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The satisfaction of being home, of belonging, which washed over Lance when the paladins had finally landed on the Earth’s soil for the first time in who knew how many months was nothing short of euphoric. They were only on Earth for a five days, partially a gift to the Paladins and partially in order to allow each Paladin to retrieve whatever they deemed important before setting off for an unknown amount of time; it could be months, could be years. The reason didn’t matter; Lance returned to his home in record time, embracing the tears and the questions and the smell of childhood. Lance was never alone, either enveloped in his mother’s hugs or being tugged at by his younger cousins or roughhousing with his siblings. It’d been so long since he’d been so full of love, unrestrained and electric. His home was always full of love, with hugs and kisses as greetings and goodbyes and affectionate nicknames always on the lips. Lance nearly cried himself cry the first day home. The third day home, however, he began to wonder.
Pidge had returned home, and the very thought of their mother’s reaction to seeing their child, safe and sound and as a frigging defender of the universe warmed Lance’s belly. Hunk was likely in a similar situation, surrounded by love and laughter; laughter was the music of Hunk’s family. Lance had always enjoyed long weekends of basking in their infectious happiness. To be completely honest, Lance wasn’t exactly sure where Shiro went. Possibly the garrison, possibly to the home he had before... everything.
It was Keith that Lance struggled with, mostly. Keith had gone back to his shack in the desert, miles away from civilization. He was, once again, completely alone, and that just didn’t quite sit right with Lance. Considering that he and Keith had begun to explore a more romantic relationship, a freshly blossoming boyfriend-hood, it was Lance’s duty to be there with him. Ergo, Lance felt that inviting himself to Keith’s shack for the night without informing him beforehand was the best course of action. He thrived on spontaneity, after all.
Lance knocked three times on Keith’s door, turning to squint out at the barren expanse surrounding the house as he waited. There was nothing as far as he could see. How Keith lived with this for so long, Lance didn’t think he’d ever understand. The door opened, slowly before being swung open by a wide-eyed Keith. “What are you doing here?” He asked. “You’re supposed to be with your family.”
Lance shrugged, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, well, I’m here. Lemme in.”
Keith stood stock still for long enough that Lance nearly repeated himself, but he moved aside, eyeing Lance with a familiar, begrudging look. Lance stepped inside happily, glancing around and finding himself a seat on Keith’s ratty couch. Keith crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe, visibly displeased. “We have five days on Earth,” he said slowly, as if trying to make sure Lance understood, “and you’re spending your time here. Not with your family.”
Leaning back into the couch, Lance tilted his head back to look up at Keith’s ceiling. “What’s a handsome guy gotta do to get a glass of water ‘round here?” He inquired loudly, opting out of answering Keith’s question.
Wordlessly, Keith pointed to the cabinets in his tiny kitchen, and Lance promptly jumped up and grabbed a glass. He held it underneath the faucet and turned the knob only to nearly drop the glass as murky, brown water filtered down. After a moment, the water began to run clear, but Lance turned the faucet off and set the glass of water down on the counter. He turned back to Keith, thirst forgotten. “Forget water. Come on, show me around!”
“Around?” Keith glanced around his tiny house, frowning.
“Yeah, around,” Lance pressed, gesturing wildly with his hands. “The desert. Pease tell me there’s something to do in all this sand?” He paused. “And I’m not building a sand castle, just to be clear. Sand under the nails is as bad as wet socks.”
Keith’s frown hasn’t left his face, the worried crease in his brow never smoothing out, and Lance heaved a sigh. “Keith, my man, my dude, you’re being real difficult right now. Look,” Lance stood, striding towards him, and set his forearms on Keith’s shoulders, looking directly into his eyes with an insistent intensity he knew Keith couldn’t ignore, “relax. I’m going back home tomorrow, but I just wanted to visit our resident shanty squatter.”
Keith quirked an eyebrow. “Is that me?”
Lance nodded, grinning widely. “Now you’re getting it! C’mon, no time to waste. It’s almost sunset, anyway, and I want a tour while I can actually see all of the animals that are probably going to try to kill me. I’ve heard desert animals are killer.” He winked at Keith. “That includes you.”
Keith snickered, despite himself, cheeks dusted with red. He benevolently ignored Lance’s awful flirting. “You want a tour of the desert.”
Leaning forward and planting a kiss on Keith’s cheek, Lance hummed. “Yeah, you goof, now come on, already.”
Keith relented, allowing Lance to pull him out of his little house and onto Keith’s speeder bike. Keith sat in the front with Lance flush against his back, lips grinning against his neck as their night began.
It’s a well known fact that the ocean is home to creatures beyond the imagination, from dead-eyed Fangtooth fish to the massive Vampire Quid. It’s also commonly said that the ocean harbors Earth’s most terrifying animals--obviously, Lance thought, they haven’t spent an evening in the desert.
Lance grumbled, burying his face between Keith’s shoulder blades; Keith, the image of Lance scrambling frightfully away from a thorny dragon nest fresh in his mind, guffawed, wiping tears Lance was almost sure weren’t really there from his eyes. “It was just a lizard,” Keith smiled breathlessly, “you literally shot a Galran commander while you were on the brink of unconsciousness, and you’re afraid of a lizard.”
