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i.
Space is vast, so impossibly vast.
The first time Lance McClain thinks so, he’s so small that his sister is still carrying him in her arms clumsily to watch the meteor shower, so young that he doesn’t have the words to express the wonder that wells up in his heart with each streak of silver tearing through the sky.
They're all standing together, the entire family out there staring at the immense midsummer night sky, and his child mind struggles to comprehend everything around him but remembers the feeling. He remembers how it feels to have Rachel's warmth envelop him as the stars rain down from the sky, to hear his mamá’s hearty laugh, to have Luis and Marco bicker over who would give his name to which comet first to have his wish come true.
The first time he sees the myriad of stars beyond the veil of nighttime he’s so infinitely small, as a being, as a person, as a soul, that it could crush him, yet it never does. It cradles him instead. He babbles a few times, a wondrous and miraculous little thing as little bits of “sta, sta, mama sta, ra’hel sta!” leave his mouth.
The warm cacophony of his family immediately goes silent with stunned wonder as he repeats it again and again, calling out to his mamá, papá and siblings in a flutter of giggles and botched first syllables. “papa sta, mama sta!” He laughs and the sound seems impossible to everyone, so impossible in fact that his mamá takes him off Rachel’s arms into a crushing hug. Lance doesn’t remember her tears of joy, it’s a detail that his brothers had to remind him of later when he left for the Garrison, but he does remember his mamá’s tender and convinced hum in Spanish as she held him tight: “This boy is made for the stars, his soul was born in them.”
The first time Lance thinks that space is vast and beautiful, everyone replies to him in chorus that he was meant to be there.
ii.
Space is vast, so alluringly vast. The second time this thought crosses his mind, he’s 15 in the back of a busted pickup truck, drinking stale beer he shouldn’t be drinking with people whose names he never bothered learning. It’s not his first time nor his last, but it never leaves any deep impression on him. It’s the perfect social interaction where he can just throw one-liners one after the other for a few hours, revel in the drunken laughter he gets, and rinse and repeat tomorrow.
He’s giggling and stupid as the pretty girl with the green braces and the burgundy hair gives him a sloppy truth-or-dare kiss and grimaces at him. Her lips taste like cherry lip gloss and she's a messy kisser and the music is too loud and everything is shaking and moving under him but he thinks that he can get used to it, that this is what it means to be cool. He laughs at a few horny jokes, spins the bottle a few more times and tries to ignore the feeling of inadequacy that gnaws at his guts.
If he was meant for something else then he would know it. This is pretty much the perfect life as he's been told.
His glassy eyes look up with glee at the night sky and the stars seem to drunkenly swirl into one giant stream of light, an ocean he wants to dive in. Almost reluctantly, shamefully, he thinks that space is so impossibly vast and he wants to explore it.
But for now he doesn’t, can’t, not him, not Lance “flirteando fracasado” McClain, not the town’s vaguely lovable but frankly annoying loser Lance. For now he drinks a few more stolen beers, spins the bottle a few more times, ignores the way the kisses don’t feel real, ignores also the way his eyes cling to the blonde boy to his right who keeps getting closer. Not him, not now, not ever really. Lance McClain has to be cool, has to be normal, or become it at least.
Not him, yet he surprises himself when every night the dream doesn’t leave but lingers, thrumming and imperious, when the stars never stop whispering his name in every trashy bass boosted 11 minute rave song that his friends listen to. Some nights he feels foolish for trying to avoid it, some nights he feels foolish for believing in it. Not him, not him, he’s too small a fish for such a vast ocean.
A few months later he gets that job his stoner friend was fired from at the gas station (Rachel is furious and threatens to kill him if he does not become a pilot), and in between two reheated 1 dollar hot-dogs he keeps on wondering. He thinks it’s fine as is, he’ll leave the heroics to the really cool people, the ones who have a clue what they are, who have a direction they’re going towards. Getting lost somewhere isn’t a direction, so he doesn’t dare dream anymore.
iii.
