one step forward, two steps back

by jxcxo

Summary:

The fingers on his cheek tighten before releasing with the sigh Keith emits, followed by a light brush against his cheekbone. “I don’t hate you, you moron, you’re the one that started the stupid rivalry stuff. I will hate you if you pass out again, though.”

“Don’t hate y’either.” Lance mumbles. He’s not even sure what he’s saying is in English, his thoughts are slipping fast, like the last bits of sand in an hourglass. “You’re s’good at everything… ‘nnoying.”

or

5 times Keith feels out of reach + 1 time he assures Lance that he isn’t

1.

When Lance is seven, his best friend ditches him for Kyle Chatwin.

“He has a whole binder filled with Pokémon cards, and he doesn’t have to share a room with his brother.” Raphael shrugs, already half turned away from him. He’s wearing the blue squirtle shirt Lance got him for his birthday. He had a hard time deciding between that and Charizard. “Kyle says I can’t talk to you anymore, so bye, Leandro.” He doesn’t do their secret handshake when he walks away.

Lance has lost people before. He lost both his abe and abo within a year of each other when he was five, and his dog Alce got hit by his neighbor’s car a couple months ago. They’re different, though. Lance knows that none of them wanted to leave. His grandparents would love to join them for their annual Sunday brunch again, and he knows Alce would be nipping at his heels across the beach in a heartbeat. This is different.

Raph just doesn’t want to play with him anymore. It hurts his chest and makes his heart feel funny when he thinks about it. His breaths come out fast and the back of his eyes feel hot. It takes a while for Mr. Sanchez to calm him down enough for the snot bubbles to pop and the tears to dry. Raphael keeps his word and doesn’t speak to Lance again.

It’s kind of a slip-and-slide after that. Lance has always been a little restless and a lot loud. It works for him in some ways. He gets a reputation as a class clown. The other kids love him in class, especially when he’s distracting the teacher from their lesson, and they buzz around him like bees to a hive during passing periods, but no one ever sticks around past the surface.

He thinks it will be different at the Garrison, a fresh start, and it is in some ways. He gets a sweet roommate that he immediately nicknames Hunk, on account of his beefy arms and full heart. Hunk is (probably understandably) annoyed with Lance at first. He’s self-aware enough to know that he’s not the best person to have as a roommate. He has trouble being quiet at the proper times and prefers an organized mess over, well, organization. Hunk eventually warms up to him after some time and forced proximity, and soon they’re sneaking to the kitchens after hours and talking more deeply than Lance has with anyone else.

The Garrison is also where he meets Keith.

(Okay, meet is maybe a strong word)

The first time Lance sees Keith Kogane he’s stepping out of a simulator. The kid’s got the kind pale skin the tourists in Veradero find burnt in five seconds flat and an angular face and hair that’s much too long in the back. He seems too short to have gotten the best sim score the Garrison has seen since Takashi Shirogane, but he supposes that image isn’t everything.

Appearances aside, Lance is determined when it comes to Keith. Sure, his simulator scores aren’t as good as Kogane’s, but he’s catching up, and with one new friend already under his belt Lance feels optimistic. He’s at the Galaxy Garrison. He managed to make a best friend. He’s going to go to space one day.

Keith won’t talk to him.

Lance keeps it simple at first, giving him a nice job, man after a sim run or grinning hi when he sees him in the hallways. Keith ignores him, but he also ignores everyone whose name doesn’t rhyme with Bakashi Birogane, so Lance isn’t deterred. He continues to chirp good mornings and sends him the grins his abuela says can break hearts and waits (impatiently) for the day Keith returns his smile. It all comes to a head on an ordinary Thursday afternoon.

“Hey, Kogane.” Lance chirps, his hands sweating around the beige lunch tray. He’s decided to attempt a new level of this friendship game, and he’s more than a little nervous at how it’s going to play out. Keith always sits at the same table alone during mealtimes, and Lance figures he’d enjoy company. Humans are pack animals, after all.

Keith doesn’t even flinch, he just keeps his head bent over his tray as he shovels the food in at an almost feral rate, his mess of dark hair completely blocking his face. Lance bites his lip.

“Uh, so, I noticed you sit alone at lunch every day and that’s not very fun. Me and my buddy Hunk usually sit at that table over there,” Lance turns and points over his shoulder to Hunk, who gives them an exuberant wave, “and it’d be really cool if you joined us? I mean, if you want to. I swear we’re good people. Hunk’s an engineer and I’m going to be in fighter class with you after the test next week so we could study together!” Lance pauses, feeling a betraying heat crawl up his neck. “The name’s Lance, by the way.”

Keith stills in his animalistic eating habits, shoulders tense. He looks up, and Lance’s breath catches as their eyes meet for the first time. His irises are a strange, deep grey-purple, and Lance has never seen anything like it. He imagines it’s what a nebula looks like when you’re flying right through it. How unfair that he was born like that, already wrapped up in space before he’s even set foot in it.

“I don’t want to sit with anyone. Can you be annoying somewhere else?”

Lance flinches, the spell breaking over his head like the raw eggs his little sister used to balance on the top of his and Marco’s bedroom door. If he were back home, he could probably fry the yolk on the back of his burning neck. Keith stands and brushes past him with his lunch tray still half full.

“Fuck you and your mullet and your dumb fingerless gloves.” Lance says to his back, pushing the stab of hurt down, down, down. “I’m beating your simulator score on Monday, just you watch.”

Keith ignores him, and Lance swallows his fury as the boy marches away. There’s no indication he heard Lance’s words, not even a tension to his back anymore. Lance isn’t even a mosquito that needs to be batted away. He’s nothing.

Lance doesn’t beat Keith Kogane’s simulator score. No one does, though, so it’s—it’s fine.

He doesn’t make fighter class either, but Hunk doesn’t let it get to Lance for long. Lance is an antagonist at heart, and if there’s someone he knows needs to be antagonized it’s Keith fucking Kogane. Lance’s focus lasers in a way it’s never done before and his grades soar with help from Hunk and their new (forcibly-made) friend Pidge.

Keith is obviously very comfortable up on his pedestal. He doesn’t give anyone the time of day, brushing off the gaggle of girls asking for his number and the pilots wanting to talk flight strategy. It’s infuriating to watch someone who barely ever says a word take up so much space in everyone’s mind. Lance talks enough for five people, and he doesn’t get a sliver of the same treatment. The only person Keith talks to is Commander Shirogane.

Lance’s tale of his Galaxy Garrison is a little embarrassing. He’s twelve and in the garage that’s cluttered with so much junk that there’s no room for their family car, gutting the day’s catch with his dad, when a smooth voice makes his ears twitch.

The TV they scrounged from a yard sale the previous year is a junker, static cuts though every four minutes on the dot and there’s a green-purple tinge to the screen if you aren’t looking at it from the right angle, but the spindly antennae are long enough to catch the telenovas his father denies he loves.

There are commercials between episodes, the last one ending with Benito holding a gun to his wife’s lover’s head as the two dramatically clutch pristine white sheets to their chests. (Dios mio. His father grunted, swiping a thumb across his forehead and leaving a smear of fish guts in its wake. He had gasped, completely scandalized, when Benito walked in on the scene. Don’t know how she’s going to get out of this one, mijo.)

“The world is expanding and evolving far beyond our previous borders.” The man on the blurry screen says. He’s tall with broad shoulders and very large arms. Lance’s mouth feels a little dry as the man grins awkwardly, displaying a row of perfectly straight teeth, as white as the sheets Cassandra had used to cover her modesty. “We want you to be a part of it. Come to the Galaxy Garrison to witness history in the making.”

When Lance hides under his covers with his phone that night, screen dimmed to the lowest brightness, it has nothing to do with the Galaxy Garrison and everything to do with the strong man on the television screen. The website has a whole biography about him, Commander Takashi Shirogane, who is the youngest cadet to graduate from fighter pilot class and is expected to lead his first space mission in a few short years.

During his quest to curb his curiosity, he gets distracted by the mission page.

At the ancient age of twelve, Lance hasn’t had the opportunity to give much thought to his future. They have the family fishing business, and though he knows his oldest sister Veronica is going to take it over (despite no one outright saying it), he always just figured he’d stay on. He and Earth are old friends, and he knows her well. He knows the sand between his toes and siting uncomfortable in his wetsuit, he knows the feeling of the ocean swirling around him, the push and pull both threatening to swallow him up and fling him far away, he knows the sway of the boat under his feet (how are you more clumsy on land? Marco snorts, not bothering to offer Lance a hand as he scowls wetly at his scraped knees). He doesn’t know anything about space, but he wants to.

Lance switches gears after that night. He locks everyone out of his room so he can study after school or lugs his four-hundred-pound bookbag down to the beach when Marco’s fist on the door becomes too much to ignore. His family doesn’t say anything to dissuade him, but he sometimes spots the look in their eyes, the one that says he’s working too hard for something that may not come to pass.

Lance ignores them. He has a goal now, something he actually wants. He wants to be Takashi Shirogane, the most talented and decorated cadet to leave the Galaxy Garrison. He wants to explore space. He wants maneuvers named after him and parades on his return. He wants his parents to be proud of him, instead of an afterthought smack dab in the middle of his four siblings.

His parents are proud when he gets the acceptance letter, and they throw a big party with their extended family and neighbors to celebrate. It makes him want to stay. It’s completely redundant but being grounded in the middle of his going-away party, arms around his shoulders and smiles beaming his way, suddenly makes him very scared. Space is very empty. His family won’t be in space.

He goes, though, because flying still calls to him. He meets Commander Shirogane during orientation, who gives him a firm handshake and a robotic smile. He’s too busy ruffling Keith Kogane’s awful hair to pay any attention to Lance after that.

Sometimes he spots the two talking after a simulator run or between classes, and something sour twists in his gut at the openness on both of their faces. He’s not sure who he’s more jealous of.

Commander Shirogane leads the Kerberos mission, then he goes missing on the Kerberos mission, and then Keith goes missing too. It’s odd how acutely Lance feels their missing presences; the man who drove Lance to apply to the Garrison and the boy who kept him there. He makes fighter class in the golden boy’s absence, but it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. He was supposed to earn fighter pilot to show Keith what he was made of, not warm the open seat he left to go cold.

Lance is on the roof with Hunk when something bright crashes into Earth. His jaw drops when he spots a familiar scowl and head of terrible hair hoisting an even more familiar Commander out of the wreckage.

“Who are you?” Keith glares, gripping Takashi Shirogane’s robotic arm tightly. The man is almost unrecognizable with the scar across his nose and the shock of white hair above his forehead.

