DAY 19 03/04-18

Just two weeks ago my life was kind of like a palindrome, everyday the same, not matter if you looked at it from end to beginning. I woke up, I went through hell, and went back to sleep again. Today would have been the same as tomorrow, and yesterday would have been the same as three weeks forward. 

But then Lance came like an extra letter and broke that word sequence.

° ° °

I run my fingers through the soft wisps of Lance's hair, trying to count all my thoughts like piles of tufted snow sailing through the abyss that is my head, trying to grasp the very thin strings that's holding my prudence together. I feel hot and clammy, as Lance is radiating too much unnecessary body heat, but also the thoughts that's circling around my apprehension. I think about my dad, Krolia, all the recent events, tomorrow, all while quietly humming Luna Lunera to myself.

I don't know if Lance is awake or not, but based on his heavy breaths, I suppose he is. I can't really see his face, since it's hidden against my arm. I really hope he is asleep, because the thought of being caught singing a lullaby isn't really tempting. 

So we've been in this position for what feels like hours. Alone in the hospital room, air conditioner cooling us down under the white blanket that's lazily slung over half our bodies, his face against my skin, arms hugging my torso tightly and how I'm absently shifting my gaze from him and the window beside us. The view isn't something special at all; since the bed we're laying in is so goddamn short, the only view I get is the sky, plain boring blue and clear from anything else.

As I hum the end of the lullaby, I quickly start over again.

"You have a beautiful voice", comes out as groggy comment from below. I abruptly stop humming and look down, seeing Lance stirring into motion again, turning his head to look up at me through a tired haze. "You've been humming Luna Lunera for the past minutes. If I didn't have questions I would have fallen asleep since long ago."

I look away in a poor attempt to hide my blush. "I thought you were asleep."

"I figured", he chuckles, lightly tapping his finger on my stomach. "I assume that you wouldn't sing if you knew I was awake. That's why I pretended to be asleep."

"Of course you did", I scoff, embarrassed that he's witnessed too many sides of me in such few days, sides even I didn't know I had. I'm not claiming that I know the answers but I never thought I was so unsure in myself. All this time I were just that, convinced that I knew the basics, when I really didn't.

Lance laughs quietly, but the laugh sounds strange, almost wavering and faded at the edges, like it's just not real, or integral for that part. I look down at him and see how his smile - that never reached up to his eyes - just melts down into nothing completely. He's looking out of the same window I've been staring out of and he's clutching me harder, and I want it to be unreal that his lip is quivering, but it's unfortunately very true. In fact, his whole body is trembling against mine, and he keeps his eyes open, like if he just blinked once, everything would burst. I open my mouth to call after him but then he looks up at me, and the look I'm receiving is killing the only words left in my mouth.

"Fuck, Keith... I ..." He takes one shaky breath, still not blinking, and I see how his eyes is slowly turning red and lustrous. Immediately, the shape of his eyes is turned downwards at the edges, his eyebrows wrenched into despondency. His words comes out as a broken pule. "I... know I s-shouldn't mention this since you're literally... going to go through an o-operation t-tomorrow and you must be s-scared as hell right now... but I just... goddamnit Keith... It's not f-fair. It's not fair that you're experiencing this! It's n-not."

He breaks down into a shaking, breaking form, face pressed against my chest, arms holding me like everything just flipped the other way around, like I'm his lifebuoy now and I'm responsible of pulling him up on shore. He's clinging onto me like he's been drowning all this time but I just didn't notice. He's been waving at me all this time, to get help, but the fact that I was drowning too, made it impossible for me to even rescue myself. How could I rescue the both of us?

But I've learned to swim these past days. I managed to gather up enough strength to make me float in the water, sometimes failing, but always trying again until I could move forward. Lance just happened to lose his strength just now, and it's my duty to pull him to shore with me.

° ° °

It takes a couple of minutes for Lance to calm down, and by the time he does, he lays completely still on top of me, arms hugging me loosely, giving me the expression that he maybe did fall alseep this time. But just as I think that, Lance moves, turning his head to the nightstand beside the bed like he came to think of something. I follow his eyes and to my dismay his gaze has landed on my little notebook. 

