Archive of Our Own

Lance hadn’t talked in days. He, who thrived on conversation, who needed people like others needed air, had spent an entire week in silence. He had isolated himself but now his thoughts had grown so loud he couldn’t bear them anymore.

Lance began to slowly pace through the house Coran had provided him with–he wouldn’t call it home–learned its corners and edges, learned which floorboards creaked and which ones didn’t. Turned out that none of them did. Disappointing.

He also found himself avoiding mirrors, ducking his head whenever he passed the one in the hallway that connected his bedroom to the kitchen and the living room and brushing his teeth with his back to the sink. It was almost like he could pretend that they weren’t there, like they were nothing more than a ghost of a world that had never existed, like they were relics of a past that he would forget with time.

But the markings on his cheeks didn’t fade and the memories didn’t, either.

Lance picked up the clear spray bottle he had placed on the coffee table and walked over to one of the plants perched on his window sill. His fingers trailed over the vibrant red leaves. Fire caught in a new shape. Planta Feurie , he recalled and began to spray the leaves with water. Then he went onto the next one, with leaves so dark they seemed to swallow all light rather than to reflect it back– Magnoliore Ibio– and sprayed its leaves as well. He repeated this process, recalling the names in old hinaa, a local Altean dialect he had read up on, and spraying the plants.

His collection had grown over the past months he had spent on Altea. With team Voltron scattered across the universe and his family back on Earth, he had needed something else to look after, something else to care for. It had quickly gotten out of hand after the first one.

But he hadn’t started learning their actual names and meanings until recently. After he had realised that he couldn’t bear to talk about the happenings of the war and that he couldn’t bear to keep giving a love that he knew he wouldn’t receive in return, he had left the capital and now found himself with much more time on his hands. So he had started devouring the Royal Library, taking piles upon piles of books back with him whenever he went to visit. Learning came almost naturally after that. Funny how it was much easier now that he didn’t have to worry about getting quizzed on it anymore.

He had almost completed his round through the house, passed the living room, the hallway and had come all the way over to the kitchen when there was a knock at his door. Lance stilled and frowned, no one ever came this far out from the capital and Coran usually announced his visits. Lance put down the spray bottle and went to answer the door. He opened it and his heart missed an entire beat and took another one to recover.

“Keith?” Lance couldn’t believe his eyes. Keith, who was supposed to be on some far edge of the universe, was here, in front of him.

“I wanted to call to warn you of my ambush but I was so close already it wouldn’t really have made a difference.” He shot Lance a sheepish grin, crooked, with the left corner of his mouth slightly higher than the right and… dimples? Were those dimples? Why had Lance never noticed them before?

“What are you doing here?” Lance blurted out and heat shot up to his cheeks when he realised his harsh words.

“I thought about swinging by and figured why not?” Keith put his hands into jeans pockets and shrugged.

Lance raised an eyebrow. “So you just decided to come? Just like that?”

“Lance,” Keith started and Lance could already see a long-winded explanation forming in his mind and in his throat, “Look, how about I come in first?” He shot Lance an almost pleading look and Lance immediately felt sorry. Keith came all the way from God knew where and the first thing Lance did after seeing him for the first time in months, was interrogating him like he was about to go on trial.

“Of course! Sorry, please come in.” Lance practically jumped backwards to make room for Keith to enter and immediately scanned him to see if he had to take a coat. His abuela would have been proud of him.

“Do you want something to drink?” He asked when both of them stepped into the kitchen. Yeah, definitely proud of him.

“No, I’m fine thanks,” Keith answered, sitting down at the table.

Lance sat down across from him and immediately wished hadn't. His solitude had eaten away at him, so now the coat of social interactions fit awkwardly and wrong.

There was a beat of uncomfortable silence, of words that had risen up to the tips of their tongues but didn’t dare to take the leap. But Keith pushed them over the ledge anyway.

“Did make this table yourself? Looks like one from Earth.” He ran his hand appreciatively across the varnished wood.

Lance frowned. “Why are you here, Keith?” he asked again, though this time much softer than he had before.

“Why are so pressed about that? Can’t I just come to visit?”

“You didn’t come to marvel at my woodworking skills though, did you?” Lance raised an eyebrow and shot Keith a challenging look, his almost expected to get one back. Neck to neck, like they always been.

Keith sighed instead. “Coran sent me.”

“What? Why?”

“He’s worried and now that I’m here, I can see why.” Keith shot him a worried look, that weigher much heavier now that he looked so much older, now that his hair was longer and the lines of his face sharper.

“I’m fine,” Lance answered almost reflexively, the words out before he could evaluate whether they were true or not. They weren’t. But Keith didn’t have to know that.

“I don’t believe you,” Keith said without a sliver of doubt.

“What?”

“Have you looked in the mirror lately?” Keith pointed at him with his open palm but didn’t raise his voice. Lance blinked at that, a Keith who knew how to hold his temper wasn’t a Keith he knew how to deal with.

I haven’t. I won’t. “I’m fine, Keith.”

“Alright, then.”

Lance’s eyes widened, “You believe me?”

Keith snorted, “No, actually not. But I refuse to waste the one night that I have fighting with you.” Keith leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms in front of his chest. Lance’s eyes caught onto his forearms–bigger and more defined forearms–and onto the scars, he didn’t know of, scars he could ask about, instead of insisting on a truth that they both knew was a lie.

“You’re leaving so soon?” Lance was even more surprised than Keith at how distraught he sounded, at how much reluctance there was in his voice.

“Neither Krolia nor Kolivan know that I left so that‘s gonna be fun tomorrow.” Keith shot him a wry smile and Lance found himself returning it without thinking about it. An anomaly. His smiles didn‘t come easily anymore, another thing the war had taken from him.

“You missed me that much, huh? I‘m honoured.” He gently teased him, the smile still resting on his lips.

“You should. I don‘t cross the galaxy for just anyone.” Keith‘s eyes lingered and the words, where they had been teasing and light, turned meaningful and heavy.

“You didn‘t have to, you know? I know that you’re busy, repairing diplomatic relations, stopping space pirates, saving the world.“ Lance trailed off and averted his eyes. Keith shouldn’t have abandoned everything just to make a house call.

“Coran told me that you weren‘t okay and that he was worried. So, of course, I had to. I wouldn‘t have been able to focus without checking up on you, anyway.“ Lance gut twisted further when he saw the worry return back in Keith‘s eyes, reclaim its place after their brief moment of laughter had passed.

“Well, you‘ve done that now!” He clapped his hands, much sharper than believable, “You can rest easy, now that you‘ve seen that I‘m alive and kickin’.”

“ Lance,“ Keith sighed, “You sound like you want to get rid of me. Yes, I came to check up on you but also because I wanted to spend time with you. I haven‘t seen you in months, I miss you!“ Keith‘s voice rose but he forced it back down. Not that it made that much of a difference. A full glass bumped into but caught before it could fall over completely—the spill had happened anyway.

Lance stared at him, wide-eyed, breaths shallow. It was one thing to joke about it but to hear it like this… sincere and vulnerable. That was something else.

I missed you.

“I missed you, too,“ Lance whispered back. He eyed the potted ivy sitting on a stool behind Keith, an attempt to give love to a thing because the people that he wanted to give it to were too far. More than you can imagine.

Lance let the words unfold between them, take the space they needed and imagined them fading like whisks of smoke before he spoke again.

“Let’s make the most of tonight then.” Gripped by new enthusiasm he got up and walked over to the fridge behind Keith. Without waiting for Keith to answer, he began rifling through the contents of his fridge to whip up something edible.

“I didn’t really expect anyone.” Lance’s cheeks heated up as he turned to face Keith. But Keith had already turned, his eyes set onto the plants Lance had perched onto his windowsill in the living room.

“That’s fine, I’m not really all that hungry anyway,” Keith assured him, “I hadn’t thought of you as a plant person.” He pointed at the various plants Lance had scattered across the house.

“Yeah, that’s a bit of a recent thing. You can look at them more closely if you want to, cooking’s gonna take a while, anyway.”

Lance began to prep his ingredients and pretended to be sunken in thought when Keith got up and walked over to the plants in the living room. Without knowing he started to walk the same route Lance had taken earlier, starting by the biggest window of the living room, moving right over to the entrance hall, walking into the various extra bedrooms Lance didn’t use but Coran had given him anyway.

Lance forced himself to focus on the leftover chicken breast he had sizzling in the pan in front of him but his mind evaded his grip each time he tried to reel it back in. Keith was in his house, walking over the same unnaturally silent floorboards as he had done earlier, breathing the same air as he was and taking up space.

