Klance; of Florists & Tennis Shoes

Chapter V

Chai Tea & Threadbare Backpacks

He stared at the peeling paint of his bedroom ceiling, eyes flat with disinterest. She had pressed the carnations back into his palm without looking at them, eyes unapologetic and sadistically jovial when she declined his offer, shrug light on her shoulders. Her smile hadn't wavered, expression unfaltering in its amused indifference, a lack of empathy present in how she'd flipped one braid over her shoulder, a burning palm set platonically on his forearm.

His features were guarded, the hesitant smile disappearing entirely from his expression. His months of courting had done little in the way of emotion, and the lust that had once led her touches and curled her lips was gone - because the shallow desire was swallowed whole by something more brutal in nature; it was swallowed by something that was always there. He supposed it was his fault, to have let himself get strung along into something that was transparent and superficial from the start.

He hadn't fallen for her-

-but he could've.

He could've easily fallen in love with her, and that feeling made way to sick, coiling lividity in the pit of his stomach. He'd been naive, not that he'd expected much in the beginning - but the realization of having gotten too deep, and the idea of drowning in her color-coded speak set the candlewick of pride alight. He hated it. The carnations sat on his bedside table, undefined and unwatered.

He wanted them to wilt.

It was strange though, the burning need to visit the small flower shop, despite having been turned down by Nyma's repulsively genial smile. So he did, and in the week that followed, he'd gone every other day, the sight of Keith making the visit all the more rewarding. The negativity, though, had also lasted well into the days that followed; his shoulders slanted with disinterest, and even with Pidge's prompting, reactions were seldom given. Lance was in no mood for any of it. It wasn't as though this had been the first time he'd been turned down so savagely, but he had to admit, that it was the first time he'd been so brutally played by someone he'd been invested in.

She had been a passing interest, at the start-pretty in her height, and her wide hips and her small laughs. It was something any interested man could hardly ignore, and Lance fit the bill to an undignified T. And with each passing flower, that hand on his thigh had gone higher and higher, until what remained of Lance's sanity were a series of nervous chuckles. Though, that had been how Lance found himself in her presence, it hadn't been why he'd fallen beneath her heel.

Nyma had shown an interest in him as a person.

That little fairytale was disproven by the dead flowers a week into wilting by his bedside, but initially, she had. She asked about his interests, and his family and his study, always with that pretty smile dancing on her features. She'd asked him about everything, from the stars to his own desires, and Lance would've fallen for it again if she'd chosen to do it a second time. Like a man dying of thirst, he would've swallowed the sea salt. Even the freebie brownies Hunk set on his table, time after time, when he went to study at Coran's coffeeshop, had little affect on his mood; after all, only one thing did.

Keith.

It was ridiculous at first, but even Lance had noticed it: he was never angsty with Keith. The reason wasn't that he didn't feel like a heaving pile of shit, but it was more of the fact that he didn't want the florist to see him down-especially when Keith placed so much effort into doing the exact opposite in the most subtle of ways, like having Lance take sips of his grossly sweetened honey lemon tea, or the small jokes he would try to make in an attempt to keep up with Lance's constant banter. Just the thought of that drunken admission-"I want you to be happy, dick, that's the problem"-brought an unreal feeling of warmth that made Lance, like a dumbass, continue to visit the rickety old flower shop down sevenths.