Chapter Text
In hindsight, Keith should have realized that it would be Lance to bring it up first.
He should have seen it coming like a fucking ten-wheeler screaming down a highway with its brakes cut. He should have prepared himself, dropped into a defensive position with his blade out and his teeth bared. He should have guessed that Lance, whose impulse control was a faulty tail light on its best days, would be the one to finally pull the damn block out of the jenga tower. Lance, who was deceptively perceptive. Lance, who had more experience in unrequited love than the rest of the team combined. Lance. The asshole. The closest thing Keith had to a friend these days.
In hindsight, Keith should have realized that he was getting soft.
They were scouting an abandoned planet with a name Coran had told him more than once but Keith still couldn’t seem to keep in his brain, looking for…something which started with a ‘p’. Or maybe an ‘f’. He’d been distracted by trying not to look at Shiro, at studying whether or not he was truly okay, as he continued to reassure Keith. At judging whether the bags under his eyes were getting lighter or darker. With all his sleeping—sometimes close to eighteen hours a day—he should have been looking better, right? Less pale? He should have been standing up straighter. His smiles shouldn’t have looked so strained.
Keith had never been good with judging recovery times, mostly because he’d treated them like therapy sessions he’d been forced to attend as a kid with the resident counselor at the orphanage—a good idea in theory, but excruciatingly painful and ultimately a waste of time in practice. How long did it take for a soul to realign with a body after it’d been blasted out into the astral consciousness of a sentient lion robot?
The only benchmark he had was how long it had taken him to feel like a person again after thinking Shiro had died on Kerberos. Months. Six at least. And even then, it was touch and go there as to whether or not his life counted as living. Not until he’d seen Shiro strapped to that table, had touched his jaw and looked down on him with his own eyes had he felt like he could truly breathe.
So no, he didn’t know what the fuck this element was called, or how it was supposed to help the lions recharge, or why he’d been the one to designate search teams and landed himself with Lance. Maybe it was his subconscious displaying its customary sadism. Or maybe he just liked Lance. That was a weird thought. But after two years on a galactic space whale with his mother, he was growing used to being surprised by his own desire not to punch everything that looked at him sideways.
He was standing on the side of a cliff streaked with blue and white glowing fungi, frowning down at a deposit of what must have once been the droppings of a creature who’d overdosed on neon corn. He was distracted by the slight pulsing of the air around him. The atmosphere, or something. By the memory of Shiro’s laugh. The first one he’d given since waking up a few weeks ago. Or the first Keith had heard, anyway. Rough, surprised, with an undercurrent of bass which still did strange things to Keith’s chest even after six years. He definitely wasn’t listening to Lance, so he didn’t hear when he went ominously quiet. He didn’t feel the pointed gaze, calculated with Lance’s particular brand of impish nonchalance.
And so he didn’t see it coming when Lance asked, casually, “So how long have you been madly in love with Shiro?”
It was a testament to his maturation over the past few years that he didn’t jump and pitch himself off the cliff to escape this conversation. Instead, he scratched a hand through his wolf’s fur, taking his time to swallow the immediate urge to pick up the space shit in front of him and throw it into Lance’s face.
Progress. Patience yields—
Stop that.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, looking over the cliff to judge how far the next marker was that Pidge had flagged for them to check out. “We should get moving.”
“Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to find any of this phornatonium stuff here. Might as well head back to the lions. But before we do that, I’m going to ask again—how long have you been kindling your fire for our erstwhile fearless leader?”
Keith flicked up his comms array. “Pidge?”
“Find anything?” she answered at once.
“It’s a bust. We’re going to have to keep looking.”
“Sounds good.” There was a pause. “So...you and Lance have a nice chat?”
There were times in the beginning of this whole crazy ride where he felt like the rest of the group didn’t want him around. Where he was tolerated, but never truly embraced. All of that had vanished in the few years he’d spent away from them, after he’d realized that he’d been the one holding himself at a distance in a stupid bid to protect himself.
He’d never felt betrayed by them before.
“Not yet,” Lance answered breezily. “I think this might take a while, Pidge. Save some of Hunk’s dinner for me, will you?”
“No promises. Remember, Keith, this isn’t an intervention. It’s a helpful nudge. Honesty is your best play here.”
