Omg my little brother just started playing with a yellow and red gummy bear like that episode where Hunk and Keith where inside the Weblum and he's running around screaming and I honestly couldn't be more proud.

۝ ۝ ۝

"What's the matter with you these days?" Allura asked me, appearing at the threshold of my room. I couldn't see her, since my face was pressed against my pillow and my arms were laying heavily at my sides on the bed, but I could still hear her solicitude. The bed sank when she sat down on the edge beside me, her hand appearing on my back, rubbing soothing circles. "Have you fought with Nyma? Is that what's it's about? Or are you feeling under the weather again?"

The lie played at the tip of my tongue, and all there was to do was to just open my mouth and utter it. My words were muffled by the pillow pressed against my face when I spoke. "Nyma...away...month."

"I don't think I understand", Allura said.

I turned around with a defeated sigh, the air feeling frigid against my warm face that had been pressed against the bolster for about a varga now. Allura shuffled on the bed to give me space to move, and her hand quickly found its way to my arm instead, kneading my forearm. She was concerned with me, of course she was. And how would I reward her for her tender loving care? With a lie.

"Nyma had to go away for a while. Something about... um, an unfinished mission in another planet. She won't be back for some time." She won't be back forever. He won't be back ever.

"I'm sorry for that, Lance." She sounded candid, and it made the lump in my throat I had felt all quintant grow significantly bigger, until I was sure that when I spoke again, it would come off more as a whimper than actual words. "Is there something I can do to help?"

I tried to speak, but the tribulation had already taken over all my functions, and my throat stung, my eyes started to water. I swiftly turned back over to my stomach, my face finding its place pressed against the pillow again as I hugged the soft object tightly, trying to tell Allura something that would make her leave me alone, but I couldn't. My mouth was shut down for the quintant.
But Allura must have sensed my hankering, and said something that didn't reach my ears, before I could feel my bed heave because of decreased weigh.

I sobbed for the rest of the quintant, and after a while, I didn't even know what I was crying over anymore.

۝ ۝ ۝

It went two movements of me rotting away in my room. When I did go out, however, I continued to rot away in different rooms in the castle instead, always keeping a glower on my face. I couldn't even see the point in keeping up an act anymore, mainly because I couldn't see a point in anything anymore, but also because I often were lucky, and the paladins was almost always caught up in talking to each other to notice me anyway. Luckily, my morose mood didn't ruin the other's, and I was locked up in my room often enough to not be able to sojourn a lot around them anyways.

The big tree I laid in front of soughed in the light breeze, and my hands laid on top of my stomach, my cape laying like a blanket under me, the mountain juniberries - scattered like pink dots on a green canvas - filling my nose with a new kind of smell that wasn't the smell of my frowsty room. My eyes were closed, but the strong light around me making me see orange behind my eyelids made it impossible for me to take a nap out here. It took everything in me to not just stand up and stomp back to my bed, but there was only that much of brooding I could muster before the contrition was too much for me. I didn't want Allura to worry any more than she already did.

Sigh. There wasn't exactly much rest out here, and certainly no comfort either, and being out here didn't assuage anything for me. My thoughts had a massive space to run around in, in addition to it all, which slowly drove me insane. I exhaled, opening my eyes again.

Keith was looming over me.

"aaAAAAAAHHHHHHH...!" My heart leaped out of my chest as I flew up in a sitting position, my mouth still open in a scream.

"Lance?" I heard Blaytz shout from the castles backdoors, quickly approaching me. How he happened to pass the garden just when I screamed seemed like the worst kind of fortuity to me. "Everything alright?" His voice was closer now.

"...AAHHII'MMMMMM, GONNA SWIIIIIINGGGG, FROM THE CHANDELEEIIRRRR! FROM THE CHANDERLEEEIIRR!" I quickly recovered, feeling my lungs about to rupture from the scream-singing and from my heavy breathing after the shock.

Blaytz appeared several meters away from me, wearing a relaxed smile on his face upon hearing everything turned out to be "fine" with me, and his eyes met mine in that annoying calmness he always had.

"Oh, you're just singing", he chuckled, crossing his arms over his chest. "New song from your earth friends?"

My throat felt cracked inside, like dry dirt, and I panted, whipping my head forward, looking if Keith was there.

He wasn't.

