Chapter Text
Keith’s consciousness came back in pieces.
Fragments pulling together through a thick fog of the unknown. The steady pulse of a monitor somewhere close by threading through the gaps with a steady mechanical consistency. Which was… odd.
A soft, repeating beep, air humming through vents somewhere above him. A faint squeak of rubber soles passing somewhere around him. All of it was wrong. These weren’t normal sounds that he was used to dealing with.
Curiosity got the better of him, and Keith tried to open his eyes.
Which was a mistake.
Light flooded in sharp and white, way too bright to look at directly. It made behind his eyes sting in that dull aching way that made him want to groan and shield his face. But he can’t move his arms without the dull ache and the sound of someone gently murmuring to him and pulling his arm back down. His stomach churned as his body started to come back into full consciousness once again.
He forced his eyes closed tight, something deep and sore in his head. A sort of breath or grimace echoed around his head, assuming it was his. Everything felt wrong, like he was high. Or like, really heavy.
Really heavy.
Like his body belonged to someone else, and he’d been dropped into it without any time to get used to the feeling. Something was tugging at the inside of his arm; it felt like tape. It was slowly tugging on the hairs that occupied that area, and with every small movement tugged it a bit harder. His chest hurt when he breathed too deeply; his left leg felt stiff and weighed down under whatever blanket he was under right now. Even slightly shifting his body against the mattress sent discomfort radiating through his ribs, hard enough to pull another distressed sound from him.
The monotone beeping beside him reacted instantly, beeping faster.
A chair scraped somewhere nearby in response, “Oh, hey. Keith? Can you hear me?” A voice said gently, accompanied by a gentle touch to the arm.
The voice startled Keith more than it should have in hindsight. But Keith didn’t know that voice. So, he forced his eyes open again, slower this time, squinting against the brightness until the room gradually stopped clouding his entire vision. The second Keith found consciousness enough, the realisation settled in quickly, like a stab in the chest.
Hospital.
There were white, clean walls, pale curtains pulled halfway around the bed, machines glowing beside him. There was a small portion of natural light spilling in from a small window beside the bed, but not close enough to touch any of his skin. Above all, it was the smell. That clinical, antiseptic smell that Keith should have clicked onto a lot earlier, because now it was the only thing clogging up his senses.
Keith didn’t realise when the nurse stepped closer, until that gentle touch graced his arm again. Keith turned his head lightly to look at the nurse. “There you are,” She smiled gently, and Keith took a moment to take it in. “Welcome back.”
Yep, that’s a nurse.
Christ, what did I do now?
Keith blinked away the thoughts and asked the question that was waiting on his tongue, begging to be asked. “What..?” But his question was cut short by the scratching and dryness of his throat. God, how long had he been asleep? His throat felt like a Sahara.
“Don’t try talking too much yet.” The nurse beside him smiled and reached for a small plastic cup beside the bed, helping angle a straw towards Keith before moving it forward. “Drink first. Small sips.”
Keith felt himself staring at the straw for a second in pure moritifcation. But, embarrassingly, Keith drank from it immediately when his body soon realised how thirsty it was. The water definitely tasted stale, but it was everything that Keith needed in the moment, so he gulped it down like a man starved. Annoyingly, it helped soothe the slight burn in his throat.
“How are you feeling?” She asked gently when she put the water down and took a seat in the chair beside Keith. Keith looked at her badge: she was an intern.
He felt like he was hit by a ten-wheeler.
Keith frowned faintly at the thought before reading with a slow, creeping unease that maybe that might actually not be too much of a stretch as to what could have happened. His memory felt too slippery, like every time he reached for an explanation, it scattered apart again before he could grasp it.
Like rain.
Rain.
His mind fluttered off, rain. Headlights blurring annoyingly through a windshield; A GPS voice somewhere in the background speaking over itself that he had missed a turn; a hotel maybe? Wait, no. An apartment? No, a rental. He was on a work trip. He studied the thought in his head, trying to piece together what actually happened, then a sharp memory flicked through unwanted. A sharp feeling spread through his chest and head, a loud beeping noise, his current pulse kicking painfully against what was now definitely broken ribs. In the memory, the sound of some kind of impact rings loud and true, the feeling of metal folding somewhere around him. But then, just when he thinks the memory is taking him somewhere, it fades
Keith swallowed and reattempted the question; he didn’t know if he was ready to have answered. “What happened?” He asked, quieter than the confidence he tried to project.
In response, the nurse's expression shifted into something practiced and reassuring. “You were in a car accident two nights ago. You have been in and out of consciousness since surgery, but this is the first time you’ve been coherent enough to communicate with us. But don’t worry, that is completely normal.”
The number landed somewhere odd. Keith found himself staring blankly for a moment, trying to understand how time could seemingly vanish like that. “Surgery?” He managed to croak out in response. It felt like he was playing detective for his own life right now.
