Chapter Text
Lance’s life in space dictates that not a day should go by without him stumbling across some unexpected phenomenon. Which is fair enough, considering his unwanted role as a paladin. He’s learned to readjust.
He likes to believe that, with two years of fighting in a mechanical cat slapped onto his track record, there’s not much that can faze him.
But Keith strolling into the lounge room with just a pair of sweatpants on and a towel slung over his shoulder is something that unwillingly snags Lance’s attention, causes his brain to short-circuit, and unspools his tightly-woven coil of placidity in one go.
He flounders against the couch, nearly losing his grip on his milkshake in the process. The rest of the team isn’t here – they’re scattered all over the castle, doing their own thing amid the rare lapse of Galra-free activity. Which means, if Keith were to elicit a conversation, Lance would be the only one in the room who would have to respond. All while feigning indifference.
He takes a moment to convince himself that he is, in fact, indifferent to a half-naked Keith appearing in his periphery because a) he’s seen Keith shirtless multiple times before, duh, and b) there aren’t even any rules that are preventing Keith from wandering around like he’s on his way to sponsor Vogue Hommes or something.
If Lance also, by any chance, somehow notes how much more defined Keith’s stomach has gotten since the last time he saw it, he wholeheartedly chalks it up to the oncoming brain freeze his milkshake is about to deliver him.
Keith hasn’t notice him yet, though. He’s absentmindedly running the towel over his face and the top of his damp hair. Lance takes this as an opportunity to frantically scan the room for something that can make him look occupied, locates a book discarded near the end of the settee, snatches it up with his free hand, and proceeds to crack it open.
He thumbs through it with his face scrunched up tight, trying to appear as deeply engrossed as he can. Not that he would have been able to focus, per se. The entire print is in Altean.
“Hey.” Keith walks over to him, but then stops short, as if hesitant to disrupt his reading.
Lance, being the good theatre kid he is, keeps up the charade by making a noncommittal noise at the back of his throat and delicately flipping to the next page.
“Uh, what are you reading?”
He pushes the book higher towards his face, emphasizing its presence with a frown, saying, “I’m reading an anthology. On… the history of things. That happened in Altea.”
“Upside down?” Keith asks, brows lifting.
They both look to see that he isn’t exactly wrong, as the book might be what some may deem ‘upside down’, if they are really so pathetically bound to space and time. But yeah. It’s upside down.
“I like to challenge myself, unlike some people I could mention. It’s all about progress, man. Evolution. I am above you in the totem pole of life.”
Keith gives a derisive snort. He flips the towel from his head and uses it to carefully blot the water drops off his arm. “If you say so.”
Lance sniffs and makes a pointed effort not to make eye contact with Keith as he asks, “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Can’t find my shirt anywhere. I looked all over the castle, and this is the last place I could think of.”
“Maybe Kaltenecker ate it?” Lance suggests, innocent as ever. He doesn’t bother to point out that Keith has several other variations of the same dark-grey shirt (which Keith still claims is actually “navy blue”, but since Lance is a bonafide intellectual and Keith is just a moody brood who somehow believes that wearing at least two kinds of leather makes him appear cooler, Keith’s input on the matter is synonymous with all things insignificant).
“What?” Keith says, looking vaguely offended. “Why would she eat my shirt?”
“Dunno. Maybe your sweaty clothes are just something that cattle find naturally nutritious for their diet. Don’t ask me, Kogane.”
“Lance.” Keith’s eyes flash dangerously. “Did you have something to do with this?”
The boy in question, with an airy whistle, brings the book up ever so closer to his face.
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, Mullet. Are you accusing me of committing a crime? Where’s the hard-boiled evidence? The motive? I want an attorney.”
Keith squints at him, as if determining whether Lance is about to pull the rug out from underneath him or something. “Did you make the cow eat my shirt or not?”
“I plead the fifth.”
Okay, so maybe, maybe, Lance had tripped over the laundry hamper this morning and found his face shoved into Keith’s shirt, which may or may not have smelled sort of pleasant, and he may or may not have sniffed it some more until he realized what he was doing, panicked, and carelessly pitched it out the port window overlooking the castle ship's miniature field. It's not his fault that it happened to conveniently land at Kaltenecker’s feet.
At the time, it didn’t seem like such a problem, mainly because there’s not much that can cause his cow indigestion, and also because the prospect of making Keith lose his cool had outweighed any of his other worries. But now that he’s facing the consequences (re: Keith’s shredded abdomen) he’s sort of reconsidering his life choices. And having an internal, quasi-irrational, panic-induced crisis.
Keith levels a heavy glare at him. He’s standing directly in front of Lance now, arms folded over his chest, mouth pursed into a thin, rigid line. His jaw flexes, as if he’s trying to piece together a well-delivered retort, but nothing seems to be coming out.
Lance takes a large slurp of his milkshake. Blows off an imaginary speck of dust from the spine of his book. Continues to flip through the pages.
And if, in the coming weeks, Keith wanders a handful of times in front of Lance without his shirt on – very deliberately, Lance may add, because Keith doesn’t hide his obvious enjoyment at Lance’s squirming – then Lance stubbornly chooses to remain oblivious.
>>>
Some people are addicted to meth. Keith is addicted to stabbing inanimate objects with repeated fervor until he’s worked out his frustrations.
These days, a lot of the stabbing is because of Lance.
He doesn’t even have a specific reason. It’s like, every time he so much as has a normal conversation with Lance, he feels himself psychoanalyzing every little thing that comes out of his mouth. Even a little shoulder brush sends his pulse into overdrive. It’s like his semi-fucked brain is filling up with supernovas, but it’s not even aware of that yet.
You useless gay , he thinks to himself, ripping apart a sequined throw pillow with so much force that a cloud of stuffing explodes in his face. He’s beginning to realize, somewhat grudgingly, that Lance is becoming a danger to his hard-earned neutrality. Thinking about him tends to give Keith an unwanted hitch in his lungs.
On top of that, it’s nearly impossible to keep his impulsive excuse of a body from launching in front of his overzealous teammate whenever he becomes a target in battle. Which Keith knows, considering Lance’s freakishly predictive aim, is overly redundant and unnecessary. He’s seen firsthand what Lance is capable of.
