Chapter Text
Keith’s been on this ship for twelve goddamn hours and he doesn’t know if he’s going to survive until the thirteenth.
His lungs are burning . He doesn’t know how long he’s been running. He can’t imagine how big this ship is, because he’s been at it for a long time and he thinks he hasn’t been going in circles. But honestly, he has no idea where he’s going. All the dark hallways look the same. None of them contain Lance.
Keith thinks to try and keep track of the turns he’s made, but by that point he has to be far away from where he started. He tallies four left turns and a long hallway from that point anyway, though it still gives him no sense of direction, and it’s about at that point that the sirens start in. Loud and raucous, they pound at his temples. His body is dragging, he can feel the fatigue in his feet and in his knees like weights, and the noise sends an unsettling vibration through him that has him unbalanced.
He knows what those sirens are for. They’re not an alarm clock. This isn’t a safety drill. They’re announcing visitors, of the unwelcomed kind. Which happens, unfortunately, to be exactly what he is. The entire ship must be on standby, on lockdown, the place crawling with sentries and soldiers searching for him and Lance.
He has to find Lance first.
His surroundings are unfamiliar, but there are lots of parts of vast Galra ships that look similar and parts that look different when your senses are flooded with adrenaline and exhaustion. He could really be anywhere on the ship, at this point. Maybe he’s been here before. Maybe he’s moving farther and farther away from his goal with each step. He somehow finds the mental capacity to wish that the Galra blood in his veins came with something useful, like the intrinsic ability to navigate Galra ships, but he doesn’t have anything like that.
A pair of sentries spots him as he careens around a corner, almost directly into their pointed guns. They don’t have time to pull the triggers before Keith is slashing. He severs one into two pieces at the waist. Spins. Plunges the point of his bayard into the other’s chest. Both crackle with electricity and slump to the ground.
It’s not good. Leaving a trail of broken sentries is not good. They can probably track his movements based on that, so he takes a few winding turns to potentially throw any pursuers off. But that isn’t good either, because if he was lost before, he has absolutely no idea now where he came from, or where he’s going. He just keeps running, almost aimlessly. Despite the problem of the sentries, he’s not actively trying to hide from them either. He can take them, he knows.
Even if one does spot him from behind and take a few shots at him before he can spin around and drive his bayard through its abdomen. One lucky shot hits him in the shoulder, but he barely feels it. Instead he switches his bayard to his other hand and keeps running, running.
It feels like panic-filled eons before Keith spots something familiar. This hallway is a little bit wider, and this intersection looks like one he’s been to before. He’s been lucky, he realizes, managing to get here, though it took too long. He all but sprints down the corridor to where he knows the wide arch of the cargo bay door is, gasping for breath. He can only hope that Lance has made it there.
Lance has. Keith sees him.
Keith sees him in an awkward slump against the frame of the arch, his legs splayed at exhausted angles, sitting at the center of a dark splatter.
“Lance!” Keith cries, and somehow speeds up despite the desperate drag in his limbs.
Lance chuckles a tight laugh into his comms. “Hey, man.”
Keith’s stomach clenches in empathetic pain as he runs closer. From here he can see the blood, the places where Lance’s armor has been dented in against his calf and glistens red around the edges. He’s splattered in more blood than just his own, if the bluish color of it is anything to go by, but his is absolutely in the mix as well, flowing from more than one puncture on his person. As he reaches Lance, Keith drags his eyes up Lance’s body to assess the damage, and then finally comes to rest on his face, glistening with sweat but grinning.
“Took you long enough,” Lance says. His tone is light but his voice shakes.
“ Fuck ,” is how Keith responds, falling to his knees beside him to get a closer look. “We’ve gotta get you out of here.”
Lance laughs. “Where to?”
“I don’t know , Lance,” Keith replies. He doesn’t. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know where to go, or what to do, or how to deal with the fact that Lance is bleeding freely in front of him. He can’t care for his wounds or escape to do so later. He can only stare at Lance, the blaring sirens echoing between his ears, terror threatening to swallow him whole.
