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| all this time i’ve wasted; you were right there all along |
Lance will always remember his mother’s reaction when she opened the door. It had been six years since they’d last seen each other. She took a step back, eyes widening from surprise, shock… dismay.
She touched the scar on his eyebrow first, her mouth open in wordless questions while her eyes welled with tears—he decided then that he wouldn’t ever tell her about the one on his back. Though in the moment, he couldn’t really tell her much of anything; his throat had gone dry and the knowledge of how to form words fled for the time being.
His mother was content with studying him anyways, not speaking either. There was no more baby fat left on his cheeks, his features defined from years of intense training. He’d been taller than her since he hit his growth spurt in eighth grade but now it felt like she had to look up and up and up at him. He never thought of his mother as vulnerable before, but there was a first time for everything.
Seventeen to twenty-three, a blink of an eye for her, what felt like a decade for him.
Two years have passed since his return. And yet here Lance still lives with his family. At first, it was out of desire. They needed to catch up, to reconnect; returning to them was his biggest driving force while fighting. But slowly, as the years started to stretch on, living here became a habit. There’s nowhere else Lance has been drawn towards to set down roots. He has an easy job at the Garrison where he’ll work as one of the Earth diplomats for New Altea, among other planets, and he’ll often be a guest flight instructor on simulator runs, which leaves most of his summers free and not much hardship besides the obnoxious teenager or two.
Everything else has been quiet, peaceful, just what he always wanted. Plus, he still gets to visit his friends on occasion, especially their yearly reunion dinner on New Altea. Allura is now a queen, Pidge has an army of scientists inventing crazy new tech, Hunk is a universe-renowned chef, Shiro finally married Adam, and Keith… is still Keith.
Lance misses space. He doesn’t miss the war but he misses space and flying and their team. He’s so happy to be home, to be surrounded by his family again, but that doesn’t mean a part of him feels like something is missing. It has for a while now. He knows everybody can see it.
On an early summer’s evening, he lays there on the couch, contemplating just what to do with his life, until a knock at the front door interrupts all self pitying thoughts.
Lance gets a taste of his own medicine when opening the door reveals a slightly bruised and tired Keith. Standing on the front steps, he swings his gaze back to the door once he senses movement and shifts the strap of the duffle bag further over his shoulder. His welcoming tight lipped smile is more of a grimace and Lance doesn’t bother to control his surprise.
“You’re on Earth!?” he asks as his jaw drops an inch. With Keith’s schedule for the Blade, being one of their new commanders, not much time is given for friendly visits or layovers or really any sort of downtime at all. He relaxes his grip on the door knob and leans against the wall. “You never said you were coming back anytime soon…”
Shrugging, Keith winces from the movement. “I’ve been forced on a mandatory vacation?” He says it like Lance would have the answer; luckily Lance is fluent enough in Keith speak to translate that he probably sustained an injury. One bad enough for Krolia and Kolivan to force him to rest, which must mean it’s pretty terrible.
So the moron was badly injured but he still decided to fly all the way back to Earth instead of recuperating on New Altea or Daibazaal. How... moronic. Lance shakes his head.
“Then why are you here at my house?”
Keith shrugs again and winces, again . He really has to stop doing that. Lance cringes as Keith’s hand automatically hovers over his left side. “I didn’t want to disturb Shiro and Adam.”
The last time Lance saw Keith was at their wedding, a little over three months ago. Shiro and Adam just returned from their honeymoon so Lance can understand wanting to give them space.
What he doesn’t understand is why Keith is on his parents’ front steps and not taking advantage of the rent free apartments the Garrison offered all of them on base. Lance has yet to make use of his. It’s almost been a year. The minute he entered the sterile living space, void of dust and scuffed furniture, he walked out. He called his mother before the door could lock behind him.
It’s with that sudden thought that Lance finally realizes the truth.
Keith doesn’t want to be alone.
Just like him.
He finally steps out of the doorway, allowing Keith full access to his home. “You’re always welcome. We have plenty of room.” Lance means it in a figurative sense, of course, because unless Keith would rather sleep on the couch—and with his injury, he shouldn’t —they’ll be rooming together, snuggling in the same bed.
That’s only one of the many issues with this whole situation.
The other comes in the form of his entire nosy family. They love Keith the minute they set their eyes on him. His mother can’t help but immediately push food onto him once he’s settled—the best way to know she’s taken to Keith without any reservations—and Keith is even able to speak some Spanish, having grown up in Texas and trotted around foster homes, which impresses even Lance, who never realized how fluent Keith almost is. Lance never spoke much Spanish on the Castle-Ship; there really was no need.
He watches this all unfold from the sidelines, still not sure what to make of Keith showing up here for a vacation. Lance wouldn’t exactly call his parents’ house a vacation. It’s his type of preferred chaos, but not Keith’s.