“Pidge,” Keith practically growled. “You seriously don’t want to do this—”
“No, I do. Lance drew the long straw, though. Trust me, I’m just as upset as you are. Have fun, boys!”
Keith glared at his wrist, knowing there was nothing he could do about the situation at that very moment, but feeling as if his anger might reach out through the radio waves and strangle that insufferable girl and the demonic grin he knew she was wearing back in her lion.
“You don’t seriously think the silent treatment is going to get you out of this, right?”
Keith closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, reminding himself that he was better than face-palming Lance into the rock. Such violence was beneath him. Plus, it was probably what Lance expected, and it was one of his few, undiluted joys in life to piss Lance off.
“How about you tell me what you think I’m supposed to say,” he muttered, finally turning around to see—sympathy in Lance’s gaze.
Well. That wasn’t what he was expecting.
“Listen, I get that you’re a conceal-don’t-feel kind of guy, but I just think it’ll be better for everyone involved if you offload some of that simmering dramatic tension that’s been making it difficult to stand in the same room with you for the past two weeks.” Lance shrugged, crossed his arms as he leaned against the rock behind him. “You gotta let that shit go somewhere, buddy. It’s gonna give you heartburn.”
“Where is this coming from?” Keith asked in a last-ditch effort to distract Lance. “I’m assuming everyone has been gossiping behind my back. I think I have a right to know what stories you all have been inventing to keep yourselves entertained.”
“First of all, you’re a Texan, so shame on you for abandoning your heritage by using proper grammar for the second person plural. Second of all,” Lance’s eyes grew horribly wide and he actually grimaced, grimaced, as he said, “Keith.”
“What?” he barked, causing his wolf to butt his head against Keith’s thigh. He reached down to reassure him. To reassure himself, really.
Lance took a moment to respond, expression still hovering far too close to pitying for Keith’s comfort. “Buddy, come on. For all the dark, broody, edgelord energy you’ve got going on, you’re kind of an open book. Also, for all your faults, you’re not actually clueless.”
“Thanks,” Keith muttered, eyes narrowing.
“No problem. Point being, you’ve got it bad for Shiro. Like, epically bad. Monumentally bad. You’re pining a whole freaking evergreen forest.” Lance smiled, undercutting the tension building in Keith’s sternum. “Speaking as someone who has some experience in these matters, I thought maybe you might want to talk about it.”
He wasn’t wrong. Keith had considered, in his darkest, lowest moments, going to Lance to ask how he’d been able to deal with his feelings for Allura for the past year (three years, damn space whale) and not implode. But that was something that even marginally-better-adjusted Keith couldn’t quite wrap his head around. Going to Lance for help. He’d sooner shove his knife into his thigh.
Keith took a deep breath, sank his fingers deeper into the scruff of his wolf for comfort, and said, “You think I’m in love with Shiro.”
“I think you’re head over heels, truly, madly, deeply, in love with Shiro. Yes.”
Keith’s jaw clenched, but he forced himself to consider Lance’s words as if they weren’t cutting through him like shrapnel. “Right. I can see why you might think that.”
Lance stared, expression morphing into incredulity. “Wow, you’re really going to play it this way. I mean, I admire the commitment—”
“Shiro’s the most important person in my life. He has been for the past six years. He’s the reason I’m the person I am today, so yeah, I love him. He’s like my brother.” Keith thought he should be congratulated for only slightly faltering on the last word. The word which had haunted him for the past two weeks. The word which had made him feel like the stupidest, most idiotic asshole in the entire fucking universe.
Brother. Brother.
He was a fucking idiot. The problem was, he hadn’t realized until the word literally came out of his mouth how absolutely, dead-wrong, it felt. Like he’d barfed up some kind of weird slimy creature which was now sitting and staring at him in silent, disgusting judgement.
Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who had a problem with the word.
Lance snorted. “Your brother? Uh, so, I don’t judge as a rule. Everyone’s got their own kinks and whatever you think of in the dark of the night when you get your rocks off—”
Keith took a step toward Lance, whose hands came up at once in surrender.
“All right, all right, don’t bite my head off. I just…” He laughed, holding out his hands in an open-armed shrug. “My dude, you do not think he’s your brother.”
