Chapter Text
Lance missed the Earth, and it was no secret. He missed it the same way he missed his family, the two realities blurring and mingling together in a dull nostalgia most of the time. He missed the ocean and the shore, the glimmering sand under the sun, the hot white pebbles along the road, the birds chirping shrilly in the branches shook by the breeze…
To the pretty flowers blossoming here and there - he had to admit - he never gave much thought. And yet, if asked, he would have loved to be given the opportunity of seeing even those again. So he thought at least, but in truth, what were the odds of him somehow finding earth flowers here in space?
As unexpected as it seemed, Lance did end up seeing earth flowers again, and the same small, light blue ones that grew between the cracks of his front door steps at that.
It was just petals at first. So small, so frail, the very firsts must have gone unnoticed.
“That sounds nasty” came Pidge’s comment. Her voice cutting sharply through the coughing noises.
The girl studied him, lifting an eyebrow and looking away from the symbol crowded screens hovering in front of her. Lance inhaled deeply, catching his breath after the brief fit. He shook his head and flashed her an amused grin.
“Nah, it’s just the smell of whatever nightmare Coran is trying to cook.” He pointed his thumb in the general direction of the kitchen (from where, to be fair, a thick green mist was coming their way), before pouring himself a glass of water. Pidge’s eyebrow remained raised as she went back to her screens. She didn’t buy that at all.
Brushing aside the things he didn’t really want to address was kind of Lance’s speciality, he usually managed to fool even himself into thinking them utterly unimportant. Of course though, he was wrong.
The coughs came and went during the day, leaving him panting and annoyed for a few seconds. They woke him up in the middle of the night, tearing him away from dreams filled with sun, warmth, laughter and kisses. They even came up during training, forcing the air from his lungs and distracting him enough to get shot by one of the training bots. Keith gave him a look halfway between an annoyed glare and a questioning concern.
Lance decided he’d rather have the glare, so he breathed in quickly against the grating feeling in his throat and cracked a joke. Keith rolled his eyes and the groans from his other teammates covered nicely the last of his huffing coughs.
He was determined not to worry anyone over something so trivial, he’d just have to wait for this annoyance to pass. So he thought at least, and he persisted until one evening masking his symptoms became even harder.
The face that Keith - sitting right next to him – had pulled, after bravely (or foolishly) shoving in his mouth a rather generous spoonful of pinkish goo somehow engineered by Hunk, had sparked a loud, carefree laugh in Lance, one that was quickly bringing tears in his eyes before the air caught in his throat. The paladin brought a hand to his mouth, coughing harshly and grasping at the table with the other, trying not to get too frantic at the sudden difficulty that breathing proved to be.
The easy chatter around the table came to an abrupt stop, Shiro placing a steadying hand on his shoulder, Pidge kneeling on her chair, seemingly ready to jump over the table to get to him. Lance couldn’t make out much other than the hushed mutterings of his own name going around the table, shuddering when Keith’s hand stopped hovering and tentatively touched his hunched back. Just as he vaguely began to realize that holding off panic was proving almost impossible, the fit suddenly stopped, leaving him wheezing and gasping for air. Lance slumped down, resting his cheek on the cold table beneath him.
His heart hammered in his chest and after a few sharp inhales he opened his eyes (which he didn’t really recall closing) still gasping, still gripping the side of the table like a lifeline. He lowered his other hand from his mouth and saw, swimming in his watery vision, a couple of small, delicate, periwinkle petals. He remembered those petals, picking the small flowers that grew here and there back at home would leave him with his hands covered in them, until he learnt to be more gentle.
Allura’s voice calling his name, an alarmed edge to it, snapped him back from his memory, and he realized he must have been staring for a tad too long .
Lance raised his head, feeling actually fine now that his lungs seemed to be working once again. He looked around at the concerned faces of his friends and bit lightly on his lip before attempting a smile and closing in a fist the petals on his palm. He cleared his voice and that seemed to lift a spell form the others, who suddenly moved to touch him and talk
“What was that all about?” asked Pidge, voice a little squeaky with worry at the end “Should we get him in an healing pod?” Hunk went on anxiously, wringing his hands and looking at Lance as if he might actually collapse any minute
“How are you feeling?”
“Can you breath freely now? Do you think you can stand?”
Shiro and Allura added to the chorus of questions and, probably most alarming of all, was Keith’s slightly scrunched up face, a silent worried expression that made Lance want to dig a hole for himself.
