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“I’m sorry, but I have to say it,” Lance says flirtatiously. “You look absolutely ravishing tonight.”
Before him, the alien giggles. Her skin is pink and her eyes are purple. She has no hair anywhere on her body and she’s been leaning in toward Lance more and more with his every word for the past several minutes. She’s the sixth alien he’s charmed tonight.
“I knew you paladins were brave, but I never thought you’d be so charming,” she says, smiling up at him.
“It’s my second most important priority,” Lance assures her. “First, I make sure everyone’s safe. And then I make sure they’re happy.” He winks at her and she laughs, leaning in even closer.
“Why don’t I get us some drinks?” Lance offers, and when she agrees, he slips away, heading toward the drinks until he’s out of view. Once safe, he slips behind a pillar about pulls out a pen, pulling up his sleeve to mark another tally on his wrist.
Just then, a small but terrifying demon appears before him.
It’s Pidge.
“What the hell are you doing?” she snaps, crossing her arms and glaring at him.
Lance clicks his pen. “Uh, partying?” he guesses, hoping it’s the right answer. They’d secured another alliance for the coalition today, and in what seemed to be a tradition across the galaxy, they were now celebrating the alliance with a banquet. There are drinks on every surface and hosts walking around with tiny foods on platters.
Pidge glares at him. “You’ve been flirting with everyone,” she seethes. “I thought you’d be over that, now that you’re dating Keith.” She seems genuinely upset with him. Lance never realized that she’d cared about his and Keith’s faithfulness toward each other before. In fact, she’d never shown any real interest in their relationship at all, choosing to pick on them for it whenever the opportunity arose.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Lance points out.
“That doesn’t matter,” Pidge snaps. “He trusts you, and you’re going behind his back! How do you think he’d feel if he realized what you were doing?”
Lance hums, pretending to think about it. “Jealous,” he decides.
“Exactly!”
“Because I’m winning,” Lance adds.
Pidge stares at him blankly. “What?”
“Pidge, Pidge, Pidge,” Lance says solemnly, throwing an arm around her shoulders. She tries unsuccessfully to shove him off, Lance gripping her all the more tightly. He steers her around, his eyes scanning the crowd, and when he locates him, he positions Pidge to face him. “I’m not being unfaithful to Keith. We’re just having a little…”
“Competition,” Pidge concludes, having finally noticed Keith.
Keith’s leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the room, his arms crosses loosely over his chest as he stares up at the alien before him. The man is taller than Keith, practically looming over him, and this particular alien happens to have a tail. Said appendage is currently wrapped around Keith’s calf, Keith’s own brand of flirting apparently working for him.
“Dammit, Pidge,” Lance says finally. “Keith probably picked up, like, three whole dudes while you were accosting me,” he huffs.
“You guys are insane,” Pidge says, obviously not caring about Lance’s plight. “You’re the weirdest couple I’ve ever seen. Space has done irreversible damage to your brains.”
Lance pouts, but he releases Pidge, letting her take a step away. What she doesn’t understand — and, truthfully, what most of their teammates don’t understand — is that something like this is fun for them. Before they were dating — hell, before they’d even gotten along with each other — competing like this was something they’d always shared. There’d been a time when Keith had annoyed the hell out of Lance, where they’d wanted nothing to do with each other. Sure, they were on the same team, and they’d saved each other’s lives countless times, but besides that, they couldn’t care less about one another.
Except for this. Because Hunk was Lance’s best friend, and Shiro was the closest thing Keith would ever have to a brother, and they both had generally good relationships with everyone on the team and hadn’t needed anything more. But even then, there’d been something special between the two of them. The ability to look past their vast differences and work together. And, back when they’d barely tolerated each other, the ability to come together and share something that was solely theirs.
See, space could get boring. That sounds crazy, Lance is well-aware, especially when your life was almost constantly in danger and you were meeting new and wildly different aliens daily. But at the end of the day, they always came back to the same cold, empty halls. Seven people wasn’t much to fill up a castle, and it wasn’t hard to find yourself alone, to somehow not bump into anyone for hours at a time even when you weren’t actively trying to avoid anyone.
