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Every time Lance turns around and throws Keith a snarky remark, it pisses him off.

But even after they're done and Keith's already walked away, he can't stop picturing Lance's smirk and his half-lidded eyes, trying to goad Keith into giving some kind of response. It's probably just him lingering on the conversation too much, Keith would tell himself, but that’s a lie. The words aren't what Keith’s stuck on; he doesn't care that much about whatever Lance would say to him and what he would say back. It's Lance that he can't get out of his head. This constant image of his cheeky smile and his stupid jacket sticks like glue in his mind. Every time Keith passes by when Lance is in conversation, the look of his bona fide smile never fails to haunt him. And the laughter. It’s gotta be one of the most annoying, yet genuine sounds he’s heard in his life.

It’s cute, in a way. It makes Keith’s cheeks turn warm just to hear it.

But the moment Keith catches those thoughts, he shakes them away and distracts himself with something else. He goes off to the training deck, or explores the castle, or sees what the rest of the team is up to – just does something that takes his mind off of the looming thoughts that leaves a taste of revulsion in his mouth. He tries to avoid Lance as best as he can because of it – but deep down, he knows that he won’t be able to evade these feelings forever.

Keith finds himself in the training room, one day, practicing against a fighting bot. No matter how much he slashes and dodges and parries he can’t stop imagining Lance’s dumb giggle every time he nearly gets grazed. That laugh that Lance makes after Keith argues back – it’s aggravating, but it keeps replaying in his head. Not to mention that inane grin he always gets. It’s so senseless, but it’s so… cute.

No, no, no. Lance is annoying, not cute.

Distracted, he only sees the robot’s sword swinging at him at the last second. He barely has enough time to block the blade with his own before being knocked off balance and falling onto the ground. Rolling out of the robot’s reach as it lunges for him, he calls out hastily, “End training sequence!”

The bot stops where it’s standing and disperses into light. Keith takes a few moments to catch his breath, grits his teeth, and slams his fist on the ground. He mutters out a dammit as he sits up. He came here to train and get his mind off of Lance, not to keep thinking about him.

“You seem distracted,”  someone says behind Keith, and he turns around to see Shiro standing there. “A little,” Keith sighs. He doesn’t know how long he’s been standing there, but it doesn’t matter.

“You okay?” Shiro asks, helping him up. He’s got one brow raised and a sincere smile.

Keith wipes the sweat off of his face as he stands and says, “Yeah, I’m fine. I barely dodged that last attack, but I’m good.” But when he looks up at him and sees his questioning face, he realizes that that wasn’t what Shiro had meant. “I’m – I’m fine.” Keith says, trying to put on his best reassuring tone, but it doesn’t work.

“Are you sure? You know you’re more than welcome to talk to me about anything.” Shiro’s hand rests on Keith’s shoulder. Keith breaks eye contact and steps back after a moment, brushing his hand off. “Really, I’m okay.” But that isn’t true. Shiro backs off and says, “Okay, if you say so,” but the look of worry on his face makes Keith feel so guilty that he considers spilling the truth. His feelings regarding Lance are really embarrassing, but… Shiro has this trustful aura. Like you could tell him just about anything, and he wouldn’t make it weird.

“I came down here to check up on you; you’ve seemed bothered, lately. Just tell me if anything’s up, okay?” Shiro says, concerned, with another pat on Keith’s shoulder, and he turns to the exit. Watching Shiro’s back as he walks away, Keith panics for a split second, knowing his chance is slipping away. So he calls, “Wait.”

He stops, and turns to look back at Keith. “I do have something to talk about.” Keith says, gritting his teeth behind closed lips. He already regrets wanting to confide in Shiro, but it’s too late to turn back, now. Shiro looks surprised for a moment, but his expression turns neutral again and he says "Go right ahead." Of course he'd be surprised; Keith doesn’t open up about his feelings much.

Keith goes to the wall to pick his jacket up. Shiro follows, and they both sit down against it, which he feels grateful for, considering he feels less vulnerable, in a way, when he sticks to the walls of a room. Keith stares intently at the ground, not wanting to see how Shiro reacts after he says what he wants to say. But as he opens his mouth, he has second thoughts, and finds himself at a loss for words. How the hell is he supposed to say this?

Shiro catches onto his struggle, as he always does. "Is this about Lance again?" Shiro asks, and Keith looks up at his expression – curious, but neutral enough to where he can safely tell the truth.

"How'd you know?"

"Keith, whenever you come to my room you've always got something to say about Lance," Shiro laughs, raising a brow, "it's not a hard guess."

Keith's ears turn warm and he turns his focus to the wall. "Whatever. But... yeah, it's Lance."

"Did you get in an argument with him again?"

"N-no, not this time. Something's just been bothering me lately." He looks over at his friend again. Shiro’s expression is nothing but gentle, and he isn’t saying anything; only staring straight at Keith, waiting.

Keith takes a breath. "Um, how do I say this. Lately I just…" He closes his eyes in frustration, pinching the bridge of his nose, now annoyed with himself for not thinking of how to word this before confiding in Shiro. He bites the inside of his bottom lip, letting key words run through his mind while he thinks about what to say. Lance. Annoyance. Confused.

Like.

No, no. He can't put it like that. That's not how he feels. Probably. Thinking about the mere idea of that honestly makes him want to punch himself.

"I – I think that – I’m..." again, he doesn't know how to start off. God.

"Take your time, Keith. Just explain slowly." Shiro touches his shoulder, showing him nothing but sincerity. Keith realizes how tense he feels, how tight his arms and legs are and loosens up when he sees the genuinely warm look on his face. He nods, and finds a place in his thoughts to start with.

"Okay. So, you know how me and Lance don't get along." Obviously. Keith's stalling, still figuring out what he's trying to say. He shakes his head, looking down at the ground again. "Every time we get into an argument, I can’t stop thinking about it afterwards. I mean, uh, not the argument itself; I don’t even remember why we were arguing in the first place half the time, I mean it’s probably not that important or anything if I can't remember it, but still I’m –” he gets lost in his own words and forgets where he was supposed to go with that sentence. Dammit.

“Start over, Keith. If it’s not the argument itself that bothers you, what is?” Shiro asks, understanding in his voice.

Keith sighs, trying to get back on track. He closes his eyes again, opens his mouth, thinking. “It’s… it’s… Lance, that I can’t get out of my head.” he feels the tension in his chest, just forcing the words out of his mouth. He doesn’t want to open his eyes and look at Shiro – he can barely admit this to himself, let alone another person. Except he can’t help but take a peek at him for affirmation anyway, and is surprised to see that he doesn’t seem confused or weirded out at all.

“Keep going,” Shiro urges gently.

Keith inhales through his teeth. “It-it’s weird, because he always pisses me off and I hate that. But then I can’t stop imagining his face at every turn, and even just now when I was fighting that robot, I kept hearing his voice, and it makes me want to see him smiling and laughing more, but in a positive way,” as the words come out he realizes that he sounds more creepy than anything. He wants to punch himself in the gut, but continues, “When we get competitive with each other, I just look at his face and at how hard he’s trying to beat me and then I get hyper aware of the burning on my face. I – I wouldn’t say that he’s cute, but – I can’t tell if I’m crazy, or if I’m just weird…?” he turns to look at Shiro, his eyes widening. “Is it weird to be attracted to someone you consider a rival?” Attracted. He really just said that word.

Shiro gives him this look for a second and laughs, “I don’t know? I wouldn’t say that’s typical, exactly, but?”

“D-don’t sugarcoat anything, I know it’s weird.”

But then realization washes over Keith.  When his thoughts came out of his mouth, he made it sound like he actually likes Lance. But he totally doesn’t! He hates the guy so much, he wouldn’t ever kiss him even if his life depended on it and who is he kidding. He does like him, despite how much he hates himself for even thinking about it. It doesn’t make any sense. And he wants to get rid of these feelings because Lance probably hates him anyway and it might make it weird between him and the whole team, even, and none of his past romances have ever worked out, especially with other guys. He buries his head into his hands, and groans, and groans again.

It’s weird how he admitted something to Shiro before he admitted it to himself. Yeah, it’s gotta be his aura.

Gently, Shiro puts his arm on Keith’s back and remains. “Keith, you don’t have to feel bad about it. You know people don’t intend to have crushes most of the time, but they do, anyway.”

“Yeah… but…” Crush. That sounds so strange, but… so accurate.

“You should try to become friends with him. You know. At least get closer to the person you like.”

Keith groans.

Lance always feels like shit after provoking Keith, but he can't stop himself.

Riling Keith up and watching his eyebrows furrow, his teeth grit and his voice straining a little as he growls an insult back. It’s fun. It's also hilarious, which is why Lance always does it when he can. At dinner, passing in the hall, in group conversations. But when he walks away, he always looks back at Keith, who's still fuming, and feels a pang of guilt, but then he does it again and doesn’t know why. He doesn’t understand why he feels bad about it in the first place. Like, he didn’t feel bad when he would tease his sisters or his friends, back at home. And when he’s competing with Keith during training or even board game night, Lance almost always gets his ass kicked, yet he doesn’t feel bad about that and enjoys it if anything. It’s fun to see Keith trying hard over something that doesn’t involve getting attacked by Galra battleships. It’s weird. Keith’s weird.

When Pidge and Hunk are in his room one night, sitting on the floor with alien goo shakes and old Altean board games, he talks to them about it.

“Ugh, enough with the board games. You know Pidge is just gonna beat us again, anyway.” Lance groans, throwing his piece onto the floor.

“Hey! I like winning!” Pidge protests, disappointed as she looks down at the piece that Lance dropped.

