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Chapter Text

When Kyong-hui is a little child and she still knows her mom’s face, she spends every night staring out the window of their little house in the middle of the Texan desert. She loves the big fields surrounding them, the smell of oil from the rigs off in the distance, and the open skies that show the entire universe. She loves the little house in Texas, the one with creaky floorboards, pencil marks on doorframes, and her mom singing in the kitchen.

        She’s six years old and standing on the front porch, looking at the sky and trying to find the three stars that make up Orion’s belt. It’s January, and the three stars—Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka—are visible to the naked eye. She’s wearing her dad’s leather jacket to guard against the cold desert night, but the occasional wind bites through the leather.

        She doesn’t notice when her mom comes out, not until she says, “Blair.”

        Blair is Kyong-hui’s middle name, and it was her dad’s choice. It’s her middle name, so she’s never been actually addressed by it.

        Kyong-hui looks up at her mom. In the dim lighting, her eyes are purple, and the sclera is tinged yellow. She’s taller than she ever has, and her features aren’t as delicate as they were hours ago.

        “Why are you calling me Blair?” she asks.

        Her mom gives her a sad smile. “You’re going to school soon. The other kids won’t know how to say their name.”

        “But I’ll teach them!” Kyong-hui says, hands on her hips.

        “They won’t want to be taught. Blair will just be your school name, and here we’ll call you Kyong-hui.”

        Kyong-hui considers this. She can teach those who want to, but she never knew anyone in town with as complicated a name as hers. “I guess,” she huffs, pouting.

        Her mom laughs, and picks her up so she can stand on the porch railing. A comet streaks across the sky, its tail vibrant in the dark.

        “A shooting star!” she exclaims in delight.

        “Do you know the actual name?” her mom asks.

        Kyong-hui huffs. “Shooting star sounds prettier than comet,” she tells her mom seriously

Her mom laughs again. It’s quiet before a few moments before she says, “Do you want to go to space?”

        “Of course!” Kyong-hui shouts. “I wanna touch the moon and the stars!”

        Her mom sighs, and turns Kyong-hui so her back is to the sky. “Kyong-hui, you must never go to space.”

        “Why not?” she asks petulantly.

        “It’s not safe,” her mom says simply.

        “But astronauts go up all the time and they’re fine!”

        “You are not an astronaut, but my own daughter. Space has never been good to my family, and it will never be.”

        “But what if I’m not like you!” Kyong-hui shouts, stomping her foot on the railing. She loses her balance, and would’ve fallen over if not for her mom’s hands holding her steady.

        “Kyong-hui,” she says, “you are my daughter, and my blood runs in you. Space will never be good to you. You must never try to touch the stars. Can you promise me this?”

        Kyong-hui looks at her mom, and takes in the ways her appearance has changed in the past minutes. Her skin is graying, her brow bone becoming more prominent, and her ears lengthening. She seems otherworldly in the starlight.

        “I promise, Mama,” Kyong-hui says. She means it, too. She doesn’t want whatever caused her mom to feel so strongly about space to happen to her too.

        Her mom beams, and presses a soft kiss to her forehead, and sends her to bed.

        Kyong-hui settles in her bed with the star-patterned sheets, and curls up under her blankets. When she wakes up in the morning, her mom is gone and her dad is staring out over the Texas horizon, searching for something, anything.

When Kyong-hui starts up school in the fall, she tells all her teaches to call her Blair. No one has called her Kyong-hui after that, except her stuffed animals. Her dad was never good at the pronunciation, and looked relieved when she told him she wanted to use her middle name as her first name.

        She’s slowly losing parts of her mom as time goes on, and Park seems American enough of a surname if no one calls her Kyong-hui.

        Blair looks at the sky, counts off Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka, and heads inside. She’s giving up her name and her one true love; she doesn’t need to be reminded of what just a few months have taken from her.

Blair is eight-and-three-quarters when the Galaxy Garrison is being built couple of miles south from her little house. There’s nothing in the desert to absorb the noise, so the sound of metal grating against metals carries across the land.

        She spends most of her summer in the city, at a summer day care place her dad drops her off at every morning before heading into work. She doesn’t like it, but she can’t stay home, nor will she stay home with the construction.

        Her dad is afraid the Garrison is going to blow up, taking their house with it.

        Blair is afraid the Garrison is going to go door-to-door recruiting people like Scott Brown says they will. She can’t join an organization with “galaxy” in the name—she would immediately break her promise to her mom.

        It doesn’t matter in the end. The Garrison finishes being built, school starts up, and the stars in the sky keep changing.

It’s only the second week of the fourth grade, and Blair’s dad is already late to picking her up. She has to sit in the office for hours, with a coloring book and a pack of wax crayons the secretary offered her. She doesn’t even touch those, instead pulling out a thick book she got from the library. She has to turn it in by the end of the week, and she’s not halfway done with it yet.

        Blair is almost finished with the book by the time someone comes to pick her up, but it’s not her dad. It’s a smiling lady with blonde hair, and she crouches down beside Blair’s chair.

        “Hi, I’m Ms. Halloway,” she says.

        “I’m Blair,” she says quietly.

        “Do you know why your dad isn’t here to pick you up?”

        Blair shrugs. “Usually he’s only an hour late, because his shift is suppose to end when school’s out but sometimes he has to stay behind.”

        “School’s been out for four hours, and no one can get him on the phone,” Ms. Halloway says. “You’ll have to spend the night with me and see if he comes back tomorrow.”

        “Dad said not to go anywhere with strangers,” Blair says seriously.

        Ms. Halloway smiles. “How can I not be stranger?”

        Blair tilts her head. “What’s your favorite color? And first name?”

        “Ms. Park!” the secretary exclaims, but Ms. Halloway only laughs.

        “My name is Gwen and I love the color red.”

        “Me too!” Blair exclaims.

        “Does this mean you can stay at my house for the night. If it’s not mine, you’ll probably have to go somewhere else and share a room with more girls.”

        “I’ll go with you!” Blair says, sliding out of her chair. She packs her book in her superhero backpack, and looks up at her. “Let’s go, Gwen!” she announces.

        Gwen only laughs, and follows her out of the office.

        It’s a quiet night at her apartment, but she lets Blair eat pizza on a school night, and she gets to watch cartoons until bedtime. In the morning, she goes to a building downtown instead of school.

        Blair has to wait in the waiting room for hours, but there’s a TV in there and she has her book to read. During lunch, Gwen comes with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a coke, so Blair isn’t able to complain. It’s another few hours before Gwen comes to get her.

