There is a certain stretch of an hour and a half between the time when the sun dips over the horizon and when the last of its dancing purple glow finally dissipates into thin air, and it's not until he is looking directly at the sky and counting the constellations that are splattered across it like the most tragic smattering of freckles, that a seventeen-year-old boy feels most alone in the world.

Lance is hardly sixteen years of age when he happens across the application form for the Garrison, stacks of them hung up in neat, methodical rows in front of the counselor's office at the local high school, when he brushes his fingertips across the pages of blank lines, asking name, and age, and goals and aspirations? Lance is hardly sixteen years of age, but he has spent the last fifteen stargazing in the middle of a beach town at one in the morning, when the light from millions upon millions of miles away is forever imprinted into the dark backs of his eyelids, and he cannot even blink, now, without seeing Corvus, Cyrus, Cassiopeia flickering in and out of his view. One in the morning on a beach littered with the sharp, bright green of abandoned beer bottles and heavy with the thick scent of salt and summer and sticky with the feeling of dried spills of ice cream under his skin; when one in the morning is his favorite place in the world, Lance looks at the blank sheet of paper, asking what do you want to be? and glances back up at the sky. He runs his gaze over the invisible supernovas and the tiny pinpricks of light, smaller than the point of a needle but brighter than his own soul burns. He turns back to the paper and picks up a pen, and writes down like the stars.

Lance has just turned sixteen when he chances across the sheet of paper, but it takes a year more for him to get a letter back.

He is seventeen now, with a fresh dream in mind, and it has been months since he forgot about the paper, and forgot about the two even folds and the medically white envelope, and the government-issued stamp accompanied by the two-hour trip to the post office. It has been a year since he took seven pages of his brother's lined paper to write his application essay and over a year since he has last entertained the thought of getting chosen for such an elite opportunity.

He holds the letter opener in his hand and slides it under the opening of the new envelope, even whiter than the last, with the wax seal and monotonous logo on the front (Galaxy Garrison: Turning Young Cadets Into Astroexplorers) and relaxes at the sharp sound the paper makes as it tears apart. Pulling the letter out and scanning across it, Lance registers

Congratulations,

..have been chosen..

..cargo pilot.

Lance doesn't quite yet know what it means to be a cargo pilot, and he hasn't quite thought about how to afford the tuition, and he vaguely recalls the letter informing him of an address and a date and a - something else.

Lance doesn't quite yet know what it means to be a part of the Garrison, but it's the middle of July so the second the sun teases him with a quick darting movement towards the shifting outline of the ocean, he excuses himself from the crowded dinner table and through the back door, slipping down the line to the waterfront that he knows like the back of his hand, into the dip behind the jagged crook of a boulder and lays himself down on the sand.

It's one in the morning in the tepid summer heat, when Lance starts to laugh out loud - he laughs at the fading feel of sweat from his hairline, laughs at the lingering strokes of the dust at his ankles, laughs at the way the water pushes itself back against the shoreline, hopeful hopeful hopeful. He laughs and laughs until his eyes water with the same salt from the oceans he is made of and until the stars are reflected in the tears. He presses his shoulders against the cool rock behind him, swirls his fingertips around in the sand below him, and tries to memorize the feel of the earth against his skin. He looks to the dark waves, and back up to the lightening sky,

and laughs.

There is a certain stretch of ten minutes between when Lance exits the car and when he pushes open the heavy double doors to the Garrison's main building, as bulky and imposing as the night sky in a city too bright to locate the stars. In the six hundred seconds it takes Lance to realize what's happening, the map of the sky has begun to fade from his eyes, and it drains every bit of energy he has to not keel over in the middle of the entrance hall in a state of panicked hyperventilation.

Because here, Lance is in the middle of the desert, and here, there is no faded skyline of the city, a hundred miles away. There are no trees to be seen anywhere nearby, and he doesn't even recall seeing a tree for the last forty-five minutes of the drive here. There is nothing to mask the curving dome of the sky above him, threatening to close up around him and swallow him whole, and Lance wonders whether it's possible to feel afraid of both small and big spaces at the same time.

Every now and then, there is the occasional fleeting second, between when the sky fades in from a brilliant cerulean into its dismal, truthful black, and if Lance finds his way to the roof of the building fast enough - if he manages to catch the hallway with the right fire exit when the guards aren't looking, if he can pull himself up to the scorched aluminum tiles without flinching for too long - then he can watch the sky turn the exact color of the ocean, of the waves, of home. It's strange, he wonders, how he looked at the stars back in the water, and he searches for the water in the stars. His two worlds, his two homes, but he can never be a part of both of them at once.

The two shades of blue would be synonymous if it weren't that Lance knew that they weren't. No matter how hard he tries, tries to concentrate on nothing but the fading, fading, fading streaks of light behind the empty horizon, no matter how hard he squeezes his eyes and searches, desperately, through his memories for the thousands of images he has saved of the water, the water, summer and sun and sand and the water, no matter how hard he squeezes his fingernails into the palm of his hand, feeling only the ghost of the swirling sand beneath his skin, no matter. He can't have the best of both worlds, because to be a part of the water when he has given himself to the stars, is impossible.

When one in the morning is your favorite time in the world, there is a reason for it. Lance loves it because at one in the morning, the world seems to open up above him, pulling him in and pushing him out at the same time. Everything is alive, breathing in sync with his own lungs. At one in the morning, the wind and the sky and the air are an orchestra, and Lance clenches the conductor's baton too tightly in his fingers.

When one in the morning is your favorite place in the world, it's because time suddenly loses all meaning. Lance can spend the night on the rooftop, having black holes painted onto the inside of his skin and nebulas tattooed across his bones. He is invincible, immortal, inseparable from stardust. Lance can bend the physics of space and time under his fingertips, and no one there can stop him. He spends weeks on end with shadows under his eyes and a trembling hand at the wheel of the simulations, but it's okay, it's okay, because Lance breathes in the bruises and exhales starlight, and suddenly, he is energy.

The thing about one in the morning, however, is that when it's your favorite time to exist, you'll find that you're not entirely alone.

It's hotter than usual today, and nearing the same midsummer season that would yield a caramel-coffee tan back home in Cuba, and the smell of coconut sunscreen would be permanently burned into his skin. Lance can hear the laughing of the children as they run around on the beach, he can see the sparks from the little fireworks he would help the younger kids set off on the sand - yellow/goldwhite against the pitch-black sky, and he opens his eyes to see them here, now, but ever-still and omnipresent. Not for the first time, Lance wonders how he ended up here; not for the first time, he wonders why he hasn't left.

"How long have you been sitting there?"