But space is vast and full of surprises and he’s so so weak and so so selfish, so when they move to another country and THE Takashi Shirogane comes to his family’s house with a grand spiel about serving humanity and seeing what’s beyond, about being a hero, Lance is already one foot out the door before the end of the presentation. If anyone asks, he laughs a bit too shrill and says he wants to be a hero and be seen as the sexy pilot genius that he’s always been. In the cover of nighttime, he allows himself to think about getting lost out there and never coming back.
Takashi Shirogane –Shiro as he likes to be called– tells him about all that’s out there and about how Lance would be so perfect for the job. And Lance knows that he’s lying, because of course Lance isn’t what he’s looking for, but he chooses to believe the lie, because that would mean going out there and knowing. Knowing what? He doesn’t get it yet, but he feels like if he goes in there, flies that ship in the middle of nowhere, flings himself into the furthest black hole he can find, he’ll understand something that’s missing.
So he joins the Garrison, passes the entrance test somewhat abysmally, gets fitted into the uniform, cries in his mamá’s arms, cries in Rachel’s arms, cries in Luis’ arms, cries in his papá’s arms, cries… He cries a lot, it doesn’t stop after arriving at the Garrison really. He meets Hunk and he cries in Hunk’s arms too, and he wonders if Hunk sees him as what he truly is or just thinks Lance is uncool. Uncool is fine, it’s vague enough and hurts less than what Lance knows he is. He hopes Hunk doesn’t notice the way he looks at the sky every night before sleep like it hurts.
Space is vast and incredible and crushing, so impossibly vast and full of so many other people that Lance doesn’t manage to become a fighter pilot. It’s fine, he’ll pilot cargo and he’ll still be out there and if he’s lucky enough in a few years or so of dragging around and begging he’ll get to pilot the real deal and go much farther. Space is vast, it can wait for him, he thinks. It can wait for him when he fails his first class, then his second. It can wait for him when the Sargent and the Commander and everyone in that damn Garrison tells him he's not worth the training. He knows that. It can wait for him even longer when the one that keeps on fucking coming first all the time is-
Space is vast and impossible to explore in full yet Lance has the misfortune of stumbling on Keith Kogane in all that void. Keith Kogane, infuriating, rude, jackass, talented Keith who always comes first and does so effortlessly, like it doesn’t cost him anything to be there. Keith who is cool, and who is normal, who has normal dreams about going to space for cool reasons, who definitely kisses girls in a normal way and who would never look at a guy like Lance because Keith would see that Lance isn’t just uncool but something so much worse and so much more Lance.
Lance hates Keith and thinks about him every night. His thoughts split between the immensity of space and the impossibility of Keith, because he knows that Keith is that one wall that’s stopping him and that one star he’s striving towards. Keith is the heroic guy you’d talk about in stories, Keith is the one made for the stars and life changing fights with 80s movies lasers and reveals of an evil father in the eviler empire.
Keith lives easy and gunning for the stars like it’s a normal dream to have, like Lance hasn’t been struggling to even feel adequate since… since forever, hanging on a dream of shining stars and something more because it can't be just that, please, it can't be the only way to live life, please no, it can’t just be.
Space is so vast and merciless that when Lance sees Keith again (stupid idiot Keith who disappeared out of nowhere before Lance could beat him and feel like a real person) (stupid idiot Keith trying to save Shiro all by himself) he sees that wall he’d spend nights trying to surpass, but when Keith sees him his eyes do not light up with recognition at a long lost rival. Space is vast and the star that Lance has been following all this while looks at him and says “Who are you?” and means it.
Lance wonders how long it’ll take for Keith to realize how much lesser he is. He doesn’t leave Keith the chance. He smiles as he prepares his usual one-liners. Better a rival who hates him than a friend who sees him.
iv.
