Keith walks into his room after a deliciously vigorous training season, wiping his sweaty face with a towel, and immediately notices something is off.
He freezes, towel clamped to the back of his neck, and carefully scans his room from corner to corner. His lock was still intact when he walked in, so unlikely break-in. His bed is still exactly as messy as it was when he left it. His dresser drawer is still left cracked slightly open, as he always leaves it, because it’s harder to put a drawer back to the same level of open it was before than to close it (he’s caught Hunk snooping through his shit many a time with this method. Thanks, Pa’s paranoia).
His gaze lands finally on a nondescript black book on his nightstand, and his eyebrows shoot up. He finished his book this morning and returned it to the library on his way to the training room.
He did not leave that black book there.
Wary, a thousand anxieties running through his brain, Keith approaches his nightstand bayard-first, sword extended and sharp. He pauses before he comes in contact, taking time to analyse it, attempt to puzzle out any kind of traps or discrepancies before they jump out at him. He can’t see any — the book is on the newer side, with a roughened black hardcover, gold detailing on the spine but no title or author. The paper looks thick and it’s strangely uncut, raggedy.
Hesitantly, Keith pokes it.
Nothing happens.
Less suspicious, now, he prods at it with his hands, and when that does nothing, he picks it up. It’s heavier than he expected. He cracks open the cover to reveal a red paper lining. Stuck to the inside of the cover is a baby blue post-it note, crookedly place, with only a neatly drawn heart in glitter gel pen. Keith can’t help the smile, even as his eyebrows furrow in confusion.
“What even…”
Pinching the first page from the bottom corner so as to not accidentally rip any paper, he slowly turns it over.
He gasps, fumbling with the book as he nearly drops it.
“How did it…”
He recognises the first page — it’s his. Or he made it, anyway. Scrawled in every white space of the nearly parchment-esque alien paper is his own doodling, from a boring meeting several weeks back. He recognises the slightly mean drawing of the Capnir leader and his snooty expression in the left corner, and the ninety games of tic-tac-toe he played with Lance on the bottom half of the page (Lance insisted he won because he is a nasty cheater. Keith didn’t even know it was possible to cheat at tic-tac-toe, but it is. It’s crazy).
Gobsmacked, Keith begins to flip through the rest of the pages, eyes getting wider and nose getting closer to the book with every corner he turns. These are his doodles and drawings — hundreds of them, loose papers from meetings and scrawled diagrams from mission plans and notes to other paladins and dorky little drawings he made for his friends or because of his own boredom. There are grocery lists covered in drawings of engine parts and knives and strange alien vegetables, hand-to-hand manoeuvre diagrams, several drawings of Shiro as Captain America, of Pidge and Hunk covered in soot except for the line around their eyes from their goggles, of Allura with the mice in her hair, Coran in the wackiest outfit he’s ever seen, Shiro with his eye twitching from Slav, Matt making goo eyes at Allura. Some of Kolivan, even, with over-exaggerated eyebrows and a frown that touches his neck.
And dozens, maybe even hundreds, of drawings of Lance. Smirking at Keith from across the kitchen table before he instigates a Pidge-Hunk argument, crowing in victory after making a shot, serious and focused mid battle, face drooping and sad and fixed on a glowing blue Earth projection with his chin hooked over his knees. Drawings that itched at Keith’s fingers every hour of every day, that he barely tried to resist; snapshots of Lance that plagued his mind ‘til he finally found time to grab a pencil.
Drawings that he had, apparently, left scattered all over the castle without thinking.
He cradles his flaming face in his free hand, heart pounding in his ears. He’s sure — he knows he threw half of these out. Some of them he left lying around, sure, and others he left out deliberately for his friends to find, but — Keith knows he threw out the full-page and coloured portrait of Lance, bright and beautiful in a dozen shades of earth, smiling softly at Keith in the low-light of the common room well after midnight. He can see the creases and smudges from where he’d crumpled it, embarrassed, and where someone had fished it out of the trash and carefully straightened it back out, brushing dust out of the crevices.
“Oh my God.”
Hunk would never have been able to keep the secret with how long it would have taken to bind this book — by hand, by the looks of it. Allura couldn’t either. Both Pidge and Shiro would have been gleeful in mocking Keith about the clear affection in every pencil stroke. Coran would have probably stuck it proudly on the fridge — he did that, once, Keith remembers, with a sketch he’d done of the whole team during a movie night. It’s still there; it’s been so long that Keith doesn’t notice it anymore.
