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“So…” Keith started, taking a seat on the edge of Lance’s bed and leaning back on his hands. “Your family. They seem… nice.”
Rolling his eyes, Lance pushed his bedroom door shut behind him with his hip, dumping his bags down heavily next to Keith’s.
“They’re a pain in my ass,” he corrected, coming over and flopping down on the other side of the bed, behind where Keith was sitting. Shifting his body to face him, Keith looked down at his boyfriend as he got comfortable, crossing one ankle over the other and putting a hand behind his head on the pillow. “But you know. You get used to them,” Lance continued, grinning up at Keith in a way that really shouldn’t be so endearing. “You’ll fit right in here, I can tell.”
Keith resisted an involuntary frown, stomach lurching unpleasantly at Lance’s words.
“… You think so?” he asked, trying not to let his skepticism show. Because, really, how could Lance sound so confident and sure of himself while making a statement like that? From the environment Keith had been thrown into so far, he couldn’t help but feel like Lance was only setting himself up for disappointment – and the guilt of that gnawed at a pit in Keith’s gut.
Dropping his gaze to the floor, he rubbed his thumb against his knuckle subconsciously. When Keith had agreed to stay over at Lance’s place for the summer, he hadn’t wanted to overthink it, but he’d barely been here five minutes and his fight or flight instincts were already setting off alarm bells in his head, insisting that this had been a bad idea. If Lance hadn’t been the one to drive them here, Keith wouldn’t even be in the house right now. He’d have chickened out the moment he pulled up outside, turned around and driven right back across the state.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like Lance’s family – in fact, they seemed wonderful so far. His parents had been kind and welcoming, if a little enthusiastic, and his siblings seemed pretty funny and chill, even though they had been a little nosy. His abuela didn’t speak much English, but she had a kind smile, and his niblings… well, they were loud, Keith supposed? And they had a lot of energy. Which Keith guessed was good, for children. Not that he would know, though, never having been part of a family big enough to have to deal with children so much younger than him.
And see, that was just it. This was the whole problem. Keith had no idea how to deal with a family like Lance’s. Up to now, he’d never really cared much for first impressions or the fact that he wasn’t very good at them, but this was different. This was Lance, who cared about his family more than life itself, and if they ended up hating Keith... God. He didn’t know what he’d do with himself. That was why this was so important, and why his throat was already clogging up with dread.
It was common knowledge that Keith didn’t exactly appear to be the friendliest of people. He never went out of his way to expand his social circle, nor did the idea sound particularly appealing to him. He was no good with names, or faces, or people, really. Keith was the type of guy who usually avoided this sort of thing like the plague. He wasn’t even sure how he’d managed to get a boyfriend as friendly and outgoing as Lance, and now he had to try and get along with his whole family? It was just – it was all just –
“Hey, man,” Lance’s voice cut through Keith’s thoughts, cool and light. Almost flinching, Keith blinked, becoming aware of his boyfriend reaching out and covering his hand with his own, beginning to intertwine their fingers and stilling the nervous movement Keith hadn’t even been aware he was still doing. “Look at me.”
Swallowing, hesitant, Keith glanced up at Lance, letting his hair fall over his face in an effort to shield his expression.
Of course, Lance was having none of that. Exhaling slightly in amusement, he reached out with his free hand and pushed back Keith’s bangs to reveal his eyes, smiling softly, and Keith’s skin tingled where Lance’s fingers traced his face. Lance’s eyes were warm and beautiful as ever, shining with fondness and love. It was that expression that never failed to make Keith’s breath catch in his throat and warmth flush his cheeks.
“I know it’s a lot, but you’ll be fine, mullet,” Lance said, cupping Keith’s face gently and brushing his thumb over his cheekbone. Keith’s lips twitched ever so slightly at the familiar childish nickname, shamelessly leaning into his boyfriend’s touch. “My family just want us to be happy. They’ll like you as long as I like you, there’s no pressure here. You’re not the first skittish stray the Álvarez-McClain family has taken in, I can promise you that. And I’m right here with you, so don’t go shutting me out, yeah?”
Grounding himself in his boyfriend’s touch and steady gaze, Keith took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Yeah,” he replied quietly. “I’ll– I’ll try.”
Squeezing Keith’s hand reassuringly, Lance’s smile turned wry. “And besides,” he added with a grin, “Considering Nadia once tried to adopt a feral raccoon she found in our trash can that probably had rabies, you aren’t the worst thing I could have brought home.”
At that, Keith let out a snort of easy laughter, the tension seeping from his shoulders to be replaced with the gentle buzz of affection, and Keith marveled at the way that Lance could just do that. Shaking his head fondly, he leaned forward and propped himself up on one elbow above his boyfriend, gazing down at him.