And their competitions had seemed to fill that emptiness, somehow. At first, they’d been unspoken things. Keith had arrived to the bridge first almost every time their alarms blared, and it’d started to drive Lance insane. He’d ended up making it into a competition in his head, and the next time the alarms went off, he got ready in record time.
And when Keith had rushed into the bridge and seen him standing there, Lance had seen the realization on his face. The understanding that somehow, without even agreeing to a competition, he had lost.
From there, things got a bit crazier. They’d had plenty of tame and pointless competitions, sure, like who could wash the dishes fastest or finish showering after training first, but there were also times when they’d gotten more out of hand. Once, they’d been keeping track of who could blow up more ships during a battle with the Galra. Lance had forced Pidge to make a program to install in their lions, and it’d been a lot of fun, but then Allura had realized that it had a lot of really helpful potential uses during battle and she’d had it installed in the rest of the lions, sucking all the fun out of it.
Keith had challenged Lance to duels with the training bots and Lance had bet Keith that he could find something from Earth in a space mall before he could. Just a bunch of stupid, pointless competitions that entertained them and made them laugh and accidentally ended up bringing them a lot closer.
And now that they were dating, nothing had really changed. They were still challenging each other to stuff like this all the time, which was how they were currently involved in a competition to see who could pick up more alien babes in a single night. Which, right — Keith was probably way ahead of him now, still thanks to Pidge.
“Can I at least mark you down as interested?” Lance says petulantly, clicking his pen once more. Pidge glares at him.
“Absolutely not,” she says, before turning and disappearing back into the crowd.
Lance sighs.
“Give up?” says a voice from behind him.
Lance spins back around, finding that Keith has abandoned his post as well as his handsome alien. He’s standing in front of Lance, his hands in the pockets of his dress pants and his lips quirked into a smile.
“Absolutely not,” Lance says. “Pidge just distracted me. What number are you at right now?”
Keith pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket. Unlike Lance, he came prepared. And then he unfolds said paper, proving that he did indeed get ahead of Lance while he was distracted.
“Dammit,” Lance says, revealing his own wrist and number.
“I can wingman you, if you’re so desperate,” Keith teases, and Lance grins, blinded with affection. He grabs Keith by the belt loops and pulls him closer.
“Maybe my heart’s just not in it,” Lance says, openly flirting with his boyfriend now. “I mean, no matter who I talk to, I just keep thinking about you.” Despite the fact that they’re actively dating, this gets a blush out of Keith. Not that Lance didn’t expect it — Keith might’ve won the lottery of genetics, but if there’s one thing he’s missing out on, it’s melanin. The man blushes like nobody’s business.
Keith leans in, and Lance meets him halfway, tugging him closer as they kiss. And then, very abruptly, Lance is drenched in water.
He jerks away from Keith, blinking the liquid out of his eyes, and turns to see the pink alien from earlier standing beside them, glaring at Lance like she wished looks could kill.
“I went ahead and got a drink for myself, since you were taking so long,” she snaps. Lance finds himself suddenly thankful that these aliens aren’t the fire-breathing type, because he’s pretty sure he’d be rolling on the ground right now if they were.
“Um,” Lance says.
“Is this some sick game to you?” she demands. “It’s clear you’re involved with your own teammate.” Her eyes slide to Keith, striking him with their death-ray.
“Princess, what’s wrong?” another voice inquires, and Lance’s sees an approaching figure, his heart dropping into him stomach when he realizes it’s the king.
“The fucking princess, Lance?” Keith hisses at him under his breath, the two of them standing ramrod straight.
“I didn’t know!” he whispers back.
What ensues is, honestly, terrifying. The princess, apparently, seethes to her father about how Lance humiliated her and disrespected her. A crowd gathers, including those from their own team, and over the king’s shoulder, Allura shoots daggers at him with her eyes. She ends up swooping in, apologizing profusely and promising that nothing of the sort would ever happen again. And then she goes as far as to claim that Lance has an ailment from Earth, that he’s very sick in the head and while he’s fit to fight, his memory is shot, which is probably why he ended up flirting with the princess, forgetting that he was dating Keith.
And so, after that whole exhausting debacle, Allura has them gathered in the bridge. For the second time that night, Lance is glad that an alien species doesn’t have fire-breathing capabilities.
“I’ve had enough of your stupid competitions,” Allura says, glaring at them. “I don’t want to see any more of them.”