“The name’s Lance.” He cheers, his gut squeezing. Lance is loud. Lance is annoying. Lance takes up space. Or at least he thought he did, until the two men look at him without a hint of recognition. Lance doesn’t hate, he’s not built for it, but he hates the two of them in that moment.

He whoops as he pilots the giant, blue lion through a wormhole, yanking the machine into a 360 spin just because he can. “How’s that for a cargo pilot!” He grins even as the others yell at him.

He’s in space, he’s piloting, he’s going places no other human has.

The nebulae on the other side match Keith’s eyes.

 

2.

“I am so bored. Somebody entertain me.”

The castleship was cool for, like, two days, but now Lance just feels antsy. They met the ten-thousand-year-old aliens (cool), they found the other lions (double cool), Lance got blown up (which hurt like a quiznack, but was still objectively cool), and now their days are just monotonous. Sure they get an alarm to go fight the Galra every once in a while, and he gets to grin into the void of space as adrenaline spikes through every nerve, but most of their days are filled with training.

Bonding training with their lions, mind-meld training with the other paladins, or physical training with their bayards. Lance has never done very well with structured life unless he’s the one structuring it. In Cuba he could wander down to the beach for a swim any time he wanted, and at the Garrison he made Hunk sneak around with him any chance he got. There are not many places he can sneak around a ship, and it’s bringing out his restless energy more than usual.

“We have team training in a varga.” Allura hums, eyes focused on her data pad. Lance groans, sagging against the counter and dropping his head onto his arms with a dull thump.

“Predictable and boring.” Lance sings, voice muffled by his arms. “We need a vacation or something. A spacecation.”

“How is fighting a war in giant, sentient mecha cats boring?” Hunk asks at the same time Pidge says, “People are dying, Lance.”

Lance laughs a little but doesn’t lift his head from his arms to show his amusement. Pidge rigged his door the previous night so it would only open if he sang a Nickelback song, and he has a lot of pride in his ability to hold a grudge.

“You need the training.” A gruff voice butts in, and Lance’s buoyant mood immediately sinks. Speaking of holding a grudge.

“And you need a personality.” Lance gives him what’s hopefully a subtle middle finger. He can’t really tell if he succeeded with his forehead still pressed against the table.

“Guys.” Shiro sighs from somewhere to his right (when did he get in the kitchen? Oops). His voice is raspy, and he sounds like he’s on the cusp of a breakdown. That means that they broke unofficial-official rule numero uno: no arguing before Shiro has had his space coffee.

Lance frowns a little as Coran asks what Lance’s finger sign means and Pidge jumps into an explanation of Traditional Earthen Greetings (make absolutely sure it’s the first thing you perform before speaking to any of our world leaders.)

The fighting thing with Keith wasn’t intentional. Okay, it was, but it also really wasn’t. He was just, so insanely mad with Keith those first few days. He put in so much work both to get into the Garrison and keep his spot there. He had to spend endless nights trying to force his clinically unfocused brain to focus and logged ridiculous hours on the practice simulator, only to be put in cargo class. Keith sailed right by him on sheer talent and casual skill, and normally Lance wouldn’t be upset by something like that, except for the fact that he put so much work into Keith too.

Lance talked to him, they had three classes together, and he had come out of the simulator to see Keith waiting for a turn on several occasions. All for the Garrison’s wet dream to have no idea who he was when he ran over to help Shiro on that fateful night. It was infuriating on so many levels and Lance couldn’t help but take it out on him. Of course, Keith Kogane had a temper to match the bad boy persona, and everything kind of spiraled from there.

Back at the Garrison, around a week after he was promoted to fighter class, Iverson laid into him. He’d just finished his first post-cargo simulator run, and maybe it wasn’t the best (lost the landing gear when he yanked the jet on its side to squeeze through a canyon, resulting in a particularly epic explosion on landing), but it was his first try. The other fighter kids had had a year to get used to everything. Iverson didn’t see it that way.

“Jesus Christ, Serrano.” Iverson snapped, banging a fist on the wall. “I would take Cadet Kogane’s big toe over you right now. What the hell are you doing?”

Lance had put on his biggest smile and assured him he’d polish his landings into tip-top shape, but something in his chest squeezed painfully. It was we never should have promoted you at his worst, and Keith would have done better at his best. The kid was gone, he ran away, but him and his stupid mullet were still ruling over the Garrison. It wasn’t fair.

Lance feels like that at the castle sometimes. Especially late at night when he can’t sleep because his sheets are too stiff and his room doesn’t smell like fish guts and he can’t hear his brother’s soft snores. He thinks of his parents at his going away party, eyes shining with pride. He thinks of his tios sneaking him onto the porch for a beer and a cigar because he’d earned it. He thinks of his niece and nephews crowding around the computer whenever Lance skyped, eager for stories about space and America (both being very foreign concepts to them) from their favorite Tio Leandro.

He doesn’t feel like all that pride in him is warranted. Sure, he flies a giant blue lion that magically merges with four other colorful lions to form a giant person through the power of friendship. Sure, he fights space colonizers and liberates planets. Sure, he’s learning more about the secrets of the universe than any other human has ever dreamed of. But, he could never do all that without everyone else pulling him along like a child in a backpack leash.

Pidge and Hunk are both Mensa level geniuses. They can hack a battle cruiser or build another lion from scratch without breaking a sweat. Shiro is A Leader. Uppercase, italicized, underlined. The man went through literal hell because of the Galra, but he still can keep a level head and guide the team through battle. Allura and Coran are aliens from an extremely technologically advanced race who alternate between kicking ass and kissing ass like it’s nobody’s business. Keith is a soldier through and through, a born Paladin, whose fighting skills are only second to the warrior aliens and Shiro’s evil arm.

Lance is just… there.

He doesn’t know how to code or build or lead or fight. He’s Lance Serrano, public enemy number one aboard the castleship and chronic fuck up. He has no doubt he would’ve bitten it by now if he wasn’t hanging off everyone else’s coattails.

Blue growls low in the back of his mind, admonishing, and Lance winces. She’s right, he’s no use to anyone when he gets like this. Lance heaves a sigh and pushes up from his arms. Pidge is waving both middle fingers in the air, encouraging Coran to do the same, and Shiro has his head in his hands. A usual morning then, nothing to get all Real about.

“Pidge!” Lance forces a grin and makes a circle with his pointer finger and thumb, suggestibly pumping his other pointer finger through it. “Make sure you get him up to date on this one too.”

Pidge grins, her eyes oozing evil, and Keith lets out a sigh. A normal morning. Everything is fine.

.

The alarm blares during the middle of training, which still makes it a normal morning, to be honest. Allura takes one appraising look at the panting paladins before turning on her heel, long hair flicking over her shoulder like a whip. “Paladins, grab your helmets and follow me to the bridge.”

Lance groans from his place on the floor and slaps Keith’s offered hand away. He just spent the better part of two hours getting beat up during hand to hand, he’s not in the mood for an olive branch.

“You’re such a child.” Keith scoffs, jogging up so they’re neck-in-neck as they follow Allura through the endless hallways.

“You’re such a child!” Lance pitches his voice up and sticks a tongue out for good measure. Keith glares at him.

“You’re not helping your case.”

“You’re not—shut up, Billy Ray.”

“I will when you do.”

“Enough.” Shiro says as they enter the bridge. Lance pouts as they slow to a stop, crowding around the screen while Allura logs on to the coalition network. He leans closer to Keith and jabs an elbow into the meat of his bicep.

“Do you see more white hairs than usual?”

Keith’s breath comes out in a hiss, and he pinches his the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “Do you,” Keith says lowly, his voice hard, “ever stop shut up?”

Lance tilts his head. “No, Hunk says I talk in my sleep.”

He’s saved from whatever Keith is going to reply with when Allura straightens, gesturing to a deep red planet she’s pulled up on the screen. “Paladins, we just received a distress beacon from the planet Klavo. It seems to be a Galra attack, so please head to your lions while we wormhole closer to their galaxy. I will feed you more information through the comms as I receive it.”

“I’d show you my Klavo any day, Princess,” Lance mutters as he shoves his helmet over his sweaty head. “What?” He asks when Keith glares at him again, “That wasn’t even a dirty word.”

“You’re inherently dirty,” Pidge says, her voice crackling through the comms, “being around you makes me feel gross.”

“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Pidgeon.”

Hunk snorts and Lance grins in response, sprinting into his hanger and up into Blue’s waiting mouth. It’s hard to stay still in that moment, with fresh adrenaline flooding his veins and the excitement of a battle tensing his muscles. He knows they still have to wormhole, but every part of Lance is aching to immediately fly into the fray. This is his one solace against his Not Nice thoughts. The homesickness and the fear and the feelings of inadequacy fall away whenever he’s flying his lion. He’s his most confident in her cockpit.

“Wormholing now, Paladins. Brace yourselves.”

There’s a brief push and pull around him, the prickling feeling of every atom in his body ripping apart only to be shoved back together, and then he’s soaring through the depths of space.

“Wooooooo!” Lance can’t help but let out a cheer, looping Blue into a spin. “Let’s show these eggplants who’s boss!”

“There’s only three cruisers.” Shiro says. Lance’s eyes flick over the images of his teammates, each one with a fierce determination in their eyes. “We won’t need Voltron for this. Keith, you take the one on the left, Pidge and Hunk you guys take the one on the right and I’ll go for the middle one. Lance, we need you as cover. Stay high and let us know if you see any surprises.”

Lance deflates a little before sending Shiro a wink and a two finger salute. “You can count on me, bossman.” He guides Blue a safe distance away and squeezes his fingers stiffly around the controls as his friends dive into the counterattack.

Lance throws a couple of strategic ice beams into the fray, even knocking an engine off of Keith’s cruiser, but his brows still furrow a little. He knows that backup is important, and that it’s his usual position when they’re on the ground, but he can’t help the thoughts from breakfast from creeping into the edges of his mind.

Everyone else is down there, taking hits and putting up a good fight, all while Lance is sat in Voltron timeout. He’s literally itching to go weave through space debris and send the Glara running with their tails between their legs. Hunk’s lion packs a long-range punch, why wasn’t he put on backup? Or Pidge, who prefers to hang back and analyze the situation? Is it because they can clearly see that Lance isn’t good enough to fight next to them?

Blue’s cockpit flickers, the images of his teammates going black for half a second, and Lance frowns. “That was weird.” Lance murmurs, pulling up his scanner. There are only eight dots on the display, five are multicolored while the other three pulse white.

“Did you say something, Lance?” Shiro grunts as he pulls Black away at the last second to avoid cannon fire.