The voice comes out of nowhere, kind of harmonic in the way they draw out the long, tired and expectant in the flow of it, and also a little familiar in the way that one recognizes an announcer on the radio. It's the vocal equivalent to someone jumping out to scare him from behind a corner, except there is no element of frenzy and desperation; rather, Lance suspects that they've been sitting there behind him, possibly doing the very same thing he's been doing, and only just noticed he was there.

He turns around slowly, and it takes more than a moment for his eyes to stop scanning the darkness in confusion and to focus on a figure sitting cross-legged maybe ten feet away from him. They're clad in a black jacket and dark jeans - two items of clothing that are prohibited, as of the dress code - and their face is almost completely covered by a mess of long, black hair. No wonder Lance didn't know anyone else was here - in addition to them being quiet as fuck, they've also almost completely camouflaged themselves into the pitch-blackness of the roof.

He can count the number of heartbeats in between the time the question was asked and when he realizes that he's actually supposed to answer. But he can't answer that. He doesn't really know. "I don't know," he finds himself saying. "What day is it again?"

It earns himself a sharp laugh from the other, too choked and too honest for it to be a real laugh, sounding like they pushed it out of their own lungs. But Lance appreciates the effort, because it means that they're either trying to humor him, or they agree with him. And god, Lance doesn't know what to do if it's the second.

There's a rustling noise as the denim drags against the metal flooring, and Lance feels the tiles shift and squeak under the rubber soles of shoes and they sit themselves down next to him. Close up, Lance can draw his eyes across their features, takes in the sharp jaw and the set of their chin, the way that their brows are furrowed in defiance, anger, and blankness at the same time. All at once, Lance realizes that he knows this boy, can recognize his voice because he's heard it through the cacophony of sounds in the mess hall, he's heard this boy arguing with the guards and commanders through three rooms' worth of walls. It's the kind of thing where you can't hear a word without immediately associating it with another - like the ocean and the sky, apparently, or Lance and a fucked-up overwhelming feeling of inadequacy. Lance knows this boy, has seen him in the halls enough to know him just by the curve of his lips and the aggressive slouch to his shoulders, and enough to feel the angry, red red red emanating from him like the smell of the churro stands at the summer fairs back home. He looks like heat and sugar, fills Lance's mouth with the sharp tang of cinnamon gum and the coppery taste of blood. Something bubbles up inside his chest, a baking soda-vinegar volcano of blistering summer sun, and it burns his esophagus on the way up his throat.

"My name is Lance," he says, and immediately regrets it in the way that his throat suddenly feels like it's filled up with sand and and his voice is hoarse like he hasn't spoken in hours - which he hasn't. It's not good, not good, but he swallows, softens himself down, and sticks out his hand, clammy in the humid heat but cold from being clenched tightly into a fist for so long.

There's an amused look that flits across the other boy's face, confusion, maybe irritation, but not true humor. He sticks his hand out too, and murmurs "Keith," into the warm night air. There's something in his tone that strikes a match of recognition in Lance's brain, but it's annoyingly out of reach. Keith's fingers are warmer than his own, rough and calloused and somehow rougher around the knuckles, like some kind of backwards blister. His eyes look violet in the dim lights from the building around them, and Lance thinks, no, that can't be right, because people can't have purple eyes. They're the kind of soft, muted, angry color that Lance revels in, they blister him around the edges as much as any meteor shower, like the kind of scalding hot shower he hasn't been able to enjoy in forever. They look like the lava lamps that Lance's sister collects in her room, bright and bubbly and liquid fluorescence, lucent against the shadows under Keith's eyes, a fucked-up juxtaposition of the most beautiful sort.

Lance hopes that Keith can't feel the blood that's welled up through his palms, pressed into the skin in fingernail crescents, but if he does, he doesn't mention it, only pulls his hand away with a fleeting touch to Lance's fingertips, before turning his body around as if Lance isn't there at all.

It's not usually anything like this that leaves Lance's heart pounding, but his chest squeezes like it does whenever he looks at the photos of his family that he's brought with him, like whenever he manages to convince Hunk to travel the four hours with him to the nearest lake, like when Lance can make it five whole steps into the water before the tears make their way down his face. The sky looks cosmic tonight, brilliantly molded into shapes and sounds that make Lance's heart ache.

Sometimes, one in the morning is your favorite place in the world because it reminds you of yourself, in the smooth sky and the compressing heartache and the tears that are being pressed out from under your eyelids. And sometimes, one in the morning is your favorite place because it reminds you of the color of amethyst stones and the feeling of sliding into a hot bath on an even hotter day, and when you look away, you feel even emptier than you did before.

our conversations are written into

your skin

and i can see everything you said

dancing fluidly across your lips

and everything i didn't

frozen still on mine

Oh God, Lance thinks, squeezing his eyes shut longingly against the harsh morning sun, too white, too bright, too piercing for his dark-fueled eyes to use as any sort of feasible light source. His head throbs and his skin crawls, and it's the first time in months that he's starting to feel the effect of awakeness like this.

When one in the morning leaves him feeling the psychological equivalent to downing six mugs of pure caffeine during finals week, ten o'clock should not draw the immediately opposite reaction from his brain.

But it does.

"Fuck," he whispers to Hunk, who is sitting across the cafeteria table from him in all of his bright-eyed, cheerful yellow morning glory. He doesn't seem to be sporting a headache the size of the moon itself, and instead sits there in silent pity, at least polite enough to not point out in the middle of a crowded room at a military school that Lance looks very, very, hungover. But the twisted, backwards, mess of it all, is that he isn't, not even a little.

It's just,

he's so tired.

"You have a free period between one and two-thirty, right?" Hunk prods apologetically at the congealed gray mass on his tray, spoon sucking itself into the gelatinous mess and, to both of their neverending horror, remaining stuck with a certain kind of resistance that most brands of superglue would be jealous of. "You should take a nap. You look like shit."

Lance groans even harder at that. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he can see black spots behind his eyes when he blinks. Are his eyelashes supposed to leave neon trails of light behind them like that? Whenever they move? He has a sneaking suspicion that the answer is no. He drops his head onto the table and buries in his arms. His voice is muffled when he says, "how did I end up like this?"

"You know," Hunk chimes in helpfully. "I heard that the longest a person has gone without sleep for was like two hundred and sixty-four hours. Intentionally." He gives Lance a once-over out of the corner of his eye. "You don't stand a chance, man. Hey," he adds, lowering his voice, "what do you even do all night, anyway? You weren't in your room when I stopped by last night."

How is he supposed to answer that? Oh, it's nothing much, I just sneak onto the roof and stare at the sky and compose unnecessarily theatrical metaphors in my head about how much I wanna go home. It's the kind of question that's both looking for an answer and trying to stay away from all cohesive thought at once. Unfortunately, the truth doesn't really roll off his tongue as much as he'd like. So Lance just shrugs, lifts the glass of water up to his mouth to avoid answering. "'Dunno," he says, and it's truthful, in a way. What does he even do?

