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He didn’t grow up with snow, but somehow he feels more at home on these wintry hills rolling against this silver skyline than on any other planet he visited since they took off from Earth. The planet yields a bluish undertone, and everything he sees he sees with a Varadero tint. A call to home, he notes with a touch of sorrow. He squints at the ashen sky, willing a snowfall that hasn't come.
“Hey.”
The lanky boy wheels, and his mood visibly brightens. Snow deep a little ways below him stands a smirking, cherry-nosed Keith, donning a winter coat and swamped in a thick wool scarf. His dark mullet spirals outward beneath a beanie, and Lance can’t contain the fond snort. In his gloved hands, he bears hot cocoa - or at least, the space equivalent to it.
“I, uh, Hunk, asked me to.” Keith raises the mugs in indication before puffing out a wisp of winter breath and finding avid interest in a nearby naked tree.
Lance beams as he hurries down to meet him, his frosty, tawny hands immediately claiming one of the steaming mugs of space cocoa.
“Careful, it’s hot,” Keith rushes, alarmed.
Lance stifles a laugh. “Yes, Mother,” he says without bite, absently fanning and blowing the surface. After a pregnant pause, he points his head up the hill. “C’mon. You’re gonna love where I’m going.”
Keith lifts his brows curiously before following suit. Caught up, he peers down the view Lance is admiring. At the heart of the hill range lies a reflective pond complete with silver trees clustering its circumference. Void of movement it may be, but it seems full of life with the glittering fairy-like orbs that hold their shimmer among the trees.
“Is it frozen?” Lance breathes, starry-eyed. He skips down in a hurry, fur-trimmed hood bouncing after him. Keith trails behind before settling his cup of cocoa in a pillow of snow next to where Lance had placed his.
“What are you doing?” Keith approaches slowly as Lance launches a fist-sized rock towards the center of the pond. When the rock lands hard on the ice without leaving any visible cracks, Lance tentatively places a foot on the water’s edge and subsequently heaves all of his weight onto the ice. Keith grows rigid, ready to launch after Lance were something to go wrong. Upon finding purchase with the friction, Lance tosses a delighted beam over his shoulder, and Keith can’t help cracking a smile.
Lance returns his sights to the ice below him as he takes a second step towards the center. He stomps the ice with a fuzzy boot; once, twice harder. Then Keith reacts as he watches Lance prepare to jump.
“LANCE!” He hears his voice crack a little as he dives towards Lance’s torso. He swears the universe could not give him a more stupid boy to look after. In a tick, the two of them are a painful pile of bodies in the middle of the ice.
“Ow, HEY!” Lance groans from beneath Keith. In one fluid movement, Keith’s on his knees beside him, and Lance struggles to sit up on the glassy ice. “What’s the big idea?!” he bursts, voice shrill.
“What was yours?!” Keith snaps back.
“What?!”
“Jumping like that! Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?!”
“I was - ,” Lance furrows his brows, “I don’t know, I was testing the ice and having fun? Ever heard of it?!”
“Have fun getting out of an ice crack and freezing to death!”
“Well what an equally brilliant idea barreling into me to put the both of us in the middle of the pond!”
Keith envisioned himself getting to his feet, narrowing his eyes, and retorting with a “I wouldn’t have had to if your dumb ass hadn’t decided to jump in the first place!” Instead he finds himself a little dazed with a pair of freshly bruised buttocks a few steps away from Lance.
All tension is out the window as Lance releases a snicker that quickly accelerates into a howl of laughter. Keith rolls his eyes and takes another try at getting up but instead comes crashing down onto the other boy, who hasn’t stopped laughing.
“Would you quit it?” Keith sighs, moving aside.
“Pfft, oh, m-man,” Lance tries between breaths, “I’d pay to have seen you skate for the first time.” Keith frowns, and Lance loses his laughter to cock his head at the silent reply. “Don’t tell me you’ve never gone ice skating before.”
