YELLOW [[klance]] [[COMPLETED]]

Lance.

The past week has steamrolled; my family visiting, group therapy, and Pidge and Hunk visiting. When my family visited, my mom and her Mom powers surveyed me and Keith coexisting in the same vicinity and did some calculations of her own, so by the time they bid goodbye and left, Keith was a blushing, red-faced mess and I couldn't stop laughing at the fact that he had a near nervous breakdown when Veronica sat down, looked at him, and said "So you date boys, right?" 

(I didn't give them details about my dinner with Dad. Mom didn't pry.)

Group therapy was not nearly as bad as Edgelord Kogane made it out to be, and it mainly consisted of Pidge and Hunk talking while Shiro wrote on the absurdly squeaky whiteboard and we all gathered on overstuffed pleather couches, staring off at random points in the room. I figured I might as well commit myself to the group, so I relayed my Hospital Sob Story to a group of teenagers with glazed eyes and absolutely zero fucks. 

Except, strangely, Keith actually sat and stared at me and listened.

Then afterwards Pidge dropped their backpack and spilled approximately 328 packets of Kool Aid powder and so we moved on to more pressing and confusing matters.

Pidge and Hunk arrived to our room the day after adorned with eight servings of sushi, a Netflix password and a stuffed animal for each of us, which was not asked for initially but greatly appreciated afterwards. After multiple She-Ra episodes in which I spent way too much time paying way too much attention to the fact that Keith was laying next to me, they sadly pried themselves away from us and said goodbye.

Then today. The ultimatum of Boring Hospital Days. I lay around rereading Harry Potter, cutting stupid shit out of magazines, and attempting to skateboard around the room. This ended abruptly when Keith told me if I didn't stop fucking shit up he was gonna file a complaint and a new room request, which I knew was a lie but decided to stop anyway so as to decrease my imminent mortal danger.

Being around Keith is strange, like walking on a fire that doesn't hurt, it's just comfortably warm and kind of ticklish. (Okay, that sounds weird, but you know what I mean.)

It's strangely calming. Like breathing after being underwater for so long you forget what it's like.

Yesterday, we were talking, me about something so random even I can't remember, and I sat there and watched his face go slack, still and pale as porcelain, his foggy indigo eyes glazing over as they gazed blankly above my head.

"Keith?" I said quietly.

His eyes trailed downward, to my face, a little concerned, a little confused. "Sorry," he replied faintly.

"S'okay." And I took his hands all gently and we sat there for a minute as he blinked his way back to reality.

"Keith?"

"Yea?"

And then we kept talking.

Or, this morning, when I was dancing to Shakira and he was groaning and moaning inside his hood when I bent over coughing, all the air yanked up and out of me and leaving nothing but a snotty mess in my quivering lungs. And I sat down right where I was with my head between my knees and counted in my head. 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3.

And Keith couldn't couldn't move, of course, but he sat next to me and spoke real quiet and rough in his coarse, gentle voice;

"It's okay, it's okay. You're gonna be okay, Lance."

I gulped dryly until I could breathe, and he took my head in both his hands and softly brought it to his lap. I rested it there and he ran his hands through my curls. When I brought my head up to look at him, he tilted my chin up and craned his neck down and kissed me softly.