Hunk looks at him with a strange look in his eye, patronizing and sorry at the same time. "Well," he says, standing up to put his tray away, "if you ever figure it out and wanna talk?" He gestures down the hall towards the dorms. "You know where my room is."

"I'm Cuban." The words have started to flow out of Lance's mouth more fluidly now - they don't need to be coaxed out of his throat, and are almost teetering on that dangerous edge between confident, fluent speaking, and word vomit. "My family's lived in the outskirts of Varadero for my entire life."

Keith is tracing patterns onto the roof with his fingers, hands stilling when Lance talks. He looks up at him with a strange expression on his face. "Varadero?" he asks. "Cuba?"

Lance nods, the all-too-familiar bitterness of homesickness settling down onto his chest, sonofabitch he doesn't need this, home home home, is not something he needs to think about. The bitter sourness of saltwater gags him, a phantom memory (of drowning, no less, under the midnight moon and nine years old and familiar with the water but unaware, unafraid, unsafe under the dangerous pull of the waves) and he closes his eyes and clenches his hands into fists until the sharp, telltale sting of his nails breaking skin remind him to open his eyes and breathe.

There's suddenly a hand on his back, the middle of his spine, soft and cautious and tentative. Lance doesn't expect it because Keith doesn't get touchy-feely like this. Keith doesn't move, doesn't talk, doesn't make any noise, just keeps his hand there, four inches below his shoulder blades, right behind Lance's heart. He waits, holds his breath, tries not to breathe too deeply lest Keith feels the way that he shudders in the inhales and lets out a sob on the exhale. But he's only human and his lungs give way and if Keith notices the little squeak of a whimper he lets out as he composes himself, he has the good grace to not mention it. He's still looking at him kind of strangely, and in the harsh white light of the lantern, his eyes look like liquid gallium, that one metal that melts into a silver puddle as you hold it and here, Lance feels fixated, blistering, like he's melting right now, simply from Keith's simple touch against his back.

"Do you ever miss your home?" Lance blurts out. Shit shit, the aforementioned word vomit is starting to make an appearance.

Keith's mouth drops into a startled oh, brows unfurling for just a second, a split fraction of a moment, but suddenly his face opens up like something beautiful, like a timelapse of a blooming flower, and Lance would feel so, so proud of himself for putting that expression on Keith's face if it weren't for the tension dancing across his shoulders and the way he curls his fingers up into a fist clenched tightly at his side. The flower stops blooming, shrinks in in in like soft pink petals at the first touch of a winter frost, and Lance feels his stomach drop and his throat close up and waits with baited breath for Keith to say-

"I don't have a home."

Oh, fuck.

"I don't have a family either."

There is a silence, and it feels like the first touch of metal to skin, and Lance doesn't know what to say, doesn't know how to react, because he thinks of his mom and dad and five siblings and innumerable cousins and his old, worn-in house on the side of the beach and Christmas with the smell of cinnamon thick in the air and wool sweaters scratching against skin. He thinks of hugs and home and how while he has been here, his heart aching to return, Keith has been here, his heart broken in knowing that he can't.

"I," he starts, then cuts himself off when he realizes that anything that came out of his mouth would sound indifferent and fake and he can't do that to someone who just throws around his past like that. "Sorry," he finishes lamely, and it sounds hollow in the thick of it, and Lance can feel the stars burning shameful stares into his back, because Lance has given a part of himself to both of his homes, and Keith has neither.

Keith raises an eyebrow, but remains silent, the pink curve of his upper lip settling into something in between a snarl and a smile, both equally beautiful and ugly on his face, both enough to make Lance want to take cover. "It's okay," he murmurs, and the quiet, true, genuine, apologetic quiet is so unlike Keith that it takes Lance by surprise. He smiles, gently, a flush gracing his cheeks like someone had colored them in with the broken tip of a colored pencil, too vividly pink and unreal and beautiful, sharper in some places, and only accentuated by the penciled-in outline of his cheekbone. When he moves his hand, Lance notices that the bones of his wrist have started to become more prominent; when he looks towards him, he notices that the purple bruising under his eyelids have started to resemble black eyes, instead of sleepless nights; when Keith touches his knuckles with his fingertips, Lance wonders what happened to get them all scabbed-over like that.

"Do you?" Keith asks him back, and Lance knows that it isn't a question, not really, because there's only one real answer for this and it's not the kind of thing you talk about just for kicks. But when Lance thinks about all the times he's felt happy here, he can count them on one hand, and when he thinks about the number of people who've stopped to point out his red eyes and shaking hands and the quiet sniffles he knows they can hear through the thin rooms of the dorms, he can fit them on the remaining fingers, so he looks down at the ground and pushes his tears back, burning hot like molten glass into his corneas and says,

"I've never stopped."

Keith hums, low and grounding. It sounds like he understands, which is ridiculous, but a little ludicrity isn't unwanted in Lance's life right now. Perhaps Keith can sympathize and nobody knows about it yet - he doesn't make an effort to talk to anyone except Lance and maybe the occasional wandering student that happens to run out of space during lunch in the cafeteria.

Keith fiddles with something inside the pocket of his coat; it catches the light, a bright, gleaming silver, but Lance doesn't ask what it is because Keith stuffs it back inside the moment he notices Lance glancing towards him. It's okay, because they have their secrets, all of them, and a little trinket that Keith has borrowed away from home with him isn't the biggest of Lance's problems.

"So," he says instead, because if he doesn't talk they'll sit here, silent, and something about the way Keith is when he's quiet is unnerving - he studies everything with a bright hunger and it makes Lance feel very, very small. "How old are you?"

He sees Keith crack a small smile to his right, unexpected and quiet, and he's so startled his jaw almost drops open. "Seventeen," he replies, almost unsure of it. "But you knew that."

He did. No one here is younger than seventeen or older than nineteen or so, not unless they're a senior officer, teacher, or current/retired crew member.

There's an awkward pause for a moment, in which Lance is trying to focus on the emerging silhouette of the mountains from where they stand in front of the lightening sky. It's coming close to four o'clock now, already. Time seems to fly faster on the nights Lance finds Keith up here as well.

"I'm from Korea," Keith spits out next to him. The words sound like they're falling out of his mouth, not entirely intentionally. Lance waits, and tries to push back the giant grin threatening to appear on his face. Keith is a pretty reserved guy, he knows. Getting him to talk at all is a challenge on its own. Getting him to talk about something personal? He hasn't bothered to even try to entertain that thought yet.

