolton’s were covered in rusty-red tiles, with cream wallpaper after waist height. The lighting was poor and yellow, making the whole scene seem a little old and broken down, but Dalton’s had the best pizza in all of Arus, as long as you ordered the right thing (Their Hawaiian and pepperoni was somehow amazing, but don’t you dare order cheese or vegetable because they somehow managed to mess that up every time). Keith chose a booth in the back corner, under a half burned out light, and signed, sitting down and leaning on his hand. He turned to watch Lance, who was grinning and talking to the man at the counter, who just looked tired and bored and not too happy to be there. Lance put both hands down on the counter and propped himself up, laughing at something the man said. Keith felt a small stab of jealousy, but crushed it down, biting his tongue because - god, Lance wouldn’t even look at him on the car ride there, and now he was laughing and talking to some random person, when Keith was right there and had literally known him for, like, half of his life ? But it was fine! It was fine. Whatever.
Lance pulled his wallet out of his pocket and pulled out a twenty, handing it to the man and continuing to talk, because Lance McClain was the type of person who physically couldn’t not hold a conversation with someone. It was one of the things Keith liked the best about him; even when they were both tired, Lance somehow found a topic for conversation and Keith was happy to listen to whatever Lance wanted to say, even if it was the same story five times in a row or a bunch of information that didn’t mean anything to either of them. Keith just liked Lance’s voice. A lot.
Lance thanked the man, leaning over the counter to shake hands with him and grab his change, and then turned toward the back of the little shop towards Keith. He was grinning, happier than Keith had seen him all day, crooked smile fastened on his face and his eyes adorably squinty. Keith turned and coughed into his arm, half trying to hide his resulting smile, half trying to get rid of the weird tickling feeling that had spawned in his throat.
Lance made to sit beside Keith, and then seemed to realize what he was doing and instead plopped down in the booth across from him, effectively eliminating Keith’s giggles and making a sour note simmer in his stomach. Right. Ex-boyfriends now. Keith needed to get a grip.
“I got you pepperoni,” he said, “that cool?” He passed Keith a cup of ice water, and took a quick sip of one of his own.
“Yeah,” Keith said.
Lance leaned back in the booth, the cracked plush distorting awkwardly behind his back. He tilted his head back, eyes closed, and sighed loudly through his nose. Keith tried to think of something to say, something to make Lance more comfortable with him without sticking his entire foot in his mouth, but it was proving difficult. Why wasn’t Lance saying anything? Lance usually started their conversations; it was just how they worked. Keith usually fell into easy conversation with him, just following whatever topic Lance picked and saying the appropriate things at the right times to make him laugh and toss an arm around his shoulder, drawing him into his side.
Keith wasn’t sure if Lance could tell how uncomfortable he was, but he came to the rescue, asking Keith, “Did you hear that Hunk asked out Shay?”
Keith had heard this story before, from Lance, maybe a few days ago, but no way was he going to look this gift horse in the mouth and say so. “No,” he replied instead, “what happened?”
Lance grinned and propped his elbows on the table, beaming at Keith, and he could feel his chest tightening at the brightness in his smile and the cheerfulness on his face. (Why did he look so happy when they’d just broken up? Was Keith really bringing him down that much?) “Well,” Lance said, grinning, “technically Shay asked him out, thank God, because to be honest I thought that they would never get together. Hunk’s great but he does not know how to ask out people.”
Keith snorted. “Oh, and you do? How many people have turned you down because of your terrible pickup lines?”
“Hey!” Lance objected. “I have had plenty of people want to date me, and my pickup lines are great . You like them, you can’t lie to me! I can see it in your face, you liar!”
“They’re terrible,” Keith said flatly (and they were! And okay, so maybe Keith thought that they were a little adorable and maybe it was just a part of Lance’s charm, but that didn’t mean that they were good . They were more like pugs; so terribly ugly that they were cute).
Lance pointed at him. “You’re going to regret that, Kogane! My pickup lines are the best of the best - I could pick up anyone I wanted with them. Just you wait! I’ll show you!”
“I doubt it’ll be the pickup lines that’ll make people want to date you,” Keith said easily, grinning at him. And then immediately proceeded to choke on his own words, coughing. Jeez, how desperate did he want to look? He didn’t need to tell Lance to figure out how overwhelmingly gone Keith was; they’d just broken up, for quiznak’s sake. He coughed awkwardly, bringing a fist up to his mouth and looked at Lance with pleading eyes. Please forget I said that , he begged, trying to send Lance some sort of telepathic message in order to relieve himself from embarrassment.
Luckily for Keith, Lance ignored the slip up; instead, he leaned across the table to wack at his back a few times, and Keith pretended he didn’t notice himself leaning into the affection. “I meant that, uh, nobody would want to.. Date you. Yeah.”