“I’m fine, I’m fine” he shoved his hand in his pocket and waved the other dismissively, smiling wider, eager to brush off the whole accident. It proved difficult but he managed, avoiding a trip to the pods by letting Coran shine a light into his mouth and finding nothing.
After that Lance could feel slightly nervous glances never fully leaving him, and he couldn’t really blame them, since even when he wasn’t coughing, his breathing was steadily becoming raspy and shallow. He suspected that it was mostly out of concern that Keith asked him so often to train together, after all he couldn’t properly choke to death if he had someone there to help him. Lance went along with it, but exercising was becoming a pain, an heavy weight soon settling deep in his chest, and he was actually getting worried as each cough left one or two blue petals fluttering out of his mouth.
For all of their observing the others hadn’t spotted the small petals yet, but they did notice the obvious signs of him not getting any better, at all. He knew it was all a matter of time before they bodily took him to the pods and the reason to came all too quickly, when he was helping Hunk and Pidge relocate some materials.
The chatter was light and nice, and Lance was glad to be momentarily free from anxious glances. At least until he let one of Pidge’s projects fall unceremoniously to the ground, coughing so harshly that the only thing keeping him standing was the hand he gripped at Hunk’s shoulder when he hurried to his side. Looking down at the floor Lance could see the scattered metal pieces, and reasoned that he must have looked like he was going to die if Pidge wasn’t shouting at him for that. In all honesty he was also feeling like he was dying, considering how he couldn’t bring air into his lungs, no matter how he tried.
When finally the coughing subsided enough for him to take a shaky, ragged breath, he found himself kneeling on the ground, Hunk’s hand moving in slow circles on his back. He looked down and saw small periwinkle flowers scattered in front of him, some caught in the hand he had in front of his mouth.
The silence around him was only broken by his own gasps, his breathing still shallow. When he looked up he saw the other two staring at the pretty flowers in a bit of a daze.
“Take him to the pods,” Pidge’s voice was barely more than a murmur, but Hunk nodded anyway.
Lance worried at his bottom lip: ignoring small petals nobody else saw was one thing, he had done a pretty good job at convincing himself that it was something that could actually happen in space, but coughing up whole flowers in front of others? That was a whole different matter.
He got poked at, prodded and scanned, Coran running every test he could think of, even shoving him inside one of the healing pods for a few minutes in order to get better readings. When he finally got out, the two Alteans were looking at the screen projecting his vitals, all the other paladins standing around them too.
Lance took a couple steps towards them while trying to decipher the expressions on their faces. Some eyebrows were raised high, others knitted together, Hunk did look a bit queasy but they were supposedly looking at his insides, so who wouldn’t? Lance decided to take a shot at optimism tho, cause what did he have to lose anyway?
“Is it a space flu?” he asked running his hand along his neck “do I need shots? I’m not a big fan of needles to be honest.”
When nobody turned to look at him, he attempted a glance at the screen, confusion quirking his brow and narrowing his eyes
“Wait what is that-”
“Flowers” came Coran’s answer, matter of factly
“Yeah I can see that-”
“In your lungs” elaborated Shiro, in a tone hard to place.
To be fair, it probably shouldn’t have come as such a surprise after actually coughing them up, but still, seeing flowers in there threw him in a bit of a daze as he stood staring silently at the screen.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before” breathed the princess, almost to herself, shaking her head lightly.
Reaction to the stupor that seemed to floor them all came in the form of a frustrated rumble from Keith “Okay, he has flowers in there, can’t you just take them out?”
Allura cradled her cheek in the palm of her hand and shook her head again: “I don’t think so… the flowers seem to be too closely interwoven with the other tissues for a removal to be safe”
Lance knew this was a really bad moment to think that the way Keith’s nose wrinkled in thought was cute, but it really was and he was a simple man.
“What about the healing pod?” wondered Pidge scratching her chin “would it make any difference?”
Coran sighed: “It might slow down the growth of the plant but it’s not going to make it stop.”
Silence fell once again, and if Lance could barely stand the worried looks from the previous days, right now he felt like he was attending his own funeral. This was honestly depressing.
Hunk looked once more at the flowers and winched slightly.
“He can’t be the first one to catch this, it must have happened to someone else before, right?”
Coran nodded pensively “Yes, I would imagine it has happened before”
“We will search for it” the princess gave an encouraging smile “and we’ll let you know as soon as we find anything.”
