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What if the sky and the stars are for show and the aliens are watching live from the purple matter.
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It’s the stretch of brown flesh over soft peaks of bone, the cut of muscle lining the inside of thighs, soft fold of stomach and delicate articulation of fingertips. The careless way Lance peels off his suit more flirtatious than any practiced quip. Shiro feels the bunch of his back muscles accumulate more tension; he looks away.
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The corridor to the hangar oscillates between total darkness and halogen purple in intervals of three seconds. An ominous siren rings in bass, vibrates through his blood and bone. Three seconds of absolute black, then three seconds of Lance’s eyes glowing blue like arctic core carbon dated to three million years ago, then three seconds of absolute black, then three seconds of Lance’s eyes focusing down the barrel of a gun, drop of sweat incandescent sliding across his jaw, then three seconds of absolute black and Keith closes his eyes to prolong it.
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On the 7th moon of a planet with 12 oscillating rings, Lance glimmers neon green, disappears into a crowd of bipedal, humanoids with semi-translucent skin. All night, they’ve been marvelling at how opaque the paladins are, Lance especially. Keith watches the way their blue blood travels quicker through their limbs at the sight of Lance, drinks their alcohol, feels the tendons in his neck stiffen.
The music is a pulsar, the hypocenter in the skin under his fingernails, rolling across his ribs, seeping down his adonis belt into-
He follows Lance, loses him in the press of bodies, the sudden blinding flashes of light matching the beat. The crowd thins but the oxygen in his blood is thinner. He goes outside where Lance is leaning into an open flame caged by spidery alien hands.
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
Lance slides him a lopsided smile.
“Only when I drink.”
The cigarette in between Lance’s lips is close enough to Keith’s rollies at home, smelling more like burning steel than plant matter.
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Lance is fine. He smiles at Shiro, teeth completely red and his pupils dilated. His body is unmoving except for the quiver around his mouth and tightening of his fists around Shiro’s as Coran sows his side shut. Some blood seeps out and Shiro uses his free hand to try and clean it up. All he does is smear it further across Lance’s face.
Lance hangs stiffly between him and Coran as they sidestep the dozens of Galra bodies, making sure not to slip on the wet floor. As they turn a corner, Shiro catches the blown out eyes, face painted like war: expressionless and manic. He becomes hyper aware of the network of veins in his body. The extremities to which they connect.
Before falling into sleep that night, he recalls this and is filled with a vitriol that makes him weightless.
-
At the climax of their victory on a planet whose name none of them could pronounce, they watch two stars collide, die. Lance can feel his rifle arm shaking, can feel the flutter of meat under his skin as his body cannibalises after two straight days of combat. He watches light and stardust combust in patterns and colors indescribable, watches death arc across the endless nothing of the universe and feels it echo in himself.
In the empty hollows carved into him from birth, through life, there is a viscous material he scoops out every time he closes his eyes. He lifts his cupped hands to his mouth and tastes want.