Lance: A Narrative Fiction

It seems like an eternity passes, but Lance keeps one hand trained on Keith's spine soothingly as he inhales and exhales; caressing star maps and circles and trajectories onto his back, maintaining eye contact with him all the way until he's no longer blinking back kaleidoscopes of crimson, fury, cataclysm at the blurred edges of his vision. Calm. Calm, Keith, calm.
"Fuck, Lance, I'm so sor-"
"Don't apologise," Lance says shortly, almost bitingly and Keith holds his tongue, afraid. He feels drained of everything in him and his eyelids are swollen, latticed with sinewy veins, crusting around with stardust and sorrow and everything is wrong, so goddamn wrong. Lance stands up and begins to walk away, and Keith admits to himself that he's really
Because Lance. Because Lance has just strung up the entire universe for him, and he has absolutrly no idea what to think, no idea what to say, no idea how to even react.
Keith had always loved space as a kid, had always dreamed of flying rockets light-years into the night and disappearing within the cosmic clouds of fairydust and wonder, but, but he'd never had someone fulfill that for him willingly- Voltron aside, he hadn't been given the opportunity to indulge in his love for the starlight above him ever, ever.

But now, now Lance has done all that with the press of a fucking button and the two of them are suspended in complete darkness in the control room, lanterns of stardust exploding and detonating around them like tiny sunbeams, glowing, glowing. Another click, another whirr and the constellations sing melodies inside his ribcage, distant asterisms in faraway galaxies; Keith spins and the skies melt into moonlight and erupt, incandescent blurs of stars licking and cartwheeling across the blackness and fracturing like supernovae, like dying stars, fragmenting into a spectrum of blazing colours and raining down in stardrops of green, purple, pink,
They look into each other's eyes and maybe this is shifting out of Keith's comfort zone, but to be frank he doesn't care anymore, would leap out of a spaceship and swim to the furthest corners of the fucking universe if it'd give rise to Lance being happy.
"If I hated you, I wouldn't open up to you, would I? Or cry about you ignoring me. Or tell you that you're a star. Or make out with you." he laughs.
Keith just gawks. Then: "Do it again," he whines, and this time the smile gracing his mouth is real, celestial, love pooling in the depths of his belly like honey.

Loving Lance is like inhaling sunlight, exhaling stardust, and it's like jumping off a cliff when he's never been called brave in his entire life. He's the kind of beautiful that makes Keith want to scream. Ragged, even, all cracked smiles and kerosene-drenched flowers and rustic eyes, like he knows just how much the universe is passing him by down the minute, the second, the millisecond; except this time, it's not so unfamiliar anymore, expanses of endless spacetime where he can't belong.
They belong with each other. The stars continue to drift around the two of them in trails of celeste gold, and Lance's mouth quirks upwards as he leans in close to Keith again, sugar-soft.