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Words couldn’t describe the violent flurry of emotions Lance felt at seeing Keith again. It made him nauseous. He wanted to scream or maybe cry, he’s not sure. What he does know is how much he missed that idiot, how his arms spread for a hug, aching to hold him, make sure he’s real, keep him from leaving again.
In a moment of hesitation, he aborted that plan when he took in how Keith looked – broad shoulders, that dumb mullet falling just past them, and stubble peppering his chin. Since when could Keith grow stubble?
Lance felt like he was missing a vital piece of the puzzle. He took a careful look at his teammates’ faces and was baffled at how nonchalant they seemed. Aren’t they wondering who the hell this man is?
As usual, Lance’s mouth got ahead of him and when he walked towards the taller (seriously, what is going on) boy, he blurted out, “Hold on. How do we know you’re the real Keith and not his bigger, cooler, grizzled older brother?"
Keith didn’t so much as spare a glance towards him as he pushed forward towards the other paladins. “I don’t have time for this, Lance.”
Lance willed his face not to show how much that hurt him, spitting sarcastically, “Hey, everybody, Keith’s back!”
He knew it was futile to pretend. The disappointment etched on his face burned shamefully through his facade. It wasn’t like Lance was expecting a grand reunion or anything, but he hoped for at least a friendly hand on the shoulder or even a simple “Hey guys, nice to see you again”. But no matter how upset he was, he was still a certified Saviour of the Universe, so he quickly tuned back into Keith’s orders.
His gaze set, jaw tense and hands clenched, Keith explained what Lance had been fearing all along – Lotor had been using them. And of course, being who he is, Keith immediately suggested hunting down the Galran prince, ever desperate to jump into action. Thankfully, the team interfered before he could run off, explaining that taking out Lotor right now would hurt Allura, as well. Even so, it was clear that Keith was less than happy with the situation. He almost seemed to be vibrating with the need to do something and even opened his mouth to argue before Lance beat him to it.
“They said Allura’s with him. We can’t risk hurting her,” he gritted out. Keith swiftly shifted his gaze to him, brows furrowing in an unreadable expression, but nodded.
As is often the case when the two boys argue, Shiro rushed in to de-escalate the situation. “Look, Keith, everyone, calm down. When Allura and Lotor return, we’ll get this all sorted out.” He paused to make sure everyone registered the command before turning back to Keith with a quizzical look. “Lance is right, you have changed.”
This finally brings a small quirk of a smile to Keith’s face. “Time is different where I’ve been.”
***
To say that things went to shit would be an understatement. They lost the Castle of Lions, almost lost Keith, did lose Shiro, got Shiro back and caused a whole clusterfuck of a mess in the fabric of space-time in the process.
Also, they’re going home.
It’s been about a week since they began their journey back to Earth, and everyone was slowly getting cabin fever from being stuck in their lions all day, squished between their belongings, the animals and the new members of their team.
Krolia had presented them with a training exercise on day five of their space road trip, to which the team collectively groaned in protest. At least now Lance could confidently say that Krolia is, in fact, Keith’s mother with what she considers a “simple” training exercise.
On day nine, Keith finally called it. They needed a break to stretch their legs, get some fresh air and gather more supplies. The lions, too, weren’t faring well. Without the Castle’s power source, they have been a lot slower to recover, growing progressively weary with the constant flying. They changed course to the closest hospitable planet, seemingly uninhabited aside from a few small animals, and the team wasted no time in gathering firewood and collapsing around a makeshift campfire.
Lance stretched and cracked his tired bones as he glanced around at his friends. To his right, Pidge and Hunk were huddled in close, supporting each other’s bodies and sharing warmth. It was currently twilight and not yet cold by any means, so Lance assumed the gesture was more out of comfort than anything. Coran, Romelle and Allura were across from him, Allura showing the other two tricks she had trained the mice to do. Lance had never seen her this happy and spirited before. He felt something churn deep in his stomach. He locked eyes with Coran for a brief moment, sending a small smile his way. The older man looked back with a watery expression before returning his focus to the other Alteans.
