Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When I’m on my feet, I can take the heat
But when I get low, I prefer the cold
I can be a hard light to ignite  

“Chocolate ice cream.”

“WHAT? As if! Who in their right minds misses chocolate ice cream more than anything else? Hunk, you’re an idiot,” Lance exclaims, his eyebrows dancing across his forehead in a dramatic display of outrage. His arms flail around his head.

“Am I? Or am I just speaking the truth here?” Hunk shrugs and smirks.

“No, no, no, no. I have a theory about chocolate ice cream. I say, after the incredible, world-changing inventions of both chocolate and ice cream, some scientist guy was like ‘oh, yes, what a great idea, I shall combine these two creations to make a hybrid species called chocolate ice cream.’ So, the scientist-”

“Well, it wouldn’t have been a scientist, nimrod. It would have been a chef,” Pidge shoves her glasses higher up her nose as if emphasizing her point.

“Just let me tell the story! So, the chef would have been all excited about his idea and created the world’s first bowl of chocolate ice cream… tasted it… and been like ‘I have made a terrible mistake. I must now remove all evidence of this error so that no psychopath can come along and make this sacrilege a thing.’ But THEN some jerk was like ‘Let me try it!’ and decided that he liked it and the chef was all ‘Uh, nah dude, I’m getting rid of this utter disgrace to the good names of chocolate and ice cream,’ and the psychopath killed him and gathered all the other lunatics of the world and they formed a cult and made chocolate ice cream a thing.”

“Wow,” Hunk shakes his head.

“So now, the 1% of the population who are clinically insane have made chocolate ice cream a thing, and the rest of us have to deal with their stupidity.”

Shiro claps his hand on Lance’s shoulder.

“Oookay, Lance. So what do you miss most about Earth?”

“Oh, that’s easy. Vanilla ice cream.”

“VANILLA ICE –” Hunk’s laughter erupts and he smacks his leg dramatically. “So you – y – you think that chocolate ice cream is sacrilegious, but – but you like vanilla ice cream? The blandest, plainest flavour on the planet?!”

Lance looks as though his glare alone could burn craters into Hunk’s face.

“Alright, alright. That’s enough about ice cream,” Shiro interjects, turning to face Pidge. “Let’s continue. What do you miss the most about home, Pidge?”

Pidge’s back straightens slightly as she raises a finger the way a lecturer might when addressing their class. “I miss the internet. High speed access to the complex, labyrinthine web of connection uniting humans in a global consciousness.” She glances quickly at her feet. “Also compilation videos of babies falling on their faces.”

“What about you, Shiro?” Lance asks as he swivels in his chair to plonk both feet before him on the table.

Shiro smiles. “For me, it’s the sunrise. More than just the ability to monitor the passing of time, just the sun as it opens up to the world every morning. It’s… nice.”

“Huh. And here I was thinking ‘oh wow what beautiful imagery this guy must be like a poet or something’ but nope. It’s just ‘nice’,” Lance snickers.

Shiro rolls his eyes and shoves Lance playfully, but hard enough to send him flying off his seat in a blur of arms and legs.

“Oh, nice one Shiro!” Hunk nods his approval, offering a high five. Shiro slaps the extended hand proudly.

“What about you, Keith?” Pidge turns to the figure lounging tepidly against the doorway.

“Yeah,” Lance shouts from the floor, breaking his indignant pout. “Man, I can’t wait to hear this. What does the mullet miss most about Earth?”

Keith lets his arms drop from their default position crossing his chest to hang at his sides.

“Uh…” Almost in unison, everyone leans gently forward curiously. “Uh. Dirt?”

“Dirt?” Lance raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah? It’s just kind of… earthy? And smells good. I guess I miss dirt.”

There is a brief, uninterrupted moment of utter silence. Finally, Lance breaks the stillness.

“Ok, weirdo,” he shrugs, before reclining to lay lazily on the polished castle floor.

“Hey! It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to miss! It’s not like we’ve got any dirt around here,” Keith exclaims, taking a step forward.

“Listen, Dirt Boy, I’m not judging you and whatever strange rock fetish you got going on,” Lance says with his hands behind his head.

“Well it sounds like you are!”

“So you admit that you have a rock fetish?” Lance grins as he sits up excitedly.

“No! I just miss dirt! I can miss dirt!”

“Whatever you say, Mud Man,” Lance chuckles as he slowly leans back to rest on the ground once more, closing his eyes to ignore Shiro’s disapproving-dad-look. He can never help but squirm under the disapproving-dad-look.

“Paladins, to the training room!” Allura’s mildly urgent message echoes throughout the castle before a pouting Keith could retaliate. “One last training session before lights out. Come on!”

Lance throws his arm over his eyes and releases a low, guttural groan, allowing himself to wallow in his self-pity momentarily. By the time he reluctantly removes the arm from his face, Hunk and Pidge are the only ones in the room with him.

“Come on, man,” Hunk sighs, dragging a scowling Pidge by her sleeve to the door. Lance rolls his eyes and drags himself to his feet, trips on a chair leg, stumbles, catches himself, and saunters listlessly out of the room. His mind is already wandering to the enticing thought of his eye-mask and pillow.

*

After training, they trudge with dragging feet to the dining room for some food goo before retiring for the night. With sore limbs and aching joints, they sit at the table and chat, their voices mingling in shades of laughter and irritation. The food has improved since Hunk began tinkering with Coran’s simplistic dump-it-on-a-plate recipe, and they scarf down their dinner eagerly.

One by one, the paladins leave to haul themselves to their individual rooms, yawning and stretching their arms above their heads. Lance is among the first to leave. He pushes away from the table after taking the liberty of cleaning his plate himself with his tongue and strolls out of the room with a half-hearted wave as goodnights are exchanged. His footfalls are heavy and they echo down the hallways as he makes his way to his room. Extending his back until he hears a satisfying crack, Lance pushes his door open and moves sleepily through his nightly routine. He practically falls onto his bed.

 xx

Screaming.

Dark and dark and dark and screaming.

Gunshots and running and burning and aching and screaming, screaming, screaming. Screaming for him. Screaming for him to reach them, to save them.

Running. Running. Running. He can see them, see their eyes full of terror and dark and dark and dark. He is running for them, running to save them and shelter them so they can stop screaming. So they will live.

“Ugh,” he stumbles from bed, his body collapsing heavily onto the wall as he drags himself forward.

Running. Running. They are screaming his name, screaming for him. It is dark, dark, dark, and everything is screaming.

He plunges into the darkness cloaking the room, his body moving too fast and his eyes closed.

The dark is moving, oh God it is moving and it is coming closer and closer and closer and he won’t reach them, he won’t –

“Urgh!” He crashes into the wall beside the door, hands flailing with a groggy kind of wildness until the motion sensors activate and the door slides open.

He won’t reach them, he won’t reach them before the darkness comes and they can see it coming for them, so close, so close. They see him. They see him, and in their eyes they know he won’t reach them. He won’t save them. And they scream. They are screaming and then silence. Darkness.

He gasps, bursting into the hallway to stop dead, his body frozen and his blood cold.

They are gone.

He drops, his knees smashing to the ground and his limp body slumping forward.

And it is his fault.

“Lance?” Keith stops. He drops his bayard, unsure if what he is seeing is real. This couldn’t be Lance, this broken body slouched against itself and draped in the darkness of the corridor.

Lance’s lungs feel raw and empty but his dry throat will not open. He cannot breathe. He heaves, and a sob rakes its way up through his aching throat to bleed from his lips.

Slowly, Keith steps forward, hesitant to draw a response from this shattered, lanky figure. When Lance doesn’t move, Keith tentatively edges nearer until he is close enough to see that the boy’s shoulders are quivering violently and his limbs are trembling.

“Lance?” His voice is a whisper. As if in reply, another strangled sob clatters from Lance’s lips, only to be smothered seconds later by the shrouded air around them. Keith crouches carefully beside the whimpering body. His eyes are wide, waiting to be shoved viciously away, waiting for an outburst, waiting for a denial. But it doesn’t come.

“Lance,” Keith utters, the name dripping from his tongue in a small, shaken voice. His hand moves slowly to Lance’s shuddering back, and he bends to shorten the distance between them. Lance raises his head slightly, enough for Keith to feel that his touch is not unwanted. They remain like this for a few seconds before Keith feels Lance’s weight begin to slouch against him. He lets his hand slip around Lance’s waist until he is somewhat hugging him. His other hand gently meets Lance’s shoulder to draw him in closer. Lance’s hand comes to rest against Keith’s knee and he lets his head lean into Keith’s chest. Keith can feel the shallow breaths against his shirt-covered torso gradually become longer and deeper exhalations.

Lance’s eyes are still closed. Their faces dance beneath his lids, their mouths silently gaping and their eyes stricken with horror. Slowly, as he feels himself drawn into a warm, very real body, he begins to realize that his family is not gone. They were not swallowed by an all-consuming darkness because Lance couldn’t reach them in time, because he couldn’t save them. And as his eyes blink open and adjust to the lack of light, at first he isn’t sure whose lap he is staring at, whose knee he is touching. He brings his other hand to the person’s back, touching an all-too-identifiable cropped jacket. He should reel back, he knows. He should refute ever having had a moment of vulnerability, a moment of weakness. But he can still taste his pulse on his tongue as his heart racks painfully against his ribs, and Keith is soft and here, and it is so easy to let himself sink into the embrace. His hand clenches and the fabric of Keith’s shirt is scrunched in his fist, and he lets himself breathe against this open, supporting body. He is grateful that he did not open his eyes to a lonely, vacant darkness.

They stay crouched in the hallway for some time. Keith’s heart hammers shakily as he listens to Lance’s breathing becoming steadier. He knows he should wonder what they will do next, how they will end this moment of inadvertent intimacy without it becoming awkward. But he cannot bring himself to tear his thoughts away from the present, away from the beads of sweat underneath Lance’s hairline and the hand crumpling Keith’s shirt. He knows Lance must have regained spatial awareness by now from whatever dream sent him crashing through his bedroom door. He waits for Lance to move. Absently he wonders if Lance will remember any of this at all.

