Blue Roses |Bad Boy! Keith x Flower Shop Worker! Lance|
Pairing: Lance McClain x Keith Kogane
Genre: Fluff
Warnings: suck that kkou29’nan$ iksmske:/“ 9b)_?]€|+
Summary: Lance works at a flower shop in which his grandma is the owner of. He’s there every day without a single complaint, loving to be around the flowers and helping people show the ones they love them with a simple gesture such as flowers. He wished someone would show their affection towards him with flowers but it seemed that day would never come. One day though, a mysterious stranger shows up in his shop looking beyond handsome. Turns out the stranger liked him and they had a bonding moment. Now, the story of their love growing and flourishing must be told.
Part: 7/?
> Breath of the Forbidden {Prince!Shiro x Reader} Angst
In a world where rank means everything, you would be described as the lowest of the low. Working for people of higher class, taking orders with no room to complain, you find yourself thrown into a new world entirely whenever you are sent to work for the Shirogane royals - the family who rules over Voltron. Though all seems to be a disaster, what happens whenever you end up striking an unlikely bond with the son of the king and queen, Prince Takashi?
> Bad At Love {Photographer!Keith x Prodigy!Reader} Angst
Keith Kogane was known for being the good-boy-gone-bad. You were known for being the emotionless prodigy that only ever showed up to school to stop her foster parents from getting arrested. Whenever you two are put together on a school project after briefly meeting during detention, you find your world tipping upside down as you realise that there’s more to life than science and logic.
p1 - p2 - p3 - p4 - p5 - p6 - final
{Lance McClain}
> Action! {Lance x Youtuber!Reader} Angst
Being a YouTube guru is hard enough without the added stress of living with Lance McClain, the man who insists on bombarding into every YouTube video you try to film. His viewers love him, and secretly, so do you.
p1 - p2 - p3 - p4 - p5 - p6 - final
> Hiraeth {demigod!Lance x Reader} Angst
Your life changed forever that day in the forest. The day the voices got too much. The day that single word brought you to what felt like the very brink of death - that was until Lance McClain, son of Poseidon, arrived to take you home.
part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6 - part 7 - part 8 - part 9- epilogue
{Hunk Garrett}
{Pidge Gunderson}
{Matt Holt}
> Serendipity {Matt x Reader} Angst/Fluff
You and Matt used to be childhood best friends, but that hadn’t been the case for nearly four years now. Whenever your parents insist on going to the Holt family country home for the summer, you may be forced to face old feelings as Matt makes an appearance.
p1 - p2 - p3 - p4 - p5 - p6 - final
{Prince Lotor}
{Team Voltron}
> House of Voltron {platonic!TeamVoltron x Reader} F - housemate!au
A series of fics documenting what it’s like having Team Voltron as your housemates.
#1 - Keeping an Eye
> The Rockstar Series
The Rockstar Series: a series of fics documenting rockstar!Voltron falling in love.
More Than a Prisoner (Prologue) - Voltron Fanfiction
Series Summary (without spoiling too much): Bella, a previous prisoner of the Galra Prince, finds herself wrapped up in the mess between Voltron and the Galrans. Follow the story as Bella tries to gain the trust of the paladins and possibly her own freedom from both sides of the intergalactic war.
Chapter One will be out soon! Chapter one is out! Read it here!
Sprinting down the empty corridor, resisting the urge to cover her ears to block out the deafening alarm blaring throughout the ship, Bella makes her way to a column she can take cover behind. Her heart was pounding as she took deep breaths, pressing herself against the wall hoping she was out of sight.
Peeking her head out to check if the coast was clear, she heard a group of Galra soldiers chasing after her. She held her breath, closed her eyes and prayed her choice in hiding spot was good enough.
Her body filled with relief as she watched them pass her. With a blissful sigh, she made a move to get up until the group of guards stopped a few feet down the corridor, arguing.
“She came this way, I was positive.” Said one of them.
“She couldn’t have gotten far.”
“We must find her soon, or it’s our heads on Lotor’s plates.” Said another.
“I doubt Lotor will have enough anger left for us once he’s done with her.”
Fear began to take over Bella’s body at the mention of the Galra Prince. Her heartbeat accelerated at the thought of him. She didn’t want to even imagine what would happen to her if she got caught.
The guards started moving further down the hall and Bella saw this as her window of escape. Forcing her tired legs to stand, she started sprinting once more down the corridor back the way she came.
“There!” One of the guards yelled as they all started chasing after her.
Bella kept running, not daring to look behind her. She navigated the endless maze of hallways, never sure she was going the right way, but she had no time for being indecisive.
The pounding footsteps behind her didn’t cease. Turning the corner, Bella saw three armed guards facing away from her. Just past them, she could see the doors leading to where the fighter ships were kept.
The guards from before were gaining on her and seeing no other choice, Bella bolted past the three armed guards. Instantly they started firing at her. Rays of purple flew by her as she tried dodging their shots.
“Idiots. Don’t fire! The Prince needs her alive.” She heard Commander Thax yell.
Bella threw open the doors and darted for the control board. Finding the buttons to be labeled, she slammed a fist on the one labeled ‘Open Flight Deck Doors’.
Opting for the closest fighter ship, Bella climbed aboard. She was able to make it into the cockpit before the guards even made it into the room. Jumping into the chair, Bella searched for a way to make the ship turn on. There was a dashboard before her containing hundreds of different buttons, and unlike the control-board, there were no labels to be found.
Panicking, Bella tried almost every button until purple lights came on in the cockpit and illuminated the windshield with charts, maps and dials she couldn’t begin to understand. Taking hold of the joysticks in front of her, Bella pushed them forward with full force. The ship jerked forward, knocking into several parked ships.
Bella toyed around with a few other switches and buttons until the ship started moving. The guards resorted to trying to shoot at the ship as Commander Thax ran to the control board.
Bumping into a few more ships, Bella was able to direct the ship and began rolling towards to doors at a speed that was less than satisfactory.
She looked over to the guards who were failing to damage the ship with their fire. Thax, however, stood with his arms crossed with a victorious smirk ghosting his lips, staring down Bella. Confused as to how the guard could be anything but furious, she looked forward as watched as the metal doors started closing.
Bella had come too far to completely lose hope now. She turned her attention to the dashboard and began fidgeting with the controls once more.
“C’mon. C’mon” She pleaded as each button failed to affect her speed.
She tried the small red buttons atop each of the joysticks only to find that they controlled the laser cannons, not the speed but she did manage to shoot two of the fighter ships parked in the line across from her.
The doors were closing fast, barely giving her enough room to fit the entire ship out.
The guards ceased their fire, almost mocking her like she wasn’t worth wasting ammo, like they knew she wouldn’t make it so why bother trying to shoot her down.
Hitting a red button on her left caused the ship to shoot forward. The wheels started retracting into the ship. Bella let out a sound of utter joy, turning to the guards, Thax especially, and lifting her hands and positioning her fingers in a crude gesture used on her home planet of earth.
He stilled looked unfazed, which diminished Bella’s feeling of victory slightly. Glancing forward she noticed the doors left a space that was too narrow for her to fit through. If she kept forward, the wings of the ship would be torn right off. If she gave up, she’d be taken prisoner once more.
Weighing her options, Bella charged forward. Closing her eyes tight and praying to any god listening. She turned the ship vertically to just barely squeeze through the space in the doors.
Bella slowly opened her eyes, laughing to herself, amazed she was able to survive that.
Her moment of triumph, however, was short-lived, as the doors reopened and two fighter ships came out.
“Can’t a girl catch a break?” She muttered to herself as they started gaining on her.
Commander Thax’s ship was side by side with hers, with the second ship not far behind. Bella was running out of luck and options.
In a last-ditch effort, Bella jerked her ship right, knocking head on into Thax’s. The initial crash may have damaged her ship but Thax’s spun out of control, crashing hard into the ship trailing close behind them.
Bella gripped the joysticks and pressed down hard on the two red buttons, firing at the ships. Not even bothering to see how badly she damaged them, she piloted her ship in the opposite direction trying to get as far away as she could.
Bella had no idea how much time has passed since she made it off the Galra ship, but she was starting to get tired. Her eyelids drooped and she found it increasingly difficult to stay focused the more she forced herself to stay awake.
Bella’s eyes closed themselves for a moment as her head hung low but a quick jolt of pain in her stomach shot her head back up. Her stomach growled loudly for a while. She hadn’t thought to pack food, in fact, she hadn’t thought to pack anything. She hadn’t actually thought of a plan. The only thing on Bella’s mind was escape, focusing on the end goal rather than all the steps necessary to achieve it. Her escape was complete luck and here she was, piloting a ship she barely knew how to fly, exhausted and starving.
She took a deep breath, praying she’d get another streak of luck.
Bella was interrupted by a screen popping up before her. Taking a closer look she saw a green dot and two red dots behind it, coming closer and closer. There were words and what looked like numbers along the bottom of the screen that she couldn’t understand, they were written in the Galra’s language.
Suddenly her ship was jolted as lasers were fired.
“Oh, not again.” Bella groaned to herself. She wasn’t surprised the Galra ships had found her.
Charging forwards, Bella tried maneuvering away from their fires. She surprisingly dodged a few shots but she couldn’t keep avoiding them forever. If only she could figure out how to aim her lasers.
Turning her attention to the buttons atop the joysticks, hoping there was some dial she missed that would aid her in aiming. The ship was struck again but this time an alarm blared as red lights flashed, just like they had in Lotor’s ship.
Knowing this couldn’t be a good sign, Bella looked at the flashing screen before her. It was a layout of the ship, the left wing highlighted in a blinking red light.
“Left engine failure.” An electronic sounding voice repeated.
Looking at the damage done to the left wing, Bella saw the entire thing covered in a layer of ice.
“What the hell?” She asked aloud as the ship started drifting to the right, no matter how hard Bella tried to straighten it out.