Space is vast and so far away from everything he knows. At first it never stops feeling exciting and new and exactly where he meant to be, at first he feels like he can fake the part of a hero well enough for his mediocre performance to not matter. He sees them, finally, the faraway stars and wandering planets and that feeling of immensity wrapping around him and never letting go. He flirts with Allura liberally, because that’s what normal people and heroes in books and movies do, he doesn’t speak about wanting to fly further, deeper, hopelessly in that empty void out there, and his eyes stop lingering on Keith so his hatred subsides. Well. Sometimes they don’t linger. Sometimes the hatred isn't there. The envy always is.
Space with a duty is fun, it’s freeing, it’s an imposed sense of purpose and it’s okay for him. It’s a normal job for cool people, or maybe a cool job for normal people. Either way he gets to receive praise for being suckered into it and if he smiles bright enough and shoots decently enough he’ll ride on the one or two accolades he gets. Being a paladin of Voltron is the gas station 1 dollar hotdog of space travel, it gives him a universally tolerated reason to be there, it makes him a hero almost as if he chose to sacrifice himself for it. And this time around, Rachel can’t try to kill him for that job because 1° he’s in space (that’s what she wanted) and 2° he’s in space (he’ll never see her again).
He cries in Hunk’s arms more times than he can count.
Space is vast and lonely. So lonely. Space starts feeling like… something else after a while. Keith is used to the loneliness, of course he is, and Lance gathers that it means he’s the problem for missing his family so much. Everything is big and cold and empty and the Galra threat starts to actually mean something when he sees people falling under laser rays and not getting up, when the space war doesn’t look like a level of the f-zero copy his grandparents had in their home but charred Galra bodies floating in zero grav and Pidge being thrown into a healing pod with missing fingers and Keith with a gash in his stomach and guts in the open air.
Space is cold and terrifying and he isn’t cool enough or hero enough for it but somehow Keith is, and Shiro is, and even Pidge is smart (genius, she’d say) and Hunk adapts so easily to it. So Lance does feel uncool for real this time, wonders if he can bring them stale beers and bad rave music and chain one-liners and see how it goes. Pidge is 15 but that’s when he started so it should be fine, if anything he can call anyone who doesn’t drink uncool to make himself feel better. Pidge is 15 but Lance doesn’t feel like he has aged any since that time either. He still looks at the sky and thinks that space is really vast and he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life and he’d just like to get lost far away and leave the duty to people who can actually do it. Pidge is 15 and has a goal, Lance is 18 and doesn’t.
But he doesn’t have the guts to say anything so he keeps to the routine of charred Galra bodies, rave music to himself only and hating Keith. It’s healthy, it’s tradition, it reminds him of home –charred bodies aside, and it helps him feel normal. Every new star system stops being a wondrous discovery, the fated nowhere to get lost in, but another potential Galra base, another potential enemy, something to learn to fear before anything else. Fights become the usual, become tedium. Near-death experiences do nothing but desensitize him further to loss. He can shoot decently and it helps him feel like he’s not wasting their time, Blue purrs with satisfaction every time they down a ship, Shiro praises him once in between remonstrances about being reckless and distracting with his jokes, and he feels like that level of middling performance is fine of him. Not like he can do better, but he could definitely be doing worse, so he takes it. Lance likes the imposed purpose, wonders if this was an Earth job would he earn more than the 6 dollars and 34 cents an hour he earned from the gas station job.
Space is vast and uninformed and when they reach a new planet and the people hail him and the others as heroes he almost believes it, until he realizes that the people count him into the equation as well when they say heroes and now he knows they’re lying. Or delusional. Or lied to. They’re heroes plus one, but he doesn’t say what he thinks, so he poses with his bayard and sticks his tongue out to Keith and Keith chases him around the plaza until Lance feels like he’s been paladin of Voltron enough. He says a few hellos, flirts with a few aliens he hopes are girls for good measure and then leaves. Rinse, repeat.
