Work Text:
“What do you mean,” Lance huffs dramatically, arms waving, “that you never got your wisdom teeth out?”
Keith shrugs simply at his exasperated boyfriend, finding his bewilderment a tad amusing. “I don’t know, Lance, maybe we had more important things going on, like winning an intergalactic war?”
“Right, but that took what—” he counts on his fingers quickly “—3 years of your life? As opposed to the other 18?”
Keith raises an eyebrow, recalculating to make sure he’s right. “5 years. You’re forgetting the space whale.”
Lance inhales. Nods. “5 years. That’s still a fraction of your age!”
“Wisdom teeth don’t grow in until either teenage years or early adulthood. And this is all besides the point,” he continues. “The point is I need them out now.”
“The point,” Lance says, holding up a finger, “is that you need to stop neglecting your health.”
Keith cocks his head, giving his boyfriend a measured look. “I was on my own for 2 years before we went to space, and then spent 5 years fighting a war and the only break I got was when I got stranded on a space whale with my mom and forced to relive both our memories. I think I was a little too busy to worry about having teeth yanked out of my jaw.”
A sigh slips from Lance’s lips, and he tilts his head slightly up, scanning the ceiling as if it has the answers. To what, exactly, Keith doesn’t know.
“Fine,” he finally replies. “But you really gotta stop coming up with such good excuses, you know. I mean, I can hardly argue with them! Every time, it’s like ‘my bad, Lance, my mom left me with my dad when I was a baby and then he died so I really had no one—’”
Keith scrunches his cheeks into a cringe, holding up his hand. “I really don't need the play-by-play, Lance. I lived it. Twice,” he adds.
“Sorry,” he murmurs.
A moment later, he slides up behind Keith, resting his chin atop his shoulder (which is pointy, geez). Keith leans his head onto Lance’s, soaking in his presence, the familiar scent of his vanilla and cinnamon shampoo.
“I just hate how much you had to deal with,” Lance says quietly, his tone somber.
“Hey,” Keith murmurs, shifting his shoulder. He places a finger under Lance’s chin, drawing his head up till their eyes meet. There’s a sorrow, a guilt, amongst the oceanic hue of his gaze, that Keith wishes wasn’t there. “My past isn’t yours to fix. You can’t change what I’ve lived through. And that’s okay.”
“I know,” he admits, hushed. Huffing a short laugh, he adds, “you’re starting to sound like your therapist.” Then, briefly, he brushes a soft kiss against Keith’s lips, leaving behind a tingling sensation. “You don’t need fixing, cariño. You’re perfect as you are.”
Keith blinks hard, eyes stinging. A side effect of dating Lance, probably—he’s way more comfortable crying now. It might always feel odd to express his emotions in any form other than anger, he thinks, but perhaps not. Perhaps someday it’ll feel just like breathing. As easy as being with Lance feels. Just right.
“Now,” Lance claps his hands, “how do we go about getting those little buggers out? Ooo, do you think they’ll use a bone saw?”
Keith grimaces at the mental image. “I’d love to not think about that.”
Lance taps his chin thoughtfully. “Well, hopefully it’s a breeze. I remember getting mine out. Got to eat ice cream for a week. No school, either. Honestly, what’s better than that?”
“That sounds like a nightmare,” Keith grumbles, already dreading the time off work. There’s nothing he hates more than being forced to sit around and twiddle his thumbs for a week straight. Bedrest—his ultimate nemesis.
Lance pats Keith’s head, smiling cheerfully. “It’ll be fine! You’ve fought in an intergalactic war before. I mean, really, how much worse could this be?”
As it turns out, much worse. Keith nearly groans remembering Lance’s words from a few weeks ago, but he’s afraid moving his jaw will send another wave of throbbing pain through it.
Currently, he’s sat in the passenger seat of Lance’s car, trying to ignore the pain that’s slowly been creeping in for the last ten minutes.
Lance had run into the pharmacy to grab Keith’s prescriptions—an assortment of meds he’ll need following the procedure—so he’s all by his lonesome. Beside Keith, a caramel milkshake is melting into what’ll eventually be a pathetic puddle of sugary milk. He’d abandoned it a few minutes prior, not long after the pain started. There’s the blood he can taste at the back of his throat, but swallowing proves difficult, and the taste just keeps coming back.
More than anything, he hates the gauze stuffed back there, wet with saliva and too large for it to be comfortable. It presses directly into where his wisdom teeth once were, which he vaguely realizes is the entire point. However, between the pain the pressure is causing, and the nauseating sensation of cotton wads positioned so far back in his mouth, it’s overall a pretty miserable experience.
A few more minutes pass, in which Keith silently pleads with whoever’s listening for Lance to just come back already, as the pain slowly worsens. By the time he registers the sound of the car unlocking, the pain is steadily radiating up his jaw, and all he can do is clench his hands on his thighs.
There’s the click of the door opening, and, finally, Lance.
“Hey, sorry that took a minute,” he’s saying as he slides into the driver’s seat. There’s the rustling of a plastic bag as he rummages inside for something. “So he gave you nausea meds in case you need them, a mouthwash you’ll need to use twice a day, and most importantly—” he shakes an orange pill bottle, “—pain meds. The good stuff.”
