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“What the hell are you doing out there!?” A voice cuts through the field, and Lance is pretty sure it knocks the Juniberry blooms off balance on its way to reaching him. The petals seem to quiver, at least in his mind, and so Lance bends down and pats the petals, caressing them as if to say, It’s okay. I’m here.
He twists one of the petals and plucks it clean.
Lance doesn’t imagine the flowers are very scared. He raised them. They’re as much a part of him as this place has grown to be, the sun beating down on him, sunshine and rain entwining themselves with his skin, stitching themselves into his DNA and other pointless metaphors.
These flowers know him. Why would they be scared of Keith?
Lance can’t see things near him very clearly any more. Objects lose meaning when they're close enough to touch, warping into shapes and colours and nothing else. He’s glad Keith is standing far away.
He’s taller, now.
Uh, Keith. Not Lance.
Keith has been taller than Lance since his misadventure into the Quantum Abyss. He came back different after that. Calmer. Like he was hiding secrets, like he was in on a surprise no one else could be privy to until the time was right, and was trying to hold back his laughter.
He has long hair now, long enough to be pulled into a loose braid. What couldn’t be pulled back is plastered to his face from the rain. Lance would say he looks beautiful, but Lance has been a paladin too long to partake in such grave injustice.
Keith jogs over, and he gets foggier by the second. Lance frowns, missing the sight, opening his mouth to speak, but his throat is hoarse. His lips stick to each other by virtue of dryness, and no words come out.
Keith rushes over, doubles over, hands on his knees. He’s panting, catching his breath. How far away did he run over from?
“You anaemic dumbass.” Lance can make out the worry on Keith’s face, in his voice, sticking to each syllable, “You’re gonna shiver to death,”
Keith has been spending more time at home. He’s fixing up the shack. Texas is sunny this time of year, and the people are kind to the leader of Voltron. His accent is thicker now, his voice is warmer. He’s happy, and Lance misses him even though he’s right there.
Lance registers only the movement, the fast-paced blur, when Keith’s hand grabs on, ever so gently onto Lance’s forearm, and Lance nearly crashes into him, pulled in completely by the intense desire to envelop him in a hug.
He’s shivering. Lance hugs himself. Why hadn’t he noticed that?
“You’re okay,” Keith says softly, and he pulls him into a hug, and Lance sobs. He can’t see, but he can find the crook of Keith’s neck just fine. They fit into each other, like Keith was molded just for him, like this was where he belonged all along and had been looking everywhere else.
Or was it different? Did they grow like this, out of necessity, out of love?
Keith holds onto him. He whispers something, something hoarse and unintelligible. Lance feels worse; he wants to hear what he’s saying. Keith reaches down, hooking a hand under Lance’s knees and –
Heh. Cradling him in his arms.
He’s humming some tune. Keith, not Lance. It’s a nervous habit, and it, senselessly, makes Lance want to cry less.
Lance grabs onto Keith, hiding his face in the Black Paladin's chest instinctively as the rain pelts down on their faces, and he rushes into Lance’s house.
𓇢𓆸
It’s his Abuelo’s property, the house. Adopted by Lance for its vast fields; for the soil.
Coran said that the Juniberries don’t need a specific soil or a particular temperature. Juniberries survive on love. “You must love them, and you must love someone more than you love yourself, so they may recognise it and bloom.”
“It’ll be no trouble for you, my boy,” He’d said, “They’ll bloom the second you set them out.”
Lance thinks Coran has him pegged wrong. Lance doesn’t feel like he has that much love left over. He thinks he’s been hollowed out, undone, turned upside down and emptied. He doesn’t want to love any more than he wants to hate, and hate, hate and feel the retribution, the ugly satisfaction that makes him feel empty and new.
He sets out on that mission one day. He’ll have them wilt.
His grief turns him ugly. He looks for satisfaction at the bottom of bottles of brandy and tequila, yells at passersby, turns his image sour, stomping on ants and feeling terrible. If kindness makes him feel so much, surely cruelty might have the opposite effect.
He waits for it to be enough.
The sun shines on the farm and the Juniberries bloom.
𓇢𓆸
It’s not the first time Keith has turned up on the farm, by far. He’s there at the end of every month. God knows what debt he’s repaying. He had Lance glasses made last month. Before that, he dug Lance out of a hole the Blue Paladin dug himself, worked very hard on, nursing bottles and passing out in inopportune places.