With everyone split into their groups, Lance simply stared into the fire, allowing his mind to numb to Romelle’s exclamations of excitement and Krolia and Shiro’s quiet conversation to his left. He didn’t notice how there was one distinct voice missing from the gentle chatter.
Lance didn’t know how much time had passed when Shiro nudged his shoulder, but the sky had already darkened above them. Lance was met with a soft look from their former leader. No doubt Shiro was the most drained out of all of them. If Lance idolised him before, now he properly viewed him as a god. No, Shiro was just the strongest person he’d ever met. To go through so much trauma and still make it out with a clear enough head to lead a team of teenage soldiers manning the most powerful weapon in the entire universe to end a ten thousand-year-long intergalactic war…
“Keith hasn’t come back in a while Could you go get him for me, Lance?” Shiro broke through Lance’s thoughts. There was a glint in the man’s eyes that Lance didn’t understand. Regardless, he nodded and headed over to the Black Lion, which still had its ramp down. He entered the cockpit only to find it empty of the paladin in question. There was not much of anything in there, actually. He knew Keith didn’t have many belongings before he left for the Blade beyond his jacket, but it still felt wrong to see it so barren. Not for the first time since knowing him, Lance felt a pang of pity for the man.
Without much to do, Lance seemed to be getting into the habit of spacing out, so when he felt something poke his back from behind, he nearly jumped out of his skin. And no, he definitely did not let out a high-pitched shriek, no sir. When he spun around, he was met with the tilted head and curious eyes of Keith’s wolf. Lance melted immediately. He was a sucker for puppies.
“Aw, Kosmo, it’s just you. Don’t scare me like that, okay?” He barely had to bend down to give the wolf some well-deserved pats. Lance was sure he’d be bigger than Pidge soon. He sniggered to himself at the thought.
Kosmo, eyes closed, wagged his tail happily as Lance continued to shower him with love until the space wolf’s ears perked up in attention. In an instant, he zapped away, and Lance, not having any warning to let go, disappeared with him. The next second found Lance in the lower storage area of the Black Lion. He unceremoniously landed on his ass and rolled onto his side, rubbing his backside at the impact.
A familiar snicker came from above. Smirking, Keith stared down at him, hands on his hips as Kosmo bounded happily around his ankles. Lance felt his cheeks grow hot with embarrassment. He quickly jumped to his feet, nearly headbutting the other man in the process, and shot Kosmo a betrayed look. He fumbled around trying to stand up, tripping over crates in the process. Yeah, he had a skill for embarrassing himself in front of Keith.
“Well, this is a surprise.” Keith was still staring at him, amused.
Lance sputters, face warm. “Yeah, well, you should tell your wolf that it isn’t polite to zap people through the fabric of space without their consent!”
Keith barks out a laugh at that. An actual laugh! It’s been so long since Lance had heard it.
“What are you doing here, Lance?” He spoke quietly with a velvety tone that made Lance’s insides go all gooey. The smile was gone, but there was a certain softness in Keith’s features that Lance had only seen directed towards Kosmo. This boy was completely and utterly dangerous for his heart.
“You’ve been here a while. We’re having dinner soon,” he said swiftly, trying to be casual.
Keith’s whole demeanour changed, and he visibly deflated. This was when Lance noticed just how tired he looked. Although the two missing years did Keith good in filling out his figure, he looked worryingly slim. Lance doubted space whales had the necessary resources to sustain proper levels of nutrition. Now, Keith’s hollowed-out cheeks only added to the general aura of fatigue surrounding him.
The red paladin stepped closer to him. “Keith? You okay there, buddy?”
The boy in question raised his head, fringe falling into his eyes in a way so painfully familiar, that, if it weren’t for their height difference and the scar on his cheek, Lance could almost pretend that nothing had changed. Keith flinched and crossed his arms, looking mildly uncomfortable, but retained eye contact.
“I’m sorry,” he said so quietly that Lance almost thought he imagined the words falling from his lips.
“Sorry? For what?”
Keith curled into himself more, shoulders hitched up to his ears, gaze turned to where Kosmo was idly chewing on some unconventional toy in the corner. He took a deep breath before turning back towards Lance.
“I pushed you away when I came back. That’s not how I imagined meeting you after so long.”