More warning messages appeared on the screen before her. While trying to decipher their meaning, the ship started breaking through the atmosphere of a planet Bella hadn’t even noticed was there. The ship started doing barrel rolls as it rocketed towards the planet like a meteor.
Not seeing any way to save herself, Bella began screaming, hoping the impact wouldn’t kill her.
Seconds passed and the ship made contact with the planet. Feeling pain explode everywhere in her body, Bella managed to open her eyes. She was alive but everything was very hazy, her vision becoming spotted.
She saw two ships make a much more graceful landing on the planet before her. She could barely make out what was before her but she could tell they weren’t Galra ships. They were tall and had an odd shape to them. One was blue while the other was red.
She saw two figures descend out of their ships in armor of white and their respective ship’s colors before her vision went completely black.
A/N: I’m sorry I’m a horrible person and it’s been so long since I updated this!
Prologue - Ch. 1 - Ch 2 - Ch. 3
_______
Shiro woke up the next morning feeling rejuvenated. He was up before the other paladins, as per usual. Everything felt normal, like they were still traveling through space. Except for one thing. He couldn’t get you out of his head. No matter what he did, there you lingered. Only making him look forward to the day ahead.
He was a bit impatient about waiting for the others, he was ready to explore this place, and get to see how everyone had lived here for so long.
Shiro trained to pass the time, continuously increasing the level as he went. He was about to increase the level again but was stopped when Keith walked in. “Hey” he greeted, tossing a towel to the older man.
Shiro wiped his face. “The others awake?”
“Yeah I was coming to warn you, in case you wanted to shower or anything” he said with a certain teasing in his tone.
Shiro gave him a sort of ‘what’s with the voice’ look.
“I mean you wouldn’t want to be all sweaty for your lady friend you’ve made“ Shiro immediately blushed at the accusation.
“W-What? I don’t know what you’re talking about?”
Keith only cocked an eyebrow. Shiro sighed in defeat, “That obvious?”
“Only to me” he shrugged. “The others are to in awe at this place”
“It’s really amazing isn’t it. So many years they’ve been saving refugees and staying hidden from the Galra if I wasn’t here, I wouldn’t believe it”
Keith nodded, “It is. But the other will want to go soon. You should shower up.” he said before exiting the room. Shiro did as told and headed to the shower.
Once he was finished they all headed off the ship. They wandered to where the military base was. Finding Christian and Tara.
“Hey guys” Christian greeted, Tara smiling beside him. They all returned the hello.
“I’m Tara by the way, I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure”
“Hey there beautiful, I’m Lance” Tara only smiled awkwardly before taking a step back and to Christain’s side.
“Anyway, we were both about to go find [F/n] if you’d like to join us” Tara offered pointing in the direction they were headed.
“Awesome, can we see more of the base?” Pidge asked excitedly.
“She should be a good distance away so you’ll see a good bit of it” Christian assured before leading the way. He wasn’t wrong they did see a lot of the base.
Though interest of everyone wasn’t peeked until they saw a large group formed to watch something. “What’s that?” Hunk questioned, directing everyone’s attention there. “A fight?” Pidge inquired.
“Cool I wanna watch” Lance began to head that way as the others followed.
“You don’t think?” Tara looked at Christian, “With those two, who knows?” he chuckled.
“With who two?” Allura asked the pair as they came upon the group. “Those two, Alastor & [F/n]”
The groups attention was drawn to a sparring match of you against your father. It was entrancing the way you both fought. Swords clashed as you twisted and contorted to avoid attack after attack. Graceful yet deadly. Like a Cobra attempting to sink its fangs into its prey. It was electrifying to watch. The focus, the agility, the skill. It was alluring.
Unable to tear his eyes away Shiro stared intently, observing every movement, every slight of hand. When it all of a sudden came to an abrupt halt. Your father was without a sword and yours lay suspended under his chin.
“You’ve lost your touch, or I’ve just learned your moves” A smug smile on your face.
“You’ve grown my daughter. But..” In an instant you were disarmed and flipped over his shoulder, landing on your back with a grunt. “there are things even you have yet to learn”
“Is that your way of telling me not to get cocky?” wincing and looking at him from the ground.
He chuckled, “One of the morals” before picking up his sword and heading to take care of his daily duties. The cadets parting as he passed, Tiamat close behind him. “Love you too dad” mumbling to yourself with a chuckle.
You were still on your back before a hand was offered to you. Accepting the offer, “I thought you had him this time” Christian commented pulling you up.
You chuckled, Ryuu coming behind you and nuzzling his head under your arm. “Yeah I did too, then we saw what happened after I assumed. ‘Don’t ever assume it will make an ass out of you and me’ the wise words of every father ever”
“I know I’ve heard mine say it” Tara said beside him. “You’re getting better your father usually looks like he’s holding back, but you had him on his toes that time”
“Maybe, but I still have to improve if I’m ever to get to his level. As a leader and a warrior” Patting Ryuu’s snout.
“You have to stop putting so much pressure on yourself” Tara said whilst giving you a disapproving look. You shrugged looking around at the cadets still gathered.
“Sparring’s over soldiers! Back to your business!” Ordering as the troops dispersed. Leaving the paladins and Alteans.
“That was so cool!” Lance yelled drawing all of your attention. You smiled sheepishly, “You guys saw that?”
“It was quite amazing! One can only hope that the paladins may get to that level of combat.” Coran complimented as all of the paladins gave him hurt expressions. Making the three of you chuckle.
“Anyway, [F/n] would it be possible for me to have a word with your father. I’d like to ask him for some help on coming up with plans to take on the Galra” Allura asked.
“Sure I can take you to meet him, will all of you be coming?” Eyes falling on the other paladins.
“Oh sounds interesting but I’m actually starving” Hunk said as his stomach growled. “You’re always hungry” Pidge deadpanned.
“We could take whoever doesn’t want to join [F/n] and Allura on a tour if you all would like?” Tara offered. Four of the paladin’s eyes lit up, all nodding.
You laughed, “Then I guess Allura, Coran, and Shiro will be accompanying me”
“Looks like it” Shiro smiled at you. “Well then follow me, catch up with you guys later?” Looking at your friends. “You do your perimeter check” patting Ryuu’s neck before he took off to do his job.
“Yeah see at the celebration the town decided to throw for your return” Tara reminded you. “Shit I forgot about that”
“That’s what I’m here for” she smiled before you lead the three to where you could find your father. It didn’t take long to find him and honestly as the three talked you and Shiro lagged behind due to sheer boredom.
“So we aren’t exactly needed at the moment, and they’re not discussing anything that pertains to taking down the Galra. What do you say we duck out?”
He looked over at you a smiled, nodding.
Nodding to the side you both ducked away. “I don’t think I could listen to them talking about the landscape for another second” you chuckled.
Shiro laughed beside you. He looked around as you walked through the main road. Taking in the small shops and restaurants. “This place reminds me so much of Earth it’s scary”
“You’ll get back there” you smiled looking at him. “Yeah just can’t help but miss it” meeting your gaze.
“I can’t imagine, but hey. You’re always welcome here” Nudging him with your arm. “You’re amazing” he smiled, making both your cheeks flush, “Sorry I --” he started but you waved it off. “It’s okay, you’re pretty amazing yourself.”
He smiled as the both of you continued to walk in silence, not an awkward silence but a comfortable silence. “What was it like?” you cut through the silence. He looked at you confused, “Your life on Earth, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“No I don’t mind. Well I was a pilot in the garrison for a long while. It was my dream to explore space, it fascinated me. So when I got the chance to go on a mission called the Kerberos mission I jumped at the chance to pilot it. We traveled to one of pluto’s moons, but well you know what happened.” he looked down at his feet during the last part.
You nodded, “Space isn’t all bad though. Before the Galra it was beautiful, unknown. I dream for a time like that again. One where we can enjoy the universe instead of protect it.”
He gave you an appreciative look. “Yeah, call us dreamers” chuckling.
“Eh, I’d prefer future seers” You turned to him as both of you stopped walking. Meeting your eyes to his grey ones, “You know, on the Galra ship. The last thing I remember is your eyes before losing consciousness. I never got to thank you for that so, thank you” biting your bottom lip.
He blushed a little remembering when he caught you. “N-no problem”
You both smiled before continuing the walk chatting, learning more and more about the other. Leading to the both of you only falling harder.
Bad At Love{P1} {Photographer!Keith x Prodigy!Reader}{AU}
Words: 5344
Summary: Keith Kogane was known for being the good-boy-gone-bad. You were known for being the emotionless prodigy that only ever showed up to school to stop her foster parents from getting arrested. Whenever you two are put together on a school project after briefly meeting during detention, you find your world tipping upside down as you realise that there’s more to life than science and logic.
Pairing: Photographer!Keith x Prodigy!Reader
Warning: Keith swears a lil bit.
Notes: p2 - p3 - p4 - p5 - p6 - FINAL; CHAPTER 1 OF MY NEW KEITH FIC! PLEASE GIVE ME FEEDBACK!
Chapter 1
“Did your massive IQ get you in trouble again?”
The words at the first thing you hear as you step through the door of the foster home you had been cooped up in for nearly two months now, occupied by the all-so-friendly Ann Marie Park who insisted on asking the exact same question every time you walked into the kitchen.
It was exhausting. Sitting down at the kitchen counter and reminiscing on the most-likely-awful day you had just charged through. You never lied about it – the only reason you were in the foster system, from the loose papers you had stolen and memorised from the offices when you were 5, was because your mother and father couldn’t handle a child genius.
That was the label they had put on you in black and white ink, on official papers. Even at the age of five the words hurt. Reading about how you had crafted an entire doll house when you were three year olds, how you were speaking in full sentences by seven months, how your intelligence had scared off the people who were meant to be with you at all times.
Today was no different.
