Archive of Our Own

He's the kind of beautiful that makes Keith want to scream. Ragged, even, all cracked smiles and kerosene-drenched flowers and rustic eyes, like he knows just how much the universe is passing him by down the minute, the second, the millisecond. He's a thunderstorm, torn apart in wildflower circles that dig midnight underneath his eyelashes; and there’s something about the way all the stars have left the sky and settled over the ocean of his irises, lithosphere streaks of moondust, that Keith can't quite place.

Lance, this strange boy who looks like the aftermath of a supernova. He's got a vespertine gaze that kindles something bonfire-bright in Keith's stomach, a smile ripped apart into a thousand suns that Keith cannot recognise despite memorising every last solar system. The curls of his eyelashes are astral, the starlight blooming beneath his skin patchwork flames of wonder; and Keith, oh, Keith never thought he'd find a person as fascinating as this, a person like Lance. He makes Keith remember just how lonely he is, with his bronze complexion and stupid jokes and loud laugh and infectious grin- and the worst thing is, as Keith morosely comes to admit, is that he actually doesn't mind him and his dumbass noisiness at all, at all.

It's infuriating. 

✼✼

The first time he realises he most definitely doesn't hate Lance is this: they're on another alien planet, Allura pledging support against the Galra to a kind and gentle civilisation, and the Paladins are all enchanted by the aliens' culture and lifestyle and habitat. They're hosting a party for the Alteans and Earthlings in return for the promise of help, and Keith has never seen anything so warm and so stunning, really; the aliens have hand-collected extra-terrestrial fireflies and released them into their palace, tiny pinpricks of starlight, and the walls are cast in an ethereal, fairytale glow, clinging to the corners in iridescent webs and streaks of molten silver. It's easier to feel the place than to see it, Keith reckons, and he shivers at the sensation of subdued heartache and bittersweet happiness hanging in the air; and he closes his eyes and lets the white noise fill up all his senses, making something akin to hope flutter sugar-soft in his stomach. It's beautiful, really, strangely beautiful in its own alienating way, and he doesn't think he'll ever forget it.

The whole experience is slightly surreal too, Keith notes, as he watches Allura and Coran being so grateful for the aliens' gratitude that they're going around and talking to each alien individually, looking at them like they've strung up the entire damn universe. Hunk is big and wonderful (not a surprise, really) and passes out his ever-doting compliments as he digs into the better-than-goo alien food, offering everyone his most brilliant beams after swallowing. Pidge has found herself a peaceful corner to tinker with her laptop in, occassionally glancing up to unknowingly serenade younger aliens with her blinding smile; and Shiro, well, he's just there being Shiro- ever the polite and well-mannered leader he is, making females (and males, and essentially everyone) swoon with his oblivious muscle-flexing as he fixes the decorations helpfully. Idiot, Keith quietly grins to himself- but there's one person absent from the whole extravaganza, the one person who would've topped off the loveliness of it all, and that's Lance. He has no idea why he notices- he despises the dude and his annoying personality, for god's sake- but he does, and that's something he can't deny, no matter how hard he tries.

Lance had excused himself from the party a while ago, now, having made the excuse that he'd needed the toilet. "Don't miss me too much, mullet boy!" he'd yelled at Keith's unreasonably incredulous expression, and then had left him there standing stiffly, no one left to talk (cough, mindlessly bicker) with. Keith had drifted around for a while, attempting to awkwardly stir up small talk with aliens about the absolutely gorgeous weather outside (permanent black skies and rain-soaked moonlight, strikingly similar to his own soul as Lance had poetically put it) but now, now he's bored. On-the-verge-of-falling-asleep kind of bored. At least Lance is entertaining to argue and one-up, he tells himself desperately, and then he makes his decision- I'm gonna go look for him, right now. So I can rile him up and have some fun, obviously- that's the only reason! Even alien fireflies can become a little tiring, after a while.

He tries Hunk first, figuring that Lance's best friend would know or be able to guess his whereabouts the most closely. But Hunk seems to be just as perplexed and clueless as he is.
"He said he went to the toilet?" he confirms, in the thick of mouthfuls of (concerningly) aglow, acid-green cookies.
"Well, if there's something I do know, it's that Lance never goes to unknown toilets- he always holds it until he's in a personal one he's used to, since he's a proper hygiene control freak, you know? So, like, he probably used it as an excuse to go off and flirt, or something."
"Oh." Keith's profile visibly falls. Hunk appears alarmed.
"Sorry, buddy! Maybe ask if anyone saw which direction he went in?"

Pidge is even worse and doesn't answer Keith's inquiries about directions at all, instead opting to explain in a uber-loud voice (she's got headphones in her ears) about Lance's possible motivation for going missing for so long.
"He's probably taking a giant shit, or something," she casually yells in her most unbothered monotone, "in which case you really, really don't want to interrupt him!"

Allura doesn't bother to answer such frivolous questions, and Coran reaches the same conclusion as Pidge after a lot of drawn-out thinking out loud- "Lance must be excreting!" he exclaims joyously, and Keith doesn't miss a beat as he turns away and stalks over to Shiro without a word for Coran's excretion-based enthusiasm. Surely Shiro, the kindest, most helpful man in existence won't conclude that Lance has been taking a dump for over half an hour, even in an excessively formal dialect like Coran had put it. He's better, more intelligent than that, right? Right?

"He could be taking a dump, Keith?" Shiro instead does tell him mildly with a wave of his cyber-arm, before backtracking when he sees Keith's half- angry, half- disappointed death glare. "Or... God, I don't know, you could just look for him, I guess? This alien palace doesn't have many places to go, so just check out all the rooms if you want to find him that bad."
Keith turns his gaze to the upper floor of the palace, his eyes flickering over the hundreds of gold-embedded doors, and Shiro examines their whereabouts with him, wincing slightly in anticipation for Keith to start yelling about how there damn well are many places to go that Lance could be in. But to his surprise, Keith only sighs.
"I think I'm just going to go outside on a walk for a while," he says to Shiro, who nods. "Cover for me if anyone asks, okay? It's getting way too cramped in here."

