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The first time that Keith kisses Lance, the sky is the color of cotton candy. The waves are lapping at their feet, tiny pats of encouragement that dare Keith to take Lance’s chin into his hands, curl his caramel cheek into his palm, press pink lips to pink lips. The wind sings behind them, the crashing waves the clapping hands of god. Perhaps this moment was foretold at the beginning of the universe. The creator, in all his glory, created the world, and with it, love.
“Oh,” Lance says softly when Keith pulls away. They’re still breathing onto each other’s lips, soft puffs of air that grace the after trail of kisses. Keith loves him so fiercely that he forgets to breathe, lets his chest ache from lack of oxygen, and sucks in another kiss in lieu of a breath.
Lance’s arms slip around his waist and pull him closer, strong and steady and smelling of salty air and food. They ate lunch together, sat on the porch of Lance’s childhood home in Varadero, had hotdogs that his tio cooked over the grill, watched Coran and Allura examine them with barely-concealed giggles. Pidge sat with her brother across the yard, running her hands through the patchy grass of Lance’s backyard and laughed at something Matt had said. In that same moment, Keith reached out and took Lance’s hand in his own.
Their hands are unclasped now, one of Keith’s cradles Lance’s cheek and the other is tucked around his hipbone. Lance pulls them closer, their bodies flush against each other. Crumpled cotton shirt to outgrown leather jacket. Jean shorts to swim shorts.
“I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” Keith whispers as they part. Between them, a trail of saliva slings between lips before severing.
Falling from a destroyed craft, one hand clutched around Shiro’s, tumbling into deep space, Keith had come to a few conclusions. First, that he would do anything for his brother. Second, the Voltron crew was the best group of people he’d ever known. Third, he was about to die and never had the chance to tell Lance he was in love with him.
Lance, with his short brown hair and bright green eyes and infectious laugh. Lance, who made everything a challenge, pushed Keith to be better, stronger, faster. Who made him a better person. Who, for two years, Keith riffed through time and dreamed of. Of Lance’s smile, of his companionship, of how they sometimes fell asleep on the observation deck watching foreign stars fly past. Dreamed of sparring in the training room, back to back against the simulation, flying side by side in their lions, twisting through the air as Voltron.
Two years is a very long time to miss somebody. On the cosmic scale, not really, but for Keith, the ache was Mariana’s Trench. Impenetrable.
“I’ve wanted you to do that for so long,” Lance replies, and then pulls Keith in with his arms and pecks the tip of Keith’s nose. “I missed you,” he whispers. “I know you were gone longer, but,” takes a deep, shuddering breath, “in the months you were with the blade, and then on that mission, I missed you.”
“Me too,” Keith says, and it isn’t enough. He pulls Lance into a hug and shows him instead, breathes in the scent of lavender soap and the salt on Lance’s skin, buried his nose into the junction of Lance’s shoulder and neck, absorbs him. Lance trembles, sensitive, a live wire.
This moment belongs only to them, standing on the bleach-white sands of Varadero Beach, Lance’s home, where they’ve crash landed after months travelling back to Earth. A place where angry Garrison officials can’t reach them, where the government can’t contain them, where when you shut off your cell phone, you’re left only with 50s American cars and crooning songs through the radio. A place they can find peace, however temporary.
It isn’t permanent. Nothing good ever is. In two days, the castle ship will be ready for flight once more, and they’ll be back in deep space, hunting the last strains of the Galra empire and freeing whatever subjugated nations remain. In two days, the sand under his feet will be no more than a memory, the warmth of the sun just an artificial light.
“Finally!” A voice calls from the beach path. Pidge is poised there, her green tank top masking her with the lush green of the palms behind her. Hunk emerges behind her, a tentative smile on his face. “We’ve been waiting for you two idiots to get it together for months.”
I’ve been waiting years, Keith thinks bitterly, but releases Lance instead and runs a hand through his hair, residual awkwardness creeping into his skin. Lance reaches out and grabs for his hand, then tangles it through with his own.
He steps forward, breathlessly calling to Pidge, and it makes Keith’s heart clench. “I cuffed it!” He calls, triumphantly raising Keith’s arm, a victory torch.
“Aw, buddy!” Hunk cheers from the trees, tumbling over tree roots and onto the sparkling white sand. “Smile!” He calls, raising a disposable camera (those still exist? Keith makes a mental note to stock up.) and snapping a photo. Lance’s hand is still raised, tangled with Keith’s, a blooming smile on his face and a shy grin on Keith’s. Hunk tumbles into Lance, wrapping his friend up in a hug, and Pidge follows. Except she diverts at the last second and wraps herself around Keith.
He’s used to contact, now. He’s used to hugs, and the physicality of family. But he still gets caught off guard at how readily love comes from those closest to him. He hugs Pidge back without hesitation, allows his arms to wind around her broadening shoulders, smiles into her unruly hair.
“I’m proud of you two,” she says softly to Keith, “I’m especially proud of you.”
It means the world to him.
-
Later that night, they all gather around a campfire pit in Lance’s backyard and take turns roasting marshmallows. Lance’s siblings all pile in next to him, so Keith is sitting across the fire, watching. He’s next to Shiro, who has had a perpetual smirk on his face since he learned about the events that transpired earlier that day. He catches Keith staring at Lance and elbows him.
“You’re being pretty obvious,” Shiro says with a snort.
“I kissed him on a public beach, Shiro,” Keith retorts, “this was never going to be kept private.”
Not this love, because no matter how badly he wants to cradle Lance’s love to his chest like a tiny bird, vulnerable and young, this is no fledgling bloom. He can’t breathe in the same room as Lance and is reminded of that saying about flowers growing in your lungs, and although beautiful, still suffocate you.
A love so deep your missing coffee cups come home, a love so deep your socks stop disappearing in the wash, a love so deep that all the chips in your grandmother’s china mend.
