Archive of Our Own ^beta

The tinkle of the bell at the front of the shop startles him out of a trance. It takes a moment for him to settle back into his body enough to stand up, skin still tingling slightly from the residual magic, but he manages. Keith scowls in the direction of the customer even though they can’t see him, stretching his limbs out enough to release some of the tension that’s built up, sighing as the buzz fades. He’s been completely still for almost an hour, searching through the haze of magic surrounding a silvery teakettle, which still sits innocently on top of his desk. He frowns at it, then reaches to a side table to find a glass cover rimmed in copper, setting it over the top of the kettle.

“Stay,” he says sternly. The teakettle doesn’t respond, but shivers slightly.

He winds his way through the corridor leading to the front desk, ducking a few hanging herb planters that wouldn’t fit up front and one or two listlessly spinning light charms that have found their way into the hallway.

The front of the shop has dozens of the charms floating overhead, easy spells that save Keith on electricity and give his shop an authenticity that those who come to it are apparently seeking. He doesn’t have to have all of his herbs and gemstones and books filling up the front of the shop -- in fact he’d prefer them be in the back, where people couldn’t touch them -- but Allura had insisted it was a good look for the shop, that people would be drawn to it, and he trusted her.

The girl in front of him does seem impressed, her eyes flicking all around the room, lingering on the glowing light charms, and the wall covered in sticks from a dozen different trees, and the shelf full of jars that are labeled with a system only Keith knows. When he steps to the other side of the counter, she looks straight at him and smiles nervously.

“Hello,” she says, in a thin, melodic voice. “I’ve heard that you might be able to help me?”

Keith takes in her kind smile and studies her aura briefly -- a hedge witch, probably good with nature and not much else.

“Depends,” Keith says. His voice is slightly scratchy. He should have grabbed a bottle of water after his scrying. He swallows and tries again, saying, “I don’t sell spells, I break curses and offer herbal solutions to problems. If you want love potions, you’ll have to try the shop over on Elm. Although their spells aren’t very strong, you’ll want to add some echinacea to strengthen it, especially something made from the root.”

The girl smiles, shaking her head. “I don’t need a potion. I need a hex broken. It’s this music box,” she says, digging into her purse. “It’s my grandmother’s music box, from when she was a little girl.” She sets it on the counter. Keith glances up at her and then gently reaches out with his magic, prodding it.

The music box has several charms on it; one keeps the wood from warping or aging, and one ensures the springs and mechanisms of the box stay oiled and free from rust. But there, clinging to the gears, is a small tendril of blackness. Keith hones in on it, pushing harder, and it recoils from him, clinging stubbornly. 

“She’s in the hospital,” the girl says, oblivious to what he’s doing, “And she wants the box with her there. But I can’t take it in there like this.”

“How did it become spelled?” Keith asks. “It’s a small spell. I’m assuming all it does is play the music at odd times, probably backwards, maybe too loud.”

“Yes, exactly,” the girl says, making a wry face. “I honestly think it might have been someone in my family practicing, maybe trying to improve it. Maybe even grandmother. Her magic has been...difficult, since she’s been sick.”

She looks briefly upset, and it makes him avert his gaze.

“What’s your name?” Keith asks, realizing he hasn’t introduced himself or asked about his customer at all so far. Allura would scold him for being rude, but thankfully she isn’t here. The girl looks up at him, blinking.

“Shay,” she says. “And yours?”

“Keith,” he says absently, already looking at the box again. “Okay, yeah. This shouldn’t take more than ten minutes. Give me a second.” He moves around the counter, looking up at the ceiling, following the rows until he finds some juniper hanging. He gestures and a few bits fall down into his open hand, and he crosses the room back to the counter. Shay watches with curious eyes as he waves a hand and the juniper lights on fire. He waves it in the air around them and over the music box, focusing his magic, and then sets it to the side, still smoldering.

The hex is suppressed by the juniper smoke hanging in the air, enough that he can easily reach in with his own magic and pull it out. It comes away from the gears like scooping seeds from a pumpkin, and he can see it for what it is now -- a charm gone wrong, meant to make the box play different kinds of songs than the one it was designed for. It dissipates as he pulls it out of the box, and the juniper extinguishes completely.

Coming out of his trance, Keith opens the box, listening as it plays a lilting song, tinkling cheerfully. A painted portrait of a waterscape fills the inside of the lid, and there are yellowed handwritten letters inside of the box. He listens a moment longer, just to be sure, and then closes the box, pushing it towards Shay.

“It’s gone now. You should be able to take it to your grandmother without worrying about it anymore.”

She looks relieved, taking the box and hugging it to her chest with a smile. “Thank you so much. It’s such a little thing, but I wanted to bring it to her. The hospital should let me take it to her room now.”

“No problem,” Keith says, shrugging. He waves a hand and the charred juniper disappears; he’s sent it to the backroom, where he’ll grind down what remains and use it in future work.

“How much do I owe you?” Shay asks, opening her purse.

Keith thinks about it for a moment. “First time customer discount. Ten bucks should cover it.”

She stills, tilting her head at him. “Are you sure? Most magic is usually--”

“It was a little hex gone wrong,” Keith says, shrugging his shoulders. He gives her a half-smile, hoping it doesn’t look strange on his face. “Next time I’ll charge you full price.”

She laughs. “I’ll tell my friends about you. Thank you again.”

“Have a nice day, Shay,” Keith says, waving a hand absently at her, already thinking about the teakettle again. She waves back, placing a ten dollar bill on the counter, and weaves her way back out of the shop, reaching up and gently touching one of the light charms before she leaves. The bell rings again as the door opens on a cloudy day outside; the wind whips at her dress, sending the chimes hanging out front into a hectic spiral, and then the door closes again and he’s alone.

He knows he should have charged her full price. Allura gets onto him constantly about his clients, about how he’s too soft on them. She reminds him over and over that this is a business, and that it comes with expenses and inventories and paperwork. He’s offering a special skillset, and it takes his time and energy to perform spells.

He knows this. He knows that he’s got more magic than most people, and that even small charms gone wrong like that one would be difficult for someone like Shay to remove on her own. He knows that more dark magic has been brought about on accident trying to fix spells than deliberately cast, that his abilities make him a sought-after source for curse removal, no matter how big or small. He knows he could charge double what he does and still get paid.

But as trite as it sounds, no matter how it makes Allura and Shiro sigh over him, it’s not about the money. He just wants to fix things. He just wants to be able to make people better.  

The teakettle keeps him occupied for the rest of the afternoon, and when he finally leans back in his chair, exhausted, the clouds outside are tinged with orange and pink. He’s wiping beads of sweat off of his brow when the front door rings again, but with a different tone, the one that means Shiro is here. Keith curses and checks the time -- half past five, well beyond the time he was supposed to have closed the shop.

“I just got caught up,” Keith says, before Shiro is even fully in the office. Shiro doesn’t say anything at first, too busy batting away a light charm that’s gotten stuck in his dark hair. “I promise I’m not using too much energy,” Keith continues, insistent.

“I know,” Shiro says, finally looking at him. “You don’t have to worry so much, Keith. If I thought you weren’t taking care of yourself I wouldn’t let you run the shop.” His eyes are familiar, fond and exasperated all at once. It’s an expression that Keith has been acquainted with for years.

“I’m legally an adult, you know,” Keith says, crossing his arms. Shiro rolls his eyes and sits down in the chair across from Keith’s desk, settling back to match his posture. This is a very old argument, one they’re both familiar with, and they’re both aware that Keith is just saying it to say it. “I don’t need you to tell me what I can do.”

“Sure,” Shiro says. “But the shop is still in my name.” Keith scowls. “You agreed to wait until you were twenty-one, Keith,” Shiro reminds him. “Which means that if I think you’re pushing too hard again, I can limit your time here.”

Keith deflates, sighing. He reaches up and rubs his hands over his eyes, a vulnerable gesture that he doesn’t think he’d let anyone else see. He knows that Shiro is only trying to take care of him, that their parents put the shop in Shiro’s name because they knew he’d watch out for Keith. He knows that Shiro was hit hardest when he had his breakdown two years ago. He knows he can’t keep getting defensive over the same thing.

“Sorry,” Keith mutters. “I’m just tired from this dumb teakettle.”

“What was wrong?” Shiro asks, looking at it. Keith knows he’s nudging it with his own magic, trying to discern what he can, but Shiro’s talents lie with empathy magic. It’s what makes him such a good teacher; it helped him know how to help Keith before Keith even knew he needed it back when they were younger.

“It was just possessed by a demon,” Keith says, yawning. When Shiro looks vaguely alarmed, Keith waves a hand absently. “Minor demon. The owner was cleaning out their attic and found it, and was hoping to either use it or sell it, but everything put into it turned into blood.”

Shiro makes a face. “Gross. It’s fixed now?”

“Yep,” Keith says. He leans forward and stretches in his chair. “Can we stop and get dinner on the way home? Something with lots of carbs. I’m starving.”

“Sure,” Shiro says, smiling. “You gonna ride with me or take your bike?”

“I can take my bike,” Keith says, standing up and putting the teakettle to the side. He puts the glass lid back on its shelf as well, and waves a hand in the air, setting the few odds and ends he’d used that day back where they belonged. The light charm that had clung to Shiro’s head makes its way back into the hallway.

“Show off,” Shiro says, ruffling Keith’s hair as he passes by.

“Don’t be jealous, old man,” Keith says, and laughs as he dodges Shiro’s hand, hurrying to the front of the shop. He waves his hands at the front desk, and the light charms all gather together and drop into a bowl left there for them, dimming. He’ll have to refresh them in the morning, he thinks to himself, before he gestures for Shiro to follow him out through the front door.

“Ready?” Shiro asks, looking around the shop himself. Keith does his final checks and nods. “Alright,” Shiro says. “What do you want for dinner? Pasta?”

“Yes,” Keith says with feeling, provoking a laugh from Shiro, and follows his brother out into the twilight.

.

Keith has barely opened the shop before there’s a chime, but he doesn’t bother looking away from his plants where he’s spraying them with water. It’s another specialized chime, meant for someone who visits very often.

“How are they doing?” Allura asks, stepping close to him to look up at the plants with him. She reaches out and touches a finger to a bamboo leaf, which grows bigger under her touch and then returns to normal when she pulls away. Keith gives her a look and she laughs. 

Allura is the only other person he knows with more power than he has. She’s got magic literally pouring out of her; the few times Keith has checked her aura, he’s been left with bright spots in his eyes like he’s been staring at the sun. Her magic is focused in healing, so she’s in medical school, but with so much of it, she’s good at pretty much everything she attempts. Keith is only better than her with curse magic, and he’s been working at it since he was a kid.

She’s been Shiro’s best friend since they met in high school, a permanent fixture in their lives for almost a decade. She was there for them when their parents died, and they were there for her when her mother passed a year ago. She’s been an older sister to Keith, a calm and guiding force as well as a partner in crime against Shiro.

She’s also annoyingly chipper in the mornings.

“I went for a run this morning and I stopped by your garden, you really need to weed,” she tells him, before waving a hand over the bowl on the counter and refreshing his light charms for him. A few of them glow too brightly, too much energy from her magic, and Keith winces, cutting his own hand through the air sharply, only opening his eyes when the charms dim again. “Oops,” she says, sounding unapologetic. “You really should be used to waking up early by now though.”

“No,” he grumbles at her, spritzing his rosemary.

“Eloquent as usual,” Allura says, grinning. She moves behind the counter, pulling up his schedule for the day. “Is Dr. Tenenbaum coming to pick up her teakettle today?” 

“Probably,” Keith says, spraying his last chili pepper plant. “I finished it yesterday afternoon. No more bloody tea cups.” 

“Thank god,” Allura says, shuddering. “She’s been talking about it at work nonstop. She actually regrets not taking a sample of the blood to study it.” 

“It was demonic blood,” Keith tells her wryly. “I don’t think it would have helped advance medical magic.”

“Well, she--” Allura cuts off as the phone Keith keeps behind the counter starts ringing. She picks it up and says, “The Counterspell, Allura speaking.” She listens for a moment, tilting her head and then grabs a pen and flips to the current day in the calendar he doesn’t bother to keep up with properly. “Let me see here. It looks like he has an opening this afternoon, if that would work for you? What about two o’clock? Is that -- oh, a referral! We do appreciate that. I’ll let him know. Thanks! See you this afternoon.”

Allura hangs up the phone and smiles at him. “You’ve got a client for two this afternoon.”

“I’m aware,” Keith tells her, ignoring her when she laughs. “Did they say what it was about? I’ve got to finish up some items this afternoon, I can’t spend hours on someone.”

“He said his magic is being suppressed by something,” she says, shrugging. “Oh, and that he was told to come here by someone named Shay, and that she was really pleased with your service.” Allura comes around the counter, reaching out to ruffle his hair. “I’m really proud of you, Keith. Remember when customers used to wonder if you could even smile?”

“Don’t you have work, Allura?” Keith says, pushing her hand away, but he grins at her when she effortlessly weaves her way through the hanging plants backwards without looking, the front door opening without her touching it. “Have a good day,” he calls out to her, and she winks at him and strolls off, her hair glinting in the early sunlight.

The morning passes quickly, spent checking his inventory and taking a few walk ins who either don’t actually have a curse on them or who are carrying items with minor curses. He loses track of time working on a hexed family ring, which is proving stubborn and difficult to exorcise properly, and is almost relieved to be able to put it down when the front door chimes.

When he heads to the front, there’s someone with their back to the counter, staring around the shop with apparent interest. Keith folds his hands over the surface of the counter and clears his throat, and the person turns around and looks at him sharply.

It’s a boy, probably about his age, taller than him, with brown skin and wide blue eyes. He looks over Keith and tilts his head, either curiously or condescendingly.

“Can I help you?” Keith asks, flicking a light charm away from his head where it’s floating too close. The boy watches the light spin through the air for a moment and then smiles. It’s a smile that’s bright enough to rival the glow of the charm itself, Keith thinks, and immediately regrets the comparison.

“I’m Lance,” the boy says. “I’m supposed to have an appointment at two?”

Keith glances at his phone and winces; it’s five minutes past. He hadn’t even stopped for lunch today. That stupid ring.

“Yeah, sorry, that’s with me.”

“With you?” Lance asks dubiously.

“Yes,” Keith says shortly, frowning. “This is my shop.”

“But you’re like, my age,” Lance says, laughing. Keith feels his hackles raise and stares at him, swallowing the annoyance only because Shiro’s voice looms in the back of his mind. Be nice, don’t you want to keep this shop?

“I’m the owner. Do you want your consultation or not?”

Lance’s brow furrows at Keith’s terse tone but then he sighs. “Yes. I can’t figure it out, and neither can my usual healer. I don’t know what’s wrong with me but my magic -- it’s -- just gone.” His voice goes deeper, more frustrated, and his fists clench. “I can’t do anything. I can’t even light a candle right now.”

“When did it start?” Keith asks, looking Lance up and down. He doesn’t act like he’s under a curse, doesn’t show any signs of fatigue or pain. He just looks suspicious, which is ridiculous, considering Keith’s shop has a perfect rate of broken curses -- even the internet says so.

“About a week ago,” Lance says, shrugging. “I woke up and reached for my magic to just do something easy, like open the window or something, and it just didn’t come.”

“Why do you think it’s a curse?” Keith asks him. He half-heartedly tries to peer at Lance’s aura, but there’s too many magical components up here at the front desk to see anything properly, which probably does mean it’s being suppressed. Lance flicks his wrist absently at a passing light charm and then hisses a breath out through his teeth when it still flies into his head. Keith suppresses a laugh at his aggravated expression.

“Because my magic is gone?” Lance asks incredulously, gesturing at the charm, which goes spinning off into the shop. “What else could it be?”

“Something you ate,” Keith says, ticking off points on his fingers. “You could have some kind of blockage? Standard spellcaster error?”

Lance scowls at him and crosses his arms. “Something is wrong with me, and I need it to be fixed. I’m about to graduate and I’m on track to be accepted to the school I want to get into, and it’s the best school in this country, so I kind of need my magic to work.” He glares for a moment longer at Keith, looking down at him, and then seems to deflate, his arms uncrossing. “It feels wrong,” he says quietly. “I feel wrong without it.”

Keith finally swallows his irritation, because this at least is something he can sympathize with. The idea of losing his magic, temporarily or otherwise, makes chills break out over the back of his neck. Magic isn’t necessary in their world; there are plenty of people who have little to none, who go about their lives getting by on spells bought or bartered, or who don’t need them at all. But magic is part of who Keith is, has been wound through his body and into his soul. Without it, he would cease to be who he was.

He blows out a gust of air that ruffles his bangs, and then says, “Okay. Follow me.”

Lance looks relieved but quickly hides it. “Lead the way, Sunshine.”

Keith squints at Lance and then gestures for him to follow him to the back room, away from the front counter. Lance glances around the shop one more time hesitantly, but doesn’t say anything else. It’s only a short walk to the small office that Keith keeps in the back, and he motions wordlessly again for Lance to sit in the chair in front of his desk.

“Are you gonna say something, or just keep waving your hand around?” Lance asks, sitting down. Keith lowers himself into his own chair and stares at Lance -- now that they’re away from all latent magic in the front of the shop, Keith can focus in more on Lance. Without bothering to respond, he digs deep into his own magic and pushes gently at Lance’s aura.

Revulsion crawls over his skin from the first touch -- Keith almost physically rears back, shocked at how dark and acidic the curse is, clinging like an oily film over Lance’s aura, pulsing with malevolence. This spell is darker than he would have expected, given how calm and normal Lance is acting -- someone under a curse this heavy should be showing physical signs of damage, but Lance just blinks curiously at him.

“Are you okay?” Lance asks.

“Fine,” Keith grits out, reaching out much slower this time, brushing his magic like fingertips over Lance again. He braces himself and pushes against the curse, and it’s all he can feel. He knows instinctively that Lance’s own magic is lurking underneath, but it’s been suppressed entirely by this curse until the darkness is all that’s inside. Keith keeps skimming over the top of it, ignoring the ache in his head and the squirming in his gut, trying to read the patterns of magic that run through the curse, trying to discern anything that will give him an answer. There’s a tugging sensation that he’s never felt before, like he’s being pulled against his will, and he doubles down and resists, but it’s exhausting.

It takes longer than it should; Keith knows everything there is to know about reading curses, has usually been able to recognize what kind of dark magic is at work quickly even if it takes him a while to fix it. This is something else, something new. But -- it still feels familiar somehow, like he’s seen it before, maybe a long time ago. It’s like a word stuck on the tip of his tongue that he can’t quite speak yet, close enough to sense and yet too far away to grasp.

He keeps pushing, even when he feels his vision fading, even though his mouth is dry and his brain feels seconds away from cracking open. When realization finally comes, when the feeling and the nature of the spell finally clicks in his head, Keith’s blood runs cold in his veins.

He pulls back immediately, exhausted, sweat beading on his brow and hands shaking slightly.

“I know what kind of curse it is,” he says, wiping a hand over his mouth, leaning back tiredly in his chair. His body feels weighed down, like something heavy is sitting on his chest. “But it’s bad news. Really bad.”

Lance’s eyes widen, but his voice is steady when he says, “Tell me.”

“It’s called the Komar curse,” Keith says wearily, clenching his fist to hide the fact that it’s still trembling. He waves a hand at the small fridge across the room, and a bottle of water makes a very wobbly path across the room towards him. For some reason, his own magic is suffering from proximity to the curse, which means a lot of his usual methods of removal are going to be challenging to say the least.

“I’ve never heard of it,” Lance says, looking baffled. “But -- are you okay? You look awful.” He sounds genuinely concerned, which makes Keith pause in the middle of uncapping the bottle of water to look up at him.

“Thanks,” Keith says dryly. Lance flushes a little, and Keith waves a hand at him absently. “I’m fine. The curse is just strong enough to affect me, somehow.”

“What exactly is it?” Lance asks, wrinkling his nose. Keith studies him again, mind racing, reaching up absently to push his hair off of his damp forehead. Lance looks unperturbed, like he can’t feel the vile magic at work inside of him at all. Keith doesn’t know what that means, exactly. From what he can remember from reading about this a long time ago, afflicted people were usually physically suffering from the effects of the curse.

“Whoever cast the curse on you is draining your magic,” he says bluntly, because there’s no other way to say it. Lance stares at him, a slowly dawning comprehension creeping over his face. Keith feels his stomach twist, either in sympathy or from tiredness. “You can’t draw on it because the curse is suppressing it and siphoning it off to the spellcaster.”

“What does that -- how do I--” Lance looks flustered, hands coming up to gesture around his face. He makes himself stop talking and sits for a moment, chewing his lower lip. Keith lets him think, draining the water bottle, closing his eyes and thinking about how much dragon’s blood he’ll need to use to help restore his magic once Lance is gone. He has a lot of work to do. “What do I need to do now?” Lance finally asks, voice firm with resolve.

Keith opens his eyes and leans forward, sighing. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I’ve only read about this spell being cast twice before, ever. And I only know about it because I’ve read basically every curse and hex book out there. I’ll have to do some research.” Lance doesn’t look happy about that, but he doesn’t say anything. “I’ll find something,” Keith says, trying to sound reassuring. “And luckily you don’t seem to be affected other than loss of magic. That gives us time.”

“What happens if you can’t find it?” Lance asks quietly. “The way to break the curse?”

Keith knows the answer to this. He knows it because both of the other cases he’d read about, they hadn’t been able to find the counterspell in time. The witches had succumbed to the curse too quickly. “Without your magic,” Keith says softly, “You’ll die. The spell will consume you.” The words fall between them like heavy stones. Keith has never said them out loud before to a client, never felt the chill that creeps up his spine as understanding registers on Lance’s face.

Lance’s fists clench on the chair and hold tight for ten seconds. Keith counts them silently in his head. “Okay,” Lance says. His eyes drop to the ground and then rise to meet Keith’s. His mouth twitches in a tentative smile. “No choice then. What should I do?”

“I’m too drained right now to work on deciphering the spell,” Keith says, trying not to let his frustration show. “I’ll have to rebuild my magic and prepare protections for the next time I examine you. And I’m gonna want to do research. This kind of magic -- it’s dark. It’s darker than anything I’ve had come through my shop.” Keith pauses, frowning, and then says, “I don’t know how you’re not being affected by it, to be honest.”

“I guess I should count myself lucky, then,” Lance says, voice dry as the desert. He looks anything but pleased, but there’s a soft curve to his mouth, almost self-deprecating, like he’s telling a joke that Keith isn’t in on.

“Listen,” Keith says, “I’m not a medical witch. If you haven’t already, you should get looked at by a professional, not just your regular healer. I can recommend a hospital nearby that my brother’s best friend is working at right now, ask for Allura and she can take good care of you. In the meantime, I’m going to send you home with some amber, which I want you to keep on you at all times. It’s good for protection and for strength.”

“Okay,” Lance says, looking overwhelmed. “Allura. Amber. Got it.”

“Also,” Keith says, “I want you to come back tomorrow. Or as soon as you’re able.”

“Wow,” Lance says, slowly starting to grin. “Someone’s eager.”

Keith blinks at him, a startled flutter in his stomach, and then rolls his eyes. “If you’ve got any questions, you can call the shop. If you hit the star button when you call, it’ll go straight to my cell phone, just in case you call after hours. That’s only for emergencies though.”

Lance is starting to look more at ease, leaning back in his chair and studying Keith with his very blue eyes. His gaze is penetrating, and if Keith weren’t very certain of his lack of magic he’d wonder if Lance was trying to examine his own. As it is, Lance just looks at him for a drawn out moment and then says, “Okay. I trust you.”

Keith feels the weight of those words as they leave Lance’s mouth, almost like physical blows. The air between them feels thick with tension, like they’re teetering on the edge of a cliff and one step forward or backward could save or doom them. It’s bizarre -- Keith has never felt anything like it before. He swallows against the feeling, pushing it away, and says, “I’m going to fix this for you.”

Giving Lance the amber and taking down his information doesn’t take long, but it feels long. Keith’s never felt this weak after spellwork before, and the only thing that compares is when he almost overworked himself into an early grave a couple of years ago. It’s almost like the spell siphoned his magic off along with Lance’s, except that wouldn’t make sense because the spell wasn’t on him -- and magic like this has to be very, very specific. It wouldn’t be able to hold itself together otherwise.

“I’ll call you if I can get away from work tomorrow,” Lance promises. He has a ring of keys in his hand, each of them a different metal and shape, and they clink together as he absently spins them around. It’s strangely melodic, rather than grating. There’s no magic happening, Keith has enough of his own left to be able to tell that, but Lance doesn’t seem to be trying to do anything either. It just looks like something natural. But it does make something occur to Keith, something he realizes he doesn’t know about Lance.

“What kind of -- what sort of magic do you do?” he asks Lance, who’s examining the amber amulet Keith gave him curiously. Lance looks up, eyes sparking in the glow of the light charms.

“You really can’t tell anything?” he asks, sounding disappointed.

“It’s not that I can’t tell that you have magic,” Keith says, feeling strangely like he has to reassure Lance. It's somewhat true -- it's more that he knows from the way the curse works that Lance has magic, can almost feel its presence underneath that black and oily film, but he can't feel it. “But I just can’t feel enough of it to be able to see what it’s like, or how much of it there is.”

“Oh. Um, I work well with water,” Lance says slowly. “And I’m good with the stuff that comes with it, elemental and healing magic.” He doesn’t look like he’s explaining everything, and Keith’s brow furrows.

“And?” he prompts.

“And I can -- affect probability?” Lance says, glancing hesitantly at Keith.

“Luck magic?” Keith asks, brow furrowing. “But that’s like, really powerful.” Lance looks mildly offended at his dubious expression, but only sighs and crosses his arms.

“I’m not an expert or anything. I’ve only managed to control it properly a few times, just making sure a light stays green, or the kind of pastry I want hasn’t sold out. It’s -- difficult magic. A lot of the time it does what it wants without my help.” Lance closes his eyes and looks very tired. “All I ever hear from people is how much potential I have, and now -- now I don’t have anything.”

Keith doesn’t know why he does it -- something inside of him reacting in sympathy, or maybe his lack of magic is affecting him more than he thought, but he reaches out and puts a hand on Lance’s shoulder. Once his hand is there, he doesn’t quite know what to do, but pulling away quickly seems sort of rude, and so all he does is let it rest there. Lance’s eyes open and fix on him, looking confused. He looks at Keith’s face for a long time, holding his gaze until Keith thinks nonsensically, irrationally, that someone could drown in the ocean of blue in Lance’s eyes. Finally Lance looks away, and his mouth is curved slightly.

“Thank you, Keith,” Lance says finally. “I’ll call you.”

Keith watches him leave, feeling mildly disoriented, almost like he’s been affected by a spell himself. The bell chimes above the door as Lance opens it, a strangely dissonant sound, and it lingers with Keith the rest of the day.

He closes the shop early, too depleted to do anything useful, and spends the rest of the afternoon tending to his plants and digging through his books, trying to find the one that mentioned the Komar curse. He can’t find it, and that leaves him in a foul mood on top of feeling slightly dizzy from the effects of the dragon’s blood potion that he takes to try and counteract the draining feeling.

When he gets home, he doesn’t feel like talking to Shiro, who only has to glance at his aura to guess what’s going on and leaves him be. Empathy magic is good for stuff like that. Keith spends the evening tearing through his personal library of books, struggling to remember what kind of book would even mention something so rare, and still can’t find anything. Even using the research spell that Allura taught him doesn’t yield any results, although it does end up causing a book to smack into his head.

He goes to sleep frustrated, and dreams for the first time of Lance.

.

Lance is just sitting on the counter at the shop, kicking his feet slightly. He looks comfortable, at ease, like he’s been here dozens of times instead of just the once. Keith’s schedule book is open next to his leg, a pen resting on top of it, a future date circled in red. The light charms crowd around Lance like they’re pulled in by some sort of gravity, and he laughs, but there’s no sound. It’s like everything, all of the ambient sensation, has been filtered out. Keith can’t tell if he’s really there, if he has a body or a mouth or even if Lance can see him.

All he can see is Lance, laughing silently on the counter of his shop, a radiant face surrounded by a halo of light. He almost looks surprised by his own laughter.

Keith wakes up in the middle of the night with his pulse tripping wildly in his veins, like he’s been running in his sleep. His magic feels normal again, full to bursting, pulling at the edges of his skin like it’s yearning for something. It leaves him disoriented, dizzy, and Keith takes several long, deep breaths, closing his eyes until Lance’s image in his mind fades into pinpricks. He goes back to sleep, this time with lavender tucked under his pillow, and doesn’t wake again until the sun rises.

.

Keith still has to deal with his other customers, although all he really wants to do is keep researching, so he spends his morning finishing with the cursed ring, dealing with a few walk ins, and sneaking back to his books to try and find out anything he can glean from them about where he might have heard about the Komar curse. He feels compelled to focus on Lance’s curse, for some reason -- something about it tugs at him, and he doesn’t know if it’s the urgency of the situation or if he’s just curious to figure out a spell no one else knows anything about. 

He’s in the middle of scanning one of his oldest books when his phone rings. He waves a hand to answer it mostly so it will stop making noise.

“What?” he asks, not bothering to look at the screen, still focused on using his magic to peruse the contents of the book.

There’s a slight crackle and then Allura replies, “Hello to you too, Keith.” Her voice isn’t reproachful, only vaguely amused, but Keith feels guilty anyways.

“Sorry,” Keith says, leaning away from the book, rubbing his eyes. “Sorry, I’m just caught up reading something.”

“Something interesting?” Allura asks curiously.

“Research for a customer,” Keith replies, closing the book in resignation. Another dead end.