And for Keith, it really is. As he navigates through the clusters of loud, laughing aliens spinning and dancing wildly in their celebrations, his head is throbbing and there's a shrill ringing in his brain.  He can feel his heartbeat pounding in his ears, like there's antimatter tearing through his body and pouring out of his mouth in bursts of panic, and everything's red. Everything is red, and everything is noisy and everything is just everything and everything all at once, and then someone is too close and accidentally brushes against Keith's back and he chokes out in discomfort, shit, don't touch me, don't fucking touch me, and he needs to get out. He needs to get out, out, fucking out and he can't find the exit and there are tears blurring in his eyes and he doesn't know what to do right now, what do I fucking do, why the fuck is this happening to me again for fuck's sake I need to get out out out make it stop make it stop make it fucking STOP-

- and he's gasping for, for air and doesn't realise when he starts running except that he does, the backs of his eyelids scorching and a lump ripping through his throat like a black hole, like agony. By the time he's outside he's already run far, far away from the party, far away from the palace packed tight with chaos and cacophony and shouting and too-pitched laughter- and he finds a wall peeling with paint and overgrown with moonflowers and slumps against it desperately, dark circles smudged with crimson and blood-red and cobalt exhaustion, still struggling to fucking breathe. The sight of so many people had suddenly caught him off guard and now his heart is battering at his ribcage, echoing and sifting through his bones like a siren, and his lungs are tight and filled with something so goddamn heavy it's weighing him down. People can't even touch me without me fucking panicking, he broods bitterly to himself, pathetic. I'm so damn pathetic.

By the time he manages to calm himself down, it seems like aeons have passed, and everything is frozen as the sky shatters open and raindrops crackle while hitting the asphalt. They lodge themselves like stars amidst the thorns and flower petals, and cling to Keith's eyelashes like city lights and forgotten promises. He feels wiped-out of everything, almost, not sure whether there's pollen in his eyelids now or if they're just leaking battery acid and heartbreak; but either way, they ache, and Keith sits brokenly as he listens to the chasmic pulse beating fast between his lungs. He peers up at the vast, empty outer space for a moment, tinged with indigo and twilight and moonlit sadness, and then grimaces as his heart regains its steady beat. Pathetic, he thinks once again, still angry at himself for reacting so goddamn intensely to simply seeing so many people around him, simply being touched without expecting it. Pathetic, weak, fucking little shit-

All of a sudden, he hears a muffled sob ripping from somebody else's throat, and he freezes in his self-reprimandation. He didn't made that noise, and his blood runs cold at the idea that he's been near someone all along during his- contained, albeit rather noisy- panic attack.
Who-?
Keith rakes a hand through his matted hair and timidly pulls himself up, dropping low and scanning the area with caution. In front of him, there's nothing but overgrowth- wilting flowers stained all the colours of dusk and dawn, twisting and twining into each other like vines and climbing high, high, high up the emerald tree trunks shivering from the rain's relentless attack- and there are tear-stained branchlets, and rings of cerulean and gold, and crevices of dark where the skylight just cannot reach, abysses like oceans carved into the night. Keith takes a step backwards and stealthily begins to look behind him instead, his spine pressed adjacent to the foliage as he slides parallel to the ground, up until he's reached the end of the wall. He holds his breath betwixt leaden lungs as he shuts his eyes tight, then peers out from beneath the curling tapestry of elderflowers and scarlet berries...

And there, sitting at the edge of the cliff, is fucking Lance. He's looking out, silent for once, at the alien planet spread crystal-bright before him; and his eyes are glinting, glazed over like cherries, with the diamond shine of carefully held-back tears.

Keith swallows, and it burns. It's a transcendental place he's found himself in, really, so he has no idea what this sudden searing in his stomach even means; the alien land stretches out on one side of the ivy-twined wall, crumpled roses and thorns peeking out from inside the cracked bricks wearily, and it's mesmerising. It separates dream from reality, kingdom from cliffside where Lance is perched precariously on the brink, and Keith just watches- watches quietly as Lance takes heaving, shuddering breaths, as Lance hastily wipes away the seasalt tears that spill down his cheeks like shards of glass, as Lance grips the rocks he's sitting on so tightly that his knuckles turn white with effort, a fusion of starlit reds and violets and blues like he's made of stained-glass fragility.

Keith wants to approach him, to ask him what's wrong? Why are you out here? You think you're alone but you still try to hide the fact that you're crying, why's that? He wants to kneel beside him and, and hold the nape of his neck until he stops crying softly, until his lips don't taste like regret and seaglass sadness, until his lashes aren't wet and his irises aren't dull and his smile isn't a whirlwind of plastic enthusiasm anymore. He- he wants to make Lance smile that genuine, wonderful smile again, curling up at the corners and so, so fucking infectious, contagious, lighting up the entire goddamn world with that beam of his, and, and, shit- fuck. What is this feeling? Why the fuck am I feeling this way? What the hell?

His long, meandering trail of erratic thoughts is interrupted by a drawn-out sigh let loose from between Lance's lips, and he gulps as he watches him angle his head backwards, gazing upwards at the vast empyrean like it's his only hope. Something erupts in Keith as he stares, this time, because it's too much for him to take in; it feels like his ribcage is breaking into fourths, now, his bones trembling open, a liquid sunset rising in his chest quiveringly slow. Lance is gorgeous, he reflects, as he licks his parched lips. His eyes are turned upwards to the sky, tiny solar eclipses dazzling on his visage; and Keith is far, too far, but close enough to see the long line of moles decorating his throat like constellations, freckles and blemishes he's all too used to frustratedly closing his fingers around and not, not properly appreciating ever, not properly seeing ever. Keith looks, but he doesn't see, and that's his downfall, because look how much he's missed; look how goddamn much he's missed.