He is here.

He is here.

He is here.

There was no space in his mind to harbour any other thought. Keith should be somewhere else, had to be somewhere else, but instead, he was here with Lance. Because he wanted to, because he missed him . A warmth, the kind he hadn’t felt in months, spread inside his chest, crept into the spaces between his ribs and settled down like a guest─not like a permanent resident─but a guest with the intention to stay for a while.

Lance lowered the heat under the sizzling vegetables and listened to find out where Keith was. Then he began to trace his route. He imagined his footsteps and stepped into them, revelled in the way Keith changed every room he stepped into, how he gave life to it without even meaning to. Keith was one of the people so full of life that it spilt whenever he moved, it left traces wherever he went.

Lance wanted them to never fade.

They met again in the kitchen. Lance took out plates––nice ones he had never touched––rinsed them off to get rid of any dust that might have been on them and set the table.

“I can do that,” Keith had offered but one glare and a pointed nod towards the chair had silenced that foolish idea. Keith was a guest, Lance wouldn’t let him lift one finger.

He served the dinner he had scraped together out of leftovers and seasoned to make it seem like something new and sat down across from Keith.

“Did you choose this place yourself?” Keith asked around a mouthful of chicken.

“Coran gave it to me after I said I said I didn’t want to live in the Castle anymore.”

Keith raised an eyebrow but didn’t take the chance to pry. Lance didn’t know whether to be grateful or not. “It’s nice.”

“It’s too big,” Lance answered.

“Means you can take guests.”

“Rarely ever have any of those.” Lance sighed. He still didn’t know whether that was intentional or just a natural development.

“Come on, no one ever wants to see Lance the war hero? The one who gives the most amazing tours of Altea.” Keith shot him a teasing grin. All of him, his voice, his face, his posture spoke of good will and banter and yet, Lance’s heart missed a beat and his lips remained unable to answer Keith’s grin.

“I stopped giving those tours a while ago, couldn’t stand to talk about the war,” For some reason, this felt like a confession he had to make, “I took in an apprentice for just long enough to show him the ropes and then left the Castle as soon as I could.” This was more than he had intended to say, but with Keith’s grin fading back into worry, the words kept coming.

Keith sat down his fork. “Lance, are you okay?” he asked again, his voice deep and serious.

This time Lance answered truthfully. “I don’t know. I feel like I should be but I don’t know.”

Keith reached inside his back pocket and slid him a device across the table. Lance grabbed it to examine it further and frowned when he saw that it was a communicator. He shot Keith a puzzled look.

“It’s an emergency communicator that can break through any jam signal and reach into the farthest corners of the universe. The next time you need...,” Keith faltered, struggling with his words as though they didn’t want to come out, as though they were the wrong shape and couldn’t be spoken. He said them anyway. “The next time you need me. No matter how late or how early, call me and I’ll be there.”

“Keith, you don’t–”

“ Call me and I’ll be there.” Keith’s hand shot across the table and grabbed his hand, his grip tight and anchoring and a balm for Lance’s aching skin. A grip that shouldn’t have an end.

“Okay, I will.” And the grip tightened.

Keith had left a week ago and Lance hadn’t slept well since.

Now that he knew what the house felt like when it was filled with two people, he alone wasn’t enough. His rooms were too wide and the air too quiet for him to find rest. He found himself tossing and turning, trying to stay awake at first but then too tired to do anything. He became trapped in a state between wakefulness and sleep, too exhausted to be awake but to high-strung to fall asleep.

He shouldn’t have been foolish enough to believe he had finally gotten better, that those days he woke up screaming, those days where his mind was plagued by the echoes of war, were over. They weren’t.

Lance looked up at the open blue sky and then down at the red sand beneath his feet. He was in his pajamas, just how he had been when he had gone to bed. He had a feeling that he was supposed to be wearing something else, something that was actually capable of protecting him. Led by the certainty and the unconditional acceptance of the extraordinary that usually came with sleep, he set his focus inward and tried to contact Red. He didn’t know why nor did he feel the need to figure out why. It felt like the right to do so he did, as simple as that.

When his mind stretched out to find Red’s familiar presence, he was met with rejection. Blatant refusal to even consider letting him in. Lance imagined her entrance like a door and banged his fists against it. He begged. He pleaded. But she wouldn’t let him in, wouldn’t accept him as her Paladin.

unworthy

unworthy

unworthy

unworthy

The constant stream kept going inside his head, growing louder and louder until it drowned out everything else, until it was repeated often enough it stopped sounding like a lie. Lance withdrew his mind and when his eyes turned outwards, his focus back to where his physical presence actually was, he found that he wasn’t alone anymore.

Right in front of him, was this giant spaceship, piercing up, and up and up into the sky. Its shadow was dark enough to pass as a small pocket of night. A night bringer. and Lance was nothing against it. The world around him was silent, no trace of the other Paladins and Red had shut him out.

He was alone.

This ship in front of him, as big as Earth itself, stood across from him and there was no one at his side. He was completely alone. He wasn’t Lance the Red Paladin of Voltron, he wasn’t Lance the Blue Paladin of Voltron, hell , he wasn’t even Flight Cadet McClain from the Galaxy Garrison. He looked down at his bare hands, too soft to actually do anything.

He was Lance McClain, a simple boy, and utterly alone.

The realisation spread inside his mind like a disease and the sky was set a ablaze. As if that had been its cue, this impossibly big spaceship began to rain fire upon him. Orbs as big as his head and even bigger came hurling down at him. He called out for help, rooted in the spot, his throat captured in a web of fear, his screams soundless.

The fireballs in front of his eyes slowed as if time itself wanted to cash in on his suffering, wanted to take it to the max. The fire came at him as if it were passing through honey instead of air and Lance might have had the time to study it, to learn its shape, calculate where it might land, plot his escaped.

And yet, he and his thoughts remained frozen in one spot.

The fireballs came closer but still, Lance didn’t even move an inch. They struck the ground and shook the earth stronger than any earthquake ever could. For a moment there was nothing but heat and fire and debris.

Then Lance shot up straight in his bed. Half a second later he realised that he was screaming or sobbing or something twisted in between. He grabbed two fistfuls of hair and tried to will the pain to anchor him, to ground his mind in reality. It didn’t work. There was nothing but panting and pain. The words followed him out of the jumble of his dreams and came back to haunt him in the real world. Unworthy, unworthy, unworthy . He squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t take this alone.

He would later argue that it was the fatigue, that it was the fact that the sun hadn’t even begun rising, that it was a weakness of heart, or pain, or all of those but none of it would matter anyway. It would be his actions that counted and not the excuses he made to ease his mind.

Lance forced himself to take a deep breath and reached for the communicator sitting on his nightstand. It rang for a minute, two minutes and then–

“Lance? What’s going on?” Keith.

Keith was there and his chest uncoiled.

The communicator opened up a screen in front of him and Keith’s face, tired but alert, filled his field of vision. Lance opened his mouth but no words came out. His voice, his vocal cords––all of them failed him. But it didn’t matter, Keith took one long look at him and understood right away

“Nightmare?” He asked and at once, Lance was back in the Castle of Lions, half a millennium younger, the weight of the universe back on his shoulders. He, unable to sleep after being plagued by nightmares once more and after wandering through the castle trying to force his mind into silence, found Keith. Meeting Keith was inevitable. They were two opposite magnetic poles and they found each other. And when they did, it came down to the same exchange.

Nightmares?

Yes.

Do you want to talk about it?

No.

And they would sit in silence until sleep or the next morning, whichever one got to them first.

“Yes,” Lance now answered.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

The usual answer was already on the tip of his tongue. There, waiting. But too much time had passed for Lance to still fall into old patterns, too much time had passed for him to remain the same. He chose not to.

“I keep seeing it.” The words were out but Lance didn’t feel any better.

“What?” Keith asked, his strong brows furrowed, the usually angular lines of his face softened by concern.

“The Earth Battle, the one where Red didn’t immediately answer.” Lance absentmindedly scratched his cheek, then he remembered the markings he now bore, that his cheeks were proof of a sacrifice bigger than the universe itself and lowered his hand. “She never really accepted me as her Paladin, y’know? She tolerated me, yes but she always kept missing you.” The words came out completely robotic, detached as though they weren’t about him but someone else. But the pain inside his chest proved to him that, yes, this was his pain and his alone.

“Is that all?” Keith didn’t offer him comfort, he just spoke through the pain, remained upright while Lance’s entire world tilted.