“I don’t know, I just…” Lance bites his lip, studying the scanner. There are still only eight dots. “Did any of you guys’ displays go black for a second?”

“That’s called blinking.” Keith shouts. Lance rolls his eyes and spins Blue around to check the perimeter. He didn’t blink, and Blue is a magical space robot, she doesn’t flicker on a whim. Blue hums in his mind, in firm agreement, and that pushes Lance to do a more careful sweep.

Lance shoots a beam at Shiro’s cruiser’s cannon, encasing it with ice. He yells his thanks but Lance isn’t paying attention to the battle anymore, eyes flitting between the scanner and his view through Blue’s eyes. He tilts his lion on its y-axis and does a double take at the view before him. There used to be a planet there, a small dwarf called KL-2439 if Lance is remembering Allura’s intel correctly, but now it’s just a wall of black, the stars previously surrounding it swallowed in the inky darkness too.

“Shit!” Lance yells, hands flying over the controls as rushes to sound the alarm. Green’s cloaking did the same thing at first before she perfected it. “Guys, there’s something big coming! I can’t—”

There’s a small circle of red light in the middle of the black, and then it’s growing larger and larger until it blasts into Blue dead center. Lance screams, Blue’s roar in his mind hitting the same frequency, and suddenly they’re falling. (Moving, Pidge’s annoyed voice says in the back of his head, nose scrunched in that familiar manner, you can’t fall in space.)

Lance’s head pounds as the G-force pins him to his seat. His body feels heavy, like he’s moving through molasses even though he knows his lion is moving quicker than his eyes can process. He forces his heavy limbs to reach out for the controls, but he already knows it’s too late. Blue’s screen has gone dim, the only light coming from the star’s fire reflecting off Klavo’s surface. Lance screams again as he tugs at the controls to no avail. His lion’s momentum is throwing them into the center of the battle.

One of the cruisers performs a hairpin turn, angling for Lance, and his eyes go wide. Lance tenses, preparing his battered body for another dance with a cannon, when there’s a flash of color to his right. You quiznaking idiot Lance thinks as Red barrels into his side, forcing Blue to spiral in a different direction. Lance’s vision goes white at the contact, his nerves screaming at him, and when he comes to all he can see is a deep, swirling red.

“Well, fuck.” Lance murmurs as Blue tears through Klavo’s atmosphere. He should probably do something, like straighten Blue out to slow his fall (he is actually falling this time, Pidgey, he’s in a gravitational field now, thank you very much) or eject himself from the cockpit, but his brain is too mushy to hold onto a singular thought and Blue’s voice isn’t there to ground him.

Lance soars through the red film and is mildly surprised to see green on the other side. There’s still some red snaking through the patches of green, wrapping Klavo up like garland on a Christmas tree. I wonder what mama is getting me for Christmas this year Lance thinks deliriously as the green gets closer and closer. Guess I’ll never find out.

The green and red goes bright white on impact, and then endless, uncomfortable black.

.

“—nce!”

Lance groans as the black floats around him. Everything is still so dark, and while he can’t see the movement, he can feel it. It’s making him dizzy. Five more minutes, mom. Lance thinks, trying to block out the loud voice, tell dad I’ll meet him on the boat.

“Lance!” The voice says again. Lance flounders in the nothingness. That’s not his mom’s voice. “Lance, come on, you idiot! Don’t you dare die.”

Die? Lance tries to move, and everything goes so white he sees every color at once. He groans again, the pain pulsing harshly through his veins and choking around his throat.

“Fuck, stop moving!” Someone says. There’s a painful pressure on his side that almost makes the black take him again. “You have a piece of shrapnel in your stomach. Help is coming soon, just hang on, okay?”

Lance pries his heavy eyelids open. It feels like twenty years since he last did that. The first thing he sees is red, the air is filtered with it as light pours over the smoking cockpit. The second thing he sees is a pale face framed by endlessly dark hair. The brightest white and the darkest black. A memory stirs at the edges of his mind.

“Keith?” He asks. His voice sounds wrong, all croaky and barely there, and he frowns. He’s supposed to have a nice voice. He needs it to sing.

“Jesus Christ.” Keith breathes, mouth pinched and eyebrows creased, Lance wants to smooth out the wrinkle in the middle. His helmet is off, and there’s a steady stream of blood trailing down his jaw and onto his neck from a large gash near his temple. He has one arm wrapped around his middle, which he removes with a wince to bring his wrist to his mouth. “He’s awake. Someone needs to get down here, now.”

Lance raises a heavy arm without really thinking about it, reaching up to run shaking fingers across the cut. Keith flinches back, eyes staring wide into Lance’s own. “You’re hurt.” He murmurs, giving into gravity’s relentless pull and letting his arm fall heavy across the armrest with a thunk.

Keith blinks at him for several moments before letting his arm wrap back around his ribs, shaking his head. “Jesus Christ.” He says again.

“Not quite, but I won’t be mad if you get down on your knees for me.” Lance manages before dissolving into a series of bone rattling coughs. The pain all over is so intense his vision whites out again, but he eventually comes to with the feeling of a warm hand patting his cheek.

“Lance! Lance, stop, come on, you idiot. Stay awake!”

Lance does stay awake, but there’s a lot more black around the edges than before. His vision tunnels on Keith, Klavo’s atmosphere bathing his wide eyes and furrowed brows in his lion’s color.

“There… There s’a ship.” Lance says, voice scraping against his throat. It’s taking a lot more energy to get words out now. “Tried t’warn y’guys.”

“You did warn us.” Keith says, his hands a warm presence on his pulsing side and throbbing cheek. “You got hit and you’re bleeding pretty badly. We need to get you to a pod. Don’t talk, just focus on breathing, okay?”

Lance hums, digesting that information slowly. Everything feels murky and so, so dark around him. There’s something… something he needs to do. The net! He needs to anchor the net before pulling it in. The boat is always dark in the early hours of the morning, but Lance knows the Serrano deck like the back of his hand. He could find the release in his sleep.

“Hey!” There’s a firm pressure on his cheek and Lance forces his eyes open. When did he close them? “Stay awake, you asshole.”

“Y’never want me to talk. Y’like fighting.” Lance says, blinking at the blurry figure in front of him. He can’t see his eyes properly in this lighting. “You hate… you hate me. You should be fighting.”

The fingers on his cheek tighten before releasing with the sigh Keith emits, followed by a light brush against his cheekbone. “I don’t hate you, you moron, you’re the one that started the stupid rivalry stuff. I will hate you if you pass out again, though.”

“Don’t hate y’either.” Lance mumbles. He’s not even sure what he’s saying is in English, his thoughts are slipping fast, like the last bits of sand in an hourglass. “You’re s’good at everything… ‘nnoying.” Lance blinks sluggishly. Everything is so, so dark around him. “Time s’it? Need t’get the net.”

“Fuck, Lance!” The warmth disappears from his cheek and Lance distantly feels his head drop with it. “I need an evacuation now! Lance isn’t—”

The endless black reaches out to take him, and this time Lance is powerless against it.

 

3.

Lance could do without the diplomatic events.

When he imagined what it was like to fight in a space war (not that he ever had before he stepped into the blue lion, his imagination is good, but not that good), he didn’t think about all the schmoozing that goes with it. Sure, Lance was never one of those history obsessed kids, but he always thought he got the gist of wars. There was fighting, and more fighting, until eventually too many people were killed on one side and the other side was declared the winner.

Apparently, fighting isn’t all there is to it.

Lance laughs heartily at a joke the Ghorigian Queen makes, raising his flute to cover the confused tilt to his lips. He’s not sure why stepping on a flaguy curtain is so funny, but if the ambassadors are beside themselves then he supposes he should be too. Allura did say they really needed this alliance.

Lance lets his eyes wander over the head of the vaguely caterpillar-like creatures. He sees a flash of silver hair on the other side of the ballroom, standing next to Coran, Shiro, and a couple of Ghorigians in military uniforms. There’s three.

Hunk is easy to find, his hands flailing about as he tells a story to a crowd of smaller Ghorigians. Pidge is more difficult, as usual, but he eventually spots her and her perpetually fluffy hair slinking around the refreshments table, snagging a glass with a cautious look to Shiro’s back. He stiffens, as though completely in tune with every mischievous act the paladins throw at him, but when he turns Pidge has already disappeared back into the crowd. Four and Five.

Lance frowns, his teeth working unconsciously at his bottom lips as he scans back and forth across the crowd for the third time. His shoulders are tense, ready to sound the alarm, when there, in the corner half-hidden by a large pillar he spots red and white armor. Six.

Lance lets out a breath and graciously excuses himself from the Queens party. He nabs a second flute from a passing waiter, sending a curious look to Shiro’s back, before high tailing it over to Keith’s location. He jumps when Lance silently settles next to him, and Lance doesn’t hold back his snicker as he shoves the pilfered flute into Keith’s chest.

“Here. You gotta take a knee or something because my ultra-intuitive guts says that Shiro is going to be making his rounds any second now.”

To Lance’s utter surprise and delight, Keith does just that. He turns into the shadow of the pillar and drains the glass in one swallow, gagging immediately afterward. “What is that? It tastes like… like—”

“Like those terrible cola flavored popsicles mixed with artichoke baby food? Yeah, I know. I’ve been pretending to drink it around the queen and spilling a little over my shoulder whenever I have the chance. There are cola-artichoke puddles everywhere, my man, so watch your step on the way out.”

Keith stares at him, mouth hanging open like the air will dissolve the taste particles right off his tongue. “I hate you.”

Lance grins and shoots him a wink, upturning his glass so the rest of the awful drink splashes into a pile next to them. He’s feeling a little better about this possibly-years-long space journey thing now that he knows that Keith doesn’t actually hate him.

After the… enlightening Klavo incident, Lance had woken up from his weeklong stay in the pod and tumbled right into Hunk’s loving arms. After getting equal parts hugged and punched by the rest of the team, Lance had turned to find Keith hovering unsurely near the back of the group, lips caught halfway between a scowl and a pout, obviously a little hesitant after their last Bonding Moment (which Lance really doesn’t remember. Getting blown up will do that to you. He did probably get more satisfaction out of Keith being the one to be forgotten for once than was absolutely necessary, though).

They had their super awkward adult talk about communication, and in the months since things have been on the up and up. Lance is honestly surprised at how much he enjoys just… hanging out with Keith. It took some time for their barbs to shed their spikes, but when they did Lance was shocked to find that Keith is actually funny? In a weird your-childhood-friend’s-dad deadpan kind of way. And he cares far, far more than his prickly exterior lets on, about the team and about the state of the universe as a whole.