“Yeah, we should probably put this board game away. It smells like burnt rubber.” Hunk says, putting down his piece, as well, and taking a sip from his goo shake.

“What? No, not rubber. It smells more like…” Lance leans down to take a whiff of the board on the ground. “oily fish.”

“Guys, c’mon. It’s gotta be old canned soup with pee sprinkled in.” Pidge twirls a piece around in her fingers, smells it, and cringes.

Lance and Hunk both dip down to sniff the board. “Eugh, yeah. Old soup and pee for sure.” Hunk crinkles his nose, fanning the air.

“Okay, I see your point – but, that’s not why I said we should stop. I need to talk to you guys about something. And also, we should put the board back before Allura catches us.” Lance says, keeping his eyes on the two of them. Hunk cleans the board game up and puts it back in its box. Pidge takes a sip of her goo and says, “What is it?”

Lance exhales. “So, about Keith –”

“Ohhhh my GOD!” Pidge and Hunk both groan, Hunk throwing his head to the ceiling and Pidge covering her face with her hand.

“What?!” Lance yells. What the hell is their problem??

“Lance, you ALWAYS talk about Keith. Can you not, like, talk about something else? Like the board game smell, for instance?” Pidge’s eyes are wide.

“Or Bofa?” Hunk says, cocking an eyebrow.

“Wh – Hunk, stop – and hey, it’s not my fault that he’s an asshole! With his stupid perfect hair and his mysterious eyes, it just… pisses me off! I gotta have some outlet to rant about him, right?”

“He’s the asshole? Lance, you’re the one always egging him on.” Pidge stirs her shake around, squinting at him. Hunk nods in agreement.

So even they noticed? “That’s the problem!” Lance shouts, throwing his arms up in frustration. “It’s hilarious to mess around with him, but I always feel bad about it afterwards! I don’t know why, and I don’t know how to stop!”

Hunk asks, “Why do you keep doing it if you feel bad, then?”

“I – I don’t know!” Lance replies, “Pidge, you’re smart! Tell me what you think.”

“What? I’m a mechanic, not a psychologist.”

“Just try!”

“Uhh???” Pidge exchanges glances with Hunk, dumbfounded.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Hunk says, putting a finger up. “Did you ever read those Junie B. Jones books when you were a kid?”

“What? No.” Lance says, squinting. What the hell does does a children’s book series have to do with this?

“Oh,” Hunk says, embarrassed. He clears his throat and continues, “Well, that’s not the point. I remember Junie B. was rivals with this kid named… what was it, Tim?”

“Jim.” Pidge interjects.

“Right, Jim. Thanks. Anyway, let’s say you’re Jim and Keith is Junie B…. In the books, Jim and Junie B. were rivals, and Jim would always make fun of Junie B. and bully her, right?” Hunk says.

“Okay?” Lance replies, still skeptical.

“So on Valentine’s Day, Jim gives Junie B. a Valentine, and confesses to her that he bullied her because he actually had a crush on her, and was trying to hide his feelings –”

“Hunk, no! Your jokes aren’t helping!” Lance yells, holding his hands up in front of him. That’s not how he feels about Keith, holy shit, dude.

“No, no, no! Just let me finish!” Hunk exclaims, waving his hands around. “I’m saying that Jim bullied Junie B. instead of being nice to her because he wanted to be friends with her, but didn’t know how.”

“What are you trying to say, Hunk?” Lance asks.

“He’s saying that you probably want Keith’s attention, but because you had a bad start with him, you provoke him. Doing that would be easier than trying to make friends with him; after all, that’s still getting his attention in some way, right?” Pidge says, pushing her glasses up.

“Yeah! That!” Hunk smiles ecstatically and holds his hand out flat in front of Pidge. She high-fives him. Or, low-fives?

“So let me get this straight. You’re saying that I want to be friends with Keith, but the only way I know how is to be annoying, which is why I feel bad for being a dick to him?”

“Yes.” “Yeah.”

That kind of makes sense. “But why would I want to be his friend?” Lance looks over to Hunk, the newly-appointed psychologist.

Hunk leans over and raises a brow. “Maybe you like him, like Jim liked Junie B. You do talk about him all the time.”

“Okay, enough with the Junie B. Jones talk already! And I don’t, he’s an ass!”

“Didn’t you tell us one time that you like asses?” Pidge’s smile grows devious as she turns to face Lance.

“Ugh! The butt asses, you guys know what I mean!”

“Sure, but what did you say about him earlier? ‘Perfect hair’ and ‘mysterious eyes’?” She leans closer to Lance, eyebrows raised.

“What – I was just!! Ranting!! I don’t like Keith, seriously!” Lance pushes her away, cheeks burning. That’s a ridiculous thought! He doesn’t like Keith! Probably.

“It could be possible! It’d be like that one episode of The Suite Life where Maddie and Zac Efron totally hate each other, but they end up making out in the middle of arguing.”

Lance has no idea what Hunk’s talking about, but he’s sick of it. “I’VE HAD ENOUGH, HUNK!!”

“You’ve had enough of me but you can’t get enough of Keith, huh?!”

Lance groans in exasperation and lays down on the ground while Pidge and Hunk laugh and roar and high five until Allura yells at them over the ship intercom to be quiet because everyone’s trying to sleep.

The next morning, the team assembles down at the training deck to do their usual morning routine; general exercise, holding their own against robots, sparring with one another. The whole time, Lance is distracted by thoughts of what Pidge and Hunk were telling him last night. Wanting Keith’s attention and trying to get along with him. Not to mention their constant teasing.

Lance? Being attracted to Keith? The accusation is baseless! Like, sure, Keith is good in combat, and he has a nice face. But he’s also reckless, and bad at roasting people. Yeah, Lance definitely does not like him in that way.

...So he doesn’t understand why the thought bothers him so much.

Despite his conflicted feelings, his performance doesn’t mess up too much. Though he does feel out of the loop the whole time.

At one point, when the team has to protect one another from laser projectiles, Keith keeps giving him weird looks every time he blocks a laser coming Lance’s way. He doesn’t know if he’s doing it on purpose or not, but he doesn’t like it.

After that, morning training is over and the team gets break time. As Lance changes out of his uniform, he contemplates on whether he should use this break to go talk to Keith or not. As strained as their relationship is, there’s no point in continuing to be an asshole to him. Since Lance apparently wants to be his friend, there’s no use in doing it by being annoying. In fact, he might actually try to get along with him. Who knows how much effort that’ll take, though, considering Keith is a real pissy lone wolf.

He should go talk to Keith after dinner or something, when he has time, but he gets antsy just thinking about it, for some reason. It’s best to do it now and get it over with while he still feels like it.

Lance steps out of his room and bounds down the corridors, hoping that Keith is in his room right now. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say once he gets there, but it’ll probably be fine if he wings it. After all, it doesn’t matter that much, anyway. It’s just a conversation, right?

He steps in front of Keith’s door, inhales deeply, and knocks. A beat of silence passes, and he hears footsteps heading towards the door. So he’s in his room for once, thank god.

The doors slide open automatically when Keith steps closer. If he’s expecting anyone, it certainly isn’t Lance, judging by the look on his face. Keith’s expression turns from surprised to sour, which isn’t too shocking. “What do you want?” Keith says, crossing his arms as he leans against the frame of the door.

“I just came to talk.”

“About?”

“Stuff?” Lance says, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Look, I’m gonna try not to be rude this time around. Can I come in?” A look of surprise crosses Keith’s face, which turns to suspicion, but he steps aside anyway to let Lance in.

The door slides closed once Lance comes in, and he looks around. Shirts are strewn about everywhere, and random papers and trash litter the floor. Nice room, Lance is about to say, but then he remembers the ‘not being rude’ thing. He swallows his words down and turns to face Keith, whose arms are still crossed.

“Okay, so, I’ve realized recently that it’s, uh, not cool of me to try and to annoy you every chance I get,” Lance starts. Keith looks confused as he says this, but not angry. Yet.

“But whenever I do get into an argument with you, I always feel bad about it afterwards.”

Now Keith’s giving him a skeptical look. “You feel bad?”

“Yes. I feel bad.”

“Then why do you keep doing it?”

Lance gulps, and leans back against the wall. “That’s the thing. I keep doing it, even though I feel bad about it, because it’s funny?” As the words slip off his tongue he has immediate regret pooling in his stomach, because that is NOT what he meant to say.

Keith purses his lips, furrows his brows, shakes his head for a moment. “So what you mean to say, is that insulting me is basically a form of entertainment?”

“N-no! Well, yes, but…” Ah, shit.

“Lance, what did you come down here for?”

He exhales. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

Keith could probably just say, “Fine, we’re cool” and be done with the whole ordeal. After all, it’s not like Lance’s riling bothers him nearly as much as Lance himself does. But Lance and his stupid cute face have given him so much mental anguish these past few months that it makes Keith want to hold his ground, keep arguing. Wait, did he just call Lance’s face cute? Shit, he needs to quit.

“You come here and basically make another dig at me, and then expect me to forgive you for that?” Keith retorts, “That’s pretty shitty if you ask me.” He’s not even mad about this! So why is he stubbornly arguing, anyway?

Lance grits his teeth and stands up straight. “Well, at least I’m trying. I don’t even understand why you get so pissed off, anyway; whenever I provoke you I’m just teasing you most of the time! I don’t even mean half the things that come out of my mouth!”

“Then why are you saying them in the first place? Because it’s funny or whatever to piss me off? Can you not just stick to being a dumbass somewhere else? There’s lots to do on this castle, so I’m pretty sure you’ve got more options than being an ass to me.” There’s no point in arguing if he’s not mad. It doesn’t make logical sense and he should probably stop, but… Lance looks cute, right now. Shit.