He never asks why. He never asks Lance to get it together.
He just turns up.
𓇢𓆸
He’s stoking the fire. Keith, not Lance. Lance is sprawled on the couch, unable to move a muscle, some unnameable weight sitting on his chest, heavy and immovable, like a really determined cat. There’s no reason for there to be a fireplace here. That was Keith’s idea, also. Kind of. Lance supposes it was his own, one he hadn’t committed to, one that Keith committed to for him.
Lance peers out the window from where Keith has dumped him. (Keith had set him down very, very gently. Like he might shatter and break. He has such strong arms, hands that have killed, but Lance doesn’t think Keith has that setting anymore, one that had once been so good at finding the right buttons to push to make Lance hurt.)
The flower field sways in the rain. They look rejuvenated in the aggressive showers, like they’re dancing in the hail. “What’re you doing here, Samurai?”
Keith’s head snaps up, surprised. “Uh. Wow, didn’t expect that question. Or any question,”
Lance can’t help the tiny laugh that bubbles up or the smile that follows. It’s small. It’s something. “I can’t see you.”
Lance’s tone must have been troubling because Keith jumps to his feet, rushing around blindly looking for the glasses. Lance groans as he pushes himself into a sitting position. Lance opens his mouth to make a wild guess at where he might have left them, but Keith floats into view.
Lance reacts, hand stretched out for the pair, but Keith, so gently, so carefully slips them onto his eyes that it makes his heart stutter, punches the air out of his lungs.
Keith is older now. They're all ageing, breathing in the oxygen of the planet they were born to, watching themselves grow and turn into stranger versions of themselves, most of them happier for it. Lance doesn't like looking in mirrors, but if Keith lived with him, he'd have them all over the house; an excuse. There are smile lines next to his eyes, violet, maybe indigo, eyes that Lance wishes he’d seen sooner, in this detail. Eyes, Lance never wanted to stop looking at. Lance can’t remember why he was so fond of hate for so long.
You must love them, and you must love someone more than you love yourself, so they may recognise it and bloom.
“Lance?” Keith says, at the very same time that Lance reaches out and pulls Keith down. Keith, unprepared, lets out a shrill sound as he collapses on top of Lance, scrambling to pull himself off. Lance is sick, and drenched, and shivering, and Keith, as the only one with a clear head, feels he has some responsibility.
Oh.
Before Keith can get very far, Lance cups his face, pressing their foreheads together. Keith’s eyes flit rapidly between his own. Keith seems to realise Lance isn’t planning on letting him go. His face turns a little red. “Your eyes are very brown.”
Keith, not Lance.
“It’s you,” Lance says, apropos of everything.
Keith frowns. “What?”
“You love me,” Lance says bluntly, blunt like Keith didn’t know he was capable of.
“Took you long enough, sharpshooter,” Keith says after a second of intense silence. Keith does everything intense. Lance loves it.
That’s it. That’s the right word.
His heart clenches. Love. More? He shakes it off, focusing on the task at hand, “No, not – the flowers, Keith!”
Lance waves his free hand around with more energy than he’s had in six months.
“I’m not following.” Keith frowns at Lance.
It's another look Lance has seen often, the drawing of his brows when he’s trying to piece something together. “You’re what’s making the flowers bloom.”
The silence draws on from Keith’s end, the tell-tale frustrated pout, the confused crease to his brow.
“Your love, mullet-brain!” Lance clarifies, nudging the back of Keith’s head like it would knock some sense into him, like he’s making every bit of sense, and Keith’s just a big idiot. He looks incredibly satisfied, like everything’s right now, each item slotted into its rightful place, like it makes perfect sense. “Not mine. What I was doing must have worked; obviously they would find a way to survive!”
Keith quiets, pulling away, checking Lance’s temperature by placing the back of his hand against Lance’s forehead. Lance’s face is red for different reasons when Keith basically has to straddle Lance to achieve that, suddenly made aware of the position he has unwittingly orchestrated.
Keith’s eyes widen to owl-levels, and he swears like a sailor when he stumbles quickly off him. Lance grabs onto his wrist reflexes rusted-over. He stares up at Keith, and Keith stares back.
