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Chapter 30: Final

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(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

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     As they stepped into the apartment and into the light from the still-exposed windows, Keith realized that this was going to be a problem. Pointedly ignoring the dire mess in the middle of the living room floor, Keith led Lance through the entryway and went straight for the steps leading to his room and the little loft above the rest of the apartment. Lance ambled in behind him, stalling at the foot of the steps and Keith was certain that he had caught a look at Keith’s art all over the floor.

    “I… Keith, what the fuck happened here?” he asked. His footsteps led away from the loft stairs now and back towards the living room. Keith cringed slightly but focused on gathering his suitcase and his clothes from his closet.

    “What happened where?” he asked. He hoped that Lance would get the tone of his voice. Nothing happened . Nothing. Fucking nada. The living room was clear of evidence of his break down and he certainly wouldn’t have to tell Lance why in the world Keith’s artwork was positively in shreds, littering the hardwood floor with their charcoals, pastels and other mediums.

    There was a little sound as Lance came up the steps. “You know what.” Keith looked to Lance was stood behind him in the doorway with his shoulder propped against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest. “What happened down there.” He jerked his head back to demonstrate his point.

    Keith gave a shrug and went back to taking his things out of his closet only to throw them back onto the queen sized bed into a sizable pile. He wasn’t even paying attention to what was going on the bed, just grabbing anything that came to hand.

    Lance frowned and came forward until he could put his hand on Keith’s wrist. Keith wet his lips but kept his eyes on the mattress and his pile of clothes. “Hey.” Lance moved so he was almost half leaning over the bed as he tried to get into Keith’s line of sight. “Keith.” The man blinked a couple of times and rolled his eyes at himself before looking to Lance and meeting his eyes. “What happened, hmm?” he asked carefully, softly like if he spoke to loudly than he would break the air itself. “Why is your art in pieces out there?”

    Keith’s jaw set and he hesitated for a minute. He tried several times to start but stopped short again, not knowing how to phrase what he needed. It was like grasping for threads in a string factory. He had plenty of thoughts - just not the ones he wanted or needed.

    “It was after we had slept together,” he said finally. He looked up to the roof, partially in thought and partially in a silent prayer that God might strike him down before he had to finish his explanation. He had no such luck, of course. He was left to grasp at his thin strings and prepare for the worst that would come. “And we fought and you cut yourself off. Caroline was in Baltimore, Julie is with her boyfriend…” He trailed off and waved a hand in the air, sighing through his nose. “Kevin’s across the country, and not exactly in the position to drop everything and deal with my bullshit, so I didn’t really have anybody to talk to and I…” He made vague gesture and thinned his lips. Maybe Lance would get the picture, vague as it was, that while in a poor mental space, Keith had shredded his things.

    Lance wasn’t having that. He nodded, telling Keith that he still had every bit of his attention. Keith sighed and continued. “I bottled it all up and it exploded in my face. I took a pair of scissors to every piece of paper I could get at.” He shrugged, a rueful smile on his lips. He looked back to his clothes and stuffed a few more into his bag. “I was going to clean up but then I just slept instead and then I forgot about it; and before I knew it, Allura called me and you were in the goddamn hospital with a fucking concussion.” His movements got jerkier and rougher until he was sure he was going to tear the pair of pants he was holding. He slammed them in the bag in a fit. His face was burning. With shame or maybe frustration he didn’t know which. He didn’t get to do that many more times before Lance was catching his wrists and uttering small, calming words to him.

    “Keith, hey, hey,” he whispered, placing Keith’s wrists against his own chest, holding them over his heart. Keith pulled at them but Lance didn’t let go until Keith calmed a little and settled against Lance’s chest with a violent breath. One more feeble tug and Keith was surrendering. He thumped his forehead down against Lance’s collar bone and just focused on his breathing for a moment. Lance let go of one of his wrists so he could wrap an arm around Keith’s shoulders and draw him closer. “It’s alright,” Lance whispered against his hair. He whispered it again and again and variants thereof as he held Keith against his chest and shifted to card long fingers through his hair. Keith’s arms slipped from in between them to wrap around Lance’s waist.