“Let’s get inside,” Keith says, jerking his head towards the interior of the cargo hold. If they can hide again, maybe Keith can wash out Lance’s wounds and find some cloth to bandage him up with. “Can you walk?”
“Probably, but you can always feel free to carry me,” Lance says with a wink, and begins struggling to sit up.
Keith chokes on his panic. “Save that for later.”
He helps Lance into a standing position, which doesn’t seem to help the bleeding. Lance’s armor is slick with it, rivulets running down his shins, his hair soaked through under his helmet. Keith doesn’t care that his own hands are now sticky and red.
“What happened?” Keith asks. Lance leans against him heavily, an arm clinging to his shoulders, so Keith threads his own arm around Lance’s waist and offers support.
“Firefight,” Lance answers simply, and takes a first stumbling step, teetering into Keith. “You should see the other guys.”
Keith takes the step with him. Lance really isn’t in good shape to move right now, he can tell that much. But they have to get out of here before any more Galra come find them. And the sirens, all the flashing lights, aren’t helping anything.
They’re about to step into the shadows of the cargo hold when Keith first smells it. He freezes.
“What?” asks Lance. The sound of his breathing is labored in Keith’s ear.
Keith twists his neck to look back out towards the hallway. It’s hard to see in the dark, the lights no more or less glowing purple for it, but a hint of hazy gray billows oppressively against the ceiling, like warning clouds portending a storm. Lance follows his gaze, and Keith feels the realization in him as a frightened straightening of his spine.
“I don’t think those sirens are for us,” Lance says.
Suddenly the cargo hold, with its dark dead ends, its narrow labyrinthine paths, its potentially flammable contents, is the last place Keith wants to be. They need to be anywhere but here.
“At least they’re not going to be bothering with us anymore,” Keith says, and turns Lance around so that they’re facing back the way they came. Together they take a few staggering steps.
“What now?” Lance asks. There’s something pulled taut in his voice and it almost physically pains Keith to hear it.
Keith evaluates the smoke. It’s coming from down the passageway, so he turns them towards the other direction. “Away from the fire.”
Lance opens his mouth to respond, but before he can even begin the crackle of an announcement system cuts through the siren scream.
“All personnel evacuate immediately,” a deep Galra voice booms around them. “The fire has spread through the interior of the ship. There are no pods currently docked. Proceed to the fighter crafts in hangar 6. Thank you.”
“Well that’s great,” Lance says as the sirens flood back in.
Keith agrees with his sentiment. There’s no way they’re getting off this ship if that’s the case. If there really are no pods anywhere, and the only way off is some fighters. Every Galra on the whole ship will be scrambling to get on one of those. There won’t be a good time for two stowaways, one injured, to sneak on. Not to mention that if Keith can see smoke, the fire is definitely crawling along towards them. Maybe in the floor, in the walls, in the ceiling. A fire doubles in size every minute.
“Do you think that’s ours?” Lance says.
“Our what?”
“Our fire.”
Keith thinks of a few lucky shots and a Galra burning as it ran by. He curses under his breath. Shouldn’t a civilization capable of spaceflight for over 10,000 years have a better fire suppression system? “It would be, wouldn’t it.”
Gritting his teeth, Keith tightens his grip on Lance’s waist and tries to speed up, but Lance puts weight on his injured leg and his breath hitches. Keith takes a deep breath and tries to clear his head.
Think. Think. Patience yields focus. How can he think when his head throbs in time with the blaring of the alarm, when Lance is bleeding against him?
“Hey, Keith,” Lance says. His tone is quiet but it slashes straight through the sounds of the sirens, straight through any concentration Keith has built up. Keith glances at him and finds that the smoke has thickened around them, enough so that he can see it past Lance’s head.
“What?” Keith says. It comes out a little more testy than he intended, especially when Lance’s face is looking so grim like that through the glass of his faceplate.
“I think you should…,” Lance starts, and then stops. His mouth pulls into a thin line. He looks Keith dead in the eye. “I think you should leave me.”
“What?” Keith’s body seems to react before he can, and he accidentally jerks Lance closer with their next step, as though the physical hold on him could stop him from having thoughts like that. Lance winces when the motion jostles his wounds, but Keith is too testy to care. “No way.”
