Archive of Our Own

Lance doesn’t have to argue. He knows, deep down, he’s right, and nothing will ever change how right he is. He also knows, deep down, Keith will never change his mind on this particular subject, so fighting is futile.

There’s more important things to worry about. The mission plan should be working, but of course, it probably isn’t working. It isn’t like their plan’s bad; they had Pidge’s wirehacked intel that aliens were planning on stealing one of the Lions, and a decent trap to catch said aliens in the Lion-stealing act. But that trap’s going nowhere, and Lance has the time to stew.

The longer he stares at Keith, the more he wants to argue. It’s not fair. Keith’s completely oblivious to the facts of the situation; blissfully unaware to Lance’s thought processes. Mostly blissfully unaware. He’s meeting Lance’s stare with an increasingly peevish expression, trying to match the intensity on Lance’s own face.

The argument bubbles up through his throat before he can stop himself. “We can’t automatically assume they’re after Red. They could be after any of the lions,” Lance starts. He pauses; he can bury this hatchet, right here and right now.

He doesn’t.

“That’s why they haven’t taken the bait, and coming here to get Red. Blue’s better, so they’re probably after her, ” Lance says, waving an arm for pointed emphasis.

To Lance’s annoyance, Keith’s peevishness fades, at least momentarily. He seems... relieved, really, but then his eyebrows furrow and he’s forming some horrible counter-argument. “They’re speed racers,” Keith says. He doesn’t say anything else, and just crosses his arms.

That doesn’t mean anything to Lance. Lance shrugs, and Keith doesn’t take easily to the dismissal of his terrible argument, looking more crabby than before.  Keith lets out a short huff of breath. “And Red’s the fastest,” Keith states, as if that’s a irrefutable fact, and as if Red’s always faster, and as if speed is everything.

“Only in some situations—”

“—most situations—”

“—and it doesn’t matter, Blue can swim faster.” Lance pauses, for effect, and to judge Keith’s expression; he’s still not getting it. “And they could be after that,” Lance adds on.

Keith’s frustration peaks, as it usually does, and he throws a hand in the air. “That would help, if we were on Earth, and not racing in a desert—”

“Maybe they don’t want the lion for racing! All the racers look the similar, there has to be some standards,” Lance says, reaching for an explanation. “And it doesn’t look like a giant robot lion fits that size limit.”

That stalls Keith; despite Lance pulling the excuse from absolutely nowhere, it’s logically sound. It’s a double-bluff, an actual argument from an intended bluff, and Lance cherishes his accidental point.

“If they’re after speed, they’re after the Red Lion,” Keith says, but he doesn’t sound as sure of himself.

Lance snorts; he’ll take that moment of weakness and run with it. He doesn’t want to admit it, but Red’s definitely the faster Lion; she’s smaller, and, more importantly, Lance has seen the two of them in action. They’re an inspiringly fast pair, dodging bullets before Lance even realized they were there, though Lance would never say that outright. 

Lance concedes that Red’s faster, as gracefully as he can manage. “Well,” he starts. “Speed isn’t everything,” he says, “and Blue’s the better lion, so they could be doing like, water recon.”

“Their planet has no water—”

“—that doesn’t matter,” Lance cuts him off, even though it did matter. They probably aren’t after Blue, as much as it pains him to admit, but they sure aren’t after Red. “And they could be doing like, normal recon, on the other racers,” says Lance. “Like, sabotage, or something. So they could want the Green Lion.”

It dawns on Lance that he’s probably right; he wasn’t really sure of the entire argument when he was saying it, but now that it’s out, he’s one hundred percent convinced.

“That’s why we’ve been waiting out here for quiznak knows how long, for no good reason, because they don’t actually care about the Red Lion, since she’s not the best—” Lance starts, but Keith isn’t listening; instead, he’s grabbing Lance’s wrist, and pulling him forward into the Red Lion.

“H-hey!” Lance protests, but Keith doesn’t stop; he tugs Lance up and into the cockpit, only letting him go to plop himself down in the pilot’s seat.

As much as Lance enjoys being right, they shouldn’t just— leave. “We could just comm everyone instead of rushing in—”

“We’re out of comms range,” says Keith. “We need to get back in range and warn Pidge.”

That actually makes a lot of sense. “Okay, fine, whatever,” Lance says. “I guess that makes sense.”

Keith didn’t need Lance’s confirmation; he had already started the Lion, leaving Lance to grapple helplessly for steady footing as they start flying. He has to balance his need to complain with his need to be right.

For a moment, it seems that Keith’s going to say something. He keeps looking back to Lance, even though he’s piloting, and shaking his head.

Well— Lance needs to be right, more than Keith needs to say whatever it is he’s planning. Having no patience to wait, Lance says, “Blue’s still better.”

Keith turns; it’s an affronted look, instead of the menagerie of nervousness he displayed before. “This isn’t...  are you still going on about that?!”

“Yes!” Lance says. He scoffs to add emphasis. “Of course I am— that’s what this is all about—”

“I thought this was about the mission!”

Lance can take credit for that, and win this argument, too. “I mean, I was right about that, but that’s not what’s important—”

“—yes it is!” Keith looks back to his piloting, probably knowing he’s on the losing side of an argument.