“I see your description of the Red Paladin wasn’t an exaggeration.” Rachel slinks up beside him with that annoying grin of hers. “He’s very pretty.”
“Hands off, Rachel. He’s gay.”
“Which works out perfectly for you.”
Crossing his arms, Lance scoffs. “He wouldn’t ever be interested in me.”
“He’s here, isn’t he?” Rachel shrugs. She already starts to walk back into the chaos but not before throwing one last look over her shoulder to say, “Pretty obvious to all of us.”
“I’m sorry about all… that .” Lance cringes as he apologizes, hating the way it makes him sound embarrassed about his family when he’s not. He’s just embarrassed for himself really and how much they clearly adore Keith and how quickly they can easily ruin Lance’s life by spilling all his dirty little secrets.
But that’s his own private battle to contend with.
Like the gentleman his mother raised him to be, he carries Keith’s lone duffle bag into his childhood bedroom, which, he guesses, can just be called his bedroom at this point after reclaiming it these last two years despite being too lazy to redecorate. He gestures for Keith to follow.
“I don’t mind,” Keith replies, but he’s clearly distracted by the posters on Lance’s wall. Some are lame space ones depicting their solar system—how boring after everything—and a couple are for the Galaxy Garrison, once serving as a reminder for why he was studying ridiculously hard to be accepted into the program. “I didn’t expect such a warm welcome,” Keith admits, swinging back around to Lance, hands stuffed in his pockets.
As per usual, Keith hadn’t talked too much aside from polite greetings, gratitude, and one word answers when Lance’s mother kept asking him if he would like to eat, but never once did Lance get the sense that he was seconds from bolting.
“Just don’t let them scare you off.” One more snarky comment from his siblings and Lance himself will be running for the hills soon.
Keith snorts, quiet enough that Lance almost misses it. “Nothing scares me.”
He rolls his eyes. “How could I forget.”
You don’t fight a war with someone side by side for years without being able to read them like the back of your hand, without learning every small detail about them. Lance would be surprised if there’s any secrets left of Keith he doesn’t already know.
Like how Lance learned long ago, after many unsuccessful attempts at trying to hook his fellow paladin up with hot male-identifying aliens, that Keith is asexual. Which brings him back to the whole sharing a bed situation.
“This okay?” Lance asks as he fluffs the pillows and pulls down the sheets, not at all embarrassed by the little spaceships and rockets that decorate them. “My mother would kill me if I offered you the floor and I don’t want to sleep there either so…”
Keith rolls his eyes as he begins to unpack. “I don’t like sex. Doesn’t mean I can’t sleep in the same bed as someone.” He tucks his clothes into one of the empty drawers of Lance’s bureau. “As long as you don’t snore, of course.”
“How dare you suggest such a thing.” Offended, Lance gasps as he places a hand to his chest. “If you snore, I’m risking my mother’s wrath and kicking you to the couch.”
Keith ignores his threats like always, the bastard. The corner of his mouth curls upward instead, before it quickly disappears. “I also hate blanket hogs.”
“Well, isn’t someone a little high maintenance?” Lance steps towards Keith, arms crossed and smirk defiant. “We’ll see who’s the worst bed partner. My money’s on you.”
“I’m sure it is.”
They wake up spooned together.
And wordlessly drop the bet for fear of it bringing something else to light.
A few days pass and whatever restless energy stirs inside Keith turns him from a guest who should be resting into his parents’ little helper. He begins to gradually check off a to-do list of house repairs that Lance’s entire family has procrastinated about for years, mostly damage from past hurricanes they’ve kind of let slide a little too long—though he’s also helped weed the garden. Lance’s father is too old to be doing such things anymore and all his siblings have full time jobs and Lance himself… he’s never been much of a DIY person.
“I fixed my desert shack all the time,” Keith says, rolling up his sleeves to his elbows. A ladder already rests against the side of the house; no one even pretends to try to stop him besides Lance. “Reattaching a gutter is nothing.”
“You're injured,” Lance counters.
“I'm fine.”
The conversation concludes quickly once Lance realizes he won’t be able to convince Keith to see sense and doesn’t feel like wasting the energy to keep trying. Instead, Lance follows him around, never helping—because that would be a disaster—but providing unnecessary commentary where needed. Like, ‘You’re not hammering straight,’ in which Keith’s chosen response is always something like ‘Because I’m not.’ Lance does grin at Keith’s rare joke but he has to quickly force his expression back into a scowl lest Keith begins to believe that he is okay with him straining his injury like this.
His eventual hope is that all his backseat driving comments will start to irritate Keith so much that he throws down his tools in aggravation and gives up for the time being.
Over an hour into Keith’s various projects, Lance’s plan has yielded no results.
His parents left to run errands once they determined that Keith had the repairs well in hand, and with Lance’s siblings all living their own lives today, he and Keith have a type of quiet he hasn’t experienced since Keith arrived almost a week ago. It’s nice for it to be just the two of them even if this alone time is spent standing near the base of the ladder watching his stupid former teammate nail a gutter back into place while recovering from an injury.