“No, I was alone. I kept calling for you, the others and you, but-” His voice broke, like a beam finally caving under a burden too heavy to bear, “All I was hearing was unworthy . Just that word and nothing else. Unworthy, unworthy, unworthy and nothing else.”

Lance lowered his eyes and felt guilt and shame coil inside his gut. Dream Voltron, despite being nothing more than his subconscious using his shame haunt him, had been right. He was unworthy . By not being good enough, by not being enough of a Paladin when it counted.

“Lance, look at me,” Keith coaxed, his voice as soft as silk. Lance didn’t want to but he couldn’t deny Keith anything when he sounded like that. He raised his head to meet Keith’s eyes, his own still burning from tears he refused to let fall. “You did nothing wrong. You didn’t let anyone down and you sure as hell aren’t unworthy. You are a Paladin of Voltron and we wouldn’t have been able to make it, if it weren’t for you,” Keith faltered, for just the fraction of a second, “You are so good and so loved and so goddamn worthy . Don’t ever doubt that:”

Lance was stunned silent, his mind grappled with the idea, with this somehow radical notion that his subconscious was lying to him. It didn’t exactly work but it made him want to try again, to keep trying to tear down barriers that kept him from believing Keith.

“Thank you for telling me this,” he whispered, “Thank you for being there when I needed you most.” Lance's voice shook as he met Keith’s warm smile with a shaky one of his own.

“For you? Always.”

You’re allowed to hurt.

Lance’s next month was filled with tears, those that were already a year old, those that he had held back time and time again. He forced himself to let his mind go wherever it wanted, instead forcefully reeling it back like he had done before. And so his mind went down pathways he’d love to remain unexplored. Dreams came back to haunt him again and again.

Slowly but surely, he felt himself beginning to crack, faultlines all around his edges. He had imagined his descent as a grand thing, a glass breaking and smashing, a bang, a crash. The end of an era, a clean cut─it was none of that.

Instead, pieces broke away, the pain in his chest dulled––didn’t fade, no––but dulled, turned into something bearable. Good days started to happen, days on which his first thought after waking up wasn’t to go back to sleep again. And on those days he began to try. Something, anything. One thing he hadn’t done in over a month, that was his rule.

One the first day, he called up Hunk. The phone rang for what seemed like an eternity but both Hunk and Pidge’s faces greeting him made waiting all the more worth it. He had worried that this would be stilted that they had forgotten how to talk to each other in the time that Lance had been unable to reach out to anyone. That the time he had spent alone, had cost him his sense of humour, his ability to talk to people, his ability to be himself.

None of that was the case. They picked up right where they left off. Seamlessly.

“So wait, you’re telling that you gave your first food critic food poisoning ?!” Lance pressed his fist against his lips to muffle his laughter.

“No!” Hunk exclaimed, as Pidge tried and failed to contain her laughter, “At least not exactly. They just had an allergy they hadn’t told me about.”

“Tell him what happened next,” Pidge wheezed out between her fits of laughter, eyes filling with tears, cheeks stained a bright red.

“Yeah, buddy. Don’t hold out on me!” Lance whined, his grin more teasing than it was laughter.

Hunk mumbled something ineligible and Pidge’s laughter spiked. The tears began to spill and she doubled over, jostling the communicator in the process.

“Tell me!!” Lance yelled, dragging out the vocals.

“They puked on inside their purse,” Hunk mumbled, arms crossed and pouting. That was it. Lance lost it. He doubled over with laughter joining Pidge in her current state. It all played out in his mind, the way Hunk must have looked, his eyes wide and completely unable to do anything.

“What did you do?” Lance forced out between his laughter.

“I panicked.” Hunk lifted his hands as though that was supposed to be a warning.

“What did you do?”

“I offered them dessert.” Lance snorted again. “They did not like the dessert.” And Lance lost it all over again.

But then there were other kinds of days, bad days. Days on which his entire body was crafted out of lead, days were his world was unable to snap back into focus, where everything in front of his eyes remained blurry and unclear. He opened his eyes in the mornings and he still didn’t know how or what caused it, but he just knew. Knew in the way his first breath came, how the air felt inside his lungs, knew in the way his bones sat, that this day wouldn’t be a good one.

Those days undid all of his progress.

It took begging and pleading and finally bargaining just to get himself out of bed. Eating and drinking where a whole different chapter of an entirely different book. He moved sluggishly slow, as though he were trying to take a swim through honey. His flowers and plants, now in full bloom in the brightest of colours, that usually filled his heart with joy, left him numb. His world once lively and colourful had now faded like an old photograph no one had bothered to look at. Deprived of love. Bled dry.

But even those days passed.

Lance learned self-forgiveness from the only person that could teach him: Himself. He learned to be gentler––not gentle––but gentler with himself. He was a work in progress, learning, growing, and anything worth starting was worth sticking with until the end. Lance learned to reconstruct himself after days of falling apart. He learned all of this alone. In a house, far away from home, inside four walls that weren’t quite his yet but had the potential to be.

Lance had just finished days of self-reconstruction, days of trying to find sunlight when all his eyes wanted to see was rain, when Keith called him. This time, he was the one in pieces.

“I’m sorry,” was the first thing he said when Lance picked up his call, “I shouldn’t have called, but I don’t know who else to talk to,” was the next thing.

Lance didn’t listen to him, instead, he took the time to study him. Eyes swollen by tears shed and those not fully made yet, skin splotchy, fatigue and exhaustion––not the kind sleep could fix, but deeper––eating away at him. “What’s going on?”

“I- I…” Keith broke off and buried his shaking hands in his hair. He looked a hair’s breadth away from falling apart.

“Keith, hey. Come on look at me. You know the drill, we’ve done this before,” Lance lowered his voice and kept it calm despite his own inner turmoil, “In. One, two, three, four. Hold. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Out. One, two three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Again.”

Keith followed his instructions and for a moment it felt like they were back in the Castle of Lions again, piecing each other back together after a fight or a bad night had threatened to break them to pieces.

“Keep going. You’re doing great. You’re safe. Nothing can harm you now.” Lance kept his stream of encouragement, sweet nothings, that were too sweet to be called nothings, going until he saw Keith’s shoulders uncoil and watched him regain his composure, piece by piece.

“I forgot how good you are at this kind of thing,” Keith said finally, calm again but echoes of panic still lingering.

“It’s nothing really.” Lance brushed him off. Keith looked like he was about to argue but decide against it.

“Thank you. For this. For being here.” Keith looked at him with sincere eyes. Eyes, decades older than when Lance had first been captivated by them back at the Garrison.

“Nothing worth thanking me for. You’ve done the same for me.”

“But I allowed you to thank me.” A small smile played on Keith’s lips and Lance felt something uncoil inside his chest.

“Very well then,” Lance straightened and made a show clearing his throat, “I hear your gratitude and you are very welcome.”

“You’re an ass.” Keith stuck out his tongue at him, like the child he was but Lance caught his deflection and didn’t engage with it.

“So, why did you call?” he asked slowly. The first step onto a frozen surface, when the question of whether or not it would support his weight had yet to be answered.

Keith’s grin bled away and made room for exhaustion to reclaim its place.

“There was a mission,” Keith began, choosing his words carefully. Lance sat down on his couch and leaned back. He wouldn’t rush Keith. “Kolivan was actually supposed to take it but something came up. Something urgent or whatever. I don’t even know. But he transferred command to me.”

Keith took a deep breath and for a moment Lance thought he would lose his composure again but Keith held onto it firmly and continued. “It was just standard procedure: Some rogue pirates were terrorising a cluster of planets and we were to go in, neutralise their base and leave again unseen. Easy.”

He sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than Lance. Repeating easy, easy, easy all over again until he forgot that it was a lie.

“We were halfway through the mission. We already had our intel, wiped clean all their networks and just had to get out. But when I opened my mouth to give the order––” his voice broke, no, it shattered. It took a few shaky breaths before he had assembled enough of it back together to continue speaking, “I felt like I was in the Black Lion again, like someone had given me shoes, my feet weren’t big enough to fill. I choked completely, my voice failed me and I had a full-blown crisis. Behind enemy lines,” he quieted in terror, as though he was only then realising what was happened, “I could’ve gotten us all killed,” he whispered, eyes wide and afraid.

“Keith, look at me,” Lance waited until Keith met his eyes to continue speaking, “You froze. It was a high-stress situation… We just came out of a war, for fuck’s sake!” Lance tried and failed to contain his agitation, “Things like these happen. They happened to all of us, to me, the rest of team Voltron, heck, probably Kolivan too. What matters most is that you got them out, right? That you caught yourself and led them out regardless. Despite fear, despite panic, you brought your team back to safety.”