But it’s apparent that both Keith’s mind and body seem to think otherwise.
He stabs at the immobile couch cushion in front of him and snarls at it. “I. Don’t. Have. Time. For. This!” Each word is punctuated by a slash in the next cushion. Stuffing oozes out of the slits and drifts to the floor like puffs of snow.
“Woah, dude. Are you okay?”
Keith pauses his slaughter to glance over his shoulder, where Matt is standing at the doorway, paused mid-bite from a bowl of green goo balanced under his chin.
“Yeah.” Keith tries to look dignified. “Nothing going on here.”
Matt sticks his spoon inside of his mouth, swallows its contents, and gestures at the poor couch cushion. “What did the throw pillow ever do to you? You do know there’s a training room where you can let off steam by fighting bots, right?”
When Keith doesn’t respond, Matt starts to nod, expression grave. “I see,” he says. “This is more than just trying to let out steam, isn’t it?”
Keith considers denying it, but then shrugs in lieu of a reply.
Matt waits for him to continue, but Keith still doesn’t elaborate. The older Holt sibling may be easy enough to get along with, but the moment he’s let in on a single private matter, he’s veering towards either Allura or Shiro to mouth off. He’s almost as bad as Hunk, which is saying a lot — the yellow paladin is shameless when it comes to gossip. Hunk’s grapevine seems to mysteriously extend beyond just the paladins and over to the random alien allies they’ve made in the past.
With a resigned chuckle, Matt shakes his head and turns around to leave, still slurping at what Keith is pretty sure is his fifth bowl of goo today.
He waits until the sound of Matt’s footsteps recedes before turning back to the destructed couch cushion. A groan slips out of him when he realizes how big of a mess he’s made on the floor. And Matt, he knows, is already on his way to cheerfully inform Allura of all the maiming Keith has done to her sparkly throw pillows.
She’s going to murder him.
>>>
In Lance’s humble but entirely correct opinion, he shouldn’t be left to wander around unsupervised when he’s got his datapad on him. Like, how does everyone expect him to stay put on a scope-out mission when he’s on a planet that’s lush with greenery and not, against his better judgement, take as many impromptu selfies as he can?
Even if, admittedly, said selfies lead him into climbing a tall, tree-like plant like some humanoid squirrel jacked up on stimulants. It’s a feat that soon leads to a slow and dawning realization that he can’t climb back down unless he wants a broken limb or two.
“On the bright side,” he muses, “the view is quite striking.”
When he peeks a longer look downward, his lunch threatens to lurch right out of his mouth, and a disorienting dizziness has him quickly turning back to face the plant-slash-tree thing. Of course he has to get stuck in an abnormally large tree on the one day he doesn’t have his armour on. His jet pack would’ve saved him a lot of trouble.
Houston, his subconscious screams at him, we’ve got a major fucking problem.
He’s in the middle of grumbling curses under his breath and hugging a branch for dear life when he hears the sound of muted laughter from below. On instinct, his jaw tightens, and with it, a familiar flare of heat starts to unfurl in the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t need to look down to know who the laugh belongs to.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” he calls back, trying to sound dignified.
“Really?” Keith’s voice is thick with amusement. “Because to me, it looks like you’re cowering on top of a tree.”
“Me? Cowering? Not at all.” Lance attempts to look blasé. “Just chillin’ out, maxin’, relaxin’, all cool. Breathing oxygen from the tree. Because, you know, it’s a plant.” Stop rambling, he tells himself, frantic, but it’s like his mouth has a mind of its own. “Very oxygenated, this air is. You’re really missing out on the whole experience.”
“Yeah? How’s the weather up there? A bit chilly?”
Lance has to admit that it is, in fact, chilly at this height. He can feel a cool draft working its way down his jeans.
He shakes a fist down at Keith. “Shut up! Getting stuck trying to take a decent selfie was totally accidental. Plus, the lighting over here is to die for. Really brings out the glow in my complexion. Just saying.” His hands scrabble for purchase as they slip a bit against the plant’s rough exterior. “But that’s beside the point! Can you – stop laughing! – can you just come and get me down somehow?”
“Nah, I don’t know if I can. Maybe I’ll just call Pidge over here so she can record this. Then she can distribute the tape all over the galaxy.”
An outrageous shriek flies out of Lance’s mouth before he can stuff it back in. “Don’t you dare!”
Keith hooks his thumbs into the loopholes of his belt and takes several giant strides backward. Even from this height Lance can see the corner of his mouth crinkling with restrained laughter.
Lance figures he has two options: a) let Keith get Pidge or b) beg for mercy and face eternal ridicule.
Eventually, after pondering over this for a considerable amount of time, he decides to veto both choices. He’s Lance McClain . He doesn’t do embarrassment, nor does he grovel at the feet of anyone, let alone the feet of a mullet-sporting hellion like Keith.
“Come on, Keith. Amigo. Chum. Just help out a bud in need.”
In response, he gets two brows raised in a show of severe enlightenment.
“I gotta take a leak,” Lance tries.
The brows furrow. “Can’t you hold it in?”
“No, as a matter of fact, I can’t hold it in. I’m bursting right now, Kogane. Absolutely bursting. Chugged, like, two cups of Coran’s space decaf this morning and – Ohh. I think I can feel it leaking down my – oh, man, it’s so warm – “
“Oh my god, fine! I’ll help. Spare me the details.”
A triumphant smile spreads across Lance’s lips.
Keith treads closer until he’s standing directly beneath Lance. He looks up, squinting, then raises a hand to shield his eyes. Watery-red sunlight filters through the foliage and casts a warm shadow over him, slicing his face into ribbons of pale, smooth skin and fiery oranges. Forgetting about his suspended position in the air for a moment, Lance watches Keith with a frown, feeling a peculiar sense of something stir inside him.
This planet’s star isn’t even remotely close to the hot and searing heat under Cuba’s sun – a place he can easily recall summer afternoons spent with his sun-darkened body running along the beachfront – but looking down now, he thinks that Keith’s face, softened by the dusty, orange glow, reminds him a teeny bit of that Cuban sun.
But just a teeny bit.