"Lance?" he finally brings himself to say hesitantly, and he cringes at the sound of his own voice- hoarse, cracked around the edges, like porcelain breaking in half again and again till it's nothing but glowing embers on the ground. Lance jumps slightly, snapping his neck back quicker than the speed of sound, and his features contort in agony for one swift, fleeting second- anguish at the abrupt contraction of muscles, Keith assumes.
"Uh," he says again intelligently, eloquent as always to break the uncomfortable quiescence that's settled between the two of them. 

"What... what are you doing here?"

He's finally walking towards Lance as he'd entertained in his mind for several long minutes before summoning the courage to actually approach him. Lance's pupils dilate momentarily in panic at Keith's motions, barely detectable, before a mask of calm washes over his front; and it's terrifying, slightly, how natural it all seems. Keith would've fallen for it, he knows, if he hadn't watched Lance cry and cry and cry into the dirty sleeves of his jacket just moments before; and he'd never have pinned Lance to be such a great actor, but then again he'd never have pinned him to be a lot of things in the past, things like drop-dead gorgeous. This night is turning out to be one of countless, jarring revelations, clearly, revelations that do things to Keith's insides that he hasn't felt anything similar to in his life before. Ever. Ever ever ever.

"I'm sitting on a cliffside and massaging my neck after breaking it, thanks to you," Lance eventually snaps in response to Keith's question snarkily, snapping him out of his chaotic thoughts once more- though there's slight uncertainty laced into his tone that Keith can't quite disregard, and he hears the worry as it floods his brain, timid as an earthquake.
"Why are you here, anyway? How long have you been standing there, dude?" Lance looks awkward, as if he's been caught red-handed. Keith supposes he has, in a way.
"I just got here," he lies easily, the falsities dripping from his tongue silky-smooth like honey.

"And. I was just! Y'know, exploring, because the party got kinda... uh... cramped. And you just so happened to be here, and so... yeah, hi." He mentally chides himself for his extreme lack of social skills, but he's sure the other paladin doesn't mind too much- not enough to point it out right now, in any case.
"Okay, so are you going to sit down or what?" Lance says, rolling his eyes practically out of his brain, scooting over and patting the empty space next to him tentatively. Keith doesn't mull over the unusual act of kindness too hard and complies, placing himself at a safe distance from the blue paladin. He looks hard at his boots dangling over the mountains for a while, a strange heat dredging his cheeks and his ears for no reason whatsoever apparently, as he thinks hard. Then, he opens his mouth and turns to Lance, intending to yell at him for lying about going to the toilet because paladins are supposed to be bonded, idiot, we shouldn't be lying to each other, what the hell were you thinking Lance?...

And, he closes his mouth. And his heart stops. 

What the fuck-?

It's something like the third time Lance has knocked him speechless today, but Keith- it's an off day for him, and he simply can't help it. Just like he can't help the deep blush that crawls onto his skin as he stares and stares and stares at Lance, utterly unable to talk, rooted to the spot as he so often is in the other's unwavering, endlessly frustrating, entirely discombobulating fucking presence.

Because- because Lance is exquisite, right now. Shit. There's no other way to put it. He's tilted his face upwards again, but this time Keith is close enough to see everything, absolutely fucking everything; and the three moons of the planet shine gemstone-bright, incandescent, all the colours of the wind as they paint onto the contours and shadows of his features, fragments of lustrous sealight etched deep beneath his flesh like love-torn hurricanes. His eyes are the ocean. His skin is illuminated with strokes of liquid moonlight, dipping into the hollows of his cheekbones, drenching his eyelashes in molten stardust; and there's something about the way he looks so utterly peaceful here, so completely vulnerable and rid of those stupid exaggerated expressions he always makes, that pulls at Keith's heart like gravity. 

But Lance... Lance also has tear tracks marked along the golden bronze of his skin, silvery and opalescent like dried-out platinum and smudges of outer space and blazing starflowers; and it elicits Keith to physically ache in every way possible to see him like that, his walls invisible, his armor hopelessly collapsed. He realises he needs to say something, anything to Lance- but as soon as he opens his mouth to ask if he's okay, Lance turns in the opposite direction, sighing deeply, his frozen breath drifting into the otherworldly atmosphere with moonlit spirals of indigo smoke.
"Keith," he whispers, and Keith feels snakes writhing in his stomach, tangled in patterns that seem awfully similar to full-blown anxiety. 
What is this feeling?

"Keith, do you ever miss home?"

The snakes shatter all at once in a thousand high-pitched screeches, disintegrating, swirling into a million iridescent starbursts that bubble venomously inside his abdomen like intergalactic fireworks, like fractures of scorching cosmic dust and supernovae spinning outwards and outwards and furiously unravelling like nothing else in the universe. Inside his abdomen, an assail of too-sudden grief and despair, melting into his bloodstream like poison, like heartbreak; inside his abdomen, a stellar scream that starts in his core and radiates through searingly to the tips of his fingers, that fucking longing he so often feels but tries to block out because it's too out-of-character, too pathetic, too fucking weak for him to ever succumb to. He closes his eyes, yearns for his flesh to stop buzzing with the vivid memories he has of Earth's rain sinking into his body, warm and tender and heart-wrenchingly familiar unlike the torrential stardrops falling from the sky on this alien planet, one of billions and billions. He tries not to remember the feeling of lightning shivering across tightly-shut eyelids during crashing, blazing thunderstorms, tries not to remember the caramel-sticky smoothness of sand between his toes and the sun beating down like firedust on his backbone, tries not to remember tracing paper-plane constellations like kisses in the darkness and smiling at the touch of starlight twining into his hair each and every goddamn night.