“Did you suddenly learn how to read minds while I was away?” Keith snapped, fighting the urge to pace. Pacing was something people did to relieve stress, or because they were agitated. And Keith was neither stressed nor agitated. He was annoyed. And that was all.
“Okay, so I am going to say something that will probably have you growling at me, but I have brothers. Real brothers. Flesh and blood, from the same womb, brothers.” Lance’s tone was comforting, fond even. There wasn’t a bite or a hard edge to it, which made it harder for Keith to hold onto his anger. Harder, but not impossible. “I know how brothers act, and what they feel like. I love my brothers. But if I were treating my brothers the way you and Shiro treat each other, I think it might raise some eyebrows.”
Keith stared at him, his traitorous mind honing in on exactly what Lance had said. The way he and Shiro treated each other.
Well. That was something, at least.
Lance sighed, rubbing a hand over his helmet. “Your hand was on his thigh, dude. His thigh.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When we got back from getting the first batch of phornatonium, and Shiro had just woken up, and you were cradling him in your arms, your hand,” Lance pointed in emphasis at the offending appendage, “was resting on his thigh.”
Keith blinked. That moment was a blur of emotion and relief and fear. He barely remembered anything except for Shiro’s weight on his shoulder, the steady beeping of the machine reaffirming the fact that he was alive, and not only alive, but present. “Oh,” he said, lamely.
Lance threw up his hands again. “I mean, the fact that you don’t even remember, that it was so instinctual, to rest your fucking hand on his inner thigh, just confirms it.” Lance stared wide-eyed at him, shaking his head in disbelief. “Is any of this getting through?”
“You don’t—” Keith wanted to run his hands through his hair, to pull, to get some kind of bearing in this conversation which was quickly spiraling out of his control. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, okay? I love Shiro. For a long time, he was the only family I had. That’s...that’s all.”
It didn't matter that it was the baldest lie Keith had ever told in his life. It didn’t matter that he wanted to scream and rage and defy himself for being so stupidly oblivious for so long. He had to keep saying it was nothing more than familial love.
Because if he admitted it was anything else, that it was anything more, he might not be able to keep going. To keep living and talking and breathing the same air as Shiro, his rock, his best friend, his world. Whom he now, unequivocally, knew that he was in love with.
He’d go mad.
Lance was quiet for a long time, simply watching as Keith gathered himself back together, patient. When had Lance McClain learned how to be patient?
“I tried for a long time to convince myself I didn’t feel any particular way toward Allura,” he said softly, with a distant kind of pain in his eyes. “I told myself I’d be her friend, and I’d support her, whatever she chose. I mean, God, I watched her fall in love with that slimy douchebag prince of shit.” Lance took a moment to collect himself, anger hardening his features in ways Keith hadn’t really seen before. “And it was okay, right? Because she was my friend, is my friend, and I care about her as a person first. But…” He sighed, drooping slightly in his position against the rock. “It took me a while to figure this out, but lying to yourself sucks. It might be more painful to admit the truth, but it’s better than fighting something you can’t really control.”
Keith tried to get angry again, he truly did, but there was something raw and fragile about the look Lance was giving him. Something which cracked the cage Keith had been holding around his heart for the past two weeks. For the past few years, really.
“It doesn’t matter,” Keith muttered, trying to keep his voice level as his heart tried to leap out of his throat.
“It does.”
“No,” he repeated, grabbing on his small flicker of frustration at Lance’s sheer stubbornness, “it doesn’t. It doesn’t change anything. Shiro is—” He had to swallow a lump of panic as he tried to admit it out loud. “He’s in bad shape, still. He doesn’t need… He needs to rest, and he needs to get better. Me feeling a—certain way doesn’t help.”
From the outside in, he could see how ridiculous he sounded. He couldn’t even work up the courage to say it out loud. He was stumbling over his words, his voice was shaking, his entire body was shaking. He was a fucking mess.
He’d been a mess for two weeks. Standing in the eye of a storm which was constantly threatening to swallow him whole.
In more ways than one, he still felt like he was hanging on the side of that broken platform, two seconds from plunging to his death, hand gripping the arm of the man he loved, the man he was in love with, the man who had nearly succeeded in killing him.
