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“I have to leave,” Keith says.
Lance shakes his head. “You don’t have to do anything,” he says. “You want to leave.”
Keith’s throat closes in on itself. He wants a lot of things. Friends and peace and the Red Lion back. Shiro to remember that they’re brothers and not just comrades, to stop expecting more than Keith is capable of giving. Sunshine and Greyhound buses and the El Paso zoo, the monkeys and elephants staring back at him across the fence, like they wanted out, too. Lance’s eyes, glowing and blue when he talks about Cuba like he intends on showing Keith the ocean some day.
He doesn’t want to leave. He needs to leave, before this hand around his neck becomes any tighter, before he fails his friends more than he already has by trying to lead and being terrible at it. Before his being half-Galra becomes more of a nuisance to them than it’s worth. Before Lance thinks he needs to leave instead.
I’ve been doing some math, Lance had said, all those weeks ago.
Keith has been doing math, too, and the team needs Lance’s strength and heart and direction more than it needs Keith’s stubbornness and impulsiveness and anger. The team needs Lance and Keith needs an outlet. Keith needs a place to swing a sword. And maybe, a little, Keith needs a place to find information, to fill this gaping hole in his chest, to quiet this more-poignant-than-usual self-hatred that makes an appearance whenever he thinks of his nameless, faceless Galran mother.
Keith is incapable of being a leader for so many reasons. Keith is incapable of being a Paladin for so many reasons. And Lance needs to stay. Lance belongs here.
Lance is still staring at him, the line of his mouth uncharacteristically sober. Keith looks back and tries to appear determined rather than afraid.
“I’m not gonna stop you,” Lance says, finally, pushing off from the wall where he’s been leaning. “I’m not, Keith, if you want to do this, then — then I can’t stop you.”
He walks over until he’s within arm’s length of Keith, until Keith can see the freckles on his nose. His stomach turns over on itself.
“But you better fucking call me,” Lance says, and reaches out to rest a hand on his shoulder, and smiles, sad and bright all at once. “I’m not taking no for an answer on this one. Okay?”
“Okay,” Keith says. “I will.”
The first time Keith calls Lance is after a mission for the Blade. There’s blood on his forehead.
He realizes after Lance picks up that maybe his timing needs work.
“Holy shit,” Lance says. “Keith, oh my God, are you okay? Are you dying? Holy shit, Keith, you’re dying, calling me is your final act, oh my God —”
“I’m okay,” Keith says, reaching up to touch his hair, confused. When his hand comes away sticky and red, he winces. “Aw, fuck. ”
“Keith, you’re dying,” Lance says again. “Oh my God, I’m getting Shiro.”
“I’m fine,” Keith says.
“Fine, my ass,” Lance says, already standing, as if he plans to leave the room, and Keith feels a sudden rush of panic, unwelcome and forceful enough to make him shout.
“Don’t!” Keith says, and then looks away, embarrassed and still scrubbing at the blood on his head. “It’s not my blood.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Lance snaps.
“I’m sorry!” Keith says, crossing his arms and glaring across the video call at him. “I just — I wanted to talk.”
Lance stares at him.
“You said I should call you!” Keith says, defensively. “You said —”
“No, okay, I definitely did say that,” Lance says. “Uh. Wow. What do you want to talk about?”
“What was your favorite thing to do at home?” Keith says, very quickly. It isn’t a new question. He’s wanted to ask Lance all kinds of things, for a very long time, but he had never gotten up the courage to do so in person. It’s easier in this call, because Keith has the option to turn it off if Lance laughs at him or seems annoyed.
“Wow,” Lance says. He blinks once, then twice.
“Mine was the zoo in El Paso,” Keith adds, for clarification.
“The zoo? ”
“I liked the elephants,” Keith tells him.
“Dude, why did you call me with blood all over your forehead to talk about elephants?” Lance says. “Not that I’m complaining, or anything, it’s just . . . it’s not really on brand for you, y’know? Are you okay?”