“That lizard,” responded Lance indignantly, “was 90% spikey rage and 10% regular animal, okay? It’s called self-preservation.”
“Right,” Keith nodded, exaggeratedly drawing out the ‘i’.
Lance rolled his eyes, and before Keith could make fun of him for screaming at the sight of a red scorpion twenty minutes ago, he asked, “Where are we, anyway?”
A number of miles west of Keith’s shack was the edge of a plateau, a daring drop off which Keith used to frequent when he felt particularly alone. The sunset always provided a comforting presence, easing his stresses with its encompassing glow. The sun had become a companion to him, in a sense--a friend who sat with him at day’s end, when he was bothered enough to drive even further into nowhere. One specific spot on the plateau was highly populated with a variety of beautiful desert flowers, such as the indigo bush, the mojave aster, and the sand verbena. The flowers which grew so persistently in the desert fascinated him; flowers required great upkeep, water, and careful attention, and the punishing desert provided none of these things. Keith had once tried to care for a flower which Shiro had bought for their room at the Garrison. Shortly after Shiro brought the plant home, he’d left for a brief trip to a nearby base, leaving Keith in charge of ensuring that their flower fared fine. In less than a week, it had wilted pitifully and adopted a grey hue.
Desert flowers were different. They thrived on the precipice of death, despite the overwhelming heat and sun and a vexatious lack of water. When Keith had first found his spot, he had been sure the flowers would die off by his next visit. Each time he came around, however, they seemed to multiply, resilient in the face of dry circumstances.
Keith brought his speeder to a crawl near the edge of the cliff, silently enjoying the way Lance’s hands gripped his jacket tighter as the brunet leaned to the side to get a better look. Having Lance this close always managed to intoxicate him. Lance breathed a wow, his eyes raking the landscape in awe.
“The desert’s not so bad,” joked Keith, and Lance’s brilliant blues flickered to him before a smile spread across his face.
“Not so bad, indeed.”
Stopping a few feet away from the sharp edge of the plateau, Keith climbed off of the speeder and began to search for a prime location. Lance swung off of the bike and trotted after Keith, head whipping around to take it all in. “I didn’t know so many flowers grew, here.”
Once Keith found his spot, he sank to the ground, waiting patiently as Lance settled beside him, their thighs warm against each other. Their shoulders bumped and Lance’s fingers found their way entwined in Keith’s. The sun’s reach, luminous and warm, brushed over Keith and Lance as it set, whispering hues of reds and pinks and purples across the sand.
After the sun had disappeared beneath the horizon line, the stars made their appearance, slowly flecking the sky and forming constellations. Keith had never thought Shiro’s lecutres on stars would have come in handy, but as he and Lance lay back, he pointed out Ursa Minor, relishing in the way Lance’s hair tickled his chin. The night was only beginning, though, and Keith couldn’t wait to show Lance what a real night in the desert looked like.
Lance shifted on his chest, and pushed himself up to straddle Keith. Lance monopolized his attention, smiling against a glimmering sky, gazing down at Keith with a look filled to the brim with tender affection. He leaned forward, torturously slow, and pressed his lips to Keith’s jaw, dotting kisses on his cheeks, his nose, and his forehead before settling down onto his mouth, moving against him seductively, rolling his hips and tilting his head to find the most pleasing angle. Keith’s body responded instantly, his hands carding through Lance’s hair, trailing down his back and resting on his lower back, fingering the hem of his jeans. Lance hummed, low and hungry, and before things could escalate, Keith gently pushed at his shoulders. Lance blinked in confusion, and Keith struggled to ignore his tempting flush of cheeks and shortness of breath.
“You’re from the city, right?” Keith asked.
“Yeah,” Lance responded, his voice deep and distracted. Ignoring Keith’s reasoning for putting the passion on hold, Lance placed his hands on either side of Keith’s head, grinding down slow and sweet, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth before dragging Keith back into heated touching and reddened cheeks.
Before Keith could get too far gone, however, he broke the kiss off and tried not to smirk at Lance’s low whine.
“Whyyyyy?”
Keith nodded at the sky. “Look.”
Lance twisted on top of him to comply, and Keith wouldn’t have traded his expression for the world. Lance’s jaw dropped, his eyes reflecting the sparkle in the sky. The Milky Way was visible now, a dense sea of glimmering stars. Lance had never seen anything like this, and it showed. He had stargazed before, of course, but out here, so far in the desert that no city lights could buffer the beauty of an unimpeded sky? It was unreal.
Lance rolled off of Keith, his head on Keith’s shoulder, eyes searching the beyond so intensely that Keith thought he had forgotten where he was entirely. But after Lance had had his fill, he turned his wide-eyed gaze towards Keith.
“Being a shanty squatter isn’t so bad, either,” Keith murmured, watching Lance watch his lips move around his words.
“Dating a shanty squatter is apparently also not so bad,” Lance responded, leaning up to kiss the coloring on Keith’s cheeks, humming against his skin. The desert had grown chilly in the absence of a burning sun, but Lance’s skin seared against Keith’s. They lay under the moonshine for hours following Keith’s display, wrapped in one another. Time had ceased to exist, and under the gentle gaze of the moon, the only things that mattered were each other.