“Well I’m sorry, but maybe being an asshole is just me trying to get closer!” Lance yells.

“Wait, what?” The words roll out of Keith’s mouth. Lance’s eyes widen and he looks away, like he didn’t really mean to say that. But Keith is cursing at Lance mentally to stop making that face, because he looks too cute and it’s really unsettling. “Closer? The hell do you mean by that?”

Lance’s teeth grit and his eyes shut tight as he makes stiff movements and – are his cheeks turning red? “Uh, okay, this is gonna sound really weird when I say this but –”

“Paladins! Please return to the training deck, break time is over.” Allura’s voice sounds through the ship intercom, and they exchange glances.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Keith hisses. Lance starts to protest, “Wait –” But Keith’s already pushing him out. He closes the door on him, and he lingers in front of it for a few beats. He can’t shake the image of Lance’s embarrassed face and awkward movements. Most of all, he really wants to know what Lance was going to say.

He tries not to overthink it as he changes back into his uniform.

A few minutes later, they all gather back at the training deck to continue. Nothing much out of the ordinary happens.

Until they get to the invisible maze, and Lance has to guide Keith through the virtual walls. He tries to not think about their earlier ‘discussion’ as he studies the maze. The map is a pretty simple one; thankfully, at that, because Lance has never been that good with solving puzzles. Lance manages to direct him well enough through most the maze, though he makes him backtrack at times, which he swears isn’t on purpose – he’s just hasty on telling him where to go. He normally doesn’t bother messing up their training exercises, anyway, since they’ll have to start over if he does.

He continues giving directions as Keith gets closer to the exit. “...Okay, now take a left, walk forward three steps, and…” he scratches his chin. “Now take a right…wait –”

Shit. Lance got his left and right mixed up.

As Keith crashes into the wall, he yelps, gets shocked, and knocked onto his ass. Lance can’t contain the burst of laughter that ensues.

“Fuck you, asshole!” Keith snarls from the ground, scowling up at the console where Lance and Coran stand.

“Keith!” Coran shouts, glaring down at him.

“Maybe after training,” Lance snickers, wiping tears from his eyes.

“Lance!” Coran yells, now distressed as he turns to face him.

“What?” Lance says defensively, not realizing what he had just said. But then he looks down at where Keith is still sitting, and even from far away he can see that his face has turned as red as a tomato. Oh.

Oh.

Lance raises his eyebrows, opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. There’s a beat of silence until Lance finally picks up the pace and says, “IjustsaidthatwithoutthinkingI’msosorry.”

Coran shakes his head and says, “Lance, Keith. Continue with the maze, please.”

Keith stands back up, and Lance curses at himself for making things awkward. He used to use that remark all the time when his friends would tell him ‘fuck you’, so he doesn’t understand why he gets so flustered now, when he says it to Keith. Quickly, he guides Keith out of the maze and Team Voltron is done with afternoon training after that.

And then there’s break time and and an awkward dinner, and the paladins have the rest of the night off.

Lance finds Hunk and Pidge in the Cryopod Chamber, talking and messing around on Pidge’s laptop. “Guys, guys, something amazingly hilarious and embarrassing happened at training earlier!” Lance calls, running over to his friends.

“Is this about Keith –” Pidge starts.

“So I was supposed to help Keith through the invisible maze today,” Lance says, getting closer and sitting down in front of the two. Pidge and Hunk both sigh as Lance continues, “I accidentally messed him up and he got shocked, right? And –”

“How do you accidentally mess him up?” Hunk asks.

“I – I got my left and right mixed up. Anyway –”

“Seriously? Lance, you’re like seventeen,” Pidge says, “how can you –”

“That’s not the point!! Anyway, he got shocked from the wall and he yelled, ‘Fuck you, dipshit motherfucker!!’ and I –”

“He really said all that?” Hunk asks, doubtful. “Are you –”

“That’s not important! And, stop interrupting me! Anyway, point is, he told me ‘fuck you’, and I wasn’t thinking about it at all, I just said it out of instinct, but I told him ‘Maybe after training’ and he–”

Immediately Hunk and Pidge’s faces light up and they start cackling, to which Lance regrets bringing this story up to them. He was considering telling them about his attempted apology to Keith, before, but decides against it.

“We were right! Oh my god! Lance does like Keith!” Hunk shrieks with laughter, slapping the ground. It takes forever, but once the two of them finally start to settle down, Lance can’t get a single word in without them looking at his displeased face and bursting out into laughter again.

“Okay, I’m done.” Lance groans, and stands up. He stomps out of the laughter-filled Cryopod Chamber and through the halls. Seriously, the notion that Lance likes Keith in that way is just stupid. Ugh, why does that have to occupy his thoughts, so much? Stupid mullethead, with his cute scowling face… wait a second, that was a weird thought.

Lance shakes it off and goes to the direction of his room. But when he passes by the corridor with Keith’s room, he changes his course and goes down there, instead.

Keith heads straight to the training deck after dinner is over and dukes it out on a fighting bot. He doesn’t bother telling Shiro about what happened earlier; there’s no point in telling him what’s basically gossip. Well, what can be considered gossip with seven people living in close quarters, anyway. Besides, talking about it would make Keith think about Lance even more, which is the last thing that he needs.

Keith rolls out of the way of a sluggish swing from the robot’s sword and kicks at its shin. The robot falls onto the ground, and he stabs the it straight in the gut before it can dodge. It diffuses into blue light, and he rests the tip of his sword on the ground as he catches his breath and takes a moment to think. God, Keith had no idea what to say earlier. All he could do was gape up at Lance from the ground as his face turned warmer and warmer. This wouldn’t be an issue if Keith didn’t, for whatever reason, like Lance. (That’s still so weird to think about; liking Lance.) He would’ve laughed it off if it were anyone else that had made that joke. Okay, well, probably not anyone else, but still.

“Start training level two.” Keith calls out, picking his sword back up. A robot materializes in front of him, and lunges for him immediately. As Keith dodges it with ease, and attempts to slice at the robot’s backside, he remembers what Lance had started to say earlier.

‘This is gonna sound really weird when I say this, but…’

What could he possibly have wanted to say? Keith feigns an attack to the robot’s right, where it dodges predictably to the left.

‘...I think I might like you?’

“Hrrgh!” Keith grunts as he grips the hilt of his sword with both hands and slashes at the robot’s neck, where it stops and turns into light. There’s no point in playing fairy tales in his mind. No, that was more of an intrusive thought than a real one. Probably.

“Keith?” Someone yells from the entrance of the room. It’s Lance.

Keith rests his sword blade on the ground and mutters a shit under his breath because Lance is the last person he wants to see right now. “What?”

Lance walks in closer, fingers fidgety, looking around the room. He seems uncharacteristically nervous. “I stopped by your room just now, but you weren’t there, so I thought that you might be here.” Then he points to Keith’s sword and asks, “Uh, you mind putting that away?”

Keith glances down at it. “Why?”

“You might stab me or something? I dunno.”

Keith scoffs, but takes his sword and reverts it back to normal bayard form. He drops it next to his feet and kicks it away. “Happy?”

“Yeah,” Lance says, and he clears his throat. “So, to continue with our earlier conversation…”

Oh, shit. Keith did say earlier that they would talk about it later. Guess now is later. “Yeah?” Keith crosses his arms.

Lance touches the back of his head and says, “So just to reiterate, I really am sorry for being such a pissant to you these past few months–”

“Pissant?” Keith scoffs. “Haven’t heard that one in a while.”

“Okay, Keith.” Lance squints and exhales through his nose, putting his hands in his jacket pockets. “Anyway, I didn’t finish what I was saying earlier.”

Oh, fuck. Oh, shit. Here it comes.

Keith shouldn’t be getting so nervous right now, but his chest is growing tighter with apprehension as Lance continues. “So, uh, I was trying to explain earlier why I act like a piss–an asshole. And I guess I didn’t really figure it out until recently, but…”

Finish the damn sentence, asshole.

“I guess this whole time…”

Yeah?

“I’ve actually…”

YEAH?

“...wanted to be friends with you.”

Oh.

“...Friends.” Keith says. Yeah, of course. It’s stupid of him to expect anything more than that.

Lance raises an eyebrow, but he still replies, “Yeah. Friends.”

Keith wants to slap himself for assuming that Lance would want anything more. He asks, “Okay… but how does wanting to be friends correspond with being annoying?”

Lance averts his gaze, rubs at the back of his neck. “I guess I just? Wanted to talk to you somehow? But being a dick was the only way I knew how.”

This time, Keith gives a doubtful laugh, but his tone is light. “So acting bothersome equals friendship, for you? I don’t think that’s a healthy way to go about it, to be honest.”

For a moment, Lance looks like he’s annoyed, like he’s about to say something argumentative, but then he seems like he’s figured out that Keith was joking and relaxes a little. He shrugs and smiles. Holy shit, Keith made him smile.“What can I say? Bugging people is how I show affection.”

“Oookay, weirdo.” Keith rolls his eyes. Affection, huh? Is that what Lance wanted?

Lance laughs in response, to which Keith forces his goosebumps to go down. But then Lance asks, “We cool?”

“Yeah.” Keith replies, and inwardly breathes in relief. He remembers the advice Shiro gave him, about trying to get along with Lance, and is thankful that he’s taking steps towards it now. “And, Lance?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t feel too bad about annoying me. I wasn’t that pissed off about it.”

Lance scrunches his eyebrows, pauses for a second. “What? How come you were so upset about it earlier then?”

