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To his teammates, Keith is a fighter. He may be rash, yes. But he is driven, dedicated, and skilled. There’s a reason he was the best pilot at the garrison. Some may attribute this to his being part Galra, but Keith has worked hard to get where he is. He doesn’t accredit his abilities to anyone but himself.
He knows that the others know this. He also knows that they see him as a resolved person. Not the kind of guy to crack bad jokes at the worst possible times (Lance), or watch kid’s cartoons (Lance), or maybe…
Bake cookies in the middle of the night.
Keith is very good at hiding this hobby. He does it when he knows everyone is sleeping, after his training. It’s a good thing the kitchen is far enough from everyone’s room that they can’t hear Keith using the Altean equivalent of an electric mixer.
It’s also a good thing he can function on minimal hours of sleep.
When everyone wakes up to find treats in the castle’s kitchen, they assume its Hunk. Hunk, being the only one to know the truth, takes the credit. Bless that wonderful man.
It’s fairly routine when the paladins all walk in the kitchen after waking up and see a large tray of chocolate-and-mysterious-alien-berry cookies sitting on the counter.
“Aw, sweet!” Lance shouts, running over to it. “Hunk made more of those Pirvian-style whatchamasomethings!”
Pirvian-style berry crinkles, Keith thinks disdainfully. A recipe he had recently learned from an old blue-skinned man at the trading post on Relget-J 9. He had traded a simple recipe for chocolate chip cookies for it. Thank god chocolate is an intergalactic food.
“Uh, yeah.” Hunk mumbles. “I guess I did,”
Lance grabs two and shoves them both- yes, both of them- in his mouth. He moans loudly and says something that sounds like a muffled, “Oh, man. I want to fuck these cookies.”
“Gross.” Pidge swats Lance’s arm and takes a cookie. She has the common decency to eat it at a normal pace.
Lance seizes the entire tray and scuttles towards the lounge room. Shiro is already there, sitting on the couch. When Lance sits down next to him, he smiles and wordlessly takes a cookie.
After the first bite, he says, “Wow, Hunk. These are delicious.”
Hunk blushes a little, giving Keith a subtle smile.
Keith just keeps his head down and takes a cookie.
-
Maybe fighting the level five training robot wasn’t such a good idea. Keith is drenched in sweat, his limbs ache, and his feet hurt from standing for so long. His brain is screaming at him to get some sleep. Instead, he finds himself in the kitchen.
Keith walks over to one of the cupboards. The metal door slides open with a hiss. He searches through the contents; generic Altean spices, some strange-looking root, and a lemon-like plant. Keith takes the not-lemon and brings it up to his nose. It doesn’t smell weird, and it appears safe. He shrugs and puts it on the counter. He’s been meaning to try the alien version of a lemon glaze recipe.
It takes about ten minutes for Keith to gather the ingredients (Hunk regularly stocks the cupboards with things that aren’t Coran’s food goo) and make the dough. The texture is different from the stuff Keith made back in his desert shack, but it tastes exactly the same. Memories surface in Keith’s mind, when he would stay up just as late, baking to take his mind off his lonliness.
He frowns and starts rolling the dough into small balls.
Half an hour passes while Keith bakes sets of cookies. The castle’s oven is way fancier than the one he had in his shack, but he figures out how to use it quickly.
Keith scrapes the last of the dough out of the mixing bowl, holding it in the crook of one arm. The sugary smell of not-lemon distracts him a bit, throwing him into another memory.
The crew had stopped at a small, tropical planet a few weeks earlier. The trees, tall and strangely soft, were full of the strange alien plants. The whole atmosphere had smelled like not-lemon.
A smile tugs at his lips as he remembers Lance climbing up the tallest tree. His face had been so bright when he grinned down at Keith. His eyes were so blue.
Keith knows he’s fucked.
“Hey, man! What are you-?”
Keith shrieks at the sudden voice and drops the bowl. It shatters to the ground, glass flying everywhere. He feels something sharp pierce the skin of his foot and curses loudly, stumbling backwards and stepping on more glass. “Fuck!”
“Shit, Keith!” Lance runs over to him, fuzzy slippers protecting him from the shards. He grabs Keith and shoves him towards the counter.
Keith reluctantly hops up on the surface, scowling when he’s pushed. Lance ignores him and grabs his foot. Keith hisses and tries to jerk it back, but the blue paladin glares at him. “Stop moving, you’re bleeding!”
Keith tries to hold still, though it’s hard when Lance is touching his foot.
