Chapter Text
“And that's Lance Díaz,” Shirogane says, seeing Keith's focus wandering to the cadet with animated limbs and a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes, as if half the city doesn't know about the boy wonder already. “He's top of the class. Would probably give you a run for your money if you ever showed the Garrison what you're really capable of.”
Keith's gaze slides away so he can glare at the older man next to him. “I'm not giving this shitty institution anything,” he says stiffly. He goes back to looking at Lance because it's difficult not to. Everybody at Garrison knows about the man who can freeze someone to death with the snap of his fingers; Lance is rather famous — or infamous, depending on who you ask. The higher-ups think he's the strongest elemental ability user in years.
Only Keith and Shirogane know that Lance has a potential rival in strength, but that'll be their little secret.
“Breathe,” Shirogane says mildly. “It'd be a shame if you set the building on fire on your first day.”
“A shame for whom?” Keith mutters under his breath, ignoring Shirogane’s bark of laughter. He notices that Lance left the room and wonders why he feels disappointed about that.
The first real thing that Keith learns about Lance is that he has a temper. He assumed that somebody with ice abilities would have a cool personality to match. He is very, very wrong.
“What did you say?” Lance is smiling at Hudson but it doesn't reach his eyes like always. It looks more like he's baring his teeth: rows of knife-like icicles set between sneering lips.
Maybe he wasn't entirely wrong, Keith thinks. Lance’s anger doesn't run hot; it's cold and biting and suffocating like a sudden blizzard or avalanche that catches you off-guard.
“You heard what I said,” Hudson says smugly, seemingly oblivious to the invisible guillotine threatening his neck. “You could go far without that deadweight partner holding you back. Someone as talented as you deserves... better company, and I think I’m just the guy.” He extends a hand, a confident smirk on his face. “So what do you say, Díaz?”
Lance doesn’t shake the hand. “Hasta la later, fuckface,” he answers blithely before punching Hudson in the face.
While hiding behind a corner, Keith learns a second thing —
(“You didn’t have to do that,” Hunk says, carrying Lance on his back as if he weighs nothing. “We’re not little kids anymore. I can handle some shit talk.”
“Nobody insults my best friend and gets away with it.” Lance pokes at his split lip with his tongue while staring at it, looking slightly cross-eyed even from a distance. “Just because you can probably benchpress like, five of me now, doesn’t mean I won’t have your back.”
Hunk scoffs. “I appreciate it man, really, I do. But if you’re going to get into a fistfight on my behalf, let me know so I can bring a first-aid kit? Or, y’know, invite me to join in? Your bro who is conveniently invulnerable to punching? So you don’t get your ass kicked?”
“Well excuuuuuse me, princess, I did not get my ass kicked.”
“Sorry, you’re right — you got your ribs kicked.”
“Don’t fucking sass me after I challenged Hudson to a duel for your honour.”
Hunk hops and laughs when Lance yelps in surprise at the sudden jostling. “Oh Sir Lancelot, my knight in shining armour, whatever would I do without you.”
“Yeah, yeah, I love you too you big nerd.” Then Lance grins happily, and it’s the first real smile that Keith has ever seen on the other cadet’s face.)
— Lance is unbearably kind.
Third thing: Lance dislikes Keith.
Shiro — now a friend as well as mentor — assures Keith that it’s probably nothing personal. “It’s not my place to give any details, but... he’s going through a lot,” he says, meticulously stirring his coffee. The spoon clinks rhythmically against the plain mug. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him get close to anyone except Hunk. He’s pretty friendly to everyone but it’ll take some effort to really get through to him.”
He’s not friendly to me, Keith thinks, but he doesn’t say it out loud. Lance is never openly hostile but he doesn’t want anything to do with Keith. It’s obvious in the way his face is closed off whenever they have to interact, the tension in his jaw, the stiff line of his shoulders, the frosty glare that bores into Keith and then goes out the other side. You mean nothing to me, said without any words.
“I think it’ll take more than just effort for me to get through to him.” Keith frowns at his own mug. “A miracle, maybe.”
Shiro looks sympathetic. “It might get better with time.”
It doesn’t. The more months pass, the more resentful Lance looks. Keith can’t figure out why and it takes all his fraying self-control not to rise to the bait that’s constantly dangled in front of him. He decides to keep his distance before he accidentally sets his crush on fire for insulting him again. Romance isn’t something he has much experience with after being on the run most of his life, but even he knows that immolation isn’t a very effective means of wooing somebody.
All Keith can do now is watch from afar. He watches Lance stay at the top of the class with steely determination and gruelling effort. He watches Lance’s smile grow more brittle with every lecture from a commanding officer. He watches Lance gain dark circles under his eyes and lose at least fifteen pounds of weight. He watches Lance collapse one day during a training exercise and stay on the ground unmoving until Hunk carries him to the infirmary. He watches in secret until his heart aches but he can’t look away.
Eventually, Keith gets caught because he’s an idiot. “You dropped these,” he says, holding out a canister of pills before Lance silently rips it out of his hand hard enough that his fingers sting. He closes his eyes and breathes evenly through his nose to push back the instinctive annoyance before it grows out of control, clamping his jaw shut so he doesn’t snidely say Wow, you’re welcome. When his eyes open again, he notices that he’s being glared at.
“Leave me alone,” Lance says stiffly. His knuckles are white as he grips his medication; he shoves his hand into his coat pocket when he sees Keith staring. “Why are you still here?”