Slowly, Lance raises his body to a sitting position, and Keith moves his hands to lightly grip the boy’s shoulders. Keith can see Lance’s face now; his tear-streaked cheeks and his swollen eyes. Hesitantly, Lance lifts his heavy gaze to meet Keith’s. Silently Keith searches Lance, asking if he is ready. Lance nods and they rise gradually, Lance’s movements still sluggish and wobbly. Keith’s arm remains draped across Lance’s back to grasp his shoulder as they trudge into his room. Lance’s head hangs limply, dangling gently. They reach his bed and Lance collapses onto the mattress, his body already still. Keith turns to leave, and as he reaches the door, he hears the softest, almost inaudible murmur from the bed. A sound so faint he isn’t sure he heard it at all.

“Thank you.”

 xx

Slowly, with a groan, Lance’s eyes open. The room around him is filled with an artificial light, which only seems to illuminate the hopelessly empty space. As the lingering traces of haze evaporate from his mind, Lance remembers.

He gasps, body jerking abruptly into a sitting position.

Did that really happen?

His head pounds and his vision obscures momentarily from the too-sudden movement. He brings a hand to his forehead and waits with eyes squeezed shut for the blood rush to subside.

He’d had another nightmare. Throughout his lifetime of broken limbs, the passing of distant relatives and a quiet, but violent disappointment, Lance had never had a recurring nightmare. He’d had dreams attach themselves to his subconscious like glue to children’s fingers – trivial dreams of failed papers and naked wanderings through public areas. And he’d had nightmares. Oh, he’d had nightmares. Visions of unrelenting ferocity wrenching him from sleep to sweat-drenched hair and icy blood. But those nights when he’d trudge to his parents’ room to wake his mother had been few and far between, and the images that flashed before his eyes had never even remotely resembled one another. So to have had not two, but three nearly identical nightmares within the course of a few weeks was new to Lance. Waking to the sound of his own screams was new, too. And to find himself slouched in a hallway with none other than Keith Kogane’s hand on his back was downright absurd.

Lance huffs out a breath, casting his eyes around the room as though searching for some sort of explanation. It was a dream. It had to have been a dream. Please let it have been a dream. Please don’t let Keith have seen me like that.

“It wasn’t real,” Lance says resolutely to his bedroom. It was just part of the dream, just part of the nightmare. Because only in a nightmare would Keith be given that kind of blackmail material. There’s no way. Lance nods firmly. “There’s no way.”

He shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Nope. No way. It was a dream. It was a dream.”

A moment of brief silence during which the very air seems to be holding its breath fills the room. Then,

“It wasn’t a dream, was it?”

Lance throws himself against his pillow and groans throatily.

“Noooooooooooo.”

If Keith didn’t take him seriously before, he will definitely consider him no more able-minded than a kiddie now. What kind of paladin of Voltron needs to be guided back to his own bed after a bad dream like a child? And of all people Keith – strong, fearless, perfect Keith, will see him as nothing more than the weakest link now. Great. That’s great. Real dandy.

He sighs deeply. He feels his body sagging heavily and his head feels about the weight of an ocean compressed to fit inside a snow globe. Exhaustion hangs on his thoughts and in his gaze. The nightmares leave him drained, denying him any benefits of sleep and leaving him with only the imprint of the crushing dreams that battered him in the night. If Keith decides to make fun of him, or accuse him of immaturity, or even just mention it, Lance doesn’t think he’ll have the strength to retaliate. He won’t be able to deny the claims that he was found sobbing on the floor like a baby, and then everyone will know. Everyone will know how weak he really is.

Well, may as well get on with his inevitable downfall as a halfway respectable member of the team. He lunges out of bed with one final, deep exhalation.

*

“Hey there, sleeping beauty,” Pidge, nestled cosily into the corner, doesn’t even glance away from her computer screen upon Lance’s entry. “Nice of you to re-join us in the land of the living.”

“Good morning everyone,” Lance yawns. “I hope my presence wasn’t missed too sorely.”

“Really? You do?” Hunk grins.

“We’ve got a big day of training ahead of us. How did you sleep, Lance?” Allura chimes from the head of the dining table.

“Great,” he shrugs. Keith, Lance notes, doesn’t react in any way to his easy lie. His heart beats a little gentler.

“Good,” Allura’s back straightens slightly. “You will each need all of your strength if we are going to become skilled enough to defeat Zarkon. Today’s training will incorporate both flying practice and team bonding. I hope you are all ready!”

Although Allura’s enthusiasm is met with little more than a firm nod from Shiro and a grumble or two from Pidge and Hunk, Lance’s chest tightens. Lying about having had a decent night’s sleep is nothing new to him, but now the lives of billions of people depend on him and his strength.

Keith still hasn’t moved.

Lance takes his seat in front of a plate of goo. He sighs deeply, poking the alien gunk with his spoon.

“Do you ever stop sighing?”

Lance stiffens at Keith’s voice. He glances up, anticipating Keith’s next words. But Keith’s expression of soft amusement and his mouth is twisted in an almost-grin. Still, Lance holds his breath.

But then Keith does something amazing.

He brings the back of his hand to rest on his forehead with a dramatic flourish and releases a long sigh. Impersonating Lance. Eyes fluttering closed, Keith slumps theatrically against his chair and lets his body slip like jelly halfway down his seat. The room explodes with laughter and Lance’s jaw drops clean open. Maybe it’s his relief, or his exhaustion, but Lance can’t bring himself to be insulted. Unable to scrunch his mouth out of a grin, he bows his head to look at his plate, a blush creeping into his cheeks.

“Shut up, Keith,” He sniggers with a mock gruffness. His eyes dart around the room to see Pidge clutching her stomach and Hunk doubled over. Ok, so the broody bad boy pulling an Oscar-worthy performance out of nowhere was pretty funny, but come on. But when his gaze falls on Keith and he glimpses something like an amused fondness in Keith’s small smile, Lance’s stomach flips.

That was it. That was his confirmation. Keith won’t be giving him a hard time, after all. Is he sure it really happened? He dismisses the warmth growing in his chest as a rush of relief that he still has some dregs of dignity to cling to. After the laughter dies, Lance’s eyes flick to Keith to watch him forcing the ghost of a grin from his lips to focus on his food.

Why didn’t he just leave me there?

Lance frowns softly. What would he have done, if he had found a boy who swears to hate him broken in the middle of the night?

What did Keith do?

Lance remembers opening his eyes and feeling his hand against Keith’s knee, and bringing the other to Keith’s back. He squirms, embarrassed. But he remembers Keith’s hands around his waist, on his shoulder. Drawing him closer. Something surges through Lance’s chest –

Discomfort? Discomfort. A warm, tingling discomfort. Yeah.

What had made Keith do that? What about the crumpled, crying boy had not made Keith want to turn and walk away?

Keith picks at his food, nudging aside the clotted pieces of green goo. Lance watches him bring a heaped spoonful to his mouth, head tilted slightly and hair falling in his face. Lance flicks his gaze to his own food. He remembers the nights when he woke alone; the nightmare having released its tenacious clutch only to let him drop, painfully, back into consciousness. He remembers the violence of his loneliness in those moments when his blood splinters with ice. It had been nice, he supposes, to wake up to someone. It had been warm. p>

Chapter Text

An open book with a torn out page
And my ink’s run out
I want to love you but I don’t know how

He is a fighter.

That’s it. That’s all.

With every drop of blood within his pulsing veins, every footfall that carries his weight, every thought trickling through his mind like ink. Both his memories and his thoughts are alive in the moment, his attention is undivided between profound emotions and his river of thought.

All the words, visions and concepts that clatter around his mind, all the flickers of movement that surge in his limbs, all the deeply felt touches grazing his consciousness, they all amass and contribute to his fight. They are part of it. They define it.

But he doesn’t think through this as he lunges into a fray. He doesn’t need to. His awareness of his state is as intrinsic to him as his hands are to controls.

When he fights, every part of him fights. Every part of him awakes and moves with the stream of his actions. No feeling, regardless of its origin, does not follow him as he clashes through the moment.

That is how he takes them with him. When the fight surrounds him, they move with him –  melded like metal into a conglomerate of thought and jewels and stone. All of them are with him when the wildness and fire drip from his fingertips.

Shiro.

He swerves, veering away from the glowing weapon.

Pidge.

Gritting his teeth, he lunges forward, his sword crashing down to clang heavily against the blade.

Hunk.

The weapons scrape against one another in a battle of strength before they swing free, the pressure released.

Allura.

He lurches to the side, heaving his bayard upward once more to clash against something solid.

Coran.

He draws back, clutching the sword handle with both hands before delivering the final blow. Panting, he watches the simulator deactivate. He wipes the sweat from his brow and bends forward to plant his hands on his knees, hair falling into his face. Inhaling deeply, he closes his eyes.

 Lance.

“Nicely done, Keith!” Coran’s voice booms over the speakers and reverberates around the empty room. Keith jolts upward, eyes widening.

“Coran! I didn’t realize you were there,” he calls to the above control room. He runs a hand through his sweat-dampened hair, his breath becoming steadier with each exhalation.

“I was just applying a quick update Pidge came up with to the sound system. Good on you for your dedication to training! You can often be found in the training deck, yes?” Coran has emerged from the control room and is making his way down to the deck.

“I guess,” Keith mumbles. At his side, his bayard retracts with a flash. Coran is striding merrily towards him now, arms held casually behind his back and his head high. He stops a few feet before him. He rocks back onto his heels, head cocking to the side as he seems to consider Keith with a quiet kind of interest.

“If it’s alright with you, can I ask, why do you spend so much time training?”

 “What else is there to do?” Keith shrugs in an attempt at nonchalance.

“Well, the others seem to find plenty of things to do besides training.”

In his silence, Keith knows, Coran is waiting for an explanation. He glances down at his shoes, shifting his weight slightly.

“I guess…” Coran’s patient, friendly expression urges him forward, despite his discomfort. “I guess I feel like, I finally have something… some sort of purpose? And if I’m going to do this, I should do it right.” That’ll do.

Coran smiles kindly.

“I understand,” he says, his eyes twinkling. They do that, Coran’s eyes. At first, Keith had presumed this is just his natural state. But those glistening eyes, that bounce in his step, the inflections in his voice, they’re more hollow than Keith had thought. They are ancient paintings on the walls of an emptied, aching cave. Maybe the sparkling in his eyes isn’t forced. But it’s something other than blissful warmth. Something darker. Coran’s ability to make sadness look like something else seems to Keith to be the loneliest thing he has ever known.