“Okay”, Keith says, sounding like he’s carefully trying to choose his next words. “Do you trust me?”
“Uh,” Lance says. “Is that a trick question?”
“Do. You. Trust me? Because I want you to let go.”
Realization dawns on Lance, and he nearly chokes on his spit in his mad dash to sputter out a long stream of outraged proclamations.
“Are you nuts?” he yells. “Trusting you to not get me impaled in battle and trusting you to catch me from all the way down there are two completely different things.”
“But you do? Even a little?”
“Yes,” Lance says, without thinking. “But –“
“Then jump. I’m stronger than I look.”
Right. Galra blood and all.
Lance lets a huff of breath escape his lips, but doesn’t give himself enough time to mull over everything that could go wrong. Whatever. If his untimely death happens to come in the form of a splat on the ground, then at least the blame will be pinned on Keith and shatter his emo-space-ninja notoriety forever.
He takes a quick, dramatic selfie of his terrified face with the datapad before squeezing his eyes shut, muttering a ‘time to blast’ under his breath, and then letting his grip on the tree go slack.
Before he knows it, air is rushing past him and his heart feels like it’s trying to claw right out of his throat. He screams, but the sound is swallowed away by the shrill whistle of the wind. The weightlessness is an entirely different kind of sensation to when he’s nose-diving at rapid speed in his lion – here, his amount of control is next to nada.
His eyes remain closed, even when he finds that the dropping sensation has abruptly given away. “Is it over?” he mumbles. “Am I dead? Is there a Lance-shaped imprint on the ground?”
“Lance. Just open your eyes.”
He pries one eye open, then the next. With a crane of his neck and a quick scan of his surroundings, he discovers that he is decidedly not, in fact, flattened into a pancake-like mixture on the planet’s terrain. All his limbs seem intact, which he duly considers an instant win. He turns his head back around and immediately regrets it when he’s met with an uncomfortably close, front-and-center view of Keith’s face.
In all the cases he’s gotten up into Keith’s face – most of them being the direct result of an explosive argument – he’s never paused long enough to catalogue the entirety of Keith’s appearance. It’s not like he’s ever had reason to.
He tilts his head, curious, and examines the features before him like a sculptor assessing his model, barely even registering the flustered scrunch of Keith’s face.
Dusky, violet eyes tinged with grey. The gentle incline of his nose. A small scar near the corner of his mouth. The slight jut of his lower lip, chapped and in dire need of some Vaseline. If he squints and tilts his head just so, he can acknowledge that it’s not a terrible face. Adequate, even. Seriously. Who does this guy think he is?
Lance supposes that, if there ever came a chance, he wouldn’t mind getting a palette knife and running it through a cream of paint, pressing it onto the canvas, and letting the tool slip and slide along the surface, angular and firm in an approximate likeness of Keith’s face.
Awesome. Now he’s waxing poetic about his teammate’s aesthetics like a complete weirdo.
Keith clears his throat a bit louder than necessary, which is when Lance notices that his arms are still encircling Keith’s neck like some spooked koala bear. Keith’s are locked in a firm grip beneath Lance’s knees and back, holding him up. And, yeah, okay. Maybe he can grudgingly admit that Keith is stronger than he looks.
“Thanks,” he says, simple and to the point.
After a pause, Keith gives him an uncertain nod.
Another pause stretches out between them, in which neither of them makes the first move to disentangle themselves.
But then, finally, Lance cocks his head to the side and tries to defuse the awkwardness with a flash of his teeth. “So,” he hears himself say. “You letting go of me anytime soon? Or are you just going to fondle me some more?”
“I’m not fondling you,” Keith says, eyes widening just the tiniest bit. “Get over yourself.”
At this, Lance throws his head back and lets out a full-blown cackle, knowing that it’ll only make Keith’s blood boil.
He’s not even mad when he gets dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
>>>
Turning off the zero-G after nearly getting obliterated on a mission isn’t Keith’s version of a breather. All he wants to do is take a scalding hot shower and rest his aching limbs, maybe even catch a dreamless sleep for once. But when Lance bounced over to him, eyes twinkling with mischief as he proposed his brilliant idea, Keith – as per usual when it comes to Lance – found that the word no didn’t exist in his vocabulary anymore.
Which is why, fifteen minutes later, freshly showered and free of any grime in parts of his body he didn’t even know he could get grime in, he’s standing in front of a set of doors adjacent to the control room. He enters just in time to see Lance hurling a shrieking Pidge through the air like a humanoid missile. Hunk and Matt, on the other hand, seem to be helping Allura juggle her floating mice in the air like they're a part of some intergalactic circus union. It's only after several lack-luster attempts that they decide to finally let the mice run free. Or as free as mice can get in a chamber with no gravity.
As Keith navigates past them, he’s startled to find Pidge – still shrieking – careen past him, hitting up against his side on her way. He’s whirled around, body abruptly rotating until his feet are sticking skyward and his head is floating mere inches above the ground.
“Watch it,” he grumbles. He pushes his palms against the floor and uses it as leverage to propel himself higher, peering over his shoulder as he does so. Pidge’s legs are wrapped around one of the pipes protruding out of the wall in an effort to keep herself from floating away.
“Sorry,” she says with a sheepish grin. “Lance and I made a bet to see how far he could launch me.”
With a glance back, Keith finds said boy floating over to them with a superior look etched onto his face. He flexes his arms several times, points at the swell of his biceps, and then gives each one a ridiculously loud ‘mwah’ kiss.
“These guns never let me down,” he says with a wink. “Bets over, Pidge. I get to use the headset for another week. Without you getting on my case.”
Pidge throws her hands up into the air. “How was I supposed to know you were actually hitting the training room hard? Last time I checked, you tried to fake three different kinds of alien plagues to get out of mandatory training.”
“Okay, first of all, I have a weak immune system and catch things easily. Second, I can’t let my rival one-up me.”
Lance jabs an accusatory finger towards Keith, though it’s hard to take him seriously when the lack of gravity keeps making tufts of his hair stick out in every direction.
“If you think you can out-do me in the buff department, you’re wrong.”
Keith squints at him. He’s somehow had this notion that, after the pivotal direction their relationship had taken post lion-switching, Lance had put their “rivalry’ aside. Apparently not.
