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Lance threw his arms up in despair. Pidge had found an old Altean board game while rummaging around, and they'd been playing it all afternoon. Only Coran actually knew how to play, and Lance was certain he was lying about the rules in order to win.

He growled, looking at the other paladins’ piles of chips. Even Shiro had more than him, and he'd spent most of his turns bailing Pidge out.

“Right, I’m going to throw myself out of the airlock,” he announced, getting to his feet.

There was a sharp gasp and he was surprised to find a wide-eyed Keith stumbling to his feet.

“Wh- Lance!” he cried, voice half chiding and half horrified, “Just because you lost a board game? The whole universe needs you! You can't just-”

“Relax, Red, I was just kidding.” Lance shifted uncomfortably under his teammate’s gaze. Something in Keith's big, dark eyes seemed genuinely worried. “Anyway, is Voltron the only reason you don't want me to hurl myself into space? I’m hurt,” he joked, waiting for Keith’s eyes to shrink and go back to his usual sullen demeanour,  but he stayed frozen.

“Keith, it's alright,” Shiro spoke up from where he was kneeling on the floor. “He was just kidding. Come sit down.” His worried gaze flickered between the red and blue paladin before he met Keith’s eyes and smiled comfortingly at him.

Keith shrugged and sloped back towards the rest of the team. Once Lance had managed to clear his head, he told his team his plans for the night. “I'm going to get some sleep. Skin like this doesn't just happen.”

It wasn't like he was quitting before he could lose the game or anything.

***

Laying awake in his bunk, Lance couldn't help but feel guilty. Keith was usually so cold that it was weird to see him so frightened. Keith specialised in sarcasm and glares that could make a weblum quiver.

He didn't understand Keith sometimes. He was such a talented pilot and he threw it away for a lonely desert shack. Then there was his obsession with training. Lance didn't trust a guy who didn't like to relax. But by far the shadiest thing about him was his skin. Lance had seen Keith’s shelf in the showers, horrible chemical filled concoctions that made him wince. It was completely unfair that his skin glowed like that while Lance had to barter with whatever he could find for some foul smelling seaweed, just to keep the acne at bay. 

***

Keith flattened the goo on his plate with his fork. He liked the monotony of the alien food: after he'd gotten used to the green goop, he hadn't had to deal with the cacophony of flavours and textures that always assaulted him when he ate Earth food. He was a firm believer that eating was for sustenance only, and all these unnecessary spices and combinations, and weirdly mushy things like bananas that he didn't trust as far as he could throw them, made him unnerved.

The goo was a nice texture, malleable and firm. He was intently forming his into a lovely green square when he felt a cool metal hand on his arm.

“Eat your food, Keith,” Shiro said gently.

Keith glanced up at him quickly before shovelling it into his mouth in three mouthfuls. Distracted with neatening the shape’s corners, he hadn't realised how hungry he'd gotten.

He raised his head to survey the others around the table, enjoying the calm mealtime atmosphere. For once, Lance was keeping his calm. He seemed like a well-meaning guy: Keith wanted to like him. He did like him, mostly. Something in him was pathetically desperate to impress Lance, to earn his approval - or jealousy - in ways that never mattered to him before. But sometimes Lance was just so noisy, and he had this bright, focused energy that made Keith want to curl up and  defend himself.

He knew he got grumpy when he was overwhelmed and he was trying to be better, but he'd never met anyone capable of creating so much stimulation at once as Lance. In a way, he reminded Keith of a puppy; bouncing around speaking a thousand words a minute with this manic grin on his face, and then passing out as soon as his head hit the pillow - or the closest floor, wall, or chair.

He didn't realise how much it had hurt Lance that Keith didn't remember him, after they first rescued Shiro. Shiro had explained it to him later, and it sort of explained why Lance was like a cross between a peacock and an armadillo whenever Keith came near. 

Keith admired him, though he'd never admit it. He got exhausted from a few sentences sometimes. The pressure of having to socialise constantly aboard the ship, the lack of personal space, and the emotional closeness everyone had and expected of him, it made him grouchy for sure. Remaining as constantly cheerful and friendly as Lance did impressed Keith way more than any piloting chops. Despite whatever kind of weird rivalry they had - or Lance just thought they had - Keith could see the kindness in Lance that never wavered like Keith’s seemed to.

Shiro told him just to smile, that people would understand he meant well even if he messed up as long as he managed to hold a friendly expression. But it wasn't that easy, especially when he had to be constantly vigilant against attack. His brain didn't always have room to remember to look friendly on top of that. He was constantly aware of how untrained they all were, using training as a way to help keep his anxieties at bay. The other paladins teased him for his excessive dedication, especially Lance. He just hoped no one had figured out how scared he really was.

One by one, everyone cleared away to the kitchens, taking their finished plates to be washed up. Keith, always a slow eater, was left alone with Lance. The blue paladin seemed to be lost in thought, his fork moving robotically through the goop.

“Are you going to eat that?” Keith asked. Be friendly, he remembered, pulling his lips into a smile and trying to look what Shiro called warm. Because a person could be a temperature, right. 

Lance looked slightly dazed, blinking at Keith like he'd just woken up. “Ugh, does it have to be, like, so green?” he complained. “It doesn't seem like food. I kinda don't trust it to put it in me. It's all goopy and it makes my whole body feel slimy even after I've eaten it.” He shuddered.

Keith smiled for real at that. He could definitely understand that feeling. It felt good to find common experiences with the others, especially when he often wasn't sure what was a universal experience and what was just… A Keith Thing. He'd never had much family or friends to teach him what was normal to voice and what he was meant to keep to himself.

“It took me a while to get used to it, but after I just closed my eyes and put it in my mouth, I actually kind of liked it,” Keith admitted carefully.

There was a sharp splutter from across the table and Keith flinched, thinking Lance was choking until he saw the grin splitting his face. Lance coughed a few times before he managed to compose himself. “Dude, did you hear what you just said? After you put it in your mouth you liked it?”

Keith frowned and crossed his arms over himself, feeling vulnerable. Lance didn't seem to notice how uncomfortable he was talking about that kind of thing with someone he'd only known for about a month.

“Just eat the damn goop,” he smiled shyly, happy to change the subject. It grew into a natural grin, though, once Lance matched it. How did the guy get his teeth so white? “Close your eyes and hold your nose. It'll be okay once you've had the first bite.”

Lance writhed violently as he forced himself to eat it, his long legs thumping against Keith's chair as he kicked out like it was causing him physical pain. His expression of completely disgust made Keith giggle. “Nope, I'll never get used to this stuff.” He eyed Keith curiously, making the red paladin go the same colour as his suit and squirm under his gaze.

“What?” Keith frowned, trying to plaster sullenness over his shyness.

Lance shook his head. “I didn't know you could actually laugh, Kogane,” he teased. “Hey, all this slimy quiznak has made me kind of wound up. I think I'm going to head to the training deck.”

“I still don't think you're using that word correctly,” he rolled his eyes but he was smiling. Lance's goofiness made him feel steadily more at ease in the kind of one to one interaction that usually made him so nervous. “You, training? By choice? I'll believe that when I see it.”

Lance made an offended noise and flipped his short hair. “I'm going down there right now,” he grumbled. “Want to join me?”

Keith shook his head. “No.”

There was an awkward silence and Lance looked genuinely hurt. It was only after the third time of replaying it in his head that Keith realised how cold he sounded and his face fell. He'd been getting on so well with Lance and then he went and messed it up. He didn't mean for it to sound like such a rejection, he just didn't want to train now when he hadn't planned to, and he was getting worn out from being sociable all day.

“Oh I see, you're scared I'll chop your short ass into a thousand pieces,” Lance chirped mockingly. He must've seen the panic on Keith's face and realised he meant well. Keith felt and suppressed the urge to point out that he wasn't that short. Although the only person  shorter than him on the ship was Pidge, damn it.

“No I'm not,” he growled back. “It's for your own safety, that's all.” He breathed a small sigh of relief as he found his verbal balance again and followed Lance into the kitchen with his plate, the two of them bickering comfortably the whole way.

***

Lance was doing what he thought was a very successful job of not looking at a shirtless, dripping Keith. They might be rivals but Lance had eyes. You didn't have to be in love with someone to notice their sweat-drenched abs. 

Keith was making little frustrated noises and rocking the bench they both shared as he tried to remove his shoes. It would be cute if he wasn't glowering so strongly.

Lance dropped to the ground and took hold of Keith's shoe. “Here, lemme help,” he suggested, tugging on the stubborn boot.

“Don't touch me!” Keith snapped, jerking his foot away and kicking Lance in the process. He scrambled up onto the bench, pressing himself away from Lance with an expression like a frightened animal. The fact that he looked scared rather than angry made Lance's heart ache as his head spun with confusion. He tried reaching a calming hand to Keith, but the red Paladin only shied away further.

“Keith, just breathe,” Lance ordered in an even tone as he fumbled for his helmet, despite the panic bubbling up in his own chest. He hadn't missed the quick looks and calming words that often went between Keith and Shiro, like when Keith had got all worked up about Lance and the airlock. He guessed Shiro could help, if he could just figure out how to get his comms to Shiro only.

“Shiro?” he said into his headset. “Um… We have a problem. Something’s wrong with Kogane.”

“What?” Shiro’s voice came through sounding concerned but calm as ever. “Are you okay? What happened? Where are you?”

“I don't know!” Lance cried, feeling horribly guilty for making Keith get like this. “I tried to help him take off his shoe and he went crazy. We're in the changing room by the training hall. He's totally freaking out, I don't know what happened, I don't know what I did, I didn't mean to-”

“Lance? Listen to me. It's not your fault, you didn't know. He's okay, Keith just gets freaked out sometimes when people touch him without warning. You just surprised him is all. I'm coming there now. Don't beat yourself up over it, Lance.”

Lance nodded numbly, despite the fact that Shiro couldn't see him, and tried to control the horrible sinking feeling in his chest. He wasn't a terrible person, he hadn't let down the whole entire universe.

“Keith?” he said cautiously.

Keith peered up at him with his weirdly large eyes, still shaking. He seemed to spent so much effort cultivating that loner-with-a-mullet vibe, but his ever-enormous eyes totally ruined it. 

“Shiro is coming to help. I-I’m sorry. I didn't mean to upset you, Keith.” He tried to keep his tone even and calm. It felt weird to call him his name and not some insulting nickname or his last name, but Lance felt  a sudden softness in himself at seeing the other paladin so scared. It almost reminded him of himself, when he got overwhelmed at family gatherings by all the people and noise and would go and hide in a cupboard until everyone had left.

He heard a voice at the door that snapped him out of his thoughts.

“Keith, it's Shiro.”

Keith looked up, uncurling slightly as the black paladin entered the room. It made a strange jealousy shoot through Lance at how the older paladin’s presence visibly calmed Keith, but he had to admit it calmed him too. Shiro was like everyone's big brother. He just wished he was as emotionally important to the team as Shiro, whose gentle leadership they would all completely collapse without.

“Can you stand up? Do you want to go back to your room?” he asked gently. He also shot Lance a tense smile while Keith wasn't looking, focused on his whole team as always. Just thinking about being that altruistic at all times, even after how he'd suffered at the hands of the Galra, made Lance's head spin with awe.

Keith nodded unhappily, his limbs untangling from around each other as he flopped forward and shakily got to his feet, leaning against Shiro and looking pale and tired. Shiro mumbled something in what Lance guessed was Japanese and Keith nodded against him, following him out of the changing room without looking back.

Lance stayed in the room by himself, staring blankly at the wall until Hunk called him for dinner through his helmet.

***

Keith hadn't been at dinner. Shiro didn't look particularly worried but that didn't stop a hundred anxieties from gnawing at Lance as he ate. He'd even missed Keith's grumpy presence across the table from him.

Lance wrung the shirt in his hands anxiously. He'd never been to Keith's room before but it wasn't hard to find: there were five rooms in a row where the paladins slept and his was the only one with the door shut, besides Pidge’s, which had a slightly concerning hazard sign on the door.

