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“Start training level four.” Keith spoke his command to the empty training room. His fingers curled around the hilt of his bayard as the sword sprung to life, catching the glint of the castle’s vibrant blue lights. The gladiator droid fell from the open ceiling with a soft whir of machinery, its sword raised in an offensive stance before it charged forward.
He’d fought this level so many times he had lost count. The motions were secondary, repetitive, lyrics to an old song he could recite from distant memory. His bayard clashed against the droid’s blade in a rhythmic pattern--parry, duck, parry, parry, duck--until the right moment arrived. The droid slowed for half a tick as Keith knew it would, a hesitant moment in time that gave him the window of opportunity he needed. He lunged forward, slicing the tip of his bayard through the center of the training droid and colliding with its weapon. The sword flew from the its hand, hitting the ground behind Keith with a clatter as his opponent dissipated into dozens of crystalline light fragments.
“Haven’t you already beaten this thing?” Keith jumped slightly at the sound of a voice and turned to face Lance, unaware that he had even entered the training deck. He had his back pressed casually to the wall, his hands buried in the pockets of his jacket. The fallen sword lay a few feet away from him.
“What are you doing in here?” Keith asked, ignoring Lance’s question.
Lance shrugged in response. “Not much to do in a giant castleship that’s traveling through space.”
Keith folded his lips together, unsure of how to respond. He placed his bayard on the floor to sweep his dampened hair off of his neck and into a loose ponytail.
Lance pushed himself off the wall and moved to pick up the gladiator’s discarded weapon. He spun the hilt in his fingertips a few times before speaking again. “Spar with me.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Keith raised an eyebrow, skeptical. “Have you ever even held a sword in your life?”
“Hey, there’s a lot you still don’t know about me,” Lance responded, testing the weight of the blade in his palm. Their eyes locked, and a competitive grin slid its way onto Lance’s face. Keith matched him with his own smirk, kneeling down to pick up his bayard and gripping the handle tightly.
“Then teach me.”
Lance needed no further encouragement. He leapt forward, his expression a mixture of intrigue and excitement as their weapons clashed.
As the two sparred, Keith found that what Lance lacked in swordsmanship, he made up for in reflexes. Every time he brought his sword around to overtake Lance’s, Keith would watch him spin his body around and strike out again, almost blindly. His swings were wild and thoughtless, but his body moved fluidly, in sync with his mind.
This was different than fighting the gladiator droids. Their attacks were robotic, monotonous motions that were easy to remember if you studied them hard enough. Lance was human, muscle and bone and blood and sinew, fluid in motion like the element he possessed and unpredictable with every strike.
Keith was enthralled.
The sounds of their swords clashing filled the empty room, melodic in its own strange way. Lance ducked under Keith’s calculated swing and moved his arm around in an attempt to force the bayard from his grip. Keith met Lance’s blade with his own and pushed forward before sliding away, leaving Lance stumbling backwards.
Lance sank to the ground, his left leg supporting the bulk of his weight as he lifted his blade to defend against another strike. Keith’s eyes narrowed as he saw his opportunity before him, and with a swift turn of his wrist, he maneuvered his sword under Lance’s, wrestling the blade out of his grasp. It skittered across the floor, stopping just short of wall. Lance breathed heavily, watching it spiral away across the floor before glancing upwards. The tip of Keith’s sword hovered before him, not three inches from his throat. He swallowed.
Their eyes met.
For a while, neither of them said anything. They communicated through gazes, two shades of blue irises merging to form rivers and lakes and oceans of unspoken words. Keith’s bayard shook ever so slightly; if Lance hadn’t been so close to it, he wouldn’t have noticed. Lance’s eyes darted across Keith’s face, tracing the shape of his jawbone and landing on the stands of hair that had come loose from his ponytail and now were plastered to his neck. “Shit,” he breathed out in a whisper.
If Keith had heard him, he made no indication of it. After a moment, the corner of his lips curled upwards in a triumphant smirk. “Gotcha,” Keith laughed quietly, glancing at Lance’s awestruck expression through his dampened bangs. Dark strands of hair clung to his forehead, and he lifted his hand to push them away. Keith took a step back, his bayard reverting to its natural state before leaning forward again and extending a hand to Lance, who still knelt on the floor. Lance grasped it without hesitation.
“Nice job keeping up,” Keith was saying as he pulled Lance to his feet, “though your actual sword-wielding skills could use some work.” He offered another light laugh, pulling back the bangs that kept falling into his eyes. Lance’s eyes landed on the faint freckles across the bridge of Keith’s nose and his breath caught in his throat.
“T-thanks,” he spoke quickly, stumbling over his words and hoping the heat that burned beneath his skin wasn’t projecting itself as a blush onto his face.
Keith’s brow furrowed as his features creased into a frown. “Lance? Are you okay?”
“Of course!” he blurted, a bit louder than he intended. He took a step back. “I-I mean,” Lance ran his fingers through his hair, casting his gaze to the ground. Damn it, since when had it been this easy to get so flustered around Keith? “Would you mind, maybe, teaching me some of those skills sometime?”
Keith blinked, momentarily confused. That was the last thing he expected Lance to suggest, even if the two of them were no longer considered “rivals” on his part (in Keith’s eyes, they never had been). For someone who wore his heart on his sleeve, Keith found that Lance had been right. Keith didn’t know much about him at all. Though he couldn’t miss the skip of his own heart or the smile in Lance’s eyes when he answered, “Sure.” Keith matched it with a smirk of his own. “Anytime.”