But Keith’s protests don’t matter, no matter how short they sound. Lance cuts him off before he can continue, “Blue chose me and not you, and I know, I know, you’re sad about it—”

“Lance—”

“—but you don’t have to pretend that Red’s better-”

“—I was going to say thanks, but I guess I won’t.”

A pause stretches between them, and Lance might feel regret. He might feel annoyance, too, and a lot of other emotions that swirl in a mixture he can’t quite place. In the end, he decides that he just wants to win this argument.

“Blue’s better,” Lance repeats. Keith doesn’t concede; he just stares. This doesn’t feel like a won argument. “And you’re the worst,” Lance tacks on.

It still doesn’t feel won, but at least Keith looks as annoyed as Lance feels.

Canyons are, speaking objectively, the worst landforms in the universe. They’re impossible to fly through, for one, and for two, anything that takes over a million years deciding that it’s best suited to being an ugly hole in the ground has some priorities to sort out.

Really, the only good thing about canyons is the excess of rocky outcroppings to hide behind, ripe for the picking. Or, ripe for picking off Galra infantry, anyway. Too bad that stopped mattering the second the mission changed, and any advantage went out the window.

No, instead of staying out of the thick of things and providing cover— like, oh, a sensible job for a sniper perhaps—  Lance gets to infiltrate the building at the foot of the canyon with Keith, but whatever! The universe remains uninterested in playing to Lance’s strengths, apparently.

The plan had been for Lance to cover Hunk while they went for some vital quintessence extraction tech. Which had been a fantastic plan, up until the tech turned out to be a decoy, and Pidge had needed Hunk’s help to deal with the actual extraction. Meanwhile, Keith gets to do what he does best: demolition. Which means Lance is stuck making sure he doesn’t die in the process.

Which! Is always an awful job! Keith would rather die than think before he charges ahead, which is the most likely outcome, actually! Every second of Keith-sitting duty ages Lance by a decade; if he misses a cover shot, boom, that’s it, one dead Keith, negative one red paladin, zero Voltron! And Keith has the nerve to keep looking back and grin at him, like he’s enjoying this.

Eventually, they get to the point of the building that Lance has been assured has the most potential to literally explode in their faces, which great! Fantastic! Truly, Lance has never wanted anything more than to be in the blast radius of volatile alien tech! This is exactly how he wanted his life to play out!

Lance aims at another incoming wave of guards as Keith rigs up his weird bombs that he somehow knows how to rig up, and that’s always, always, going to be unnerving. It was weird when they were rescuing Shiro from the Garrison, and it’s just as weird now.

“How did you ev—” Lance pauses, mid-word, to take a shot, then continues. “Why do you just know how to make explosives? That’s not something people just know how to do.”

“That doesn’t matter right now,” Keith says, brow furrowed in concentration.

“I’d say it does, considering the plan kind of hinges on your bombs going off when they’re supposed to,” Lance counters.

Keith frowns, fiercer than his usual resting expression of general displeasure. “Can you— Can you just once believe me when I say I know what I’m doi—” Before he can finish the sentence, a shot gets past Lance, striking the wall next to Keith and barely missing the all-too-combustible machinery that he’s wiring the explosives to.

Lance tenses, ready to defend against whatever accusation Keith’s about to sling his way. Instead, Keith curses and goes back to work, and honestly, that’s so much worse.

They don’t speak after that, silent aside from the tense rhythm of staccato laser bursts from Lance’s bayard and the occasional curse on Keith’s end. Then, there’s the click specific to devices that are supposed to be doing something important, but are failing spectacularly, followed by Keith swearing more furiously than ever.

“There’s something wrong with the remote detonator,” Keith says, turning back to Lance. There’s a moment where his eyes are blown wide, which is weird because Keith doesn’t get scared, and then it passes, and he looks as resolved and ready to pull some harebrained stunt as ever. He opens his mouth, and no matter what comes out, Lance is absolutely sure it’s a bad plan. “We’ll have to put it on a timer.”

Lance, barks out a short, startled laugh. “What.”

“I’m going to need you to trust me to get us out of here. It’ll be tight, but we can—”

Lance laughs again, and there’s no humor in it because this is the opposite of a funny situation but what. What.

“ What?” He wants nothing more to throw up his hands, gesturing until Keith realizes just how ridiculous this is, but he has to keep shooting. “The canyon’s a death trap already, and the explosion’s going to spring it faster than we can say, ‘uh oh’!” Lance shoots down another guard, then turns to glare at Keith. “In case you don’t remember, you’re the one who said that we needed to be in the air by the time it went off in the first place! Sure, Yellow might be fine, but Red’s a lot squishier, and us? We might as well be marshmallows, ready for roasting! Or suffocating under a metric ton of rock! Whichever comes first!”

“Lance,” Keith starts, low, serious, and way calmer than he should be, given the situation. “It’s either trust me, or trust the Galra not to remodel this facility and get back to work, with or without the information Hunk and Pidge are getting. They’ve done this before; they know how to sap this planet dry.”

Lance opens his mouth to argue, but Keith has a point. Not a good one, but a point. “Fine.”

Keith doesn’t deserve the easy, relieved grin that spreads across his face. It shouldn’t sit so naturally on his features, not when they’re both about to die. “Thanks.”