“Maybe I just wanted to argue to rile you up.” Keith feels a grin creeping on his mouth from giving Lance a taste of his own medicine. He doesn’t add in that it was worth it, that Lance looked kind of cute when he got angry.

It takes Lance a second, but he catches on and just goes, “Wow.”

As Keith lays in bed later that night, he can’t stop wanting pull the hair out of his head. He hates himself for liking Lance, because it’s completely unfounded, and flat out stupid. He despises himself, for every time he remembers seeing Lance smile and wanting to see more. And he hates the fact that Lance would never, ever feel the same way, especially considering how Keith’s treated him thus far. Lance is probably straight, anyway.

Expecting anything more than friendship from him is childish, REALLY childish, and he should be more thankful that he’s on better terms with Lance at all. And he is thankful. But not nearly as much as he is disappointed in himself.

He shouldn’t be attracted to Lance. It doesn’t make sense. But he is.

He rolls onto his side, curling up closer into the blanket as tides of disconsolation wash over him.

They stop having heated arguments, and start having competitions more fueled by standard rivalry. He starts making an effort to talk to Lance, too, and Lance tries back, which brings them just a little bit closer. Keith’s learned that Lance is fluent in Spanish, but occasionally Lance says ‘El idiota dice what?’ really fast and laughs when Keith says ‘what?’ In the end, Keith doesn’t mind. But when Lance smiles after teasing him, Keith catches himself staring at him a second too long and ends up feeling horrible about it. He’s also learned that Lance wanted to be an astronaut and a singer when he was a little kid, and that he wanted to sing for all of the bored astronauts up in space. “You could still do that. We would make a concert night just for you.” Keith says, and Lance laughs, “You wish.” Every time Lance laughs, Keith loves every second of it, and he wants to punch himself because of it.

“Hey,” Keith says to Lance, one night.

“Hey.” Lance pulls an earbud out, looking up at him. Keith sits down next to Lance on the couch. He doesn’t say anything for a bit, just fiddling with his thumbs because he’s not sure if he should ask this or not. Instead, he stalls on it and asks Lance, “What’re you listening to?”

Lance doesn’t say anything, just hands the earbud to Keith.

When Keith puts it in his left ear, he only listens to it for a few seconds before pulling it out and saying, “Seriously?”

“What?”

“‘You Spin Me Round’? You seem like the kinda dude who’d listen to Drake albums nonstop, to be honest.”

“Why does everyone always say that when they find out my taste in music?” Lance says, scratching at his head. “Well, who cares what you think. The eighties were a golden time for music, ‘kay?”

Keith just gives him an “okay, Lance”, and puts the earbud back in and listens to Lance’s classic eighties playlist. It’s not that bad; if anything, he’s sick of hearing the same Fall Out Boy songs on his own phone. It’s not like he can exactly download new ones, either, unless there’s an alien internet out there to download alien songs from. He leans back and doesn’t move a muscle. Lance shifts a little closer, so the earbuds won’t fall out, and they sit in comfortable silence, just listening to the music.

He wants to ask him, he really does. He doesn’t know if it’d be an appropriate question, but he’s feeling particularly brave tonight and knows that he has to do it before his opportunity slips away.

“Hey, just wondering, Lance,” Keith starts. Gotta seem casual.

“Yeah?”
He keeps his eyes forward. “So, I’m just wondering, but, what – what kinda people are you into?” Taking a glimpse back at Lance, he has an eyebrow raised.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Like, uh? Are you straight, or –”

“OH, that’s what you meant!” Lance exclaims, and Keith is glad that he didn’t have to finish that sentence. But he finds himself with bated breath, waiting for an answer. “Well,” Lance says, “I’d say that I’d be down with anybody, to be honest.”

When he says that, Keith feels like jumping around the room. But he contains himself, and says, “Oh, cool.”

It’s board game night. Allura and Coran sweep the dust off of some old Altean games they haven’t touched in years and bring them out for the whole gang to play with. The rules are too convoluted for all of the paladins, and Allura and Coran are the only ones that understand how to play them. The majority of the games result in the two Alteans pitting against each other, while the paladins all bet on who wins. Lance bets on Allura no matter what, even if it’s obvious that she’s going to lose. And Keith always bets on Coran, just to oppose him.

When they get to one particular smelly board game, all the paladins have an argument over what it smells like.

“It’s old canned soup and pee! C’mon, guys!” Hunk exclaims, holding his arms out. Lance points at him in agreement, and Pidge nods.

“No, it’s something like sweaty feet. Where the hell do you get soup and pee from?” Keith replies, squinting.

“Keith,” Shiro says, touching him on the back, “Feet is too basic. It’s more like raw sewage mixed with vinegar.”

“What are you all talking about? I don’t smell anything.” Allura says, blinking.

And later, when Pidge wins the game, Coran exclaims, “This game was difficult even amongst old Altean scholars! How did you win if you’ve never played this game before?” Pidge looks up at him, smiles, shrugs, and exchanges glances with Hunk and Lance. She does a double take at Lance, looks at how close he and Keith are sitting next to each other, and wiggles her eyebrows. When Keith looks away, Lance gives her the finger.

Finally, they get to a game that is uncannily similar to Jenga, only the blocks are smaller, and the tower is taller. They go by rounds; whoever knocks the tower over is out of the game, which turns out to be a slow process, considering how freaking long it takes to set the whole thing back up. Surprisingly, it comes down to Lance and Keith in the final round.

Lance rubs his hands together as he’s about to pull out the first block. “I am SO gonna wreck you!” he says with confidence, taking out a block from the bottom.

But before he can remove it all the way, Hunk leans over and whispers to Lance, “That’s what she said.”

Lance’s cheeks flare and he freaks out, yanking the block out and smacking Hunk with it (which isn’t that effective). But the whole tower wobbles and falls apart on the table. Lance only notices once one of the blocks flies closer to him and knocks him on the forehead. “Ow!”

Everyone starts to laugh, and although Lance is annoyed that he lost against Keith, he laughs along with them. When he sees Keith chuckling, it’s surprising, because he almost never sees the guy’s laughter when it’s not fueled by sarcasm. So he cherishes the moment like the rarity it is, and replays the sound of it in his head even when Keith’s long stopped.

Allura and Coran decide to head for some planet that Lance forgot the name of. They say it’s because the castle is running low on goo, and the planet is overflowing with it. “I don’t understand why, but our goo supply has been declining rapidly recently!” Allura says, standing in front of the team, while Coran changes the coordinates of the ship’s destination.

“D’you think it was the late night goo shakes?” Hunk whispers to Lance. He shushes him in response.

When they land, Lance is amazed by how cool the place looks. The planet’s mostly beach; in the distance, rippling pink and orange water splashes back and forth atop sheets of black sand. The first thing he does is say excitedly, “Can we go swimming?!” But Allura shuts him down. “Some other time, Lance. We have to get what’s needed first. Besides, you’ve all got a busy day of training tomorrow!” Geez, what a downer.

The sky, like the water, is similarly pink and orange, casting warm light on everything and everyone. When he asks Coran about it, the Altean responds, “Ah, these colors of the sky make up the longest period of the day! I believe the colors are somewhat similar to that of what Earthlings call twilight.”

“When are the sparkly vampires showing up?” Lance mutters to Keith.

“Dude, shut up.”

“Aw, how come?”

“Twilight was good, okay? I’m sick of hearing all these jokes about it.” Keith snaps, to which Lance snickers. Crossing his arms, Keith says, “What’s so funny?”

“You? Like Twilight?” Lance looks at him skeptically. “I would never believe that in a million years. You’re like, this antisocial stoic kid that always goes off to go train on free will. I’m having a hard time imagining you’d be into a crappy series like Twilight.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?!” Keith puts his hands on his chest defensively. “I like Twilight and all there is to it!” Hmm. Well, Lance is mostly correct, but there’s something about Keith that he’s missing. Likes reading weird romance novels… listens to rock… wears a lot of black?

“Oh! I’ve got it!” Lance exclaims, patting his palm with his fist. “You’re more like that sappy emo kid that cried when My Chemical Romance broke up.”

“I-I’m not emo, and – hey! It was a sad day for the world!” Keith exclaims. Then he pauses with realization, and looks away, burying his face in his hands, to which Lance bursts out with laughter.

“Lance! Keith!”

Lance turns around, still giggling, and there a displeased Allura stands, hands on her hips. “Did you two hear a word I just said?”

“Uh, no.” “Nope.”

She sighs. “Well, I was saying that Pidge, Hunk, Coran and I will go collect food for the castle. Shiro and the both of you are to stay here and guard the ship, and alert us if anything goes wrong.”

Lance gives her a thumbs-up, and Keith nods.

When Allura, Coran, Pidge and Hunk walk off to go find a goo reservoir, giant goo-collecting bags in hand, Pidge and Hunk both shoot Lance these looks and make kissy motions at him while pointing to Keith. Lance flips them off, as per usual.

“What’s that about?” Keith asks next to him, which gets Lance’s shoulders all tense – Holy shit, did he see all the gestures they were making?? Please say no, please.

“Uhhh what was what about?” Lance fidgets with his sleeve. Nervous habit.

“Flipping them off?” Keith asks, and Lance feels like his entire chest drops in relief.

“Oh, they’ve just uh, been annoying me a lot lately. Don’t worry about it.” That’s not a lie, at least. Keith raises a brow in response, but doesn’t say anything else.