And so the days went by, daily check ups finding the flowers in perfect health and full bloom, breathing becoming progressively more of a conscious effort for Lance. He really felt like he was about to break any second, but then he’d spot Pidge’s downturned lips, Shiro’s slightly pained frown, hear Hunk’s furious baking, walk by Keith exercising himself to death and he really couldn’t help plastering a smile on his face and go cheer them up. He’d have time to panic once he was back in his own room.
As if on cue, when the atmosphere in the castle got a tad lighter, things spiralled quickly downwards once again. Lance supposed he had to consider himself lucky that this was happening during a relatively easy mission, which allowed his team to make for a quick escape when his condition got worse. What started with a few petals falling from his lips, quickly turned into a coughing fit that had him almost chocking on full flowers crawling up his throat in bundles. It was far more painful than he’d imagined, leaves and stems catching up on their way up, making him bring both hands to his throat, bayard clattering to the ground, in an attempt to catch some air back into his lungs.
Keith and Shiro’s horrified expressions did give him a fair idea of how the whole situation must have looked.
A brief stay in the healing pod had his throat in a good enough shape to talk without any pain once more, but after that, none wanted to risk it again, so he was practically forbidden from taking part to missions and left in the castle, feeling more of a burden with each passing day. Lance knew, at a rational level, that what they were doing was look out for him, but that didn’t stop him from telling himself how worthless he was.
If morale had been low when they first found out about the flowers, it was several feet underground now. Lance did sometimes find it in himself to put on a brave front when he saw his friends look at him in a particularly pained way, but it was getting more difficult by the day, and he could feel himself getting more irritable than necessary. On that note, he’d snap at Keith fairly often, for really silly things too, and then he’d be left feeling like crap when the guy just got up and left instead of picking up the fight. Honestly, at this point actually getting punched in the face would have made him feel better about himself at the very least.
“You do know that he just wants to help, right?” Hunk gave him a questioning look once Keith’s back had disappeared behind the sliding doors of the kitchen.
Lance looked sullenly at the flowers scattered on the ground and in his hands, feeling the familiar taste of blood in his mouth.
“I know,” he muttered and chewed on his cheek while staring at his knees “but I mean, it’s like every time he’s with me I’m worse than usual and all in all I really don’t want him to see me like that??”
He lifted his head and stared Hunk right in the eyes, as if hoping for him to understand what he felt through sheer mind power.
“I mean, with him being my…”
“crush” supplied Hunk when Lance attempted to convey the last word with a generic hand gesture
A small chocking sound and a couple of petals later Lance was able to speak again.
“I was gonna say rival but sure, that too” he sighed in resignation, slumping against his friend’s shoulder.
“What are we gonna do Hunk?” his raspy voice faltered dangerously over his words and the other twisted his neck to get a glimpse of his face.
“About what?”
Lance smiled to himself, leave it to Hunk to make him spell out things.
“About me”
An heavy silence met his words and Lance went on, resting his cheek on Hunk’s shoulder
“I’m useless like this.. you know I am.” he added to shush any intention Hunk might have had of denying what he was saying
“and Coran doesn’t tell me but my lungs look more and more like Swiss cheese and I may not have any medical training but I’m pretty sure I need those to live.”
At least sarcasm hadn’t abandoned him yet, and he was glad because that was all he had right now to help keep the waterfalls at bay.
Hunk moved to put some space between them and stared at him for a few seconds before tackling him in a bone crushing hug and croaking a barely reassuring
“Stop spewing nonsense, it’s not that bad”
And Lance knew it really was that bad, but making Hunk cry wasn’t on his wishlist, so he took the deepest breath he could and nodded, patting his back.
Researches to find out what kind of disease he had hadn’t stopped, and as he saw them get more frantic, Pidge joining Coran and the princess in scanning the seemingly endless archives, Lance felt even his rage begin to fade, leaving way to a sort of constant tiredness. Whether or not it came from the lack of oxygen he managed getting into his system, he didn’t know, but it made things easier to handle at the very least. Trying to pick fights with anyone wasn’t a cause of concern anymore, and he found that Keith’s reaction to his lack of energy was a sort of hurt expression that made his heart ache and more flowers tear their way out of his chest.
Lance took to sitting in the observatory deck most of the time, gazing at the planets and constellations floating lazily on the walls and all around him. Soon enough the others developed the habit of orbiting there at different times of the day and night (or, well, what they had set as day and night on the castle), which he was glad for, because his coughing fits were becoming a frightening experience, and suffocating alone was a really present fear in his mind.
