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Lance hissed and flinched backward as Keith’s fingers brushed his wrists.
“Oh, come on,” Keith groaned. “I haven’t even touched you yet.”
“Well excuse me for being a little nervous when you’re about to burn me with your fire powers,” Lance snapped, trying to cross his arms in frustration. But the ropes around his wrists prevented that from happening, and after a few seconds of struggling, he gave up with a huff.
“I’m not going to burn you,” Keith said with a roll of his eyes. “I’m going to burn the rope.”
“Which is touching my skin.” Lance thrust his bound hands into Keith’s face to emphasise his point, nearly smacking Keith in the nose. “As in, your fire will also be touching my skin.”
“No it won’t.” Keith grabbed Lance’s wrists firmly in his hands and pushing them back down, despite Lance’s squawking protests. He adjusted his grip until he was supporting Lance’s wrists with one hand, the other hovering over the ropes. “Trust me; my control is really good now. Besides, you have your own powers to protect you.”
“Trust you?” Lance scoffed. “Last time you used your powers, you almost burned down the entire kitchen! Besides, can’t you just use that knife you always carry around?”
“I left it with Red.”
“Why?!” Lance yelled, aggravated.
Keith was too busy concentrating to respond. His entire focus had narrowed down to the rope in his hands, and the delicate skin beneath. The rope was rough and thick, made from the vines he’d seen growing all over this alien planet. Lance’s usually rich brown skin seemed almost pale against its pitch-black colour, and Keith could see the beginnings of bruises blooming where the ropes had cut into Lance’s wrists. He stared at those marks for a moment, something like anger rushing through him, but he quickly dismissed the feeling so that he could focus on what he was trying to do.
He let his mind open up, searching for his connection with the Red Lion, to help strengthen his powers and his control. And then he took a deep breath, stared at the rope, and thought burn.
Lance let out a high-pitched scream as the ropes around his wrists burst into flame, the black bark turning even darker as it burned to charcoal. But Keith’s will was iron, and he refused to let his flames hurt Lance. He held the fire away from Lance’s skin, gripping it as tightly as he could with his mind, leaving the blue paladin completely unharmed as the restraints turned to ash and fell away.
The moment he was free, Lance looked up at Keith in shock.
“Wow. You actually did it,” he said, stunned.
“Yeah, I did,” Keith panted. He didn’t tell Lance, but he hadn’t actually been as confident in his control as he’d led him to believe. This was the first time he’d actually managed to control the fire so well, but then again, he’d been motivated. He couldn’t let Lance be hurt.
Only now he felt woozy and weird. It had clearly taken a lot out of him to keep the fire so tightly contained. He let his shoulders sag, his eyelids drooping.
“Hey, you feeling okay?” Lance suddenly asked, reaching out and putting a hand on Keith’s shoulder. Keith swayed at the pressure, before sinking down slightly to lean on Lance’s arm. “Man, you’re not lookin so hot now. Pun not intended.”
Even as exhausted as he felt, Keith still raised an eyebrow at Lance.
“Fine, pun a little intended.” Lance’s free hand came up to grab Keith’s other shoulder, and now Keith was sagging into Lance’s arms with a tired groan. “Okay, definitely not okay.”
Keith huffed weakly. “I’m just tired,” he mumbled, his head dropping down to rest on Lance’s shoulder. “I did have to save your sorry ass from those aliens, and then drag you through the jungle to safety.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lance grumbled. “That’s great, but it’s kind of a shitty rescue if halfway through the rescuer becomes the rescue-ee. Come on, man, pull it together.”
“Okay, okay.” Keith started pulling himself away from Lance’s hold with a grunt of effort. He managed to make it all the way to vertical, and stood there for a full three seconds. And then he let out a groan and collapsed to his knees.
“Shit!” Lance dived to the ground, catching Keith just in time before he faceplanted into the dirt.
“Oh man,” he groaned when his cheek brushed against Keith’s and he felt the heat radiating off of Keith’s skin. “You are really burning up. That can’t be good.”
“I think I might have overdone it with the fire powers,” Keith admitted groggily, flopped over uselessly now into Lance’s arms, his eyes slipping shut. His entire body was radiating heat so strongly that Lance could feel it even through both sets of paladin armour.