Nothing indicated that he had even been here in the first place, and I was starting to think that my mind had started to play tricks on me, as if to test my limits. Was I starting to hallucinate now? Did I miss him that much? No, that was ridiculous.

"I..." My voice sounded and felt wobbly, and I slowly turned my head towards the blue paladin again, looking at him like he could give me answers as to what just happened. He raised his eyebrow. "I... Yes?"

His face instantly turned relaxed again. "Sweet. What's it called?"

Didn't he notice how my heart was running and screaming across the field, or was it just me being able to see it? "C...C-chandelier?"

"Hm." Blaytz looked like he was imprinting the name into his memory before diverting his focus back to me again. "Sure everything's alright? You look kinda jumpy."

I hated my lies. I hated that they somewhat worked everytime. I hated that I kept saying them. "Um... Just very surprised over my amazing singing skills. I was thinking of that opera Coran wanted to join so badly and it inspired me to sing, you know?" Can he please please please just leave so I can find out how crazy I have become?

The blue paladin made one sloppy finger gun at me, grinning. "That's the spirit." He started to back away, and I exhaled in relief. "Appreciate your own skills." He saluted and made his way back to the castle again, leaving the stillness and the strong juniberry smell after him. My thoughts instantly started to roar inside my head again as soon as I was left alone. Alone. Keith wasn't here. My mind was just desperate and audacious enough to paint such a realistic picture of him in my head. He couldn't actually be here.

"Nice save. He fell for it pretty quickly. Or he was just that gullible."

This time I squeaked, not wanting to attract any more unnecessary attention. My neck almost cracked as I hastily looked over my shoulder, my torso soon turning too so i could get a good look at the boy in front of me.

Keith sat leaned against the side of the tree, hidden in an angle that made it impossible for Blaytz to have seen him from where he just stood. I couldn't understand how he managed to hide there so quickly, and so soundlessly. His knees were slightly pulled up, and he rested his arms on his kneecaps, his head leaned against the big tree trunk, staring straight ahead. I gawked. I knew I was. In the back of my mind I knew he noticed, but that certitude wasn't enough to make me stop.

Okay, I could understand now how much light mattered. How it could both change and bring out features in things or people that wouldn't be possible to see otherwise. I'd never seen him in this light before. I'd never conceptualized how he'd look outside the poorly lit up cave. Now he looked more palpable, and less like a 2D version that consisted of only flat colors and sharp outlines. His hair swayed, something that I'd never seen before in the cave since it we were deep enough to be out of reach for the wind outside. Out here, I could see how shabby his purple suit really was, scratched in places from battles. Keith turned around and I could see the extra big scratch on his right shoulder, something I had assumed was just a shadow before, since the fire in the cave had a tendency to cast futile shadows around us.

He looked at me and his eyes shone. Under them, I could pin point the dip from lack of sleep, and when he blinked, I had a tick to notice the several veins running across his eyelids. I didn't know if it was this particular light that made me see every hidden feature in him, or if my cognizance suddenly was awaken. We stared at each other and I wanted to know so badly if he was scrutinizing for latent features in me too.

"You're not going to say anything?" Keith mumbled, still perforating his eyes into mine. In this light, his sclera's looked almost white.

My throat felt clogged up, and it physically hurt to speak. "I... I was afraid I'd scream again but I t-think I've calmed down now." Lie. Now my heart was screeching for a completely new reason.

"Good", he said, but didn't add anything else to that single word.

At last everything in my snapped into place, and I could finally understand what was going on. He leaned towards me as I leaned away from him, like there was a string tied between us and whenever I backed away, the string just pulled him closer. I stopped, he stopped, prompted on his knee while the other was raised, like he was ready to stand up if I was. I gasped for air, grimacing when the very vehement smell of juniberries slithered into my nose and mouth. Okay, now the scent of them was turning to a stench.

"What are you doing here?!" I wheezed, feeling how my whole face was throbbing because of my escalated pulse. I didn't need to keep track if anyone was approaching us; I knew Keith's sharp senses could notice from miles away.

"Lance", he muttered. "Calm down. Your pulse is raising." Shit. Did I disparage his incredibly good attentiveness? Could he hear my pulse in the silence between us? Of course he could. Keith was capable of hearing everything, even my thoughts. He was probably hearing exactly what I was thinking now.

Keith looked down at my chest, like he was looking at my heart, and he said: "I can hear your heart beating too fast. Try to calm it down."

