klancepride with cal

day 2- first date

"Keith, it's so buggy out," Lance complained mildly as they walked down the forest path. It was dusk and the sun was just beginning to sink beneath the mountains on the horizon.

Keith held Lance's hand as they walked along the path, searching ahead for the break in the road that led to his destination. He hadn't wanted to do something big for his first date with Lance, but he was beginning to worry that this wasn't enough to impress the boy.

Lance slapped his arm, killing a mosquito, and huffed, annoyed. He'd thought that this was going to be some sort of romantic getaway. Instead, he was being eaten alive by pesky blood-suckers. But he was tethered to Keith by their hands and he wasn't about to give up yet.

"Finally," Keith murmured as they rounded the corner. After a few more paces, they turned through a gap in the woods to stand on a wide rock ledge and were immediately bathed in light.

The sunset was in full swing. The sun itself looked bright salmon-pink, the sky around it orange, slowly fading to magenta. The clouds were cotton candy and the mountains were indigo. Lance felt his breath whoosh out of his lungs. He stepped forward as if to get closer to the sunset, as if he would drink it in if he could.

Keith looked over at Lance's dazed, gorgeous expression and decided that, for a first date, it had been a success. He unfolded the picnic blanket he'd been carrying and laid it down on the rocky cliff, pulling Lance down to sit beside him.

Before either could say anything, they heard loud, rambunctious voices coming up the trail behind them. Great. Keith looked over his shoulder. A group of kids his age was tromping down the path, laughing and shouting over each other.

Lance began to get up, but Keith put a hand on his shoulder, kissed his cheek, and whispered, "I've got it."

He jogged over to the kids and put on his sternest, most serious face he could muster. The kids were in a group of about 5, their faces alight, eyes wide.

"Heeey!" one shouted upon seeing Keith. Keith noticed that the young man held a joint and realized why they were all acting so crazy.

He pulled the guy with the joint over to the side of the trail and spoke with a soft voice. "Would you guys mind going somewhere else? I'm on a date and I want it to go well."

The guy frowned, looking over Keith's shoulder at the cliff where Lance sat. Keith looked too and forced a smile when he saw the Cuban smiling and waving at him and the guy.

"No worries, bro, we'll just go further down," the dude said nonchalantly. He hesitated, then handed the joint to Keith. "Cheers, bro." He motioned, overexaggerating, to his friends to be quiet and follow him. They giggled wildly and romped off in the direction the guy pointed.

Keith smiled slightly. People could be decent sometimes. He looked down at the joint in his hand, took a hit, handed it back to the guy, and then walked back to Lance, gathering him in his arms and pulling him closer.

Lance laughed softly and buried his face in Keith's shirt. After a few minutes, the sun had sunk beneath the ragged slopes and peaks of the mountains on the horizons, and Keith hadn't been able to stop smelling the peachy smell of Lance's hair. The sky, still brilliant, had faded into red and violet hues while the stars slowly twinkled in on the opposite side of the sky.

The moon rose in the East, a picturesque crescent of untouchable white. Keith felt dazedly blissful, Lance's skin warm against his own, everything moving fast and slow at once. Time had seemed to stop, but he kept time with the beating of Lance's heart and the racing of his mind.

"Was this a good first date?" he murmured to Lance's hair, which tickled his nose as the evening breeze blew through the cocoa strands. Lance craned his neck to look at Keith squarely. The sunset cast the flecks of green and brown around the pupils of Lance's blue eyes to amber, his lips slightly parted, cheeks pink.

Lance reached up and ran his hand through Keith's long hair, eyes searching Keith's face for any hint of how he was feeling. I am an open book for you, Lance. Flip my pages. Delve into my deepest, darkest depths and read my life and my love for you. Find my boundaries and push them. Find my walls and break them. Find every bit of me and love me as I love every bit of you.

"The best," Lance murmured. Their lips met.