“Thank me when we get out of this unexploded,” Lance fires back.

After Keith’s done setting the timer, the rest of the mission is a blur of panic. Every movement is too slow, every guard and obstacle inching them towards certain fiery death, and Lance always knew that Keith would be the actual literal death of him, but all he can think is ‘please not here.’ Eventually— too late, it feels too late, it has to be too late— they see Red. Lance shoots a guard, and Keith, always just a little bit faster, vaults over the falling robotic body as it collapses. If they can make it to Red in the next ten seconds, Lance thinks, then they’ll make it out of here alive.

Everything’s a landmark, a timer. If he can pass that rock in two seconds, they’ll be fine. If he can jump over that guard’s body in five seconds, he’ll be fine. Four seconds to Red. Three. Two.

Keith’s reaching for him, and he’s inside.

“Let’s get out of here,” one of them says, and Lance isn’t sure who, too preoccupied with how he’s suddenly pinned back by the force of Red launching into the air. They just barely take off when there’s a roar like thunder behind them, and everything’s collapsing at once.

“Lance!” Keith yells. “Can you stop screaming? It’s not helping!”

“I’m not!” Lance screams, then clears his throat. “I’m not,” he says, quieter, but it’s covered up by the sound of the world collapsing around them.

“Hang on,” Keith says, and Lance complies just in time for Keith to roll out of the way of a falling boulder.

“That was so close,” Lance says, and every thought comes loose at once, tumbling as quick and free as the landslide. “Red probably— Red probably would have gotten a concussion from that one. Can our lions get concussions? I don’t want Red to get— Red, please don’t get a concussion.”

“Lance! This isn’t helping my concentration,” Keith says, narrowly dodging flying shrapnel.

“It’s making me feel better!”

“Living through this would make me feel better,” Keith says, but he doesn’t complain about Lance’s yelling after that.

After a small eternity, they come to a stop, hovering above the lip of the canyon. It looks like a thunderstorm trapped in a bowl, light flickering and dying within the swirling mass of roiling smoke and dust below them.

“Told you I could do it,” Keith says, leaning towards the dashboard and heaving out a deep breath, and there’s something about it that makes something unpleasant settle in Lance’s gut. It’s the way Keith looks like he never had a doubt that he could do it.

The thing is, Lance isn’t some kid from the Garrison with stars in his eyes anymore. He shouldn’t still be sitting there, looking at Keith flying and overcome with— with awe, of all things . This was Keith!

And yet the feeling, coiled up and heavy, sticks around. Keith never doubted himself, yeah, but Lance hadn’t doubted him either. Not really.

Of course Keith could do it. It was impossible, but of course. When had Keith ever been incapable of anything?

Meanwhile, Lance… He snorted. When had anyone ever expected anything from him. Keith had proven that when Lance had almost gotten him shot, and he didn’t say a word. He’d never expected anything.

Keith looks back at him, eyebrows knitting together. “You alright?

Lance takes a breath, ready to say something, then shakes his head. “You’re the worst.”

Stealth missions used to be interesting, back when they rotated jobs; sometimes Lance would be the stealthy one, sometimes he’d be point, sometimes he’d be the getaway Lion. It was fun, it was variety, it was like being in a spy-flick. And while not all the roles were always the best fit, at least he’d always have the chance to do something new.

But as Voltron got more and more accustomed to stealth missions, everyone got more and more accustomed to specific roles. Pidge normally gets the coolest jobs— sneaking into enemy bases to hack into the mainframe or whatever she did. Shiro and Hunk get point and get-away Lion respectively.

Lance gets decoy and Keith-sitting duty.

Lance doesn’t mind being decoy all the time. Sometimes decoy just means sweet-talking the latest alien diplomat, which he’s totally all for. But most of the time, that fun’s burdened with making sure Keith doesn’t mess the whole situation up.

It’s not that Keith’s bad at anything. It’s just that stealth requires a certain degree of… stealth that Keith’s all-too-willing to overstep in the name of doing what his Keith-brain thinks is right at the moment. Sure, it works, it typically works very well, but it also typically means compromising their mission and, potentially, compromising diplomatic relations.

Lance knows Keith’s not too fond of the set-up, either, but Keith hasn’t protested it. Allura’s scary enough that Lance doesn’t want to argue by himself, and he knows, deep down, it’s best to keep Keith off the front lines for this sort of thing, but he still doesn’t want to pair with Keith every single time. It just ruins something.

“You could at least try to look like you’re enjoying this,” Lance reprimands. He swooshes his fancy alien drink, and a bit of it spills over onto his hand. He pretends not to notice.

Keith doesn’t even look over at him. “But I’m not enjoying this,” he says.

“Oh, come on— You were better last time, and even then—”

“Last time wasn’t with… ugh,” Keith scrunches his nose. “These people are the worst.”

Lance will give him that, these people are kind of the worst. Normally their diplomat gala missions meant talking to stuffy royalty or hapless elected officials, but this party’s gone the extra mile. Lance is pretty sure most people in the room have stabbed someone in the back at least five times in their lives, so it’s only natural Keith’s on edge.