“Oh, you mean Lance?” Allura asks nonchalantly, except she drags out the vowels in Lance name liltingly, Laaaaance. Keith’s brow furrows.

“Yes,” he says. “How did you know?”

“He came to see me at work today,” Allura says. “Told me you recommended me. Very appreciated, saved me from a terrible conversation with that upstart asshole who wants father to give him a recommendation. I think he was trying to flirt with me.”

“That Lotor guy?” Keith asks, wrinkling his nose. He’s only met Lotor once, when he went to the hospital to take Allura lunch. He was a tall, arrogant looking teenager, and had been hanging around the nurse’s station, trying to ferret out information about Dr. Alfor’s schedule. He was apparently trying to get into some fancy magic school that only accepted about ten students each term, and a recommendation was required for admission. Lotor was evidently interested in genetic science, something that Alfor specialized in, but Alfor was also specialized in avoiding people he didn’t care for, something Keith found enviable. A lot of Lotor’s attention had therefore focused on Allura, whose schedule as a intern made her much more available, as a way in to meet her father, and he hadn’t let up despite her frosty indifference to him.

All Keith really remembers from meeting him is a deep-seated sense of entitlement. His magic, when Keith had brushed against it, had felt slimy and oppressive, and Keith had left as soon as he was sure Allura was okay.

“Can he really not take a hint?” he asks now.

“Apparently not,” Allura says tiredly. “I know my dad is the preeminent expert in his field, but there are other doctors he could request a recommendation from. At this point I think he’s being petty.”  

“Sounds about right,” Keith mutters. “But you saw Lance?”

“Yes, he was very charming. When I went to take him back to the examination room he was sending Marina into fits of giggles.” Allura’s voice is still amused, but Keith suddenly feels very inexplicably annoyed.

“And did you find anything?” he asks, eager to get the point.

“Unfortunately no,” Allura says, sighing. “I’m not attuned to cursework like you are, and I’ve never even heard of this curse, but I can assure you his physical body is in good health. I tried looking at our database for the Komar curse when he mentioned that’s what you said it was, but there’s nothing out there about it. We just don’t keep data on curses that rare, because there isn’t enough to be scientifically accurate. I asked my father about it when he had a moment, and he has heard of it before, but all he remembers is that it’s a very, very difficult spell, which is why no one ever attempts it. Only someone with a really strong grasp on dark magic could manage something like it.”

“That’s sort of helpful,” Keith says, even though it’s nothing he didn’t already know. “Could you maybe ask your dad if he remember where he heard about it? I can’t find the book I read, it’s not at the shop or at home.”

“Did you ask Shiro if it’s with your parents things?” Allura suggests.

“I got all of my parent’s book for the shop when Shiro agreed to let me run it,” Keith says. There’s a long, guilty pause on the other end of the line, and he frowns at his phone. “Allura,” he says slowly. “Do you know something I don’t?”

“Well,” she says hesitantly. “I just think that Shiro might have kept a few things out of the pile, is all. Perhaps. Who can be sure?”

Keith feels another surge of annoyance, has to clench his fist in a physical effort to tamp down on his emotions. He gestures at a shelf nearby and a piece of cypress comes flying his way -- as soon as it’s in his palm, his emotions settle somewhat, and he takes a deep breath. Then he takes another, just to be sure. “I’m gonna call my brother,” Keith says.

“Don’t be mad, Keith,” Allura says quietly. “He’s just taking care of you.”

“Sure,” Keith says sullenly. “Bye, Allura.” He hangs up before she can say anything else and sits silently.

He keeps the cypress held in his fist for a moment longer, drawing in the calming effects for as long as he can. He didn’t used to do this, use plants and stones and herbs on himself, trying to regulate his emotions and tempers and misery. He’d spent his childhood stood on a step stool next to his mother and father, watching them grind and burn and sew together sachets of ingredients, listening to them advise people on how to handle curses and spells gone wrong. He’d always thought himself too capable, too smart to need anything like that. And if it’s something I can’t handle, I can just have you guys fix me, he’d said to his mother one evening. She’d laughed and agreed.

The shop had always been a second home to him. Shiro had decided to choose another path, something his parents had wholeheartedly embraced, but Keith had known from the moment he was allowed to come to work with his parents as a child that this was what he wanted to do. It was in his blood, an inherent need to solve puzzles, to make things right again. He’d grown up believing, knowing that this was what he was meant for. His parents had been happy, had eagerly taught him as much as they could about all of the aspects of running the shop.

But then there was the accident. For the first time, magic had failed him entirely -- it was a lesson learned that had left him and Shiro orphans, alone in the world but for each other.

After the funeral, he’d demanded control of the store from Shiro, had fiercely reminded him that their parents had always intended him to have it in the first place. He hadn’t been able to bear the thought of something so vital to his parents closing up, disappearing into dust or being sold to someone else, especially not when he was still there to take care of it.

Shiro had been adamant that at sixteen he was too young, that it was too soon, that he didn’t know what he was doing. It had resulted in explosive fights that had left both of them fuming and grief-stricken, too wrapped up in their own needs and worries to see each other’s point of view.

Keith had stopped going to school, spending all of his time tending the garden they used for inventory or reading his parent’s notes. He’d refused to speak to anyone, not Shiro or Allura or any of the well-meaning family friends who ‘just wanted to talk.’ It had taken almost two weeks of this bitter silence, but Shiro had finally relented and allowed him to reopen the shop, with the caveat that Keith would finish high school, and Shiro would retain control of the shop until Keith turned twenty-one. Keith had agreed immediately, too relieved to worry about what that would be like.

And briefly, it had been fine. He went to school in the mornings and opened the shop in the afternoons, staying open later to make up for lost time. He’d swallowed his exhaustion and pushed through the lingering ache that came every time he glanced to the left or right and didn’t see his mother and father standing at his side. He’d done his best.  

But he’d still been angry, and hurt, and tired. He went night after night sleepless, snapped at friends and family who tried to comfort him, had nightmares about the shop burning into nothing under his watch. He’d stretched himself thinner and thinner, staying later at the shop after school, expending magic he didn’t have to keep the only thing that really mattered alive and thriving.

It had, of course, made everything a thousand times worse, his anxiety mounting on top of his exhaustion, but he hadn’t been able push past the unending fear that if he left for a moment, if he looked away for a single second, everything would fall apart. He’d fail his mother and father.

He’d continued on despite the warning signs.

Only a few months into his control of the shop, Shiro had threatened to take it away again. He’d done it with so little emotion and so quietly that it had felt like a normal conversation. There had been no fighting this time. Keith had realized that Shiro was done fighting.

The knowledge that Shiro would do it, that he wouldn’t even hesitate before selling the shop, had frightened him into trying to get better. He tried therapy with the school counselor, and limited his own time at the shop, but nothing had helped -- his anxiety and worries refused to leave. He’d felt like he was drowning in an ocean that had no surface, that no amount of swimming would ever help. He’d wondered if Shiro had been right all along, that he couldn’t handle it, that he wasn’t ready or good enough.

Lying sleepless in bed one night, he eventually fell into a restless dream, a dream so real it felt almost like a memory. His mother leaned over the counter at the shop, talking to a customer Keith couldn’t see -- she’d made them a sachet of sage and hyacinth and lemon balm, sewing it closed with deft fingers, and then she’d looked down at Keith and brushed her hands over his hair, smiling.

When he woke up, blinking tears from his eyes, he made himself a sachet of sage and hyacinth and lemon balm, had carried it around his neck for a week, and had felt himself calm for the first time in a month.

Things had gotten better, slowly but surely. It had been two years since he’d felt that creeping terror again. He’d kept the shop safe, he’d helped hundreds of people. He hadn’t failed his parents yet.

In the present, he shakes off the old memories, lets them go just as he lets go of the cypress, floating it over to a bowl of ashes, where it hovers and then bursts into flames. He can use the remains of it for other works, but ingredients that have been used are never as good, and he doesn’t want to dilute any power for future magic.

He slowly opens his phone and calls Shiro. It only rings once before Shiro picks up.

“Hey Keith,” Shiro says, sounding winded but pleased. “You caught me on break, nice job. The kids are at recess, I just handed them off to Darcy. I swear, some of these kids are more energetic than even you were at their age.”

“Yeah,” Keith says quietly.

There’s a pause, and then Shiro says, “You okay, buddy?” Shiro’s empathy doesn’t work over the phone, but that doesn’t stop him from knowing when something is going on with Keith. Usually that innate understanding is a relief, but right now, everything is irritating.

“Did you keep some of Mom and Dad’s things from me?” he asks bluntly. This time there’s an even longer pause, and then a sigh. It blows over the phone like static, and Keith knows Shiro is taking the time to sit down. He always tries to approach arguments calmly, rationally, and he likes to be comfortable when he does so.

“It was only a few books,” Shiro says carefully. The slow response only serves to irritate Keith more.

“You didn’t have any right to--” Keith starts to say hotly, but Shiro cuts him off.

“I have every right as your guardian, Keith,” Shiro says firmly. He’s not raising his voice, but Keith wants to, and he makes himself close his eyes and breathe again, picturing calm. “Those books have dangerous stuff in them, dark magic, and I don’t want you hurting yourself.”

Keith inhales sharply, because of course. Shiro had always couched his handling of Keith’s choices with ‘it’s for your own good’.

“I can’t help people if I don’t know how to, Shiro,” Keith snaps. Trying to breathe isn’t working at all, but suddenly he doesn’t really care that much about being calm. Being calm through an argument has never worked for him the way it does for Shiro. “You don’t get to pick and choose what I know just because you don’t understand how this works.”

“What in the world do you need dark magic books for? You break small curses, you exorcise weak demons, that’s not exactly groundbreaking stuff, Keith.” Shiro still doesn’t raise his voice, and Keith knows that it’s because he’s still at school, he knows it’s because he doesn’t want to be unprofessional, but in in the face of his own emotion, Shiro’s level tone scrapes like a flint against his sudden flash of anger.

“I know you’ve never cared about what I do here, but I didn’t think you’d think so little of me that you wouldn’t trust me with something Mom and Dad let me read when I was twelve,” Keith says lowly, embers burning in his own voice. Shiro makes a soft noise, a protest, but Keith doesn’t give him the space to reply. “But I don’t just break small curses , and there is a person who might die if I don’t do something to help him,” Keith continues. “And I need those books to be able to research properly.”

“Die?” Shiro says, confused. “Hang on, Keith, wait, you’re just a teenager, you can’t be responsible--”

Keith’s temper ignites like a fuse. “Stop telling me what I can’t do! I’m a curse breaker, Shiro! This is what I do, it’s what I’m supposed to do, and you know I’m the best in the city, so don’t pretend this guy is supposed to try and go somewhere else. He’s been to a healer, and to Allura, and no one knows what’s going on, but I’m going to figure it out, I promised him I would, and I don’t need you babying me just because you think what I do isn’t important!”

The bowl of ashes bursts into flames, startling him. Keith sucks in a deep breath and extinguishes them with a jerky wave of his hand, has to do it again when some of the flames refuse to die down. His temper goes out almost as quickly, leaving him feeling hollow and barren.

Fighting with Shiro is sometimes very, very easy, but Keith never relishes it. He never feels better afterwards. He just -- he doesn’t know how to reconcile his brother with the person Shiro had to become when their parents died. The person who constantly handled him with kid gloves, who never approved of his choices, who tried to take every single aspect of Keith’s life into his own hands. Allura’s told him over and over that it’s how Shiro had coped with his new responsibility, with their parents’ loss. He supposes that Shiro doesn’t always know how to handle Keith now either.

Shiro is quiet for a very long time, and Keith says, very softly, “Their books are some of the only things I have left of them, Shiro. They’re important to the shop, part of it. Please don’t keep them from me.”

Shiro sighs heavily, and it sounds resigned. “You’re right,” he says quietly. “It’s not fair for me to keep things from you about something I don’t really understand. I’ve never -- it was never something I was very interested in. I just don’t want you to be in danger, Keith. Mom and Dad were always so reckless, they never stopped pushing things, and then they -- just, Keith, you and I, we’re all each other has now.”

“I know,” Keith murmurs. His eyes are hot, and he stares hard at the table in front of him to keep from blinking.

“Right,” Shiro mutters. “I’m just -- the books are in the attic. There’s a box, I put a lockspell on it. The password is tulips.”

“Mom’s favorite flower,” Keith says. He blinks, and his vision goes blurry.

“I won’t tell you not to try and help someone, Keith. You’re the kind of person who would do whatever it took to help someone. You always have been. And I’ve always been proud of you for that.” Shiro sounds warm for a moment, despite the fact that they’d just been arguing, but his voice quickly goes serious again. “But -- Keith, please be careful.”

“I will,” Keith says. “I just -- Shiro, there’s something about this curse, about this guy. I feel like I have to be the one to do this.” He pauses, and adds, “I had a dream about him.” It’s the first time he’s let himself think about it, and it brings a flush to his face.

“About your customer?” Shiro asks, now sounding intrigued. “You’ve never said anything about that happening before. Was it dream magic?”

“It’s never happened before,” Keith says. “And I’m not sure that’s what it was. But I’ve never -- I’ve never had a dream like that before. I don’t know what it means, but it feels important.”

“I understand,” Shiro says, sighing. “We’ll talk when I get home, okay? The kids are about to come back in.”

“Thank you, Shiro,” Keith says, closing his eyes.

“Love you, kiddo,” Shiro says. Keith can feel his smile even if he can’t see it.

“Love you,” he echoes, and then the line goes dead.

He sits quietly for a few minutes, feeling strangely overfull and empty at once, and then wipes his eyes, gets up and dumps still smoldering remains of the ashes. He tidies up his office, and then spends the rest of the afternoon working on a few more cursed items, handling a woman who’s been cursed with insomnia, and thinking about Lance, about his strange dream and his strange smile and his strange curse.

He’s already locked up, straddling his motorcycle and about to head home, when his phone rings. He pulls it out, and it’s an unknown number, but he answers it anyway.

“Hello?” someone says breathlessly.

“Hello?” Keith replies, brow furrowing.

“Oh, good, you weren’t lying about the star button thing.”

“Lance?” Keith says, blinking. “Are you -- okay? You’re breathing kind of--”

“I have to get to work, so I’m running,” Lance says, pausing to gasp for air. “I had to make time -- pardon me ma’am -- between classes to go to see your doctor friend, so I’m cutting it close. But I managed to convince my -- sorry! -- teachers to let me out of my last class tomorrow, so I’ll be free to come by the shop. Excuse me, sir! Coming through!" 

“Good,” Keith says. He realizes he’s smiling for the first time all afternoon, and touches his cheek absently. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” Lance says, laughing a little. He sounds like he’s finally standing still, breathing heavily. “I don’t have a car, so this is how I have to get around. I’m used to it. I’ll probably have to do the same tomorrow.”

Keith looks down at his bike and says, without really thinking about it, “I can give you a ride.”

“What?” Lance asks, sounding surprised. “You would -- you don’t have to do that.”

“It’s fine,” Keith says. “I’ve got a bike, so--"

“Wait, like -- like a motorcycle?” Lance makes a soft noise, somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “Of course.”

“Uh,” Keith says. “Yeah? It’s just an offer--”

“I accept,” Lance says quickly. “Thank you. I’ll see you around two tomorrow afternoon, okay?”

“Sounds good,” Keith says. They say goodbye and Lance hangs up, leaving Keith to squint into the setting sun, wondering what in the world just happened. His chest aches strangely, and he realizes that he’s still smiling.

When he gets home, the books are exactly where Shiro had said, and Keith carries them carefully downstairs to his own room, spreading them out. He remembers immediately which book is the one that mentioned the Komar curse, because it’s easily the oldest and easily the darkest -- not just the cover, which is black as night, but it feels wrong , feels unsettling. He doesn’t remember that from when he was younger, but then, his magic has become a lot more sensitive to dark magic over time.

A quick scan spell locates the entry, and Keith reads over it with bated breath, willing some new information to arise.

The Komar Curse, a dreaded and rare dark spell, has been used only twice in recorded memory, both curses cast within a year of each other. The perpetrators remain unknown, due to the nature of the curse, but the victims of the spell, Harriet Jefferson and Charles McOwens, succumbed to their fate merely days after being afflicted. The curse is named for the witch who took notice of the spellwork, Henry Komar, and who compiled information on the two victims to conclude it was a type of dark magic previously unknown to modern witchcraft.

Information about the curse is sparse, given its limited and quick use, given both victims died within days of affliction. Komar notes that the curse, an inherently complicated, dangerous magic, essentially draws the magic out of the victim, siphoning it off rather than destroying it, presumably to the spellcaster. It is believed the spell has roots in other dark magics, but information on its origins are incomplete and believed to be inconsistent. Komar took note of the following patterns from the healers who examined the victims while they were alive, which were identical to each other. His work, amassed over a five year period with no further known victims and no new sources of information, remains the only definitive study of the curse.

Underneath is a helpful drawing of Komar’s observations of the patterns of the spell’s structure, which Keith remembers vividly. If it hadn’t been for his morbid fascination with one of the darkest spells he’d ever heard of as a child, he might not have recognized the curse for what it was. There are no other helpful notes, no counterspells offered, no solutions. Komar had never been able to devise a spell to fix it because no one knew exactly how it was performed, and few would volunteer to practice such a spell. Few would be able to perform it, given how precise the spellcasting would have to be.

It’s clear this passage is more of a footnote than a real source for the spell, but it doesn’t offer other means of research. All he’s learned is that there are no definite countercurses for the spell, which is the opposite of useful.

Keith hisses a breath out through his teeth, trying to think calmly. Just because no one has done it before doesn’t mean that he can’t figure it out. Lance isn’t suffering from any negative effects so far, unlike Jefferson and McOwens, who both were apparently bedridden and delirious with fever and spasming pain as their magic had been wrenched from them.

But who knew how long that would last.

An inkling of doubt begins to creep in Keith’s mind as Shiro’s words from before echo in his head. He wasn’t lying when he said he was the best in town -- he’d learned from the best in town, and he’d held onto that reputation despite his young age when his parents had died. There were half a dozen other curse breakers in the city who didn’t have as much skill or power as he did, and he knew that. But he isn’t -- he’s never had someone’s life in his hands before. He doesn’t know if there’s anyone else out there who might know more about the curse, or would be better suited to help Lance. Henry Komar was long dead, and because there hadn’t been any other documented cases of the curse, no one had filled his place.

He buries his face in his hands and sighs, breathing deeply. He counts the seconds between breaths, seven at a time, until his head feels less fuzzy and he can sit straight again.

“I made a promise,” he says out loud, as firmly as he can. He knows he can do this. He’s never failed to remove a curse before, and he’s not going to start now. He just has to figure something out.

A thought occurs to him, and he pulls out his phone. Scrolling to a number that’s only labeled with a small bird emoji and a poop emoji, he texts, Can you do some research for me?

Almost immediately there’s a response: ur done with school tho

It’s for work.

interesting……..what u got

The Komar curse. There’s nothing useful about it in any of my books. Lura checked the medical database and found nothing.

There’s a short pause, and then another reply.

hmmm. i’m intrigued. basic search tells me it’s some kind of weirdo magic sucking spell. why do u need more info?

A customer’s got it.

yikes. that’s……..unfortunate

Understatement, Pidge.

ill see what i can find, bud

Thanks.

Keith lets out another breath, this time feeling slightly relieved. Pidge isn’t a curse expert -- she’s far more interested in how magic applies to technology, and has no interest in fixing anything but robots. But she’s a tenacious researcher, and knows how to ferret out information from the deepest parts of the internet. He feels better having asked for her help.

Keith tucks the books carefully on his shelf, except the black one, which he leaves out on his desk. He sits on his bed with his knees tucked up against his chest, thinking. He’ll try a purification spell tomorrow, although it’s doubtful it will do much. He’ll just have to treat this curse like any other spell he’s never encountered firsthand, throwing counterspells at it until something sticks.

He falls asleep before he can refresh the lavender under his pillow, and dreams of Lance again

.

This time Lance is sitting outside, wind ruffling his hair as he sits on a hillside next to a river. The world is cast in muted greens and browns despite how lovely the day looks; the only real color is Lance. The light reflecting off the water makes the angles of his face stand out, makes his eyes flash bluer, brighter. There’s still no sound, but it seems like Lance can see Keith, because he’s looking straight at him. He’s smiling, arms wrapped around his knees, and he says something Keith can’t hear and laughs. Keith feels his own mouth open, feels himself say something he can’t hear, and Lance stares at him and then grins. In the distance, the clouds pass over in front of exactly half of the sun, casting shadows across his face. 

There’s something sad about him, something hollow in his eyes, but the smile he turns on Keith is genuine and beautiful; it somehow feels intrinsically Lance in the dream, like Keith knows that he will always smile through his pain rather than show it. 

Keith reaches out, and he can’t tell if he’s doing it because he wants to or not. Everything feels surreal, scripted, like it’s happening outside of himself. It’s a similar gesture to the one he did before in his shop, but this time, he touches Lance’s face, cupping his cheek. He can’t feel the warmth of his skin but he knows it should be hot, because Lance’s other cheek is pink. Lance’s eyes close, and his smile grows wider. He opens his mouth to say something, and Keith wakes up all at once, his entire body buzzing like pins and needles.

His magic is pulling at his veins again, straining against some imaginary restraint. He doesn’t know what it means, what’s wrong with it, what his dreams are trying to tell him. Lance’s bright smile lingers in his mind tonight, pressed against the backs of his eyelids like a photograph he can’t forget, and he finds it hard to fall asleep again even after putting new lavender under his pillow.

.

He refrains from doing any strenuous magic in the morning, putting off appointments when possible and offering more tangible cures to those who don’t want to wait for him to do the spells himself. He doesn’t want his magic to be any weaker than necessary when Lance gets here, because his magic is acting -- strangely, lately, and he’s not sure that the protections he uses during the purification will prevent it from draining again, which would leave them exactly where they were before. 

He basically ushers a last minute customer out of the door just before two, probably too quickly -- she clutches her sachet of sage, cedar, and magnolia blossoms to her chest and shoots him a bewildered look when he flashes her a tense smile and walks her to the door. As soon as the door is closed he’s moving back to the counter, waving his hand as he passes underneath his rows of plants. Dragon’s blood and oak leaves float towards him, as does a piece of birch wood hanging on the wall.

He leaves them in the air for a moment, thinking about where he wants to perform the purification -- unbidden, the image of Lance sitting on the counter in here flashes across his mind, almost as if it were a memory rather than a dream. Keith frowns and waves his hands irritably, and the items begin burning, casting pungent smoke in the area around him. Keith watches them intently, making sure they’re burning properly, and almost misses the sound of the door opening, the bell ringing. 

He hasn’t made a door spell specifically for Lance, but somehow the ringing sounds like a particular chime all the same. It sounds like laughter.

“Hello!” Lance says cheerfully, waving a hand. He’s got a bright blue backpack slung over his shoulder and silvery glitter like freckles across his cheeks. Keith finds himself staring, momentarily caught off guard. “I’m not late, am I?” Lance asks, pulling out his phone to check the time.

“You’re fine,” Keith says, waving a hand in the air and extinguishing the herbs. The smoke winds its way through the air, curling through Lance’s hair and around his throat. For a second he looks alarmed, but then he glances up at Keith and relaxes. “This will attempt to purify your aura, and it will help keep my magic clean,” Keith explains.

“Cool,” Lance says, sounding interested. “That’s birch, right? My grasp on ritual based magic is kind of low, but I remember that one for sure.”

“It’s one of the most useful ingredients you can use,” Keith agrees, smiling a little when Lance looks pleased with himself. “Along with oak,” he adds, gesturing to the smouldering remains of the leaves.  “A lot of magical tools are made with oak.”

“Hmm,” Lance says thoughtfully. “I know the wand I used when I was little was made of oak, but I hadn’t really thought about the other stuff. I wish I’d learned more about this kind of magic, I was always so much more focused on basic magic and elemental spells.” Lance runs his fingers through the thick smoke and watches it twist around his wrists gently.

“I’ve got a few books you can borrow,” Keith says before he can think about it, and Lance’s eyes flick over to his and hold. Keith blinks at him, and Lance smiles brightly. “Speaking of books,” Keith says hastily, walking back to the counter, “I found the book that talks about your curse.”

“What did it say?” Lance asks, walking closer. The smoke clings to him like a scarf, trailing wispily after him.

“Not much,” Keith admits, frowning. “I’ve got a friend doing some more research, but until I hear from her, I want to do basic diagnostic spells and see what I can find out about the spell. Knowing the caster could help a lot.” He glances up at Lance, who looks back at him with wide eyes. “You don’t know how you came to be cursed, do you?”

Lance chews his lower lip, turning it red, and Keith has to make himself look back up at his eyes. “No,” Lance says, shrugging his shoulders after a moment. “I just -- woke up and couldn’t do anything anymore. It’s been more than a week now and I still don’t know how it happened.”

“Some time in the middle of the night,” Keith murmurs to himself. He pulls out a notebook and writes down, Does the spell require night magic? along with a dozen other questions he has about the curse.

“You think it’s this really old, really rare spell,” Lance says, clearly able to read Keith’s questions even upside down. “But if it’s that specific, if it even needs to be performed at a specific time of day, how could the caster know all of that but you don’t?”

“Magical knowledge isn’t universal,” Keith says, making a wry face. “Especially curses, since a lot of the intentional spells are based in dark magic. Curse breakers all try our best to share and make information widely available, but a lot of the older spells were lost or distorted in translations. All it would take would be someone finding an original text somewhere and they’d have information no one else does. Or maybe they created the spell on their own and it just happens to do the same thing as the Komar curse does.”

Lance’s face is troubled, which makes something in Keith’s stomach twist in reaction. “Spells always have counterspells,” he says firmly. “I’m gonna figure it out. Even if I have to create a spell to do it.”

Lance looks up at him and smiles, and it almost reaches his eyes. “Okay,” he says, nodding his head. “What do you want me to do?”

“I’m gonna examine the spell again, this time with precautions. I’ll see what I can figure out about it, and if I can, I’ll attempt some basic countermeasures against it. I’m -- I especially wanna figure out why you’re so normal.”

“Uh,” Lance says, grinning, “I think I’m just like that.”

Keith snorts. “That’s what I’m talking about. You’re completely unaffected. Most magic that dark would have an obvious effect on you, other than just stealing your magic away. You seem totally normal, which isn’t comparable to what’s been recorded.”

“Okay, scratch normal, maybe I’m just a special guy,” Lance says, raising an eyebrow and grinning. He moves closer to the counter and hops up onto it, turning at the waist to look at Keith properly. “Well,” he says, holding his arms aloft and letting the smoke twist and turn its way around him, “Go ahead.”

Keith blinks his eyes and flashes back to Lance sitting on the counter in his dream again, laughing. He’s not laughing right now, but there’s humor in his eyes. His life is at risk, he’s putting all of his trust in some teenage curse breaker, but he’s still able to smile at Keith. Stranger than that, though, is that Keith wants to smile back.

Keith takes a breath, closes his eyes, and reaches out.

The extra amber and carnelian in his pockets protect him this time, shielding him from the worst of the aura. This time, he’s able to hold himself at arm’s length and examine the pattern properly, confirming that it matches what the book says, confirming that the woven intention is as he said. Someone created this spell to specifically target and consume Lance’s magic. The curse is vast, tangled together like a knot around Lance’s heart, and it wriggles in place when he comes closer, like it’s excited to see him.

“Oh,” Lance says, and Keith immediately opens his eyes, pulling out of the trance, to see him frowning. “I felt -- strange for a moment.”

“Pain?” Keith asks, reaching a hand out and touching his arm. Lance stares at his hand instead of replying, and Keith pulls away again, feeling uncomfortable.

“No,” Lance says finally, looking back up at him. His mouth is curved strangely, not quite a smile but warm. “Just -- a pulling, almost. But it felt like -- like me. Like my magic.” He looks hesitantly happy about that.

“I still can’t see your magic,” Keith tells him, sighing and pushing his hair out of his eyes. He’s sweating already, even though he’s barely started -- there’s something about the curse that pulls at parts of him, like it’s trying to affect him even though he’s not the target. Even with the protections he’s put in place, he can feel it like bile in his throat. “The curse is covering it completely. But I can confirm it does look exactly like the Komar curse.”

“Hooray,” Lance says dryly, raising a fist in a mock celebration. Keith quirks his mouth at him and takes a deep breath, trying to settle himself again. He waves a hand and pulls more birch from the wall, setting it ablaze with another flick of his wrist and adding to the smoke still drifting around Lance. Lance watches with interest, raising his own hand and running his fingers through the smoke like it’s water. “That looks so cool.”

“You can plant a birch tree outside of your home,” Keith says, pulling a hair band off of his wrist and pulling his hair into a messy bun. Lance makes a small noise, but when he glances up at him, he’s looking intently at the smoke as it floats through around his head. “It’s good protection. Useful against lightning strikes.”

“Normally I’d say my luck is protection enough, but clearly that’s not the case,” Lance says, laughing a little wryly.

Keith shakes his head, smothering his own smile, and extinguishes the birch with another gesture. “Okay. I’m gonna check again. Try not to speak unless you’re in pain, because I won’t be able to maintain the trance.”

“Got it,” Lance murmurs, settling more comfortably on the counter.

Keith falls back into the trance, tamping down on his own magic when it pulls again. The inky tendrils shift again when Keith tries to pull at them with his magic, moving on their own, but it’s impossible for him to budge them an inch himself. It’s not at all comparable to the little hex on Shay’s music box -- that had been a mistake borne of inexperience, with no malice of intent behind it.