His eyes are very gentle, even over the shaky connection of video. Keith feels a leap in his stomach, the same kind he always gets around handsome, kind-eyed boys. He studiously ignores it (or, at least, he tries.)
He twists his hands together for something to do. “I —” he starts, and then trails off. “I wanted to talk to you,” he says, finally, because he can’t make his mouth from the words I missed you, because Lance is there and his eyes are gentle and blue and waiting.
“You never want to talk to me,” Lance points out. Keith shakes his head before Lance even finishes the sentence.
“That’s not true,” he says, and it must come out pretty determined and pretty forceful, because Lance leans back and blinks, staring at him like Keith has said something far, far outside of the weird, banter-y, cautious script he and Lance usually follow. Maybe he has. Maybe distance makes that script mean less. Maybe it just makes Keith more desperate for something besides leave the math to Pidge and we make a good team, more than moments where Lance looks at him and then looks away. Maybe he wants Lance to keep looking, for once.
Then again — Lance’s eyes are gentle and he asked. Maybe he’s trying to mess up the script, too.
“That’s not true,” he repeats. “You’re my friend. Pretty much my only friend, right now.”
“ That’s not true, either,” Lance says, his mouth tugging up in a pleased half-smile. “We’re all your friends.”
Keith hums. It’s nice to hear, but he’s more focused on the gentle, quiet joy on Lance’s face, the way it lit up his eyes like a beacon to follow.
“I can’t believe you actually called me,” Lance says.
“Well,” Keith says, not sure how to respond to that. “I wanted to. So. I did.”
“Yeah,” Lance says, and leans back in his chair, still grinning in that way that makes Keith’s knees weak. “So, the zoo, huh? The elephants?”
Keith nods, and crosses his legs, settling in. “I always had to take the bus to go see it,” he says. “It took forever to get there, but.”
“I only went to the zoo once with my little siblings,” Lance says, fondly. “They were, like, fascinated with the animals, they wouldn’t stop staring. It was really cute, honestly.”
Keith watches his hands as they move. Lance always talks with his hands — talks with his whole body, really. “What’s Cuba like?”
“What’s Texas like?” Lance responds, grinning.
Keith laughs, surprising himself. “You first.”
“Okay, dude, but you’re gonna be sorry you asked,” Lance says, easily, and sits up a little straighter. “I’ve got, like, bunch of siblings and our house was always full of people, it was awesome —”
The training room for the Blade is almost exactly the same as the one in the castle-ship, so it doesn’t make sense that Keith should hate it so much.
But it’s undeniably colder, the training just a little more difficult. This is less of a training mechanism and more preparation for war.
And when he finishes training, there’s no Hunk leaning in the door and telling him everyone’s gonna go eat dinner now, no Lance sitting on the sidelines giving commentary on his form until Keith laughs and gives him the finger. No Allura offering to train with him, and teaching him Altean fighting styles.
Here, he trains, alone, and eats, alone, and goes back to his room, where he is alone.
And then he’ll call Lance, and he won’t be.
Keith starts waiting with more and more impatience until the end of the day, until he has an excuse to sit down and press Call on the tablet-thing Coran had given him when he left. Until Lance’s face can fill his line of vision and Keith can take a deep breath, and let his shoulders relax, and feel at home sitting next to someone who was miles away.
Sometimes Keith prods him into talking, just for an excuse to sit and watch — his hands moving, his shoulders relaxed and happy. He feels selfish for stealing so much of Lance’s time, and happy that Lance wants spend it with him. It’s a complicated, layered feeling, one that Keith can’t really understand. So he doesn’t try, he just talks, and talks, and Lance laughs across the line, the white of his teeth flashing, and something sleepy and starved grows in Keith’s gut with every little smile Lance grants him.
Keith is half-asleep in his closet-sized room at the Blade headquarters, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders to combat the cold. It’s keeping him warm, but it only makes him more tired, which is a problem, because he is watching Lance through the filter of his webcam, through the screen. Lance’s smile is wide and bright and teasing and he is talking about Hunk and Pidge and Allura and Shiro and himself. His hands are gentle and brown and endlessly moving through the air as he talks, like birds.