        “No one can find your dad, sweetie,” she says, crouching down so she’s on Blair’s level.

        “Is he coming back?” she asks.

        Gwen hesitates before saying, “I don’t think so.”

        “Oh.” Blair doesn’t realize she’s crying until Gwen pulls her into a hug. They stay like that for a few moments until Blair pushes away. “Where am I going now?”

        “To a group home until someone wants to foster you.”

        Blair nods, recognizing the words from A Series of Unfortunate Events and Jacob Sims, who was in her third grade class and adopted.

        “Can I get my stuff?” she asks.

        “Of course,” Gwen says.

        They drive out to the little house in the desert. The master bedroom is empty of everything but a perfectly made bed, and there’s a note on the kitchen table. Gwen doesn’t let her read it, and puts it on a cabinet out of her reach.

        “Go pack a bag,” she suggests.

        In her room, Blair hesitates between her space-print backpack and her bigger superhero one. She chooses the second, and fills it up with her favorite things: her dad’s red jacket, her favorite book on space, her music player, and under it all, the knife her mother left when she did.

        She looks at her room for the last time, knowing she won’t ever see it again. Her walls are covered with drawings of stars and planets, and her ceiling has glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on it in the pattern on constellations. Her love for space, neatly showcased in the eight-by-ten room, and now she’s about to leave it all behind.

        Blair’s about to close the door behind her forever when her eyes catch on a piece of laminated paper under her pillow. She doesn’t remember putting it there, so she pulls it out. It’s a family portrait from when she was a toddler, her mom holding Blair in her arms and her dad holding both of them. She shoves it in her bag too, and slams her bedroom door shut behind her.

        Gwen drives her to a group home just outside of Austin. Her new room has two bunk beds and three other girls. Blair sleeps with her bag close to her chest, and she has a hand on the knife when she sleeps.

        She lives in the city now. Her one constant, the stars in a clear Texas sky, ware covered up with clouds of light pollution.

Somewhere between the sixth and seventh set of foster families, Blair realizes she isn’t a girl—he’s a boy. He’s twelve, is dependent on whoever the state throws him with, and he’s a trans boy. He can’t tell anyone; his foster parents will only care enough to beat it out of him. After all, the government stipend isn’t enough to make them love a random Korean-American not-orphan.

        Internally, he changes his name to Keith, as it shares a similar meaning to Blair, and both names are Scottish. Keith means “from the battlegrounds.” In English they learned the difference between literal meanings and figurative ones, and he supposes he’s from a battleground. It’s certainly not the nuclear family his English stories all seem to have.

        Keith cuts his hair in his seventh foster home, with a pair of kitchen scissors and the bathroom door locked. The mom yells herself hoarse and the dad shakes his head in disgust, but he feels okay with himself. He knows it won’t last, and he’s only days away from the parents calling in his “behavioral” problems.

        Once they do that, Gwen will show up, and he’ll be carried to a girl’s home and then to his next foster family. He wants her to show up, though, as she’s always saved him from the horrible families. Gwen is almost like Keith’s knight in shining armor, except she drives a dingy Toyota with brake issues.

        Two weeks after he cuts his hair, Gwen pulls up in her little Toyota. The mom smiles viciously at him as he walks past her down the walkway, but Gwen is there, smiling softly like she always does.

        “Hi, Blair,” she says when he slides into the front seat, his one bag of earthly possessions clutched in his hands. The superhero bag gave up the ghost years ago, so he’s using his school backpack, which is also crammed with all his notebooks and binders.

        Keith flinches at the name, because somehow he thought Gwen would just know. It’s stupid to think that, but his case worker has been his one constant through all these years, and he’s used to her just knowing. “Hi,” he finally mumbles back.

        It’s quiet after that, and Keith fiddles with the radio until it’s playing classic rock. He’s trying to convince himself to tell her, to say the three words that will undeniably change his life. It takes him almost the entire drive to tell her, and he looks at the street sign for Verona Avenue, the clear Texan sky, and he blurts, “I’m a boy.”

        Thankfully, Gwen doesn’t slam on the breaks. They’re at a red light, so her head swivels towards him instead. “What?”

        “I’m a boy,” Keith repeats, quieter.

        The car is silent, the radio playing classic rock, but someone behind them honks and Gwen realizes they’ve been sitting at a greenlight. She turns right into a random neighborhood, and parks the car in front of a house with a manicured lawn.

        Keith feels like he’s about to pass out, and he’s regretting telling her when she says, “What’s your name?”

        “Keith?”

        “Alright, Keith,” Gwen says smoothly, “when did you realize?”

        “At the Farrows,” he says, picking at a loose thread on his jeans.

        “Those assholes,” she says, making a disgusted face. She was the one that stayed with him at the hospital, and visited him at the group home while he laid in bed with cracked ribs. “And you cut your hair at the Tuckers, right? Is that why they said you were having problems?”

        Keith nods. “Mrs. Tucker yelled for an hour when she found out.”

        She gives him a sympathetic smile and says, “Sorry, kid.” It’s quiet for a few moments before she speaks again. “You’re gonna have to go to the girls’ home. Maybe for a long time. It’ll take a while for all the paperwork to go through.”

        “Paperwork?”

        “Name change,” she says simply. “And then therapy so someone with a degree can say ‘yes this is a boy’ and then your medical records will be changed, and then you’ll get shuttled off to another group home.”

        “Why do you know so much about it?” he asks. Surely Gwen is getting his hopes up. There’s no way a social worker in Texas is so willing to help him transition, and it won’t work anyways, he’s just a foster kid with behavioral issues who’s been bounced between seven homes in four years, and—

        “My second case was with a girl, except her name wasn’t Alice. I was so damned determined to help her, begin her transition, but the state didn’t want to mess with it. That was eight years ago, and after everything, the state is more likely to help.” Gwen has her hand on Keith’s shoulder, just keeping him grounded. “I know you don’t trust the system or the state, but I hope you trust me enough so I can do this for you.”

        It’s true, Keith doesn’t trust anyone. But Gwen has been with him for four years, and has always taken his side against foster parents. If he were to trust anyone, it’s her.

        “For this,” he agrees.

        Gwen beams at him, and turns the radio back on. It doesn’t take too long for them to reach the home, and Keith sighs he prepares himself for more long weeks sharing a room with three girls.

        “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Gwen says.

        “See you then,” Keith agrees.