“You have a few cuts, but- wow, there’s no glass in there.” Lance brushes his thumb over Keith’s heel. “Man, your feet are calloused.” Keith jerks his foot away.
“Okay, I’ll just.” Lance looks around. “Do brooms even exist on Altea? I’m going to go get some bandages, stay put.” He rushes out before Keith can utter a word.
Keith inspects his foot, muttering assorted Korean curses. There’s some blood, but it doesn’t hurt very much. The worst thing about this is that Lance is here.
Keith stiffens.
Lance saw him. He saw Keith and now he’s going to ridicule him for all eternity. He’ll make fun of his masculinity or something else that Keith won’t admit he’s bothered by.
“I found them!” Lance barrels in, arms full of way more bandages than necessary. He dumps them on the counter. He takes one and starts unrolling it.
Meanwhile Keith stares at the ground, focusing on the glass shards so he doesn’t have to watch Lance dress his “wounds.” It’s so annoying, having Lance’s hands on him. Especially when he’s being uncharacteristically gentle.
“I think that’s good.” Lance says, letting go of Keith’s foot. Keith doesn’t respond or look up at him. He can feel his face reddening. Why can’t Lance just leave him alone?
“Are you okay?”
“If you’re going to make fun of me, just do it already.” Keith snaps.
Lance gives him a weird look. “What? Why would make fun of you right now? I mean, apart from your mullet.”
Keith ignores the hair joke and waves his hand towards the cookies cooling on the tray.
Lance is silent for a moment before letting out a loud laugh. He grins at Keith. “Why would I make fun of you? I’ve known about this weeks.”
Keith gawks at him. How could he have known? Lance is one the densest people in the universe.
Lance snickers. “Hunk told me.”
Oh, that makes more sense. “God dammit.” Keith swears under his breath. But he can’t really be mad at Hunk.
Lance takes a cookie off the tray. Stuffing half of it into his mouth, he smirks at Keith and hums softly. “These are great. I didn’t know you could get even gayer, but here you are baking cookies.”
Fucking Lance.
“I’m going to bed.” He shoves Lance away, stepping down from the counter (and making sure to avoid the glass).
“Hey, wait!”
Keith stalks out of the kitchen. He’s fuming. It wasn’t even that insulting but he’s too tired to deal with anything.
Lance grabs him arm. Keith turns and gives him the best glare he can muster, though he’s sure his face is red.
“You’re an ass, Lance.”
“Come on, I didn’t mean- I’m sorry, okay?”
Keith huffs out a small breath, blowing a few strands of hair out of his eyes.
“I just…” Lance lets go of Keith’s arm and reaches up to rub the back of his own neck nervously. “I don’t mean this is a demeaning way, but-” -He averts his gaze- “It’s really cute that you know how to bake.”
If Keith’s head hadn’t exploded before, he was sure it would now. Did he hear Lance right? “Cute?” he asks in a tiny voice.
Lance bites his lip. He seems to be considering saying something else.
“So, it might be a bad decision to tell you this now….” He looks up at Keith again. “I mean, I did plan to tell you somewhere better, like a cool planet or something. Shit, This was a bad idea.”
Keith crosses his arms. “Spit it out.”
I like you, Keith.”
Keith sucks in a breath. “Oh.”
“Is that weird?”
A beat of silence.
“No.”
Lance is blushing furiously now, though Keith is probably no better.
“Do you… like me?”
Keith nods. Because even though Lance is an idiot, he really does like him.
Lance breaks out in a cheesy grin, completely shattering the awkward air. “I knew you’d fall for me eventually!”
“Oh my god, Lance, shut up!” Keith covers his face with one hand.
Lance laughs and grabs Keith’s hand. “Yeah, yeah.” He squeezes his hand, looking so genuinely happy that Keith can’t help but smile back.
“I need to go to bed.” Lance says and then, hesitantly, leans in to plant a gentle on Keith’s forehead. Afterwards he pulls back and looks at Keith, silently asking that if that was okay.
Keith squeezes Lance’s hand back and whispers, “Okay, goodnight.”
Lance’s face melts back into a smile. Letting go of Keith’s hand, he turns and walks past Keith towards the rooms. He looks back once before disappearing around the corner.
Keith watches him go, trying to process everything that just happened. His chest feels fluttery (is that the right way to explain it? He wouldn’t really know).
Then he remembers the glass still littering the kitchen floor and the ingredients still on the counter. Keith groans and trudges back into the kitchen. He still needs to find a broom.
But even as he sweeps up glass shards, he feels fuzzy and can’t stop thinking about Lance’s smile.