The fire flickers off their faces. The warm heat of the Cuban summer bakes into Keith’s skin. It’s far more humid than the desert ever was, he’s sweating from the sticky air that makes his hair frizz and his shirts cling to his skin. He swapped the leather jacket for just a long sleeve tee shirt, but he’s no cooler.
Lance’s mother appears through the shadows, carrying a shopping bag in her hands. “Marshmallows!” She calls, and the kids on Lance’s lap go tumbling to their feet, eager to find the best stick to roast the treats on. Mama hands the bag to Lance and kisses his brow before retreating to the darkness. Hunk calls after her, inviting her to stay, but she just wipes her hands on her jeans and says something about enjoying a drink on the porch.
The kids return, Lance’s cousins and siblings, all young and bright eyes and eager to hear the stories the paladins tell about flying through space and defeating evil. They leave out the bad parts, like Lance’s death, Keith’s sacrifice, Kuron, the vast amount of killing, the homesickness, the long nights, the endless battles, the –
The list doesn’t end. War is no place for children. War is not something for children to fall in love with. Lance’s family will never know his heart stopped, that he wouldn’t be alive without Altean alchemy, they’ll never know how many people he killed and how many he failed to save, they’ll never understand why Lance shivers at the word home like it’s a barb on his tongue. Where is home, anymore? Earth? The destroyed castle ship? For the millions of displaced creatures around the universe, home must be a place they’re seeking. Keith looks at Lance, comfortable on an old log, a half-forgotten stick in his hand, and thinks he may be a little closer to understanding what a home is.
Hunk is telling a story about space goo, Lance embellishing as he goes along, wiggling his hands and bouncing his youngest nephew on his lap. Keith feels a fond smile nip onto his face and manages not to blush too hard when Shiro elbows him between the ribs with a brotherly; “sappy fuck.”
He looks at Lance, who is telling his family animatedly about the time they got to travel to an alternate universe, his arms waving and a grin plastered to his face, and Keith thinks I am so gay and so in love. He feels absurd.
Slowly, then night ticks on. Lance adds wood to the fire, piece after piece, until every last child has stumbled to bed and it is just the five of them, the original earthlings, gathered around a bonfire on a blisteringly hot summer night, half of them shirtless (Lance, Hunk, Shiro) and the other two sweating buckets and complaining voraciously (mostly Pidge). The sit and swap stories, laughing at nothing, pretending. Just for this one night. That they are young adults spilled onto a beautiful beach in the middle of paradise for summer break. That they’ll return to the Garrison and fly their planes and be beautiful and orange and fluorescent. Shiro will have two flesh and bone arms. Keith won’t be half purple. Lance will never have died, Pidge will never have been separated from her family, Hunk’s anxiety will never come to fruition. Their dreams are holographic and pornographic. Keith teases Lance about being a cargo pilot, Pidge guarantees she would have eventually expelled for hacking, Hunk wants to invent the next fastest plane. Shiro, ever the dad, just claims he wanted to make a difference as a teacher. And then grins and admits he always wanted to be a teacher just so that all his lectures could be in Comic Sans to piss off the kids. Keith? Looks across the fire and admires the shadows glinting off Lance’s face and thinks. I’m glad this is our reality.
-
He wakes to the feeling of a hand draped softly across his shoulder. Keith opens his eyes to see Lance standing above him, bending over the couch where Keith is asleep, jostling him softly.
“C’mon,” Lance whispers, “I have something to show you.”
Keith follows him without question. He always has. When he was getting used to being the black paladin, it was Lance who provided him with the cables to hold onto. He chases blindly, pouring himself into love as if it is an endless vessel. Pouring himself into Lance.
Keith pulls himself from the couch, wearing nothing but the jean shorts from earlier and a white tee that he stole from Lance’s room. It has a surf logo on the front and smells like his laundry soap.
They pad out the front door, Lance’s bare back shimmering in the moonlight. He’s in a pair of swim shorts and smiles over his shoulder at Keith like he has a secret. He takes Keith’s hand after their tie their shoes and traipse onto the lawn. Keith dares not speak, dares not ask where they are going. He is allowed into Lance’s world, and just that is enough.
Lance leads him to the main road, where houses line the streets, crowded close together like overhanging teeth. Where Lance’s home is off the road and surrounded by trees and lawn, these homes are chipped and pressed together, seemingly claustrophobic.
“This way,” Lance says, tugging on Keith’s hand and pulling him to the shed leaned against the side of a red house. He turns the combination lock and opens the door, letting go of Keith’s hand and disappearing into the darkness. Keith shifts from side to side, feeling like an intruder in a strange person’s garage. He presumes that Lance is close with them because he knows their garage code, but it still feels odd.
Lance’s face peeps out from around the door.
“Ready for me to be the best boyfriend in the whole world?” He asks, a grin slipping onto his face. Keith rolls his eyes.
“Sure, okay,” he says, and then his eyes nearly bug out of his head at the sight of what Lance pulls from the garage.
It’s old. It’s shitty. The paint is cracked. He wonders if it’ll even turn on, except then Lance straddles the bike and kicks the stroke down and suddenly it roars to life. Lance looks up, grinning, bare chested, helmetless, and Keith is hopeless.
“Come on,” Lance taunts, “we used to do this all the time as kids.”
Keith swallows, climbs onto the bike behind Lance, wrapping his arms around his middle and sinking onto the seat behind him.
“Oh,” Lance says. “I assumed you’d want to drive?”
He loves him. He loves him he loves him he loves him. Keith hops off and replaces himself in front of Lance, waiting for his arms to circle around him before he pushes off from the ground and edges the throttle forward. It’s no lion, but the old bike speeds forward, rumbling onto the dark small-town road.