 Of course I miss Earth, he wants to yell at Lance, so fucking badly the misery is visceral, feral as it swims through his veins. Of course I miss Earth, because maybe I didn't know how to swim in its oceans or scale its immense forests, and maybe I had no family and zero things to actually, legitimately have a reason to live for. But it was home, and I miss home, even if I spent my entire life ignoring the dust underneath me and looking up, up, up at the stars, wishing to fly away, wishing to one day pilot a rocket so powerful I could find a wormhole and just disappear into another galaxy, find somewhere I could finally belong. I was wrong, and it was home; and no matter how shitty and shabby and damn ordinary it was, that desert shack alone was still where I belonged, where I felt most like myself. Of course I fucking miss Earth. Who wouldn't?

But Keith knows, he knows he can't say that to Lance. No matter how captivating he finds him, no matter how much they seem to complement each other's flaws and work as a perfect team and lucidly connect, Keith's all too fucking aware that they'll never be anything more than that- teammates, acquaintances, rivals, fellow pilots and defenders of the universe maybe. But Lance will never be his friend, and even if he was Keith wouldn't be able showcase his vulnerabilities so openly like that because he's weak- so instead of answering Lance's question, he just stays mute for a while, gaze fixated on his boots once again as he swings his feet side to side with nerves.

"Are you okay, Lance?" is what he finally manages to choke out, and Lance just looks at him blankly, not betraying a single emotion on his face. Then he laughs, one long, drawn-out, euphonious note that sounds too much like home to Keith's ears than he's particularly comfortable with, and nods over-vigorously.
"Of course I'm okay, stupid," he says with a shine in his irises again, and in a moment of rare affection, he places a warm hand cautiously on Keith's shoulder. Keith's muscles stiffen at the touch, the contact burning into his skin like an inferno of smouldering, charcoal-studded flames; but he wills himself to relax against Lance's fingers, to not seem weird and unapproachable and as socially inept as he really is. 
It's just a hand, Keith, he tells himself frantically as he draws in a single, shaky breath, trying to calm his erratic heartbeat from going out of control like it had before. 
It's just a hand, a comforting gesture between people who... who recognise each other as friends, maybe. Lance is like this with everyone. It's okay.

"I miss Earth a lot sometimes, you know?" Lance quips into the zephyr, and Keith nods, having heard about his and Coran's talk of how far away their planet is numerous times. 
"I know I'm kinda, like, always yammering on about my family and the beach and the smell of campfires and rain, and... and all that. But, honestly, Keith? Most of all, I also miss what makes Earth so irrefutably Earth, things we can't have at these stupid alien parties with alien food and alien aliens and alien freakin' everything. I hate it, seriously, even if I laugh about it most of the time. I had... I had to get out, out of that place somehow, even if for only a little while, y'know?"
"I get it," Keith replies instantaneously in a small voice, still unsure of how exactly to reassure people in socially acceptable ways- but then fuck it, he decides, it's not like I'd be good at it even if I knew how, anyway. He goes with what his impulses are yelling at him to do instead, and shyly raises one of his gloved hands, brushing it feather-light in contact with Lance's for a second before dropping it down onto his own thigh with a thud, carmine heat moulding into his cheeks once more. Stupid. 

"There's stuff I miss too, you know," he hurriedly decides all at once to blurt out, stumbling over his words in a rush. "All of us do. That's the price of being human, I guess- we're all still attached to what we had, no matter how much distance and time we... we're forced to put between it, and us. If I crave it, then surely everyone else does, too. That's just common sense, right?"
Keith blushes deeply after speaking, a scowl furrowing his brows and turning his mouth downwards in a frown, because fuck- how much more emotional and idiotic can I make myself sound? Oh God, Lance probably thinks I'm so stupid now, fucking fuck fuck fuck, of course I'd do this to myself-
"Keith?" Lance says, and he tenses, bracing himself for a barrage of insults and ridiculous laughs at how damn excessively cheesy he is. I deserve it, probably, he surmises vindictively to himself. But when he rotates to command a view of Lance, instead of mocking laughter he's greeted with the ghost of a smile sculpted into Lance's dry, chapped lips; lingering like cherry blossoms in the seams of the crinkles underneath his eyebrows, curling like mint-jewel leaves just above the crease of his lids.

For the millionth time today, Keith has no words. There are flowers blooming inside of him, wrapping around his iron-clad lungs gently and fluttering between the gaps of his ribs; liquid sunshine explodes again and again within him with all the brightness of supernovae, and midnight suns dissolve like cosmic promises of new beginnings and hope, hope, hope in his heart.

"You know, I think that's the most you've ever said to me- and probably the least stupid thing, too," Lance laughs to himself with a deadly serious, solemn lilt in his voice, and Keith can't help it- he snorts with the irony of it all, the slopes of his mouth quirking upwards with some sort of unexpected, peculiar contentment he's never quite experienced before. Lance steals a glance at him with a glaze in his pupils unlike the tearful sorrow from earlier, a glaze with something like wonder and enthrallment and confusion swimming in its depths- and it brings Keith rapidly down to Earth (or more precisely, whatever alien planet they're on) again, clearing his throat with traces of a grin still evident on his face.