This curse, though -- this curse feels like malevolence, feels like bitterness and anger and hatred and resentment. It feels like all of Keith’s worst days made into one feeling. It makes it all the more strange that Lance isn’t feeling it at all.

He tries over and over to search for a weakness, to search for some kind of thread that will lead him to an understanding --  how the curse was made, who made it, why Lance isn’t affected. His grasp on the curse is flimsy, which frustrates him, because he’s never, never been unable to discern any openings for a counterspell before. His magic shudders in his chest, and he knows he’s overdoing it, he knows he’s pushing too far, but he can’t stop yet -- he can’t give up with nothing to show.

Then -- there’s a touch to the side of his temple, and he jerks out of the trance all of a sudden, head pounding, stomach shivering with tension. Lance’s fingertips are still resting on his face, and his expression is concerned, far closer than he had been. He’s moved so that he’s sitting on Keith’s side of the counter, leaning in so that they’re only a foot or so apart.

“You looked -- in pain,” Lance says quietly. His fingers drag slightly on Keith’s brow when he pulls away, and Keith swallows and takes a step back. His heart beats unsteadily in his chest and he clenches his fists, annoyed at himself.

“I’m sorry,” Lance says. “I shouldn’t have--”

“It’s fine,” Keith says tiredly. “I wasn’t getting anything. Even with the protections, even with the purification, it was -- I couldn’t see anything.”

“Fuck,” Lance says softly. “Sorry,” he says again, cringing. “I’m not -- I know you’re trying--”

“It’s fine, ” Keith repeats. Lance kicks his feet as they hang over the counter, sighing. “Look, it wasn’t pointless. I know more about how it affects me, and I know what isn’t working against it. I can keep doing research. I can keep figuring it out.”

“I know,” Lance says, smiling wryly. He still looks unhappy, and Keith thinks of his dream, that hollow smile. He doesn’t want to keep seeing it.

“Thank you,” he says, which makes Lance look up and blink at him. “For pulling me out. I was -- I get carried away sometimes. I’m not supposed to overdo it anymore, and I was about to. So. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Lance says, smiling more genuinely this time. “So, hey, do I get more fancy rocks to take home today?”

“Fancy rocks?” Keith asks, mouth quirking.

“Am I wrong, Sunshine?” Lance asks, tilting his head and smiling slyly.

Keith gives him black tourmaline and opal, tucking them into his front shirt pocket and making a show of buttoning it carefully, which makes Lance laugh. It’s not usually something he’d do with a customer, this sort of -- teasing. But Lance has been unusual from the start. Nothing about their interactions, about Keith’s experience with him, has been normal. He’s not really interested in questioning it when there’s so much more to think about.

“Are you sure you’re okay to ride on my bike?” Keith asks, waving his hand at the light charms still floating overhead. They all make their slow paths towards him, wobbling a little along the way. He’s not drained, his magic is still there, but he feels tired. Still, somehow his magic is restless, shifting in his veins and under his skin like a pacing cat.

“Wait,” Lance says, “You were serious?”

“I said I would, didn’t I?” Keith asks, frowning. He’s closing the shop early again, but there’s really no other option -- he doesn’t feel up to continuing for the day, and he’d promised to get Lance to work on time. He finishes tidying up the area by hand, while Lance finally hops off the counter and stretches his arms high above his head. The glitter on his cheeks sparkles from the light as the charms tuck themselves into the bowl on the counter, and he’s struck all over again by how familiar his face is, how -- attractive he is.

“I just didn’t really think you meant it,” Lance admits, touching the gemstones through his shirt with one hand while he watches Keith move around the room.

“I meant it,” Keith replies, shrugging. He takes a look around his ingredients, making a mental note he hopefully won’t forget to grab more birch from the tree outside his house to replenish his supply. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Sure,” Lance says, almost sounding wry. When Keith glances up at him, he’s slinging the backpack back over his shoulder. His shirt pulls with the movement, exposing a slice of his collarbone. His skin is smooth and dark. “You need help closing up?” Lance asks, tilting his head when Keith just keeps looking at him.

“Uh,” Keith says, blinking, “No, um, let me just grab my bag.”

On his way to the back, he pushes his hair out of his face, scowling. The dreams are messing with him more than he’d realized. He’ll have to add linden and poppy seeds to the lavender under his pillow tonight, or else he’s going to start getting too distracted to work properly.

He locks the shop up while Lance watches him set the security spells with curious eyes. The afternoon sun brightens his eyes to the color of the sky, and Keith almost fumbles the spellwork with them on him.

“That’s an older version of the locking spell, isn’t it?” Lance asks once the spellcasting is complete. “You did an extra step, the hand motion at the end there. Isn’t intent enough?”

“Usually,” Keith says, reluctantly impressed that Lance had noticed. “The building is old, and it responds better to older spellwork. It likes when I do the whole thing.”

“Hmm,” Lance says, sounding interested. “I wonder if that’s true for all older buildings.”

“This is the only one I regularly perform on,” Keith says, “But I have done housecalls for items that can’t be moved to the shop to be exorcised. Based on my experiences there, I think in general they do prefer older methods, unless they’ve been extensively updated.”

Lance laughs, shaking his head. Keith looks at him curiously, pocketing his keys to the shop and heading towards the parking lot.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Lance says, still smiling. “Just -- you’re ridiculously powerful, aren’t you? I can’t read you because I don’t have -- but just the way you talk about magic, you must be.”

“Yes,” Keith says, because there’s no sense in pretending otherwise. Lance grins at him, and it’s almost chagrined.

“I spent the whole first time I was here thinking you were a joke,” Lance admits. “Like, you’re my age and you’re running a curse breaking shop? Yeah right.” When they reach Keith’s motorcycle, Keith starts digging through the bags, pulling out two helmets from a specially crafted storage compartment that holds items bigger than it should be allowed to. “But you’re -- you’re good at this. You could probably get into my program if you wanted. How come you’re not trying to get into a secondary school?”

“This is what I want to do,” Keith says, shrugging and handing a helmet to Lance. “I already learned what I needed to from my parents, and anything new that comes up I can find out through research. I finished high school a semester early so I could be here full time again, because this is -- The Counterspell is the most important thing to me.”

He puts his own helmet on and then looks back at Lance, who’s got the helmet on his head but hasn’t fastened it. He’s looking at Keith thoughtfully, his mouth pursed slightly. Keith’s brow furrows.

“Do you need help?” he asks, and Lance seemingly shakes himself and laughs.

“No,” Lance says, doing the clip up himself, “I was just thinking -- nevermind.”

“Where are we going?” Keith asks, slinging a leg over the bike and scooting forward as far as he can. He pulls up the kickstand and flips the switch on, kicking the bike on and revving it in one motion. Lance looks excited, so Keith revs it a couple more times while it’s out of gear, just to see the grin on his face widen.

“Um,” Lance says, reaching out and touching the leather seat with his fingertips, “You know that coffee shop by the university? The 24 hour one?”

“Yeah,” Keith says, well acquainted with it. Shiro used to practically live in that coffee shop when he was going to school. “Okay, get on.” The motorcycle hums pleasantly under his thighs, a familiar sensation. Keith’s weariness is almost a memory right now -- he feels strangely punchy, something like giddiness settling into his stomach.

“Right,” Lance says, just barely loud enough to be heard over the engine. He puts a hand on Keith’s shoulder and straddles the bike, sitting down far enough back that Keith moves himself back in the seat so he can get more comfortable. Lance stiffens against him, and Keith turns his head to look at him.

“You have to hold on tight,” Keith says, taking one of Lance’s hands and putting it on his waist. “And lean with me when I turn, okay?”

“Okay,” Lance says, nodding with wide eyes. His other hand goes to Keith’s hipbone as well, and when Keith is sure he’s holding on, he takes off. It’s not a fast movement, but Lance yelps anyway and wraps his arms all the way around Keith’s midsection immediately, which makes Keith burst into laughter. Thankfully, the engine covers it up.

Lance holds on tight enough to almost choke him for about two blocks, pressed up close to Keith’s back, but then seems to relax, loosening his grip enough to pull away a little. He leans fluidly with Keith when they make a turn, and when Keith pulls up to a stoplight, he can hear him laughing, a wild, joyous sound that Keith’s never heard before. Lance hooks his helmet over Keith’s shoulder, pressed against his back completely, much closer than he’d been before, and says, “Can you take the long way to the shop?”

Keith grins and revs the engine in answer.

When they finally get there, there isn’t much time before Lance’s shift starts, so Keith pulls up to the front door and lingers while Lance gets off, pulling his helmet off. His hair is messy, but his face is alight with happiness. He looks like the sun, blinding and warm, and Keith doesn’t know whether to bask in the light or hide from it.

“That was amazing,” he says breathlessly. The sparkles on his cheeks catch the sunlight and throw stars in Keith’s eyes. Lance’s smile is just as bright as he tucks the helmet back into its case.

“You know you’ve got glitter on your face, right?” Keith asks, just in case Lance isn’t aware. Lance’s hands fly up to his face, and he laughs again.

“I know,” Lance says, winking. “It’s to make me look pretty.”

You don’t need it to look pretty, Keith thinks, unbidden. Lance glances back at the coffee shop, thankfully missing the startled face Keith makes at his own thoughts, and then looks back at him apologetically.

“I’ve gotta go, Keith. I’ll call you tomorrow and see when we can meet up again, okay? Thanks for -- for everything, really.” He flicks his fingers in a salute and twirls in place, hurrying into the coffee shop. Through the glass windows, Keith sees him wave hello to the barista behind the counter, sees the barista look out at Keith and grin.

He swallows hard and pulls away from the curb, trying to focus on the road rather than his clamoring pulse.

.

When he goes to sleep that night, he makes sure to put the sachet under his pillow properly, takes the time to clear his mind before he tucks himself under the covers. He stares up at the ceiling in the dark for a long time before he falls asleep. 

He still dreams of Lance.

For some reason the colors in the dream look brighter, although Lance looks tired tonight. Tired, but happy -- he’s still smiling at Keith, fuzzy around the edges. There’s still glitter on his cheeks even in the dream, and Keith finds himself watching it as it flickers in the lamplight of an unfamiliar room. There are posters on the walls, but Keith can’t make them out clearly, and there’s a desk and a bookshelf full of unfamiliar books. The moon outside the window is a little more than half gone, which is strange, because Keith thinks there was just a new moon a day or so ago.

Lance says something and curls up on a bed with gray covers, tucking his smile into a pillow. He still can’t hear him, it’s nothing like a voice, but there’s a fuzzy noise, like it’s there but just filtered. Keith sits on the bed next to him and watches himself reach out and smooth his ruffled hair back into place. Lance’s smile is even brighter when it peeks back out from the pillowcase, and Keith finds himself grinning back.

It’s...peaceful. They sit quietly on the bed, and sometimes Lance will say something to him that he can’t understand, and Keith will reply with something similarly inaudible, and finally Lance closes his eyes and seems to fall asleep; Keith watches him and feels his own heart beating in time with Lance’s chest rising and falling, steady and strong and comforting.

When he wakes up, his magic rumbles in his chest but feels less fervent, feels calmer somehow. His alarm is going off and he sits up in bed and breathes slowly, in and out, and wonders what the hell is going on.

Shiro takes one look at him and frowns when he comes down for breakfast. “Are you feeling -- well no, I know how you feel. What’s going on?”

“I’ve had three dreams in a row about him,” Keith murmurs, opening the fridge and pulling the milk out. He sniffs it while Shiro makes a humming noise. “I don’t know what’s going on, I put a sachet under my pillow, I should have--”

“Those just make it easier to fall asleep, though,” Shiro says, and Keith blinks slowly and looks at him uncomprehendingly. “I looked up some dream stuff when you mentioned you had a weird dream. Most dream sachets are just good for insomnia. They give you peaceful sleep. They won’t stop weird magical dreams from happening. I don’t think there’s much you can do there.”

Keith’s brow furrows. “I wear my protection stones to bed -- and even if I didn’t, Lance doesn’t have any magic to try and invade my dreams in the first place.” He frowns, pulling a bowl from the cabinet and reaching for his cereal box, trying to think of what could be going on.

“Have you ever considered,” Shiro says carefully, “That you’re just, you know. Dreaming about a cute boy. It’s not like it’s the first time.”

Keith flushes and almost drops the cereal box on the ground, only managing to catch it with a quick jerk of his hand. He vainly tries and fails to keep from remembering his thoughts from yesterday about how pretty Lance was. Shiro makes a snorting noise but gracefully refrains from full out laughing at him.

“That’s not it,” Keith says, except, he thinks reluctantly, he’s not entirely sure that’s true.

“Sure, kiddo,” Shiro says, taking a sip of coffee with raised eyebrows. Keith resists the urge to jerk the coffee cup out of his hands with his magic; instead he pours the cereal into his bowl aggressively, annoyed when some spills. His ears are burning, and he hates that Shiro can probably feel all of his jumbled and messy emotions right now.

“I can’t even hear him when he talks,” Keith says, choosing to do what he usually does -- ignore his feelings and focus on anything else. “I can’t talk to him. It’s just -- him, in my dreams, but there’s some kind of -- barrier, I guess?”  

“You could always go see a witch who specializes in dream magic,” Shiro suggests. Keith makes a face -- he doesn’t really see the importance and usefulness of dream magic, and it’s far more open to interpretation than he likes. Most of the time they only seem to want to psychoanalyze you rather than explain what’s going on. How you reacted to the dreams, what you think they might mean. Keith vastly prefers clear cut answers.

“I’m too busy,” he says, which isn’t untrue. “I’ve got to catch up on my regular customers and try and do more research on the Komar curse. Pidge still hasn’t gotten back to me about the search I asked her to do.”

“She’s probably asleep,” Shiro says. “Matt says she stayed up for about forty hours and then got in trouble and was forced to rest. I bet she’s in a coma right now.”

“Of course,” Keith says, rolling his eyes. He takes a bite of his cereal, still thinking about his dreams. This last one had felt -- different. Like Lance was more present, somehow, like the whole thing was brighter, more real, even though they still couldn’t speak. He doesn’t know what might have changed -- the only thing that was different was that --

“I put the sachet under my pillow before I had the dream last night,” Keith says out loud. He frowns, trying to remember the other nights, how they’d felt. He hadn’t bothered to check when he had woken up from the dreams, but he thinks it might have been around the same time as before -- and last night, he’d slept all the way til morning rather than waking up. Shiro gives him a blank look, and he explains, “It was different last night, and that’s the only thing I can think of that’s changed.”

“Maybe using the sachet beforehand cleared your mind to actually be able to receive the dream magic?” Shiro suggests. Keith bites his lower lip, wishing he knew more about what actually went into dream magic. He knew ingredients for sleep sachets -- several of his regular customers were insomniacs, and he knew what went best to help relieve terrible sleep, but he didn’t know about the actual magic of dreams. Curses didn’t usually work through dreams, so he’d never bothered.

“Shit,” he mutters, ignoring when Shiro sends him a blandly annoyed look at the swear. “I’m gonna actually have to talk to a dream witch.”

“Is it really that important? It’s connected to the curse?” Shiro asks, frowning.

“It has to be,” Keith says, leaning back in his chair. “Why else would I be having dreams about someone I barely know?”

“Besides the obvious reasons,” Shiro says, raising his eyebrows. Keith gives in to pettiness and uses his magic to fling the pieces of cereal still on the counter at his face, grinning when they nail him directly in the nose.

.

Pidge shows up at his shop about halfway through the day, thankfully while there’s no customers. He’s slumped at his front counter, idly trying to remove a curse from a pair of glasses that left the wearer with blinding headaches -- another family heirloom, as many of his cursed items were. Most people would just throw away stuff like this, petty curses hurled at petty annoyances, but heirlooms were less easy to part with.

He’s just managed to subdue the curse into a manageable ball, ready to be pulled out, when the door flings open, hitting the wall and sending the bell into a loud frenzy, swinging heavily above Pidge’s head. She’s wearing a hoodie despite the warmth of spring heading into summer outside,  and her hair is pulled into a very messy bun. She looks halfway dead but her eyes brighten when she catches sight of him.

“Hey,” she says, ignoring the still manic bell as it settles behind her. She blows a bubble with a piece of neon blue gum and walks over to the counter, slinging her backpack onto the floor next to her.

“Hey,” Keith echoes, cataloging the circles under her eyes and the way her hair is drooping into her eyes. “Are you actually sleepwalking right now? I need to know if I’m supposed to try and catch you when you inevitably fall over.”

“Ha ha,” she says wryly. “Don’t start. Matt tried to handcuff me to the stairs back home. I’m fine, I just look tired. Sleep is for the weak. Etcetera, etcetera.”

“Convincing,” Keith says. She makes a face and starts digging through her backpack, pulling out distressingly few paper printouts and one of her laptops. “Is that all you found?” he asks, looking at the maybe four or five pieces of paper.

She gives him a deadpan look. “May I?” she asks.

“Fine, fine,” Keith says, trying not to be impatient. It’s hard when he thinks of how many days it’s already been -- more than Lance should have been allowed to begin with. Every new day just feels like pushing things too far, like he’s making a mistake by even trying to do this. He thinks of Lance’s laughter in his ears yesterday, of the feeling of his hands around his waist. He’d made a promise to that laugh, to those hands. He doesn’t want to break it.

“Unfortunately there really is very little information out there, even in the places that should have it. I had to send out feelers in a lot of place I’d rather not send my magic again, thanks. But there was this one forum, really deep web, where I found where someone had been looking up the same thing.” Pidge pauses. “This was about a month ago.”

“A month,” Keith says. “Lance was cursed a little more than a week ago.”

“So within our relative time frame, considering they would need to prep.” Pidge shuffles her papers and gives Keith a look. “Are you sure that’s what the dude has, Keith? Everything I looked at says he should be absolutely dead by now.”

“It’s the same curse,” Keith says grimly. “I recognized it because it freaked me out when I was a kid, and I checked it again yesterday.”

Pidge whistles. “I have no idea how he’s managing that, but I guess it gives you some time. Anyways, this person -- I don’t know how, but they managed to erase literally everything they found on the subject once they found it. I could tell where the information was meant to be, but it had been scrubbed completely.”

Keith’s stomach drops. “Are you -- are you serious? How is that even -- what are we supposed to do--”

“Hey,” Pidge interrupts, looking offended. “A little faith, please.”

Keith stares at her. “Did you manage to get it back?”

“Not all of it,” Pidge says. Her face goes solemn, an unusual expression for Pidge. She shuffles the pages again, frowning. “But enough to know something they probably didn’t want anyone else to know. The way to get rid of the curse.”

“What is it?” Keith asks, feeling a surge of excitement in his stomach.

“You have to kill the caster.”

The excitement turns to ash, burning like smoke in his lungs. “Don’t joke,” he says.

“I’m not,” Pidge says. “That’s what the source said. The thing is, that’s just the only known way to get rid of the curse -- it’s how you get rid of basically any curse, really, but there were claims that this worked. I tried to get sources on other times it’s been used, because clearly it has, there was actual information out there about it, you know, people who said they’d seen or heard about it being cast, but it’s really complicated. No one uses names, or places, or dates. And there’s no way to verify anything because how do you tell if a corpse was drained of its magic? How many dead people out there have died of this and we don’t know?” Pidge pushes her glasses up her nose and looks at him with a fierce gleam in her eye. “There could be dozens of cases undocumented.”

Keith’s legs feel weak, so he puts his hands against the counter to hold himself up. He thinks, again, of Shiro telling him that he should send Lance to someone else. That this was too much for him to handle. But who would he send Lance to? Who would be able to help him with some spell that only existed in dark places, that no one really knew anything about?

He’d promised.

He sucks in a breath and lets it out. “There are always counterspells,” Keith says firmly. “Was there anything else, Pidge?”

“A bit more about how to cast it. You guessed something about the timing being important, right? Yeah, it’s a good old midnight spell. And the caster has to be really, really strong. Really precise. Someone used to handling dark magic.”

“That narrows it down,” Keith mutters sarcastically.

“Hey,” Pidge says mildly. “I’m trying here.”

Keith sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Pidge. I appreciate it, I really do.”

“I get it, dude.” Pidge opens up her laptop, tapping away at it. “I’m still running programs. My magic got drained pretty badly there, but once I’m topped off again I’m going back in.”

“You don’t have to,” Keith says. Pidge is a good witch, but she’s still young -- her magic takes time to return when she’s used it up, and she doesn’t have Keith’s natural inclination to recover quickly or Allura’s overwhelming magnitude of magic to make up for it. “You should probably be sleeping right now.”

“Hey,” Pidge says, reaching out and resting a hand on his shoulder. “I’m in it now. You don’t have to do it alone, you know.”

Keith feels something in him go sharp and hot at the tone of her voice, and he has to breathe slowly in and out until it will subside. Pidge had been younger when the accident had happened, and the fallout from it as well, but she’s always been observant -- Keith knows when she looks at him now, she’s looking for the fault lines that had preceded him breaking apart.

He wants to tell her that he’s fine, that he’s not going to fall to pieces again. He wants to go back to before Lance showed up, when he felt confident that that wasn’t a lie.

Instead he offers her a weak smile and gathers the papers up, stacking them carefully. “Thanks, Pidge.”

She lingers for a while, tapping away at her laptop, promising that she’s checking other projects and not using any magic. He gives her a sachet of cinnamon to help her recover her magical strength, and a cup of tea just because she still looks tired despite her lofty reassurances that she’s fine, etcetera etcetera.

She gets distracted halfway through her cup and lets it go cold, so Keith is in the middle of using his magic to reheat it for her when the phone behind the counter rings. He grabs it absently, thumbing it on and saying, “The Counterspell.”

“Keith!” Lance says, sounding cheerful.

Keith’s hand jolts and pushes the cup of tea he’d been holding, sloshing some of it over the edge and close to Pidge’s computer; she yelps and jerks it away, giving him a dirty look.

“Keith?” Lance asks, now sounding concerned.

“Hi,” Keith says, annoyed when he sounds breathless. “Um. Hey.”

“Hi,” Lance says. His voice is hovering somewhere between amused and baffled. “I was calling to see how things were going.”

Keith’s eyes automatically trip to the papers Pidge had given him, the bleakly dark option that was his only real news. You have to kill the caster. There was no way he could say something like that to Lance. “Not a lot right now. I’m--” He pauses, swallowing hard, and then grits out, “I want to focus on finding who cast the spell. That way we can know more about how it was cast and how to undo it.”

“Okay,” Lance says, sounding dubious. “I don’t really have any leads, but I can come in and we can work through something. I’m off this afternoon.”

“Sounds good,” Keith says, feeling something in his stomach go warm at the thought of seeing Lance again so soon and ignoring it determinedly. Pidge is staring at him over the top of her glasses, her eyes narrowed. “I don’t have any appointments after four.”

“See you then,” Lance says. His voice is soft, familiar -- Keith pictures him from the dream last night, bright-eyed and coy as he tucked his smile against a pillow and drifted off to sleep. He thinks about how peaceful it had been to sit next to him and just breathe. Shit. He still has to get in contact with a dream witch.

“See you then,” Keith echoes, waiting until he hears the click of Lance hanging up before he does the same.

“Was that the guy?” Pidge asks, looking at the phone as he puts it away.

“Yes,” Keith says shortly.

“The guy Shiro says you’ve been having dreams about?” Pidge asks, tilting her head. Keith opens his mouth to reply and then realizes what she’s said, closing it with an audible sound and glaring at her.

“He told you that?” he asks, scowling as his face flushes. Pidge cracks up, clutching her stomach as she leans away from the counter and his annoyed expression.

“Matt told me. Apparently Shiro was asking him about dream witches and Matt made a joke about him that he wouldn’t tell me, like he thinks I don’t know about sex jokes, and Shiro explained it was for you.” Pidge makes a show of wiping her eyes, adjusting her glasses. “You think the dreams are connected somehow?”

“Yes,” Keith says firmly, turning away from her so he doesn’t have to see her smirk. “I can tell the difference between a regular dream and something magical, Pidge.”

“Sure,” Pidge agrees, far too easily to really think so. “But what about him?”

Keith turns to stare at her. “What about him?”

“If you’re having weird dreams about him that you think are magical in nature, and he’s the catalyst for all of this happening, don’t you think he might be having the same thing?”

Keith keeps staring at her. She stares back, her face a deliberate blank slate. Keith abruptly realizes that he’s blushing even harder, his entire face turning pink. He makes a small, annoyed noise and covers his eyes with one hand.

“I can’t believe this hasn’t occurred to you!” Pidge says, finally breaking down into laughter again.

Keith can’t either. It makes sense that if something to do with Lance was making him have these dreams, Lance might also be experiencing something similar. He doesn’t know why he hasn’t thought about that possibility before now. Lance has never said anything about it, has never even briefly mentioned dreams -- but then, Keith hasn’t either.

“There’s -- a possibility,” Keith says haltingly.

“Are you gonna ask him?” Pidge asks, tilting her head questioningly.

“How am I supposed to ask him if he’s having dreams about me, and also tell him I’m having dreams about him?” Keith asks, running a hand through his hair in frustration. “He’s a customer, that’s weird.”

“A customer,” Pidge says, doing air quotes. “A customer you dream about and who makes you go super smiley when he calls you on the phone.”

He scoffs at her. “I was not smiley,” Keith says, crossing his arms.

“You got all quiet and soft and stuff when you were talking to him,” Pidge says, rolling her eyes. “I don’t think it’s the end of the world if you think a customer is cute, Keith.”

Keith doesn’t know how to respond to that, although his impulse is to deny that he thinks Lance is cute -- but that’s not true, and Pidge will know it’s not true, so instead he gives into the more childish impulse to walk away, heading over to check some of his hanging plants. She makes a fondly exasperated noise as he walks past her before turning back to her computer.

Pidge only lingers in the shop for a little while longer until she starts falling asleep, so Keith calls Matt to come pick her up and make her get some actual rest. She sleepily promises to keep looking for information for him, and gives him a pointed look when she tells him to have a good rest of his afternoon. He deliberately pretends he doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

He has a few walk ins, and he finishes with a few more items he’s been meaning to work on, but there’s nothing strenuous. It feels good to actually know how to fix something, to be able to tell someone that this gemstone will help them recover from an illness and that spellwork will be able to pull the spell gone wrong from a plant that can’t grow anything but blackened flowers. He’s in a better mood by the time four o’clock runs around, so much that when the bell chimes cheerfully above the door, he automatically smiles at whoever’s coming in.

Lance has sunglasses on, although they’re sitting on top of his head, pushing his hair back. He’s wearing a soft white tank top and Keith can see where the tops of his shoulders are slightly darker than the rest of his already brown skin. They’re -- broader than he’d realized. Lance catches his eyes and blinks, and Keith feels his absent smile go a little crooked, embarrassed as he realizes what he’s thinking.

“Afternoon,” Lance says, shooting him a grin. He walks up close to the counter, leaning his elbows against it where Pidge had been sitting only a few hours ago, and idly fiddles with a piece of rosemary Keith has left there.

“Hey,” Keith says, somewhat cautiously. He looks closely at Lance and realizes that he looks tired, with dark circles under his eyes and a slight line of tension in his jaw. As tired as he had in the dream last night. The decision of whether or not to bring the dreams up weighs heavily in his mind, but he pushes it quickly away. “How was -- how was school?” he asks instead.

Lance makes a face. “Bo-ring. All our exams are over so we’re basically just finishing out our last few lessons, and since I can’t even do anything, I just get to watch. My friend Hunk is trying to make it easier on me, but there’s only so much good your favorite cookies can do, you know?”

“What’s your favorite cookie?” Keith asks curiously, and Lance laughs a little.

“Is that relevant to your cursebreaking, Sunshine?” he asks, tilting his head teasingly. Keith rolls his eyes. “I like cranberry oatmeal,” he says. “Don’t say it’s weird, I already know.”

“No, ah, it’s--” Keith pretends to think for a moment, and then shakes his head, smiling. “No, it’s weird.”

“Hey, Hunk makes a mean cranberry oatmeal cookie,” Lance says, shaking his finger at him. When Keith still looks skeptical, he says, “I’ll just have to bring you some next time and prove my point.”

Next time. The thought both sobers him and kindles a kind of warmth in his stomach. He’s all too aware that every new day brings more and more risk for Lance, but he can’t deny that part of him is excited at the idea that Lance wants to keep seeing him.

He’s got to get a grip.

“So, you wanted to try and figure out more about who cast it, right?” Lance asks. He leans further over the counter, still playing with the rosemary. “I’ve been trying to think of who might be able to do something like this that I know, and I can’t think of anyone, dude.”

“I’d say it’s more likely that someone hired another person to do it,” Keith says, sighing. “I don’t think your average high schooler is gonna manage something like this. This kind of magic takes years and years to perfect.”

“Okay, well, I still don’t know who would want to do something like this to me.” Lance sighs, letting the slightly scraggly piece of rosemary fall back onto the counter. “I mean, everyone at school seems to like me. And this is like -- really dark. I don’t know anyone who would do this.”

“What about outside of school?” Keith asks.

“What, like my family?” Lance asks, brow furrowing. Keith shrugs helplessly, because he has to ask. “They would never. We’re all -- no, there’s no way it’s anyone in my family.”

“Have you told them?” Keith asks quietly.

Lance stares silently at his own hands for a moment and takes a deep, shuddering breath. “No. Nobody knows about the -- the end. I don’t want them to worry. Especially if there’s nothing that -- I just don’t want them to feel like it’s their fault.”

Keith swallows hard, stomach twisting unpleasantly. Lance’s expression is quietly miserable, and it doesn’t look right on him at all. “Okay,” he says firmly, trying to change the subject. “We should look into seeing if we can use the curse to track whoever cast it then.”

“What do you mean?” Lance asks.