“Come on, Keith,” Lance says, letting enough of his usual whine back in his voice to calm Keith’s bristling, just slightly. “I’m holding you back. You can get out of here.”
“Stop talking,” Keith growls, and turns forward to try and block further conversation on the topic.
But Lance doesn’t move. He sighs. “What if you go and come back for me?”
Keith can see right through that. If he leaves now, no matter what else happens, all he’s going to come back to find is the burnt-out shell of a spaceship. None of Lance will be left to come back for. He can’t have that. He won’t.
“Shut up, Lance,” Keith replies. “Save your breath.”
Keith makes another attempt at forward motion, but Lance tugs him, harder than he should be able to, really. Keith looks back questioningly, and finds Lance staring at him. “Keith, please. We can’t both make it out of here.” He reaches up with his free hand and touches the side of Keith’s helmet. “I’ll be just fine here knowing that you made it out.”
“Lance, stop !” Keith shouts, and swats away his hand. “I’m not leaving you.”
The sirens cut out again. “All passengers please report to hangar 6 immediately. The fire will reach the fuel tanks in approximately 60 ticks. Thank you.”
Lance’s eyes are wide and terrified when Keith meets them again. Neither of them need a further explanation on that. The ship isn’t going to exist in another minute or two, and as long as they’re on it, their fate is tied to it. “Keith, go .”
“ No !”
Something like bile is creeping up Keith’s throat. Maybe their suits will protect them, maybe they’ll be okay, maybe…maybe—
“55 ticks,” the voice announces.
Keith extracts himself from Lance’s arms and turns his back towards him, heart pounding. He thinks for a second as he lets go that Lance’s grip tightens infinitesimally before he releases him. Lance doesn’t want to die.
Keith doesn’t want Lance to die either. He crouches, back to Lance.
“Get on my back,” he says.
“Keith, get out—”
“ Get on my back !” Keith shouts, and he thinks he hears the tiniest sniffle over their comms.
“50 ticks.”
Lance throws his weight against Keith. Keith catches his thighs and stands, Lance hooking his arms around his shoulders and his legs around his waist.
“You barely weigh anything,” Keith mutters, and then takes off in the best semblance of a jog he can possibly do.
“Where are we going?” Lance asks.
“Anywhere,” Keith says. “Out.”
“Of the ship? How?”
“We’ll do better out in open space than here,” Keith replies. “Start calling for Red.”
Lance moans, probably in response to the jostling of his wounds. “She never listened to me like she did for you.”
“40 ticks.”
“Just do it!” Keith says. “Just try.”
If they’re near a cargo hold, they’ve got to be near the outside edge of the ship. There’s a door up ahead that looks like it could be a hatch. Keith doubles his pace, not allowing himself to feel Lance’s weight against his back, not allowing the burn in his lungs and his legs, the fear that’s making all the hair on the body stand on end. His singular focus is that door.
“35 ticks.”
Keith slams his hand against the hatch’s control panel. It slides open too slow. He turns around so he can prod Lance into the intermediate chamber through the widening opening, and then stumbles inside himself and slams on the button to shut the door and begin the process of draining the room of air.
“There are holes in my suit,” Lance notes absently.
“In your helmet?” Keith asks, the rate of his heartbeat stuttering.
Lance shakes his head.
“Then you’ll survive,” Keith says.
Keith doesn’t know if that’s true. He learned about exposure at the Garrison. They all did. About ebullism and decompression sickness and anoxia and hypoxia. How you pass out after 14 seconds and that’s when the you can feel your saliva boiling on your tongue. But it isn’t the heat or the cold that kills you first, it’s the lack of oxygen. Lance has his helmet, so that’s not a concern. It’s the holes in his suit exposing his skin to the vacuum, devoid of pressure, that’ll get him. Keith surveys Lance’s suit one more time.
“Put on my leg guards and chestplate,” Keith says, wrangling the parts off his own body. He has his unmarred suit underneath, and he prays the pieces will seal around the places where Lance’s own has split.
“10 ticks,” comes the muffled announcement.