"Okay, so do you want to know the real reason I'm here, or not?" Lance groans impatiently, tugging at Keith's cropped jacket, and he chuckles.
"What, you aren't here reminiscing and sobbing over Earth?" he teases, and Lance whines even louder.
"No, idiot, why would you ever threaten my fragile masculinity and dare to even suggest that I was crying over shit? I'm outraged! I, Lance McClain, never cry!" he declares dramatically with a flail of his skinny arms.
"Oh, and for the record, I never reminisce either- only lame people do that, like your dumb face!" He smirks at himself for the absolutely ruthless burns he gives to Keith on the daily- savagery at its finest.
"You clearly were reminiscing, just now, fuckface," Keith deadpans, stopping Lance in his tracks.
"No I wasn't, asshole! Uh... what does reminiscing mean again?"
This time Keith groans as Lance grins down at him and winks, holding his head in his hands with mock-irritation. 
"Lance, you stuuuupid," he huffs in indignation, "It means remembering things, but, like, fondly. So basically, what we were doing about Earth just now. It was a bonding moment, okay?!"
"You and your bonding moments," Lance mutters under his breath, and Keith glares- "What'd you say?"
"Nothing, nope, nada, nothing at all!" Lance shouts and begins to whistle, then yanks at Keith's jacket insistently, standing and pulling the red paladin up with him.
"But no, like, seriously, Keith. Haven't you seen it yet?"
"Seen what?" Keith frowns, and Lance clicks his teeth together, inching closer and grabbing his hand without hesitation. Keith tries not to inhale sharply as his pulse becomes more and more rapid with the unexpected- but this time, not wholly unwanted- touch, beating tick by tick, faster than the speed of light.
"Okay, let me show you then." Lance breathes, and he raises their intertwined fingers together- up, up, up till they're pointing at the sky, the inky blackness rippling like tidal wives above them, directly at one of the planet's jewel-bright, opaline moons. Keith squints, not quite comprehending what Lance is trying to show him at first, but then-

"Holy shit," he gasps, and he feels every frenetic beat of his heart resonate through his body like birdsong, all of a sudden.
"Oh my god, that... that isn't a moon... oh my fucking god? What the fuck?"
"Watch your language, mullet boy!"
"But Lance? Lance, fuck!"
"I know," Lance grins, and glances beside him gleefully to where Keith has his jaw completely slack. He brings his other hand up and caresses Keith's bottom lip for a moment, their eyes meeting. Then he slowly closes the other boy's mouth, looking at it for a beat too long, and returns his gaze to the sky.

Because, because: circling above their heads in halos of glowing illume are fireflies, creatures soaked in starlight, drenched in wonder, filled with the glow of a thousand suns. Keith blinks away the cadmium yellows and ultraviolet darkness curling like wildflowers across the belts of his vision, and takes in the view with his mouth still ever so slightly open.

These aren't the extra-terrestrial fireflies that he'd seen harvested and used as decorations in the alien party they'd left behind. No- instead, these small spheres of stardust Lance has found look painfully akin to Earth's bona-fide firefly species, clusters of molten amber and tiny galaxies floating through the breeze, glowing midair like the paper lanterns of Keith's distant past. These fireflies are pockets of nebulae suspended like wisps of cosmic wind, stained-glass firelight melding into the sunset horizon, flares of rainbow like neutron stars and helium igniting below his skin.

It's ethereal. They'd originally been in one unified, spherical formation, vaguely resembling a full moon, but now Keith's absolutely fucking enchanted as they slowly drift their way towards him in descent, one perching itself in Lance's chestnut hair like a glowing meteorite, like a dream come true.
"Make a wish," Lance murmurs to Keith, and Keith looks right into his sunlit, neptune eyes. He beams, and Lance smiles right back, their fingers still threaded loosely together- and Keith finds that he doesn't mind the contact at all, not anymore.
"I have," he whispers, and the blue paladin nods. They take one last longing, drawn-out look at the fireflies, before Lance turns to the wall once more, the sweeping branchlets desperately clinging on in distilled blurs of green, azure, violet.

"Come on, we've got to head back now. Everyone's probably wondering where we are- well, where I am, of course." he says, sticking his tongue out, and Keith nods- disappointed but, but happy.
"Okay." he responds. 

And in that moment, everything really is okay.

✼✼

Except it's not okay, because Keith wished on the fireflies for Lance; and after that one memorable evening, he knows he's completely and utterly fucking gone with this barrage of feelings he'd never once asked for.

Lance is everything, he slowly realises, and that epiphany tastes like lingering seasalt and acrid heartache on his lips. He's everything in the way that he's selfless and arrogant and sad and happy all at the same time, a technicolour boy in a heaven of black-and-white, fucking celestial with his porcelain laughter and caster-sugar smile and all that he is and ever will be. Lance is everything in the way that he makes Keith feel like there's fire-pressed jewels sinking into his throat, sun-soaked euphoria melting into the moulds beneath his lashes; he's cosmic, made of firelight and quicksand grins that show off too much teeth, a euphony of canaries that sing inside his bones, asteroids and fucking shooting stars splattered golden against a seaglow heart. Lance is chasmic, and vibrant, and Keith knows that he deserves all the fairytale desires and explosive love and Earth-bound oceans in the whole fucking universe, more grandiose fantasies and glittering myths from the tip of the north star like fairy dust. But he can't give that to him, because he's just Keith, the boy who became a pilot by luck, the boy who has no parents (and likes it that way, if he's got to be honest), the boy who's invisible and unmissed, forgettable, replaceable.

It's a strange and awfully new feeling at first, but Keith gets used to it. Passing Lance by on the ship's corridors is always an experience, to say at the very least; and he finds himself tearing his vision elsewhere from his teammates and picking at the sunsets beneath his fingernails constantly, just so that they can't see the permanent blush dusting his cheeks. The newfound electricity burns at the pads of his palms, like comets and volcano smoke swimming in through his fingertips and bursting in his veins, but he knows he has to ignore it- he has to ignore the feeling.

Lance argues with him in his teasing, joking manner and he turns away each time, his chest aching like there's a crushed kaleidoscope inside him shattering and shattering and shattering over and over each time he rejects his feelings. Lance tells his bad jokes and flirts with anything on legs and comes up with his stupidly impeccable plans, and he sense a part of himself, the matter and stardust and iron and molecules of his soul, wilting like dead tulips and fireglow. Lance tries to converse with him more noticeably after their alien bonding moment, silver-lipped like slivers of seadust in the sky, and Keith merely ignores him, sends him deadpan scowls and one-word replies and exits the room every time Lance is there because, because- how can he have these feelings for him absolutely out of the blue, when he's never loved anyone before, when he's too busy defending the fucking cosmos with no time for romance on his hands?