This is not where Lance expected the conversation to go, but he would be lying if he said he wasn’t silently hoping to get an apology for the way Keith brushed him off back then. But with the state of the team the past few months, he’d learned to accept the fact that his feelings came second to, well, everything.
Before Keith left for the Blade of Marmora the two boys had built a kind of synergy. They led the team together. Keith listened to him, listened to his concerns and ideas, and in return, Lance put his full trust in him as the Black Paladin. They were a team, and a good one at that, so when he left, it felt like a gut punch to Lance. It felt like Keith took the fragile friendship and camaraderie they built up and threw it back in his face. Lance understood his reasons, sympathised, even, but he selfishly let himself be bitter. They were similar in that way – easier to yield to anger than to hurt.
Keith glances nervously towards him. “When I found out I was part Galra, it was like all my worst fears came true. And the worst part? It all made sense. I wanted to stay with Voltron, really, but I also wanted answers.” His eyes turned downcast. “It was more than that, though. I could see things changing within the team and it– it scared me.” He levelled a look at the shorter boy. “We were good together, Lance, and I can’t help but feel like I ruined that.”
Lance takes a deep breath. “Keith…”
Keith shifts on his feet and rubs his thumb and finger together – a nervous tick. “I just want to know if I missed my chance to be in your life.” He was very clearly apprehensive about being this vulnerable in front of another person. It was baffling to Lance – the dissonance between the angry, closed-off boy he knew and the man standing before him now, desperately trying to convey the sincerity of his words.
Lance stared wordlessly. It was as if everything he’d been craving had been laid out right in front of him. The idea of having Keith by his side after the war, long enough to meet his family, and Keith wanting to stay, well, it was almost too sweet.
But Lance, master of deflection, doesn’t address any of that, choosing to veer towards safer territory instead.
“So, you’re twenty-one, then? Damn it, Keith, you always got to be jumping ahead of me, huh?” he smirks.
Keith simply frowns at him. “What?”
Lance can’t help but break his face into a full smile as he moves closer and rests a hand on Keith’s shoulder. The older boy’s breath hitches minutely and that was all the motivation Lance needed to lean forward and wrap his arms around him. In his surprise, Keith stiffens, but quickly melts, sliding his hands around Lance’s waist and pressing back fully.
He heaves a deep sigh, breathing the other in. “I missed you,” he whispers.
“I missed you too, Samurai,” Lance sniffs. The words are spoken into his shoulder, and he slowly allows his fingers to loosely weave into dark locks.
They stay like that, in the lion, listening to Kosmo’s soft pants in the corner. That’s when Lance comes to a crushing realisation.
“Wow, you really are bigger now. Kind of wish I’d hugged you more when you were shorter than me,” he jokes. He feels Keith chuckle more than hears it.
“Well, you can hug me now.”
Lance hums in response. “Yeah, I guess you cradling me in your arms now is just as good.” He buries his nose in Keith’s shoulder, revelling in the comfort. “Don’t think about the future too hard, Mullet.”
Keith pulls back just enough to look into Lance’s eyes and keeps his hands firmly on his hips. He bites his bottom lip, seemingly fighting with himself. Lance tracks the movement with his eyes as warmth floods his body, starting from where Keith is touching him to the very tips of his ears. Lance takes a deep breath, exhales through his nose and breaks the eye contact.
“Come on, let’s go eat dinner.” Lance pats his shoulder and steps back. He doesn’t turn around to see Keith follow him out the door.
***
The next time they stop at a planet is after the whole Garfle Warfle Snick fiasco. Lance is grateful for the change of scenery. Being cooped up in Red led to way too many concerning thoughts.
No matter how much he tried to engage with the rest of the team that day, his self-deprecation inevitably got the best of him, and he clammed up. He just couldn’t bear the fact that they all thought he was stupid. Nobody said it explicitly, of course, but the way none of them stood up to Bob grated at his self-esteem. So, Lance found himself pulling away – joking less and speaking only when he was being addressed. If anyone noticed his behaviour, no one called him out on it.