When Hunk asks him if he’s sincere about Allura he laughs a bit too shrill and replies that of course he is, because who in their right mind wouldn’t be heads over heels over this girl. And he thinks the statement is correct too, he just knows that he’s not in his right mind and so he feels worse. When Hunk and Pidge ask him why he’s so antagonistic to Keith he doesn’t have an answer beyond fake claims of mullets and cringe. In the depth of himself he fears that he could answer the same thing as for Allura, and this time he’s not in his right mind for the wrong reason.
He doesn't have to think about it much for much longer though, and perhaps he is thankful. Space is vast and somewhere you can get lost in if it hates you hard enough.
v.
One day space becomes vast. Properly, truly vast. Vast in the way it was promised to him as a hushed warning in the garrison training videos, vast in the way his mamá was singing to him as a child, vast in the way he knows he always wanted but… One day Lance realizes exactly what infinite means. One day, space becomes terrifying.
A botched Galra experiment, something mystic and obscure and messy as they face Zarkon, he’s not sure exactly. The only thing he knows is that he finds himself light years away from everything he thought he had left after the first loss of Earth, properly, truly, alone. There are no stars near him, he sees glittering specks far enough away for him to know that this is a trip longer than a lifetime. His comms don’t work, Blue is barely moving, joints creaking in incomprehensible machine pain as she whines low in his mind, his entire thigh is pierced from part to part and pinned to his seat by a dislodged piece of metal he can’t identify, seconds become minutes become hours, he has nothing left.
He’s lost.
He’d thought before, or rather he thinks now that he should be happy. He did it, got himself lost in the vastness of space, all alone, no burden of humanity or purpose to carry, no great war to lead, no hotdogs to put back in the oven at 1:59 AM when his shift ends at 2, no Keith.
No Keith. He realizes with a wet gasp that it is, in fact, a problem. Nobody. No Hunk, no Pidge, no Shiro, no Allura, no Coran, no Rachel, no Luis, no Marco, no Veronica, no-
No Keith.
He sees all around him the endless void, as he’s always dreamed, sees the endless possibility out there but the view blurs under fat, heavy tears that roll down his cheeks and feel like they burn as they leave tracks in their wake. He doesn’t get it, doesn’t get why it hurts so much to be there. Space is vast and empty and beautiful and all those vague things and he has proof. He did it for real this time. And then he realizes the one terrible flaw, the root of the issue. Space is horribly vast and empty and no one else is with him, but he is alone with himself. And he happens to not be very fond of that person.
Space is vast and empty and beautiful but as long as he is in it then his own ghost will haunt him. He chooses to ignore it, to ignore him, he wonders how the others are doing, if they noticed he disappeared a little bit ago, if they’re trying to come or judging if he’s worth the hassle. He wonders if Keith remembers his name, if he ever noticed the person hiding under Lance’s one-liners, if he cares. He thinks about how he’s definitely not normal and how every day he fails to be as his heart swells and hurts when he thinks about Keith and he wishes that if Keith had at least one flaw it would be to be like him. But he knows it’s just a pipe dream. Keith is the TV cartoon hero, he’s the one who gets the princess, the accolades and the praise at the end, Lance is just-
Lance is going to die there having not done much, and he feels like it’s deserved.
His tears choke him up as he gasps for a while. Meant for the stars, he is for sure, and he could laugh about it if horror was not clawing at his lungs right now. He wishes he could see his mamá one last time, tell Rachel that he did it, that he lived the dream but it’s not all that actually, that he does think the salary would be better than the gas station but the clientele is worse. He wishes he could tell Keith that he loves him. He wishes he could tell Keith that he hates him. He wishes he could tell Keith anything sincere. He wishes he could be worthy of all these lofty desires but he isn’t so he stays stubbornly silent as Blue continues twitching like a beetle on its back and his comms run a steady white noise of static and desperation.