They fly. They’re helmetless, Lance is shirtless, Keith is breathless. The road takes them out of town, and Lance yells for Keith to stay left on a side road. Then, they’re flying along next to the water on an abandoned boardwalk, no doubt stuffed with tourists and peddlers during the day, but empty and stunning at night. Keith accelerates, relishes in the rumble under his thighs and the tight grip of Lance behind him. The moon reflects off the water, their moon, the moon that Keith grew up looking at. And there’s constellations spilled into the sky that they both can rattle off, not strange star clusters on foreign horizons.
He doesn’t know how much time passes, but eventually Lance taps on his shoulder and Keith pulls the bike up. They’re on an empty road, the ocean spilling to their left and trees towering to their right.
“Stash the bike, this is the best part,” Lance says.
“How is there a better part?” Keith exclaims. “This was the best surprise ever.”
There’s a glint in Lance’s eyes when he smiles over his shoulder. “I knew you’d like it.”
“You know me so well,” Keith replies, covering the front fender with a loose palm fawn. Lance knows Keith better than anyone except maybe Shiro. Lance knows the stuff like how he has an old injury in his left knee and favors it fighting, so he always stays on Keith’s left when they’re in battle. He knows stuff like how Keith gets night terrors, knows that the easiest way to calm him down is by holding him. Shiro knows all the shitty secrets about Keith, like how he gave himself a haircut in the fifth grade with safety scissors.
He takes Lance’s hand and follows him onto the beach, which is far rockier than Varadero. To their left, a cliff ascends. Lance leads him up it, and they climb under the moonlight, hands tangled.
“Sorry,” Lance puffs as they climb, “we can only get here by basically hiking.”
“Don’t mind,” Keith pants, “love it.”
They reach the top and Keith peers over the edge. Just on the other side of the outcropping of rocks they’ve climbed is a cove, a small, sandy beach at the base. The road winds of into the distance, rendering the tiny inlet unreachable.
Unless you’re Lance, apparently. In mountain-goat-esque movements, he begins scrambling down the rocky crags and toward the cove. They’ve done so many more dangerous things than climb down some boulders, but Keith has a knot in his chest as he follows. There’s something terrifying about the Earth and being back on the Earth. He feels human again, like it would only take one misplaced foot, one accident, to end his life. Sometimes in the lions, he feels indestructible. Or at least, if he dies, it’ll be in a fiery explosion, not a rockslide. Half of dying is looking cool.
He scrambles to the bottom and meets Lance there, where he grins at Keith and leans in for a kiss.
Keith reciprocates, allowing his hands to drape over Lance’s bare shoulders, relishing in the built muscle and firm bone under his hands. Lance’s skin is sticky from the heat, but beautifully soft. Warm. He hums, pleased at the feeling of Keith running his hands over Lance’s back and shoulders. It’s intimate in a way that Keith has never been. His breath shudders into the kiss. He wants, so badly. Lance. To touch, to feel, to kiss every inch of tanned skin and broad shoulders. To sink into Lance and never leave. To breathe him, taste him, exhale him.
Lance breaks the kiss. “Come on,” He says, and suddenly his hands are on the tie around his waist and he’s slipping out of his shorts and boxers. “Let’s go swimming.”
“Naked?” Keith gapes. But Lance is already moving toward the water, long strides carrying him off into the sea. Keith has no choice. He rips off the shirt and the shitty jean shorts, tosses his boxers on the sand and tells himself it’s a problem for a later Keith to deal with. Keith follows Lance into the water, allows the cool rush of the water to flood his sweating pores and rinse the day from his body.
The stars twinkle overhead, hiding their eyes. Keith looks up. He’s touched the vast depths of space, gone where no human ever has before, and yet. Here he is, standing nude in the ocean with the boy he’s loved for so, so long, still human and somehow home. The universe is a great mystery that Keith has yet to solve. But Lance? He looks at him, charging into the waves, looking back over his shoulder, skin glimmering from the sea, eyes and hair both wild. Lance makes him feel like he has all the answers.
-
The sun rises on two boys in one bed. Keith is pressed against Lance’s chest, wrapped in his arms, tangled in his grasp. His breath swings against bare skin, dancing onto it, lifting off of it, and gliding back again. If he must die, now would be the optimal time.
Lance stirs softly.
They have two days until they are charted to leave Earth. Two days until the fledgling castle ship is complete and they are cast into the sky to save the universe again.
Keith is selfish for saying this, but he doesn’t want to save the whole universe, really. He just wants another month of peace, of tanned skin and soft smiles, of windy beaches and two boys dancing around each other until their lips finally seal. He whispers, universe, let something go wrong. Let us stay.
They climb from bed and dress in each other’s clothes. Outside, gulls cry to a cloudless sky. Keith can hear distant hammers from Coran, probably up early to put the finishing touches on the ship.
Shiro is sitting at the breakfast table, chatting with Lance’s mama. She’s holding a cup of coffee and laughing at whatever he’s just said. Keith hovers in the doorway, drinking in the morning light, the stillness of the air, the way laughter echoes through this atmosphere.
“Morning,” Lance says, shuffling to the coffee maker and pouring two cups into a mug. He fills one with milk and sugar and offers the black cup to Keith with a wave. He takes a sip. Bitter. Strong. He’s missed coffee.
“Nice night?” Shiro asks, eyebrow raised. Keith is suddenly hyper aware of the dark circles under his eyes and their late arrival home. Shiro must know. This is just payback for all the times that Keith fell asleep in the spare bedroom of Adam and Shiro’s apartment, listening to them wash dishes and banter down below. And uh. The other stuff too.
He and Lance ended up staying out until almost sunrise last night. They swam, the laid on the beach and watched the stars, hands intertwined, looking at the stars and talking. Lance told him about his family, about how much he missed all of them, about how sad he is that they’re leaving soon, and Keith hummed and absorbed everything. They fell asleep there, under the night sky, and Keith woke to Lance shaking him softly and whispering, up. They rode home, slowly this time, taking their time and watching the sky blossom from an inky back to a pale pink. Keith parked the bike in the garage and they slipped into Lance’s bed, still sandy and sticky, and passed out wrapped up in each other.
