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Keith’s unease was not a sudden thing. It built up over the weeks, a tenseness in his shoulders and a flicker in his eyes as he tracked the subject of his confusion from across the room.
He acted like everything was normal, of course. There was enough trouble right now; Keith didn’t need to go around actively making it worse. With Shiro gone, the Blade of Marmora down dozens of soldiers, and no knowledge of how to handle the rumors of Prince Lotor, there was more than just the usual number of problems to deal with.
So Keith stayed quiet. He kept his mouth shut, pretended nothing was wrong, and just… paid the extra attention, once he finally realized what the problem was.
Lance hadn’t reacted to Keith being Galra. At all.
o.o.o.o.o
People noticed, of course. Keith wasn’t a bad actor, but the amount of time he spent with his fellow paladins and the rest of the rebellion meant that there was always someone nearby to notice when he acted even a little out of character. Hunk was trying to keep an eye on everyone’s mental health with Shiro gone, and Pidge was turning into a paranoid mess, trying to figure out how to find Shiro and make sure nobody else mysteriously disappeared either. Coran was trying to be a supportive figure in their lives, regularly trying to help everyone talk through their problems or otherwise be the rock they all needed. Allura, for all her efforts to treat him as she had before, still kept a nervous eye on him when he was in the room, a nearly unnoticeable hitch in her breath if he moved suddenly while her back was turned.
(Keith tried not to let it get to him. He’d grown up as a gay Asian kid in Texas; he knew what it was like to feel paranoid with someone at your back, even when you knew they didn’t mean you any harm. When four out of five white kids in the class were raised by homophobes or racists, it was hard to trust the one that wasn’t, just because of basic pattern recognition.)
(It still hurt that Allura subconsciously didn’t trust him, no matter how much she was consciously trying to be on his side, but at least he understood it.)
But the point was that there was always someone paying attention, whether it was Hunk and Coran trying to make sure everyone was okay, or Pidge and Allura’s nervous paranoia, or just the glancing eyes of a passing Marmora soldier.
Everyone knew that something was wrong, and while Keith thought they were all just attributing it to Shiro being gone, he was sure that it was only a matter of time until someone figured it out. After seeing how he’d hid himself away the last time he had a secret, they’d all learned to watch for the right tics.
Only a matter of—
o.o.o.o.o
“Okay, you know what? I’m tired of this.” Lance slammed a spoon down on the table, scattering green food goo all over, and turned to face Keith. “What the hell is your problem?”
Keith jerked away, eyes widening just a tad. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about!” Lance leaned forward, poking at the air in front of Keith’s face with one finger, confusion and aggressiveness mixed in every line of his body. “You keep looking at me funny when you think I won’t see!
“That’s bullshit!”
“You keep watching me whenever I’m in the room like you think I’m gonna jump you or something!”
“I have not!”
“You, uh, kind of have, dude.” Hunk raised his hands apologetically when Keith shot him a poisonous look. “Sorry, Keith. It’s true.”
Keith shut his mouth with a clack of teeth, clenching his jaw and turning his gaze to the table.
“Are you seriously giving me the silent treatment on this?” Lance sounded flabbergasted. Was that actually a thing people could be? Flabbergasted? If so, Lance was.
“It’s nothing,” He insisted.
“Looking like you think I’m gonna stab you with your own knife is not nothing,” Lance argued back.
“Please, like you could even get it off of me in the first place.”
“I could totally ge—wait, no, you’re deflecting.” Lance shoved his head into the space between Keith’s face and the table, sudden and intrusive and making Keith jerk back in alarm. “The hell is your problem?”
Keith pursed his lips for a moment, well aware of the fact that he was technically pouting. He glared to the now-empty seat at his side. “It’s stupid. Don’t worry about it.”
“Nope. I’ve been waiting for you to deal with whatever the heck is bothering you for weeks now.” Lance pushed himself up to sit on the table and swung one leg around so he was sitting with a leg on either side of Keith’s chair. He was far enough away that it wasn’t creepy, and Keith normally would’ve just rolled his eyes and ignored it when Lance decided this was how he wanted to sit while they talked, but at the moment, he just felt trapped.