“You feeling okay?” Lance asks. An alarm of concern spikes when a sharp grunt suddenly escapes from Keith’s lips. It’s not as hot out here today as it was the week prior, and not as hot as it will get during the coming months, but Keith has acquired a noticeable layer of sweat doing manual labor all morning. He’s probably dehydrated and starving. Lance tried to get him to drink water a half hour ago but someone, as usual, wanted to keep going.
Shoulders hunched, Keith nods. “I’m fine.” But he grips the ladder tight, knuckles practically white, so Lance struggles to believe anything he says.
“I think you’re finished for today, actually.”
It’s probably more concerning when Keith doesn’t try to argue at all. He accepts Lance’s command with too much ease. Unfortunately, he misses a step or five on his way down.
Lance curses and sprints towards Keith as he starts to tumble off the ladder. Grunting at the unexpected weight, he catches Keith, and they both crash to the ground. A few sharp rocks poke Lance's back. Sprawled half on top of him, Keith breathes heavily. He groans and clutches his injured side. When he pulls his hand away, blood coats his entire palm.
“That... might have been a mistake.”
Lance glares. No shit, dumbass. “You popped your stitches.” He gently rolls up Keith’s blood stained shirt revealing the ugly, slightly healed wound where indeed most, if not all, of his carefully laid stitches have snapped. Lance grinds his teeth. “I thought you were mostly healed.”
“Mostly being the optimal word.”
“Stubborn, stubborn man.” Lance lightly growls as he tries to figure out a way to get Keith into the house. He could be a normal person and call 911 but hospitals and Keith rarely mix well and they were all trained in extensive first aid when they were part of Voltron. It’d be easier for Lance to patch Keith up himself.
But since there’s no way Keith can so much as partially walk himself inside, Lance crouches down next to him and gestures to his back. “Hop on and feel free to bleed out all over me.”
“My hero,” Keith sarcastically mutters against his curly hair once he settles against Lance like a comforting, warm blanket. He wraps his legs around Lance’s waist while Lance hooks his hands under his thighs. Keith presses his lips into the back of Lance’s skull and Lance tries not to dwell on the concerning skip of his heart.
He carries Keith all the way into the house. Kicking open the front door to a thankfully blissful silence, they end up in the first floor bathroom. Lance makes quick work of grabbing the first aid kit shoved into the back of some drawer and cleans Keith’s wound. Bloody rags are soon strewn across the counter, and Lance threads the sterilized needle.
“You’re lucky I still remember how to do this.”
“You’re lucky I have a high tolerance for pain.” Keith shifts his head, trying hard not to turn his whole body from where he lays against the cool tile. Lance holds him down anyways.
“Too much tolerance if you ask me.”
For the first time since Keith arrived, Lance gets an up close and personal view of his wound. He doesn’t ask him how he got injured. Keith hasn't shared the information freely so Lance won’t push. It was a nasty stab wound, though. Some sort of jagged weapon that Keith should feel beyond luckily didn’t nick any organs. An inch to the right and a centimeter deeper, Lance could see it being fatal.
“If you ever end up dying on me, I’m going to kill you myself,” he grumbles, mostly to himself, as he starts to stitch the wound closed.
Even with the numbing agent Lance spread around the wound, Keith’s breath hitches as he swallows a grunt of discomfort. “I–I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
The bathroom falls silent, except for Keith’s deep breathing and the slow drip from the bathtub faucet Keith had on his list to fix later today—that won’t be happening anymore. Lance bites the inside of his cheek, concentration curling his tongue, and commands his hands not to shake. He stitches Keith’s wound in record time, though it didn’t help that Keith stared at him all the while.
Breathing out a sigh, Lance sits on his heels, wiping the sweat off his forehead. The surgical gloves try to stick to his clammy hands as he snaps them off to throw in the garbage. “Never make me do that again for you.”
Despite the pallor to his skin and the dark circles, Keith has enough energy to roll his eyes. “I do try not to get stabbed, you know.”
Lance scoffs as he cleans up the bathroom—Keith has three middle names: Akira, Reckless, and Injured. He putters around while trying to make sure Keith stays where he is and doesn’t immediately pull his newly applied stitches. “You had the most healing pod stays out of all of us,” Lance reminds him when he crouches down towards Keith again, ready to move him to a more comfortable surface.
“Says the person who had the second most.”
Expression wrinkling, Lance mimics the words right back to him in a slightly nasally voice. Keith has to clamp down on his amusement before laughter tugs at the wounded side of his body. Lance loops his arm around Keith to hoist him into a semi-standing position. “That’s enough sass out of you, hotshot; let’s get you to bed.”
For once, Keith has no argument.
