It gets to be too much for Lance around the same time Keith is pretty much considering throwing himself out of an airlock.
He's sitting in the control room, totally alone, at the Altean equivalent of four in morning when Lance finds him. He'd been tracing constellations absent-mindedly into the crystalline tiles beneath his fingertips, all eighty-eight of them, and he's just about to connect the last star of the Pleiades sleepily with grazed, stained-glass knuckles when the screech echoes through his ribs, louder than crowsong, heavier than a raven's call.
"Keith!" Lance screams, and he jumps violently and swears he sees his life flash before his very eyes, vignettes of a tear-stained childhood and amethyst bruises breaking the surface like …show more content…
I shouldn't have said all that, he's actually going to fucking leave me now, he internally screams in a panic, and by then he's gone with the stabs of paranoia throbbing in his head, daggers of steel pounding again and again and again till he's convulsing.
Everything's fucking red as he begins to cry once more- weak, pathetic little shit, can't even let Lance get emotional once without stupidly ignoring his feelings and paying attention to your own instead- and the tears cascade wildly as everything around him fucking burns burns burns, shuddering flames erupting in his stomach and gasping upwards like volcano smoke, the blaze tearing through his innards as all the burning butterflies in his stomach shiver to a halt and set his gasoline fucking heart on fire and everything burns, everything burns, he's crushed, he's crushed...
"Keith? Keith?" he distantly hears and he vaguely makes out that he's sunken to his knees and has his hands clamped tightly over his ears, thumbs blisteringly hot against his bare flesh, sobbing.
"Keith, dios, buddy, I need you to breathe with me. Fucking please. Please breathe,
He's sitting in the control room, totally alone, at the Altean equivalent of four in morning when Lance finds him. He'd been tracing constellations absent-mindedly into the crystalline tiles beneath his fingertips, all eighty-eight of them, and he's just about to connect the last star of the Pleiades sleepily with grazed, stained-glass knuckles when the screech echoes through his ribs, louder than crowsong, heavier than a raven's call.
"Keith!" Lance screams, and he jumps violently and swears he sees his life flash before his very eyes, vignettes of a tear-stained childhood and amethyst bruises breaking the surface like …show more content…
I shouldn't have said all that, he's actually going to fucking leave me now, he internally screams in a panic, and by then he's gone with the stabs of paranoia throbbing in his head, daggers of steel pounding again and again and again till he's convulsing.
Everything's fucking red as he begins to cry once more- weak, pathetic little shit, can't even let Lance get emotional once without stupidly ignoring his feelings and paying attention to your own instead- and the tears cascade wildly as everything around him fucking burns burns burns, shuddering flames erupting in his stomach and gasping upwards like volcano smoke, the blaze tearing through his innards as all the burning butterflies in his stomach shiver to a halt and set his gasoline fucking heart on fire and everything burns, everything burns, he's crushed, he's crushed...
"Keith? Keith?" he distantly hears and he vaguely makes out that he's sunken to his knees and has his hands clamped tightly over his ears, thumbs blisteringly hot against his bare flesh, sobbing.
"Keith, dios, buddy, I need you to breathe with me. Fucking please. Please breathe,