School was the same old, pointless array of regurgitated information that you saw as common sense. Your notebooks were filled with the same old, stupid doodles that were the only thing that kept you from collapsing from both boredom and the exhaustion that waking up at 6am brought upon you.
You slump down against the counter after tossing your bag carelessly against the sofa that was littered with your foster-siblings own school work which he was clearly struggling to get through. Patrick hissed at you as your bag barely whizzed past his head, nearly knocking him out cold.
“Teachers get so butthurt,” you find yourself mumbling, a loose reply to the question Ann-Marie had asked you. “I corrected Mr Blanchard on his spelling today and got deemed disrespectful. An absolute joke.”
Ann-Marie sighs, placing a steaming cup of tea in front of you. You instinctively push it away, your brain already going through every single thing that the second-hand kettle would be pouring into your cup.
“What did he say to you?” Ann-Marie asks.
“He said I had no right to shout out in class and that my input was unnecessary. He then proceeded to give me a detention.”
Ann-Marie sighs, letting go of the breath she was holding in. She was clearly expecting the final piece of your story – the detention. The detention which you seemed to be assigned every other day all because of the fact that you didn’t feel things in the way others did. Your sky-high IQ, your label of genius wasn’t all it was cut out to be – your emotional effort was way too low, meaning you very rarely knew when to bite your tongue and keep quiet. The idea of being scolded didn’t scare you like how it scared other kids, meaning you said whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted and would only react whenever the punishment was given to you.
“What time do I have to pick you up at?” Ann-Marie asks.
“I don’t plan on going, Ann-Marie. It’s was unfairly given to me by-“
“I’m telling Mr Blanchard you said that!” Patrick wails from behind you. You turn in your chair, eyebrow raised as you look at the boy behind you – half your age yet he still managed to be the only one who could grind your gears in the way he did.
“You can tell Mr Blanchard all you want – I won’t be there to see his facial expression.”
Ann-Marie grumbles, grabbing your arm to snap your attention back to her. You turn back around in your stool, take a handful of grapes from the fruit bowl and proceed to pop them in your mouth one by one.
“You’re going whether you like it or not. The only way we’re gonna break the surface with you is if you see what the punishments are really like.”
You raise your brow, speaking through a mouthful of grapes. “Break the surface? Ann-Marie, my own parents couldn’t handle me whenever I was an infant. There’s no way a detention is going to suddenly boost my EQ levels.”
“What are EQ levels?”
“Be quiet, Patrick.”
Ann-Marie shakes her head at you, her beady blue eyes glaring directly into yours in the way they always did whenever she was giving you a warning. You simply shrug, leaning back against the stool, wanting nothing more than to just get up and leave. Being around people brought up your lack of emotions. It exposed you against your own will, and the only way to soothe it was by being on your own.
You wanted to be on your own.
“You’re going,” Ann-Marie repeats, more stern this time. “I’ll call up the school and find out what I need to find out, and then you’re going to sit through that entire detention whether I have to handcuff you to that chair.”
“That’s actually a form of hostage capture and-“
“Y/N!” Ann-Marie hisses. “Enough. Now, go upstairs and get out of those clothes. Dinner will be in an hour.”
If I break out of her grip in exactly five seconds, and run by lunging, I could be out the exit door in no time.
Ann-Marie yanks your arm, silencing your overactive thoughts as she drags you through the hallways of the high school you were sure you had escaped for at least another two days whenever you had left on Friday.
And yet here you were – trapped in the confines of your foster-mothers arms, wading through the empty halls whilst the teachers smile at you as they pass, pretending they didn’t make your life a living hell. They had Ann-Marie fooled. You could tell by the way she chirped up every now and then, commenting on how, “Polite these people are!”
It made you sick, quite frankly.
“You know they’re only smiling because you’re the one keeping their bills paid, right?” you comment, not bothering to lower your voice.
Ann-Marie groans, tugging on your arm again. “This is what I mean, Y/N. You have absolutely no filter.”
“I didn’t tell you that you yanking on my arm is only making me stumble even more, so I think I’m improving. Can we go home now?”
Ann-Marie doesn’t even reply as she turns the corner, coming face-to-face with Mr Blanchards ICT room. The computers line the wall, none of them on bar the big monitor that sits high and proud on Mr Blanchards desk.
You scowl upon seeing his small head popping above it, him immediately flashing a large grin at Ann-Marie who gives it right back. He even has the nerve to smile at you – you simply roll your eyes, folding your arms and leaning against the door.
You would never understand people who did that. Could change personalities completely within the space of two seconds, all depending on who they were talking to. Perhaps it was your low emotional levels, but you treated everybody the same. It was just how you worked.
Ann-Marie and Mr Blanchard spoke for a good few minutes before Mr Blanchard finally turns to you and asks you to take a seat. You grumble out a, “Thank you, good sir,” before stowing off to one of the desks in the centre of the room. You set your bag down, pull out your notebook and get to doodling – just like you did every lesson.
You had been caught most times. The teachers always noticed the way your pen moved back and forth at a fast pace, a clear indication that you were colouring rather than actually writing. You took great pleasure in showing them the notes you had already jotted down from nothing but memory. Their faces would turn blank and they would hand to you their favourite comment they used on every smart kid:
“Your notes can’t be correct if you jotted them down so fast.”
You didn’t mind. You got even more pleasure as you watched them read over your notes to see that they were even more detailed than the ones they had written on the board. You had even gone as far as to provide detailed examples, and continue on with the topic long before the teacher had a chance to teach you the criteria.
Clearly, though, not all teachers appreciated having somebody smarter than them in their class. It belittled them.
The clock ticks by with you subconsciously counting the milliseconds, just like you always did. An hour of silence between you and the teacher was enough to make you feel like you were going mad –
But that silence was abruptly cut off at exactly 3:27pm. You had counted.
The door to the room swings open, and even Mr Blanchard shoots upright in shock at the sudden disturbance. You had noticed a shift in his demeanour at around 3:20pm, with him continuously looking at the clock, pouting to himself before looking back down at the paper work on his desk.
Apparently the boy in red who was currently wading into the classroom was the reason behind Mr Blanchard’s confusion.
“Keith,” Mr Blanchard exclaims, standing up almost immediately. “You’re late once again.”
Keith.
You nearly gape as you look at the student in front of you – in your year, you knew. He had been the end of rumours for months now. Keith Kogane, photography student, good boy gone bad for a reason unknown.
You had avoided him at all costs, not seeing the point in wasting time on a friendship with somebody who would clearly do nothing but drag you down this school year. You had even gone as far as dropping photography club – a class and a profession which Keith Kogane was known for.
Taking pictures was his specialty, and he didn’t hide that fact. His camera hangs limply around his neck even now, even though it’s off and there’s hardly anything to capture in this dimly-lit room with simply computer monitors around the place. His black hair is ruffled messily in the back and slicked neatly in the front, his red jacket stained with a yellow sauce you can tell is mustard.
Had he stopped at the cafeteria before he got here?
“Sorry,” Keith utters in response, and you’re surprised at the lack of hostility in the apology. He almost sounds genuine.
Mr Blanchard’s eyes soften as Keith ducks his head down, kicking the door shut behind him and stepping into the room. You watch him closely as he takes a seat at the desk opposite you, immediately putting his head back down, his nimble fingers delicately holding his camera.
Mr Blanchard opens and closes his mouth for a moment, clearly wandering what to say to this boy who was so well-known amongst the school and yet he walked alone through most of the day. You had only ever seen him with people during lunch hours. After that, he disappears into whatever corner of the school he finds most aesthetic to lose himself amongst pointless pixels.
Eventually, the teacher gives up, shakes his head and exits the room completely. Not before giving you a stern look of warning which you give back just as sternly – and then the door has shut behind him and the only two people in the room are you and Keith, alone.
In silence.
Your eyes never leave him. You sit, leaned back against your chair with your eyes focused on him, unable to focus on anything else. He just seems to strange. So far from what you expected him to be. You expected him to be like a rabid bull walking into detention – kicking chairs over and yelling about how Mr Blanchard isn’t his father and he can’t tell him what to do and spraying every curse word under the sun like profanity was his second language.
But here he was in front of you now, eyes never leaving the small screen on his camera. The only noise in the room is the consistent beeping noise which comes from the device as he flicks through the photos he’s looking at. He seems so intrigued by them, and you find yourself half tempted to ask him what he’s doing.
But that wasn’t you, was it? You didn’t care about what Keith Kogane was doing. Just because he surprised you this one time doesn’t mean you should jeopardize your school career by getting involved with him and whatever bad luggage he brought with him.
You slide down further in your chair, pulling your hood on up over your head and deciding to lose yourself counting the tick of the clock again.
Twenty minutes. Thirty seven seconds. Ten milliseconds.
The time would pass by easily. It had to. You had your doodles here with you, an overactive brain to keep you company. Science and maths was a lot better company than the man sitting across from you.
Nineteen minutes. Fifty five seconds. Fifteen milliseconds.
You could ignore him just fine. The fact that he was currently breathing extremely heavily was nothing for you to care about. You had never spoken two words to him before. He was nothing to you.
Nineteen minutes. Fourty six seconds.
There was no reason for you to want to know more about him. No reason for you to ask him about the rumours that went around, inquiry him about how he had gone from a straight A student to somebody who very rarely even showed up to class.
Eighteen seconds. Fifty seven seconds. 12-
“Son of a bitch!”
You nearly yelp, your eyes darting up from your lap to click onto the pair of brown ones which are currently flying around the room in a frantic search for whatever the boy had just dropped.
You had heard the clatter but it hadn’t startled you as much as Keith’s voice had.
You straighten up in your chair, letting your hood slip off of your head as you do. Keith barely acknowledges your existence as he roughly pushes a chair out of his way so he can duck under the table.
“What are you doing?” you find yourself asking.
Keith doesn’t look up. He doesn’t even reply to you. He simply keeps cursing lowly under his breath, his hands feeling up the floor.