As blood drips from his fingers and ash chokes his lungs and smoke corrodes his throat, Lance screams. He shoves Keith from the line of fire. They tumble together onto the ground rolling for infinity until they come to stop where Lance arches over him, hollering.
He shakes Keith’s cold body. ‘ Wake up wake up wake up wake up, ’ he tries to say but his mouth is sewn shut and he’s falling through the earth, desperately trying to cling to Keith’s lifeless body. Those wide, vacant eyes follow after him instead.
Heart pounding, Lance wakes to someone petting his hair. They card their fingers through his curls, never pausing their ministrations.
“It’s okay, Mrs. McClain,” Lance vaguely hears Keith explain right beside him—or above him? In fact, Lance quickly realizes, his head is resting on Keith’s lap. “I know how to handle this.”
They have wildly different reactions to their PTSD induced night terrors. Keith’s are often silent. He’ll wake from a cold sweat, usually jostling Lance awake in the process, and wander the house until his heart rate calms down and his hands stop trembling. Sometimes Lance joins him on these walks; sometimes Keith needs to be alone.
Lance, on the other hand, screams. His night terrors are loud, violent at times whether someone tries to grab him to wake him or not. His throat is always raw when he regains full consciousness.
If that bet was still a thing, this, he knows, would have caused him to lose. No contest.
Lance doesn’t dare move, not with his parents in the room. He has no desire to see their pity, their concern, their helplessness. He tries to maintain a steady, slow breathing pattern and keep as still as possible. After much coaxing on Keith’s end, his parents thankfully leave them be, and Lance allows himself to open his eyes. But Keith must have known that he’s been awake the entire time; he isn’t surprised in the slightest.
“Did I hurt you?” Lance croaks. Again , he should add after the choking incident from a week ago. It’s a miracle that Keith is still willing to share a bed after all that. The fingernail cuts on his neck are still scabbed.
“You tried to swing at me but it was… predictable .”
“Asshole,” he mutters into Keith’s chest, burying his face against his shirt. Keith has such a distinct smell to him, outdoorsy mixed now with the perpetual salt air of Varadero, and a hint of spearmint from his deodorant. “I’m sorry.”
Flashes of his nightmare force him to squeeze his eyes shut again. He twists Keith’s tank top between his fingers.
“Don’t ever apologize to me,” Keith says. He works through Lance’s curls again, wrapping them around his fingers. “Not about this.”
“I don’t think therapy is working.”
“Maybe you need a new therapist.”
“Maybe,” Lance mutters, unconvinced at the idea this late at night. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day to reevaluate some things. He goes to therapy at least once a week—sometimes less when he can’t be bothered to talk about feelings. He thinks he is the common problem here, not the person he babbles to.
Breathing through his nose, Keith sighs and leaves the conversation alone. His hand trails from Lance’s hair down the length of his neck before falling to his mid back where he draws patterns into Lance’s skin. When his eyes flutter closed again, the nightmares barely linger anymore.
“Do you think you can try to sleep again?” Keith quietly asks and Lance shrugs. He opens his eyes to find Keith staring at him. Unbridled concern etches into his features. Unlike when it comes from his parents, Keith’s concern never pities. He understands Lance’s issues just as Lance understands his.
He knows he should detach himself from Keith when a slight guilt settles for disturbing his much needed sleep as well. But Keith never makes a fuss about Lance’s needs, never makes it out to be a burden or a chore that he has to lure Lance from his nightmare-enraptured brain every so often.
So Lance allows himself the one pleasure of burying himself further against Keith’s warm, living body, holding onto him tight and refusing to let go. “Will you be there when I wake?”
“Always.”
Ever since he returned to Earth, Lance has begun to dread beach day. He usually whips up some excuse to remove himself from the outing, preferring to stay at home, but since this is Keith’s first official McClain Family Beach Day, it’s his duty not to leave Keith alone with the piranhas.
Who knows what his family would let slip about his more than half a decade long crush.
Keith keeps pace with him as they trudge through the hot sand while everyone else runs ahead to claim the best spot. His hair is held in a high ponytail; red swim trunks brush above his knees. Lance has seen Keith shirtless countless times, so he’s not shocked by the sight of all his major scars on display together. The one on his shoulder, his face, and the brand new one still bandaged. A bunch of little scars pepper his skin too, a blaster shot here, a nick of a bladed weapon there. But those mirror the marks on Lance’s own body and call for far less attention. Keith pushes his sunglasses to the top of his head, shoving back his bangs in the process.
“Does it have to be so sunny?”
“You lived in a desert for a full year.”
Keith scowls as he gazes out at the open beach before him and the bright blue ocean crashing against the sand. Despite trying to arrive early, a sizable crowd already populates the beach. “Yes, but there was a decent amount of shade.”
Lance laughs, unable to help himself. He is quite curious to see if Keith will tan or ripen like a fresh tomato. There will at least be one reason to enjoy this outing, if only to see how Keith handles his first Earth beach day ever.