“Just to stabilise your leg,” She explained quickly. “You’ve got a fracture in your knee, some broken ribs. On top of that, a concussion, a lot of bruising. You were lucky, honestly.”
Lucky did not feel like the word for it in a million years.
He tried moving again, slower this time, and instantly felt every single injury that was waiting for him to notice. Ribs protesting angrily, his shoulder burning even though he felt cold. His leg remained heavy and stiff beneath the blankets. Keith assumed it was probably cast or wrapped right now. He decided moving probably wasn’t a good idea for now, and halted his movements.
Definitely a ten-wheeler.
Outside the room, someone laughed quietly in passing, pushing what sounded like a cart. Somewhere farther down, another monitor was beeping incessantly before being silenced. Life continued around him, which felt oddly surreal. He glanced gently at the window, watching as the sunlight pushed through. The light almost looked wrong, too bright for home.
The realisation settled heavy; he wasn’t at home; he was still on a work trip.
This wasn’t his city. He had flown out here for work; he was still in a random city in America. He’s been sent out here for almost three weeks now, finishing negotiations on some long, boring, miserable project Keith had stopped caring about halfway through the first week.
He hadn’t even unpacked into the furnished apartment they’d rented him before everything started blurring together into long days and even longer nights. Takeout containers making up ninety percent of his furniture. Rain pelting down on the windows on a night when he was driving back from whatever boring meeting he had to deal with that day.
He remembers now that he was preparing for a big shareholder meeting for the next morning and had spent way too long with a client. Packing up late means he was going to be caught by the storm, but it was fine because he needed to prepare for this meeting-
This meeting that would already be done and over with by now.
Oh fuck, work was going to be pissed.
“My phone?” he stuttered out abruptly from his little mind palace that he was currently residing in. “We have all your belongings, don’t worry.” She smiled gently and stood, walking over to a file and reading through it. “Your work has already been informed too, oh, and your emergency contact.”
Keith’s mind snagged on that a little. The panic and worry of what his company's reaction was halted by the thought of an emergency contact. He assumed it was just standard procedure, but he couldn’t help the dread that washed through him.
Shiro is going to be so mad.
Keith closed his eyes briefly against another wave of exhaustion that hit. His head hurt. And so in turn, thinking hurt. Everything felt distant and slightly unreal, like he was still only halfway awake despite the brightness of the room.
The nurse kept talking softly while checking something near his bed, her tone easy and conversational in that way medical professionals developed around injured people. “You gave us a bit of a scare there,” she said. “Your emergency contact will be relieved you're finally awake.”
Keith made a quiet sound of acknowledgement without really processing it. “…Yeah. Sorry.”
The nurse smiled lightly, apparently satisfied by that response, and moved toward the door. “Try and get some more rest if you can. The doctor should be in soon.”
Keith nodded again, and the nurse headed out; the door clicking softly shut behind her. Silence settled back over the room apart from the steady monitor beside him and the distant movement of the hospital outside, and Keith’s mind started to drift again, unbidden.
They had rung someone, probably Shiro now that Keith thinks about it. But he lived nowhere near here. So he wasn’t going to be able to just pack up and visit. He would just be relieved to know that Keith woke up. Damn, if he were able to reach his phone right now, he would feel better.
Keith stared up at the bright unfamiliar ceiling for a long moment, unease curling slowly somewhere low in his chest without a clear reason attached to it yet. Then, the medication dragging at his system pulled him back under before he could think too hard about why.
Sleep kept swallowing him whole between one blink and the next.
Keith would surface slowly into awareness just long enough to realize where he was before exhaustion dragged him back under again, thoughts loose and disconnected around the edges. Time had stopped behaving normally by this point. The sunlight shifted eventually, moving from sharp white across the wall to something duller and gold at the edges, but beyond that he had no real sense of how long he’d been drifting in and out.
At some point someone adjusted the IV in his arm. At another, somebody helped him sit up just enough to force medication down with lukewarm water while his ribs screamed in protest hard enough to leave him dizzy afterward. The concussion made everything so slippery; it would annoy Keith for a brief moment until the exhaustion would slip through again and send him back under.
Faces blurred together if he closed his eyes for too long. Conversations drifted in pieces through half-sleep. Call him crazy, but he swears in his half-asleep state he heard a very familiar voice nearby frantically asking doctors if he was going to wake up anytime soon. And a soothing voice in reply saying that this was normal, and that Keith would wake up when his body caught up.
Once he woke convinced it was raining outside only to realize the sound was just somebody showering in the room next door.
And by the time a doctor finally appeared properly, Keith felt less like a person and more like a collection of injuries being politely rearranged every few hours. “Mr. Kogane?”
Keith looked up slowly from where he’d been staring blankly at the monitor beside the bed. The doctor looked into Keith’s eyes for a long second and then smiled with a firm nod. “Good. A little more coherent this time.”
Keith frowned faintly at that. “How bad was I?”