Five minutes pass of just Shiro, Lance, and Keith in front of the ship, standing guard. Keith and Shiro are standing off, talking about miscellaneous things. Lance has been entertaining himself by drawing boats on the sand, but it’s kind of hard to see the lines when the sand is black. He finally gives it up and watches the beach, where what seems to be a festival happening. A bunch of people look like they’re celebrating something. They’re shining several different-colored lights in the distance, dancing, cheering, talking. A lot are turned towards the prodigious castleship and pointing it out. Some are walking around with necklaces that are literally on fire, but, uh, okay. None of them are swimming in the water, though, which is weird. Still, looks like they’re having lots of fun, and Lance is curious to know what’s going on.

So he stands up and walks up to Shiro and Keith. “Guys, I’m bored. Why don’t we head down to the beach and see what those people are up to?”

Keith is the first to protest. “No, Lance. We need to stay on task.”

“Don’t be such a party pooper! All those people are having fun over there and we’re just standing here, doing nothing. I mean, at least Pidge and Hunk and Allura and Coran get to go do something, even if it involves crawling into moist caves to shove a bunch of goop into their gigantic bags.” Lance makes these huge gestures towards the beach and the ship, like he’s a salesperson trying to convince Shiro and Keith to buy his latest product. “And why are we even standing guard in the first place? I’m pretty sure we’d notice if someone was trying to steal our thousand-foot tall castleship from miles away.”

Shiro is the one to speak, this time.

“Allura said that this is one of the few planets she visits that hasn’t been taken over by Galra forces. Zarkon could come crashing down at any second, ready to pounce.” He gives Lance a sympathetic smile. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“So we can go, then??”

Shiro looks down at Lance, and then he looks at Keith. Keith still seems skeptical, but Lance can tell that he wants to come, too.

“How about instead,” Shiro says, “You two go off and have fun? I’ll stay here and watch over the ship.”

“Hey, wait, I’d feel bad if you had to stay here and do nothing. Just come with us, man.” Of course Lance is happy that he got permission from Dad Shiro, but...

“Yeah, Shiro. Come with us.” Keith says, staring intently at him. Except, it’s weird, because his tone sounds more… urging? And Shiro just has this strange smile on his face, not looking away from Keith.

“Nope, sorry. Can’t change my mind, now. I’m staying right where I am.” Shiro crosses his arms and sits down, still not breaking eye contact with Keith.

And it gets even weirder. Lance can swear that Keith glances back at him, movements tense, before turning to Shiro – and he whispers something to him. Shiro just chuckles in response and says, “Lance is waiting, Keith.”

Keith pauses for a few moments. Lance doesn’t know what the hell is going on, but hey, he might as well go off while he still has the chance. He taps Keith’s arm and starts to walk backwards, towards the beach. “Keith, c’mon. And thanks for covering us, Shiro!” He turns around and starts to jog. When he glimpses behind him to see if Keith is following, he’s still looking at Shiro, but he doesn’t say anything more and then turns to go follow Lance.

When Keith catches up with him, they slow to a walk. “Now it’s my turn to ask you what that was about,” Lance says, raising a brow. “What’d you whisper to Shiro?”

But Keith’s shoulders stiffen, and he averts his gaze to a different direction. When he opens his mouth to answer, no words come out for a solid second. “I-I was just telling him thanks for watching the ship for us.”

“Uhh, okay? But, why’d you have to whisper it if you –”

“Hey, race me to the beach!” Keith yells, and without another moment’s hesitation, starts bolting there.

“Oh, you’re on!” Lance shouts, and follows suit.

After a few minutes of running, Keith beats him there. Lance refuses to admit it. “No, that was totally a tie!”

Keith gives him a doubtful smile. “Do you count a twenty-foot gap as a tie?”

Lance takes a moment to think of a good comeback, realizes he doesn’t have one, and settles for “Pssh, whatever!”

When he looks around, he remembers why they had gone up here in the first place. There are little tables made of rock sitting all around on the sand, with goo delicacies placed on them. Some people are having a little acapella group over in one corner, while another group of them dances horribly. There are a lot of what seems to be families and couples walking around, talking and playing and waving their fire necklaces in the air. They all look vastly different from Keith and Lance, with multi-colored skin and white hair.

“Yeah, I’m starting to feel really out of place right about now.” Keith looks around, observing their surroundings, as well.

“Don’t talk like that, man!” Lance slaps him on the back. “I’m sure these alien peeps will love us! Just gotta show ‘em how fun we are.”

“Are we fun?”

“Of course!” And as he says that, he spots a group of beautiful girls walking right in front of them, talking. “Hey, girl!” He yells to one with dark red skin. She turns to look in his direction. Lance puts his elbow on Keith’s shoulder, but ignores him otherwise as he flashes a flirty grin to the girl and points a finger gun at her. “Girl, are you an alien? Because you’ve totally abducted my heart.”

Keith steps aside and Lance loses his balance. He yelps, but covers his mouth halfway because that did not sound manly, in like, the slightest. He looks up at the girl, who gives him a face of disgust. One of her friends ushers her along and the group keeps walking.

“Hey! What was that for?” Lance cries, glaring at Keith.

“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t just stand there and tolerate that cringe-worthy performance while you were using me as a wall.” Keith rolls his eyes.

“Well, I’d like to see you do better.” Lance crosses his arms, and smirks at Keith. A real challenge.

“I’m not gonna go around flirting with strangers just to prove a point, Lance.” Keith rolls his eyes. But Lance puts his hand up to his face and says, “Then what if I told you, that if you prove yourself to be a better flirt than me, you can have me do anything you want, no matter how embarrassing it is?”

Keith just squints at him for few seconds, contemplates it. He crosses his arms, too. Now they’re both face-to-face. “Fine.”

Hell. Yes. Keith could never beat him at flirting! The guy barely knows how to socialize!

Lance looks around at the crowd of people. He points his thumb at one. “Go. Talk to that one, with the blue skin.”

Keith glances over at them. “Is that a guy or a girl?”

It doesn’t take a second for Lance to shrug and say, “I dunno. They’re all aliens, dude.”

“Fair point.”

So Lance and Keith approach the person with the light blue skin, who’s sitting alone with an unnaturally-colored drink in hand at a little bar-like stand. Lance almost feels bad for them, since he knows that Keith’s flirting can’t possibly be any better than his own. He is curious to know, though, how Keith will go about this, since flirting with guys and flirting with girls are wildly different stories. Lance would know. So how does one go about flirting with someone that lands somewhere else on the spectrum?

Lance takes a seat next to the person, giving Keith a challenging smile. Yeah, that’s right. He’s making it harder on purpose. Keith doesn’t get to sit next to them; there are only two stools. But Keith ignores his Lance and clears his throat.

The person turns to the left, seeming startled. “Hey,” Keith starts. Oh, alright. Starting off with a simple approach, okay. “My name’s Keith, and this is my friend Lance. What’s your name?”

He’s sure that the person gives out their name, but Lance doesn’t pay attention to it, as he’s too focused on the fact that Keith starts to lean on his shoulder. He’s about to protest, but remembers that he did the same exact thing to Keith earlier. He holds his mouth shut as Keith smiles coolly and says, “Cute name.” They give a short, breathy laugh, and look down at their drink, still smiling. Shy, much?

Cute is good as an adjective, because it works for any gender. Keith’s doing so far, so good. But Lance is waiting for it to turn to shit.

“S-so, where are you from?” They ask. Keith replies, “Earth. It’s a cool place, it’s got lots of unique people and places. And especially beautiful sights to see. But none as beautiful as this planet,” he pauses, “or you.”

Lance has to turn the other way and cover his mouth to keep his jaw from dropping. What the actual fuck?! That was super cheesy, but SUPER smooth. He hears airy laughter from the person, and Keith. “Sorry, was that too straightforward?” Keith says, still smiling. The person shakes their head, smiling too. “No, no. I appreciate that.”

He feels invisible, at this point, as the person asks, “How come you’re away from your home planet?”

Dammit. There’s no way that this person won’t be enamored with Keith after he explains the whole Voltron thing; being a defender of the universe against the oppressive Galran army? That’s a feat that would impress anybody.

But then Keith surprises him when he says, “We’re here on a tour around the universe. That huge ship back there belongs to us.” he points behind him where the ship lies, and when the person turns around to look at it, Lance feels a weak pinch on his neck from Keith; signaling to him not to point out the lie. The person goes, “That’s so cool!” and et cetera. When he thinks about the reason Keith lied, it actually makes sense. Like, a crazy story about flying lions and fighting in space isn’t very believable, especially if you’ve never even heard of Voltron. Huh. Props to Keith for thinking of that, then.

Keith’s coolness and flirting and the blue person’s blushing and laughter all kind of blends together after that. The romance seems so real, that Lance feels like an awkward third wheel as he looks back forth between the two, not even processing what they’re saying anymore. Just looking at their faces, their body language, their tones of voice. It’s going off without a hitch. It’s obvious that Keith’s won at the flirting, but Lance can’t wrap his head around how. He doesn’t like this. Doesn’t like this at all. How can he describe his feelings, right now? Is he jealous? Yeah, jealous. But… jealous of Keith’s mad flirting skills, or jealous of the target of his affections?

Wait – that was a weird thought. Of course Lance is jealous of Keith’s flirting skills, not the person. Definitely the flirting skills. Definitely.

Lance feels just as thankful as he is bitter when the blue person checks the time, and gasps about how late it is. The sky has turned dark; the only lighting coming from the various stands, pink lights that are set up, as well as the fiery necklaces people are still swinging around. “See you around,” Keith says, grinning as the person waves and walks away. The moment they turn their back all the way, Keith heaves out a huge sigh of relief and sits down on the stool where his blue friend was sitting at just now.

“Man, that was like, super draining, Lance. I was panicking every single time they said something I didn’t know how to respond to.” Keith rubs at his forehead and puts his hand on Lance’s shoulder, bending over to rest for a few seconds. And it’s weird, because Lance really likes the touch.