He knocked five times in a row and tried not to shake.

“Come in.”

Keith was tucked in bed, blankets pulled up to his nose. He started when he saw Lance. The frown that settled on his face made Lance's guilt from earlier rise back to the surface. He looked inexplicably cute, wrapped up in the bed, but he was unhappy again and it was Lance's fault, again.

“I thought you were Shiro,” he said blankly.

“You left your shirt.” Lance realised after he'd said it that it didn't exactly follow on from Keith's conversation, but his overactive mind had already planned the entire interaction and it wasn't his fault Keith went off script. After a beat of silence he added, “Are you okay, Keith?”

The red paladin just frowned. Lance sighed quietly, placing the sweaty shirt on the dresser and moving to leave. Just when he thought they were almost becoming a good team.

“Wait!” Keith cried helplessly. It was the least Keith-like sound Lance had ever heard. He sat up and grabbed Lance's wrist. Lance  noticed the fingers of his right hand tapping his thumb alternately and felt something in him spark in recognition at the repetitive movement, reminding him of the ones the school councillor had taught him back on Earth.

“I'm sorry,” Keith muttered, his free hand patting the bed. “Sit down.” His face wrinkled thoughtfully before he added, “Please?”

It was sweet, but unnervingly different from the Keith that Lance was used to, which made him feel hesitant and unsure. 

Keith saw his expression and looked stricken. “I'm sorry- I- I'm not very good at, um…” he scrabbled for a word, looking forlorn and so small. No matter how much Lance teased him for being the shorter one, his build made up for it and he looked twice as imposing as gangly Lance. Well, usually.

Lance felt the corner of his mouth turn up. “It's okay. Me either.”

“I know that I sometimes seem… Rude,” Keith said slowly, like he was carefully picking each word. “And today I was-” the tip of his nose went pink. “I'm so embarrassed.” He fell silent, staring resolutely ahead of him. He hadn't really said anything that Lance could reply to yet, but he acted like he was done talking.

“Keith…  Did someone hurt you when you were younger?” Lance asked nervously.

The bed wobbled as Keith jerked upright. “What? I- where'd you get that idea?”

Lance worried at his lip. Keith had such an intense stare that always made him nervous when it was turned in him, and he was trying not to cry at the thought of someone hurting his friend. Wait, no, his rival. They were rivals, not friends, right?

“You were so scared… When I touched your leg.”

When Lance dared to look at Keith, he was sitting hunched over with his hands clasped in front of him. From this side there was a slight jaggedness to the curve of his cheek, and Lance could see a raised muscle in his jaw as he clenched his teeth, could see his chest rise unsteadily with his shaky breath.

“Lance, I have Asperger’s Syndrome. I'm autistic.”

There was an uncomfortable noise that Lance eventually realised was Keith grinding his teeth.

“Thank quiznak,” he breathed, ignoring the way Keith's head instinctively jerked up to tell him he was wrong. “I thought someone had hurt you. I know we don't always get along but… I'd never want anyone to hurt you.”

Keith was quiet, tilting his head to the side. Lance could feel relief radiating off him. Eventually he said, “This is a lot for me. I don't want to talk any more today.”

Lance just nodded in agreement. He wanted to reach out, offer some kind of reassuring touch, but he knew Keith didn't like that, so he forced his hands to stay in his lap. He wasn't sure if now was a good time to tell Keith about his ADHD, or if that would be too much for him at once, so he kept his mouth shut. He hadn't wanted to tell anyone before, especially Keith, because he was desperate to be a valid member of the team and not be seen as an immature kid who couldn't stop whistling and fidgeting with his pen.

Lance gaped and physically jumped when Keith's head fell onto his shoulder. Keith sat up and turned to look at him with big curious eyes, hurt glimmering in them.

“I thought you hated to be touched.’

Keith's gaze shifted from hurt into content and he smiles sleepily. Lance marvelled at this side of Keith, sleepy and smiley. His stupidly jealous old self at the garrison would never have guessed that Keith Kogane was capable of any more facial expressions than a scowl.

“I don't like it unannounced or sudden,” he corrected. Lance remembered Shiro's words back by the training room and nodded in understanding. Growing up in a huge Latino family made him struggle to show his feelings, whether affectionate or furious, without touch. 

“So it's okay if you're using me as a pillow?”

“Yeah,” Keith agreed, sounding so exhausted that it made Lance's heart clench. “You're bony, though. You need to work out more,” he added matter-of-factly, instantly extinguishing the spark of affection that had momentarily bloomed. He laughed along with it, a bright, carefree sound Lance still struggled to associate with him and oh, the affection was back.

Lance wondered if he should make some kind of speech about how he understood and Keith was still Keith to him and how could he help and blah blah blah but he remembered those speeches from all his aunts after his diagnosis and how exhausting they were. Keith already looked like he was about to fall asleep. On Lance’s chest. Shirtless. 

“Your heart is pounding,” Keith announced calmly. “And are your muscles tense or do you just always feel like that? Muscle tension is very harmful for-”

Lance scrambled to feet and dashed out of the dorm as fast as his scrawny legs could carry him.

Chapter Text

“Ummmmmmmm…”

The yellow, green, and black paladins were clustered in the corner of the control room like perplexed bird watchers.

“Lance is broken,” Pidge announced. “I think Lance is broken.”

Hunk frowned and put his chin in his hands, watching thoughtfully. “Ooh, maybe Keith has managed to, like, hypnotise him with his giant eyes, and now Lance is his mind slave!”

Shiro made an indignant noise, feeling obligated to defend Keith, even if his eyes were enormous.

“Guys. Keith wouldn't do that. I don't think he can do that.”

Pidge turned to blink at the older paladin behind those huge glasses and Shiro realised he'd done that earnest thing again and taken the playful gossip that often flew between Hunk, Pidge, and Lance too seriously. It'd been so long since he'd been around teenagers. Sometimes he didn't immediately catch on when they were just being jokey.

“You're being a dad, Shiro,” Pidge informed him helpfully. He ducked his head, embarrassed. 

“Hey Keith, did you mind-control Lance?” Hunk called cheerfully. “Lance, if Keith is mind controlling you, blink once. Wait, no, he could controlling your blinks-”

Keith, for his part, just raised his head nonchalantly, his signature blend of annoyance and slight confusion marked across his features. Shiro had seen his persona harden protectively as he got older, but the underlying vibe of a kid in a supermarket who'd lost their parents had never quite faded away. He met Shiro’s gaze quickly, looking for confirmation that he'd read the situation right, and Shiro felt himself smile.

“Yeah, he's totally under my control,” Keith deadpanned back. “Lance, pull a really ugly face. See?” he added, turning back to Hunk.

Lance scrambled upright from his slouch against Keith’s side. “How is that proof, I didn't even do any- Hey! ”

Even Shiro laughed at Lance's disgruntled expression. Keith just pressed his lips together and looked laughingly at Lance out of the corner of his eyes. It was such a familiar gesture, as though they were the only two in the room. Shiro shook his head to himself, perplexed. The last thing he wanted to do was make the two uncomfortable with their newfound ease around each other - it was good for Voltron after all. But he couldn't help feeling curious about what had suddenly made them so friendly.

***

Lance was chewing on the drawstring of his hoodie when Keith found him after dinner. He'd been looking for a room to sit by himself but, finding that he didn't mind the idea Lance's company, he slunk into the room. Noticing the fabric hanging from Lance's mouth, Keith shot the blue paladin an expression of disgust.

Lance raised his eyebrows and let the string fall away. “What, you think I should just bite all my nails off like you do?” he answered Keith’s unspoken complaint.

Keith shrugged. “You'll make your jacket all gross, is all. I don't know how replaceable those things are in space.” He looked down at his feet with a pang of sadness. The thought reminded him of just how many Earthen things they couldn't replace out here. “I wouldn't want you to ruin it.”

“Ay, you sound like my mama,” Lance shook his head, air hissing out through his teeth.

Keith couldn't help but smile. He loved listening to other languages being spoken, even if it was just Lance’s accentuation of words that were technically also English. Something about it was fascinating and comforting at the same time. Languages he couldn't understand were always, strangely, easier on the ears. 

Lance noticed him smiling, what Keith thought was amusement filling his face in return. Lance had such a natural smile and his whole face seemed to welcome the warmth and magnify the emotion behind it. Keith had smiled into mirrors before. He definitely thought it suited Lance better.

“What's the smile for, vato?”

Keith felt his face go hot. “I like it when you speak Spanish. You never do it around everyone,” he admitted. His hands were beginning to fold nervously in his lap, until he saw the gleam in Lance's eyes. Nothing boosted his confidence like the possibility of Lance embarrassing him. 

“Not like that,” he protested, disgruntled, “I just like the way it, uh, feels, listening to another language. Shiro speaks Japanese sometimes. There's something, like, smoother about listening to a language you don't understand.”

Lance's eyes lit up evilly. “Vale, you think I'm smooth, zorra?”

Keith cringed at his choice of word as Lance winked. The way his lips moved around the last word, Keith felt sure that Lance had insulted him. Or possibly hit on him. He frowned, sulking.

“Ohh, why the pout, little mullet?” Lance cooed, making Keith's frown deepen even further.

“What's zorra? Did you just call me something rude?” he said eventually, feeling silly for how awkward the word sounded on his tongue compared to Lance's. The ease with which the words fell out, sounding much more natural and effortless than English, was why Keith liked it in the first place. 

He suddenly realised that he had no idea which language Lance considered his first. Somehow the idea of being out here, so far from home with a whole big language that no one but him could understand seemed so much worse if it was his mother tongue that he'd lost. 

Lance's laughter was bright and loud and, despite how the sudden noise made Keith want to curl into himself at first, it was a nice sound.

“Heh, you got me.” Lance started fiddling with his fingers, embarrassment so strange and out of place in the set of his bony shoulders. He was still grinning smugly, though. Keith didn't quite understand how he could hold so many emotions in his body at once, but he was proud of himself for picking them all out.

He wasn't sure if Lance was going to the effort to make it obvious for him, like how he'd started showing off his Spanish after Keith had mentioned it. He cursed himself for not being able to tell by himself if it was just Lance's natural openness and what was something more. 

It made his cheeks go pink and his chest feel warm. He'd known Lance was kind, underneath all his smugness. Shiro was calm and understanding, but it came naturally to him. The effort and attention Lance paid to people in need somehow meant more, when compared to his usual self. Thinking so attentively about what Keith needed was something that Shiro naturally did for every person he met, without really trying. Meanwhile, Keith was very aware that whatever Lance did was very deliberate and thoughtful for him. 

“Zorra is like… A girl who's, like… A vixen. Foxy," Lance explained. The playful gleam of his tone was at odds with the nervous set of his brows. Keith recognised that look from feeling it on his own face - like he wasn't sure if he was going too far.

Keith scowled  but his eyes were laughing. “Hey!”

“Sorry,” Lance grumbled, throwing his hands in the air and generally not sounding sorry at all. “You're the one who called me smooth!”

Keith couldn't help his mouth from turning up at the corners. “So you called me a foxy lady?” he laughed.

Wow, when did he get comfortable laughing like this around Lance McClain?  Usually he hated to be teased. He could remember a warning from when he was younger; that there was always truth behind any jest. He supposed he was always thinking about that in the back of his mind when people told jokes at his expense. Even from people he liked, they stung like the real thing. Then again, there wasn't really anything stinging in being called a vixen.

In answer, Lance just shrugged, doing something with his mouth that Keith didn't quite understand. He tried staring at it intently for a few seconds, but decided it wasn't that important.

Keith folded his legs under himself. “Hmm… How do you say ‘I am an idiot moron’ in Spanish?”

Lance shrugged. “Eh, soy un tonto, soy estúpido , Ha-" he drew himself up and his mouth slammed shut when he heard Keith's tiny giggle escape him. "¡Oye! You little-”

Keith just smiled angelically when Lance realised his game and turned to glare at him. 