With everybody pitching in, it doesn't take long to set up their spot with beach chairs, a few towels, and an umbrella. Lance already rummages through their cooler for a quick drink while his parents chose to rest underneath the umbrella and his siblings rush towards the ocean.
He and Keith end up building sandcastles with his niblings, which leads to all three of them teaching Keith the proper sand-to-water ratio to build a stable structure. Most of Keith’s mounds turn to mush quickly but eventually, he gets a few towers all propped up in a row, minimal cracks scattered around the surfaces. Lance is more impressed by his, Sylvio, and Nadia’s masterpiece of a palace, complete with seashell windows and a driftwood drawbridge.
Beach day is relatively uneventful, as usual.
Except all the while, Lance catches Keith staring at him. It’s little peeks at first, second glances here and there, but towards the middle of the day, Keith openly stares, brows pinched together enough to cause his forehead to crease.
When they decide to settle under the shade of their umbrella, left alone by Lance’s parents walking the shoreline and his siblings entertaining the little ones, Lance can’t not comment.
“Am I really that attractive that even you’re considering jumping my bones?”
“Wow, good one.” Keith rolls his eyes though Lance sees him trying to hide an amused smile.
“Then what’s the matter? Have I had lettuce in my teeth this entire time and you decided not to be a gentleman and tell me?”
Keith shakes his head though his smile starts to slip off his face. He stares at Lance with those startling dark eyes of his and leans slightly forward. “Lance,” he mutters low so his voice won’t carry over the breeze. “Why don’t you take your shirt off around anyone anymore?”
Lance freezes at Keith’s question. His mouth dries as he presses his tongue against the back of his teeth. He should have known Keith would pick up on the oddity. He had no problem walking around shirtless in space whenever they encountered a beach-like planet or even before space. His family hasn’t thought much of the change; maybe they don’t register it as a difference after having been separated for so long. But Keith sees it; he must have clocked it the minute they all stepped out onto the sand.
Lance quickly finds a much better response than the truth.
“You want to see me half-naked that badly?” His accompanying laugh is cracked and warped.
This time, Keith frowns at Lance’s stark avoidance. “You’ve always said the beach is your second home.”
Silence settles over them, besides the regular cacophony of a crowded beach. Keith doesn’t push for a response but that only causes Lance to feel like he deserves one even more. He takes a few quiet minutes to sort through his thoughts.
“They don’t—none of them know about the first time I almost died.” Or the second, for that matter, when Allura had to personally revive him. But the first time he almost died was the one that left a large mark on him. He’d never be able to hide the starburst scar on his back. It would lead to so many questions, ones he doesn’t have the heart to answer. “They already look at me differently.”
“Of course they look at you differently,” Keith says, blunt as always in a way Lance has often found refreshing. “You’re an adult now; they only remember you as a kid.”
“I know.” He ducks his head and picks up a seashell, half broken. It cuts against his palm but not sharp enough to pierce his skin. “It’s just… the things we did during the war. Sometimes I feel they can see it written all over me. And if they start seeing the visible scars, they’ll know about the eternal ones too.” It’s bad enough his night terrors are unconcealable.
Veronica is the only one of his siblings who he feels can begin to understand, but even she was only there for the last six months of the war. He has years caked onto his body.
Keith places his hand on top of Lance’s, burying them further into the hot sand. Lance glances down at the physical contact before his gaze finds Keith’s face again, expression neutral but supportive and understanding. “If you don’t give them a chance to know, there’ll always be a wall between all of you.”
“Sounds like something Shiro would say.”
“Who do you think I heard it from?”
When did the tables turn so silently? When did Keith become the stable one and Lance the emotional basket case?
Before he gathers the desire to ask, Sylvio runs up to them, interrupting any further conversation. He may be Luis and Lisa’s offspring, but at this age, he’s almost a carbon copy of a younger Lance. The same freckled cheeks, the wildly curly hair that will probably straighten slightly as he grows older. His nose is all his father’s and his eyes are his mother’s, but everyone can see the echoes of Lance in him. Lance only hopes he grows up to be someone better.
When he left Earth, his niblings were one; now they’re close to turning nine. While they didn’t remember him, no surprise there, it didn’t take long for all three of them to fall in sync with each other—much quicker than Lance with the rest of his family.
Sylvio grabs both their arms trying to drag them to the water. His mouth moves a mile a minute.
“Tío Keith, how long are you staying? Are you planning on marrying Tío Lance? Is it going to be a summer wedding? Tío Lance said he’s always wanted a summer wedding on the beach. Can I be the ring bearer?”
“Hahaha, you’re such a riot, Sylvio, how about you go bother your father, yeah?” Standing from under the umbrella, Lance gently shoos his nephew away and sets him loose on Luis. He awkwardly cringes as he faces Keith again. “Kids, aren’t they hilarious?”