“Bad enough to concern us. Not bad enough to kill you.” The answer was matter-of-fact, almost dry, and weirdly easier to process because of it. Keith appreciated that the words were not full of fake concern. The doctor stepped further into the room, tablet balanced in one hand. He looked maybe in his mid-forties, and he looked very tired. Probably had a long shift, or career; somebody who had clearly delivered variations of this conversation a thousand times before.
“You suffered a clean break to your upper tibia,” he explained. “Three broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder which has already been reduced, and a moderate concussion. Significant bruising. Lacerations. Thankfully, no spinal damage.”
Keith absorbed that in silence. It sounded like a list being read about somebody else; was he really that broken up right now?
“Your surgery went well,” the doctor continued. “At the moment we’re mostly monitoring the concussion symptoms and pain management. You’ve been unconscious or semi-conscious for around forty-eight hours, which isn’t unusual considering the trauma and medication involved. However, we are concerned about your coherency, hence the regular visits.”
There it was again, two whole days missing. The number still felt fake, like they were still talking about someone else. Keith shifted slightly before immediately regretting it as pain flared through his side and leg. The doctor noticed instantly. “Easy,” he said. “You’re going to feel fairly terrible for a while.”
“I’ve noticed.”
The doctor snorted softly at that, apparently taking it as a good sign. “Humor’s intact. Also helpful.”
Keith let his head rest back against the pillow again, breathing carefully through the ache in his ribs. Even existing felt physically expensive right now, and he wasn’t used to being this still for this long. “How long?”
“For recovery?” The doctor asked with a tilt of the head. Keith swallowed and buckled up for the answer, nodding gently.
“You’ll likely be here several more days minimum. After that, physical therapy and limited mobility for a while. Full recovery could take several months depending on how healing progresses.”
Months.
Work was going to love that.
Keith stared at the ceiling for a little while, letting it all sink in. The doctor shifted slightly, as if reading the thought directly off of Keith’s expression, “Your employer has already been informed you were injured.”
“Great.”
“You seem less concerned about the fact you nearly died.”
Keith considered that weakly, a small huff leaving him. “Can’t really do much about that part now.”
The doctor watched him for a moment like he was trying to figure something out, then simply nodded. “That level of detachment is fairly common after major trauma,” he said. “Especially combined with a concussion.”
Keith wasn’t sure it was detachment exactly. Everything still felt too far away emotionally, like his brain had wrapped the entire situation in several layers of thick fabric before handing it back to him. So much was being told to him. But he didn’t want to be told, he wanted to remember.
“What actually happened?” Keith asked after a moment. “The crash. Because I can’t remember a thing.”
“Loss of control on wet roads, from what we were told by first responders. Another vehicle clipped you during the spin. Your airbags deployed, which likely saved your life.”
Keith closed his eyes briefly as the fragmented memory flashed unpleasantly behind them. It came back in waves, loud noises and bright lights. Cold rain against his cheek for brief moments. People touching his face and shouting at him, but it all sounded like a slow-motion crowd, where you couldn’t make out one person in particular.
“You were found fairly quickly,” the doctor continued. “That helped.”
Keith nodded once. The room fell quiet for a few seconds outside the steady hum of machines and distant movement somewhere down the hall. Then, before he could really think about why he was asking, Keith said, “Did someone call…?”
The doctor glanced down briefly at the tablet in his hand. “Yes. The contact listed in your records.”
Keith’s brain moved sluggishly around the question. He tried sorting through possibilities automatically. Still Shiro probably. Or maybe his sister? He couldn't remember for the life of him who he had down as his emergency contact. Though his sister hated answering unknown numbers and Shiro was halfway across the country right now for some training program or work conference or something equally impossible to travel back from quickly.
The doctor continued casually, “They arrived a few hours ago.”
Keith’s stomach dropped down so suddenly he was sure that heart rate monitor beside him was going to flatline.
Shiro was too far away. There is no way Shiro would have been able to throw everything to the wall and get here in time for Keith waking up. He couldn’t have, could he? His sister is barely getting by as it is; there’s no way she could have arranged enough to get a flight across the state last minute.
There was… one other person that would have come immediately without stopping to think about whether he should. Once upon a time.
The realisation slowly hit before the name was even spoken.
Keith stared at the doctor, pulse suddenly uneven beneath the monitor leads stuck to his chest. He asked the question even though the swirl in his gut told him he already knew. “…who?”
The doctor looked mildly surprised by the question and looked down at the file again before reading out the name. “Lance McClain?”
Everything inside Keith went very still very suddenly. He didn’t scream, or freak out. He just sat with the thought for a second. His body, still messed up, froze, and Keith couldn’t convince it to breathe or move or do anything. He just sat, blank in the way shock sometimes was. Like his brain simply refused to move around the information properly.
Lance.
He was here. Somewhere, inside this hospital. After god knows how many years now.