Then they fell into an empty silence while Keith tried to figure out how to make the smile fade slowly from his face instead of quickly dropping, so it didn't seem like he was uncomfortable. With the silence or the company. 

“I miss Earth,” Lance said suddenly.

Keith startled, shifting around on his legs to stare at the blue paladin. He tried making connections in his brain, but he couldn't figure out how Lance had got there from their previous conversation.

“I- My family were always my best friends,” Lance said, like that was an explanation. Keith just blinked at him, waiting for more detail.  “Okay, so when you're in a bilingual household, it's like…  a third language. Like you can switch between either, and everyone understands what you're saying. It feels like your family has their own secret language. Speaking just one, it's like if you were only allowed to say half the English words you know.”

Keith nodded slowly as he started to understand. And even back on Earth, when Lance was away from his family - there were other Hispanic students at the garrison. He could always find someone to share either language with. Now he couldn't even have a conversation in pure Spanish, let alone any kind of mixture.

“So, speaking Spanish… It makes you homesick?”

Lance made a sort of assenting sigh. He glanced at Keith out of the corner of his eye and awkwardly tacked on a  “Yeah.”

Keith startled when he realised Lance was making it clearer in case he didn't understand the sigh. He struggled for a moment, unsure if he felt patronised or touched. Seeing him floundering, Lance leaned closer to him with a concerned expression. Keith remembered how Lance had disappeared yesterday and shuffled back slightly. He hadn't figured out what made him go, and the new and improved Supportive Lance never mentioned it, which Keith understood was a pretty obvious clue that he was supposed to pretend it hadn't happened.

Still, he'd been drawing up a mental list of variables which were present and might have been the cause. They'd been pretty close - maybe that made Lance anxious like Keith had felt when three strangers and one half dead old friend had piled onto his tiny vehicle in the desert.

“It's dark.”

“...We're in space.”

“No, I mean, look,” Lance huffed, pointing at the ceiling, “The motion sensor has turned the lights off. We haven't moved.” He wiggled his leg to turn them back on with a satisfying click, pleasure in his face at something Keith couldn't figure out.

“I haven't even done my bedtime yoga.”

Keith snorted loudly, his cheeks tightening into a smirk. “You do yoga?”

He searched Lance's face intently for a few seconds to make sure the hurt on it in response to the mocking was joking and not genuine. Lance seemed to understand because he dropped his hands away from his heart and rolled his eyes.

“Laugh now, but when my lifetime is an average of 5 years longer and I have the butt of a god -”

Keith just sniggered again, and then he doubled up and couldn't stop, the mental image of Lance in yoga pants trying to reach his toes at the bottom of his absurdly long legs at the forefront of his brain and paralysingly funny.

“But… Yoga?”

Lance didn't seem bothered. “I have to tire myself out or I can't sleep, but I don't want to get my heart rate too high and release adrenaline right before bed. So sí, cabrón, yoga.”

***

Shiro felt a little like he'd been thrown into an alternate timeline. He'd just opened his mouth to tell his team to speak a little more quietly, when Lance - Lance - beat him to it.

“Woah guys, one at a time!”

Shiro caught Lance’s  eyes slipping to Keith, who had his arms folded and looked a little white. His feet were frozen mid-attempt to shuffle away.

Pidge turned to look at him, unimpressed.

“Um, you're the one who started it?”

Lance held his hands up in a goofy surrender. Even when he was doing ridiculous things that but the entire universe in danger, Lance managed to be endearing.

“Okay, yeah. But that's only because I'm right and you guys won't listen! And look, it's upsetting K- uh, my eardrums.”

As Shiro watched, Keith raised his head, widened his eyes, dropped his head, and blushed a fantastic shade of red. Okay, what was going on between those two?

“Pidge is right, Lance, there's just too many ships there right now. It might be okay to take risks like that when you're training, but considering how important Voltron is, we have to play it safe when we can,” he agreed.

“Okay, paladins,” Allura announced, “Looks like we're going to have to wait a little longer before we stop for supplies. You should all have a little while to rest and recover.”

“Recover from what?” Lance whined. “We haven't even done anything dangerous in a million quintents!”

Shiro opened his mouth to say something when Keith's mouth set itself into the tight little line that meant he was agitated and he grabbed Lance's arm. Feeling his eyebrows raise in surprise, Shiro made a quiet noise of surprise. He settled onto a chair where he could see what was going on with the ship, always reluctant to completely abandon responsibility, as the other paladins dispersed. Pidge immediately flew to the spare computer and began clicking away, and Hunk trailed out of the room in the direction what Shiro had a sneaking suspicion would be the kitchen.

He turned his head from the two less… fiery paladins: Pidge and Hunk could usually be trusted to sort themselves out and not blow anything up or start any fights. Lance and Keith on the other hand… Shiro remembered Keith's tight frown and matching grip on Lance's arm. Turning his head, he prepared for their squabbling and stopped short, mouth open a little. They were sitting so close their legs pressed together, marvelling over what appeared to be a small vial of food goo.

Lance was holding it in his hands, holding it upside down and rattling it around to watch the slime ooze around inside it. Watching it with an expression like a puppy looking at a frisbee, Keith was comfortably sat against his side. He looked calm and happy, which was something Shiro didn't see half as often as he wanted.

Keith didn't do casual touch. Touches meant something; Shiro’s reassuring hand on his shoulder when he was afraid, Pidge tapping his back to get his attention about something on the computer screen, Hunk high fiving him after they'd successfully pranked Lance, Lance- Shiro’s brain ground to a halt. He didn't think he'd actually seen Lance and Keith touch each other, except for the past days. His face wrinkled up slightly with anguish as he remembered Lance's prone form draped across Keith's lap, the red paladin’s face decorated with the most stricken expression Shiro had ever seen on him. So they had touched before…

Keith hated showing that he liked people, let alone trusted them. In the past, he hadn't had good experience with trusting people. The way he seemed to see it, trusting more people meant having more to lose. In Shiro’s experience, trusting others made you stronger. Unfortunately, too many people aboard the ship seemed to disagree with him about that. He supposed it made the trust that had sprung up between team Voltron all the more precious.

Keith, who thought friendliness meant weakness and who found casual touch to be a waste of a very limited supply of energy, was leaning into Lance with a shy smile. Shiro was starting to wonder if Pidge and Hunk were right.

Chapter Text

Keith was about to leave his room and go hang out with Shiro before dinner when Lance appeared at the door. They managed to walk into each other as Lance went in and Keith went out, both oblivious to the other until it was too late - for their foreheads anyway, both of which would probably bruise.

“Ow!” Keith held his hand to his head with an accusatory glare.

Luckily for him, Lance seemed to have already forgotten his injuries because he just smiled sunnily and deposited his bayard in Keith's hands. Looking down at the object that was now in his hands, Keith's face wrinkled in disdainful confusion.

“Hi, Keith! I need your help with something,” Lance chirped, hovering in the doorway with an expectant face. 

Keith's bedroom was his private space. Lance had only been in there once before, and Keith couldn't remember any of the other paladins entering it at all. It wasn't that he directly enforced it exactly, but he went there to be alone; if he wanted to not be alone he wouldn't be there and the other members of team Voltron, save Lance, seemed to at least subconsciously understand that. Keith was not known as a fan of spontaneous companionship. Unless, apparently, the companion was Lance. 

To be fair, the one time Lance had been in and stayed there was because Keith asked him to. But a second entry seemed to mean something more solid and Keith didn't know if he wanted to let go of that sanctity, so he blocked the doorway with his body.

“Oh. I was kinda busy.”

Lance blinked his eyes dumbly at Keith for a few seconds, cocking his head to the side.

“Ummm. Are you mad at me or are you just…?”

It didn't seem like Lance was trying to be malicious, so Keith just shook his head slowly. Lance straightened his shoulders and looked less uncomfortable after the clarification. 

“Right. Sorry. You just seemed- anyway, uh, I could do with your help…” He trailed off and left Keith frantically trying to figure out why he sounded so nervous. He was still trying to feel out where exactly the line lay with Lance - one quick remark had him puffing his feathers up and spitting back confidently, another seemingly indistinguishable one and he would just collapse in on himself completely. 

With that in mind, Keith made a careful effort not to look angry as he shrugged. "Ask someone else? I was going to talk to Shiro about stuff.”

He had barely had a chance to catch up with Shiro all week and, considering the lack of readily available therapists in space, things were starting to pile up on his shoulders again. Talking to Shiro was a pretty good substitute. He thought maybe he should feel guilty for venting to his friend so much, but Shiro insisted that's what friends were for .

“You aren't taking it out on me,” he'd pointed out, eyeing the training dummy that was twitching on the floor with Keith's bayard sticking out of it, “That's different. You're allowed to share things that trouble you with your friends.”

After everything that had happened with Lance, Keith was getting slightly desperate for Shiro to analyse it all for him and make it seem less complicated. Sometimes he couldn't shake the part of himself that just wanted an adult to tell him what he should do - despite his contradictory track record with actually doing what adults told him to.

Lance looked a little pained. “I can't . No one would be able to get Pidge out of the lab right now without some kind of weapon, Allura and Hunk are doing repairs to the castle, I can't even find Shiro, and the idea of asking Coran for help honestly pains me.” He dug his hands into his pockets and pouted sadly.

“Ugh, fine. What do you want?”

“Are you going to let me get in, wey?”

Keith shook his head. After a beat, he realised that Lance expected him to clarify. But he'd only just opened his mouth to explain that his room was private when Lance cheerily suggested they go to his room instead. They walked in companionable silence because of Lance's newfound resolution to talk less. In front of all the paladins, he'd said that it was because he planned to impress princess Allura with his maturity and reserved nature, but Shiro called Lance's flirting a ‘defensive caricature’.

When Keith first met Lance, he's seemed so annoyingly self confident. When Keith had complained of as much, Shiro had told him to look for insecurities underneath, and Keith had realised that the opposite was really true. Most of Lance's noise and egotistical nonsense was some kind of cover up. Keith didn't really understand what was wrong with him that needed covering up, but he wished it didn't. Partly because he wanted Lance to be happy, mostly because he wished the castle could be a quieter place. He'd noticed that Lance was always quieter and more natural when he was with fewer people, though. Maybe that was the only reason he felt so keen to spend time alone with the blue paladin. 

“Are you going to tell me what help you actually need?” Keith suggested as he curled himself into the corner of Lance’s bed where it met the wall. After hovering awkwardly, Lance took a seat. There was a considerable gap left between them and it felt pretty deliberate. Keith remembered the last time they'd sat on a bed together, and Lance had ran away. He sat with his head tilted sideways, regarding Lance flatly.

Lance brandished some scraps of cloth and a little bottle of some kind of oil.

“Okay, so I think my bayard got some kinda blockage in it, so I asked Coran and he said to clean it with this,” he indicated the supplies in his hands, “But-”

Keith made a disinterested noise. “So? Clean it yourself.”

Lance held up a finger in Keith's face with a staged sigh and a shake of his head. “¡Espera, primo! I wasn't done, estupido.” He clicked his tongue and made a big show of being annoyed until Keith elbowed him and rolled his eyes. “Anyway , I tried to clean it myself, but it's like…” he shuddered. “You know when someone scrapes their nails on a chalkboard? It's like that. ¡Uy! I can't even touch that oily cloth without wanting to die. Um, not literally.”

Keith felt his nose wrinkle up. “I got it that time,” he mumbled. Lance's face fell and he looked guilty , so Keith hastily added, “Thanks, though.”

He stared down at the bayard in his lap, unsure how to proceed.

“So! Can you do it for me?” Lance said brightly, as though the awkward silence had never fallen.