“You think I’m – what – more ripped than you?” The words come out of his mouth with a bite of incredulity.
“No, I think that you think that you can somehow get more ripped than me by routinely working out in the middle of the night. There’s a difference.”
Keith opens his mouth, then closes it again with an audible click. He wants to tell Lance that the only reason he’s been going to the training room so late at night is that he can’t sleep. Not that he’s ever been able to sleep, per se, and on the rare occasions he does, it’s usually for an unproportionate number of hours before he’s dragged out of it by of his nightmares.
Yet lately, his nightmares have gotten worse. He’s been making a conscious effort to avoid his bed while the rest of the occupants in the castle are sound asleep. He finds it easier to exhaust himself on the training deck, slamming through one level to the next, rather than waking up with his whole body coated in sweat and his subconscious screaming a cacophony of different warnings at him.
He didn’t think Lance, of all people, would keep tabs on his nightly procedures, especially considering how stubborn he is about keeping his eyebags as nonexistent as possible. Keith’s not sure whether he wants to let himself feel flattered about this or not.
After a moment of consideration, he decides to keep his reasons to himself. He doesn’t want Lance, or anyone else in the room, for that matter, to pepper him with questions he’d rather not give answers to.
He tries for a shrug and says, “But you’re admitting that you see me as a threat. I think that says a lot.”
At this, Lance’s eyes take on a mischievous spark. The corners of his mouth lift, and somewhere behind Keith, Pidge blows out an exasperated sigh. He doesn’t need to turn around to see that she’s probably rolling her eyes, too.
In all things considered, he should’ve expected this. Keith should’ve known that to provoke someone as competitive as Lance wouldn’t end in anything but a wild chase around the room, regardless of there being gravity or not.
He supposes that maybe, somewhere along the back of his mind, he was counting on it.
When Lance catapults over to him, the grin on his lips turning almost wolfish, Keith feels something stir in the pit of his belly. It’s a feeling like deep-seated satisfaction, or perhaps a little more beyond that, something he can’t quite put into the right words. He pushes it down and gives a hard shake of his head. Later.
He lunges out of the way a split-second before Lance can tackle him, and he’s surprised to find a bubble of laughter erupting out of his throat as he watches Lance’s floundering hands. It doesn’t last long. Before Keith can yank his body out of range again, Lance has pounced on him, legs wrapped around Keith’s abdomen, elbows digging into his shoulders with a surprising amount of strength.
Keith struggles against his grip. His legs flail in midair as he tries to throw Lance’s weight off his back. He only succeeds in drifting them higher, almost until their heads are barely grazing the ceiling.
“This is ridiculous –“ he starts, but gets drowned out by Lance’s triumphant crowing.
“Square up, Kogane,” he says, a grin evident in his voice. “Let’s see what all that time on the training deck has really done for you.”
“Please. You really think you can be much of a challenge? Last I checked, anything involving close-range combat is a miss for you.”
“Maybe not. But you’ve seen me in battle before. I’m a strategist.”
“And exactly what kind of strategy are you going to impose?”
Lance wiggles his outstretched fingers. “The kind that involves me figuring out your weakest spots.”
“What are you –“
To Keith’s horror, a sound that he’s never emitted before escapes out of his throat. Lance’s fingers – on his torso – are probing him. Just the barest brush of fingers against his shirt, but it’s enough to send Keith squirming.
“Well hey,” Lance says, surprised. Keith squints out of the corner of his eyes and sees a flash of those proverbial dimples. “Someone’s a little ticklish.”
Keith is still trying to wriggle away like an earthworm, all his defenses single-handedly crumbling before him. “What are you doing to me? Is this some twisted form of torture? An attack?” He’s about to add something else, but an uncharacteristic squeak of laughter shoots out of his mouth before he can stuff it back in, making his limbs kick out like he’s either having the world’s deadliest seizure or performing an elaborate rendition of the hokey pokey dance.
It’s like he’s suddenly lost the ability to control his entire body, and all his sensitive areas – mostly around his torso and stomach – feel like they’re being attacked by an alien force.
“Aw, Keith, have you never been tickled before? Are you a tickle-virgin?”
“I’m – not – a tickle-virgin,” Keith gasps out between uncontrollable hiccups of laughter. “What the hell even is that?”
“Hey, Hunk!” Lance calls out, voice far too smug for Keith’s liking. “Keith’s a tickle-virgin!”
“No way! For real?” Hunk’s voice projects from all the way across the other end of the room, but Keith’s too preoccupied to look over and see his expression or catch his next set of words. He’s not sure if he’s imagining it, but he’s certain he also hears a small laugh come out of Allura.
“I’m going to elbow you in the nuts,” he seethes, making one last effort to ditch Lance’s grasp.
Lance leans over and sticks out his tongue in Keith’s face. “No need to be so crass, mullet man. I didn’t know someone as thorny as you could dissolve into laughter with just a single poke to the belly.”
He wags his tongue even more. It's such an infuriatingly cute expression that Keith almost lets out a groan – all he wants to do right now is tug himself free so he can go and bury his face in his hands.
“It wasn’t a poke, and you know it!”
Lance pokes him in the belly button, just to prove his point, and Keith’s muscles instantly clench, his flight-or-fight response kicking in before he’s able to stop it. His entire body feels on high-alert, but it's more to do with the fact that he's literally in Lance's arms. He's got Lance's entire front pressed against his backside, warm and solid and close enough that Keith can catch a faint whiff of something distinctly boyish and soapy. Damn, he thinks. So this is what it's like to be wrapped up in a cute boy's arms.
He feels a stab of annoyance at himself for that unwelcome thought, but then he gets distracted by another soft, teasing poke from Lance.
“This is so not fair,” Keith says, trying to disguise another involuntary laugh. He makes a half-hearted attempt to kick Lance away, but somehow, Lance has trapped his legs between his own, blocking any possible retreat, and is now proceeding to tickle him even further. His fingers graze just a little above Keith’s hipbone, sending another spike of warmth coursing through his body.
Yet, because Keith is a touch-starved boy who may or may not have a thing for boys with long limbs and an infectious laugh, he doesn’t let himself mind the whole ordeal as much as he desperately wants to.