As Lance descends the ramp to his lion, he notices the rest of his team already at work setting up camp. Without a task of his own, he takes the chance to quietly slip away. The twigs crunch under his boots as he makes his way through the dense forest path to a cliff’s edge. He situates himself dangerously close to where the ground drops into a ravine, exposing sharp boulders and the echoes of an animal’s howl. A few alien bugs skitter around him on the ground. Lance really hopes they’re not poisonous. That’d be a pretty stupid way to die.
The orange light of one of the planet’s setting suns cast scattered beams across Lance’s skin. If he closed his eyes, he could almost believe he was back on Earth: his nephews running around in the background, the soft splashing of waves on the sand and the boisterous chatter of his family. But the buzzing around him wasn’t familiar and the air smelled foreign to him, something almost sulphurous, ruining his daydream.
He didn’t expect the homesickness to be worse now that they were on their way back, like a saccharine treat that was just out of reach. If anything were to detour their path to Earth, the disappointment would irrevocably kill his resolve to fight.
He allowed his eyes to unfocus from the warm colours on the horizon as the alien planet thrummed around him. A sudden rustle of leaves from behind had him whipping around, ears trained on the sound. The branches opening to the small clearing shook and a head popped out.
“Kosmo!” Lance, despite himself, smiled, reaching his arms out to the wolf. “Hey, boy. You’ve got to stop scaring me like that.”
Kosmo bounded up to him, smiling goofily as he plopped down next to the red paladin, resting his head on Lance’s legs.
Lance’s heart squeezed looking at him. “You’re so cute, aren’t you?” Just like your owner. He immediately mentally slaps himself to stop that train of thought.
He sinks his fingers into the soft blue fur on Kosmo’s neck, breathing in a calming sigh. He’d never had pets growing up, parents too busy taking care of five kids, but he’d always had a soft spot for animals.
Ever since he showed up with Keith, if he wasn’t near the Koganes, Kosmo would follow Lance around, sometimes even joining him in the Red Lion for the night. He didn’t know why the wolf chose him specifically, but he liked to think it was because he gave the best head pats out of all the paladins.
So, Lance wasn’t surprised to find himself in the company of Kosmo. But something that was newer was the appearance of Keith in those moments. Sometimes it was deliberate on his part, having followed to see where Kosmo had run off to, and sometimes he would materialise right in the middle of Red’s cockpit. Keith would stutter out an awkward apology and berate Kosmo for teleporting him, but those days were secretly Lance’s favourite. They’d get to stay up and talk, and something always lightened in Lance’s chest.
This is all to say that he also expected the second crunch of footsteps behind him.
“Bothering Lance again, are we?” a gruff voice asks.
Their arms brush when Keith settles on his other side. The black paladin reaches over to scratch between his wolf’s ears, leaning his other hand on the ground behind Lance. It makes their shoulders overlap, but Keith doesn’t seem uncomfortable at the contact. That was another new thing – Keith has been a lot more touchy since their little chat in Black. Every chance he gets, he’s pressed up against Lance’s side, like he can’t get close enough. It should be suffocating. It should raise his defences to have his rival invade his personal bubble like that. But it doesn’t. Lance likes it. Too much, even.
When Lance doesn’t acknowledge his presence, Keith extracts his hand from Kosmo’s fur and places it on the other man’s knee. “You’ve been quiet today.”
He scoffs. “Believe it or not, Mullet, I am capable of shutting up.”
“Well, I don’t like it. It’s eerie,” Keith declares, sitting back with finality, shifting his gaze to the sunset.
Lance can’t help but roll his eyes at the statement. “Sorry, didn’t mean to disappoint.”
Keith turned to look at him in concern, dark eyes scrutinising. It felt like he was being laid out bare for Keith to see, his fears and insecurities on complete display. Here, under the watchful gaze of his leader, there was no rose-tinted glass to steer away the concern, no amount of jokes or teasing to deflect the obvious hurt painting his features.
“What’s going on, Lance?” Keith asks carefully. “This isn’t like you.”
He lets out a bitter laugh at that. “How would you know? You left.” Immediately, he regrets opening his mouth, especially after seeing the way his friend’s brow scrunches in guilt. He averts his gaze towards Kosmo, who seemingly sensed the tension between the two and was wearing the most judgemental look Lance had ever seen on an animal.