“You think?!” Lance shouted. Frantic, he started searching their surroundings for any kind of help. Without even noticing, he started talking, narrating his thoughts aloud. “Okay, okay, we’re in the middle of nowhere on an alien planet, I have no idea which way our lions are, we have no supplies or ways of calling for help, and you just collapsed on me. Fuck. Fuck. Okay, okay. We can work with this. Think, Lance!”
The lack of supplies, directions to the lions, and even being lost on an alien planet weren’t the immediate problems, he quickly realized. The lack of supplies and being stuck on this planet would be easy enough to fix once they got back to their lions, and Keith was probably smart enough to have left a way to get back to his lion before he rescued Lance. Even if he hadn’t, they could use their connections with their lions to sense out their locations. It would take longer, and it would give them both headaches, but it was doable.
No, the immediate problem was that Keith was completely non-responsive now, and he only seemed to be getting hotter. Lance could see the sweat beading across Keith’s forehead, and his breathing had become a harsh panting that sounded almost painful. The ground around them was starting to bake, and Lance could actually see the air above Keith wavering with heat, like looking across hot pavement on a summer’s day.
Lance knew what the logical solution was, what the only solution was. There was no water around, no convenient refrigerators or snow banks that he could shove Keith into to help him cool off. No, the only source of chill he had on hand was, well, himself.
He knew he had powers too. He and Keith had both started developing their new talents around the same time, and Allura had been thrilled because it meant their bonds with their lions were becoming stronger. The problem with these powers, though, was control. Keith wasn’t the only one who’d accidentally caused massive damage to the Castle of Lions when he’d first been trying to get the hang of his magic. Lance had managed to freeze the showers so badly that several pipes had burst and they’d all had to share the private baths in Allura’s quarters for three days while Coran and Hunk worked to fix it. If his control wasn’t perfect, he could do that to Keith. Even if he didn’t hurt Keith, there was a chance he could do the same thing as Keith did to himself and overdo it, and then they’d both be sick and weak and helpless.
No pressure.
But one look at Keith’s face, flushed a deep red as he burned up from within, and his resolve hardened. He couldn’t let this go on; Keith was already bad enough. He had to do something.
So, taking a deep breath, he gathered Keith close in his arms, focused on the connection he had with Blue, and thought cool.
Immediately he knew he’d overdone it. The ground around them turned white as frost radiated out around him in growing spirals, frozen fractals stretching as far as the nearby trees. The air temperature also dropped about ten degrees in seconds, and a cool mist suddenly appeared around them, making it hard to see anything but Keith in his arms. He swore loudly, struggling to get his powers under control.
But then Keith suddenly let out a loud gusty sigh of relief in his arms, and a wave of warmth cut through Lance’s ice, melting the frost and dispelling the mist. The chill of the air vanished, though it didn’t return to the muggy heat that had been radiating off of Keith before. Instead the temperature had become comfortable, a good balance between the two extremes.
Lance looked down to see Keith’s eyelids fluttering, struggling to open. “Keith? Can you hear me?”
“Wha…?” Keith breathed out, finally looking up. “What happened?”
“I…don’t know?” Lance said. But when he glanced around, he had to admit that he might have had some idea. “I think we just combined our powers. Somehow? And they cancelled each other out.”
Keith blinked, groggy but still thoughtful. “Oh. Well that makes sense.”
“I…guess?” He shook his head. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter right now. Can you get up?”
Keith seemed to realize for the first time that he was currently being supported in Lance’s arms. Cradled, even. His eyes went wide, and he blushed even brighter red than when he’d been burning up. He started struggling in Lance’s grip, trying to get up, and nearly elbowed Lance in the face.
“Hey!” Lance snapped. “Watch it!”
“Let go!” Keith’s squirming intensified, and Lance quickly dropped him before he could end up with a black eye. Keith hit the dirt with a grunt, then climbed to his knees.
“Geez, what is your problem?” Lance growled, pushing himself to his feet and stepping back. At least he knew Keith was feeling better if he was able to hit that hard without even trying. But no sooner had he thought that when Keith suddenly swooned, landing heavily on his hands. The ground around him immediately turned dry and cracked again. At the same time, Lance felt a chill rush through him, making his blood feel like slush in his veins, and the ground around him started to freeze over.