“Dude. This is, like, even better than discovering that you sleep in your day clothes. Now I have something that I can actually use against you. For leverage, of course.”
Absolutely. Not. Fair.
“Chillax, Keith,” Pidge says, floating over to them. She gives Lance's hand placements a single, assessing glance, then turns back to Keith’s squirming body without an ounce of sympathy. “Getting tickled is actually pretty healthy for you. Certain studies show that it strengthens digestion and abdominal muscles. Plus, it increases blood circulation, produces a higher supply of dopamine, speeds up brain functions for optimal cognition, blah, blah. You get the drift.”
Lance lets out an impressed huff of laughter, making the tufts of hair curling near the nape of Keith’s neck fly up. “Hear that, Keith?" His voice is almost a murmur against Keith's skin. "I’m actually helping you out here.”
Keith scrunches up his nose, trying as hard as he can to wipe away whatever kind of whipped expression he has. “I’m pretty sure you made half of that up,” he says to Pidge, who shrugs at the pointed look he gives her and lazily begins to backstroke her way down.
For just a fraction of second, Lance’s grip on him relaxes, and Keith uses that spare moment to twist out of range, his glove-clad hands instantly seizing Lance’s wrists to prevent them from coming near his stomach again. Unfazed, Lance just shoots him another heart-stopping grin.
“I’m going to get you back for this,” Keith promises.
“I’d like to see you try. I’m not the least bit ticklish.”
Keith arches a brow.
“Not even a little,” Lance adds, chest puffing out proudly.
Keith’s mouth pops open to make an off-handed remark, but then he pauses, his brain finally processing the warm skin pressed under his fingertips. He lets his gaze fall to where his hand is resting. His forehead crinkles as he examines the contrast of his own fingers to Lance’s, which are a lot longer and nimbler — kind of like a pianist. Briefly, he wonders if Lance knows how to play any instruments. Another moment of scrutiny leads to the discovery that his hands are a lot less calloused, too, even with the small smatter of scars across his knuckles.
“Um, Keith? Something wrong?”
“Nothing. Uh. Your hands are just really soft,” Keith says, then promptly proceeds to blush, horrified at his own words, because – wow. He’s a certified fucking moron. He can feel the heat washing up his throat as panic twists itself into a painful knot in the pit of his stomach.
Not for the first time, he wishes his life could come with a trapdoor. Just a little exit hatch he can disappear through when he mortifies himself to the nth degree.
“It’s called moisturizing, buddy,” Lance preaches, sounding more matter-of-fact than weirded out by Keith’s outburst. “You should try it.”
At this, Keith gives Lance a small shove in the shoulder, barely containing any force in it, but the lack of gravity sends him veering away like an off-kilter ballet dancer. Lance’s surprised laughter fills up the entire room as he body-slams into Pidge, who up until this point, had been in the middle of balancing her glasses on the toes of her sneakers.
Hearing Lance’s carefree laugh, it makes something in Keith’s chest twinge. It feels like the unfurling of a large and unwanted butterfly, one that’s been slowly making its presence known inside of him instead of dissipating like he hoped. He wants to swat it away. He wants to squash it in the palm of his hand. Anything, really, to get rid of it.
But once he steps out of the room, feet rooted back to the ground, the uncomfortable realization that he doesn’t know how strikes him like a vicious blow.
>>>
It’s several days later, somewhere between taking a long, exhausted shower and getting ready for bed, when Lance is hit with a profoundly ground-breaking realization.
He and Keith have reached a grudging camaraderie. Not that he’s deluding himself into thinking that in the two years they’ve been in space together, they’ve dismantled their ‘rivalry’ altogether and become buddy-buddy, but they’ve come far enough to at least respect each other. To a degree.
With a hum, Lance slips on his Altean robe and starts to smooth out the front of it, then looks in the mirror and gives himself a tantalizingly goofy wink.
He walks out of the Altean equivalent of a bathroom and wracks his brain for a reason why he and Keith being friends is such a startling concept. They’ve had more than their share of moments where they’ve let themselves be vulnerable with each other. They’ve taken the brunt of enemy blows for one another on more than several occasions. They’d co-lead missions during Shiro’s absence. Yet Lance has taken all of that into stride – he’s chalked it up to teamwork, or perhaps just a level of mutual tolerance that they’ve had to construct to get through these two years in space.
He’s still thinking about this as he makes his way over to the kitchen, opting for some last-minute ingredients for his evening face regimen. When he finds the lights already on and a slightly rumpled Keith at the table with a bowl of heated goo, the answer finally strikes him. He and Keith have never outwardly discussed this so-called friendship. Heck, Lance isn’t even sure if Keith considers them friends.
The thought settles something strangely distasteful in the pit of his stomach.
With a loud whistle, Lance saunters into the room and heads straight for the fridge. He pulls out some goo and a vial of citrus-y liquid he can’t pronounce the name of (but what has immensely contributed to the glow of his complexion in the last week or so). Once he’s gathered the rest of the ingredients, he plops down next to Keith and starts combining them all into a small bowl.
“Can’t sleep?” he asks, ever the conversationalist.
Keith lifts a shoulder. “Bad dreams, as usual. Training deck isn’t really cutting it for me right now.”
“Yeah, that’s understandable. The last nightmare I had still gives me hives. I think you were in it too, actually.”
Keith puts a pause to his food-picking and quirks a brow at Lance.
“It was a dream about starting a dating service for fish called solemate.com. No idea why you were in it, but I think you were mostly there to give me moral support.” He scratches the back of his neck and gives an awkward little roll of his shoulders, suddenly hyper-aware of the fact that Keith's undivided attention is laser-focused on him. “Or, now that I think about it, maybe you were just there for decorative purposes.”
He’s met with a blank stare. Then, Keith bursts into a fit of laughter so abrupt that he nearly spills the contents of his bowl onto his lap. His shoulders start to quake and his head dips back ever so slightly, causing his insane fluff of hair to flop away from his forehead. Lance’s ears instantly perk up. He can’t help the pleasant little current that goes through him. I did that, he thinks in amazement. I 'm really out here, making Keith fucking Kogane laugh his butt off.