It doesn’t take long for Gwen to get him an appointment with a therapist, but it takes a while for Keith to find one he’s comfortable with. The first just asks if he’s questioning his gender because of his childhood trauma, the second suggests he wants to be closer to his father, and the third just makes him uncomfortable.

Finally, there’s a gender therapist in San Antonio that doesn’t make Keith want to crawl out of his skin. His name is Greg, and he introduces himself as, “Hi, Keith. My name’s Greg, and I’m a trans man.”

        Greg looks perfectly comfortable saying this, and Keith looks at him with wonder. That’s how he wants to be, he thinks, comfortable with himself and who he is.

        Greg helps Gwen get around the red tape, and Keith gets his name change. It’s too early for him to get blockers, and Keith can’t do anything besides present himself more boyish, but he feels better writing his name in school as Keith Park.

When he’s thirteen, Keith enters middle school. He lives in Fredericksburg with the Burtons and two other foster kids. He likes the Burtons, and they care about Keith past the monthly government stipend they get. Keith gets to take jiu jitsu classes, and the Burtons don’t even care about the cost. They even drive him to San Antonio for his bi-monthly therapy sessions. Fredericksburg is nice, even if the night sky is cloudy more often than not.

        School is easy for him, and he adapts to the accelerated classes he’s put in. One of his teachers says he can even skip a grade, but Keith doesn't want to. He’s mocked enough for his appearance, for being a foster kid, and becoming a genius would only make him even more of an outcast.

        Halfway through seventh grade, his gym class splits between boys and girls, and each are shuffled off to separate classrooms to watch videos about puberty. The school doesn’t care enough to have a battle about where Keith has to go, and the principal lets him go with the other boys. They’re watching the same videos, after all. Keith just sits in the back corner, idly spinning a pencil around his fingers while the other boys snicker at the drawings of the reproductive organs.

        The classes take a week, but on Friday it’s not about sex but instead soul mates. The teacher stands at the front of the class, his mark proudly displayed on his arm. It’s a flower, ornate and colored in with bright oranges and pinks.

        “Who knows about soul marks?” he asks once the class has settled down.

        Morgan, the first to raise his hand in any situation, blurts out, “It’s a representation of your soulmate’s soul, passion, or their name.”

        “Correct,” Mr. Cannady tells him. To the class, he says, “Soul marks are what connects you and your soulmate. Everyone has one, but whether it’s romantic, platonic, or familial is decided by when and how you get the mark. Marks also differ from person to person. I have my husband’s favorite flower, and he has the title of my favorite book.”

        One of the kids in the back laughs and sneers, “You’re gay?”

        Keith feels something in his stomach drop.

        Mr. Cannady ignores him. “Generally, familial marks occur when you’re kids, romantic marks come during puberty, and platonic marks form when you and the other person become close. There’s no set time for when one gets their marks, and you aren’t special if you get yours first, and you’re not broken if you get yours last.”

        He puts on another video, and Keith zones out as teen actors go through marks-related drama. He doodles five-point stars on his worksheet instead, absentmindedly creating constellations.

        Keith wonders what the mark representing him will be. He doesn’t know what he’s passionate about besides space, but he doesn’t want that to represent him. He can’t go to space, and all he does and stare at the constellations and think about the myths behind them.

        Mr. Cannady cuts the lights back on, and Keith turns in his blank worksheet, with only stars and question marks scribbled on the paper.

Keith is fifteen when Gwen is no longer his case worker, and Mr. Burton loses his job. Three foster kids are too many for them, and Keith and James have to be moved. Keith switches districts entirely, and moves to Odessa with the Allens. He doesn’t even bother arguing with his new caseworker about Greg, or about finding a new therapist.

        The same day Keith moves to Odessa is the same day the Galaxy Garrison lands a man on Mars. He reads the updates on his phone, eagerly awaiting every transmission Shirogane Takashi sends back to Earth. There’s a man touching the stars, a man who sees Earth as a bright point of light in space.

        Keith wants it to be him.

        The Allens are done with him in months, and he gets moved to Gardendale with the Normans. He goes to Church with them every Sunday and gets in fights with the neighborhood boys in vacant lots. His lessons in jiu jitsu pay off, but he learns how to fight dirty instead of using the perfect forms he was so proud of.

        He gets a job at the body shop, and lets the old man teach him about cars and bikes. He scavenges for parts in his free time and Milo shows him how to make his own hoverbike.

        Keith doesn’t have the means to get his license, but he sneaks out on clear nights and rides into the desert, bringing a cheap telescope and a notebook with him. He watches the stars burn, comets streak across the sky, and Shirogane fall back into orbit.

        It’s then, seeing the pod enter the atmosphere as it hurtles towards the Pacific, Keith decides he’s going to become a pilot for the Garrison.

Keith turns sixteen, and the constellation for Leo bleeds onto his arm. Fifteen points in dark blue are nestled in the bend of his elbow, and surrounding the constellation is a faint outline of a lion. He knows what it means: his life with forever be tied to space. If the universe wanted to tell him his soulmate was represented by a lion, then it wouldn’t have used the constellation. Keith knows space is written into his soulmate’s soul, and he needs to touch the stars.

        He’s sixteen, a foster kid, and he’s forgotten his mother’s face. She’s the reason for his flat nose, his monolids, his long-forgotten name, but it’s been ten years since he’s last seen her. The promise he made has followed him through all these years, but it’s not like she’s here to tug on his ear and remind him space will only hurt him.

        He applies for the Garrison, but gets stumped on the personal essay: Why do you want to enter the Galaxy Garrison?

        He doesn’t know what they would be looking for, what cause is noble enough for admission. In the end, and Keith writes is: I’ve wanted to touch the stars since I first saw the night sky.

When summer comes, Keith has a scholarship to the Galaxy Garrison.

The Galaxy Garrison is in the Chihuahuan Desert, and it’s massive. Keith remembers its construction, but never thought a summer of labor would yield this huge building. He gets lost during orientation, after stopping to watch another tour group. His gaze had been caught by an energetic boy, and he couldn’t tear his eyes off of him. By the time he could, Keith’s guide had already left, leaving Keith to wander the halls.

        He’s been lost for a while when he literally runs in Shirogane.

        “Sorry, sir,” Keith says, snapping into a salute when he realizes he just ran into his hero.

        The man laughs and says, “At east cadet. Are you lost?”

        Keith nods mutely, lost physically and for words.

        Shirogane laughs again. “Star struck?”

        Keith nods again, then feels his face heat up as he realizes what he agreed to. His red face only seems to make the man even more amused.

        “I’ll help you find your group,” he says, kindly changing the subject. “Do you remember your guide’s name?”