He isn’t certain, isn’t sure that he should, but –

“Coran?”

“Mm?”

“Can I ask, uh… How do you do it?”

Coran raises his chin, eyebrows furrowing slightly inquisitively.

“How do I do what?”

Keith sighs just barely.

“Cope.”

“Ah,” Coran tilts his head back, as though it was a question he was awaiting with a quiet patience. “I suppose my answer is quite similar to yours. I have a reason to continue coping – the princess, Voltron, doing my part in defending the universe. And all of you,” he finishes with a soft nod. The distilled sadness that seems to linger in Coran’s every lively step hangs noticeably heavier in the air around them.

Keith nods back. In some ways, this is enough. But he knows there is more he could say, more he could do than just nod and accept the existence of pain. But all of his words are bowling balls in his mouth – too heavy and huge to slip past his lips without clunking awkwardly on the ground.

“Well,” Coran lifts his voice with a jaunty spring. “Are you all finished up here? It’s almost dinner time and Hunk has been meddling with my goo again so I presume you will all want some of that traitor’s concoction.” He winks then.

“Yeah, I’m done.”

“Excellent!” Coran twirls around and strolls towards the door. He pauses and glances over his shoulder, eyebrows raised and the corner of his mouth quirked upwards. “Coming?”

“Yeah,” Keith hurries after him.

 xx

The room is full of life and noise when they enter, and it crashes into them like the breaking of a wave.

“No, no, no, and no. Definitely not wearing that.”

“Come oooooon Pidge. It would be so adorable, you would look like a tiny little kitten in a bundle of clothes – oh-my-God your hands wouldn’t even reach the sleeves, ooooooh-“

“Forget it, Hunk! Lance, get that stinking thing away from me – I don’t know where it’s been!”

“Aw, Pidge, come on,” Lance whines, thrusting his jacket under Pidge’s wrinkled nose. “You know you wanna!”

“No, nope, I really don’t wanna.”

“Oh yes you do!” Lance is leaning so far forward he is practically sprawled out on the table. Wriggling his eyebrows, he waves the jacket like a flag in Pidge’s face. “And you don’t have a choice. You have to. Sorry, the inexplicable will of the universe is out of my hands! Besides, you might make Hunk cry if you don’t. Do you really want to see Hunk cry?”

“Yeah!” Hunk exclaims, his expression immediately morphing into a pout that would put a puppy wearing pyjamas to shame. 

Pidge waves her hand dismissively. “Hunk cries all the time.”

“Wha –” Hunk starts. “I do not!”

“I’ll have you know Hunk only cries most of the time,” Lance raises a finger defensively.

“Exactly. Thank you, Lance,” Hunk nods firmly. Pidge rolls her eyes.

“Hello, everyone!” Coran trills, breaking his objectively amused stance and strolling into the room.

Hunk perks. “Oh, hey Coran and Keith. Just in time for dinner!” He bounds from his seat and scurries away to the kitchen, presumably to retrieve said dinner. Pidge uncrosses her arms as the new arrivals move to sit down.

“Please, save me from these imbeciles,” she sniggers with a crooked grin as Keith approaches his usual seat beside Lance.

“Sorry, Pidge. I’m afraid there’s no cure for stupid,” Keith smirks as he pulls out his chair.

“Hey!” Lance exclaims, still laying lazily across the table. He rolls theatrically onto his side to face Keith, his left eyebrow achieving an all new altitude and his shirt riding up past his hip bone to his waist. Keith pointedly doesn’t notice. “Who are you calling stupid, stupid?”

“You,” Keith deadpans. “But I should have realized. You can only be stupid if you actually have a brain. You’re exempt.”

Pidge snorts and smacks the table. “Ohhh!”

Lance’s jaw dangles loosely for a moment before he launches himself forward to stick his nose in Keith’s face, propping himself up with his elbow. “Oh yeah? Well… Your brain is like, one… twelfth the size of my brain!”

Lance’s eyes are level with Keith’s, the tips of his hair just barely touching Keith’s stray wisps. Realising he had been holding his breath, Keith inhales slowly, sharing Lance’s warm, thick breath. He forces himself to breathe steadily.

“That doesn’t even make sense, one twelfth of zero is –”

“Dinner is served!” Keith is interrupted by Hunk’s delighted declaration. With a flourish, he adorns the dining table with plates stacked with colourful foods from various planets they had visited. Lance scrambles into his seat to dive hungrily into the assortment of exotic cuisines.

“Besides,” Pidge says with her mouth full of something orange, “Intelligence is unrelated to brain size. You can have the world’s biggest brain and still be an idiot.” She turns to Lance. “But a complete lack of a brain, now that’s another story.”

Lance looks like he’s about to say something before Hunk pipes up.

“What? Does Lance not have a brain?”

“Oh? Didn’t you know?” Keith grins.

“Mm,” Pidge coincides.

“Huh,” Hunk muses. He faces Lance seriously. “I never actually knew that. That really sucks, man. Does it, like, hurt? You know, to think?”

Lance glares daggers at him, eyebrows flat and lips pressed tightly together. Pidge cackles with laughter and Keith snickers.

Keith has to lean away from Lance’s flailing limbs as the gangly boy wriggles into his seat. Keith watches as Lance pouts down at his food for a while with a shaking head before scarfing down some kind of steamed, yellow plant. By the time he has picked up the empty plate, licked it clean, and slammed it back down on the table, all traces of indignance have disappeared and he reaches for another dish. Keith watches as Lance sniffs the pale mush in front of him, his thoughts ever splattered across his face as his nose wrinkles and his mouth twists. Lance pulls back slightly and pushes the plate away before pausing, shrugging, and lunging at the apparently strange-smelling food.

Keith drops his head to hide his smile with a wall of hair.

Stupid Lance.

 xx

“Good training session everybody!” Shiro exclaims proudly.

“Yeah!” Pidge seconds, her hands planted on her knees. “We actually lasted pretty long. Hunk, that one shot you did when you like leaped in front of Shiro and did that army roll – so cool!”

“Thanks,” Hunk blushes. “What about when you took down like three bots with one swipe, Pidge!”

“It was four, actually. But anyway, thanks!”  

Keith grunts softly as he pulls off his helmet, shaking his damp hair loose and letting it fall into his eyes and around his face. He turns to see Lance looking at him, helmet in his hands, jaw slack, eyes glancing hurriedly away and head swivelling in the other direction a little too quickly.

“And Lance!” Shiro claps Lance on the shoulder. Lance jumps, taken by surprise. He looks up at Shiro, eyes widened slightly. “You’ve really improved at looking out for your team mates. You made some very impressive blocks today. And your shooting’s improved too.” Shiro smiles.

Lance stares, his mouth falling open and his eyes gleaming.

“Uh… Thanks, Shiro!” He grins, reaching his hand up to scratch the back of his neck. “Well, I mean, obviously, I was bound to become the greatest, most talented member of the team, but –”

Pidge snorts. Shiro rolls his eyes and chuckles softly, shaking his head.

Hunk laughs openly, but he raises his hand for Lance to high five. Lance slaps Hunk’s hand enthusiastically, but falls behind as the others begin to drift out of the training deck. Keith watches as Lance slows his pace, feet almost dragging along the ground as he casts his gaze down to the helmet in his hands. Keith lingers, pretending to fiddle with his armour, his back turned and his head tilted discreetly.

Lance’s steps trickle to a stop, his head hanging low. He grins down at his helmet – the smile erupting across his face as a small noise escaping from his lips and a flush of pink kisses his cheeks. His eyes close for a moment before they opening softly.

Keith stares.

Lance seems to steel himself, pressing his lips together and raising his head. He walks out of the room, his steps long and jaunty as usual, but his head angled downward slightly. He’s still smiling.

Turning away, Keith frowns down at the bayard in his hand. He activates the weapon, cutting it through the air with precision. He grunts with every swing, throwing his entire body into every movement. After a moment he stops, panting slightly. His gaze bores holes into the ground.

But he can’t fight the grin creeping onto his face.

Stupid Lance.

 xx

“Mmh,” Keith groans, yawning. He stretches his arms above his head, extending his back. With lazy feet and stiff joints, he wanders down the hallway. He has always enjoyed the ache of well-used muscles. It feels sweet to him, like the muffled throb of a heartbeat reminding him of the humanness of his body. It makes him feel like he’s used his limbs by making them hurt.

His muscles ache now.

More and more often these days he can be found on the training deck. He finds solace in discovering his limits and nudging them, testing them. It distracts him from his thoughts and allows him space to think about nothing but the moment. It helps him breathe.

He shuffles down the hall, running a hand through his hair. Dinner had been almost three hours ago, and he is thirsty after pushing his body for that long.

Rubbing his eyes, he moseys into the kitchen. He pours himself a bottle of water, brings it to his lips, chugs half of it, and refills. Screwing the cap on, he strolls into the dining room to make his way to the bedrooms. He stops in the doorway.

There is Lance, slumped onto the table with his head resting on his arm, dead to the world. He is in the same spot he had been in three hours ago.

Keith had been among the first to leave after dinner. He isn’t sure how Lance had managed to not only be the last at the table, but also to have passed out right there with no one having had disturbed him.

Keith inches closer. Lance’s cheek is squashed against the table’s surface, his mouth hanging open with a trickle of drool leading to a small puddle beside his hand. Keith can’t decide whether he looks peaceful or intoxicated. A soft snore oozes from Lance’s lips.

Keith feels his chest stiffen. Should he just leave him? Is that what Hunk or Pidge would do? Just let him sleep? On the cold, hard table that would leave him with a kink in his neck the next morning?

Keith’s eyes dart around the room as though searching for a resolution to his conundrum. What would Lance do if he found Keith? Leave him, probably. Keith breathes in deeply. What can he even do? Carry him to his room? Keith huffs a wide-eyed snort at the thought, then panics immediately, glancing over at Lance. He hasn’t moved.

Neither has Keith in the past two minutes, he realizes. He releases the breath he has been holding for he doesn’t know how long. He can still just leave. No one needs to know that he stumbled upon a sleeping Lance who may or may not be drooling all over the communal eating area.

He grips his water bottle. Can he just make a loud noise and run out of the room before Lance realizes what woke him up?