They both stared at each other for a moment before moving as one. Lance dropped back down to the ground while Keith reached out and grabbed Lance’s arms. As soon as they were touching, the frost and heat vanished, and everything returned to normal again.
“Okay,” Lance said slowly, as soon as his teeth stopped chattering. “We may have a problem.”
“You think?” Keith grunted. His grip on Lance’s arms was borderline painful, but he looked pretty shaken so Lance didn’t bother complaining. “What do we do?”
“What? Why are you asking me?” Lance stared at Keith as if he’d grown a second head.
“Because you’re really good at coming up with plans in crazy situations,” Keith told him, and he was so sincere that Lance was rendered speechless for a moment.
“I…uh,” Lance stuttered, completely thrown. A little bloom of heat suddenly grew in the pit of his stomach as Keith stared at him, unblinking, looking completely confident in Lance’s ability to come up with a solution. He swallowed thickly, quickly looking away before that heat in his stomach could move any…lower.
“Well,” he started to speak, more to stall for time than because he actually knew what to do. But when he felt Keith’s hands squeezing his arms in support, an idea popped into his head. “It looks like as long as we’re touching, we’re okay, right? So we just have to hang onto each other until we can get back to our lions. I’m sure once we get there, our connections with them will help us stabilize our powers.”
“Okay,” Keith agreed easily. But then he hesitated as he realized what that meant. “So, what, like…holding hands?”
“Yeah,” Lance said, his voice hoarse. His eyes dropped to the ground. “I mean, it’s just to keep us from dying, right? Not like I’d hold your hand for any other reason.”
“Right,” Keith said quickly, nodding his head in agreement. “Right. It’s just to control our powers.” But he wasn’t able to look at Lance anymore either.
“Let’s just…” Lance trailed off as he reached up and grabbed Keith’s hand in his own. Their hands shook slightly, but he wasn’t sure if that was from him or Keith. Maybe both.
Wordlessly they both got to their feet, holding on tightly even as they both looked away from each other. They stood there for a moment, just holding hands and blushing, and then Lance awkwardly cleared his throat.
“Um, Keith? I don’t know which way the lions are, remember?”
“Oh! Uh, right.” Keith immediately started walking, faster than Lance had expected, and his grip on Lance’s hand tugged him forward, making him stumble a little. But he caught himself, and the two set off without further problems into the jungle.
It felt like they had walked in silence for about half an hour before the lack of conversation started getting to Lance. He was a chatterbox by nature; all of this brooding silence was more Keith’s thing. But he hardly knew what to talk about. The jungle? It was all becoming a boring green mess at this point, the same trees and bushes and vines over and over. Their fight against the Galra? Nah, that was a downer subject.
Finally, fed up with the silence, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“What happens if we get back to the lions, and it doesn’t go away?” he asked. As much as he hated to admit it, his connection with Blue was sometimes a little finicky. She was always happy to support him, but they weren’t always on the same wavelength. And heaven forbid Red was in the middle of one of her hissy fits. “If we’re stuck together like this, how the heck are we going to get out of here?”
“We’d have to leave one of the lions behind,” Keith pointed out logically, although he sounded a bit sad at the thought.
“I don’t think I’m cool with that. Heh, get it? Cool?” He elbowed Keith’s side with the same arm that was currently connecting them.
Keith rolled his eyes. “Well I’m open to suggestions.”
Lance scrunched up his face in thought. How could they get out of here with both lions if they were stuck together? Short answer? They couldn’t. So they needed to figure out a way to get their powers back under control if their lions couldn’t help them.
His mind chewed the problem over, attacking it from every angle. Their powers were out of control, spreading outward, but they were also spreading inward too. If they let go of each other, Keith would overheat, and he’d freeze to death. Based on how fast Keith had collapsed earlier, it would only be a matter of minutes, too, which ruled out just hanging onto each other until the last second and then hoping they got back to the Castle of Lions in time. Man, if only there was a way to push his ice powers into Keith, and have Keith give him some fire back. That way they wouldn’t die.
That thought, combined with the feeling of Keith’s hand in his own, immediately gave him some very interesting mental images.
No, brain, he quickly shoved those ideas as far down into the back of his skull as he could, that is not a good solution. And why the hell is Keith topping, even in my own head?!
Growling, he shook the thoughts away. “Nope, not going there,” he muttered.