        “Holt, I think,” Keith says, and falls into step with Shirogane when he starts walking.

        “Brown hair, big glasses, lots of gestures?” Keith nods, and he continues, “You’re with Matt. He probably hasn’t even realized he’s lost a kid.

        Keith, having always been uncomfortable around strangers, feels oddly at ease with Shirogane. Despite that, it still takes him a few moments to say, “Thanks for helping me.”

        “Ah, I don’t mind,” Shirogane says. “Iverson had me on patrol duty for whatever reason. It was getting boring.” It takes a beat before he realizes how informal he’s being. “Commander Iverson,” he hurries to say, and Keith snickers.

        They lapse back into silence, but it’s comfortable. Shirogane finally leads them to the cafeteria, and Keith spots his brown-haired guide in a corner.

        “Thanks,” he says again.

        Shirogane waves a hand at him. “Don’t mention it. See you around, Park.”

        Keith goes to rejoin his group, and no one bats an eye at his reappearance. From across the room, he sees the energetic boy from earlier. He’s sitting down but he’s still moving, talking to the big guy next to him. He has to tear his eyes away, feeling something unfamiliar form in his ribcage.

Keith settles into his room, and easily unpacks his small bag of items he’s kept over the years. His superhero backpack is somewhere in a dump and he lost the space book so some asshole in a home, but he still has the oversized red jacket and his mom’s knife. There are cadet uniforms in his size already in the closet, and he puts up his few changes of casual clothes.

        It’s everything and nothing like another group home.

        On his first day of classes, he walks into the training room to find Shirogane standing at the front. It’s the required self-defense class every cadet has to take, but Keith didn’t know they would have such a high-profile officer teach it.

        “Good morning,” Shirogane says when everyone files in on time. “As some of you may know, I’m Lieutenant Shirogane. Today I’m just going to be testing your abilities and see where you are in terms of technique.”

        He pairs everyone up, but with an odd number of people Keith is left out. He stands to the side while the partners awkwardly face off. A few through punches, thumbs tucked in and movements obvious from across the room. It’s painfully obvious none of them know how to spar.

        The same thought occurs to Shirogane, and he motions Keith up to the front of the room. Quietly, he asks, “You do know how to fight?” When Keith nods, he grins and says, “Everyone, eyes on me! Watch how Cadet Park and I spar.”

        Keith and Shirogane face off, and Keith’s heart races with excitement. He knows it’s just sparring for an example, but as he throws an obviously telegraphed punch and lets Shirogane block it, he’s still having fun. He lets himself be the dummy, making sure all of his moves are obvious so everyone else gets the idea of what to do. After a few minutes, Keith begins to actually fight and Shirogane does as well.

        He can tell the rest of the class is still watching, but his focus zeroes in on Shirogane, and he lets his body take over. They’re evenly matched for a few minutes, but ultimately Shirogane’s stamina and training wins out.

        Shirogane grins as he knocks Keith flat on his back, and addresses the class with even breath. “Partners, begin sparring.”

        He gives Keith a hand and Keith pulls himself up. “You’re a pretty good fighter. Did you do judo?”

        “Jiu jitsu,” Keith says.

        “You’re easily the most advanced kid in this class. Or the entire year.”

        Keith flushes. “Thanks,” he mumbles.

        “If you want, I could train you after classes,” Shirogane offers.

        “That’d be great,” Keith exclaims. “Thanks, uh—”

        “Shiro,” he says. “You can call me Shiro.”

        “Thanks, Shiro,” Keith replies. Shiro smiles at him, and he smiles back.

Shiro takes an interest in Keith after that, and he doesn’t know why. Sure, Keith is the best at close combat in his year, but that doesn’t call for the first man on Mars to pay him so much attention. Despite his musing, Keith doesn’t mind the attention, and it’s not long before he and Shiro are becoming something like friends.

        Keith’s medical status is all over his paperwork, and he knows all of his instructors have seen it, and he knows which ones will be assholes about it and which ones don’t care. Shiro isn’t either one, as he cares but he isn’t an asshole about it. He makes sure Keith isn’t wearing a binder to practices, and that he eats during lunch instead of hiding out in his single. It’s almost alien to Keith, having someone care about him to this much. Gwen did, and the Burtons to a degree, but being a social worker and foster parent means having an obligation to care—even if some of them never did.

        Shiro is different from all of them, because he doesn’t look at Keith with pity. He looks at Keith with empathy, and he tells Keith his own childhood wasn’t great either.

        “No one has a perfect childhood,” Shiro says during one late-night sparring session. They’re taking a break, for Keith to catch his breath.

        Keith was thinking about how much he wanted to get rid of his fucking breasts, and Shiro’s words took him by surprise. “Mine’s pretty shitty,” he says, not knowing where the man was going with his statement.

        “That’s true,” he says, “but not everyone else was automatically better off than you. I don’t know what you think mine was like, but I promise it’s nothing like what you’re thinking.”

        “I always thought you had the perfect family, another thing I would never had that you did,” Keith confessed. It’s no surprise Shiro was his hero, but he never told the man about this. His idea of Shiro has changed since he was fifteen, but he’s always imagined the man to have a perfect life, his fantasy where the only person he cares about is okay.

        Shiro makes a noise, but Keith doesn’t look up from his knees. After a long pause, Shiro places his hand on Keith’s ankle, and he looks up at that. He has a small, sad smile on his face. “I had my mom and my dad, who hated each other but never divorced because they didn’t want to pressure me. They lived in separate rooms, had a schedule for who said goodnight when. I was loved, of course, but it always put a strain on me, having two adults who didn’t know what to do rely on me for every minor problem.”

        “I’m sorry,” Keith said, at a loss for anything else. It won’t do anything, those two words never do, but he’s never been good with words, and those are the only two he can think of.

        “Don’t worry about it,” Shiro says. “I just didn’t want you to put me on too high a pedestal.” The tightness around his mouth tells Keith someone already had, and Shiro took a long fall.

“I won’t,” he promises. He means this promise; he won’t break it.

        Shiro grins at him, and smoothly slides onto his feet. He reaches a hand down for Keith, and when he grabs it, Keith feels a familiar burning sensation on his. Shiro hauls him up, and they both compare wrists.

        On Keith’s is a winged lion, and he can’t help but think of his other lion-themed Mark. Shiro has a constellation, one neither of them have seen before. It doesn’t look like any pattern in their galaxy, and Keith doesn’t think too hard about what that means.