“What?” Lance says, trailing off, and Keith realizes he’s smiling, soft and dopey, his chin balanced in his free hand.
Keith flushes and leans back. “Nothing,” he says.
“You look tired, dude,” Lance says, squinting at him. “Maybe we should cut this short?”
“No!” Keith says, too forcefully and too hastily, and he blushes again. “No, I just — I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Lance says. “I’m tired too. It’s late.”
“I want to keep talking, though,” Keith says. “I promise.”
Keith is blushing, his heart pounding quick and nervous, and Lance’s hands are like birds. His smile is as quick and bright as a shooting star.
Oh, Keith thinks, the feeling sinking like a stone in his stomach, thrown into a pond and causing a tsunami. Oh.
Love terrifies Keith. It’s the idea of a heart that he has to remember instead of ignore, the idea of Lance’s smiles being connected to a future and not the tossing and turning of his stomach. His world changing, turning on its heel. A candle being lit but a match being blown out. Sometimes Keith doesn’t know who he is without his hands curled into fists at his sides, and loving Lance would unfold them, and that’s scary enough to make him shut his mouth.
But sometimes — sometimes. Lance will hold his eyes for a moment too long, their mouths both twisting up to form gentle smiles. Sometimes Lance will watch him back and Keith will think oh, warmth dropping into his stomach, and he will feel recklessly brave.
But then Lance will look away again, and Keith will be left alone, balanced on a cliff’s edge, only willing to fall if Lance falls with him. He does not know if he is lucky enough to go by himself. He doesn’t think he’ll survive it. (Keith has never considered himself to be particularly lucky, and the universe does not seem too set on proving him wrong, either.)
The hungry thing in his gut grows louder and louder, and Keith wishes and dreams and wants, and he gathers up bits and pieces of those instants of reckless bravery to use when he needs them.
Weeks later, Lance is watching Keith talk and Keith trails off, mid-sentence, because Lance is smiling in the faint way that Keith always smiles when he thinks of Lance. And —
And Keith is still holding the words I love you in his hands, rubbed thin from having been touched so much. He is more afraid of this than he has ever been of dying for the Blade. Maybe because Lance’s hands and smile and voice mean life, and being that to Keith is not what Lance signed up for. Maybe just because he has never felt about anything like he feels about Lance McClain. Maybe —
“Keith?” Lance says, frowning at him. “What’s up?”
Maybe, Keith thinks, maybe maybe maybe. He could sit here for a lifetime counting maybes while Lance is right there.
“I love you,” Keith says.
Lance stares at him. “The fuck, Keith!”
Terror crashes over him, instantaneous and harsh. “I didn’t mean to —”
“No, God, you can’t just say that like — like — like it’s just normal! Oh my God! Give a guy some warning, maybe —”
“You’re mad because I didn’t warn you?” Keith says, shoulders collapsing in relief. “God, you’re such a weirdo —”
“I had plans, Keith Kogane!” Lance snaps, pointing a finger at him. “I was going to woo you! I was going to — to confess in the rain or something like Ryan Gosling!”
“Lance,” Keith points out. “I hate the Notebook, and I also hate rain.”
“You’re an uncultured idiot who thinks the X-Files is romantic,” Lance says. “And it wouldn’t have been in rain specifically. You’re missing the point. I was going to woo you.”
“I think I’m pretty wooed,” Keith says. “Considering that I’m in love with you and everything —”
“ Augh, ” Lance says. “Shut up. I’m going to do this right. I’m going to take you on a fucking date, I swear to God, Keith —”
“Too late,” Keith says, and grins. “I love you.”
“Yeah, well, I love you too,” Lance says, his irritation swallowed by an answering smile. His voice is as soft as his eyes, and Keith lets the words wash over him, hardly believing them. Then Lance snickers, and tacks on, “even if you ruined all my romantic plans, you asshole. ”
Keith’s shit-eating smirk widens into a true smile, impossible to contain, even as he bites his lip and tries. Lance loves him.