Keith just rolled his eyes - what a baby ! - and snatched the cleaning materials off him. Lance looked decidedly smug as he rested his hand across the bayard and it sprang into its proper shape to be cleaned. He then settled his chin in his hands and watched Keith doing all the hard work for him. For all Keith knew, it was all a hoax to get out of hard work. The cloth seemed fine to him. But every now and then it would squeak as Keith scrubbed hard against the blaster, and Lance would visibly flinch, so maybe Lance was being genuine after all.

He'd only asked the other boy to clean out the blockage, but as it turned out, the entire thing was in need of a little care. Or more than a little. When an honest to god stone fell out of it, Keith decided to give the whole thing a clean up.

“Lance, what were you going to so when you were in the middle of battle and your completely filthy bayard exploded?”

With a roll of his eyes, Lance insisted that exploding from dirt was not a thing, and Keith made an indignant noise and griped about how it was still dangerous and irresponsible.

They bickered eagerly as Keith scrubbed the whole thing inside and out, feeling suddenly grateful that his knife was so much easier to clean. When his arms got tired, he shuffled closer and used Lance as prop to hold it while he poked down the barrel and all the weird unexplained cavities and scraped out the carbon that had been left behind from the heat in there.

Keith was acutely aware of where their legs pressed together. He kept his feet tucked safely away underneath him; he didn't think he'd ever be okay with anyone touching his feet - but the awareness was different from that. He could feel a steady heat in his leg and his blood felt like it was pumping faster in that area than everywhere else. He studiously ignored it and kept his eyes focused on the bayard, tongue poked out in concentration.

His hands were completely blackened with residue, so he unthinkingly wiped it off on Lance’s pants. They were already fairly dark, so it wouldn't matter, right? He looked up from aggressively scraping his hands across Lance's thighs to see Lance's eyes bulging out of his skull like Keith had suddenly sprouted horns.

Keith flinched away. Lance went positively maroon and started muttering Incoherently . Keith's leg started shaking without him telling it to. Lance looked upset and he knew it was to do with him but he didn't understand what he'd done wrong and that meant he didn't know how to fix it. He tried unsuccessfully to curb the bouncing of his leg, tapping every finger in turn to his thumb and counting his breaths.

“I'm sorry, I did something, I don't know what I did wrong I didn't mean to upset you, Lance-”

Lance finally looked up, a weak smile on his face. The fact that his smile was now hugely reassuring instead of irritating was… sort of concerning. Keith thought he'd been doing a pretty good job of convincing himself that Lance was annoying to him and nothing else,  because annoying people didn't make him have to deal with his emotions or require his trust or his time or want to touch his feet… But as soon as Lance smiled Keith's shoulders sagged and he flopped forward into Lance's chest.

Lance's hands came around to hesitantly pat at his back, and he felt simultaneously more grounded and at peace than he had since leaving earth, and completely lost.

“Cariño, what's wrong?”

“You were upset,” Keith told Lance's shirt. “I don't know why and it was my fault. I did it again... ”

He felt Lance's laugh shaking his torso.

“Jesús, me jodiste…” Lance mumbled in reply. Keith had no idea what that meant, but the vibrations were comforting all the same. “I guess we both have a thing about touch,” he said eventually. “Well, I have a thing about dudes rubbing their hands all over my thighs without warning-”

Keith heard Lance's mouth snap shut. He already understood what Lance was saying, though, and he felt terrible. He'd just randomly started aggressively groping Lance's legs - of course that had made him uncomfortable.

“I'm sorry I made you uncomfortable,” Keith said meekly, relieved that the atmosphere seemed to be okay again but not yet ready to remove his face from Lance's shirt and definitely not ready to think about why shoving his face in Lance's chest made him feel so safe in the first place.

***

“¡Culo de dios! Coño, sapo, pollas en vinagre- huy…” Hunk watched with a blend of amusement and concern as his friend paced the room, occasionally punctuating his exclamations by butting his head against the wall. “¡Es un rollo! Ay de miiiiii,” he whined , dramatically flopping onto Hunk’s bed.

“Are you done, buddy?” Hunk asked carefully.

“Que te den por culo,” Lance said venomously, and Hunk knew him well enough to assume his friend just told him to be intimate with a snake or some such thing.

“Lance? I'm kicking you out of here unless you stop being a foul-mouthed Disney Princess and tell me what the hell is wrong,” he said sternly, although they both knew that Hunk would never kick Lance out unless he'd contracted the bubonic plague - and even then he'd be hesitant.

Lance fluttered his absurdly long eyelashes and pouted. “Do I have to?”

Hunk folded his arms across his chest. He was too young to be a mother. “Don't be such a baby. Let’s see… Is it about Allura? You don't seriously like her, right? I mean, I get it, that is a hot piece of space a-” Hunk’s eyes widened and he started coughing as a blob of food goo lodged in his throat in shock as the answer came to him. That was probably Allura taking vengeance for Hunk calling her a space babe. She wasn't even in the room, but Hunk wouldn't put harnessing the power of karma past her when she was mad.

“You- I was going to ask you about- but- Okay, I'm kind of a total Judas,” Hunk admitted. He tried to slow down before he spooked Lance too hard. “Everyone wanted me to ask you about Keith, so I-”

“Woah woah woah, ‘ask me about Keith’? What the hell does that mean, ask me about Keith?" Lance was making scare quotes with his hands. Hunk stepped back nervously - if Lance was making scare quotes, that meant he was mad. “Why don't you ask Keith about Keith! Ask- ask yourself about Keith! What do I know about Keith? I don't even like the dude, Keith and I are rivals,  Hunk, Keith is my rival."

Okay, he definitely said ‘Keith’ too many times just then. A fortnight ago Lance had hissed and spat like an alley cat at the mention of his name, and now he was racking up 8 name drops in a couple of seconds.

Hunk nodded coolly. “Yeah, you guys are definitely huge rivals. Everyone really respects your rivalry, you know. Um, but we were just kinda wondering how come, like, you and Keith are so. Y’know. Kinda. Y’know.”

Lance's eyes narrowed very very quickly. Abort! Hunk shrieked in his brain. He wasn't afraid of Lance per se - that kid was six skinny feet of mama’s boy. But he would really rather eat nothing but food goo ever again that have to be confrontational, least of all with his best friend.

“Keith and I. Are. Oh mannn … Look, you'd understand a lot more if I could tell you this thing about Keith, that we kind of bonded over, but he asked me not to tell anyone. I think Shiro knows, but. He just doesn't want anyone to think different of him and… I get it, you know. Cause I kind of have a similar deal, with my-”

“Ohhh!” Hunk gaped. That made a lot more sense - it was a lot easier to put your differences aside with someone when you had a shared weakness, because you suddenly understand what it's like to be in their shoes. And Lance could understand why Keith wouldn't want people to think differently of him for how he was, because Hunk knew he was in pretty much the same boat. Well, except his boat also had girls in it. “Dude, I already knew Keith was gay. Mullet, duh."

Hunk didn't get to finish his proud statement about how happy he was for them that not only did they seem to be getting along, but they'd found someone to talk about liking guys with, because Lance dropped his bowl full of food goo with a huge crash.

“ Keith is gay?”

Chapter Text

“Mmmrrrphhhh pffff crmff kmmmmffff.” Lance definitely sounded very distraught, but Hunk had no idea what he was actually saying. He'd refused to come to dinner and hadn't moved from burying his face in his pillow, except when Hunk offered to go and get Keith.

He'd meant perfectly well, since the reason he was upset seemed to be something to do with Keith, so maybe he could fix it. But Hunk only managed to take two steps towards the door before his friend’s hand shot out and grabbed his wrist, threatening to kill him in muttered Spanish.

“Buddy, you need to eat something. The kitchens are empty now, no one is going to make you talk to anyone. You know you get heartburn when you take your meds on an empty stomach.”

Lance flopped onto his side, removing his face from the pillow so he could at least be heard. He was an incredibly pitiful Sight. The wobbling of the blanket suggested that Lance was shaking his leg underneath it and at least that was a good sign. Lance only jiggled his leg when he was bored: upset and angry were often an inseparable pair for him and when he was angry he became very serious and still until his whole body was like one clenched fist.

Lance usually only started to get restless when the clutch of whatever strong emotion had seized him had begun to fade, because the way he fixated and wallowed didn't leave much room for boredom. If he was bored, Hunk had already won half the battle.

“Ughh, don't want ‘em,” the blue paladin whined. Lance was paranoid about unforeseen side effects of the ship’s synthesised medication - although it was created especially for him rather than a potential cocktail of trial and error like he took on Earth - and he'd recently been toying with the idea that he'd be a better fighter when he was unmedicated. Whether or not that was true, Hunk refused to see his friend as out of sorts as when he was on an irregular medication schedule. Plus, the easily provoked and uncontrollable anger that he'd seen Lance have to grapple with before he got diagnosed was something they were mutually very happy to keep at bay.

“We are not even arguing about this, dude, so come eat your food goo or I swear to god-”

Lance held his hands up in surrender as he pathetically rolled to his feet while still draped in blanket.

“Vete a la verga culero," Lance complained as he was led out of his room.

After so many years with Lance, Hunk wasn't completely defenseless. Since ninety percent of the times Lance directly addressed him were insults, Hunk had long since taken the liberty of memorising a few curse words to respond with, although full sentences were stretching it. He'd tried his hand a few times in the past and usually just left Lance looking more befuddled than anything else.

“Perdedor. Let's get you some food.”

***

They'd only been in the kitchen thirty seconds when Shiro shuffled in guiltily. He started at the sight of Hunk and his blanketed companion, righted himself, and nodded awkwardly at Hunk. The look they shared was that of two single dads at a Troublesome Toddlers group.

Shiro hastily shovelled some goop into a bowl and scarpered, sensing the atmosphere and making his way out as quickly as possible.

“So Keith is-” Lance coughed, lowering his voice when he realised his volume had shot up again. Shiro might still be outside. “So Keith is gay?” he hissed.

Hunk shrugged. “ Yeah , dude, you… didn't know?”

Lance narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “How do you know that?”

It didn't even matter who Keith liked, but Lance was still sort of shocked. He didn't think Keith liked anyone. Well, he didn't think Keith didn't like anyone, it was just….Lance hadn't exactly considered it like that. It wasn't like he had any reason to.

“Dude. Dude . You seriously didn't- Okay, like, can you imagine Keith kissing a girl?” He crossed his arms, looking smug.

Lance shuddered. “Ew, no, I… No.”

Hunk made a satisfied noise. “ Exactly . There you go. That's because he's gay.”

“I mean, he- Keith- I-” Lance stuttered pathetically. “I kind of, didn't really think about it. I mean, I assumed he didn't really. Care about that.” Which, Lance realised suddenly, was an unfair assumption to make just because Keith was kind of aloof. He was probably just private about these things, which would make sense considering how he was about, well, most things. Lance started to run through every single memory of Keith he had and cross reference it with the new information.

Hunk raised his eyebrows. “Still with us, buddy?" His voice called Lance back out of his thoughts and into reality. "I mean, you know I am clueless about these kinds of things and even I noticed, so.”

“You might be right but, like, we shouldn't assume that just based on vibes.”

He didn't miss the way Hunk wrung his hands together and looked decidedly guilty. "What was that?” Lance's head snapped up. “Dude, what? I know you know something.”

Hunk stuck his hands in his pockets and became suddenly incredibly preoccupied with the floor.

“I don't know anything. I didn't hear anything. I am as clueless as a newborn baby, dude.”

“You know something! What do you know, Hunk, I swear.”

Hunk gave Lance the kind of serious glare he only gave when he meant serious business. The fact that he'd only used that glare a couple of times in the entire time they'd known each other made Lance cower under its sudden intensity.

“Lance. I love you, buddy, but this isn't my stuff to share. I wouldn't have even told you anything if I'd realised you didn't already know. If you want to know more, you'll have to ask him.” He thought for a moment. “But if you tell him I had anything to do with this you are dead.”

***

“I think Lance hates me,” Keith said bluntly. It was a different kind of blunt than his usual socially inept but harmless brand. It was cold and hard and defensive and he was pretending not to care to protect himself. “And everyone knows I'm gay. So yeah, it is that bad.”

