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The parking garage smelled like oil and cold concrete and nothing at all.
Lance liked that about it. The absence of everything. The university had closed off the lower levels two years ago — some structural issue, hazard tape and a sign nobody read — and now it just existed underneath everything else, forgotten. The kind of place that had stopped expecting to be visited.
He sat with his back against a support column, knees pulled to his chest, hoodie doing essentially nothing against the cold. He hadn’t thought to bring a jacket. He hadn’t been thinking about jackets.
Above him, one of the fluorescent lights buzzed and flickered and buzzed again, trying to decide. Most of them had already given up. The ones that hadn’t cast everything in a pale, sickly yellow that turned the concrete the color of old bone.
His phone had stopped buzzing twenty minutes ago.
He figured Hunk had found the note. Not a real note — he wasn’t dramatic, despite what Keith said — just the dishes done, the leftovers sealed and labeled in the fridge, a text sent at 1:47am that said hey going out for a bit, don’t wait up. Casual. The kind of thing that meant nothing until it meant everything.
Hunk would’ve read it three times with his face gone quiet, and then tried calling, and Lance had let it ring out every time because he couldn’t do the thing where Hunk’s voice broke and Lance had to reassure him that everything was fine.
He was so tired of reassuring everyone that everything was fine.
He’d been doing it since — he tried to count backward and lost track somewhere around October. Before he’d started noticing that getting out of bed required negotiation with himself, a series of small arguments he had to win just to put his feet on the floor. Before the tired had gotten into his bones in a way that sleep didn’t touch. Before he’d started watching his friends laugh at dinner and feeling it from the wrong side of glass — present, smiling, performing there so convincingly that sometimes he almost believed it himself.
He was good at that. He’d always been good at that.
It was probably the thing he was best at, if he was being honest, which he almost never was.
He rolled the pill bottle between his palms. Orange plastic, cap already off. Pidge’s prescription — anxiety, which was ironic, because Pidge never seemed anxious about anything. Pidge was sharp and capable and took up exactly the right amount of space, always. Lance had taken it from the medicine cabinet three weeks ago telling himself he wouldn’t use it — the same way you make a decision and carry the weight of it around, waiting for the right night to catch up with you.
Tonight had that feeling. He’d known it when he woke up.
He shook two pills into his palm.
You’re being dramatic, said the voice that had been living behind his sternum since roughly middle school, the one that wore the face of everyone who’d ever looked through him. No one’s going to miss this version of you anyway.
Lance had stopped arguing with it a while ago.
He swallowed them dry. Then two more, because the whole point was that he was so tired — of the static, of performing, of being the one who kept things light because if he didn’t then who would, and nobody had ever stopped to think about what keeping things light was costing him.
He leaned his head back against the column and closed his eyes.
The buzzing of the light above him settled into something almost like a note. He focused on that instead of the thought trying to form at the back of his mind about what he’d just done, which he wasn’t ready to look at directly.
At least it’s quiet here, he thought. And he meant it. And that was maybe the saddest part.
The footsteps came from the ramp. Lance didn’t move.
A flashlight swept the level and found him without much trouble. The figure stopped.
“Hey.” Unhurried. Not alarmed. Just present, the way a solid thing is present. “You’re not supposed to be down here.”
Lance opened his eyes. Badge, uniform, dark hair with a white forelock that the sick yellow light turned silver. The officer crouched rather than standing over him, dropping to Lance’s level like it was the obvious thing to do.
Nobody did that.
“Yeah,” Lance said. “I know.”
The officer didn’t reach for his radio. Just looked at him with a patient, seen-things steadiness that Lance didn’t know what to do with.
“Cold down here tonight.”
“I’m fine.”
“Mm.” Said like he was filing I’m fine somewhere and continuing regardless. His gaze moved — careful, not invasive, just aware — and Lance watched the exact moment it reached the pill bottle. The lid on the concrete two feet from Lance’s knee where he’d flicked it.
The silence that followed was very loud.
Lance could have picked it up. His hand didn’t move.
“My name’s Shiro,” the officer said, easy as anything. “I do a sweep of the closed levels every night. You’re the first person I’ve found down here.”
“Lucky you.”
The words came out more hollow than he’d intended. He heard it.
“What’s your name?”
Lance thought about lying. His brain offered options. He rejected them one by one because constructing a lie required effort that felt, right now, like being asked to build something while wearing gloves three sizes too big. Everything was a little soft around the edges. A little far away.
“Lance,” he said.
Something shifted in Shiro’s face. Quick, a flicker of recognition he hadn’t expected.
“Lance McClain.”
Not a question.
“…Yeah.”
“You know Keith Kogane.”