Keith isn’t what Lance’s head had built him up to be, thankfully (he’d called Lance a dumbass for insinuating that Keith thought he was better than everyone else, and now that the kid is actually talking to people and letting his true colors show, Lance feels like he should accept that title). He’s, just… so much more.

Keith snorts and hits Lance’s arm excitedly, pointing a gloved finger over to where Pidge is standing in the shadow of another support pillar. The bottom of her glass is tipped high over her mouth, and they both hold their breath as Pidge lowers the glass and smacks her lips. She squints at the flute, eyes owlish and considering for a long moment behind her glasses, before shrugging before nabbing another one from a passing waiter.

Lance and Keith take one glance at each other out of the corner of their eyes before falling into a series of giggles. “What the shit?” Lance exclaims, hunched over as his laughs force tears into his eyes, “Who even is she?”

Keith wheezes, sliding down the pillar until his butt hits the floor, shoulder still shaking with barely restrained laughter. “Are we absolutely sure I’m the only part-time alien here?”

Lance chokes on his next bout of laughter and joins Keith on the floor, leaning into him a little to avoid the cola-artichoke mess he made earlier. They press together at their shoulders and thighs as they try to contain their giggles, leaning on each other for support, and something swoops low in his gut when Keith doesn’t pull away.

Yeah. There’s that, too. Lance isn’t thinking about that.

“Hey losers.”

Lance shrieks, high and girlish, while Keith is on his feet in an instant, bayard drawn and activated. It’s just Pidge, though, two flutes of beige-orange liquid in her devious hands and an innocent smile on her face. “You guys thirsty? I got these without Shiro seeing.”

“No!” Someone shouts behind her, and then there’s a large hand coming down on her shoulder, white-knuckling her in place. “Don’t listen to a word she says.” Hunk spits. He looks a little pale and when he glances at the drinks, he makes a little hrk sound. “She used my delicate palate against me.”

“I already got Keith.” Lance stands and places his hands pointedly on his hips, puffing his chest out a little. He is a Paladin of Voltron, Defender of the Universe, he did not just cower behind Keith in the face a sixteen-year-old girl. Pidge grins and holds a hand out. Lance slaps it accordingly, his own grin settling on his lips as the sound echoes like a thunderclap through the ballroom.

“Nice.” They say in unison as Hunk murmurs, “So crisp.”

Keith scowls and deactivates his bayard, attaching it to his armor with a huff. “You bring that drink anywhere near me and I’m telling Shiro about the time you tried to hack into his arm so you could get him to dab on command.”

A laugh startles out of Lance and he shoots Keith an approving wink, feeling like the ultimate winner of the universe when Keith sends him a small smile back, one sharp canine glinting over his chapped lips. Lance forces himself away from those lips, only to get caught up in angular cheekbones framing reddened cheeks, a crooked nose, likely misaligned from one of his many fights back on Earth, and those slanted eyes housing the depths of space.

Keith is sharp around the edges, all broad shoulders and thin wrists and legs always poised for attack, but he’s also so unbearably soft in the way he smiles and laughs, the way he blows his bangs out of his face before a fight, the hand and advice he offers for whichever Paladin he annihilates at training that day. Lance wants to feel the bruising pressure of those edges. He wants to bathe in his warmth, curl up under it and let it rest over him like his abuela’s quilt. He’s so fucked.

“Whelp!” Lance says suddenly, slapping his hands on his knees and rubbing the area lightly. “Time to rock and roll, kiddos. My Lancey senses are tingling and that means that either Shiro or Allura is going to come over here to scold us for acting like a bunch of bored teenagers in the middle of a political gala,” Lance pauses, tapping his finger on his chin, “Oh wait.”

Pidge snickers and runs off with the intent of getting Shiro to drink the Ghorigian punch, Hunk stumbling after her to watch the show, all protective instincts gone when it comes to their leader, apparently. Lance scans the room, hunting for the Queen’s party, and smiles a little when Keith settles at his side. He bends his head side to side and rolls his shoulders like he’s warming up for a fight.

“Are you finally emerging from your chrysalis? Are you preparing to take flight with those newly formed social butterfly wings of yours?”

Keith snorts and smiles up at him through his bangs. Lance’s heart performs a little two-step against his ribs. “I don’t want another Shiro lecture about broadening my horizons. I think flying a giant red cat through space and drinking gross punch with giant caterpillars has broadened them enough.”

Lance grins again, laughing lightly as he starts through the crowd. “Please tell him those exact words. I want to see his head explode as he tries to morph them into something inspirational.”

Keith hums and they fall silent as they fight their way through groups of Ghorigians. Their shoulders brush a couple of times and Lance has to physically restrain himself from tangling his fingers with Keith’s. His constant warmth at Lance’s side pulses through him. Every nerve is turned toward Keith like a flower to the sun.

“I’m going to stick by you, if that’s okay.” Keith murmurs. “I never know how to deal with these things and you’re so good at it.”

“I’m really not.” Lance huffs a breath through his nose, even as his ears warm at the sort-of compliment. “I just talk so much that it’s inevitable the right combinations fall out at some point. Murphy’s Law and all that.”

“Murphy’s Law is the bad one.”

Lance hums, eyes finally catching on the Queen’s raw crystal crown. “Well if you’re going to be such a know-it-all, then you’re going to be the one leading the conversation with Queen Fruigi.”

Keith scoffs his diapproval, but dosen’t get a chance to respond before Lance pulls them into the new circle with a flourish. Lance watches fondly as his cheeks redden under the new attention, hands fluttering around his bayard and eyes meeting Lance’s intermittently. He looks so handsome out from the shadows and under the crystal lights. The gold sheen makes his light skin seem impossibly warm and glints off his dark waves in a distinctly Loreal manner (which is so unfair since Lance has seen him use bar soap on the strands in the communal shower room).

Yeah. Lance has a teensy, tiny crush on Keith Kogane.

Lance gathers crushes like flowers in a field, snapping the stems of the most beautiful ones and placing them in a water-filled jar on his windowsill. He watches them from afar, adding water every once in a while, throwing a hand around their shoulder and murmuring a pickup line into their ear. The flowers inevitably wilt after some time. Lance is always rejected.

He thinks of Monique and sorry, but I like Emmanuel. He thinks of Aldo and I’m not into you like that. He thinks of Claudia’s thinly veiled disgust and Allura rolling her eyes. Lance gets rejected. The flowers die and he tosses them in the compost bin with a frown, and then Lance finds a new flower to place in his window. He’s familiar with the cycle by now.

He doesn’t want Keith to wilt.

He wants to dig around the bulb and gently pry the roots from the Earth. He wants to plant it in an absurdly expensive pot and check the soil humidity every morning and rotate it when one side gets enough sun. He wants the flower to stay healthy and whole, to thrive under Lance’s careful touch. He wants to keep this feeling. He wants Keith. He wants.

Which is why he can never tell him.

Keith is so sensitive to change, so filled with repressed emotion that any slight change to his ecosystem can set him off kilter. He can’t throw a pickup line at him, can’t wrap an arm around his waist and charm him into a date, because Keith is different. With time, Lance could probably handle the rejection, but he also knows how Keith is. He’ll start acting differently around Lance, whether from pity or disgust, and Lance will lose everything he has now. That he won’t be able to handle.

So, Lance is content with how things are now. He’ll reign in his staring, his ache to run the pads of his fingers over Keith’s jaw, his urge to press their lips together. He’ll sit in the field through rain, sun, and snow, and watch the flower bloom from afar.

Friendship is enough, Lance thinks as Keith drops back to match his pace on the walk back to the castle ship, a sly smile twitching at his chapped lips. It has to be.

“Look what I have.” Keith grins, pulling a vial of beige-orange liquid from a pocket under his armor. “You wanna help me siphon it into a juice pouch to give to Pidge after training tomorrow?”

Lance grins and wraps an arm around his shoulder, shaking him in excitement. “You really do have a brain under that mullet!” Lance laughs, eyes drinking in Keith’s toothy grin like a man starved. “I feel the need to warn you that this will definitely start a prank war.”

Keith shrugs and wraps an arm loosely around Lance’s waist, fingers digging into his hip. “We can take her.”

Lance is going to pass out. A deadly uppercut to his chin and a solid kick to the solar plexus. Keith’s arm, warm and heavy and very present around Lance, and we.

He’ll weather this storm to watch Keith grow. He has to.

 

4.

Lance runs a hand through his hair, teeth gnawing at his lower lip as the tablet in his lap rings into the silence of his bedroom. The sound is bittersweet. Their calls have quickly become the one thing Lance looks forward to the most, but more often than not Lance is left staring into his distorted reflection in the screen as the call times out, feeling foolishly like some lover waiting to hear about news on war front.

He supposes part of it is true. The Blade of Mamora is so dangerous. Keith is out on missions almost constantly, and Lance has a never-ending knot of worry between his shoulder blades because of it these days. He’s so scared that one day it won’t be Keith answering his call, that it will be some other mask in the masses informing him that Keith didn’t make it out. That he met death on his quest for knowledge.

Lance is so sick of mottos.

The lover part… Lance still aches for him. With every fiber of his being. It’s almost worse now, and Lance wants to throat punch the person who first said distance makes the heart grow fonder. He’s almost always the one to initiate these calls, and he’s more than a little worried that Keith is annoyed with him.

He knows he’s a lot. Too much. Too much energy to sit still in class. Too many jokes to take anything seriously. Too many freckles for them to be considered cute. Too many insecurities to be the Black Paladin. Too many bad ideas to be of any help to the team. Too much love in his heart to keep it to himself, yet not enough to make anyone stay.

Too much and not enough. Lance is versatile like that.

The tablet beeps lowly and Keith’s rumpled form fills the screen. He’s on his bed, back resting against the headboard in a mirror pose to Lance’s position. There’s a towel around his neck, sopping the moisture from his curling hair. The longer strands kiss his collarbones now.

“Hey,” Keith says, shifting on the bed. “Sorry I almost missed you, I was just getting out of the shower.”

“No problemo, man.” Lance says waving a hand in the air. “If you’re too busy to talk I understand. I don’t want you to get in trouble with Koli-bitch.”

“No,” Keith says, smiling slightly. His eyes look more sunken than usual. “I, uh, I like these calls. It’s nice to hear what’s going on in the castle and it makes me feel more… normal, I guess.”

“Cool.” Lance says, biting down a grin. “So, how are things over at space CIA? Is Kolivan still tying your shoelaces for you?”