(“ You must never try to touch the stars. Can you promise me this?” his mom whispers in the back of his head. Keith ignores it; he doesn’t care about what he once told a probably-dead woman. He doesn’t owe her anything.)

        “Soulmates, huh,” Shiro says, moving his arm so he can look at the constellation in a new way. It won’t solve the mystery, but he still tries.

        “I guess,” Keith says, staring at the lion on his skin. It seems almost alive, like it was about to jump off his wrist and take a lap around the room. Likewise, the stars on Shiro’s arm seemed to glow.

“Maybe one day you’ll map this constellation,” Shiro says.

        Keith tries to give him a smile, but it comes out strained. He has two lions on his arms, and a destiny that’s certainly leading him to space.

        Looking at Shiro, the man who cares about Keith for no other reason than liking him, Keith knows he lucked out on this soulmate.

Keith learns about the Kerberos mission in class. It’s an astronomy class, but focused on the Milky Way. Mr. Harding is talking about Pluto, its reinstatement as a planet, and the TV in the room suddenly turns on, the Garrison insignia showing as it does before every important announcement.

        It shows a press conference, and Keith’s stomach drops as he sees Shiro behind the table. The director of the Garrison, Marshal Johnson, is sitting beside him, and she leans forward into the microphone.

        “The Galaxy Garrison was established so humanity could travel outwards, and explore the one constant to our small planet: the heavens. With the successful return of Commander Vaughan and her crew on their trip around Uranus, the Garrison has decided to approve a new mission. This mission will be to search for signs of life within our solar system, and to see the history of our farthest planet.

        “It is with great excitement I am here today,” she continued, sounding anything but excited, “with Lieutenant-Commander Shirogane by my side, to announce our newest mission to one of Pluto’s orbitals: the Kerberos Mission.”

        Keith freezes.

        A mission to Kerberos, one of Pluto’s moon. It will take months to get there, another few months to get back. Then he has to account for the time spent on the moon, and if any complications arise on the trip.

        Keith doesn’t realize his breathing is speeding up and his vision becomes cloudy until a pair of hands drag him out of his seat. He doesn’t fight them off, instead continues to gasp for breath and let his body be led out the classroom, through the halls until he’s pressed against the wall. He slides down until he hits the floor, but his new position isn’t doing him any good.

        “Breath,” someone orders, and he tries, gulping in air but his lungs aren’t pumping. The person grabs his hand and presses it to their chest, taking in exaggerated breaths. Keith can feel their heart, steady, and this rise and fall of their chest.

        He mimics them, and the person begins counting and he follows. Slowly, his vision clears and his breathing evens out. Keith looks up, taking a moment to register tan skin and bright blue eyes. It’s the kid in almost all of his classes, who’s close to Keith’s grades in their core classes, but always is one point shy of fighter class status.

        He doesn’t think Iverson would let him in anyways.

        “Thanks,” he says. “Alvarez, right?”

        Alvarez looks shocked that Keith recognized him, but he soon smirked. “That’s me! What set you off?”

        Your eyes, Keith is about to say, because it’s true. Alvarez’s eyes are a true, deep blue that shines across a room. “Your loud mouth,” is what he ends up saying, because it’s not a lie either.

        “Hey!” Alvarez protests. He frowns for a split second, before reaching down and pulling Keith up. “They’ll be fine, y’know,” he says suddenly.

        “Huh?” Keith asks, lost.

        “Lieutenant Shirogane and the Holts. They’ll be fine!” Alvarez assures him, knowing exactly what set Keith off.

        Everyone knows Keith and Shiro are close, although few know about their marks. Of course Alvarez knew why Keith had a panic attack at the idea—the fact Shiro was going to leave Earth for over a year.

        “Thanks,” he says after a moment, and Alvarez beams at him. “I’m just,” he says, pointing down the hall leading to the dorms.

        “‘Course! See you later, dude!” Alvarez says, waving as he walks away.

        Keith waves back, feeling less lost as he sees the tan boy stumble back into the classroom. He doesn’t know what to make of it, the selfless way Alvarez led him out and helped him, and even reassured him. Shiro would probably say something about how not everyone is out to get you, Keith, but it’s still weird.

        Shrugging it off, he wanders down the halls to Shiro’s room, knowing the man wouldn’t care if he let himself in. Keith throws himself on Shiro’s bed and curls up in the unmade sheets. He’s already missing his brother, and they’re still in the same state.

The first thing Shiro tells Keith when he comes back is “sorry.” To the surprise of both of them, Keith bursts into tears. He’s able to rationalize later: no one told him they were sorry they were leaving. Not his mom, his dad, Gwen, or any family who liked him. Shiro is the first, in all eighteen years of Keith’s life.

        After a while, Keith shrugs it off. Shiro’s going to Kerberos, and he’s coming back. It’ll be a year, tops. And before that, there’s still the year of preparing and training before the mission launches.

        (There’s still a year for it to be called off.)

        Keith helps Shiro train, helps him study, and tags along as he and Matt Holt have bonding time. Matt exclusively refers to Keith as “Shiro’s lil’ bro” and it makes something warm ignite in his chest.

        Finally, the day comes when Shiro has to leave for the launch site. It’s not for another week, but they’re all required to spend their final week preparing for the greatest year of their lives.

        “I’ll bring you a space rock,” Shiro promises.

        “I don’t want a space rock,” Keith says petulantly. He knows he’s being a brat, but he doesn’t want Shiro to leave.

        Shiro sighs. “Keith, I’m coming back. With a space rock.”

        “A space rock is just unnecessary weight that means you’ll have to spend another day in space.” Keith points out.

        “Okay, okay, no space rock. Is it cool if I bring the Holts back?”

        Keith pretends to think about it, before shrugging. “I guess you’ll have to.”

        Shiro grins, and wraps Keith in a tight hug. He closes his eyes, pressing his face in the warmth of his brother’s shoulder. “I’ll miss you, Takashi,” he says.

        “I’ll miss you too, brother,” Shiro says into Keith’s hair.

        Keith’s crying, but he wipes away the tears when they finally separate. “You can bring me a space rock,” he says, his voice wavering.

        “I’ll do that,” Shiro says, through a watery smile.

        They hug again, and Keith refuses to think of his mother and how she said, “Space has never been good to my family, and it will never be.” Shiro is his family, and Keith hopes her words don’t carry over.

        Just this once, Keith prays to the universe, be kind to my family.