It hurts, and everything is painted colourblind and he feels like he's constantly on fire, on fucking fire and it's unstoppable, uncontrollable, all-consuming in all that it is but Keith. Has to. Let go of his fucking feelings, or he'll end up disappointed and bitter and raw again, something he can't have now that he's finally gotten everything he wants, fulfilled his dreams of piloting the first ever mission to another goddamn galaxy and crossed realms of jewel-webbed spacetime and is drifting, drifting, drifting in the claws of dark matter, exoplanets, whirlpools of nebulae and constellations and star-drenched paradise that is outer space.

Keith has gotten everything that he thought he'd ever want, except now he hasn't because he's fucking selfish; because nothing is ever enough for him and now there's a new carnal longing swelling in his lungs like explosions of firedust, growing and growing and growing, an all-new big bang painted chaos and anguish in his arteries till he's heaving with it, reeling with it.

Loving Lance isn't as beautiful as he first thought it might be; it's painful, and he feels like shit, and he knows it can't ever be returned. So Keith does what he does best, and blocks out the feeling in its entirety, plugging his energy into training till he's drained, working on his missions till he's exhausted instead.

It hurts, but it works. And at least it doesn't hurt as much as loving him does.

✼✼

It gets to be too much for Lance around the same time Keith is pretty much considering throwing himself out of an airlock.

He's sitting in the control room, totally alone, at the Altean equivalent of four in the morning when Lance finds him. He'd been tracing constellations absent-mindedly into the crystalline tiles beneath his fingertips, all eighty-eight of them, and he's just about to connect the last star of the Pleiades sleepily with grazed, stained-glass knuckles when the screech echoes through his ribs, louder than crowsong, heavier than a raven's call.
"Keith!" Lance screams, and he jumps violently and swears he sees his life flash before his very eyes, vignettes of a tear-stained childhood and amethyst bruises breaking the surface like cyclones, and an empty desert shack, alone, alone-

- "It's fucking FOUR THIRTY IN THE MORNING and you're STILL FUCKING IGNORING ME and y'know, I don't know, maybe I'd like to fucking demand a reason why!" Lance roars with his eyeballs practically bulging out of his head now- but Keith's already shut off his own vision tight, tight, tight, willing for him to stop yelling and to just go away and to stop staring fucking burnt-up holes along the rungs of his spine, and, and-
"I'm not ignoring you," he manages to hiss out raspily, timbre rough from not having used it for hours upon hours, and Lance's panting is all too loud as Keith feels himself hastily getting to his feet, combing a shaky fist through his hair, walking walking walking with stare glued to the ground as he tries to step past Lance and exit the room like the lost whispers of a ghost, and-

"For god's sake, Keith!" Lance absolutely screams, and the grip he has on Keith's wrist then is iron, molten metal, liquid nitrogen searing into aquamarine veins like the thorns of a briar rose, like silver bullet wounds. It stings. Keith dares to peer up, terrified from beneath his tired lashes, and Lance looks completely goddamn different; he's vicious, fucking vicious, a whir of anger and frustration with vessels boiling white-hot and eyes spitting out russet-red sunbeams of pure poison ivy, on fire, on fire. 
I did this to him, Keith ascertains miserably to himself, I've got to go, I've got to go, I can't hurt him like this anymore, I fucking can't. I've got to go.

So: "I've got to go, Lance," he gulps out, the words scorching on his tongue like acid, and Lance just glowers at him defeatedly. "I'm sorry, okay, I really am..."
But Keith stops abruptly at the sight before him all at once, and suddenly it feels like someone has shot him fifty-nine times in the back of his throat; stabbed him and stabbed him and stabbed him, but he just won't fucking die. It feels like he's jumped off a cliff expecting to fly but has instead fallen, fallen, fallen, rushed too fast down to the cold, granite-sturdy ridges of the rocks beneath. It feels like the universe splitting open, like a wound inside of him. 

Because Lance is crying. 
Fucking fuck fuck fuck, Keith thinks eloquently. Lance is crying, and it's your fucking fault, you did this to him, it was you, you useless piece of shit, you-
He discerns something brimming in his chest at the sight of Lance, glacier-slow and as smouldering as liquefied magma, shuddering out from deep within him and painting his insides with fireworks, starbursts of pure fucking sorrow. Lance is a hurricane, now, drizzle-stained violence and blue tears smudging across his starlight skin; he's turbulence, blooms of midnight blossoming like dust on the tips of his lashes, water seeping into his eyeballs like frozen imbue.

Lance cries like he does everything else in his life: with a strong, self-assured conviction trailing into his well-hidden insecurities, except that this time all his insecurities are clearly visible, marked along his cheekbones in tear-tracks of soaked charcoal and stars. It's worse than the night Keith had seen him him teary-eyed from homesickness, because at least he hadn't been directly in front of him when it'd happened; at least Lance hadn't been crying because of him. At least.

But here he is now, with his jasmine eyes like lunar eclipses ripped into nothingness, and Keith- Keith doesn't know what to do, so he stands. And he stares. And he feels his world falling away, pummelling into his flesh, crumbling like moondust. And he stares.
"Lance,"  he eventually whispers, and the air seems to lull as they meet each other's gaze, uncertain and tumultuous and stilted all at once.