That moment of clarity and acceptance as he watched Shiro falling beneath him was the last time he’d felt any kind of peace. Everything since then had been panic-relief-dread-tension-fear—a never-ending cycle of reconciliation that he would not acknowledge. He was frozen in a state of fight-or-flight and he was losing, somehow, by doing nothing.
“You never told us what happened,” Lance murmured, pulling Keith back from the brink of his own mind.
Keith looked down at his feet.
“I know it wasn’t good, from the scar on your face, and the shape you were in when you came back, but…”
He hadn’t really told anyone about it. After the dust from the fight with Lotor had settled, he had gone to his mom, had broken down in front of her. She’d held him, and comforted him, and he’d known that she understood, even without him saying anything, what it had been like for him. That was the best thing about her, really—the way she seemed to understand everything about himself that no one ever really had, not even Shiro. Shiro might have accepted him, and done everything he could to make Keith feel like he had someone to turn to, someone who was there for him and cared about him, no matter what, but he didn’t understand it all. He didn’t understand the isolation and fear, the need to protect himself before he got hurt, the need to never let anyone in, the instinctual, primal, fury Keith felt when he thought about all those nights he’d spent thinking no one cared about him, or wanted him.
His mom did understand. Sometimes Keith thought his mom understood himself better even than he did.
Keith just shook his head, feeling Lance’s eyes on him. He couldn’t open up now. Not yet.
“Have you talked to Shiro about it?”
Keith let out a sharp laugh. “When would I have had time to do that? We’ve been pretty busy the past few weeks.”
“And Shiro’s doing his best impression of a cat these days, I know, but… I don’t know, man, this seems like something you might want to make time for.”
Keith met Lance’s gaze, trying to tamp down on the sudden urge to explain, to say something. “I don’t even know what he remembers. He’s been so out of it.”
Lance’s brow furrowed. “You think he’s got amnesia?”
“Maybe.” Keith unhooked his bayard, needing to do something with his hands. He flipped it over and over, like he’d taken to doing with his knife, just to get out the frenetic energy he’d always had. “You saw a bit of what he was like...before. When Haggar—” Keith had to resist the urge to call on the sword, physically clenching his hand before it could emerge in response to the spike of pure, unadulterated rage he felt toward that...thing that had turned Shiro against himself. “I don’t know if he remembers everything, or if he was just watching from the Black Lion, or if he’s got some kind of residual memory imprint from the clone or something. He hasn’t been awake long enough to really explain.”
“You’re right that this is a bitch of a situation,” Lance said, scowling. “Seriously, all of this is… I mean it’s about as weird and convoluted as it can get, and we’ve been put through the ringer the past year. I thought it didn’t get any weirder than sentient plants and mind-controlled merpeople but—”
“Lance.”
“I’m just saying that it’s okay to be fucking confused! We live in confused now, population us, but you don’t get un-confused by bottling that shit up.”
“Eloquent.”
“I don’t think you have any right to comment on my eloquence when the most I’ve been able to get out of you in the past ten minutes is ‘grr, brother, good’.”
Keith slid his bayard back into its holster and punched the rock next to Lance.
“Jesus, Keith—”
“I’m fine,” he muttered, shaking out his hand as it pulsed with pain. He hadn’t broken anything, but it helped clear his mind. It was a trick he’d learned when he was young. Punching something usually helped solve whatever was bothering him at the time. It was a mark of his maturity that he wasn’t punching people anymore. “I’m just—”
Still shaking, he turned and slid down the rock face until he was sitting with his head between his knees. He held onto his helmet, trying to hold onto everything else which was bursting to explode from still-bruised mind.
“I didn’t know,” he whispered into his knees, the words dragged from his lips before he could stop them. “I didn’t know.”
He hadn’t known the depth of his feelings until he’d been faced with a Shiro who no longer believed in him. A Shiro who had done his best to unmake everything they’d built together. He'd been faced with Shiro’s death again and again, and every time he had fought like hell to get him back. Every time, he had come closer and closer to that horrible, incredible, life-shattering truth. He hadn’t known how unlike a brother Shiro was until the word slipped from his mouth for the second time in his life. Until his panicked mind tried to course correct with the truth it had always known, even if Keith had been hiding it from himself.