“Were you really? Because those were the smoothest social interactions I’ve ever seen you perform.” Lance smiles, trying to mask his bitterness.

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean that you’re not great at socializing normally with your actual friends, dude. I really wasn’t expecting you to be a flirt master. So when you pull out this pickup line about how beautiful that person is, my jaw just drops. Like, the delivery was way smoother than I thought you were capable of.” Lance isn’t even speaking in a ‘complimenting your friend because they deserve it’ way; the words pouring out of his mouth are in a ‘jealous talk that can be perceived as genuine’ way. Keith takes it as the former, straightens his back, and laughs modestly. “Uh, I’ve been told that I’m better at flirting with strangers than people I actually like.”

“What? That doesn’t make sense,” Lance laughs, “Shouldn’t it be the other way around? How do you flirt with people you like?”

And then Keith’s back straightens more and his shoulders tense up, but he looks to the side and shrugs. “I dunno? Badly?”

Okay, that was kind of weird. But Lance ignores it and laughs, “I’ll bet.”

“Anyway,” Keith says, picking up the pace, “Beating you at flirting was barely a challenge. Seriously, I just killed you.”

“Ah, shut up.”

“And remember the deal? You have to do something for me, now.”

Crap. Lance completely forgot about the deal that they made. That he came up with. He throws his head back and groans, and stands up. “Okaaay, fine. Just tell me what it is now so I can get it over with.”

“Huh?” Keith blinks. “Oh. Uh, I guess I didn’t actually think about what it was before bringing it up. Hm…” he scratches at his chin.

“Please, nothing too embarrassing.”

Keith takes a few more moments to think, and in the end, just shrugs. “I honestly don’t know what to make you do.” He pauses before speaking again. “You know what, I’ll decide later. Make you anticipate whatever’s coming.”

Great, now Lance has a surprise to look forward to.

The two stand up and walk off to look around. Lance still doesn’t get why or how these people can be wearing aflame necklaces. Or why there’s not much to do here other than stand around and sing or dance or talk. Or the point of this festival in the first place. But the flirting incident still leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, and he’d rather just watch than participate in anything, for now.

“‘Kay, I know we just got up, but can we sit back down again?” Lance asks. Keith chuckles and says, “What were you saying earlier? That we just have to show these people how fun we are?”

“Hey, I just feel partied out, okay?” Lance replies, crossing his arms and taking a seat on the nearest rock-slab-bench. Keith seems worried for a moment, but doesn’t say anything about it. He just sits next to him and says, “Welcome to introvert world, where you can do practically nothing and still feel drained after.”

Lance doesn’t say anything back, but just scoffs. He relaxes and leans against the back support of the bench, staring at the bright lights and high energy of the festival. How their spirit collides with his weird, unfounded envy.

Why is Lance so perturbed about the whole ordeal, anyway? Yeah, it makes sense to be annoyed that Keith is better at him than something. But he doesn’t usually get this up in arms about it. Is it Keith’s skill that’s getting to him, or seeing him flirt with somebody else at all?

Stop, he’s going down weird territory. But his mind wanders anyway to the time when he described Keith as having perfect hair and mysterious eyes without even thinking, and all the times Pidge and Hunk would tease him, and how defensive he’d get. Shit, are they right? Does he like Keith? Maybe he’s been denying it to himself this whole time? That’d explain why he’d be so jealous over Keith flirting with another person, but – stop, stop, stop. This is turning way too weird.

…

Okay, but hypothetically, if that does turn into a thing, how would that even work? To be honest, Lance wouldn’t mind that. The thought of dating Keith sounds – more appealing than he’d like to admit. Like, Keith is cute. His mullet pisses Lance off, but it’s so flowy and Keith-like that he’s warmed up to it. And he can be closed off at times, sure, but that makes Lance want to know more about him. Not to mention, those rare moments when Keith laughs non-sarcastically. It sounds odd, like he doesn’t laugh like that often, but when he does, it feels so positive and earnest.

But like, is Keith even into guys? He’s never mentioned his preferences in that aspect, but Lance has. He told Keith that he’d be down with anyone. But when he thinks back to how Keith reacted, it was kind of weird? Like, he got all tense and took a couple of seconds to respond, and just said, “Oh, cool.”

Tense. Huh. That’s how Keith acts on random sometimes, when he’s around Lance. He usually chooses to ignore it, but now that he’s really thinking about it, it seems out of place. Like earlier, when Keith whispered something to Shiro, and acted weird about it. Crap, does Keith dislike him? That would explain perfectly why he was so hesitant on coming over here with him. Or when Lance asked about the flirting thing. Dammit, was he getting too personal, or something? What’d he do to piss him off this time?

Lance, without explanation, leans down and groans, “UUUUUUGHHH.” Feelings are complicated.

“I feel you.” Keith says.

Lance doesn’t even think about his reply. “Oh, you feel me?”

Again, with the weird tensing up. Keith stops, opens his mouth, closes it, and opens his mouth again, and says, “Wow.”

It’s an intrusive thought, more than anything, that Keith might not like him, but the more Lance contemplates it, the more plausible it seems. What if Keith merely tolerates being around him? Does he still get mad when Lance teases him? They’re sitting quietly right now, not doing anything but watching the festival. He can’t tell if it’s awkward silence or comfortable silence. But Lance leans more towards awkward the more he speculates.

And soon enough, when Lance looks at Keith to check if he seems uncomfortable, he’s actually falling asleep. Like, his head is bobbing and it’s funny to watch, so Lance doesn’t wake him up. But then he falls asleep and he’s leaning to the right, closer to Lance, and now his head’s resting on his shoulder.

But Lance doesn’t mind. At all. The guy needs something to rest on, right? In fact, this is actually… really nice.

Keith’s breathing is low and quiet. Huge contrast to his temperamental personality, and the energizing festival. But it’s a pleasant change of pace. His hair is poking Lance’s neck, but it’s soft and doesn’t smell, so it doesn’t bother him. And even though there’s a draft in the air, he feels strangely warm.

Eventually, Lance just kind of forgets about his negative thoughts for the time being, as well as all of the bright lights and the dancing in front of them, and hones in on how still he feels, and how still Keith feels, and how quiet and warm they are. Like they’re in their own world. He doesn’t want this to stop. And he closes his eyes and rests his head on Keith’s, and lets his breathing come to a slow.

When Keith wakes up, it’s to the sound of Pidge giggling, “Party’s over, Lance, it’s time to go back to the castle.” Keith exhales, but doesn’t open his eyes because he’s too comfortable to wake up all the way, right now. But after a few more seconds, he realizes that he’s resting his head on something. No, someone.

He opens his eyes to see Pidge standing a few feet in front of him, holding out her phone and giggling. Confusion floods his system, and he sees Lance’s jacket, which just confuses him even more. But then he remembers the festival, which is over by now; the beach is devoid of all people and any stands or lights that were set up prior. He remembers coming over here to sit down with Lance. Oh, shit. He must’ve fallen asleep. But on him.

Keith freaks out, shooting up straight and swatting Lance away, feeling the heat rush to his face. He didn’t mean to fall asleep, especially not on him. What makes it worse is the fact that Pidge is recording them right now.

He stands as Lance starts to wake up, snatches up Pidge’s phone, stops the video, and deletes it. She tries to grab at it, protesting, but he holds it up in the air, way above her reach. Scrolling through the rest of her recent photos and videos, he can see that she took a few pictures of them, too. His head is resting on Lance’s shoulder in these pictures, but Lance is resting on him, back. Jesus Christ. Nobody needs to see these.

“Heyy, what’re we looking at, here?” Lance says, groggily, picking the phone out of Keith’s hands just as he’s about to delete all the pictures. Keith’s shoulders stiffen up as he watches the other scroll through the photos, and sees his eyes widen. “Keith, are these your pictures?”

“What?! No, that’s Pidge’s phone!” Keith yells, just as she plucks it out of Lance’s grasp.

“Gee, you two are just so cute together,” Pidge sighs, discontented, and stares down at her phone as she walks away. That statement makes Keith freeze in his tracks, and the next thing he does is look up at Lance, just as Lance looks up, too, and he swears that Lance looks just as flustered as Keith feels, with wide eyes and red cheeks and pursed lips. It’s cute, but they maintain awkward eye contact for another few seconds until Lance seems to compose himself, and then does an over-the-top-wink at Keith.

Shit, that was really cute. But it was probably a joke.

That’s when Shiro comes walking over, telling them that they all need to head back to the castle. And as they saunter back in the dark, Keith asks, “How long were we gone?”

Shiro replies, “An hour and a half, maybe?”

Lance butts in from the side, “So you were standing there for that long? What did you even do the whole time?”

“My job.” Shiro says, which invokes an embarrassed laugh from Lance. Just then Pidge falls back to talk to Lance about something. Keith taps on Shiro’s shoulder with the back of his hand.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know. You could’ve come with us.” Keith says.

Shiro smiles. “It would’ve been nice to have alone time with him, right? I mean, you do still like him, don’t you?”

“Don’t make me admit it.” Keith covers his face with one hand. “Anyway, sorry that you had to wait alone.”

“Don’t be sorry. I know you wanted me to go, too, but standing guard by myself was my own choice.”

When everyone gets back to the ship, Lance and Keith get inevitably scolded by Allura. Pidge complains about how they forced her to crawl into narrow, damp caves to scoop deposits of goo into a bag, since she’s the smallest. Lance seems troubled by something, Keith notices, but he doesn’t pry him about it.

So when Lance comes knocking on his door a little while later, right as Keith’s about to fall asleep, he’s surprised.