Pidge would lay on the floor next to him, tapping away at her keyboard, and when he saw her eyes turn misty he’d do his best at taking her mind off, sometimes he’d succeed and get a small smile out of her, some others he’d settle for an angry and teary girl scrolling furiously through Altean texts without a word.
Hunk was kind of violently ignoring the problem which, if possible, made it feel even more obvious that a problem was there. Still, sitting there with him chatting and eating was as great as usual and Lance loved it.
Shiro came rarely to spend time alone with him, and Lance did feel hurt and cast aside, but he did also see the way the older paladin looked at him when he did come, like he had no idea what to do to help him and it was tearing him apart, and Lance supposed he could understand.
Keith would often stomp his way up to him and stare him down like he wished he could actively engage in a fist fight with whatever was wrong with him. Lance suspected it was his way of expressing concern, and tried not to feel too pissed when after the staring contest Keith would just grimace and stomp his way back out of the room. Other times he’d flop down next to him and sit in silence. Those times usually ended up with Lance gagging on clumps of small, periwinkle flowers even bigger than usual.
Lance might not have been the sharpest tool in the bunch, but he was no idiot and it didn’t take him long to figure out that the familiar pang he’d feel in his chest when he was in close proximity with the red paladin was related with him coughing up bloodied flowers. What he did not know, was what to do with this piece of information. Yet he knew that Keith had no idea that he was making him worse, and also that spending time with him made him feel lighter no matter how much he suffered as payback.
Keith was fiercely protective of him over the weirdest things, and he looked like he’d be content with getting a constant visual of Lance, just to make sure he wasn’t dying. Would Lance usually have been pissed off by that? Yes, he most probably would. Was this a usual situation he was finding himself in? Nope, it wasn’t. So he felt like he had a right to cut himself some slack.
Evenings that would see them bundled close together in blankets became something he’d look forward to, letting Keith do most of the talking as his voice failed him more often, or sitting close on the couch when he felt adventurous enough to try walking all the way to the room it was in.
Lance was… he wasn’t sure what he was. Was he happy to get to be so close to the other? Did he feel like the only reason this was happening was because he was sick and Keith felt bad for him? Did he think he was probably getting his hopes up over the normal behaviour of a friend really scared of losing him? Yes, yes and yes, but he still couldn’t help the warm pang of yearning and affection he felt when their pinkies so much as brushed. He couldn’t help the way less romantic lack of air he would experience after that though.
Keith, on his part, wasn’t faring much better on the feelings front, a whirlwind of contrasting emotions hit him pretty much every time he risked a glance at Lance. He was furious, his first instinct was to go train with a bot until he couldn’t think anymore, to possibly punch something hard enough to make it unrecognizable. But then, he also wanted to curl around Lance and never let go. He felt absolutely powerless, wished he could somehow do something to make things better, to have the usual annoying Lance back. He had ended up settling for being a sort of disgruntled body guard.
There were moments when he felt his heart stutter in the dim light of far away stars, while Lance looked outside into space, and he ended up looking at Lance, the way the bluish hue softened his features and lessened the dark circles under his eyes. He knew it wasn’t the right time, and Lance’s rattling breathing would remind him that the boy was wasting away and he wasn’t doing anything about it.
With a frustrated huff he’d bump their heads together as lightly as he could, which didn’t mean they never accidentally headbutted each other. It was frightening, in the calm that surrounded them he’d listen at Lance’s breathing, and every hitch he heard in the pattern could be the start of a new fit of coughing, it could mean blood splattering on the ground, the soft flump of a bundle of flowers falling.
Keith had positively loved flowers all of his life, but now he had come to dread the mere thought. Forget-me-nots where the small, non threatening looking flowers that spilled from Lance’s mouth, and he couldn’t help but think that the only reason why his friend was still breathing at all, was that the flowers were so incredibly small.
Missions were now different, Keith almost couldn’t bring himself to leave the castle, because what if something happened while he was away? What if he came back to find part of his family missing?
His fear became all too real when the team came back only to find Lance inside a pod, Coran looking at his vitals with clenched fists and Allura pacing up and down the room, biting down on her thumb nail.
The plant was growing fast, damaging tissues at a concerning rate and making it harder to breath by the minute.
They still had no idea what to do, none could find anything anywhere about such a disease, the pod wasn’t doing much and all they could think about as buying Lance as much time as possible in the hopes of finding a cure. So the only solution they could come up with was to try and put him into one of the cryo pods, which would keep his condition stable.
When asked, Lance wasn’t thrilled at the idea, not at all, not one bit.