Keith merely nodded, his lips pinched tightly into a line.

“Then don’t continue to punish yourself. Please. What you’re doing is remarkable. No, truly,” Lance insisted when Keith made moves to protest, “To come out of a war and still keep helping people like you do… You’re extraordinary, Keith.” He couldn’t contain the sheer admiration and sheer reverence of his voice.

“But you’re still human, still fuck up sometimes, and that’s okay.” Lance held his gaze, as though he were cradling a precious object, blown out of glass and crafted with love and, to his surprise, the last bit of tension in Keith’s features uncoiled. He still looked tired and exhausted but it was better, lighter , now.

“Thank you, Lance, truly thank you,” Keith looked like there was something else he wanted to say like there were words he’d just swallowed down, that had threatened to creep past his lips.

“Now, it’s getting really late here and I feel like I’m about to keel over and never get up again,” Exhaustion turned his voice in honey-like and slow, “Has been a pleasure talking to you.”

“Pleasure’s on my side, trust me. Talk to you soon?” Lance asked and he didn’t know whether that had been too much or just the right amount of hopefulness.

“You got it.” A crooked grin, one side dragged down by sleepiness, and then he was gone.

When Lance went to sleep that night, he dreamt again. This time, of a Keith, scared and alone, until he, Lance, appeared to comfort him.

Another month came and went until he gathered the energy to call up his family. Energy, not courage even though the term would have fit better but lying to himself was not a thing he was above doing, not yet.

The month had been filled with more good things than bad ones so as per rule he had to do one thing he hadn’t done in over a month. But this was… something else.

Lance hadn’t called his family in over two months, hadn’t seen them ever since he left Earth eight months ago.

It had been necessary, he didn’t doubt that. Didn’t mean that his heart didn’t ache and burn whenever he thought about what he left behind.

He remembered the way his mother seemed to touch him lighter than before, after her teasing question of whether they were to see Allura again, was met with head shaking and almost-tears. Finally back on earth, finally back where he belonged… and yet, it didn’t work. He had outgrown his old life on earth, like a coat he had put aside for a while too long. No matter how he stretched it and tore at the fabric, it refused to fit.

His days all were the same back then. He rose. He ate. He thought. He slept again. Day in. Day out.

Grieving in its purest form.

He couldn’t find happiness there. So when Coran offered him to live on Altea and to help honour Voltron’s legacy—it hadn’t even been a question worth hesitating on. But saying goodbye hurt regardless. There was no universe, this one or otherwise, where saying goodbye wouldn’t have hurt as much as it did.

Come back to us soon, mijo, his mother smiling through tears, a ray of sunshine through a sky otherwise grim and grey.

Now he held the communicator in his hands and hesitated. He traced its edges with his fingertips, number already dialled, finger hovering over the call button. He took a deep breath and gathered all of his broken pieces, those he had not yet managed to assemble. One thing you haven’t done in over a month, that is the rule, McClain.

He pressed call. It rang. It rang. And then it didn’t.

“ Uncle Lance?!” A screen that was half Nadia and half Sylvio, a blue eye, almost as dark as his own and a brown one, much darker than his own, shining back at him. A smile, sparked by their wonder and their just pure liveliness spread on his lips.

“Yeah, it’s me. Did you miss me?” Lance joked, his smile wider and widening, the first miracle of many.

“Yes!!” Sylvio yelled out, “We had a dance recital last week and you weren’t there and people kept asking–” Lance interrupted him before his heart could collapse inside his chest.

“I’m very sorry,” Funny how, missing someone could get better before it got worse again, “I’ll try to be there for the next one.”

“Do you promise?” Nadia asked, her little brows furrowed, freckle-specked nose scrunched up in her softened version of stern.

Lance hesitated. One thing you haven’t done in a month.

“Yeah, of course. Name a time and a date I’ll be there.”

“Yes! You’re the best!” A smile even wider than his own shone back at him. Two of them.

Then Nadia turned. “Veronica! Uncle Lance promised that he would come to our next dance recital.” Lance flinched at the loud crash that came out of the kitchen behind them. Veronica announced herself with elephant-like stomps echoing on their wooden floor, she wrestled the communicator from their hands and shushed them when they rose to give their cries of outrage. For a moment there was chaos and then there was only Veronica.

Lance only saw her shoulder, then he heard the click of a door and they were alone. “You call now?”

“Am I calling at the wrong time?”

“Is there even a right one?” And boom, Lance was the middle child fuck up again. Loved, yes, but no doubt a disappointment. His skin crawled the sentiment.

Lance sighed. “I suppose not.” Veronica hummed in agreement, the lines of her face unmoving, hard, unforgiving. It took Lance everything not to flinch. He knew that she hadn’t been supportive of his decision to go, of him abandoning the family so soon after coming back, but this… this somehow felt worse, when there was a screen between them.

“Why are you calling?” she asked as though she were accusing him of a crime.

“I missed you,” Lance answered, his chest now burning even harder than before. The feeling gained power every time he affirmed it.

“Then come home.”

“It isn’t that easy,” Lance almost pleaded.

“It is, though. You are making it complicated. You miss us, you come home, where you belong. Period. End of the story.” Lance used to admire her for this, being able to map out a clear path, commanding an entire room by simply stepping into it. Now, it felt stifling.

“I don’t want to go back to Earth.” There he said it and now that he started, there was no way he could stop. “I can’t be happy down there.” Her eyes lingered on the markings on his cheeks and Lance felt her eyes like a physical touch.

“We can make you happy. We’re your family Lance, come home,” now she was pleading instead of commanding and Lance felt tears prick at the back of his eyes. His heart stretched, two parties tearing at it, threatened to rip.

Lance shook his head. “I can’t. I– I love you but I can’t .”

Veronica deflated, a fire reduced to embers. She sighed. “Fine, then.”

“ Veronica.”

“What?”

“Don’t be like this,” Lance pleaded.

“How can I not?!” She cried, eyes red from the cheeks spilling down her cheeks, “You’re far away among the stars and refusing to come home !” She crossed her arms in front of her chest as her voice bled into a shout.

Lance flinched. Guilt rose in his chest. “I’m not saying this is forever. Just… I need this. Please.” Her arms remained coiled tight, like her own version of makeshift armour, “ Please.”

Her arms uncoiled. “Mamá has just come home. I’m sure she wants to talk to you.” She sounded tired and defeated. Lance wanted to comfort her, to make her world better somehow, but there was nothing for him to do, so he just nodded and bade her goodbye.

There was rustling, there were steps and then there was his Mamá.

“Mijo.” She smiled, surprised and wide and free of pain. Lance broke down crying. “My boy, don’t cry.” She whispered, her hoarse voice a balm on his aching soul.

“I missed you, Mamá,” he whispered, muffled by the tears, “I missed you so, so much.” He wiped the tears off his face and forced himself to take a deep breath.

“How are you? Are you feeling better now?” She asked carefully, her eyes wide with worry. She had aged visibly since he’d left worry taking its toll on her. His heart twinged at the thought that he was the thing that brought her so much misery.

“I’m feeling better, yes. I… I needed this, to get away from everything,” he flinched at how harsh that sounded. He expected her to answer something but instead, she just looked at him, as though she couldn’t believe what she saw in front of her eyes. That what she saw in front of her eyes was still her son.

But Lance couldn’t blame her, he didn’t recognise himself these days. It must even be worse for her. He had left as a starry-eyed aspiring pilot and came back as a defender of the universe, someone that had lived among the stars for long enough that gravity didn’t work for him anymore.

“I heard that you’ll visit., She said and Lance didn’t know whether it sounded accusatory or not, whether his mind was playing tricks on him or not. He nodded anyway.

Silence spread between them, heavy with the words unsaid and lingering. Lance forced himself to speak. “I promise I’ll call more often.”

His mother nodded, the lines around her reddened eyes– his eyes–deeper than before.

“I love you,” she whispered, her voice the deepest shade of blue.

“I love you too.” And then it was over. His living room lay silent once more.

That night lance had to walk five rounds across the house, fingers ghosting over all of his plants, clipping dry leaves, watering them, recalling their names. An illusion of being able to care for something. A bandaid for a wound too deep to heal on its own.

His ups and downs came and went. The fact that Keith caught him on an up-day was entirely a coincidence.

“Do you even have the mental state to deal with me right now? I don’t want to impose on you if you have… your own problems.” Keith looked down at the floor and Lance watched his shoulders tremble.

For you? Always.

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about me,” Lance waved off Keith’s concerns like he was warding off a pesky fly, “What happened to you?”