He isn’t worthy, so he wonders dimly why he keeps hearing Keith’s voice in his head, why he can’t let go of that stupid pipe dream and that stupid weird desire and that awful way of being anything but normal. He pushes his hands against his ears as if it would help, wraps his arms around himself, ignores the burning feeling and the blood flowing from his thigh and gives up immediately in a way that he thinks would convey to whomever dealt him his fucked up fate that they can cut the cord and end it there. But the voice persists, cutting and coming back from somewhere nearby.
And then Lance realizes belatedly that it’s not just his mind playing tricks on him but his comms that scratched themselves back to life during his crying session, playing from his discarded helmet a little bit away from him. He realizes with horror that he’s hearing the real Keith’s voice and that he’s coming and that he’s about to witness Lance as he is. He knows that’s it for him, space is vast but somehow Keith found him and will leave soon enough when he realizes that Lance isn’t even good enough for the annoying façade he keeps on wearing.
He hesitates to put the helmet back on, thinks for a bit that if he doesn’t reply then Keith will think he’s dead and gone and won’t waste his time. But he’s so so weak and so so selfish, so he snatches his helmet, wincing as his thigh burns from the movement of metal in flesh, and tries to steady his voice. He says a few words off comms but realizes quickly that they both taste and sound like tears. He thinks that the comms will distort his voice enough to cover it. And so he turns them on and a single word comes out of him as a whimper.
“Keith?”
Keith is kind enough not to comment on it, or maybe he doesn’t notice the wet tone and lack of mullet insults in between two requests for Lance’s location now. Lance wonders absently how Keith found him, how he could brave the vast vast vast universe to find someone as infinitely small as Lance. Is that what heroes do? He doesn’t say that, though, and Keith keeps on asking for his location so instead his throat constricts, eyes well up, and he mumbles pitifully.
“Keith… m’sorry… I fucked up again.” And Lance thinks he hears Keith swear under his breath sharply. He visualizes easily the knitted brows and harsh expression of an exasperated Keith and realizes that it gives him some comfort. Keith is mumbling something frantic and Lance hiccups a few times and for a second he wonders if Keith will just leave him there. But Keith is really cool so his voice shakes a few times before steadying and he speaks softly to Lance the second time.
“Hey, you’re good, sharpshooter. I got your loc from the comms. Don’t move, I’m coming.”
Lance doesn’t move, can’t, doesn’t even try to as his eyes glaze up at the empty sky. He thinks this is a really nice dream, that it would be funny if Keith cared like that in real life. Space is vast, impossibly vast and he’s all alone right now and Keith is light years away fighting for justice and having an evil mom in the eviler empire and being a hero. That voice he keeps on hearing is nice though, it’s soft and intimate and tender and Lance wonders who will ever be lucky enough to hear it from the real Keith.
“M’sorry… Such a loser… have to be saved by the real heroes.”
He doesn’t mean to say that one aloud but does, tries to laugh and pass it as a joke, knows it doesn’t work. His voice is quiet and little but the comms are otherwise silent so there’s no excuse, no shitty 11 minute bass boosted rave music to hide his feelings for the dark haired boy who keeps getting closer.
“Come on, you know that’s not true. Let’s get home.”
Lance almost believes that Keith isn’t tired of him because that voice is so soft and he’s not seeing his face and his knitted brows and his arms crossed and his entire face shut tight and hard at his endless bullshit. Keith uses his name and doesn’t ask him who are you again and he thinks that’s good enough.
“You shouldn’t bother…” He gasps out again, knows that he should stop, but nothing in his mind yields. He has a mission to prove to Keith exactly how bad he is.
“Lance, would you SHUT UP.” Keith’s words are urgent and hurting, and Lance thinks about how he’s managed to annoy him again. He wonders if he prefers it to the soft voice, if it’s an easier burden to carry.