Lance stirs, frowning in his sleep, a look of discomfort passing over his face. Keith sighs.

He edges closer, his spine seeming to realign itself in the shape of a steel rod. As he grows nearer, he can hear the gentle rumble of Lance’s breath as it grunts from his lips. He reaches out his hand and hesitates, his fingers hovering in the air uncertainly. He shakes his head and gently grips Lance’s shoulder.

“Uh,” Keith manages. He gives the shoulder a small shake, not even enough to move Lance’s entire arm.

“Uh. Lance.” Lance remains still. Keith groans impatiently. He shakes the shoulder again, this time with enough force to push Lance’s whole chest forward. His body slumps back into position instantly. Keith rolls his eyes.

“Come on!” He flattens his palm on Lance’s back and pushes, hard. Lance’s eyelids flutter open with a sharp intake of breath. His dazed eyes wander up to Keith leaning over him. Lance blinks. Frowning, he brings a hand to his mouth to touch the spittle running down his chin. He looks down at the sizeable pool on the table, and smiles bashfully at Keith.

“Oops,” Lance says groggily. Keith rolls his eyes.

“I’ll get a cloth.” Keith goes into the kitchen to look for something to clean Lance’s dribble with. When he returns with a cloth he finds Lance still sitting down, rubbing his eyes with slow movements and yawning hugely. He takes his hands away from his face and his eyelids are drooping so low that his eyes are nothing but slits. When Keith approaches, Lance reaches out almost blindly for the cloth. Keith sighs.

“Just go to bed,” he says grudgingly. Lance looks surprised for a moment, but then a large, lazy grin spreads across his face.

“Thanks, Keith!” Lance stumbles out of his seat, nearly bumping into Keith on his way past. Keith watches Lance leave – his head dangling low and his arms swinging limply at his sides.

Keith smiles, despite the puddle of saliva he now has to clean up.

Stupid Lance.

 xx

Keith stomps past the automatic doors into his bedroom. He storms into the centre of the room and stops. He stares at a space on the ground for a few seconds before glancing around aimlessly. He looks down at the water bottle in his hand, and walks over to his desk and slams it on the surface.

He closes his eyes, briefly.

Walking over to his bed, he tugs off his jacket and flings it onto the ground. He drops onto the mattress on top of the blanket and lets his body grow still.

He is so tired.

He lets his eyelids lower over his eyes slowly.

*

Keith had not recognised him. The boy who stormed up to him as he hoisted on his shoulder the one he had been missing for a year. The one he was saving from something big and unknown that he did not yet understand. The one Lance had helped Keith carry as he inserted himself uncomfortably into Keith’s life.

He had been infuriating, insisting on forcing himself into any position that opposed Keith. In the beginning, Lance was an obstacle for him to collide with, an explosion he ignited with no effort at all.

He isn’t sure when Lance’s gripes had stopped driving him to murderous inclinations and started making something inside his chest flutter. Maybe it was sometime when Lance’s fuming face was inches from his, their eyes boring into each other and their noses almost brushing. 

Blue. His eyes are blue. And when he’s that close, it seems like all that Keith can see is that sleepless ocean in Lance’s eyes.

At first, it had been mild. A fleeting and strange something he could easily dismiss. That, he had been able to cope with. That had been alright, if not welcomed. But at some point, it had become less easily suppressed, and harder and harder to deny. Which he had done, for so long. 

He had not wanted this. He had not at all understood what it was that drew him to Lance – what could possibly be appealing to him about the smirking, competitive arrogance he had thought Lance radiated. 

But he had been wrong. And it was really only when he realized this that it started to hurt. 

He had felt himself slipping slowly, the way streams trickle into rivers and open their mouths to form seas. He had noticed himself noticing Lance – his position in the room, the frequency of his laugh, the thoughts attached to his words. He had caught his own hypersensitivity to the proximity between them. He had found himself watching the door when Lance wasn’t in the room. 

He had seen all this. Cursing himself, he had seen it. 

But he had felt it when Lance was lying there as the dust settled, his unconscious body bruised and battered. He had felt it when Lance had used himself as a shield of blood and bones between a friend and the flames. He had felt it when Lance had looked at him and gripped his hand, his voice warm. 

Lance was made of hidden astronomies, and when Keith had glimpsed them, he felt himself fall. 

*

He opens his eyes, slowly. Darkness hangs in the room as thick as the stillness it discolours. He sighs, and it’s a soft sound in the empty space. 

He doesn’t know how late it is, or how long it’s been. He doesn’t care. 

Sitting up, he rests on arm on his knee and the other on the bed beside him. He watches his fingers trace lazy patterns on the sheets with half-closed eyes. It’s now when he almost wants for an alarm to blaze over the speakers, calling for him to spring from his bed and race to find the others.

He scowls – frowning as though in a staring contest with the darkness. The darkness wins. 

He wonders if he has the will to train – rather than laying listlessly in his solitude. Training, lately, has become a ritual of coping for him – a recipe to follow gladly. After the lights go out, he makes his way to the training deck, pausing to gaze at the expanse of foreign galaxies from the ship windows as he passes. He never comes across anyone, or needs to explain what he is doing awake in these beautiful, lonely hours. 

The others, he knows, have restless nights too. Sleep isn’t something easily stumbled upon anymore. But Lance is the only one he has come across on the journey between training and his room.

Keith flinches at the memory of Lance’s racking sobs. He remembers moving slowly, uncertainly, towards him – bending down to pull him, gradually, into his arms – 

Keith squirms. He doesn’t want to think about that. What he wants to know is why Lance had a dream of such ferocity, why it had wrenched him from his bed so coldly, why he had leant into Keith the way he had. 

If he had the words, he would find a way to ask Lance. He would. 

It would be a product of gritted teeth and averted eyes, but Keith wants Lance to tell him what had haunted him that night. He wants to know, and he wants Lance to have someone to can spill himself to. He has a feeling that Lance hasn’t told anyone. And something about it feels too heavy to be left as an open wound. It feels too important. 

Lance is Keith’s friend. Keith has the right to care about him. 

Something in his chest shakes, but Keith makes his decision. He will do it. He nods, as if assuring himself. He’ll do it, he’ll find some way. Even if his mouth stumbles and his head grows dizzy. 

He will talk to Lance. 

Chapter Text

I don't like walking around this old and empty house
So hold my hand, I'll walk with you, my dear

Darkness.  

Lance heaves a gasp, lunging forward and scrambling off the bed. His feet tangle in the sheets and he stumbles, thudding to the floor heavily. Eyes wide and staring at the oblivion painted in the emptiness around him, he whimpers a soft groan. He lays there, still. His shallow, panting breaths seem to echo throughout the room. 

After a stream of what feels like hours condensed into seconds, he blinks for what he thinks must be the first time since his eyelids flew open. 

He had another nightmare. Another one. In the same week. 

How did this even happen?

His arm feels heavier than usual as he lifts his hand to rub his eyes. At least he hadn’t launched himself out of his room and into the hallway this time. He glances down at his body, raggedly strewn upon the ground. A sigh escapes his lips quietly. Grunting, he hurls himself upright, wincing and clutching a hand to his head as his vision stirs nauseatingly. After a moment he stands, crossing his arms over his chest absently. Not only has the lull of rest disappeared, but also his will to fall back asleep.

He exhales sharply with his decision and pulls on his nightgown before turning and wandering out the door. 

*

Space is big. Quite big, actually. Lance mulls this over as he blows at the steam emanating from the liquid in his cup. It isn’t the first time he has explored this thought. The weight of the concept never seems to leave him.

He sips his drink without shifting his gaze away from the colourful expanse before him. 

It’s comforting that he is so far away from them, in a way. He is a paladin, a defender of the universe, and his team is needed where there is danger. And at this moment, the fact that he is so sickeningly far from his family means that the danger is far from them too. 

For now. 

He drains his cup and turns away from the window. Heading back to the kitchen, his feet drag just slightly and his shoulders slouch. 

An effervescent glow fills the room when he trudges in. He places his cup onto the bench without removing his hand, his finger tapping the porcelain absently as he thinks about the incredible paradox of how the artificial light somehow doesn’t make the room feel any less dark.

His spine stiffens at the unmistakable sound of feet rounding the corner. With his back to the entrance, Lance hears the footsteps pause at the door, briefly, before entering the kitchen. He doesn’t move until the steps come to rest on the other side of the bench. He lowers his head to flick his eyes to the side.

Keith gazes back at him nonchalantly as he pulls open a drawer to reach for a glass.

Lance jolts almost imperceptibly and his eyes dart to the ground, to his hand grasping the mug, to the wall, and back to Keith. Lance gives him a small, stiff nod. Keith nods back casually.

Lance drums his fingers on the mug before pushing it across the surface and snapping his arm to his side. He edges forward, lessening their proximity. His hands fidget restlessly and his back remains adamantly rigid.

He hears Keith continue to make his drink, and as he sidles awkwardly around the kitchen, he feels eyes following his every movement. Every so often he glances over his shoulder, to check if Keith is still watching him. Which he is. Every time.

And every time Lance’s gaze flickers to the boy lounging lazily against the bench and sipping his water, it seems that Keith’s frown has grown deeper.

Lance sidesteps along the length of the wall now, in no particular direction, keeping his back to the pair of eyes he feels searing into him. Again, he glances back at Keith, whose frown has morphed into a genuinely disturbed expression of bewilderment. Lance continues to shuffle in a crab-like manner around the room. Then he hears a sigh, the tap of a glass against a surface, and,

“Ok, what the fuck?”

Lance swivels around, inquisition splattered dramatically across his features.

“What?” He quips, voice high. “You got a problem?”

“You idiot,” Keith shakes his head, sounding mildly baffled.

Lance plants his hands on his hips. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“I’m thirsty because I’ve been training,” Keith says like it’s obvious. He raises his eyebrows. “What are you doing here?”

Lance opens his mouth, closes it, and shrugs. He scuffs his feet on the floor. “Why don’t you mind your own beeswax, Keith?”

“You just asked me!” Keith scoffs.

“Yeah, well –” Lance trails off. Normally, he’d have a comeback for that. Lance is good at comebacks. Like, graduated-from-college-with-an-honours-degree-in-comebacks level good. Usually. But tonight, there’s an ocean in his brain and he is sacrificing most of his energy to keep it from leaking.