“Lance?” Keith rubs his eyes absentmindedly. “What’re you doing here?”

“Can I just hang out here?” Lance asks, clearly tired. They’re all supposed to wake up early, tomorrow, but Keith doesn’t want to deny him the chance to talk. So he lets him in.

Lance takes a seat on Keith’s bed, where there aren’t a bunch of clothes everywhere. “Your room’s messy as ever,” he remarks.

“Not like your’s is much better. Make room.” Keith sits down as Lance scoots closer to the foot of the bed. Lance is staring down at the floor, his hands a little fidgety. Now’s probably the best time to ask about it.

“You okay, man?” Keith asks.

“Yeah, I just. Wanted to talk to you about something.” Lance replies, which gives Keith the same nervous lurch in his stomach he always gets when someone says that to him. But he plays it cool and says, “Sure, what is it?”

Lance takes a moment to breathe out, and then looks at Keith. “Be straight with me. Do you, like? Hate me?”

The question comes as such a surprise that Keith doesn’t even know what to say, at first. But he finds his words and says, “Of course not! What the hell makes you think that?”

Lance recoils the tiniest degree at Keith’s harsh tone, which he instantly regrets, but he still stares at Lance, waiting for his answer. Lance shifts around, uncertainty clear on his face. “I don’t know! You just… sometimes, you seem like you’re upset, or awkward, around me.” Keith’s eyebrows hitch, but Lance continues, “Like earlier, when Shiro said that we should go off to the beach on our own. You whispered something to him, and then raced me to the beach so I’d forget about it. Which I did. But what did you really whisper to him?”

Shit, Lance remembers that? And is that what he thinks? That he’s upset with him? In reality, Keith had told Shiro, ‘You don’t have to do this for me.’. But he doesn’t want to say that, because Lance will ask why he whispered it if it’s not such a big deal, which Keith doesn’t have an excuse for. He doesn’t know what to say.

But Lance doesn’t wait for a response; he keeps talking and turns to face Keith all the way. “Or when I asked you a question earlier about flirting? You got all tense. And I said something else, too, which made you tense up again. And that one time, when…”

And Lance keeps on listing the times when Keith would get flustered or embarrassed with him. Keith can’t believe that he let his emotions show through like that, in all those instances, but he also can’t believe that Lance interprets all of that as Keith being upset, rather than flustered. Lance is seriously dense, if he had managed to catch all of that, but still suspects the wrong thing. But Keith is conflicted, because he doesn’t want to confess how he really feels, but he also doesn’t want Lance to think that he dislikes him.

Finally, Lance ends it with, “And when you asked me about my sexuality that one time, I gave you an answer and then you just got uncomfortable. Like you didn’t know how to respond, at first. Are you against that, or…?” Lance is giving him this look that’s angry. “Is that why you’ve been acting weird around me?”

Keith doesn’t let a single second of silence pass between them before he responds, “No! Of course I’m not ‘against that’! For god's sake, Lance, I’m –” but he stops himself there.

“You’re what?” Lance yells, brows hitched.

...Fuuuuck. Keith shouldn’t have said that. His sexuality isn’t something that he likes to disclose to people, even Lance, despite knowing that he’d be okay with it. But when he stares at the hurt look on Lance’s face, searching for an answer, he knows that he can’t lie about this.

Keith shuts his eyes, exhales. The room is silent while Keith tries to muster the energy to say what he’s feeling. Finally, he comes out with, “I’m – I’m bisexual, Lance.”

Lance blinks, and says nothing while his expression turns from indignant to surprised. “You are?”

Keith exhales for a solid few seconds, before saying, “Yes.” Neither of them say anything for a few beats, just staring at each other.

Finally, Lance says, “Then how come you act uncomfortable around me at times?”

Oh no. Keith bites his bottom lip, doesn’t say anything, hitches his eyebrows, feels his shoulders stiffen. He was not anticipating this. Not anticipating this at all.

Lance stares at him for a moment, and says, “There you go! You’re doing it right now. Keith, I thought that we were on better terms. If you’re still resentful of me, just tell me what’s wrong. Please.”

Keith’s never seriously considered telling Lance the truth about his feelings. So this – this is like getting handed a bat and being told to enter the league when you’ve never played baseball in your life. There are no feasible explanations or excuses that he can make up, right now, that would possibly make sense. The only option that he could choose is to confess the truth. And if he doesn’t, Lance will assume that he’s disliked, which Keith does not want.

“Uh.” Keith stutters. Thinking about the mere prospect of confessing makes his heart pound in his chest, because he has NO idea how it would go down. At all. And he really doesn’t want to try.

But he might have to.

When Keith stammers, Lance sits there, waiting impatiently for him to find his words. He’s on the edge of his mental seat, here, wanting to hear what Keith has to say. Ever since the idea first popped into his head, Lance has been horribly paranoid for the past few hours that Keith doesn’t actually like him, but hates his guts. It’s kind of stupid of him, to jump to this conclusion with such little evidence, but he’s has had friends like this, before. Where they’ve hated him the whole ride, but didn’t tell him until much later. Building up your entire friendship with a person, thinking that they like you just as much as you like them, and then watching it all crumble to pieces once you find out the truth is so, so painful. He doesn’t want this to be the case with Keith, because he is genuinely one of the best people to be around that he’s met in a long time. So he wants to confront him about it, before it’s too late.

Finally, Keith picks up his words. “I, uh… How do I say this…?” Godammit, Keith is still doing that thing. Where his movements become tense and minimal, his back straightens, and he hesitates before talking. He looks awkward, and this behavior of his is so familiar to Lance that he can’t believe that he’s only stopped ignoring it today.

Keith breathes out deeply. Another sign that he’s uncomfortable, but trying to get a grip. “So, uh, here’s the – here’s the thing.” He rubs his neck. “Um, I’ve always kind of, felt this way around you, but, I’ve only just – come to terms with it.”

And then Keith stops his line of speech, and bites his lip, like he’s trying to decide what to say next. Lance doesn’t want to rush him, or anything, but. He needs to know if Keith hates him or not, pronto. So he slouches over, trying to make eye contact with Keith, mentally egging him on to hurry up.

Except he notices that Keith’s face is a little red. No, not just a little red. It’s really red. Holy shit. Reminds him of the Red Lion. But why is he turning red? Lance didn’t think that someone could be this uncomfortable, but then another thought crosses his mind. That Keith’s not just uncomfortable, but he could also be embarrassed? But why would he possibly be embarrassed from talking about –

...

Wait.

WAIT.

Keith just said that he’s bisexual.

And the things that Keith is saying right now; ‘always kind of felt this way’, ‘just now come to terms with it’.

If Lance thinks back to the times when Keith’s acted uncomfortable about him, and imagines him as being embarrassed, or even flustered, rather than uncomfortable –

Holy. Shit.

It all makes sense. Like when Lance says flirty things by accident to Keith, he gets flustered. Or any time Lance gets passionate about anything, Keith gets flustered. Or when Lance laughs, even, Keith gets flustered.

In that one moment that he took to think, it all clicks together and Lance can’t contain the small gasp that ensues.

Meanwhile, Keith is just starting to talk again. “Okay, so. T-the reason that I act nervous sometimes, isn’t because I dislike you. I, I swear it. The real reason why, is because –”

“–because you like me!” Lance yells, his eyes wide. How could he just now realize this?! It’s been sitting in front of him this whole time!

And Keith gets this scared look, his face turns a darker shade than Lance thought was possible, and Lance suddenly starts laughing. “Keith! I’m such an idiot! I can’t believe that I’ve never figured it out before; you’re horrible at hiding secrets like this!”

Keith finally opens his mouth to talk. “I-I am??”

“YES, you are!” Lance laughs, and smiles at him. “But that doesn’t matter now! Keith, you do like me, right? That’s why you act weird? Not because you dislike me, but because you get flustered?”

Keith blinks, and nods. “Yeah...”

“What’d you say, earlier? That you’ve always kind of felt this way?” Lance says, leaning over closer to Keith. He feels the relief washing over him. So Keith doesn’t hate him – thank god. Keith has to take a few more moments to compose himself, but he does, and replies, “Y-yeah. I just realized it maybe – a couple of months ago?”

“So, like around when we actually became friends?” It’s been going on for so long, Lance can’t believe that the thought has never crossed his mind before. But he gets curious, and asks, “Why, though?”

“Lot’s of reasons!” Keith blurts, before covering his mouth, and clearing his throat. “Like, um. Your sense of humor, and, how competitive you are. And when I get sad, you make a fool out of yourself on purpose to make me feel better. And uh, to be honest I – I don’t get ever tired of hearing you laugh.” He’s making a lot of nervous-induced hand gestures now, and his eyes are flitting around the room. God, Lance understands now. Keith’s just flustered.

“Geez, you really are cute when you’re embarrassed!” Lance laughs, putting a hand on Keith’s shoulder. This is normally the part where he would tell himself that that was weird, that he’s going down weird territory, but he doesn’t, this time. In response to this, Keith breathes out a ‘holy shit’ and then says, “You too. I mean, you’re really cute, all the time... Uh.”

Christ. “Yeah, you are bad at flirting with your actual crushes. But that’s alright, yeah? I can make up for it by flirting for you.” Lance gives Keith’s shoulder a little squeeze.

“So – hold on, do you actually? Like me back?” Keith stammers, shaking his head a little.

This one, Lance takes a moment to think about. About how he likes the concept of being with Keith, and about how Pidge and Hunk’s teasing isn’t that unfounded, and about how he had gotten jealous upon seeing Keith flirt with someone else. And about how much he cherishes it when Keith laughs, or how much he enjoyed that moment when they were falling asleep on each other, and how much he wants more of that. It’s been brewing in his heart, albeit slowly, but it’s there. He’s just never noticed it.