“Shouldn’t you be…” He wheezes in between words, his heart is tight and aching. “Fighting with the others…”
“Lance. You wiped out the last of them before you disappeared. There’s no one left. That was you. Please just… Wait for me. Please” And Lance thinks that he’s lying but Keith never does because he’s too good for that and too honest and too perfect so Lance feels sick instead. He’s not made for heroics and to be the center of a fight, he’s made for empty jokes and staring at his ceiling at night thinking he should stop it. Lance is silent for the rest of the way because he doesn’t want to hear Keith have to lie to him again, doesn’t want the hero Keith to carry that burden. When Keith reaches him and Red looms beautiful over the dark horizon, Lance barely lifts his head. When Keith latches both lions together and enters his cockpit and gasps at the sight of him, he has the common sense to laugh at his state but still says nothing.
Keith whispers something that Lance doesn’t quite catch but he does catch the horror in his voice and it doesn’t surprise him.
“Oh my god, your leg- are you okay? Lance hey look at me, Lance, c’mon, hey sharpshooter look at me.”
And Lance does look at him and finds him hateful and wonderful in equal measure, asks himself how it’s even possible to hate a person as beautiful as this but knows that it’s in fact very doable because he’s been doing that for years. In a corner of his mind, as he loses himself in the vast empty starscape of Keith’s eyes, he thinks that he’s still hating him now, if only because he isn’t his. Keith’s eyes are dark and vast and shimmering like space but Lance can’t get lost in these because that would mean telling Keith the truth. Can’t have that.
He lets out a stupid little sob, and another, and his eyes fill with tears again before he can stop them. He’s trading one dream of getting lost somewhere impossible for another, and it doesn’t hurt any less when it’s Keith. With Keith it hurts more. Keith is right there and coming ever so closer and he’s warm, and he’s holding Lance now –when did that happen? But he still feels so far away and impossibly distant and beautiful and vast like space. Lance is lost in space with Keith and nothing else and feels like he’s falling twice as fast into the void and he feels so so alone.
“Shh, shh, you’re okay” And then Keith is almost nuzzling him and it’s warm and it’s tender and it’s so close and Lance doesn’t know how to deal with it. Space is so vast but Keith is right there so he looks at him as if trying to capture his beauty once and for all in his mind and whispers “love you” and means it. He hopes Keith didn’t hear but of course he did because he’s Keith, so Keith’s head whips towards him eyes wide like an owl, and Lance thinks that it was a nice lie of a friendship while it lasted.
“You…” Keith is tentative and slow when he replies and Lance wonders how harsh the rejection will be. He wonders if he’ll follow Shiro’s footsteps and lie to Lance that he’s loved and needed in every way but this or be honest and just admit that he would never lower himself to liking someone of Lance’s caliber. His eyes stay fixed on the metal in his leg and he hopes in some tiny way that the blood loss will take his consciousness before he hears the reply.
But Keith comes closer, holds him warmer, eyes wide and bright and vast and beautiful like space when he asks him to repeat what he just said. And when Lance doesn’t, because ritual humiliation too has its limits, he pushes closer and closer and his voice drops the careful cultivated softness to burn with something that Lance assumes is anger. Because why would it be anything else?
“Lance, what did you say?” And Lance doesn’t say it, doesn’t admit it, doesn’t let it linger, hopes that the rejection comes once and swiftly. But then Keith comes even closer, and Lance feels like every breath he takes is one Keith let out just before, and that thought is more inebriating that stale beers in the back of pickup trucks and his hand “accidentally” brushing against the blonde boy that came closer and closer and-
Keith asks him in nothing more than a whisper if he can kiss him and Lance remembers that this is a dream and this is a delusion and he’s probably still back at the Garrison looking at the sky after Hunk fell asleep and dreaming that Keith takes him far away up there. So he accepts, leans in with a sob he thinks is encouraging, and his nose and teeth crash against Keith’s when he meets him halfway. It sucks and it’s messy and Keith is a horrible kisser and he doesn’t wear cherry lip gloss but his lips taste sweet and soft and painful against Lance’s. Keith doesn’t let him go, doesn’t allow him to escape from his grasp and Lance wonders if Keith knows that Lance wants to get lost out there in the vast, impossible space. Or does he still want to? He’s not sure. That kiss is really nice.