A week later, the Kerberos Mission launches. Six months later, Shiro safely lands on the moon. A month later, he fails to send the daily transmission. He doesn’t the next day, and the next day, and the next. The Garrison sends a probe, who only finds pictures of the wrecked remains of the ship.

        Humans can’t survive in space. The Garrison pronounces them dead.

        Keith knows it’s a cover-up, that it can’t be “pilot error.” Shiro is the greatest pilot of the generation, and the pictures from the probe looks something attacked them.

        He breaks into Iverson’s office and hacks his computer to find the truth. He downloads Shiro’s last transmission before Iverson finds him. Keith can’t lose the thumb drive and he has no one to answer for him, so he does what he’s always wanted to do.

        He punches Iverson square in the face, feeling the man’s nose crunch under his hand, and he steals a hoverbike. He wanders aimlessly for a few days, before he feels something, a tugging in his gut leading him westward. He follows it, with nothing to lose.

        After a few days, he stumbles upon a little white house with a wraparound porch, the smell of oil permeating through the entire house. It takes him a few minutes to recognize it, before he realizes it’s the house he spent his childhood in.

        It’s the house that was abandoned with him.

        It hasn’t been touched since he was nine, and he finds his bedroom the way he left it. The posters on his walls were faded from years of the sun’s rays, and he finds a nest of rattlesnakes underneath the generator, but Keith makes do.

        And after ten years, Keith finally reads the note his dad left him. Gwen left it face-down on a desk the sun couldn’t touch, and the weathered paper was still eligible.

        Blair–

        She’s still out there. I’ll find her, and

        we’ll be a family again. I’ll see you

        soon

                                            — Dad

        He reads the note once, and again, and again, and again. Finally, he bursts in hysterical laughter that slowly turns into hysterical sobs. His dad left him to go find his mom, not for some giant, life-altering reason. He left his only child and didn’t have the ability to say “love.”

        Keith cries until night time, but then he’s relocated to the porch. He steps over a broken board and leans against a post.

        The night sky is just as beautiful as he left it.

During April, Keith holds his arm against the night sky. He’s memorized the constellation, the three stars that makes up a triangle, and the long line that connects the triangle to a backwards question mark. Leo is an easy constellation to find, although the lion itself is hard to conceptualize.

        Ever since he was sixteen and the mark showed up, April is reserved for stargazing. Ursa Major is right above it, and he traces lines in the sky, from Denebola to Phecda to Polaris. He finds Errai from there, the star in a binary system that will succeed Polaris once the North Star finally blows out.

After his promise when he was a kid, Keith tried to stop caring about space. It didn’t work out, but Keith was able to just be fascinated by it. He didn’t have to touch the stars, but then his mark showed up. And then Shiro unknowingly led him to the Garrison, and his life was forever linked to the universe from then on.

        He can see Jupiter too, through Virgo. No matter how much he strains his eyes, Keith will never be able to see Pluto, much less Kerberos. Pluto rests in Sagittarius, which isn’t visible until August. But until then, he can see Leo. Keith can see the lion mirrored on his arm, with another one on his wrist.

        He stares at the stars for hours in the summer. Tell me where my brother is, he begs them, but the giant balls of boiling hot gas never reply. Sometimes a comet streaks across the sky, and Keith lets himself imagine it’s a ship, with Shiro safe inside it, exploring the universe.

        He doesn’t imagine that for long, because if Shiro was exploring the universe, why wouldn’t he come get Keith?

        Sighing, Keith drops his arm and closes his eyes. Stars shine bright against the dark of his eyelids, and unbidden, his mind goes to Kerberos, only months ago. A pilot error, Shiro hitting debris, the ship crashing into the moon. No survivors. Pilot error.

        Keith lets out a strangled yell, and sits up. His mind is running away from him, and he doesn’t want to think about this. He fishes his music player from his pocket, winding out his earbuds, and jams them in.

        His music collection hasn’t been updated since he was in middle school, and all he has are angry songs he still knows the words to. The stolen hoverbike is waiting for him, and he guns the engine in time with the swelling of guitar chords. He takes off, heading for the trickiest canyon that requires all of his attention, especially when he’s going too fast.

        It’s easy to pretend it’s just Keith and no one else in the world, as he speeds between rock formations and listens to music. No soulmate, no missing brother, no missing parents. It’s just Keith.

A year after recording all the frequencies and the messages in the caves, the day he’s been waiting for arrives. Keith sits outside on his hoverbike, watching the sky for whatever event is supposed to happen.

        Finally, he sees a pod enter the atmosphere and he starts the bike, ready to follow the burning hunk of metal.

        It crash lands close to the Garrison, and he cautiously approaches until he sees Garrison officials already arrived. He knows it’s Shiro in there, and he’s quick to burst in, no plan, just his hot-headed self. He uses the skills he hasn’t needed for a year, effectively knocking out the three officials and hurrying to Shiro’s side.

        He barely registers the scar across the man’s nose, or the shock of white hair, but his gaze does catch on the metal arm Shiro’s now sporting. He doesn’t have time to focus on what it means, because three Garrison cadets pop up.

        He remembers the skinny boy vaguely, and responds irritably with “Who?” when the boy says his name.

        Lance, apparently, says he’s saving Shiro, and Keith is in too much of a hurry to do anything but let the guy sling Shiro’s arm over his shoulder. He can hear backup coming, and he yells for everyone to get on his bike.

        Even if the Garrison has faster vehicles than Keith’s dingy hoverbike, he knows this desert by heart. He knows there’s a cliff up ahead, but it’s a jump he has made a million times. He guns it, and the cadets are screaming in his ear, but his adrenaline is pumping.

        They touch down lightly, and Keith sees the Garrison stopped across the chasm. He keeps his speed up, wanting to get Shiro to his house in case he needs any medical attention.

        By the time they arrive at the little house, Shiro is moving against Keith’s back. He lets the three cadets off before carefully helping Shiro up into the house, setting him on the sheet-covered couch.

        “Keith?” Shiro mutters, and he abandons his goal of getting a bottle of water.

        “Yeah, it’s me, Shiro.” He kneels next to the couch, holding on to one of his brother’s hands.

        “Told you I’ll be back,” he says, reminding Keith of their last conversation.

        Keith feels the urge to cry, but he blinks away the tears and gives Shiro a watery smile. “You did,” he agrees.

        Shiro seems content to drop off into sleep after that, and Keith checks him for any injuries. The mark is still on Shiro’s arm, and Keith traces it, the constellation that neither know the origin of. He doesn’t have any injuries besides the evidence of old ones from scars, so Keith pulls a blanket over him and leaves the room. The guy, Pidge, is messing with Keith’s equipment, and he feels a flash of annoyance pass through him.