    After a few minutes, Keith pulled away and tilted his head back to look up at Lance. Lance was quiet now, and his gaze was soft into Keith’s. Keith leaned up on his tip toes and pressed a kiss to Lance’s lips.

    Lance smiled and pressed a kiss to his soulmate’s cheek. He sighed and tucked his face into the crook of Keith’s neck. “You do know that we still have to clean that stuff up downstairs though, right?” he muttered into the thick material of Keith’s sweater.

    Keith frowned but nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

    And so they did, just as they were about to leave. Lance made his way into the living room, hands picking up differing shreds of paper and putting them into one complete pile near the foot of the coffee table. Keith hesitated before he came over and began to help as well. With shaky fingers and an aching feeling of disappointment in himself, he helped Lance clear up the floor. Keith went to work on gathering the uncut pictures and putting them back in their folder and atop the unpacked box against the wall.

    “What do you want done with these?” Lance asked. It was a soft question. Lance looked up to Keith from where he was sitting back on his heels, the papers on his hands.

    Keith worried at his lip for a minute, caught in between turning from the box back to his soulmate. He gave a one-shouldered shrug, an admission of defeat of sorts “The trash,” he said. He cast a glance around, trying to locate the bin. There was one in the kitchen, he realized. “There’s no other place for them, anyway. I made sure of that.” He held out his hands for the pages and Lance handed them over to him. He twisted on his heel and crossed over to the kitchen. He tossed the small stack in the bin with a pained sound. He looked at them and their new home in the trash bag. That looked wrong. He felt ashamed that he would let them get damaged enough to warrant them being thrown in the trash.

    Sighing, he turned around. Lance was already there, standing tall, like some kind of stronghold for Keith to hold onto. He knew that if he wanted, there wouldn’t be any more words shared about this subject. He could avoid them forever and, if asked, Lance would make a point to never bring it up again.

    Keith licked his lips and cast around for something to start it all off. He dropped onto a barstool and combed the fingers of his right hand through his hair. “I, uh, communication is important.” The phrasing was cliche, but it was a starting point. It was enough to plant his feet and push off, jumping through the scramble of thoughts and words weighing him down. He waded down through the mess for a string of coherent talking points.

    Lance leaned against his elbows on this opposite side of the counter. “Very much so,” he agreed.

    Keith rubbed his hands along his forearms, playing with the cuff of his sleeve pushed up to his elbow. “And I didn’t, you know, do it often. Not with what mattered, anyway.” He swallowed down saliva and it was much louder than he intended it to be. “The whole thing with soulmates was weird for me, and I never really made you aware of that fact, Or hell, why it was a fact, and as a result, everything got messy and it ended up ending. Us, I mean.” His fingers tapped at the underside of the marble counter with a rhythm.

    “That was a two-way street, though.” Lance spoke up, swishing his hand in the air between them. “‘Cause, when that happened I was the one that triggered everything to explode and I was the one to book it before we could talk things out.”

    “But I was the one to not call afterwards, or stop you and explain everything during the whole thing.”

    Lance sighed. “Alright, so you were. But that’s okay. We’re past that now. If you’re still beating yourself up about that, you shouldn’t.”

    Keith made a little face, so Lance went on.

    “Okay, so how about this? The slate’s wiped clean.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “Here, I mean this: from here on out, no more score keeping. No blame taking, or fault giving for stuff from forever ago.” He mimed throwing something over his shoulder. “Clean slate. No more living in the old past. Only looking forward.” He held a hand out for Keith to shake.

    Keith looked at him closely. “That simple?”

    Lance smiled. “That simple.” Keith shook his hand. “That also means you can’t bring up any of the embarrassing childhood memories from my family anymore, too.”

    Keith spluttered. He protested, “That’s bullshit!”

    “Nah, nope, it’s not. We shook on it!” Lance’s grin was warm and Keith surrendered.

         Coming back to Lance’s apartment hours later, Keith had a backpack slung over his shoulder, his soulmate right beside him in the elevator.

    “So,” Keith murmured, looking at Lance as they came up to Lance’s apartment door. “Only looking forwards, right?”

    Lance blinked at him, the keys in his hands, all jingling against each other. The sound filled the air between them. He sucked in a breath, puffing his chest out with the inhale. “Yeah.”

