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As soon as they walk inside, Lance has a bad feeling about this cargo ship. He can’t explain what it is, but as he walks next to Keith, his rifle in hand, their footsteps echoing in the empty space, there’s a seed of dread sitting heavy in his stomach. The purple lights illuminate the dark corners, the eerie glow weirdly familiar after the years spent in space fighting against the Galra, but there’s something inherently wrong in this place.
Their intel of the ship said that there are multiple squadrons on board, but so far, they haven’t encountered anyone, and it’s been quiet, too quiet. It’s supposed to be transport for fighter ship parts, and as usual on Galran ships, there should be patrols and sentries loading up crates, but there’s been nothing.
“Guys? Did you encounter anything?”
“Nothing serious, just a few sentries, but we took them down quickly,” Pidge answers, and Lance looks at Keith with a frown. “Why?”
“We haven’t seen anything,” Keith answers, and Lance’s face twists into grimace as he walks up to the sliding doors at the end of the corridor. “We’re about to head into one of the hangars.”
Lance looks at Keith, arching his eyebrows in a silent question. Keith nods, and Lance readjusts his grip on his blaster, steeling himself as Keith presses his hand to the locking mechanism to open it.
“Guys, wait–” Pidge starts, but the doors slide open with a near silent hiss, to reveal all the Galra fighters and sentries they haven’t encountered on their way in. “--they’re all in there, don’t go in!”
For a moment, nobody moves, and Lance takes it as an opportunity to gauge the numbers – there’s about thirty sentries and ten Galran soldiers. They’re massively outnumbered here, and it’s going to take a miracle to get out of this one. They’re going to have to pull this off, the others will kill them if they die here. A sentry shoots at them, missing him by a meter or so, and the hangar is thrown into chaos. Someone sounds the alarm, and the doors close with a second set of doors closing from the top and the bottom, truly cutting them off from both escaping and reinforcements.
Lance shoots at the sentry that shot at them, and it goes down in a heap. Using what little element of surprise they still have, he takes out another three in quick succession that’ve started charging at them. He’s still standing next to Keith, and he glances at him for a moment. He’s tense, coiled to spring into action.
“Don’t you dare die, Mullet!”
Keith smirks at him, and Lance’s heart skips a beat. “Right back at you, Sharpshooter!” With that, he leaps into the fight, cutting down a sentry with a rapid sweep of his sword.
Lance turns his focus on the fight, shooting sentries with a deadly accuracy, hitting them multiple times to make sure they don’t get back up, losing himself in the rhythm of the fight — duck, shoot, turn, shoot, jump, shoot. He tries to keep the actual soldiers at bay, with well placed shots making light fixtures fall off the ceiling and shooting at the crates in hopes they’ll explode and at least slow them down. It works, for the most part, luckily, and the lights even crush a few sentries as a result.
Their numbers start to dwindle, but the soldiers are still a problem. He can feel himself tiring, but they can’t afford to slow down, not if they want to live. There are robotic limbs strewn all over around them, torn off with the power from his blaster, and sentries sliced in half, Keith sparing them no mercy.
He’s busy keeping a sentry from jumping Keith, so he doesn’t notice a soldier creeping up on him, and it’s only thanks to his instinct from years of fighting that he turns around in time to raise his bayard to block the blow, his bayard switching to its broadsword form in an instant. He gets a hit in the chest and the face in quick succession as a result, his eyes tearing up as he tries to get his breathing under control again.
He twists from the grasp of the Galra soldier, and stabs him. Once the Galran is down, he takes a step back and wills his bayard back to its blaster form to line up another shot. His back bumps into Keith’s, and he feels him heaving as there’s a lull in the fight. Keith’s lost his helmet somewhere along the fight, and pushes back the hair sticking to his face as Lance glances at him from the corner of his eye. The gesture really, really shouldn’t affect Lance the way it does, especially not in the middle of a fight.
“When we make it out of here, I’m gonna kiss the life out of you!” Keith shouts over their laboured breathing, before jumping back into the fight.
Coupled with his earlier thoughts, this surprises Lance so much that he flinches and misses the shot he had lined up. “Fucking hell, warn a guy next time, asshole!”
