Chapter Text
Keith doesn’t know why he always ends up next to Lance.
But he always ends up next to Lance .
Meeting with Allura about a diplomatic mission to - “ TO ALDERAAN!” Lance shouts pretty much directly into Keith’s right ear, and yup, he’s right there. Dinner? Lance is gabbing away to his right. They just fall together all the goddamn time - Keith might walk forward and Lance will stop him and then they don’t part for hours, or they pair together for a mission, Keith forging ahead and Lance running after him, muttering insults.
They’re like magnets. Keith is furious. The soulmark on his shoulder has been pulsing more than ever lately.
The night before they’re supposed to head out to a planet called Rwaf - the f pronounced like a t, and the w like an f, what the hell - Keith gets into bed and turns off his lights. He looks down and -
“Holy shit,” he says, hitting the lights again.
His shoulder is glowing .
He takes off his shirt and runs a hand over his soulmark. It’s beautiful, criss-crossing, intricate lines curling around his right shoulder and towards his collarbone and edging up his neck. It had stopped growing for a while, but it’s never been there before, not on that area of his neck.
It’s growing again. Why’s it growing again?
When he was little, it was just a dark little starburst on his shoulder, and as he grew in size, so did it - soulmark placements were supposed to mean something but he’d never really gotten involved in that mumbo-jumbo, as Lance would say. Well, Lance probably wouldn’t call soulmarks “mumbo-jumbo” because Lance gushed about his soulmark. Keith’s pretty sure he hasn’t seen Lance’s soulmark yet, but he probably will at some point because Lance bats his eyelashes at Allura and mentions the fact that his soulmark has been pulsing “ all the time” around her and that she might be the light of his life . Wink, wink.
Keith just wants to stab him, mostly.
But nevermind the fact that Allura’s entire right arm is fully jet black, all the way to the tips of her fingers, and in no way does that match Lance’s soulmark. Both his hands are his normal skin color. Apparently soulmarks are a universal thing.
Keith’s soulmark is practically ringing right now. He can hear a buzzing in his ears. “Why are you acting up?” he asks it, fully aware that that is a stupid thing to do and will yield no results. “What do you want?”
Keith doesn’t really believe in soulmarks or soulmates or fate. You choose your life. There’s no mystical energy field controls his destiny.
The people populating Rwaf don’t really like them, and Lance ends up hauling Keith onto Blue as he bleeds from several stab wounds and from his mouth.
“Why are you bleeding from your mouth?” Lance shrieks at him as he dumps Keith to the left of his chair and sits, zooming away from the planet’s surface, Red following closely. “Did they stab your mouth? Did they cut out your tongue? Oh my God, did they cut off your tongue? Can you not talk anymore?”
“Cab still talk,” Keith says, and blood starts gushing from his nose. “Pudched a toothd.”
Lance hits the console. “Dammit, I was hoping to not have to hear your stupid voice anymore,” he says, and Keith laughs thickly from the ground.
“You bight dot have do,” he mumbles. “bight… ged rid of be.”
“Nope,” Lance says, pushing down on any feelings of terror at losing Keith that bubble up inside him. “There won’t be any getting rid of you. And honestly, Keith, don’t try to take my spot as drama queen of the Paladins. Wailing about being about to die is my job.”
Keith slaps a hand against his leg and Lance can feel the jolt all the way up his bones, even through the armor. “You do a good job of id,” he says, and Lance almost smiles.
“Keep talking, hermano ,” he says. “We’re almost back, and however much I don’t want to hear your voice in normal situations, I really should hear it now.”
Keith doesn’t say anything and Lance risks looking away for two seconds to check he’s still awake. He is, but his head is lolling like a bowling ball on the head of a pin, and his eyes are glazed as he looks out at the stars through Blue’s eyes.
“Keith,” Lance says warningly. “I’ll kick you if you don’t start talking.”
“You…” Keith says slowly. Lance knows he’s about to insult him, but he needs to keep him talking, so, magnanimously, he puts up with it. “You datter od… about dothig, but that isd’t a skill I possess. I dod’t doe what to talk about.”
It takes Lance a second to process that all of his d’ s are actually him trying to make n ’s through his bloody nose, but once he figures that out, he decodes Keith’s statement and sticks his tongue out, even though he knows Keith can’t see him.
“Well, tell me about your soulmark,” Lance says. “You never talk about it. I don’t think anyone’s ever seen it.”
“I’b… private,” Keith mutters. “Is od by right shoulder. Really beautiful. Squigglies and lides bakid’ a patterd. Beed growig lately. Growig ad glowig.”
“Do you know who it is?” Lance asks quietly, his mind whirling as the castle comes into view. “We’re almost there.”
“Doe,” Keith says. “I dod’t believe in soulbates adyway. You should choose who you sped your life with.”
Lance pulls into his lion’s hangar and gets out of his chair to help Keith up. “Come on,” he says. “Get up.”
Keith lets himself be pulled to his feet and dragged away.
Lance stands in front of the healing pod, looking at Keith’s naked shoulder through the glass.
It’s his soulmark. Fucking of course it is. Keith Kogane, Lance’s ultimate rival, is his soulmate. It figures.
Whatever. Lance is going to prove to him that soulmates do exist. Lance is going to be the best soulmate ever . He is going to out-soulmate Keith Kogane, which shouldn’t be too hard, since Keith doesn’t believe in it anyway. Keith is going to fall so hard in love with him.
Lance takes his shirt off and looks at his soulmark, on his left shoulder, and then back at Keith’s. Keith’s right - both their soulmarks have been growing. Lance’s is glowing faintly silver, and inside the pod, Keith’s pulses with light as his wounds seal.
There’s a stillness to the air as the glass slides aside, Keith wobbling in place and then toppling forward.
Lance catches him easily and his breath stills in his throat as their soulmarks glow in unison and turn silver, crawling further along their skin like two synched up etch-a-sketches.
It’s gonna take some time. But Lance is gonna soulmate the shit outta Keith Kogane.