He peered flatly at Shiro, who had seen more life in his grandfather’s deathbed. The thought made him shudder: Keith could be cruel, furious, he could be completely terrified, and none of those things were fun to see. But Shiro rarely saw him look so lifeless. 

“Keith, none of that is true, and you know it. I thought you and Lance were a team now?”

“Me too,” Keith said, with the same bluntness that he'd been speaking with for the last hour. “But I heard Hunk tell him… About me… and he's been avoiding me since then. And Hunk knows and Lance knows so Pidge probably knows too because they aren't going to keep secrets from Pidge and that means those stupid mice probably know which means Allura knows and so Coran knows.” He quickly added that Hunk hadn't outed him on purpose, only because he'd assumed Lance already knew. He was just in time to stop Shiro from having a complete and utter mother hen meltdown.

Shiro was baffled. He hadn't pinned Lance as the kind of guy to go cold on someone for those kind of reasons at all. He felt his hand curl into an angry fist. “How do you know Lance is ignoring you?”                               Keith had the unhelpful combination of a huge dose of pessimism and a much smaller dose of emotional comprehension. He tended to jump to the worst conclusion with the worst evidence.

“Um, because I've spoken to him directly five times today and he hasn't looked me in the eye or addressed me once .”

Shiro bit his lip. A big part of him wanted to find an explanation for this, but he had to admit that what Keith described was some pretty blatant snubbing. The way Keith's eyes bubbled with anger in an attempt to conceal the genuine hurt splashed across his features made Shiro’s protectiveness spring up in full force. Just because Keith had a mouth on him (and fists) didn't mean he wasn't incredibly vulnerable underneath.

“I'll talk to him. He might be kind of embarrassed about it but he can't hate you. It's not 2017 anymore and you're the only Texan one here.”

“I am not goddamn Texan,” Keith hissed with surprising fury, “And if you say a word to him I will rip your throat out while you sleep and shove it up your quiznak.”

Keith  turned away and blocked Shiro out with his pillow, a clear indication that he was done talking.

***

For the second time that week, Keith and Lance's foreheads shared a passionate embrace. Lance's eyes were red and puffy, Keith noticed with alarm. Also, it hadn't escaped his notice how particular Lance was with his sleep schedule, which made it odd for him to be roaming the castle at this time of night.

His eyes shone a dull blue in the dim light of the castle as he cursed and rubbed at his head.

“Keith…” Lance's gaze cleared and he leaned forward to peer into Keith's eyes. “Woah dude, are you okay?”

Keith folded his arms, feeling self conscious. “Pot, kettle,” be grunted. His brain helpfully told him that Lance had been crying, but he stubbornly ignored it because he didn't want to end up having to deal with it or think about why. “What're you doing u-” he didn't finish because Lance snatched up Keith’s left hand in his and cradled it like his firstborn. He had the nerve to fill his face with shock and horror at the tiny cut, as though he hadn't just taken Keith's trust and shredded it into a million pieces over the last few days. Keith cared more about that than a little blood. 

“Sorry, touching without warning, right, right, “ Lance sounded furious or irritated or some other kind of frantic anger, but not at Keith exactly. There was no one else in the room though, so Keith couldn't figure out who else might have upset the blue paladin. “Keith, you're bleeding!”

“I know,” Keith said blankly. He waited, cursing himself when the pause carried on to the point he realised meant he was expected to continue. “I just bit my nails too hard. What's your excuse?”

In the darkness, Lance cocked his head questioningly.

“You look awful.”

“Oh. Thanks man,” he drawled sarcastically, but not before a spark of vulnerability had leapt across his face. He shrugged casually, tone in stark contrast with his face and his words. “I dunno. I guess I haven't been sleeping well that well. Getting my ass kicked by sleep deprivation and A- exhaustion.”

“I think those are the same thing.” Keith peered at him suspiciously. He knew a backtrack when he saw one, but unfortunately he didn't know how to tactfully draw out the hidden meaning, so he left it. Judging by Lance's current demeanour right now, he wasn't in the mood to be pushed.

“Oh.”

They stood there in paralysed silence until Lance - who looked progressively more terrible the longer Keith looked at him - coughed.

“Okay, look. There's not a single cell in my body that wants to have this conversation right now, but I can't just leave you wandering around with a face like that. What's wrong, Keith?”

Keith felt himself physically flinch. There was a significant difference between discomforted avoidance and outright contempt, and he hadn't realised just how much more Lance's openly stating his hatred would hurt. Lance was the most welcoming, accepting dude Keith had ever met, and yet he'd managed to shunt their relationship from friends to complete intolerance in twenty four hours.

“You don't want to talk to me that badly?”

Lance jumped out of his skin and his jaw dropped so far open that it clicked audibly when he snapped it shut. “Wh- what the hell? No? I just meant I found you skulking around at night with a knife and you really don't look like you want to be approached and I'm getting in your space and your feelings.” He looked like a kicked puppy at the very idea that Keith would even think that.

Keith was very used to people thinking he was being meaner than he meant, and he was also quite familiar with thinking other people were being meaner than they really were. And here he was, killing both birds with one stone by upsetting Lance with his assumptions. You're on fire day, Keith.

“The fact that you're asking me what's wrong kind of makes me think. That I might have messed something up again.”

“¿Qué?”

Lance looked so honestly, innocently confused that Keith wanted impale himself.

“Oh quiznak. I kind of heard Hunk telling you, uh, something about me, and then you were avoiding me so I thought you were that kind of guy and you hated me.” Keith struggled to spit out the actual word gay without going stupidly red and choking. He could do it with Shiro but apparently Lance made him uncomfortable being quite so open. He wasn't ashamed of himself exactly, but to him coming out felt a lot like telling your grandmother about your sex life. 

To his credit, Lance didn't look angry at being misjudged. Mostly confused, and sort of stupid but in an endearing way as his jaw hung open and he wore a brain dead expression.

“So you thought I hated you because you're gay? Me?” he ducked his head and wiped off the relieved half-smile that had crept onto his face. The way he'd emphasised 'me' so incredulously meant something, he was sure of it. “I'm, uh, so sorry I gave you that impression. That's why you're out here so late looking like you just watched someone eat a kitten?”

Keith nodded dumbly. “Well, kind of. I'm not the best at sleeping so I just wander around a lot.”

He widened his eyes as a blush spread across Lance's cheeks and he started wringing his hands nervously. He looked like a middle schooler asking his date to the dance - so that meant he was nervous but hopeful. Keith found it very useful to compare expressions to scenarios and figure out from prior knowledge what the person in that scenario would be feeling and apply it to his present.

“Sleep is really important. Did you know if you sleep for less than three hours a night you'll start to exhibit the same symptoms as ADHD? That's why I need to get my eight hours or I turn into a mess. Imagine that and already having ADHD. ADHD squared,” he giggled. Something about how he phrased it was weird, but Keith found that quite a pleasing fact and filed it away. He didn't notice how Lance suddenly looked very awkward, or his relief when Keith didn't seem to notice anything. 

“Anyway, would you maybe want to come hang out in my room? I don't like to think of you wandering around like this at night, especially if it's my fault. We could at least keep each other company. You don't have to come if you don't want.”

“No, it's a good idea! And small talk tires me out so maybe it'll help me fall asleep.”

Chapter Text

Lance had a problem. On the one hand, he really didn't want to be alone right now. On the other hand, if he was allowed to communicate with other humans after midnight he became the most impulsive, oversharing idiot known to man. With everything that had been going through his head lately re Keith, inviting Keith back to his room seemed like one of the worse ideas Lance had ever had. But here they were.

It didn't help that Keith seemed to glisten in the dim light from the glowing crystal Lance kept as whatever the masculine world for a night-light was. His overactive mind had a habit of taking shadows in the darkness and running with them, so he'd grabbed the small crystal when he'd seen it in a cave during a mission. It cast a soft purple glow across the room that didn't mess with his body clock but stopped paranoia from eating him alive.

Keith was sitting on his bed, a little more life in his dull eyes than before, looking carefully neutral. Lance was half sitting, half lying, with his feet just touching Keith's crossed legs. The little bit of human warmth was making the possibility of actually falling asleep a much realer one, but it would leave Keith in a very awkward position, so Lance tried to stay awake every time his eyelids fluttered shut. Each time he forced his eyes open again, Keith was watching him with a small smile.

“What are you smiling about? Quit staring, socio.”

Keith flinched. “Staring? I didn't mean to - it's a, it's a symptom… I stare without meaning to sometimes and I don't realise I'm doing it.”

“Mierda, metí la pata. Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I was just teasing, I'm sorry. I don't even mind, it's fine.” It was fine except for the fact that all those times Lance had found the red paladin’s gaze lingering on him meant absolutely nothing. He watched Keith's face attentively for signs that he was upset and only relaxed when Keith's little smile came back.

“I like talking to you," Keith said suddenly. "I know when I'm meant to talk, or least I think I do. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, still, and you're just accepting of my bad conversational skills.” He smiled teasingly. “I mean, you're talking most of the time anyway, so there isn't room for me to mess up.”

Lance's heart fluttered. He wasn't sure how to respond to that. He liked talking to Keith, too, but he didn't know how to say that or if he should say it at all. He liked how he could pause to think about what he was going to say and Keith didn't think it was weird, he could randomly change the subject, he could let himself get passionate and Keith didn't get that ‘oh god, Lance is being weird again’ look in his eyes. When he started a sentence too loudly or steadily climbed in volume as he spoke without realising, Keith would tell him he was being loud but without judging him or making him feel ashamed for not being able to control his volume very well.

“How aren't you tired?” he mumbled through a yawn, watching Keith's soft smile grow. He wasn't used to seeing that kind of gentleness on Keith, especially not directed at him, which was doing super weird things to his heart.

“You're way less annoying when you're sleepy.” Why did that feel like the greatest compliment anyone had ever given anyone in the history of mankind? He watched Keith carefully in an attempt to figure out what he was thinking. He just looked content and thoughtful, until he added anxiously, “Uh, if you want to go to sleep now I can go…”

Lance definitely wanted to sleep, but if he had to choose one or the other he was going to chose company. He didn't know if he'd be able to fall asleep without the comforting feeling of another chest rising and falling in the vicinity,anyway. At least if Keith stayed he wouldn't end up trapped alone in the dark until morning.

He missed when he had brothers and sisters who were made for this kind of thing, curling up beside him in the double bed he inherited when his big brother left for college and there was no awkwardness in falling asleep together. Keith was a poor substitute in that area.  His eyes glowed such a pretty violet colour in the dark, though, and he never went on Lance's videogames and spent all his money. Those were two big advantages over any of Lance's family. 

“I'm not going to be able to sleep on my own tonight,” he confessed with after-midnight ease, “But I don't want to fall asleep and leave you trapped there all night…”

The words were barely out of his mouth before there was a rustle and suddenly Keith was under the blankets, pressed up against his side. Even with the weird spontaneity and emotional confidence that seemed to posses everyone after a certain hour, Lance nearly choked on his spit. He must be asleep already, he reasoned. It was just a dream in which Keith was warm and pliable and… Almost falling out of the bed.

“You…”

Keith stuck his hand in Lance's face in an aborted shushing motion. “You need to sleep or you'll get ADHD or whatever,” he said solemnly. Lance giggled a little at his earnest stare, but he was touched by his concern and the fact that he'd remembered Lance talking about why he cared about sleep from way earlier. It was a little too late to stop him from getting ADHD, but the thought counted. “If this is the only way you can sleep then I'm happy to stay here.”

“You're going to fall out of the bed. I'm going to touch you a little bit so I can stop you falling, is that okay?”

He heard Keith laugh and point out quietly that they were already touching quite a bit. He stiffened a little, though, when Lance gently rolled him over so he was laying on his side, and tugged him in so they were essentially spooning. Jesus, they were spooning. Lance felt ready to fall asleep any moment, but he tried to remember to tease Keith about that in the morning. It almost felt like he heard Keith sighing quietly, but he was probably just a heavy breather.