He can feel Keith watching him. He wonders if the jerk is trying to be inconspicuous or if he really just doesn’t care if Lance knows he’s being watched. Lance feels like yelling at him that yes, I can SEE you looking at me you complete moron, but he doesn’t. Instead, he sways his body around absentmindedly to a songless rhythm in an effort against his skittishness. He inevitably glances at Keith again, and pauses at the look of quiet contemplation swimming in his features. Lance’s eyes dart away, but a soft tension ebbs in the air between them now; an aura of uncertainty and question. Finally, Keith speaks.

“You had another nightmare, didn’t you?” His voice isn’t low or soft, but it’s gentle.

Lance splutters. “Wha – what makes you think THAT?”

Keith shrugs, but his eyes linger on Lance’s still jittering hands.

For a moment, a quietness blankets the air. They stand, Keith sipping his drink coolly and Lance moving about idly, with averted eyes and lowered heads. Lance yawns pointedly.

“Well, this has been nice and everyth –”

“You ever notice that dent in the wall in zone C level 2 at the Garrison? By the corner near the main offices?”

Lance eyes Keith oddly, but responds anyway. “Uh, dent? Dude, it’s literally a gaping hole in the wall. Iverson’s face every time he walks past it… priceless. Because it’s like, big enough that it’s completely in-your-face noticeable, but not so big that it needs to be filled in immediately, you know? And the rest of the place is so pristine,” Lance chuckles. “Everybody knew about it though. Where the heck were you, Keith? We all used to make up stories about how it happened. best one I heard was that it was an alien Iverson keeps in his filing cabinet as a sex slave making a run for it. Jimmy McGuire, man.” Lance shakes his head with a fond smile.

Keith’s smirk is devious. “It was me.”

“IT WAS –” Lance starts, eyes bulging and jaw slackening. “It was you?”

“Yeah,” Keith nods, grinning. “In first year. During the Christmas break. The place was pretty much dead, and I wanted to take my bike for a spin. Got it from storage no problem, and there was no one around so I decided to just get on and ride the rest of the way out.”

Lance is gaping now. “So? How did you make the hole?”

“I’m getting to that part,” Keith waves his hand dismissively. “So I’m riding through the hallways, and I get to the offices. They’re usually empty during break, so I just went for it without thinking. But one office has the door open, and there’s someone inside. They were wearing a commander’s hat? But they weren’t a commander, so I was really confused, until I saw them start to pull these weird faces and dance around the room with a mop.”

Lance’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline.

“Yeah,” Keith snickers. “So, I’m watching this guy, waltzing like a goddamn idiot, and I crash right into the wall. Hard. The guy looks at me, and I look back at him, and he looks fucking terrified and I’m sure I looked the same, and we just have this moment of silent agreement and he takes off the hat and I ride away.”

Lance stares for a moment, then his lips are tugging upward and suddenly he’s cackling madly. It takes a few moments for him to catch his breath enough to speak.

“Wow, wow, wait, wait, wait. Who was the guy?”

Keith shrugs. “I think maybe a janitor? I mean, he had a mop.”

Lance howls with laughter. “Wait, wait, you mean Barry? Or Carl? No, no, please tell me it was Frank. Oh God, if it was Frank, I think I’d die. It’d be the end of me. I couldn’t go on.”

Keith raises an eyebrow. “I don’t know. I didn’t know him.”

“Oh this is too good,” Lance wheezes, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “I can’t believe the cause of the Mysterious-Spontaneous-Hole-In-The-Wall was you and a dancing janitor! Do you even know how many conspiracy theories there are going around the Garrison about that hole? Heck, I made up like half of them. You’re like an urban legend. This is the best day of my life.”

Keith grins, folding his arms over his chest. “Yeah, I’ve heard a couple of stories.”

“Man, wait till I tell Hunk. I bet he’ll like, ask for your autograph or something embarrassing like that. And Pidge – oh man Pidge was convinced it was evidence that the Garrison uses corrosive extra-terrestrial gasses for power to evade taxes. Because you know how if you get up real close, you can see pipes inside? She thought the acidic alien gas was slowly disintegrating the building. Dude, you bashed your way into the plumbing, how did you even do that?” 

Keith shrugs, smirking. “I don’t know. I guess I was too distracted to really notice the damage at the time.”

“Ah man, I can’t believe this,” Lance shakes his head, bewildered. “You know, when you said it was you I was thinking more along the lines of… like, a high-speed chase between you and the principal, or an illegal cockfighting arena for homemade robots, but a dancing janitor…” Lance snorts, whacking his hand against his knee theatrically.

Keith rolls his eyes, smiling.

“Oh this is the greatest. You don’t have any other incredible, thug life, I’m-too-cool-for-the-law secrets, do you?” Lance laughs at Keith’s scowl. “No, no, but like… the graffiti that was outside the boy’s bathrooms a couple of months back? Or, or, the jet packs that went inexplicably missing from the school supply? Or how about the fire alarm that interrupted our final exams last year and nobody knows how it was started?”

Keith eyes Lance for a moment, arms folded and one brow raised. Then he hums.

“I don’t know about the graffiti, or the fire alarm, but the jetpacks…”

Lance gapes, eyes wide. “No.”

Keith smirks. “Yes.”

“No!” Lance exclaims. “What the heck did you do, Keith?”

Keith frowns. “They took my bike. Caught me riding outside hours in third year. I was mad, and I needed something to get around on.”

“Why couldn’t you just, I don’t know, walk like a normal person?”

Keith’s brows furrow. “But they took my bike.”

“You’re insane.”

“Coming from you.”

“I didn’t steal private property from a government-level institution out of spite!”

Keith huffs, tightening his crossed arms.

Lance smirks.

They’re both quiet for a moment. Lance glances at his feet and scuffs at the ground absentmindedly. Yawning, he brings a hand to his face to rub at his eyes.

“Anyway. I’m out,” Lance declares with a flourish of the hand, a smile tugging at his lips. “A face like this needs its beauty sleep to stay fresh.” He saunters towards the door with a lopsided swagger.

“A face like that needs hibernation,” Keith mutters.

Lance gasps and swivels, hand grasping his chest.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing,” Keith snickers.

“That’s what I thought.”

Just as he has left the room and is rounding the corner, Lance hears something suspiciously akin to “Good night, Lance.” He freezes, cocking his head to the side before glancing over his shoulder.

“Uh –  night, Keith.”

 xx

An unearthly hum hangs in the air the next time Lance finds himself wandering into the kitchen in the quiet hours of the night. He thinks it’s funny, that it feels like shifting from one dream to another. He knows this dream is nicer, this resting castle. But still it feels strange empty.

Keith is there when he reaches the doorway.

Lance stops, cocking an eyebrow. He knows Keith has likely been training again, but he doesn’t look particularly sweaty leaning against the bench lazily, toying with an empty cup. He looks up as Lance enters. He doesn’t seem too surprised, almost like he had been half expecting an appearance. Lance frowns.

“Ugh, it’s you,” Lance sighs, clenching his still shaking hands. Subtly, he hopes. He wonders if Keith noticed. “The delinquent.” 

Keith rolls his eyes. “That was two times, Lance.”

Lance raises an eyebrow. “Sure, sure. Whatever you say.”

“It was!”

“Ok, ok!” Lance holds his hands up. “Relax, Max.”

“Who’s Max?”

Lance chuckles. “No one. It’s a phrase.” He scratches his eyebrow, feet shuffling.

It still aches, this soon after being wrenched awake. It still creaks in his bones, still weighs heavily over his mind and clouds his blood. His body, like a limp thing attached to a set of strings, seems to lag behind his brain’s command and his senses protest against the sound of his own voice. He isn’t sure, but he thinks Keith can tell. He thinks maybe Keith is always paying attention, even when he doesn’t need to be.

“You hungry?” Keith asks over his shoulder as he begins pulling out drawers.

Lance frowns. “You’re offering me food?”

Keith shrugs. “I’m hungry. I’m gonna eat.”

“Suit yourself,” Lance yawns, scratching the back of his head. He watches as Keith rifles through the contents of the drawers until he finds a small bowl. Bringing it to the food goo dispenser, he loads it with the green gunk and dumps the dish back on the counter. He then proceeds to whip out the beverage tube and something in Lance’s head clicks.

“Uh,” he starts, taking a step back. “I see you’ve got the drink tube there. And no cup. And a bowl of ooey, gooey space food.”

Keith raises an eyebrow without glancing away from his task. “Yeah?”

“Keith. Keith, buddy. My man. Bro. Pal. What are you doing?”

Keith looks up, the nozzle of the tube in hand. “Um, eating?”

“Well, yeah, but dude…” Lance eyes the nozzle with dread-filled alarm. “What are you doing?”

Keith frowns. “I’m making cereal.”

“Oh, nooooo,” Lance moans, slowly shaking his head, bringing a hand to his temple. “No, no, no, no, no. No way in hell. Nuh-uh. Nope.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “How else am I going to have cereal, Lance?”

“That’s not cereal!” Lance shrieks, arms flailing. “Cereal is supposed to be crunchy, so when you put the milk on, the gods of the universe unite to even out the textures and create the perfect concoction of balanced consistencies.”

“Yeah. I like cereal.”

“But THAT,” Lance continues, thrusting a finger toward the bowl of goo, “that pile of sludge is sloppy, and soft, and moist.” Lance shudders suddenly as shivers course down his spine.

Keith stares at him, unblinkingly.

“To mix that with whatever the heck kind of water Coran’s got us on… would be to violate everything that is good and sane in the universe. In the universe, Keith! It’s disgusting!”

Slowly, Keith’s left eyebrow raises and the corner of his mouth twitches. He readjusts his grip on the nozzle.

Lance gapes, eyes bulging. “Keith, listen man, I get it. You’re, like, creative and innovative or whatever, but you don’t have to do this. Ok? Don’t be a weirdo. Let’s just forget this ever happened.”

Keith brings the drink tube to hover dangerously over the bowl.

“Keith. No. This is just –”

Without breaking eye contact, Keith squeezes, pouring a stream of liquid into the bowl. It pools around the mounds of green and seeps into the goo, creating a slushing substance dotted with floating clumps.

Lance gags, slapping a hand over his mouth as his stomach lurches. “Oh my God, it stinks. Keith, it stinks.”