Lance struggles with the armor pieces that Keith tosses at him. Keith reaches over to shove one over his shin and then shifts the one on Lance’s chest. Lance hisses a curse in the process, but Keith would rather have him uncomfortable now than his body swelling when the liquids in his body evaporate inside of him.
Keith is so worried about protecting Lance that he barely notices the outer door slide open, until Lance is suddenly clinging to his front and they’re shot out into space. Keith doesn’t let his brain catch up, instead acting on instinct, turning his jetpack on and blasting them as far away from the ship as it will possibly take them. This would be his choice, flames or open space.
Red, please, if you hear me , Keith begs silently. I need you. I’m sorry .
The explosion is spectacular, in an objective way. Keith only has a moment to watch the bright flash of light from it until the wave of heat from it hits them. Lance moans in pain, but his arms stay around Keith’s body. Keith holds him close.
He closes his eyes. Red, come on .
“Isn’t this romantic?” Lance interrupts.
Keith’s eyes snap open. Lance is looking at him. He’s got a smile on but his eyebrows are low, like the teeth his lips are stretched over are gritted.
“How is this romantic?” Keith snaps, out of fear more than irritation.
“We made out on a Galra ship and now we’re cuddling in space.” Lance’s smile wavers.
“You’re hurt.”
“But I got to show you how I feel.”
Keith swallows thickly. Something is lodged in his throat, and he can’t get it out.
“Why’d you have to be such an ass about it though?” Keith grumbles, as if to distract himself. Definitely to distract Lance, at least.
“Hah,” Lance laughs weakly. “Maybe I was scared. I wanted your attention for so long, and you didn’t even know my name for most of it.”
Keith inhales sharply, aware that this is something he can only do for the duration of how long his flight suit will continue to function, and who knows how long that could be. For Lance, it’s probably less. He chooses to focus on the conversation instead of that. “How long…?”
“Since I met you at the Garrison? I don’t know.” Lance averts his eyes, though the strained smile still sits on his mouth.
Keith tries to pull him tighter, somehow. He wants their bodies to meld together, he wants the gravity of their masses to keep them permanently attached. He wants to take Lance’s wounds onto his own body and feel them burn with the same intensity that the lining of his lungs burns with.
“That’s a long time,” is the only thing Keith can think of to say, and something inside his voice is scratching at it, scrabbling to break free.
“I was scared,” Lance says again. “Aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Keith says. “I am.”
He lifts his head and knocks the faceplates of their helmets together. He hopes that his meaning translates.
Lance is the one who says it out loud though.
“Wish I could kiss you right now.”
“You can,” Keith says. “As soon as we get back to the castle.”
Lance laughs again, weaker this time. “I don’t think I’m getting back to the castle, Keith.”
“Shut up,” Keith growls, but in his head he’s praying. Red, please .
Lance doesn’t seem to share his concern, smiling as he looks at him. “You’d better start being nicer to me. What if the last words you ever say to me are ‘shut up?’”
Keith wraps his arms tighter and stares into Lance’s eyes. He honestly believes he’s going to die right now. He’s already accepted it, though his arms still cling back to Keith. Even though his forehead is drenched in sweat and blood and the tension is clear in his jaw his smile looks gentle, serene, so different from the shit-eating grin he usually wears. He tips his head back and looks at the stars.
“Tell Allura to take good care of Blue for me,” Lance says. “You can have my jacket, if you want.”
“I don’t want your jacket, Lance,” Keith replies.
Lance seems to shrug. “Your loss. Give it to Pidge then.” He looks contemplative. “She can have her headphones back too I g--.”
“Wait, shh .” Keith looks around. All he sees is stars and swirls of distant galaxies, but--
“What did I just say about being nice to me?” Lance asks. His grip around Keith’s back is weakening and his eyes are closed. Keith clutches him closer instinctively but is wholly otherwise preoccupied.
“Seriously, Lance, shh,” he says. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Lance asks, opening his eyes. “I think you’re losing it, buddy.”
Keith’s entire body goes stiff as he strains to hear. It’s not for another moment that he realizes what he’s listening to isn’t a sound. It’s an idea in his head.