Lance schools his expression into something that closely resembles disdain, which leads to Keith trying to mask his laugh with an unconvincing cough.
“It’s not funny! It’s probably the weirdest dream I’ve ever had. Which is saying a lot, because I’ve had ones that included Zarkon, the U.S. president, and a taxi driver all in the same steamboat.”
This only switches the coughing into more snorts of laughter.
Lance swings his arms expansively. “Here I am, trying to tell you about this wonderfully awful dream I had, which includes you, by the way, and all I’m getting is a lot of unwarranted judgement. Like, how am I supposed to tell you nice things like this when all I get in return is a laugh in the face? Don’t answer that. You’re going to say something soul-crushing, I know it.”
“You have such a dumb flair for the dramatic, don’t you?”
“It’s one of my more enduring qualities.”
With a shake of his head, Keith goes back to sipping at his bowl of goo, but there’s a distinct curve to his lips now.
Lance dips a finger into the concoction he’s made, trying to see if the consistency is right. He adds in a few drops of citrusy liquid, pauses, ponders, and decides on two more. When he’s satisfied with it, he contemplates retreating into his room and calling it a night, but then falters. He might as well get this over with. Even if his ego is on the line.
“Keith,” he says, hesitant, but then with a little more certainty, “Are we friends?”
Keith looks startled. He opens his mouth, then shuts it closed again. For a brief, terrifying second, Lance expects him to snort, or roll his eyes, or simply get up from the table and leave. But he seems to be genuinely considering the question. His dark eyes are fixated on Lance's face, unblinking, as if evaluating what sort of answer to give.
Eventually, he shrugs. “Do you think so?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Lance flicks some of his concoction at Keith’s face. “Do friends fling goo at each other?”
Keith, with a sputter, wipes the sludgy substance off his cheek and hops out of his seat, snatching his own bowl with the reflexes of a seasoned boy-soldier.
“Do friends,” he says as a teasing glint enters his eyes, “do this?”
And then he unceremoniously tosses a handful of goo onto Lance’s hair.
“Oh, it is on!”
Lance shoves out of his chair and narrowly avoids another hit as he sprints towards the goo dispenser. He snatches the long pipe off its hook and waves the nozzle in front of him threateningly, one finger already pushing down against the spray trigger.
“Keith, I hope you told your knife collection that you love them today, because you are going to die.”
Keith’s eyes widen. He immediately hose-drops to the ground as Lance narrows his eyes and lunges forward. Keith darts backward, ducks, and sprints around to the other side of the long counter, mirroring Lance’s movements exactly so that they’re constantly shuffling around the counter at different ends. When Lance books it to the right, Keith does too, bowl still held aloft.
“Stay in one place, Mullet!”
“Come on, sharpshooter. Afraid you can’t hit me from all the way there?”
“Your ass,” Lance announces, making another fake-out to the right, “is grass, you hear me?”
Keith’s absurd, fluffy hair poofs out over his eyes as he tilts his head to the side, giving Lance an achingly radiant smirk. “Sorry,” he drawls. “I can’t hear you over my lack of terror.”
With renowned fervor, Lance dives over the counter, yanking the hose along with him. Before Keith can make a break for it, Lance has the nozzle spraying sticky green substance all over his head, face, and the upper half of his shirt. In a matter of seconds, Keith is losing his balance and slipping against the hard surface of the floor, a surprised yelp escaping out of his throat.
Lance twirls the hose between his index finger. He makes a point of blowing on the nozzle like it’s the barrel of a pistol, letting his lips kick up into a razor-sharp grin when he takes in the expression on Keith’s face. It kind of reminds him of a wounded kitten.
“Hey, Lance?” Keith says from his place on the floor.
“Yeah?”
“Do friends –“ Keith’s ankle shoots out – “do this?”
Just like that, Lance’s legs are swept right out from beneath him via Keith’s clunky go-go boots, arms uselessly flailing in midair for a fraction of a second before the hose slips out of his fingers. He lands with a graceful little oomph just as the sound of laughter reaches his ears.
Once the initial surprise of the fall wears off, he waggles his middle finger in the general vicinity of Keith’s face and says a few choice curses, but he can’t help but laugh along, too. There’s something about hearing Keith’s quiet, unstrained laughter that makes Lance’s belly spread with warmth, like he’s just swallowed down a spoonful of melted honey. It’s such an open and trustworthy sound – completely at odds with Keith’s usual snorts of dismissal, or even his small huffs of laughter while being tickled. Hearing it makes him wonder why he ever wanted to egg Keith on just to get a rise out of him when could've been making him laugh this whole time.
Perhaps this is the kind of vulnerability that he never got from Keith at the Garrison while trying to befriend him, and Lance supposes maybe, just maybe, they have come far enough in the last two years to become friends after all.
He doesn’t pause to consider what he’s going to do next. He rolls over the stone floor until he’s facing Keith, reaches out, and swipes his thumb across Keith’s goo-covered cheek in one go. At his touch, the ends of Keith’s mouth curl into a confused and unsure half-smile. A crease that’s becoming all-too familiar forms between his brows.
This close up, Lance can see himself reflected in Keith’s eyes, can feel them exchanging oxygen, chests rising and falling in sync.
It’s strange, he thinks, that with just a careful shift of his torso and a slight tilt of Keith’s head, they could almost be nose to nose. Not that they would, of course. But if they wanted to.
He wipes the thought out of his mind before he has time to analyze it any further.
Blinking hard, he shoots Keith a Colgate-commercial worthy smile and brings his finger to his own lips. Even though the goo has a semi-plain, semi-bittersweet taste and an overall soppy texture, he still swallows it down, giving a slight hum of ill-disguised displeasure once he’s done.
He lifts both hands and gives Keith two dorky thumbs up. “I guess friends do this too, yeah?”
And as another small, breathless laugh escapes past Keith’s lips, Lance thinks, oh.
He thinks that, when Keith laughs, magic happens.
>>>
“What made you want to explore space?”
They’re on the observation deck, silently looking out at the spray of milky stars floating across a field of deep blues and purples. It’s been several weeks since they’ve had a chance to exchange more than just a sentence or two; between stakeouts, separate missions, and liberating intergalactic species, taking a breather in the castle was pretty much impossible.