"It's just," Keith says. "You were talking about yourself, and it seemed like something you care about and." He pauses here, nudges a loose tile with his shoe. "I wanted to return the favor. Kind of hard, though," he adds, "because I've never been. My parents raised me here, for a while."

What happened after the while, Lance wants to ask, but something sad is settling into his stomach at Keith's words and the set of his jaw and the way he kind of slumps over into himself, and he's pretty sure he knows without having to ask.

"It's a bit of a lost cause to think about it," Keith says. "Not like I'll have a chance to go back or anything." A heartbeat passes, heavy and insistent. "Not like I really want to," he adds.

"Hey," Lance says. He wants to say something soothing, maybe a little profound or enlightening. But he can't. So he just lets his hand drift over until it rests on the curve of Keith's palm. It feels like fire against ice, stardust against water. Electricity sparks softly at the touch, setting his fingertips alight and burning. Keith is too cold, Lance burns too warm. "Thank you."

Keith pulls his knees closer to his chest and doesn't reply.

There is a tapping on Lance's door in the darkest hours of the morning, the time when he has fallen into a feather-light sleep filled with light and colors and ice and heat burning cold into his skin. The knocks are light and persistent, echoing hollowly off the aluminum alloy of the door to his dorm. It takes him a few moments to open his eyes, and a few moments more for them to adjust from the soft glow of his dreams to the unforgiving black of his room.

"Lance." His name is whispered urgently from the other side, muffled by the aluminum. It's too faint for him to make out who the voice belongs to. Lance lets out a groan, and swings his legs over the side of his bunk. The floor is cold, too cold under his bare feet. He hugs his arms to his sides through his thin cotton shirt, and tries to blink the too-rare dregs of sleep from under his eyelids as he walks over to the door.

He's barely swung the door open, straining to keep the hinges from squeaking, when a hand shoots out to grab his wrist and walks past him back into the room. A cold touch, calloused, harsh.

"Keith?" Lance murmurs, voice still hoarse with sleep. What's Keith doing here? They've never spoken before, not outside of their multiple midnight meetings. "What-what're you doing?"

Keith doesn't answer, only grabs a discarded pair of jeans from where it sits folded on top of Lance's dresser, before tossing it to him. He opens a drawer and mumbles in discontent, rummaging through the contents. He has on a red jacket today, one that Lance hasn't seen before, a weird, cropped piece of clothing with the most ridiculous collar. It makes Lance wonder things.

"Ah," Keith announces at last, pleased. He throws Lance a shirt, something soft and vaguely warm-looking. "Get dressed," he says.

Lance stands there stupidly, holding his clothes in one hand. "What's going on?"

Keith pauses in front of him, already on his way out the door. The height difference between them is a little more noticeable now - at least for Lance, from where he stands a glorious two inches above the other boy. Keith furrows his brows, and reaches up to comb a hand through Lance's hair, through where one half of it stands straight up from sleeping. The gesture makes something warm settle under Lance's skin, unfamiliar and painful, like a string wrapped around his heart. This is unfamiliar territory.

Keith goes to pull his hand away but Lance catches it by the wrist. "I.." Oh. He falters. " How did you know which room is mine?" he improvises, a little pathetically, a little too late.

Keith yanks his hand away completely, expression unreadable under the cover of darkness. "I asked Hunk," he says simply, before pushing past Lance, not in an aggressive way. His boots thud loudly on the metal.

"Oh," he adds, turning back from where he stands. "And bring a jacket."

He finds Keith sitting alone at a table in the cafeteria, room dark, lights off, hands clenched into a fist on the table in front of him. The moonlight streaming in through the window illuminates the curl of his hair around his throat. He looks small, sitting there, Lance thinks, a small defeated thing.

"Hey," Lance says, clearing his throat as he strides into the room. He leans against the wall, props his heel out in front of him, the very image of a bad boy. "What do you want?"

Keith scoffs. "No need to be rude. Besides," he adds, getting up from the table, chair squeaking obnoxiously against the floor, "I'm dragging you out of here because I think you'll enjoy it."

"Mm," Lance agrees, somewhat sarcastically. "Thanks for dragging me out of a military base at ass-o'clock in the morning." He waits for Keith to catch up to him, their footsteps falling in sync almost automatically. "I'm sure I'll have the time of my life."

Keith has to walk a little faster to keep up with him. He'd say it was endearing, but nothing about Keith is endearing, not in the slightest. He's not- endearing. He is heinosity incarnate.

(Although he isn't sure he believes that, himself)

Keith peers around the corner, even though there are rarely ever any guards in this hallway and even if there were, they'd be able to see the glow that their flashlights give off. It's worth a shot though - if the two of them are caught after hours with the lights off in a deserted corridor, the punishment won't be fun at all. "It's okay," he says after a moment, already having turned the corner and striding confidently down the hall. "It's clear."

"God," Lance says, any sense of stealth and self-preservation clearly abandoned at the get-go. "Keith, have you ever really snuck out before?"

"Hmm?" He says distractedly, passing the last two intersections altogether and heading for the wide metal doors to the building.

"Sneaking out? Have you- oh shit, Keith the security alarms!"

Lance backs up against the wall, while Keith does the opposite, kneeling down to the floor and traces the thread-thin line of red light up to a camera to their upper right. He slips a piece of glass under the doorframe, slowly and steadily, in front of the beam's path, before pushing the door open in one big swing.

Lance holds his breath and squeezes his eyes shut, waiting for the sirens to go off, lights to turn on, officers and guards to come running down the hall and for Iverson to start yelling-

Nothing.

There's nothing.

When he opens his eyes, slowly, he sees Keith's face swim into focus in the too-dark room, inches from his own and lit up in a smirk, almost wide enough to be a grin.

"Yeah," he shrugs. "I've snuck out a couple times before."

He steps outside, the warm night air sweeping into the room.

Lance tries to ignore his clammy palms and follows him out the door.

It's the kind of humid tonight that raises a sheen of sweat on the back of your neck, your upper lip, under your eyes, hugs your thin cotton shirt to your chest a little too snugly, and lets you feel the moisture in the air like a million microscopic raindrops falling from the sky. Lance is from a beach town in Cuba. He is used to the heat and the humidity and the irritating cling of static to his skin. This isn't anything unusual, other than maybe a little irritating. He's fine.

What he is not ready for, however, is for Keith to stop outside the door of the Garrison, to push his bangs back from his face, and to tie his hair up, one swift, fluid motion.

Oh.

Oh.

Maybe Lance harbors a secret death wish, deep inside his heart, because he seems to be utterly incapable of looking away, at the ground, the mountains, literally anything else. Oh.

Keith says nothing else, just shrugs with a simple "it's hot out here", and shoots a smirk in Lance's direction that doesn't do much other than imply that he understands the current situation very well. Perhaps a little too well for Lance's liking.