        “What are you doing?” he snaps, and the guy looks over the laptop.

        “Looking through your data, duh,” he says, and Keith rolls his eyes.

        Lance is poking at his pin board, scoffing at some of the articles he had printed out. “Are you out here looking for aliens?” he asks, quirking an eyebrow at Keith.

        “Yes,” he says sullenly, pushing past them to the kitchen. He grabs two water bottles, opening one and crossing the room to set out on the table by the couch. He stares to make sure Shiro’s chest is still moving and wonders if it would be too much if he checked for a pulse. Deciding that would be too much, he goes out back to check out what Pidge is doing.

        He’s poking at the board too, rifling through Keith’s observations and charts. He idly picks one up, and discards it. Keith watches it float to the floor, feeling his annoyance flare up again.

        “Don’t ruin my shit,” he hisses, picking up the paper. It’s his chart of the frequencies, and he sets it on the desk, smoothing out a crumpled corner.

        The big guy makes a noise, and plucks the paper out from under Keith’s hand. “These are Fraunhofer lines!” he exclaims.

        “What now?” both Pidge and Keith ask.

        Hunk explains, and as he does, he holds the paper upside down. Keith realizes something. He looks through his stacks on paper, not caring if he knocks things off the crowded desk, and finds a map of the desert. The irregular crests and troughs match the valleys and mesas of the deserts.

        “Do you know where this is?” Hunk asks, pointing to a valley on Keith’s map. He hasn’t been there yet, as it’s a few miles out and it takes a bit of hiking to get there.

        “Of course,” Keith says. “It’s a cave a few hours out.”

        Hunk smiles. “Guess we’re going spelunking!”

        Pidge makes a disgusted noise and Lance laughs. Even Keith makes a small smile.

        He looks at the map and the frequencies, and feels something warm in his chest. Everything is coming together, and he doesn’t know what it means.

Lance complains the entire way to the cave, and Keith isn’t surprised. Despite his protest of the exertion, he’s going at the same speed as Keith, but he can see Hunk and Pidge lagging behind. The Garrison wasn’t big on cardio for tech students, but Keith knows Lance can take the hike. He’s just complaining so his friends don’t feel bad.

        The hiking takes hours, and it was well into the morning by the time everyone was ready to go. Keith and Shiro lead the group, but Keith can tell the Sun is getting to everyone but him.

        “Should’ve brought sunscreen,” Lance mumbles from behind him.

        There’s a loud noise, and Pidge says, “You don’t even get burned!”

        “Well, yeah, but your nose is getting red!” Lance retorts. Keith sighs, but leaves them to squabble among themselves. It’s only a little while to the caves; he’s sure they can make it without any casualties.

        Finally, they reach the cave and Keith leads them in. There are lion carvings all over the walls, and the other four look around while he stands in the middle of the room. It’s like every other cave with the carvings, dark and boring.

        That is, until Lance reaches out to trace the back of a lion and the line lights up blue. All the carvings light up blue, and the five stare, amazed, as the cave glows a light blue.

        And then they’re falling through the ground.

        Keith is the first to see the giant robot lion, and he all but runs to reach the barrier. His fists bang uselessly against the barrier.

        “Maybe you just have to knock,” Lance says, and barely touches it before the barrier falls down.

        The lion opens for Lance, and Keith watches him settle in the pilot’s seat. He looks at home there, the blue glow of the lion only bouncing off his brown skin instead of washing him out. He looks ethereal there, and Keith is finding it hard to break his eyes away.

        (It’s then Keith remembers who Lance is: Lance Alvarez, the boy from orientation, who guided him out of a panic attack.)

        The lion makes him, as it breaks through the cave walls, through four of them against the walls of the cockpit. From the screen, Keith can see the desert, and the Garrison. It’s a few loop-de-loops before Lance guides the lion up.

        They break free of Earth’s atmosphere, and Keith can see the stars all around him.

        From space, Leo isn’t a lion, just a random mess of stars. He looks at his arm, even if he can’t see the mark through his jacket.

        He has a blue lion on his arm, he’s standing in a giant blue lion flying through space, and he’s being piloted by a boy who helped him no other reason.

        For once, the universe lets Keith take a good thing and hold onto it. He has his soulmate and his brother with him, and they’re flying though space. Keith feels like he can touch the stars from here, in this massive robot lion.

Chapter Text

i am a collapsing star with tunnel vision but only for you

Space has never been good to my family, and it will never be.

        Keith wonders if that’s what she meant. He wonders a lot about his mom, actually. It’s been days since he went to the Blade of Marmora and learned the truth behind the knife. His mom didn’t look like she was Galra, much less an alien. She was Korean, the reason for his flat nose and slanted eyes. She looked just like him, except for that last night.

        The night she asked him to never go into space. And then Keith broke that promise, and then learned space was not kind to her family.

        Or Keith’s family, for that matter.

        His brother is lost in space, collateral after defeating Zarkon but the Galra Empire is still thriving even after their leader was taken out. There’s someone else in his place, his son or some other relative that’s just as bloodthirsty but more cautious and cunning.

        Keith is tired of alien politics.

        It’s easier to get lost in fighting the simulator, to lose himself in the adrenaline rush, so he does. He goes for a bot that’s levels higher than where he’s at, but he needs the extra challenge. He’ll never learn if it doesn’t get harder.

        Keith focuses only on the bot and its sword, sharp enough to slice through bone. His bayard forms his blade, equally sharp, but it also burns as it cuts.

        He rushes the bot, and loses himself.

        The thing is, Keith knows he has limits. He has to; he’s human—to an extent. He knows when he’s too battered and bruised to keep going, when his ribs are screaming at him to take a break, when he’s too exhausted to function. Despite that, Keith has always been good at ignoring his limits. He fights when he’s already banged up, binds when his ribs are bruised, keeps going when the only thing holding him up is pure willpower.

        And fighting this bot, Keith is still battered from their last mission, his binder is on instead on a compression bra, and if he was horizontal he would immediately pass out.

        The bot knocks Keith off his feet, and he’s able to protect his head before everything goes black.

        He wakes up to someone saying, “End simulation,” and then there are warm hands on his shoulder, a face right above his. He has to blink a few times before Lance’s face comes into focus.

        “You fucking idiot,” Lance says, with concern instead of anger. Keith wants to protest, but he can’t find the energy to open his mouth. Lance notices, and rolls his eyes. “You should be in a healing pod, not in the training room!”