Keith glances sideways at Lance, a brow cocked in thoughtful consideration at the question. His jacket is slung over one shoulder, and he starts to fiddle with the cuffs as he drags his gaze back to the cluster of foreign constellations.
Lance reclines on his elbows and waits for Keith’s reply. By now, he’s beginning to understand that Keith, when he’s not busy being a hot-head, likes to piece his thoughts together in silence before speaking. It’s the opposite of what Lance would do – he runs his mouth a mile a minute as if he’s on autopilot. There’s always so much to say but not enough time for his brain to operate as fast as his mouth.
He remembers a time when he would come home from school and ramble on about his day for minutes on end, barely stopping to heave a breath, and his mom would laugh and sweep a kiss across his forehead before telling him that he was babbling again. Not that she minded, really. She’s probably the only one who can keep up with his constant stream of chatter, no matter how many sub-topics he ends up interchanging.
At the memory, a small smile forms on Lance’s lips. He leans forward to wrap his arms around his legs before pressing his cheek against the curve of his knee. Next to him, Keith stops picking at his jacket sleeves and finally looks away from the window.
“I think earth was too suffocating,” he says. His voice is quiet.
“Suffocating?” Lance asks, squinting down at the floor. He can imagine his home planet to be many things, but none of them would be something he’d describe as suffocating .
“I was bounced around from one foster home to the next. I hated it. There were – well, there were too many people with the wrong kind of expectations. At least at the Garrison, I felt like I was actually learning about something that I wanted in life.”
“Until you got booted.”
Keith blows out a breath that flops his bangs against his forehead. “Until I got booted. But that didn’t make me want to go to space any less.”
Lance glances at him. Keith looks away, looking slightly embarrassed.
“I don’t know. There’s just something about space, the unknown, that made me want to be a pilot so bad. I wanted to feel the same kind of rush I got when I rode my motorcycle. Except... I wanted to feel it anywhere but on earth.”
To some extent, Lance can understand that kind of longing more than anything. The first time his mom took him out onto the roof to let him use a telescope, his world had tilted on its axis. That preliminary glimpse of space, an endless velvet of black lit up by thousands of silver stars, had lit a deep and hungry flame in his belly. It sent a rush of awe and excitement through him, like little spikes of electricity going off in his bloodstream.
That night, as he lay in bed with his stuffed shark – Mr. Bubbles – crushed tight against his chest, he pretended that stars were things that could be lured to earth.
But despite his fascination with the galaxies spread out before him, Lance understands that now, if given the chance, he would return to earth in a heartbeat. If given a way to end the intergalactic war he’s been forced to become so tangled up in, he wouldn’t hesitate. It’s a kind of desperate, persistent longing that sits in his chest cavity, day after day, like some hollow semblance of hope. He wonders how long it’ll be before it’s tapped out for good.
Then there’s Keith, who he isn’t so sure about. For one thing, the guy isn’t even completely human. It makes sense that he feels at ease out here in space, what with part of his DNA being Galra and all.
It makes him feel strangely unhinged. Even if their circumstances are completely up to par with Keith’s idea of a grand time, he’s got his suspicions about the hot-tempered paladin being more than just reluctant to return to earth. And why would he want to return? He’s got no father to tie him back to earth. His living arrangements consisted of a desert shack out in the middle of who-fucking-knows-where. He, unfortunately, has nothing to lose by running around from one interplanetary mission to the next.
Lance supposes that, in a way, space gives Keith the kind of freedom that can never be offered to him on earth.
He opens his mouth to rattle off something meaningful, but then stops short. He doesn’t want to make things awkward. Or put a wet blanket on the considerably heavy mood any further.
So, channeling his usual self, he shrugs and leans back, letting a lazy grin stretch across his face. “You know, that was kind of deep. I wasn’t expecting it. Makes what I have to say sound lame in comparison.”
Keith runs his fingers along the ends of his hair in an almost unconscious gesture before he angles his body towards Lance, looking curious. The sheer expectancy in his attention throws Lance a bit off balance.
“Well,” he says, struggling to recollect himself. “The thought of space and an endless of array of star systems to explore is great and all, but what really got me interested are the black holes.”
"Black holes."
"Yep."
“Why am I not surprised? This totally fits.”
“Totally fits what?”
Keith gestures vaguely. “This mental notion I have of you. Black holes? It’s just – well – so undeniably your type of thing. A Lance thing.”
“Thanks, I guess.” Lance doesn’t know why he sounds so pleased at the thought of Keith having any of kind mental impression of him besides exuberant and talkative. “But, anyway. The thing about black holes is that if you were to travel inside of them, you would be stretched like a noodle. A goddamn noodle, Keith. Linguine. And you know what they call it?”
Even though he probably knows the answer, Keith still humors him by lifting a thick brow.
“Spaghettification!” Lance throws his hands up into the air dramatically, like his mind has just been blown to pieces. “And, I mean, now that we know wormholes exist and we can pop right into different pockets of the universe like no one’s business, black holes just seem mainstream, but still. Everything about the theory of quantum gravity – about not even light being able escape that much force? That’s so trippy.”
When he looks over, he catches Keith trying to hide a smile behind the upturned collar of his jacket. It cuts off Lance’s train of thought and sends it veering in a totally different direction.
He appraises the gentle curve of those lips in thoughtful silence. So far, he’s cataloged a wide range of Keith’s smiles, safely filing them away at the back of his mind in the same way a kid would stow away their wrapped candies or shiny marbles. There’s Keith with the sardonic, too-cocky smile right before he’s about to ninja-splice his opponent. There’s Keith with the absent-minded smile, just barely parenthesizing the corners of his lips. There’s Keith with the sharp grin when he’s excited or passionate about something, revealing just the barest flash of his canines. Then there’s Keith with the soft smile, lips upturned with the kind of fondness that Lance has never thought him capable of.
There are a lot of Keith Smile’s Lance has stashed away, apparently.
Point is, he doesn’t think he’s noticed this one before. It’s a mixture of amusement and something else too, something a bit more soft-edged and newer. Affection, his brain pushes at him hopefully, to which he politely tells his brain to fuck off and find someone else’s thoughts to chew at.