Luckily for both him and Keith, he recovers fast enough to shoot the soldier charging at them, and turns to intercept the one coming at him from the right. The Galra only stumbles when he shoots him in the shoulder, raising his sword to stab him in the chest. Lance catches the sword with the top of his bayard, and kicks at the Galra to put some distance between them before shooting him. It works, but as the Galra falls back and flails his sword around, it cuts him on his arm, blood slowly oozing from the wound.
He looks around, panting and muscles aching, finding that there’s only a handful of soldiers left. He and Keith can finish this soon, and he’s going to have some words with Keith after they’re done. Who in their right mind would confess to liking someone in the middle of a battle? Keith, that’s who, and he can hardly believe that this stupid and endearing guy would just blurt something like this out while they’re fighting for their lives. But it’s so like him that Lance can’t help but gather all his remaining energy to end this fight and kiss that mullet-headed idiot.
With only four soldiers remaining, the two of them make quick work of them, their enemies strewn around the hangar floor in various states of incapacitation. Lance takes off his helmet, wiping the sweat off his face as he glances at Keith.
He’s bent over trying to catch his breath, leaning on his sword for support, his helmet discarded and his once immaculate armor full of soot smudges and scratches and blood — Lance can only hope it’s not his own. He probably doesn’t look any better. When Keith looks up at him, his gaze lights a fire inside Lance, the same way it has for the past few months.
He doesn’t know how he fell for Keith, but Lance can’t seem to look away from Keith. Even like this, after a fight for their lives, Lance doesn’t think he’s seen Keith look as devastating as he does right now. The wide panes of his shoulders rising with each breath, his strong arms flexing as he leans on his sword, the way his hair falls in his face, curling slightly at the ends, making Lance want to sweep it back from his face. He’s almost slipped up multiple times in the last few weeks, when Keith fell asleep in the lounge, looking impossibly soft.
He’s wondered how Keith’s lips would feel on his, what it would be like to be close to him without either of them annoying the other first, whether his heat would feel different than when they used to get heated during their bantering. Especially during those months when Keith was off with the Blades, then in the abyss. He has the chance to find out now.
He puts an arm on his hips, the other still holding his bayard, and raises an eyebrow at Keith. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
It seems to snap Keith out of whatever headspace he’s in, because his sword clatters to the ground, returning to its original form, and before Lance knows it, Keith puts a hand on the back of his head, the gentleness a stark contrast to what has been going on the past who-know-how-many minutes, and pulls him into a searing kiss.
Lance blanks out, all of his senses filled with Keith and Keith only — the way his hair feels between his fingers, his heat against his chest, the way his lips move on Lance’s, the way Keith holds the back of his head with one hand and his waist with the other. He doesn’t even realize when he drops his bayard on the floor, his arm snaking around Keith to pull him even closer.
Keith pulls away, breaking the kiss, panting as he rests his forehead against Lance’s. His eyes are dark and wide, a wide range of emotions swirling in them with a burning intensity.
“You okay with this?”
Lance loses the fight against the urge to roll his eyes. “Do you think I would’ve reminded you if I wasn’t? Besides,” he says, looking deep into Keith’s eyes, “I think my brain stopped working for a moment there.”
“Well,” Keith answers, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he smiles, “there’s not much–”
Lance doesn’t let him finish that sentence, leaning forward to capture Keith’s lips again. He doesn’t protest, just simply pulls Lance closer, even though there isn’t any space between them. Lance’s hand drops to Keith’s hip, the tips of his fingers pressing into his skin as he starts to lose any sense of coherency with the way Keith is kissing him. His insides are scrambled and he’s acutely aware of every inch where Keith is touching him, his lips moving on his, and Haggar could be literally attacking them and he wouldn’t notice a damn thing.
He completely loses his sense of time, only returning to this plane of existence when someone shrieks. He pulls away from Keith and looks over his shoulder, only to see the rest of the team standing in the doorway. He hides his face in Keith’s shoulder, who seems to have frozen, willing the ground to swallow him or an airlock to suck him out of the ship. Neither happens, so he chances a look at the others.
Keith is blushing, his face almost as red as his armor, Pidge is grinning like she won the lottery, Allura is smiling with that knowing look in her eyes and Hunk is looking up at the ceiling, his shoulders sagging.
“You guys couldn’t have waited just one more month, could you?” Hunk says with a groan.
Lance frowns at him, though he can tell his face is still on fire. “What do you mean?”
“Now I owe Pidge five hundred GAC, and I’m broke as it is!”