Sweeping his eyes over the contours of Lance’s face, he took in the slightly upturned slope of his nose, the sharp curve of his jawline, the light freckles littered over his cheeks and the effortless charm in his easy smile. Keith wondered briefly what in the world he did to deserve someone so perfect, before leaning in to press a soft kiss to Lance’s lips, chaste and brief. Lance didn’t hesitate to reciprocate, smiling into the kiss as his hand slid through the back of Keith’s hair. Warmth spread from Keith’s core right through to his fingertips as he tasted the creamy sweet strawberry of the ice-cream they’d had on the way here, and a semblance of something that felt like laughter bubbled in his chest, lips beginning to curve into a helpless grin.
When he finally pulled away, the both of them smiling too much to kiss properly, Keith rested their foreheads together briefly, indulging in their closeness, before sitting back with a grateful smile. Lance only squeezed his hand again in response, looking as content and carefree as ever laying back on his space-themed bedsheets.
Breaking eye contact momentarily, Keith let his hand slip from Lance’s grasp as he got up from Lance’s bed and finally took a minute to have a real look around his boyfriend’s room. It wasn’t quite what he’d expected, he mused, but really, Keith hadn’t taken the time to speculate much, as preoccupied as he’d been.
The room was one Lance usually shared with his twin sister, Raquel, her bed laying on the other side of the room. The walls were painted with a purple and blue pattern, and were covered with everything from NASA posters to Percy Jackson merch, a bi pride flag hanging above the headboard on Lance’s side of the room and a trans pride one on Raquel’s.
Next to Lance’s bed, a string of pictures was hung up among some dim fairy lights, and Keith came closer, footsteps quiet against the carpeted floor, to get a better look at them. Pictures ranged from group photos with Lance’s whole family at weddings to little purple flowers fallen on the sidewalk – anything Lance had wanted to capture, Keith figured. His boyfriend was sentimental like that. Countless photos featured Keith and their other friends, including Pidge smirking with their hair in tiny pigtails and making a snarky comment to whoever was next to her, Hunk passionately explaining something to a very attentive Shay, Allura grabbing Romelle by the arm to excitedly point out some sparkly jewelry through a shop window and a group photo on Shiro’s birthday with a laughing Shiro sitting in front of a cake made by Hunk that said “Happy 7 ½ th Birthday!” while the rest of them practically piled in on top of each other to get into the picture, making various silly faces.
But one that caught Keith’s eye was a selfie of the two of them, hung up near the center. Leaning closer, Keith tilted the photo upward from the bottom with his fingertips to take it in properly. The picture had perfectly captured the moment. The wind was playing with their hair, tousling Lance’s bangs handsomely, and held in Keith’s hand was a rather complicated looking ice cream in a large plastic cup with multiple layers of different flavors, drizzlings of strawberry and chocolate sauce, rainbow sprinkles, a large chocolate wafer and two little plastic spoons sticking out of it. Lance’s arm was thrown around Keith’s shoulders casually, pressing a kiss to his cheek as Keith laughed, blushing.
A soft smile spread across Keith’s face. This had been their first date.
After allowing his gaze to linger for a moment, memorizing the happiness etched into their features, Keith let the photo slip from his fingers to hang comfortably on the wall again before turning back toward the rest of the room.
A wall of shelves by Lance’s desk held all sorts of things that Keith was sure he could spend hours going through – colorful marbles, incomprehensible clay models, a box full of jewelry, paper airplanes with doodles all over them, plenty of stationary and a tall stack of snapbacks, to name a few things. A guitar was propped against the wall in the corner, and ceiling across the whole room was littered with glow-in-the-dark stars.
It felt… right, for Lance, Keith thought. It suited him. It felt like a place he’d call home.
“I like your room,” Keith told him decisively, turning back to find his boyfriend already watching him fondly.
“Thanks,” Lance replied with a smile, “We’ve been decorating and redecorating it ever since we were kids.” Shuffling back a little, he patted the empty space next to him on the bed. “C’mere, babe.”
Blinking, Keith tilted his head to the side. “Aren’t we supposed to…” he gestured to the door. Wouldn’t Lance’s family be waiting for them?
“Nah,” Lance dismissed, “I’ve already told them you might need a little space to adjust. We’ve got all the time we want.” Grinning, he made grabby hands towards Keith, then mimed throwing a lasso around him and reeling him in. Keith rolled his eyes at Lance’s antics, but offered him his hand so he could pull him down onto the bed and joined in his boyfriend’s giddy laughter as he tugged him towards him. Getting comfortable, he laced his fingers with Lance’s and settled beside him.
With a happy smile, Lance pointed up at the stars on his ceiling. “Those have never changed, though. I was maybe five when my papá helped Raquel and I put them up. They represent real constellations, you know.”