He desperately wants to ask what kind of mental impression Keith has of him right now, at this exact moment. He wants to ask a myriad of other things, too, things that suddenly seem so much easier to get out in the undisturbed silence of the observatory.
But then Shiro enters the room, an admonishment already scraping off the tip of his tongue, and the moment around Lance crumbles.
>>>
There’s a strangely melancholic taste in the air tonight.
Keith and the rest of the team are standing in the middle of a crumbling planet, stock-still in thick, penetrating silence. Dust and debris floats down from the red-streaked sky, and a hollow, droning sound permeates the air. The scent of something burning scratches at Keith’s nose as he watches Shiro and Coran loading the lone survivors onto one of their cargo ships.
Lance, with soot and ashes streaking down his face like war paint, is breathing hard. So hard, his knees buckle and collapse to the ground. His armour protests with a weak whine, leg braces creaking against the impact. Hair, matted with sweat and a day’s worth of grime, curls over the tips of his ears. Hands fist into the damp soil as a low growl of frustration slips past his lips.
“Lance,” Hunk says quietly, but then stops short at the look on his best friend’s face.
“No,” Lance bites out, sounding like he’s physically refraining himself from dry-heaving onto the ground. “No, I refuse to accept this.”
Keith, who’s standing the closest to him, can only stare down. A gaping flare of helplessness starts to snake through his stomach. He wants to find the right words, anything, to comfort Lance. But he’s never been good with words. He doesn’t possess the innate ability to connect and communicate with people the way Lance can. His default trait is doing, not thinking.
So that’s exactly what he does. He lets his knees sink into the damp soil, touching down next to a boy with a heart as soft and open as a bruise. Silently, he wraps his arms around Lance, allowing him to drop his head onto his shoulder. For a few moments, Lance doesn’t do anything – just remains completely still, as if frozen in a block of ice.
Then, he lets a shudder wrack through his body and presses in closer to Keith’s embrace.
“I could’ve saved them,” he whispers. His voice is hoarse and scratchy, as if he’s trying to swallow down clumps of dry cereal down his throat. Something about it makes Keith’s chest seize up. His mind empties of everything but the hollow gust of wind against their faces and how vulnerable Lance looks in this fraction of a heartbeat, like one movement can break him open.
“Stop it. You survived. Your quick thinking got at least half of these hostages out. That counts for something, right?”
“But not all of them survived, Keith. Most of them were barely conscious. Some of them were literal children. What’s the point of being a part of a glorified, ass-conquering robot who saves the universe if you can’t – can’t – “ Lance cuts off with a sharp inhale. Another shudder runs through him. This time, Keith can hear the unmistakable sound of Lance’s breath hitching, as if he’s on the verge of breaking into tears.
Keith leans in to tighten his grip on Lance, almost like he’s shielding him. From what, he isn’t quite sure. All he knows is that he doesn't want something in Lance to shake loose. He lets himself count to thirty before he draws back and presses his thumbs against the sides of Lance’s head, forcing him to tilt it up.
”Hey, hey. Look at me. I’m not saying that what happened wasn’t shitty. But just because you couldn’t save everyone doesn’t mean you’re any less of a –“
“– A what?” Lance’s eyes flash dangerously.
“A paladin.”
The droning sound in the air fizzles out, then slowly pops back in.
“Some paladin I am, then,” Lance says, voice brittle. There’s laughter somewhere in there, too, more self-deprecating than anything else Keith has heard from him. “You know, it feels like the more lives we try to save along the way, the more we keep losing.”
“Lance,” Keith says, then cuts himself off, because he doesn’t know what he wants to add next. He doesn’t trust himself enough to say anything more, too afraid he’ll accidentally let the wrong thing slip out and send Lance into another panic-induced spiral.
It occurs to him that he’s never had to comfort Lance in the kind of way Lance has with him – mainly when Shiro disappeared and left Keith with a role far too big for him to fill in alone. Lance had put aside whatever spite he had for Keith and kept him level-headed through pretty much the entire span of his role as leader.
It would take an awfully big heart and clear mind-set for someone to do that, Keith thinks, frowning.
He steels a breath to compose himself. He ducks his head a bit further so that the others can’t listen. They’re at eye level now. Lance’s usual clear-eyed gaze is replaced with a wild kind of frenzy, the deep blue of his irises taking on a duller, ashen shade. Keith lets his thumb trace down the length of Lance’s jaw while he tucks the index finger of his other hand under Lance’s chin.
“I know the death toll lately hasn’t been the best,” he says, voice quiet. “But think about the big picture here for a moment. We’re giving lives that we do save a second chance at living a normal life. We’re returning a basic right that Zarkon has taken away from them, and even though we can’t give it to every single life-form, the fact that we can give even a fraction of each planet’s population another second chance means that it’s a step closer to overthrowing the rest of this crusty, fascist empire.”
At the last bit, a small smile curls the ends of Lance’s mouth. It makes a dimples push out against the corner of his mouth, just the tiniest bit.
“Crusty empire, huh?”
“Yeah. Just a matter of time, if we play our cards right,” Keith replies, and he can’t keep the smile out of his voice.
Lance watches Keith for several beats of silence. Normally, his face is like an open book, pages idly spread out for the taking, but right now, Keith honestly can’t tell what he’s thinking of.
“Okay,” Lance breathes out. The grey look on his face finally breaks, or at least clears away enough for his usual buoyancy to bounce back. “I think – I think I’m okay now.”
“Really?”
“No. You’re really bad at giving pep talks. Like, almost as bad as the time you told me to leave the math to Pidge.”
Keith rolls his eyes, trying not to look stung. “What can I say? Inspirational speeches just aren’t my forte.”
Lance smiles widely. “The effort was cute, though, not gonna lie.” His expression softens again, the corner of his lip slipping under his teeth as he looks back into Keith’s eyes. “But thank you. I do feel a bit better.”
“Oh. Uh – yeah. I just – yeah. You’re welcome.”
He lets Lance stay in his arms for little while longer after that, head pillowed against his chest, ruffled hair brushing alongside his jaw. They don’t bring any of it up the next day, or the day after, or ever. Instead, they choose to dance around the subject and the unnamed thing unfurling between them.