short klance fic from an old old convo with @cmajalis where Lance can't sleep :-)
“You’re here again.”
Lance turned, bleary eyes looking up to the person standing besides him, face hidden in the shadows of the observation deck.
They took a step forward, features quickly illuminated by starlight, a pair of dark eyes looking down to Lance before flopping down besides him.
“I mean, you are too” Lance teased Keith, gently shoving at his shoulder.
Keith sighed, turning to face Lance, a question gleaming in his eyes.
“I just finished training.”
“And I was just up for some late night stargazing.”
They held each others gaze for a moment, a silent competition, willing each other to break first.
In the end Keith sighed, breaking contact as he turned to face the glass panel ahead of them, planets lazily swirling in their orbit, casting lights and shadows into the quiet room.
“Does anyone ever sleep in this Castle?”
Lance laughed.
“Let’s see-Hunk stress bakes until he falls asleep in the kitchen, Allura stays up late going over plans with Shiro and Coran-Not that Shiro ever sleeps anyway, Pidge is well, Pidge, and you…” he trailed off, looking to Keith for confirmation.
“I sleep. Not much, but” Keith shrugged, “It’s enough I guess.”
Lance nodded slowly, calculating Keith’s somber expression.
“And I don’t sleep because..everything feels too quiet” Lance silently admitted.
He felt Keith shift besides him, but made no attempt to look to him, preferring instead to focus on the fiddling of his own fingers drumming restlessly over his thigh.
“I shared a room with my older brother all the way until he left for college, and then I’d usually end up babysitting my sister’s kids so they’d stay in my room, then at the Garrison we shared the room with Hunk.”
Lance shook his head, a bitter smile on his lips.
“There’s so many people on this ship, but at night it gets so quiet. The first night here was the first time I could actually hear my own breath while I slept.”
A pale hand came to rest atop his over his legs, finding the gaps between his fingers and slipping into place.
"Does it scare you?" Keith's eyes came into view, his body leaning across Lance, "does the quiet scare you?"
Lance shook his head.
"It doesn't. It just..."
He looked down to their intertwined hands, feeling his grip shake.
"It makes me feel so alone" he croaked out, the words mere whispers, yet so loud in the still around them.
"You're not alone."
Lance smiled but said nothing.
Wasn't he?
Shiro's expression when he'd yelled at him still lingered in his mind, intergrained with Pidge's apathetic tone when she'd adressed him, Hunk's gentle but absent-minded smiles, Allura's infatuation with Lotor.
Wasn't he alone? Wasn't he unecessary?
"You're not alone" Keith reaffirmed him, grip tightening, fingers digging into Lance's palm.
"You don't even live in this Castle anymore. You're not-you're not even here right now."
Keith cocked his head, mouth dropping into a pout.
"You're not here" Lance breathed out, his vision turning blurry, Keith's features fading as he let his eyes fall shut.
The next moment his eyes open, a muffled gasp escaping him.
He sat up on his bed, fingers clenching and unclenching into the bedsheets until the colour drained from his knuckles.
A sigh befell him, his chin meeting the top
of his knees as he huddled into himself, hearing his breaths quiet to a lonely lull.
His heartbeat quieted down, his breaths evened out, the buzzing in his ears died down into a soft thrumming.
And once again, he drowned in the silence of an empty room.