“Mhm,” Keith says noncommittally, but still traces his fingers across the back of Lance’s neck as he passes by him in the kitchen, reaching for the toaster. He freezes after, turning back to see Lance’s mother sitting at the table, munching on an apple with a knowing smirk on her face.
She shifts. “Anything to tell me, boys?”
Lance leans across the table and kisses her cheek. “Just in love, Mama.” He straightens and wraps his arm around Keith’s waist. Keith blushes but leans into his arms, softening under Lance’s touch and the soft smile of his mama.
Mama laughs. “That’s not a ‘just,’ Lance.” She straightens, flexes her arms above her head, and stretches. “I’m glad you worked it out.” She says gently, with all the care and tenderness of a mother who loves her son with everything she has.
Keith remembers telling Krolia about Lance. Sitting on that space whale, thinking about how he was never going to get off, how Voltron was going to be either old or defeated by the time they made it off the rift, Krolia had unlocked what Keith likes to call his ‘tragic backstory.’ The tragedy of being an orphan and bounced around, a foster system kid, the boy who didn’t trust anyone, least of all himself. The gay half-Alien whose scars healed purple for reasons Keith didn’t figure out for a long time. The person who’d had everything he’d ever loved ripped away from him, so he stopped keeping things. The absurdity of falling in love with Lance and keeping himself ten feet away at all times, physically and mentally. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda. Keith curls an arm around Lance and relishes in the bravery of love.
But then, things weren’t so easy. He’d told Krolia about everyone on the team but left out his feelings for Lance. When he confessed, she’d smoothed his brow and kissed his forehead and told him that sometimes, you don’t get all the time you want with the people you love, and that you should always try. When she talked about Texas Kogane, her voice had gone the way of the wind – wispy and soothing.
He wonders what Lance has said to his mama about him. If he’d said anything at all.
Pidge emerges from upstairs, her hair tied into a tiny bun. Hunk follows, grinning when he sees Keith and Lance wrapped around each other. A few moments later, Allura appears from around the bend, trotting downstairs in a bathing suit that Keith assumes was borrowed from one of Lance’s sisters.
“Today,” she cries, jogging down the stairs and nearly pushing Pidge and Hunk out of her way in her haste to get to the bottom. “We’re going on an adventure!”
Keith literally just went on an adventure. Like three hours ago. He would really love to take a nap on the beach with Lance, thank you very much.
But Lance, the traitor, gets a devilish grin on his face. “It’s time,” he crows. Hunk catches his eye, and they appear to exchange in a round of telepathy before Hunk echoes with his own.
Pidge, Keith, and Shiro remain dumbfounded.
Lance releases Keith from his side and jogs for the door. “Swimsuits on, gays. We’re going surfing!”
He opens the slider and leaps outside. His mama laughs as he goes. “Good luck,” she says with a snort. “The waves are tiny today.”
Pidge and Hunk retreat back up the stairs to put on swimsuits. Shiro groans, takes a final bite of his cereal, puts the bowl in the sink, and follows. Keith and Lance’s mama are left alone in the kitchen.
“You take care of him, alright?” She says after a moment of silence.
Keith turns. “Lance?”
“All of them.” She shifts in her seat and rises. “I know what you all are doing is dangerous. Please,” she turns back over her shoulder. “Bring my son home to me.”
Keith’s breath sticks in his throat.
He can’t promise to bring Lance home alive. None of them know if they’ll ever make it back alive. They don’t even know if they’ll ever make it back to earth. This is the worst shovel talk ever.
“Yes,” he says. “I’ll make sure he comes home to you.”
And then she is washing the dishes, humming, and Keith feels light headed.
He wants to stay here, in this endless summer afternoon, where mornings are filled with eating cereal around a table with his closest friends, where the afternoons are languid and the nights are full of lancelancelance. He was gifted with a glorious burden when he became part of Voltron. The price of the universe is high – it has cost their innocence and perhaps their lives.
“LANCE!” Keith shouts into the yard, suddenly realizing his error. “I DON’T HAVE A BATHING SUIT!”
Lance, the little shit, is midway through dragging surfboards from the shed out back when he calls back. “Didn’t stop you last night!”
Hunk, who has descended the stairs in swim trunks, pretends to puke. “TMI, buddy,” he groans. Pidge, who has similarly followed, wiggles her eyebrows.
“Get it, uh-uh-uhh,” she mimes hip thrusting. Keith flips her off.
“Borrow one of mine,” Lance says, ignoring Pidge and Hunk. His eyes are only focused on Lance. He’s burning under his stare. It blisters his skin and rips him to his core. “Bottom drawer of my dresser.”
Keith nods and retreats to Lance’s room. He searches for a pair of swim shorts that aren’t A. blue or B. short shorts, and comes up with a neon orange, retro patterned pair that remind him of the Garrison uniforms that fit his criteria. Blue is Lance’s color. Short shorts are not Keith’s thing.
He emerges, and Lance looks up and laughs.
“Hey!” Hunk calls from across the yard. “I got him those for his birthday two years ago!”
Time passes weirdly. Keith forgets that its passed on Earth, too. He wishes it were static, that life had spun on but earth had not, that Lance’s mama hadn’t sobbed when she’d seen him, that the Garrison hadn’t pronounced them dead, that Pidge’s mom was still alive.
They take the surfboards down to the beach, Allura laughing at the way that Lance forces them all to lay on their stomachs on the dry sand and practice popping up onto their boards. Hunk accidentally kicks sand onto Shiro, who chases him into the water, who in turn is followed by Lance, and then the surfboards are forgotten and there’s a water fight breaking out in knee deep waves, and Keith is wet and sunburned and his hair is tangled and he’s –
Standing there, in two feet of water, droplets glistening off his arms, tan and laughing at something someone said, bending with the flexion of a supple waist to cup water and splash it, and Keith is so, so, so fucked. Keith is in love. With a beautiful boy and his amazing smile and kind heart and wide eyes that pierce the summer heat.