“Nah, he gave me the kind with the velcro straps and sent me on my way.”

Lance snorts as Keith giggles on the other end of the line. Lance is hit with such a large surge of fondness for the boy that he feels a little lightheaded. Dios, he misses Keith so much. He wants to find his eyes over the table at a briefing and giggle at the absurd array of alien customs. He wants to spar with him on the training deck and fight through a cruiser back-to-back. He wants to make him laugh and smile. He wants to bury his face in the spot where his shoulder meets his neck and press his lips to the mole in the hollow of his throat. He wants to pull him close to his chest and never let go.

“—nce? Lance!” Lance startles and gives Keith a guilty smile when he realizes he was too caught up in Keith as a whole to listen to a single word he said. Nice one, Lance.

“Sorry. I was going through my lines. The universe’s favorite paladin needs to stay in prime shape, you know.”

Keith rolls his eyes, but there’s a tilt to his lips that soothes some of the anxiety in his chest. “What, you mean Take that Galra scum? Or is it Voltron will never let you get away with this!”

Lance groans and buries his face in his hands, feeling heat crawl up his neck at Keith’s laugh. “Shut up,” Lance mumbles into his palms, “That shit is so bad. I feel like a Mystery Gang reject.”

“What do you mean?” Lance peaks through his fingers to see Keith’s fond grin. The sight sends butterflies fluttering around his stomach. “I thought you’d be into all the fame and glory and stuff.”

“No, I am, it’s just…” Lance sighs, letting his hands drop to his lap and resting his head against the wall. “I don’t know. I like the parades and the baby kissing and all that, but it doesn’t feel like we earned it, y’know? Like, for the last couple of months all we’ve been doing is putting on the show, but we haven’t actually done anything to make these planets safer. I want to be out in the field—the space field—kicking Galra ass and not just winking into a camera and waving a fake sword around. I feel so useless.”

Keith frowns, that tell-tale wrinkle appearing between his eyebrows as he sits up a little and rolls his shoulders. Preparing for battle. Lance doesn’t think he’s going to win this one.

“You’re not useless, Lance.” Keith says, his voice hard. “You’re a Paladin of Voltron, and you’re doing a ton of work for the coalition right now. We need all the allies we can get for Naxzela, and I know it sucks, but someone has to do it. It will be worth it in the end.” Lance grimaces and swallows down the barely on the tip of his tongue. Truthfully, he hasn’t felt like a paladin for a long time.

Blue’s rejection still aches like a knife to the ribs, twisting with each breath, scraping his bone and slowly tearing up his lungs. He likes Red, all fiery drive and willingness to act. He likes how quick she is in battle and how sensitive her controls are. He likes being the Red to Keith’s Black. He likes the trust, the invisible thread tying the right-hand man to the leader. He likes Red, but he’s not the Red Paladin.

Lance feels like one of the Keith cardboard cutouts he sees all over various swap meets, or like his eight-year-old self tugging his father’s bright yellow waders over his stumpy legs. He’s nowhere near close to enough to fill the hole that Keith left.

“Yeah, whatever.” Lance murmurs, letting out a breath. “Also, everyone is acting so weird. I swear on Lotor’s split ends that Coran is high on something, and Shir—everyone else is so mega focused on getting things ready for Naxzela that we barely hang out outside of shows anymore. I’m honestly a little worried that we won’t be able to form Voltron.”

Lance bites his cheek hard enough to taste copper when Keith sits up straighter, that crease in his forehead twitching and internally curses himself. “What about Shiro?” He asks.

Of course, he picked up on that. The kid as a lightyear-wide radar for things involving Takashi Shirogane (he honestly thinks that’s the only way Keith managed to find him after the crash). Lance wants to talk about Shiro so badly. He wants to see if anyone else has noticed the dark look he gets in his eyes sometimes, or the way he obsessively paces the bridge at night. He wants to know if anyone else catches the burning intent under some of his biting remarks, or if Lance is just being an oversensitive baby.

He wants to bounce ideas around about what could have precipitated his sudden personality change, but no one else seems bothered by it. Pidge, Hunk, and a newly rescued Matt are always holed away scheming up something incredible, and where Lance used to fit like a puzzle piece cut hastily at the edges, barely keeping up with their techno-babble and handing them the wrong tools, Matt takes his place smoothly, fitting between the them without any awkward bumps or gaps. He’s like Lance where he can cheer people up and make them laugh, but he’s also better because he can fight and build and be a sounding board to Team Punk instead of just a piece of peeling wallpaper to rant to.

Allura and Shiro are spending more and more time holed up together, planning without anyone else’s input. He’s supposed to be the right-hand of Voltron, he’s supposed to help, but these days he just finds himself hanging out with Kaltenecker or watching his tablet screen go dark with the words CALL NOT RECEIVED cutting across his eyes.

He trusts Keith with anything and everything… except this. Keith loves Shiro above all else, probably more than his own life, if the way the Blade missions are taking a toll on him seems to go by. And also… he left. He chose not to be a part of what goes on with Lance anymore.

Lance takes a deep breath, hears Raphael in his high-pitched seven-year-old voice saying Kyle has a whole binder filled with Pokémon cards and he doesn’t have to share a room with his brother. The Blade has missions that are actually making a dent in the Galra empire, and he doesn’t have to worry about cleaning up Lance’s messes.

“It’s nothing.” Lance says after too long of a pause, forcing a smile onto his face. “He’s acting a little weird, but he’s been a guest of the Galra twice now and we have Lotor peeing all over the place to stake his claim, so it’s probably not a big deal.”

Keith studies him through the screen, mouth pinched, and Lance has to squeeze his hands into fists to avoid hanging up the call. Eventually he sighs and rubs a hand roughly down his face (Lance mentally slaps him for ruining his skin barrier). “Tell me exactly what’s bothering you about him.”

“Look,” Lance says, preparing himself the back pedal his way off this cliff. “It’s really not a big deal, I’m probably just—”

“Lance,” Keith interrupts, eyes glaring a hole through the screen. “Stop. I trust your gut. If you think something is wrong, then something is. Just tell me what has you on edge. Is he sick or something?”

Lance sighs and closes his eyes against Keith’s watchful gaze, heart leaping a little at the no-nonsense way Keith said he trusts him, like it was something effortlessly easy to admit. Maybe it is for Keith, who doesn’t have his heart in his throat every time their eyes meet.

“He gets these headaches.” Lance begins, choosing his words carefully. “He’s not treating them either, I asked Coran to be sure, and...” Lance hesitates, lips twisting. “He can also be a little… mean? I guess? Like, I don’t know, it’s really not a big deal, he just wasn’t like that before, y’know.”

“What does he say?” Keith asks, his voice drawing Lance’s eyes open like a siren call. “Tell me. Please?”

The please crushes the last of Lance’s willpower and he blows a sharp breath out from his teeth. “Okay, I feel like such a little snitch right now, but whatever. We’ll be, like, planning missions or whatever, and if I say something he’ll snap at me to stay out of it or to be serious for once, and, like, yeah, I’m pretty nosy and my mouth is on speed dial to my brain, but it seems a little more… real than usual? I don’t know. Like I said, it’s probably noth—”

“If you say it’s nothing one more time I’m going to hijack a ship to fly over there and cut out your tongue.” Keith growls. Lance stills, blinking at screen-Keith’s narrowed eyes. He runs a hand through his hair and forces a laugh. “Sorry, man.”

“No, that’s not—” Keith groans, a (frankly adorable) pout on his lips. “It’s not nothing, Lance. We use your plans ninety percent of the time because they work. You were always the best strategist out of all of us, you can see a way to get in and out cleanly with minimal casualties. It’s—you shouldn’t stay out of it, okay?”

Lance blinks at the screen, mouth slightly agape. “Oh.”

Keith sighs again, his cheeks bathed in a rosy pink, and reaches up to grip the towel around his neck. Lance pretends not to notice the way his forearms flex at the movement. “You’re right, it is weird. Talk to Coran and see if he can force Shiro to get his headaches checked out. Maybe he’s irritable because he has an injury he refuses to get treated or something.”

“Sounds like someone I know.” Lance jokes, feeling his shoulders unlatch from his ears. He didn’t know how badly he needed the validation from someone else that he wasn’t developing some kind of acute paranoia. Of course, Keith is the one able to talk Lance off his soapbox. His voice is the only thing that can soothe his perpetually frazzled nerves these days.

“I miss you.” Lance breaths, the words coming out so soft and so telling that every single muscle in his body goes taut again. They both suck in a breath at the same time, and Lance leans forward hurriedly, heat wrapping around his neck like a vice. “I mean—I—everyone misses you, man, y’know? It’s weird having the training room so empty, and those gross cotton candy flavored goo bars that only you like are piling up in the kitchen. We just… we feel your absence so strongly, Samurai. It feels like something is missing.”

Lance is breathing a little too hard after his rant, and he hopes the soft blue emergency lights of the night cycle are enough to cover the blush he knows is crowding his face. Bajeezus, be more obvious, why don’t you? Keith is smiling, though his eyes look a little sad.

“I miss you too.” He whispers. Lance’s heart lurches. It’s the collective you, but Lance lets himself bask in the word anyway. He wishes he had Keith in his arms instead of the cold Altean metal of the tablet. “I’ll see you soon, okay? My schedule should get better after Naxzela.”

Lance nods, letting the word flow through him. Soon. Soon.

.

Lance is in his room, blankets pulled high over his face and nose shoved into the wall.

He’s not crying anymore, but he’s pretty sure that’s due more to dehydration than lack of feeling. He was flying right at the barrier Matt’s voice echoes in his head, raw with disbelief, I couldn’t stop him, he wouldn’t answer me.

Lance shudders and wraps the blanket tighter around his head, almost suffocating himself with the force. He’d left for his room immediately after Matt’s declaration, wanting to pull Keith into his arms and absorb him into his body, but unable to stand around in the hanger and watch him emerge from his ship.

Lance has spent a lot of the past few years following Keith Kogane, and in this moment he can admit it without the usual embarrassment. He followed him though the Garrison halls and up the class rankings. He followed him into a desert shack, one of Shiro’s arms wrapped around each of their shoulders, and into the mouth of the Blue Lion. He followed him in and out of the depths of space, and eventually into the cockpit of Red.

He’d follow Keith anywhere, but he can’t follow him there.

There’s a faint whirring nose, and Lance emerges from his comforter slowly, already knowing who entered his room. Keith is lingering in the doorway, like he can’t decide if he wants to come in or not. His mask is down, but the Mamora hood is still pulled over his hair. He looks paler than usual, skinnier too, and the effect has him looking almost skeletal under his hood. Lance wonders if he really is seeing a ghost, if the grim reaper’s come to take him too.