“Did you ever get into searching spells at your school?” Keith asks, reaching out a hand and making a pulling motion at one of the pots hanging on the far side of the room. “At mine, there were loads of kids trying them out.”

“Well, yeah,” Lance says, watching a blowball float their way. “But that’s for a love spell.”

“Yeah,” Keith says, grabbing the dandelion out of the air and twirling it between his fingertips. “But there are some curses that will work under a similar principle, if the connection between the two people is strong enough. It doesn’t have to be as strong as a soul bond, those are the most powerful, but it needs to be meaningful. And a curse like this is a pretty strong connection, especially since your magic is being taken through it.”

“Did you ever do the love spell?” Lance asks, gently taking the blowball from Keith. “It was the same at your school, right? You blow the seeds to the four directions when searching for love.”

“I--” Keith flushes a little and shakes his head as Lance looks closely at him. “No, I didn’t.”

“I did,” Lance says, grinning. “I couldn’t follow it all the way to where it led, though. I got about halfway to that old church on Broadway, like two blocks down from here? But then it got too dark. I kind of got bored of it, especially since it didn’t really work for most of my classmates.”

“The bond has to be strong, like I said,” Keith says absently. “And I doubt a lot of the emotional connections in high school are that solid.”

“True,” Lance says, shrugging. “So is that what we’re gonna do here? Blow this and see where it takes me?”

“No,” Keith says. “That was more of an example -- blowballs are pretty much exclusively for romantic bonds. But I’ve had some luck with angelica root ash when tracing magical signatures in curses.” He walks to one of his shelves, pulling of a jar full of ashes with a blue label. “Angelica root is good for curse deflection and for visions, which means it’s good to trace with. I found the caster of a choking curse with this once.”

“A choking curse?” Lance asks, eyes wide.

“A woman got ahold of someone’s hair and used it to create a connection to them, and they started choking on a ball of their own hair.” Keith makes a face, remembering the disgusting sounds of retching and the horrible sensation of pulling the hair out with his own magic, trying to be as careful as possible. “It wasn’t enough to kill them but it was -- really bad. They had to go to the hospital for damage to their throat. But I found the person responsible by following the connection back with a vision from the angelica root.”

“Holy shit,” Lance breathes. “That’s incredible.”

Keith struggles not to blush under Lance’s awestruck gaze. “I’ve only done it a couple of times,” he says, trying to look unaffected. “But it seems to work pretty well.”

It’s a basic premise, but Keith doesn’t want to take any risks, so he makes sure he has all of his protective stones on him before he starts. Lance sits on the counter again, idly kicking his feet as he watches Keith mix the ashes with a bit of almond oil, turning them to a chalky, dark paste. Keith almost gets distracted watching his bright red shoes flick back and forth, and then abruptly remembers that he has to apply the mixture to Lance as well as himself and curses himself for his lack of foresight.

“Um,” he says awkwardly, setting the bowl with the ashes aside, “I have to put this on both of us so I can read your connection. It’ll go around my eyes and, uh, I have to put it on your affected area.”

Lance’s brow furrows, “Okay. What would that be?”

“Your heart is the best proxy,” Keith says, eyeing the white tanktop. “It’s where the curse is focused, when I’ve looked at it.”

“Oh,” Lance says. His voice is slightly croaky, and when Keith looks up, there’s a pink flush riding high on his cheekbones. “So I guess I should -- um -- take this off?” He pulls lightly at the material over his chest and Keith feels his own face heat up.

“Yes,” he says, trying to sound calm although he can feel his heart tripping faster and faster. “If you want to just, uh, maybe pull the sleeve down--”

“That’ll stretch it,” Lance says. He’s still blushing, but he reaches down and pulls the shirt over his head, setting it gently in his lap. His hands fold over each other and he looks at Keith expectantly.

Keith’s throat is dry. Lance’s torso is long and his skin is ridiculously smooth; he looks more marble statue than human, just for a moment, and then he shivers a little, breaking the illusion, turning back into a boy sitting on Keith’s counter.

Keith has the sharp and fleeting urge to reach out and touch the hollow of his throat, to feel his pulse until his skin just to be sure. He swallows hard and picks the bowl up again, finding a paintbrush under the counter and dipping it into the mixture.

He paints a circle over Lance’s heart with the ashes, filling it in with enough of the mixture to make sure it’s covered. Then, wishing he had a mirror but deciding to wing it, he lifts the paintbrush to his own face.

“Wait,” Lance says, frowning. He reaches out and touches Keith’s hand for good measure, halting its progress. “Tell me what to do and I’ll draw it for you.”

Keith hesitates, and then gives him the brush. “Just -- a circle around both of my eyes should do it,” Keith says quietly. Lance takes the brush and looks down at him intently, his mouth pursed in concentration.

“Does it matter how thick the lines are? Should I fill it in, like you did mine?” he asks.

Keith shakes his head. “No, my connection doesn’t need to be as strong as yours. I’ll be able to follow it. Just -- just around my eyes is fine. The line doesn’t need to be that thick.”

Lance’s free hand moves to cup his chin, holding him still, and Keith’s breath catches in his throat. “One sec,” Lance murmurs, lifting the brush, and Keith’s eyes close automatically.

The brush is warm with magic when it touches his skin, leaving a line of heat around his eyes, but it can’t compare to the warmth of Lance’s hand on his face. Keith’s stomach shivers painfully, a twisting sensation that’s almost too strong to ignore. The time it takes Lance to do both eyes is almost enough for him to decide he has to pull away before he does something ridiculous, like make something catch on fire, or lean into the touch.

“Okay,” Lance says, just as quietly as before. Keith’s eyes flutter open and the first thing he sees are Lance’s eyes, looking at him. They’re darker than they’ve looked before, almost a stormy blue rather than a bright sky. There’s a long, breathless moment where neither of them move, but then Lance’s mouth quirks and he breaks away, setting the bowl down. Keith tries to remember how to breathe.

“You look like a raccoon,” Lance says, grinning.

“Gee, thanks,” Keith say wryly, stepping away from the counter. The angelica root is is already working -- he can feel it mingling with his own magic, magnifying and focusing it.

“A cute raccoon,” Lance assures him. Keith flicks a glance at him, but Lance is examining the ashes on his own chest, tilting his head curiously. “So what should I do now?”

“Just sit still,” Keith says. “And, uh, I guess if you can, try and focus on the curse -- see if you feel the connection between it and whoever cast it, and bring it to the forefront. It’ll make it easier for me to see.”

“Sure,” Lance says, although he looks dubious. For the first time, Keith wonders what he would do if he suddenly didn’t have access to his magic. He knows he uses it superfluously -- it saves him getting a stepstool to reach his planters, or a few precious moments of turning on a stove when he wants tea. It’s something he turns to automatically, that he uses like another limb, an extension of himself. If he didn’t have his magic, if he couldn’t rely on it, he’s not sure what he would do, who he would be.

He shakes the thought away. It’s not useful to Lance, who’s done a better job of handling this whole situation than Keith ever could. The least he can do now is focus properly on fixing it.

He closes his eyes, puts his hand against the circle on Lance’s chest, and breathes.

The curse is the same as ever, eager to see him and squirming around Lance’ heart like a spider’s web of black. He can feel it pulling at him, but he keeps his distance, focusing instead on where a connection would exist, where the magic could be getting pulled to. Any decent witch would cover themselves, would make it difficult to track their origins, but Keith is the best cursebreaker in this city, and he relentlessly pursues every edge of the curse, every hint of a bond.

The skin under his hand pulses warm and Lance makes a soft noise, not in pain but straining, and suddenly, Keith can see it. It’s gray and wispy and weak, but he can see a thread leading away from the curse.

He bears down, his magic unfurling like a cloak around him, and follows the thread.

It’s twisting, winding -- it deliberately tries to mislead him, and he pushes harder against Lance’s chest, feeling the ash respond in kind, burning against his palm. His magic flickers wildly in his grasp, trying to give chase, trying to pull away from him, but he grits his teeth and holds fast -- the curse lingers, dark and greedy, in the back of his mind.

After what feels like an hour of following the thread, his vision clears, and something begins to form in the mist -- a dark room, a library maybe, hushed voices and a flash of a red-gemmed ring in the darkness. A woman’s dismissive hand waves under long pale hair, but he can’t see a face, he can’t see anything distinguishing anyone, it’s too dark, and underneath his palm he can feel the ash dwindling to nothing--

All of a sudden, golden eyes pin him and he feels his breath stop as the woman stares and then smiles.

He pulls away from Lance, gasping for air, his magic shaking in his skin, his palm scorched. There are hands on his shoulders immediately, steadying him while he tries to get his breathing under control, blinking his eyes so the vision of that smile will leave him faster.

“Keith?” Lance asks, sounding worried. “Keith, are you okay?”

Keith ignores him and shakes his hand out absently as it stings, then panics and hurriedly looks at Lance’s chest where the ash had been. Thankfully there’s only a red mark from where Keith’s hand had been pressed against his skin, and when Keith gently prods it, there’s no damage or lingering heat. His shoulders slump in relief, comforted that at least Lance hadn’t been hurt.

“I’m fine,” Keith says sighing. Abruptly he realizes that his hand is still touching Lance’s chest, while Lance’s hands are still holding onto his shoulders. They’re only a half foot apart, Keith between Lance’s legs as he sits on the counter, Lance leaned in close so he can peer into Keith’s face.

Across the room, a cedar branch catches fire.

“Shit,” Keith says, jerking out of Lance’s hands and hurrying over to put it out. His magic responds jerkily, but the fire goes out quickly enough, leaving the branch to smolder where it hangs on the wall. He reluctantly turns away from it and faces Lance, who’s staring at him with wide, startled eyes.

“Are you okay?” Keith asks awkwardly, rubbing his hand against his side to try and get the rest of the burning sensation to leave. Lance looks down at his chest and then back up at Keith, reaching up to touch his heart carefully.

“I’m -- it’s fine. It doesn’t feel any different. But you look -- your hand -- Keith, seriously,” Lance jumps down off of the counter and walks over to him, reaching out and pulling his hand away from his side. Keith is too flustered to resist, staring up at him as he examines the red burn marks in the middle of his palm. “If I had my magic,” Lance murmurs, and then looks quietly miserable.

“Right,” Keith says, remembering. “You’ve got elemental magic. Healing.”

“As long as I have water nearby,” Lance says. He frowns. “And my magic.” He tugs lightly at Keith’s wrist, cradling his hand carefully. “Do you have a first aid kit or something? This needs something on it right away.”

“I’ve got aloe?” Keith says, shrugging. Lance sighs, his mouth finally turning up at the corners wryly. “This doesn’t usually happen,” Keith says defensively.

“Why did it hurt you and not me?” Lance asks. His fingers trace gently around the edge of the red skin, leaving tingles that distract Keith from answering for a moment.

“I was the one using the magic,” Keith answers, gently pulling away and moving towards his aloe plant. He uses his magic to gently cut one of the outer leaves, slicing it open so that he can see the gel inside.

“Here,” Lance says, taking it from him and squeezing some of the gel onto his fingertips. He grabs Keith’s hand again and gently smooths it over the skin, flinching when Keith’s breath hisses through his teeth. “Sorry,” Lance says quietly, then resumes spreading the gel.

“It’s fine,” Keith says, already feeling the aloe working against the burn. “Thank you.”

“Lavender is supposed to help too,” Lance says, running his fingertip in a circle around the edge of the mark. When Keith looks at him in surprise, he smiles crookedly. “Hey, I took special courses for healing in school. I remember a few things.”

“My lavender oil is in the back,” Keith says, “But it can wait. I want to write down what I saw before I forget something important.”

“You did see something?” Lance asks, his breath hitching excitedly.

“Yes,” Keith says, grinning, and then abruptly realizes that Lance is still shirtless in the middle of his shop, holding his hand and smiling brightly at him. “Um,” Keith says, his face heating. “You can put your shirt back on.”

Lance lets go of him, flushing. “Right. I’ll just.” He picks his tank top back off the counter and slips it on over his head, fussing with the hem when it’s properly on again. “What did you see?”

“A dark room,” Keith says, flipping through his notebook to get to his notes on the Komar curse. He starts writing rapidly, trying to remember as many details as he can. “Maybe a library, there were a lot of books. Multiple voices. I couldn’t understand them but it was definitely a man and a woman. And I saw her -- she had white hair, pale skin, I think she was pretty old. Her eyes--” Keith pauses, swallows. “Her eyes were cold. They were...golden.”

“An old woman with gold eyes?” Lance says quietly. “I don’t -- I don’t know who that could be.”

“She was wearing a ring with a ruby on it,” Keith says, wondering if he should risk trying to sketch it out with his terrible artistic skills. He settles for writing a description and doing his best to describe the perfect circle the stone had made, how there might have been symbols etched into it that he couldn’t remember. He’s pretty sure he would recognize it if he saw it again.

“Was there anything else?” Lance asks, crossing his arms over his chest. He looks pensive, biting his lower lip.

“I don’t -- I don’t think so,” Keith says, trying to remember. “But I’m pretty sure she’s the one who cast the spell.”

“I wish I could have seen her too,” Lance says, sighing. “So I could know if I recognized her.”

“I could try and draw her, but I doubt a stick figure will help us,” Keith says wryly. Lance laughs, eyes warming as he looks at him, and then goes rigid all of a sudden and snaps his fingers.

“My friend Hunk can help! He has this spell that lets him take images from dreams and put them to paper, it helps him sort through the meanings and stuff.” He starts to look a little excited. “I bet we could find a way to use that and get a picture of her!”

“Wait,” Keith says, brow furrowing. “Why does he know that kind of spell?”

“Well,” Lance says, tilting his head, “He’s interested in dream magic.”

Keith stares at him for a long moment, and then says, choking back somewhat hysterical laughter, “Of course he is.”

Lance looks confused but doesn’t question it, just whips out his phone and starts texting immediately. “I don’t think he’s on shift today either, so hopefully he could come over and we could do that this afternoon. Unless you’re busy,” he adds, lowering his phone belatedly.

“I’m not,” Keith says, setting his pen down. His palm is still sore, but it feels better than it had five minutes ago, which is good enough for him. He has more important things to worry about now -- namely, if Lance has a friend who’s a witch that’s good at dream magic, does that mean that witch will be able to tell what kind of dream’s Keith’s been having, if he comes here to help? Does it mean that Lance has already had someone to go to if he’s been having dreams himself?

Keith chances a look at Lance, who’s still staring at his phone, brow furrowed and tongue between his teeth as he types. The sleeve of his tank top is slipping to the side a little, and his hair is mussed from where he’d pulled it on in a hurry. Keith’s heart bumps painfully in his chest.

“Awesome,” Lance says, grinning down at his phone. “Hunk can be here in twenty minutes. Holy shit, I think we might be getting somewhere.” He raises his eyes to Keith’s, still smiling broadly. Keith smiles back tentatively, wondering if he should ask Lance now rather than risk it coming out later in an awkward way.

Lance leans back against the counter, sighing, his shoulders dropping a little in relief. Keith can see the edge of the red spot where his hand had rested against Lance’s heart, just peeking over the top of the tank top. His palm burns.

Fuck. There’s no way he can ask Lance to his face if he’s been dreaming about him.

“I’m gonna go, uh,” Keith says, “Get something to wrap my hand.”

“Do you want help?” Lance asks, straightening again, but Keith waves his hand at him absently, trying to look calm.

“That’s okay. I’ll just be a second.”

The back room feels like a safe haven, and Keith allows himself to bend a little, breath easing out of him slowly like a balloon releasing. His magic shifts uneasily under his skin, pulling at his heart pointedly.

“I get it,” he says out loud, holding a hand up to his chest. His voice is frustrated.

Part of him is still anxious over the vision, over those piercing eyes pinning him down -- the bond went both ways, after all, and now whoever cast the spell definitely knew who he was. His basic protections wouldn’t keep him safe from whoever was strong enough to cast a spell like that.

But part of him, a bigger part, the part of him that he’s been desperately trying to ignore for the last few days, is caught up in how close Lance had been just a few minutes ago, how warm his skin had been under Keith’s hand, how gentle he’d been touching the edges of the burn.

He sucks in a breath and then lets it go again, slowly, slowly.

He uses scraps from the cloth he keeps for sachets to wrap his hand up, struggling slightly one-handed but unwilling to go back up front and ask for help from Lance. He lingers a little longer, resisting the urge to try and find something to calm himself -- he doesn’t want his magic muddled if someone is about to come in and start messing with his head.

The bell chimes up front, and he hears a sudden burst of voices and then hushed whispers. He takes another deep breath for good measure and makes his way up front, grabbing a light charm that’s gotten stuck in the hallway along the way.

“Are you sure -- oh, hey.” The speaker is a tall boy with dark skin and a wide smile, curling his fingertips in a wave at Keith when he walks into the room. It’s the barista from yesterday, the one who’d been inside when Keith had dropped Lance off. Lance pulls away from him where he’d been leaned in close, his cheeks darkening with a blush as he looks at Keith. Something heavy pulls at Keith’s chest, and he ruthlessly pushes it away. “You’re Keith, right?”

“Yes,” Keith says, resisting the urge to look him up and down. He can feel the difference in their height keenly, even from behind the counter. “You’re -- Hunk?”

“That’s me,” Hunk agrees, still smiling. “Lance has told me all about you.” Lance shoots Hunk a quick look, frowning, but Hunk doesn’t look away from Keith. “He said something about you tracking the person who cast the spell on him through the bond? But you need some way to record what you saw.”

“He thought of you,” Keith says, nodding.

“I’m still learning how to do this,” Hunk says cautiously. “My magic is more suited to creation stuff -- I don’t know if Lance told you, but I’m actually hoping to go into engineering. But one of my moms is a dream witch therapist, and I wanted to know more about it.”

Something in Keith settles a little. A novice. That’s somehow more bearable. Hunk probably won’t be able to dig around any more than Keith wants him to.

“Okay,” he says. “It’s worth a shot, at least. What do I need to do?”

“Uh, well, for starters, you should probably be asleep.”

“Wh -- I can’t fall asleep on command,” Keith sputters. Lance makes a soft laughing noise, covering his mouth with a hand. Keith shoots him a look, but Hunk is already waving his hand placatingly, sending Lance a frown.

“I’ve got a spell that lulls you into a quasi-dreamlike state. It should be enough to get you relaxed enough that your brainwaves resemble sleep patterns, and enough for me to find the image I’m looking for.” Hunk flashes a smile at him, like that makes what he’d just said any better.

“Quasi -- what?” Keith crosses his arms and only barely resists taking a step away. “Is that safe?”

“Scared, Keith?” Lance asks teasingly. When Keith opens his mouth to reply, Lance laughs again, forestalling the words. “He’s practiced it on me loads of times. It’s not really sleep, but it imitates it. A lot of dream witches who are therapists do it with patients, it’s perfectly fine.”

Keith hugs his arms a little tighter around himself, feeling hesitant all over again. Lance’s eyes practically bore into him, wide and pleading. “Fine,” he says after a moment, sighing. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Where did you wanna lay down?” Hunk asks, casting a glance around the shop. There are no horizontal surfaces except the counter, which -- Keith is not doing that.

“I’ve got an office in the back. My chair will work,” Keith says.

“Cool,” Hunk says. “I’m ready when you are, then.” He flashes a thumbs up, which somehow relaxes Keith a little. Hunk seems to radiate a certain kind of steadiness, a grounded aura. It reminds him of Shiro, although Shiro is always more gently worried than anything the last few years.

In his office, he’s reminded of how he’d just thought of this as a safe haven; now it’s just another room, and it almost feels too crowded as he settles himself into his chair behind his desk and Lance and Hunk stand on the other side, looking around.

“I was in here before but I didn’t really take it all in,” Lance says thoughtfully, examining his bowl of ashes. Keith swallows, watching him stretch on tiptoe to peer at the pieces of wood assembled on his shelf, or tilt his head to read the spines of his books. Lance has an absent smile on his face, a gentle curve that reaches his eyes. The difference between the anxious tilt of his mouth, the forced one Keith has seen for the last few days, and this smile, unconsciously given, is unmistakable. This smile most closely resembles the one Keith has seen in his dreams, the guileless, simple one.

Keith realizes that for the first time, maybe since all of this started, Lance is hopeful.

He forces himself to drag his eyes away from him, only to find Hunk staring at him with curious eyes. Startled, he only barely resists grabbing the amber he keeps in his jacket pocket, an instinctive reaction to protect himself from those eyes. Hunk seems to notice, because he smiles gently.

His voice is soothing when he says, “You ready to start?”

“Yes,” Keith says. He feels a muscle jump in his jaw, realizes he’s clenching his teeth. Hunk reaches out, puts a hand against the side of his head, touching the hair just above his ear.

“Take a deep breath,” Hunk says -- his voice echoes strangely, like Keith can hear it inside of his head as well as outside. It makes no sense, but it doesn’t really matter anymore. He blinks, and Hunk blurs into brown and gold, a white flash of eyes. He’s still there, still in front of Keith, but there’s no features, no nose or mouth or face, and he thinks he should be worried, but everything is soft and gentle and comforting.

It’s alright, a voice says, soothing. Take your time.

Time? He has time? Time feels flickering, pointless, inescapable. He blinks and it feels as if a year has passed -- there’s a midday sky behind the gold and brown shape, all shades of blue and white, and it holds a new moon in the middle of it and feels -- wrong, but right, so right, but --

Think of the vision, the voice says. The woman. What was her face like? Close your eyes.

The woman. Keith closes his eyes, and things feel clearer without the colors flooding his vision. The woman -- the woman -- her pale face looms in front of him, her narrow golden eyes, her pointed chin, her long white hair. Darkness around her, purple and red and black, illuminated by a flickering flame. Her ring catches the light and throws it at him, a red sun flashing, blinding.  She’s as unsettling to see as she was before -- her malevolence tracked in every crease of her smile, like she can see him, like she can reach him --

Keith, it’s alright. A new voice. Blue skies. The sun lingering on a mouth. Sitting on a counter, no, on the bank of a river, no, curled in a warm bed. A smile, meant just for him, a voice --

Keith opens his eyes, hands gripping the sides of his chair so hard his fingers are cramping, to see Hunk pulling his hand away from his head. He’s giving Lance a chastising look, but Lance isn’t looking at him -- he’s staring at Keith, who realizes suddenly that he’s gasping for air, his chest heaving with the effort.

“Are you okay?” Lance asks. He’s moved from the other side of the room to the right of Keith’s chair, and his hand hovers over Keith uncertainly.

“I’m fine,” Keith says, and it’s true. He’s out of breath, and his heartbeat is racing, but there’s nothing wrong with him, at least not until he looks up at Hunk and sees his expression -- calculating, thoughtful, knowing. He saw, Keith thinks, his heart sinking. He knows.

“Did it work?” Lance asks, leaning over Keith to stare at Hunk. His hand has finally migrated from midair to the back of Keith’s chair, close enough that if Keith put his head back a little, his hair would brush Lance’s fingers. He stays leaned forward, trying to catch his breath.

“I got it,” Hunk confirms, smiling. “Just give me a minute to get it onto paper.” He glances up at Lance, and then over at Keith. “Actually, Lance, could you give us some room? That way I can make sure everything goes okay and the image won’t be tainted with any other magic. Who knows what that spell on you might be capable of.”

Lance’s shoulders fall, and he stares down at his chest, touching the middle of it. “Oh,” he says. “Right. I’ll just -- I’ll watch the front counter.” He dredges up a smile, although it’s painfully obvious that it’s fake, especially when Keith knows what his real smiles look like. He has to resist the urge to tell Lance to stop pretending, bites his own tongue against the impulse. “I bet I could charm the pants off your customers, Keith. You might end up with some competition.”

“I’m pretty sure you’d win the charm competition,” Keith says. Lance’s expression smooths out, as if he’s surprised. “But I think otherwise I’d have you beat,” he adds, ridiculously pleased when Lance’s brow furrows indignantly, taking the faux-smile with it.

“Hey,” he says, raising a finger to point at him, “I’ll have you know--”

“Lance,” Hunk says, sounding amused. “This is kinda time sensitive, you know that.”

“Fine,” Lance says, huffing a little. He flicks the finger pointed at Keith, narrowing his eyes. “When I get my magic back, you and I are gonna settle that, though.”

“Looking forward to it,” Keith says casually. This time, when Lance smiles, it reaches his eyes. It’s the last thing Keith sees before Lance closes the door behind him, leaving him alone with Hunk. There’s a brief pause before Hunk opens his mouth to say something, but Keith beats him to it.

“He couldn’t see that, right?” Keith asks, leaning forward with his hands on the desk. “At the end?”

“He couldn’t see any of it,” Hunk confirms. “You just started breathing quickly, and your hands were gripping the chair pretty tight. You looked like you might have been in pain. He shouldn’t have spoken, he knows that, but he was worried.” Hunk sits in the chair opposite him and pulls several pieces of a glossy paper out of his bag. They look almost wet, a strange shine to them that reflects the yellow lamplight of a bulb Keith probably needs to replace. He sets the papers on the desk and pulls a camera out of the bag as well, letting it hover in the air next to him. “I’ll record it, just in case something happens,” he tells Keith.

“Fine,” Keith replies shortly. Hunk gives him another look but doesn’t say anything.

He starts with the middle piece of paper, touching the shiny surface with his full palm, fingers spread wide. For a moment, nothing happens, but then dark rivulets of color start to seep around, following some unseen pattern -- Keith realizes an image is forming, realizes it’s the woman when a broad stroke of white starts to take shape as her hair.

“The spell essentially just channels the images to me,” Hunk explains, “And because my mom trained me, I can hold them for a short period of time and then use this spell to transfer them to this special paper. It’s not a difficult spell to master, you could probably do it, but it does take a lot of time. You have to work with a dream specialist for months.” His voice is soothing, matter-of-fact, and he doesn’t look up from the paper as he speaks.

He’s talking so much because he thinks it will calm him, Keith realizes. Although part of him bristles at the implication that he’s not calm, another part of him recognizes the gesture and is grateful. Knowing how it works does make him feel better, and he lets himself lean in closer to look as Hunk transfers his hand to another piece of paper, this one beginning to depict the red ring.

“You have to tell the person what to do in the dream state?” Keith asks, because he’s realized that the voices were Hunk’s and Lance’s respectively by now. Hunk nods his head, moving his hand slightly so he can peer at the picture.

“Sometimes the client will already have the image in mind, but a lot of the time you have to direct them to it. That kind of stuff can reassure people in therapy, as long as they trust their counselor not to ask them anything they don’t want them to know. I can’t pull the images out of your brain myself, you have to be thinking them.”

There are several more pictures now, another angle of the woman, the background of the fireplace and bookshelves that Keith had barely noticed this time. Hunk glances up at him and says, “Those dreams you’re having, the ones about Lance -- they’re not just dreams. You’ve guessed that, though.”

Keith flushes, slumping in his chair. “I know,” he murmurs. “I don’t know why his curse would be affecting my dreams though.”

“Maybe because you’re the one who’s interacted with it?” Hunk suggests. “You’re the first cursebreaker he went to. The doctors and healers, they just looked at it, they didn’t try to fix it. After my girlfriend recommended you--”

“Shay’s your girlfriend?” Keith asks before he can stop himself. Hunk gives him a knowing look.

“We’ve been together for three years now,” Hunk says; his smile is more of a smirk, and it makes Keith scowl a little.

“She’s nice,” he says awkwardly, trying not to feel relieved. Hunk seemingly takes pity on him, letting the conversation resume without commenting.

“She is,” he agrees. “Anyways, she heard about you from some friend of a friend, and your online reviews are really good, so Lance came here first. Maybe when you checked him out, it did something to connect you to it.”

“My magic did react weirdly after that,” Keith murmurs. “I assumed the spell was just taking my magic because of the proximity, but if I’ve been somehow affected as well -- but that’s not how it works, the spell is incredibly specific, it’s only supposed to affect Lance.” He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “None of this makes sense. The dreams don’t make sense.”

“That’s probably because you wear those protection stones all the time, dude, and nothing can get through,” Hunk says. Keith opens his eyes and stares at him, mouth parting. “I can sense them. Plus you just seem the type to have them, to be honest.”

“You’re saying my stones are blocking the dreams and that’s why they’re so -- muted?” Keith asks.

“Are they muted? But you can still see stuff?” Hunk looks interested, leaning forward. The papers are all filled in with pictures now, the images Keith remembers -- they look really good, just like they were in his mind. “What’s been going on?”

“Just -- Lance and I talking, except I can’t hear anything, and he’s the only really colorful thing there. Everything else is...dull.” Keith makes a face. “But this still doesn’t -- my stones should make it so nothing comes through, not just some of the dream comes through.”

“The magic must be stronger than your stones,” Hunk says reasonably. “Strong enough to get the majority of the dream in, but not all the pieces.”

“Last night,” Keith says hesitantly, “I used lavender, linden, and poppy seeds in a sachet before bed. It was the clearest it’s been. All the other times, I had the dream and then used the lavender afterward, and my sleep from then til morning was normal. So does that mean the dreams came easier last night because I used the sachet beforehand?”

“That makes as much sense as anything. Dream magic isn’t really a science, you know?” Hunk says, tapping his chin. “Well, okay, you have two options. You can either use much stronger stones, and try and block the dreams completely, or,” he pauses, looking intently at Keith. “You can take the stones off and see what’s going on.” His tone is pointed, almost knowing.

“You said that like you already know what I’m going to do,” Keith says, faintly accusing, but he knows what he’s going to do as well. Hunk smiles and starts gathering the pictures up, pausing his camera -- Keith had forgotten about it, and colors red at the reminder of all the things he’d said.