"Sneak a peek", he mumbles to himself, voice still raspy from crying just minutes ago. 

"Y-yeah?" I stutter out.

"No Keith, sneak a peek", he says again, and before I know it, he's reaching for the object, his body leaning over mine and I barely have time to blink before it's in his hand. He examines the cover thoughtfully before sitting up a little in the bed, looking at me through bloodshot eyes, nose red from sobbing. "You said you were willing to give me a perception of your mind..." He holds up the notebook, looking me dead serious in the eye. "Keith, this is the best way for me to get a look into your mind. To understand your morals... which I failed to do the first time." He looks down in some kind of shame, but then he drills his gaze into mine again, clutching the notebook harder. "Let me read it, Keith."

I don't answer for a solid thirty seconds. Once again, I overthink, wondering what it would really mean if he would enter the field of my very dark thoughts. That field being the papers with the very long strands of grass that is my thoughts, growing like weed. This notebook was more like a toilet for me to barf out my thoughts into, not as some kind of exhibition for other's to see. But maybe now, it can be some kind of assurance. Assurance for Lance that I'm willing to change for the better, something I struggled with for so long. The way life served things for me just made me that way, after all, made me want to be that way.

Now Lance is sitting up completely, and I sweat like he already opened the notebook and read my thoughts. I stutter out a ragged breath. "L-Lance... They're dark thoughts, my very darkest... No one has ever acknowledged them..."

He glances at the object in his hand with a bigger meaning behind his eyes this time, like what I just said made it more important.

"Let me be the first, then." Before I know it, he has already opened the book to the first page, and what surprises me is that I don't even try to stop him. My hand is completely still midair, like I didn't really want to fulfill my will. Immediately, Lance grins, looking amused as his eyes scans the page.

"What?" I squeak, starting to doubt if this really is a good idea.

He chuckles softly, turning around and laying down with his back pressed against my chest and his legs entangled in mine, notebook resting on top of his stomach. I look over his shoulder at the first page.

"You have a cute handwriting", he states, but then I sense how he drops his smile upon reading the words written on my sloppy little handwriting. "And you sound like a poet, too..."

"I read a lot", I admit, glad that Lance can't see my face. "I... It is kind of like my escape from reality... Especially when I lived in the orphanage. The world was ugly around me, so I entered into this alternative universe whenever I read books, with problems that always got solved in a good way." I gulp.

Lance turns his head towards me, stars twinkling on his face, and he frowns in a sad way.

"You lived in an orphanage." He utters the sentence more like he wants to assure himself that he heard right rather than a question.

My voice gets laced with bitterness upon the memories. "Yeah. Where else would I live? I didn't really have parents to take care of me."

His eyes are so downturned he almost looks like a completely different person. Sad Lance... God, I hate this side of him. That side that is so utterly depressing it paints the whole world gray. He presses his lips together for a moment.

"Oh... Um, I guess I just thought you would at least live in... foster care, you know, have some parental guidance..."

I wish. Or honestly, I don't know if I really do. I could get the best parents you could wish for, or I could get the complete opposite. Would I have encountered Shiro if was to be put in foster care? What outcome would have came out of that?

How would it have been if Krolia stayed?

"Lance...", I mutter, annoyed of how bared I am. "Just read." 

His eyebrows flies up for barely a second before he quickly turns his head down again to continue reading. He hastily mumbles an of course and silence falls down around us.

I chew on my lip as Lance reaches the second part of my letter, quietly reading the words that bled down form my mind to the pen and took form on the striped paper. When he comes to the last sentence, he remains silent as he flips to the second page. I try to let out my breath but I can't. 

Just as he reads the first sentence he lets out something in between an exhale and snigger. "I made you happy."

The satisfaction in his voice surprises me. I try to think back to day two, and the feeling I felt that I didn't really know how to describe on paper. Among all the other feelings inside my chest, it's hard to find anything, really, so I leave the task aside for the moment, cautious as to how Lance will react when he reads the second part of my letter. The angry statements I wrote because I was befuddled and irate then. I hate that Lance will read them now. I hate that he will read the other angry thoughts in this notebook. 