Unable to look either of them in the eye, he instead turns to the fidgeting fingers resting in his lap.
“That’s not fair,” Keith says quietly. Gold light floods his features, splaying cascading rays across his face. The picture creates a stark contrast with the strained tone of their conversation.
They’ve been getting along so well lately, Lance thinks, and here he goes screwing everything up again. He startles when he feels a hand grasp his. It sends goosebumps crawling up his arms. How can Keith be so gentle with him when he’s been so bitter in return?
Keith tightens his grip, leaning forward to try to catch his downcast stare.
“The game show… None of you take me seriously, do you?”
Keith fumbles. He retracts his hand and turns to face Lance fully. “Lance, what are you talking about?”
Kosmo grunts from his other side before teleporting away from them. Lance can’t blame him. He doesn’t exactly want to be having this conversation either.
“Everything changed when you left.”
Keith stays quiet, allowing him to collect his thoughts.
“I know you didn’t want it, but I liked leading with you. Shi–Kuron always brushed me off. I guess the others took it as an example.” His stomach churns as he remembers the last few months. “Nobody wanted me around anymore. I had no one to talk to aside from the mice.” He chuckles pathetically, feeling the lump in his throat grow. “No one to make fun of,” he repeats his words from a few months ago, when Keith announced he was leaving, and glances at the man next to him.
Keith wore the most distressed expression, eyes boring into Lance’s.
“Bob was a dick to you on the show,” he says quietly.
“He kept calling me stupid.” Lance smiles sadly. “Nobody corrected him.” He takes a deep breath before unloading his next resentment. “You said you didn’t want to be stuck with me forever, Keith.” The first tear fell as he finished speaking. He could tell Keith was itching to fix this somehow, the gears in his head turning desperately.
“I thought it was a dream,” Keith mumbles.
Lance sniffs before looking back at him in confusion. “What?”
“I thought the game show was a dream,” he repeats. “That’s why I said those things. I didn’t think it was real.”
“Even if you thought it was a dream, you still said it. There must be some truth to it, then.” Lance was beginning to feel irritated with the way Keith kept beating around the bush. So he didn’t like him enough to be stuck together forever. Fine. At least be honest about it.
“No, I–” Keith sighs, running a hand through his hair in frustration. “All those nice things you said about me. I thought it was my brain playing tricks on me by telling me what I wanted to hear. So, I didn’t want to play into the illusion and said something I didn’t mean.”
“But you still chose me to leave. Why?” The tears striking his cheeks have dried out, but Keith still reaches out to swipe his thumb over them.
“I knew you’d be able to bring people together to continue this fight. I trusted you to do what is right, not because of your sense of duty, but because it is the good thing to do. I trusted you to lead them. I trusted you to bring peace to the universe.” His hand rests against Lance’s cheek now, stroking a thumb underneath his eye. “Plus, you deserve to see your family again.”
A fresh onslaught of tears floods Lance’s eyes as he crumples in on himself, leaning into Keith’s touch until his forehead meets the other’s shoulder. He sobs, wondering why this man thinks so highly of him when he’s done nothing to deserve his praise.
They sit there until the sun sets and exhaustion overtakes his desire to cry. Keith intertwines their fingers, providing a steady rhythm with his breaths for Lance to mimic. He rests against Keith, watching the stars and questioning how two isolating years on a space whale could turn an emotionally stunted boy into the supportive, sensible man sitting with him. But he should know by now that Keith never does anything the traditional way.
***
The next day, Lance was dozing in his pilot’s seat, curled up with his knees to his chest. He was in between sleep and wakefulness, allowing Romelle and Coran’s conversation on the other side of the cockpit lull him. Just as consciousness began slipping away from him, he was rudely awakened by a flash of blue light and a bark. He didn’t even startle, just grumbled in annoyance and kept his eyes closed.
“Get up,” Keith leans over him, nudging his arm.
“You’re disturbing my beauty sleep, Keith,” he settles deeper into his pilot seat. It was hard to keep his groove, though, as he could feel Keith’s expecting presence nearby. “What?” He deadpanned and finally opened his eyes.