Eyes still boring into Lance’s, Keith pulls out a drawer and gropes blindly around before removing his hand now grasping… a spoon.

“Ok, man,” Lance wheezes, pinching his nose. “You’ve made your point. Time to stop now.”

Keith plops the spoon into the bowl. Literally. It plops.

Lance stiffens. “Keith. No. No. Just, just, think about this for a minute –”

Unflinchingly, Keith scoops through the slop until he has a spoonful of drooping, soggy goo with a decent amount of green-flecked liquid.  

“Keith –” Lance gags again, lurching forward to clutch his stomach. “Keith. You need to stop. Please. I’m begging you. This is getting out of hand. It’s not funny –”

Carefully so as to keep the spoon steady, Keith raises it to his mouth.

Lance’s jaw drops. “Don’t you do it.”

Keith’s smirk is filthy as he opens his mouth.

“DON’T YOU DO IT KEITH!” Lance lunges, hands reaching to smack the spoonful to the floor where it belongs. Keith’s eyes widen at the sudden movement and he shoves the spoon into his mouth, lips closing around the metal.

Lance freezes. He supposes that this must be what it’s like to witness a car crash. Something deep and instinctual that feels a lot like his humanity screams at him not to look, yet he can’t for the life of him tear his gaze away. He feels his stomach coil sickeningly.

Eyes glinting with a defiant amusement, Keith pulls the spoon out of his mouth, clean. Lance stares at it. Then, he hears what is definitely a purposely accentuated swallow.

“Aaaaand that was the most repulsive thing I have ever seen in my entire life.” He pushes away from the bench forcefully.

Keith presses his mouth together, lips trembling. Finally he releases a loud snort that dissolves into giggles.

“No. I’m serious. That was foul. You are foul, Keith,” Lance practically spits, crossing his arms over his chest. “Never speak to me again.”

Dropping the spoon onto the counter, Keith clutches his stomach, hollering with laughter.

Lance scowls. “Ha, ha, laugh it up now. We’ll see who’s got their head in the toilet later tonight throwing up chunks of gooey green –” Lance stops, eyes widening. He clasps a hand over his mouth as his stomach heaves.

Keith howls, slapping a hand on his thigh. “It’s not… bad,” he gasps between huffs of laughter.

“NOT –” Lance digs his finger into his ear and wiggles it around theatrically. “Not bad? Not bad? Keith, that was literally nothing but mush. That you put in your mouth. And ate. You’re sick.”

“No,” Keith shakes his head, giggles trickling to a stop as he adopts his usual solemn expression. “It’s actually pretty good. I usually have it after a workout –”

“YOU’VE HAD IT BEF –” Lance throws his arms into the air in defeat.

Keith smirks, rolling his eyes.  

“It’s really not bad. Try some.”

Lance drops his arms, letting them swing limply at his sides as he turns slowly to face Keith.

“How about, no.”

“Alright,” Keith shrugs. “Coward.”

“Uh, dude, just because you’re crazy enough to eat whatever kind of hell that is, doesn’t mean anyone else should.”

“Fine, whatever,” Keith cocks his head slightly. “Good to know there’s something I can do that you can’t.”

Lance’s jaw drops. Revulsion etched across his face, he recoils with a hiss.

“No. Nope. This does NOT count as something you do better than me. Nope. This is just pure insanity. It’s like, a judgement of how much of a freak you are. I’m not doing that. I’m not a freak, Keith!”

“Fine. Whatever you say,” Keith shrugs, dropping the spoon back into the bowl. “Wimp.”

Lance staggers, eyebrows flailing across his forehead. “What did you just say?” His voice is a whisper.

“I said wimp,” Keith reiterates casually, hand leaning on the bench. “You’re not even willing to try. In my book, that’s pretty wimpy.”

Lance gawks. “Keith, I don’t think you’re understanding the situation here!”

“Oh, I’m understanding fine,” Keith cocks his head, eyes rolling. “You won’t try something that has just been proven edible because you’re too chicken.”

Lance’s head lowers, eyes narrowing to slits.

“Too.”

Lance’s teeth bare.

“Damn.”

He snarls.

“Chicken.”

“I’LL SHOW YOU CHICKEN!” Lance dives for the bowl, and before Keith has time to blink, Lance is hurling the dish full of watery goo at him, arms flurrying wildly. Keith freezes as the slop splatters across his chest, seeping into his shirt and clinging to his skin.

“Ha!” Lance exclaims, pointing. “That’s what you get!”

Keith looks down at the wet gunk plastered onto his clothes for a single, aggressively silent moment, before he lifts his flashing eyes once more to Lance, who flinches involuntarily.

“Well, I hope you’ve learned your lesson –”

Keith launches himself forward, snatching the drinking tube and rounding on Lance, lips pressed together in a hard line. Lance shrieks, throwing his arms in front of his eyes as Keith points the nozzle at him and squeezes. Lance’s shrieks morph into shouts of outrage as the liquid gushes into his face and drips down his front.

“Keith! I’m in my pyjamas!”

“You started it!”

“I’LL FINISH IT!” Lance runs to the food goo dispenser, aiming the hose at Keith with the air of a neighbourhood firefighter, and squirts the green substance at the fiery-eyed boy across from him. Keith dodges behind the counter and Lance yanks at the tube to follow him in his pursuit.

“Lance, don’t, or I’ll –”

Squirt.

“That’s it!”

Lance yelps and dives behind the counter as a goo-bespattered Keith shoots a stream of liquid after him. Ducking as Lance fires back over the bench from his crouched position, Keith drops to his knees on his side of the island. Using the bench as cover, they aim over the counter at one another, swerving around squirts of alien nutriments and growling when hit. They hurl threats at each other through crooked grins and wear small determined frowns, until Keith leaps on top of the bench, ignoring the goo blasting his chest, to drench Lance from higher ground. Lance yells, raising his hands defensively as the liquid spurts into his face at close range. He splutters as the substance pours down his face, glaring at Keith’s insufferable smirk. He opens his mouth to shout something in retaliation, but all that comes out is a flood of space water spilling from his lips. They both freeze, jaws slack, before erupting with laughter.

Keith slides from the countertop to the floor beside Lance, chuckles still shaking both of their shoulders. They allow their giggles to fade naturally, weapons falling to the ground. They sit there, traces of smiles clinging to their lips, long enough for Lance’s head to lean back to rest against the island and his eyes to close gently.

When he opens them again, after however much time it takes to slip into the pre-sleep state of acute dreaminess, Keith is looking at him. Lance grins lazily, and Keith smiles back. They’re quiet for a while then. He wonders if it’s acidic, their silence. If it’s corrosive. He doesn’t think so.

“I can’t believe you soaked my only pair of pyjamas.”

“You asked for it.”

“You asked for it. I can’t believe you ate that bowl of vileness and inhumanity.”

“It’s just food.”

“You’re just food.”

Keith rolls his eyes.

 xx

The time, like usual, is filled with blood and sweat and detonations. They fight, and it might seem like a game in its endlessness, if anything could ever feel like a game to them anymore. They all, (except Shiro, for whom it’s been too long,) still use words and concepts like day and night, as though there is anything but a vast emptiness that blankets the space between planets and stars (which seem colder when not above them in a sky).

In the air, when the only important name they have is paladin, Keith and Lance move like poetry. They glide around one another in some kind of lethal harmony, exchanging warnings like breath and thanks like smiles. Seamlessly, effortlessly, they fill the gaps left by the other with steady hands and watchful eyes.

But the grace they share in those heated moments is not the same when their feet are on the ground and all the castle lights are on. They bicker and banter and scowl at the ground, just the same as always. They don’t, however, nurture hostility in their glares or end conversations with sour-tasting words the way they had before. No one else notices when their arguing starts to feel less like fighting.

xx

Once more, Lance finds himself wandering towards the kitchen as the castle cloaks itself in stillness. Again, he feels disjointed, like a splintered marionette imitating motion. His bones softly hum with disquiet.

It’s the second time this week.

Once more, he finds Keith there. He doesn’t know how it happened, this pattern of slow glances and small nods that seem to fill silences. He doesn’t know how anything so consistent could remain so fundamentally unspoken. But every time, since the first time, that he’s needed to be anywhere but inside those four walls, he’s found Keith here.

It’s early in the week.

“Hey.”

Keith looks up from his arms folded over the bench. “Hey.”

*

They sit on the floor, loosely gripping the cups resting on their knees. Lance wonders when silence became comfortable between them. He wonders how long Keith has been waiting tonight. Why Keith waits at all.

“I totally showed you up today, by the way.”

Keith frowns. “What?”

“Today! On the Galra ship! I took down thirty-four sentries, and you only took down twenty-two.”

“You were counting?”

Lance scoffs. “Duh. So I totally beat you and am clearly the better paladin.”

“I was the one who actually recovered the data, though.”

“Psh, that’s irrelevant, Keith. You can’t deny the cold hard stats.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “That’s stupid. I did more.”

“Well, obviously you didn’t if I took down twelve more sentries than you!”

“How did you even keep track?”  

“With great difficulty,” Lance smirks.

“You are ridiculous,” Keith shakes his head with an accentuated slowness.

‘Hey!” Lance jerks forward, the liquid in his cup sloshing. “I’m like, half as ridiculous as you are.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!”

“You couldn’t be any more ridiculous if you tried.”

“You couldn’t be any stupider if you tried!”

“Whatever, lame-brain.”

Lance forgets that Keith’s eyes are on him and waiting for a rebuttal. He just stares for a moment, his lips tracing some ghost of a smile.

He doesn’t notice Keith’s frown. “Lance?”

He tears his gaze away from the space it was momentarily entwined with. When he looks at Keith, his smile is small.

“My sister says that.”

“What?”

“She calls me lame-brain.”

Keith nods seriously. “She’s onto something.” Scoffing, Lance shoves him before slumping back against the cold kitchen island.

“She’d call me that and chase me around the house throwing cheese puffs at me, trying to get one in my ear because she wanted to know if it would come right back out the other. She called it science and said she was testing her hypothesis that there’s nothing in my head at all.”

Keith snorts. “That’s a valid point.” Lance barely hears him.