Whilst in my bubble, he has already read the whole letter, and he glances back at me with a somber look but he chooses not to comment anything more about it as he flips page again. I read the first sentence over his shoulder, and I sigh. Great, that letter didn't turn out quite happy either. Damn, I'm depressing.

"Like everything was mid air", Lance mumbles to himself. I hear the subtle smile in his voice. "That's actually a really cool way to put it."

I scoff, and he chuckels as he flips page again. I should be letting out my air but I can't, and I start to get dizzier and dizzier. I know Lance can feel my wild heartbeats against his back because he's holding his breath too, body completely still against mine. I read the depressing letter over his shoulders and he doesn't make any comment for the remaining letters, probably too caught up in the reading. His flipping in pages becomes harsher and faster after every page.

When he reaches to the latest letter, I'm ready to snatch the notebook from his grasp, but he places it aside himself, turning around and hovering over me, and before I know it, his lips meets mines. Hard. So hard that my head almost hits the headboard behind us. My eyes widens and it feels like I will pass out from the lack of oxygen any second. The tubes running through my nose doesn't seem to bother Lance at all, as he kisses me deeper, already cupping my face and discovering my skin with his fingertips and making me tremble against the white sheets. Every part of me quivers so fiercely that they almost crumble into small pieces, but my heart somehow survives, thumping against my ribcage.

He lightly tugs at the strands of hair that curls just at my ears and I shiver so intensily it almost hurts. His tongue prods at my underlip, and I automatically open my mouth, letting out all the air I held inside in just one long exhale. His tongue explores as much as his fingers against my face does and his legs are on either side of my hips and he unravels me in so many ways. I scrabble for anything to hold onto and my hands finds their way to Lance's back and shoulder, traveling over the smalls bumps.

Lance slightly pulls back, and his eyes are glowing, but I only get a sight of them for just a second before they disappear because he presses his lips against my collarbone. Lips soft and tender, so light it feels more like a warm gust of wind than a kiss. I feel him even closer until he fills the air around me with him and his body temprature, so heavy and bunched it grounds me. I don't know what's  happen to me if he keeps on kissing me and I don't know what will happen if he stops. His lips are like cotton against my skin and it's tasting and fondling and every cell inside me is spinning but standing completely still. I'm a paradoxal mess, but I can't really do anything because he goes up again and he kisses me harder than the first time, like he can't afford time to go slowly anymore.

"You", he presses words after word against my lips, on my face. "You wrote a lot about... me."

I run my fingers through his hair and cup his face, meeting his kiss with equal force. We're both breathing harshly. "You're... worth... writing about..."

He touches every outline of my face with his hands, biting my lip. "You wrote... bad things about me... too."

His words makes me falter for just a bit, but as he deepens the kiss I can't help but to go back into the rhythm of our movements. "I was... confused. It made me angry. It was a moment of rage..."

Lance retreats again, and a disgruntled whine grows in my throat. I force my eyes open and I see that he's smiling at me, but he smiles like he's terrified, frightened over tomorrow's consternations and the feelings he's feeling and he's breathing like he forgot he needs to. I don't even know when the last time was since I took a breath. My hands is still on his face and his skin is a blushing heat and we're both burning. His hair is messy, his breathing unbridled, his eyes so blue I can almost see the waves inside them. His gaze is terrified but still filled with covet and hunger. 

"Are you... Are you still confused?" he asks me, so softly and quietly his voice almost merges together with the momentary silence. 

I blink a thousands of times before I answer. "No..." Sitting up a little, shaking some volume into my voice, I repeat what I just said, louder. "No. No I'm not."

I know what I want.

° ° °

It's like some kind of refreshment. A new start. Maybe my story starts from here.

° ° °

Here I give you some steamy but also fluff Klance cuz I know we Klancers all crave it right now

Ready for the last chapter?

*cries in gucci*