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Keith has lived for too long to believe in coincidences. Fate is a harder concept to believe in, but after this much time spent in the galaxy, it’s easier for him to accept. It is no coincidence that he is half Galra, it is fate. It is no coincidence that he is inextricably tied to rebel groups, it is fate. It is no coincidence that Keith is a risk to himself, it is unfortunately fate.
After his self-sacrificial stint on Naxzela, Kolivan labeled him a high-risk soldier and put him on indefinite leave. According to him, Keith was too impulsive and lacked discipline. His attachment to Voltron made him act rashly, and the consequences of it would not result in any gained knowledge, as the Blade of Marmora upheld. In the time between, Keith was forced to reconstruct himself to believe in the values of the Blade of Marmora. Nothing could obstruct the path to resistance, including personal relationships. Kolivan didn’t believe he could change.
Keith tried. He tricked himself into upholding knowledge. He erased the things he cared most about. Distancing himself from the only people he’s ever truly known was a physical challenge, but it was an even tougher mental challenge. Keith trained himself, bit by bit, to let go of it all. He had to convince himself he did. At some point, Kolivan finally believed his little act. Keith could even call it fate.
But now he is hiding in the dark corners of a club on Olkarion, finally entrusted with a solo mission after weeks of inactivity, and has decided to cut all ties with fate. Because it can only be coincidence that the one person he worked hardest to detach all feelings from stands before him now. Fate would not put Lance in the silliest disguise known to time, nor would it pair him with the most dangerous woman in the club. Only coincidence would do that.
“Keith, what is it?” Kolivan asks in his ear. “You need to move. We don’t have much time.”
“Something’s come up,” Keith simply says. He can’t tell Kolivan that Lance is here. That Galran has a better understanding of emotions than Keith does. He figured out how Keith feels about Lance all on his own. It’s how Krolia felt about his father. Kolivan doesn’t want history repeated, but Keith cannot detach himself from the one thing he’s wanted most. “The Handler is here.”
“Do not engage,” Kolivan warns. “Whatever you do, Keith, do not—”
He takes out his in-ear monitor and crushes it between his fingers.
Kolivan is right, of course. The Handler killed the last Blade his team sent into this club. If he’s going to investigate the death properly, steering clear of her is his best bet. Yet Lance is chatting her up like she’s just another Olkari, standing out like a sore thumb with a neon green feather boa and fishbowl-like goggles. Keith doesn’t know how his fellow Blade member perished, but the likelihood is that it was by The Handler’s needle, and Lance has placed himself along her stitch.
It is difficult to approach Lance for two reasons: one, the club is so packed that he’s forcefully pushing himself past drunkards, and two, he can feel his heart rate spike when their gazes meet.
It's been so long since Keith has seen him; he was afraid that he was forgetting all his quirks. Lance’s eyes look jarringly huge behind his ridiculous goggles, but they glint and widen at the sight of Keith. A stray white light crosses his face to brighten his smile. The heat from his cheeks warms Keith’s mask. Honestly, he can never detach himself from this years-long crush. A cruel fate, but one he’ll carry despite its troubles.
He trudges through the dance floor to get to the bar, where Lance is talking up The Handler. She’s a tall Olkari who doesn’t blend in much herself, wearing a bleach white suit with sharp, padded shoulders. She is known for this get-up. Patrons will seek out her white-clad form for all sorts of business endeavors. Keith can’t comprehend why Lance would even think to speak to her. He doesn’t know what he’s doing here alone. He doesn’t know anything about him anymore.
When Keith is just a few steps away, Lance reaches out to grab his wrist and pulls him right against his hip. The force of it is unexpected—perhaps Lance has always had this kind of strength—but his initial surprise is immediately intensified by the arm Lance snakes around his waist.
“This is my husband!” Lance introduces. Keith feels his balance waver before Lance squeezes his hold on him.
Husband. Husband? That’s not right. That’s far from right. He’s only ever heard Lance call him husband in dreams he wakes from in cold sweats, or in fantasies he’s had to zap himself out of. When they were kids at the Garrison, Keith overheard Lance tell Hunk he’d be a great husband to someone, and Keith never stopped thinking about it since then. But all of that is delusion, a far call from reality, and yet—
The Handler extends a gloved hand to shake. “A pleasure to meet you, sir,” she says demurely.
Keith glares at it for a second too long. Lance’s arm falls from his waist to grab at his hand, guiding it over to shake hers. Keith meets her eyes and notices those, too, are milky white, no iris or pupil in sight.
He only nods in response, unwilling to speak out of fear that his voice will crack. Lance jerks a thumb at him as he chuckles.
“He’s not very good with words. I still wonder how we ever made it past the talking stage!”
The Handler does not laugh. Keith feels her eyeing him up and down, as if he’s just as suspicious as the next person.