“That’s on you for betting on us,” Lance answers. He pulls away from Keith, before holding his hand out with a smile. “Let’s go home, Samurai.”
Keith takes his hand with his own smile. “Let’s.”
When Allura mentions that they’ve been invited to a gala on Mas’elrond two days after the fight on the cargo ship, Keith thinks it will be like any other diplomatic event they’ve gone to in the past years: get to the planet, make nice with the hosts for the duration of the dinner, mingle with the locals while trying to avoid offending them with something that is completely normal for them but would be seen as a taboo to their hosts, and then go back to the Castle or the Atlas to sleep it all off and leave in the morning – all in the comfort of the paladin armor.
This is decidedly not looking to be like any other diplomatic event.
“What do you mean we need to wear their traditional formal wear?” Keith asks, panicking only slightly.
Shiro sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Believe me, we tried to talk them out of it but they insisted, and we can’t afford to lose the Rondians as an ally.”
“But–”
“Keith,” Shiro says, looking at him with pleading eyes to drop it. He looks exhausted, and Keith feels a pang of guilt. “It’ll be fine, they have very tight security.”
That’s not what he’s mostly worried about. “Fine.”
“Thank you. Here’s what we know: we’ll arrive three vargas before the gala starts, so we have enough time to get settled in the rooms they’ve given us and get ready. They’ve insisted we stay the night in the palace as well, so there’s not much we can do about it.”
Shiro keeps talking but Keith doesn’t register much of it. This is really not like any other diplomatic event and the nerves twist his insides into elaborate knots for a multitude of reasons. One of the main problems is that he’s not going to be in armor with no other way to carry any weapons on himself, and the other main problem is that he’s seen the traditional clothes and he’s royally fucked if he sees Lance in them.
See, the thing is that Keith might have been avoiding the topic of their relationship with Lance a little since the fight. It’s not like he does it on purpose, they do talk and spend time together, but they haven’t outright acknowledged it, either. Lance did say the kiss was not just a spur of the moment thing, but he’s still a little wary that Lance doesn’t truly want to be in a relationship with him. His own feelings happened slowly then all at once, and the two years he spent away from Lance only strengthened them instead of making them go away.
It’s not helping that whenever Lance is near him – which seems to be always, especially in the last days – he’s touching Keith in some way: an arm on his shoulders, leaning into him when they sit next to each other in the lounge, grabbing his hand to drag him out of the training room for lunch or dinner. Having feelings for Lance is a serious health hazard, and he’s not sure how he’s going to survive tonight.
Case in point: Lance is currently using him as an armrest, leaning against him as he listens to Shiro, or at least pretends to. Keith himself is trying not to bolt out of the room and drag Lance with him as Lance’s warmth seeps into his side, so similar to when they kissed, lighting him up from the inside out. From this close he can smell the fruity scent of his shampoo, his bodywash, and it’s driving him crazy.
He snaps back to awareness when Shiro claps his hands together. “That’s all from us. We’re arriving in twenty minutes, so get ready to leave and pack an overnight bag.” He looks at them all. “Any questions?”
They all shake their heads simultaneously, even though Keith has no idea what was said in the past three or so minutes. It’s gonna be fine. It has to be.
It’s not fine. It’s anything but fine, and he really should’ve paid attention to Shiro, because now he’s standing in the middle of the lounge part of the suite he got assigned to, watching as Lance steps inside as well. This has to be some cosmic joke, that he’s forced to share a space with Lance for the short duration of their stay. Either that, or Shiro purposefully arranged the rooms like this, and going by the shit-eating grin on his face when Keith glares at him, it’s the latter.
“This place looks so cool, holy quiznack!” Lance exclaims as he steps inside, looking around in awe.
Keith uses his distraction to mouth ‘I’m going to end you’ in Shiro’s direction, but he only laughs.
“We’ll come get you two when it’s time to leave, alright?”
“Yeah, sure, thanks Shiro,” Lance chirps, still flitting around the room.
It’s admittedly an impressive room — it reminds Keith of the baroque castles he’s seen in his history textbooks, with their light walls, the big panels on the walls with the golden, detailed borders, the flowery wallpapers on the panels themselves, the painted ceilings that were planned right down to the smallest details, the tall windows letting in the dying light of the dual suns of Mas’elrond. They provide a spectacular view of the capital city spreading underneath their feet, spilling from the top of the mountain all the way to the glittering river, bridges with golden statues lining the wrought-iron guard rails connecting the two sides. In the far distance, he can see the rolling hills and green fields, with another mountain range looming behind them.