The moment stretches, heavy with tension that has been theirs since the beginning of time. Lance is an expert at kneading and jabbing at this tension, stretching it like taffy, molding it into whatever he likes; usually a pointless conversation, a brawl, a spar: verbal or otherwise.
This time, Lance lets it be. He hands the tension-taffy over for Keith to have. Keith has never been one to let Lance down, and so he slowly gets down on one knee. Lance can only look, and look, and look when he decides to reach over and kiss Lance’s wrist, feather-light.
“You kept showing up,” Lance asks breathlessly, staring at Keith with wide eyes. “No matter what I did. I never got it.”
Keith slips out of Lance’s hold and makes himself comfortable on the floor, his back next to the couch. He lays his head back onto the couch, looking over at Lance. There’s a smile in his eyes that makes Lance want to kiss him.
“You found me out,” Keith admits, like he’s at a confessional and it’s his greatest sin. “Caught me red-handed.”
“I love you.” Keith says it so easily, so effortlessly. Lance’s heart burns. Tears claw at his waterline. He looks away.
“Why?”
“I’m sorry,” Keith blurts out. “You’re basically a widower. I was…you don’t stop loving someone just because–”
Lance’s head whips around, his glasses nearly flying off his face at light speed. The unbidden thought of his glasses hitting some unfortunate pedestrian and knocking them to the ground springs to his mind. He waves it off and reins his head in because Keith has some very violent misconceptions that need to be cleared up ASAP.
“I’m not grieving, Keith,” Lance frowns, his voice sharp and clear as a bell. Keith looks startled. Lance is aware he hasn’t let words completely out of his mouth for some time, but he needs this to be established.
Keith stares at him like he’s grown a third head, or maybe lost the one he already had on his shoulders. Lance runs a palm over his face, raising his pointer finger to punctuate, “Well, I mean– I have been grieving,” Lance clarifies, “but not Allura,”
“You don’t have to do that, Lance,” Keith says, waving him off. There’s a troubled tone to his voice, a vulnerability he offers a man like Lance too readily. A man like Lance, who wants to gently swaddle it, but has hands that have grown scissors at the ends, only capable of destruction. They’ve switched positions.
“I’m not–” Lance scrambles off the couch, pushing Keith aside with his hip to join him on the floor. Keith scowls at him. When was the last time he smiled? Lance fixes him with a look. “I haven’t been grieving Allura.”
Lance reiterates; he pronounces each word carefully, but he doesn’t grit his teeth. He says it like it’s a fact. Keith is trained to believe him. His face falls, the nonchalance that Lance thought was effortless slipping off like water off a duck’s back. He stares at Lance, his eyes flitting between Lance’s, searching for a lie desperately. “What?”
Keith looks away, staring at the ground. Lance knows that look. He hates that he brought it on.
“We were in love,” Lance says, and it feels like heaven to say it out loud for the first time in so long, “Or I loved her. But that doesn’t mean I’ll spend my life on a farm, Keith,”
“That’s literally what you’ve been doing!” Keith basically yells in Lance’s face, his own contorted in anger. His fangs are out, and Lance flinches, registering that he hasn’t seen them in a while. He reaches out, aching to touch, but he doesn’t. Keith flinches back, a chasm between them.
“I’m– Lance– I’m so sorry, I should–” Lance finds Keith’s hand and looks at it, fidgeting with his fingers. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Keith, how his torso is turned away, getting ready to leave, run. That’s still his first instinct.
“That was a stupid thing to say,” Lance mumbles, picking up each of Keith’s lavender-tinged fingers, pressing them against his own. He spreads his hand apart, then curls it around Keith’s. He huffs out a laugh, “I’ve been spending my life on a farm.”
Keith just stares. Lance doesn’t look at him, eyes focused on the claws between his, “I’ve been a fucking idiot. Why have you stayed?”
“Because.” Keith’s voice is hoarse, frustrated and watery. Lance’s mind clouds.
“I loved her,” Lance says, and chases the sentence with his next one, quickly, because he sees the way Keith closes his eyes, “And I loved the rest of the universe,”
Keith opens his eyes, frowning again. A smile. Lance wants to see him smile. But he needs to get this out of the way first.
“When…when Allura died, and the lions left, I was purposeless, Keith,” Lance forces the words out of his throat. “I had so many responsibilities on Earth, and I never felt I was doing enough. And so many nightmares. I got calls…people who had died in the war effort. The casualty count was…”
Keith scooches closer, and Lance isn’t sure if he’s doing it consciously. Lance swallows, laying his head down on Keith’s shoulder.