Well, four and a half. But that's besides the point.
Keith looked away first, eyes fixing hard on the pale blanket over his legs while something tense and nauseating twisted low in his chest. That didn’t make sense. Not because Lance wouldn’t come if called- that was almost the problem. Lance had always come.
The doctor was still talking, oblivious to the sudden static roaring through Keith’s head. “He’s been waiting most of the afternoon for you to wake up properly. We encouraged him to get some rest, but he seemed reluctant to leave.”
Keith swallowed hard enough that his throat hurt. His first coherent thought was not relief.
Why the hell is Lance still my emergency contact?
After the doctor left, the room seemed too quiet. It wasn’t actually quiet. He assumed that hospitals never really were. There was always something happening beyond the walls. But inside the room itself, everything suddenly felt suspended. Keith stared at the ceiling without really seeing it, the name rattling around in his head and refusing to settle.
Lance McClain.
It had been years since they’d spoken properly. Not awkward birthday texts or the occasional accidental interaction through mutual friends online. No, an actual conversation, or actual presence. And now Lance was somewhere nearby, close enough that Keith could probably hear his footsteps if he walked past the room. The thought made something tense pull tight beneath his ribs.
It had ended badly. Not in the explosive way Keith assumed relationships did. Although that almost would’ve been easier to understand looking back on it now. There hadn’t been screaming or slammed doors or dramatic betrayal. Just exhaustion from both parties involved. Hurt stretched too thin over too much time, left and ignored until resentment built and suddenly time wouldn’t fix all wounds. Conversations that kept circling the same issues until eventually there was nothing left to say that hadn’t already failed once before.
Lance should not be here. Objectively, rationally, there was no reason for him to still be tangled up in this situation at all. They weren't together anymore. In fact, they hadn’t been for a long time. Keith had moved cities after the breakup; Lance had stayed. Life had continued separately in the quiet, uncomfortable way it always did after something important ended.
And yet the hospital had called him. Because Keith had never changed the contact information. The stupidity of that settled heavier the longer he thought about it.
At some point during the first year after the breakup, he should’ve changed it. Probably during the move. Or when he switched insurance providers. Or after the second apartment, probably. Or even after the first time he’d opened the emergency contact section on some form and stared at Lance’s name for a full minute before locking his phone again without touching anything.
There had been dozens of chances. But avoidance is a funny thing. It clings, holds onto things you didn’t think were ever important. And suddenly, the topic is too hot to touch, too painful to relive, so you don’t.
It was never some dramatic decision where he sat there thinking I can’t let him go. It had honestly felt smaller and dumber than that every single time. Pure avoidance.
Something Lance would have killed him for once upon a time, which was the kicker.
Changing it would’ve required acknowledging something permanent about the breakup that Keith had spent years carefully refusing to examine too closely. Leaving Lance’s name there had become strangely easy after a while, like an old bruise you stopped pressing on because you already knew it hurt. But that obviously backfired, and now Lance was here because of it.
Keith exhaled slowly through his nose, immediately regretting the depth of the breath as pain sharpened through his ribs. The room blurred slightly when he shifted against the pillow. Exhaustion still dragged heavily at him, medication making the edges of everything soft and slow, but his thoughts had sharpened enough now that resting felt impossible.
Lance had traveled here. That part kept snagging hardest.
This wasn’t home; it wasn’t even nearby in the slightest. Keith had barely learned the roads around the temporary apartment before the accident happened. The company had sent him out here alone for a project that was supposed to last another month at the minimum, and aside from a couple coworkers he occasionally met for miserable conference room lunches, he didn’t know anybody in the city.
But Lance had gotten the call and come anyway.
Keith rubbed tiredly at his face with his good hand before wincing at the pull in his shoulder. What was Lance even thinking right now? The last real conversation they’d had played in fragments at the edges of Keith’s memory if he let himself look too directly at it. Tired voices and long silences, two people trying to say what they mean but not being able too without hurting the other. Lance standing in the kitchen looking more exhausted than angry by the end of it.
I can’t keep doing this, Keith.
The memory made guilt curl unpleasantly in his stomach, and he wondered suddenly if Lance had hesitated before answering the hospital. If there’d been a moment where he looked at the unknown number and almost let it ring out. If hearing Keith’s name after all this time had reopened old resentment instantly or if fear had swallowed everything else before he had time to think about it. Keith honestly didn’t know which possibility felt worse
His phone was probably full of missed calls from work by now. Emails too. Questions he couldn’t answer yet, because even he didn’t know what was going on. He should probably care more about that than he currently did. Instead, every thought kept circling helplessly back toward one impossible fact.
The exhaustion in Keith’s body made it difficult to hold onto any thought for too long before another slipped in beside it. Pain medication softened the edges of panic enough that nothing fully spiraled, but unease lingered stubbornly under everything else. He tried imagining what Lance looked like now and immediately hated that he couldn’t do it properly. Not Lance now. His memory kept stubbornly offering older versions instead.