Being left behind for who knows how long? While his friends risked their lives on a daily basis? Waking up one day and finding them older and happy with whoever they had found to be his replacement? It really wasn’t his definition of a good plan, and if he had to be honest, all he wished for right now was the opportunity of seeing his family once more, and everybody knew that.
Still, he couldn’t bring himself to be selfish enough to ask putting everybody in danger for his own sake. So he ended up sighing and slumping in his seat
“Whatever, just try not to let 10.000 years pass before you take me out.”
He was smiling, but ever since this whole ordeal had started, none had seen him look more miserable, and Keith couldn’t stand it, he felt like he absolutely had to do something or he’d explode.
He pleaded with Allura for a wormhole to take them close to earth
“I’ll take him! We won’t get caught, it’ll be quick and once we’re back we can do the cryo pod thing”
The princess looked conflicted, “please understand, your home planet is incredibly distant, creating a wormhole for you to get there would leave us with very little energy and with only three paladins…”
In front of the opportunity to finally do something, Keith couldn’t be asked to step back
“I am going to sneak him out of the castle and take him home if you don’t do it” he growled, gritting his teeth.
“No you won’t” came Shiro’s calm reply from behind him, the familiar weight of his hand on his shoulder grounding him and allowing his racing thoughts to slow down.
“Why not” he bit back anyway
Shiro squeezed gently on his shoulder in lieu of voicing the reason, which hung above them like mist.
“Guys, it’s okay” Lance’s voice rose trough the thick silence and Keith’s shoulders dropped “it’s fine, it wouldn’t have been a really happy reunion anyway, you know, with me coughing up blood and all that.”
In the end, they all decided to have one last day before resorting to the cryogenic sleep. It was way less depressing than Keith thought it would be: they played, joked, tried to cook, almost gave Hunk a stroke with how bad they were and ended up just helping him preparing the dinner he had planned.
Glancing around Keith couldn’t help but smile, everybody looked happier than they had been in what felt like forever.
“And finally you don’t look like someone just kicked a puppy in front of you” Lance smacked his back and grinned, quirking one eyebrow “getting a smile out of you is almost worth it”.
Lance was expecting a shove or a rebuttal of sort that never came, because Keith was too busy freaking blushing while staring at him??
And, as some sort of punishment for finding it endearing, Lance felt his breath hitch, petals tickling at the back of his throat and proceeded to ruin the evening with a generous amount of blood trickling down his chin and flowers all over him.
Once the blood had stopped and the panic had subsided, they all relocated to the observation deck, with blankets and pillows, and sat in a circle telling silly stories which were meant to be scary, until they fell asleep one after the other.
Lance and Keith had ended up close to each other, bundled in the same thick blanket as usual, and stayed awake, looking outside and whispering from time to time. Lance was painfully aware that this was probably his last chance if he wanted to put his feelings out there in the open, since even if they did find a cure, who could tell how long it would take? He’d still be the same age then, not a day would have passed for him, while so many things could have changed for them over time.
Did he really want to make things awkward and leave Keith with the burden of a one sided interest right before going to sleep for maybe years?
He really didn’t, so he settled for scooting closer and resting his hand next to his, skin barely brushing and a strange feeling of fondness stirred inside him, a sort of nostalgia for something he didn’t really have, which made his chest ache. He hoped more flowers weren’t going to crawl up because he really didn’t want to ruin the moment.
If cryo sleep allowed him to dream, he whished at least some of his dreams could be like this, a peaceful night spent watching the stars, the reassuring warmth of Keith against his side.
Keith on the other hand, was going though a very similar line of reasoning as Lance, and coming to very different conclusions.
If he was going to have to say goodbye to the boy and let him sleep for what his most pessimistic side told him would be the rest of eternity, he wasn’t going to do so without being honest with him, because rejection would still be better than year after year of doubt slowly eating at him.
He felt his heart beat speed up, his hands get clammy with the thought of what he was about to do, and tried to calm himself listening to Lance’s slightly labored breathing. Every hitch in the pattern made him more eager to confess, as if his time was running short.
Keith had never been too good with words, he often said the wrong thing altogether, or the right thing in the wrong way, and yet what he wanted to say now was straight forward enough that he didn’t think it possible for himself to get it wrong. He nuzzled his cheek against Lance’s shoulder, and let their fingers intertwine, starting by tentatively locking their pinkies together and continuing with the others when Lance didn’t pull his hand away. He felt the boy stiffen just a bit against him, and looked up to see the ghost of a blush creeping up Lance’s neck.