“Keith.”
“Lance.”
Lance leaned forward, like he wanted to start a staring contest.
“…I was confused about something,” Keith said carefully. “You’re the reason why.”
Lance squinted at him. “This isn’t some sexuality thing, is it?”
“What?” Keith blinked. “No. No, that’s not—no, Lance, it’s something else.”
“Then what?” Lance made a big, floppy gesture with his arms. “I’m seriously tired of getting stared at like I killed your puppy or something!”
“I’ve never had a puppy.”
“Keith.”
Keith crossed his arms and glared to the side again, well aware of the fact that his shoulders were defensively inching up towards his ears. He spotted Hunk out the corner of his eye, and realized that he’d entirely forgotten the fact that they kind of had an audience. He focused on Lance again. “You…”
“I…?” Lance gestured for him to continue.
“You never reacted.”
“…to what?”
“To me being Galra.”
“…Okay, I’m going to need you to scroll back a bit.” Lance leaned back, finally out of Keith’s personal bubble again, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re telling me that the reason you keep looking at me like I’m gonna try to kick your ass… is that I’m not being an asshole?”
“…basically?”
“What the fuck, Keith?” Lance threw his hands up in the air for a second, then let them drop into his lap. “What the actual, everliving fuck?”
Keith shrugged, uncomfortable. “You just… everyone else reacted somehow. Pidge was awkward for a few days, Hunk kept making dumb jokes, Allura was… concerned. Coran pretended it didn’t matter, even when it was obvious that it did, and even Shiro was at least surprised. You barely blinked.”
Lance buried his face in his hands. “I try to respect your privacy, and you do this. I can’t with you, Keith, I really can’t.”
“Respect my—what do you mean, respect my privacy?” Keith wondered if what he was feeling was bewilderment. It might have been. “What does respecting my privacy have to do with anything?”
Lance looked up and made a face. “If I tell you, you won’t believe me, or you’ll laugh.”
“You made me tell you what was bothering me,” Keith pointed out. “You have to explain what the hell you mean by that.”
Lance shifted uncomfortably on the table, and Keith was a little relieved to have flipped the tables like this. Or, rather, he was relieved until Lance actually spoke.
“I already knew.”
“What.”
Keith wasn’t the only one to speak that time, at least. Pidge, Hunk, and Allura had all joined in, and only Coran had stayed silent, watching.
“Bullshit!” Pidge shouted, pointing at Lance. “None of us knew, how the hell would you?”
“See, this is why I didn’t want to explain,” Lance said, pointing right back at Pidge. “Everyone would think I was lying.”
“It is a little hard to believe,” Allura said. “That you would have figured it out before even Keith himself had.”
Lance gestured around the room wildly with one arm, looking Keith in the eyes. “Exactly why I didn’t want to bring it up.”
“Maybe if you explained how you knew…” Coran suggested carefully.
“Yeah, right now, all I’m getting is that you were still hung up on that rivalry bullshit and thou—”
“The Balmera,” Lance cut Keith off, an annoyed look on his face.
Keith blinked, because that definitely wasn’t what he was expecting. “The… Balmera told you?”
“What? No. I can’t do quintessence stuff.” Lance shook his head like a dog shaking off water. “Don’t you remember?”
“Remember what?”
Lance stared at him for a long moment, then put his palms together, thumbs pushing up against the underside of his jaw while his fingers pressed down over his nose. He closed his eyes and breathed deep, then let it all out in one big whoosh and dropped his hands. He fixed his eyes on Keith again. “Okay. The hangar. Do you remember what our plan there was?”
“Cause a distraction, sneak into the office, close the hangar doors to trap the soldiers and drones underground,” Keith rattled off. He did remember that one.
“Right, and I’m very glad you remember my plan. Do you remember what happened once we got inside the office?”
Keith frowned. “We just…fumbled around until we closed it.”
“Keith, I punched a bunch of buttons and nothing worked. Then all you did was put your hand on the panel, and it did what we wanted.” Lance leaned forward, elbows locked as his hands pressed down on the table beside him. His eyebrows inched up encouragingly.
“I…yes?” He remembered that. Vaguely. “Wait, you figured it out just from that?”
