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“Keith,” Lance breathed reverently, his brown eyes blown wide as saucers. “The fireflies.”
“I know, Lance,” Keith murmured, and he slipped his hand into Lance’s as he stepped up to his side. “They’re—”
“—Beautiful,” Lance finished. He stood unmoving in the knee-high grass, still in full Paladin armor but for his helmet, which lay discarded behind them, as was Keith’s. His hair was an absolute tangled mess where it curled around his head and against the edges of his face, but the glitter of twilight was still stunningly caught in the curves of each lock, like a shattered halo sprinkled upon his crown. For all the beauty of this ethereal, earthen planet and the lightning bugs all around them, Keith couldn’t tear his eyes from Lance.
“Keith,” Lance repeated, and this time he turned to face Keith, his eyes boring into him. In return, almost involuntarily, Keith turned his whole body toward Lance and met his gaze.
“Yeah?” he whispered back, somehow afraid to splinter the atmosphere. Their faces were barely inches apart—a firefly fluttered into the empty space, pulsating a brilliant yellow, before drifting away and leaving nothing but thin air between them.
“I’m really happy,” Lance confessed—like it were a secret, even. But the sincerity in those simple three words had Keith’s face splitting into a smile so unmistakably fond that his younger self would never have been able to conceive the idea of it. It was telling, Keith thought, that there was no surprise on Lance’s face; all he saw was a blazing joy and something else that he knew, they both knew, but had yet to put into words.
Perhaps now they would. Finally.
“Are you?” asked Lance, tugging Keith out of his reverie.
Keith couldn’t help but laugh a little, his head tipping forward as he tried to stifle it—he was both surprised and unsurprised when Lance’s forehead met his halfway in between them. His hair ghosted against Keith’s pale skin, and it made him both shiver and light up inside.
“What do you think, Lance?” Keith went with, aiming for exasperated but ending up with something so ridiculously endeared that he was almost disgusted with himself. Keyword: almost.
“You are happy,” Lance decided, his own smile incandescent as he stared at Keith. “Really happy. Right?”
“You’re an idiot,” Keith mumbled, another laugh rumbling in his throat. He could feel Lance’s tremble through their foreheads, the impatience and suspense that had him wound up as tight as a kite. “And beautiful, I guess, too.”
“You think I’m beautiful?” Lance blurted, and his eyes were searching Keith’s face—for what, he’d like to pretend he didn’t know … but he did. Oh, but he did, and he knew that it was painted all over him, and he was tired of waiting for Lance to point it out himself.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t know, heathen,” Keith sighed, and his muscles relaxed further, lending more of his weight into where he leaned into Lance. “You know it damn well.”
“Maybe,” Lance admitted wryly, and Keith thought he might be a little bit addicted to that smile of his. To all of Lance’s smiles, in all fairness, but this one was the one in front of him right now. This one was the smile he got to see as they stood in the knee-high grass of an alien meadow, so far from Earth that the number of light years would take an inconceivable amount of time to write out, surrounded by otherworldly fireflies, while the shimmering lights of unfamiliar stars cast twilight shadows around them. “But … what’s the phrase? Right. Vice versa’s true, too.”
Keith hummed. “Is it? You’ll have to elaborate.” He couldn’t stop grinning as he watched Lance roll his eyes.
“And you say I’m the insufferable one.”
“Because you are,” Keith said like it was meant to be an insult, but it was all too gentle.
Lance squeezed his eyes shut, and Keith couldn’t tell if he wanted to laugh or cry. Or both. “Stop beating around the bush about it, Keith.”
“Oh, I’m the only one beating around the bush?” Toward the horizon, the last vestiges of fiery rose and carmine were fading, leaving shadows of purple in their wake. More and more stars were springing up above them as the world darkened, their patch of the planet rotating into starlit darkness. If Keith could, he would look for the planet’s two moons in the sky, but he was a little preoccupied with the love of his life and couldn’t really be bothered to tear himself away.
“I hate when you have a point,” Lance conceded. “But you say it first.”
“Why do I have to?” Keith protested, though he wasn’t entirely sure why he was protesting. “You do it.”
“No, you.”
“Now I don’t want to say it, you immature piece of shit.”
Lance pouted. “Please?”
“No,” Keith said, and he went to swat Lance playfully, but realized halfway through the gesture that there was a better use for his hands. So instead, he cupped his gloved hands around the back of Lance’s head and neck, parting the mess of curls with his fingertips and brushing his ears with his thumbs. Lance froze, then melted again. He felt a sudden sense of satisfaction, Keith thought, and safety, maybe—as though holding Lance like this left them secure against all the dangers in the whole wide universe. Maybe it did. He wouldn’t know, not yet.
Lance seemed somewhere between breathless and hysterical as he choked out, “You’re going to drive me mad.”
“Welcome to the club, then,” Keith whispered. “You drove me mad a long time ago.”
“How long?” Lance asked, if only to prolong this clandestine, hesitant conversation before he had to push it to transcendence.
Keith chuckled. “That’s not a question for a first date, now, is it?”
“This isn’t a date.”
“No. I’m letting you know for future reference.”
Lance laughed at that, truly laughed, and the sound was so silly and wonderful and contagious that Keith found himself laughing too—then they were laughing against each other, drunk on starlight and victory and endorphins, and Lance hooked an arm around the back of Keith’s head, too.
“I love you,” Keith avowed, like it was a promise, like it was a fact. “But I think you already knew that.”
“If only because you already knew that I love you too,” Lance answered, the words rolling off his tongue as though they’d just been waiting for their time to shine. Keith’s whole face softened even further, becoming something unrecognizable and hopelessly in love, and his lips met Lance’s with not a burst of fireworks but a rush of water. It was nothing expected, nothing shocking or groundbreaking, but instead something beautifully inevitable—as though they’d been tied together this whole time, and this was their release. A release from suspense and an entrance into choice, because that’s what it was, no?
They’d chosen each other for everything that the other was, and finally, the world would get to know it too. No more waiting, Keith thought fiercely, and he pulled back from Lance so that they could breathe and cling to each other and laugh a little more. I’m so, so done with waiting.
“I love you,” Keith said again, just for the sake of it, and Lance chuckled and gave him a peck.
“I love you too.”