“You said you love me too,” he says, because it doesn’t quite seem real, then, “God, I wish I was with you.”
Lance’s eyes soften. “Yeah,” he says. “Kinda sucks to do this now. I’ve been wanting to kiss you for forever.”
“How long is forever?” Keith asks, cupping his face in his hands, watching as Lance blushes and rubs the back of his neck.
“I don’t know,” he says. “School. You sat behind me and you kind of acted like a dick and apparently that really does it for me, so.”
“You —” Keith doesn’t know what to do with his hands all of a sudden. “I did not!”
“I tried to befriend you and you totally blew me off, dude,” Lance says, cheerfully.
Keith groans and looks away, trying to conceal his blush. “I don’t remember this.”
“I thought you were just an introvert at first,” Lance says, fondly, laying the side of his face on a closed fist and grinning across their video-screen connection. “Then I thought you were a dick, and then I thought you hated me. The wanting to kiss you part never changed, though.”
“You thought I was a dick and you also wanted to kiss me?”
“ Yes, Keith, try to keep up,” Lance says. “If it helps, I also wanna kiss you right now, and I stopped thinking you were a dick forever ago.”
“Oh, well,” Keith says, giving up on hiding how flustered he is. “Okay. Um. Same.”
“Which part?” Lance says. “The part where you don’t think I’m a dick?”
“No, you — ugh ,” Keith says. “You’re so annoying. You know what I mean.”
“No, please,” Lance says. He’s still got his chin on his fist and he’s still smiling like the world fell into his open palms. “Enlighten me.”
“I’ve wanted to kiss you since I met you,” Keith says. He knows how he looks when he blushes, unattractive high points of red on his cheeks, but he only minds a little. “I mean. I thought that was implied.”
“It was,” Lance says, and laughs when Keith groans and buries his face in his palms again. “I just wanted to make you say it. Fair’s fair.”
“Jerk,” Keith huffs.
“You love me,” Lance says, in singsong, but his smile is wide-open and beautiful.
“Yeah,” Keith says. “I kinda do.”
(That night, he lays in bed and smiles at the ceiling so hard that his cheeks hurt.)
They’ve made a silent pact not to talk about Keith’s missions, or Lance’s. But they find other things to talk about, like home and here, like Pidge and Hunk and Matt, Pidge’s brother, who has joined them on the ship. “He’s like a second Pidge,” Lance explains, “it’s terrifying. ” Keith talks about Shiro and Dad and having to sort out which parts of his family he wanted to keep and which he didn’t, how he still misses Texas sometimes but feels like shit about it after. Lance talks about having to carve out a space for yourself in a crowd of people, and how much he misses his parents and his house.
Every night that they talk, they lose track of time, until one or both of them fall asleep over the call.
It’s close to the happiest Keith has ever been, honestly, for a little while, and then — then it just starts to be bittersweet, because — because he loves Lance, but it would be nice to love Lance and also be standing next to him.
(His reasons for leaving in the first place have started to become more than a little vague.)
“Keith,” Lance says. “ Keith. ”
“What?”
“You’re zoning out, babe,” Lance says. He’s got a book open on his lap on Altean astrology, one that he found in the castle-ship’s library. He’s been dramatically reading particularly interesting passages to Keith, who is not very interested in astrology but very interested in Lance enjoying himself. He looks so close that it makes Keith want to scream, because he isn’t. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” Keith says. “It’s just — it’s weird.” He hesitates, then takes a deep breath and decides to be truthful. “I miss you. And you’re there, and I’m here, and —”
“I get it,” Lance says. He tilts his head, thoughtful.
“I just,” Keith says, then doesn’t know how to finish. Lance tilts his head in the other direction and closes the book.
“Come visit,” Lance says, then, “come home, ” and Keith nods before he can even think about it.
“After my next mission,” he says, because he knows they have one for him. “I’ll — I’ll convince them to let me have time off, or something.”