“We just have to mingle with these diplomats and wait until Hunk gives us the signal,” Lance says. “It isn’t that hard.”

Keith clenches his still-full glass, eyeing the rest of the room. “You shouldn’t be so loud,” he says in a very unsubtle hiss.

Wow, Keith really isn’t taking this in stride. He’s always been kind of paranoid, but being in a situation where he’s completely justified in being paranoid must add another dimension to it. There’s a stiffness to Keith’s posture that, infuriatingly, makes the both of them stick out when they should be blending in, but it also just looks… uncomfortable. And not  awkward-uncomfortable, but cornered-animal uncomfortable.

It should be great; Lance is finally in his element, and Keith is finally out of it, but Lance can’t garner the willpower to brag. With a sigh, he sets a hand on Keith’s way-too-tense shoulder, and hands Keith his drink. “Just hold this, and don’t spill it, it’s really good—”

“I think you already spilled it,” Keith says.

“—and I’ll do the talking. Shouldn’t take that much longer.”

There aren’t many options for reasonable, kind diplomats to talk to, so Lance chooses at semi-random a lanky amphibian woman holding a thin flute of some purple, shimmering drink.

She doesn’t look horrible, and she’s not talking to anyone, so that’s the standard Lance sets for himself. As he approaches, she nods in acknowledgement or distaste, but Lance has to plow through with conversation anyway.

“How’re you liking the event?” Lance says, and she sips her drink. Lance can smell it, even from where he was, and it smelt strongly of cough syrup. “Really good drink selection.”

“It is a good selection,” she says, looking to Lance, then to Keith, then to the drinks in his hands. Her expression scrunches, eyeing the drink like it’s some sort of noxious poison. “Pity that you’re not taking advantage of it.”

Maybe there’s a reason not even the other shady diplomats are talking to her. “You know, you gotta try everything, Can’t just stick to the… the purple drinks all the time.”

She takes another drawl of the pungent drink. “Novelty always wears out eventually,” she says.

“Hasn’t worn out yet,” he says, and the diplomat seems to take this as the end of the conversation. Lance will just have to work for this.

“I haven’t introduced myself yet— Lance, Blue Paladin of Voltron,” he says, holding out a hand that she doesn’t take. He continues the gesture and points to Keith, as if that’s what the gesture was for to begin with. “And this is Keith, also with Voltron.”

“Lance, of Voltron,” She somehow manages to make that sound like an insult. “I’m Senator Eliska, of the Draga Quadrant.”

Nodding as if that meant anything to him, Lance says, “So what’s it like? Being the Senator of the uh, Draga Quadrant?”

“Not bad,” she says, swishing the drink in her flute and watching it instead of Lance. She manages not to swish it over the side like Lance had. “We’re far enough away from the conflict, but it does impact our trade routes. We’re poised to lose profit if Voltron doesn’t manage to defend the universe.”

“We’ll… try our best for you,” Lance manages, trying to hide distaste with a stretch of words. At least Keith had reason to not like these people, sheesh; Lance doesn’t even want to continue this.

Luckily, Senator Eliska takes the conversation initiative. “So you’re... it. You’re what we for the job,” she says. She looks at him the same way she looked at his drink.

It’s tense; Lance doesn’t know what to say, caught off-guard and trying not to think about his bad novelty-that’ll-wear-out drink. Novelty’s great, his drink’s great, Voltron’s great, she’s just the worst. It’s fine. This is going great, he just needs to continue this terrible conversation for ten, fifteen more minutes, and they should be in the clear to leave.

Faking a laugh, Lance tries, “Yup, that’s us. We’re that.” Lance doesn’t know how Senator Eliska can manage to look condescending sipping cough syrup but she sure does. Maybe it is a good drink and Lance’s does stink, but who is he to know. “We’ll be the ones defending the universe, and the Draga Quadrant, and, uh--”

“—yeah, defending the Draga Quadrant from you,” interrupts Keith. 

Lance continues smiling, his hands mid-gesture. He doesn’t make an effort to look at Keith, or correct them, his mind in a stalled overdrive of panic. A tense pause hangs over them. This isn’t going to go well. Allura’s going to be so pissed. There’s one goal to smooze-the-diplomats missions, and it’s smooze-the-diplomats, and insulting them lays far outside that singular goal.

“Excuse me?” squawks Senator Eliska. What could pass as condescending before just looks ridiculous now; she’s just an amphibian alien drinking cough syrup out of a fancy glass. She’s still looking down at him, but her eyes are wide and shocked, her horrible drink sloshing over her hand.

A drip of it hits the floor, and the tension snaps.

Lance snorts, and the snort turns into a laugh that he really, really should hide but he just can’t. As Lance watches the diplomat’s face scrunch in annoyance, he full-stop cracks up. He should be doing damage control, and this is definitely not damage control.

With a huff, the diplomat leaves, which is funnier somehow. Lance does try to conceal his laughter behind his hand, but there’s only so much a hand can do. Keith’s watching him with a dumbfounded expression, mouth gaped and everything, which just makes Lance laugh more.

He does stop. Eventually. Keith doesn’t make a move the whole time, just standing there with two glasses and staring at Lance.