Even Keith hadn’t picked up on that hint.
“Ish?” Lance wiggled a hand in the air, making a face. “I didn’t connect the dots until I heard Pidge complaining a few days later that she always needed Shiro’s arm around when she wanted to hack Galra tech.”
Hunk buried his face in his hands and made a choking noise that sounded like despairing laughter. Keith could relate.
“So… yeah, the reason I didn’t treat you differently was because it wasn’t really… news, I guess. Just a confirmation.”
“And you didn’t think you should maybe tell someone?” Pidge demanded. “We’d have suddenly had multiple options when I needed to hack things!”
“Well, yeah, but… I wasn’t sure, you know, and Keith either didn’t know or was keeping it a secret, and he and I already had enough trouble getting along and it was obviously the kind of thing that could cause a lot of team problems and it just… he was still Keith, right? Still the emo show-off, not any different than before, just that one of his parents was a xenophilic yiffer—”
Keith choked on air.
“—and I figured that if Keith wasn’t a spy or something, and we could literally see into each other’s heads as Voltron, so I knew he wasn’t… then why bring it up? I guess? I don’t know, it just seemed like an asshole thing to do. I wouldn’t be respecting his privacy, I’d be hurting the team’s trust, I’d be bringing up something that was only a theory, not even something I knew for sure… It just seemed like a bad idea.”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence at that. Keith eventually cleared his throat.
“As the person that this was about,” Keith said slowly, “I would have appreciated you telling me, at least.”
“Wow, no, that just seemed like a recipe for getting you to hate me.” Lance shuddered theatrically. “I mean, what was I supposed to do, just come up to you and say ‘hey, Keith, I was thinking about that thing on the Balmera and I think you might be related to the species trying to take over the universe that we’ve all sworn to fight.’ Like? I couldn’t think of a single way that scenario could end that didn’t result in one of us crying. Mostly me. I did most of the crying in those scenarios. Because you’d punch me.”
“Stop rambling.”
“Okay.”
Keith stared up at Lance, who had long since moved to stare down at his own fiddling fingers. It would have been kind of cute if not for the fact that Keith was still trying to sort through the fact that Lance had just known the whole time.
“So…” Lance started again, and Keith kind of wanted to make him shut up so he could think. “You don’t have to be confused anymore, I guess. Or watch me like I’m gonna steal your ridiculous jacket as soon as your back is turned. I didn’t bring up the Galra thing because nothing changed on my end, and I figured you didn’t need more shit on your plate.”
Keith actually reached up and put a hand over Lance’s mouth, when it looked like he was going to keep going. “Shut up and let me think.”
Lance went cross-eyed looking down at the hand, but nodded a little.
Keith withdrew, and looked down at his own lap, as though that would somehow help him figure out what he was feeling. It didn’t, so he looked back up at Lance.
Lance, who had known Keith was part Galra, and kept his mouth shut out of respect for Keith’s privacy. Out of a desire to keep everyone happy. Out of a fear that he’d hurt Keith, somehow.
“You trusted me. You knew, and you didn’t tell anyone because you trusted me.”
Lance made a face. “I guess? That’s… really cheesy, though. Doesn’t suit you.”
“You trusted me,” Keith repeated, stressing it.
Lance shrugged, looking away. “Yeah. Sure. I’m uncomfortable now. I know I started this conversation, but can it be over now? I’m really no—why are you hugging me?”
Lance was stiff as a board in Keith’s arms. Keith was not an expert in hugs, but he was pretty sure this wasn’t how they were supposed to go. He’d certainly had enough to know that. Lance was supposed to hug back, at least, not just stand there. That could definitely be attributed to the surprise, though; it wasn’t like Keith went out of his way to hug Lance all that often.
Or at all.
He hadn’t really hugged anyone other than Shiro in years, actually. Mid-battle cradling didn’t count.
Whatever.
“Thank you,” he breathed out, barely audible. He squeezed Lance tighter for a moment, as though to punctuate the sentence.
“Uh…” Lance brought his arms up hesitantly, wrapping them loosely around Keith in return, and patting him on the back. “You’re welcome?”