Then they’re all traipsing out of the water and onto the sand and grabbing their boards (Keith picks his up the wrong way and Lance laughs, but there’s no malice in it) and going back into the water. Lance paddles up next to Keith and helps him, pushing him into waves as they come and shouting “STAND UP STAND UP STAND U- aww!” As Keith attempts to surf (and fails, mostly).
The water is the color of transparent aquamarine tile. The sky is the same, a perfect blue dotted with sparse clouds here and there. After a few failed waves, and the one time he did manage to stand up and stay up for more than three seconds, Keith ditches surfing and just idles past the breaks on his board instead, chatting to his friends while they wait for waves.
Hunk and Lance surfed together every summer when Hunk came to Varadero, so they’re both pretty good. Both are taking turns pushing Allura, Pidge, and a disgruntled Shiro into the water. The missing arm is throwing off his balance completely, and he keeps overcompensating for the missing weight and plunging off the side of the board. Keith laughs, cupping his hands to his mouth and calling “need help, old man?” to Shiro’s back.
Allura picks it up fast, to no one’s surprise, and Pidge manages to catch a few waves too.
“It must be a brother thing,” Keith consoles Shiro. “I’m garbage at it too.”
Shiro gives him the stink eye. Keith swallows a laugh and just pats one of Shiro’s sunburned shoulders.
After a while, when the sun is starting to rise high into the sky and they are all hungry from exertion, they carry their boards back in through Lance’s beach trail to his backyard. They set them on the sand, and one by one, shower off and head into the house for lunch.
Keith stays out back and helps Lance clean up. They just chat as they do, trailing fingers of each other’s hands over backs of necks and tips of elbows as they put the boards and other gear away.
Lance pins Keith against the side of the shed and kisses him, firm and sweet, and the whole world melts like a popsicle in the hands of a child.
“I don’t want to go,” Keith whispers into Lance’s mouth, his hands on his shoulders. “I want to stay here forever.”
Lance looks down at him, green eyes shining. “We’ll make these two days last forever.”
“I mean,” Keith scrabbles. “I love saving the universe and.” He swallows. “I know it’s important I just.” Looks into Lance’s eyes. “Love being here with you. Love this.” Traces Lance’s exposed collarbone with the tip of his index finger. “Love you.”
“I love you too,” he says softly. “I’ve loved you for a while, you know.”
“I know,” Keith says. Love comes in many different forms. He knows that Lance has loved him in at least some of them for a while now.
Keith leans back in, kisses Lance once more, feels the salt on his lips and the way he smiles under Keith’s touch. He feels the muscles of a boy who has been through hell and back, walked through the realm of the living, and even briefly graced the land of the dead.
“Come on,” Keith says to him. “Let’s go see your family and eat lunch.”
Inside the house, Mama McClain is lounging on the couch, holding an iced tea in her hands and watching the boys traipse up the stairs and into the house.
“How’d it go?” She asks as they enter. Keith notices the condensation on the glass, freshly beading from the warmth of the air compared to the cool of the ice. “Was Lance a good teacher?”
“The best,” he says, and squeezes Lance’s hand. Lance looks back to meet his eyes, and a smile curls onto his lips. Lance, placing his hands on the back of Keith’s board and cheering him on no matter how many times he tumbled off the board. Lance, teaching Keith how to sit on the board behind him and watch, so they could still be in the water together even though Keith had given up surfing. Lance, guiding voice with lilting tones.
“You’re so cute it’s disgusting,” Pidge says, mouth half filled with sandwich. A chunk tumbles out and Keith thinks, irony.
Hunk, who is hard at work making said sandwiches, shoots back. “Ignore Pidge. She’s just upset that she lost the bet of when you two would finally get yourself together and start dating. She missed it and now she owes me two weeks of dish duty back on the castle.”
The castle. Keith looks out into the distance and sees the white metal beast rising in the distance, protected by a force field of Altean magic that renders it invisible to unwanted sight. In two days, they’ll be departing, in a new place, a new home, with new battles to face and foes to defeat. In three days, he’s going to be eating dinner at a new kitchen table, not the worn out one that sits in Lance’s kitchen. When he breathes, the air will smell stale, manufactured oxygen filtering his lungs. It won’t be like this, where the air smells like salt and petrichor and the world is full of sounds and life. Space is a lonely place.
“You guys made bets on when we’d start dating?” Lance says, mouth half open, half filled with sandwich. It should be gross, but Keith is just kind of endeared.
Hunk laughs, and it echoes through his belly. “We’ve been betting on you two getting together for years, man. Except we keep having to redo the bets because you took your sweet, sweet time figuring each other out.”
“In our defense,” Keith says, twisting his hand into Lance’s. “It took me a long time to figure out myself.” Lance squeezes softly.
Keith thinks about the two years that he spent with his mom, travelling through space and reflecting on the people that he loved. He thought about Pidge, and the way she always had a solution for every problem. That when Keith was down, Pidge was the first one to give him space and usher everyone out of the room to let him recover. He missed Hunk, with his big hugs and boisterous smile. He missed Shiro, and how he always seemed so serious until he quoted vines in front of Allura and Coran without cracking a grin and sending the rest of them into stitches. He missed Allura, and her quiet strength. Coran, and his laugh. And Lance. Everything about Lance. How he got under Keith’s skin, pushed all his buttons on purpose, drove him insane but at the same time made him want to press him against a wall and kiss him senseless.
Two years was a long time to have feelings and have no one to talk about them to but your mom and your space wolf.
And those years made Keith realize that Lance was worth it. That the flirting, the furtive glances, the heavy tension that coated the air, it was all worth chasing. He missed him. He missed him every damn day.