He lets his head drop onto Lance’s chest and breathes out a sigh of relief. His eyes fill with tears.
“Hang in there, Lance,” he says. “Red’s coming.”
“Oh, is she now?” Lance replies, exasperation mingling with relief in his voice. But his words are quiet, weak. Keith gives him a gentle shake.
“Stay with me,” he says. “Goddammit, don’t close your eyes like that. Lance. Come on.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lance rasps.
“Come on, come on,” Keith begs. He doesn’t know if he’s talking to Lance or to Red. Probably to both.
Lance gives him a grunt. Keith watches his face through his faceplate, his eyes closing, his mouth twisting in pain. His eyebrows have come down low to give him the impression of someone bearing a tremendous weight.
Keith’s eyes focus back out. Because suddenly, reflected in the glass of Lance’s faceplate, is an enormous red robot lion.
“Lance, Lance!” Keith calls, as he uses his jetpack to swing Lance around and towards Red. “She’s here. You’re gonna be fine.”
Lance groans.
Red stares down Keith for a moment without opening her mouth. He feels strangely contrite, humbled, as he bows his head before her. He knows what happened wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t help what he needed to do. But he does care about Red. So much. And he didn’t intend to abandon her.
Keith’s heart pounds in his chest. His throat feels choked with panic. He tries to breathe, and finds that he can’t. He looks up at Red.
His message must reach her, finally, finally , because she stretches her maw open. Keith grins at her, wide and fierce, and carries Lance inside.
Red takes off the moment they’re in there. Keith has no idea where they are, but he figures she must, and she must know how to get back to the castle from here, so he trusts her to do that. In the meantime he lays Lance flat against the floor and takes off his helmet.
Lance intakes a shaky breath, a shallow gasp, but doesn’t open his eyes.
“Lance?” Keith asks, voice quivering, shaking fingers tugging at the edges of his armor.
There’s no response.
Off, off. He has to get the armor off, has to stop the bleeding. Keith manages to wrangle Lance’s chestplate over his head and stares down at the gaping wound. Nestled right at the bottom of his ribcage, his skin and the armor is slick with red. Keith curses, loudly, and knows there’s a first aid kit in here somewhere but he doesn’t really know the first thing about closing up a wound like this. His Garrison first aid training seems woefully distant right now.
It wouldn’t do for him to die now. They’ve come this far. Hurry, Red , Keith begs.
Keith himself is running on pure adrenaline at this point. There’s not a part of his body that doesn’t ache deeply, not a single place where he doesn’t feel like he’s been buried in hot coals. His throat and mouth are dry and scratchy and he coughs when he breathes. His eyes itch and burn with exhaustion. His stomach rolls. His head aches.
But Lance is unconscious before him. His eyes are closed. His lips are blue, matching the accents on his uniform, and Keith has never hated the color more. Keith finds himself just as frozen.
Lance might actually die here. So close to safety. So close to home . He could lose Lance .
Keith swallows a sob, hard and crashing in his diaphragm. He tears off his own helmet. Leans in close, until he can feel the flutter of Lance’s faint breath against his nose. A teardrop lands on Lance’s cheek.
Lance’s lips are cold where Keith touches them.
Their stumble into the Castle-ship, when they arrive moments later, is a blur of red and blue. Distantly Keith can feel his arms straining as he carries Lance cradled to his chest. He hears shouting and realizes that it’s his own voice. He’s met in the hangar by the rest of the team, their panic-stricken faces swirling together in his mind as he tries to run past them towards the healing pods with Lance in his arms. He almost doesn’t let go when Shiro comes to take him, strong arms lifting Lance out of Keith’s grip.
“I’ve got him,” Shiro tells Keith.
“He’s dying ,” Keith finds himself sobbing.
Shiro takes Lance away, and Keith’s knees buckle under himself. Around him, whispers of Is he already— become cries of Keith’s name. He falls to the ground. His vision goes dark, and he doesn’t get up.
Keith feels cold.
He tries to say something, a name maybe, but he chokes on the frost in his mouth. When the panel before him slides open, and whatever force had been keeping him upright drains from his muscles, he staggers instinctively forward and it takes his entire concentration to keep his knees and ankles beneath his body.