Keith shifts on his feet, looking sheepish. “I wanna show you something.”
“And it couldn’t wait?”
“No, it has to be now.”
Lance’s interest piqued as Keith leant over him to activate the Red Lion’s comms. He could smell the distinct brand of deodorant he wore and felt the heat of his body. He couldn’t stop his heart from speeding up at their proximity.
“Hey, team. Lance and I are gonna take a quick detour, so everyone rest up. We’ll be back soon.”
"Is this why we’ve been flying in the wrong direction for the past varga?" Allura questions with a knowing smile. He hears Keith choke on his spit and grumble next to him.
“O-o-oh,” Hunk sing-songs suggestively.
“Use protection!” Pidge chimes in, cackling.
Lance sputters, heat filling his face. “Okay, bye!” he says too loudly and drops the call. He should’ve never told them about his crush, but his irritation eases when he sees Keith wearing a matching blush. The Alteans in the room chuckle lightly and Lance sends them a menacing glare in return. Thankfully, Keith quickly whistles for his wolf and instructs him to take Coran and Romelle to Blue, leaving the two boys alone in the lion.
Lance clears his throat, straightening in his seat. “What’s this about, Keith?”
The black paladin doesn’t respond, instead, inputting a set of coordinates on the dashboard. “We’re going to this planet,” he points at the screen.
He doesn’t expect to get any more information out of Keith, so Lance simply straps in and flies them out of formation and in the direction of the coordinates.
It’s less than ten minutes later when the lion touches down on a small, unassuming planet. At first glance, Lance doesn’t see anything special about the place, which only exacerbates his confusion. Before he’s able to question Keith about it, he’s dragged out of the chair and is led outside by his hand.
“Hurry! It’s almost time,” Keith urges.
“Time for what?”
Their hands are still linked when they descend the ramp. As soon as they step onto the ground, Lance feels a drop of water land on his bare arm. Soon enough, they’re being pummelled by a downpour. It takes him a moment to react, and he sees Keith staring expectantly at him from the corner of his eye.
“It’s raining,” he says quietly. Realisation overtakes him. “Keith, it’s raining!” Laughing, he runs out into the rain, arms spread to the side and face lifted to the sky. He lets the water run down his cheeks, not caring about his soaked-through clothes, which will drip all over his lion, or the fact that his wet socks will surely squish and get him sick later.
There, standing in the rain on an alien planet, millions of light-years away from Earth, it all clicks for Lance. Keith Kogane, resident emo and fearless leader of Voltron, Keith motherfucking Kogane, found this tiny deserted planet in some random corner of a galaxy in the infinite universe just to bring him rain.
Slowly, Lance turns to Keith, who has his arms wrapped around himself with a small, fond smile lifting his lips. When they make eye contact, his smile grows, revealing the sharp canines Lance is always trying to ignore. He walks deliberately towards the man, eyes never straying. Once he’s close enough, he unwinds Keith’s arms and gently pulls him away from the lion.
One well-known fact about Lance is that he’s a hopeless romantic. He’s seen every rom-com to ever exist, twice. As a preteen, he used to sit for hours in his bedroom with his sisters, daydreaming about the perfect wedding with the love of his life. So, naturally, when faced with the most ideal opportunity to recreate a movie-esque scene, he takes it.
He tugs Keith closer, bringing one of his hands to his waist, and clasps the other in his. He lets his fingers sneak into the soaking hair on Keith’s nape and leads them into a silent dance, the pounding of the rain providing its own music. Keith goes willingly, using his grip around Lance to bring their chests together, and rests his head on his shoulder.
If you told seventeen-year-old Lance he’d be recreating scenes from his favourite films – dancing in the rain with the Keith Kogane – he’d probably punch you in the mouth for such a blasphemous suggestion. But nineteen-year-old Lance welcomes the warmth Keith radiates, heart feeling full with the butterflies invading his stomach.
