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“Oh -- Are you --” Lance could hardly speak for how he was snorting with laughter and the way they were dashing across the debris strewn square for shelter beneath a fallen billboard. “Are you growling? Seriously, you just -- you can’t growl, dude, not with that face, it -- too much!”
“I do not,” insisted Kolivan, “enjoy being wet.”
“Yeaaah, I got that. What with the whole full body shudder and glare o’ doom at the sky.” Finally making it to safety, he grinned a little lazily, slicking back his hair and trying to get the rain water out of his lashes. “You were like a cat, man. Which like. Seriously, with the -- ears -- the alien biology, it just -- it’s like you want us to coo, or something.”
Kolivan, squeezing out his long, sopping braid with a miserable looking frown, glanced down at Lance from narrowed yellow eyes. “You are the alien,” he said. “And my hair curls. I’ll have to re-braid it.”
Lance blinked. “Oh.”
“Mm,” agreed Kolivan, and then set about doing just that. He untied the braid and began shaking it free. Sodden as it was, the white strands seemed even heavier and silkier than usual, waving gently from being bound so tightly. Lance let his dripping jacket slip from his shoulders with a splat to the ground, staring.
“Something amiss?” Kolivan asked, voice quiet in the hush of heavy rain.
“No.” Lance opened his mouth, paused, and then pressed his tongue to the corner of his lips, watching those massive blue hands with their delicately tipped claws carefully pry the braid apart until it was all falling down in a slender shower from the base of his skull, sliding sensuous over his massive shoulders.
Kolivan pressed, even quieter, “Are you quite certain?”
“You’re really beautiful,” Lance blurted. “Like -- you have my colors, did you know? Blue and red.” His fingers twitched, tempted to touch. He wondered if the delicate knobs of Kolivan’s crest were sensitive, or what it might be like to stroke his fingers through the wild tufts of the Blade’s ears.
Then Lance realized what he was thinking -- and what he had said, oh holy crow! -- and flushed, feeling like he’d just lit himself on fire despite the chill of rain still slicking his skin. “Uh... Sorry.”
“...A bold statement from one so small,” Kolivan decided, and Lance eyed the deep lines at his eyes, the stern press of his lips, the near-constant furrow of his brow, and -- just --
He wanted. Dumb, maybe -- but he did. Lance felt a little helpless with it, just as he always did. But this was -- well, different. Not just a passing pretty face. This was Kolivan, the Galra that Lance had run missions with, who had trusted him to have his back, to leap out of Blue -- and then Red -- to free fall through the air with only Lance’s eyes and itchy trigger finger to keep him safe.
Lance said, “Bold?” and couldn’t help the way his voice went weak.
“That is a claiming statement,” Kolivan rumbled, tilting his head so that his hair swung out, nearly taunting in its messy glory. “Your colors, you say? Or is it that you wear mine? What are we, then, but a matched set?”
“...Huh.”
Kolivan stared at him for a moment, and Lance held his breath, heart – wow, it was really going there, now wasn’t it. But after a moment in which the tension held, and held, and held, Kolivan merely sighed. Not in a way that Lance could hear, but in a way that he could see, a slight surrendering to his posture. A subtle slump, as if in resignation.
Lance’s heart squeezed, grinding to a stuttering halt, hating the slow way Kolivan straightened out of it, like he was closing himself off again, drawing solitude around himself like a barrier.
“Uhm,” said Lance, wondering just what, exactly, had gone wrong.
Turning away, Kolivan gazed out across the busted courtyard, profile stern. “If this rain keeps up we will never finish marking this site for clearance. I had hoped to get ahead of schedule. This is as good a place as any to begin basic training for the Blades. We –”
“Hey,” said Lance. “Wait. Wait a -- weren’t we just having a moment?”
Blinking, Kolivan looked back down at him. He had half-raised his arms to begin the tedious task of rebraiding his hair, and -- no, Lance decided. Not yet. Not until he’d had a chance to sink his fingers into it loose. That needed to happen. Desperately. Lance wrinkled his nose at the alien, a full blown pout.
Kolivan stared. “Why are you making that face. And what moment? I -- You didn’t --”
Oh, and that was a growl of frustration, wasn’t it? Awesome.
“I was waiting for you to make a move,” said Lance, raising his eyebrows. “You’re uh, a little hard to read, sometimes, you know?”
“Hm,” said Kolivan, entirely still. “So I have been told. But you have -- well. You have always been very good at ignoring any clues I have ever given you to leave me alone. I can’t imagine why you would be starting to grow a sense of decorum now.”
“Better late than never?” Lance grinned in a way he hoped was endearing.