“They do?” Keith said, glancing up at the ceiling again. Immediately, he realised it was true – he could pick out almost all of these constellations, meticulously placed to almost perfectly resemble the night sky he’d had burned into his memory ever since he was a kid. Keith had no idea how he hadn’t noticed it immediately. “That’s actually really cool.”
Lance’s lips curved in an insufferably beautiful grin as he played with Keith’s fingers absently.
“What was that?” Lance pressed, leaning into Keith obnoxiously, “The great Keith Kogane thinks I’m cool?” Still grinning, he pulled their joint hands to his chest while Keith groaned, half-heartedly trying to push him away. “I mean, you’re really not wrong, you’d be crazy not to. After all, I’ve done my fair share of romancing right here in this room, and I always get compliments for my, ah… bed under the stars, if you know what I mean…” He winked suggestively, and Keith couldn’t hold back a burst of sniggers at how unfathomably stupid that was. His boyfriend was completely ridiculous.
“Stop feeding your ego, it’s inflated enough already,” Keith said with a smirk, rolling his eyes and turning on his side to face Lance, “You’re still a nerd for having glow in the dark stars on your ceiling.” Then he gestured to the Star Wars posters at the foot of Lance’s bed. “And unless having Chewbacca staring over your shoulder the whole time was much of a turn-on for any of your past partners, I doubt you’ve ever actually gotten laid in this room.”
“Chewie is the sexiest beast I’ve ever laid eyes on, I’ll have you know,” Lance told him seriously, rolling on his side to face Keith, too. “I had the ladies lining up for that poster. It was my main selling point.”
“Yeah, now I can see why you never sold,” Keith snorted, raising an eyebrow.
Unfazed, Lance threw an arm around Keith’s waist to pull him closer, grin widening.
“You know, you say that,” he mused, “and yet here you are.” Slowly, he slid his hand further up Keith’s side and wiggled his brows obnoxiously. “In my bed.”
Despite the faint smile that was tugging at the corner of Keith’s mouth, he raised an eyebrow, feigning indifference. “Hmm. You know, I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“You always were a little slow on the uptake, Kogane,” Lance replied smugly, and then let out a snort of laughter at the offended scrunch to Keith’s face. At Lance’s reaction, Keith only scrunched his face further, which Lance seemed to find hysterically funny, curling in on himself with giggles.
“Look, this is you,” he told Keith, and then contorted his entire face, furrowing his brows, wrinkling his nose and sticking his lips out comically in an exaggerated imitation. Keith couldn’t hold back his splutters of incredulous laughter, fingers curling into the front of his boyfriend’s hoodie. He countered Lance’s stupid expression with another of his own, Lance did the same in turn, and they went back and forth like that, getting increasingly more ridiculous until the two of them had completely dissolved into giggles, gripping each other tightly.
And Keith – Keith didn’t even know what made this so funny, really. If he’d been with anyone else, he was sure it wouldn’t be, but that was just it, wasn’t it? It was Lance. No matter what the feeling, Lance could make it a hundred times more intense just by being himself – at least, for Keith he could. Watching Lance’s entire face light up with mirth, the shared peal of their laughter filling the room, Keith only hoped his boyfriend could feel a fraction of what he did.
When their laughter finally died down, their eyes found each other, the two falling into an intimate kind of quietness. Keith realised their bodies were now so close that his bangs tickled Lance’s forehead, the warmth of their skin mingling, Lance’s every exhale grazing his lips. If he tilted his head ever so slightly, their noses would brush.
Lance’s gaze was magnetic. All of a sudden, the air felt much heavier than it had been a minute ago. Keith was hyper aware of the arm curled around his middle, fingers ghosting beneath his shirt. The slow, burning heat that was beginning to pool in his gut was mirrored in Lance’s eyes as they roamed over Keith’s face, his neck, his chest, pausing where his fingers lay against the sliver of exposed skin at his waist.
Keith’s breath hitched.
Slowly, trembling slightly, he let his hand trail down Lance’s body from where it had been resting against his chest, fingers mapping out the planes of Lance’s torso and waist through his hoodie, and reveled in the way his boyfriend’s body responded to his touch, giving a barely perceptible shudder. When he reached his waistband, he paused, brushing his thumb over Lance’s hipbone and watching the movement of his neck as he swallowed thickly. His gaze flicked down to Lance’s mouth, where his lips were parted. Keith felt hypnotized, his grip on Lance’s hip tightening subconsciously, and when Lance reacted almost involuntarily by shifting his leg forward ever so slightly, the length of his thigh brushing up against Keith’s own, a flash of something curled deep in Keith’s stomach, raw and compelling.