Lance half asleep on the couch with a blanket tangled around his waist. Lance laughing so hard he snorted into his drink. Lance standing barefoot in their kitchen with music playing quietly from his phone while he cooked.
Keith shut the thought down before it could go further. Because none of it was helpful. That wasn’t the person outside the room right now. That was an older version, a softer, brighter man who he once loved. The man outside now wasn’t that person anymore.
A soft knock sounded against the partially open door. Barely loud enough to register over the machines.
Keith’s entire body went still anyway, because no nurse knocked like that. Something deep and instinctive tightened painfully in his chest before he even looked up because he already knew. Somehow, impossibly, he already knew. Keith’s stomach twisted tighter before Lance even fully stepped into the room. For one strange, disorienting second, Keith almost didn’t recognize him.
Not because Lance looked wildly different.
The shape of him was still painfully familiar. The same broad shoulders, same posture that somehow always looked halfway relaxed even when tense. Same face Keith’s memory had apparently preserved in cruel detail despite years of trying not to think about it too often. But time had settled on him anyway. He was older-looking, sure, but he looked sharper around the edges in a way Keith can’t find in his old preserved memories.
But God, he looked tired.
Lance stood just inside the doorway with an overnight bag slung over one shoulder and a paper coffee cup crushed slightly in one hand, like he’d forgotten he was holding it hours ago. His clothes were wrinkled enough to suggest he’d either slept in them or tried unsuccessfully to sleep sitting upright somewhere uncomfortable. There were shadows under his eyes darker than Keith remembered and tension sitting visibly in his jaw like he’d been clenching it for too long. He looked like somebody who had been running entirely on adrenaline and caffeine for at least a day. And Keith couldn’t find it in himself to stop staring.
Lance looked up fully then, finally meeting his eyes properly across the room. And there it was. That split second where his body betrayed him.
Relief.
Keith saw it happen before Lance could stop it. The way his shoulders loosened fractionally with a small, sharp exhale. The tension in the room breaking for just a heartbeat. Then, almost instantly, Lance pulled himself back together again. Not cold exactly, but exactly contained like an ex would be. Like somebody physically drawing a curtain shut.
“Hey,” he said.
Keith swallowed; he didn’t say anything for a second. Oh wait, shit, he should definitely say something. “Hey.” The word sounded rough coming out of him. Silence followed immediately after, it stretching strangely between them, thick with too much history and not enough understanding of what they were supposed to do with it now.
Lance shifted the coffee cup into his other hand. Keith noticed rainwater dried faintly along the shoulders of his jacket. Airport maybe. Or a long walk from parking; his hair looked slightly damp at the edges still. Lance glanced briefly toward the monitor beside the bed before looking back at Keith again, eyes scanning quickly over the visible injuries like he was cataloguing damage against instinct.
“You look like shit,” he said finally.
Keith let out a startled breath that almost became a laugh before pain cut it off halfway through. Relief flooded so quickly that he didn’t even register his movement until the pain caught up to him, causing him to grimace immediately.
Lance reacted just as fast, taking an unconscious half-step forward before stopping himself. “Don’t do that,” he said automatically. “Your ribs.” He groaned with a cringe. The familiarity of it hit Keith so hard his chest hurt for an entirely different reason. Lance definitely noticed too. Keith could see the realization cross his face a second too late.
Another silence settled when neither of them acknowledged it.
Keith became painfully aware of every inch of distance between them. Lance stayed standing near the door at first like he wasn’t entirely sure he belonged further inside the room than that. Which, to be fair, maybe he didn’t. Keith honestly didn’t know anymore. “You flew here?” he asked eventually.
Lance nodded once. “First flight this morning.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
Lance’s mouth tightened slightly at the edges, something unreadable flickering briefly across his expression before disappearing again. “The hospital made it sound worse than this.”
Keith looked down automatically at the cast on his leg, the bandages disappearing beneath the hospital gown, the bruising blooming darkly across his exposed arm. “This?” he repeated weakly.
Lance huffed a short breath through his nose. Not quite amusement. “You know what I mean.”
Keith did.
The room fell quiet again. It was unbearable how familiar Lance still felt sitting inside Keith’s awareness like this. Not physically close or touching in any way. But present in the room with that same gravity he’d always had. Keith hated how quickly his body recognized it despite everything. Lance eventually moved further inside after all, dropping the overnight bag carefully into the chair near the wall before setting the untouched coffee beside it. Even exhausted, he moved with deliberate quietness like he was trying not to disturb anything.
Keith watched him maybe too openly. Lance had changed. Not anything dramatic like gaining muscle or changing his appearance. No, it was smaller. Less restless, maybe, calmer, settled in his own skin. Something Keith never got to see when they were together. Older in the way people became after enough years passed and enough things happened to them quietly.