The name landed in Lance’s chest like something dropped from a height. He looked away — fixed his eyes on the dead lights at the far end of the row — and his jaw went tight, and he breathed carefully through his nose.
“I mean,” he said, when he trusted his voice again. “That’s a strong word for it. We mostly just make each other insane.”
“He talks about you,” Shiro said. Simple. Factual. The way you’d say the sky is dark tonight.
Lance pressed the back of his head against the column.
He talks about you.
He didn’t know what to do with that. So he didn’t do anything with it. His eyes burned, which he ignored.
“How many did you take?” Shiro asked.
Still quiet. Still that same unshakeable calm, like it was just the next question in a normal sequence.
“I’m fine.”
“Lance.”
Just his name. But the way Shiro said it — gentle and direct, no judgment in it, no alarm, just I’m here and I’m asking — cracked something open that had been sitting right at the surface.
“Four.” The word came out before he’d built anything to stop it. “Just — it was just four, I wasn’t trying to — I mean I was, but not — “ He stopped. The lie dissolved halfway through. What was left when he looked at it directly was: “I just wanted it to stop.”
He hadn’t said that out loud before.
Shiro held the silence for a moment — not rushing past it, not filling it. Just letting it be what it was.
“Okay,” he said, and he meant it as I heard you. “Four is manageable. But I want someone to check you out tonight.” He reached for his radio, then paused. “Can I call Keith? I think you’d do better with someone you know than an ER waiting room right now.”
Lance laughed — too thin, the laugh he made when something hurt. “He’s gonna freak out.”
“Yeah.” Something rueful in Shiro’s voice. Fond. Like he knew exactly how Keith was going to freak out and had made peace with it a long time ago. “That’s not the same as not wanting to be there.”
Lance stared at the dead lights.
He didn’t say yes. He didn’t have to.
The wait was eleven minutes.
Shiro sat with him through all of them without filling the silence, and at some point had put his jacket over Lance’s shoulders without making anything of it, and Lance held onto the warmth and didn’t protest. His hands were starting to feel strange. The warmth was something to hold onto.
The footsteps when they came were fast. The specific rhythm of someone who’d been told something and run.
Keith came into the light still pulling his hoodie straight — gray sweatpants, hair half out of its tie with a piece fallen across his forehead he hadn’t bothered with. He’d left in whatever he’d been wearing. He looked like someone who’d moved before the thought finished forming.
He looked at Shiro first. Something passed between them, wordless and fast, the whole language of people who share a home. Then his gaze moved to Lance and just —
stayed.
Lance had prepared something. Eleven minutes, and he’d used them — the whole defensive arrangement, every deflection sharpened over years of being the person who made things okay. I’m fine, relax, you didn’t have to come, it’s not a big deal.
Keith’s face dismantled all of it.
Because he looked wrecked. Not sharp, not exasperated — just raw. Open in the specific way Keith only ever was when he thought no one was watching, without the careful distance he kept between himself and everything else. His jaw was working. His hands weren’t quite steady.
All of Lance’s prepared words went nowhere.
“Hey,” Keith said. His voice had gravel in it, like it had been handled roughly on the way here. “I’m here.”
“I’m—” Lance started.
“Don’t.” Not harsh. Just tired, and certain, and please.
“Don’t say you’re fine.”
Lance closed his mouth.
His eyes burned harder than before.
“Okay,” he said. Very quietly.
Keith crossed the distance and crouched down in front of him, and Lance could see his hands still weren’t steady, and that was somehow the worst part — Keith, who was steady about everything, who could walk into a fight without blinking.
“Can you stand?”
He could, mostly. Keith kept a grip on his arm the whole way up the ramp, matching his pace without commenting on it. Shiro stayed close on the other side. Lance kept his eyes on the ground. Every crack in the concrete, very specific.
He couldn’t look at either of them. Looking at them felt like the thing that would actually break him.
Their apartment was warm.
Just warm — the specific warmth of a place that people actually live in, that carries the smell of cooking and laundry and the general accumulated evidence of two people sharing space. A lamp in the corner with a warm bulb casting everything amber instead of that sick yellow. A blanket that appeared over Lance’s shoulders without his tracking how.
Shiro made a quiet call from the kitchen. The verdict came back manageable. Water, food, someone watching through the night.
Keith came back with a mug — blue ceramic, chipped handle, something warm inside that smelled of honey — and set it on the coffee table and sat at the other end of the couch. Close enough that Lance could feel the gravity of him there. Someone who had decided not to leave.
Lance looked at the mug for a long moment.
Not a glass. A mug.