You stand up slowly, looking over the top of the round table you’re sat at. “Did you drop something?”
“No, I’m just crouching on the floor because my arse got tired sitting down,” Keith shoots back. He looks up at you, rolls his eyes as if you were the stupidest human being on the planet. “What are you even doing here anyway?”
You raise a brow, shocked and intriguied by this sudden change of attitude. You couldn’t help but chuckle at yourself – how you had thought for one minute that maybe the rumours were all false was beyond you. With an IQ of 160, you thought you’d have caught on by now that high school rumours held a lot more tact that TV gave them credit for.
“I’m in detention too, smart ass,” you reply. “That’s usually the reason why students look miserable whenever they’re forced into school on weekends.”
Keith rolls his eyes, letting out a small scoff at the corner of his mouth before he goes back to searching for the mysterious object he had dropped.
You aren’t entirely sure what to do or say afterwards. Do you help him look? It seems, morally, like the correct thing to do, but your lack of said morals was hard to fight against. He had treated you like shit for no reason, so you would do the exact same thing to him and not regret it.
You fall back against your chair, fold your arms over your chest and quietly hum to yourself, letting your head swing back to look up at the ceiling. You can feel Keith’s eyes glaring at you as you hum, clearly getting irked by the small noise you’re making – that was your plan. You knew how the human brain worked. You had known how the human brain worked since you were 7 years old. Little noises that you had to strain to hear were what your brain was attracted to. Your brain wants to pick up on the small noises, even if you aren’t entirely keen on trying to listen to them.
You had lowered your voice to just that perfect level, knowing full well it would drive Keith mad.
And it had, apparently.
Keith slams his hand against the floor, shooting out from under the table with tired and annoyed looking eyes. You smile at him, stopping your humming for a moment.
“Can you be quiet? This hour is already gonna drag for me, and you’re really not making it any better.”
You shrug loosely. His comments did nothing to you. “I’m not here to make your hour any better. In fact, I think detention is the only place where it’s acceptable to make a persons life hell.”
Keith’s eye twitches. “Are you serious?”
You smile, nodding.
Keith shakes his head, hollowing out his cheeks. “You don’t happen to be the child genius chick everybody goes on about, are you?”
Your smile fades, a twisting feeling pinching the inside of your gut at the two words which shouldn’t have gone together. They crossed his lips so easily – he didn’t even seem shocked, and yet the two words brought back memories that you had forced down over the past few years.
You cough and look away, suddenly feeling uneasy. “I don’t-“
“IQ of 160 or something like that,” Keith continues. “God, you must feel some sense of superiority in this hell hole, don’t you? Smarter even than good ol’ Mr Blanchard.
“His IQ isn’t difficult to challenge.”
Keith scoffs. “I can tell. The old bastard caught me taking pictures of the tree outside his room and put me in detention for it. What a stupid reason, huh?”
“I’d rather not talk about my intelligence, thank you. It’s quite a – uh – personal thing.”
Keith raises a brow as he lifts himself up off the floor. He wipes the dirt off of his black jeans, never taking his eyes off of you and suddenly it feels like the tables have turned. All because he had brought up the one thing you wanted people to forget about you – you were a certified genius. You had an IQ that was higher than anybodies this school had ever seen, and you couldn’t help it. Your brain had been overstimulated from a very, very young age and now you were forced to deal with the repercussions – trust issues, questions, teachers who despised you for the soul reason of you being smarter than them.
You hated talking about it when you didn’t need to. Talking to people in general was a hard enough task for somebody who had zero emotional quota. Talking to them about the one thing that was enough to trigger something inside of you was even harder.
“I go to school with you,” Keith says once he has stood up fully. You notice how he holds his camera protectively against his stomach as he speaks to you – a mark of denial. Perhaps he had some anxiety hidden beneath the tough-boy surface. “Surely knowing about your intelligence comes with the package of being a student with you.”
“We don’t have classes together,” you point out. “Nothing but ICT and biology, and it’s very rare you even show up to those.”
There goes that filter again, Y/N.
You try to cover it up as quickly as you can. “But I suppose I shouldn’t be the one to talk. I’m not usually very vocal during lessons.”
“Bullshit!” Keith nearly yells, startling you. “You’re constantly putting teachers in their place, aren’t you? I heard from my friend Pidge that you corrected Mrs Leech during one of her maths lessons once and you basically took over the class. That’s not something somebody with social issues does.”
“I don’t have social issues as much as I have a low emotional quota.”
“Please translate.”
You can already feel the conversation gnawing away at your brain, an urge to put a stop to it taking over all over again.
“It’s medical, so it’s none of your business.”
Keith frowns, his fingers twitching against the buttons on his camera. Another marker of shock – was he surprised at your defiance?
“Medical? Surely if it was medical, the teachers would have to let it slide. Yet here you are – in detention.”
He made a good point. You lower your head to the desk again, tossing your hood on over your bed-head which you had arrived with this afternoon.
“If you don’t tell me what all of that means, I’ll just look it up for myself and figure it out on my own. Do you want me to be misinformed?” Keith questions.
You groan. “I don’t even know you.”
“That’s why we’re talking. We’re getting to know each other.” You hear the screech of a chair against the floor – all too close for your liking. You look up from the confines your arms had made for your head to rest upon, eyes meeting with Keith’s almost immediately.
He had pulled a chair out to sit next to you – next to you. Usually, such an action wouldn’t bother you. You were always too lost in your own brain or too monotone that day to even care if somebody wanted to sit next to you. But there was something about Keith and the way he looked at you and the rumours that spiralled around his very existence that had you feeling even mildly uncomfortable.
“I don’t usually talk to people, you know,” he continues. “You’d have noticed that when I walked in. People – they aren’t my strong suit – but I love a good interesting person. A person who can keep me entertained with whatever shit they want to talk about.”
“My intelligence is mine, Keith. I don’t need to talk to you about it if I don’t want to.”
“That’s right. But as I said, I do plan on just searching this all up and figuring you out for myself. You’ve been a mystery in this school for years.”
Your eyebrow twitches in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“People wanna know about you. The infamous child genius-“
“Stop calling me that. I’m 17 years old.”
“The infamous teenage genius, then-“
You can’t help yourself. Before you can think rationally, you’ve slammed your hand against the table, silencing Keith. His mouth immediately zooms to a thin line, flinching back in his own chair as his social personality suddenly seems to melt off of him, replaced by the angsty kid who had walked in this room in the first place.
But you were far from calm anymore. You were angry, the words that Keith spoke zooming around in your head at one hundred miles an hour, because they were the words you had grown up hearing in whispered voices down the hall of the foster home, people talking about how your parents couldn’t cope with the genius. Nobody could cope with the genius. Ego’s were being hurt left right and centre and the human race was far too stuck up to let that happen.
Children aren’t meant to develop this quickly. Maybe she’s sick.
Maybe she has a photographic memory. I heard that can ruin lives.
They were right. But what ruined lives even more was whenever people diagnosed you with every illness under the sun instead of taking into consideration that maybe, just maybe, you were more than your god damn intelligence. You were more than your grades, or your above average test score, or your early acceptance to Harvard.
You were sick and tired of hearing people label you genius like you were some animal in the zoo.
Oh look! There’s the genius!
Oh, hey! There’s the genius!
The word made you sick, and hearing Keith say it over and over again without knowing just what it did to you was enough to make even you, an emotionless human being, snap.
“Can you just be quiet?” you nearly yell. “This hour has been long enough without you nagging in my ear. I don’t even know who you are! So if you could please shut your mouth, it would be very much appreciated. Go take pictures of the scenery or something – just leave me out of it.”
You gather up your school bag, slinging it over your shoulder before walking over to the far table, slumping down against the desk and ducking your head in your hands. This certainly wasn’t normal for you – you had a hard enough job of hacking into your emotions, let alone having somebody else do it for you.
But that word brought up memories. It made you remember all those years that that was all you were to people – smart. Too smart for your age, they often said. They belittled you because you were too smart, and they would do the exact same thing if you were stupid. You had to find a good balance, and the rules annoyed you.
Keith annoyed you.
The world annoyed you.
You just weren’t very good at processing that emotion.
Never before had you been so aware in a class before.
Usually, you only pulled yourself out of bed and to the classroom for the attendance record. If you’re attendance dropped below 65%, Ann-Marie would be getting a phone call home asking where I was. Which was why you even bothered.
You put very little effort into the classes you attended – you didn’t need to. Sure, some were better than others. You were incredible at the sciences and maths, and needed a little brushing up when it came to technology and practical subjects, but you were good enough to keep up fairly good grades in all the classes you took.
Biology was usually a breeze. You simply sat back and let the teacher ramble on and on about things you already knew – things you had known since you were 3 – and you jotted down any useful information every now and then. But most of the lesson was spent counting the ticking clock and doodling on the front of your notebooks at the back of the classroom.
Today was different, though, because suddenly you were hyperaware of the man sitting two rows in front of you – black hair, red jacket, camera set at his side amongst his other assortment of class belongings.
Keith had never sat so close to you before. He either didn’t show up to class, or he sat at the very front in the corner, by the window, where he would spend the lesson gazing out at the scenery. You often saw him after class, sprinting his way down the hallway because he had spent the biology lesson so inspired by the plants outside.
You would never understand that side of things. Biology was a lot more important than photography, and yet he insisted on throwing the subject away for something that would only get him so far in life.
But today he had showed up to class earlier than usual – still late, but earlier – and had taken the seat two rows in front of you. His eyes hadn’t drifted to the outside world once, and he instead was focusing firmly on the board in front of him.
There had to be a bigger motive towards his actions. If six years of high school with Keith Kogane taught you anything, it was that he didn’t just change seats. You had seen him get in multiple fights with people just because he had walked in to see them sitting in his preferred seat.
This was so unlike him, and you could only link up his strange behaviour to the conversation the two of you had had in detention the previous day.