He moistened his lips, his boyfriend’s eyes tracking the movement and sending a fresh wave of heat through Keith’s gut. Shakily, voice low, Keith began to murmur, “Lance… have you –”
And just then, a shout echoed down the hall – the high-pitched cry of a kid. Both boys tensed as if doused in cold water. “Nadia, give it back! I’m telling mami!”
A bunch of thuds and more yelling was heard as the children chased each other down the stairs. Keith blinked, looking up at Lance, and the reality of their situation dawned on them both. They were in Lance’s house – his family home, in the bedroom he shared with his sister, where his siblings, his parents or, god forbid, his niblings could walk in on them at any moment. Doing anything… like that was completely out of the question, and they both knew it.
A bitter pang of frustration soured Keith’s gut, and from the slight downturned twist to the corner of Lance’s mouth, he was feeling much of the same.
“H-have you…” Keith wasn’t entirely sure what he’d been about to say before, but whatever it was, he couldn’t say it now. Especially not with the voices of Lance’s niblings still fading down the hall, with Lance gazing at him expectantly with those oh-so-pretty eyes of his, with the very distracting hand that was still ghosting over his waist, fingers trailing atop his skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake, and – fuck, what had Keith been thinking about again?
Oh, right – he was supposed to be saying something. Something definitely completely unrelated to making out on Lance’s bed.
But, Keith being Keith, his mind was completely blank as to how he could switch tracks so abruptly, so after a frantic glance around the room, in a moment of brainless word association, he ended up blurting, “H-have you ever tried to disinvite a Wookiee to anything? Not a good idea.”
Immediately, Keith wanted a fighter jet to crash through the roof, killing them both instantly.
For a second, Lance stopped, brows furrowing and lips parting. Then a surprised grin took over his features and he burst into uncontrollable peals of laughter. Hand finally slipping out from beneath Keith’s shirt, he instead draped his arms around Keith’s shoulders and pulled him into a hug, shaking with giggles. A flush heated Keith’s whole face, partly from embarrassment, and partly because a Lance so happy and affectionate always had that effect on him – which was possibly even more embarrassing, fuck. Burying his head in Lance’s neck, Keith tucked his body close to his boyfriend’s, hiding his burning face.
“From Solo?” Lance managed to ask through breathless laughs, and Keith could only give a mortified nod in response, pressing his face to Lance’s collarbone to try and stifle his own laughter as he got caught up in his boyfriend’s giddiness – because really, how could Keith not be happy right now? Like he said, Lance always had that effect on him. He couldn’t help it.
“You’re such an idiot,” Lance said, his delighted tone not matching his mocking words. “Fuck, I love you so much.”
Keith was sure his face was beet red. “Shut up, oh my god, you are such a nerd,” he protested, grateful that his face was hidden so Lance couldn’t see his embarrassed smile. (He could probably feel it through his hoodie, though.)
“Babe,” Lance spluttered incredulously, “You just quoted Star Wars when we were about to kiss, you are not allowed to call me a nerd anymore.”
Well, there was no way Keith could argue with that.
“… Fuck you,” he mumbled half-heartedly, much to the continued amusement of his boyfriend. “I panicked, alright? And the first thing I saw was your stupid Chewie poster, so if anything, this is your fault.”
“Mhmm, yeah, it’s totally my fault that you panicked so hard, you exposed your inner nerd,” Lance agreed, nodding. “And by all means, please keep panicking if it gets me that – just wait until Pidge and Hunk hear about this, holy shit –”
Keith’s stomach dropped. “Lance, I swear, if you tell them –”
“Oh, I’ll do more than tell them,” Lance promised, and Keith could hear his obnoxious grin, “I’m about to set the scene, here, mullet.” He put on a low, dramatic voice, “There we were, spread out on my childhood solar-system bedsheets. His head was on Pluto, my ass was on Saturn, Chewbacca was staring over my shoulder –”
“Oh my god,” Keith interrupted through a burst of laughter, “You really are a dick, you know that?”
Lance only continued to giggle softly, peppering kisses to Keith’s hair through his smile. He pulled Keith with him as he rolled onto his back, gathering him close and swaying them gently. Settling on top of him, Keith tucked his face in his boyfriend’s neck and sighed – involuntarily, happily. Curling his arms closer around Lance, he closed his eyes to revel in his warmth. He could stay here forever, he thought, breathing in the soft scent of vanilla and rain from Lance’s hoodie and feeling the gentle vibrations of his chuckles through his chest.
“I love you,” Lance murmured into his hair, and Keith’s stomach swooped.
Closing his eyes, Keith allowed the rest of the world to slip away for a second, the faint yet steady thump, thump, thump of Lance’s heartbeat grounding him. Anchoring him. Right here, right now, he was cuddling with his boyfriend, and there wasn’t anything in the universe that he’d rather be doing.
Pressing a kiss to Lance’s neck, he whispered quietly, “Love you, too.”