"Alright," Keith says, righting himself, and leading them into one of the abandoned tool sheds next to a storage garage. It smells odd in here, kind of damp and musty, but also fresh, in a way. Refreshing.

Distant.

There's a horrible scraping sound from behind where Lance stands, alone in the dark. He turns around to see the faint outline of Keith's hunched body, dragging a very large object outside.

The large object turns out to be something resembling a motorcycle, except instead of wheels, it has two large hover-mechanisms that seem all too familiar. Almost like-

"Keith," Lance asks slowly. "Does that belong to the Garrison?"

"Yeah," Keith answers flippantly. He has - oh god - a helmet clutched under one arm - oh god - and is busy twiddling with something on the handles. "Is that a problem?"

"No," Lance gets out. It's not so much that Keith stole property from a military school, but it may have to do with the bangs falling in his face and the black helmet and the black boots and the tight pants and-

Ah.

"Catch." Keith throws him the helmet, and swings a leg over the seat of the hoverbike. "You need it more than I do."

Lance stands there, holding the helmet, and can't help but feel a little insulted. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

A sharp laugh, a flash of white teeth. "Do you know how to ride a hoverbike?"

"..no."

Keith pats the spot on the seat behind him. "Hop on, then."

And so Lance does.

For the record, riding on the back of an open, moving, precariously balanced vehicle with another person isn't nearly as glamorous as the movies make it seem. Lance spends the first two minutes of the ride with his eyes squeezed shut and his hands fisted into the lapels of Keith's red jacket, hair plastered uncomfortably to his forehead by the helmet and squeezing the sides of the bike with his thighs so as to not fall off. "Dios ayudame," he mutters under his breath. "God, fuck, oh shit," as a foot slips off the grip on the side.

Keith, for his part, doesn't help all that much. Lance doesn't know what the speed limit is, in the middle of the desert, but Keith has definitely passed it. He doesn't say much, or anything at all, really. He just kind of sits, chuckles a little when Lance slips in his seat behind him and grasps frantically at his jacket, sometimes grunts when they glide over a rock or particularly hard bump.

It's entertaining, albeit a tad distracting.

Lance itches to take the helmet off, and feel the wind through his hair, and he would if maybe Keith wasn't such a reckless driver. He hasn't felt a breeze as strong as this one since mid-August on the beach, with high tide coming in at ten at night and the wind whipping the salt into his skin. His stomach is doing flips, like the roller coasters he rides with his family at the fairs every year, and maybe half of it has to do with the dangerous careening of the bike as Keith makes a sharp turn (again) but at least the other half has to do with the heat of Keith's body as Lance leans in and the little ponytail that he's tied that keeps brushing across his head and-

The bike stops, with a horrible screeching movement. Lance jolts in his seat, wraps his arms tighter around Keith's chest to keep himself from falling off as the contraption teeters suspiciously before freezing altogether.

Lance lifts the tinted visor of the helmet up and out of view; they're parked in the parking lot of what appears to be a small bar, or gas station, or something of a similar sort, a building that's kind of small and insignificant but lit up in a hopeful neon nonetheless. It smells cleaner out here, fresher. There are a few trees dotting the landscape, short and bushy. Clean oxygen, he thinks, feeling light-headed from the ride. It's nice.

"A quick pit stop," Keith informs him, taking his hand and pulling him through to the front door.

It's a bar, definitely a bar, but lit up with a soft orange instead of a murky white like most, and smelling like antiseptic gone wrong, instead of body odor and desperation. It's crowded with bodies but it all feels rather like a coffee shop than a place for hard liquor and repressed memories. It gives him the feeling that he's being watched, kind of, a muted discomfort that settles around him, makes him feel a little unfocused around the edges. He isn't sure whether he likes it or not.

Lance is only seventeen, maybe, but he has had ample time to find his way around a cityscape, perhaps the wrong ends of a cityscape, and it shouldn't hit him like a truck that he's standing here with Keith. (It doesn't, of course. It doesn't.)

Either way, it's not struggling to attract a crowd tonight, late on a Friday evening, even as isolated in the middle of nowhere as it is. The moonlight shines in like quicksilver through a window, puddles in rivers on the floor. Lance wonders what it would feel like to step on them, whether he'd sink. He wonders whether they would turn his shoes silver too.

"Follow me." Keith pulls Lance through the thrum of bodies and tables scattered haphazardly across the open floor until they reach a row of stools.

Keith gestures to a man behind the counter, who looks unremarkable enough give for the strip of sterile-looking white cloth wrapped across one eye, cleaner than the white shirt and cargo pants he's wearing.. He glances over at the two of them, takes in Keith's faux-leather outfit and split knuckles and Lance's faded jeans and tired eyes, and scowls. "Two bottles, please," Keith says, no element of hesitation whatsoever.

He gets a frown in return. "Don' be ridiculous. How old're you, kid?" the man asks, reaching for a wet glass and a rag. "You look like you'd be one of 'em students down at that military school. I'm not giving you alcohol."

Keith slides onto a stool in response. "That's the thing," he shrugs. "I go to a military school. Cut me some slack, would you?"

The man gives Keith a long look, expression unreadable. Then his eyes flicker down, to where Keith is still holding Lance's hand in his own. Lance flushes, tries to pull his fingers out of his grasp, but Keith squeezes, once, and doesn't let go.

Right. Okay then. (He can suddenly feel his palms start to get clammy).

The bartender grunts dismissively. When he leans in, Lance notices scars crisscrossing over his cheekbones, hidden under a mass of auburn beard. There are wrinkles lining the corners of his eyes. "Right," he says. "Only because my shift ends in ten and the guy taking over after me might not be so lenient. Givin' out drinks to minors and all." His gaze softens a little. "I remember that place. Stole the years of my prime out from under my nose." He reaches down and pulls out two opaque, beer-bottle shaped containers from below the counter, pushes them across the surface not completely unkindly. "Is that all?" he asks, already turning away, pretending to not have noticed them at all.

"Yeah," Keith replies with a grin. He hands a bottle to Lance, taps the necks together, and mouths cheers with a wink as he slaps down a bill onto the counter. "Thanks."

They stop at a field, maybe twenty minutes later. It's kind of colder here. Lance shivers, even though the warm material of his jacket.

Keith hops off the hoverbike, grabs the two bottles from under the seat, and gestures at Lance. "Almost there."

Apparently "there" is a little bit further into the field, grass - grass? - growing green and luscious under their feet and the gentle slope of the hill in front of them giving way to a view of a spill of white city lights. The sky opens up above them, tentative and gently curving, galaxy fingerprints pressed up against the solid black. If Lance squints, he thinks he can make out a shoreline, pressed flush up against the coast. It all feels sort of synthetic, but it also feels real, and Lance is okay with dipping his toes into the pool for a little bit.