Lance snorted. “Sure. Says you.”
… that was fair. Because as much as Keith liked to make fun of Lance and his terrible flirting and honest to god heinous pickup lines, Keith was also the idiot who’d been in love with him for what, three years? Maybe longer? Keith didn’t even bother to keep track anymore; it was such an integral part of him he’d given up on assuming that it would eventually go away like the majority of his crushes had. And while that had been all fine and dandy when he and Lance had been dating, but now he just had to… crush it. Ha. And Lance’s dump flirting wasn’t helping, because, contrary to how he acted, Keith maybe sort of a little bit enjoyed Lance’s stupid pickup lines, even if they wouldn’t ever work on anybody else. He figured it was less of “Oh wow, those pickup lines actually aren’t to bad” (because they were bad. Oh god, they were so bad) and more of a “I’m so freaking in love with you that you could probably set the world on fire and I’d think it was adorable”. If Keith had really been bothered by Lance’s flirting, he wouldn’t have dated him in the first place.
Luckily, Keith was saved by the same bored worker coming over, holding two large pizzas in his hands. A true angel in disguise; if Keith was even somewhat more religious he might have gotten on hands and knees to praise right there in the middle of the store. The worker set one pizza down in front of Lance, and the other in front of Keith, and then brought over two ceramic plates and a large stack of napkins. “Enjoy,” he said flatly.
“Thanks!” Lance said, grinning at him. The worker left, and Keith saw a weird brown stain on the back of his red t-shirt, but decided against saying anything because honestly retail workers needed all the relaxation they could get. Keith would know; he had worked as a waiter at some random restaurant for a few years during college.
The pizza was hot, and both Keith and Lance spent a good amount of time avoiding conversation by cutting themselves a slice and blowing on it. Lance dabbed at his pizza with his napkin (something about the grease not being good for his pores. Keith had told him that if he was really worried about his skin, he should just stop eating pizza, but Lance had punched him playfully in the arm and continued to smother his slice in napkins, so he’d given up). Keith took a bite before it was fully cooled and nearly spat it back out, but managed to force himself to swallow before chugging some ice water to eliminate the burning. Lance laughed, and Keith decided that he should burn himself everytime he went out with Lance if only to hear that happen again.
“So do you have any plans this weekend?” Lance asked Keith.
He shrugged. “Probably going to do something with Pidge. We heard about something online with an alien sighting an hour away from here and thought it might be cool to check it out,” he lied. He was probably going to lie in his bed and cry the weekend away with the leftover ice cream from Pidge’s visit instead.
“Oh, cool!” Lance said, grinning at him. “Do you… do you guys think I could come too? I haven’t seen Pidge in a while.”
“Uh,” Keith said, panicking slightly because he didn’t actually have any plans with Pidge that evening; he just didn’t want to seem like a loser who was so hung up on his ex that he didn’t do anything but wallow over the weekend. “I can ask them.”
“Thanks,” Lance said, taking a bite of his now cool enough to eat pizza, chewing with a thoughtful look on his face. Keith bit his tongue in order to not do something stupid, like tell Lance that he wanted kiss that frown away because his concentrated faces were always way hotter than Keith allowed himself to admit.
“No problem,” Keith said finally.
They ate in silence for a bit, and Keith tried to not stare too obviously at Lance, who was being much more quiet than usual.
“So, are we cool?” Lance asked suddenly.
Keith jumped, panicking for a second thinking that Lance had caught him staring, and coughed. “Uh, what?”
“Like, no big deal that we broke up?” Lance asked. “We’re still friends? Not going to stop hanging out?”
“Um, yeah,” Keith said, swallowing. He tried to hide his grimace, but Keith had very expressive eyebrows (or at least, he had been told), and likely wasn’t succeeding. “I’m still going to want to be friends with you, dumbass. It’s going to take a lot more than breaking up to change that.”
Lance seemed relieved, and Keith couldn’t help the selfish happiness he felt that Lance still wanted to be around him, even if it wasn’t in the romantic way. He reached across the table and took a piece of Lance’s pizza, while he squawked and complained but didn’t actually do anything to stop it from happening. Instead, he took the crusts from Keith’s plate and ate them, jokingly scolding Keith about how childish and wasteful it was to not eat the ends. Keith relaxed into the conversation, sending back quips when needed, just grinning at Lance with a (probably dopey) smile that hopefully didn’t convey how badly Keith was pining after him.
By the time the two of them had finished their pizzas, Keith was feeling a little sick. Lance commented on it, asking him why he was a little green, and Keith offered that maybe he’d eaten a little too much pizza, even though the two of them had gotten smalls and Keith had definitely eaten more than that before. Lance seemed to accept this, and dropped Keith back at his car, telling him to text him when he got home so that he could be sure that he hadn’t fainted or fallen asleep at the wheel and coasted off the side of the road.