“Has anybody got any questions before I get into explaining the project?” the teacher, Miss Shaw, asks from the front of the classroom.
Your jaw slackens whenever Keith’s hand goes up almost immediately.
He never spoke out in class. Even a few of the students around you stare at him in mild shock, clearly bewildered as to what he has to say.
“Yes, Mr Kogane?” Miss Shaw calls forward.
Keith shuffles upwards in his seat, messing with his camera – an anxiety marker. The man clearly had some social anxiety within him.
“Miss, I know this really has nothing to do with what we’re learning about, but I just want to know more about something I was researching yesterday,” Keith begins, and your entire stomach falls. “What does it mean if someone has a low emotional quota?”
Miss Shaw raises her brow, pulling her glasses off of the bridge of her nose to look at Keith properly. She leans one hand against her wooden desk, veins popping out of her wrinkled arms as a small smile finds its way onto her cheeks.
“Well, that is definitely more a question for your psychology teacher, but the basics around a low emotional quota means that the person struggles to feel emotions correctly. They often speak out of turn because they don’t care about consequences, or they struggle to form bonds with people because they don’t care about social life or other people.” Miss Shaw nods. Keith shuffles in his seat. You want to scream. “It’s certainly not the type of life you’d want to be living, Mr Kogane.”
Keith nods. “And what are the characteristics of a person with a low EQ?”
“Well, somebody who’s been abandoned in their life, somebody with trust issues, somebody who feels a little less than everybody else.”
“Somebody with a high IQ?” Keith suggests, and that’s when Miss Shaw’s eyes spark up to meet yours, her suddenly catching on to what Keith is saying.
But her smile doesn’t fade. In fact, it seems to only get brighter. She knows full well about your high IQ. Every teacher in the school knows about it. You were the student they didn’t know what to do with.
“Correct,” Miss Shaw finalises, before shaking her head. She’s still smiling. She must think your public embarrassment is a joke – or maybe she thinks you don’t care. You certainly hadn’t given her any reason to care about your well being over the past few years she had been teaching you. Her lack of emotion towards you was equal to your lack of emotion towards life.
She drops the subject, even if she is still smiling to herself. You let your eyes burn holes in the back of Keith’s head, hands clenching at your sides in an attempt to calm yourself down.
Deep breaths.
“Anyway, now that that is out of the way,” Miss Shaw continues. “I’m gonna read out the partners for the research project you guys will be doing for me this week and going on until the deadline. Please listen for your name.”
You can’t listen. You’re trying to grab onto any and every way possible to calm yourself down, but you were so unused to this feeling of overwhelming anger that you had never needed to calm yourself down. You were so used to feeling absolutely numb that this need to grasp onto reality was rare for you, and you didn’t quite know how to do it.
You zoned in on the ticking of the clock. Attempted to. Miss Shaw’s voice rang out over the top of it, making it incredible difficult for you to even catch a glimpse of the noise. The patterns were gone. Your brain was running haywire.
And then-
“Keith Kogane and Y/N L/N. You two will be doing a research project together on the animal kingdom.”
Keith spins around in his seat, a large smile pulling at his lips that he attempts to hide from the view of the other students by pulling his hood around his head.
You suddenly wish you hadn’t shown up to class that day.
Summary: Being a YouTube guru is hard enough without the added stress of living with Lance McClain, the man who insists on bombarding into every YouTube video you try to film. His viewers love him, and so do you.
Pairing: Lance McClain x Youtuber!Reader
Notes: p1 – p2 – p3 – p4 – p5 – p6 ; well here it is guys - the final! i really just wana say a massive thank you to everyone who has read this series and sent me feedback. the outpour of positive messages that this message brought was overwhelming and i don’t think i’ve ever felt so proud of my own writing before. that’s all on you guys. you guys made me feel like my writing was actually doing something, and that is an indescribable feeling. i love you all, and i hope you can look back on this series one day and smile. i know i will. thank you for reading and enduring all this angst with me x
The thing about Lance McClain, you had noticed over the course of three years, was that he spoke whenever he was trying to avoid a topic.
He spoke whenever he was nervous, whenever there was something lingering in his brain that he didn't exactly want to indulge on.
A part of you wanted to believe it was just the fact that he was pumped up on all sorts of pain-numbing medication, but the other part of you knew the real reason as to why he hadn't shut his mouth in the past ten minutes – you had walked in the room, and he quite frankly didn't know what else to do.
His parents were seated at his bed side, Francesca listening on in mild confusion as Lance babbles on about how he's scared he's going to feel 'phantom pain' where the blood once pumped through his system and now it wasn't. Averall had to constantly remind him that the blood had been replaced, and you didn't feel pain in your blood anyway.
But Lance wasn't having it. Or rather, he didn't want an excuse to be quiet.
You leaned against the door frame, arms folded over your chest as you listen on to him talking. You don't want to feel bad for him in this moment, but his clearly flustered state is enough to make you feel just a little bit at fault – he was already under enough stress and, no matter how badly he had hurt you, you didn't want to cause him even more unnecessary disturbance.
“Lance, honey, I think it's time for you to be quiet,” Francesca sighs, patting her sons hand gently. “Your father and I need to go and see about your discharge papers, but until then -” She looks up, gives you a warm smile. “Y/N can help you pack up your hospital bag, yeah?”
You nod your head without hesitance, the task seeming so easy. You had helped him pack on multiple occasions – he was a pilot in training. There was always some place he needed to go to, some place overseas that he needed to be at. This was an everyday thing for you.
You move out of the way of the door and allow Lance's parents to exit the room, leaving you and Lance alone at last.
For a single second the air is clear. The air is normal, unmoving. For a single second, it's just you and Lance and old times sake. No hurt. No memories. No regrets to place a wall between you two.
It's shattered as soon as Lance starts to talk again.
“Do you wanna see my surgery scars? I think they're pretty cool, but my parents don't want to look at them. They think they're gross. I, personally, think they're natural. Like – Like a sign I survived or something cheesy like that. Do you wanna see?”
You narrow your eyes, hauling his empty hospital bag onto the bed at his feet to begin packing away his essentials. “I think I'm good.”
Lance frowns. “Fine. I'll just let you dismiss the evidence of my life. I'll look at them happily on my own. I don't even need anybodies support. I've got myself. That's all I need.”
You nod. “Okay.”
“And maybe, like, two churros to keep me busy. I've never liked not having something to chew on. It's like a tic of mine.”
“I know.”
“Remember that bag full of sunflower seeds we kept on the mantle piece after we watched Holes? We thought the sheriff's habit was so cool, even though sunflower seeds tasted like baking flour and vinegar.”
You remember. You simply nod in response, keeping yourself busy by folding his clothes up and trying not to make eye contact with him. The idea of looking into his eyes and seeing that mild case of panic he always had on whenever he was in one of his nervous states was almost too much for you to bare. You had seen him wear said expression before, but never around you. He never needed to wear it around you. Whenever you two had anything to talk about, it was the easiest thing in the world to just sit down and talk things through.
Not this time, apparently. Apparently this time was different.
“The nurse told me you stayed by my bedside the whole time.”
Lance's words startle you a little bit. You were hoping he hadn't been informed of the situation – you were hoping he hadn't heard you say the things you had said to him the other day, right before he woke up. You didn't want to give him hope that things could go back to normal, because even you weren't so sure of such a thing. But the words you had spoken were the truth, whether you wanted to believe it or not. If he had died, you would have been in ruins.
At least he knew that.
You purse your lips as you throw his alcohol-stained shirt into the sports bag his parents had hauled down from his hotel room the day before. “Right.”
Lance nods, eyes watching your hands work at his clothes. You can tell he is itching to help by the way he hesitantly reaches forward every now and then, before pulling his hand back.
“That was sweet of you,” he says. “You didn't have to.”
“I know. I wanted to.”
“I find that very hard to believe,” Lance chuckles. He takes one look at your deadpan face and the humour in his voice wears off immediately, half-startled by your lack of response to something that would usually have you at least cracking a smile. “You don't have to feel guilty for the collision. I know you well enough to know that you feel guilty about it.”
You shrug loosely. There was no point in denying it, because he was right. He did know you well enough to know that. He had seen you in these kind of states before, completely paralysed by your own guilt against something that you couldn't have helped.
But the thing with this situation was, you could have helped. And that thought plays like a broken record in your mind as you work at packing up Lance's clothes for him.
Lance sighs, leaning his head back against the freshly-fluffed pillows. “It was my own stupid fault and we both know it. My body can’t handle more than a few bottles of beer. Any more than that and-”
“And you’re stepping out in front of moving vehicles.”
Lance nods slowly, looking at you now. You can feel his gaze burning the side of your head as you work, a soft smile forming itself on his features that he clearly tries to hide with the back of his IV-littered hand. He doesn’t want to push his luck. He doesn’t want to think you’re making jokes with him to ease the tension.
Maybe you were mad at him. He didn’t know that and he certainly didn’t want to assume anything less.
“You know,” he continues, pushing himself with a grunt of pain that the medication had yet to chase away, “my parents work full time at the high school. The doctors won’t let them take me back to their house with them, which means I’m gonna have to go back to the apartment in San Fran.”
He pauses, waiting for you to catch on to what he is saying. You know what he’s insinuating, but you don’t speak up. You keep your eyes glued onto the pair of trousers you are currently folding.
He nibbles on his bottom lip before continuing. “I know I’m probably overstepping my boundaries by asking you this, but I just - I kind of need help getting places, and the doctors won’t let me leave if I don’t have a guardian who can take care of me whilst this heals up. If it can’t be my parents, I would - uh - I would love it - appreciate it - if that person could be you.”
There it is.
You feel the butterflies bubbling back in your stomach, the idea of being back in your apartment with Lance with some sense of normalcy to it making you more happy than you would like to admit. Because he had hurt you, badly, and things would never just go back to normal like you hoped, but this could be a start.