There was a ring-shaped pale mark near the base of his finger that caught Keith off guard so abruptly he looked away before Lance could notice. His stomach twisted unpleasantly, betraying him.
“Doctor said you were awake earlier,” Lance said after a moment. “But apparently you kept falling back asleep. Tried to come see you.”
“Concussion.”
“Yeah.”
Keith couldn't figure out where to put his eyes. Every direction felt dangerous somehow. Looking at Lance too long hurt. Not looking at him felt worse. Finally, before he could lose his nerve entirely, Keith asked quietly, “Why are you here?”
Lance blinked at him once, genuine confusion pulling briefly between his brows. “The hospital called me.”
“No, I know, but…” Keith stopped. He didn’t even fully know what he was trying to ask. He tried racking his brains for the words he was looking for. Questions like, Why did you answer that call? Why didn’t you just give them Shiro’s number and pass the buck? Why are you here?
Lance stared at him for a second longer before understanding settled slowly across his face. The exhaustion there suddenly looked deeper somehow. “If you died and I hadn’t come,” he said quietly, “I couldn’t live with myself.”
Blunt, exhausted honesty dropped carefully between them. Keith felt the words land somewhere deep enough that breathing suddenly became difficult for reasons unrelated to the fractures in his ribs. Lance looked away first after saying it, rubbing tiredly at the back of his neck. The fluorescent lighting made him look washed out, almost pale with exhaustion, a stark difference to the caramel skin that usually sits there. Like stress had been sitting on him for hours without relief. Keith swallowed carefully and looked away before he was caught.
“Why am I still your emergency contact?” Lance asked suddenly.
The question hit harder than Keith expected. He felt it like a bullet. He knew it was coming, but he still felt it hit like physical pain stronger than any hurt in his body. Lance looked back at him properly this time, not accusing exactly. Just tired and confused, as any sane human should be in this situation. “I was wondering that too when they called.”
Keith opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Because he genuinely did not have an answer that made sense. Not one he could explain aloud anyway. Keith stared down at the blanket twisted loosely over his lap instead of meeting Lance’s eyes. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally, voice rough. And that was somehow worse than any lie he could’ve come up with instead. The silence afterward felt enormous in the small space.
Lance looked at him for a long moment like he was trying to decide whether he believed that answer or not before eventually exhaling quietly through his nose. “Okay,” he said.
Nothing about the situation felt okay.
But Keith didn’t know how to explain that either. And the only thing he could feel was guilt for dragging him into this crazy situation that was definitely making both of them relive things they definitely didn’t need to be remembering. There was a strange, awkward stretch after the emergency contact conversation where he remained standing near the chair like he still had one foot mentally outside the room, shoulders tight beneath his jacket.
Then his phone buzzed sharply in his pocket. The sound seemed to break whatever invisible pause they’d both gotten trapped inside. Lance pulled it out automatically, glancing down at the screen before rubbing tiredly at one eye.
“You can answer it,” Keith said.
Lance looked up and shook his head. “It’s fine.” The phone buzzed again almost instantly. Keith caught a glimpse of multiple unread messages lighting the screen before Lance locked it again and shoved it back into his pocket.
“Persistent,” Keith muttered.
“My mama.”
Something in Keith’s chest tightened unexpectedly. Of course his mom knew. The idea of Lance’s family hearing he’d dropped everything to fly across the country for his ex-boyfriend’s medical emergency made heat crawl unpleasantly up the back of Keith’s neck.
Lance sat carefully in the chair near the bed at last, elbows braced against his knees as he exhaled slowly through his nose. Up close, the exhaustion on him looked worse somehow. Fine cracks beginning to show through whatever self-control had gotten him here in the first place. “You should probably sleep,” Lance said after a moment.
Keith almost laughed again at the immediate instinctive irritation that rose in response. It felt stupidly familiar. “You just got here.”
Lance’s expression flickered briefly at that before smoothing back out. “Well, I mean… Yeah.”
Keith hated how aware he was of everything Lance did. The shift of his shoulders. The scrape of his thumb against the coffee cup lid. The tired line between his brows that deepened every time he looked at Keith for too long. It felt dangerous being this aware of him again. “How long was the flight?” Keith asked.
“A couple of hours.”
“You came straight from work?”
“Straight from bed, actually.” Keith blinked in shock for a secon as he quickly tried to work out time zones in his head. Lance leaned back slightly in the chair, exhaustion dragging visibly at him now that he’d stopped moving long enough for it to catch up properly. “It was like four in the morning when they called.”
Keith stared at him for a moment until the image arrived uninvited. Lance waking abruptly in darkness to an unknown number, answering groggy and irritated, maybe. Then hearing the words car accident and emergency contact and hospital. Keith looked away first. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
Lance was quiet for a second too long. “For what part?”
The question should not have felt as loaded as it did in that moment. Keith forced himself to swallow and nod at the wall. “The flight. The whole… contact situation.” He gestured weakly around himself before immediately wincing at the movement.