“Just be careful, Keith,” Hunk says, standing up. “I know this dark magic stuff is your deal, and I don’t know a lot about it, but I know enough. If there’s someone out there sucking Lance’s magic, and you’re on their radar now, you should take precautions."

“I will,” Keith says, oddly touched at his concern. Hunk pulls his bag over his shoulder, and Keith makes a soft noise. “Hunk,” he asks, still pink. “Has he -- does he have dreams too?”

Hunk stares at him silently, his mouth softening from a smile into something more unsure. “He hasn’t told me,” Hunk says, a little sadly. “I think there’s a lot he’s not telling me, though.”

Keith thinks of Lance earlier, about nobody knows about the end. He bites his tongue, and nods his head, and follows Hunk out of the room without saying anything else.

Lance is actually on the phone when they walk up front, with one of the light charms nestled in his hair and the planner spread out on the counter in front of him. He’s got a thumb in his mouth, chewing on the nail as he runs a fingertip down the hourly schedule.

“Let’s see here, Peter, I think Keith has an opening next Tuesday if that works for you?” Lance pauses, then puts a pencil to the notebook and taps an entry twice. “Say around eleven in the morning? From what I can tell, a curse like that shouldn’t take him any time at all, you’ll definitely be able to make your lunch date. Yep, no more purple spots on your chest. Haha, yeah, well, we’ve all annoyed an ex at one point or another, I’m sure. Sure. Yep. I’ll let him know.” He glances up at the two of them, a curious expression on his face. “Alright, goodbye.”

“I thought you were joking about stealing my customers,” Keith says, smiling. Lance straightens up a little, closing the planner and tucking it away where it was before; as he turns to face them, Keith realizes the tips of his ears are red.

“The phone was ringing, and I just automatically answered, and from there I just -- was that okay?” Lance asks, biting his lower lip.

“It’s fine,” Keith assures him. “I hate talking to customers on the phone, they always want to go into too much detail and I can’t just zone them out and focus on the curse instead like I can in person.”

“An excellent bedside manner,” Lance compliments him dryly. “Hunk, whatcha got for me?”

“I don’t recognize her myself, but check her out, buddy.” Hunk spreads the pictures of the woman across the counter, and Lance hurriedly leans over them, his eyes tracking each of her pictures, all the angles. Keith watches his excited expression fade into puzzlement, then disappointment.

“You don’t know her,” he says quietly. Lance shakes his head, but his brow is furrowed.

“I don’t, but something about her is familiar. Maybe her hair. I mean, how many people have long white hair like that? Something -- something is pulling at me. But I don’t know her. I don’t recognize the room either, or this ring.”

“Like I said, someone probably hired her to do it,” Keith says, sighing. “But we know what she looks like, and if I give these pictures to Pidge, I bet she can find some kind of trace of her.”

“Is she the one who does techno magic?” Hunk asks with interest. “Lance mentioned you had someone researching.”

“Yeah,” Keith says. “She was in here earlier, but she’s running on reserves right now. She went on a bender, which isn’t unusual for her.”

“Sounds like Hunk on a project,” Lance says, gently stacking the pictures together into a neat pile. “I swear past a certain point he starts speaking in a made up language only he understands.”

“You haven’t done the same?” Keith asks, because before his breakdown, he used to run his magic past its limits all the time. Lance laughs, and it’s almost a real one.

“I like my beauty sleep too much to wear myself down to nothing,” he says, winking. Hunk snorts a little, hitching his bag up on his shoulder. “Thanks for helping out, dude,” Lance adds, smiling at him.

“No problem,” Hunk says, shrugging. “Glad to be able to do something to help, to be honest. Let me know if you need anything else. You too, Keith,” Hunk adds, and his voice is just pointed enough that Lance shoots him a suspicious look.

“Thanks,” Keith says quickly, hoping he won’t ask about it.

He and Lance watch Hunk stroll out through the door, the bell sounding normal for once as it chimes above him. For a long moment, everything is still and quiet in the shop, with only the soft humming noise the light charms make to cut through the silence, and then Lance sighs, his shoulders loosening.

Keith watches him, wondering what to say. Lance solves the issue by glancing back at him, his mouth quirked up at the corner. It’s not a smile, but it feels genuine, more genuine than he’d just been with Hunk. The weight of knowing that, of being able to tell that about someone he’s only known a few days, is exhilarating and mystifying.

“Thanks for everything today, Keith,” Lance says, reaching out with a fist to gently tap Keith’s chest. Keith chews the inside of his cheek, struggling not to frown, not to let his worries show.

“It’s not enough, not yet,” he says, crossing his arms and frowning at the pictures on the counter. He looks up at Lance,  “I’m going to have to research more about time-sensitive spells, about how it was put together, and I think I’m going to research better tracking spells so I can--”

“Keith,” Lance interrupts, setting his hand on Keith’s shoulder. Keith swallows his words and meets his gaze, his breath hitching -- Lance is closer than he had been a moment ago, and his eyes are a serious, dark blue. “We’re gonna figure it out. I know it.” Keith stares up at him, unable to speak, his throat working. “I gotta -- I gotta head home, my sister’s about to get out of dance practice,” Lance says, and his hand tightens on Keith’s shoulder. “Can I meet with you tomorrow again? After school?”

“Yes,” Keith says immediately. He doesn’t know what his schedule looks like, but he already knows he’ll clear it. “I don’t know what I’ll have to tell you by then, but--”

“We’ll work on this thing together,” Lance says. “I’m not just leaving it all up to you.” He smiles, and Keith feels the echo of the dream spell earlier, his fixation on that smile, thinks about the fact that Lance seems to have a thousand of them, all so different. He realizes, somewhat uncomfortably, that he wants to see each of them, to learn them all.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Keith says, stepping away from Lance to grab his bag for him. Lance’s hand falls off his shoulder slowly and he takes the bag from Keith gently. “Bye, Lance.”

“Bye,” Lance echoes, and when he leaves, the bell chimes above him, sounding like laughter.

.

That night before bed, he takes off every protective charm and stone he has, gently unwinds the ivy that wraps around his bedposts and sets the plants in the spare bedroom. He feels uncomfortably naked without his stones -- he never takes off his amber necklace or onyx stud earrings, but he’s rarely without his black tourmaline ring either. He sets them all on the counter of his bathroom, lined along the edge of the sink, and realizes that he’s truly unprotected for the first time in years. Anything could happen.

Part of him is afraid. Part of him is excited. 

He’s sure it’s going to be impossible to fall asleep, that he might have to resort to using lavender again because his thoughts are too busy racing, wondering what might happen, but he crawls into bed, closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and--

He opens his eyes to see Lance standing in his kitchen; there are still bowls in the sink from the dinner he’d had with Shiro, a few glasses left on the counter, all empty but for one, which has a few swallows of water left, but Lance isn’t looking at any of that. He’s looking out through the window, into the early morning sunrise barely peeking over the edge of the treetops.

“Lance,” Keith says, and almost startles at the sound of his own voice.

Lance doesn’t seem surprised, just turns in place and stares at him. He’s backlit by the sun pouring in through the glass, so for a moment he’s just a silhouette, but Keith sees his teeth flash in a grin.

“Keith,” he says, and he doesn’t sound surprised at all. He walks closer, lets his fingertips reach out and brush the hair off of Keith’s face. “You finally look like yourself.”

Keith opens his mouth to say something, and Lance cups his face with both hands, his fingers smoothing over Keith’s cheekbones.

“You look brighter tonight,” Lance murmurs. “Your voice, too, it was clearer. I wonder if the spell is wearing off. Or changing.”

Keith doesn’t know what’s going on -- what Lance knows about what’s going on. He’s holding onto the knowledge that this is a dream by his fingertips, only barely grasping the reality of the situation. “Lance,” Keith says, because it almost feels like the only word he knows right now.

“These dreams are becoming a problem,” Lance says, still smiling. “Especially if you’re going to look the way you do in real life.” His hands are still on Keith’s face, his thumbs dipping down to press against the corner of Keith’s mouth. “I can see where you bite your lip,” Lance says. He laughs a little. “My memory is honestly frightening at this point.”

“It’s me,” Keith says, almost desperate. “It’s me, Lance.”

“It’s you,” Lance agrees. “Night after night, it’s you I keep coming back to.” He leans forward, pressing his forehead to Keith’s, his eyelashes fluttering shut. Keith keeps his eyes open, feeling helpless. “Keith, I’m so tired,” he whispers. “I wish I could tell you in real life, but I’m so scared.”

“You can tell me,” Keith says softly, his chest aching. “You can tell me anything.”

“You’re trying so hard,” Lance says quietly. “But I can see how scared you are too. I’ve already -- I already know how everything is going to end. I don’t want to make things harder on you--”

“No,” Keith says, and it’s strong enough, desperate enough that Lance pulls away and stares at him. “Lance, I’m not going to let anything happen to you, I promise.”

Lance blinks at him, his eyes tracking Keith’s face. “Keith?” he asks, but his voice is blurry, echoes like they’re in a long tunnel together, and the room around them goes bright and then everything goes hazy and dim and--

Keith sits up in bed all at once, his magic twisting anxiously under his skin like a coiled snake. He can still feel the warmth of Lance’s hands on his face, the sun through the window beaming down on his back.

“Shit,” he says, gasping for air. “Shit.”

He ends up staring at the ceiling for what feels like ages, his heart rabbiting in his chest like he’s being chased by something; at some point, his adrenaline must fade enough that he crashes, because he eventually passes out around three-thirty in the morning. When he wakes a few hours later, his magic and heart are settled again, calm once more. He sits up in bed and presses his hands to his face, breathing as slowly and deeply as he can.

He doesn’t know what it all means, or if Lance knew what it meant; doesn’t know if his magic’s strange reaction to the dreams was important or just a side effect.

He does know that it’s impossible for him to pretend he’s unaffected anymore, to ignore the feeling of Lance’s forehead pressed to his own, the sensation of his fingertips on Keith’s cheeks, the agony of his voice as he’d whispered, I’m so scared.

“Shit,” he says again, just for good measure.

.

The morning passes in a daze of customers and cursed trinkets, ignoring both Shiro’s phone calls and then Allura’s once Shiro starts bugging her to bug Keith. His mind is too wrapped up in the dreams to really focus on anything, but he half-heartedly digs around in his books, determined to find anything he can on dream magic and how they relate to curses.

Keith, Shiro texts him, Is something wrong? You felt strange this morning.

Keith, Allura texts, Should I ask my father? Coran? Shiro and I are getting worried.

Keith, Pidge texts, no luck so far on those pics but i’ll keep u posted. still grounded rn. but dude, u texted me at like five this morning. u ok?

He’s flipping through one book, skimming a passage on how to interpret dreams when a prickling on the back of his neck makes him look up. Lance is standing outside the window of the shop, peering in at him, and Keith stares at him for a full five seconds before he registers who it is. Lance looks surprised for a moment, eyes widening, his entire body going unnaturally still.

But then Lance flashes a smile his way, and the moment passes. He waves his hand before he ducks around and through the door -- the bell is just as bright and warm as ever above him. Keith feels his breath catch in his throat just looking at him, trying to figure out what he’s thinking.

“Hey,” Lance says, waggling his fingers. “I know I’m early, but I skipped class.”

“Oh,” Keith says, glancing at the clock. It’s barely past noon, but he hasn’t been paying attention to the time, too caught up in thinking about everything else..

“I brought you something,” Lance says, still smiling. He reaches into his bag as he walks closer, pulling out a bag of cookies. “Freshly baked. Hunk insisted they go to you, even though I hadn’t even told him about making you try them.”

Keith takes the bag of cookies and examines them, all of them picture perfect, like something out of a magazine. He thinks of all the things Hunk might know about him, about his feelings for Lance, after just a glimpse into his mind. It’s unfathomable that there could be so much after so little time, but Keith feels the magnitude of it as he glances up at Lance and finds a grin already waiting for him. This smile is pleased, but almost hesitantly so.

“Thanks,” Keith says, smiling back. “I hadn’t eaten yet, so this actually saves me a trip.”

“Cookies aren’t lunch, Sunshine,” Lance says, almost sounding scandalized, but he doesn’t stop Keith from reaching into the bag and biting into a cookie. It’s delicious, the perfect blend of soft and firm, the cranberries just tart enough to make the sweetness of the cookie stand out. He makes a noise, an embarrassingly happy one, and Lance laughs.

He finishes it off and starts eating another before realizing that Lance is trying to read his book upside down. He flushes, uncomfortably aware that the word dream is on the open pages no less than thirty times, and closes the book, sliding it away.

“Research for a client,” he says when Lance gives him a startled look. “It’s really boring stuff.”

“Research,” Lance says, brow furrowed. “Right. I almost forgot you have other clients.”

“Your case comes first,” Keith tells him, frowning. “Everything else is low priority, just simple stuff. I’m still waiting to hear back from--”

“Keith,” Lance says, reaching out and putting a hand on top of his, leaning in closer. “I don’t expect you to put your business on hold for me. Seriously. I know how hard it all is.”

Keith looks up at him, hoping his face isn’t as red as it feels it is, and realizes just how close Lance has gotten. His eyes are warm and blue like a spring day, like waking up and opening the window and just breathing fresh air; Keith looks at him and remembers, all over again, the dream from last night. Their foreheads pressed together. Lance’s voice, soft and weary, I’m so tired.

There are still shadows under his eyes. They’re expertly hidden with makeup, another fine layer of glitter on top of some kind of warm foundation, but Keith can see them. They seem darker than they had been yesterday, dark enough that Lance had gone to the trouble of hiding them.

“Lance,” he says slowly. “Are you feeling okay?”

Lance withdraws his hand, straightening. “I’m fine,” he says, tilting his head. “Well, you know, apart from the obvious.” He attempts to smile, but it’s clear it’s a fake -- Keith thinks it might be noticeable even to someone who didn’t know him.

“Are the stones not helping anymore?” Keith asks, leaning forward himself now. “I can give you new ones, we could make something to strengthen you. You don’t have to just -- to bear it.” He pauses, hesitating, then reaches out and puts his hand on Lance’s arm. “You can tell me.”

Lance stares at him, his mouth parted, his eyes narrow as he examines each facet of Keith’s face like he’s studying him for clues, or for answers. Finally, he licks his lips and says, somewhat shakily, “It wasn’t just a dream.”

Keith winces, not entirely surprised that Lance has realized so quickly. “No.”

“You too?” Lance asks, sighing. “You’ve been having them this whole time?”

“Since I met you,” Keith confirms. “But last night was the first time I could do anything, and it’s because I took my stones off.” Something occurs to Keith, something that he should have thought about to begin with. “Wait, if you’ve been wearing yours this whole time, why could you hear--”

“The stones burnt up. All of them, from the very beginning,” Lance says wearily. “I didn’t want to tell you because it just -- I didn’t want you to panic. I’m doing fine without them anyways.”

“That’s not what you said last night,” Keith retorts. Lance surprises him by bursting into laughter, and he realizes what he’d just said and flushes red, covering his face with one hand. “You know what I mean,” Keith mutters. Lance’s smile lingers on his face until he registers Keith’s serious expression and then it slowly fades.

“It’s...getting harder,” Lance allows reluctantly. “I’m tired. And I sometimes -- sometimes I have chills. And hot flashes. But other than that, it’s nothing. I’m not in pain. I’m not dying yet, and I didn’t want you to think I was.” He starts to look frustrated, clenching his fists. “I didn’t want you to think you weren’t helping, because you are .”

“You’re not supposed to be coddling me,” Keith says, a little annoyed. “I’m not the one with the curse on me that’s slowly sucking away all of my magic. Lance, I need to know when things change so that I can fix them. If I don’t have all of the information, I can’t be precise and I could fuck up.”

Lance looks rebellious for a minute, his eyes almost glowing as he stares down at Keith, but then his shoulders slump. He seems to cave in on himself, just a little.

“I’m sorry. I know, I know you’re right, I should have said something. I just -- I just can’t stand not being in control of this. I can’t stand not knowing anything.” He closes his eyes and looks very vulnerable, and it’s so unfamiliarly familiar that it takes Keith a moment to realize that this is how he’d looked last night, in the dream, finally showing himself to Keith without any pretense or facade of cheerfulness.

“Lance,” Keith says softly. Lance opens his eyes, and his mouth firms into a straight line and his shoulders straighten again.

“No more lies,” he says. “I’ll be honest with you, I promise. We both should be.”

Keith nods, feeling relieved. “Good. I think that’s the only way things are gonna--”

You have to kill the caster.

The words spring unbidden to his mind, cutting him off, leaving him staring wide-eyed at Lance.

“Keith?” Lance asks. He bends forward so he’s level with Keith’s eyes, peering into them curiously. He’s close enough Keith can feel the warmth of his skin.

“Nothing,” Keith says quickly. A hot curl of guilt starts at the bottom of his stomach and rises up, threatening to choke him, but he pushes it away. “Nothing. Let’s just -- we should try and figure out how the dreams are related to the curse.”

“I don’t think they are,” Lance says, thankfully taking the bait and letting it go. Keith almost sighs with relief, but inwardly his thoughts are racing. He’d almost forgotten himself that even if they did figure out who that woman was, unless they figured something else out, someone would have to kill her to save Lance -- Keith might have to murder someone.

He glances up at Lance, who’s digging around in his bag for something, and realizes with a cold shiver that the idea doesn’t seem as impossible as it once had, not if it could save Lance. The enormity of that makes him almost sick, fills him with giddy dread.

“Here’s the stones,” Lance says, plunking them on the counter, driving the thoughts away. The gemstones are scorched entirely, blackened from the inside out, and Keith winces and waves a hand over them immediately, sending them far, far away. “What did you--?”

“They had a bad energy,” Keith says. He gestures to a bit of sage and a sprig detaches itself from the plant and floats towards him, obediently lighting itself on fire. He grabs on and waves it around gently, focusing on making sure the smoke winds its way around Lance. Lance squints a little but tolerates it, watching it swirl around his shoulders and wind its way down his arms. “Why don’t you think it’s connected?”

Brow furrowed like he’s trying to think of the right way to phrase it, Lance says, “It feels sort of like when I used my magic before. It feels -- it feels like it’s from inside me. It’s not the same as the curse.”

“Your magic is -- working somehow?” Keith asks, surprised, setting the sage aside.

“No,” Lance says. “I don’t know. I still can’t do anything, I can’t use it. But it feels familiar.”

“It’s gotta be some kind of weak spot in the curse, somehow,” Keith murmurs. “Is it because it’s happening at the same time it was cast? The midnight hour is supposed to make spells stronger, more focused, so maybe--”

“I want to know why it’s connecting us, though,” Lance interrupts. “What’s the point? We don’t do anything in the dreams, just talk. Before last night, all you did was say the same kind of stuff you usually say during the day.” He goes a little pink. “My name, mostly. It was like -- like a memory or something, a memory of things we hadn’t done yet.”

“I don’t know,” Keith admits. “I’m not well versed in this. Maybe we should ask Hunk? Or his mom?”

“I’ll do that,” Lance agrees. “I think he already knows something is going on anyways.” He smiles a little wryly. “He’s pretty perceptive like that.”

“I noticed,” Keith replies, quirking his mouth in a similar smile. “You can give him my number.”

“To do that, I’d have to have your number,” Lance says, raising an eyebrow.

“You do,” Keith says, frowning.

“I have the shop’s number,” Lance corrects. “If I’d had your number, you would have gotten a phone call last night because I was kind of freaking out. Well, I could have called and I guess it would have gone through, but that seemed presumptuous."  

“Right,” Keith says, feeling faintly embarrassed. “Here.” He holds out his hand and takes Lance’s phone when he passes it over, quickly adding his phone number and handing it back. He opens his mouth to say something else and hears a camera noise as Lance holds the phone up and snaps a picture of him. “Hey,” Keith protests. “My mouth was open!”

“It’s cute,” Lance says without looking away from his phone, where he starts tapping away at something. “Here, I’ll text you.”

Keith looks at his phone, which lights up with a text: :3c

“Dude,” Keith says, looking up at him, deadpan.

Lance laughs, and Keith saves the emoticon as Lance’s contact name, just because he can. He takes a picture of Lance laughing as well, just because he can. Lance blinks at him but keeps grinning, his eyes soft.

“So, uh, I have some books we could look through,” Keith says hesitantly, “Stuff about tracking spells. But I--”

“Can we go for another ride?” Lance asks. Keith blinks at him, so he clarifies, “On your motorcycle. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I just -- I know this stuff is important, but I also just wanted to--” He looks uncertain, and shrugs his shoulders. “I dunno.”

“Yeah,” Keith says quickly. It’s not what he’d been planning, not what he should be doing, but -- but why shouldn’t they go? He didn’t have much else to offer Lance, no answers, no clues, nothing. If this was what Lance wanted, it was something he could give. “Yeah, let me just close the shop up really quick.”

“Really?” Lance asks, surprised. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Keith says, more firmly this time. “We can make it an errand. I need to go to my garden and restock on a few things. Let me just grab my inventory list and my jacket.”

“Cool,” Lance says, looking pleased.

Ducking into the back room to grab the list and the jacket, Keith takes a second to clear his head, to calm down a bit. Things with Lance keep happening so fast, revelations and feelings and surprises -- he makes himself stop and stand still in the middle of the room, to just let himself absorb everything.

I like him, he allows himself think tentatively. It’s true, but it’s also too soft and quiet for the feelings crowding his chest, like he’s a dam slowly buckling under pressure. He takes another deep breath for good measure, a bandage on the spreading cracks. Shaking his head, he grabs his jacket hanging on a hook, pausing when he spies another old leather jacket next to it. He hesitates, then clucks his tongue in irritation and grabs it.

“Here,” he tells Lance back up front, shoving the jacket at him. It’s soft and faded leather, a deep maroon that he hasn’t worn in ages. It belonged to his mother once, just like the motorcycle had, but he doesn’t want to tell Lance that and make things strange, or invite questions that Lance hasn’t bothered to ask yet.

“Oh,” Lance says, surprised. “Thanks.” He slides the jacket on one arm at a time, running his fingers along the lapels. “Oh man, this is amazing.”

“It suits you,” Keith tells him, because it does. Everything Lance has worn has suited him, his glitter and his sunglasses and his firetruck red shoes. It’s hard for Keith to imagine him not being effortlessly attractive.

Lance ducks his head, smiling. “Thanks, Sunshine,” he says again. “So what’s on your list?”

“I need to restock on some of my branches,” Keith says, scanning the list. “I could do with another rosemary plant, the couple I have potted in here are getting a little ragged. I always need more sage. Some catnip. I’ll probably think of more once I’m in there.”

“I’m kind of excited to see it,” Lance tells him as they walk outside, waiting patiently for Keith to close up. “I mean, your shop looks really cool, with all the hanging plants and stuff -- I thought that would have been all of your stock.”

“I have to keep a garden because I go through stuff so quickly,” Keith says, shaking his head. “If I was just keeping it for myself, the shop plants would be enough, but with customers I have to have a secondary source.” He hands Lance his helmet again, watching with some amusement as Lance fiddles with the straps before pulling it on. “Plus, it’s good to keep a garden. It balances you.”

“Some people don’t have magical green thumbs,” Lance says, poking him in the chest.

“I don’t either,” Keith retorts, poking Lance back. “I had to learn how to take care of everything from my parents.” Lance looks curious at that, but thankfully doesn’t ask more as Keith hurriedly turns his back and puts his own helmet on.

Lance hovers close as Keith gets on the bike this time, and doesn’t hesitate before he climbs on after him. Keith opens his mouth to remind him to hang on, but Lance is already snaking his arms around Keith’s midsection, his palms warm against his stomach even through the jacket.

He leans his head over Keith’s shoulder, the visor pushed up. “I’m ready!” he says, already smiling. His fingers flex a little, curling into the leather. Keith feels himself smiling too, kicks the motorcycle into gear and pulls out a little more quickly than he had last time, reveling in Lance’s giddy whooping.

It feels like flying -- the sun on his face, the wind blowing in his face, the warmth of Lance braced against him. Lance keeps himself close, but from time to time Keith feels him turn his head and look at something, feels him lay his head against Keith’s back, like he’s also basking in the feeling. It kindles something inside of him, little embers that feel like they’ve always been burning.

Keith’s garden, the garden his parents started years and years before he was born, flourishes on a small plot of land just a few miles away from the edge of town. It’s an area where all the wealthy people live on sprawling estates, which is why Allura sees it more often than him, but it’s not too far from his house, especially when he can take back roads. There’s a wooden fence surrounding it, heavily weathered, but there are a few newer boards here and there where he made Shiro come help him repair it. They’d spent an entire day researching spells to do it, gotten bored, then decided that the easiest thing was just to figure out fixing it themselves. It had resulted in a few crooked boards, and some near misses with thumbs and hammers, but they’d used enough nails that they were still fixed firmly in place, and it was pleasingly haphazard, like it was evidence of a mark they’d left on this place that had become almost sacred to them, the way all of their parents’ places had become sacred.

They’d both grown up in this garden, harvesting flowers and leaves and fruit, pulling weeds and learning small spells to fertilize soil or ensure the ground didn’t get too dry. Shiro liked planting best, liked watching the little shoots poking up through the ground, growing almost right before their eyes, but Keith loved harvesting most of all. He liked getting to pull and use ingredients, liked knowing that the lavender could be used for either sachets or to turn into oil, liked knowing he could use snapdragons to repel curses and fennel for protection. Touching the leaves and the stems and the petals, he’d come to understand just how powerful everything around him was, how powerful he was. Standing in the middle of towering rows of bushes and vines and trees, he’d realized how connected everything was, a constant flow of magic and energy and purpose.

He hadn’t realized what it would feel like, bringing Lance to the garden. As he turns off the motorcycle and turns to look at it, he feels the pull of it like it’s the first time he’s seeing it -- the enormous oak tree in the back of the lot, the ivy climbing all around the edges, just trying to curl its way a little closer. He sees the rows and rows of flowers and flowering bushes, the hyacinths and the hydrangeas. He spies the herbs tucked neatly in the front, separated into their own little pots so they don’t tangle with each other.

It’s lush, and beautiful, and perfect, and his -- it’s a reflection of him the way the shop is, but this is something that no one else gets to see except those closest to him, only Shiro and Allura, really. He feels Lance climb off first, the gentle rocking of the motorcycle as he slides off the back and stands next to it, but he can’t bring himself to look at him just yet. He feels stupidly like he’s accidentally showed Lance something he wasn’t meant to see yet, like he’s peeled back a layer of skin to show the softest parts of himself underneath.

“Keith,” Lance says softly. “This is…” He pauses, swallows. Keith stares at a pot of peppermint and tries not to look nervous. “This is amazing,” he says finally. “Incredible. You take care of this by yourself?”

Keith finally gets off of the motorcycle himself, crossing his arms as he stares out at the garden. “It’s got a lot of spells on it so that it doesn’t get overrun, or too dried out. Stuff to deter animals who might try and forage. But yeah, it’s just me.”

“Look at all of those trees,” Lance says, stepping forward as if compelled. “That huge one--”

“That’s our oak tree,” Keith says fondly. His mother and father had carved their initials into that tree a year after they’d been married, and there’s a few jagged lines about four feet off the ground where a six year old Keith had attempted to do the same before he’d been caught and relieved of the pocketknife he’d taken from his mother’s bag. “It’s been here for decades. Way before me or my parents. The other trees they planted though.”

He walks forward, placing his hand on the wooden gate and unlocking it with the same spell his mother and father had put on it all those years before. The gate swings open with a loud creak -- he’ll have to replenish the charm on the hinges, he thinks -- and he walks inside.

Lance follows curiously, his head constantly swiveling around as he takes everything in. There’s an organized chaos to the garden, since similar types of plants are usually grouped together, but most of them have grown into one another along their edges, taking over nearby beds and spilling over the edges of the wooden planters.

“Sage is up here,” Keith says, beckoning Lance with a hand. They walk along, and every now and then Lance will ask Keith about a plant, what it does, how it grows, can you eat it. Lance tastes mint and basil and lemongrass as they walk along, humming happily. “There are poisonous plants in here,” Keith warns him, “So ask me before you put anything in your mouth. Or touch anything, to be honest.”

“Yes, dad,” Lance intones dryly, and Keith laughs.

They clip a few handfuls of sage, setting them into a bag Keith keeps to hold all of his ingredients, spelled like his motorcycle bag to hold more than it should. Keith digs around in the bag for a moment, arm inside up to his elbow as he knocks gardening tools and loose twigs around, before he finally manages to grab a small pot out.

“I’ll need to transplant some rosemary,” Keith says, scanning the rows of herbs until he finds it.

“Can I do it?” Lance asks, tilting his head inquisitively. He reaches out, smoothing a hand along the rosemary, rubbing a leaf between his fingertips. “I’ve never done this kind of stuff before.”

“Sure,” Keith says, helplessly charmed by the curious expression on his face. He pulls out a spade and shows Lance how to dig around the plant, avoiding the majority of the rootball and leaving the soil intact. He cups his hands around Lance’s as they lift one of the smaller rosemary plants up and out of the pot it’s kept in, stowing it in the smaller one he’ll be able to hang in his shop. Lance’s hands are warm and soft underneath his, streaked with dirt. His nails are painted a pastel pink, so light it’s almost white, such a contrast against his skin tone that Keith is almost distracted enough to drop the plant. He lets Lance add more soil to the new pot by himself, patting it down around the plant so that it looks neat and tidy.

“That was easy,” Lance says, looking pleased with himself. “I take it back, I could definitely handle a garden.”

Keith flicks a bit of dirt at his face, grinning when Lance yelps and ducks. “You planted one little herb. You should be here on the days I have to walk around for five hours strengthening wards and refreshing the maintenance spells. Or on the days when I have to weed.”