“Lance?”
“Hm?” came the somewhat strangled reply
“I like you” he blurted out the words, tangled together enough that it took Lance a few beats to process the meaning.
Time suddenly felt incredibly still to Keith, in what took Lance to inhale he had time to regret his decision to a great extent, lift his head, take off his hand and start thinking of a way to escape the deck without waking up everybody nor trampling any sleeping form.
Lance felt the meaning of the jumbled words slowly sink in, and wondered at the fact that he could still take in a shuddering breath. He turned to stare at Keith, who stopped looking around and stared back at him like a deer caught in headlights, eyes wide and petrified.
Lance couldn’t help but think that by now he should be crouched on the floor coughing up flowers, but he somehow, miraculously wasn’t?
An incredulous laugh bubbled inside his chest, warmth spreading on his cheeks, and he grabbed back Keith’s hand, squeezing it.
“You do??”
Hunk grumbled in his sleep and Coran turned over
“You do?” Lance repeated in a whisper this time
Keith could only nod, the smile he was given was dazzling and he frowned, looking away.
Lance felt his cheeks hurt from how wide he was smiling, and leaned back against Keith’s side, giving him a quick, barely-there peck on the cheek before resting his head on his shoulder.
Keith glanced down, hardly daring to breath, and while his brain was trying to make sense of the situation his mouth opened of its own accord
“You like me too?”
Lance snorted on a chuckle and nodded, squeezing his fingers lightly.
He relaxed, letting his cheek rest against Lance’s soft hair, and trying not to think about tomorrow while an incredulous smile tugged at his lips.
The next day found them all in the medical bay. Saying goodbye had somehow been harder than any of them would have wanted to admit, the hugs they exchanged were made longer and tighter by the unspoken fear of Lance never waking up.
Leaving on such a sad note made his heart break, but he had no idea how to make things lighter, so he just squeezed Keith’s hand, smiled as warmly as he could, and stepped inside the cryo pod, closing his eyes and hoping his friends wouldn’t forget him.
The cold enveloped him in a rush of wind and his last thought went to the evening before, and how he had woken cuddled up to a sleeping Keith, and he wished he could see more of his sleeping face, hear the regular pattern of his breathing and feel his chest raise and fall under the palm of his hand.
When consciousness came back to him, the buzzing sound of people talking outside the pod, the bluish hue of the lights filtering trough his closed eyelids, he felt as if only a second had passed.
He steered himself to see his friends changed forever and slowly opened his eyes when the cold air of the pod escaped with an hissing sound. In front of him everybody was standing with wide eyes, Hunk’s were red and puffy, Pidge looked like she could start crying at any time and Keith’s bewildered expression would have made him laugh if only he wasn’t so confused. Everything looked the exact same as when he entered the pod, did they find a cure in a matter of hours? He looked around and saw Coran gaping at him.
“You guys are seriously freaking me out” he stepped out on wobbly legs and coughed, blood covering his palm. He looked down with wide eyes before looking back up at the others. There were no flowers coming from his mouth, not even a petal on his hand.
“What the hell-” he was cut short by Hunk tackling him and lifting him off the ground in a hug that made Lance worry his bones might not make it.
“You’re fine!” he bawled, not showing any intention of letting him down.
Lance still had no idea what was going on. He craned his neck to the side “Coran what does this mean? How long was I out?”
“Around ten minutes” answered Shiro while the Altean man was apparently still too busy staring at the screen in front of him and then back at Lance as if he’d seen a ghost.
“Ten minutes?? What- why?”
“Because the plant isn’t there anymore” said the princess, walking up to him and touching his cheek, as if to make sure he was really in front of her “your lungs are still damaged, so you are going to need time in the healing pod, but the plant is gone, you are going to be fine”
Hunk finally let him touch the ground again, and Lance felt like his legs might give up any minute.
“I’m fine?”
“You are” the princess smiled and nodded, her hand covering her mouth as her lip quivered.
Stumbling out of the healing pod, Lance landed on Shiro’s chest, warm and firm as usual, and opened his eyes to everybody smiling widely at him. He felt so incredibly happy, so glad to be there, that he almost didn’t notice the few tears streaming down his face as he was taken into a group hug.
His friends were there, Keith was there, he could be part of the team again, he could breath again, everything was beautiful, and in his happiness he really didn’t see anything wrong with grabbing Keith’s arm and smashing their lips together, not much of a kiss, but the only way he could think of to show how he was feeling.