Keith’s frown deepens, and he shrugs halfheartedly. “Never needed to. Never met an ice rink anyway.”
Lance gives a little pout then shakes his head in disapproval. “Nope, that can’t do.” He peels himself off the ice with a decided nod.
“What do you mean ‘that can’t do’?” Keith knits his brows and heaves himself up only to slip into Lance’s arms. Right. Ice.
He is aggravatingly aware of their proximity, and his teeth nick his bottom lip as Lance reverberates a low chuckle against Keith’s cheek. “It means, Mullet, I’ve firmly decided to spend my precious afternoon being your personal teacher,” he grins cheekily, “and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
❆
“Since when did we have ice skates at the castle?” Keith wonders aloud on their return circuit to the pond.
“Since our last Voltron show,” Lance proffers a sheepish smile as he tosses the two pairs of skates over his shoulder. “We hold them for memories and as leverage against Coran since he's so embarrassed by it.” His sheepishness turns into mischief.
“Oh,” is all Keith can say, and he's muddled between feeling humored and dejected. An unpleasant weight wells up in his gut as he recalls his quintants away from the team. He had missed them so much, and picturing them without him is… overwhelming to say the least. He casts his gaze to the freshly, fallen white at his feet as they fall into silence.
“You should’ve been there,” Lance remarks after a passage of time then chuckles. “Allura had to play as you.”
Keith blinks at him, slightly devastated, and his eyes return to the snow. “I’m sorry.”
Lance lifts his brows, alarmed. “N-no, that’s not what I meant,” he rushes. “Don’t be sorry. You felt the need to be with the Blade. That in itself is important.” Lance's face grows sincere. “Don’t ever regret the time you choose to spend on something. It’s only worthwhile because you chose to do it.”
Keith cocks his head in impressed bewilderment, and Lance notices.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Keith purses his lips before letting them lop into a smirk. “It’s just that you didn’t say something dumb. I’m shocked.” Lance gapes at him for a tick, but before he can protest Keith announces rather loudly, “We’re here. Now teach me.”
Directing the conversation to Keith’s own skating incompetence seems to repair Lance’s ego as he wordlessly hands Keith one of the pairs of skates before worming into his own. Keith watches Lance roll his shoulders, stretch his toned legs; he watches him glide onto the ice. He’s broken out of his musing when an ocean gaze meets his amethyst, and he barely sees Lance extend a slender hand and a soft grin. “C’mon, Mullet. Get on the ice with me.”
“Right,” he croaks. He takes Lance’s hand, and with a firm grip, Lance tugs him onto the ice. “Shit,” Keith gasps an escaped curse. His full-blown eyes remain fixed on the glaze below him as they glide farther and farther from shore.
“Pfft, your face,” Lance lets out a hearty laugh as Keith’s grip on him tightens. “Relax.”
“I am relaxed,” Keith seethes through gritted teeth. He shuffles his feet together as they slide away like repelling magnets. “God, this is quiznak!”
“I don’t think you’re using that word right,” Lance pushes, and Keith sends him a nasty glower. “Okay, okay.” Lance quickly surrenders and forgoes the jokes; he’s walking on thin ice. “Look, you gotta push against the swing,” he says with limited demonstration due to the Keith hugging his arm with an iron grip, “like you’re scraping the ice every time you're about to lose your feet.”
“Like sharpening a knife?” Keith is intrigued.
“Yeah but not that extreme. Imagine you’re riding two scooters, one on each foot. But you’re doing it alternatively. So you’re pushing against the ice diagonally behind you with one foot to move forward then repeating the step with the other. That’s how you walk.” Keith nods and gives it a try. “You’re doing it! You’re moving!” Lance shouts.
“This is,” Keith relinquishes an amused smile, “this is kinda fun.”
“Hell yeah it is!” Lance whoops. “Now let’s get you skating on your own.”