“You don’t have spells for that?” Lance asks, absently examining a sprig of chamomile.

Keith shakes his head, tucking the rosemary plant carefully inside the bag. “There are things you can do to limit it somewhat,” he says, “But nature really does what it wants. If weeds want to find their way into the garden, they will. They’re pretty stubborn.”

“Sounds familiar,” Lance murmurs. Keith glances at him to find Lance staring back at him, a half-smile on his face. He realizes quickly how closely they’re bent together, that they’re pressed all along Keith’s right side so that he can feel the warmth of Lance through their clothing. The air between them seems heavy, like humidity has built between them, dragging in his lungs as he takes a breath.

When his heart beats in his chest, it feels like it beats twice as hard, like an echo.

Lance’s lashes flutter briefly, and then he leans back, settling on his heels. The glitter on his cheeks catches the sunlight, throwing a shower of sparks into Keith’s eyes. “What else?” Lance asks cheerfully -- as if he hadn’t felt it at all. Keith swallows, flexing his hands in his lap. Maybe he hadn’t felt it at all. Maybe it was just Keith being ridiculous.

“Birch,” he manages. “I need to get some more sticks.”

There’s a long row of birch trees, since they tended to be thin and his parents knew they’d go through a lot of them. They walk along, gathering twigs and sticks, trimming a few from the tress themselves here and there, until Keith has a neat bundle tucked under his arms.

“This will last me for a little while,” he says, pulling a bit of twine out of his bag and wrapping it around it. “I think that’s most of what I need right now. Oh, catnip -- I can grab that on the way out.” There’s no reply, so he turns around and realizes that Lance has wandered off. He’s approaching the oak tree, stepping under the expansive shade of its limbs and focused intently on the trunk of the tree. Keith follows him, putting the birch into the bag as he goes, wondering what Lance is looking at.

Lance reaches out a hand and puts it against the tree, and Keith realizes that it’s the jagged mark where he’d tried to write his name all those years ago -- the K is horribly lopsided, but still recognizable, but the E is impossible to interpret properly, and he’d been stopped before he could go any further.

“What’s this?” Lance asks softly.

“Me,” Keith replies with a quirked smile. “When I was a kid, I tried to copy my parents.” He nods his head towards their initials, the lovely curls and careful lines his mother and father had carved into the tree with proper tools. Their Ks are immaculate in comparison to his, but Lance doesn’t even glance up at them. He keeps his palm pressed to the tree, over Keith’s etching. He looks almost like he’s in a trance. “Lance?”

Lance draws a deep breath, then lets it out. He pulls away from the tree, tucking his hand up against his chest. “Right. Yeah, sorry. I can just feel…this place means a lot to you, doesn’t it?” He looks at Keith, his brows furrowed gently like he’s puzzling something out.

“Yeah,” Keith says quietly. “It does. It’s--” He swallows, hesitating, then decides to take the plunge. “My parents are the ones who planted it, and it’s one of the only things I have left of them.”

Lance’s brow softens, but it doesn’t make Keith uncomfortable the way he’d expected. Lance just nods, glancing up at the tree again. “You loved them a lot. I feel the same about my family.”

Keith’s throat closes up, warmth flooding his face. He pushes his hands into his pockets, ducking his head. “I do love them,” he says, because he’s never stopped, because it could never be past tense even if they’ve been gone for so long. “I feel them with me every single day, every time I go into the shop.”

They’re in everything, in the notched wooden countertops where his father had accidentally dropped a knife he’d been using to cut ingredients; the filing cabinets that still have his mother’s handwriting on every folder, her careful print outlining each aspect of the business; the inside of the doorframe in the office where carefully crafted marks plot out his and Shiro’s heights as they aged, starting from when Keith was four years old up until he was fourteen. It had taken him a full year to stop saying ‘our shop’ instead of ‘my shop,’ because even now it still felt like theirs, like he might look up one day and find them walking through the door, arm in arm and arguing about the best counterspell for this or that curse, that he would hear the song that was charmed to play when they walked through together -- it had been his father’s idea, and it had driven his mother crazy, but she’d never changed it.

The ache of loss is nothing new, but it still overwhelms him, so he takes his time absorbing the blow.

“I’m glad,” Lance says. It startles him out of his thoughts, because it’s not what Keith expected him to say, not what most people would say. He’s dealt with pitying expressions and meaningless platitudes for so long that he could almost say them along with whoever is offering them, but Lance is smiling up at the oak tree, not even looking at him. “I think they’d be really proud of you.”

Keith looks at Lance, and he wants so badly to kiss him that he can feel the ache of it in his chest. His magic yearns to pull him closer, to take one step and then another, to close the distance -- something in him insists there should never be a distance between them. He has to make himself clear his throat, to turn his back and dig through the bag pointlessly, to close his eyes and breathe. “You ready for another ride?” he asks, grateful when his voice sounds normal.

“Yeah,” Lance replies. His voice is careful but clear. “Yeah, let’s go.”

.

The ride back is quieter, calmer, but no less distracting; Lance keeps his hands firmly around Keith’s body, and somehow one of his hands curls up to rest against his heart, so neatly pressed against it that Keith suspects it isn’t an accident. If this is the kind of comfort Lance wants to offer, Keith doesn’t mind.

Neither of them speak on the way back to the shop, and Keith can’t tell if it’s comfortable or not -- he can’t tell what Lance is thinking, what it was about the tree that made him go so solemn.

When he shuts off the motorcycle, Lance stays pressed against him for a moment longer, his hands flexing as they breathe in unison, chests rising and falling. The sun is high in the sky by now, beating down upon their heads, but Keith doesn’t think it’s why his face feels hot, why sweat breaks out onto his brow.

“I gotta go,” Lance says after a long moment, loosening his arms. “I need to get my little sister from school, and then I have work.”

“I can drop you off,” Keith offers, since they’re still sitting on the motorcycle. He feels Lance shake against him and realizing he’s laughing. “What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Lance says, sounding fond. “It’s alright. I’d kind of like to walk. It’s a nice day, today.”

Keith squints up at the blue sky and thinks he’s right -- summer is well and truly here, bringing with it longer days and a sort of melancholic nostalgia, memories that feel all too fresh after where he’s just been. Summer had been his favorite season, once.

Lance climbs off the motorcycle, tucking the helmet away himself. Keith takes off his own, shaking his hair out, running his fingers through the strands until it feels settled. When he glances at Lance, Lance is staring at him. He hasn’t bothered to fix his own hair, but in a confirmation of Keith’s suspicions, he looks good with the messy hair anyways.

“I’ll see you later?” Lance says, and Keith swallows a laugh, because he has a feeling that unless one of them takes drastic action, that later means tonight in our weird linked dreams. They probably should have talked more about it, but it’s hard for Keith to bring it up now.

“Yeah,” Keith replies, smiling a little, relieved when Lance returns it. “I’ll do some more research tonight.”

“Text me if you find anything?” Lance asks, already backing up, hands in his pockets. He looks deceptively calm, like they’re two normal boys who’ve just spent a normal afternoon together. Maybe they are, and Keith is the only one who feels otherwise. Maybe he should get off the damn motorcycle and back into his shop, where things usually make sense.

“I will,” he says. He watches Lance turn the corner around the side of the shop, heading down the street towards the middle of town; at the last moment, he realizes Lance is still wearing the leather jacket, but he doesn’t say anything.

When he unlocks the shop, the bell above the door hums in welcome, and he hums absently in response. The light charms bounce around the room as he passes under them, floating around gracelessly and bumping off of the hanging pots as he makes his way towards the herbs.

He hangs the new rosemary plant, brushing his fingertips over its leaves, over the soil where Lance’s hands had pressed as softly as they had against his ribs on the ride home. He feels abruptly foolish, touching dirt from a potted plant in the middle of the afternoon just because a boy he felt connected to had touched the same place.

“Get a grip,” he tells himself sternly.

When he steps around the counter, rubbing his dirty hands absently against his thighs, he notices Lance’s backpack still resting there, bright blue against the wood. He picks it up, brow creasing at how heavy it is, although Lance had carried it like it had weighed nothing.

He texts Lance, You left your bag here.

There’s no immediate reply, which makes sense if Lance is still walking, so he sets the bag on the counter and pulls out a cursed object he’s meant to be working on for one of his customers, a key that opens doors to the wrong rooms of the house it belongs to.

He comfortably loses himself in the magic for a moment, examining the little spell intently, twisting it back and forth in his hands to find a weakness. It’s a simple, easy kind of magic, both to deal with and to understand. Something meant to be annoying, meant to wear at the patience of the person it affected -- the kind of curse he’s used to. He burns a bit of juniper just to make things easy on himself and pulls the curse away from the key, watching it twist in his grip unhappily before it dissipates into nothingness, leaving the key sitting harmlessly in his palm. As he sets it aside, his gaze catches on the backpack once more; a strong urge rises within himself to open it, but he pushes it aside and picks up another object, this one a pen.

He does two more curse removals before he catches himself looking at the backpack again; he bites his lip and glances at his phone, where there are no new messages waiting for him, before he draws the backpack close and opens it up.

It’s full of books. At least a dozen books on curses, on dreams, on dark magic and spellcasting and herbal magic, and one on bonds. All of the books have sticky notes highlighting specific pages, some more than others, and a few of them have papers sticking out of them. Keith pulls gently at one and finds it’s a printout from a website about bond magic.

This is hours of research, hours of reading and absorbing and writing. The notes are filled with small, meticulous handwriting, and while most of it is basic understanding, a lot of it is -- really good. Insightful notations, things it took Keith a lot of time to work his way up to. He feels vaguely overwhelmed, but mostly impressed.

“I can see why that fancy school wants you,” he murmurs, running his fingers over the bright blue of the straps, and then startles guiltily when his phone buzzes loudly on his desk.

It’s a message from Lance, because of course it is. damn, i’m so forgetful :p can you hold onto it for me until tomorrow?

He replies that yes, of course he could, the shop opened every day at seven in the morning but he could meet him before that. Lance sends back i’ll meet you there at seven, thanks :) and Keith quickly zips the bag up and tucks it away under the counter.

He should have known that Lance would be doing his own research into things -- Keith wouldn’t have left things alone if it had been a curse on him, so it makes sense that Lance would be doing the same. But Lance hasn’t mentioned anything to him -- hasn’t brought it up at all, or shared any insights he might have had, or asked Keith for help. It makes something in him anxious, especially since they’d promised to be honest with each other.

Except you aren’t being honest either, he reminds himself. He closes his eyes and sighs.

He spends the rest of the day doing his own reading and dealing with a few customers who walk in, either picking up their newly curse-free items or asking for his help. At the end of the day as he’s closing up, he hesitates but eventually leaves the backpack in the shop, telling himself it’s so he doesn’t forget it at his house but knowing that it’s so he won’t be tempted to dig through Lance’s things any more, to see if there’s really something that he’s hiding from Keith.

Shiro gives him a strange look when he walks through the door, looking up from the box of pizza he’s opening. “Did something happen today?”

Keith shrugs, reaching into the box for a slice and biting into it to stall for time. Shiro stares at him, unimpressed, while he makes pained noises as the hot cheese melts in his mouth. “Keith,” Shiro says firmly.

“Just a normal day,” Keith says, because in all honesty nothing had really happened -- it’s just something itching at his insides, something pulling at him constantly, telling him there’s something obvious right in front of him, something he’s missing. He doesn’t know how to convey that without sounding crazy, so he settles for taking another bite of pizza.

“You feel sort of -- frazzled,” Shiro says diplomatically. “Is it something to do with Lance? Are things getting worse?”

“Not worse,” Keith says slowly. Not yet, he thinks. “Just. Complicated.”

“I can help if you need me to,” Shiro tells him, reaching out and putting a hand on his shoulder. “You just look a little...tired,” Shiro says quietly, and the way he says it, Keith knows he’s saying it to imply something. It’s a precursor to Shiro doing something drastic, like keeping him away from the shop again, and he can’t do that, especially not now.

He swallows his bite of pizza, barely tasting it now, and smiles up at Shiro. Shiro doesn’t look convinced at all, but Keith concentrates on his protective stones, wills them to shield him from further inspection. “I’m fine. We’re figuring stuff out, I promise. It’s just taking some time, and it’s wearing Lance a little thin, so I’m kind of worried.” It’s all the truth, so Shiro nods his head gently and his his eyes soften.

“I’m here for you, kiddo,” Shiro says, running his hand up the side of Keith’s head to ruffle his hair. “Seriously.”

Keith’s throat feels tight; he stares at the corner of Shiro’s left eye to avoid looking directly at him. “I know,” he says, because he does. It’s not a lie.

Part of him does want to confess everything to Shiro, all of the dreams and weird feelings and the worry that he’s going to have to do something horrible in order to save Lance from this curse -- it’s Shiro, his brother, the only person he had left in the world. But there’s no way Shiro, the Shiro he’d come to know after his parents’ death, would ever let him continue on like this. He’d make Keith walk away, he’d call the police or doctors or anyone else he could think of to help Lance and take Keith out of the picture.

Keith may not know what to do, how to fix things, but he knows it has to be him. As if in agreement, his magic pulses in his body, straining in his blood like a leashed animal.

He goes through the ritual of removing his stones again that night, settling into bed with the air of someone about to embark on some kind of journey. He feels strangely as if he should be wearing something other than his usual overlarge shirt and shorts to sleep, even though he never really notices what he’s actually wearing in the dream. He can’t even really remember what Lance wears -- the only thing that’s ever really clear and focused is his face, his eyes, his smile.

He’s contemplating what sort of clothing would be best to meet someone in a dream state when he slips off into sleep, only a half hour or so before the witching hour. He opens his eyes and sees Lance sitting under the tree in the garden, staring up at the leaves. Nothing really moves, because there’s no wind, but everything is just as colorful as it is in real life, bright greens and reds and purples, blending together like a painter’s palette at the corner of his vision.

He makes his way through the sprawling plants, gently pushing vines and stems out of his way, until he’s close enough to see the curve of Lance’s mouth. Lance tips his head up to look at Keith, and his eyes are exhausted, but he still grins at Keith. Keith realizes he’s sitting underneath the jagged carvings Keith had made so long ago.

“Fancy meeting you here, Sunshine,” he says.

“This is so strange,” Keith says, glancing around. “I wonder why we’re in different places every time?”

“I think it’s our memories from the day,” Lance says, shrugging.

“I’m guessing that bedroom was yours,” Keith says, thinking back on the dreams, the different landscapes. “The hillside by the river too?”

“I go there sometimes,” Lance replies, drawing his knees up to his chest. “To think about things. It’s in a park near my house.”

“Oh,” Keith says. He hesitates, then sits down next to Lance, settling cross-legged with his back to the trunk of the tree. There’s a patient silence; Lance goes back to staring up at the canopy of the tree, breathing gently. “We’re just -- here.”

“We have to be somewhere,” Lance says reasonably.

“We’re here together,” Keith amends. “In a dream. Just -- existing. I still don’t understand.” Tonight it’s easier to hold onto the fact that this is a dream; he doesn’t know why, exactly, except that maybe now they’re both aware, painfully aware of each other’s presence.

Lance shrugs again, slumping forward to rest his weight on his knees. “It’s peaceful, at least.” His tone tugs at Keith, who leans closer, frowning. Lance glances at him, his brow creased. “Sometimes, after these dreams...I have nightmares,” he murmurs.

Keith feels like he should ask him about it, but he’s not sure what to say. He instead gives into an impulse that only really feels possible now, in this dream where they’re huddled together in a  facade of one of the most important places in Keith’s life. He reaches out and brushes the hair back from Lance’s face with one hand, letting his hand linger with his fingertips pressed to his temple. Lance goes very still and then looks at him askance, almost distrustfully.

“Are you pitying me?” he asks, nose wrinkling.

“No,” Keith says honestly. “I just wanted to see you better.”

Lance stares at him and then softens visibly. “Oh.”

Keith takes his hand away, feeling his face heat up. “I can give you lavender tomorrow morning. If you want to sleep better.”

“I think this curse would just burn it up too,” Lance says, sighing. “Nothing magical seems to be able to sustain itself around me, once it’s actually mine.”

“You mean the curse pulls the magic from things that belong to you as well?” Keith asks, brow furrowing. Lance frowns at him, like he’s said something strange, but nods his head. “Like the stones I gave you.”

“That’s my working theory,” Lance says. “My bedroom had some charms on it, privacy charms and stuff like that, but they’ve fizzled out, and no matter how many times my sister redoes them, they stop working after about a day.”

Lance suddenly smiles again, snorting.

“What?” Keith asks, confused.

“You were stroking your lip with your thumb,” Lance says, still grinning. “Like a detective puzzling over some grand mystery.”

“It’s just -- I hate not knowing anything,” Keith says, scowling. “There’s no data on this curse, so this is just a theory, but I think it’s because -- I think it’s because of you. I think it’s because the curse was put on you specifically that things are acting strangely.”

“What do you mean?”

“All of the research I’ve done, and that Pidge has done -- even in cases where we assume people are telling the truth about casting the curse and no one else knowing about it, no one’s ever said anything about the victim surviving as long as you have. It’s almost been two weeks.” Keith catches himself touching his mouth again and jerks his hand away impatiently. “We don’t have anything to compare it to, so maybe this kind of stuff, the dreams and the curse burning up other spells attached to you, maybe that would happen for anyone. But I think it’s you.”

“The dreams aren’t part of the curse,” Lance says firmly. Keith gives him a skeptical look, but Lance returns it, his mouth straight and serious. “I can tell, Keith.”

“My point stands,” Keith says, shrugging. “I think you’re special, somehow.”

“I bet you say that to all the boys,” Lance murmurs, resting his head on his knees and closing his eyes.

Keith feels his ears go hot, and he turns his head to look away from Lance before he can see. “You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Lance says, his voice strange, almost forlorn. Keith is still too embarrassed to look at him, so he stares across the garden, taking in the view and comparing it to what he’d seen earlier in the day. Everything is just as lush as he remembers -- trees tall, vines wrapped tightly around trellises, herbs spilling over the edges of their pots. It’s a perfect replica of Keith’s garden. In the distance he spies an old thermometer Keith and his mother had hung on the fence, yellowed with age and overlarge so they could see it from wherever they were in the garden. His gaze narrows as he reads it -- the temperature indicated doesn’t match the weather outside at all, showing that it’s negative 30 degrees Fahrenheit, a few notches above the bottom of the gauge.

Something tugs at Keith’s memory, other strange details that stuck out to him at the time, and he struggles to pull them from the depths of his mind for a moment, like digging at the bottom of a lake, sifting through sand and mud. He closes his eyes and tries to focus, and then remembers them all at once: a circled date on a calendar, a dreamt moon that didn’t match the real one, cups of water almost completely drained. And now this, a thermometer showing the wrong temperature, a gauge almost empty. It’s an emptiness that matches the look in Lance’s eyes when Keith turns abruptly and stares at him.

“Is this -- you’re worse than you’re letting on, aren’t you?” Keith asks. Lance goes still next to him and glances across the garden, spying the thermometer and wincing. “Is this some kind of countdown?” Keith asks, sitting up straighter. “Have you noticed this stuff before?”

“The first dream,” Lance says quietly. “I saw the date on the calendar.” He swallows, tucking his head against the corner of his elbow. “It’s a few days from now. I don’t know what it means. 

“It means you’re dying, ” Keith snaps. “Aren’t you? I thought we were being honest with each other--”

“We already knew I was dying,” Lance interrupts softly. “Nothing’s changed.”

“I told you I need to know everything,” Keith says hotly. Something terrified is crawling up the back of his throat, choking him. “Lance, we have to--”

“We’ve done everything,” Lance says. He reaches out and smooths a fingertip along the edge of Keith’s mouth, then quirks his own. His touch is like fire. “Well, almost everything.”

“Lance.”

“There’s still a few days,” Lance continues, as if he hadn’t heard Keith at all. His hand drops back to his side, leaving a burning mark on Keith’s face. “At least. I don’t know how this dream stuff works any more than you do. It could all be bullshit. I could die tonight in my sleep or a month from now for all I know.”

“You’re not gonna die,” Keith protests.

“Everyone dies, Keith,” Lance says tiredly. Keith makes a frustrated noise, and Lance holds a hand up. “I’m not giving up, I promise. I’m just -- I’m doing damage control. It already hurts enough that I know you’ll feel guilty if anything happens. I didn’t want to give you this deadline and put even more pressure on you.”

“Fuck my feelings,” Keith says furiously, pushing to his knees and leaning in close to Lance, who straightens and presses himself against the trunk of the tree in surprise. “Fuck my guilt, and fuck anything that makes you think that I would prefer to be kept in the dark. Lance, you’re my --” He cuts himself off, struggling to think of the right word. My client? My friend? My responsibility? Nothing feels right, nothing feels enough. Mine, some part of Keith insists, but he shoves it aside roughly. “You’re what’s important. Not me, or Hunk, or even your family. None of us can know what you’re going through but we can help.”

His chest is heaving when he’s through speaking, and he realizes he’s much closer to Lance than when he started, his hands digging into the dirt so he can lean in and look at him face to face. He can’t feel Lance breathing but he’s close enough that he would be able to if this were real life. Lance stares at him with wide blue eyes, the brightest blue in the world, his mouth open and gaping.

“Keith,” Lance says, startled, and Keith’s eyes blur as the image of him distorts, growing dim around the edges. “Keith,” Lance says, sounding regretful, and Keith feels something in him go desperate and he reaches out to grab Lance, to hold him--

And wakes up with his hands raised in the air above him, grasping at nothing.

.

Keith goes to the shop but doesn’t open it. It’s not the first time the shop has ever been closed, but it’s the first time since his parents died; he keeps the light charms in their bowl and leaves the sign hanging on the front door flipped to closed. He barricades himself in the back of the office at half past six in the morning, a massive cup of tea at his elbow and dozens of books at his side. He’s read most of them already, but it can’t hurt to go over them again. He sends a text to Pidge and sets an alarm for himself to text her again in an hour.

He’s not going to drag his feet anymore, not going to spend his time mooning over Lance when he should be focusing on saving his life.

He loses himself for a while in a book about bonds, because he’d been curious about what Lance might be researching, and he wonders if Lance was trying to find a better way to track the caster. He gets more caught up than he’d like, accidentally drifting off into reading about marriage bonding and soul bonds; he knows his parents had gotten a marriage bond, but soul bonds were something else entirely, something that predated ritual magic. You didn’t have to perform a spell to acquire a soul bond -- you just had one, were created with another being attached to you from the start, but they were incredibly rare. Sometimes people went their whole lives without realizing they had one, because they only became active through certain actions, like a kiss, or a sacrifice, or even bloodshed.

Marriage bonds had been created to mimic soul bonds, attaching you to another human being through magic and feeling. It was easy to find the person you were bonded with through magic like that, barely taking any effort or thought, and it would actually lead you right to them. He wonders if tracking spells that worked well on marriage bonds might similarly work for the curse, if that’s what Lance was searching for. It’s a long shot, but they’re kind of at the end of a very short rope.

He tries to take a drink of his tea and finds the cup empty, that his neck hurts from craning forward, that his eyes are heavy with lack of sleep.

He glances up at the clock and sees that it’s 7:28. His brow furrows. Lance had said he would be here to get his bag at 7, but the bell hasn’t chimed at all. He checks his phone, which starts to buzz as his alarm goes off telling him to text Pidge, but there’s no texts from Lance.

Something goes cold in his stomach. He realizes out of nowhere that he doesn’t know enough about Lance at all, where he lives or even what school he goes to -- he knows where he works, he knows his best friend is named Hunk, he knows he likes cranberry oatmeal cookies, but he has no idea how to find him now. The dream from last night, the memory of his tired eyes and desolate words, sends stabs of worry through his gut.

He texts Lance, hoping that he’ll receive a reply that Lance had just overslept or something. Something uncomfortable settles under his skin, and he realizes his magic is twisting unhappily in his chest; it feels as if he’s swallowed a particularly agitated snake, which is heaving back and forth inside of him, restless and frightened. He texts Pidge as well, although it’s unlikely she’s awake at this hour, and unwillingly turns back to his book.

He passes another hour this way, taking several trips up to the front counter just to be sure Lance hasn’t snuck in, but the backpack is still sitting behind the counter, bright blue as ever. He texts Lance again, and debates going ahead and calling him to be sure, but as he’s hovering over the contact, his phone vibrates with a text.

It’s not Lance. His shoulders drop as he thumbs it open and finds an unknown number, but the first sentence says Hey Keith, it’s Hunk, Lance’s friend? Hunk? Wait, right, Lance had said he’d pass his number on to Hunk. Lance hasn’t come to school today. I tried to call his house and his mom says he’s staying home sick, but he’s okay.

Something weak and shivery takes hold of Keith and he slumps over the phone, relief pulsing through him. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before he looks at the rest of the message.

Lance can be pretty bad about holding stuff in, even from people he cares about. Probably especially from them. We just gotta keep pushing at him until he lets us help. Let me know what I can help you with, okay? I’ll do whatever it takes.

Keith takes a moment to be grateful for Hunk, grateful for his thoughtfulness in reaching out to Keith, and that Lance has such a good friend. He almost feels guilty for knowing just how badly things could go for Lance while Hunk was still in the dark, but it wasn’t his place to tell Hunk anything about it, and he really didn’t know how to go about doing it anyways. He settles for texting back, I’m just doing research today. I texted him earlier but didn’t get a response. I hope he’s resting. I’ll let you know if I need anything.

Hunk sends back a thumbs up emoji. Keith saves his contact and sets the phone down on his desk, casting another glance at the blue backpack. He doesn’t even feel tempted to open it today -- he’s too worried about Lance, too caught up in remembering his small form tucked under the enormous tree.

He folds himself sideways in his desk chair and reads, and makes notes, and reads some more. He experiments with different ingredients, testing their potency and usefulness as he applies them to cursed items he hasn’t gotten around to yet. He casts a few curses himself on things in his office, paperweights and filing cabinets, just so he can undo them again, examining the spells as closely as he can. His magic hasn’t been used this much in days, and it burns at the edges a little, responding to his restlessness, tingeing the air with the scent of ash and smoke.

He receives a text from Pidge halfway through the day: getting close to pinning the woman down. i think she’s connected to someone from lance’s school. he gave me some names. i gotta confirm first tho

He tells her to keep him updated, then goes to the front of the shop and goes through the long process of tending to all of his plants. He waters them, trims their dead edges, collects a few bits here and there to dry out and use for other magic. He goes through the motions, his mind caught on Lance, on the curse, on what he can do. He still doesn’t have any answers, any concrete ways to fix things. All of the things he’s done today, the countercurses and the remedies, they’re nothing compared to the Komar curse. He knows that. He’s known that all along, but here, at what’s starting to feel like the end, with the knowledge that they’re really, truly running out of time, it weighs heavily on Keith.

For the first time in a long time, he feels the stirrings of panic. Real panic, true panic, the kind that comes from helplessness. This whole time, he’s felt one step behind, but never truly lost -- he’d grown up knowing, believing that there was always, always a counterspell.

But what if there wasn’t?

If Pidge found this person, would he really kill her? It would be for Lance. Just the thought of him has Keith going warm, like sunshine is falling on his head. It’s ridiculous. Just days ago, Keith didn’t even know who he was, but now he’s thinking about killing another human being for him, wants to do whatever it would take to restore a real smile to his face.

He’s wondering if somehow a spell has been cast on him, if there’s any way the proximity to the curse has affected his emotions as well as his magic, when the bell in the front of the shop rings. It sounds like laughter.

He’s racing to the front of the store faster than he ever thought possible, barreling through the door and knocking several floating light charms spinning through the air in his haste. Backlit by the golden sun, Lance is standing next to the door of the shop, watching him. His skin is almost ashen, his face drawn. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a week, even though Keith knows he slept at least a little while last night.

“Lance,” Keith says breathlessly, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Lance says shortly. His eyes flick around the store, almost vacant. “I just came to get my bag.” He stops, takes a deep breath, seems to steel himself. “And to tell you that I don’t need your services anymore.

The room goes silent. Keith isn’t even sure if he’s breathing anymore, or if Lance is. “What?” he croaks. He takes an aborted half-step forward, but finds himself unable to move further, as if his feet are glued to the floor. Lance walks closer, but his eyes are dim and unsmiling as he does. He looks like a stranger. He rounds the corner of the counter, avoiding contact with Keith, picks up his bag, and turns around again.

“I’m gonna look for other ways to handle this. I’m sorry for wasting so much of your time -- I’ll make sure you’re compensated. But I think we both know this is bigger than you can handle, and I need to think about myself.”

“Lance -- Lance, wait,” Keith says, his voice ripping out of him like pulling a knife from a wound. Lance pauses, his shoulders going tight. He turns in place, his head tilted gently in a parody of absent attention. Keith feels something almost hysterical rise up in him. “I’m so close to figuring it out, I promise -- I’ve got -- we’ve got leads, and there’s no one in town who can--"

“I’m not going to anyone else in town,” Lance says bluntly. “And I’ve got copies of the pictures of the woman from Hunk. It’s fine, Keith. I’m telling you it’s not your responsibility anymore.”

“But you are, ” Keith bursts out, and here, finally, he finds something in himself to move forward, stepping as close as he dares. Lance finally turns in place fully, staring down at Keith, drawing himself to his full height. His eyes are dark pools in his face, blank and foreign. “Lance, you know I’m connected to this somehow, I know you can feel it, I can feel it, I’m involved now too--”

“Fuck your feelings,” Lance says softly. Keith’s words dry up in his throat, his sentence cutting short. Lance’s voice is the thud of a gavel falling, the cold, ringing sound of a guillotine slicing through air. It feels as final as death. “That’s what you said to me last night. That I should worry about myself and not anyone else, even you. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m just taking your advice.”