He hadn’t known that he loved Shiro until he’d said it out loud. And it was killing him.
Keith felt Lance settle next to him, far enough away that they weren’t touching, but close enough that they could, if that was something Keith wanted. He didn’t, but he wasn’t sure he’d push Lance away, either.
“Okay, so you’re a bit more clueless than I thought.”
Keith’s head whipped up to glare at Lance, who was staring out over the neon-planet with something like a smile at the edge of his mouth.
“I’m sorry, man,” Lance murmured, still not looking at him, giving him space. “That’s… Well, that’s pretty fucking rough.”
Keith’s eyes burned and he looked away, blinking rapidly. “Rough is a word for it.”
“I’m sure there’s some other asshole in this universe who has it worse off than you, but you’re probably top ten. Top twenty, at least.”
Keith let the joke fade without a retort. His wolf settled on his other side, resting his chin on the top of Keith’s head. His heart felt like it was breaking apart, like there was too much inside him and he was about to explode with it all. No one person could contain this much sheer, bristling, feeling. No one person should be able to hold onto so much pain. He thought he’d grown used to bottling everything up and shoving it down so deep he never had to look at it. The absence of his mother, the loss of his father, the scorn of his peers, the dismissal of every authority figure he’d ever had the misfortune to serve under. He thought he’d gotten used to feeling like he was worthless and broken.
But Shiro had fixed him, or he had begun the process, at least. Maybe Keith had done the work himself, but Shiro had shown him it was possible.
And now Shiro was broken, had been broken for months, and Keith hadn’t been there. He’d left, too wrapped up in his own shit and need to forge his own path, and he’d failed him.
He didn’t know how to fix Shiro. He wasn’t a fixer. He was a breaker.
Broken, the word resonated in the back of his mind, like the deep reverberations of a gong. Broken. Broken. Broken.
He wasn’t broken, not anymore. Or if he was, it wasn’t a bad thing. It didn’t make him any worse than anyone else.
It didn’t mean it hadn’t hurt to hear, though.
“What if he didn’t want to come back, Lance?”
He didn’t even bother to stop his tears now. Some part of him would regret this later, when he came back to his senses and remembered that Lance was a dick, who would probably lord this over Keith for the rest of his life. But right now, he didn’t give a shit. In fact, it kind of helped that it was Lance who was watching him cry. Better Lance than one of the others.
“He was floating in the Black Lion for so long. I didn’t even stop to think… We pulled him back, shoved him into that body, and none of us… What if he wanted—”
“Stop,” Lance said, his voice soft, but firm. “If you’re going to beat yourself up for something, fine, I’ll help you draft a list, but you don’t get to pull that shit while I’m here.”
Keith’s jaw clenched shut, but he didn’t look sideways to see whatever disapproval hung in Lance’s face.
“If Shiro didn’t want to come back, he wouldn’t have. You said you talked to him in the Black Lion’s consciousness, right? That he helped you? He was lucid enough to know what was going on, to reach out, more than once. Fuck, he reached out to me. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t want, in some way, to get out of there.”
“He did that to help us,” Keith muttered, his hands shaking. “That’s what he does. He helps. He saves everyone else at the expense of himself.”
The moment he said it, though, he knew he was wrong. Shiro had a martyr complex the size of a fucking galaxy, but he wasn’t entirely selfless. He’d left for Kerberos, when it might have been easier to stay on Earth. He’d chosen himself when it had hurt other people, Keith included. He could be selfish, even if he usually chose not to be.
“There’s a difference between helping out as a magic space ghost and sliding into the sleeve of your evil clone. Allura said that his soul was rejecting the body, at first. She might have put him in there, but he chose to stay.”
“Sure,” Keith said, self-loathing strangling the words on their way out, “after I begged him, again, to come back. You didn’t hear what I said to him.”
You can’t do this to me again.
He’d been so out of his mind with panic that he would lose Shiro, after everything he’d done to pull him back from the brink, that he’d fucking guilted Shiro back to life.
“I think it’s common knowledge that Shiro has a soft spot for you, dude. If anyone was going to convince him to, ah, live, it was gonna be you.”