Keith raised his head and looked at him, his eyes reddened enough to rival the mark on his cheek. He struggled to get his words out. “It was nothing really.”

“Doesn’t seem like nothing to me.”

“No, no really!” Keith insisted, then he deflated, “It’s like it has been building over time and today, even though it was completely normal, tipped the scale. I can’t take this anymore.” Lance saw the same despair reflected back at him, he had seen in the mirror back when he still used them, back when he had still been able to bear what they reflected back at him.

“Where are you right now?” he asked, the idea already forming in the back of his head.

“Adrarian Sector, 4th star cluster. Why?” He shot Lance a puzzled look but Lance was caught up calculating. The Adrarian sector was eight hours away, on good days that number came down to six.

“Would you like staying with me for a while? To take a break?” Lance balled his hands into fists to squash the trembling building inside them. He shouldn’t be this nervous about asking. They have lived together before, have shared close quarters, have slept wall to wall. This wouldn’t be any different.

“What? Like a vacation?” He hadn’t immediately said no. He looked sceptical, yes, brows furrowed, head angled in thought, but he was considering it. Hope sparked inside Lance’s chest.

“It could be,” He answered hastily, his breath short, his heart pounding.

“Lance, you don’t have to do this,” Keith averted his eyes and was already closing up, “By tomorrow I’ll be fine again just…” He pushed back his bangs and took a deep breath, as though he were stealing himself to lie. To both Lance and himself. “It’s just a lot for now.” Taking all of the vulnerability and things he had laid bare and locking them behind doors.

“But I want to. You need a break. Look at you!” He exclaimed, his voice carried by concern, “You’re not okay, Keith. I know you want to be and I know you want me to think that you are. But you’re not okay!” Keith still didn’t look at him. Now Lance went onto pleading. “Let me help you, please. ”

“Alright, fine. When should I be there?”

Keith arrived three days later, wrapping things up with Kolivan, Krolia and the rest of the Blade members had taken longer than expected. Lance had used the residue energy of his last string of good days to tidy up and prep everything before Keith arrived. He had vacuumed and dusted and mopped and then did all of it again. (Yeah, it had been a lot of energy.)

But now he was calm. No, that wasn’t the right term, the energy had just subsided, simmered down to merely pulsing beneath his skin instead of spilling over the edges. It gave him the illusion of serenity but without actually giving him room to relax.

That slight sense of uncentredness, being slightly off-kilter remained even after Keith settled in. His voice did weird things when he addressed Keith, missing the pitch he was aiming for or sounding small and unsure where he was supposed to be confident. But that eventually passed.

The awkwardness, lingering between them, hadn’t left voluntarily though. It had been a guest unwilling to recognise that it had overstayed its welcome. But Lance tackled it head-on, there was no other way. Conversations, forced at first but in the end not so much, were had, again and again until they stopped sounding awkward and Lance and Keith, both, learned how to share a space again.

“So, what’s up with all of your plants? Hunk told me you killed a cactus back at the Garrison” Keith said, sitting sideways in Lance’s leather armchair, feet dangling off the armrest, a cup of tea cradled in both of his hands. He was wearing one of Lance’s old shirts and a pair of soft worn-in sweatpants. His shoulders were rid of tension and his entire figure painted a picture of calm and restfulness.

“I needed a hobby,” Lance added a shrug to make his deflection complete, to downplay his desperate attempts of giving himself something to take care of.

Keith shot him a look whose meaning evaded Lance even as actively he tried to grasp it. “They mean a lot to you.”

“Yeah.”

Keith sat his cup down to the coffee table next to him and shot Lance the soft hints of a smile. “Tell me about them?” He suggested, his voice soft and warmer than it had been since he’d arrived.

Lance gave him a warm smile in return. “Sure.” He got up and walked over to the pots perched on his windowsill, they blocked the window so he couldn’t open it in full. Something that had taken him two smashed pots to fully learn and internalise. Keith followed him suit and hunched down next to him until they were both shoulder to shoulder.

“So this,” he pointed at a red flower in full bloom, “is a Planta Feurie , quite literally a fire plant, they bloom during the summer and can be used to kindle a huge, bursting flame.”

Keith studied it, his face open with interest, soft expression resting where it had been before. “I like this one,” He said simply, gently tracing its petals with his finger.

“That doesn’t surprise, Guardian Spirit of Fire,” Lance teased.

Keith frowned. “ You’re the Red Paladin, well… uh, were, anyway.”

“I’ve never been able to let Blue go completely and something tells me it was similar for you and Red.” Lance looked out the window as he remembered the longing that had lingered around his mind whenever he was piloting Red. She didn’t openly oppose him or reject him but Lance could feel her missing Keith, missing the connection they had had before.

“I guess you’re right,” Keith said finally, eyes set to the floor, “Black never felt quite right like a bar I was too short to reach.”

“Red never stopped missing you either,” Lance said but he couldn’t quite decide whether it was meant to be comforting or not. It wouldn’t have served the purpose of offering comfort anyway, he decided when Keith remained silent, his mind a thousand miles away.

“This is the Magnoliore Ibio,” he pointed at the next plant, palm-like leaves as dark as the night sky, “There’s this village north of the capital where–” Lance looked over to Keith, where his eyes were still cast over and his mind still miles or maybe even galaxies away and he faltered, “I’m boring you, aren’t I?”

“No! Not at all,” Keith shook abruptly shook his head and his vision cleared, “I’m sorry, I just got distracted.” He looked at the plant Lance was talking about, “ Magnolia ibio, you said, right?”

“ Magnoliore ,” Lance softly corrected but picked up his explanation again when Keith shot him an encouraging smile, “So, as I was saying, this village wears the leaves as jewellery and it’s the most amazing thing you will ever see.” There was no need to whisper but it seemed right. Here they were huddled over the plants that Lance treated better than some treated their own children and Keith wanted to know more about them.

This was another role Lance didn’t know how to fill. This time, not because he had grown out of it, or had set it aside for too long. No, this role, the role of the person you turned to when you sought knowledge, was completely new.

Lance fumbled his way through explanations and sometimes had to restart the same sentence time and time again until it came out the way he wanted it to. But through it all Keith remained patient and calm in a way Lance didn’t know he was capable of. No line of his features, none of his gestures and body language suggested even a hint of boredom or disinterest. His eyes remained lit with interest and curiosity, his ears glued to Lance's voice as they made their way through the entire house.

Lance could’ve gotten drunk on that feeling.

Lance’s string of good days got too long as though the universe was trying to balance the scales, it threw in a bad one. Not for him though, for Keith.

He was torn out of sleep and wakefulness welcomed him screaming. It took Lance half a second to realise that it wasn’t him screaming but that the sound came from two rooms over.

Keith. He shot to his feet and bolted down the hallway. He almost ripped the door out of its hinges and one frantic pitter-patter of bare feet against hardwood flooring and three long, long steps latter and he was there. At Keith’s side.

Lance sat down at the edge of Keith’s bed and put on his shoulder. Keith’s face was drawn in and pulled into a grimace of pain. his entire body was tense and shaking as his screams died down into pitiful whimpers. Lance’s heart was torn in half.

He shook Keith awake and was met with panic.

Despite the only dim light that fell inside his bedroom through the gap in the doorframe, Keith’s eyes shone glassy and unseeing. He was panting and shaking and staring.

“Keith?” Lance whispered his voice almost painfully even, “It’s okay, It’s me Lance.” There was a moment of hesitation, the Keith seemed to register his words and calm down. At least a little bit. It was then, that Lance noticed the shine of tears on his cheeks

Lance wanted to reach out and comfort Keith, hug him until he would believe that everything would be okay again but for some reason, he hesitated.

“Nightmares?” A familiar exchange.

“Yes.” A painfully familiar answer.

“Want to talk about it?” Their roles were reversed but their lines stayed the same. Lance already knew what kind of answer he would get.

“No.”

He also knew how to react. “That’s okay. Do you want me to leave?”

“No,” Keith huffed out a breath and closed his hand around Lance’s wrist, “Just stay here for awhile.” And that’s what Lance did. He stayed and didn’t pry.

Eventually, Keith began speaking on his own. “It was like a highlight reel of failure. The Paladins, the Blade of Marmora, you… I failed you. You trusted me to lead and I failed you.” Keith sounded torn in half and then chopped up some more, like he’d gotten shared by the war and kept accidentally cutting himself with the edges he was trying to glue back together. “I can’t do this anymore. It feels like I have to but I can’t. ” His voice was a weak gush of air as his body curved in on itself as if trying to disappear.