“I always appreciate their unfiltered opinions.” Keith grins at him, almost as blinding as the sun above him. Their previous conversation is left behind. “What else have you planned for this fantasy wedding?”
Lance’s entire face pinches. He hopes Keith gets a really irritating sunburn or sand in his shorts. “Don’t listen to a thing either of my niblings squawk about,” he orders, and before Keith can utter anything else ridiculous, he shouts, “Race you to the water!”
Lance sprints off without looking to see if Keith follows.
Sometimes healing from such an injury takes all of Keith’s energy—especially after a full day of working around the house, which Lance still feels he shouldn’t be doing to the extent that he is. On a soft late afternoon, Lance finds Keith taking a cat nap. His arms cushion his head despite a couch pillow sitting two inches from him. His knees are pressed against his stomach, legs curled to avoid them slipping off the couch. His forehead is smooth, face relaxed—for once not plagued by nightmares—and his chest rises through his steady breathing.
Keith fits so perfectly against the backdrop of the living room, like he’s always been a part of this house, of Lance’s life, that Lance doesn’t want to disturb him. But his mother tasked him with reviving Keith for dinner and Lance is not one to blatantly ignore his mother’s commands.
He kneels down beside the couch and brushes back Keith’s hair from where it catches in the corner of his mouth. It’s gotten so long since he’s been here. Lance has offered to trim it for him a few times, but Keith always declines. He can barely tease Keith for having a mullet anymore.
“Hey, Mullet,” Lance starts softly, prodding him in the shoulder to wake up. “Keith, it’s time for dinner.”
“Lance,” Keith mutters in reply.
They're nose to nose by the time Keith opens his eyes only for them to flutter closed again. His warm breath caresses Lance's lips as he gently breathes out. For a split second, Lance almost believes Keith is going to kiss him—a half baked insane thought, truly. Instead, they maintain their close proximity, nothing bridging that wide, wide gap.
“You gotta get up, Mullet, or else I'm going to stick two crazy kids on you.”
“But I'm injured,” Keith mumbles, not quite fighting Lance's threat.
“And where have I heard that before?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Eventually, after great maneuvering and some slight assistance from very helpful niblings, they make it to dinner. The amount of people at the table always changes depending on the day of the week. Most nights it’s only him, Keith, and his parents, which has turned out to be far less awkward than he initially feared, but when the weekends roll around, almost all of his siblings appear out of the woodwork. Tonight, being Saturday, they have a full house.
“Tío Keith taught me how to wield a sword today!” Nadia loudly proclaims to the table. She puffs out her cheeks, all proud.
Smirking, Keith turns to him. “I think she has a new favorite uncle.”
“You shut up.” Lance makes a face at him, unconcerned about their audience, before he turns to his niece. “Nadia, sweetie, tomorrow I’ll teach you how to shoot and then you’ll see which one of us is superior.”
“Hell no,” Lisa pops in as she glares at both of them. She waves a butter knife vaguely threateningly in his direction as she talks. “One weapon is already too much for my child.”
“ Mami ,” Nadia whines, pleading with those devastating puppy dog eyes of hers. If only she went into space with them, she could have defeated Zarkon in two seconds flat. Unfortunately, Lance’s sister-in-law has grown an immunity that no one else possesses and Nadia pouts for the rest of the meal, much like Lance.
“Maybe next time,” Keith whispers to him. That stupid smirk is still on his face, though it has turned more into a smile that reaches all the way to his eyes.
Lance sticks his tongue out at him before cracking a grin.
“Thank you for bringing back my son's smile.”
Lance doesn’t mean to overhear it, but some things are made to be listened to. He tilts his head against the wall, eyes closed and breath shallow.
“I—I don’t think I had much to do with that.”
His mother laughs. “Dios mío, you two are so alike. One day you both will see what we all do.”
The next sweltering heatwave, Keith walks out of the bathroom, still shirtless from last night, yet to have gotten dressed for the day. His injury is a nasty red mass of scar tissue now, but the stitches were removed weeks ago and the danger of him reopening it is far behind them. Keith leans against the doorframe of Lance’s bedroom, breathing out a sigh. “Alright, you win.”
Confused, Lance pauses making the bed as his brows furrow. Keith tugs at his frizzy hair, half caught by his hair tie. His dry ends crunch against his hand as he tugs the hair tie free and Lance can’t help but wince at the poor, poor state of his hair.
“This is getting ridiculous even for me.”
Lance snorts. “At least you got there eventually.”
They woke up stupidly early today, mostly due to the suffocating heat and the fact that both of them are still programmed to wake at the smallest of sounds, even the general creaking of an old house. Since everybody else is still asleep, Lance grabs the supplies they’ll need as quietly as he can, and they head downstairs.
Dawn has broken out across the first floor. The kitchen is a hazy gray when they enter before Lance flicks on the light. He lays out a sheet on the ground and places one of the island stools on top. He washes Keith’s hair in the sink, only choosing to waterboard him whenever his comments get a little snippy, and gently combs out any tangles before he picks up the scissors.