    “Looking forward to things like us , right?” Keith’s voice had dropped an octave and was thick with emotion.

    He was closer, now. So, so close to his soulmate. It was like a switch was flipped and the air became charged.

    Lance swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Right,” he breathed.

    Keith didn’t say anything more.

    Like magnets, Lance leaned down while Keith pushed up to meet him. There was a second of hesitation, A moment of hovering uncertainty as they exchanged looks, flicking between eyes and lips.

   And then it was a gasping flurry: the gap between them closed and they met. Mouths slotted against each other as they kissed. Soft sounds and puffs of breath were passed between them. The breath from Lance’s nose fanned over Keith’s cheekbone and Keith remembered that he had forgotten to breathe.

    Hastily, he drew in a breath, cocked his head and continued kissing Lance. He drew back and turned away, pulling a slightly confused sound deep within his soulmate’s chest as he grabbed Lance’s keys to unlock the door.

    As soon as it was opened, and they were through it Lance was on him again, kissing hungrily, hands on hips and Keith’s own hands grasping at his arm and the back of his shirt.

    Insistent tugging led them through the dark space. Keith knocked his hip against the side of the couch as Lance kissed him, cupped his face and only let go when Keith took over, backing Lance up against the column of wall at the beginning of the stairs. Keith crowded into his space, pressing against him as his hands pushed up under the hem of Lance’s shirt. His grip went around, bending Lance’s legs around until they were snug against Keith’s hips.

    Lance pulled back with a little groan. “I don’t think you get how hot it is that you can pick me up,” he noted. “That’s, like, a mad turn on.”

    Keith laughed, pressing a hand into Lance’s middle back to keep him stable.

    There was more kissing. Keith had the urge to repeat a string of words Lance said weeks ago. Why didn’t we start doing this a long time ago?

    He didn’t have the time to dwell on the question, because there was a rude distraction in the form of a door opening somewhere to his right. He faintly heard the lock click open and the creak of the wood against the frame. Before he fully registered the sound, there was a light, popping sort of exclamation.

    “So, I see you’ve both made up!” came a voice Keith found vaguely familiar. Dredging a name up from memory to connect it to, he looked to the side, body tense. He relaxed when all he saw was Lance’s manager, Ms. Robins.

    Lance jolted away from Keith, his eyes wide. “Aw, shit,” he muttered. He untangled himself from his soulmate, lowering himself down onto the floor again. “Carla,” he said, laughing nervously. “What’s up?”

    She gave him a withering look. Lifting the heavy-looking notebook in her hands, she said, “We’ve got to talk.You’ve gotten yourselves into a very, very deep pit, image wise. We need to start working towards getting you two out of it.”

    Lance made an unhappy sound. “Way to ruin the honeymoon phase,” he grumbled.

    Keith shuffled, his sneaker tapping at the first step of the stairs. “Should I get out of here?” he asked, looking between the two of them.

    “No.” The woman shook her head. “You’re very much a part of this. We need you here to help. And besides. If you’re here, then there’s no way anything can get lost in translation.” She shot Lance a dirty look at that last bit. She came farther into Lance’s home, crossing down and taking a left past the kitchen to the kitchen table, ignoring the small conference room through the door to her left. She took a seat and parked her bag and notebook on the tabletop in front of her.

    They two came closer, but not by much. Inching slowly, they had barely made it past the kitchen island before she gestured them all the way in with an exasperated hiss.

    “Let’s get started,” she said, opening her book. “We’ve been dark for over a week. People are taking partial info and creating their own realities with what’s going on here.” She gave a mighty eye roll. “We’ve got to get going and correct everything. It’s time we come out and set things straight.”

    Keith had a dreaded feeling that this was going to be a long day of work and very little of the pleasure they had been intending to indulge in.

         They did a lot of interviews the weeks after that. And “they” meant Lance. Keith’s role in everything was graciously minimal. It mostly consisted of him going back online, rising from social media death and promoting the living hell of Lance’s bits. He had one or two Skype interviews done, as well. He also took the opportunity to spread the messages of the interviews in question. Soulmates .

    It was all about the stigmas and social ideas surrounding soulmates. They talked about the negative, the positives and everything in between, often times using themselves as examples.