Lance accepts his realization this time, instead of pushing it away. He shifts closer to him, takes his hand off of his shoulder and slides it over Keith’s hand. Keith flinches at the contact, but remains in place.

“Yeah. I do.” Lance says, locking eye contact with him.

Keith just breathes, not saying anything for a few beats. When he speaks up, he says, “Does this mean what I think it means?”

“That we’re boyfriends?” Lance says. Boyfriends. It has a nice ring.

Keith nods.

Lance tries to twine his fingers with Keith’s to be romantic, but his hands are actually really sweaty right now, so it doesn’t work. But he settles on pushing his pinkie beneath Keith’s. “Yes.”

When they announce it to the team the next day, no one shows any surprise. Allura, confused, says “Huh? Were you not already courting?”, Coran gets emotional and wipes at his eyes with a handkerchief, while saying “Young love! It’s a miracle!”, Pidge and Hunk, predictably, say “Called it!”, while Shiro gives them an encouraging smile. Lance pulls Keith in closer to him, unable to contain his growing grin.

A week later, they try to have a little date just by going on a stroll around the castle and talking. It’s not bad at all, actually. It’s casual, but romantic at the same time.

When Lance leads Keith back to the dinner hall, he tries his best to make some kind of alien goop dessert. In the process, he presses the wrong button, which opens up some kind of vacuum on the machine. It feels just like he’s being sucked into space, only with more murderous kitchen appliances. Keith hears the noise and runs down to the kitchen, and laughs at Lance for a good minute when he sees him holding onto a counter for dear life, before he helps out. When he shuts the machine off, Lance sees stars around his head, but feels like his dizziness is remedied the moment Keith gives him a peck on the cheek for trying.

They land on the beachy planet to have a day of fun, for once. There aren’t any random people having a random party, this time, so that’s good. Coran tries to figure out how to start a bonfire, and Allura and Pidge catch a bunch of alien crabs and name them. Hunk picks Lance up and throws him into the water every time he gets too annoying, while Shiro swims out to sea to save Lance when he starts drowning. Keith lays down on the black sand, thinking, This is the color of my soul.

Allura and Coran decide to leave the castle parked on the planet overnight, and that they’ll take off back to Arus the next morning. Keith figures it’s because they’re too lazy to fly back, right now.

When everyone goes to sleep, he tiptoes down the corridors and into Lance’s room. He has to pull the eye mask and headphones off of him, but when he does, he murmurs, “Hey, wake up,” giving Lance a light shake.

“Whyyyy…?” Lance groans. He rolls onto his back and opens his eyes, looking up at Keith.

“Come with me.” Keith says, still shaking his arm.

“Nnng…” Lance keeps groaning for another minute, but eventually rubs his eyes and gets his lazy ass out of bed.

“Where are we going…?” Lance mumbles, as Keith grabs his hand and leads him down the halls. “You’ll see.” is all Keith says. They go through some more corridors, down the stairs, and into an escape pod.

Lance yawns as the pod takes off and separates from the castle, and they descend slowly to the ground. “Okay, Keith, I know you’re trying to be all mysterious, right now, but why are we going down to the beach –”

“Just be quiet and follow me.”

When the pod lands, and the doors open, Keith lets go of Lance’s hand and they stroll down to the beach, together. The sky is dark, with millions of stars lining the sky. A breeze rolls through the air, folding and vacillating the tides of dark blue water. The waves splash a lot stronger than the sea on Earth. Pidge explained earlier today, that it’s most likely caused by the size of the moon, which is understandable; the moon on this planet is immense, and sits bright and proud in the sky. Its reflection shines clear on the sparkling water. The only sound Keith hears is water spraying over rocks as it pushes back and forth. The serenity, here, makes a huge difference from all of the noise and yelling that he’s experienced at this place, thus far.

“Come into the water.” Keith says, turning to him. Lance does what he says without question, and chuckles when he sees the other rolling his pant sleeves up. “Always wear shorts to sleep, Keith.”

“Whatever.” Keith wades in after Lance. He should be afraid, considering these giant-moon-caused waves roll pretty far into the shore, but he’s not. They trek into the water, halfway up to their knees. Then Lance steps aside and kicks up water at Keith, with a challenging smile on his face.

Keith, accepting, bends down and laps water back at him, laughing when Lance shields himself against the coldness. “You’re on!” Lance yells. He tries to look cool by doing a 360 and kicking up water, but his foot gets stuck behind a rock and he loses balance, yelping and flailing backwards into the sea. Keith laughs, “Those shorts didn’t save you!” And suddenly his ankle’s getting grabbed and pulled and now he’s falling in, too.

“C’mon, there’s no way you didn’t expect that.” Lance says, smiling after the splash has subsided, wiping water off of his forehead.

Keith sits up, surfacing from the water, and faces Lance, smiling, too. “I didn’t.” And when he hears the water getting louder and louder to his right, he looks into the direction of the ocean and sees a tall, incoming wave that’s bound to drench them both in mere seconds. He exchanges a single glance with Lance before they both get up and scramble back to the shoreline.

“Man, now my hair’s wet.” Keith grumbles, plopping back down when they get to a dry patch of sand, right in front of where the sea foam hits.

“Was having a water fight enough for you?” Lance smiles and raises a brow down at him.

Although Keith is freezing, his shirt is uncomfortably sticky, and his legs are wet and ridden with sand, he still doesn’t want to go back to the castle. So instead, he says to Lance, “Sit with me.” And he does.

They do nothing but watch the water, and shiver every time they feel the wind, and hear the splashes. Eventually, they scoot closer together, and wrap an arm around each other to share warmth.

The silence between them is pleasant.

Keith is hesitant on breaking the quiet, but after a while, he does. “Lance. Do you remember the deal we made a month ago?”

“Yeah?”

“I know what you can do, now.”

Lance locks gazes with Keith, a knowing smile growing on his face. “What is it?”

Keith’s heart is slowly picking up its pace. “Kiss me.”

All Lance does is laugh, like he was already expecting to hear that. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

And as they both inch closer to each other, Lance tries to wrap their fingers together again, but his motor skills have barely improved since last time and it makes Keith want to laugh as he twines their fingers for him. He stays still as the other takes hold of the back of his neck and moves closer.

When their lips meet for the first time, it’s more like a crash, because Lance moves too fast by accident. But Keith laughs against his mouth, and pulls back enough to look at his face, and sees that Lance’s eyes are wide, and his cheeks are red with embarrassment.

Who’s the flustered one, now?, Keith thinks to himself. He smiles, leans in closer, but more slow. His breath hitches. They kiss again, this time with more patience. He feels warm all over, but there are also shudders running up and down his spine, both from the cold and the kiss. He doesn’t stop, though. Just strokes Lance’s hand with his thumb.

Lance pulls him in deeper, brushing Keith’s jawline with his thumb. It sends shivers down his arms.

And when they pull away, they take only one look at each other, and kiss again.

Keith’s the one to pull back this time, because he can’t breathe. His heart is pounding in his chest, right now, and he can’t believe that this is happening.

A strong gust of wind passes through, and Keith, without thinking, wraps his arms around Lance. He gets flustered for a moment, but hears a small chuckle from Lance, and feels arms wrapping around him, too, so he stays like that.

When he buries his head into Lance’s neck, they both lay down. And they say nothing.

They’re both soaking wet, but it’s fine. He’ll remember this moment. Where the water and the wind slow to a halt, and all he knows is the steady sound of Lance’s breathing, the feeling of his chest rising and falling.

Keith’s feeling his own heartbeat slow down as he breathes, in and out, too, against Lance’s neck.

It’s crazy to think that, a few months ago, he hated Lance. And here he is now, soaking wet, cuddling with him on a beach with black sand and a colossal moon.

He burrows his nose closer into the space of Lance’s neck, wraps his arms closer, shifts his whole body closer.

Closer, closer, closer.

He’s closer, now, more than ever before.

Bonus:

“You two snuck out, risked intruders into the castle overnight, and then got sick? For what reason?” Allura yells, crossing her arms. She’s pretty much nagging, but she’s worried, too.

Keith snuggles closer into his towel, feeling a sneeze coming. But he forces it back down, which makes his nose burn. Lance, still shivering with cold, speaks up next to him. “A walk?”

“A walk?” Allura repeats, thrown aback in disbelief.

The rest of the team are watching the scolding session, as well. Shiro’s leaning on the wall, giving them a doubtful smile. Coran’s wiping his eyes again at Young Love. Hunk and Pidge are both trying to keep their laughter subdued. “Suuuure it was…” Hunk manages, staring at Keith and Lance.

Normally, he’d flip him off, but instead, when Allura looks the other way, Lance grins, raises his eyebrows, does an over-the-top-wink, makes a hole with his hand, and slides a finger through it. Pidge and Hunk both stop in their tracks, jaws dropping open.

Keith is watching this go down. But then he realizes the implication of Lance’s gestures, and Pidge and Hunk’s reactions, and feels his cheeks burning as he pushes Lance over, interrupting Allura’s criticism class. “What the hell!! That didn’t happen!!” He screeches, punching at Lance’s arms.

Allura stops, confused at what’s happening, before she puts a hand to her forehead. She sighs, gives up, and walks away.

Through Coran’s continual tears, Allura’s defeat, Shiro’s face-palming, and Pidge and Hunk’s shock, Lance can’t stop his laughter. Especially not when he sees how riled up he’s gotten Keith. He pulls him closer, and doesn’t let go.