Flower Boy - Klance | completed |

Ch. Seven

Ch. Seven

Keith didn't know what the fuck he was doing at this point.

Lance had easily gained Chris' full attention, and he loosely grasped the older boy's wrist as Chris gently tugged him around the rink with a soft smile on his face. Why had Keith thought this was a good idea, again?

Go faster, his subconscious urged. Forget them, forget everything. You don't owe them shit.

Without a second thought, Keith bolted, zooming laps around the rink over and over again. He had to do something, he had to get rid of this awful churning in his stomach. He shouldn't have even entertained the thought of agreeing to that stupid bet.

Keith remembered the face he'd pulled after Lance had offered the name of his crush. The poor boy's eyes had widened, heart stopping in his throat while his hands subconsciously clenched around the hem of his shirt under the table, twisting it together.

"Keith?" Daniela had asked from across the room, pausing her struggle with Venita's hair enough to study his paling face.

"I-" Keith didn't know what to do; he glanced around the kitchen anxiously. Bile rose in the back of his throat, and he pushed himself to his feet, the wooden chair scraping against the cold tile and disturbing the heavy silence that had fallen across the room.

Dominic had been sitting on the floor next to Sebastián in front of the old cabinets, and upon seeing the panic gripping at his brother's features, stumbled to his feet and pulled his phone from his back pocket.

"Keith," he broke the tension that had been slowly building, peering up at him earnestly. "We never finished cleaning up after the whole 'paint-ball incident'. Shiro's pissed, we gotta go."

In that moment, Keith had never been more thankful for his little brother. Dominic's shoulders had tensed, fingers squeezing tightly around his hand-me-down phone that had originally been Shiro's, then Keith's, and now it was his. That phone was, strangely enough, something Keith had really admired about Dominic for keeping all this time.

Sure, it had a long, jagged crack down the center, and some parts didn't work as well as they used to, but he was willing to put in the effort to fix it. It's not the phone that needs to be replaced, Dom had said when Keith asked him about it over lunch one day; it's the people that used it and damaged it in the first place.

Trying to keep himself together, he began to nod numbly, and Dominic quickly seized his hand, tugging him towards the front door, echoing what Keith had done to him in an attempt to whisk him away from bad situations throughout their lives.

"It was nice meeting you all!" The fourteen-year-old called back to the McClain siblings. Anton poked his head in the room and waved enthusiastically. "Come back as soon as you can, kay?"

Venita copied her brother's actions with a goofy smile lighting her features, babbling softly under her breath.

"Bye, Dom. See you later, Keith." Daniella smoothed back Venita's hair weakly, as if acknowledging she was fighting a losing battle.

"See you around," Seb nodded once, tucking his knees to his chest as they made their exit.

And you know who hadn't said a word throughout the whole ordeal?

Yep.

The wall approached faster than Keith had anticipated. He dropped, one leg out to guide the sharp turn while he tucked his other securely against his chest, fingertips grazing the cold mason tile beneath him.

He could sense a pair of eyes tracking his form, but he was too angry and stubborn to glance over to see who it was, instead drawing a long breath to hold his concentration before slowly leveling himself out.