He didn’t know why that detail cracked something in him a little. He picked it up with both hands and held on.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Keith said. He was turned toward Lance, elbows on his knees, holding himself in the tense way of someone working very hard not to reach out.
“But I’m not going anywhere.”
“Your Friday class—” Lance started.
“Lance.” Flat. Final.
Lance looked down at the mug.
The silence sat between them and it wasn’t bad silence. The lamp hummed. Shiro moved carefully in the kitchen, giving them space. Outside, a car passed and then nothing.
“What’s it like,” Keith said finally. “In your head.”
Lance almost laughed. Almost deflected — the jokes were right there, three different shapes of nothing, forget it, I’m being stupid — and he just. Didn’t.
He was so tired of doing that.
“Like the math never works out,” he said slowly. “I keep adding myself up and the total is always less than it should be. Less than everyone else.” He turned the mug in his hands. “And I know eventually everyone around me is gonna figure that out. I just—” He stopped. “I got tired of waiting for it.”
Keith was quiet.
Not uncomfortable quiet. The quiet of someone actually holding what you said, turning it over, taking it seriously.
“I used to think something like that,” he said. Lower. Not looking at Lance — looking at the table, somewhere that gave him distance from the words. “Freshman year. Shiro helped me through some stuff.” A pause. “You didn’t know us yet.”
Lance turned to look at him.
Keith’s profile in the lamplight was careful and tight, the way it got when he’d said something more than he meant to. He didn’t take it back.
“The math is wrong,” he said. “That’s the thing. Not the answer — the math itself. Whatever’s doing the calculation in your head, it’s using the wrong numbers.” A glance sideways at Lance, quick, almost reluctant. “I know that doesn’t fix it. I’m not saying it fixes it.”
“No,” Lance said. “I know.”
Silence.
“You show up for people,” Keith said, like it had been waiting and gotten tired of waiting. Ears going red, eyes still on the table. “All the time, without thinking about it. You notice things about people that — “ He stopped. Started again. “You make me laugh when I’m being an idiot. When I get too far in my own head. You’re the one who—” He pressed his mouth closed. “That’s not nothing, Lance. That’s not what net negative looks like.”
Lance’s throat closed.
He didn’t cry. He was hollowed out past crying, somewhere on the other side of it where everything was just very still. He held the mug and sat with what Keith had said, turned it over like something he wasn’t sure he was allowed to keep.
Shiro appeared in the doorway with toast and water, quiet and efficient.
“Overnight here,” he said, looking at Lance. “Tomorrow we figure out what’s next. Not tonight.” His voice was steady. “You don’t have to have any answers tonight.”
Lance nodded.
Keith pushed the toast silently toward Lance’s side of the table.
Lance picked up his phone instead.
Seventeen missed messages from Hunk. Four from Pidge. He’d deal with Pidge tomorrow. But Hunk —
Hunk would’ve been sitting in their dorm room this whole time. Lamp on. Phone in his hand. Going out of his mind the quiet, thorough way Hunk did everything.
Lance pressed his thumb to the contact before he could talk himself out of it.
One ring.
“Lance.” Not anger. Not relief. Just Hunk saying his name like something he’d been holding onto for hours.
“Hey.” Lance’s voice came out smaller than he meant it to. “I’m okay. I’m at Keith’s — I’m gonna stay here tonight.”
A long breath on the other end.
“Are you actually okay,” Hunk said. Not a question. The specific way he asked things when he already knew the shape of the answer and needed to hear it anyway.
Lance closed his eyes.
“No,” he said. “Not really. But I’m safe. I promise.”
Another breath. Longer.
“Lance. I need you to know—”
“I know,” Lance said. His voice cracked on it — the first time all night. “Hunk, I know. Me too.”
He heard Hunk hold it together on the other end with everything he had.
“First thing tomorrow,” Hunk said. Firm. Final. “I’m coming by.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” quieter. “Get some sleep.”
Lance lowered the phone.
The apartment was warm. The lamp was on. Keith hadn’t moved and wasn’t going to, and they both knew it. Outside somewhere the first birds were starting — that confused 4am bird, always wrong about the time.
It wasn’t fixed. Tomorrow the tired would still be there, and conversations he wasn’t ready for, and things he’d have to say out loud to people whose faces he could barely stand to look at. Recovery was long. He was beginning to understand that.
But Hunk’s voice was still sitting in his chest.
And Keith was still there.
Lance picked up the toast and ate both pieces in the warm quiet while the lamp hummed and the birds got the time wrong and Shiro moved somewhere in the back of the apartment, steady and careful, saying without words I’ve got this, you don’t have to.
Lance let himself stop trying to make the math work.
It could wait.
Tonight he was just here.