Because I care about you too damn much. Instead, Keith asks: “Is everything okay…?”
Lance laughs unpleasantly. “Is everything okay?” he repeats, his voice a mocking parody of Keith’s concern. “Don’t fucking patronize me.”
“What? I’m not —”
“You’re either patronizing me or sincerely asking an incredibly stupid question,” Lance says, jabbing a finger angrily at Keith. “I think you’re many things but stupid isn’t one of them, so there you go. Process of elimination.”
Keith grinds his teeth. Breathe, he reminds himself, the voice in his head sounding like Shiro on his first day here. “Or there’s a third option — you look like a fucking wreck lately and I was offering a listening ear because I’m worried?”
Lance scoffs. “Sure.”
“Is it really that hard to believe?” Keith snaps, nails digging into his palms. Breathe.
“Yes!” Lance’s face looks pinched, the recent hollows in his cheeks appearing more pronounced than usual in his anger. “Let me tell you something — kindness isn’t free, nothing has been given to me without a pricetag since I entered the Garrison, so forgive me for doubting your sincerity.”
With his body running warmer than most people, Keith doesn’t notice that his breaths are now little visible puffs, doesn’t notice the temperature rapidly dropping, doesn’t notice what a stupid idea it is to say “Are you this fucking misanthropic and paranoid with Hunk too?” until the jealous words fall out of his mouth.
Something shrieks a hysterical warning in the back of Keith’s mind and his body flares on long-forgotten survival instinct alone, the fire melting a jagged spear of ice right before it impales his head. He can’t remember how to breathe.
Lance’s eyes are fixed on something that isn’t there, like he can’t see anything around him. His voice is mechanical and distant when it says, “You should go.”
Keith runs back to his room, heart throwing itself against the walls of his chest until it’s bruised and falling to pieces.
(Third thing: Lance dislikes hates Keith.)
Here’s the crux of it all: Keith wants to forget Lance but he can’t. He knows nothing good will come out of this infatuation but his heart is as stubborn as the rest of him. Of course the fucking traitorous organ would glue its shattered pieces back together and continue pining as if the person of its affections didn’t spell out rejection with a murderous icicle; figurative heartbreak after a near-death experience isn’t nearly as terrible as literal heartbreak after an actual-death experience, and he already survived the latter in his childhood.
That’s what he tells himself anyway: ‘you’ve been through worse’, even though it doesn’t feel like it. He wonders what hurts more: the pain if the ice actually hit him, or being turned away by the one equally dangerous person he thought would understand him.
There’s an uneasy quiet that blankets the Garrison after Team Cerberus is declared missing. The disappearance of Shiro hits the cadets especially hard, since he is the one who recruited so many of them. Keith thinks he should be more upset but he can’t scrape together any grief past the numb feeling in his chest. It might get better with time, he tells himself in his friend’s comforting voice.
The Garrison doesn’t give him any time. He detachedly concludes that they’re trying to find a replacement for Shiro when they start pulling him aside more often, asking him more and more questions, prodding him with more needles and tests than they used to. It makes sense to pick him, considering how unnaturally resilient he is. He hopes they don’t find out his ability isn’t physical regeneration.
It’s at one of his many appointments that Keith learns something he shouldn’t. He’s impatiently waiting for a nurse to tell him he can leave when he overhears Lance’s name in the next room.
“— new about Díaz?”
Keith frowns and leans closer to the wall behind him out of curiosity.
“— ide effects are the same — getting stronger —”
“— too unstable — isn’t safe —”
He leans even closer...
Then a familiar voice says: “I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t kill him.”
Keith jerks away from the wall, heart hammering in his chest. He knows that voice. He heard it when he was bleeding out in the backseat of his parents’ car, clinical and cold. It said ‘they’ve been taken care of, sir’ as if his family’s deaths were nothing more than a mild inconvenience.
The voices in the next room are still talking but Keith isn’t interested in hearing anything else. He sneaks out the door anxiously, waiting until he’s out of the infirmary before running back to the barracks. The Garrison isn’t safe for him anymore. Lost in his thoughts, he almost barrels into somebody when he’s close to his dorm; his heart thuds wildly in his chest when he sees who it is.
“Hey, I was looking for you,” Lance begins breathlessly, and on any other day the conversation would continue the way it’s meant to.
Keith almost laughs. Timing is never on his side. “Sorry,” he says, trying his best to sound sincere, trying to make the meaning stretch past this one moment in time: sorry I can’t talk right now, sorry I have to go, sorry I wasn’t there for you, sorry for everything, sorry I’m an idiot in love. “I’m — I’m busy. Um… raincheck? We can talk later.” He lies through his teeth because he doesn’t think he’ll ever see Lance again, but he can’t help but hope for a better future anyway.
Lance frowns for a brief moment before his face smooths over. “Right. Raincheck. Sounds good.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “I’ll see you around, then?”
“Yeah,” Keith says with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “See you around.”
That night, he becomes a runaway again.
It might get better with time, Shiro says in a memory, back when things were simple like clinking spoons inside coffee mugs at breakfast. Things aren’t simple anymore — or rather, they were never simple in the first place and Keith just didn’t notice. He wonders what Lance wanted to say; he tells himself it doesn’t matter now.
Keith smiles sadly because there isn’t any time left for things to get better. It’s cold up on the roof of the Garrison’s R&D building, but not for long. “It'd be a shame if you set the building on fire on your first day,” he murmurs to himself, pulling a bandanna over his face with one hand as the other is licked with flames.