There's a beat. There's a long beat. And then suddenly, Lance has launched himself into Keith's arms in the space of a millisecond, and he's sobbing and sobbing and sobbing and burying his face in the crook of Keith's neck and everything is storm-stained and hot and Keith simply holds him, holds him, wraps his arms around his torso and clings onto him tightly like he's about to fall into a thousand layers of burning ocean, devastation. Lance's body is as fragile as the wind and quivers against his shakily, and maybe Keith doesn't like touching and maybe no one's ever tried to hold onto Keith as closely as this before, but he stays put and stays sturdy and lets Lance dissolve into his side like a broken sunset, lets their bodies melt together till Lance has stilled and his sobs are choking to a pause. It's a long time until Lance draws back slightly and rests his head hopelessly on Keith's dampened shoulder, but he does, and Keith loosens his grip and traces constellations on his back instead. His fingers buzz. Touching...

"I'm sorry," Lance starts with a tremulous voice, and falters a little at the weakened tone he's taken on, flinching.
"Ugh, I seriously don't want to apologise to you of all people but I... I just am, okay? I just... I get really weird when people ignore me, and it's kind of like what my family used to do sometimes because we're so big and they couldn't listen to me ever, and I guess I just thought... well, assumed, really, that not being with them meant I could avoid being blanked, so when I do get ignored by friends I kind of sort of have a breakdown, and I'm really really sorry, I just, I-"
"I'm not ignoring you," Keith repeats quietly, and he glances down, his face warm at Lance's outburst. Guilt surges through his veins like electricity, sharp and stinging as copper wires melding into his limbs, blood filling his lungs as he exhales roughly.
"Why would I be ignoring you, dude?" he continues, looking up. Lance is staring at him, downright mystified, so he goes on.
"I do this thing where I need space from people sometimes," he explains, and watches as Lance's countenance falls all at once, dawning with abrupt realisation. "It isn't personal, I swear, I just kind of need some time to think sometimes..."
"I'm an idiot, Lance professes with a groan, "You're an introvert! I fucking knew this! I'm so damn dense, oh my god!"
"Tell me something I don't know," Keith grins lightly, and just like that, the tension evaporates from the air in curling tendrils of smoke, star-pressed sunrises. Lance bows his head and continues rambling at Keith with wide eyes, yelling about personality types and introversion and extraversion and how you're so totally lame, Keith, how are you gonna win over all the girls with an introverted personality, or all the boys, like don't you just wish you were as fabulous as me and cool and extroverted and-
But Keith isn't listening. His mind is spinning at a thousand thoughts a second as he takes in what Lance is saying- boys, girls, boys, I don't want boys, I want you- and what he'd said before- I feel weird when my friends ignore me.

Friends. Friends. Keith inhales, and it's like his there's an explosion within him of gold, saffron, all the colours of happiness and beyond.
"We're friends?" he says quietly in wonder, softly interrupting Lance's speech about personalities- and he stops in the middle of talking, his mouth agape dramatically.
"Of course we're friends, dumbass!" Lance howls in indignation, then prods at Keith's chest accusingly, and Keith doesn't flinch away- he practically beams. 
"We can be friends even if we're rivals, you know! Everyone basically knows that I'm better than you, but being the generous person I am, obviously I'll extend a hand in friendship despite my blatant superiority." Lance puffs his chest out proudly. Something in Keith deflates.
"I mean... uh... actually, that's kind of true," he forces out with a strain in his voice, rubbing the back of his neck tiredly, and Lance stops.
"Wait, wha-what?"
"Why are we even friends?" Keith says, looking up at him determinedly with a fire raging in his glare out of nowhere, and Lance is rendered speechless. It's been building in him for day and days, however.
"What do you mean, why are we frien-"
"You should be friends with people louder than me, nicer than me, less half-hearted and not as fucking distant as me," he spits, and chuckles scathingly.
"I can't even touch people without freaking out about it, Lance. Why would you want to spend time with someone as... as fucking unimportant as me?"
His voice cracks, and he droops his head, tears scorching into the backs of his eyelids like white-hot bolts of lightning, and his face is on fire, humiliated.
I shouldn't have said all that, he's actually going to fucking leave me now, he internally screams in a panic, and by then he's gone with the stabs of paranoia throbbing in his head, daggers of steel pounding again and again and again till he's convulsing.

 Everything's fucking red as he begins to cry once more- weak, pathetic little shit, can't even let Lance get emotional once without stupidly ignoring his feelings and paying attention to your own instead- and the tears cascade wildly as everything around him fucking burns burns burns, shuddering flames erupting in his stomach and gasping upwards like volcano smoke, the blaze tearing through his innards as all the burning butterflies in his stomach shiver to a halt and set his gasoline fucking heart on fire and everything burns, everything burns, he's crushed, he's crushed...

"Keith? Keith?" he distantly hears and he vaguely makes out that he's sunken to his knees and has his hands clamped tightly over his ears, thumbs blisteringly hot against his bare flesh, sobbing.
"Keith, dios, buddy, I need you to breathe with me. Fucking please. Please breathe, please." 

 It seems like an eternity passes, but Lance keeps one hand trained on Keith's spine soothingly as he inhales and exhales; caressing star maps and circles and trajectories onto his back, maintaining eye contact with him all the way until he's no longer blinking back kaleidoscopes of crimson, fury, cataclysm at the blurred edges of his vision. Calm. Calm, Keith, calm.
"Fuck, Lance, I'm so sor-"
"Don't apologise," Lance says shortly, almost bitingly and Keith holds his tongue, afraid. He feels drained of everything in him and his eyelids are swollen, latticed with sinewy veins, crusting around with stardust and sorrow and everything is wrong, so goddamn wrong. Lance stands up and begins to walk away, and Keith admits to himself that he's really fucking blown it now, hasn't he, he's just got to deal with it, he brought this upon himself, fuck-

But Lance hasn't gone. He's just made his way over to a control panel standing stiff in front of the Balmera crystal, and he's looking at it with his jaw tight, completely expressionless for once. Then he slams his fist down on it.

And suddenly, everything is black.