“They better let you,” Lance says, winking at him. “Or I’ll have to come by in the Red Lion and talk some sense into them.”
“You could sneak me out in the middle of the night,” Keith teases, already feeling much better, “is that enough of a rom-com cliche for you?”
He reaches up to turn off the call, then, but before he does he catches Lance laughing, bright and golden as the sun.
“We are sending you on a solo mission,” the leader of the Blade tells him. “It will be completely secret. You are the best candidate, due to your size and piloting skill. We want you to infiltrate —”
Completely secret, Keith thinks, and for the first time that he can remember, interrupts during a briefing.
“How long?”
“The timeframe is unknown.”
“What does that mean?”
“It will depend on how long it takes them to trust you. It could be as little as a month, but it could be longer.”
Months, Keith thinks, his heart pounding. Months.
They keep talking, but his ears are buzzing, and he keeps his mouth shut, which turns out to be a mistake.
(They put him on communications lockdown the second the meeting has finished.
He can’t even tell Lance he’s leaving.)
He imagines endless scenarios, floating through empty space in the cockpit of his ship. Telling the Blade to fuck off with their missions and leaving. Telling them please, not this one. Please, let me tell him. Calling Lance in secret in the middle of the night and telling him I ’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Hoping he understands. He spends a little bit of time feeling like shit for wasting so much time when he was able to talk to Lance feeling bad about not being in the same room as him.
He thinks of worse things, too, Lance thinking he’s dead, Lance thinking that their relationship didn’t mean anything to him, Lance thinking he left on purpose instead of by force. Lance thinking that Keith has done anything these past few months besides love him and to attempt to believe in that.
He wonders if Lance is sitting up the same way Keith does, arms wrapped around himself and staring at the ceiling, wondering and wishing.
The mission takes him to a planet called Lupus, a three-day’s journey. He is supposed to infiltrate some kind of pro-Galra force and steal information about their ships — things like how fast they are, how tightly they turn, battle formations, how many people pilot them at once. All things that he knows will help, that he wants to help with. But.
Well. Not when he’s alone, not when this planet and this mission are just another in a long string of events that prove his terrible luck.
Lupus has a huge and bustling marketplace that Keith initially does not make much use of. He uses the disguising hologram tech the Blade gave him to impersonate an alien looking for a job, and he talks only to the pilots he’s attempting to join up with and betray. He only goes to the market to buy weird-looking food, and every time he picks something up he imagines Lance, and Hunk and Pidge, laughing next to him. He imagines Lance’s hand on his elbow, his warmth at his side.
He wishes he could call him. He’s on communications lockdown except for an earpiece, and the voices of the Blade are slowly driving him crazy with their constant go here, go there, say this, look at that.
One day, though, he’s walking through the market and he sees a stand full of books, in all different languages, all different sizes and shapes and colors, and thinks of Pidge, and how she’d kill to see something like this. He drifts over to the stacks and carefully picks them up, one after the other, holds them in his hands and pages through them.
He looks up at the rest of the market, and he thinks —
There’s a lot there.
It’s not an especially profound thought, but.
There might be something there that screams Lance, the way this stack of old books screamed Pidge. There might be something he can find, and buy, and take home with him. Something he can keep in his pocket. A reminder.
There is another side to this mission, an exit, just like there was an entrance. He only has to reach it.
He takes a deep breath and walks forward.
(He finds, eventually, a leather-braid bracelet with a small blue pearl on it. The vendor said it carried the essence of the sea, which Keith is dubious about, but seems like the kind of thing Lance would wholeheartedly believe.
He intends to carry it in his pocket, but after a day, it finds it way onto his wrist and stays there.)
Three and a half weeks after his arrival on Lupus, there’s a stir in the marketplace as he robotically picks through space apples. The people around him are murmuring to themselves, excited and scared; and Keith looks up to see a small crowd heading towards the square.
Mindlessly, he follows them, and almost runs away again when he sees the source of the sudden excitement: the arrival of the Paladins of Voltron.