When words failed him learned turned to physical comfort. Lance wove his fingers through Keith’s, slow enough to give him room for refusal. “You don’t have to bear this burden alone. Let me help you.” His voice was a rough murmur but the pleading in it was unmistakable. Keith tightened the grip he had on Lance’s hand and inched closer until he could lean against Lance.

“I want to,” Keith answered. “I really want to.” Lance closed his other hand over Keith’s–another touch where words abandoned him.

“I feel like I have forgotten how it is to rely on somebody, how to not do everything on my own, or well, try to anyway” Keith huffed out a self-deprecating laugh and Lance’s heart clenched at the masked pain behind it.

“But you can learn, don’t you?” Lance turned his head to meet Keith’s eye. He took a shaky breath, “We can learn together, can’t we?”

The moment stretched as the whole world held its breath alongside him. The light caught onto the purple of Keith’s eyes and diffracted in the most breathtaking way possible as Keith’s lips slowly spread into a small smile.

He whispered back, his voice nothing more than a shaky breath, an exhale squeezed into the shape of words. “We can try.”

They slept together that night. Lance hadn’t been comfortable leaving Keith alone in the dark after a night like this and Keith didn’t want to see him go, either.

They arrived separately in the land of sleep but left together in the morning to find themselves tangled up in each other. Lance wrapped around Keith, his head nestled in the crown of his hair and Keith with his face hidden against Lance’s neck. Entwined in a way none of them dared to hope for when awake but that was too precious to break now they got to have it.

Another string of good days happened and so Lance called his family again. This time only his mother was home. She asked him again whether he would come down to Earth to visit sometime.

This time she believed him when he answered yes.

Something in their dynamic shifted after that night. A barrier between them was torn down as the remains of awkwardness were banished from the space between them. Not that it would have there anyway. They were joined at the hip now, hardly more than two feet away from each other, as if they couldn’t stand the alternative.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Lance turned when he heard Keith enter the kitchen. A small smile spread on his lips when he watched Keith yawn and stretch. His eyes caught onto the exposed slip of his stomach and got as far as the edge of his boxer shorts when tracing his trail of dark hair before Lance got a hold of himself.

“You’ll have to pay more than that.” He cleared his throat to distract from his internal embarrassment but Keith didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he merely hummed in response, when he poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down across from Lance.

Silence spread between them, gradually like honey dripping down a spoon but this silence wasn’t like the one he had forced himself into a few months back. No, this one was different. This one was… comfortable.

Though, he still broke it eventually. “Keith?” Lance might have taken a moment to appreciate how his name rolled off his tongue, but no one needed to know that, “Have you seen anything of Altea? Aside from the castle I mean,” he added.

“Oh, you awake now?” Keith shot him an amused look and gestured at Lance’s half-empty coffee mug.

“I need my fill, we both know that.”

A smile played on Keith’s lips, lazy and slow, the perfect addition to his overarching theme of well-rested, lazy half bun, sweatpants hanging over his bare feet and all. “But no, I haven’t seen much of Altea. I pretty much left straight away. Couldn’t bear to stay in one place.”

Lance hummed as he gathered the courage to ask his next question. “Do you want to see it? It’s pretty shitty that I’ve pretty much confined you to living in the middle of nowhere with me.”

Keith caught his eye. “You’re incredible, don’t ever doubt that.”

Lance blushed. “I… uh thank you.” He tried and failed to not let his embarrassment show. “But still, you wanna see the capital? We could swing by the castle, say hello to Allura and Coran, and I could show you all of my favourite spots.”

The hints of a smile resting on the corners of Keith’s smile grew into a true smile. “Yeah, that would be nice.”

Bright sparks of happiness ignited in his chest, enthusiasm and excitement in their purest form and Lance couldn’t bring himself to pretend that he didn’t notice them.

His heart was still fluttering, even five hours later, as they approached the castle. He waved at the guards as they passed them, their faces vaguely familiar from the time when he still lived here. Back when the leaves didn’t hang on trees but instead, formed a red sea on the ground that crinkled every time one took a step.

“Lance! Keith!” Allura exclaimed when the two stepped into the royal entrance hall, “I didn’t know you were coming.”

She completely looked the part of a queen now. Her white curls were tamed by a golden hair circlet and her gown, clung to her skin as if it were aiming to replace it, before flaring out at the waist. The pale blue shade around her neck bled into the crisp white of a cloud too light to carry rainfall and made her skin seem even more luminous.

Lance smiled. “I’m sorry I didn’t announce our visit, it was a bit of a spontaneous decision.” For the first time in a while, his heart didn’t heavy with phantasies of romantic love and the pain of giving without receiving what it wished for in return. He was looking at a friend, one he loved dearly and one who loved him in return.

“It’s fine, it’s fine!” Allura got up from the throne, a tall white chair, carved to look like vines curling into one another, and crossed the room in big strides. She looked at them for a second, seemingly searching for words before abandoning her search and opting for a hug instead. Her arms spread wide and both Lance and Keith were encased in a cloud of white curls and clean scent. The moment stretched but Allura didn’t let go, didn’t even weaken her grip.

It wasn’t until after Lance heard at least three of his vertebrae pop, that she released them. Allura turned to Keith. “I didn’t know you were on Altea?” She angled her head.

“Lance invited me to stay with him, when…” Keith fell silent for a moment, even after all these years, his voice still caught onto vulnerability the same way a piece of fabric accidentally caught onto a hook, “I was in a bad spot and Lance helped me out of it.” He flashed Lance a grateful smile, though it was small and muted.

Lance focused on making his own one wider in return, on being a strength Keith could draw from, should he need it. “It was nothing really.” He saw Keith readying to disagree with him and quickly added,

“So how have you been, Allura? It’s been a while.” Not really his place to say, considering the fact that it had been a while because of him, but nothing else came to mind, so this is what he had to make do with.

“It’s been a while, indeed.” Allura sighed and Lance now noticed the exhaustion on her face. Her skin might have been healthy and glowing but there were bags underneath her eyes and a certain slowness to the way her gaze wandered across the room, like they had to drag boulders while doing so.

“I’ve been doing pretty much the same since you’ve left, dodging marriage proposals, trying to build diplomatic ties and other stuff that requires hideous amounts of paperwork.”

“Marriage proposals?” Keith frowned.

“Lots of them,” She shot him an exasperated look, “Apparently, marrying not only a princess but also a former Paladin of Voltron is considered to be the new trend when it comes to royal weddings.

“Allura, you have to admit, you are a catch!” Lance interjected.

“I will not be thrown around like a sack of potatoes on a market, thank you very much.” Allura scrunched up her nose in disgust as Lance and Keith snorted. Lance made attempts to explain the idiom but Keith interrupted him.

“You know what? Just keep that exact attitude.” Lance snorted but the door opening behind him cut him off.

“Allura, I looked into what you told me about yester- LANCE, MY BOY!” Coran gasped and shot forward. He didn’t make it very far before Lance, equally enthusiastic and also sprinting, barrelled into him and encased him in his arms. “Why didn’t you say you were coming? I would’ve prepared. Also, Keith, don’t just stand there! I have two arms!” Coran lifted his left arm and wrapped it around Keith when he stepped into the hug. Coran held them both as tight as Allura did and Keith and Lance melted despite the pressure.

Eventually, they separated. “Coran, you mentioned something about research?” Lance asked curiously, last time he had talked to Coran, he had told Lance that research wasn’t currently fulfilling him and that he would pursue other things. Research, now slow and completely on his own terms instead of being rushed and steered by the insistence of an impending war, didn’t work for him. That realisation had shocked Lance and devastated Coran. Even Coran, who seemed to be always striving forward, drawing energy from a seemingly never-ending well, had been left off balance. As if the war had chopped him up and pieced him back together the wrong way.

“Yes, I looked into something. Though, maybe it's better if we discuss the matter in private? It relates to your, uhm…” He trailed off and vaguely gestured at his cheeks.

Lance’s stomach dropped but he forced his voice even. “No need for that. I don’t have anything to hide from him.” Lance felt Keith’s confused eyes bore into the side of his cheeks, willing him to answer the silent questions resting on his tongue.

“Very well then,” Coran cleared his throat, “I may have found a way to permanently remove your markings.”

There wasn’t a single thought in Lance’s head. Not one that made sense anyway. It was as he was a clock ground to a halt a moment caught frozen in time while the world around continued to spin.

“What?” A broken exhale. But when he inhaled he didn’t exhale again. As if it were stopped by his fear of Coran breaking out in laughter, of him yelling sike and this just being the universe cruel way of tormenting him, the breath remained chained to his lungs.