“That’s my point,” Keith said, voice cracking as he looked up. His wolf shifted, laying down on his paws and curling his tail around the back of Keith’s legs. “I had to convince him to come back. What if he didn’t want to, and he’s only back because I…”
He swallowed back the sob that was threatening to burst from his lips, clenching his jaw against the tremble.
“Because he loves you too?” Lance finished gently.
“He doesn’t,” Keith answered automatically. “Not like…”
Not like I love him.
“And you know that because you asked him? Because you talked to him like the adult you now apparently are—fuck you, by the way. In all the crazy that happened since you got back, I never expressed how thoroughly fucking obnoxious it is that you went and got older and taller and more stupidly handsome while the rest of us had to stay the same age. I mean, congratulations on finding your mom and spending time with her or whatever,” Lance added sulkily, “but you didn’t have to be so extra about it.”
Keith managed a weak cough of a laugh.
“So, okay, you didn’t know you were in love with him,” Lance said in a voice which was more suited to deciding what restaurant they should choose for dinner. “The affairs of the heart are complicated and you’re one of the more emotionally constipated people I’ve ever met, so I can understand why it might have come as a bit of a shock. To those of us on the outside looking in, though, it was pretty fucking obvious that there was something going on there, with both of you. And it wasn’t brotherly love.”
Lance patted him gingerly on the knee, pulling his hand away at once when Keith looked up to glare at him.
“I can’t imagine what you two went through, and I’m not saying you have to recount every terrible detail. But you have to stop thinking that you’re somehow at fault for anything, here.”
“It’s not that simple, Lance.”
“No, it’s probably not, as nothing is simple these days, and everything is a clusterfuck. I mean, frankly, the second the universe decided that us chucklefucks were going to be the one thing which held back the forces of chaos and death from consuming everything good and pure in this world, simplicity was thrown out the window with a single tear and one poured-out drink. I just think it’s pointless to beat yourself up for wanting Shiro to live. And it’s pointless to pretend you don’t love him. Because you do. Clearly.”
“Even if it won’t change anything?” Keith muttered, inching more closely to accepting what Lance was saying. He still wanted to punch him, but the urge was growing fainter now.
“You said it yourself, Shiro’s out of it. Things might change. You have no idea what the future holds, dude. And since you’re apparently denser than I thought you were, you really have no idea what might change.”
Keith looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “Just like things might change between you and Allura?”
Lance winced, knocked his head back against the rock. “I don’t know, man. I’ve been hopelessly in love with her for a year. And unlike you, I’ve known for pretty much the whole time. It might not be in the cards. She’s… I mean, I’m just this asshole, right?” His voice got faint, expression growing pained. “Why’d she go for a clown like me?”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Keith muttered, sympathy softening his voice. “You’re not entirely hopeless.”
Lance turned to look at him, crooked smile stretching over his mouth. “Keith Kogane, are you about to give me a pep-talk?”
Keith scowled. “I was going to say you’re a good shot, and you’ve marginally improved in your flying. That has to count for something.”
“Wow, this is nice. I feel all warm and cozy inside.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Maybe you and I should ditch Allura and Shiro and—”
“Stop.”
Lance sighed, pulling his legs up to mirror Keith’s posture. “Look, if you can’t work up to talking to Shiro just yet, you should at least try to talk to everyone else. We’re worried.”
A wound which had never really healed inside his chest began to prick and burn. “Why?” he murmured.
“Because you ditched us for six months and you nearly died two weeks ago. We’re all on the same team, okay? Stop pretending you’re this lone wolf who doesn’t need anyone else.” Lance eyed the wolf at Keith’s feet, frowning. “I mean, literally, you’re not a lone wolf anymore. You found another wolf. The metaphor is so obvious I wonder sometimes if the universe doesn’t have a sick sense of humor.”
A knot formed in Keith’s throat. He stared down at his space wolf, feeling a little like his entire center of gravity had been shifting sideways for the past two weeks, and he’d only just noticed.
He’d realized, over the long, boring months of time spent on the space whale with his mom, that’d he’d found some kind of family with the rest of Team Voltron. He hadn’t truly understood the depth of his fondness for them until he’d had time to sit and process. Being with the Blades had been nothing but movement, no time to rest and ponder, no time to think about what he’d left behind. He hadn’t thought about Hunk’s cooking and deep-bellied laugh, or Pidge’s dumb little smirk every time she made a particularly ruthless joke, or the way Allura hummed to herself when she got lost in thought, or how Coran would sometimes break into calisthenics when he got bored on the bridge, or how Lance was actually decent company when he wanted to be.