“You’re the worst,” Lance says, gripping Keith’s shoulder and trying to guide the both of them away from the whole situation. “I— I was totally handling it, but you had to—”

Keith closes his mouth and looks away; he’s not tense, just…. contemplative? Maybe?  “You’re the one that started laughing,” he says without bite, still looking contemplative and focused solely on Lance and Lance alone. It isn’t a Keith look, and Lance doesn’t know what to do with it.

“The worst ,” Lance repeats, knocking into Keith’s shoulder, hoping to break him out of his seriousness.  “Let’s get out of the spotlight before you get into trouble.”

The tactic seems to work; the seriousness is gone, and Keith rolls his eyes. “Like you’re one to talk,” he says, but follows Lance out anyway.

Everyone takes their turn in the healing pod eventually. Lance is more familiar with the view from inside them than most, which sucks because the pod makes his mouth feel cottony and taste like he ate a freezer-burned chicken patty for a week. However! It also means that no one else got hurt, so he tends to chalk that up as a win. After all, the one time Hunk took a turn in a healing pod, it was less of a turn for the worse and more like a tires-squealing, rubber-burning veer into both a figurative and literal black hole, and Lance was too busy worrying about them to be much help in finding a way out.

Besides, the ship’s always too quiet when one of the others is in a pod. It’s like someone took a cog out of a clock. Half of the pieces are whirring away, but they aren’t doing anything. And some cogs have more of an effect than others. Especially when no one’s used to working without them.

No one’s used to working without Keith. It’s weird, honestly. All things considered, Keith should have the rest of the team combined beat for total hours in the pod; however, he’s annoyingly skilled at extracting himself from the fallout of his terrible decisions relatively unscathed. Or skilled at hiding his injuries, anyway.

As it stands, though, the absence of sound from the training room is weird. The way the collection of cups on the common area’s table flatlines instead of growing at its usual pace of one gross cup per day is weird. Sitting down at the table next to an empty seat is weird.

Keith’s gone and it’s… weird.

Lance knows visiting people in the healing pod doesn’t do much. He’s never noticed whenever people have fessed up to lurking outside his pod, for sure. Still, he likes to think…

Well, it’s the principle of the thing, isn’t it? That someone cares enough to visit. Like showing up to someone’s hospital room while they’re in a coma, except not really, since they’re in literal stasis and have absolutely zero chance of taking anything in, and— actually, this is a very bad idea, and Lance should stop indulging it. There’s nothing to be gained in visiting someone who won’t benefit from the company. Heck, even if Keith could hear him, he’d probably just be annoyed.

Lance visits Keith anyway.

“Hey punk,” he greets, then grimaces. “Okay, no. Crossing that one off the list. Doesn’t work if you literally dress like…” He gestures at Keith. Though, considering he’s abandoned his usual eighties-bad-boy-chic for healing pod jammies, it’s not exactly illustrative. “Plus, it makes me sound like I’m eighty. Can’t go around acting like an old man when you look this good, am I right?”

Keith, stunned by the clarity and power of this argument, says nothing.

“I mean, what kinda image would I be giving off? Gotta save it up for when we’re all old and grizzled.” Lance crosses his arms. “Which means I better not catch you making a habit of this. Might think you’re trying to weasel out of our standing appointment. You, me, bad old people nicknames. Forty years from now. It’s happening.”

There’s no response, which means Lance has to fill in the blanks. “If I’m still stuck with you forty years from now, I’ll take the pod,” Lance intones, trying to match the scratchy tone Keith gets when he aims for something flat and unimpressed and misses.

“Joke’s on you, Keith.” Lance leans forward. “If I’m committed to anything, it’s proving a point. There’s no escape, so you better save the date.”

The room is silent.

“Ugh.” Lance lets his head fall the rest of the way, thunking against the glass. “And here I thought you couldn’t get any more quiet and broody. Just gotta outdo yourself every time, huh?”

He raps his knuckles against the glass, two knocks. “Well, I won’t have it. That is my pod, and you spend enough time silently leaning against things already. If you’re gonna pull some loose-cannon, ‘I’m Keith and therefore invincible’ stunt, figure out how to do it without landing yourself in a medically induced coma.” He lets his fist open, then makes a face at the smudges his hand makes on the glass. “I mean… Jeez. How hard is it to take care of yourself?”

Incredibly, Keith doesn’t have a ready defense. He just stands there, suspended in the pod. Because he’s terrible, and put himself in the way of danger, like he always does.

“Ugh,” Lance sighs, again. “You’re the worst.”

The terrible, annoying, awful thing about Keith— one of many— is that when he puts his ridiculously risky plans into motion, he either pulls it off, or he grievously injures himself (while still pulling it off). There’s not a lot of self-reflection in that because hey! He did it! Who cares how many bones had to break in the process! Literally everyone on Team Voltron cares, but apparently, their opinion doesn’t matter.

This, apparently, only applies to when the bones broken are his own. Keith’s bad calls don’t really affect other people, until they do, and then he doesn’t know what to do with himself. And Lance isn't above a fully vindicated ‘I told you so,’ especially since he did, in fact, tell Keith that his (lack of) plan sucked and they should wait for backup, but it wasn’t that big a deal. Like, at all.