“We were at a family lunch one time with all our relatives and everything, and every time someone said my name she’d pretend she’d never heard of me. My poor great aunt thought she was getting Dementia or something, and she was all distressed and pointing right at my face and finally my sister just went ‘Oh, you mean lame-brain.’  And she wouldn’t let anyone say my name the whole day without correcting them, and eventually everyone just picked up on it and called me lame-brain too.”

Keith is laughing now.

Lance smiles. “I remember the day she came up with it. She thought she was so clever. I was trying to watch TV like a peaceful human being and she wouldn’t stop running around the couch yelling it at me. She thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

Keith raises an eyebrow. “Huh?”

Lance eyes Keith quizzically.

“What does that even mean, sliced bread… what?”

Lance chuckles. “Oh my god Keith, it’s a saying. It just means that someone thought something was really great. My –” He stops suddenly. “My um, uh… hm. My someone says it.”

He taps his knees together, resting his cup on the floor with a small clink.

“Huh,” he frowns.

Gazing at his feet, his eyebrows draw steadily closer together. He clears his throat. “So, anyway, she was running around the couch, and I stuck out my foot, and who the fuck says it?” Lance jolts forward abruptly and Keith flinches just barely. Spine rigid and fingers fidgeting absently with his sleeve, Lance’s eyes flicker around the room restlessly. Keith is still.

“Mom, or, or… Abuela? Aunt… Or no, Great Aunt.... No.” His foot taps on the floor rhythmically. “It’s not my abuelo. Um, um, it could be… I mean… Uncle –? No. Is it?”

Keith opens his mouth, slowly. “Lance –”

Lance ducks his head, closing his eyes and huffing a dry laugh.

“It’ll come to me.”

“Yeah,” Keith murmurs, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

Lance plucks at the flap on his shoe. He feels Keith’s eyes on him.

“I’ve never heard you swear before.”

Lance chuckles. “Guess not.”   

“What happened when you stuck out your foot?”

Lance looks at him. “Huh?”

Keith raises his eyebrows. “When you stuck out your foot. On the couch?”

Lance stares for a moment, his gaze swimming with a warm kind of surprise. Keith had been listening.

“Uh, yeah. So, she was running around me, and I like, eased my foot out just before she ran past. But now, you have to understand here, I am the master of subtlety. Like, I bet I could trip anyone before they saw my foot coming. There’s an art to it. I’m an artist.”

“Sure, whatever,” Keith says, rolling his eyes.

“You’re just jealous of my mad tripping skills. Anyway, so she was in the middle of chanting, you know like,” Lance clears his throat before carefully neutralising his expression and singing to the tune of Post Man Pat; “Lame-brain Lance, lame-brain lance, Lame-brain La – hey, shut it!”

Keith shakes his head, stifling his laughter in the crook of his elbow.

Lance scowls. “I said shut up. Anyway, she didn’t see the foot I ever so subtly stuck out and she went literally flying across the room and landed face first on the Epic-Gum-Ball we’d all been making together for weeks. I mean, it was massive – like bigger than an actual tennis ball – and it smooshed into her fringe so bad and she couldn’t get it out. She screamed every time Mom told her to cut it, so she just walked around with mashed up bubble-gum in her hair for three weeks.”

“Heh.”

“We were at the grocery store and this old lady was like to her ‘I like your rainbow hair-dye lovey’ and my sister was like ‘Thank you, it’s this new brand called Lame-brain Bubble-gum Spice’.”

Keith snorts loudly. Lance watches him, grinning.

“She sounds interesting.”

“Oh, she is.” Lance goes quiet then.

He doesn’t notice Keith watching him toy with the hem of his shirt so much as he feels it, like a stillness clinging to a shadow of a thought.

“Wanna see how much space goo I can fit in my mouth before it comes out my nose?”

Lance nearly chokes on his splutter. He coughs, eyebrows soaring at Keith’s expectant gaze, before pausing and tilting his head slightly.

“Yeah, ok,” he shrugs, lips curling upwards. “Let’s see what you’re made of, Mr. Juvenile Offender.”

xx

 Lance collapses onto his seat beside Hunk, propping his elbow on the table and letting his chin slump onto his hand. Keith is slumped a little more lifelessly than usual in the seat next to him, belligerently ignoring the conversation around him and staring hard at the table. If Keith is noticing the not-so-subtle glances Shiro is throwing his way at regular intervals, he is really quite impressively refusing to acknowledge them.

“You know, you’ve seemed more tired than usual lately, Keith,” Shiro frowns slightly.

“Oh yeah, I’ve noticed that too. A level two drone would have taken him out yesterday if I hadn’t gotten it for him,” Hunk offers, spooning a pile of goo into his mouth.

“I’m not tired,” Keith huffs, folding his arms over his chest. “And I had that drone, Hunk. I was fine.”

“Oh sure, buddy,” Hunk says around his mouthful.

“Well, I hope you’re all ready for the mission we have planned today,” Allura chimes with her assertive kind of brightness. “Coran and I have been working on the logistics for some time now.”

“We’re ready, Princess,” Shiro nods firmly. A chorus of groans of agreement follow.

“Good. You’ll need to be, considering the quantity of black matter we’ll likely be coming in contact with today.”

“Can’t be much more than the mass of black matter under Lance’s eyes,” Pidge mutters with a snigger.

“Huh?” Lance looks up from where his gaze had been resting on his bowl.

Pidge smirks playfully at him from across the table. She reaches a finger behind her glasses to tap the skin beneath her eye. “You got a little something right there, Lance.”

“Oh,” Lance’s eyes flicker down for a moment. Barely a second, and yet he can still feel how Keith’s gaze is a little heavier than everyone else’s in that fraction of a heartbeat. “Buzz off, Pidge. I don’t have bags. Old people have bags.”

He’s noticed them. Of course he has. They’re hard to ignore in the gleaming mirror under fluorescent bathroom lights. He doesn’t linger on them. All they are is a reminder.

“What’s the matter? Didn’t get enough beauty sleep last night?”

“Oh, I get it. What’s the matter, dark matter,” Hunk whispers loudly.

“For your information, I have precisely the right amount of beauty sleep regularly. It’s a science,” Lance says as he waves his spoon at her theatrically.

“Sure Lance,” Pidge chuckles, but there’s a shade of fondness in her voice.

“Pidge, didn’t you wake up in the hallway this morning?” Keith raises an eyebrow at her.

Pidge freezes. “Shut. Up,” she mutters through gritted teeth.

“What was that?” Shiro turns away from his conversation with the Princess, training his masterfully stern stare onto the recoiling Pidge. “You fell asleep in the hallway? Again? That’s why you were here so early? You’re supposed to be getting more rest, Pidge!”

Pidge looks at him with the wide eyes of a kid caught stealing from the cookie jar, and Lance bursts out laughing. Hunk giggles beside him and Allura covers her mouth. He watches Keith snicker beside him, and grins briefly at him between fits of laughter. Keith’s eyes glint back at him.

Pidge bristles. “Thanks for that, Keith.”

xx

“Ok, Pokémon, anything else?” Lance grins at Keith lazily. “There’s gotta be more. I know there’s more.”

Keith’s lip sticks out. “You don’t know that.”

“Oh yes I do,” Lance leans his head against the wall, elbow resting on his knee. “Come on. What else is there?”

Keith huffs a breath, tightening his folded arms. “Naruto.”

Lance laughs loudly. “Not surprised.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing at all, Keith. Nothing at all,” Lance chuckles. “It just makes sense is all. I watched it sometimes too, you know. What else have you got?”

Keith exhales, shaking his head.

Lance groans. “Come on, man, I told you about Star Wars!”

Keith nods, grinning. “I can’t believe you made a shrine for Obi wan Kenobi.”

“Hey! That man was a legend. And I watched them in chronological order. I was understandably devastated.”

“But you kept it up for six years.”

Lance nods. “That I did.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “I just figured you’d be more into Han Solo or something,” he shrugs, smirking. “You have some similar traits.”

“Is that an insult?”

Keith opens his mouth, closes it, cocks his head to the side and hums.

“Hey!” Keith’s lip twitches upwards as Lance shoves him. “Ok, so I did love Han Solo. But Obi wan was just so awesome and smart and – and noble, and… cool. I was always him when we played Jedi.”

Keith chuckles, hair falling into his eyes.

“So come on, I know there was something else you were obsessed with. Spill.”

Keith’s features slide once more into a pout. Lance raises an eyebrow, before swivelling to face Keith wholly, narrowing his eyes and leaning forward intently. He stares, unblinking and unrelenting, until finally Keith sighs in defeat.

“Fine. I don’t know why it’s so interesting though.”

Lance raises an eyebrow expectantly. Keith sighs again.

“Alright. I used to like… well, theories, I guess. About like, cover ups and things, and... Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You… wait, lemme get this straight. You liked conspiracy theories?”

Keith frowns. “I guess you could call them that,” he mumbles.

“Oh, ho ho, oh man. Ok, ok, like what? Bigfoot? Um, Sasquatch? Loch Ness monster? God, tell me you believe in Nessie. Please. I beg you.”

Keith rams an elbow into his side, rolling his eyes. “Not like that, you idiot. I mean like… about the moon landing and 9/11. You know the CIA created AIDS to try and wipe out gay people?”

Lance stares, eyes big and jaw dangling. “Wait, wait,” he says, lips creeping slowly into a grin, “Are you one of those people who think Paul McCartney died way back in like, the 60’s?”

Keith huffs, folding his arms tightly.

Lance is giggling now. “And – and – that they hired a doppelganger to impersonate him? So they could keep the band going?”

Lance yelps as Keith kicks his shin. Hard. 

“Hey!”

“You asked for it!”

Lance huffs an indignant breath, rubbing his leg. Keith mumbles something about Bigfoot and Sasquatch and being the same thing.

Lance frowns. “Huh?”

“Nothing.”

xx

 Standing in front of the floor to ceiling window in the control room, their fingertips graze the glass they cloud with their breath. It’s almost hard to remember everything that has happened in this room. Somehow it feels less empty now as they defy sleep than when there are armoured bodies and loud voices filling it.  

“The stars look different.”

Lance feels it when Keith glances away from the starry expanse to look at him and cock his head.

“Of course they do. These aren’t our constellations.”

“I know that, Keith. Obviously. That’s not what I mean.”

Keith sighs. “What do you mean then, Lance?”

