Chapter Text
“For all intents and purposes…” Lance said, grinning wickedly with his blaster pressed to Keith’s forehead. “This is the end.”
Keith raised an eyebrow. Lance and his stupid, needless monologues. He’d be much better at sparring if he didn’t waste precious seconds of every battle informing Keith that he had won. “Unlikely,” Keith said, entertaining him anyway.
Lance squawked, indignant. “What do you mean ‘unlikely’?!” he scoffed. “I have my gun to your head. You’re dead, Mullet!”
With a roll of his eyes, Keith swung his foot and knocked Lance’s feet out from under him. Lance went down with a screech, ending up on his back on the training deck as Keith pinned him, his sword to Lance’s throat and Lance’s hands pressed to the floor above his head, his blaster having skidded out of reach.
“I—you—that… You cheated!” Lance spluttered.
“Sure, I did,” Keith said sarcastically. His tone was flat, as was his expression, but his insides were anything but. It felt like his intestines were squirming around in his stomach, his lungs filled with dragonflies, his heart pounding an erratic rhythm in his chest.
“You admit it!” Lance cried. His chest was heaving, his hands struggling uselessly against the hold Keith had on him.
Keith was just grinning triumphantly. Though Lance didn’t — and probably wouldn’t ever — feel the same way about Keith that Keith felt about him, he was glad they at least had this. In the past, they’d bickered a lot, mostly thanks to Lance’s made up rivalry, but they’d come a long way since they’d first found the Blue Lion, since they’d first wound up in space. Now, Keith knew he had a bond with everyone. With Lance.
Suddenly, his fingers spasmed, and Keith was releasing Lance, curling in on himself as his entire body glitched. And not for the first time, either. Lance didn’t take advantage of his newfound weakened position, just sitting up slightly and gripping Keith’s shoulders as he groaned.
“Again?” he asked.
“It’s fine,” Keith said, trying to play it off. It wasn’t fine. Not really.
This — whatever this was — had been happening ever since they’d visited the planet Exrus. It was another easy mission of Coalition recruiting — in and out, one and done. Except Keith had ended up insulting the queen, somehow.
Okay, well, maybe not somehow. The princess had approached him, and Keith had turned down her advances without a thought. He was a paladin of Voltron, for one thing — he couldn’t afford to waste his time entertaining a relationship with some random girl from some random planet. And he was gay, for another.
But the princess had been humiliated, and the queen infuriated, and she’d demanded payment. The Exrusians — a telepathic, magical sort of species — were one that Keith never hoped to encounter again.
The queen had demanded to see his deepest, darkest secrets, and then she’d been rooting through his head, making Keith’s knees weak as horribly embarrassing images of him and Lance flitted through his mind, unbidden.
“Interesting,” she’d said, once she’d had her fill. Keith had sank to the ground, his every limb twitching, his brain drained.
“Ughh…” he’d groaned, barely hearing the clamoring of his friends behind him.
“What’d you do to him?!” someone’s voice — loud, shrill — had demanded. Keith’s head had been throbbing too hard to decipher who it’d belonged to.
“Nothing, yet,” the queen had said, sounding amused. “Soon, he shall see. He will be given everything he desires; and then it shall be taken from him.”
“That’s cruel,” Allura had growled.
“Perhaps,” the queen had said loftily. “But now we are willing to join your Coalition. Isn’t this what you wanted?”
And, well — yeah. It was what they’d wanted. And when Hunk and Lance had come to help him to his feet, the throbbing in his head had lessened. In a matter of minutes, he’d felt fine. An entire day had passed and most of them had forgotten about the event entirely, thanks to nothing coming from it.
But in the following days, Keith had started… glitching, for lack of a better word. His nerves seemed to ignite, to shift all around him and leave him feeling dizzy and winded, stretched and out of place. He had no idea what was going on, although he had an inkling...
“Keith, are you sure you’re okay?” Lance’s worried voice cut in, and Keith realized he was right there, his eyes swimming into view in front of Keith’s face. “You look really pale.”
Keith was sweating — he could feel it all over his skin — but despite this, he felt cold. He shivered.
“Lance…” he said, and his voice sounded croaky. He was thirsty. “I don’t…”
“You don’t what? Keith?” Lance demanded, except his voice sounded far away.
“The world…” Keith said, trying his best to describe what he was feeling. “It’s dissolving…”
“Oookay, that’s not good,” Lance said, the worried edge to his voice taking prominence now. “Up we get.”
Keith let out a huff of surprise as he was lifted into the air. When had Lance gotten that strong? The entire room was spinning around him, like he was glued to the center of a dreidel, watching the walls whip past him again and again and again. What the hell was happening?
“Hurts,” Keith breathed out, letting his head loll against Lance’s shoulder. His breaths felt labored.
“I know, buddy, I know,” Lance said quickly. He was a ship, cresting the onslaught of waves and weathering a storm. Or maybe he was just walking down the hall. Either felt plausible, right then.
Every time Keith blinked, he saw something different. He felt like he was on drugs, except he’d never actually been on them before. Vivid colors and scenes flashed before his eyes. Blink. A crowded city street, people pushing past him on all sides. Blink. Deep, dark blue. A trail of bubbles floating up, up, up… Blink. A drink pressed into his hand. Blink. A wide smile, white teeth, a head thrown back in laugher. Blink. Blue. Blue. Blue. With every blink, more blue — eyes of the same color, shape, and size — unchanging despite everything Keith saw before him.
“Lance…” Keith said, breathless, amazed. “Where are we?”
“We’re almost there buddy, just hang on, okay? Hang on.”
“Okay.”
“Hang on!”
Keith wrenched his eyes open, feeling immediately disoriented, because… he was standing? All the dizziness, the pain, the confusion — it was gone. Replacing it was music — what? They hadn’t heard music from Earth in years — and a clamoring of voices. Keith could smell… coffee? And not that horrible kind Hunk had tried to create. No offense.
“Hang on!” Lance’s voice called out again, and Keith’s eyes darted over to him, widening in confusion. Lance was wearing a uniform. An apron and a hat. He had what looked like flour smeared on his cheek and he was holding back a wave of angry customers with a single hand. He glared back at Keith.
“You done daydreaming, guapo? We’ve got customers!”
“I… what?” Keith managed, his voice small. Lance jabbed a finger in his direction. “Coffee. Customers. Our job? I’m not tryna get fired today, buddy.” With that, he turned back around, smiling politely at the customer before him as he typed something into the cash register. It dinged.
Keith pinched himself. He didn’t wake up.
The world was spinning again, but not because of whatever had happened last time. Surprise and confusion were taking their toll on him, because for whatever reason… he was working in a coffee shop. With Lance.