The furniture is no less splendid. There’s a giant mahogany desk with golden detailing between the windows, with a comfortable looking, plush armchair in a light beige shade in front of it. The couches - recliners? - are the same shade as the armchair with dark green and light pink throw pillows, and there are carvings on the headboard and the arms of it. They sit facing each other in the middle of the room, a small coffee table with a vase with huge, purple flowers sitting in it between them. The fluffy rug underneath is a muted red, stark against all the pale colors but somehow still fitting in nicely.
He walks to his room to put down his bag, and finds that it’s similarly lavish, but the star of the room is the queen sized bed with its rich red canopy, a bench at the foot of it with the traditional clothing he’ll have to wear laid out on top of it. He eyes the pile of fabric with trepidation, not at all keen on getting to wear it, even though it’s probably a high honor.
He doesn’t get to explore much further, or fall into the bed for a nap. He didn’t get to sleep too much last night, his mind replaying their kiss a million times instead of letting him sleep, again, and it’s catching up to him.
“Keith, you have to see this!” Lance shouts from somewhere deep in his own room.
He sighs and turns around, walking to Lance’s room. When he peeks inside, the room is a perfect mirror of his own except for the canopy over the bed being a rich, dark blue, but he can’t see Lance anywhere. There’s only a deep blue garment set out on the bench, a reminder of what awaits Keith in just a short, few hours.
“Where are you?”
“The bathroom!”
“I swear to god I will kill you if you whack me with a towel,” he mumbles, walking towards the door to the right of him. It happened more times than Keith would like it.
He finds Lance rummaging through the various bottles left for them to use on the counter, a delighted grin on his face. Keith can’t seem to look away from him. In the light of the lavish bathroom with its marble walls, the bathtub sitting snug in the alcove in the opposite wall and a freaking rattan-like recliner with two matching armchairs, Lance looks like he belongs here — in a world of luxury, with nothing to worry about, not on the battlefield. Not getting beaten up, with guns and sword in his hand, even if he looks good as hell fighting.
“This is so fucking awesome! Look at this bathroom! There’s a recliner in here! I could spend so many hours in here, a whole day of pampering! And look! Do you know how long I’ve been searching for a good moisturizer? They’re impossible to find, and the ones that do exist, are just not good,” he rattles off, with a speed Keith is struggling to keep up with. He whirls around to look at Keith. “Do you think I can ask for a gallon of this thing?”
He’s not really sure that their hosts have that kinda size, but it’s probably worth a try. “Maybe?” He tries to suppress a yawn but he fails.
“I’m keeping you from taking a nap, aren’t I?” He wants to protest, but Lance grabs his shoulders and marches him to his room. “Now get some beauty sleep, you need it otherwise you’re gonna be useless at the ball, and I will be using that bathroom to its fullest extent.”
With that, Lance leaves and pulls the doors closed behind himself, leaving Keith trying to process what just happened. Lance has always been a whirlwind, rearranging everything Keith knew in the wake of his path. He shakes his head to try and clear it a little, the ghost feeling of Lance’s hands on his shoulders lingering, and walks to the bed to try and sleep. The bed is surprisingly comfortable, he all but sinks into the mattress and the mountain of pillows. He’s asleep in minutes.
When he wakes up, feeling a little disoriented and a lot crusty, there’s about an hour before they need to be ready to go. It’s more than enough time for him to prepare, so he stays in the warm cocoon of the comforter for a little longer.
Getting ready, for him, is just a shower, drying and tying up his hair, and pulling on the garment laid out for him. He’s actively not thinking about Lance pulling on the same garment a mere few meters away from him.
The clothes themselves are beautiful and soft to the touch. The pants are wide legged with a cinched hem, made from a red, shimmery, silky fabric, and it looks like flames dancing around his legs. The top is a darker red, form-fitting, sleeveless and slightly turtle-necked, but the twist is that there is no fabric on the back of it, which is why Keith has been dreading tonight since he found out about it. Not because he’ll have his own back out, no, but because Lance’s back will be out and it’ll be a new form of torture for him. Why did the Rondians have to have wings, of all extra appendages?