“I don’t know what I’m grieving,” Lance sighs finally, and Keith just looks at him, like he’s studying every feature.
Keith is staring at him, and Lance loses his voice momentarily. He looks like he's hanging off every word, and Lance has never been one to choose his words carefully.
“One day, I was just." Keith is waiting. And it may have been a while since he's performed, but he is a performer at heart. Adrenaline is his best friend. He breathes in, relishing the blood roaring in his ears. Anything is a battlefield if you let it be. "Boneless."
"Everyone said it was my grief over losing her that caught up to me, including you," Keith looks flustered at this, likely remembering a few passionate words he'd said to Lance, wholeheartedly believing he was doing the right thing. Lance huffs out an amused sort of sound somewhere between a laugh and a scoff, "So I let them believe what they wanted... I don't think it's the truth any more. I don't know if it has been for a while.”
They drop into a comfortable silence that settles like warmth into Lance’s bones, fluttering in his belly. It leaves him scared, because Keith is here now, but he’ll leave tomorrow, into the violence that Lance escaped from and internalised. Lance shakes his fist at the universe, hoping that exhibiting the opposite of the compassion he had been doling out without compensation will somehow relieve him from the pain that he doesn’t know the origin of. He's made a routine out of it, some days a game.
He can't afford to invite more. He certainly can’t fucking share it.
Not with Keith. Not with kind, infuriatingly patient, changed-man Keith.
“I’m a piece of shit.” Keith announces. Lance barks out a surprised laugh at being harshly yanked from his train of thought before sparing his leader a look of concern.
“What?” Lance smiles, brows furrowed in incredulity, shaking his head, confused as all hell. Keith runs a hand over his face, through the locks of hair determinately crawling into his mouth, throwing it over his head.
“I’m just–” Keith laughs bitterly, something self-deprecating about it that Lance knows very well.
“You just told me that you’re basically depressed, and all I can think is that I’m glad you’re not in love with Allura anymore.” Keith blurts out, all word-vomit. He looks mortified, disgusted with himself, and Lance’s heart swells when he realises he’s been doing some sort of macho, self-sacrificing, honourable knight thing for the past year and a half.
The clouds are letting down the last drops of rain now, the incessant shower waning into something lighter, gentler. The universe is paying Lance back today. Scratch that: it’s showing him how its done. It’s picking itself up off the floor, slowly slotting different, important things into place.
It's pointing down aggressively at stepping stones, materialising across the raging river that Lance has been trapped in for God knows how long, stomping its foot down at the emerging pathway until it cracks and glows like a glowstick because Lance is a fucking hypermetropic, oblivious idiot, apparently.
Oblivious, and dumb, and enabled by the gorgeous, kind, selfless, equally oblivious idiot at the other end of the path.
“Bob was wrong,” Lance says, shrugging, folding his arms, tucking his hands into his sides.
Keith frowns. “What? How did that cosmic mistake worm his way into our conversation?”
“I’m not the dumb one,” Lance starts, but Keith interrupts him with his albeit hot, yet severely misplaced earnestness, reaching out and agreeing adamantly, “Of course you’re not. He was a fucking idiot, Lance. I’m sorry if I didn’t say it before–”
“Keith.” Lance grabs Keith by his arms before he starts serenading him with how dumb he isn’t. “Let me flirt with you, please,”
Keith shuts up so quick it makes Lance want to laugh out loud. He opens his mouth and closes it, gaping like a fish. Lance clears his throat.
“I’m not the dumb one,” Lance cups Keith’s face, smiling, tears at the corner of his eyes because of how potently happy he is, how content, because this will finally be all he needs. “You are.”
Lance hopes he’s read absolutely everything right when he leans in and kisses Keith Kogane.
The world is knocked completely off-kilter when Keith Kogane kisses him back. He presses into Lance, cupping his face ever-so-gently, his canines brushing against Lance’s lower lips when he grins, brilliantly into the kiss, and Lance is so relieved he lets out a sob.
Keith kisses like he fights, like he cares, like he thinks, like he loves: intensely, fiercely, with all he’s got. Lance melts into him and knows that this is how it ends. This is why the Juniberries have bloomed so long. This is what is enough.