Lance disappeared up into his apartment, and Keith collapsed back into his car, coughing slightly. The fluttering feeling he’d gotten in his throat had grown, like a bird had started clawing its way up from its stomach, flapping its wings against his esophagus and tickling him with its feathers. He leaned over the steering wheel, hacking up a storm. He could feel his stomach churning, waves of nausea rushing up and over him, the pizza sitting uncomfortably in his stomach. He hadn’t felt like throwing up this badly since two years ago, when Shiro had dared him to eat chicken nuggets and a milkshake and then run three miles at six thirty pace.
He could feel the pizza coming back up his throat, and he swallowed, wincing, not wanting to vomit all over the front of his car. Breathing deeply, he managed to push it back down and pull out of the driveway, now wanting Lance to look out the window and see him regurgitating pizza everywhere. His stomach protested at the bumps in the road, sending up waves of nausea that made him want to hunch over. By the time he’d gotten home, he was swallowing around the bile in his mouth, struggling to keep it in.
His toilet was a welcome addition, and he sat in front of it, letting the warm and chunky liquid pour out of his mouth. It was a waste of money, throwing up all of the pizza he’d just paid for, but it was still a better option than trying to reign it in. After a while, he began to dry heave, just staying over the toilet as he hacked and coughed. He could feel something stuck in his throat, and his saliva had been coming out red for a little bit, and it was getting harder and harder to breath, like something was blocking his airways.
Thank God he was home now. Keith would probably die of mortification if Lance had seen him like this, sickly and pale, curled around a toilet vomiting his brains up. Just the thought of Lance sent him into another fit of coughing, and he could feel tears rolling down his cheeks. Something large and soft started coming up his throat - it felt much different from anything else.
And then a large puddle of blood was falling into his toilet, along with a cluster of flowers.
Keith almost shouted in shock, which caused another fit of coughing and more flowers to come out. He had to reach up and help pull some out that got stuck on his teeth and his hands came away flecked with blood. Flowers? Whole, cartoon-like, life-sized flowers? Keith had never eaten flowers, let alone swallowed them whole. There was no way that there were flowers in his stomach.
Except -
Unless -
“Fuck!” Keith choked out, sharply yanking out another flower from his throat and wincing when he felt its stem slice something in the back of his mouth. The warm, metallic taste of his own blood made him grimace, and he leaned over to spit into the toilet, glancing up at the sink and debating whether or not it would be worth it to get up off his knees and rinse out his mouth with tap water. When another coughing fit hit him, he decided against it, just kept pulling flower after flower from his mouth, until there were enough sitting in and around his toilet to make a whole bouquet.
Finally it stopped, and he relaxed back onto the balls of his feet, breathing heavily. His ears were ringing, a long, singular beep permeating his hearing, and his vision felt slightly blurry. He could still make out the flowers, though, their pale purple petals fully extended like he’d picked them in peak season, leaves and stems ripped from his rough handling. They seemed innocent, like the type that preschoolers would draw in fields, little daisies with their white leaves and yellow middles, except that these were purple, like the water from the toilet, and the blood he’d coughed up with them had stained the soft material.
Keith waited for another few minutes, wanting to be sure that the episode was well and truly over. He didn’t want to stand up and get back to his bed only to need to rush back to the bathroom. He flushed the toilet after plucking all the flowers out and dumping them into a plastic bag, which he abandoned in the tub, too exhausted to deal with them at the time. He took his trash can with him to his bed, plopping it next to it while he collapsed down onto the soft sheets and blankets, the red plaid a Christmas gift from Pidge a few years ago. He felt gross but couldn’t be bothered to wash himself up aside from wiping his face off with some toilet paper, because…
Because he’d heard things. Everyone had. It wasn’t new news; people mostly just chose to ignore it, decided that it wasn’t real or that they didn’t think it would ever happen to them, that it was some far-off disease, like when history teachers talked about the black plague; maybe it existed, but it didn’t affect them anymore.
Keith raised his head lazily to look for his phone, and found it lying on the floor at the foot of his bed. He slowly dragged himself across his comforter in order to grab it, just managing to reach far enough to grasp it with the tips of his fingers. He pulled up Yahoo, peering with a frown at it, and typed in, throwing up flowers disease.
Hanahaki, it read back, a relatively unknown and rare disease in which a person suffering from unrequited love grows flowers in their stomach and lungs and proceeds to cough them up until their body parts are completely taken over by the blooms. The types of flowers tend to represent the victim’s object of affection, and can be unique to each person. There are only two known cures at the moment: either having the victim’s love return their feelings, or get a surgery removing the flowers from the body. This comes at a price, however; many times surgeons cannot find the entire flower, as its roots dig into the person’s body parts, and if they do manage to extract it successfully, the victim will lose all memories of the person they love.