Without thinking, Lance leaned forward automatically. “Don’t do that.”
Keith froze. For one strange suspended second, they were caught inside pure muscle memory. Lance was halfway out of his chair, already reaching instinctively toward him before he stopped himself short. The air shifted strangely between them. Keith suddenly realized Lance still knew exactly what his pain face looked like. Lance sat back slowly. “Sorry,” he said, quieter now.
Keith stared down at the blanket twisted over his legs. “It’s fine.”
Nothing about this felt fine either.
The monitor continued its steady rhythm beside him. Lance picked up the coffee finally, taking a sip before grimacing faintly, like it had gone cold hours ago. “You’ve always hated hospital coffee,” Keith said before thinking.
Lance looked up in mild surprise. Keith felt heat crawl instantly up his neck, because that was the problem now, wasn’t it? The familiarity sat too close to the surface still. Years apparently hadn’t buried any of it deep enough.
Lance, the good sport that he is, huffed a quiet breath through his nose, almost a laugh. “Yeah. Still terrible.”
The brief softness that slipped into the room afterward scared Keith more than the tension had. So apparently it scared Lance too because he looked away immediately afterward, attention shifting toward the window instead. “You scared the hell out of everybody, apparently,” Lance said with a clear of the throat.
Keith frowned faintly. “Everybody?”
Lance shrugged one shoulder. “Hunk’s threatening to physically fight you.”
“Why does Hunk care? I haven't spoken to him in-” Despite himself, Keith snorted softly before pain shot through his ribs hard enough to make him suck in a sharp breath.
“Jesus,” Lance muttered immediately.
Before Keith could react, Lance was already reaching for the plastic water cup beside the bed and holding it out toward him automatically. Keith stared at it for half a second and then at Lance. Lance noticed the hesitation instantly. Something shuttered briefly across his expression before he simply held the cup a little closer without comment. Keith took it carefully. Their fingers brushed for maybe half a second at most. The water helped the ache in his throat, though swallowing still pulled painfully through his chest. “Hunk knows?” Keith asked eventually.
“I texted him from the waiting room.”
The image caught Keith off guard again. Lance sitting alone in some hospital waiting room in the middle of the night texting people about him. “You didn’t have to tell anyone.”
“I didn’t tell anyone really.”
“You told Hunk.”
“He asked why I disappeared in the middle of the night and cancelled dinner.”
Keith blinked. “Dinner?” Lance nodded once, attention dropping briefly toward his phone again as it buzzed a third time. Keith tried not to notice how natural that sounded. Dinner. People expecting him somewhere. A life continuing before this interrupted it, and the guilt became all-consuming. Lance typed out a quick response one-handed before locking the screen again.
“You can answer them,” Keith said quietly.
Lance glanced up. “I am.”
“No, I mean properly.”
“It’s handled.” There it was again, that steadiness that he’s not used to seeing. Old Lance would’ve spiraled visibly by now, started pacing, talking too much, running emotion straight through his hands and voice until everybody around him felt it too. This version felt different. Keith found himself studying him carefully because he couldn’t help it.
Lance still wore jewelry Keith didn’t recognize. A thin silver chain disappearing beneath his shirt collar. Different watch. His hair was slightly shorter than Keith remembered. There were faint lines at the corners of his eyes now that definitely had not been there before. Time had happened to him while Keith wasn’t looking. “You look different,” Keith admitted before he could stop himself.
Lance’s brows lifted slightly. “So do you.”
“Yeah, well.” Keith looked down at the cast on his leg. “Current circumstances probably aren’t helping.”
That earned him another small almost-laugh. It was tiny and brief, still enough for Keith’s chest to fill with warmth and burn at the same time. Lance glanced toward the monitor again before saying, “Doctor said recovery’s gonna suck for a while.”
“Good. Glad we’re staying optimistic.” Keith huffed, trying to act amused.
“I’m serious, Keith.” The tone shifted slightly, not exactly harsh in any way, just honest in a way Lance was always good at. Keith looked back at him. Lance held his gaze steadily now in a way that felt newer somehow. Less emotionally frantic than he used to be. More willing to let silence exist without rushing to fill it. “You’re gonna need help for a bit,” he said quietly. “Walking. Daily stuff probably. Concussions can get ugly too.”
Keith’s first instinctive response rose automatically.
I’ll figure it out.
The words nearly left his mouth before he stopped himself. Because suddenly, horribly, he remembered another conversation years ago. Another exhausted look across another room and a groaned-out response.
You always say that.
Keith swallowed the response before it escaped. For one awful second, something old and familiar passed silently between them before both looked away almost simultaneously. Keith shifted carefully against the pillow, exhaustion dragging harder at him again beneath the medication haze. “How long are you staying? Just today?” he asked quietly.
Lance went still for a moment. Then he answered carefully, “I booked the hotel for a few nights.”