He turns to face Keith, who's looking at him with a smile. "Well?" Keith asks.

Lance can't help the grin that spreads across his face. He lets out a whoop! of joy, head spinning giddily, feeling sort of soft around the edges. "It's wonderful." He looks closer. "Is that Mexico?"

Keith chuckles."Yeah. It's what happens when you go to school at the ass-end of Arizona."

Lance plucks a blade of grass out of the ground, twiddles with it for a moment. He isn't sure how to say thank you for this - clearly it means a lot more to both of them than just a nighttime escapade. He's getting a weird sense of vertigo from looking up, around, even given the lack of tall building or looming objects - the sky just seems really big and really, really

empty.

There's a quiet clanking of glass behind him, and a bottle is pressed carefully into his hands. Lance takes a swig without even thinking about it, and it burns his throat, acidic, fluorescent warmth going down.

It's not bad.

"What is this stuff," he asks.

"I'm not sure," Keith says, to his right. "But it gets you tipsy the fastest."

That's okay with him. He takes another sip.

"Hey," Lance says. Keith blinks.

"Yeah?"

Lance gestures in the general area of Keith's jacket. "What's that silver thing you had in your pocket?"

Keith goes still, expression like a deer caught in headlights, the breeze turning his hair up at the collar like a rose. He has a nice face, Lance thinks, even though it really isn't anything he hasn't thought, or known, before.

"What, this?" Keith asks, bringing his hand out of his jacket. A small circle of silver sits in his palm, engraved with a name and the Garrison logo, a weird, artificial reflection in the dark. "It's Shiro's."

"Wait," Lance interjects. "Like, Shiro? The youngest commanding officer to be sent on an official mission in all of history? That Shiro?"

Keith smiles. Lance likes the look of that smile on him. He doesn't like how it makes his stomach twist. "Yeah," he replies. "The Kerberos mission launched last week. He gave me his "medal of honor" - or whatever - while he's gone. So I wouldn't miss him too much." Keith falters near the end, smile dropping down into something bittersweet and tainted.

The words bring something hot bubbling up in Lance's gut, ugly and mad and-

"Are you two like, you know-" he blurts.

Keith stares at him, for one long moment, and then two-

And then bursts out laughing.

Lance blinks. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Keith says around a laugh. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes have gone watery. "He's like my brother. He took me in, for a bit, when I was fifteen, so I wouldn't have to end up in foster care." He pokes at the ground halfheartedly. "He's almost the only family I've ever known."

Oh. "Oh," says Lance, trying to ignore the way his heart butterflies at that. "Well, that's-"

"Good?" Keith suggests, a smirk growing on his face. "Nice? Helpful?"

Lance shoves him with a shoulder. "Cool," he says. "It's cool."

(It's good.)

"This tastes like bad coffee." Lance makes a face as he sips at his bottle, vision starting to grow a little colorful around the edges, the lights from the thousand buildings below them have become a little more intense. If he could feel like this all the time, it'd be worth the weird taste.

Keith simply shrugs. "Great things come at a price. Besides," he says. "What's wrong with coffee?"

Are his ears ringing? It feels a little like they are. "Nothing," he replies. "If you add enough sugar."

"You're kidding," Keith says. "I can't believe you add sugar to your coffee."

"And you don't? Coffee on its own is kind of a sad drink."

He thinks he hears Keith say something,

it sounds like "i'm a sad person"

It gets lost in the breeze.

When both the bottles are drained and dry, Lance lies himself down and looks up at the sky.

Look, it even reads like a poem.

when the lights flicker out

over our heads

when the stars come out

and they twinkle instead

until your eyes don't shine

If your hand's in mine

darling, we'll be

set for life

Nobody said it was a good poem.

Lance's shoulder is pressed up against Keith's, Lance's hand has found itself a way to intertwine his and Keith's fingers together. It's warmer this way, fuller, more promising.

"Lance?"

He doesn't think he's ever heard Keith's voice sound so small.

Maybe it's the alcohol.

He clears his throat. "Yeah?"

He can feel Keith smiling beside him. "It's almost sunrise."

What? Lance blinks, hard, rubbing the deceiving layer of incoherency out of his eyes, sees the faint blue smudges starting to grow behind the horizon. "Oh. Wow."

"Yeah."

Neither of them move a muscle for another ten minutes.

"Lance?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I kiss you?"

Really, the most endearing part of it is that he asks, forever the gentleman. Not to say that the rest of it doesn't get Lance's heart pounding against his chest, loud enough that Keith must be able to hear it, surely, must be able to hear it in his voice when he breathes out a "yes," he has never been so sure of anything before. Keith doesn't seem to mind, though, not when he leans in, their faces half an inch apart from each other. His eyes dart down to Lance's lips, and then he goes in for the kill, pushes himself off the ground and-

oh.

Keith kisses like he smiles, like he talks, like he looks at Lance as if there's nothing better to look at in the whole fucking sky above them. Everything is warm and fuzzy and soft, it feels like drops of sun and the smell of asphodel flowers and jasmine - Keith - smells like grass and coffee. The first touch of their lips sends a kaleidoscope of color bursting behind Lance's eyes; he lets them fall closed shut with a soft gasp, Keith presses forward like he's stealing the oxygen from his lungs.

They stop at some point, when Keith lets out an unexpected laugh against Lance's lips and lets his head fall onto Lance's shoulder. The world feels like it's been dipped in gold and honey, Lance feels like he's dissipating into nothingness.

"I," Keith says, mumbling against skin, "cannot believe," he raises himself up on one elbow to look at Lance, "I didn't do that sooner."

Lance blushes. Keith's eyes feel too luminous in the dark: he feels like he's being watched. "Mm," he agrees. "It was about time."

They drive back in a comfortable silence. It's all in the small things - the way Keith walks Lance back to the door of his dorm, the way the two of them stand at the doorway, uncertain whether to close the door or to say something else.

In the end, Lance leans in to press a kiss to Keith's cheek, before smiling - "Night, Keith/"Night, Lance" - and closes the door.

He throws himself onto his bed and grins.

He can't stop grinning.

They don't meet up on the roof anymore. They don't really have to. Lance meets Keith for breakfast in the mess hall most days, Keith takes Lance to dinner in the town, sometimes, when they have a free day on the weekend together. They spend the night in each others' rooms when it's a little too dark outside, and then they'll wake up and make out for a while.

The first time Keith says I love you, Lance cries.

The first time Lance says I love you, Keith kisses him up against the wall with teary eyes.

When one in the morning comes, you're certain that everything will be this way forever - like it brings a new characteristic to life, and everything will be the same when you wake up.