Lance fell asleep to the thought that maybe Keith was, in some ways, even better than one of his siblings.

***

Keith woke up to a faint purple light and screaming. He cast around the the darkness for a few panicked seconds before remembering where he was and trying to sit up. Lance's arm around his waist that had been gentle and butterfly-inducing was now making it hard to breathe as Lance thrashed desperately and continued to shout out in his sleep.

Keith had no idea what the etiquette was for circumstances like this, but his hands took over and started shaking Lance awake. He couldn't bear to see the blue paladin like this any more so he decided to shake him awake before he could think about it. It was dangerous to wake a sleepwalker but Lance wasn't walking, so it was fine.

“Lance,” he hissed.

Lance's blue eyes fluttered open. Usually so warm and bright, they were dark with fear. He grabbed Keith's shoulders and started yelling frantically in Spanish. Sudden terror clutching at him, Keith reared back away from his rough hands. He'd grown so comfortable with Lance's touch that as long as Lance moved slowly he didn't even need the verbal warning, but suddenly all the panic rushed back as Lance squeezed tight enough to bruise. The person Keith had grown to trust was miles away and a stranger was touching him, hard. 

“Lance, stop it! It's Keith,” he protested hating this unfamiliar Lance. “Get off me!”

The genuine fear in his voice snapped Lance out of his nightmare haze. Keith realised he was panicking as well, now, and instantly felt guilty. Lance was the one who'd been having the nightmare and Keith needed to be there for him, but the deep discomfort of waking up in a strange room with a friend who didn't recognise him and who'd hurt him was settled deep under his skin. For all his exuberance and volume, Lance had never genuinely shouted at him before with malicious intent.

Lance struggled into a sitting position where the glowing crystal illuminated the sweat clinging to his face in full force. He'd stopped shouting and squirming but he looked very obviously upset.

“Lance?”

“¿Qué- Keith?” he blinked sleepily. The vulnerability Keith had glimpsed last night was returning in place of the defensive and afraid person he'd been just moments ago. Keith ran his hand through Lance's sweat-sticky hair without thinking. Normally he loved the feeling of Lance's soft hair against his skin whenever it would brush against him, but now that he finally got to feel it properly, it was all gross from Lance's nightmare. Keith felt cheated. 

“It's okay, we're in the castle, you're in your bed. I think you had a nightmare?” his attempt at soothing sounded suspiciously wobbly to his own ears, but Lance relaxed into his touch.

Lance's skin was too hot and kind of sticky and Keith hated the feeling, but Lance had said last night that it helped, feeling the solid presence of another living thing, so he forced himself not to pull away when Lance pressed himself up against the other paladin and shuddered.

“I don't even remember what I dreamed about but I feel…”

“Not good, it looks like,” Keith offered. “I've never seen you look that scared before.” Out of all the dangerous things they'd done and Lance never seemed to be afraid at all. In fact, he was known for his ability to roll out of a near death situation on his feet, a pick-up line on his lips. It was jarring compared to right now, when Lance was pale and trembling and it was suddenly obvious just how skinny he was. Keith didn't want to rub it in, though, so he didn't say any more.

Lance took a couple of shaky breaths as he tried to right himself, resting his head against Keith's shoulder as a way of anchoring himself while Keith continued to run his hands through his short brown hair.

“You're all sweaty and gross,” Keith complained, even though he was beginning to like the feeling of Lance's weight against him. He tried to get up to fetch a towel but Lance whined and looked miserable every time Keith tried to move. He looked around nearby for anything he could reach without having to leave Lance on his own. Nothing was within reach, though, so he pulled his own shirt over his head with a sigh.

Lance wiggled round to stare at him. It made him want to hide under a mountain of blankets but he had a feeling his blush would glow through a wall right now. He swallowed hard when he felt a hot hand on his stomach, felt his breathing rate and body temperature double. Looking Lance in the eye took all of his self control but it was worth it for the image of Lance looking up at him with a tentative expression and a blush to match Keith’s. His hand remained determinedly on Keith's bare torso, not moving but not pulling away. What did that mean?

Swallowing thickly, Keith balled up his shirt and wiped at Lance's glistening temples. He tried to be gentle as he ran the fabric over the slope of Lance's nose and Lance lifted his head obligingly as the cloth wiped under his chin. The look he fixed on Keith was a much more hesitant brand of his usual smirk, but the fluttering intention was there. Keith froze as he met Lance's eyes, which were observing him with clouded intensity. It made Keith feel like he was putting on a show, going through the motions of mopping up Lance's sweat as some kind of bid for attention.

His breath caught in his throat when Lance started making little circles with his hand, light touches making Keith's toes curl at the sensitivity. They kept their eyes locked together the whole time. Lance seemed to be searching Keith's eyes for something with such weight to his gaze that it drew a shudder from its recipient. Keith was still holding his shirt, clutching it like an anchor in his first, but he'd lost the ability to be able to move.

“I can feel your heartbeat,” Lance said hoarsely. He splayed his fingers to illustrate the point. “I want to-”

Keith wasn't sure what happened next. He'd been frozen to the spot since Lance had touched him and he didn't remember moving, but he remembered something in him snapping and then the feeling of Lance's lips pressed desperately against his. The ability to move had repossessed him in a rush and he felt himself crowding closer. There was too much manoeuvring for it to be a good kiss, the tension of the previous moments held tight in their bodies making for a bruising embrace. Neither of them opened their mouths, just pressed closer in a desperate search for… Something.

The seconds were an aching blur that Keith barely registered, until he pulled back and found himself in Lance's lap with only a small inkling of how he got there. Lance didn't say anything but Keith could feel the eyes on him. He pressed closer to Lance's chest like he could hide himself in it, with Lance's stupid confusing hand still painting circles across his abs.

“Look at me,” Lance said gently. Keith thought he heard a smile in his voice.

Hiding from Lance in Lance's shirt was a terrible plan, but thankfully Lance didn't point that out. He just kept stroking Keith's hair and breathing steadily and being infuriatingly calm until Keith finally let himself look up and meet the eyes of the guy he'd just kissed. Or had kissed him, he couldn't remember. Whatever.

Lance was smiling and his eyes were shining. He looked a lot better happy than terrified. Keith wished Lance was uglier because maybe then he wouldn't blush such a dark shade of red at the fact that Lance was smiling like that at him. Then Lance's fingers were under his chin tilting it up and their lips were together again but Lance was gentler this time, lips sliding against Keith's loosely. Keith could feel a tongue probing  gently at the tight seal of his lips and let his mouth fall open like Lance's. He wondered if you could tell how experienced someone was from how they kissed.

The room was silent except for the sloppy sound of their lips sliding against each other, which seemed like it would be gross but it wasn't really. Half his energy was spent on trying not to tremble so hard they were shaken apart, so he stayed still and let Lance lick into his mouth. Lance liked to suck on his bottom lip and release it slowly, Keith noted, and he was good at pulling off slightly so they could both take shuddering breaths, without breaking the hypnotic addiction that ran between them. For a long moment he lost himself completely to the heat. Then he felt Lance's arms slide around his back and melted into the security, crowding himself closer into Lance's grip while his own hands stayed shyly on Lance's shoulders.

Eventually Lance pulled away and Keith had to push back the strong feeling of rejection that rose in him by clinging to Lance's shirt.

“I kind of want to kiss you forever,” Lance mumbled. Keith couldn't deny the relief that washed over the part of him that expected Lance to kick him out and never mention it again. He just clung silently in reply and hoped Lance understood that he couldn't really talk right now.

He hated himself a little for going nonverbal at that moment but as always Lance's grace made him feel infinitely better. Shiro was good at calming him down and understanding what he wanted when he couldn't talk, but Lance just continued the conversation like normal, picking up visual responses and carrying on in two sided normalcy until Keith came back to himself. The best thing about having Lance by your side in a crisis was how he made it about him - not in a selfish way, although he often did that too, jokingly. It was the complete lack of hesitation with which he shouldered anyone else's burden and made everyone laugh at him. It hurt Keith to see anyone think Lance was selfish or attention seeming, when his motivations were so utterly opposite of that. 

Like when Pidge had sat on Keith's feet and Lance had started a tickle fight so Keith could sneak away to calm down quietly in his room. He'd seen the way Lance bad shrunken in on himself later when Shiro had lectured him and Pidge for ignoring how Keith was obviously in distress in favour of childish games. Keith had never said anything, to Shiro or Lance, and he regretted it now. 

“You should've told me you'd never kissed anyone before.”

Keith's head shot up. How the hell did he know that?

“Relax, I can just tell. For one, you weren't exactly getting all the action as a desert hermit,” he laughed at Keith's affronted face, “and for two, you actually let me lead which is not something you've ever done in any other circumstance, so.”

Keith just yawned and shifted so Lance was half sitting up in the bed and he could press his face against the warm shirt and feel the impression of Lance beneath his face without the uncomfortable friction of skin touching skin. It was hard to believe someone could be so firm and defined, yet almost concerningly skinny and bony, but the proof was under Keith's face. He shifted until his was comfortable, making plans internally to get Lance to eat more. 

“You're so cute,” Lance cooed. “Like a - don't glare at me like that - like a baby koala.”

He sighed happily and lowered himself onto the pillow so he was lying down with Keith curled on top of him. Keith was still glaring at Lance but they both knew that both his cheeks and his insides were glowing with warmth. Lance cupped Keith's face is his hand, rubbing his thumb along Keith's chin in a way that made him melt completely. His other arm was circled around Keith's waist, stroking circles into his side. The whole feeling made Keith want to fall asleep like that and never get out of the bed again.

“You okay?” Lance asked quietly, a note of uncertainty creeping into his voice.

Keith didn't know if Lance was talking about his silence or if he was comfortable in their current position or the events of the last hour, but he nodded anyway and curled up against Lance's chest. For once he was glad of the height difference and the way it made him feel completely secure. The feeling of Lance's fingers creeping to his head and running through the strands of black seemed to be one specifically designed to make Keith sleepy.

Lance was still mumbling things quietly to him, but he was gradually slowing down with adorable unawareness of his own exhaustion. At some point he must have stopped completely because Keith fell asleep to nothing but the feeling of lungs rising and falling beneath his head in a soothing repeated pattern.

Chapter Text

Keith slept in past breakfast. Lance was painfully, painfully aware of this fact for lots of reasons. Reason like: Keith was asleep in his bed. He knew instinctively that if Keith had woken up first he would have crept back to his own room and pretended nothing had ever happened and not only would that rob Lance of waking up with Keith in his arms, but it may have also robbed him of even more significant things. For all his flirtatious bravado, Lance was filled with emotional cowardice and he didn't know if he'd have the resolve to face Keith in that situation.

He was also painfully aware of how late Keith had slept because they'd missed breakfast. Listen, Lance was a paladin of voltron, he respected the laws of the universe. And he was fairly sure one of those laws was ‘do not disturb a sleeping Keith’. So he'd lain there, tortured by the clatter of everyone else heading to satisfy the growling of their stomachs while he was forced to stay trapped in Keith's embrace, staring at his stupid adorable sleeping face and stroking his unfairly soft hair.

The main thing that he was agonisingly aware of by now there was the odds of Keith getting out of this room without someone noticing. Keith's hair felt lovely under his fingers and he was enjoying twisting bunches of tiny little braids into it in a way Keith would never allow I'd he was awake, but Keith needed to wake up right the hell now and save Lance from inevitable death by Pidgeterrogation. Running his thumb back and forth across Keith's bottom lip was temporarily calming him down at least. It looked a little swollen but it was probably just because Lance knew to look. And god, if that didn't make him want to squeal with giddiness. Logically they probably had hours at best before Pidge was onto them. On the other hand, Lance could literally see the mark he'd left on Keith's plump lips and that was a good enough feeling to cancel out practically any misfortune.