Keith nodded to himself at that information. Lance still clearly had a life. That fact kept appearing in small, unavoidable ways throughout the conversation, the nonstop texts, dinner plans interrupted. Keith had somehow expected seeing him again to feel frozen in time. Instead, it felt like slamming unexpectedly into proof that the world had kept moving without him in it.
Lance’s phone buzzed once more against his thigh. This time he checked it and sighed softly. “My mama’s threatening to fly out here herself if I don’t call her.”
Despite everything, Keith felt a startled smile pull briefly at the corner of his mouth. “Sounds about right. Don’t keep her stressing about you.”
Lance looked up at the expression like he hadn’t expected to see it there. For one tiny dangerous second, something warmer flickered across his face in response. Then it disappeared again beneath exhaustion. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Sounds about right.”
Keith felt something immediate and unpleasant tighten low in his chest before he could stop it. A sharp awareness that this moment was ending and he had absolutely no idea what happened after that. Because once Lance walked out that door, reality would settle back in properly. This wasn’t temporary confusion anymore. This wasn’t some concussion dream.
Lance had actually come here. They had actually spoken for the first time in years, and now he was going to leave again. Keith hated how much the thought unsettled him. “Okay, well then,” he said instead.
Lance stood slowly from the chair, stretching one arm briefly, like his entire body had stiffened from traveling and sitting in uncomfortable hospital furniture for too many hours straight. Keith watched him gather his things with quiet, efficient movements. The overnight bag. The now-empty coffee cup. His phone lighting briefly again in his hand before being shoved back into his pocket unread this time.
For a second Keith almost asked where exactly Lance’s hotel was. The question rose automatically before dying just as quickly. Not his business anymore, just a weird thing to ask. Lance paused near the end of the bed instead of immediately heading for the door. “You’ve got your phone charger?” he asked.
Keith blinked once. “I don’t even know where my phone is.”
“I’ll ask the nurse.” The response came instantly, another old instinct neither of them acknowledged.
Keith looked down at his hands instead, feeling the words trying to claw their way out of his throat. “You don’t have to stay; I don't… expect you to be wrapped up in this, I’m sorry you even have been,” he said quietly.
The room suddenly felt too warm beneath the hospital blankets. “I know,” Lance answered.
Keith stared at the blanket over his legs because looking directly at Lance suddenly felt impossible. He could feel the weight of those words settling somewhere deep and uncomfortable inside him anyway. Lance shifted slightly beside the bed. “The nurses have my number if something changes overnight.”
Keith nodded once.
“The doctor said they’ll probably move you to a different room tomorrow if everything stays stable.”
Another nod.
The conversation kept catching awkwardly on itself now like neither of them knew how to end this properly. There should’ve been some obvious script for situations like this, but apparently years apart had not magically provided one. Lance rubbed tiredly at the back of his neck again before glancing toward the door. “I’ll…” He stopped briefly. Started again. “I’ll check in tomorrow.”
Keith looked up before he could stop himself. Something flickered across Lance’s face at the speed of instinct. Fast enough Keith almost missed it. Then it was gone again behind composure. “Okay,” Keith said.
His voice sounded rougher than before. Lance nodded once. For one strange suspended moment, neither of them moved. Keith became hyperaware suddenly of every unfinished thing sitting silently between them. Years of it. Entire conversations buried beneath smaller practical ones because neither of them knew how to touch any of it safely anymore. Then Lance stepped backward toward the door. “Get some sleep,” he said quietly.
Keith almost said you too. The familiarity of it hit him in time, and he swallowed the words before they escaped. Lance noticed anyway. Of course. Something softened briefly in his expression before exhaustion flattened it again. Then he opened the door; the hallway noise rushed in around him immediately. “Night, Keith.”
Keith stared at him, and then he managed quietly, “Night.”
The door clicked shut behind him. Silence settled heavily through the room again. Keith kept staring at the closed door long after Lance disappeared behind it.
His chest hurt.
His leg hurt.
Everything just hurts, and Keith wants to scream out in anger. But beneath all of it sat something worse now. Something quieter and harder to name. Lance had come, not because they were together, or because he owed Keith anything. Not because years apart had somehow magically erased all the hurt between them.
He came because hearing Keith might die had still mattered enough to get on a plane.
And now Keith was awake. He was alive and stable. Which meant this was probably over. Lance had done the kind thing. The decent thing. The very Lance thing.
Tomorrow he’d probably text to check in out of politeness. Maybe stop by briefly before flying home. Then eventually this strange awful collision between their separate lives would settle back into distance again where it belonged. That was the normal outcome here. Keith repeated that thought to himself while staring at the closed door. Repeated it again, while the medication slowly dragged exhaustion back over him.
Repeated it until he almost believed it.
And somewhere underneath all of that, quieter than everything else, sat the certainty that he would wake up tomorrow and Lance would be gone.