Lunch is finished in peace, with Pidge staying true to the bet and doing the dishes for everyone while Hunk leans against the counter and laughs. It’s easy. Peaceful. Keith finds himself resting against Lance’s shoulder and nodding along to the laughter and easy presence of the afternoon. The sun is lazy, stretching her fingers through the window and brushing Keith’s skin. It isn’t long before time stretches into one long moment and one moment, he’s watching Hunk and Pidge throw bubbles at one another and then –
He wakes up on the couch, a pair of arms wrapped around his middle. The sun is low, just about to set over the ocean. The TV is on to the news, the Cuban forecaster pointing to an animated map covered in icons of thunderstorms. There’s a knotted blanket haphazardly tossed over him and the figure resting behind him. Keith hums softly and turns over.
Lance.
He’s spooning Keith, his arms wrapped just below his sternum, honey brown hair settling just above his brows.
“Morning,” Lance says with a smile. He leans in, pressing his lips to Keith’s wrinkled brow, smoothing the lines that furrow there. Keith tips his head up, closing the space between their bodies again and landing a chaste kiss onto Lance’s lips.
“Hey,” he says softly. “How long was I out?”
Lance squints over his mop of black hair and peers at the TV. “A few hours,” he says. “Everyone went down to the beach to watch the sunset.”
“Oh,” Keith says, running his fingers along the edge of the blanket. Someone must have knitted it for Lance’s family, maybe his abuela. It has the feeling of warmth and love and comfort that only comes with family heirlooms. He thinks of the knife in his bag upstairs, carefully and lovingly wrapped. “You didn’t go with them?”
“Didn’t want to wake you,” he replies. Keith turns over so that their bodies are smushed front to front and leans in for another hazy kiss. One of Lance’s hands travels to his hair, rests itself on the base of his skull, just twining the hairs between his fingers. The kiss isn’t heated – it fits the mood of the afternoon, slow and languid.
Tomorrow is their last full day on Earth. They’re planning a huge barbeque tomorrow night to celebrate – or mourn. Whatever. Are they gaining something or losing? Keith can’t decide.
“Do you want to go?” Keith offers, watching the way that Lance’s green eyes flit back to him.
He shrugs. “Nah. I’d honestly rather stay here.” The unspoken ‘with you’ rings through Keith’s ears. He leans in a little closer to Lance, allowing himself to be selfish. He doesn’t know what the new few months, years, eons, fighting the Galra will be like. Now, everything is safe and warm. He relishes in it.
“Pidge and Hunk are almost done with Shiro’s new arm.” Lance says after a moment. “They had him try it on while you were out. Something’s wrong with the pinky finger, though.”
Earth has been the hardest on Shiro and Pidge. For Lance, coming home was easy. He walked through the front door and back into his family’s arms. Keith never had anything on Earth, so coming back just felt like visiting Arus, or another planet they’d spent a lot of time on. He missed the desert, though.
Hunk had gotten to see his parents, took a pod and spent a few days with them at home in Florida. He’d come back with pages of hand-written recipes and jars of spices.
Allura and Coran had treated Earth like a vacation – a peaceful planet with no need for diplomacy? Just overseeing the construction of their new home? It was a welcome change from the nonstop fighting they’d endured. They’d wanted to meet the president. The whole team, after finding out their sitting president was Donald Fucking Trump, vetoed that idea.
Pidge’s homecoming had been bittersweet. She and Matt had returned to find they had a single father – their mother had passed away two years ago – long before Sam Holt had returned from his mission. Heart failure. After a few beers, Pidge had confessed she thought her mother must have died of a broken heart.
And Shiro. Adam, his love, his ex-fiance, the person that he had missed the most, had been assigned to lead a reconnaissance mission to Kerberos and wasn’t due to return for another several months.
Obviously, he would not find the body of his lover, or any evidence of a crash. He would return empty-handed, only to learn that the man he was searching for had been home the whole time.
Shiro had requested that the Garrison not tell Adam of his visit until after he returned to Earth.
When asked about it by the team, he just shrugged and said “I would have wanted the same. You know? To know you were so close but so far hurts worse than anything. Anyways, we’ll be back again soon.”
It was less of a promise and more of a wish.
“Will they have his arm done by the time we leave?” Keith wonders, and Lance shrugs.
“It’s on the table, but I dunno. I think Hunk mentioned an issue with the circuit board thingie majig.” He snorts. “Or whatever. I’m not smart enough to understand it.”
“You’re plenty smart,” Keith replies automatically. He pauses, searches for the right words while Lance looks at him sharply. “Just like. Different. You know? You’re a quick thinker and an amazing shooter and you’re so considerate of people’s feelings. Just because you can’t create a robotic arm from scratch doesn’t mean you aren’t smart.” He pauses. “I could never comfort people the way that you can. Pidge could never shoot the way that you can. Shiro gives great pep talks, but I like yours better. You’re smart, Lance. You get along with everyone because you always know how to make them comfortable. Intelligence is subjective.”
Keith finishes his tirade and leans in to press his forehead against Lance’s. He closes his eyes and sighs. “Trust me. I’ve travelled the galaxy and I’ve never met anyone who thinks like you.”
“Sap,” Lance says, but his voice is garbled when he says it, like he’s trying to hold back tears. “I knew you had a soft side.”
“You’ve always known,” Keith says, because there’s no other way to put it. Lance read him like a book from day one, even back in the Garrison when Keith needed someone to challenge him and Lance stepped up – pressed his buttons and watched Keith fire off. Made Keith comfortable with Voltron by teasing him, giving him someone to push back against, because it was easier to banter with than be vulnerable. Assured him that he was a good teammate, a good leader, and now, a good lover. Knew that feelings would take Keith time, and waited.
“Yeah,” Lance says softly, letting out a little laugh. “I’ve known ever since you punched Lee Gage or whatever for making comments about Shiro being gay.”
Keith hums. “I’d still love to break his nose for that.”