He stumbles on quivering legs, and opens his eyes.
Shiro stands before him, offering his left arm for support. Keith takes it.
Keith’s tongue has thawed. “Lance,” he says.
Shiro gently turns him towards a second healing pod. Lance is suspended inside, his wounds obstructed from view by the form-fitting white suit designed for the healing process. They match, Lance and Keith.
Keith spills from Shiro’s arms and lands palms-first against the glass surface of the pod. Lance’s face is blank. Calm. Empty. Something wrenches at Keith’s organs, like hooks tearing in and ripping out fresh blood.
“Is he--?”
“He’s fine,” Shiro says, settling a hand on his shoulder, and Keith grips it for support when the tension flushes out of his muscles in relief. “He needs a few more vargas, but he’s fine.”
Keith lets himself slowly sink to his knees now, and Shiro helps lower him gently.
Shiro sits with him for a little while, but when it becomes obvious that Keith isn’t budging off the ground until Lance emerges from his pod, Shiro leaves to bring him food and some water. Eventually Keith drifts off with his forehead pressed against its glass surface, and when he wakes it’s to Pidge and Hunk coming in because Lance’s readouts are optimistic. He’s finished.
When Lance falls out, it’s to Hunk, and they hug, laughing. Pidge is on him in a second, berating him for his stupidity but crying as she does. Shiro, Allura, and Coran stand to the side and exude warmth, waiting their turns to embrace him.
Keith meets Lance’s eyes and allows him a smile, before slipping out the door to rest.
Keith is sitting in the common room when Lance finds him. He has a screen of flight maneuvers open but he’s not really looking at it. Instead he’s breathing, and being grateful that he can.
“Hey,” Lance says, and sits down next to him. He fidgets until Keith looks up at him, and then freezes. “Do you wanna talk about what happened out there? Or nah?”
Keith takes a long look at Lance. At his green jacket and his perfectly-combed hair and the smooth skin of his face. The universe almost lost this person. Keith almost lost this person.
He looks away.
“What’s there to talk about?” he asks.
“I mean, I kinda confessed to you,” Lance says. “I thought you were into me too but if you wanna just let it go—”
“No,” Keith says quickly, without even realizing he’s saying it.
Lance leans forward into his line of sight, an attempt at eye-contact. “No?”
“No…,” Keith says, slower this time, hesitant. “I don’t want to let it go.”
“Oh.” Lance leans back again, so Keith glances over. He’s blushing, Lance, the tips of his ears turning a little ruddy too. “Oh, okay. Yeah. Me neither.”
There’s a moment of silence, and Keith counts the frantic beats of his heart.
“Do you feel better?” he asks lamely.
“I’m a little tired,” Lance says. “Saving the day and almost dying takes a lot out of you, you know.”
“Wanna go to bed?” Keith asks, and it’s clear he didn’t think his phrasing through when both of Lance’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Together?”
“Uh, I mean….” Keith turns away, and scratches the back of his neck. “Why not?”
Lance stands and holds a hand out towards Keith. “If you think you’re getting laid you’re wrong. I’m exhausted.”
Keith does his best not to splutter, since Lance is standing there looking cocky and smug and he can’t let Lance win, even if they’ve apparently moved beyond whatever was going on between them before. Instead Keith takes his hand and hauls himself up, pausing to plant a kiss against Lance’s cheek.
“That can wait,” he says, and strides past Lance, though he keeps their fingers locked together.
The way Lance’s arm yanks at the end of Keith’s hand makes him smile. Lance catches up and slides the same arm around Keith’s waist, pulling him in.
“This is gonna be the best sleepover ever,” Lance laughs in his ear.
When Lance insists on being big spoon, Keith doesn’t mind. The way Lance’s chest curls and fits against his spine feels more soothing than the healing pod, and the way his breathing evens out to something deep and warm against Keith’s neck reminds him of how they’re both, somehow, alive. Lance’s hand is splayed open against Keith’s chest. Keith can feel it rise and fall with the motions of his own breathing.
He smiles to himself, and falls asleep.