His hand squeezes into a fist at his side and he wants to scream and run, all at the same time. He wonders if they will notice him in the crowd and then remembers he’s disguised; there’s a rush of disappointment that vanishes as quick as it comes. He wonders if he can be satisfied just by looking, but that’s not fair, he thinks, it’s not fair to have this drop into his lap and not —
Keith looks at the Paladins, all talking to each other and the aliens surrounding them, and he pushes his hood down off his head, drops the disguise hologram, revealing his (probably messy, probably sweaty, probably dirty) hair and face. He tries not to think about how tired and terrible he must look, about how he hasn’t talked to any of them in a month. The other members of the Blade are talking in his ear, telling him he’s not in the right area, he should stick to the market, not the square, but he doesn’t listen to them. He can’t hear anything but the rush of his blood in his ears, roaring like the crash of waves on the ocean. Lance, he thinks, Lance. He’s standing there with his sun-bright freckled skin and wavy hair, his mouth doing its best to smile at the others. There’s weight and worry on his shoulders, in the curved line of his back, and Keith wants to run to him, and look at him, and hold his worried face between his palms. Lance, who told Keith he loved him, quiet as a star being born, a month ago. Keith, who has been holding those words in his hand all this time, like a lucky rabbit’s foot.
He looks at Lance, talking to the aliens. He thinks, I can’t stand here and know I breathed the air he breathed and did not touch him. He pushes the hair off his forehead and it sticks back from the sweat. He must look like a mess, he thinks, terrified, and then pushes it aside. Lance has seen him drenched in blood and goo and worse things than sweat.
“I love you,” he mouths to himself, testing it out loud. “I love you.” It will be different, he thinks, to say it in person.
He reaches up and hits mute on the earpiece he is wearing. The Blade does not need to hear this. And surely, he thinks, surely it will mean nothing, surely it has to mean nothing, that he takes these few seconds for himself amidst everything he has done for the Blade. Surely he can get away with something so small, explain it as radio interference, some quiet mistake of frequencies. Technical difficulties. Surely he can have some luck for once, surely he can tell Lance everything and then go back to the mission.
Lance is talking to Hunk and Pidge, his arms crossed, his brow furrowed. Keith takes a step forward and then stops, hesitates. There is a crowded square between them and it might as well be a galaxy. Lance, he thinks, again, Lance. He does not seem real.
Like he hears Keith think it, Lance’s head turns to scan the crowd. His eyes meet Keith’s. He freezes.
Keith feels a grin split his face, wide and exhilarated. Lance is staring at him like he’s never seen anything before in his life. Like Keith is a barely-remembered dream, a wraith, come to haunt him in this open space; just as quickly his face shifts to anger, and then to relief. Keith takes another step forward and Lance moves.
They both start to run at the same moment, Lance offering a quick apology to the alien he and Hunk were talking to, Keith offering nothing.
Keith has always thought he and Lance were, in most ways, a match held together by compromises, but meeting in the middle has never felt better than it has right now.
They crash together in a tangle of limbs, uncoordinated and uncomplicated. Lance is laughing, exhilarated, when Keith leans up to press a kiss to his mouth, and it should make him nervous, he thinks, it should make his palms sweat, but all he can feel is relief and happiness, coursing through him like lightning. This just feels real, just like Lance in his arms instead of blocked off by a screen.
“Dude, you actually leaped into my arms,” Lance says, when he draws back. “What kind of rom-com bullshit,” and then Keith kisses him again, kisses the laughter out of his mouth and steals it for his own until they’re both giggling too hard to keep at it and Lance just presses their foreheads together and breathes in.
He doesn’t let go, and Keith doesn’t move, just wraps his arms around Lance’s neck and feels whole for the first time in months.
“I missed you,” he says.
“Missed you too, hotshot,” he says. Keith lets the nickname wash over him like summer-warm waves, like all the luck in the world.