Keith blinks at Lance, eyes flicking down to the bottle. That’d help, he thinks. Except the notion of talking right now sounds legitimately like torture, and he doesn’t know how to communicate that he wants them. His jaw is hurting badly, and his head has been fuzzy ever since he woke up with a nurse looming over him. All he knows is the unrelenting pain that sits in the back of mouth like no pain he’s felt before. So he does the only thing that makes sense in his hazy mind.
He promptly bursts into tears.
Alarm flashes across Lance’s face, followed quickly by concern. “Oh, querido, what’s wrong?”
Keith shakes his head, unable, unwilling to speak. Tears pour down his swollen cheeks as Lance scrambles to understand what's happening.
“Is it your mouth? Is it really hurting?” He asks, a hand hovering over Keith’s shoulder, not touching him yet.
Keith manages a miserable nod, sniffling.
“Okay, okay, let’s uh, get some pain meds in you then.” Lance glances down at the plastic bag, rummaging through it for a moment. He produces the orange bottle from before and squints at the label for a second. “Alright, here, can you try taking these? Remember, no straws.”
A medium-sized oval pill drops into his hand, and he manages to pour some water in his mouth. Swallowing with a numb tongue is an odd sensation, and he can feel the stitches in the back of his mouth, but he gets the medicine down.
The ride home is silent. Keith leans his head back against the headrest and lets the silent tears continue to fall. He tries not to count the minutes until the pain meds kick in, but it’s hard to wait.
Oddly, Keith has always had a high pain tolerance. He’s endured all kinds of injuries from fights and his years as a paladin. He definitely took a lot of hits when he was with the Blade of Marmora. But for some reason—maybe everything was just overwhelming and stressful and exhausting, he doesn’t know—he’s crying now.
For most of the drive, Lance keeps a hand rested on Keith’s thigh, his thumb rubbing gentle circles into it. It’s a gentle reassurance that Lance has got him, that everything’s okay.
When they make it back home, Lance helps Keith inside and to the couch. He wraps an ice pack in a towel and gives it to Keith, who holds it to the side of his face that hurts more. Fortunately, the pain meds are slowly taking effect, the pain dimming little by little.
He’s not sure when, exactly, but he must’ve fallen asleep. When he cracks open his eyes again, his mouth only hurts a fraction compared to before. Soft evening light pours in from the window, and in the other room, he can hear Lance’s voice.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got all that. Ran to the store yesterday.” A pause. “Yeah, he’s sleeping now, thank God. I think the pain meds made him pass out.” Another pause, plus the rustling of something, Keith isn’t sure what. “Mhm. Yeah. Thanks, Shiro. Oh, and you too, Adam. Don’t know what I’d do without you two. Yeah, I know. I'll update you later. Alright, thanks, bye.”
There’s a moment of silence, before Keith can hear the wood creaking beneath Lance’s feet. A moment later, he enters the room, scanning Keith over. A smile tugs at his lips.
“Hey, corazón,” he says softly, tucking a strand of Keith’s hair back. “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” he rasps, wincing at how his voice sounds. “Sorry for the waterworks earlier.” He winces again, pressing his hand to his left cheek as pain radiates through his jaw.
Lance slides onto the couch beside Keith, draping an arm over his shoulders and pressing a soft kiss to his forehead. “I don’t mind, you know that. Just worried me a little. I’ve seen you get shot before and hardly bat an eye.” He brushes back Keith’s bangs, and lightly presses the back of his hand to his forehead. “No fever. That’s good.”
Keith tries to smile—a bad idea. “Yeah, sorry, I think I just… I don’t know. I don’t like being so vulnerable, but everything was so overwhelming. That plus the anesthesia was probably contributing to it.”
Lance hums. “Makes sense. How are you feeling now? Up for some dinner?”
He ponders for a moment, trying to assess how he’s feeling. “Maybe. What are my options? Broth, broth, and broth?”
“Pretty much,” Lance chuckles in response.
He makes a face, which hurts to do. The conversation elapses into silence, and Lance nuzzles closer to Keith.
“You know you’re stuck with me, right?” He asks, hushed. “Like, there’s nothing you can do to scare me off. You are wholly and undoubtedly stuck with me.”
Keith huffs a laugh. “I think so, yeah.”
Lance straightens, expression serious. “I mean it. If there’s anything you can be certain of, it’s that I’m not leaving you—not ever.”
He tilts his head, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Is that a threat, or a promise?”
“Both,” he answers, taking Keith’s hand and pressing a kiss to it.
“I think I can live with that,” he murmurs, squeezing Lance’s hand.
A grin breaks across the blue paladin’s face, a shimmer in his eyes. “Good.”
Keith leans in, resting his head against Lance’s chest. His heartbeat thrums beneath flesh and bone, and it’s a stark reminder that this is real, that they both made it out of the war. That evil alien emperors or crazy witches or the whole of time and space may try to separate them, but the fact remains that they lived.
And their future? It’s theirs to build. Together, inseparable.
Keith lets his heavy eyes close, lets himself drift away, knowing he’s in the arms of the man he loves. And lets himself dream of their future.