“I must admit, I had my eyes set on your husband tonight,” she tells Keith, swirling a glass of vibrant purple liquid in her hand. “He speaks to people as if he isn’t tied down. Before I approached him, he was spewing his heroics to that dainty Unilu over there.”
Keith can’t help but follow where her fingers point. The Unilu is tending the bar, serving a flight of drinks. She seems like Lance’s type. Though Keith has only ever made fun of Lance’s unsuccessful advances, he has always wished he was on the other end of it.
He can’t afford to think with jealousy. Lance has looped him into this situation for better or worse, and it’s up to him to play along. Otherwise, their safety is at risk.
“My husband isn’t unfaithful,” Keith manages to say, the word husband foreign and delightful on his tongue. “Talkative, but not unfaithful.”
Lance’s gaze is heavy beside him, so much so that Keith feels the need to meet it. His disguise is so ridiculous that it’s hard not to laugh at it, but paired with the genuineness of his grin, it’s easy to indulge in his true feelings. Maybe this is reciprocated. Lance leans down and kisses him where his lips are beneath the mask, a chaste little thing that sets his nerves aflame.
“So, while I appreciate your advances,” Lance continues to talk, as if his kiss has not completely rendered Keith immobile, “I am very happily dating the love of my life.”
Keith clears his throat. “Married.”
“I am very happily married to the love of my life.”
The Handler nods, slyly smirking as she dusts nothing off her suit. “It is unwise to try and fool me, paladins, but I’m always up for a good laugh.”
In a split second, she reaches inside her sleeve and pulls out a long, thin needle. Kolivan warned Keith about it beforehand, claiming the metal is coated in a lethal poison that’ll begin to kill as soon as it touches skin. She flicks her wrist, and every gear in his body switches to fight mode.
He ducks in time to hear it zip over his hood and pierce right into a wine glass on the bar. Keith slips his knife out of its sheath and charges toward her as it grows into its true size, sliding past her to slice at the skin of her calf. The Handler buckles to her knees, yelping as she turns to face him.
There’s another needle already in her hands, only this time she’s in closer proximity to Keith. She stabs down at his robes, pinning his pants to the floor.
“The last Blade here was not as swift-footed as you,” she hisses, yanking the needle out of the ground. “My needle struck”—she stabs at him again, narrowly missing his leg as he inches toward the wall—“right between those amber eyes.” She chuckles amidst the pain, snapping the needle in half. “A testament to the fragility of the rebel cause!”
Keith doesn’t know who this Blade was, not by name or face. Still, he was a part of the mourning, and it made him question how he could ever be told to detach from the things that matter most, that make him act impulsive. How could knowledge be put before life?
Just as she tries to stab at him again, he lifts his foot and stomps down on her hand. She screams as he pushes himself up, slicing off the poisoned fabric with his blade. Across the dance floor, back-up encroaches upon the scene.
“Keith!” Lance yells to the side, jumping over the bar counter. “C’mon!”
He doesn’t know what Lance could possibly be doing, but he’d be damned if he didn’t have the utmost faith in him. Keith bolts off her crushed hand and towards the bar. Lance pulls him down beneath the counter, huddling close before looping his arm around his.
Keith barely has time to speak before he sees the Unilu’s fingers press a button by their heads, then they’re falling backwards into a dark chute.
Their screams echo harshly against the metal frame of their current entrapment. They tumble for what seems like an eternity. For a moment, Keith builds the courage to open his eyes and spots a light at the end of the tunnel. He manages to pull Lance closer to him, keeping them as compact as possible before they hit solid ground. They roll over twice before landing on their sides.
The feather boa is in his mouth. Keith spits it out, annoyed that it somehow made it through all that action. Slowly, Lance blinks the light into view. Keith steadies his breathing as he watches, taking a second to enjoy the miniscule fact that he’s here with Lance.
Which then reminds him to ask: “Lance, what the hell are you doing here?”
Lance scoffs. “What the hell are you doing here? I’ve been scouting this club for days!”
“Without a weapon? Where is your bayard? And the rest of Voltron? Why aren’t they here with you? You should never do these kinds of things alone!”
“Oh, like you’re completely off the hook. Have you gone freelance? This was the best armor you could find?”
Keith rolls his eyes and turns to rest on his back. “I’m in disguise.”
Lance follows suit, though he throws the end of his boa back at Keith’s face. “Well, so am I.”
It takes a minute for him to register his surroundings. They seem to have landed in some sort of warehouse, dense with stocked shelves. Keith sits up to take a better look around.
An arsenal of weapons are stacked against the walls. Crates of who knows what are stock piled high on the hundreds of shelves, filling each and every row to the brim. Red warning signs are painted upon them with large Galra lettering. It’s a silent warehouse, but when Keith listens closely, he can hear muffled buzzing coming from all around.