“What are you talking about?” Keith spoke up, making Lance jump. He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud.
“Uh, just…trying to think up ways to fix this. In case the lions can’t,” Lance confessed weakly.
“Oh. Well, what did you think of? Maybe it could work?” Keith suggested innocently, completely oblivious to the kinds of thoughts Lance was currently entertaining about him.
“Uh, no. Definitely not,” Lance quickly assured him. “It would definitely not be an option.”
“Why not? What is it?” Keith pressed, looking at Lance oddly now. Lance felt a cold sweat break out down his back. Keith wasn’t letting this drop, and if he didn’t say something, Keith was going to force it out of him. And there was no way in hell he was going to admit that he thought about sex as a possible solution; Keith would just stab his ass and leave him to bleed out in the jungle, power overload be damned. But he needed to say something! What was less awful than sex, but still a semi-plausible suggestion?
“Kissing!” Lance burst out. “I was thinking of…kissing,” he trailed off as he realized that kissing really was not much better.
But to his absolute shock, Keith didn’t immediately rip his hand out of Lance’s and try to murder him. Keith did stutter to a stop, though, looking at Lance with wide eyes.
“K-kissing?” Keith echoed.
“Yeah,” Lance said slowly. Now that he knew Keith wasn’t going to kill him right away, he was actually starting to warm up to the idea. “Like, I was thinking if I had some of your fire, and you had some of my ice, maybe we wouldn’t be freezing and overheating, right? And…kissing is a way to, like, transfer? I guess?” Realizing that he was sounding like an idiot, he snapped, “Whatever! It usually works in the movies!”
“Yeah, movies for kids,” Keith teased, but he was also giving Lance a shy smile. “Well, okay then.”
“Okay, what?” Lance blinked.
“Okay, let’s try it.”
“Wait, what?” Lance yelped. “Why?!”
“To see if it works,” Keith said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Why? That’s supposed to be a last resort if our lions can’t help us!” Lance was seriously considering just letting go of Keith and running. His face felt hot enough that maybe he’d make it.
“If it doesn’t work, we need time to come up with something else,” Keith argued. “We can’t just stand around trying to think of something. Those aliens might come back.”
“But…but…” Lance frantically scrambled for something to say that would talk Keith out of this madness, but he couldn’t think of anything. Keith was right, they didn’t have forever to come up with another idea. Besides, maybe kissing Keith wouldn’t be that bad.
He looked Keith over, considering him. Sure, he’d thought of sleeping with Keith before (he’d thought of sleeping with all of the Voltron crew, if he was being honest) but that had always been simple lewd fantasies. They’d never included such gentle things as kissing. He didn’t even know what he thought it might be like. He’d only kissed a grand total of three people in his life, and he was pretty sure at least one of them didn’t count because she had been his best friend growing up and she was gay as fuck so it hadn’t really meant anything.
“Well,” he hedged, licking his lips. “Okay. We can…try it.”
The two of them faced each other, still holding hands. The jungle seemed to go quiet around them as everything narrowed down to just the two of them, or maybe that was just Lance’s pulse pounding in his ears, drowning everything else out. He was suddenly painfully aware of Keith’s proximity, of the hand clenched in his own. At some point they had shifted closer together, until their toes were touching and Lance could feel Keith’s chest brush against his own with every inhale. It almost seemed like their breathing was in synch.
“So, now what?” Keith asked softly, nervously, shifting from one foot to the other.
“Just…close your eyes,” Lance instructed. He watched Keith’s eyelids flutter closed, his heart skipping a beat when Keith’s lips naturally parted as well. He stared at them. They looked a bit rough, chapped and torn like Keith had been nibbling on them. Keith clearly had never heard of chapstick. But still, Lance couldn’t help but feel drawn to them. Kissing Keith really didn’t seem that awful right now.
Taking a deep breath, he reached up and cupped Keith’s face in his free hand. Keith flinched a little at the unexpected touch, but his eyes stayed closed, and he stilled again right away. The amount of trust he had put in Lance right now was frankly staggering.
This had better work, Lance thought to himself, and then his own eyes slipped closed as he leaned forward and closed the gap between them.
At first, there was nothing really special about the kiss. It was just a simple press of lips together. Lance had been right, Keith’s mouth was rough, but it didn’t feel bad. There was just not much to it. Lance had definitely had better kisses, even from his lesbian friend.