A start you weren’t even sure you wanted.
But you had to put your grudges aside for now. He was right. You could either be the decent person you always claimed to be and help him out just this once, or you could leave him to rot in this hospital until his leg healed.
Lance was lucky you were raised right.
You nod your head, finally looking up from the folding of clothes you had been so engulfed in. “I’ll go back to the apartment with you.”
Lance’s shoulders visibly relax, a hesitant smile gracing his lips and making his pale face look slightly brighter than it had done over the past few days. You smile back just as hesitantly, unsure of what this all means, of how you should feel, if this is right.
It’s just to help him out until he gets better. That’s what you had to remind yourself. It was just temporary, and the reason behind your agreeing was based firmly on your own morals. Nothing more.
No strings attached.
“Jesus Christ, Lance, you need to help me out here!” you grunt.
One of Lance’s arms were strung over your shoulders whilst you held him up, guiding him up the long set of stairs that took you to the apartment you had been avoiding for nearly ten days now.
Your other hand held his crutches, meaning you had nothing to lean on to keep yourself balanced bar Lance’s body, and that wasn’t much use. One of his feet was wrapped up in bandages and he could put hardly any weight on it, and besides that, he had surgery scars to heal up from, meaning he shouldn’t have even been standing up right now.
“I can’t put weight on anything,” Lance hisses. “The fact that I’m even standing up right now is, quite frankly, a miracle.”
“With the way you’re tugging me right now, it’s a miracle that I’m still standing as well.”
You groan as you finally throw you and Lance forward, reaching the red door that led into your apartment. You quickly fish the key out of your pocket, place it in the door and unlock it, watching as it slides open to reveal the cold, abandoned room you had lived in for three years.
It had only been left alone for four days whilst you and Lance were in LA, and yet it still seemed completely foreign to you when you stepped inside. Nothing major had changed - the sofa had a few extra pizza boxes lying on top of it, but that was the extent of it. The TV needed dusted, and as you stepped in you couldn’t help but wrinkle your nose up at the lack of Febreze that had been sprayed around.
Nothing major and yet it felt like a new place to you. You felt as if you had never been in here before.
You grunt as you let Lance drop onto the sofa, him immediately letting out a sigh of relief when his body hits the pillows. You make a show of stretching your limbs out, popping your neck in the way that always made Lance squirm out of discomfort.
Even now he looks up at you and shakes his head at the action, but he clearly doesn’t think scolding you is a good idea.
You are unsure of what to do from this moment onwards - do you sit next to him? Does he need his meds? Does he want the TV on?
You purse your lips, awkwardly hovering over the back of the sofa as Lance fiddles with the pillows in an attempt to get himself comfortable. His face twitches in pain at almost every movement he makes, and you’re half tempted to question whether him being released from the hospital was a good idea.
“My mum used to sing Spanish lullabies to me whenever I got sick,” Lance says, suddenly.
You inhale deeply, shocked at the sudden conversation starter. You try to make yourself look like you hadn’t been standing over him for the past two minutes.
“I don’t know any Spanish lullabies,” you tell him. “And I can’t sing.”
“I wasn’t asking you to sing for me,” he scoffs. “I was just telling you a fun fact about my childhood. I thought that was one you didn’t know.”
You shrug. “I knew that one. You bring it up every time anything goes wrong with your health.”
“Which isn’t often enough for that fact to be put in your long-term memory,” he replies. “I have a very strong immune system, and my bones aren’t exactly easily breakable.”
You raise your brow. “Yeah. That’s why you currently have a broken ankle and can barely stand up without assistance.”
“Cut me some slack! My bones may be strong,but certainly not strong enough to fend off a car coming at me at 70mph.”
You roll your eyes, spinning on your heel to face the conjoined kitchen. “I’m gonna go make us some food. The drive from LA has me hungry. Do you want anything?”
“Something I can drink through a straw, please. I don’t feel like chewing.”
You nod as if his words were the most natural thing in the world, as if your heart wasn’t moving at one thousand miles per minute, as if everything right now didn’t seem completely twisted and scripted.
As you make soup over the stove, watching Lance from the counter as he keeps his eyes glued on the now-turned-on television, you can’t help but realise just how weird this entire thing was. A little over a week ago, you would have cursed the person who forced you and Lance into a room together. One car crash later and here you were; making him soup as he rewatched Friends for what you knew was the hundredth time in his lifetime.
It didn’t necessarily feel wrong as much as it felt fake. There was an underlying topic that you two were avoiding, gently pulling it out of the conversation as if you were playing Jenga with conversation starters. Trying to work your way around inevitable collapse, getting rid of all of the things that could trigger said conversation.
Everything was peaceful now, but you didn’t know how long it would last for. How long you could keep up this charade of oh, everything’s fine!
Lance was good at putting on a front, but you knew him well enough to know that he felt the same way. The way his eyes shifted to the ground whenever he was at risk of making eye contact with you, or the way he narrowly avoided the topic of Shiro whenever the two of you were discussing how Emma, Samuel and he had gotten home. He had only asked about Emma and Samuel, even though he knew full well Shiro was accompanying you also.
You hated to admit it, but you had barely thought about Shiro outside of the incident. Any time his name popped up in your head, all you could think about was the look on Lance’s face whenever he saw Shiro’s arm around your waist, the horror and the anger and the misplaced betrayal that immediately slapped itself onto his drunken features.
You felt bad about that. He had treated you with nothing but kindness and all you could think about was the man who had ripped your heart from your chest. And now, said man was sitting in front of you with a broken leg, a fractured collar bone and a skull that still had mild swelling in it.
Oh, what a day.
“Y/N!”
You pluck your earphones out of your ear, cautiously looking over at the closed door that currently separated you and the patient you had been forced to care for.
“Y/N! Y/N, are you sleeping? I can’t stand up to come and wake you up, so if you could just stop that, that would be great!”
You roll your eyes, throwing the earphones down onto your laptop, where your face is popped up on the editing program you were currently using. After making Lance and yourself some soup and watching yours get cold whilst Lance slurped his up in seconds, you had excused yourself from the living room to go and do something useful with your time. Despite your exhaustion from having driven a 6 hour drive from LA to San Fransisco, you didn’t trust Lance enough on his own to fall asleep, so you instead decided to edit your recent video.
But it seemed as though Lance had other ideas for your evening.
You trot downstairs grudgingly, barely popping your head around the living room door. “What is it?”
Lance perks up at the sght of your face. “Oh, you’re not sleeping. Great. I was just - uh - I was just wondering if you would help me get to my room? I feel lonely in the living room on my own, and I wanna sleep on my bed.”
You raise a brow. “Why can’t you just sleep on the sofa and save us both the bother?”
“Sleeping on the sofa is a bother. What if we get robbed during the night? I can’t run, and I’m the first person they’ll see.”
You shake your head slightly, fighting off the urge to roll your eyes. Same old Lance.
You say no more before you make your way over to him, looping one of his arms around your shoulders and hauling him into your side. He hisses out in pain, letting out a chorus of “Ah, ah, ah’s” as he bounces slightly, trying to find a position against you that would stop the pain from going through his body.
His body which is pressed to yours very closely.
You bite at your bottom lip, shoving all thoughts out of your head. He was ill. He was hardly leaning on you for anything more than medical reasons. The fact that he can’t even stand upright is most likely a big part of it.
And even know you know this fact is truth, your heart still picks up at the way his arm tightens slightly over your shoulders as he tries to find a good position to hobble in. A blush still creeps up onto your cheeks whenever he instinctively winds his fingers through yours in an attempt to keep him upright even better.
You still lose your mind whenever his breath tickles your neck.
“Fuck,“ he hisses now, his hopping coming to a halt as he finally gets comfortable against you. “Sorry. Did I hurt you there?”
You go to speak, but your mouth opens and no words come out. His fingers are still wound with yours, and you aren’t letting go, but neither is he and you can no longer think past the warm feeling spreading up your arm and the way his hand fits so closely with yours and how familiar it all feels even though it shouldn’t.
So instead, you opt for simply nodding before leading him up the stairs in silence, trying your hardest to hide your blush behind your hair, trying to make it seem like this was just exactly what it should have been - an innocent, morally charged exchange. You were helping him out because he was ill. He couldn’t do this on his own, and that was all there was to it.
You arrive at his room and you inwardly cringe at the sight of it - he clearly hadn’t been sleeping in his room during your time away, because your side of the bed is still a crumpled mess from the last time you had gotten out of his sheets. It seems like ages ago.
Lance clearly notices the crumpled sheets as well, as a blush begins to take form on his cheeks and his fingers tighten around your own. You inhale deeply, shake your head to nothingness as you set him down in the centre of the pillows, trying not to make it seem like you still thought of the right side as your side. He could have the whole bed to himself if he wanted.
“There,” you say, cracking your knuckles dramatically. Lance scoffs and rolls his eyes playfully at the over-exaggerated action. “If you need anything, call me. I’ll be just down the hall.”
I want to be beside you, but we both know that can’t happen.
You wince as the thought strikes you, too quick for you to dismiss it before it grows into something more.
Lance nods at you, giving you one last lazy smile before you turn to leave. Half you wants to leave. Half of you wants to stay, curl up in Lance’s arms like you had grown so used to those three months you had done so.
“Oh, Y/N, wait.”
You pause in your tracks, hand hovering over the door handle.
“Hm?”
Lance pushes himself up, turning to face you fully now. “I never thanked you for the soup you made me. It was nice. Thank you.”
How such a simple comment can make your knees feel weak is beyond you, and you silently curse your low tolerance levels when it comes to Lance McClain.
You hide your suddenly woozy state by smiling softly, whispering “No problem,” and exiting the room.
As soon as the door closes behind you, you catch your breath. You need to. The day had been so simple, so easy and usually, chill days like this took nothing out of you. But today, something had affected you and it was making you feel a thousand emotions at once.