“The last time you let me do this, we were still on the Castle-Ship.” At that point in time, it was more out of necessity. It became difficult for Keith to fight with hair too long, especially when his bangs started blocking his vision. But Lance was the only one he allowed to trim his hair and that was only because Lance made a stink about it, refusing to let Keith hack at it himself with his knife. They weren’t animals. “What changed your mind this time?”
“Too humid,” he replies as his sole reason. He never seemed bothered by the heat of the Arizona desert but a desert is full of dry air. Cuba, not so much.
“And you wonder why I used to get buzzcuts during the summer.” Except he hasn’t in a long while, well before they left Earth in the Blue Lion. Now he lets his hair grow long enough to curl again.
“Yeah, we’re not going that far.”
Amused by the idea, Lance laughs, but he knows what style and length Keith prefers and that’s why he’s the only one Keith trusts. It’s an honor, really. Lance would never jeopardize that.
Ragged locks fall to the floor as Lance chops off a couple inches, enough to get rid of Keith’s dried split ends, and thins out his bangs to erase the overgrown, unruly look he’d been sporting for the last month. By the time Lance is evening off any missed pieces, his mother walks into the kitchen. She stops at the unexpected sight, halfway to the coffee maker, and raises an eyebrow.
“Mijo, why is Keith getting a haircut in our kitchen?”
“Because he desperately needed one?” He phrases it like a question though he feels it’s stupidly obvious. “And he asked.”
Keith’s cheeks color from embarrassment. He kicks his feet against the towel. “Sorry about the mess, Mrs. McClain.”
She shakes her head. “How many times have I told you to call me Rosa?” she asks but continues to talk over any apologies Keith might have. “You look very handsome. Lance did a nice job.”
“Of course I did. He used to walk around with a mullet. Even I can’t be worse than that.”
Keith smacks his leg without turning around to look and Lance grins.
The length of Keith’s hair now rests at his shoulders, utterly soft to the touch, and Lance runs his fingers through it one too many times, disguising his efforts as if checking for any more uneven sections. “How does that feel?”
Keith arches his head back to look at him. “Much better. Thank you.” The corners of his eyes crinkle and Lance smiles just the same, not caring that his mother is watching.
The stars are so much prettier when you’re flying through the vast emptiness of space or camping on other worlds. Lance has been within inches of nebulas, raced through stardust, and hitched rides on comets. He’s experienced it all. Yet the simple pleasure of lying out in the backyard, grass ticking his exposed skin where his tank top has ridden up, the shortest shorts he owns barely doing their job of covering his ass, stargazing past midnight makes him feel just as infinite as if he was up there again.
It’s hot out tonight. The night barely cooled the day’s temperature a few degrees. His hair is a frizzed mess of curls and he’s convinced that his entire back has permanently adhered itself to the ground.
And yet the stars beg him to gaze upon them.
For the last hour, silence has presisted between him and Keith. Not necessarily on purpose but Lance thought for a good couple of minutes that Keith had fallen asleep. Every so often though Keith shifts his position and his shoulder or arm brushes against Lance as if to say he’s still present.
They should head to bed soon.
“You never told me how you got injured,” Lance says, attention remaining focused on the stars. No part of him desires to move and trudge up those stairs. He’s content right here under the moon and swaddled by the heat and Keith’s presence. There are no nightmares here.
“It was during a fight, nothing out of the ordinary,” Keith replies. He starts to sit up as he stretches, half catching himself in a yawn. “We used to get injured all the time.”
Now Lance turns to him, laying on his side. His brows pinch, mouth twisting from the dissatisfaction of Keith’s response. “I guess I should more ask why you got injured.”
That keeps Keith silent for a long moment. “I was… distracted.”
Lance snorts in disbelief. “You? Mr. I Used to Train Every Day for Fun? You were distracted during battle?”
Keith’s mouth starts to part before he quickly snaps it closed. “We all make mistakes. I don’t know. I’ve been distracted a lot lately.” Shrugging, he scrapes his hair back from his face and twists it into a stubby ponytail. The heat is getting to both of them; the moonlight catches the thin sheen of sweat covering his face. “The injury was an easy excuse for Kolivan to force a vacation but I think they’ve been looking for a way to get me to take a break for a while.”
“And what could possibly distract the great Keith Kogane?”
Keith pins his gaze on Lance but it’s gotten so dark and without any outside lights, Lance can barely make out his expression. “Take one guess.”
“You missed Earth that badly?” Lance laughs a little but Keith doesn’t join in his amusement.
“Sure,” he says quietly as he looks back up at the stars. “Let’s go with that.”