But then Keith’s mouth slipped open again, a little puff of air escaping through his parted lips, and then oh. Oh.
Warmth shot through Lance like he had just swallowed an entire mug of hot chocolate or stepped into a warm bath. It slipped down his throat, pooled in his stomach, and then spread out throughout his body from the tips of his toes to the roots of his hair, leaving his skin tingling pleasantly. It felt like coming into the house after playing in the snow all day, like eating his grandmother’s cooking, like getting a hug from his favourite person. It felt amazing.
He didn’t realize he was moaning until he felt his lips tingling. Only, he wasn’t the only one making noises. Keith was making small whimpering sounds against his mouth as well, and he was holding onto Lance’s waist hard enough with his free hand that Lance was pretty sure he’d have bruises even through his armour. Their joined hands were gripping each other so tightly that Lance couldn’t feel his fingers anymore. But oh god it felt so good he didn’t care.
Eventually, though, oxygen became a problem. Lance reluctantly pulled away from Keith’s lips to gasp for air, feeling dizzy and lightheaded. He opened his eyes to see Keith staring back at him, his eyes as wide as Lance’s must have been. Keith’s face was flushed bright red, and he looked more than a little punch-drunk. Lance knew the feeling.
“That was…” Lance started to say.
“Amazing,” Keith finished, sounding absolutely breathless.
“Yeah,” Lance agreed, because really, there was no other word for it. It had been an amazing kiss.
“I feel a cool and refreshed, now,” Keith said. “Like I just jumped in a pool after a hot day. Or ate a bunch of mint ice cream.”
“Really? Because I felt like I was drinking hot chocolate or something.” Lance paused, considering. “Actually, that makes sense. I cooled you down, you heated me up, right? That was the point anyways.”
“Did it work, though?” Keith asked.
“Only one way to find out.” Lance looked down at their joined hands, and was surprised to find that he was actually feeling pretty reluctant to let go. But that was silly, they needed to let go to see if their powers were back under control. So, telling himself to treat it like ripping off a bandaid, Lance suddenly dropped Keith’s hand and took a big step back.
They stood there a moment, watching each other warily.
“Anything?” Lance was waiting for Keith to drop to the ground again, but so far Keith was standing there as if nothing was wrong.
“Nothing,” Keith answered. “You?”
“I feel fine.” Then he shook his head in amazement. “This is crazy. I can’t believe that actually worked.”
They both went quiet, hovering awkwardly and staring at their feet. They were suddenly unsure of what to say to each other. What do you say to your friend-slash-possibly-rival after you’ve made out with them to save your lives? Especially when you really kind of liked it?
Lance was ready to just pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened, but then he made the mistake of looking up just as Keith was looking at him. They caught each other’s eyes, and Lance felt his heart rate pick up again. Keith blushed and ducked his head, looking so nervous and uncertain, but Lance could still feel Keith’s heat tingling on his skin, and could still feel the phantom touch of Keith’s lips on his own, and he was a big enough person to admit to himself that he wanted more of that. Like, way more.
But like hell he was actually going to admit that out loud, so he’d just have to be subtle about it.
“You know,” he began. Keith’s head immediately popped up at the sound of his voice, as if he’d been waiting for Lance to speak. “We don’t know if that was a permanent fix. Our powers might come back again. We probably can’t be sure we’re completely back to normal until we get back to the castle.”
When he didn’t continue, Keith prompted, “So? What are you saying?”
“We should probably keep holding hands until we get back to our lions,” Leith said as smoothly as possible, holding out his hand in invitation. He hoped Keith couldn’t hear the nerves in his voice, or see the way his hand was trembling slightly. “And we might need to kiss again before we take off. Just in case.”
“O-oh. Yeah, that makes sense,” Keith agreed, even though they both knew that, no, it didn’t. He still reached out and took Lance’s hand again. This time they actually laced their fingers together, and Lance felt Keith give his hand a little squeeze. He tried and failed to hide how much that little squeeze made his stomach jump and his emotions feel all wiggly.
“Well, um. Lead on,” Lance said as soon as they were side-by-side. Keith gave him a cute little grin, and immediately Lance knew he was screwed. There was no turning back now.
This time when Keith started moving, tugging him along by the hand, he didn’t stumble once.