Nostalgia? Regret? Confusion?
Everything. Even happiness, though you didn’t want to admit that to yourself right now. You wanted to keep yourself under the illusion that you were just here for moral reasons, to keep yourself from feeling guilty. You were helping out somebody in need.
But the happiness was unavoidable. Happiness whenever Lance smiled at you. Happiness at the fact that he was sitting on the sofa, smiling, laughing along to the television, alive. He was alive. He was thriving again, and sure, he was in pain and he wasn’t as active as he used to be, but he was happy and he was trying to make you happy even though he knew he had messed up and you would be a fool not to see such a thing.
You close your eyes and lean your head back against his bedroom door, hoping and praying that he doesn’t hear the slight bang that comes from the contact. Even though your heartbeat speeds up at the risk, you don’t move. You simply keep your ground, inhaling and exhaling deeply, trying everything and anything to keep yourself from crumbling all over again.
“Okay, but if I had an adult colouring book, I wouldn’t be complaining so much about now having an adult colouring book.”
You squeeze your eyes closed, your laptop balanced on your knees in the way you found so uncomfortable. You hadn’t realised that looking after Lance meant having to sit with him in the living room all day, listening to him complain about not having an adult colouring book.
“I’m not going to the shop and buying you an adult colouring book. Those are expensive, and the Adpocolypse has been cutting me short lately.”
Lance groans, throwing his head back. He sat on the sofa across from you, the TV playing in the background though he didn’t seem to be paying it any attention. His eyes were fixed on your working form, watching as you sat hunched over your laptop, putting the finishing touches on the video you were making.
“I already offered to pay for it, for gods sake! All you need to do is go down the street to Barnes & Noble and pick one up for me.”
“Why can’t you just have a normal colouring book?”
“Because I am an 19 year old adult who needs an adult colouring book.This isn’t a game of pick and choose, Y/N. I can’t just pick up a Mandala colouring book and be on my merry way. That’s basically fraud.”
You bite down on your bottom lip. You had to constantly remind yourself that he was ill. He was hyped up on pain medication, and that was why he was being such a pain.
“Maybe later, Lance,” you say. “I’ve gotta get this video up tonight or else there will be questions.”
Lance sighs, slumping back against the sofa again. His arms hang loosely over the back of it, though you had warned him time and time again that that would do nothing good for his sore back. He had ignored you, claiming he was tough enough to put up with it.
He watches you now - you can feel his stare. You knew he had always taken an interest in the way you worked off camera. How you could take your happy, make-up obsessed persona and suddenly replace them with this work-savvy tec person who knew everything there was to know about editing videos and the process behind it all. After working with editing videos for nearly half of your life, you had picked up a thing or two and editing had become just as simple and thoughtless as breathing.
Lance had always found that cool. How you could watch a YouTube video on how to edit and suddenly you were being filled with stock-piles of information. A little bit of practice and a weekly upload schedule had you becoming a professional even before you had met Lance.
The topic of your YouTube channel was one you hadn’t brought up until now, either, and you knew it had caused some tension. Though you didn’t want to dwell on it too much, it was quite difficult to dismiss. The way Lance suddenly got quiet, the way he pulled his bottom lip into his teeth and chewed awkwardly, watching you now as if waiting to see you bash him in a video for what he had done.
But no. It was a simple make up tutorial. You had gone another week on your YouTube channel, totally ignoring the rumours which had been circulating the internet from the moment Lance’s interview had surfaced. You were hoping they would blow over eventually. Until then, a smokey eye tutorial would have to suffice.
Lance speaks up suddenly. “I watched your LA vlog that you put up a few days ago.”
Your eyes snap up, mouth forming a line as you do so. “Right. What did you think of it?”
He shuffles awkwardly in his position on the sofa, finally pulling his hands into his lap and intertwining his fingers together. “I was a little shocked that you still put it up after - after what happened with me. Surprised you had found the time to edit it.”
“I had a lot of time on my hands whilst I was waiting for you to wake up. The waiting room has surprisingly good WiFi.”
Lance winces, your tone of voice so monotone, so free of emotion. You had planned it that way. You didn’t want him to think that you dwelled on him too much over the past few days, even though you had. Keeping your voice low and monotone would wipe out all hope he may have of you rekindling anything with him - you hoped.
No you don’t.
“Well, it was a good video. I enjoyed it. The art looked - nice.” He shifts his eyes up hesitantly, meeting yours for a moment. “You and Shiro looked like you were having a good time.”
There it was. The name that he had been avoiding since he had woken up four days ago. The name which had seemed almost a taboo topic had just fell from his mouth and had opened up an entire can of worms.
The tension was undeniable, because you went silent as soon as he mentioned Shiro. Your eyes darted back to your computer screen, your demeanour completely changing as you try your hardest to fight off the conversation which is now inevitable.
Lance leans forward a little bit, hisses in pain and decides against it. “You were laughing a lot with him. Going through the rooms of the museum and stuff. You looked happy.”
“I was having a good time,” you grunt. You don’t want to talk about this any longer, because you no longer have the choice to just get up and leave. You have to stay and take care of him, which is your invisible handcuff to this room.
He didn’t need to make it any more awkward.
“I’m glad,” he replies. “But it’s just - I don’t mean to bring this up now and make things awkward between us, but since we have nothing else to talk about, I might as well. It made me think about all the good times we used to have together and how we used to break the rules like that. We used to laugh about it, remember? Just like how you were laughing with Shiro.”
You bite down harder on your lip, suppressing the urge to throw your laptop to the side and walk off. What were you even supposed to say to that? Were you supposed to apologise for doing things with Shiro that you once did with Lance? Were you supposed to feel the stabbing guilt that you were currently feeling?
“Lance,” you breath out, clicking mercilessly at the screen on your laptop - anything to distract yourself. The more distracted you are from Lance’s prying eyes, the easier the words will come. “I was having a good night out with my friends. It was Emma’s special day, and I wanted to enjoy myself. You’re selfish if you think I can’t have a laugh just because my best friend pulled the rug out from underneath me a few days prior.”
Lance’s eyes widen and you hear him take a breath. He clearly hadn’t expected you to bring that situation up. He had clearly hoped that he could take a dig at you and your friends and get away from his own wrong-doings scotch free.
“Hey, hey, you know that’s not what I meant,” he says frantically. “I was just commenting on it. It was playing on my mind so I said it.” He winces as he folds his arms over his chest. “No need to get mad.”
You grit your teeth, hands clenching the fabric you had balled up in your hand in an attempt to ease the anger swarming through you. It was weird how you could go from questioning your anger towards him to suddenly realising why you felt it all in the first place.
You’re not yelling because you don’t want to ruin the happiness between you two. You still care.
“You know what, Lance?” you nearly exclaim, cutting the thoughts off before you can stop yourself.
You were going to prove yourself wrong. You didn’t want to be friends with Lance any more. You could yell at him. You could get mad if he gave you a reason to be.
Lance looks up at you, arms still folded over his chest, waiting for you to explode.
One look at his face and you feel like melting all over again. You can feel your anger disappearing and you grapple for it as quickly as you can, pretending the butterflies in your stomach weren’t there.
“You - You have no right to form an opinion on my social life any more,” you say, silently cursing yourself for stuttering. “You messed up. That’s not my problem. You’re not my problem any more. You’re lucky I’m actually staying here right now, because me of all people has every right to walk out and leave you if I wanted to.”
Lance blinks.
“Don’t act - God - don’t act stupid! You’re clearly annoyed about me and Shiro getting closer even though you have no right to be.”
“I’m not mad,” Lance insists, and it seems as if his nervous persona had melted away. His eyes are burning directly into yours as the two of you argue, him moving around as dramatically as his injuries will let him. “I was just commenting on the video you put up! Excuse me for trying to start a fucking conversation!”
“You really must think I’m stupid,” you scoff. “Or soft. Or something like that. Thinking I would just never replace you after what you did. You don’t orchestrate my life like that, Lance! You hurt me, and you’re surprised whenever I’m finally getting my life back on track-”
“My God, Y/N, I didn’t mean to hurt you!” he exclaims. “You know I would never do anything bad to you without a good enough reason-”
“I was hoping not even a good reason would be enough for you to hurt me. I thought our friendship was strong enough for that.”
Lance grits his teeth, his hands tugging at his hair even though the action clearly pains him. “Okay, fine. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for complimenting your stupid little vlog. Sorry for being interested in your day-to-day life.” He grunts and folds his arms back over his chest. “Plus, I’m not jealous of you and Shiro. I could never be jealous of that stupid-haircut-looking cunt.”
Your eyebrows shoot up in surprise, anger souring through you. “Are you serious, Lance McClain?”
He had pulled the final straw. You set your laptop to the side, standing up after slamming the lid closed. Lance follows your movements, but his eyes don’t meet yours. They click on every other part of your body that he can find - legs, arms, stomach. Anywhere that aren’t your eyes, because even as you glare down at him now, you know he’s repeating the words he has just spoken in his head and realising just how petty and angry he had sounded in his moment of weakness.
“You cannot insult Shiro. You just can’t,” you seethe. “He’s a better man than you will ever be, because he knows how to treat people who show him kindness.”
“I’m sorry,” Lance mutters.
“No. I don’t wanna hear it,” you say, waving his apology off. “I’m going to my room. If you need help off the sofa, call me, but I don’t wanna be associated with you outside of that.”
You start towards the hallway, hands balled up at your sides, nails digging into the flesh on your palm so harshly you’re almost certain there will be blood when you uncurl them. Everything in you screams to stay, but you know it’s just the remaining remnants of friendship you had with him - remnants which you hope will disappear after tonight.
“Y/N, please wait,” Lance calls after you, suddenly sounding exhausted. “Y/N, please! Let me explain myself!”
“Go to hell, Lance!”
Your door slams closed, blocking his voice out for good.
The night brings no sleep for you.