They split up for a bit, but space is empty and cold and Keith doesn’t want to leave any distance between them, because he dives in again, kisses Lance’s lips again and again, rough and painful and aching almost as if he wanted to convince Lance of something he didn’t understand. His lips are bruising as they rain down messy inexperienced kisses on Lance’s face, and Lance wonders how many girls Keith will have to kiss after this to go back to being normal and cool and not an unforgettable part of Lance’s world. The kisses taste sweet but they also taste salty and Lance realizes that he’s still crying and it’s not stopping.
“I love you… love you… idiot…” Keith mutters in between assaults. And Lance agrees, he is an idiot and Keith is stating the obvious and repeating his confession as if to mock him. Lance allows it because he can delude himself into thinking that this is Keith’s own words, that this is deserved and that this is normal.
“Love you too, so much, Lance…” And then Lance refuses to hear it because that’s too real and the mockery can only go so far and his dreams have never allowed him to think that it could be true. Space is vast, so so vast and someone like Keith has so many better places to go before going into Lance's arms.
But he’s there, and he stays, and he continues peppering enthusiastic kisses on Lance’s lips that Lance reciprocates because it’s as easy as breathing. He continues whispering confessions that Lance doesn’t want to acknowledge directly inside Lance’s ear as if to make sure he couldn’t be misunderstood, and Lance almost ends up believing for a second that this is real because the horrifying pain in his leg has neither abated nor woken him up. Keith is in his arms, holding him softly like porcelain, telling him that he knows who he is (he doesn’t) and loves him for it (he doesn’t, he can’t, it doesn’t work like that). Lance doesn’t have the guts to tell him that he ran out of beer and one-liners a while ago and that everything left to love was something deeply, profoundly unlovable. It’s just Lance now, and that’s not much.
But Keith says it again and again and again, lips pressed against the trembling shell of Lance’s ear when they’re not biting against his mouth. Keith doesn’t stop and it reaches a point where Lance thinks he’s either dead or delusional, feels kind of thankful for his mamá dragging him to church on the weekends, because if that’s the heaven that insincere prayer gets him, then he’s okay with that. He wonders if praying the gay away had any effect, if the world hated him so much that it heard that prayer and threw a boy impossible to forget but impossible to love in his arms.
He dares one more whisper at the ghost before him, at the star that had been haunting him for years.
“Love you so much. Sorry.” And he hopes that that sorry carries the thousand meanings he can’t say. Space is vast and terrible and Keith had the misfortune of having met a Lance who can’t let go.
0.
Space is surprisingly not as vast as people warned him in horror stories and training videos. He doesn’t remember the trip home, the moment when Allura managed to reverse engineer the Galra tech and warp them back to the castle sweaty and disheveled. He does remember the burn coursing through his thigh when they dislodged the scrap metal from it, but remembers too that it hurt less than any thought he had about Keith.
When they throw him in the healing pod he thinks that it was a nice dream, that the ghost of Keith on his lips is going to haunt him for the rest of his life but he’s gonna wake up as usual and go back to the same routine. Charred bodies, shitty rave music, hating Keith, flirting with aliens he hopes are girls. Rinse, repeat. He doesn’t dream about getting lost in the vast beautiful endless space when his eyes close in the pod, doesn’t really know why, feels like something has changed, feels like there’s a big flaw with that plan. When he closes his eyes he sees black indigo starscapes staring back shimmering and beautiful and as close as they are unreachable, sees an infinite distance in the shape of Keith.