“But, Allura—” Lance starts.
“No!” Allura says. “They’re dangerous, half of the time, and outright idiotic the other half! You two almost ruined an alliance tonight! Don’t you understand how serious that is?”
Lance slumps into himself, feeling guilty. Keith, on the other hand, is glaring right back at Allura. He’s never coped well with being reprimanded.
“We’ll stop,” Lance says, feeling like he’s tearing a piece of his heart out of his body. Competing with Keith comes so naturally to him. It’s fun and special and theirs. Sure, they don’t compete every single day, but what’s a life without any competition at all?
“Thank you,” Allura says, sighing gratefully. “You all can go now. Just — no more competitions. No more bets or challenges or — any of it,” she says finally.
And so, Lance and Keith begin their life anew. This time without their competitions.
At first, it’s almost manageable. Sure, over the next couple of days, Lance finds himself snapping his mouth shut surprisingly often, some sort of declaration or challenge on the tip of his tongue. And, sure, maybe they’re both a bit forlorn shortly after Allura’s new decree, but that’s just because they’re getting used to it, right? Their happiness doesn’t depend on competing against one another, right?
It gets harder, after that. Keith becomes grumpy. Lance becomes rude. Not to each other, but toward the others. They have all this excess energy, energy they’d used to expend on pointless competitions, and now they have nowhere to put it.
(Well, okay, they have somewhere to put it. But they can only have sex so many times in a day.)
An entire week passes before their next competition comes to be, and it comes into existence as an accident, really. Lance has Keith pressed against the counter in his bathroom. He has a hand in his pants and a mouth against his neck and Keith is making these delicious noises, ones that Lance would set as his ringtone if he A) still had a phone and B) knew that wasn’t legitimately one of the creepiest things he could ever do.
“You make the prettiest sounds,” he says. “I bet I could have you moaning all night.”
Keith laughs. “I bet I could actually last all night.”
Lance, still stroking Keith’s cock, scoffs. Because Keith’s totally impatient — he’s seen it. “I bet I could last twice as long as you,” he says. And they both pause for a moment. And then Keith’s shoving him away.
“No one has to know,” he says.
“Our sex is our business!” Lance agrees. “Who cares if we’re betting on it?”
“I mean, sure, it’s a little weird,” Keith reasons.
“Totally,” say Lance. “It’d be simpler to just enjoy it.”
“Agreed,” Keith says. They both stare at each other for a minute.
“So we’re doing this?” Lance blurts. Keith nods hastily.
“Last one to cum wins,” he says, and they shake on it. Keith smiles at him, one of those soft, fond ones he gets and would totally deny the existence of, and Lance pecks him on that smile, just because he can. And then he shoves his hand right back into Keith’s pants.
“Fuck,” Keith gasps, resting his head on Lance’s shoulder. “You’re cheating.”
“How am I supposed to make you cum if I can’t touch you?” Lance says, twisting his hand just so. Keith shudders against him, his fingers grasping Lance’s shirt.
“You were touching me before we made the bet, though,” Keith argues. As if to make his point, he moans. “It’s my turn to touch you.”
“Be my guest,” Lance says cockily, and then Keith shoves him away, brushing his hair out of his face.
“Bed,” he says commandingly, already backing out of the bathroom. “Also, take off your clothes.”
“Ooh, is that an order?” Lance teases, already holding his shirt in his hand. He’s standing in front of the bed — Keith’s bed, for once, because Lance had followed Keith into his room as they were talking and then they’d accidentally started making out in the bathroom.
“Yep,” Keith says, and he plants his hand in the middle of Lance’s bare chest and shoves. Lance falls back onto the bed, equally amused and aroused, and Keith leans over him and starts unbuttoning his jeans for him.
“Can’t wait to make you lose,” Lance says, lifting up to help Keith pull his pants off. His underwear comes with it, because once again, Keith has never been known for his patience.
“Are you kidding? The last time I sucked your dick, you came in, like, three minutes.”
“I thought we both agreed that was because of the stress!” Lance protested, sitting up. “And that it was perfectly normal, and that we wouldn’t bring it up again.”
Keith leans in and presses a kiss to Lance’s mouth, making all the fire melt out of him. “Sorry,” he says, not sounding particularly abashed. “Let’s just hope you’re not stressed right now.”