“Lance,” Keith says, and his voice is an unfamiliar, wretched sound. His whole body feels cold, aching and stinging; his eyes are dangerously blurred. “Please let me help.”

“Goodbye, Keith,” Lance says, and then turns and keeps walking. “Don’t worry about me anymore. You should just open your shop back up and live your life like normal.”

The bell, when it rings above Lance’s head, still cruelly sounds like laughter.

For the longest time, there’s only silence. Keith’s eyes stay fixed on the door, as if hoping Lance will walk back through and say, It was a joke, just kidding. Of course I still want your help. You promised. But nothing happens. Cars pass on the street outside, a man walks his dog, and still Keith keeps staring.

It shouldn’t feel like this, Keith thinks blankly. It shouldn’t feel like this at all, this yawning echo of misery and pain and betrayal, when Lance doesn’t owe him anything, when Lance has always been a client, only the semblance of friendship between them. It shouldn’t feel like his entire world has been upended, like he can’t think straight, can’t think of anything but the curve of Lance’s shoulders as he’d walked away, the impassive weight of his gaze. Like Keith was nothing -- like everything they’d said or done or talked about was nothing.

It shouldn’t feel like this. It shouldn’t, it shouldn’t --

The scent of smoke catches him too late. A long row of plants hanging on the the far side of his shop are on fire, steadily burning, and his stomach drops like lead as they turn to cinders in a pulse of heat in front of him. Another row catches fire as his panic spreads, the burning scent of rosemary and lemongrass and peppermint mixing with ashes and smoke, choking him. His body, previously numb with cold, feels like an inferno.

“Stop,” he mutters to himself, “Stop it, stop it, stop--”

The fire only grows, as if to spite him. More plants catch and burn, faster than they should -- these are fresh plants, alive plants, but they go up as if they’re dry and dead, turning to smouldering charred crisps in front of him. His blood pulses heavy in his veins, his body like a flame itself, his magic flickering in and out, growing and dying in turns. He tries to summon a piece of cedar to himself, hoping to calm himself, but it burns up in his hands the moment he touches it, smearing charcoal over his fingertips.

“Please," he begs, but he doesn’t know who he’s talking to. His plants continue to burn in front of him, his guilt and misery fanning the flames higher -- the smoke blurs his eyes, tears falling from them as he coughs and reaches again and again for his control, only to find it just out of reach. Thoughts won’t linger in his mind long enough for him to think of what to do -- all he can see is his shop, burning like in his nightmares.

The bell above the shop door rings. It’s Shiro’s bell, soft and melodic.

“Keith!” Shiro shouts, sounding alarmed. Keith can only see the vague outline of his body through the smoke, the flaming plants floating above him like burning beacons. He steps forward and the charred remains of one of the plant holders crashes to the floor, halting his movement. “Keith, get out of there!”

“I can’t,” Keith says hollowly. “I can’t, Shiro, I can’t leave them--”

“They’re just plants, Keith, we can get more--”

“I can’t,” Keith says again, louder, more frantic. He can barely feel himself, can barely think. Mom, he thinks. Dad. “I can’t leave, this place is all I have, Shiro--”

“Keith, you--” Keith watches Shiro take a deep breath, then let it out. Shiro’s hands rise and then fall, and then repeat the motion, steady movements, just barely visible through the clouds of ash and smoke. Keith watches his hands drift up and down, and feels his pulse thud in his chest in time with the motion. “It’s okay,” Shiro tells him. His voice is soft, but Keith can hear it clear as if he were standing next to him. “It’s going to be okay.”

It won’t, Keith thinks. He fucked up again. He ruined everything again. Lance, and his shop -- his parent’s legacy. He’d been so sure he was untouchable, that he could handle everything, but everything he touched turned to ash. Broken. Useless. Failure. Liar.

Why would Lance want to stay with someone like him?

His heartbeat fades in and out of his ears, a staccato drumbeat. The smoke is crawling down his throat, so thick he can’t breathe. “Calm down,” Shiro says, more firmly. “You can do it.” His voice sounds as if he’s straining to lift something heavy.

I can’t, Keith thinks, but his mind settles a little anyways, a cool sensation falling over him like water cascading over his head. You can, Shiro says, and Keith finds himself able to breathe again, sucking in air like he’s starving for it. You’re fine, Shiro says, and a smooth, velvety blanket of quiet falls over him. Everything becomes muffled. The crackling sound of fire fades, his pulse slows, his vision goes hazy.

He watches with detached indifference as the flames slowly die out, as the embers curl into themselves and wither away. A little more than half of the hanging plants are in ruins, dropping ashes and bits of burnt plant matter onto the ground below and the displays of stones and books he keeps. The door opens again, and Keith feels a gentle breeze pull at the smoke surrounding him, sees Shiro standing back and waving the smoke past him, out into the bright sunshine outside. It siphons itself out until only the lingering scent remains, bits of debris scattered everywhere, a faint coating of ash clinging to the wooden floor.

Shiro’s at his side in seconds, holding onto his shoulders, tilting his head up and back and forth. Keith looks at him, his older brother, his family -- he looks at him and thinks, You were right.

“About what?” Shiro asks softly, carefully pushing the hair off of his forehead. Keith realizes he must have said that out loud without meaning to. Shiro’s hands are impossibly warm against his face, grounding him a little.

“I’m not ready for this,” Keith murmurs. “I was wrong.”

“What’s going on, Keith?” Shiro asks. His brow furrows, and he looks around the ruined remains of the shop. “What happened to make you lose control like that?” 

“Lance left,” Keith says; saying it out loud makes it real, and he’s not prepared for how that feels, the ache settled low in his throat. “Lance just -- walked away. Said he didn’t want me -- didn’t want my help.” He closes his eyes, feeling sick. “And clearly that was the right choice, considering I’m a fucking mess.”

“Keith,” Shiro says, strongly enough that Keith’s eyes open again. “You’re not a mess.” He looks around the shop and grimaces, digging into his pocket with one hand, keeping the other firmly anchored to Keith’s shoulder. He pulls out his phone and dials someone, tugging Keith towards the door. “Allura? Hey, yeah, I’m at the shop. I’m taking Keith home for a bit. I’ve gotta call the school but they’ll be okay. Can you stop by -- yeah. Yeah. We’ll be at the house. Thanks.”

“You don’t have to leave work,” Keith says dully. “I’ll be fine.”

“You’re my brother, Keith,” Shiro says, somewhat sharply. “You’re my top priority. Now, c’mon, let’s go home.”

He steers Keith into the car waiting outside; everything fades into a semi-vague haze as they drive. Keith realizes it’s Shiro, using his magic again to temper Keith’s emotions. Keith is probably the only person he could do something like this to -- empathy magic is strongest when used against people the witch knows well, someone they already have a connection to. Keith can’t find it in himself to be upset about his emotions being manipulated. He doesn’t know if it’s because of the magic itself changing his mood, or if he’s just too numb to care.

Inside the house, Shiro sits Keith down on the sofa and leaves for a moment, come back with a cup of tea. He puts it in Keith’s hands, and Keith looks down and sees a few sprigs of lemon balm floating in the cup, tied together with a string.

“I’ve picked a few things up,” Shiro says, quirking a smile at him. Keith doesn’t respond, just turns the warm mug of tea in his hands back and forth, doing his best to push all thoughts aside. “Keith,” Shiro continues, more gently. “What’s been going on?”

Keith stares at the tea. It’s a light brown color, indicating a splash of cream, just the way he likes it. His throat still aches from the smoke, so he takes a sip. It tastes of ash and lemon. “Nothing,” he replies.

“Clearly something,” Shiro retorts. He runs a hand through his hair, sighing. “I was in the middle of class when I -- I got a feeling. I’ve never felt something like that before, but I knew I needed to check on you. You didn’t respond to your phone.”

“It’s in the back of the store,” Keith says quietly. “Sorry to pull you out of work.”

“Don’t apologize,” Shiro says exasperatedly. “Just help me understand, Keith.”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Keith snaps irritably. The calm is beginning to wear off again, leaving only an aching misery he doesn’t know how to interpret. “I haven’t known what’s been going on since I met Lance, I’ve never been so confused and lost and annoyed and--”

“Happy,” Shiro says. “You’ve been happy, too.” Keith goes quiet, glaring at his tea again. “And sad. I can feel it.” Shiro goes very still, his brow furrowed as he stares at Keith. There’s a gentle tugging sensation, like someone is prodding gently at his magic. “Oh my god, Keith, you’re -- are you in love with him?”

“I don’t even know him,” Keith says, but he finds himself thinking again, Mine. Lance’s eyes, sunny blue skies, flash in his mind -- that smile, the one he’d caught glimpses of over and over. Lance’s hand on his face in a dream, smoothing over his cheek. His heart pangs in his chest.

“I can feel that,” Shiro tells him, sounding vaguely shocked. “I can feel -- Keith, you feel like your heart is broken.”

“It’s not,” he grits out, curling in on himself. The tea in his hand sloshes dangerously, scalding the edge of his palm. “It’s just -- stress. I’m tired, I’ve barely been able to sleep, it’s not anything --”

“I can feel it!” Shiro shouts, his voice louder than Keith has heard it in a long time. He falls silent almost automatically, feeling as if he’s five again and his father is getting onto him for staying up too late, or for mouthing off to one of his teachers. Shiro keeps looking at him, eyes wide and almost frightened. “Keith, your emotions for this kid -- they’re bigger than anything I’ve felt from you in a long time. I don’t understand it but they feel real.”

“It’s some kind of -- it’s something to do with the curse, then. Same as the dreams.” He ignores the part of himself that whispers that Lance had said it wasn’t the curse that caused the dreams.

“Is it really so hard for you to admit you might like Lance?” Shiro asks, leaning closer, his face the picture of earnest understanding. “Even if it’s only been a short time -- it’s okay to like someone without knowing everything about him.”

“It’s not -- I’ve never been like that,” Keith replies, brow furrowed.

“You’ve never met Lance before now,” Shiro points out gently. Keith doesn’t say anything, just sullenly tucks his head against his chest. Shiro reaches out and puts a hand on his knee, squeezing. “Keith, you know it’s okay to be upset that someone you care about left you.”

The deliberate way he phrases it makes Keith glance up at him. “It’s not like mom and dad,” Keith says, purposefully blunt. He feels somewhat guilty when Shiro’s face creases with sorrow, the way Shiro always looks when someone mentions them, and then smoothes out again.

“It feels like it to you,” Shiro murmurs. When Keith opens his mouth to argue, Shiro cuts him off. “It’s not the same, sure, but it feels similar. I was there then too, kiddo. I know how you felt.”

Keith thinks bitterly that empathy magic should be banned from all older siblings. Shiro gives him a look, clearly picking up on that as well. It’s almost eerie how well Shiro can read him, even if he can’t hear his thoughts or know exactly what his emotions are in reaction to -- Shiro knows Keith, which means he knows why Keith is feeling what he is. It’s sometimes a huge relief to not have to explain himself, but right now it just feels invasive and irritating. He wants to go to sleep, wants to wrap himself up in bed and pretend he doesn’t exist for at least a day.

He doesn’t want to think about words like love.

“It doesn’t matter how I feel,” Keith says, which is as much of a concession as he’ll give right now. “He fired me.”

“You guys seemed like you were getting along though,” Shiro says, brows tilted in confusion. “I wouldn’t have thought he’d just walk out like that.”

That had been what Keith had thought as well, but honestly, what reason did he have to feel that way? They’d had a handful of conversations, a couple of motorcycle rides, a bizarrely intimate tracking spell experience -- but also the dreams, Keith thinks. He’d spent dozens of hours of the last week with Lance in his mind, waking and dreaming, puzzling over every aspect of him and Keith’s own reaction to him.

But none of that equaled friendship, or gave Lance a reason to stick around with someone who wasn’t getting the job done.

“He did what was best for himself,” Keith mutters. “I should have told him to look for someone else days ago. I was being -- selfish.”

“You’re a lot of things, kiddo, but selfish isn’t one of them,” Shiro says, rapping his knuckles against Keith’s knee. “I know how good you are -- even if I don’t understand everything about how it works, I’ve always known how good you are at it. People come to you for a reason, Keith.” 

“Being good at cursebreaking doesn’t mean I should have pretended I could save his life,” Keith says. He shifts slightly, and Shiro’s hand slides off of him, leaving him cold but for the mug still gripped tightly in his hands. “I just got caught up in -- everything.”

“You did your best,” Shiro says quietly. “And from what Pidge has told Matt, you’ve done a lot to help him. She’s been locked in her room all morning researching based on the spell you did to track the witch who cast it. That’s not nothing, Keith. You gave him a lead.”

“It wasn’t enough,” Keith says, a note of finality in his voice. The cup of tea in his palms grows warmer and warmer, and he has to bite his lip and concentrate deeply so it will cool again, so he doesn’t risk the ceramic shattering in his hands. Shiro sighs, acquiescing.

“Allura’s gonna check on the shop and try to clean up. I’ll be here though, okay? If you wanna talk.”

“I’m fine, Shiro,” Keith says, although it’s so blatantly a lie he doesn’t know why he bothers. “I’m just going to -- I’m gonna try to rest.”

“Okay, kiddo,” Shiro says, watching him stand up and set the mug of tea on the table. “Okay.”

Rest does not come easily, but Keith busies himself restoring the ivy to his bedposts, to watering the plants that hang in his room. He tidies the books he’s left out, closes notebooks filled with scribblings about Lance’s curse. He checks on the stones he keeps tucked in a box on his desk; some of them are his own, but a few of them had been taken from his parents room a long time ago. Their room remains a monument left collecting dust in the house, most of their things left undisturbed, but Keith hadn’t been able to resist taking these -- they would lose all their energy being locked away in a dead room, and he wouldn’t have been able to bear it. Now, he rubs his fingertips over a chunk of white quartz and takes comfort in its healing properties. He touches a piece of amethyst and feels his mind settle into a gentle buzz. His room smells of a thousand different things, lavender and chili pepper and cinnamon and pine, all blending together, a familiar and reassuring scent. He feels himself calm. He settles on his bed, wraps himself in blankets, his fist still wrapped around the quartz, and falls into an uneasy sleep.

He wakes to the sound of voices downstairs. The sun has set, but it’s only half past ten. Close to the witching hour but not quite there. Keith sits up in bed, half-listening, half-asleep still. The edges of the crystal in his hands have left deep red lines from how hard he’d been clenching it, and he gently sets it on his nightstand next to a potted tulip. He feels vaguely ill, as if he’d just recovered from a terrible sickness rather than -- Shiro had called it heartbreak. Keith has never had his heart broken before, but the word seems apt for the ache that still dwells in his chest.

He stands up, tiptoeing to the landing outside of his bedroom, trying to figure out who Shiro might be talking to.

“-- wasn’t that bad,” Allura is saying, her voice weary. “The plants were -- well, we’ll have to do a lot of replanting. Maybe purchase some new seeds for the garden to supplement. I can help speed things up, if he’ll let me. But the rest of the shop was thankfully untouched, except for some slight smoke damage.”

Keith hears a shifting noise, like someone leaning back onto the couch. “That’s something at least,” Shiro says softly. “He would have been devastated if the shop had been hurt.”

Keith feels a pang of guilt and misery. He hadn’t really thought about the shop since everything had happened, too caught up in his own feelings. He’d almost lost the most important thing in his life, and he was still worrying about Lance.

“Allura,” Shiro murmurs, “What should I do? It’s not the same as last time, then he was just pushing too hard -- this time he’s caught up in some kind of strange murder plot, and this boy, Lance -- Allura, you should feel how Keith feels about him. I almost don’t believe it myself.”

“I believe you. Did you know I met Lance once? At the hospital.”

“Right, he saved you from that shithead.”

Allura laughs a little. “Strong words coming from you, Mr. Elementary Schoolteacher. But yes, he did. He was charming, and honestly quite sweet. He made Marina smile for the first time I’ve seen since her boyfriend broke up with her. He was -- bright is the word that comes to mind. I can see Keith being drawn to him.”

“I think he’s scared,” Shiro says, sighing. “Of liking him so much so quickly.”

“Understandable,” Allura murmurs. “Keith has always been a logical, somewhat reserved person.”

“I think this whole situation has been anything but logical and reserved,” Shiro says wryly. “I’m worried, Allura. I want to tell him to leave things alone, to wait a while before he goes back to the shop, but I’m afraid of what that might do to him. Everything feels fragile right now.” He goes quiet, the silence stretching thin, taut enough that Keith can feel it wrapping around his throat and choking him. “I don’t want to make the wrong decision and lose him.”

“You won’t lose him,” Allura says, almost chiding. “You’re his brother, Shiro. He knows you’re always trying to do what’s best for him. Even if he disagrees with you, he won’t leave you.”

“I still don’t know what is best for him, though,” Shiro says, almost frustrated. “I thought before he was just sort of getting caught up in things, when he was talking about being involved in Lance’s curse situation, that he was meant to be the one working on it, but something feels weird about it all -- I think he was right, Allura. What if he’s the only person who can save this kid?”

“I could do some sneaking at the hospital and try and track Lance down, see if he might be open to talking again?” Allura suggests.

“Pretty sure that’s illegal, Allura,” Shiro points out, but he sounds like he’s smiling.

“I imagine he’s probably as lost and confused as Keith is,” Allura says. Her voice is thoughtful, and maybe a little sad. “And now he’s trying to face it all alone. He might welcome a second chance.”

“If it’s as dangerous as it seems, part of me wants Keith to stay out of it,” Shiro says quietly. His voice is heavy. “He called himself selfish earlier, you know? I’m the selfish one. I’d rather keep Keith out of harm’s way than have him save this innocent kid.”

“He’s all you have left.” There’s more shifting, and Keith can picture Allura putting a hand on Shiro’s shoulder, smiling softly at him. “It’s normal to be protective of him. I know how hard it’s been on both of you.” There’s another soft noise, a patting sound. “Besides, neither of you is as selfish as you seem to think. I know what you’ll tell him, because you’re a good brother.”

“I know,” Shiro says, sounding resigned. “In the morning, though. He needs to rest. He’s been exhausted all week.”

“You should rest too,” Allura tells him gently. “I’ll call in the morning and check up on both of you. Oh! Pidge texted me, she said she couldn’t get ahold of you or Keith. She has something to tell him.”

“It can wait until morning,” Shiro repeats. “I’ll text her to let her know, though. Thanks for everything, Allura.” His voice is warm, affectionate. “Keith and I don’t just have each other, you know. We’ve got you, too.”

Allura’s reply is soft enough Keith can’t make it out -- he thinks they might be hugging. “You’re both very important to me as well,” she says, loud enough this time that he hears it. “I’ll call in the morning.”

“Night, Lura,” Shiro murmurs, and there’s the sound of footsteps, a door opening and closing, and then silence. A long sigh, the sound of footsteps again. Shiro’s bedroom door closes with a quiet thud.

Keith stays awake through the witching hour deliberately, watching the clock tick past midnight into one in the morning. He wonders if Lance slept at all tonight. He wonders what Lance might be thinking right now, if he’s really as lonely and lost as Allura seems to think he might be.

Everything has changed in such a short amount of time -- not just his feelings for Lance, but last night, he’d felt like maybe Lance actually felt the same way. The time they’d spent in the garden, both in real life and in the dream, had felt important. Lance had made Keith think things, feel things he’s never really felt before, and it would be almost too cruel for Keith to be the only one to feel that way, but -- Lance had walked away from him without even the hint of a smile.

Was the universe really so unforgiving? Was Lance?

For all of the horrible things that have happened in his life, all the loss and heartache and pain, somehow Keith doesn’t think so.

He sprawls on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. A few stuttering light charms, the first ones he’d ever made, spelled into being when he was only ten or so, unsteadily drift around the room, casting strange shadows on the walls as they float past his plants. It makes his room feel surreal and dreamlike, a shifting tapestry of shapes and colors. It makes him feel like he can do something very brave.

“I love him,” Keith says out loud. He says it like it’s a test, an answer to a question no one has asked. His heart pounds in his chest. “I love him.”

There’s no reply, but something in Keith goes quiet, pleased. Something in him knows it’s true. He feels truly calm for the first time in days.

.

He wakes in the morning feeling rested for the first time in a long time. He wakes in the morning and knows, without having to think about it, what he has to do.

Shiro is in the living room when he goes downstairs, his phone in hand, the television on but muted as captions scroll across the bottom. He flicks a glance at Keith and his brow smooths.

“You feel better today?” Shiro asks, although Keith knows he can tell what the answer is.

“I’m gonna find him,” Keith tells Shiro. “I’ve thought about stuff and I -- I wanna talk to him at least one more time and figure things out.”

“I figured that’s what you’d wanna do,” Shiro says, smiling. “Allura and I brought your motorcycle back from the shop this morning. She was very careful with it.”

Keith’s throat closes up, emotion briefly overwhelming him. “Thanks Shiro,” he says thickly. “I know this is -- I know I made a mess of things again. But I’m gonna try and fix them.”

Shiro stands up from the couch, reaching out and pulling Keith firmly into his arms. He smells of detergent, and something warm and smokey, some kind of aftershave. He smells like home, and Keith clings to him tightly, feeling fifteen again.

“I’m not worried,” Shiro murmurs. “You’ve always been good at fixing things.”

Keith huffs a laugh, leaning away from his brother and rubbing at his eyes. “Let’s hope so.” He opens his mouth to ask if Allura had picked up his phone, when Shiro’s own phone starts ringing.

Shiro shoots him an apologetic look, reaching out to grab it. His brow furrows as he glances at the screen and he answers it quickly, saying “Pidge?”

“Shiro!” Pidge’s voice is loud enough that Keith can hear it even though the phone isn’t on speaker mode. Shiro’s head jerks away from the phone, his eyes widening. “Shiro, please, you gotta get Keith!”

“He’s right here, Pidge, hang on,” Shiro says, alarmed. He passes the phone to Keith, who takes it with a feeling of great trepidation.

“Pidge?” Keith asks, and Pidge makes an incoherent noise of relief that blows static into his ears.

“Keith, thank god!” Pidge says. “I just figured out -- listen, I know yesterday was -- whatever, so you were kind of out of it, but I got Lance’s info--”

“Wait, how?” Keith says, confused.

“Um, it’s me, Keith,” Pidge says pointedly. “Anyways, I was texting him about that lady you guys saw in the vision, just to try and narrow things down, connections between the two of them, and I found her Keith. Her name is Haggar, she’s actually kind of this mythic legend in the city as dark magic for hire. Super secretive, there’s almost no physical record of her whatsoever. But it turns out Haggar isn’t her real name -- her real name is Honerva. I can’t get an address right now -- whoever erased the info about the curse from the web did the same to a lot of her personal info -- but I’m getting really close.”

“That’s great, Pidge,” Keith says, his pulse pounding in excitement. “That’s amazing, we can find her and--”

“That’s the thing,” Pidge interrupts, sounding guilty now. Keith’s stomach drops at the hesitance in her voice. “I told Lance already and when I mentioned her name he said something about remembering where he’d seen her before and then he stopped responding to me. Keith, I think he’s going after her himself. He might already know where she lives.”

Keith’s breath catches in his lungs. His grip tightens on Shiro’s phone to the point that the case around it squeaks a little.

“Keith?” Pidge asks. Shiro’s staring at him, eyes wide. Keith realizes it’s not his pulse that’s quickening in his veins -- it’s his magic, roiling and restless inside of him. He feels like the fuse of a bomb has been lit and it’s sparking down to the gunpowder inside of him.

“I’ve gotta go, Pidge. I need to figure out where he is.” He starts to hand the phone back to Shiro, already turned towards the front door, when he hears Pidge squawk indignantly.

“How are you gonna find him?” she yells, loud enough that Shiro winces.

“Can you find him?” Keith asks her impatiently. She goes sullenly silent. “He’s probably abandoned his phone, even if you managed to try and locate him that way. I’ve got an idea for how to get to him. Don’t worry.”

“With you I do nothing but worry,” Pidge mutters. Keith shoves the phone at Shiro, reaching out for a jacket hanging on the hook in the foyer. His mind is buzzing with thoughts, trying to plan out the steps he needs to take. As he slides the leather over his arms, a hand falls on his head.

“Be careful,” Shiro says seriously. “Go to the shop, get your phone, call me if you need anything. Promise.” It almost surprises Keith that Shiro doesn’t offer to go with him -- Keith wonders if he feels it too, this deliberate sense of how things are unfolding, how they’ll keep unfolding. It’s the same feeling that’s had him so sure that he was meant to be the one to help Lance. He just... knows it’s got to be him alone.

“I promise,” Keith says, quirking a half-smile at him. “I’ll see you in a little while.”

“Can’t wait to meet the guy you’ve been dreaming about,” Shiro says, a little teasingly.

Keith wasn’t aware he had it in him to blush at a time like this, but somehow he does. The humor, even forced, lightens something in him, settles him -- it’s reassuring to know that even now, after everything, he still has Shiro to fall back on. He squares his shoulders and steps outside. The door closing behind him barely makes a quiet noise, nothing like the ringing bell of his shop, but it feels just as purposeful as everything else has. He steps into the morning light and runs.

.

It’s a miracle he gets to his shop without being pulled over by the cops. He barely pulls his motorcycle to a stop in front of his shop before he’s jumping off of it, hands already forming the symbols to unlock the shop. He stumbles inside, the bell above him humming sadly. 

He pauses despite his hurry to take it all in. It doesn’t even look like his shop anymore, gutted and dark and strangely melancholy, like an abandoned home. The entrance smells like smoke and ash, but there’s a faintly damp smell as well, probably from whatever Allura used to clean up. More than half of the ceiling is uncovered now, where before it had been teeming with plants. There’s a few blank spaces on the walls where bits of wood must have burned, and most of his bookshelves are empty of books and jars and trinkets.

There’s a miserable, guilty churning in his stomach, so heavy that he puts a hand to the wall to ground himself. He’d been so fucking careless with something that was infinitely precious to him.

He couldn’t make that mistake again.

Allura’s left a note on the front counter explaining that she’d taken the books to her house to properly clean them, and a few other bits and pieces that had smoke damage as well. The pots that had held the burned plants were out back of the shop, cleaned out and waiting for repotting. She’d tended to the remaining plants as well, making sure they weren’t damaged or in need of water or repotting.

“I’m going to have to buy her something very sparkly,” Keith murmurs to himself, smiling at the little heart she’s drawn next to her name.  

His phone is in the back, somehow miraculously not dead yet. There are dozens of calls and texts, but a quick scroll through them reveals that none of them are from Lance. Hunk had texted and even called him a couple of times yesterday and once this morning, his messages increasingly panicked and worried as it becomes clear that Lance isn’t responding anymore. Keith fires off a quick text (Gonna find him now) and puts the phone in his pocket. He grabs as many stones as he can fit in his bag -- protection stones, healing stones, strengthening stones, as well as the dried ingredients he still has available.

When he goes to the front of the shop again, he glances around quickly, scanning the rows of plants. As his eyes adjust to the strange sight, he realizes with a sinking heart that the plant he’s looking for had been hanging right in the middle of the section of plants that had caught fire, and there’s now only empty space where it once had hung. He doesn’t know why he hadn’t realized it before, but it negates all of the plans he’d been making in one fell swoop.

“Shit,” he mutters, eyes flicking around the shop as he tries to think. It’s not an uncommon plant, but finding it will take time, unless he goes to his garden, but that’s even farther away, and--

A glimmer of light catches his eye -- a light charm has gotten stuck on something sitting on the ground, casting a strange glow on the wall. As Keith approaches, his eyes widen.

It’s a single dandelion plant, tucked away neatly beside a bookshelf, the blowball on top perfectly intact. It’s exactly what he’d been looking for.

“How the hell?” he says out loud, looking around the room. It should have been burned to bits, but it doesn’t even look like there’s ash residue around it. Keith doesn’t know what to make of it, but there are no answers immediately forthcoming about how the dandelion survived, and he doesn’t have time to question it right now anyways. He grabs it as carefully as he can, gently nudging the light charm out from where it’s been caught under one of the leaves. He tears the plant free, holding the weed by the stem and carrying it outside, a hand cupped around the fragile seeds. He hopes that whatever good luck saved this dandelion will help this spell work. He hopes that his feelings are as real as he thinks they are.

He holds the blowball in front of his face and blows gently on it, facing all four cardinal directions one at a time. For a moment, the tufted seeds all drift off on the breeze, wafting gently through the air. But then the ones blown towards the east, west, and south all float down, landing on the concrete and grass around him.

The ones headed north continue to float. Keith jumps onto the motorcycle he’d left in front of the shop, not bothering with his helmet. The seeds dance along, flashes of white circling each other and picking up speed as they cross out into the street -- Keith revs his motorcycle and follows.

The seeds never touch the ground, never slow down. They swirl around each other, sometimes almost seeming to wait for him at crosswalks and stoplights, never going too far away or out of his sight. His heart pounds heavily, loudly in his chest -- it’s working. The love finding spell is actually working.

He realizes he’s smiling only when his mouth begins to ache.

The spell leads him to a part of town he’s familiar with -- the outskirts, close to where Allura lives with all the mansions and big houses. His garden is further west, but the seeds continue to bring him north, sometimes veering northeast to pull him further from the city. He passes mansions and sprawling estates, sometimes just fields of flowers and tall grass. Everything is eerily peaceful as the blowball seeds continue to float through the air, only his motorcycle’s engine disturbing the quiet.

He hasn’t passed another car or house for fifteen minutes when he spots a long, winding driveway branching off from the road, framed by a black wrought iron gate. The gate is open, and he watches the seeds twirl their way under the arch of black twisted metal that loops above the drive, merrily continuing on their way.

He takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he tells himself. “You can do this.” He follows them.

The moment he drives across the threshold of the property his stomach twists with unease -- all of the protection stones on his person grow warm, almost to the point of discomfort. He touches the onyx studs in his ears and looks around warily. He’s almost positive he’s just passed over some kind of barrier, but nothing seems to be happening, and he doesn’t feel any other adverse effects. The seeds are still moving along unaffected, so he revs his motorcycle and follows slowly, keeping alert.

Halfway down the gently curving drive, he pulls to a stop. There’s a silver car parked in the middle of the path, brake lights shining red, engine still running, as if the driver suddenly decided they couldn’t go any further. The seeds gently waft their way over the car and settle over the driver’s side, landing on top of the roof. They don’t move again.

Keith revs the motorcycle, speeding towards the car with his pulse pounding in his ears.

As Keith pulls up behind the car, the door opens, a brown hand against the handle. Keith barely gets his kickstand down before he’s flinging himself off the bike, running at Lance as he steps out of the car with a disbelieving look on his face. His eyes are red rimmed and wide, and they turn wary as Keith doesn’t slow down as he nears him. His arms come up as if to ward off a blow, but Keith ducks between them and grabs Lance around the middle, burying his face in his shoulder.

“Thank god,” he mumbles against warm skin. Lance is stiff in his arms, hands still outstretched, but he doesn’t push Keith away. “Thank god you’re still okay.”

Lance’s body trembles in his arms once, like a taut string that’s finally been cut, and then Lance seems to collapse against him, his own arms winding tight around Keith. “Why are you here?” Lance asks. His voice is thready, shaking; he sounds seconds away from tears. “I thought you would hate me after what I said to you, you were supposed to--”

“No,” Keith says, shaking his head. “I can’t, Lance, I couldn’t--”

“I thought if you hated me, if you didn’t want anything to do with me, you might be better off,” Lance says quietly. His arms tighten even more around Keith, almost to the point of hurting, but Keith welcomes how grounding it feels, how right it feels to be here. Something inside of him feels so good, even knowing how much danger they might be in, even knowing Lance is still suffering from the curse.  

“Even if you meant those things, I still couldn’t hate you,” Keith tells him, leaning back a little ways. Lance’s eyelashes are wet, but he doesn’t seem to be crying. He looks exhausted, his eyes like bruises in his face, his mouth a weak curve. “Lance, what are you doing here?”

“I figured out where I’d seen her before,” Lance says, his eyes flicking towards the end of the driveway where a house must be hidden just around a copse of trees. “When Pidge texted me her name, I knew I’d heard it before. She’s the mother of one of my classmates. Some guy named Lotor.”

“Lotor?” Keith asks, eyebrows shooting up in surprise. “Pale blonde hair, creepy aura, general asshole Lotor?”

“You’ve had the pleasure?” Lance asks wryly. He sighs. “We’re both trying to get into the same school. It’s really competitive, and I think I just edged him out of the standing last we heard from them about recruitment. I’ve heard he’s been trying to get a better recommendation for weeks now to try and sway the board to rethink their decision, but I guess he decided to go another route.”

“He’s seriously trying to kill you to get into a school?” Keith asks incredulously.

“I guess technically his mom is,” Lance says, making a face. “Maybe he doesn’t know about it. But either way, I figured I had to confront them. Maybe I could convince them to remove it. I’m pretty charming.” His attempt at a smile is terrible, but it still makes Keith feel better.

“Somehow I doubt even your charm could convince these people,” he says, scowling in the presumable direction of a house they’re still too far away to see. “But if you’re going in there, I’m coming with you.” Keith lets his hands slide down Lance’s back until he’s touching his hips, fingers grazing skin. “I promised I’d help you, and I want to keep that promise.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” Lance whispers, closing his eyes tiredly. “You’re -- important. To me.” He says each word slowly, haltingly, as if unsure how Keith will react.

Keith’s heart actually skips a beat. He’s startled at how light and giddy he can feel just from those few little words. “You’re important to me too,” he says, tugging on Lance’s shirt so he’ll open his eyes again and look at him. Lance’s blue eyes are unsure, flicking over his face like he’s searching for an answer to a question he hasn’t found the strength to ask. “Would I be out here if you weren’t?”

“How did you find me?” Lance asks suddenly. “Pidge?”

Keith feels his face heat up, his own gaze moving to the car where the blowball seeds still sit conspicuously on the hood. “I -- I--”

The crunch of gravel behind Lance alerts them both to someone else’s presence, and Keith hurriedly pulls Lance behind him as a woman approaches them. Her eyes are a pale golden green, her hair long and white. She’s not very pretty, but something about her suggests that perhaps she once was. Her mouth, familiar to Keith from a smile that still sends shudders down his spine, is a cruel slash across her pale and pointed face..

“I did wonder if you might turn up,” she says. Her voice is low and raspy, almost mirroring the scrape of her shoes on the pavement as she moves closer to them. “I should have guessed you would run to a cursebreaker, but I confess, I didn’t think you would have enough time for it to matter.”

She comes to a stop about twenty feet away from them, and her eyes narrow at Keith, then flick to Lance. “I see now why you’ve survived so long. My son did not tell me that you had a soul bond, Lance McClain.”

“I didn’t know before,” Lance says, his voice low with tension. His hand fists at the back of Keith’s jacket, like he’s seconds away from pulling him back. “It’s new.”

“I see,” she says thoughtfully. “A newly manifested bond. How interesting. I do wonder what that must be like.”

“You knew?” Keith asks Lance, refusing to take his eyes off of the dark witch. “For how long?”

“The day before yesterday,” Lance says quietly. “Before that last dream. But I think I might have known all along, to be honest. Looking at you, I just--”

“Later,” Keith interrupts, watching as Haggar’s mouth quirks in amusement. “We’ll talk later, I promise.”

“Right,” Lance says, his hand in Keith’s jacket tightening. “Suddenly I’m gripped by the knowledge that coming here was probably a bad idea. Any plans?”

“I’ve already called the cops,” Keith calls out, hoping she’ll buy his bluff. “Let’s just make this easy for everyone. You can take the curse off of Lance and we’ll say it’s all a misunderstanding.” Lance makes a noise behind him, but Keith raises his voice. “I’m a well respected cursebreaker -- they’ll believe me if I say everything was an accident.”

She tilts her head curiously. “Why would I go to all of the trouble to remove a curse that I spent so much time creating? Even if police were coming, which I do not believe they are, it would take very little for me to convince them that you two killed each other in some sort of dark magic dispute. It would be very simple for a cursebreaker such as yourself to turn on your boyfriend, and when he is dead, no trace of my curse will remain on him. I will be the poor woman who stumbled onto your bodies on the side of the road.” She smiles without an ounce of warmth. “That is a much more agreeable option.”

“There are people who know about you, and about Lance’s curse,” Keith says. His voice wavers a little -- the stones hidden on him and in his bag are heating up again, and he remembers too late that Lance doesn’t have any means of protection. “Do you seriously want to kill two people just to get your son into a school?” he asks, trying one last time.

“Would you not do whatever you could to secure the future of who is most important to you?” Haggar asks. “I would pay any cost to make sure that my son receives his due -- and that includes getting rid of two nosy teenagers who never would have amounted to anything anyway.” Her eyes flash gold with annoyance. “Your magic isn’t even that powerful -- Lotor told me for weeks how strong you were, but I must confess I’m disappointed in what I’ve managed to take from you.”

She raises her hand, and Keith barely brings his own hands up in time to stop a wave of pure energy from hitting him. Lance presses against his back, keeping him from losing his footing as Keith draws on the energy of the stones to keep the attack from coming closer. He grits his teeth, feeling sweat break out on his brow as his magic pushes back against the force of the spell.

When she lets up, she looks vaguely impressed. “You are a competent cursebreaker -- your defensive magic is very good. But I wonder how long you can keep that up -- and how long Mr. McClain can.”

Behind him, Lance takes a shuddering breath. Keith takes a chance and looks back at him. His stomach drops at the expression on Lance’s face, tight and exhausted, almost pale with fatigue. His hand on the back of Keith’s jacket has slackened, and he sways gently to the side as if he’s about to fall.

Keith takes a deep breath, trying to steel himself. Would you not do whatever you could to secure the future of who is most important to you? For Lance, the boy with the bright smile and the gentle hands and the bluest eyes, he thinks he really could do anything -- he doesn’t know what that makes him, if he’s no better than Haggar, but he knows this:

He is going to kill her.

“Lance,” he says quietly. “Get back in the car and get out of here.”

“No,” Lance whispers. Keith can’t see his face, but he can picture his scowl. “I’m not leaving you behind with her, Keith! We’re bonded, in case you missed that, and I’m not giving you up that easily.”

“I don’t want you to be here for this,” Keith responds, gathering his magic tightly under his skin; it swells quickly inside of him as if desperate to explode, and he has to grit his teeth as around him, on the edges of the drive, bits of leaves and grass start to smoke. He reins in his control again, determined not to mess up this time.

“For what?” Lance asks, stepping closer to him.

“The only way I’ve found to get rid of the curse is to get rid of the caster of the spell,” Keith says, this time loud enough that Haggar can hear him. “So that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Keith,” Lance says, sounding stricken.

“Oh, very interesting,” Haggar says, looking almost pleased. “I did wonder if you had any idea of how to counteract the curse, but it seems not.” Her eyes flash gold, and above them, thunder rumbles overhead. The sunny day that had been there moments before has dissipated under a heavy blanket of gray clouds, and the wind around them picks up, whipping at Keith’s hair. “Go ahead, cursebreaker.”

She doesn’t even bother to put up a shield, doesn’t seem threatened in the least. Keith’s temper snaps, and behind them a bush lining the side of the driveway bursts into flames. Keith swipes his hand jerkily and it extinguishes, but he feels the loss of control still. It eats away at him, dragging him back to the smell of smoke lingering in his shop, the hollow entranceway devoid of plants. He shakes himself back to the present, pushing those thoughts away.

You can do this, he tells himself. For Lance.

He raises his hand and lets his magic build in his fist, imagining it surrounding him like a ball of flame, a sword in his hands -- his magic writhes in his grasp, growing more than it ever has before, too strong for his body to contain, desperate to be released, furious and ready to tear Haggar to pieces if only he’ll let go, if only he’ll open his hand and just --

“Keith,” Lance murmurs. Something touches the back of Keith’s neck, and Keith realizes Lance has leaned his forehead against him. His skin is cool to the touch. “Don’t do it.”

“I have to,” Keith says, straining. He just has to let go.

“You don’t,” Lance says quietly.

“If I don’t, you’ll die. We’ll both die,” Keith retorts, his breath ragged. Haggar waits patiently, her smile growing, but for some reason Keith feels no responding bolt of anger this time -- he just feels sick, and terrified, and desperate.

“You said there were always countercurses,” Lance tells him, his voice firming. “You promised me. And I believe you. We can find a way. But don’t do this -- not for me, Keith.”

“Lance,” Keith says, gasping for air. The magic in his hands is scorching him from the inside out, yearning to break loose and save him, but still he can’t do it -- he feels tears welling in his eyes but he can’t make himself let go.

“We’ll be okay,” Lance says, sounding confident. Keith opens his mouth to reply, but suddenly there’s the soft impression of lips against the skin of his neck, a brushed kiss that leaves fire in its wake, and his magic flickers and dies in his grasp, snuffed out like a flame. The heat that had been burning him up dulls to a glowing warmth, suffused throughout his body.

Haggar now looks bored, almost disappointed. “This has taken up too much of my time already. I should have just killed you myself and been done with it from the start.” She sighs, raising her hands once again -- crackling energy builds between them, magic flowing to her fingertips like water.

Keith barely hears her -- his entire body feels like he’s been bathed in the glow of a golden light, endless and overwhelming. He blinks and there are stars in his eyes, lights dazzling his vision, bright and beautiful. He hears Lance gasp behind him, his body rigid against his back, his fingertips digging into his skin, and knows he can feel it too. He feels himself fall into a trance almost against his will.

Amidst the warmth and the glow, something painful and dark tries to claw its way into his heart, tries to twist its way around him and take hold -- the curse, Keith thinks wildly -- but he pushes against it, finds that he’s stronger than it for the first time. It recoils when he touches it with his magic, turning in on itself. I’m hurting it, he realizes excitedly . It wrenches away from him and he lets himself pursue it, his magic almost dancing as it intertwines with the curse and burns it where it lingers in a field of blue and white. The curse tries to wriggle away, tries to tighten its grip on Lance’s heart, but there’s a sudden bloom of color as it implodes in on itself, a supernova of blue and gold and red bursting through the inky black.

And then suddenly -- there’s Lance.

Lance’s magic is a kaleidoscope of color and feeling and light -- it’s like nothing Keith’s ever seen before, unspeakably beautiful  and unspeakably Lance, the feeling of him condensed down into pure energy. His magic overflows, more than Keith has ever seen, maybe even more than Allura. Lance makes a giddy noise behind him, laughter spilling out of him like a flood, one Keith would gladly drown in.

“Oh my god,” Lance says, still giggling, “That feels so good.”  

“Are you okay?” Keith asks. It’s a silly question -- he can feel how okay Lance is, can feel magic coursing through both of them in a feedback loop that only grows stronger the longer it’s there. He wishes he’d read more about soul bonds, because he never knew it could be anything like this, but that must be what’s happening -- their bond fully manifesting itself finally, brought on by the act of a kiss. He feels his own mouth curved into a grin, and it only grows when Lance steps out from behind him and stands at his side, his eyes bright, his skin almost glowing, looking as if he’s a magical prince that’s stepped out of a children’s fairy tale.  

“I’m good, Sunshine,” Lance says, stretching a little. “In fact, I kind of feel lucky right now.”

Haggar takes a step back, her face twisted in a scowl, her hands lowered again in her confusion. “How did you manage--”

“True love or some shit, I think,” Lance says cheerfully, and waves his hand. At first, nothing happens, all of them standing there watching each other as the sharp wind snaps their hair around their faces, but then there’s a loud cracking noise, almost like thunder, and the large branch of a tree flies their way. It bends and turns in the air, neatly missing Lance and Keith, before it slams into Haggar, dragging her to the ground. The air leaves her lungs in one fell swoop as it collapses on top of her, leaving her pinned there. “Okay, that was way different from what I was expected,” Lance says, sounding surprised.

“You didn’t plan that?” Keith asks, a single brow raised.

“I told you I have trouble with my luck magic still,” Lance says, shrugging. Haggar heaves underneath the branch, smoke rising from her body as something acidic starts to burn through the bark. “Oh, she’s not done yet.”

“I think I have something, but I’ve only ever tried this on demons,” Keith says, opening his bag and digging through it. He pulls out a handful of knotweed, twisting it together until it’s in a long, thin shape. He wishes that he’d thought to grab paper to wrap it in to make everything a bit simpler, but he holds the knotweed in the air in front of him and lets it float from his fingertips. Lance watches him curiously but keeps one eye on the branch and the hiss of the wood dissipating under Haggar’s touch.

“What does that do?” Lance asks. Keith raises his hands and lets fire come to his fingertips easily.

“Binding spell,” Keith says, flashing him a tight smile, and then sets both ends of the knotweed ablaze. As it burns in front of him, he focuses all of his attention and magic on Haggar, who starts to rise from the smoking remains of the branch, pushing aside the limbs to stagger to her feet. There’s blood at her temple and a fierce glare in her golden eyes as she raises her fists and shoves bolts of lightning at them.

This time it’s Lance who steps in front of Keith, holding his hands up and absorbing the blows as if they were nothing. The air in front of him ripples and turns blue and white before dissolving into nothingness.

“This bond magic thing is incredible,” Lance breathes, looking at his own hands with awe. “I’ve never been able to do that on the first try before.”

Haggar makes a wordless noise of fury, and thunder booms overhead. The wind whips more strongly around them, extinguishing the flames engulfing the knotweed, and Keith hisses in annoyance, grabbing the the smoking remains and cupping them in his own palms. He lights it again, ignoring the heat from the flames, willing the fire to burn hotter, faster, to bind the person who would try to do harm against him. The heat grows to an unbearable level, hot enough that Lance yelps his name in alarm.

“Keith, your hands!” he says, reaching out to try and tug Keith’s hands away from the knotweed, but Keith grits his teeth and holds on, waiting until the last of the plant has burned to nothing in his grasp.

Hands burning, he looks up just in time to see Haggar stiffen, her arms dropping down to her sides and her eyes wide with confusion and anger.

“How...dare you,” she seethes, before her eyes roll up into her head and she collapses on the ground. Her body is a perfectly straight line, as if invisible ropes are holding her -- Lance looks momentarily startled at her stillness, but Keith takes a shaky breath and says, “She’s fine. She’s just unconscious. But we really should call the cops, it won’t hold her very long.”

Lance has to reach into Keith’s pockets for him to pull his cell phone out, a procedure that makes both of them flush pink when Lance goes for the wrong pocket and has to repeat the process. Keith cradles his own hands close to his chest and watches Haggar as Lance makes the phone call, hurriedly explaining where they are and what kind of help they needed.

Above them, rain begins to fall, a gentle shower covering them in cool water. Keith tips his head up and lets it run down his face, sighing, and then startles when hands cup his own.

“Perfect timing,” Lance says, looking up at the rain too. “I need water to be able to do this.”

“Your luck magic, it really is strong, huh?” Keith asks, blinking up at the sky. The rainfall stretches as far as he can see,the storm rolling above them in heavy clouds that rumble pleasantly. Lance’s magic did that, he thinks hazily; he’s felt too many things in the last half hour to be anything but mildly impressed at the moment, but he’s sure he’ll feel differently in an hour.

“Considering I’m pretty sure it was still working even though I was under a curse that stole my magic, probably,” Lance says, distracted. “Now quiet, I need to focus.”

Keith watches as water slowly pools in their hands, covering the burns and soothing them. Lance makes a soft noise, almost a humming sound, and the water turns ice cold and then warm again, and Keith watches with wide eyes as the burns fade to a soft pink color, almost indistinguishable from his normal skin.  

Lance sighs in relief, pulling their hands apart to let the water fall to the ground below, but he keeps holding on to Keith’s hands. Keith stares up at him, disheveled and damp, rainwater dripping from his lashes. He still looks like a mythic figure despite the messy hair and wet clothing, like some kind of glowing, magical prince from a legend. He’s beautiful, so beautiful it makes Keith’s heart ache to look at him.

He still wants to kiss him, more than anything in the world.

As if he can read Keith’s thoughts, or maybe see his feelings in his eyes, Lance flushes and ducks his head. Some of the mythic legend wears off in the gesture, and he looks once again like a teenage boy, awkwardly holding another boy’s hands. It settles Keith a little.

“So,” Lance says, drawing the word out.

“So,” Keith echoes, staring down at his shoes.

“We’re like...soulmates,” Lance says. The awkward bluntness of it surprises a barked laugh out of Keith, and Lance’s hands automatically tighten on his own. “Well we are!”

“I know,” Keith says, still laughing, raising his gaze again to lock eyes with Lance. “I think I knew from the start you were different.”

“I bet you say that to all the boys,” Lance murmurs, still red. There’s a raindrop running its way along his jawline, and Keith has to bite his own lip against the urge to kiss it away.

“Only the most troublesome ones,” Keith replies quietly. Somehow they’ve ended up closer, Lance’s breath fanning across his cheek. Their hands are still clenched between them, like Lance is afraid to let go, like they both need something to hold onto right now.

“I guess I should make it up to you somehow,” Lance says softly, almost thoughtfully. His eyelashes flutter as his eyes track all over Keith’s face, like he’s looking for something. His tongue comes out to wet his lips, and he says in a cautious voice, “Can I kiss you? For real, this time.”

Keith’s breath catches and he tilts his head, hoping it’s enough of a response.

Lance flashes a smile at him and leans in swiftly, kissing him on the mouth. It’s a damp kiss, the cool rain still running down their faces as they press together, but Lance’s mouth is warm and sure as it moves against his own. Lance finally lets go of his hands to reach up and cup his head, his thumbs resting along Keith’s jawline, gently turning Keith’s head to deepen the kiss. He opens his mouth a little, and Keith feels the curve of Lance’s grin when he makes an embarrassingly soft noise at the brush of tongue.

Lance kisses the way his magic feels -- it’s gentle and bright and beautiful, so overwhelming Keith can only clench his fists in Lance’s shirt and hold on. He’s never been kissed this way before, as if he’s the answer to every question in the universe, as if this kiss is the most important thing in the world. He’s warm all over despite the chill of the rain, and only grows hotter when Lance pulls away but immediately returns to kiss at the side of his mouth, then along his jaw close to his ear.

“How was that?” Lance asks, his lips moving against Keith’s skin. It takes Keith a moment to realize he’s talking about their conversation moments ago; his head is still spinning from the sensation of their mouths pressed together, of Lance’s hands still cupping his throat.

“It’s a start,” he manages to say, hoping he doesn’t sound as strangled as he feels. Lance snorts a laugh against his hair, pulling back to look him in the eye. He’s smiling, and it’s one of those bright, genuine smiles, the smile Keith’s been longing for this whole time.

“Guess I’ll just have to keep trying,” Lance says, and when he leans back in, Keith doesn’t hesitate to rise up to meet him.

.

Keith frowns at a stuffed bear sitting on his desk, tilting his head at it. It looks soft and well-worn, pink fur smoothed all along the arms and stomach from where little hands have grasped at it; it also looks completely normal in the light of day.

He waves his hands at his lights and they turn off, except his desk lamp -- the window shutters itself, and a cat sleeping on one of his filing cabinets lets out a surprised chirp and stands up, her eyes flashing at him in the darkness.

“Sorry to disturb your rest,” he tells her wryly. She turns twice in place and settles back into her bed, her back pointedly turned to him. Keith looks back at the teddy bear, still sitting peacefully on his desk and takes a deep breath. He turns off the desk lamp and the room falls into complete darkness.

For a moment, it’s silent. Then, a soft growling noise starts up, followed by the smell of blood. Keith quickly falls into a trance, searching the bear for the source of dark magic -- it becomes obvious immediately that it’s a demon, housing itself in the toy. Probably a demon that feeds on fear, one that had grown immeasurably strong as a frightened child had tried desperately to convince her parents that something was wrong with her teddy bear. It clings to its stuffed animal host and snarls at him, an animalistic sound. In the stillness of the room, there’s the soft sound of fur sliding across a wooden surface.

“Red,” Keith murmurs. He doesn’t bother to open his eyes, but he hears a thud, followed by a loud growl and a louder hiss as the cat pins the bear to the desk in place, keeping it from moving closer to him.

He lights basil and clove that are sitting in a bowl next to him, letting the smoke wrap around himself and the toy. He murmurs quiet words telling the demon to leave, growing louder as it tries to resist him. Between the cat and Keith’s magic, though, it has nowhere to go -- and he’s not frightened of it at all, gives it nothing to feed on, until with a furious groan and the bitter tinge of sulphur, the demon finally leaves the bear and disappears in a puff of smoke.

Keith immediately turns the lights back on, relieved when Red steps off of the teddy bear looking vaguely bored. She turns her head away from him again and licks the side of her paw, the picture of unruffled laziness. Keith rewards her practiced indifference with a scratch under her chin, and a small treat from the dish he keeps locked in a drawer. She rewards him with the slow opening and closing of her eyes.

He picks up the teddy bear and turns it from side to side, making sure there’s no lingering darkness or marks from the exorcism on the toy, since the father who’d dropped it off had begged him to refrain from damaging the toy. It looks to be unharmed, so he sets it back down and leans back in his chair, stretching as he closes his eyes and listens to the sounds of Red purring as she cleans her paws.

Up front, the bell on the front door chimes. It sounds like very familiar laughter.  

Keith barely has time to sit straight again before Lance is bursting through the office door, his face glowing with excitement. A few light charms from the front room sweep into the room with him, caught in his momentum, and they knock against each other and off of him as he hurries around the desk and plants a warm kiss on Keith’s mouth, tilting the desk chair back so he’s splayed almost horizontally in a parody of being dipped. Keith makes a startled noise against his lips, his hands flailing and landing on Lance’s shoulders, but Lance is already pulling away, beaming at him.

“Was your first day really that good?” Keith asks dazedly, mouth buzzing a little from the kiss.

“It was amazing,” Lance gushes. He tosses his blue backpack against the wall and brushes his fingertips over Red’s head, earning himself a loud, full-throated purr. Keith barely has time to brace himself before Lance is throwing himself into his lap, sitting with his legs splayed over the arm of the chair. Keith grunts a little, trying to balance their combined weight, but Lance just keeps talking. “Okay, so my professors are amazing, and the students too, there’s this witch named Plaxum there and she’s figured out how to breathe underwater, Keith, can you believe that?”

“Very cool,” Keith says, amused. Lance is a warm and comforting weight in his lap, soothing after a long day of handling frustrating customers and curses in equal measure. He reaches up to run his fingertips over Lance’s hair, tugging at the curls that have started forming since he’s let his hair grow out over the summer. “What else?”

“All of my classes were so good, I think I’m gonna die in my Intro to Theoretical Magic course, it looks like there’s a lot of math involved, but my Ritualistic Curse Magic course is gonna be a breeze.” Lance smiles cheekily at him, leaning into his petting.

“And why’s that?” Keith asks idly, pulling harder on Lance’s hair when he just smirks wickedly at Keith. “I can’t believe you took that course when I’m literally right here, Lance.”

“Everyone takes an easy class their first year!” Lance protests, poking Keith’s cheek. “And besides, what if I learn something you don’t know? I haven’t forgotten our bet about me stealing your customers, you know.”

Keith scoffs. “Good luck with that. I have a flawless curse removal record.”

“My boyfriend, so humble,” Lance teases, leaning in to brush his nose against Keith’s. Keith’s eyes close almost against his will as he relaxes against Lance, a smile automatically curving his mouth. “How was your day, sweetheart?”

“Long,” he sighs, melting a little into the chair when Lance kisses his temple softly. “There were a lot of walk ins, and then a whole group of teenagers got cursed from walking into this haunted house, and then I had the teddy bear demon--”

“Oh my god,” Lance says, alarmed, turning to eye the pink teddy bear still sitting innocently on the desk. “Is that thing alive?”

“It’s gone now,” Keith assures him. “Red helped.”

Lance grins at the cat, whose ears perk up at the mention of her name. “Of course she did, because she’s a good kitty.”

Keith makes a face when Red moves closer and butts her head against Lance’s arm, seeking his attention. “She’s my familiar, why does she like you so much?”

“Probably because you like me so much,” Lance suggests innocently, then laughs when Keith rolls his eyes. “Also I’m the one who found her, we have a connection.” Red makes a chirping sound that sounds like agreement, rubbing her head more firmly against Lance.

“Betrayal,” Keith mutters sadly. Lance laughs, leaning in to press a chaste kiss against his pouting mouth, and then stands up out of his lap. Keith takes a good look at him for the first time since he walked into the room -- at his windswept hair and his sparkling eyes, offset by the pale blue of his shirt. There’s a pen mark on his cheek, most likely because Lance likes to twirl his pens in his fingers when he’s listening to something intently. He’s also wearing rounded glasses, probably because he thinks they make him look more studious, and because “they draw attention to my face, which I think we can agree is one of my best assets, Keith.”

He’s so cute that Keith almost wants to drag him back down and kiss him some more, but it’s past closing time for the shop, and he’d promised Lance a date to celebrate his first day at his new school.

“Okay, so we just have to drop off Red at your house, then the town is ours for the taking,” Lance says, picking his backpack back up and grabbing the bag that Red rides in on the motorcycle from atop a bookshelf. She jumps into it without a fuss, although she does look expectantly at the drawer where the treats are hidden. Keith sighs and gives one to her.

“That’s the plan,” Keith says to Lance, smiling. Inwardly, he’s a little more anxious -- they’d only talked about dinner and maybe riding around town on the motorcycle, their usual date activities, but Keith has a surprise that he’s hoping Lance will like.

He’d gone to his garden earlier in the day and left a bag of wood carving tools, and he’s hoping that he can convince Lance to put their initials in the oak tree.

He looks up at Lance’s open, beaming face, takes in the love he can feel pulsing through their bond, and thinks there’s a good chance Lance will like the idea.

Lance tugs him up out of the chair, chattering about how many fries he’s going to eat at the restaurant, then pivoting to talking about his new classmates so quickly Keith almost can’t keep up. He doesn’t let go of Keith’s hand, interlocking their fingers, palms warm against his skin. The bond between them is just as warm, reassuring and familiar even though it’s only been a few months.  

They step out into the sunset that’s falling around them, the slightest chill falling over the city as the sun falls behind the trees. Fall is almost here, the start of a new season on the edge of emerging, and everything feels crisp and clear.

As they pull out their helmets, Lance puts on the maroon leather jacket that he’s basically stolen at this point, making cutesy faces at Red as she gets strapped down to the seat. She generously ignores him until they climb on the motorcycle.

He’s solid and comforting against Keith’s back when he starts up the motor; Keith doesn’t know if he can feel Lance’s heartbeat because of how close they’re pressed, or if their bond is amplifying it, but it’s enough to bring a smile to his lips, to settle his own heartbeat.

“You ready to go?” he asks Lance, angling his head a little so he can look back at him. Lance’s smile flashes white in the growing darkness.

“Ready as always, babe,” Lance says, arms tightening around his middle. “Wanna take the long way?” 

Keith revs the engine and aims his bike at the pink and purple and blue horizon, his own smile growing wider. “Why not?” he says quietly, leaning back against Lance’s chest. “We’ve got time.”