The vision of Keith sleeping was adorable, but Lance was slowly going insane in his skin without talking to him and by now Keith must be heading into the next day’s sleep cycle which meant he'd be tired all over again if he was woken up before another eight hours of rest. Lance knew a lot about sleep.

Lance hovered with his lips just above Keith's, kissing the very edge of his mouth with a smile. “Wake up,” he hissed. He had his arm around Keith and Keith's head on his chest while his other hand toyed with the sleeping boy’s dark hair. He kept his face out of reach for safety as he gently prodded, just because Keith seemed like the kind of guy to wake up and instinctively punch whatever or whoever was too close to him.

He started to twitch and his fingers curled into Lance's shirt. The noise that fell out from lips was somewhere between a groan and a sigh, and it made Lance's grin threaten to split his face in two as he leaned down and kissed Keith's temple.

“ Levántate, dormilón ,” he chirped. Immediately, he wondered if he should've done that more slowly in case Keith woke up and didn't know where he was for a moment and got super freaked out over Lance being too handsy. He was constantly reminding himself to be more careful when it came to touching Keith, and he knew one day it would become automatic but until then it was constantly slipping his mind. Especially now when Keith was being so cute. Fortunately, it didn't seem to be an issue: Keith opened his eyes for a split second to scrunch them up at Lance in what could've been a frown or a smile before he dived back into his Lance shaped pillow with determination.

It was like he was trying to make it hard for Lance to wake him up. Lance had probably the third most easily guilted conscience in the castle behind Hunk and Shiro, so disturbing such an innocent sight made him feel no better than the galra. Although Keith wasn't technically at all innocent, he was utterly evil and masquerading as harmless for his nefarious purposes of getting to cuddle Lance for a few moments more.

Lance lowered his head and let his lips find Keith's, sliding sloppily over them and retreating upwards, chased by Keith. It was definitely gratifying to have Keith desperately craning his head to steal another kiss and making disgruntled noises every time Lance moved away, a stream of quickly stolen kisses hanging in the air behind them.

“ Stooop, ” Keith whined, grabbing at Lance's face and holding it still so he could get a proper kiss for his troubles without Lance pulling just out of reach again. His lips fell open and he guided Lance to follow suit. Lance felt proud and also betrayed because he was pretty sure he taught Keith to do that. After that it wasn't like he could resist chasing Keith's tongue into his mouth and letting his hands slide around to hold Keith's back steady.

“Hey, Red,” Lance grunted in between kisses, their lips sealing and parting again in rapid succession led, surprisingly, by Keith, “If you don't get up right now I'll tell everyone we made out and you liked it.”

Aw, there went those lovely sleepy morning kisses.

“Who says I liked it!”

“Uh… Is that a rhetorical question? Because, like, your tongue seemed like a pretty good indicator,” Lance shrugged.

Keith's face crinkled up. The red creeping into his face made it clearer that he was just embarrassed, not genuinely upset.

“What does it… mean?” he asked slowly, uncertainly. “Are we gonna…”

Lance panicked at the pressure suddenly on him to decide where they stood between soulmates and two lonely teenagers trapped together in space. The trapped together in space part was key here, because if Lance gave the wrong answer there was very limited potential to get away from the consequences. He diverted the remaining brainpower he had that wasn't invested in panicking and shrugged his shoulders while looking openly at Keith.

“We could count to three and on the count of three we both say what it-”

He was cut off and the wind knocked out of his as Keith thudded into his lap and threw his arms around Lance's neck.

“You idiot. You're so lucky you have me to stop you being such a moron,” he groaned as he buried his face in Lance's shoulder, which seemed to be his favourite thing to do right now. “We kissed but we didn't hook up. I had a reality TV phase- it got lonely in the shack, okay? -  Not hooking up means…” he trailed off shyly at the end of his sentence, bravado fading away at the prolonged feel of Lance's dark eyes on him. It made Lance suddenly unbearably amused to note that Keith said ‘hooking up’ exactly the way his weird old Catholic great-grandmother said ‘sodomy’. He didn't have time to think about how cute-slash-weird it was that Keith got his romantic guidelines from reality TV, because Keith was rubbing his face against Lance's collarbones affectionately. Come to think of it, Keith kind of specialised in cute-slash-weird.

“Man, you are so cute. I think you might actually be ninety but you're definitely cute.”

He felt a rumble against his chest that felt like Keith growling in complaint.

“What happened to you getting up in the middle of the night and training for three hours before breakfast? I didn't know you were even aware of what a lie-in is.”

“You happened,” Keith said, sounding anything but happy about it. “Now I think I'm broken because it's past breakfast and I'm still sleepy.”

Lance untangled himself from Keith and left him sitting on the bed while he got changed out of his pajamas. Keith looked away when Lance tugged his shirt off, sweet of him considering they'd shared a bed while Keith had been shirtless all night. When Lance turned around, fully dressed, Keith looked like he was trying and failing to hide the fact that he was snuggling up to Lance's pillow, sniffing it.

“You're so…” Lance trailed off, mostly because the words that crowded into his mouth were a little too intense for the first day of the relationship.

Keith's head lifted up at Lance's voice, and had Lance not noticed before how big his eyes were? He remembered reading that humans were programmed to want to protect stuff that had big eyes and the thought made him laugh when compared to knife-wielding Keith. He sat down on the bed while he combed his hair and Keith immediately tried to tug him back into the bed. It drew a laugh out of him and he had a smile on his face when he pecked Keith's pouting lips and stood back up.

“I'm gonna leave you here to get ready while I go see what's left of breakfast. Don't come out until you look a little more alive and remember to brush your hair, unless you want everyone to think we…”

Blushing so hard his skin was more red than anything else, Keith nodded and curled back onto the bed. He looked so adorable Lance had to bend down to peck him on the lips again. He was more alert this time and tried to trap Lance in a deeper kiss with arms around his neck, but Lance just gently pushed him off and headed into the main area of the ship.

***

Lance ran straight into Hunk’s tree-trunk chest on his way to belated breakfast. Who could really blame him for not paying attention when he couldn't stop thinking about Keith curled up and contented in his bed?

“Lance, buddy,” Hunk sighed, “You gotta stop missing breakfast. That's like the third time this week and you're wasting away !”

“That is so overdramatic,” Lance argued, trying to drag his brain back to the present. “Sleep is just as important to your health as food. Look at Keith, he never sleeps and it's stunted his growth. You should be coddling him, not me!”

“Keith is literally an inch shorter than you, man, you can't go around saying he has stunted growth. Anyway, you know why I keep an extra eye on you,” he started, and Lance prepared himself for the lectures he used to get from his mom, now surrogated by Hunk. His castle-synthesized meds were definitely better than the old ones they weren't without side effects and after Lance had lost that ten pounds Hunk had been obsessive about Lance's eating. “... because Keith doesn't take meds that ruin his appetite and sleep schedule and doesn't engage in reckless behaviour like sneaking out of the garrison to look at an alien crash site.”

“What! No way is Keith more responsible than me! Keith is a big baby, and maybe he does take meds too - do you take meds for autism? It's not a mental illness but neither is ADHD and I can regulate that so-” Lance's mouth slammed shut before his throat remembered to cut off the air and he ended up biting his tongue and puffing his cheeks up like a stupid secret sharing balloon. “ Quiznak .”

“I don't think you can take medication for autism,” Hunk said slowly.

“Uh. Is there any way you could maybe forget what I just said and never mention it again?”

Lance could deal with accidentally oversharing his own private things when his mouth got ahead of his brain. Betraying Keith was a different scenario altogether. A scenario that currently felt like he was drowning, but in water that was made of rocks.

“Dude, you just put me in such an awkward position because now I can't talk to him about it or he'll known you told me and I hate keeping secrets!” Lance could already see in Hunk’s eyes how desperate he was to welcome Keith into their weird little support group. Hunk and Shiro obviously got a lot of comfort from dealing with their shared experiences together but Lance hardly saw what was similar between ADHD and anxiety disorders so he hadn't even told Shiro yet.

Hunk was brilliant and caring, but Lance hadn't really found that much in common in their weird brain experiences. Not like, he realised, he had with Keith. Of course, Keith didn't actually know that. It suddenly felt unfair of him that he hadn't even given Keith the chance to understand him like he was starting to understand Keith. It's not that he was hiding it exactly, he just hadn't found the right moment yet.

Speaking of Keith, Lance missed him. They'd only been apart a few minutes but it was already building up in him like a physical Keith shaped crater. The longer they were apart, the more nerves moved to fill the space. Sure, Keith had been a warm puddle of awesomeness this morning, but what if he woke up properly and suddenly felt like he'd made the wrong decision and/or snapped back into his aloof persona and tried to pretend he'd never let Lance close to him. Especially after he'd basically just proved that Keith shouldn't trust him by spilling the one thing he'd asked Lance not to tell.

“Please, Hunk, I'm sorry. I mean… He'll tell you eventually and then you won't have to pretend. He told me, I mean.”

Hunk looked doubtful. “Yeah but you're different, he…”

Lance put his hand on his best friend’s shoulder. “I'll try and convince him, I guess. I'm going to get some breakfast. If you say anything to him I'm going on hunger strike,” he threatened as he stalked off in the direction of food. Hunk’s wince at the thought of his best friend/honorary son not eating was almost gratifying.

***

Hunk was surprised to find himself alone with Keith. It wasn't that he avoided Keith, but they never tended to end up being the only two people in a room. Hunk spent his off duty time trying to stop Lance from turning his life into a giant train wreck, and most of the rest of the time they weren't on missions or all strategizing in the control room he was helping Pidge with repairs and mods.

It wasn't like the universe hadn't already proved it was stupid. Apparently it thought Hunk might’ve forgotten and needed reminding, because it decided to wait until the whole thing with Lance and then trap him alone with Keith. He was innocently hanging out in the kitchen trying to figure out how to make the food goo more tolerable besides carving it into fun shapes when Keith sidled up behind him and nearly made Hunk stab himself in surprise.

“Jeez, don't creep up on a guy holding a knife!”

“I agree with you on that.”

Keith's arms were folded but they were always folded and Hunk had long since learned that it didn't necessarily mean he was mad. The same went for his monotone. He was wearing a lighter coloured shirt than usual and it reached halfway down his thigh, and his hair seemed even scruffier than usual. He had this weird little smile on his face that, had they been on earth and therefore any kind of supply, Hunk would've been interrogating him about substance abuse.

Instead he decided to begin his bonding with Keith. The sooner Keith told him of his own accord, the sooner Hunk could stop pretending he didn't know.

“So, buddy, Keith, how's it going? Oh, did I ever tell you I have anxiety? I just can't recall whether I told you or not and you know, we have no secrets in Voltron. I mean, Lance still hadn't told everyone, but I think he's just worried about all the negative stereotypes and he doesn't want anyone to think he's not fit to pilot the blue lion.”

“Wait… what?”

Keith's face fell open in confusion.

“I know, right? It's hardly like Shiro is going to judge him, and Allura will probably be all like,” he dropped into the Allura impression that he'd been practising privately all week, “What is this ADHD?”

Keith didn't even laugh at his impression, or show any kind of acknowledgement. Honestly, Hunk felt affronted. He knew he should've debuted it to Pidge instead. Sweet, terrifying Pidge, who always appreciated his hard work and natural talent for impressions.

“Lance- Lance has ADHD?” Keith's eyes were huge and round and distinctly sad looking as he blinked up at Hunk as though he had all the answers.

“He didn't tell you? I just assumed that was why you told him about your auti-” Hunk suddenly understood how Lance felt earlier as he cut himself off too late. “I didn't say anything. How are you today, Keith? Is Red getting-”

Keith's face was worryingly stormy. “Lance told you?!”

“No, no, I mean, he did but he didn't mean to, it was a slip of the tongue and-”

Hunk slammed his head into the countertop as Keith stormed out of the room. That was. Well, Hunk had quite possibly destroyed three relationships at once: his and Lance's, his and Keith's, and Keith and Lance's. Quiznak.