When they break apart, Keith’s head falls on his shoulder. He breathes, “Thank you,”
Lance grins, salty tears running down his face, and he looks up. Blinking them out of his eyes, he sees clearly. “We’re such idiots.”
Keith laughs, his shoulders shaking, and Lance joins him. It leaves their ribs tight, echoing through the room alongside the crackling fireplace, and only that, because the rain has stopped.
Keith looks up, wiping Lance’s tears off with his sleeve, and a stray sunbeam meanders into the room, framing his face. Lance leans forward and kisses his forehead. Keith sighs contentedly.
They stay like that for a while. Er, that is to say, they try. Their backs hurt eventually. Spending their late teens and early twenties in a war, doing strenuous physical labour has turned them into very young old men.
Keith tries his very best to stay like that, credit where credit's due; on the cold floor, his head tucked into Lance’s neck. However, as was ordained, his back gets the best of him, and he, extremely displeased, gets on his feet. Lance smiles widely, putting out his hand for Keith to grab and pull him to his feet. Keith is frowning, and Lance itches to test a theory. He leans up and kisses Keith on the lips, a chaste, sweet thing.
Keith blushes, his lips quirking into a smile that he poorly covers up with a cough, fist against his mouth as he coughs a few more times for good measure.
“It’s that easy to make you smile?” Lance teases, genuinely somewhat frustrated at the realisation.
Keith looks away. “Didn’t know you were interested in that line of work.”
Lance grins. “Very. I’m thinking of making a career out of it, even.”
“I hope you stick to it, this time,” Keith says, and Lance is actually impressed at how that’s a declaration of undying love and a jab at the same time.
Lance jabs back, physically, punching Keith’s shoulder in retaliation. “Asshole.”
Keith makes a dramatic show out of wincing, rubbing at the afflicted area. Lance rolls his eyes pointedly, and preens at how Keith grins at him, teeth and all. He huffs, turning on his heel and stalking out of the cabin, leaning against a railing on the porch. He looks out over the Juniberry field. The flowers seem to be literally grinning at him. Obviously, they’re smug. He raised them.
Keith follows like there’s a string between them, pulling him along. Lance remarks, “You’re like a little duckling,”
“I’d follow you anywhere, sharpshooter,” Keith finds his place next to Lance, as has been and will be forever. Lance’s face turns red.
“Stop being earnest.” Keith levels a shit-eating grin at Lance, who seems to be very interested at a specific flower somewhere.
“I’ve got more game than you ever will,” Keith says smugly, shrugging like the piece of shit he is. Lance squawks.
“So not true!” Keith was incapable of rational thought when they first met! He thinks Voltron is how the chant ends! He thinks his wolf will tell him his name eventually!
“Isn’t it?” Keith asks, leaning into Lance’s space. Lance responds by turning as red as a stop sign and spluttering.
“Wh-where’s Kosmo?” Lance manages, making a show of looking around, and Keith laughs out loud, laying his head on Lance’s shoulder easily, like he’s been waiting to be like this with Lance all his life.
Lance both feels terrible and so hopelessly optimistic it scares him. “The Wolf is with Krolia.”
Lance groans audibly, throwing his head back for good measure so he can reiterate how dumb this is. “Kosmo likes ‘Kosmo’, Keith, accept it!”
“You’re all gonna beg my forgiveness when he does, in fact, trust me enough to tell me his name.” Lance is convinced Keith is fucking with him. He can’t be for real.
Suddenly, a very loud tractor horn breaks them from their domestic bliss. Lance scowls, and Keith straightens his back, looking over at Lance.
“Keith, I don’t want to be a goddamn farmer anymore.”
Keith grins, wide and brilliant, jumping into a tirade about how he’s been imagining exactly how to integrate Lance into space and the Coalition again.
Lance thinks he wants to kiss that grin.
There’s a lot that needs to be ironed out still, he knows. There’s the worry in his stomach, the dread coiled in his chest.
Something tied him to this farm, to his grief, so tightly that it took Keith 27 months to unwind him. He’s not okay. He’s not sure about most things, and he’s going to have to be really sorry, feel terrible and ask Keith to repeat everything, which he knows Keith will.
For now, this is enough. He’s alone with a pretty boy who knows him inside out, who loves him, a boy with amazing hair, and a brilliant grin that he wants to kiss off.
For now, there’s this: he realises that he can.