Maybe there’s a bit of hypocrisy in Lance being fine with a quick trip to the healing pod, and maybe it’s completely irrelevant.

What is relevant is Keith’s extremely un-Keith response to the whole incident. He’s definitely moping, which isn’t inherently un-Keith, but he’s… hesitant. Uncertain. He skirts the edge of Lance’s periphery with guilt and shame, subdued in a way that obviously doesn’t suit him at all. Or at least, it’s obvious to anyone familiar with the endless nuance of Keith-brand brooding.

Well. Keith can’t keep up being too un-Keith for long; it’s only a matter of time before his immovable angst meets his unstoppable need for confrontation.

Sure enough, it only takes a few days for him to march up to Lance during some elusive lull in laser fights. Lance had been on his way to bother Hunk, but apparently it’s time to throw down.

“We need to talk,” Keith says, the tense set of his shoulders leaving no room for argument.

“Hey Keith! I’m fine, thanks for asking, and you?” Lance says, because he’ll take any opportunity to be difficult. He still follows Keith into one of the huge common rooms littered throughout the castle, and they sit on one of the space-couches. There's not too much actual distance between them, but with how heavy the atmosphere is, it feels like a canyon.

“You were right,” Keith announces, eventually, to the almost-empty room.

“Yeah, that happens sometimes,” Lance can't help but deadpan. “Shocking, I know.”

“You were right, and I… I’m sorry,” he says. It’s as much a painful admission as it is an apology. “I should've listened to you.”

Before, Lance would've done anything to hear those exact words from Keith. Looking at Keith now, who's holding himself taut, fists clenched, bracing himself for a nebulous something, this kind of leverage... it's grating. It's not something Lance wants. It's not something he should have.

“Okay,” he says.

Keith blinks, eyebrows shooting up in bewilderment. “Okay?”

“Yeah, okay. Apology accepted, thank you for acknowledging my superior intelligence and unparalleled genius.” And this is where Keith is supposed to scoff, roll his eyes, and realize that everything’s fine, but he remains stubbornly not reassured. “Keith. Buddy. Don't worry about it, it’s not a big deal.”

“The last time you got a papercut you spent hours complaining! How is this ‘not a big deal’? You should be mad,” Keith insists. “Why aren't you mad?”

“Do you want me to be mad?” Honestly, Keith’s absolutely the kind of guy who probably deals with guilt by fighting it out. Joke’s on him, Lance’s entire childhood was spent doing ill-conceived stunts with reckless siblings; he’s an old hat at collateral damage. “Look, it’s fine. It’s a mess you made, but it’s a mess you got us out of. I’ve had worse.” Probably. He wasn't exactly conscious at the time. “And without the healing pod, too, so whatever.” The situation seems to call for some awkward gesture of comfort, so Lance pats him on the back.

“I just… I don’t want you to get hurt,” Keith says, leaning to rest his head on Lance’s shoulder. “I don’t want to be the reason you get hurt.”

The pat starts to linger into extended hug-adjacent territory, but Lance is nothing if not adaptable. “Same here,” he manages, after a completely reasonable pause, “but not realistic. You know that.”

“I do,” he admits, “but I’m not sure you do.”

“Well, I just said—”

“No, I mean—” Keith huffs out an exasperated breath and looks up, except, he doesn't move backwards. At all. There's barely enough space between them to breathe. “I don't want you to get hurt,” he repeats, with a deliberate emphasis that fills the room. “Nobody wants you to get hurt, Lance. Nobody’s better off when it’s you that gets hurt.”

See, now this gets into complicated territory, because as tunnel vision as the guy can get, Keith’s supposed to be the big picture dude; he knows (or, should know) that there's— strategically— certain situations where some people are more high-priority for specific missions, and objectively, Lance usually isn’t one of them. It’s like chess. Probably. Lance wouldn’t know, he hates the game. But there’s no real way to have this conversation, not without sounding way more dramatic than the situation calls for, and not with someone as stubborn as Keith. So Lance ends up saying nothing. But Keith, after a heavy moment, softens the intensity of his stare into something like understanding, which is kind of, sort of, the worst possible outcome.

“We both know it’s not something we can avoid, but you need to know you're important to us. To me.” He’s staring right at Lance with an almost painful amount of sincerity, and it's— it’s killer. It's doing all sorts of things to Lance’s heart rate and it's just not fair. This was supposed to be a straightforward ‘hey Keith, everything’s alright!’ but he had to make it… whatever this is. They’re still in that weird pat-turned-not-quite-hug. And Keith’s still staring at him. It’s a lot to handle.

He should say something.

“I can’t believe you turned this around on me,” is what Lance finally settles on. An awkward laugh escapes as he covers his face with his free hand, not entirely sure what he’s trying to hide. “You’re the worst.”

Keith lets out a breath. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

Lance leans over. Or maybe, Keith tugs him over. It’s hard to tell. In any case, they end up in a genuine, bona-fide hug.

Being in space can be pretty stressful. It can also, sometimes, feel like an extended sleepover, especially when a bunch of them pile into Hunk’s room. It's not usually planned, but Hunk and Pidge work on non-explosive side projects, and Lance wanders over to bug them, and Keith’s there. So, despite the whole space thing and being surrounded by alien tech, it gives a decently familiar sleepover vibe. And it's not a sleepover unless there's a good old fashioned gossip session.