Lance grumbles under his breath, but it quickly turns into a gasp when Keith drops to his knees, right there on the floor. Lance stays sitting up despite the fact that seeing Keith with Lance’s cock in his mouth is about ten times hotter than just feeling it. Really, if he were absolutely determined to win this bet, he’d close his eyes and try to ignore that it was even happening, but he can’t even do that. He wants to watch. Needs to.
And Keith — the fucking tease — doesn’t even get right down to it. Lance had expected his strategy to be hard and brash. For him to take Lance into his mouth and swallow him deep, to put everything into one, short blowjob in an attempt to try to make him cum within minutes and secure victory for himself.
In fact, Lance had already been mentally preparing himself for the moment when he’d have to deny himself an orgasm, grabbing Keith by the hair and tugging him off because if he wanted to last long enough to win, Keith would have to stop right then.
But maybe Keith does have a deeper strategy than that. Maybe he’s going to try to make Lance lose by stripping away his will to win, considering the fact that he doesn’t even touch Lance’s cock, yet. He just presses kisses to the insides of Lance’s thighs, his hands pressing his knees farther apart as his face moves closer and closer to where Lance really wants it.
And then, finally, Keith’s hovering over his cock. He’s looking up at Lance through his bangs, his eyes half-lidded and his mouth half open. Lance is practically shaking in anticipation, handfuls of Keith’s comforter already clutched in his hands, when Keith simply presses a kiss to the tip of Lance’s cock.
Lance jerks up automatically, already desperate for it, but Keith ignores him. He follows the kiss with a flick of his tongue — barely there, torturous — and then trails down Lance’s cock without actually taking it into his mouth, pressing kisses against it and dragging his tongue down the length of it.
His hand comes up to grip Lance’s balls, the touch also light and teasing, but Lance is tense all over, his lungs already finding it hard to draw in a breath as Keith massages them in his hand, his mouth trailing ever lower still.
The fingers of his free hand replaces his mouth, gripping Lance’s cock gently. His thumb is pressed right under Lance’s slit, almost a promise, mostly a warning. And then his mouth leaves Lance’s cock entirely, his tongue dragging over Lance’s balls before taking one into the heat of his mouth and moaning around it.
“Keith, fuck,” Lance pants, and the hand on his cock squeezes just barely, threateningly. Lance whimpers, shoving a finger into his mouth and biting down because Keith’s delusional if he thinks he’s going to beg.
Keith’s mouth slides off of him, slowly, his tongue moving torturously over his skin. He presses a kiss to the base of Lance’s cock before licking his way upward again, still massaging his balls in one hand.
“Still think you’re going to win?” he says innocently, and Lance can feel the drag of his lips over his cock, can feel himself twitching in Keith’s hand. He drops his hand from his mouth, ignoring the teeth marks on his finger.
“Definitely,” he croaks, and Keith punishes him by popping the head of Lance’s cock into his mouth and sucking hard.
Lance moans, giving up and burying his hand in Keith’s hair. Keith doesn’t react to the touch, other than to press his tongue against the slit of Lance’s cock. Lance squeezes his eyes closed, realizing that if he doesn’t, there’s no way he’ll be able to last.
That’s when Keith takes him further into his mouth, pressing down slowly. He takes Lance further and further, continuing past when Lance thought he would pull up, until Lance can feel himself hitting the back of Keith’s throat, moaning brokenly at the feeling.
“Cheating,” Lance gasps out, even though Keith definitely isn’t. He probably should’ve saved his breath, too, because apparently Keith found that amusing, and he laughs around Lance’s cock, the feeling vibrating through him and shooting straight to his core.
Lance’s fingers dig into Keith’s hair harder, and then Keith starts to pull up, only to drop back down in a steady rhythm. He’s bobbing on Lance’s cock, the sound obscene and wet and messy and so fucking hot, fuck.
Keith can’t help choking on him sometimes, but he ignores it and keeps going, slurping Lance into his mouth uncaringly.
“Keith,” Lance gasps, and Keith tugs on his balls as if to reprimand him, or maybe to encourage him — Lance can’t tell, he’s too far gone. And that’s when he realizes that he really is too far gone. He can feel his orgasm building up, can imagine so clearly what it would be like to cum right now, to spill into Keith’s mouth and have Keith swallow him down.