“This is what I’m here for,” Lance announces, hands up in the air to present the place. “We heard a rumor that The Handler has been supplying the Empire with weapons. Her club on Olkarion possibly housed them, and badabing, badaboom, the rumor was correcto-mundo. That Unilu girl is undercover. She finally landed a job as a bartender after I gave her a million lessons on how to make a space margarita. Not as tasty as Earth ones, to be honest.”
“Voltron helped liberate Olkarion from the Empire,” Keith denotes. “They shouldn’t have any power here.”
“Keyword: shouldn’t.” Lance also sits up, pushing his goggles onto his head. “I heard what The Handler said, about the Blade she killed. I’m sorry.”
“I was sent to investigate it.” There’s a faint pang in his chest at the mention. “‘Knowledge or death,’ as they say.” He stands up, truly taking in the grandiose of the warehouse. This has to be their main source of weapons. “So what were you going to do here?”
Lance rummages through the bag slung across his torso and pulls out a small, spherical contraption. Behind its steel build, there’s a celestial blue light glowing beneath it. “Blow it up à la Altean way.”
“And we’re just gonna, what, go back up that chute and hope we don’t get hit?”
“Oh, like we’ve never looped arms and climbed out of a situation before.” Lance sits up and points at the far end of the warehouse. “There’s an elevator.”
“Why didn’t we just use that in the first place?”
Lance shines a mischievous grin his way, one that puts him right back in the past. Whenever Lance had more information than Keith, he’d treat it like a gotcha moment, and it would annoy Keith endlessly. But at the moment, he can’t find it in himself to be annoyed. He can’t afford to take any moment with Lance for granted.
So he doesn’t complain, like he did in the past, when they are literally back-to-back, arms looped together, going step by step up an empty elevator shaft. There was an elevator, though broken and blown through the roof, and they had to haul each other up to get out. Keith did not bicker, but Lance saw him “make that face” and it elicited a hearty laugh out of him. He couldn’t let himself forget that. He wouldn’t.
Haphazardly, the two of them knock down the door at the top and fall out into a dark alleyway. They’re far enough away from the club to see the line for entry, but not hear any music. Lance dusts off his clothes, pulls a small detonator from his satchel, and presses its center button. Olkarion shakes in response, just enough to startle its people, and just enough for Keith to lose his balance and stumble too close to Lance.
Neither of them move to increase the space between them. Without those stupid goggles in the way, he can finally look him in the eyes. Science says blue light travels the fastest, and that is why the expanse of the sky and the ocean takes on its shade. That’s why it is everywhere. Lance’s blue is a little different. It’s contained, and Keith has yearned for it to take over his life.
“I know this was all a coincidence,” Lance starts, “but I’m glad we ran into each other. I…we’ve missed you since you went with the Blade.”
“I’ve missed you too,” he says. You all. I’ve missed you all too, Keith means to say. Lance bites back a smile nonetheless.
“And thanks for being my husband,” he tacks on with a laugh. “The Handler was the last person whose attention I wanted, and she still caught on that we were paladins. But seeing you out of the blue, combined with her being flirty and everything—husband is just what came out of my mouth.” Lance picks at his fallen mask, pulling it up over his nose, but the fabric is loose and slips back down his face.
“I don’t need the mask anymore.”
“I know, but when I kissed you, the lipstick transferred.” Lance puts his hands down at his sides, fisted, and he takes a step back. “Which, by the way, really sorry about that. I didn’t intend to—well, I did kinda intend to, and it felt right, and I liked it, but I’m sure I’m the last person you want to be kissed by, so—” Lance keeps stepping back, further and further, trying to get away.
If Kolivan were still in his ear, he’d say to let him go. Lance was the hardest to try and let go of. If Keith could do so now, then he’d be a true Blade.
Perhaps it is a Galran trait to detach so seamlessly. His mother was able to do it when she left Earth. But Keith’s true fault isn’t his impulsiveness or lack of self-discipline, it’s that he is human. By nature, he cares too much, and he can’t let go. It is not something Kolivan can punish out of him.
Keith is rapidly closing the distance between them. He has to. Lance can be cowardly when it comes to facing his feelings, whereas Keith has been training himself to forget them. Only Lance has ever been capable of making him feel the whole spectrum of emotions. It’s only ever been him.
Keith kisses him. It’s clumsy and not all perfect, but there’s no mask between them nor an act to be played. He’s letting his heart spill dry.
Still, Lance kisses back with equal fervor, and it’s forever impossible to keep him away. This kiss will be another thing he’ll consider impulsive, but he’ll remember as fate.
“Let me go with you,” Keith whispers as he pulls back, cupping Lance’s jaw. “I broke my only contact with Kolivan, and I want to go with you.”
Lance is already nodding before Keith finishes his sentence. With one more kiss, Lance leads the way, and Keith follows blindly. Impulsively, even.