There’s only one person who would pick up the discarded slips of paper and slide them in his pocket — only one person who’s that kind of sentimental. One person who prints every photograph he takes of every planet they’ve ever been on, who pins up every drawing gifted to him by young children no matter how objectively horrible, who tears off notes written in the margins of battle plans and keeps them in a jar on his dresser. Only one person who has a scrapbook with a dried blade of grass from Arus and piece of sea glass from the mermaid planet and a napkin stained with food goo from their food fight all those years ago. Hell, there’s only one person on this castle with enough skill with a needle and thread to bind a whole ass book.
Keith drops his bayard to the floor with a clatter, book clenched in his fist, and sprints out of his room. He flies down the hallway, ignoring the startled shout from Pidge as she jumps out of his way and the wide-eyed stare from Allura. He almost runs straight into his brother, spinning to the right at the last minute and rushing past him without bothering to entertain his questions. He runs all the way to the MedBay, where he knows Lance is taking inventory for Coran, and nearly crashes right into the pods because he’s too pumped up to slow down properly.
“Whoa there, cowboy, cool it before you give yourself a concussion. Christ.”
Lance places a cool hand on his shoulder, concerned, bin of counted bandages left abandoned behind him. Almost immediately his face coils in disgust.
“Aw, gross, you’re sweaty.”
But he doesn’t move his hand.
Keith stares.
How did he — how did he miss it, before?
“Keith?” Lance asks again, alarm clouding his face. “You okay, buddy?”
His fingers curve absentmindedly along the junction of Keith’s neck, and he leans in closer, and he smells so fucking good and he always does and Keith is lightheaded from more than just his cross-castle sprint.
“You’re in love with me,” he blurts, and he didn’t mean to say it like that but there’s no doubt in his words.
Lance startles, yanking his hand back in shock. Keith darts out to stop it, fingers wrapped around his wrist, keeping him from going far. Lance’s breath hitches.
“…What?”
“You’re in love with me,” Keith repeats, steadier this time. He waits a moment, then says, much more urgently: “The book.”
Mortification rings off Lance in waves.
“Oh,” he croaks. His pulse is so loud and so fast that Keith can feel it in his wrist. “I didn’t think it was — oh.”
There’s a strange quality to his voice, besides the embarrassment of getting caught, and then it clicks — he’s afraid. Of rejection, of disgust, of Keith. Keith isn’t sure. But he hates that it’s there.
Faster than he can talk himself out of, he cups Lance’s face with his free hand, relishing in the sharp intake of breath, and leans in and kisses him. There’s a moment of rigid shock on Lance’s part and it could spell trouble but Keith holds steady. He keeps his hold loose and the pressure soft and soon Lance — melts, into him, there’s no other word for it; he sinks in close and sighs and the hand Keith has gripped goes slack. His lips are soft, and his hair tickles Keith’s forehead, and Keith can still feel his jackrabbit heartbeat, and he still smells like that intoxicating mix of flowers and — sunshine, somehow, straight from the brightest days in Earth. Keith’s hands have never been steadier.
“You collected my doodles,” he says, staying close when Lance pulls gently away. He can see the deeper browns in Lance’s irises, the places where the gold gives way to near-black. They look like the flecks of the precious metal Keith would see at the bottom of the river mud in the mountains of Arizona.
“They were worth keeping,” Lance says quietly. He holds Keith’s gaze. The tips of his fingers trace Keith’s temples; they’re rough with old guitar callouses.
“You think everything is worth keeping.”
“Only the things that — bleed.”
Keith thinks that they’re both right. Lance can’t leave anything behind because he aches for the soul he finds in it. He finds the worth in everything. He found the worth in Keith.
He found enough to make Keith stay.
Keith grips the book in his right hand, left still cupped around Lance’s cheek. The difference in textures is startling, grounding.
“No one has ever done something like that for me before,” Keith admits. There’s a lump in his throat but Keith thinks it’s manageable, thinks he can talk through it. Thinks he might hold the strength for it.
Lance waits patiently.
“I want to —” Keith stops. He opens the book. The drawn Lance smiles up at him, beautiful. He looks up and Lance smiles over at him, breathtaking. “I —”
He doesn’t know how to say it. It’s there, bubbling in his chest, spilling out of him; obvious. But he doesn’t know the words for it. He’s not sure anyone’s taught him before.
“Okay,” Lance says. He tugs his wrist out of Keith’s grip then laces their hands together, squeezing. His smile only widens and he — sparkles, almost. Keith’s throat goes dry.
“Okay?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“Oh,” Lance repeats, teasing. He leans in again. “I’m going to kiss you again, now.”
“Please,” Keith begs, and he does.
———
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