The problem is, it's impossible to get a good old fashioned gossip session going, considering Lance is the only guy on the ship who knows how to live a little. But it's fine! Lance just fills the gossip-void with dramatic retellings of every telenovela he remembers, along with several he doesn't.

“—so the mom, she’s like, super mad, right? Because she thinks Graci’s not good enough for her son, or whatever, so she burns down Graci’s house and kidnaps her parents, and says that she knew all along that Graci’s the head of the underground crime ring!”

There is no chorus of gasps at this shocking development. Instead, Keith and Pidge turn to look at Hunk, expectant.

“Yeah, no, he's completely wrong,” they say. “That's like a combination of three different shows. Actually, Caridad’s the one whose house burned down, and the kidnapping— parent-napping?— was from something else. So was the crime ring. The mom was just blackmailing Graci with a bunch of letters she found from an ex-boyfriend.”

Well! That! Is actual ringing some bells, but Lance still points an accusatory finger at Hunk, affronted by their betrayal. “How would you know! You didn't even watch it with me!”

“I didn't, but also, you complained for weeks. I couldn't forget even if I wanted to. And like, you were right, it was pretty baloney. The guy, Ed… En..?”

“Henrique.”

“Yeah, him, it's not like he didn't know about her ex.”

“Exactly!” Lance exclaims, despite only remembering that whole thing just now. “How does that count as blackmail! Anyway—”

“Please,” Pidge interrupts, dragging a hand down her face, “just stop. If I have to hear one more “shocking development” I might just scream.”

Pidge’s derisive air quotes are entirely unwarranted, in Lance’s humble opinion. “Cut me some slack, I’m cut off from all my major sources of entertainment! I’m missing out on so much drama! I’m in withdrawal!” Lance raises a hand to his forehead, clutches at his chest with the other, and leans against the nearest person for suitably dramatic effect. This person happens to be Keith, who rolls his eyes, but endures. “If anyone wants to share a saucy secret to tide me over, I’m all ears.” Doubtful, considering Hunk can’t keep secrets, Pidge is like twelve, and Keith’s so very Keith.

“‘Saucy’?” Pidge asks, raising an eyebrow. “I swear, everything you say sounds like a direct quote from a cheesy sitcom. I can practically hear the laugh track.”

“Thank you.”

“Not a compliment.”

“Oh, I don't know about that! If I get the laugh track, that means I’m the fan favorite.” Lance, now lying across Keith’s lap, shoots an upside-down finger gun at Pidge’s unamused face. The hypothetical audience goes wild.

“The only saucy secret I have are family recipes,” Hunk cuts in, absently derailing that whole argument. “Sorry buddy, but I’m taking those to the grave.”

“Please,” Lance scoffs, “as if you don't dump every single one of those onto anyone that asks.”

“Anyone who wants the recipes is practically family!”

“Low standards, but that makes for a lot of family. I can respect that.”

“So,” Keith starts, eyebrows pinched in obvious thought, “what even counts as a “saucy” secret?”

He even does some air quotes of his own. Holy crow, that is just too good— with Pidge it's just, sure, whatever, that's something she’d do, but Keith? Thank goodness the universe aligned exactly so for Lance to bear witness to such a sight. He could go on an entire tangent about how incredible it is to see Keith unironically use air quotes. Oh but wait, there was a question, wasn't there. Right. Saucy.

“It's just,” Lance waves a hand, nearly smacking Keith in the face with the gesture, “saucy. Or, not like, actually saucy seeing as there are delicate ears in the room—” Pidge throws a pillow at his face (and misses by a solid foot) “—but it's the usual stuff. Who’s hot, who’s not, who’s dating who, who broke up and why—”

“There's only us seven in the ship, plus the mice,” Keith interrupts. “What’s the point of talking about that? We’d know if anything was happening.”

“And that's the problem!” Lance rolls off Keith, because lying face-down on the floor is the only way to properly express his frustration. “There’s nothing gossip-worthy on this ship. Nothing! No one's dating, and no one wants to date, so what’s there to talk about!” He heaves an overwrought sigh. “What’s a master of romance supposed to do when he’s being starved like this?”

There’s a suspicious pause, long enough that Lance glances up to survey the room. He's just in time to catch the tail end of some wild face choreography; raised eyebrows, scrunched noses, the works, until they notice Lance’s attention.

“Literally anything else,” Pidge supplies, late enough that it takes a second for Lance to figure out what she's talking about. Right. Date-talk.

But, more importantly, “What was all that about?”

“Nothing, oh great master of romance.” Pidge does a little flourish of a bow, and it’s honestly impressive just how much sarcasm she can put into body language.

“So, uh, Lance,” Hunk cuts in, “did I ever tell you how me and Pidge figured out where all the sound files for the alarms and stuff are? We could totally probably mess with them, add some of our own.”

“Okay, that sounds amazing and is definitely something I’m interested in, but not when you’re obviously trying to distract me.” Which is such a shame; Lance takes a second to mourn all of the amazing potential pranks he’s pushing aside for the moment. “So like, anyone gonna tell me what’s going on here?”

“What? Nothing? Nothing’s going on, why would you think anything’s going on?”