“W-wait, what? NO. Lance?? Lance??!” Keith barely registers Lance laughing his head off as he pries Keith’s fingers off his arm, and he completely spaces out when Lance pulls ahead to do a 180. All he knows is that Lance currently has his hands wrapped around Keith’s own and is skating backwards in front of him like a goddamn pro. “H-how are you doing that?”
“Nuh-uh-uh,” Lance tuts, “one step at a time, my friend.” Keith rolls his eyes but with no derision. “All right, we’re gonna take this up a notch.” Lance bores his eyes into Keith's with a sincerity that yells “trust me” then offers a lopsided grin. “And away we go!” He drags Keith along, and they cruise down to shore at a steady speed and skirt the edge.
All is quiet, save for the scraping of their skates, and Keith finds peace and security in the wind zipping past and Lance’s hands encasing his own and the tremulous fairy-like orbs glinting in the trees. He had always thought that if he’s to be stuck in a time freeze without chances of hunger or death, he’d spend it in the certain appeal of remaining among the stars, that is floating in space. That pales in comparison to his present comfort.
Lance watches Keith shut his eyes with the tranquility of the blue veins on his lids and reopen them to divulge a rekindled delight. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, and right then, Keith’s amethyst ones are a different dark than his familiar broodiness. They hold a kind of joy, a kind of home. Lance is alarmed as he detects the first signs of an upcoming slaughter of butterflies. He skates with an alternate rhythm, one more inconsistent and unstable, and Keith’s eyes tell him he notices. Lance panics.
In a tick, everything crumbles. Lance slips on the ice, taking Keith down with him. He’s reliving their earlier collision, but this time he feels no pain. His body is overridden by the sensitivity of the nose nuzzled in his rib, the curly ends of a mullet tickling his armpit, the leg pressed up against his inner thigh, the body that fits so snugly into his and shifting off of him. A wave of heat floods his face, and Lance sits up and away in a frenzy.
Keith shoves his bangs to the side and stares curiously at him as dark blue eyes avert. “You okay?”
“I am so sorry.” Lance brushes off Keith’s concern with his own. “I got distracted, I - ”
“I’m not,” Keith cuts in. The latter boy snaps his mouth shut and faces Keith again, a brow lifted in question. “Not sorry, I mean,” he clarifies, “for coming out to skate.” His eyes swipe left and back. “With you.
“I'd been thinking a lot lately about my experiences and position in the universe, and I noticed that regret,” he treads carefully with a restless bite to the lip, “is a constant.
“It's always there, and it’s always gonna be there. All my life I’ve suffered imagining what would've happened had I made my choices differently. Had I been a better son. Had I stopped Shiro from going to Kerberos. Had I… stayed with you guys instead of going with Kolivan.” His head snaps up defensively as Lance's eyes widen and brows rise.
“Don’t get me wrong. I definitely have absolutely no regrets in contributing to all the progress that let us break through the Galra Empire faster than ever, and I get a lot of relief working with them. But…,” his brows draw together in a taut line, “there are some cons that spoke and still speak pretty loudly to me… And I guess I still don't know how I feel about it? Or about how I'd feel being back with the Blade eventually, away from you guys?
“But this,” and Lance is relieved to see Keith’s face untense happily as he indicates their most recent experience, “I’ll never be sorry for.”
Lance huffs out a fond laugh. How silly of him to panic like he had. Keith is a beautiful person, and he had caught a glimpse of a beautiful soul. He supposes his panic warrants out when chancing upon a side of Keith so indescribable, but he decides it's high time to throw caution to the wind. “I’m not sorry either,” he says softly.
Somewhere along the line, snow had begun to precipitate. Lance can only grant it a spare glance as he returns his sight to Keith, who’s done the same. They exchange faint looks and flushed smiles, and Lance pulls himself off the ice with an outstretched hand. Keith peers up at him with eyes like starlight and reaches out in return.