“Let’s go book a flight and beat up an asshole,” Lance suggests. “That’s your perfect date idea, isn’t it?”
He chuckles. “Only if you video me doing it.”
“Done,” Lance says, and then pulls Keith a little closer to him. He tumbles in all the way, falling into Lance’s orbit and tucking his nose into the dip of Lance’s shoulder and neck. He smells like sweat and salt and expensive cologne.
They sit in silence for a little while, tucked against each other on the couch, listening to the inhale and exhale of lungs while the sun dips low, low, lower over the sky. Keith closes his eyes again, warm and comfortable, settled into Lance. The sky falls, but before the sky turns ink black, Keith is already asleep again.
-
He wakes with a crick in his neck and a penchant for sleeping on couches. There’s something nostalgic about it, like when Keith used to crash on Shiro and Adam’s couch when he didn’t want to go back to his foster parents, or when it was too late for him to head back to the Garrison without getting in trouble. Shiro would always just sign him out the next day, anyways. There were perks to being just about brothers with one of the instructors.
Keith can’t even count the number of times that he woke up halfway through the night on Shiro and Adam’s couch, one of their many blankets tossed over him, TV on but playing silently, and curled into the warmth of the first place he’d found a home in and settle back to sleep.
This has the same aura. Nostalgia. He doesn’t know what time it is, except that Lance is asleep next to him, blanket pulled over both of their bodies, still nestled into each other.
Today is their last full day. They’re planning on leaving early tomorrow morning, before the sun rises, take off with a course charted for another distant part of the galaxy. Allura had mentioned a distress signal had gone up about nine light-years from Arus, a place called Decatan. So that is where they will go. No longer human boys curled up on a worn-out couch, but paladins of Voltron – warriors. Defenders of the universe. Fighters. Sometimes, killers.
He observes Lance, with his long eyelashes and soft skin, and thinks you are so beautiful. He thinks of Lance, standing in the sea, eyes as blue as the water he is surrounded by, a smile etched onto his face, and thinks I really, really love you.
Keith falls back asleep like that, eyes half open, memorizing the softness of Lance when he has nothing to defend, nothing to hide.
-
The morning is filled with clinking coffee cups and drawling voices. Keith rests against the counter and watches Pidge and Hunk assemble Shiro’s arm, carefully fitting it together, piece by piece. It’s a jigsaw of wires and the glowing Balmaran crystal the team had picked up on their way to Earth to power the new ship and Shiro’s arm.
“Okay,” Pidge says, backing away. “Flex.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Shiro jokes, but takes a half trembling breath and slowly curls his fingers into a fist. It’s been hard for him – not being able to fly a ship, barely being able to help build the new castle, overseeing but never doing.
“This is no normal Earth prosthetic,” Hunk says, speaking to Lance’s mama, who is gaping softly at the glowing silver in the cracks of the paneling. “It’s less of a prosthetic and more of a weaponized arm, honestly. That pretty much won’t break. Ever.” He pauses to confirm. “I know it won’t break because I built it.”
Shiro raises his hand, keeping his elbow firmly planted on the table. He examines the curve of his palm, the glow of the wiring, the soft purr of the mechanics. He does circles with his arm, forward, back, flexing his arm, and then picking up his coffee cup. He tightens too hard, the cup shatters. Chipped pieces of an “I heart mom” mug scatter over the floor, coffee drips off the end of the kitchen table. Shiro stares at his hand, Keith stares at the floor, the heart shattered straight down the middle.
Lance’s mom moves first. “Oh, honey, that’s alright!” She cries and reaches for a rag that hangs from the handle of the oven. “Lance, dios, get a broom,” and Lance leaps into action.
“We can tune it up later,” Pidge says with a shrug. “The coordination may take a while to get the hang of.”
Shiro still looks shocked and picks up a piece of the shattered ceramic to examine it. “I-I’m sorry,” he says, looking down to Lance’s mom, who is on her hands and knees, patting the lake of coffee while barking at Lance about his sweeping technique.
“It’s no problem! It was old anyways!” She says, in between telling Lance that he’s making the mess worse. She’s nonchalant, raising a household of children must have made her immune to the death of cheap Target mugs.
But Keith gets it. Shiro, raised in the system like him with little possessions, Shiro, who told him once that his real dad used to throw beer cans at him when he was drunk, Shiro, who like Keith, learned to be small and quiet and close doors without making a sound, has just set off a metaphorical bomb.
He springs into action.
“Come on,” Keith says, grabbing Shiro’s wrist. “Let them clean this up.”
Lance’s mom has already moved on to the table, and Lance is resting with his hip against the broom, looking sleepy and slightly annoyed at his mother’s barking. Hunk and Pidge are engrossed in a discussion about whether to alter the arm further.
He leads Shiro outside, sets him down on the front porch, on the wooden steps where Lance scraped his knees as a kid, and plops down next to him.
“Breathe, Shiro,” he says. Reaches out, ghosts his fingertips over the top of Shiro’s new hand. “You didn’t hurt anyone.”
Shiro stares out over the horizon, where they can see the soft flicker of the barrier around the castle ship.
“We’re leaving.” He says. “We’re going back to the warzone.”
Keith shuffles. “Yeah.”
“I’m not bitter,” Shiro says, “about this being us. I just,” he traces the glow on his arm, follows it to his elbow. “Wish. Sometimes.”
He doesn’t have to continue for Keith to understand.
Shiro. The Champion. The man plucked off the face of a foreign moon, retrofitted with an arm that glowed and shot lasers. Shoved into a ring and told to kill or be killed. Killed. Led a group of untrained teenagers into battle, danger be damned. An arm to remind him that he’s a machine.
“I’m tired of breaking things.” Shiro says.
Keith thinks of Adam, hundreds of thousands of miles away, searching for man who won’t be found.
He squeezes Shiro’s hand. “We don’t break easy.”