“Well, fuck,” Keith said, cringing at how rough and raw his voice sounded. He clicked around, trying in vain to find more information about Hanahaki, but gave up after a few minutes and called Pidge.
“Hey, Kogane,” they said as they picked up. “You alright? I am asking Hunk to make something good for dinner; I can bring you some, if you would like. Is everything okay with the whole Lance situation?”
“Maybe,” Keith croaked.
“Jeez,” Pidge said. “Your voice sounds shot. Just how much crying did you do last night?”
“Not that much!” Keith objected, but his voice cracked in the middle of his offended objection and made it sound like a lie. “I just - Pidge, do you know anything about Hanahaki?”
Pidge took in a sharp breath. “ Keith,” they said, stressing the syllables of his name, “you - tell me you - do you - are you - ?”
Keith ignored their rambling, pressing on. “It’s when you start throwing up flowers, right? Because you - your love isn’t. It isn’t requited.”
“I’m going to kill Lance,” Pidge hissed.
“It’s not his fault!” Keith yelped. “It’s not like he can force himself into liking me, Pidge. And it’s fine; I’ll be fine. It’ll probably go away and it’ll be all cool again and nothing will happen of it. I was just wondering if you had any information on it, or something.”
“I’m still going to kill him,” Pidge swore. “You don’t know the full story, Keith, and I swear to god - I’m going over there right now. I’ll chew him out for you, don’t worry.”
“ Pidge! ” Keith snapped into the phone. “You aren’t telling him a thing about this, you got it? Not one word, or I’ll end you. I really, really don’t want him to know about this, alright? Please, please don’t tell him.”
Silence on Pidge’s end, and then, finally, “Fine,” they decide. “But, Keith - you were in love with him for so long before you two got together, and you were so happy - I’m sorry, but there’s no way you’re getting over him. I think it’s written into your DNA: must be constantly in love with Lance McClain, or whatever. Please consider at least - at least telling him.”
“No way, Pidge, he just broke up with me! It’s not like it’s before were started dating, and there was actually a change he might like me back. He just decided that I wasn’t good enough for him - we’re done. Forever. I’ll find a way to get over him, and if I don’t, I’ll get the surgery. But that’ll be a last resort. Don’t worry about me, Pidge; it’ll be fine.”
“Sure,” Pidge said, sounding doubtful.
“It’ll be fine,” Keith repeated, insistent.
“Okay,” Pidge agreed, but Keith could tell that they were just saying that to appease him. Still, it was better than them freaking out and going to Lance, who would probably hate Keith for still being this in love with him, being so freaking infatuated that his body was straight up betraying him .
“Hey, could you maybe identify these flowers for me?” Keith asked. “I have just them in a plastic bag next to my bed, and I don’t really know what to do with them, and I read somewhere that, uh, they are supposed to represent… who you love.”
“Yeah,” Pidge agreed. “Hey.. can I come over? I just want to make sure you are okay, since I assume you’re not going to go to a doctor?”
“It’s not that serious,” Keith assured them. “I -” he paused, remembering the blooms and their thorns pouring out of his mouth, and corrected, “I only threw up a little bit.”
“ Keith ,” Pidge said, sounding disappointed in him. “I’m coming over. Hunk made brownies last night, so I’ll bring those, too. I’ll do some research on Hanahaki for you, alright? I think I read somewhere that if you avoid the person, you’ll last longer, but - but it really depends on the person, so you’ve got to be careful Keith. Please.”
“Oh, um, about that,” Keith said, laughing nervously. “I may or may not have told Lance that we were hanging out this weekend, and then he asked to come with us?”
“ Keith .” Pidge sounded slightly murderous, but Keith for once felt safe, since he doubted they’d actually do anything if he was already dying. “I’m calling him and telling him he can’t come.”
“No!” Keith yelped. “It’s fine, Pidge. I - I want to hang out with him.”
They sound way too disapproving. “Keith, he’s literally killing you - well, not on purpose, but it is his fault - and you’re still so smitten you need to hang out with him more even though it’ll be at the cost of your own health? Just - Keith. Stay home, c’mon. If you’re not going to tell him, you need to at least attempt to preserve yourself.”
“He’s my best friend, er, besides you, Pidge,” Keith argued. “I want to spend at least some time with him.”
He could practically hear their scowl over the phone. “Fine, but only because I know you will not change your mind. But here’s the deal - we can hang out with Lance, but I am sleeping over at your house every night until - until whenever. Until things get better.”
“That’s fine,” Keith agreed.
“I’m heading over now,” Pidge promised, and hung up.