But then there’s the issue. He wakes up and the shimmering indigo eyes are still there. They’re soft with sleep and not as fierce as he remembers them in his space-induced delusions, but they’re so unmistakably Keith as warm arms wrap around him and he flops gracelessly out of the pod. Soft hair brushes against his cheek as he’s held upright, and he wonders why he ever had the guts to make fun of that haircut, or Keith for that matter.
“Hey there sharpshooter. You okay?” Keith’s voice is softer than Lance has ever heard it, it feels almost giddy and Lance doesn’t get why. But he doesn’t question it, doesn’t want to ruin the moment so he nods and keeps clinging. Somehow Keith lets him, and he thinks that maybe he’s still dreaming because he can feel the shape of Keith’s smile as he leaves a kiss on Lance’s cheek. He stiffens, feels Keith stiffen too, wonders if Keith didn’t mean to and finally realised what he just did. But Keith speaks and Lance realizes that he knows exactly what he did.
“You… you remember right? Uh… Out there… What you said.”
Oh this is definitely still a dream.
“It’s not a dream, Lance.”
Oh this is definitely a dream and dream Keith is equipped with mind reading powers, Lance definitely didn't say that one out loud, which means that he’s going to learn very soon how far gone Lance has always been. But dream Keith is also patient and sadistic in equal measure because he waits for Lance to say it, waits for Lance to bare it all before him as if he has a chance.
“I… yeah. Meant it. Sorry.” He sputters out as fast as he can and doesn’t elaborate. Somehow, ‘I’ve been loving you for years and years and to me you’re the star at the edge of the universe, you’re the unreachable, you’re everything I hate and I want you but I don’t even want me’ doesn’t ring as cool as this. And this is already pretty uncool.
Keith’s hold tightens around his frame, and Lance thinks that’s it and he’s fucked in every way but the one he’d like, and even his thoughts are starting to be too honest and-
“Would you stop apologizing for just a second? Please?” The final word is punched out and sharp but Lance can tell it has no bite. “The only part I care about is if you meant it, you being a bit of a hassle is nothing new.”
Lance laughs at it before he can stop himself, and he can feel Keith’s smile return against his cheek. He likes it when Keith smiles, he wonders how many one-liners he can throw at him that will have this effect, wonders how many different smiles he can see from Keith if he allows himself to stare more. He’s been used to the frowns (caused by him thank you! He’s very good at his job) but this is something fresh and new and delightful.
“Unfortunately for you, I’m the one who gets to decide if I find you annoying. And as much as I do find you annoying, I think you’re pretty cool when you’re not speaking, especially when you’re kissing me.” Keith laughs against Lance’s skin and Lance’s heart swells with how much he feels all at once, so much that he doesn’t know what to say, stays in petrified silence as Keith holds him. When Keith doesn’t hear a reply, he stops smiling and rushes to correct himself and Lance finds it adorable in a way that hurts.
“That was a joke, by the way, I like you Lance. I don’t just kiss anyone like that. I actually don’t kiss uh.. Anyone. Yeah.” And Lance has half a mind to kiss him again and make sure. So he does. He gave Keith enough chances to run away and fulfill his real protagonist destiny but he’s also so so weak and so so selfish so he feels like now this is fair game. He turns his head towards Keith’s, sees the way the big dark eyes are suffused with a shy but persistent joy that almost glows and thinks he doesn’t deserve all that but will take it anyways. He leans in and feels Keith’s smile against his lips and they don’t taste like cherries or tears, they taste just like Keith and it’s perfect and unrealistic but who cares. His mamá said he was meant for the stars and he’s holding the brightest one in his arms right now and it’s not running away or dissolving and Lance thinks for the first time in his life that maybe he’s happy about something.
Space, really, is actually so small. Space looks wide and daunting and impossible but in all that supposed infinite he met Keith, he met its most beautiful most unreachable star and grasped it with his own hands. Space is so small when it’s shared with Keith, and he’s fine with that.
He doesn’t think he wants to get lost anymore.