I’d follow you anywhere, but I can’t follow you there.

“Lance.” Keith says, his voice cracking on the word. A tremor wracks through Lance’s body, cracking him right down the middle. One half of him is furious at Keith for throwing his life around like that. The other half is terrified that he’d even consider it. He aches to reach out, to feel his pulse pumping under his wrist and the warmth in his skin that says he’s alive, but his warring halves keep him pinned in place. He’s at a loss for words for one of the first times in his life.

“Lance?” Keith says again and the small strain in his voice breaks him. Lance exhales shakily, leaning forward so his elbows land heavy on his knees.

“Keith,” Lance says, his voice thick and strange sounding even to his own ears, “Why… Why did you do that?”

Keith hesitates, blinking quickly under his hood, before the familiar pinch of anger twitches at his jaw. “We had to stop it,” Keith says, his voice sharp, “It was a bomb, Lance. It—I thought if I could break the barrier then you guys could get inside and finish the job. The mission—”

“The mission.” Lance scoffs, rubbing the heels of hands against his eyes so brutally he sees stars. One of them darts across his eyelids, quick, like the fighter jet Keith— “It’s always about the fucking mission with you. Fuck the mission, Keith!” Lance drops his hands, blinking away the sting, “And fuck you while we’re at it! You—We don’t do that, okay? I don’t know what the Blade is teaching you, but we don’t go into missions with the deliberate—”

Lance cuts himself off, too afraid to speak the words aloud. His fingernails bite into his palm and his teeth ache where he has them clenched together. He uses the pain to ground himself. “We—I need you alive, asshole. Taking out the barrier would’ve meant nothing if we couldn’t see your stupid face afterwards.”

Keith is still breathing hard, but some of the irritation bleeds from his face. He looks away from Lance’s eyes, fiddling with the hilt of his knife. “We’re in a war, Lance.” He sounds robotic, like he’s regurgitating one of Lance’s Voltron on Ice lines. “We’re soldiers, we—"

“You’re not a faceless droid!” Lance explodes, rising to his feet. “You’re Keith Kogane. Prodigy of the Galaxy Garrison. Red Paladin of Voltron. You’re my best friend and I can’t do this without you, Keith. I—” Lance cuts himself off and marches forward, grabbing Keith by the biceps and tugging him harshly into his arms. Keith melts against him almost immediately, winding his arms tightly around his waist to fist the material at the small of his back and shoving his nose into Lance’s chest. Lance clings just as fiercely, one hang tangled in his hair under the hood and the other rubbing up and down his spine.

I’m in love with you. Lance thinks desperately, pulling Keith impossibly closer. He must have been wrong about the dehydration because he feels another stream of tears run down his cheeks. I’m so in love with you, it hurts. I don’t know what I’d become without you. I don’t know how I’m supposed to let you go after this.

“M’sorry,” Keith croaks after what could have been seconds or years. He doesn’t pull away and Lance shudders at the feeling of Keith’s lips brushing against his sternum. “I really didn’t mean to, it just happened so quickly, and—I’m sorry.”

Lance hums and tugs his hood down so he can press his lips lightly to Keith’s hair. He smells like sweat and blood and that gross medicinal space mall soap and so much like Keith that Lance feels his knees go a little wobbly. “Come home.” Lance murmurs into his hair. Keith nuzzles further into his chest even as his shoulders go stiff with tension.

“I can’t… there’s still so much to do and—”

“Then at least visit.” Lance says, curling his fingers against Keith’s spine, “Once or twice a month. Not just for you, but for all of us. It’s weird not seeing your mullet around here anymore, and you’re too skinny. Hunk is going to make you a feast and we’re not going to let you get up until you lick the plate clean.”

Keith sighs and pulls back. Lance mourns the loss of heat, but the warmth in his eyes when they meet Lance’s more than makes up for it. “Okay. Yeah, I’ll come visit.”

“Cool. Good.” Lance lets his arms drop back to his sides. That was easier than he thought, the Blade must really be doing a number on him. “You should get some rest. You look dead on your feet.”

They both freeze at his words, and Lance can feel the blood physically drain from his face. “Wait, no, that was—”

Keith snorts, and when Lance finds the courage to look at him there’s a small smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye. “You always know exactly what to say.” Keith murmurs. Lance winces, his most recent words providing extremely solid evidence that he really doesn’t. Keith looks down at his feet and fiddles with his hood, red flooding the apples of his cheeks. “Can I… can I stay? I don’t want to be alone right now.”

“Yeah, yes, of course.” Lance says, a genuine smile pulling at his lips for the first time in who knows how long. He digs through his closet and throws a pair of sweats and a faded grey t-shirt in Keith’s direction. “You gotta change, though. I’ll bend the rules to let your bar soap mullet in my bed, but I draw the line at outside clothes.”

Keith rolls his eyes but walks into the bathroom with the pile without putting up much of a fight. Lance slides into bed and ignores the way heat pools low in his belly when Keith emerges with sleep-heavy eyes and Lance’s sweatpants rolled at the waist. He ignores the way his heart flutters as Keith joins him under the covers and curls up next to him without a hint of hesitation. He ignores the way Keith’s face fits perfectly into the crook of his neck and his leg slots just right between his own. He stares at his awful drawing of Earth taped to the ceiling, a heart sketched over Cuba, and ignores the way his eyes prickle with familiar homesickness at Keith’s touch, despite him being closer than ever.

Lance ignores, ignores, ignores until Keith’s breathing evens out, and Lance feels safe enough to whisper “Te quiero” against his temple.

 

5.

Lance stares at the large screen on the bridge, heart slamming against his ribs and breath caught in his throat.

He drinks in the familiar pale face, the control panel lights spilling harsh shadows across his cheekbones and jaw. He gazes at his hair, longer than ever, and pulled back loosely into a tail that sits at the nape of his neck. His knees almost give out at the achingly familiar scowl on his face, that crease ever present between his brows.

He’s alive.

“Open the hanger.” The Keith on the big screen says, eyes straying from the paladins grouped around the bridge to type furiously into his ship. His voice sounds different, deeper than Lance remembers. “I have vital information on Lotor and the lost Alteans, and we need to act fast.”

He’s alive.

Allura shouts something, most likely a question about the lost Alteans, but Lance is too dizzy to pick up any thread of conversation weaving around him. His vision tunnels on the screen, his eyes get caught on the familiar mole that rests just below his Adam’s apple.

“We’ll meet you in Black’s.” Coran says, his unusually serious voice cutting through the clamor of the others. The Paladins rush off to meet him and Lance finds himself following in a daze.

Two months. Keith has been MIA from the Blades for two months. Lance spent the time almost physically sick with worry. Kolivan wouldn’t tell them anything besides it’s classified, and Shiro was being weirdly calm about the whole situation.

Lance had yelled at him on several occasions. When Shiro was missing Keith tore apart every metaphorical corner of the universe to find him. Twice. What does Shiro do when there’s been no communication with Keith for a couple of weeks? Nothing. He sits around and twiddles his thumbs and rolls out the red carpet for Prince Hair Extensions.

Voltron needs to be ready for anything, he’d said, his voice tight and face pinched like he was barely suppressing an eye roll, we can’t risk letting even you leave the castle just to search for him. He’s a big boy, he can handle himself.

The way Shiro had said you, like Lance’s entire being left a bad taste in his mouth, shut him up for a while. And him and Lotor were all linked pinkies and braiding each other’s hair every night. Lance didn’t understand how someone as protective as Shiro could let Lotor have free range of the ship. He listened to the prince far more than he ever listened to the paladins, and it sent Lance’s stomach churning. When Lance was alone with his thoughts, he was so sure there was something wrong with him, but the others never seemed to pick up on it when Lance chanced the conversation. He just… he didn’t know what to think anymore. Space was messing with his internal compass.

It didn’t stop him from looking, though. He gave his tablet to Pidge, hoping she’d be able to track wherever his communicator was on the other side. He pleaded with Red to use their connection, even if just to make sure that he was bare minimum still breathing. He always kept his communicator on full volume, scared that he might miss an emergency message someday.

It wasn’t enough, though, because what could Lance really do? He couldn’t hack into Keith’s ship or the BOM databases, and he didn’t have the bravery to get in his lion and fly away to search without looking back. He was so useless. To Voltron. To the universe. To Keith.

He’s alive.

Lance slows as he ducks into Black’s hanger, hanging back a little as the rest of the group rushes forward. Keith is already standing on the deck, a tall Galran woman near his shoulder and a shorter Altean one peeking out of the ship. He turns at the team’s approach and a breath-taking smile stretches across his lips as Pidge flings herself into his side. Something loosens in Lance’s chest at the sight.

Keith looks taller, broader. It’s a strange sight seeing that familiar smile on his unfamiliar body, like two reels of film being cranked though a projector at the same time. Lance lingers a foot away from the others as Hunk lifts Keith off his feet and Shiro ruffles his hair. He watches in a strange, disjointed manner as Keith introduces Krolia—his mother—and Romelle, and explains the genocide Lotor has been carrying out under their noses.

Lance wants to scream. He wants to stomp his feet and punch Shiro right in the nose and scream I told you so I told you so. He wants to shave Lotor’s stupid hair off and coat it in that awful Ghorigian drink and feed it to him for the betrayed look he put on Allura’s face. He wants to wrap his arms around Keith and shove his nose into his neck and see if he still smells the same.

He doesn’t do any of that as the group disbands around him and rushes back into the bowels of the castle. He follows after them almost in a trance, only blinking out of it when Keith slows his pace to match Lance’s.

“Hey, Sharpshooter.” Keith murmurs, space-deep eyes narrowed and lips pursed. The expression is so familiar it hurts, and Lance’s heart skips pathetically at the nickname.

“Hey, Mullet.” Lance says back, the edges of his lips quirking against his wishes. Keith stops suddenly, eyes tracing his face, and lunges forward to wrap his arms around Lance’s shoulders. Lance yelps, but his arms snake around Keith’s waist on autopilot all the same, helplessly in tune with Keith’s every movement.

“We don’t have much time right now,” Keith’s lips brush against the shell of his ear and Lance shudders at the sensation, “but we’ll talk later, okay?”

Lance nods against Keith’s shoulder, breathing him in. He doesn’t smell like Altean soap anymore, but he still smells like Keith. It sooths something in his chest, settling his feet more evenly on the ground. “Okay,” He agrees easily, “It’s good to have you back.”