Oh wow, okay. That just proved everything. I opened my mouth to scream again, but before I could proceed to do anything like that, Keith pressed the tip of three fingers against my chest, on top of my heart, and he stared intently at where his hand was placed, an immersed look on his face. My jaw hung loose and I breathed loud enough so the sound of my breaths made its way through the obstruction around my ear. Keith drew his eyebrows together when he must have felt my pulse ascending, and now he pressed his whole hand against my chest. The little gesture was enough to knock me bandy, and I wheezed.

"Why did it only beat faster?" he snapped, clearly frustrated that my heart wasn't doing as he demanded. "Lance, why haven't you calmed down yet? My presence can't have such a long lasting shocking effect on you. Cool down now."

Stupid Keith. Do he really believe that a simple insistence will tell my heart to listen? If anything it only sped up the beating, and Keith grunted in annoyance, his dark eyebrows drawing even closer to one another.

"What's wrong with your heart?" he snarled, looking up at me through those quiznacking long eyelashes. They framed his eyes in a way that made you forget about the actual art piece inside.

"N-nothing's wrong with it!" I sputtered, swatting his hand away, ignoring the longing feeling for his touch as soon as his hand left my chest. "It's reacting completely normal!"

Keith seemed dissatisfied with the fact that my heart was still noticeably pounding too fast, but he made no assertion about it this time.

"Just... Just answer my question!" Damn him and his obtuseness.

For a moment, confusion overtook his features, and he leaned back, raising one eyebrow. "Question?"

Damn him and his lapse of memory. "Y-yeah! The question I asked as soon as your grape looking face plopped up in front of me!"

Fortunately, he didn't take my words to heart, and finally leaned away from me entirely, and I exhaled like my head been hidden under water for vargas.

He didn't answer, so to clarify, I said: "I asked you what you're doing he..."

"I know what you asked", he mumbled, looking down, his hand unwittingly pulling out the strands of grass by their roots, before letting the wind blow them away. He continued to do this for some while before he finally spoke again. "I... I have... a kind of... confession..."

He glanced at my chest again when my heart sped up even more, a subtle worry glinting in his eyes.

"You should know...", he continued, starting to tear the grass one by one again "...how... physically and emotionally difficult it is for me to stay away from you. I thought I could beat my self-indulgence, but every day in these painful past two movements without you always managed to prove me wrong. I couldn't sleep, Lance... Not that I usually can, but this time it became crucial. I was torn between guilty conscience, and anger over my own irrational choices. Our fight was constantly playing in my head, and I was filled with the worst regret again, like I always am when I hurt you, both physically and emotionally." He took a ragged breath, snapping the strands of grass in the middle. "It's stupid... It's so stupid, Lance. I know I'm being bipolar. Pushing you away and trying to pull you back again. You have no reason to forgive me this time. You never had. I still can't understand why you always insisted in seeing me..."

"Maybe because I'm self-indulgent, too", I interrupted before he could punish himself further. He looked up, momentarily forgetting about the grass in his hands. "Maybe because I think of only how painful it is to stay away from you and not of the corollaries. Maybe I couldn't sleep too, Keith." I dramatically pointed at the spots under my eyes. "Do you see this? This is pure enervation. I can't even remember how many times I skipped my skin routine, but I know it's many times enough for my acne to show up again. Galra-humans get acnes too, right? Please tell me they do, because then I won't feel as disgusting as I'm currently feeling."

Keith looked taken aback, and his mouth flopped, like he didn't know whether to answer or to just laugh. He went for the latter option, however, letting out a breathy chuckle. His gaze shifted from me to the grass under us. "Um... Yeah, uh, I know humans get acne..."

"But do galra-humans get it? There's a big difference there."

This time, his lips got stuck in a broad smile instead. "Wow... Here we are trying to solve things between us, and you're curious about acne?" He sounded entertained.

Not now, heart. He'll suspect things if you're going to scream again. "It's a valid question! Since it doesn't only extinguish my curiosity, but also tells me more about you. You should know that our prospective friendship is still ongoing. Don't think it stops from here."

His eyebrows switched slightly, and his smile wavered. "The prospective friendship? I thought you had enough reasons to let that go. I've hurt you many times enough to be counted as your enemy. You still haven't realized? The danger you stand in for when being around me, how stupid it is to forgive me? Haven't I changed your mindset yet?"