There's a click and a whirring, and after a second the room is flooded with pinpricks of diamond-bright lights. Keith simply stares.

Oh my fucking god...

Because Lance. Because Lance has just strung up the entire universe for him, and he has absolutely no idea what to think, no idea what to say, no idea how to even react.
Keith had always loved space as a kid, had always dreamed of flying rockets light-years away into the night and disappearing within the cosmic clouds of fairydust and wonder, but, but he'd never had someone fulfill that dream for him willingly- Voltron aside, he hadn't been given the opportunity to indulge in his love for the starlight above him ever, ever.

But now, now Lance has done all that with the press of a fucking button and the two of them are suspended in complete darkness in the control room, lanterns of stardust exploding and detonating around them like tiny sunbeams, glowing, glowing. Another click, another whirr and the constellations sing melodies inside his ribcage, distant asterisms in faraway galaxies; Keith spins and the skies melt into moonlight and erupt, incandescent blurs of stars licking and cartwheeling across the blackness and fracturing like supernovae, like dying stars, fragmenting into a spectrum of blazing colours and raining down in stardrops of green, purple, pink, blue-

"Lance," Keith says hoarsely but Lance is already next to him, gazing at him intently, a furrow in his brow. He raises one tan hand and presses it to Keith's lips insistently, and Keith feels his heart expand, Lance's skin painted blue and golden and starlight too beautiful for him to look directly at.
"Shut up, you idiot," Lance growls, and he laces his fingers through Keith's lifeless, cold ones, his hands as hot as the artificial stars above them. Keith can hear his pulse thudding in his ears and can't take his attention off of Lance, who's fucking radiant, drenched in the azuline glow of millions, billions of pulsing neutron stars; more stunning than the fucking constellations above them, a masterpiece.
"Listen to me, Keith," he says urgently, and now one of his hands gently cup his cheeks as if he's made of marble, made of stained-glass porcelain ready to shatter. Keith's face ignites and he senses his ears beginning to stain rosette-pink.
"Are you listening, huh? Are you? Good.
Do you think the stars know that they're important?"
"Uh..." Keith starts intelligently, but Lance looks at him sharply, and he stops.
"Sadly, they don't, because they aren't sentient. Terrible, right? But just because they don't know that they're important doesn't mean that they aren't. The stars are our guides... they're guides home, they're beautiful, they glow with a raging fire that no one can ever fucking put out, they're constants. The stars are fucking incredible and they're so fucking important, Keith," he breathes, gritting his teeth.
"And I... I think you're a lot like the stars," he finishes. Every system in Keith's body shuts down. "You're beautiful, and really goddamn stupid and ethereal and, and stupid,  did I already say that yes I did but you're double stupid, and you're probably not even sentient but you're so so so fucking important and don't ever tell yourself otherwise, Keith, I'll fucking kill you, only I'm allowed to put you down as a goddamn joke because what the quiznak is there to put you down about anyway..."

Keith decides to act, then, in the same impulsive way he deals with everything else in life: point-blank, with no plan, but with the resolve and the tenacity to make up for it.

Keith kisses him. 

And the world stops.

There's a moment, a brief, ephemeral second in which everything seems to spin rapidly around them on its axis. Then, all at once, Lance is kissing him back, and his stomach explodes in fireworks.
He wraps his arms around Keith and his hands are everywhere, poised on his waist, tangled fiercely in his hair and tugging and tugging and pulling and Keith is gasping for air, fuck, fuck, lurching up slightly on his tiptoes and pressing his mouth as hard as he possibly can to Lance's without losing the ability to breathe entirely. He's never kissed anyone in his entire life, but for what he lacks in experience he makes it all up with his pure, unadulterated enthusiasm- their bodies meld together like a dissolving twilight, Keith pushing up as close as he can to Lance's hips and moaning into his mouth, exquisite. Lance gives up and peppers butterfly kisses all over his face and neck with tiny smiles, ghosts of his breath leaving primrose traces against the curve of Keith's jaw, and Keith keeps his eyelids shut tightly as he grips onto Lance's nape like it's the end of the world and he isn't ready to goddamn die.
His entire body is alight and burning, and he's never touched anyone as much as this before, but he thinks he could get used to it. He crushes his open mouth once last time hard to Lance's before pushing him away slightly and staring at him, breathless and panting, lips swollen red and irises brighter than the goddamn sun.

"I thought you hated me," he says raggedly and Lance's boom of laughter is husky, deep. His eyes twinkle, cosmic, auroral, and Keith swears he feels his entire world tilt underneath his feet, his pulse hammering like wildfire.
"I never hated you, buddy," he says, smoothing a finger slowly along the cracks of Keith's lips which linger with the taste of oceandust and nebulae and every colour of the stars. They look into each other's eyes and maybe this is shifting out of Keith's comfort zone, but to be frank he doesn't care anymore, would leap out of a spaceship and swim to the furthest corners of the fucking universe if it'd give Lance the chance to finally be happy.
"If I hated you, I wouldn't open up to you, would I? Or cry about you ignoring me. Or tell you that you're a star. Or make out with you." he laughs.
Keith just stares. Then: "Do it again," he whines, and this time the smile gracing his mouth is real, celestial, love pooling in the depths of his belly like honey. 

And loving Lance is like inhaling sunlight, exhaling stardust, and it's like jumping off a cliff when he's never been called brave in his entire life. He's the kind of beautiful that makes Keith want to scream. Ragged, even, all cracked smiles and kerosene-drenched flowers and rustic eyes, like he knows just how much the universe is passing him by down the minute, the second, the millisecond; except this time, it's not so unfamiliar anymore, expanses of endless spacetime where he can't belong. 
He knows it all, now- that the two of them belong with each other. The stars continue to drift around the two of them in trails of celeste gold, and Lance's mouth quirks upwards as he leans in to close the distance to Keith again, sugar-soft.

"Okay."