Weeks have turned into months where Keith sitting at the dinner table is more commonplace than an oddity, where his niblings and siblings all treat Keith more like a blood relation than a temporary guest, where Lance can’t even imagine going back to normalcy where he’s not sleeping side by side with someone in the same bed. He knows it will happen soon—Keith will be fully healed at some point, if he’s not already, and have to return to the Blade. Lance just isn’t prepared for how empty the house is going to feel when he’s gone. When Lance is left behind.
Towards the end of dinner, as Keith is dragged off by Nadia and Sylvio to play cars or dinosaurs or space rangers, Lance’s mother asks him to join her in the kitchen. Coerced into washing dishes, even though it should have been Rachel’s turn this evening, Lance gathers all the plates from the table and dutifully follows his mother before she drags him in by the ear.
She has a certain look on her face tonight that Lance is smart enough not to mess around with.
Except, despite his mother’s insistence, they spend the first two minutes washing dishes in silence. Every time he hands her a plate or cup to dry, he braces for her to say something—anything really, whether about his time in space or if he’s ever going to move out and start his life—but she continues to stare out the window facing the backyard where Keith and the kids play, quite unphased by Lance’s growing restlessness.
And then, just when he begins to relax, like a tidal wave, it crashes down on him.
“Leandro Alejandro Alverez McClain, when are you going to marry that boy?”
“Mamá!” Lance exclaims. The plate he’d been holding clatters back into the sink. He cringes as he scoops it up again. “W-We’re not even dating. Plus, I don’t think he’s interested in me.”
“I’ve seen how that man looks at you and that is far from the truth.” She whacks him with the dish towel and Lance yelps, rubbing his not at all sore arm. His mother returns to washing. “May I ask why you’re not dating?”
Oh god, he thinks, this is so weird to bring up with his mother. She never gave him the sex talk, left it to Luis and his father, and now he has to talk to her about sex, even if in vague ways? He wants to die.
Face flushing, he lazily moves the sponge around the already clean plate before he settles on, “I know he’s not interested in all parts of a relationship.”
She seems to understand his cryptic meaning since she asks, “And that’s a deal breaker for you?”
“Maybe, I don’t know.” He always assumed his relationships would involve sex in some capacity. He has never been aversed to it at all, excited for it at times even. So the thought of sex being off the table entirely or never being with Keith… “No,” he suddenly says, “No, I don’t think it’s ever been a deal breaker. Not with him.”
“Is he aware of that?”
Lance opens his mouth to respond only to realize that he can’t.
Fuck.
Lance rests his forearms against the porch rail as he watches the sunset. His fingers worry together and his foot taps some inane beat against the weathered floorboards until Keith comes around the corner, slipping his communicator into his jacket pocket.
“They’re calling you back?” Lance asks without turning away from the horizon.
He nods. “My injury’s fully healed.” It has been for weeks. Neither of them have commented on the fact that Keith has stayed far longer than he should have. Neither have commented that Lance never asked when he was planning on leaving nor that Keith never once brought up the idea.
Until now.
He breathes out a quiet sigh.
“Don‘t go.”
“Lance—”
Lance swings around. He ignores the frustrated tears collecting at the corners of his eyes and the way he has to clench his hands to stop them from visibly trembling as he steps closer to Keith. “I–I’ve missed you so much. These past few months, they’ve been my happiest since the whole war ended years ago.” His breath hitches while he forces himself to keep his gaze locked on Keith. “If you have to go, I want to come with you.”
“Lance” —Keith gently grabs his arms, keeping him close— “what’re you trying to say?”
What is he trying to say? Lance didn’t even know himself when he started the conversation. Now it’s a desperate rush to release all his pent up thoughts from over the course of the past few months.
“I know I’ve made it seem like sex is a big deal for me when it comes to relationships.” How many countless innuendos has he used or all those times he’s practically bragged about past experiences? He kind of hates himself for it. Maybe they could have been dating a lot sooner if he had been honest with himself and with Keith. “But I need you to know that I truly don’t care either way. Especially not when it comes to you.” He plays with the soft ends of Keith’s hair before cupping his jaw and brushing his thumb across his cheekbone. “I just want to be with you, romantic, platonic. However you want me, I’m yours. Forever.”
One heartbeat passes before Keith kisses him on the porch. His hands find the perfect spot on Lance’s waist, one dipping under his shirt to trace circles on his skin. The casual touches light Lance on fire. He’s consumed with one touch, with one embrace. Keith’s kisses are gentle, hesitant almost as if part of him is worried Lance will rip himself away, but Lance melts against him, easily matching his rhythm. When they do eventually separate, Lance can’t help but pout.
“You kissed me first,” he mumbles, almost offended.
“I did. I wanted to,” Keith admits, soft and honest, before his voice catches on a more familiar tone. “It’s not a competition.” He smirks as he says it and Lance isn’t fooled by his faux naivety.
So he laughs, shaking his head as he pulls Keith closer. “You should know by now that it’s always a competition, Mullet.”
Lance kisses Keith like he’s always wanted to.