Coran nodded and Lance exhaled.

The world around him narrowed down as his mind tried to cram the meaning of what he’d just heard into his head. It was too much. A tide rising too much too quickly. He couldn’t– It couldn’t … Like a row of dominoes, falling, falling, falling. His thoughts lost their structure, abandoned all coherence.

Keith, as if he felt his turmoil, grabbed Lance’s hand. Palm against palm, fingers gripping tight. Lance’s mind went silent. The storm receded. Like a boat anchored amongst the waves of a tumultuous sea, Lance found calm even though his heart wanted to riot.

No, Keith had brought him calm when he himself had been too lost to find it.

“I– I… Yes. God, yes.” Lance grabbed Keith’s hand tight but fixed Coran with his eyes.

Coran answered with concern. “Lance are you sure? There could be complications or maybe it doesn’t even work.”

“Yes,” Allura interjected, “We can’t guarantee it’ll work.”

“I don’t care,” Lance straightened his spine and raised his chin, “I’ll try, I have to.”

Coran sighed. “Alright then, I’ll look into it further and get back to you.” He each hugged Keith and Lance again. “It was good to see you again. Do come by more often, would you?”

Lance smiled. “You got it.”

Coran nodded at all of them again before he turned and left.

Now Keith spoke up, “How about we talk about this some other time?” De-escalating, that trait was new and it was working. Lance and Allura sighed in unison and their shoulders uncoiled.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Lance admitted before turning towards Allura, “It was a pleasure to see you again.” He smiled, the motion sincere despite his prior agitation.

“The pleasure was as always mine.” Allura shot both him and Keith a smile and hugged them each before she also left the throne room.

As silence settled around them, Lance re-established his grip on Keith’s hand. “Sorry, you had to witness that. Bit of a touchy subject,” Keith looked like he wanted to chew him out for apologising, how he always did, but Lance wouldn’t let him, “Let’s keep walking, there are some other parts of the castle I wanna show you.”

Lance led Keith through a plethora of hallways, their walls now familiar. Lance knew all the paintings, remembered where he would have pause to explain more to the visitors or tell them about some old Altean war hero. He didn’t Keith that kind of tour. No, Keith deserved more than that. He spun him a narrative filled with personal stories, twisted the bleaker ones until they sparked joy instead of sadness, despite their core still remaining true.

“Here was where I almost tripped into the Formonian Heir, to be fair, they have five tails and can’t control all of them!”

“I puked into that vase once but I swear it was an accident!!”

“Here’s where I would bring the children when they couldn’t focus on what I was telling them anymore.”

Bit by bit he filled the castle with his story, told Keith little bits of lore he had squeezed out of diplomats from other planets. Those that even they hadn’t seen before. And while he did that, Keith’s grip on his hand didn’t once falter, the gleam in his eyes didn’t once lessen.

Lance was used to hearing himself talk, used to watch people listen to him too, but Keith… Keith listened with rapt attention, curiosity and interest practically oozing out of him.

Lance felt seen and heard and listened to. It was dizzying.

They stepped out into what was Lance’s actual destination. He turned and looked at Keith, filled with so much expectation that it bled into his voice and spilt out of the corners of his mouth. “So, what do you think?”

Lance’ smile widened when he saw that Keith was stunned speechless

“It’s… It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, the Garden of the Altean Crown really is something else.” Lance tugged at his hand to lead him more inwards.

Keith traced a pair of purple petals when he walked past them and Lance smiled at the peaceful picture they formed. “Did you come here often? When you still lived in the castle, I mean.” Keith didn’t avert his eyes from the petal he had caught between his fingers.

Bees buzzed around them, tumbling from one blossom to the next. The scent of spring, rich with pollen and ripened with the sweet scent of a world in bloom wafted around them. It was peaceful. Truly peaceful in a way Lance had feared he would never get to have again.

“Almost every day,” he answered, and raised his head to meet Keith’s eye, “I’ve always had a weakness for pretty things, flowers were no exception to the rule.”

They continued walking around, admiring the plants whenever they found one that piqued their interest, before settling down into a shady spot of grass under a tree. It was almost too scenic, the grass lush and green beneath them, mysterious flowers and plants, growing towards the sun and, sometimes, leaning towards them as if they were trying to listen in on their conversation.

It wasn’t the scenery fit to carry Keith’s next question, even less fit to carry lance’s answer. “What was all that about?” Keith vaguely gestured at his cheeks and furrowed his brows in concern. Lance’s hand twitched with the desire to reach out and soothe the lines on his forehead. Keith shouldn’t have to worry.

“I want to get them removed. Coran promised me he’d look into it and now he apparently found something that might help.” Lance looked down at their joined hands, teeth buried in his lower lip. Each one of his words was like pulling teeth, each syllable a new spar of pain and they were still only the tip of the iceberg.

Keith but wouldn’t have that, he kept nudging Lance with their joined hands until he looked at him again. What Lance found… wasn’t exactly pity. No, it was pain. Brows furrowed, lips pinched, eyes darkened. “Don’t… Don’t speak like that.”

Lance stilled at his tone. What before had been just an assumption, now manifested itself as reality, pain he had before thought of as imaginative, now turned real.

“Like what?” Lance didn’t know why he had whispered the words. If it was because the words were too heavy for him to raise them in volume or because their heads were now too close for anything but a whisper to fit between them.

“Like you’re disgusting, like you’re anything short of beautiful.” The air around them shifted, changed until it matched the heaviness they carried in their eyes. Lance’s mouth turned dry, words lodged themselves inside his throat, as his eyes tried to find the lie his mind was anxiously waiting for. His search turned up empty. He opened his mouth and closed it again, there was no thought his mind could form, no words for him to say.

Gripped by a boldness he didn’t have before or just craving to get closer, to touch, he leaned forward until his head came to rest on Keith’s shoulder. Keith inhaled sharply, as Lance buried his face at the side of his neck. Lance held his breath, throat tight as he waited for the inevitable rejection, the reprimand and punishment for crossing a line in the sand.

There was none of that. Instead, Keith leaned his brow against the back of his head and moved closer until their torsos were almost touching. Every time Keith inhaled, Lance breathed with him.

“I want to believe you,” Lance whispered, his words nothing more than a breath against Keith’s skin, “I really do.” He closed his eyes when he felt tears rise in them, held his breath when sobs threatened to break through.

Keith’s hand caressed the tightly coiled muscles of his back. “None of that,” murmured, his voice gentle and warm, “It’s okay.” Lance exhaled and allowed himself to melt, to lean on Keith without doubting his ability to support him.

And Keith didn’t disappoint.

Lance had already pieced himself back together by the time the sun sunk beneath the horizon. He looked up when Keith stood across from him, arms crossed behind his back, face caught between uncertainty and expectation. “Lance,” Keith began and Lance straightened in the armchair he was sitting in. This sounded serious. “I…” Keith trailed off as if in the last second the words had dashed back down his throat and left him with nothing to say.

“Yeah?” Lance prompted him gently, a reassuring smile resting on his lips.

“I… I want to try something.”

He reached out to grab Lance’s hand, slowly as if he expected him to pull away but Lance did no such thing. Ever since they had returned from their trip to the capital earlier, whatever line in the sand between them might have existed had been erased now. Hands met skin, cheeks met shoulders and arms wrapped around whatever they could find. So Lance followed him without hesitation as Keith led into the bathroom.

Hesitation, however, did appear when Keith placed him in front of the sink, back turned towards the mirror. Lance tensed─he couldn’t help it─and Keith noticed.

“You don’t have to do this.” his voice didn’t lower, he wasn’t yet done, “but do you trust me?” Keith caught his eye and held onto it, his own wide and purple and sincere. Lance swallowed.

“Yes.” Because anything else would have been a lie.

Keith gripped the hem of his shirt and looked him with questioning eyes. “May I?” Lance nodded. Nudity had long since lost its meaning between them. He raised his arms as Keith took off his shirt and he reached out to straighten his hair when it got messed up in the process.

Keith grabbed his shoulders, his hands large and warm and Lance’s entire body tingled. “May I?” He asked again and received the same answer.

He turned Lance around and as if on cue Lance’s eyes fell shut. “Lance.” Keith’s voice was directly next to his ear, his voice soothing and slow. The fabric of his shirt brushed against Lance’s shoulder blades but his eyes remained shut.

“It’s okay, I’m right here. You don’t have to do this alone.” Lance found himself believing him before he could choose not to, found tension bleeding out of his shoulders, slowly and only partly, but leaving nonetheless.