I crossed my arms with a huff, disappointed that we hadn't gone past all this gratuitous hokum. I pinned him with a sharp look. "Maybe I am just that stupid. Now can you let me be stupid in peace? And you should know I only get hurt not being around you. Ending our friendship seems to be too unhealthy. I might not entirely know your reasons for doing the things you do, but I know there'll come a time where you'll explain everything to me. You know, when you'll warm up to me more. But for now, Keith, just please don't push me away again. For the sake of my beauty routine, at least."

The gust of wind blew in between us, pulling up the strands of grass from Keith's thigh, pushing it several meters away from us before it dropped them again. But the grass in the wind was nothing compared to Keith's hair in the wind, turning to a lighter version of molasses color under the light, swaying in a way that made you question all laws of gravity. He blinked at me, and his eyes immediately made me think of amethysts, having various version of purple in them. Even I, in this moment, could hear how my heart was beating so fast. I wondered what theories he was painting up in his head for that fact. Maybe he thought I was sick and that I was having a seizure.

"No", he murmured, and his face seemed closer than before. "Not for the sake of your beauty routine. For the sake of you."

۝ ۝ ۝

It was amazing, really, how no one had gone out to look for me; me and Keith had laid out here in the grass long enough for the sun to start its journey down. Maybe it was the fact that I was finally out of my room, that made everyone let me be, afraid that if they interrupted me, I would lock myself up into my depressing den again. It was probably Allura's orders.

"Hey... I have a question..."

Keith laid one meter away from me, hands clasped on his abdomen, his gaze turned upwards.

"Shoot."

I was glad he wasn't looking at me, or else I would definitely shy away. "How come you couldn't, like, um... smell my feelings, or whatever it is you do?"

The question made him turn his head towards me, and his eyebrows was raised. His hair laid like a dark halo around him.

"The smell of the juniberries are too strong. I can't smell anything else. Besides, it's already hard for me to sense your feelings with no distractions, so now I count it as almost impossible."

Phew! "Oh, okay~"

Keith quirked his eyebrow. "Any reason behind your wonder?"

"I just wanted to make sure you couldn't smell how physically attracted I was to you when you got so close", I certainly didn't say. Actually, I didn't say anything for awhile. I didn't know how I could enunciate myself in a normal way that wouldn't repel him in some way, but with the sight of him now, and the cracks of purple in his eyes, definitely didn't help with the situation. Was I physically attracted to him? Perhaps emotionally too? Was that really the case? It wasn't very unlikely, but I felt like I didn't know him well enough to get an answer for my own intricate questions.

But I didn't get to answer anyways, because Keith lifted his hand, and suddenly his knuckles brushed over my cheekbone, barely a caress, just like last time. Still it sent all the blood up to my face, until I felt dizzy. Was I getting a nosebleed? Maybe - from the huge amount of blood gathered in head, it should have triggered something like that. Just as fast as his hand had appeared on my face, it disappeared. He almost smiled - I couldn't really tell, since I was about to pass out from the pressure in my head.

"Allura's here", he whispered before he stood up, flashed me one last smile before he turned around and ran across the garden, over to the forest ahead, his feet barely touching the ground since his rapid footsteps gave out no sound at all. How in the actual quiznak...

"Lance?" I screamed again, but I was to confused to put up with the singing act again. When I sat up, I saw that Allura was indeed standing where Blaytz had just stood. Okay, so Keith's smelling senses maybe wasn't the best out here, but holy shit, that only made the other senses so much sharper.

My sister smiled in a sad way. "Are you feeling better? Are you ready to return inside again?"

I dared to look forward, even if I knew the sight would disenchant me, which it did; Keith was gone, but it disappointed me less than it would normally do. This time our moment spent together ended in a good way, and I knew we had made up. The last gesture especially gave it out. I quickly brought my hand up to my nose, feeling if the blood had broken out yet.

Not for now, at least, but I knew my blush wouldn't disappear that quickly.

۝ ۝ ۝

Well, will you look at that! Another late update, how amazing! :D

Okay but you have to understand that this week (and weekend especially) sucked big time for me, and the tests isn't exactly done yet...

I have a national maths test tomorrow with a bunch of smart kids. Yay. I'm the only one in the group with a steady D :')

And next week when all the tests are done I'll have another excuse: crying over the last season, so yeah, this thing with updates will be a little bit complicated (￣□￣)