When one in the morning goes, you finally learn,

good things don't really last too long.

It's not even three weeks later that Lance wakes up with a nauseous feeling in his gut, something sad and heavy and twisting and desperate to get out. He runs to the bathroom, dry heaving over the toilet for a good half hour, eyes watering as he gags. His throat burns, his lungs burn, something is wrong, everything burns.

An hour later, the voice over the PA crackles to life.

In hindsight, the whole thing is not only confusing and abrupt, but also unbelievably disrespectful. The announcement is made in the same way one might announce a high school sporting event, or call a student down to a professor's office. The secretary is cool and flippant, and Lance wants to punch something, flip over a table. His hands itch, his lungs ache

"attention students"

his head hurts.

"the manned spacecraft sent to Kerberos has been classified as missing"

But Keith.

", the crash deemed due to pilot error."

Lance pushes himself up from the desk in his room, stumbles to his closet. He needs to find Keith.

"Senior officer Sam Holt, and pilots Takashi Shirogane and Matt Holt are believed to be dead."

The door swings shut behind him with a thud.

"We offer our condolences to their families."

It isn't nearly loud enough.

He finds Keith on the roof.

This shouldn't surprise him, not in the slightest, but somehow, it manages to anyway.

Keith doesn't turn around when Lance sits behind him. Keith doesn't react when Lance leans into him. Keith sits still, with his expression stony and unreadable and his fists clenched until his knuckles have gone white and stares past the rays of the afternoon sun.

He looks different at one in the afternoon than he does at midnight, Lance thinks. Before, where the shadows kind of swallow him whole, kind of blend into his bruised eyes and dark demeanor and make him look small, the daylight doesn't let him hide anymore. Lance can point out the red lines of dried tears down Keith's cheeks - but he doesn't. Lance notices Keith's shaking hands and wants nothing more than to reach out and grasp his fingers and squeeze - but he doesn't. He allows himself one glance, wonders what kind of love this boy feels, and whether Keith likes to count the stars to put himself to sleep or if he prefers to ignore them so as to stay awake.

The nighttime cloaks Keith in a sad thing, lets him hide, but the daytime strips it away, until Keith is the sad thing himself.

They sit in silence, the two of them, for what feels like hours, but the sun hasn't moved and Keith's shoulder twitches, at one point, and it probably hasn't been more than fifteen minutes, at the latest, but the silence feels like stained glass and colored light and Lance lets his eyes fall shut, warming in the red of his closed eyes against the light.

Keith doesn't do anything for a long, long time. But when Lance slides a steady arm across his shoulders, his shoulders slump and his chest heaves and he folds in on himself with a sob, broken and sharp, like broken glass clawing its way up his throat. He has a broken glass smile, Lance thinks dejectedly, at some point along the way. He's reminded of the sharp, dark shards of glass on the beach again, buried under warm sand and beach shrubbery and salt crystals.

Needless to say, Lance doesn't go to any of his classes that day. He thinks they may have been taking a test but he's stopped caring maybe too long ago.

They sit in silence until the sun sets again.

Two days later, the clock on Lance's bedside table clicks into position, "1:00" and Lance feels a sudden sense of guilt, like sinking into something warm and familiar but too hot - sending his nerves into shock.

It feels kind of acidic.

He doesn't really mind.

Déjà vu is kind of a bitch, because he lays awake for another thirty minutes, waiting, waiting, waiting, until-

Knock knock.

"Lance." His name is whispered on the other side of the door, too quiet to make out who it is, but there's really no one else it could be anyway.

His sweatpants were kicked off onto the floor hours ago, when it became too hot to function, and the floor is probably too cold for his bare feet to handle. He's left his hoodie on, though. The conflict of warm and cool relaxes him.

He doesn't notice anything much anyway.

Keith stands in the doorway, eyes bloodshot and swaying precariously on his feet. He looks to be on the verge of both throwing up and bursting into tears at the same time. "Lance, I-"

"Shit, Keith." Lance grabs his wrist, pulls him into his room, the cover of darkness and warmth and safety and comfort. He's a mess - the boy's a mess, you wouldn't need eyes to see that. Lance looks the other over, head to toe. Keith's jacket has been discarded somewhere, sometime along the way; he stands there in a black tee and his jeans but his feet bare and his hair half hanging in a curtain around his face and half pulled back into a limp knot at the base of his neck, hopeless and dejected.

Lance pulls Keith into a hug, wraps his arms around his waist, tucks the shorter boy's head under his chin and sits them down on the bed. He tried to ignore the way that Keith smells like cheap booze and stale air, and he notices how Keith burrows his face into Lance's sweatshirt, where his shoulder meets his throat and fists his hands desperately into the material. There are stains left behind on the blue fabric.

He doesn't mind.

"Shh, Keith, hey." Lance touches his hand to Keith's face, the skin cold and wet with tears. Lance feels blurry around the edges, like he's dissolving. He's always hated seeing the people he loves in pain.

Loves?

Love.

Oh.

Keith hiccups into his chest, the last of his sobs dissipating into the recycled air. " 'msorry," he mumbles, words muffled. Lance doesn't know who he's talking to.

"It's okay," Lance whispers back. He strokes Keith's hair out of his face, wants to tuck it behind his ears but that seems too intimate, too tender. He does it anyway. "You're okay, Keith. We're okay."

"Don't" Keith stumbles over his words. "Don't leave. Please."

Lance's heart cracks, crystalline fractures appearing like glass, spiderwebbing across the surface.. "Keith," he says, softly, so softly that he doesn't quite hear it himself. "I'm not-I'm not leaving. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not." He takes a deep breath. "I'm not leaving you."

There's a pause, thick and heavy in the air. There are words sitting on the tip of Lance's tongue that he wants to spit out, wants to whisper softly, tenderly. They don't make it.

Keith's next words are almost unintelligible. "I have to."

The cracks run deeper. Lance's blood runs cold. "Keith-"

Keith rights himself, wiping furiously at his red eyes with the heel of both hands. The tension in the room grows tenfold, Lance feels heavy where he sits, like gravity just increased its hold on him, sweet poison coating his tongue and throat. There's a feeling of dread settling in his gut.

"I'm sorry, sorry, sorry," Keith whispers into his hands, fingers trembling, shoulders shuddering. Lance doesn't think he's ever seen him look so small, this blinding, brilliant boy with a laugh like sun and cinnamon and cold metal blades and his black boots and long, hideaway hair and his smile like everything bad in the world ceases to exist for a split second-

"I have to look for him," Keith tells him, not quite meeting Lance's eyes. His luminescent purple eyes have gone dim, his words fall flat on deaf ears -it all feels wrong, like flat soda and tepid coffee.