-
The new castle ship is smaller than the old one. Altean royalty has shrunk significantly, after all. Fewer unused rooms (Allura), more common rooms (Shiro), a properly placed swimming pool (Lance), a greenhouse (Pidge), an explosive-proof lab (Hunk), a training room with more equipment and droids programmable to look like Iverson (Keith, after protest from Shiro).
Lance’s family follows them through the castle, oohing at the crisp white walls and gleaming door handles.
“And this,” Lance says, gesturing to a door, “is going to be my room!” He opens the door with a flourish to reveal an empty bedroom, save for a family photo he’s already framed and hung on the wall.
Veronica, Luis, mama, and all the cousins tumble over each other – opening the bathroom door and oohing at the size of the shower, the walk-in closet, how squishy his bed is. Keith feels like he’s invading in a personal moment and turns away to open the door to his own room, just across the hall.
It’s empty – just like his old one. He wonders if this trip, it’ll finally be filled. Drawers stuffed with keepsakes, walls plastered in newspapers from foreign worlds, closet full of more than black t shirts and his old red jacket. Keepsakes other than a blade. He images waking up in this bed to Lance’s messy morning hair, his sleepy smile, two jackets hung by the door. Polaroids hung from the walls.
Home, he thinks, has a nice ring to it when you have someone to share it with.
-
The sun sets after the castle tour. The paladins sit on the beach, sand in their clothes, bellies full from the barbeque hours before. Lance rests his back against Keith’s chest, they’re lying on the sand watching the sun disappear behind the endless expanse of ocean.
Before this trip, the last time that Keith was on a beach was with Shiro and Adam, when they took a vacation and had the good sense not to leave Keith at the Garrison alone. (read: didn’t want him to get in trouble when Shiro couldn’t bail him out) They’d gone to Santa Monica, stayed in a divey hotel about a mile away from the pier, spent their days wandering through the streets and their nights on third street promenade, watching the street performers and swing dancers melt the colors of the day into subtle tones of night. The heat had been so similar to the baking Arizona sun of the Garrison, but the beach had cast the air in a sticky humidity that meant Keith couldn’t stop sweating. He remembers sitting in the sand, watching Shiro and Adam tumble in the water, wearing a thick black t shirt and jeans, sweating through his clothes and getting attacked by seagulls, and soundly deciding he hated the beach and missed the desert.
The desert, with her sweeping plains and jagged mountains, her pale sunrises and vivid sunsets, her purple mountains and swimming air. Keith had spent most of their brief trip to the Garrison relishing the dry heat and crackle of dead sagebrush under his boots.
But he looks down, to Lance, who is chatting animatedly with Hunk about a fishing trip he went on with his uncle once, and he thinks of Lance, pushing them into the ocean with unparalleled confidence the day before, and decides that if – when – they return to Earth, he doesn’t mind settling by the ocean.
He’ll get used to the seagulls.
-
Eventually, all the other paladins traipse off to bed, and although Keith’s arms are going numb from being pressed into the sand for so long, he refuses to move. Lance is motionless, wordless, just staring out into the endless expanse of sea.
“I’m going to miss this,” he says, finally. “The ocean. Varadero. My family. Earth.”
Of course he will. This is where Lance is most at home – Keith has seen it over the last weeks. He’s watched it unfold. Lance blossoms, no longer the awkward, self-proclaimed 7th wheel, but confident, leading them through the brightly colored streets, speaking rapidfire Spanish to shop keepers (perdón, mi amigo, cuánto cuesta por los platanos?), pulling a motorbike from a friend’s garage, lifting surfboards from a rack, finding cups in cabinets on the first try.
“I’m going to miss it too,” Keith says, and he means it.
Lance’s mama, her sweet face and low bun, smelling faintly of cinnamon soap, the way that Luis and Veronica gather around them at dinner, eager to hear about their adventures, the smell of the salty breeze, waking up in the same place every morning under old blankets, real coffee, sunburns after a long day in the sun, Lance’s easy smile when he jokes with his family.
“We’re coming back,” Keith continues. “I promised your mama we’d get you home safe.”
Lance tilts back to look into Keith’s eyes. “You can’t promise that. We don’t know what’s waiting for us out there.”
Keith shrugs, reaches up to card a hand through Lance’s soft hair. “Well, I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure you make it back to Varadero.”
“You better be coming with me,” Lance threatens.
He thinks of flying Red into the force field, closing his eyes a moment before impact, of falling to save Shiro, the light illuminating him in what he thought were going to be his last moments.
He thinks of Lance, his soft touches, gentle words, the way their first kiss was a wordless ‘I love you.’ He thinks of the team, no. His family. The people that have seen him grow over the last four years, loved him even when he was impulsive and hotheaded, when he snapped and sniped, still welcomed him with open arms and smiles. Hunk, cooking him dinner after he trained through dinner. Pidge, making a healing balm that worked on his mixed chemistry. Shiro, throwing popcorn at him on movie nights. Allura, asking him what a ‘despacito’ was.
“I won’t leave you,” Keith says. He leans in, kisses Lance’s chapped lips, just once. A promise. “And one day, someday, we’ll all come home together.”
-
They watch Earth grow small from the control room. Allura pilots the ship backwards so that they can see the marble of Earth grow from the size of their windshield to a marble, tiny enough to swallow.
His hand is tangled in Lance’s. They have a course charted for Decatan to liberate more people, to defend the universe, to visit more space malls, pick up more weird foreign films, piss off more diplomats.
When Earth is no longer visible, and the sun just a speck, he turns to Lance, who has a single tear streaming down his face.
Keith wipes it softly with the pad of his thumb.
“I know that’s where you belong” he says gently. “But let me be your home too.”
Lance looks at him. Smiles, reaches up, curls his arms around Keith’s shoulders. He needs not speak. Keith wraps his arms around his waist, holds him tightly, presses his lips to Lance’s temple.
And he is home.