He steps out of his room once he’s done, and seeing that Lance’s door is still closed, he sits down on one of the recliners to wait for him. He doesn’t have to wait for long, and as Lance steps out, Keith’s heart jumps to his throat. Lance looks like a walking daydream, in his blue garment, and Keith just… keeps staring at him.
The blue fabric around him gleams like he’s submerged in water, his eyes looking bluer than usual, and it perfectly accentuates his figure – his long legs, his slim waist, his broad shoulders, the lean muscles in his arms. It shows off the freckles scattered across his shoulders, like stars sprinkled over the canvas of the night sky. The starburst scar on his back from way, way back, is on full display.
Lance is also staring at him, and Keith can feel the heat climb up on the back of his neck. “What?”
“Were you seriously going to go with your hair like that?”
“What’s wrong with my hair?” Keith asks, raising a defensive hand to the ponytail he managed to pull his hair into.
Lance clicks his tongue, and walks over to stand behind him. “It’s all bumpy! Seriously, my four year old niece can tie her hair up better.”
“You do it then,” he says, yanking out the hair tie with a simple move.
He only realizes his mistake when Lance cards his long fingers through his hair, gentle and careful not to pull on a knot. Lance gathers his hair in his other hand, nails scraping on the back of his head as he tries to wrestle the unruly strands into order. It makes Keith shiver, goosebumps appearing on his arms, and he loses himself in the feeling, his eyes fluttering closed.
Lance finishes with tying off his hair, his hand falling on Keith’s shoulder. His palm is warm on his shoulder, his touch burning his skin. “There, all better.”
“Thanks,” he says, twisting around to look at Lance. There’s something familiar in his eyes, something he saw a few days ago, and he can see Lance swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the movement. Keith can’t tear his eyes away from him.
The moment is broken when there’s a knock on the door, jolting them both. Shiro peaks inside when Lance answers, letting them know that it’s time to go. The two of them walk side by side, their hands bumping together as they near the foyer before the great hall. The others are already waiting there, their outfits the same but in their own colors.
Before they head inside, Allura looks at them all. “I know you all want to do your own things, but please try to mingle with the locals for about a varga before you leave.”
“Sure thing, Princess.”
The giant double doors open, and they head inside. The hall is even more impressive looking than their suites. The high ceilings are painted with frescoes, one enormous chandelier hanging from the middle with two slightly smaller ones on the two ends of the hall, golden and glittering in the soft light that reflects off of the floor to ceiling mirrors on one side. The other side of the hall is lined with tall windows, the one in the middle opening up to a balcony wrapping around the side, looking into the gardens.
The formalities drag on and on, and throughout his talks with royal advisors he keeps an eye on Lance, occasionally catching him looking back at him. It’s pure torture – not necessarily the talking, but the fact that he can’t be close to him, that he feels Lance’s gaze on the back of his neck. To hell with keeping his distance from Lance because he doesn’t know where they stand, if he’s not kissing Lance within minutes he’s going to go crazy.
He doesn’t need to look to know who it is when someone steps behind him, the air turning charged is a dead giveaway. Lance puts a hand on his shoulder, and Keith can’t focus on anything else but the warmth and the weight of his hand.
“I’m terribly sorry to interrupt you, Councilor Anoli, but I’m afraid I have to steal our fearless leader,” Lance says, his tone laced with fake regret that fools everyone that doesn’t know him.
Councilor Anoli giggles into her hand, her wings fluttering behind her. “It’s no problem, Paladin Lance.”
“Thank you, Councilor.” Lance smiles at her, and his hand trails down Keith’s arm, igniting every single nerve in his body before grabbing his hand and pulling him away.
“Where are we going?”
He gets his answer when they get to an alcove outside the hall, and finds himself pressed to the wall, Lance crashing their lips together. He kisses Keith like he’s a dying man and Keith is the only thing keeping him alive. Lance buries a hand in his hair, the other on his waist, pulling him closer, his fingers digging into his exposed skin on his back, warm and possessive, and when he pulls away, Keith can’t do anything but stare at him in a daze.
“I’ve wanted to do this all night,” Lance whispers, his breath fanning over his lips. “I couldn’t take my eyes off of you.”
“Did you now?”
Lance presses a chaste kiss on his lips. “You have no idea about what you do to me.”
“Show me, then,” he says, challenging Lance knowing he’s not going to back down.
Lance ducks in close with a wicked smile, and does show him. And if they spend the night in the same bed, well. Who can blame them?