        “Too cold,” Keith mutters, meaning the healing pods but he’s unable to finish his sentence.

        “The entire castle is too cold,” Lance says. He leans back so he’s crouched at Keith’s side. “Don’t hate me for this, but I have to pick you up.”

        Keith is still trying to process the words when he feels Lance’s hands sliding under his body, and then he’s being lifted up. He feels like he’s swaying, though he’s in Lance’s arms who’s standing still. “Where are we going?”

        “I was gonna take you to the med bay,” and Keith tenses at those words, “but I’m taking you to your room and making sure you get a full night of sleep.”

        “It’s not even night,” Keith mutters.

        Lance laughs. “We’re in space. It’s night if I say it is.”

        Keith doesn’t have a response to that, so he leans on Lance’s shoulder. Lance is warm, much warmer than the training room floor, or the castle, or his own room. It makes Keith feel like he’s in Texas again, being warmed by the sun’s rays as he naps on a red rock.

        He doesn’t realize he’s drifted until the door to his room swishes open, and Lance sets Keith on his bed. He looks around blearily, taking the moment to realize it is, in fact, his room even if Lance already told him that.

        “You’re wearing your binder?” Lance accuses. Keith hesitantly nods, and the other boy just sighs. “Do you care for yourself at all? Wait, don’t answer that, I feel like your answer will be disappointing.”

        Keith ignores his rambling as he tosses his long-sleeved shirt, and then he slumps in his bed. He barely had the energy to take his loose shirt off; a binder is too hard. “Can you help?” he says, interrupting Lance’s monologue. “Please?” he adds when Lance is silent.

        It isn’t until he looks up that he realizes Lance was shocked into silence, staring at Keith’s arm. He looks down and sees his mark, and realizes this is probably Lance’s first time seeing it. Keith always wears his jacket or a long-sleeved shirt. Everyone has seen Shiro’s mark, but not the other one.

        (Lance’s.)

        “Help?” Keith repeats, and Lance snaps out of his staring.

        “Right, sorry,” he says. “What do I need to do?”

        “Just pull it from the bottom,” Keith instructs, and turns so he’s facing the wall. He lifts his arms and Lance grabs his binder from the bottom hem, pulling it up.

        The second it’s off his chest, Keith takes in a deep breath and coughs.

        “Oh, my God, are you okay?” Lance asks. He doesn’t touch Keith, which he’s thankful for. He feels too vulnerable like this.

        A shirt falls on the bed beside him, a clean one, and Keith gratefully pulls it on. “Thanks,” he mutters, turning to face Lance.

        Lance is still standing above him, and when Keith faces him, his eyes go back to the mark. Keith knew it was only a matter of time, and seeing he knew they were soulmates from the moment they left Earth, he’s surprised it took this long.

        “Are you going to keep staring or are you going to ask about it?” he asks, and Lance jerks a little.

        “It’s a nice mark,” he says in defense of himself.

        Keith shrugs. “I guess.”

        There’s a long, awkward pause before Lance asks, “Have you met them?”

        “Uh,” Keith stalls, trying to figure out how to say yes, I met my soulmate but they don’t know considering it’s you. “They don’t know.”

        Lance gapes. “Really!? You left your soulmate back on Earth without telling them! That’s fucked, man.”

        Keith rolls his eyes. “I didn’t leave them on Earth.”

        “Is your soulmate some alien, then?”

        “No, idiot. It’s you.” Keith’s mouth works faster than his brain, and his eyes widen when he realizes what he just said.

        “What,” Lance eloquently says.

        “Leo, blue lion, space. It’s you.” Keith says, fiddling with his shirt hem.

        There’s another awkward pause, and then Lance laughs. “Alright, soulmate,” he says, and Keith’s head snaps up.

        Lance is smiling, the smile he usually has when talking about his family, or Hunk, or when he rambles about space. And now it’s being directed at Keith, and he feels like the sun just warmed him.

        “Do you—” he begins, but cuts himself off when Lance begins to pull his shirt up. Keith gets stuck on the warm, brown skin and lean muscles before he sees it. Lance’s mark. For Keith.

        It’s not a set image, but several small ones that make up the entire mark. There’s a graceful lioness, a sword, a sunset over a mesa, the colors of a beautiful nebula. Keith’s hand twitches, and he wants to trace it.

        It’s everything that makes up Keith, and it’s directly on top of Lance’s heart.

        “It’s the biggest mark of anyone I knew,” Lance says. “I always thought it meant my soulmate had a lot of love to give.”

        Keith doesn’t, he loves few things but he loves those things with every fiber of his being. He loves Shiro, space, piloting, and Lance.

        Lance continues. “When I realized it was you, it made so much sense. Of course I got everything Keith Park loves tattooed on my skin.”

        Keith doesn’t realize he’s crying until Lance drops to his knees. He doesn’t know why he’s crying either. Maybe because Lance is his soulmate and he’s Lance’s, or maybe it’s because the representation of his soul is so beautiful. Keith didn’t know there was anything about him could be described as beautiful.

        “Why are you crying?” Lance asks, his thumb catching the tear that falls down Keith’s cheek.

        Keith laughs and says, “Because I’m happy.”

        “Oh, that’s really cute,” Lance says. “Sad, but cute.”

        He laughs again and wraps his arms around Lance, his soulmate. Lance shuts up, but he returns the hug, pressing himself so close to Keith that he can’t tell where they end and begin.

        Lance feels just like the sun, and it warms Keith to the very core.

(“When did you know it was me?” Lance asks later, when they’re tangled up in Keith’s bed.

        “When I first saw you pilot Blue.”

        Lance squawks. “Keith! That was so long ago! Why did I just now get to find out?”

        He shrugs. “I thought you hated me.”

        Lance laughs. “Keith, love of my life, mate of my soul—”

        “Ew.”

        “—I never hated you. I thought you were very cute and the way I react to cute boys is to be an absolute dick towards them.”

        “That doesn’t seem very effective,” Keith remarks. Lance’s hand finds his somewhere on the bed, and their fingers tangle together.

        “Well, it worked with you, didn’t it? Granted, there were other factors like you almost working yourself to death, fighting a bot while exhausted so you accidentally showed me your mark, and how—”

        Keith cuts him off with a kiss.

        “That’s an effective way of making me shut up. In fact, if you need to test it again for its effectiveness I would not be complaining.”

        Keith laughs, and says, “I don’t need an excuse to kiss you.”

        “Then kiss me, Park.”

        Keith was never one to back down from a challenge.)