Your bed feels cold and unfamiliar. Your body rejects it, feeling each and every spring you had missed shove itself into your spine, making you twist and turn in an uncomfortable attempt to escape it.
Usually Lance’s arms around be wrapped tight around you, protecting you from the protruding springs which were currently jabbing into your back due to how old your mattress was. Contrary to popular belief, being a YouTuber didn’t rack up a large wad of money. You needed to use things for as long as possible, meaning your mattress hadn’t seen a replacement since you moved in here.
That was your excuse. It was old. That was why you couldn’t sleep, even though you had only been out of it for a little over a week.
You knew the real reason, buried deep within the back of your head - the part that was blocked by the fuming anger you had towards Lance, the disbelief at the audacity he had shown today.
He shouldn’t have said the things he did. He shouldn’t have insulted Shiro just because he was mad at you.
But in the same breath, maybe you shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions whenever he was talking about the vlog you had posted. Maybe he was genuinely just curious - anybody would be. He wanted to know if he had been replaced and, in the moment, that had annoyed you. You had forgot to realise that Lance wasn’t a bad guy. He was a good guy who had done something bad to you - that didn’t mean every single word that fell out of his mouth was a sinister attack on you and your friends.
You sigh and bury your head in your pillow. 4am was soon to be rolling around and you had a multitude of videos to film tomorrow, as well as taking care of the big child you had left gob smacked a few hours prior. How you were going to handle the day in all it’s awkwardness was beyond you, but you were going to have to make it work.
You weren’t going to take back what you had said. It was one step closer to you illiminating him from your life completely, and maybe that was what you needed.
Not particularly what you wanted, but you couldn’t have it all.
It was around 4:30am whenever you heard it.
It was quiet in the house for the most part, meaning the sudden crash and grunt of “Oh, fuck,” wasn’t difficult to miss. It had you bolting upright almost immediately - any excuse to get out of the confines of your sheets, in which you didn’t want to be trapped in any longer.
You were out of your bedroom in seconds, marching down the hall to Lance’s room. You threw open his door and wasn’t surprised to see him lying face-down on the carpeted floor, a globe laying broken at the side of him and his sheets tangled in his legs.
He looks up at you when you enter, groans before lowering his head back onto the carpet.
You don’t speak as you march over to him, kicking the broken globe out of the way and untangling the sheets from his legs, being careful of his ankle cast. He doesn’t speak either. It’s an unspoken exchange, a confirmation that you were serious about what you had said earlier in your fit of rage.
You haul Lance to his feet with a struggle and set him back on his bed. That was all. That was all you were needed for, and you quickly turn to leave, but his voice stops you.
Of course it does.
“Please call me stupid.”
You pause in your tracks, narrowing your eyes. You could have easily turned and left, continue on being mad at him, but you stay exactly where you are, waiting for him to continue.
“Do it like you used to,” he continues. “Don’t block me out.”
You grit your teeth, lowering you head. You don’t want to give in. He had done this too many times, against his own knowledge but that wasn’t important.
Your fingers close around the door knob, ready to leave. Ready to continue on with the charade until he gets better and you can leave for good, but Lance has other plans.
He jolts his body forward, yelling in pain as he tries to make his way over to you, but his broken and fractured and bruised body doesn’t let him get very far. His hand has barely closed on your arm before he’s tumbling to the floor, yelling in pain.
You gasp, whirling around at the sudden movement which was the last thing you had expected him to do.
“Lance!” you exclaim, grabbing onto his arms. He closes his eyes in pain, his mouth in a box shape as small hisses of pain escape his lips. His fingers crawl up your arms as you go to grab for his shoulders, a signal for you to wait a minute as he catches his breath.
You look down at him, worry coating your expression. He became overwhelmed with pain almost every time he tried to stand up, but you hadn’t seen him like this. His eyes are screwed shut, deep breaths leaving his mouth alongside little whimpers of pain that claw at your heart and make you want to pull him into a hug.
Instead, you keep your hands on his shoulders until he’s ready to move again.
“The things I put myself through for you,” he grunts, eyes still closed, breathing still shallow. “Is this enough for you to hear me out? Because I won’t move until you’ve spoken to me.”
You blink rapidly, heart still racing. “Are you-”
“I don’t care if you’re dating Shiro,” he says, eyes finally opening but his fingers tighten on your arms, stopping you from moving him any further. “I’m happy if you’re happy, but I don’t want you leaving this friendship - what we had - without knowing how - how I feel and why I did what I did.”
Your mouth is running dry and your hands are shaking and no words come out of your mouth. Nothing is clicking right now. All you can see, all you can hear is Lance.
He takes your silence as a reason to continue. “I didn’t get paid to do that interview.” You gawk. “I was walking on the street one night whenever you were back at the apartment, and some guy recognised me from the video we did together. He came up to me and was saying all this stuff - all this crazy, weird stuff about how he had hacked into one of your old phones from when you were a teenager and found all these texts between you and your mum. Right when she was beginning to get sick. He said - He told me he wanted a tell-all interview or else he would release the texts and I panicked. I freaked out and I said I’d do it, because I know how private you are about your mother’s condition. I didn’t want him to put you through that, and I thought me ‘exposing’ you would hurt a little less than him leaking those texts to the world.”
Your chest burns. Your eyes burn, tears falling down your cheeks without you even realising it. At the mention of your mother - a lady who had been diagnosed with MS whenever you were young - the tears fall even quicker.
You had never spoken publicly about your mothers condition. Keeping it silent was a lot easier than explaining to everyone why she had limited time left on earth, or why none of her treatment was working. Pretending that everything was okay was a lot easier than explaining why it wasn’t.
That was why you hadn’t brought up anything about Lance in your recent videos. Explaining to people why was a whole lot more difficult than ignoring the situation completely.
Hearing that Lance hadn’t been getting paid, that he had done the interview to protect you and your mother, made your heartbeat pick up with a thing you wanted to say was hope. Hope that this could all work out. Hope that this wasn’t the end of you and Lance.
Lance reaches up with his shaky arms and wipes the tears off of your cheeks. You simply stare down at him, mouth open in shock, frozen.
He nods gently. “I know. I’m sorry. I tried to distance myself from you afterwards because I knew that when the interview released, you’d want nothing to do with me anyway. And I was right, and I don’t blame you. I wasn’t even going to say anything because I want you to go on without me if it makes you happier, but I - I can’t live with the fact that you hate me, Y/N. I don’t want you to ever hate me. If I can’t love you in the way I want to, I at least want to be friends. But I can’t have you out of my life forever. I wasn’t wired to function without my best friend.”
A stab in the gut would have hurt less.
You close your eyes, finally letting go of Lance’s shoulders and letting yourself fall back against his bed frame. Once your back has hit the frame, you tug your legs up to your chest, rest your chin on your knees and let the tears fall freely, soft sobs racking your body.
Lance does his best to sit up as quickly as he possibly can, hissing in pain in the process, but he eventually manages to move himself to the side of you, where he finally wraps his long arm over your shoulders and pulls you into his side.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I can call Shiro if you want. Get him to come over. You don’t have to stay here if you don’t-”
“Thank you.” The words sound scratchy against your throat, burning as they arise to the surface. Two words you never thought you would be saying to Lance again.
Lance tenses at the side of you. “For what?”
“For protecting me and my mother that way,” you reply. “You - You risked our friendship to protect my family. That was a brave move.”
“I still jeopardized our relationship-”
You shake your head, swallowing the golf ball sized lump in your throat. It doesn’t budge, and your words come out even groggier than before. “No, you didn’t Lance. I was mad before because I thought you had used me for the money and the publicity, but now I know the truth. I know why you did it.”
“Y/N, please don’t feel pressured-”
“I’m not dating Shiro,” you say. You look up as you say it, watching in mild amusement as Lance’s face goes from stiff to completely placid, eyes widening and mouth falling open.
His eyes meet yours and he immediately closes his mouth, coughing awkwardly into his hand. “Oh, you aren’t?”
You shake your head. “No, I’m not. Wanna know why?”
“There’s a reason?”
“It’s because I’m in love with my best friend. Head over heels in love. Completely smitten.”
Lance smiles, biting his lip at the same time, clearly trying to hide the overjoyed expression making it’s way onto his face.
You let your knees fall away from your chest so you can look at him dead in the eye this time. He looks at you, eyes still wide, hands hesitantly reaching out to grab your own but you pull away from his grip, opting to wrap your arms over his shoulders instead.
“I fell for the man who protected my family from media outcry. I fell for the man who used to lock me in the bathroom when I was being moody so I could calm down. I fell for the man who never fails to race me up the stairs, even though there’s only three steps to walk up.” You smile down at him now, eyes glistening with both tears and lust. “I fell for the stupid idiot who got hit by a car because he was mad at Takashi Shirogane.”
Lance raises a brow now, hands instinctively coming to your waist as you hover over him. “You’re being awfully vague. I think I need more hints.”
You roll your eyes. “What I’m saying is, I love you, Lance McClain. Being away from you was the hardest task I’ve ever had to endure, and I don’t wanna do it again. Not in a million years.”
He grins. He grins widely and brightly, happily staring up at you as he does so. “You won’t have to be away from me ever again.”
With those words spoken, you seal the deal with a kiss. Long and drawn out and needed, but not needy. It’s soft and gentle, though the way Lance’s hands tighten on your waist and the way you pull him impossibly closer make up for the distance you two had had from one another for the past ten days.
You’d missed this. Feeling happy. Feeling happy with Lance. Feeling like the world could no longer drag you down because you finally had your anchor back with you, even if you knew things would be mildly complicated from here on out.
You would have to deal with Samuel and Emma, who no doubt would have a lot to say about you going back to an ex. You would have to deal with Shiro - you weren’t sure what Shiro felt about you. If he felt anything. If he really did like you in that way. You just knew you would deal with it all eventually - but for now, you were with Lance.