He’d known he would miss Shiro. That was never in question. He hadn’t known that he would miss them all. More than he ever expected to.
“This might come as a surprise,” Lance said, casually, “but there are people who don’t hate having you around. Shiro’s not the only one who missed you when you were gone.”
Keith didn’t know how to respond. Everything he could think of was too little, or too stupid, to say out loud. It was easier, strangely, to talk to everyone else when they were in crisis mode, when they had to work together to fight, or to stay alive. This…was still something he was getting used to.
Lance reached over to knock Keith on his helmet. “Did your wires get crossed or something? Earth to Keith, this is Lance, your new best friend calling, hello, do you—”
Keith shoved him onto his side, grinning a little when he yelped.
Lance rolled back onto his feet at once though, with a long-limbed grace Keith had always admired about him. “All right, so now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, we can go back to the others. The longer we stay out here, the more likely it is that we’ll have to eat some of Hunk’s new fun space animal creations.” He shuddered. “Still haven’t gotten over the worm testicles. Definitely didn’t need to know that.”
Lance held out his hand, smiling down at Keith with a warm, fond smile.
He bounced back so fucking quickly. It was almost impressive.
“How do you do that?” Keith asked before he could stop himself. “Just…turn it all off like that?”
Lance’s expression grew pained. “Are you talking about my emotions? I don’t, dude. I just don’t let them turn me into a black hole of angst.” When Keith continued to stare at him, he sighed. “Practice, I guess. Being honest with myself. It’s still a work-in-progress, but I’m getting better at it. Also, it helps, to like, talk to people, and not ignore everyone.”
“I talk to people,” Keith muttered.
“Your dog doesn’t count.”
Keith rolled his eyes, but reached up to accept Lance’s hand. Almost at once, Lance pulled him into a full-body hug. He fought the urge to shove away, knowing that he could, if he wanted. “This is un—”
“Shh,” Lance murmured, patting his back and hugging him tighter, “just let it happen, man. Just give in to the hug.”
“I’m going to give my fist into your spleen if you don’t let me go soon.”
Lance sighed and pulled away, holding Keith by the shoulders. They were the same height now. It made Keith feel a little better about the situation he was in. “Oh, Keith,” Lance said dramatically, “you might have gotten taller, but you’re still just as stupid as you always were. The more things change—”
“We’re done now.” Keith shook Lance off, whistling for his wolf to follow as he picked his way down the cliff and back toward their lions.
“If it makes you feel any better, all of us are rooting for you two crazy kids.”
“It doesn’t,” he snapped at once, but it was a lie. It did, in a strange way. Like he wasn’t just going crazy on his own.
The idea of him and Shiro… It was impossible, and it wouldn’t happen, but just talking about it loosened some of the pressure in his chest. Lance might have been crazy on his own, but if Pidge could talk about it without bursting into laughter, maybe…
“Have you guys been talking about this a lot?” He couldn’t help but ask, like itching at a healing wound.
Lance nodded as he joined Keith, surveying their surroundings for possible threats. That, too, was new. Lance was usually the first person to fall straight into a trap because he was too busy being ridiculous. Now there was something almost…disciplined about him.
God, he really had been gone a long time.
“We’ve got a bet going to see which one of you cracks first.”
And just like that, all the begrudging fondness he’d felt growing for Lance evaporated with a dry puff of smoke.
“You what?”
“Pidge was the one who thought of it first, but Allura’s the one who really got the ball rolling. And before you ask, no, I am not telling you what I think is going to happen, because I know you’ll do whatever’s the opposite just to spite me, even if it means sacrificing your own happ—hey!”
Keith stuck out his foot, sending Lance toppling face first into a patch of neon space shit.
He kept walking as Lance extricated himself and started threatening him with Red’s vengeance. Keith wondered idly if the lion would turn on him in defense of her knew paladin, but he thought not. Red was smarter than that.
By the time they got back to the lions, Lance still wiping his helmet, Keith was even fighting a real smile.