    Carla was hesitant to let them do as they pleased, but was soon on board as they talked further into everything. She was gracious, making sure both were comfortable and on board before each decision was made.

    After two weeks, the initial rush slowed a bit. Not by much, but enough to give them a quick breather. The tabloids were still talking about both of their apparent “break up, breaks downs,” but those sketchy details were soon forgotten as more attention drawn to their current topic of interest.

    The whole thing was rather controversial, and the reactions were always mixed. The opinions on it were always teetering back and forth between accepting agreement, and radical hate.

    Now Keith could see why Carla was hesitant to go along with their whims.

    It’s this sort of thing that breaks a career.

    But even as Keith shut his right eye, letting a young man apply makeup to his lid, he drew a conclusion that he didn’t have to worry.

    They were currently getting prepped for an interview. Lance was in a chair to Keith’s left, getting his hair messed with. Lance’s eyes connected with Keith’s in the mirror and he smiled.

    “Nervous?” he teased. Keith could hear the genuine note of worry in his voice.

    Keith hummed noncommittally, shrugging a shoulder. “Never done this before.”

    “Trust me, nobody’s gonna bite you too hard.”

    Keith snorted. “I can handle a few bites.”

    “Good, that’s good.” Lance’s grin was jovial. “‘Cause Hollywood’s full of wolves.”

         The interview went well. Lance was ecstatic over it. It was sort of hard for Keith to be confident in his part, since he had never done anything like the interview before, and there was more than a few times where he felt the need to shrink down in on himself from embarrassment. But as they sat on Lance’s couch, cuddled in each other’s arms, watching the interview on television, so far Keith couldn’t find any glaring faults.

    He watched Lance the most, as he carried the conversation with the host, using every opportunity he could find to draw Keith in.

    “I can’t believe they let me take that jacket home,” Keith said, looking at the soft leather number he wore on-screen. The jacket was thrown over the back of a recliner some feet away.

    “It looks very good on you,” Lance noted, a smirk in his voice. Keith felt his cheeks warm slightly.

    “Oh shush.”

    “No, I’m serious! You looked amaz-,”

    Keith pressed the pad of his right thumb to Lance’s lips, effectively shushing him. “Wait a second, I want to hear this part.”

    On the TV, the host smiled warmly, looking a the two of them. “So, we’ve been over the rough patch. If you’ll allow me to ask, how are the two of you doing as of now?”

    Lance smiled, so full of life and affection for his soulmate. It made Keith shift closer to the actor, removing his hand from Lance’s face, trailing it down to rest on his shoulder.

    “It’s a good question,” he granted. “We’re…” He glanced to Keith, who watched curiously, wondering what he was going to say. “I think we’re exactly where we need to be at this point in time.” He intertwined Keith’s fingers with his own.  “We’re good. Not great, but… perfect. Perfect for this exact moment.”

    Lance shifted underneath Keith, looking up at the younger man.

    “What do you think?” he asked quietly. “Did I nail it or what?”

    Keith laughed. “Right on the head.” He leaned in, giving Lance a small kiss on the lips.

Huh.

Maybe there is such a thing as perfection.

Notes:

Thank you everyone, for reading! Thank you for taking this… incredibly long journey with me. This story has taken my time, my sleep and my tears to create. I started it, what? In August? We’re coming up on 9 months. That’s insane.

What’s insane is really being able to see how my writing style has changed, honestly. It’s so vastly different and very neat to see.

So, even though this work is finished, the series is not! You can subscribe to the Tick Tock series, so you can be updated whenever I post anything that has to do with this monster of an AU. There’s a lot more having to do with this series, including one-shots, deleted scenes and simple shenanigans I’m able to dream up.

Thank you so, so, so, so much to two very beautiful people who’ve helped me with this work: Mikiri and Penny. Felix, this story would probably be illegible without you. Pen, this would probably have been abandoned months ago without you. Thank you both! <3

With that being said, thank you to everyone who has supported me in this! You guys are fucking amazing, don’t let anyone ever tell you different.

Please drop me a comment or visit me over on tumblr !

Now i'm gonna go cry bc i am now empty inside

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