“I mean like… is it just me, or… Ok. Remember that song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?”

“Uh…”

“The nursery rhyme?”

“Uh.”

“Ok. It’s just a song about a twinkling star. But that’s what I mean. These stars don’t twinkle.”

Keith blinks. “That’s because we’re not inside an atmosphere and –”

“The heat density and varying temperatures aren’t here to refract the light. I know.”

Keith watches him as he stares accusingly out at the foreign galaxy enveloping them. Lance drags a finger across the glass, trailing an invisible line through the cluster of distant suns.

“It’s just different, you know? It’s not the same.”

Keith nods slowly. “No. It’s not.”

“I don’t even remember what it looked like when they twinkled. It’s weird to think they ever did. Isn’t it?”

Keith frowns. “There were a lot of stars in the desert. I’d just stare at them for hours. They twinkled, but they seemed… further away than they do now. I think it kind of feels like we’re among the stars now, instead of looking up at them.”

Lance looks at him then, this kid staring hard at the star-dusted sky with wild eyes glinting in the pale light. Something tugs the corner of Lance’s lips upwards.

“Yeah fine, that’s true. They do feel kind of closer. I still think they looked better on Earth.”

“You know, technically Earth’s atmosphere was hindering your view of them.”

“Technically shmechnically. Rack off, Keith.”

Keith chuckles at Lance’s out-stuck lip. Lance can still feel the burn of Keith’s gaze on him as his own drifts back out to the bespattered pinpricks before them.

They stay like that, for a while. Lance tries to keep track of the lines he draws with his eyes between stars, tries to see silhouettes of objects in the outlines he creates. None of his lines seem to come together naturally, so he bends and twists them to artificial conjunctions. When he finally finds a shape of something, he spends too long searching for a name and loses sight of it.

Keith speaks then. “Lance?”

He wouldn’t have been able to before, but now he can hear the uncertainty staining Keith’s voice. He turns his head, silently raising an eyebrow. Keith glances away from him.

“Have they been getting worse?”

Lance screws up his face in confusion. “Huh?”

“Your nightmares,” Keith mutters, and Lance’s face drops. “You’ve been, uh, up late a lot the past few weeks. I mean, nearly every night.”

“Wha – uh,” Lance glances down at his suddenly restless hands. “Why would you think that?”

Keith’s gaze grows heavier at that. Crossing his arms, he glares holes into Lance’s head with a pointedly raised eyebrow until Lance sighs.

“Alright, ok? Fine. I, um… I haven’t always… had a nightmare every single time I’ve come here. I mean, I’ve still been, well, getting them. But not like every time.”

Keith blinks. “So why do you come?”

Lance scratches the back of his neck and glances away. “I guess… I just like talking?”

Keith frowns at him slightly, and for a moment it seems as though he is squinting.

“I like talking too,” he finally says, a shade quieter than before. Lance is starting to turn back to the window when Keith speaks again. “What are they about?”

Lance raises an eyebrow. “What? My nightmares?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, uh…” Lance glances back out at the stars. “My family.”

Keith frowns, his nose crinkling slightly. “But that’s not scary.”

“Wha – well, not just my family! I dream about –” He cuts himself off. He feels Keith still watching him as his gaze flickers down. Giving a small sigh, he raises his eyes to meet Keith’s soft, expectant ones. “I dream that they all die because I couldn’t save them.”

“Oh,” Keith breathes quietly, eyes widening slightly. “That sucks.”

Lance nods. 

“They’ll be safe, though.”

Lance sighs. “Yeah, I know technically they’re safe, but –”

“No, I mean, they’re safe and always will be. We’re going to save everyone. But I know you’d never let anything happen to them anyway. Even if it was just you against the whole empire, your stubborn ass would find a way to stop them all. But you know, it’s not just you. It’s all of us.”

Lance blinks. His thoughts swirl eagerly inside his mind, swimming with the idea that Keith even hypothetically thinks that he might be able to take on an empire. He looks at Keith and smiles. Keith’s lip twitches in response.

There’s a silence then. They cast their gazes back out to the array of dotted stars before them, their expressions light.

Lips curling slowly upwards, Lance breaks the quiet.

“So ripped jeans. Do you think they make them and then rip them, or do they make them with the rips already there?”

Keith turns to face him, eyebrows drawing together. “Huh?”

Lance looks at him with an expectant flourish of the hand. Keith stares at him with a dangling jaw for a moment before sighing.

“Obviously they make them with the rips already there.”

“But how do you make jeans with gaping holes in them?”

Keith scrunches his face. “Don’t you knit?”

Lance rolls his eyes. “Yes! That’s how I know how hard it would be!”

Keith shakes his head. “Lance. You know they use machines, right?”

“Well obviously. But how do the machines do it?”

Keith pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales deeply.

xx

“Hey Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“I have a question.”

“Good for you.”

‘No, I mean, a question for you. I want to ask you a question.”

“Ok.”

“So, can I ask you my question then?”

“For God’s sake –”

“If a person dies while they’re wearing braces, do they take the braces off the body, or just bury them too?”

“Lance, what the fu –”

“Personally, I don’t think they should be burying people with braces still on. I mean, they had to suffer through wearing them in life, surely they’ve earned the right to get rid of them in death.”

“Um –”

“Like, who wants to wear braces for the rest of eternity? Or at least until your body decomposes. Unless you believe that you spend your afterlife wearing what you were buried with. Didn’t the Ancient Egyptians believe that?”

“Uh,”

“Can you imagine all the thirteen year old ghosts walking – sorry, drifting around with transparent, ugly metal stuck on their teeth forever? It’d suck. Big time.”

“Lance –”

“And it would be a waste of resources. But then again, who wants to use teeth-metal some kid died wearing? Wait no, the real question is what kind of orthodontist wants to pry braces out of a dead person’s mouth? Ugh, creepy. I just got the shivers.”

“I think you’re overthinking this.”

“I think you’re overthinking me overthinking this.”

“I’m not.”

“Whatever, Keith. You just don’t have the brain power to think about the big questions in life.”

“Fine. Well, you know they secure the jaw either with wires or by sewing the mouth shut, so it’s not like anyone would be able to see the braces in an open casket anyway.”

“Wha –”

“And they generally don’t remove that kind of stuff unless it’s requested, so to answer your very important question, yes. They bury dead people with their braces on.”

“How do you know all of that?”

“General knowledge?”

“Uh huh, sure. It’s not because you’ve already thought about his and have looked it up before, is it?”

“N – no.”

“Of course not.”

xx

 They’ve taken to wandering around the castle. Their talk fills the hallways as their hands flitter to unopened compartments and hidden crevices. It had started in the kitchen, with one of them rummaging through the shelves and cupboards looking for nothing in particular and coming across nothing particularly outstanding. The other had stood with crossed arms, calling him moronic through half-smiling lips before finally joining in the listless hunt and Lance definitely doesn’t remember who was the one to start such a stupid game (it was him). They have been making their way through the rooms of this greatly unknown beast they are living in. Lance tells himself he doesn’t know why they do it or what he’s looking for, despite the gaping hole on his inside where familiarity used to be.

They’re in a new room now, tall and uncluttered like the rest of them. 

“Was there anything in that peep-hole thingy?”

“Nope,” Keith calls over his shoulder.

“Aw man. It would have been a really cool place for secret-hiding.”

“What secrets are you hiding in a cupboard in the middle of a wall, right in front of everyone?”

“The not-very-secret kind. Duh,” Lance rolls his eyes, ducking his head under a small table.

“Hey, what do you think this is?” Keith holds up a small, faintly glowing object.

“Where’d that come from?” Lance asks, bounding across the room to where Keith stands.

“It was in that drawer there.”

Lance hums, bending until he is eye-level with the item. “I think it looks like some kind of symbol.”

“Maybe it’s a relic for some kind of cult,” Keith smirks, eyes flickering to Lance’s.

Lance grins up at him before straightening. “Yeah. It’s most likely a sacred ornament used for identifying members of a notorious hamburger-worshipping clan.”

Keith glances down at the object in his hands. “Yeah, it does kind of look like a hamburger.”

“Mm. Kind of.”

Keith glances back up. “They were probably all outlawed when the hamburger-worshippers lead a secret revolt against the food industry by trying to poison every kind of food except for hamburgers.”

“But the hotdog-worshippers tipped off the government, and they were all arrested and forced to live on a desert island planet where the only food source was celery.”

“But there were so many for them that the government had to cover for it somehow, so they blew up an empty building and said they were all in it.”

“And then anyone caught with one of these babies was sent straight to the prison island.” Lance motions to the object.

“Most of these things were probably incinerated to destroy the evidence.”

“This was probably one of the last ones, then,” Lance whistles.

“It’s probably a rare artefact.”

“Very rare.”

Keith nods solemnly, placing the item too-carefully back in the drawer. “Don’t want to anger the hamburger god.”

Lance snorts. “Some hamburger god that let all of his people eat celery the rest of their lives.”

“No, I think the hamburger god would give any Earth God a run for their money.”

Lance raises an eyebrow. “Keith, two gods can’t both exist to give anybody a run for their money.”

“Maybe there’s a different god for every galaxy?”

“Don’t you know anything about religion? God is supposed to be omnipresent and omnipotent and all that jazz. Like a divine being. There can only be one of those.”

Keith is quiet for a moment. “I guess.”

“Mm hm.”

Keith looks at Lance with curious, soft eyes. “Do you believe in God?”

Lance shrugs. “I was raised to believe in God and heaven and everything.”

Keith raises an eyebrow. “So, do you?”

Dammit, Keith. That’s usually enough to quiet the questions. To cloud the fact that he hasn’t been sure about anything that meaningful for a while now, and that he can’t remember the last time he prayed. He doesn’t know whether he feels guilty for that or not.

Lance shrugs again, then sighs. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”

Keith smiles. “Sure.”

Lance glances down at the table his fingers are silently ghosting over. His lips raise in a half-smirk.

“You know, the marking on the side right here kinda looks like an Ikea label.”

“It’s probably the symbol for a product that was made using insect slave labour.”

Lance pretends to gasp. “But that was abolished when the last of the black beetle markets were shut down!”

Keith smirks. “That’s what they want you to think.”

xx

“Who’s your favourite Star Wars character anyway, Keith? Huh?”

“Easy. Han Solo.”