Lance forced himself to breathe and as air left his chest, his eyes opened alongside it.

The sight was… disconcerting, familiar and yet, estranged. Lance met Keith’s gaze in the mirror and leaned back against him as the sight threatened to overwhelm him. Keith remained upright, carrying his weight when he couldn’t bear to do it himself.

“Good,” Keith whispered his voice as sweet as warm honey.

Lance, emboldened by Keith’s presence, directed his eyes at his face. Dark freckles that had grown darker as the sun had grown stronger, same upturned nose, a sharper jawline that he had now grown into, eyes a stark blue now that his skin had darkened and… Right there.

A pair of markings right beneath his eyes.

“Not bad as I thought it would be.” Lance exhaled shakily although both of them already knew that was a lie. Keith paid it no mind, instead, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to Lance’s bare shoulder. The touch was as light as a feather and heat blossomed beneath Lance’s skin like the bud of a flower touched by the sun for the first time. It was dizzying and left him aching for more.

Silence spread between them and Lance found himself desperate to fill it. “So what’s your plan behind this? Other than inflating my ego?” Lance huffed out a sarcastic laugh, as his false cheerfulness collapsed around him.

“You don’t look into mirrors.” Keith’s fingers began to slowly trace patterns onto the skin at his waist and for a moment, Lance was so distracted he couldn’t form a thought, couldn’t do anything but revel in the sensation that was Keith’s fingers on his bare skin.

“No, I don’t,” he finally answered, eyes still on Keith’s reflection in the mirror, “But you didn’t answer my question. What is your goal here?” Lance fixated a point between Keith’s eyebrows, a tiny mole he had never noticed before.

“You’re not looking,” Keith murmured into the skin of his shoulder and Lance shuddered as the vibrations wandered across his skin.

“And you’re evading my question.”

Keith inhaled, gathering himself, composing. “I want you to see yourself the same way I do,” His fingers at Lance’s waist twitched and for a horrible moment Lance thought he was going to withdraw them, “As something beautiful, something worth cherishing.”

Every atom of Lance stood frozen in its spot.

There were no words inside his mind that were his own. There was only Keith.

Something beautiful, something worth cherishing.

Lance let them echo through his mind, let them claim the space like sound claimed the silence of an empty room and caught Keith’s eyes through the mirror–once more, nothing but sincerity.

Lance laid his hand down on Keith’s hand and slowly wove his shaking fingers through his. Shakiness was met with strength, enough for the both of them.

“Do you really think so?” His voice was a hoarse whisper.

“Yes.” Keith’s other hand, the one that wasn’t Lance’s anchor right now, drifted up to his shoulders. “These are the shoulders have carried the weight of the universe and stood tall where others would have crumbled.”

He moved onto Lance’s arm, “These arms have carried the frail and the sick, have defeated monsters and still have love to give.”

“This chest harbours the biggest heart, the one that despite all hardships remained soft and open.”

“... eyes that see miles wide, sharpshooter’s eyes.”

“... freckles that I want to trace … lips I want to kiss, again and again.”

Keith kept going until the tears swimming in Lance’s eyes took their inevitable path down his cheeks and Lance turned to face him.

“Thank you.” Lance caught Keith’s face between his palms. “I… I─” he faltered, looking for words to say but not finding any. “Thank you,” he breathed out and leaned in.

There was nothing more than a millimetre of space between them when Lance stopped. Their breaths mingled as he whispered, “May I?”

Keith tightened the grip on his waist and then pulled Lance in to close the distance himself.

Their lips met and everything else fell into place. The world around them unravelled as the moment between them stretched. A pair of lips moving in sync, two lovers holding each other, kisses shared until breath grew short and lips and cheeks were stained red––there was nothing else in the world that mattered.

They fell into bed together that night, skin still tingling from the kisses they had shared and slept curled around each other. Not as two halves of a whole but as two entities completing each other. Both finished and whole in their own right but finally at peace now that they were together.

Lance went on to get his markings removed three weeks after. Keith’s face was the last thing he remembered seeing and the first thing to greet him when he woke up.

They spend the next few months together in domestic bliss. There was no other way to call it. They traded kisses as much as they traded gazes, their hands got familiar with the shape of the other, to the point where they could draw in it darkness and the brink of madness. They constructed a life together, still fragile in some aspects but a foundation sturdy enough to last the years to come.

Years to come─the one thing Lance had left to do.

His pocket felt unnaturally heavy with the ring in it, his throat dry with the question resting in it. Nowadays it felt like it would be the first thing to jump out whenever he looked at Keith.

“Are you going to tell me where we going?” Keith tightened his grip on Lance’s hand as he stepped over a thick branch that had fallen onto the forest trail.

Marry me, was what first came to mind. “No, I’m still not going to tell you. What happened to ‘ Patience yields focus’ ?” was what came out of his mouth instead.

“Don’t have anything to focus on, don’t I?”

“Well, this for one,” Lance let go of the branch he had been holding to make sure it didn’t smack Keith in the face when he followed him off the trail and deeper into the forest. Keith caught it seamlessly and bent it away from his face, “And two: I’m your boyfriend, you should always be focusing on the thing that brings you the most joy in life.”

“You got a point there.” Heat exploded across Lance’s skin, even though he himself had brought this onto him.

“You’re not supposed to agree with me.”

“I, also, can’t deny the truth.” Keith shot him a smug grin when he spotted the redness on Lance’s cheeks.

Marry me.

“Alright, zip it with the flirting.” Lance sharply turned his head in a show of pouting. That, though, didn’t last long. Keith closed the already short distance between them, wrapped his arms around his waist and rested his chin on Lance’s shoulders.

“Come on, Sweetheart, you don’t mean that.” Keith drawled and Lance, weak as he was, melted like butter left out on the sun. He huffed out an annoyed breath but still turned his head to press a kiss against Keith’s temple. Instead of withdrawing though, he lingered on and whispered, “We’re here, love.” Before stepping out of the hug and leading Keith down a small path that lay hidden behind small bushes.

At the end of the path lay a small lake, rimmed by glowing water lilies and the Altean equivalent of fireflies, Solaries. Now that the sun had bid its last goodbye and the stars shone far and bright above them, the ground beneath their feet lit up to match the sky. Numerous flowers, with petals big and small, began to glow a soft purple.

It was breathtaking.

Keith froze and Lance turned to face him. Then it was Lance’s turn to still. Keith stunned him speechless. The soft purple glow bounced off his eyes and gave them an otherworldly sheen, all of his edges normally sharp and strong, got softened, re-drawn by purple lighting and Lance found himself re-learning them, one by one.

Their eyes met, blue against purple and the moment between them stretched. It was as if the universe itself had inhaled alongside them and now held its breath. Lance watched Keith search for words as he closed his gaping mouth. The search continued until─

“Marry me?”

He was struck down by lightning, birthed a star inside his chest, fell into pieces and then re-assembled himself on the spot. Lance stared at Keith, wide-eyed and gasping and was met with the same. All of this preparation for asking, not for being asked.

“Oh, God. Oh no, this is all wrong.” Keith stared at him in horror as Lance’s world cracked open.

“What?” His voice was nothing but a gush of air coloured in hurt as he too a step back, letting go of Keith’s hand.

But Keith darted right after him and grabbed his hand again. “No, no, no. This wasn’t supposed to be like this. I would have had a ring and a speech and would have prepared─” Keith looked like his chest was caving in.

“You mean a ring like this?” Lance reached in his back pocket and snapped open the box to reveal an engagement ring.

Keith stared at the ring, a simple silver band adorned with a twin set of stones, one red and one blue, as if he didn’t understand what he was looking at. Then tears rose in his eyes.

“You don’t mean?” His tear-filled eyes flicked up to meet Lance’s and he was just so damn hopeful ─Lance wanted to kiss him on the spot.

“Yes, I do.” Lance smiled at Keith. The corners of his mouth pulled up as if directed by the strings of fate, as he finally got to ask the question that had been sitting on his chest for weeks.

“Keith, will you marry me?”

He didn’t get a simple yes. Keith barrelled into him, one hand on the box in his hand the other one at his cheek, certain he would be caught. And he was, with both hands and lips. Among what had to have been dozens of kisses and air growing short there was, “Yes, yes, yes.”

Then: “Will you marry me?” Keith’s smile was a curve drawn in giddiness and a love too great to carry alone.

“Yes!”

And another dozens of kisses,

and some more,

and some more.

Three weeks later Keith came home from the capital and slipped a ring on Lance’s finger. It was a simple band of silver, adorned with a twin set of stones.

One red and one blue.