"Keith, don't-" The ugly thing is crawling its way up his throat again, broken and defeated, a beacon of light that's being swallowed by the impending storm.

"He's the only family I have, Lance," Keith insists, voice cracking on the have, and Lance has the tact to not notice, he doesn't, only turns to the side and sets his jaw and tries to ignore the way his throat starts closing up and the tears pinpricking the corners of his eyes. "He's practically raised me, like a brother. He's not-not..he can't-"

He doesn't finish.

Lance doesn't expect him to.

Keith sniffles, sighs, and opens his arms, sadly, knowingly, and Lance falls into them, slowly, both of them lying on the bed with its too-sparse mattress, curling in around each other like a question mark, each of them ignoring the words hanging heavy in the air around them. Keith feels like something familiar, like stardust and saltwater and vanilla.

It's a couple of hours before either of them speaks again, neither of them have fallen asleep, despite the warmth and darkness and the hum of the generators in the room around them, a rusted kind of bitter settling on their hearts. It sets Lance's hair on end, a crackling metallic before a lightning storm.

Keith is a lightning storm, if he ever knew one. A tropical storm. They had quite a few of those near the beach.

"Lance," Keith says, into the quiet room and the warm night. His voice is steeled, hard and impassive, but Lance knows him well enough, for enough months, well enough, that he can feel the streak of emotion clouding it. A hand touches his cheek, cold and calloused, and oh-so-gentle. He leans into the touch..

Keith's hair falls over his face. Lance shuts his eyes.

"I love you."

His voice is so soft, like flower petals and everything sweet. A tear squeezes its way out of Lance's eye. He shuts them even tighter.

"I love you, Lance." Keith's voice grows more insistent. "Please."

"I know," Lance tells him, voice choked and tight and desperate. "Shh, I know. It's okay."

When their lips meet, it's too soft, everything is too soft and gentle and hesitant; Lance wants to grip him harder, squeeze him tight, reassure himself over and over again that he's real, that Keith is real and he's not going anywhere because Lance is holding him too tight for him to leave.

He can't bring himself to say it - please don't leave.

He memorizes it instead, this, all of this. Keith: his hair feels like sunlight and he smells like warmth and ice and dry desert air. The endearing way he rubs circles into Lance's waist when hugging him. The curve of his shoulders and the bruised skin under his eyes (they've only gotten darker but Lance doesn't say anything, just runs his fingers over them, peppers soft kisses to his eyelids and cheeks.)

Keith squeezes him tighter.

Sometime, right before the dawn, Keith untangles himself from Lance, pulls the two of them over to the small window, and points out the rising sun in a hushed voice.

"Your eyes look like the sky," Keith tells him, voice hoarse. They might have fallen asleep, somewhere and sometime in the stolen passage of events. Lance can't recall. He lets out a laugh anyway, dry and forced. (Neither of them buy it.) He drops his head to Lance's shoulder.

"Your eyes," Lance replies, pressing a trembling finger to the pulse of Keith's throat, "feel like home.

It gets worse before it gets better.

That's what the philosophy is, right?

Either way, the fact of the matter is that it does get worse, like careening down the steepest hill, arms windmilling frantically, stomach twisting and head spinning, bruises and all.

It takes an even longer while for things to start to look up

Keith leaves that afternoon. For someone so stubborn and dead-set on the air of mystery, Lance would have thought that he'd sneak away sometime at night. But he doesn't sneak out, doesn't pull any of that stealth bullshit. Keith leaves with a bang - when Lance hears a shout coming from the flight simulation deck and multiple angry thuds, he knows what's happening. When the students run out of the halls to catch a glimpse of the ruckus, Lance stays behind. There are murmurs around the school for days, weeks, about Keith Kogane, the delinquent, the dropout, the mystery.

"Heard he pulled a knife on Iverson."

"Why'd you think he left?"

"Such a rebel."

Lance smiles sadly, knowingly, down at his hands, through it all.

The second Garrison letter arrives at the door of his dormitory a week later - pointless, Lance thinks, when they could've talked to him in person.

(Maybe he's been getting more sympathetic looks than usual. Maybe he's been imagining it.)

"join the class as a

fighter pilot

in place of Keith Kogane

please respond ASAP-"

He almost doesn't do it. Hunk had been sitting with him when he opened the letter. He looks at Lance like he's crazy.

"Come on, man," he says, voice low and pleading. "You can't tell me you're happier as a cargo pilot, doing who-knows-what, lugging shipments of crap around in a shit plane."

Lance shrugs away. He can't say that he is. He doesn't remember any of the curriculum, has stopped caring about his grades. He has a sneaking suspicion that he won't be offered this opportunity again, ever. He has a sneaking suspicion that the only reason he hasn't been thrown out by now is because he's still somehow the top of his class, and they want him to move up.

He has a sneaking suspicion that doing it - it might help him, somehow.

"Yeah, okay," Lance says somewhat agreeably. He thinks about his five older siblings and innumerable cousins. The pay is better, too.

Hunk heaves a sigh of relief in the background.

Lance looks out the window at the stars. He's so close.

"I'll do it."

It does help him, in a sense.

Keith might not be here anymore, but his name is at the top of the list, always, every time. Keith might have dropped out in a burst of fire, but he's still a legend.

Keith might be gone, but-

He isn't, really.

Lance throws himself back into his classes, stays up past lights-out but he doesn't sneak onto the roof anymore. He tiptoes past the guards, into the library, and spends hours reading about diversionary tactics, weapon holsters and emergency landings. Hunk helps him break into the simulation room, and Lance practices barrel rolls and evades the artificial fire until his eyes feel dry and his stomach starts to churn.

Keith's name is still up there as #1.

Maybe it's a psychological thing. Maybe he thinks that if he beats Keith, he'd be proud of him. Maybe he feels like if he becomes the best, then he's moving forward, moving on from one a.m. conversations and the prettiest eyes-

Or maybe he just wants to be the best.

One year later, in the middle of the desert, with the warm air blowing hopeful circles around him, Hunk and Pidge at his back, Lance glimpses movement out of the corner of his eye.

His stomach flips.

A familiar red jacket, a mess of black hair.

Those same boots. Different gloves.

In another five minutes, Lance is looking up at a gaze he knows all too well.

"Who are you?" Keith speaks the words quietly, lips twitching to keep from smiling. His eyes twinkle, safe, familiar, warm.

Lance's face splits into a grin. He winks.

"The name's Lance."

Notes:

So I wrote this as a birthday present for my friend and then realized it was maybe a full seven thousand words longer than expected. So I guess I'll post it on here too. If you want to go leave a comment on the original story on my ao3 ( /works/11580564) I would appreciate it so much. I'm usually more active on there.

Anyway thanks for sticking with me. I really love these boys :)