Keith’s hands reach up, up, and frame Lance’s cheeks. Their foreheads are still pressed together. “I love you,” he says, and saying it out loud, in person, is just as different and fantastic as he expected. Lance makes a wounded noise and kisses him again, over and over, on different parts of his face, and Keith laughs. His entire body feels like it’s stuck in zero-gravity, Lance’s arms the only things holding him to the ground.
“I love you too, God, Keith,” Lance says. His voice is hushed and adoring, and he’s staring down at Keith’s face like he’s never seen anything like it in his life. Keith swallows a sudden lump in his throat. He’d known it would be different to say out loud. He had never considered how different it would be to hear.
“I’m sorry,” Keith says, then, taking a deep breath, fighting for seriousness against the butterflies in his stomach. “The Blade, they sent me on this mission and it was radio silence and —”
“Never again,” Lance says. “Never again, okay, find some way to tell me, I was going crazy —”
“I will,” Keith says, “I will, I’m so fucking sorry, I’m so sorry,” and wraps himself tight around this boy he knew and knows and loves. “I just — it all happened really fast and —”
“Come home,” Lance says, reckless, alive. Gentle. Keith looks at him, and his eyes are like the ocean, his freckles exploding like stars. His hair is too long and it’s getting curly and Keith feels a gnawing in his stomach, the knowledge that time has made a spot-the-difference game of Lance and he wasn’t there to watch the changes as they happened. “Come home, Keith.”
“The Blade —”
“Screw the Blade,” Lance says. “We’re your family. We need you more.”
Keith remembers watching Lance through a webcam, the two of them half-asleep, Lance’s hands like birds. He thinks of the Red Lion and the responsibilities of a Paladin of Voltron and his headpiece, still on mute. He thinks of training alone in the middle of the afternoon, he thinks of wandering this marketplace and the bracelet on his wrist.
“Okay,” he says, pressing his forehead once more to Lance’s. “I’ll come home.”
He turns on the headpiece.
“The mission’s been compromised,” he says, softly. “I’ve been recognized by someone at the market.”
He glances up and winks at Lance, who winks back.
“I think I should lay low for a while,” he says. “What do you think?”
“We have heard tell the Paladins of Voltron are visiting the same planet you are currently staying,” the voice comes. “They are quite near you, in fact. Your history as a former Paladin is well-known; you could easily go to them. It would cause whoever has recognized you to be less suspicious of your purposes on the planet.”
He wonders if the voice sounds knowing, or if that is just his imagination.
“I agree,” he says, “that’s the best course of action. I’ll contact you when it’s safe.”
He mutes it again.
“God, you sounded cool,” Lance says. “Like Captain America or something.”
Keith grins. “Really? Talking like a soldier is what does it for you?”
“You do it for me,” Lance says, wiggling his eyebrows. “In case you forgot, in the five seconds that it’s been since I told you I loved you.”
“Eh,” Keith says, and stretches up to kiss him again, surprising him, if the resulting delighted snicker is any indication. “Semantics,” he adds, against Lance’s mouth, smiling.
Lance kisses him back, warm and easy, then leans back, rocking on his heels and grinning. “Hunk’s laughing at us,” he says, conversationally, and Keith whips his head around to look behind them, ears getting hot. He’d forgotten, as stupid as it sounded, that there were other people around.
Shiro is raising his eyebrows at them in a why are you like this, Keith, expression, but Keith figures that’s just retribution for the many times Keith has laughed at him over the years and also his duty as an older brother. Allura is giving them a puzzled thumbs up. Pidge isn’t paying attention at all, and Hunk, just as Lance said, is laughing his ass off while somehow simultaneously looking incredibly supportive.
“I hate this family,” Keith says, turning back to Lance.
“No, you don’t,” Lance says, smugly.
“Okay, yeah, I don’t,” Keith agrees, and reaches out with his right hand to take Lance’s, his left hand taking the Blade’s headpiece out of his ear and tucking it into his pocket instead. “Ready.”
“Cool,” Lance says, then — “all right, laugh it up, fuzzball,” as he yells at Hunk gleefully, tugging Keith forward by the hand, and Keith walks, steps in time with Lance’s, to go back home.