“Good to be back.” Keith whispers. They stay in each other’s arms for another second, then two, until Keith’s grip tightens imperceptibly before releasing completely. Lance steps back with a new surge energy. Keith’s hugs feel like eight uninterrupted hours of sleep combined with a deep tissue massage combined with six cans of Red Bull. Lance can take on anything the universe throws at him in that moment. He can take Lotor.

The men nod at each other and hurry off to the bridge.

.

Lance stares through the fire, fingers lazily combing through Kosmo’s fur.

They’re going back to Earth. Lance is going to see his family again. He’s going to be able to hug his parents, he’s going to get a noogie from Marco and a punch from Veronica. He’s going to wrap one arm around Jose and the other around Elena and pull them onto his knees on their old, rickety couch. He’s going to let Sylvio and Clara cling to his legs while he lugs them around like a pair of boots made out of cement. Maybe he has a third niece or nephew by now that he can hold tightly in his arms and sing a lullaby to.

His other home is gone now. The castle with its hospital-white walls and electric blue lights. The training room where they became an actual team and the kitchen where they cracked jokes over Hunk’s meals. The observation deck where Lance and Keith shed their rivalry and the vents where Pidge loved to pop out of at any given time. Lance’s room filled with posters from swap meets and Voltron action figures with their faces painted all wrong. Evidence of almost two years of his life erased from their plane of existence, just like that.

Lance feels torn in two different directions. His want for the comfort of his home planet and his ache for the ship where he grew up with his new family. He’s not sure which side hurts more.

“Hey.” Lance startles as someone settles down next to him on his orange log, making Kosmo whine when he pauses his ministrations. Lance blinks over at Keith, who stares resolutely into the fire even as he holds a water pouch in Lance’s direction.

“Hi.” Lance says hesitantly, taking the pouch and removing his hand from Kosmo’s blue fur to take a drink. The wolf whines again, louder this time, and Keith lets out an amused snort.

“You’re spoiling him.”

“He deserves to be spoiled.” Lance asserts, wrapping Kosmo’s cheeks up in his hands and pressing a wet kiss to his snout. “Isn’t that right, Kosmo? You’re such a good boy! Yes, you are!”

Kosmo yips loudly, tail thumping the ground, and dematerializes under Lance’s fingers. He appears a second later right in Lance’s lap, the new weight almost sending him sprawling. “Damn, dude!” Lance laughs, showering the wolf with pets again. He looks at Keith, who’s watching the two with a strange look in his eyes. “You’re fired, Samurai. Kosmo is my space dog now.”

“Cosmic wolf.” Keith corrects, reaching over to scratch between his ears. Kosmo immediately melts into his palm. When Keith’s fingers slow Lance glances over to see his eyes trained across the fire again, at Shiro who seems to be telling a story to Krolia and Romelle. He’s gesticulating wildly with one arm, the sleeve on his other side is tied off near the middle of his chest.

“It’s not your fault.” Lance says, smiling a little when Krolia nods uncertainly at whatever bullshit Shiro is spinning. It’s to have him back—really back, this time. He missed the awkward dad energy the clone couldn’t replicate.

“Except it is.” Keith murmurs, hand dropping from Kosmos head to settle uncertainly in his lap. He peers at Lance, teeth pressed into his lower lip. “You told me something was wrong. I should have—I left, and shouldn’t have—”

“It’s not your fault.” Lance says again. He studies Keith, the first time he’s properly been able to since he came back. The scar from fake Shiro is still fresh, pink and puckered at the edges, but it does nothing to take away from his looks (it enhances them, his own voice whispers back, coy, there’s something about scars that tell a story, that—). His shoulders are much broader, his arms and thighs wider, and his hair is pulled back in that messy way that is slowly driving Lance crazy. His expression, though, the forehead creased with worry and the way his fingers flutter around his knife, that’s the Keith he’s used to. It makes looking at him a little easier.

“We were all with him and we didn’t do anything. Same with Lotor. You came in two months later and two years older and saved the day like you always do. Everything is okay now, and exactly zero people blame you for anything, I promise.”

Keith squints at him a little longer before deflating. He blows out a breath and laughs a little, those wide shoulders shaking with it. “God, I came over here to comfort you and it ended up being the other way around. Typical. You’re too good at this.”

Lance straightens and narrows his eyes. “Comfort me? Why?” Keith shrugs, leveling Lance with a look.

“This is the quietest I’ve heard you… ever. I wanted to see if everything was okay.”

Lance blinks. Right. It’s probably not too hard to notice when his mood is off. “I am now. I’m just… excited and nervous for Earth. I want to see my family so badly, but I’m also scared about how much they’ve changed without me, and what they’ll think about me fighting in a war.” Lance pauses, frowning at Kosmo’s blue head. “Also, my mama is going to beat me up for disappearing, which I’m not exactly looking forward to.”

Keith nods, his lips quirked, and looks back over at Shiro and Krolia, who are now engaged in a thumb war. Krolia has him pinned in two seconds flat and the dejected look on Shiro’s face makes him snort. Keith laughs too, a fond look passing over his features as he watches his mother and his brother bond. The smile slips off Lance’s face as he studies him.

Lance thought it from the first time he looked in Keith’s eyes, that he was made for space. He shines brightest among the cosmos, not when he’s tied down to Earthen rules and stuffy academies. He belongs here, saving alien planets and playing the hero. Lance does not.

It’s always one step forward, two steps back with them. Every time Lance thinks he’s getting close to closing the gap, almost able to stand on equal footing with him, Keith gets another burst of energy. He runs away from the Garrison. He’s a better paladin than Lance will ever be. He leaves for the Blades. He gets stuck in the quantum abyss and comes out of it all mature and wise. He’ll want to stay in space. With his mom and his love for piloting between the stars. There’s no room left for Lance’s sand-bound feet and ocean-clogged lungs. There’s always some kind of distance between them, tangible or not. Lance needs to accept that and move on one of these days.

But, he thinks as he watches Keith grin at his family, one sharp canine glinting over chapped lips and eyes warm and crinkly, that day is not today.

Lance gently shoves Kosmo off his lap and pointedly ignores his puppy eyes as he stands. “Well, I need my beauty sleep so I’m going to hit the space hay,” He gives Keith a small smile, “Smell you later, Mullet.”

Keith grins back, eyes still impossibly warm and teeth still gleaming in the firelight. “See you tomorrow.”

 

+1

The Cuban sand is eating Lance. It’s in his hair and up the back of his shirt. It’s underneath his fingernails and between his toes, settling all grainy and wet in the most welcome way on his skin. He trails his fingers through it idly as he stares up at the bright blue sky. He wants to drown in this beach. He wants his nieces and nephews to bury him tight in a mound of it and leave him there to rot. He never wants to be away from it again.

Which is the issue.

They’d landed on Earth a couple of days ago. After some intense interrogation from the Garrison, most of which featured Lance popping gum bubbles directly in Iverson’s face just because he could (Dios, he forgot how much he missed gum), and some planning with the Holts. The Castle 2.0 project is officially in motion. Pidge, Hunk, and the Alteans stayed on to oversee the building, but with nothing else to do Lance took the first chance to jet off to Cuba with Keith, Kosmo, Krolia, Shiro, and Shiro’s—fiancé? boyfriend? just bros who live together and share passionate smooches?—Adam in tow.

The relief Lance felt when Red touched down on Veradero beach and his sneakers sunk into the sand was like no other. His family was expecting them, and the entire Serrano clan charged out of the house like there was a raging bull on their tail.

“Where’s the fire?” Lance had joked as everyone drew closer, only to be taken down by Marco literally diving into his chest. He got dogpiled by the rest of them, and in his breathless haze he found that he wouldn’t mind going out like this, surrounded by his family and the love shining in their eyes.

Keith, Krolia, Shiro, and Adam got along easily with Lance’s family to no one’s surprise. The space rangers were incredibly awkward, but the outgoing nature of the Serrano’s more than made up for it. Throughout the week Lance would look up to see Krolia confusedly playing patty-cake with Clara, or Jose and Elena playing fetch with Kosmo, or Shiro and Adam jogging out to the beach with Veronica and her husband Robert, a volleyball tucked under their arm, or Keith helping his dad with their boat engine, jeans slung low on his hips and shoulders flushed red from the sun, and felt a warmth so strong it left him breathless.

There was something so satisfying about Lance’s two families coming together as if they’d known each other all along. It felt right, sitting in his kitchen and watching everything unfold. It felt right guiding his board through the waves and laughing to the point of tears when Keith barely managed to stand on wobbly legs before tumbling off the side. It felt right sunning himself on his family’s stretch of beach as the occupants alternated between telling stories Lance was always a part of. It felt right getting kissed by his mama and hugged by his dad and verbally roasted by the rest of his siblings. He didn’t want to leave his beach again.

Lance sighs as a large cloud shaped like battlecruiser floats by. He should probably tell someone. That he’s not going back, that is.

He just… can’t do as much up there as he can down here. His mama had cried when she told them they thought him dead the past two years. His little sister had crawled into his bed the night he came back, the first time since she was four and still afraid of thunderstorms. He sometimes caught Veronica looking at him like he was an apparition that would disappear if she blinked. If his family missed him half as much as he missed them, then there was no way Lance could go back into space. He wasn’t going to leave them again.

“There you are.”

Lance jumps, sand leaking from his hair as he sits up. His heart doesn’t settle as his eyes catch on the intruder, in fact it speeds up as Keith settles next to him, one knee of his crossed legs pressing into Lance’s thigh. “I’ve been trying to find you for an hour but kept getting held up by your family. I’m not at all surprised that your extrovertism is genetic.”

Lance snorts, nudging Keith’s knee. “Extrovertism. You make it sound like a deadly disease.”

“One that I’m immune to.” Keith grins, nudging him back. They devolve into a heated kneeing match, which only ends when Keith hits him in just the right spot to send Lance’s foot swinging promptly into his groin.

“Holy quiznack!” Lance screeches, hiccup-laughing as Keith doubles over, “Dude that was one hundred and ten percent your fault. I’m not even going to apologize.”

“Not my fault you have healthy reflexes.” Keith groans, his hair brushing Lance’s arm. Lance raises a hand to brush the strands away from his face but catches himself at the last second. No, bad hand. Very bad hand. Keith moans and complains for a minute longer before sprawling out in the sand next to Lance’s divot. He smiles at the way Keith’s fingers reflexively dig into the sand, as if he wouldn’t mind being buried in the Veradero surf too.

Lance joins him a moment later. They’re close enough that he can feel Keith’s body heat radiating into his side, somehow distinct even from the heat of the sun. He could reach out and take his hand very easily if he wanted to. “Why were you looking for me?” Lance asks, making a fist.