Kolivan snorted, glancing away with a twitch. So, maybe endearing, maybe something else. Lance counted it as a win either way. He sidled a little closer, gratified when Kolivan seemed to relax in place, letting him near. “You would make a truly terrible Blade,” Kolivan mused, “forever defying orders, mouthing off. You would get us all killed in moments --”
“Hey,” Lance argued. “I can be quiet! I can do stealth! I have done stealth, actually, thank you very much, though sniping really does leave you with, uh, a lot of alone time and distance so it is pretty safe usually to make mocking comments as you take down the bad guys --”
“I would not have you any other way,” Kolivan admitted, all in a rush.
Lance stopped, shocked quiet. His neck was starting to hurt, a little, craning upward to stare at Kolivan’s impossibly stern, incredibly kind face. It was worth a little pain, though. Lance said, “Oh.”
Only Kolivan wasn’t done, because in the next instant that quiet, still voice of his was saying, “Bold and brash, flickering like a blade in motion -- a constant force, unstoppable, but rarely destructive. Only to enemies, to those unworthy. But you -- to me --” his breath hitched, and Lance’s along with it.
“Oh,” Lance said, eyes wide. “You -- O-oh. I mean. You r-really, uh, really like, umm.”
Kolivan leaned down, a long, long way, to brush his forehead against Lance’s, a gentle, careful pressure. Lance’s heart nearly stopped, and then it was roaring away again, as loud as the rain still falling, or louder, too loud, riotous in his chest.
“I do,” whispered Kolivan. “I did not expect it. I did not even want it. But I was helpless against it, I think. Does it frighten you? We are of different species -- you are... so small, I fear I could break you in half --”
“Uhhhhh,” Lance managed, shivering. “Look, that -- uh. Is it going to be a deal breaker that I think that sounds stupid sexy? Because it kind of does. Uhm. Also, like. You’re big, dude, but I’m not that tiny, okay. We can totally make this work. It’s only a little kinky.”
Kolivan’s hair was falling down around his face, now, and Lance reached up and finally twisted his fingers in it. It smelled like -- something, Lance didn’t know. A little alien, and also familiar, like mint, maybe. It was sleek and cool against his calloused fingers, against his hot palms where he gathered it in fistfuls, tugging lightly.
“Or,” he murmured, unable to resist the tease, “I mean. We could make it a lot kinky, probably.”
And, that --
“Oh,” Lance breathed, feeling stupid because that was the millionth time he must have said that stupid exclamation during this one conversation, but oh. That was -- Kolivan, fierce leader of the Blades of Marmora -- and he was laughing.
Entranced, Lance pulled at Kolivan’s hair and tilted up his own face, determined to taste it, to chase the laughter right into Kolivan’s mouth.
It was Kolivan’s turn to utter a small, nearly wounded, “Oh," as Lance pressed a kiss to the corner of Kolivan’s wide mouth, then another, and another, moving slowly inward until Kolivan opened up a little, a sliver of space for Lance to slide his tongue between. He could feel Kolivan’s sharp, surprised inhale, and gloried in the way Kolivan tilted his head to deepen the kiss and made a pleased rumbling sound -- half like a purr and half like a growl.
God, was that a Galra thing or just a Kolivan thing? Either way, Lance was digging it.
And then Lance didn’t have space for thought because Kolivan was really kissing him, now, those stern lips actually incredibly soft sliding against his, and mouth searingly hot on the inside, wet and hungry just like any human. Kolivan gave a tiny, barely-there groan when Lance sucked lightly on his lower lip, leaning into it, and Lance got busy staking a claim because, after this? No way was Lance letting anyone else but him give Kolivan kisses, oh no, this was too good to ever let go.
“You should laugh more often,” Lance whispered, panting and flushed and raw-voiced when he finally pulled back. Lance eyed the blue streak down Kolivan’s chin and considered licking it. Maybe biting it. Wondered in what ways the color of Kolivan’s skin made patterns beneath that austere uniform.
“If you keep close,” Kolivan admitted, sounding a little rueful, “then I likely will.”
Pressing one of those stupidly big hands against the small of Lance’s back, Kolivan pulled him closer, straightening up enough to draw him into an embrace, pressed tight together in places, awkwardly in others. If Lance got up on his tiptoes, he could get his forearms over Kolivan’s broad shoulders, especially if the Galra relaxed into him.
“We’re gonna have to practice this hugging thing,” Lance decided. “Figure out what positions work best, that sort of thing. I mean. If you want? Uh. Do you want? To uh, try and, I dunno. Make this into... a thing? A romantic thing? A romantic and definitely sexual thing? A thing with you and me together, despite the odds, trying to --”
Kolivan’s sigh was deep and amused and interrupted Lance’s ramblings fairly perfectly. He was getting a little flustered, there, uncertain despite the evidence tingling in his kiss-plump lips. Embarrassed, more than a little hopeful, Lance buried his face in Kolivan’s chest, waiting.
“Yes, Lance,” Kolivan promised, voice solemn and tender. “I do. More than I probably should, no doubt.”