As a general rule, Lance avoids thinking about the feelings Keith elicits in him, but even he can’t deny the pull he’s felt towards the man for the last five years. Through the Garrison, through Keith dropping out, through recognising him halfway across the desert and fighting a war together, Keith has dominated his thoughts. They’re unwillingly stuck in each other’s orbits, and it’s about time Lance accepts it. Despite everything his younger self has instilled in him, he can envision Keith as “the one”, the destined “love of his life” to have the picturesque wedding he’s always dreamt of with.
As they languidly circle in the rain, he feels lips brush against his neck before they lay a gentle kiss in the junction between his neck and shoulder. Lance draws him closer, ushering his head to the afflicted spot to wordlessly urge Keith on. The black paladin drags a path up to his jaw before boldly sucking on a spot behind his ear.
“Keith…” Lance sighs. His tone brings Keith to lift his head with half-lidded eyes and a hand moves the wisps of hair plastered against Lance’s forehead behind his ear. “Thanks for this,” the red paladin speaks into the small space between them. “I know I’ll see rain in a few months anyway, but I think I needed this right now. So, thank you.” He tightens his grip on Keith’s hand and watches his gaze soften impossibly more.
“I’ll always try to make you happy, Lance.” His eyes creep downward, eliciting a quiet intake of breath from him. The rain eases up as Keith leans forward, which, in Lance’s rom-com-driven imagination, can only signify a very specific romantic culmination between the two leads.
Their noses brush together, and Lance trembles, possibly from the cold or maybe from the years-worth of anticipation of this moment. When Keith pauses in a silent question, a breath away from his mouth, Lance throws all caution to the wind and closes the gap. He leans into Keith, tilting his head and perfectly deepening the kiss as he throws his arms over wide shoulders.
He only feels a little insecure subjecting Keith to his minimal making-out experience; the Garrison didn’t provide many opportunities to swap spit with the other cadets, seeing as their dorms were gendered and the only way to convince the other "straight" boys in his block to make out was to drunkenly propose a game of Spin the Bottle, which only worked about a quarter of the time, anyway. But what he lacks in experience, he more than makes up for in passion, and his knees grow weak with every bite and swipe of tongue on his lips from Keith. Who knew Mr. I-listen-to-MCR-while-polishing-my-knife would be such a good kisser? Maybe Lance is just biased.
When they finally part, Keith looks as wrecked as Lance feels, and it sparks a bubbly proudness in his chest. Keith’s eyes remain closed as he breathes out shakily against Lance’s mouth, flexing the fingers on his lower back before drawing him closer to bring their chests together again. Their soaked-through shirts cling to each other unpleasantly, and the position forces Lance to arch his back and lean away slightly to see him properly, but he can’t bring himself to care.
"Wow," Keith whispers breathlessly, finally letting his eyes fall open. They held such deep affection that Lance could feel it in his bones, in his base atomic makeup.
"Feeling starstruck there, Samurai?" Lance can’t help but tease, eyes following the bob of his throat as Keith speaks.
"You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that."
He chuckles in disbelief and squeezes Keith’s shoulder. "I think I have some idea."
***
"That was a terrible idea," Keith grumbles from the mess of blankets he’s buried in. His voice comes out gravelly and nasal and he reaches past his cot to grab more tissues. As he blows his nose, Lance moves a few stray pieces of hair out of his face from his spot on the edge of the bed. He’s just enough in love with the man to ignore how gross it is.
"You’re just mad I have a stronger immune system," Lance points out amusedly and goes to lie down next to him.
"Why are you here? You’re gonna get sick," the black paladin mumbles but settles back into the pillow anyway, cuddling up to his new boyfriend. Lance brings his arms around him so he can lay comfortably on his chest instead.
"Hey! I’d be a terrible partner if I didn’t bring you hot tea and tuck you in every day."
"We don’t have tea."
"Not the point! We’re together now, and that means I get to baby you when you’re sick and you can’t complain. Those are the rules."
"Damn, if I knew there’d be so many rules, I would’ve thought twice about staging a romantic getaway in the rain for you," Keith jokes, sneaking one of his freezing hands under Lance’s shirt. Lance yelps at the contact but doesn’t move the offending hand away.
"No you wouldn’t," he claims boldly and squeezes Keith in penance. He grunts and wraps his arm tighter around Lance, nuzzling his shoulder.
"No, I wouldn’t."