“Oh, right. I noticed your stuff wasn’t packed.” Lance’s stomach gives a painful lurch. “I know you’re the type to do everything last minute, but I don’t want us to get into space only to realize you left your Shakira CD behind.”

Lance swallows hard, tasting bile.

“I wonder what the new castle is going to look like,” Keith continues, completely oblivious to Lance’s silent prayer for the beach to swallow him whole, “I get first dibs on a room this time, by the way. I think that’s only fair since you stole my room the first time around.”

Keith glances over at him when Lance stays silent, and his heart clenches when that tell-tale furrow appears between his brows. “What, no fight about picking your room first or that you were the superior paladin so it only made sense you got first pick? Are you o—”

“I’m not going back.” Lance says it softly, almost too afraid for Keith to hear, and the silence that follows is louder than his voice. He shifts in the sand, tearing his gaze away from the betrayed look in Keith’s eyes. “I’m staying here.”

They’re silent for a moment longer, the atmosphere only broken by the gentle call of the ocean and a child squealing far down the coast. Lance counts to ten in his head, squeezing his eyes shut painfully, before moving to get up.

“No.”

Lance blinks, then looks over at Keith. He’s staring at him with the same eyes he gives the training bots when they’re set to a high level, the same eyes he used to glare at Lance with during their first weeks in space.

“No?”

“No.” Keith says again with a huff. Lance wants to laugh almost as much as he wants to cry.

“You can’t just no me out of this one, Samurai.” Lance rolls his eyes, cursing his traitorous lips for curling at the edges.

“Yes, I can, because I’m the leader and you have to do what I say,” Keith says, muscle twitching in his jaw, “and because we’re a team, Lance, you can’t leave it.”

Lance sighs and closes his eyes again, partially to get his thoughts in order but mostly because if he looks at his fierce and caring and pretty face for one second longer he’ll cave. “You don’t need me anymore,” Lance has to fight to keep his voice even, “The team doesn’t. I’m—Red misses you, a lot, okay? And I’m not the Red Paladin, and Allura is so good and so happy with Blue that I couldn’t take that from her even if I wanted to, and—look, you guys don’t need me anymore. I’ll stay here with my family—”

“Lance.”

“—and let you guys bask in the parades and the champagne parties like the true heroes you are. It’s—I’m okay, really, and—”

“Lance.” Keith says again, physically cutting him off with a hand to his mouth. Lance blinks his eyes open, startled at the panicked edge to his voice. Lance thinks about licking his palm, but one look at the furious set to his shoulders and the frown on his face has Lance dropping all of his get out of jail free cards.

“Shut up and let me talk, just this once, okay?” Keith grits, only removing his hand when Lance nods tentatively. He huffs out a breath and runs a harsh hand through his hair, grunting when his fingers get caught in his hair tie. “Okay, first of all, you are needed. You’re a paladin, you’re always needed, but that’s not—” Keith rushes to say when he sees Lance shifting uncomfortably, “—that’s not the only reason. You just seem to think you’re extra, or something, when it comes to the lions and that’s so extremely false that I want to run you through with my knife. You’re a paladin, you’re our sharpshooter, and you’re the reason our team is a team.”

Keith takes a moment to re-tie his hair, and Lance, a little winded from the speech, forces himself to focus on the Serious Conversation instead of the way his neck looks when it’s all displayed and bare and ready for the taking. Keith lets out a breath again, meeting Lance’s eyes.

“I’m not good at—words—this is more Shiro and your thing, but—” Keith cuts himself off again, cursing under his breath, and Lance finds himself smiling at the way his cheeks puff in anger. He’s so endearing it hurts. “Do you remember what you said to me? After—After Naxzela, I mean. You said that I was your best friend and you couldn’t do this without me. It’s the same for me—except, except also more—but—look, I need you, okay? I need you at my side telling me when I’m doing something dumb, or cracking inappropriate jokes, or using some weird reverse psychology bullshit to get me to take care of myself.”

Lance is slack jawed, but Keith just keeps barreling through, bulldozing right over his fragile heart. “I know it’s selfish, but I really, really can’t do this without you. It’s selfish to take you away from your family when I know exactly how they’ll feel if you stay, but Lance—fuck—I—I missed you so much while I was with the Blades and the two years I was in the abyss. I missed you more than Shiro, even, which—fuck. This wasn’t supposed to go like this, I can’t…” Keith trails off, his form going blurry through tears because Lance is a goddamn crybaby on top of everything else. He’s frozen, unable to move, scared to break the spell even as Keith reaches forward and takes one of Lance’s hands into his own.

“I can’t lose you again, Lance.” Keith’s voice is so raw, too full of whatever is fluttering around Lance’s stomach for him to fully comprehend. Keith swipes his fingers over Lance’s new sword calluses. “Please don’t leave.”

Lance is breathless after the speech. He feels tingly from his head to his heels, and so overwhelmed that he can’t hold himself back when—

“I’m in love with you,” Lance whispers. Keith’s hand tightens around Lance’s, his back stiff as a board. Lance swallows down another bout of tears. “And you left first, asshole.”

Keith is still for a very long time. So long, that the weight of Lance’s words finally catch up to him. His ears burn in a way that has nothing to do with the Cuban sun. He should not have done that. He Should Not Have Done That. Lance feels regret roll heavy through his veins, his stomach twisting sourly. He fucked up, he misread the situation, he fucked everything up. Lance starts to pull his hand from Keith’s, but the movement seems to wake him out of whatever trance he was in.

Keith tightens his hold until it’s almost painful. He blinks at Lance owlishly, his pupils blown wide and his gaze so heavy and strong and filled with so much longing and he leans forward and—

Keith’s lips are on Lance’s. It’s—It’s an objectively bad kiss. Their noses mush together from the awkward angle, and there’s a layer of sand brushing roughly at the lips Lance works so hard to keep smooth because Keith kisses how he fights—hard and fierce, with no thought of holding back—and Lance forgets to kiss him back because he’s just… too shocked to move. Then Keith is pulling back, and Lance is panicking because he didn’t get to memorize the feeling, and he’s reaching up, one hand at the back of Keith’s neck and the other on his cheek, the one with the scar, and he’s angling him into a better position and pulling him back down, and—

And the sand is still there, and Keith still kisses too hard, but it’s perfect because it’s Keith. Keith and his impulsive nature and his brash demeaner and his gentle hands and his caring attitude. He’s always been an annoyingly quick learner and an overachiever, and Lance is embarrassingly grateful for it when their lips fall into a smooth rhythm. Lance hums into his mouth when Keith’s hands find his waist, and he grins at the soft gasp Keith lets out when Lance tugs lightly at his hair. He’ll file that one away for later.

Later, Lance thinks deliriously as Keith pulls back a fraction, just enough for them to catch their breath. He desperately wants a later.

“I’m sorry for leaving, it won’t happen again,” Keith murmurs against his lips. “Lance, I—I’ll follow you anywhere. I followed you into Blue, and around the castle when you egged me into stupid challenges, and through my dreams on that asshole of a whale, and I’ll keep following you when this is all over. I’ll follow you right back to this beach if you want, but I need you next to me before all that, alright? Please come back with me.”

Lance pulls back a little, blinking up at the boy above him. He opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again. “I’ve been following you for years now. Are you telling me we’ve been running in circles this whole time? For real?”

Keith groans and pecks his lips once, twice, three times before pulling back. He looks as dazed as Lance feels. “I hate cardio.” That surprises a laugh out of Lance, and he grins smugly as Keith’s eyes trace his face, catching more than once on his lips.

“You had a wittle cwush on me, Keithy boy?” Lance teases, “You fell for Loverboy Lance’s charms?” Keith rolls his eyes, but the movement is betrayed by the rosy tint to his cheeks and the smile twitching at his mouth.

“So did you.” He mumbles.

“Pssssh.” Lance waves a hand in the air. “Old news. Stale, really. This is a much more exciting headliner.”

“Old news.” Keith echoes, something like awe on his face. He grins slyly all of a sudden, inching his fingers under the hem of Lance’s tank. Lance shivers at the gooseflesh left behind. “How old we talking, Serrano?”

“He—ey!” Lance breaths as Keith’s thumbs make soothing circles just above his hipbones. “This is about you. You are under no circumstances allowed to turn it back on me.”

Keith hums, continuing the movement. Lance sinks into the sand, fingers playing lightly with the short hairs at the nape of Keith’s neck. He can feel a lot of sand particles in the strands, which is going to be a quiznack to wash out. Maybe Keith will let Lance help him? Lance goes fuzzy warm at the thought, and he smiles dopily up at his dumb fearless leader as the man gazes back just as imploringly.

“I’ll go back with you,” Lance murmurs, laughing when Keith lights up in the way Kosmo does whenever he holds something resembling a stick. Lance can almost see a tail wagging furiously. Keith peppers every inch of Lance’s face with kisses, and he relishes the way his lips feel on his cheeks, his forehead, his nose, his eyebrow, as he half-heartedly fights him off.

“Dios, you’re just as bad as Kosmo,” Lance says, hauling Keith’s face back with both hands and smooshing his cheeks together until his lips puff out, “slobbering all over everything. Is that a Galra thing?”

“Just marking my territory.” Keith says with a horrible wink. It’s more like a massive face twitch, really, but it still lights Lance up in flames. He’s so in love with this dork.

“Don’t you have to pee on me for that?” Lance grins as Keith groans and fights his way out of Lance’s hold.

“Gross, Lance.”

“Sorry, sorry. We can talk about kinks later.”

Keith punches him in the shoulder and rolls back into the sand as Lance cackles. He props himself up on one arm and sends Lance a look so fond that he feels it all the way down to his toes.

“I can’t believe I still love you after hearing that.” Lance squawks at the words, laughter immediately dying and pushes himself up in a flurry of limbs and sand. Keith watches him amusedly, his ears red and his face so handsome, and he meets Lance in the middle when he leans forward to plant a wet kiss on his lips.

“Well, you’re stuck with me, now. No taksies backsies.” Lance says, eyes alight. Keith grins and drags him back down into the sand.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Notes:

Hi!

This is my first fic ~ever~ and I have no idea if I did any of this right sooooo cool! Comments appreciated, thanks for coming along for the ride, folks

 

edit: lmao hey, I just realized that you have to code italics into this site to get them to stay so I just spent like an hour inserting because they play kind of a big part in my writing (which you'll realize if you're reading this post-edit) (if anyone has HTML hacks plz let me know that took forever ily)