Chapter Text

Keith managed to corner Lance before they were all needed for lunch. His instinctive desire when he saw the blue paladin was to go boneless and collapse into his arms, but he managed to steel himself. Lance smiled stupidly brightly, like blindingly even for Lance , when he saw Keith, but it faltered when he saw Keith's stormy expression. Stupid hot stupid smile.

“Keith?”

“You told Hunk I'm autistic!” Keith screeched, plans to handle this even remotely maturely flying out of the window. “ And you didn't think it was worth mentioning that you have ADHD, apparently?”

He wasn't sure whose favour the moral lines lay in, but even if Lance didn't owe it to Keith to tell him, it hurt that he didn't. Outside of medical professionals and anyone else need-to-know, Keith had told exactly two people. Yet one of those people was harbouring a similar secret and didn't even care enough to tell him? After Keith made himself vulnerable and Lance didn't even care enough to do the same.

“I didn't mean to tell Hunk, I'm so, so sorry! It came out because I have this stupid brain that doesn't think more than three seconds ahead before it does things and it just came out and I'm a terrible person who betrayed your trust and it's fine if you're furious but please don't think I did it on purpose.”

Keith narrowed his eyes. Lance looked seriously desperate with his hands held up in surrender and his chest heaving.

“I…” he was trying to be mad, really, but Lance telling Hunk had just saved him having to do it himself, and Hunk had been totally cool with it. When he stormed out here thinking Lance just went around blabbing his secrets to everyone for the hell of it, he'd been filled with righteous anger. Now, he just deflated. “Why didn't you tell me? It was so hard for me to tell you and I trusted you and you… Didn't trust me?” he made a sad noise and tried to shuffle closer to Lance. He was pretty sure you weren't meant to snuggle with the person you were arguing with, but he missed the easy comfort of the morning bed together.

“I'm sorry. I'm really sorry I didn't tell you, Keith. I just- at first I thought I should wait a while so it could be about you for a moment at least without me jumping in there.”

Keith was puzzled. Was that even a thing that people thought? Like, hey I have this important thing to share but I'm not going to do it because someone else is talking about their thing right now? “How is that jumping in there? It's not like I'm doing this for attention, I just wanted you to know.”

Lance's face somehow reminded Keith of when a horse showed the whites of its eyes. Apparently it meant they were afraid, but Keith always thought it made them look like someone in a cartoon who'd just had a prank played on them. Thank god he only had to deal with human facial expressions.

“I just. Sometimes people say I make things about me. Like I get too loud or share too much and even when I'm only trying to help it just ends up taking away from that person and being selfish.”

Keith rolled his eyes. He'd never realised what a useful action it was until he'd met Lance, but it managed to convey the complicated bubble of kind of affectionate, kind of annoyed emotions the blue paladin always invoked in him, and he didn't have to worry about the complicated parts like his tone of voice. “You can't make something be about you. It's just about what it's already about. You've never been selfish in your whole life, I don't think.”

His hand slid into Lance's of his own accord.

Lance looked genuinely surprised. “I'm- thanks.”

Keith had to turn his head to peer into Lance's face. “What, people actually think you're selfish? For real?” He couldn't understand how someone could possibly come to that conclusion about Lance. Sure, he put his foot in it a lot, but he'd probably never intentionally tried to hurt anyone else.

“Uh, yeah. People don't like it when you zone out on them telling you about their dead husband or whatever. And start a fight every time someone criticises you. Like, even Shiro gets mad ‘cause I never listen properly to mission briefings.” His hand was squishing Keith's tight, with rage or nerves or trying to comfort him, Keith wasn't sure which. He rested his head on Lance's shoulder because he figured that was a universal way of offering comfort without saying something wrong if he misread what the squeezing meant. It didn't help how uncharacteristically flat Lance's tone and facial expressions were.

“Well yeah but, you didn't mean any of that! That's not what even matters, what about the important stuff like all the people you've saved?” Keith felt hot rage bubbling up inside him. He'd never really noticed what everyone else thought of Lance, or what Lance thought of himself. He was pretty sure no one in the entire universe could think Lance was selfish, but when he thought back he could remember harsh words and disappointed sighs on numerous occasions and he could see how that would hurt Lance.

Lance perked up an astounding amount for the couple of sentences of reassurance Keith had given him. He had the most indecipherable look Keith had ever seen on his face, but then it gave way to a smile.

“C’mere,” he whispered. Keith lifted his head to tell Lance that he was already about as ‘here’ as could be, curled around Lance's side with his head on Lance's shoulder, but Lance beat him to it with a kiss. He was craning his head awkwardly but by the happy noises he was making, it wasn't bothering him much. Keith let Lance pull away slowly and press their foreheads together. It was awkward because Keith wanted to look into his eyes and drink in his peacefully happy face but the closeness had his eyes crossing whenever he tried to focus on anything. He liked the weird intimacy of their noses touching, and realised with a start that he'd seen this in romance movies before. Usually anything seen in romance movies tended to be uncomfortable and awkward in real life, but ‘things in romance movies’ was a category of actions with a very intense symbolism to Keith because they were, well, super romantic.

Keith remembered thinking that about romance. Friendship was sort of easier, because if you were friendly with someone you hugged them and clapped them on the back and high fived them. Romance had always seemed to be all about long unreadable glances and the idea of ‘just knowing ’ and no one ever said anything outright. Romance with Lance so far was mostly soul-bearing, bickering, and kissing. Keith liked the sound of that a lot better than ‘just knowing’.

***

“They were hugging !” Pidge insisted. Behind the glasses Pidge’s eyes had taken on even more of an unstable glint than usual. “I swear. I walked past them on the corridor and Keith had his honest-to-quiznak face buried in Lance's chest! They didn't even notice me when I walked past.”

Shiro frowned as Hunk suddenly looked visibly relieved. “I'm glad they're getting along,” he said neutrally.

Shiro opened his mouth to agree but everyone slammed their mouths shut and fixed their eyes behind him.

“Hi, Keith,” he said instead.

“Hey, Shiro.”

Keith had this faint pink blush stained high on his cheeks. It reminded Shiro of the time one of his college friends had brought some special brownies and left them unattended on the side for then thirteen year old Keith to help himself to. It had been so adorable; Keith couldn't stop giggling and singing. “Takashi, I feel funny.”

Shiro realised he had a stupid grin on his face from the memory when Keith narrowed his eyes.

“What's up, buddy?”

“Shiro, do you think Lance is selfish?”

Hunk made an alarmed noise and stuttered out an excuse Shiro didn't really catch. Huh, weird. On the other chair, Pidge looked perfectly content to sit back and enjoy whatever drama was about to ensue with a mildly terrifying grin.

“What? I… no . I mean, I guess sometimes he doesn't seem to take everything about this mission seriously enough but Blue wouldn't have chosen him if he was selfish.” Shiro raised his eyebrows in concern. “Did he upset you?”

Keith shook his head rapidly. “No! He just… he thinks he is, or something. I wanted to prove that no one thinks that.”

“Aww, cute !” Pidge squealed from across the room. Weirdly, Keith didn't even respond. He just shrugged his shoulders and smiled warmly. Shiro was starting to freak out. He was halfway through figuring out how to ask if everything was okay when Lance appeared in the doorway and skipped into the centre of the room to join the gathering. Lance's familiar cheerfulness was a sight for sore eyes after Keith's weirdness .

“Hey Lance.” Smiley and blushing weren't words Shiro honestly ever expected to describe Keith with, but there he was, smiling and blushing at Lance as he scooched up to make room for him on the same chair, despite multiple others being totally empty. Lance perched on the arm of the chair with his feet in Keith's lap and Shiro waited for him to complain or shove him off, but he just started fiddling with Lance's shoelaces.

“Watchya doin’, Pidgey?” Lance singsonged, as casual and oblivious as if Keith wasn't currently gazing up at Lance like he was the sun. Shiro knew Keith had some complicated feelings about Lance, especially over the last few weeks, but usually he was drastically more subtle. Pidge had a similar expression as Shiro imagined he himself had, both of their eyes widening in surprise as Lance's long fingers plucked a tiny section of Keith's hair and started to braid it. As in, Keith was letting Lance braid his hair.

“Going to get Hunk,” Pidge replied, looking stunned, and scrabbled out of the room to find the yellow paladin.

“Huh. Well how are you doing, Shiro?”

The tiny braid fell from his fingers as he resorted to running his fingers through Keith's whole mop. He winced each time his finger ran into a knot. By the third knot he was laughing and whispering something in Keith's ear about how you still had to brush your hair occasionally even in space. Shiro wasn't an expert but he was fairly sure his lips didn't need to be that close to Keith's ear. Keith tugged on his sleeve and whispered something back, more quietly, that made Lance flush and gently kick his legs in Keith's lap.

“Uh, I'm… I'm doing good.” To his own ears, Shiro sounded like he was coughing up a hairball. Honestly, it would be less surprising than whatever the hell was going on here.

“Sweet,” Lance nodded at him, eyes crinkling up in a smile. He smiled all the time and he was probably going to have crow's feet by the time he was twenty, but something about his exact facial expression was even more open and genuinely happy than Shiro usually saw, even on Lance. He tilted over precariously to rest his head on top of Keith's head and sigh happily. Keith's only response to that was a noise of mild chagrin. Very mild.

Hunk slunk back into the room with an anxious expression that immediately plummeted off his face as soon as he saw Keith and Lance, trailed by Pidge. He exchanged a series of looks with Keith that ended with Hunk blushing and Keith smiling and shaking his head. Shiro didn't understand teenagers any more.

***

“You're so small,” Lance grinned as he wrapped his arms around Keith's middle. “That okay?”

He felt the shake of Keith's head and imagined his nose wrinkling as he pushed Lance's hands further up his torso.

“I'm not small. And I guess just don't touch my feet or my stomach.”

Lance nodded. That still left him with a pretty decent square mileage of Keith touch. He stroked the hair at the nape of Keith's neck with his thumb like he'd figured out Keith liked.

“What about your back?” he hummed, fingers tracing the bumps of Keith's spine and exploring the tight ridges of muscle. He couldn't truthfully say he'd ever really noticed another dude’s back before, but the last few nights had familiarised him a lot with Keith's back - Keith was a loyal little spoon - and he'd had enough time to decide that he liked it a lot. Keith wasn't by any means a tall guy, but he had broad shoulders where all the strength was held, compared to his nimble legs. His face was mostly

unblemished but there were little smatterings of freckles across the skin of his back that Lance liked to trace in the dim crystal light. He watched Keith tense up and then steadily relax with the motions.

He dipped his head to paint sloppy, openmouthed kisses along Keith's shoulder blades and up a curved path over his shoulder that had Keith shuddering, meeting his lips at an awkward angle at the end of the trail. Lance always complained how bad spooning was for his neck and Keith pointed out only if you kiss me all the time and then made big puppy eyes and insisted that it helped him sleep and of course he won because Lance got a fearsome urge to protect him when he made that face.

“What about your ass?” he mouthed into Keith spine and felt the answering giggle wrack his body and made the poor mattress shudder beneath them.

Keith stayed obediently still while Lance palmed at his ass through his soft pajama pants. It was more gentle and affectionate than when Lance's attention had been on his back, but it felt stupidly intimate.

“I can't sleep while you're groping me,” Keith snuffled.

“Maybe I can't sleep without touching your ass first,” Lance retaliated. “That is one fiiine good luck charm. Keith, you have such a good butt.”

That earned him a gentle smack from an annoyed-embarrassed Keith, so he gave up. His arms slid around Keith's waist, appropriately high above his stomach that Keith sighed happily and backed himself further into Lance's warmth, feet curled safely from their bodies.

“Comfy?” Lance checked, before he fell asleep and left Keith trapped unhappily all night. His pride, or something, wouldn't let him wake Lance up.

Keith nodded, his overgrown hair tickling at Lance's chin. “Yeah.”