Keith hugged tighter again, eyes squeezed shut. There might have been tears gathering in the corners of his eyes.
“This is really weird, dude,” Lance said. His head moved, and Keith figured he was looking around for help from the others. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” Keith didn’t elaborate. He just kept hugging.
“Dude, you are literally standing between my legs and this is like… a make-out position. You get that, right? Like, it can totally be a hug position too, don’t get me wrong, but this is weird to me. How is this not weird to you?” Lance’s voice was inching steadily higher. “Guys? Someone please help me out here.”
Keith pulled away finally, and looked Lance in the eye. He took Lance’s hands into his own, and kept eye contact as well as he could while Lance’s were flickering around. He had to make sure Lance understood. “I’m serious. Thank you.”
“Uh, you’re welcome. Can we drop this now? Can it stop being a thing?”
Keith shook his head. “Lance, I—”
“Oh, just kiss him already!”
“What the fuck, Pidge?” Lance practically squawked. “That was a bro moment! Bro moment! Not a gay moment!”
“I mean, it could be,” Keith said, shrugging awkwardly when Lance turned to look at him in betrayal. “I’m not against it.”
Lance buried his face in his hands with a disbelieving groan. “I liked it better when you didn’t have a sense of humor.”
“Who said I was joking?”
“I think that’s our cue to leave!” Hunk said brightly, and Keith watched as he shepherded the others out the door. “I think we’ve intruded on private conversations enough already.”
“But I wanted to see if they’d actually—”
“Trust me, Princess,” Pidge said, “You don’t want that. Not while you’re in the same room.”
“Door. Right there. Let’s go.” Hunk continued to push them all out.
Coran took up the rear, looking back at Lance and Keith, who still hadn’t moved away from the table. “Lance, I’d like to talk to you later about when it’s advisable to respect someone’s privacy, and when it’s actually necessary to share the information.”
Lance winced, and Keith pursed his lips, annoyed.
Coran shook his head. “Keith, a number of issues could have been avoided if we’d known you were Galra from an earlier point in time. Pidge was right about your ability to interact with Galra technology, and we could have assured you that Zarkon wasn’t tracking you specifically if we’d known why you were worried at all.”
Keith dropped his head in embarrassment at the memory of his and Allura’s disastrous expedition in the pod.
“Your trust and respect in this situation was admirable, Lance, but some things are better discussed, or at least confided, than kept to one’s self.” With that final bit of advice, Coran turned and left the room.
And then there were two.
“So, uh, that kiss thing…” Lance said, causing Keith to look up and blink in surprise. “Was that just a joke?”
Keith shrugged. “If you want it to be.”
“…and if I don’t?”
Keith stepped a little closer, putting a hand on either side of Lance’s body, resting lightly on the table as he definitely invaded Lance’s personal space. Lance, whose eyes were wide, whose cheeks were red, who was licking his lips nervously. “Then make a move, cargo pilot.”
Lance’s face spasmed for a moment. “Way to kill the moment.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t call me cargo pilot.”
“Ca—mph.” Keith was cut off as a hand clamped over his mouth, solid and warm. There was something a little too hot in Lance’s eyes.
“I’m serious. There’s things I’m willing to put up with as a joke. That’s not one of them. It bothers me. A lot.”
Keith sucked in a breath as Lance pulled his hand away. “So, what’s that about?”
“The Garrison was… teachers are assholes, even there. Just don’t… don’t call me cargo pilot.”
Keith was pretty sure there was something deeper than that, but he could ask later. Maybe talk to Hunk and Pidge? Whatever.
Lance looked sad. That needed to be fixed.
Keith leaned in close again, until his forehead was pressed to Lance’s, noses slipping against one another, breath mingling.
“Let me try that again, then: make a move, Blue.”
“Better.” And, wow, okay, Lance had a really nice smile when he wasn’t trying. Even from this weird angle. It was all in the eyes, anyway.
That smile felt really nice, too, when Lance pressed his lips to Keith’s. Really nice. Better than Keith had been imagining, actually, and Keith had spent a lot of time imagining since they’d come up to live in space.
“Thank you, Lance.”
“Stop talking and just kiss me.”