He can also clearly see Keith smirking up at him after that, straightening up and proclaiming his victory.
So Lance tightens his hand in Keith’s hair and pulls up him, wrenching his eyes open to look at Keith, and he almost cums right then and there despite his efforts. Keith’s face is flushed, his hair sticking to his temples, and he has saliva dripping down his chin.
Lance steadies his breath, finding his composure. “Your turn,” he pants, his cock throbbing against his stomach.
Keith frowns. “I wanted you to cum in my mouth.”
Lance groans, bending forward to rest his forehead against Keith’s. “You’re killing me,” he whines. “Why’d we have to make this bet tonight?”
“I blame everyone else,” Keith says. “We wouldn’t have to compete in bed if we could compete everywhere else.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Lance says. “And you’re also not sneaky at all. I’m not letting you finish me off.”
“Fine,” Keith mutters, getting to his feet. He wobbles for a second, having been sitting on his knees for too long, and strips before climbing into the bed, laying down with a huff. Lance grabs the lube and wiggles it at Keith.
“You’re bottoming,” Lance says.
“Fine by me.”
Lance knows it is. Because Keith is like a totally different person when Lance is inside him. He gets all whiney and desperate, and Lance is sure that he can make him come first with Keith sitting on his cock.
So he scoots between Keith’s legs and squirts the lube on his hand to prepare him. He presses into Keith with one finger, already aiming for his prostate.
“So,” Lance says conversationally. “What did you do today?”
Keith looks at him blankly, unamused. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Lance says.
“You were there for most of it.”
“I’m aware,” Lance says, pumping his finger now.
“I woke up,” Keith says. “Trained.”
“Mhmm.”
“Took a shower,” Keith continues.
“Wow, without me?”
“I wanted to actually get clean, for once,” Keith says, and Lance decides to stop having mercy on him. He presses against Keith’s prostate then, rubbing hard, just to see Keith jerk against the bed, to feel him slam down onto Lance’s hand.
“And then?” Lance prompts him.
Keith’s eyes are closed, now, but Lance can see them moving behind his eyelids as he tries to compose his thoughts. Lance adds a second finger.
“And then we went planet-side,” Keith continues. “We — ah — w-we—”
“We helped the locals,” Lance says, helping him out. Keith is breathing heavily, his hips undulating against Lance’s hand.
“Right,” Keith says breathlessly. “Helped them fight that worm monster thing.”
Lance scissors his fingers, watching as Keith sighs, his fingers twisting into the sheets beneath him.
“Came back to the castle,” Keith continues suddenly. “Ung. Y-You made me lunch.”
“I’m so domestic.”
“Cute of you,” Keith agrees. “Almost as good as Hunk’s.”
Lance removes his fingers just for that comment, and Keith whines in his throat, his hips trying to follow Lance. He rolls his eyes, coming back with three fingers this time.
“Then Coran had us search the castle,” Keith says. “He thought an animal got inside on that planet.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Lance grouches. Coran had had them searching for hours, convinced he could hear something in the vents, but it’d turned out to be one of Allura’s mice, in the end.
“Then dinner,” Keith says, speaking faster now. His hips haven’t stopped moving. He’s grinding down onto Lance’s hand with every thrust, arching beautifully against the bed. “Then my room. Now this.”
“Perfect,” Lance says, and then he pulls out of Keith, strokes his cock with the excess lube, and takes his fingers’ place.
“Lance!” Keith cries out, reaching for Lance immediately, and Lance lets him. He leans over Keith, planting his hands on the bed as Keith grips his shoulders, and starts pounding into him. Keith is moaning filthily already, gripping Lance hard and slamming back down onto him as much as he can.
He can practically taste the victory already. Keith is falling apart beneath him, his face flushed and his mouth gaping. His legs come up around Lance’s waist as he clings to him, letting him wreck him, begging him to do it harder, faster. And Lance complies, more than willing to give it to him, knowing he must be close, any minute now—
And then Keith sucks in a breath and says, “Wait, stop,” and Lance halts in place, deep inside Keith, his hand coming up to Keith’s face.
“Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
“Just — pause for a second,” Keith says, wincing, and Lance pulls out immediately, unsure how he hurt him.
Keith, sweaty and red and breathing heavily, presses himself up on his elbows and grins at Lance.
“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Lance mutters.
“All’s fair in love and war,” Keith says, sliding off the bed. “And bets,” he adds after a moment, thinking to himself.
Keith stoops to the ground, and when he stands up, he’s holding Lance’s jacket. Lance watches him pull it on, and God, fuck — his jacket looks so good on Keith. It’s just a little bit too big for him. It hangs to his thighs and over the palms of his hands, and he looks so cute and soft but right now his cock is hard and red and he looks so fuckable and he’s wearing Lance’s jacket.
“Okay, now you’re cheating,” Lance decides, almost afraid that he’s drooling.
“So are you,” Keith says. “I could’ve argued about bottoming, but I didn’t.”
“That’s ‘cause you’re a cock whore,” Lance says. Keith ignores him, crawling back onto the bed, and just — this man is devious. He knows Lance too well.
“Me on top,” Keith instructs, and Lance doesn’t even argue. He’s unwilling, unable to do so, and he just slides back toward the pillows, leaning against the headboard as Keith straddles his lap. He reaches behind himself, gripping Lance’s cock, and then he sinks onto it, his eyes fluttering closed as he does.
“Bad move,” Lance mutters. “Riding me turns you on way too much.”
Keith looks at Lance through his lashes, his eyes flashing. “Turns you on, too,” he points out, and then he rolls his hips. The sensation is entirely different, almost overwhelming, and Lance grabs onto Keith’s hips as he sinks deeper into him.
Keith sets up a steady rhythm, his thighs tight and flexing on either side of Lance with every movement of his hips, and Lance guides him with his hands, pulling him down faster each time and slamming him onto his cock.
They’re both falling apart. Their mouths are open, the air between them full of their heated breaths, and Keith keeps making these little moans, these sighs and gasps as he slams down on Lance’s cock.
They’re holding themselves back, unwilling to lose, and it’s driving Lance insane. Keith reaches for him, his hand settling on the back of Lance’s neck. Lance grabs Keith’s cock, because he’s already close and there’s no way he’s coming before him, no way he’s losing this late in the game.
“Lance, fuck,” Keith gasps, and he manages to move faster, somehow, even without Lance guiding him. He’s fucking himself on Lance as fast as he can, his fingers digging into Lance’s neck, and they can’t take their eyes off each other. It’s more intense this way, and Lance can’t get enough of Keith’s fucked out expression, of the way his tongue flicks over his lips, growing dry from all the air rushing past them.
Lance rubs his thumb over the head of Keith’s cock just as Keith slams onto him, shaking. Keith’s cumming, spilling over Lance’s hand and onto his chest, and Lance is fucking into him simultaneously, filling him up and twitching inside of him.
Moaning, Keith drags Lance into a kiss, his hand coming up to cup Lance’s face. When he pulls away, his eyes are soft, his lips drawn into a smile.
Lance makes the decision to study that expression carefully before ruining it.
And then, “I win,” Lance says, and Keith’s eyes harden, his mouth dropping open indignantly.
“Are you kidding?” he says. “I could feel you cumming inside of me,” he scoffs.
“Yeah, right after you came,” Lance says.
“It was definitely at the same time,” Keith argues, sliding off of him now. His eyes flutter as Lance’s cock slips out of him, and even though his voice is heated and his eyes flashing, he twists immediately to press himself against Lance’s side, grabbing Lance’s arm to drag it over his shoulders. Lance buries his hand into Keith’s air, playing with the strands.
“If that’s what you need to tell yourself to sleep at night,” he says loftily, and Keith pinches the skin on the inside of Lance’s thigh, making him yelp.
“No one likes a liar,” he sniffs. His hand stays there, after, just resting on Lance’s thigh, his thumb brushing over the skin he’d just brutalized.
“It’s okay,” Lance says. “Maybe you can win the next bet.”
Keith groans. “I don’t know if I want to do that again,” he says. “I had to stop myself from cumming, like, three different times.”
“This is a different bet,” Lance promises. “First one to make Allura change her mind about the no-competitions-policy wins.”
Keith turns his head, grinning up at Lance. “You’re on.”