Keith heaves a deep sigh, looking weirdly haggard for someone who isn’t that involved in the conversation. Actually, the more Hunk rambles, the more dead inside he looks? But apparently, he hits a point where he can’t take any more of whatever’s going on, and he turns to Lance, and he says: “I like you.”

What.

Hold on, what.

Wait a second, hold on, what.

“Out!” Lance, finally breaking the silence of the room, springs to his feet and shuffles Pidge and Hunk towards the door. “Out, out, out, get out!”

“This is my room,” Hunk points out, but they don't put up much of a fight. Neither does Pidge. In fact, she’s practically making a break for it. Once Lance is sure neither of them are sticking around to eavesdrop, he scrambles back into the room, letting the door slide shut behind him.

“So, back up, you like me? Like, like-like?” he asks, wincing when the words actually leaves his mouth. It's probably the most middle school way to frame that question, but too late, question asked and it's time to get some answers.

“I like you,” Keith repeats. “I think,” he adds, which just makes it worse.

“You like me, you think!?” Lance sputters, indignant. “What kind of confession is that!”

“Look, this is hard to figure out!” Keith bristles, ready to throw down, and he— does he honestly sincerely not know why Lance is so worked up? It's kind of sad but kind of aggravating come on!

“Would it kill you to be more romantic? Give me— give me something,” Lance says, dangerously close to plaintive.

“Like what!”

“I don't know, there’s loads of stuff more romantic than ‘I like you, I think’! Think about timing! Think about phrasing! Think about location,” Lance insists, gesturing at Hunk’s room. The most romantic thing that’s probably happened here is once Pidge had a brief fling with healthy sleeping habits and took a nap.

“Well,” Keith drawls, defensive with maybe a hint of genuine curiosity, “how would you do it?”

“I wouldn’t do it here, that’s for sure! We’re in space, Keith! There’s plenty of romance in space! Stargazing, that’s romantic! On the next desert planet, because for some reason you like the awful feeling of getting sand in your socks.”

“We don’t stay on planets for long,” Keith points out, like the pedantic jerk he is. “Besides, there’s no way of knowing when we’ll be near a safe desert planet. It could take weeks.”

Pedantic, but also, a legitimate point. “I could ask Allura. Maybe Shiro? Or no, Coran,” Lance decides, because out of everyone available, Coran is the one responsible adult most likely to sympathize with Lance’s cause. “But anyway, it doesn’t have to be a desert planet, it can just be a planet with a desert. Loads of planets have deserts.”

“Why are you so obsessed with deserts?” Keith asks. “I don't like them that much.”

“You should've said that before we went to the desert! Now we’re both miserable!”

“I don't not like them, I just think you're exaggerating how much I do.”

“Well it's too late now, you're just going to have to accept that I’m making a huge sacrifice for you and your terrible taste! We’re in the desert! It's romantic!”

Which should be the end of that, except it’s not, because Keith has to be entirely too Keith about everything, all the time. “What if the Galra attack while we’re distracted?”

“If they did, we’d just fight them off, but they won’t, so we don’t have to worry about that.”

“We’re just assuming this is uninterrupted stargazing, and nothing goes wrong,” Keith says, skeptical.

“Yes,” Lance says, leaving no room for argument.

And miraculously enough, Keith doesn’t try and make room. “Fine. Then what,” he prompts.

“Then, we talk.”

“About?”

“Y’know, stuff!” Except, a lot of their conversations usually revolve around missions, which isn’t bad per se, but kicking butt isn't always romantic. “Stuff we don’t usually talk about,” he clarifies. “I’d start talking about how you’re always pulling off all these really cool moves, or how you’re always on my mind, or how you’re not as bad as I thought you were and we’ve gotten way closer than I ever thought we would which was something I kinda hoped would happen because you’ve always been kind of amazing even when I thought you were a huge jerk, but it turns out you’re not a huge jerk, you’re just super awkward— and actually, still kind of a jerk, but in a fun way— but you’re always doing your best which is really funny and kind of inspiring and so unfair because it just makes me like you more—“ Lance grabs Keith’s hand, looks him right in the eye as he leans in just a little, enough to kick his heart slightly into overdrive. “Atmosphere! It’s something you have to build up to, you can’t— you can’t just dump someone in a desert full of stars and expect it to be romantic, you have to make it romantic! You have to set the mood!”

“You’d really drag it out, huh,” Keith murmurs.

“Well yeah.”

“And then?”

“We’d—” kiss, hopefully, but the conversation abruptly catches up to Lance enough for him to finally register who, exactly, he’s having this conversation with, along with what, exactly, he’s been saying. And what makes it worse is how legitimately attentive Keith looks, laser-focus directed right at Lance, which is really. Embarrassing.

“It’s starting to sound like you like me too,” Keith says, looking a little shy but way too pleased with himself. They’re still holding hands.

“That’s not—! I’m just giving an example!” Lance explains, totally smooth, totally calm, and not flustered at all.

“Sure about that?” Keith asks, and, oh, now he’s looking way too smug.

“Ugh, you are the worst,” Lance proclaims, before tugging Keith forward and closing the distance between them. At the very least, it wipes that smug grin right off his face.