Work Text:
It was the dancing that put Keith over the edge.
At first, it was just like any other night in the Castle of Lions; Allura had charted a course earlier in the evening and the ship was flying on autopilot, cruising through a dimly lit but colorful nebula. The Paladins were all gathered in the commons area, spread out over the couches that formed a ring, talking and laughing and forming conversations of two or three participants that drifted lazily in and out of life in a slow, ephemeral beat.
Keith was half asleep on a couch. He hadn’t even been paying attention to the talk, but someone had accused Lance of not being able to dance, and then there was a flash of movement and Lance was standing in the middle of the couch-ring, shucking off his jacket, ready to defend his honor.
“Coran!” Lance pointed, his trademark sideways grin crackling across his face like lightning. And then he deadpanned, “Play me some sick beats.”
It had taken a minute or two to explain to Coran what, exactly, a “sick beat” was, and Keith had spent the time studying Lance through his half-closed eyes, veiled with sleepiness. Lance was only in his undershirt. And he was stretching, his arms above his head, lean muscles twisted and taught. The undershirt lifted up to reveal a brown crescent of Lance’s flat stomach. A warmth bloomed in Keith, the familiar longing. He curled up tighter into the arm of the couch. Pidge was his closest neighbor, and he knew he was safe from her trying to spread out and touch him. He could easily drift off to sleep here.
But then Coran turned on the stereo and the room was flooded with music. It was strange, unlike anything Keith had heard before. He supposed it made sense; it was alien music, after all. The beat was slower than Lance probably wanted, low, colored maroon and purple and richly chocolate.
Lance started swaying.
The joking atmosphere died pretty quickly, because it was obvious that Lance actually knew how to dance . The boy was gyrating and moving his arms in what should have been ridiculous motions but actually looked good, like he knew what he was doing.
In a mesmerizing and circular pattern, Lance worked his way around the space. Everyone was mute, entranced, impressed.
And then the beat picked up along with Keith’s pulse, because he was no longer asleep, and Lance’s grin had slid into a startlingly bright shade of the shit-eating variety.
He pointed at Keith, like he had with Coran earlier. And crooked his damn finger.
“No,” Keith said. “No. Nope. No wa-”
But Lance was already standing over him, tugging on his wrists, smile turned up full blast. Allura was laughing and clapping, and of course Pidge and Hunk followed her example, catcalling and egging Lance on, which was attention he did not need. Even Shiro was smiling and patting his knee to the beat.
Keith knew he was toast from the beginning, of course, but he had to protest for appearance’s sake. Finally, though, he allowed Lance to pull him to his feat, grumbling all the while. His face burned.
“Follow my lead!” Lance shouted above the music.
His fingers slipped between Keith’s.
His hands were warm. Steady. Keith felt the moment swallowing him whole.
And then they were spinning.
**
After that little episode, he couldn’t keep it in any longer. He had tried and failed to kill his feelings, but the damn things were resilient. A diary had helped, a little, but even that was no substitute for the one thing Keith hadn’t had in years: someone to talk to.
It was dark in his cabin. When he checked the clock, Keith groaned at the numbers. It had been hours since lights out, yet he hadn’t fallen asleep. His mind was still swirling from the dance in the same way water swirls in a bottle after the bottle is spun and suddenly held still. He couldn’t think right. He couldn’t think of anything except for Lance’s crooked smile and the feel of a hand on his waist and the smell of Lance’s sweat as they danced.
Stop. Stop it.
It was a weak attempt, even for Keith. He had accepted long ago that he had a massive crush on Lance, had accepted the absolute insanity of the notion. It wasn’t the being-gay part that had been hard to come to terms with. Keith was fine with that. Well, he thought he was. Really he hadn’t had a whole lot of down time to think about it.
No, it was the fact that Lance drove him higher up the fucking wall than anyone else in the galaxy, and Keith had gone and fallen for him.
Plus the fact that hoping hurt. It was exhausting, obsessing over every touch and eye contact and conversation, endlessly analyzing for hints of reciprocation to the desperate and invisible signals that emanated from Keith. And even if he found those signals, Keith was too much a coward to ever act on them. Really, the whole thing was an exercise in masochism.
The only thing more tiring than all of that was doing it alone.
His wrists burned where Lance had grabbed them, and his palms blazed where Lance had held them while they danced. And danced they had, for the duration of the Altean song, which had been longer than a normal Earthling melody. Lance had held Keith that entire time. Even though the others had began to dance around them too (Allura had been the first to tug Shiro out of his seat), Lance’s eyes had been focused entirely on Keith. Or so he thought. What was the dance supposed to mean? Had Lance held his waist as part of the dance or because he had wanted to? Had he been blushing of exertion or something else?
Fuck it.
Keith threw back the blankets and swung his legs out of bed. The tiny cabin was too cramped for all of these thoughts, thick and choking as fog. He needed out.
The ship was eerily quiet at night. Keith had no shoes except for the boots he had been wearing when the Blue Lion had abducted them, and his Paladin armor shoes, so he padded barefoot down the hall. The cold metal whispered against his feet. There were no echoes.
He wasn’t sure where he was going. It wasn’t like there was an endless desert to escape into here, after all. But the thought of returning to the cabin, knowing Lance was on the other side of the thin wall, was unbearable.
No, he had to talk to someone. If not directly about Lance, then about anything, anything at all. Conversation was a foreign and strange territory to Keith, but he felt like a dam about to burst: something needed to be let out.
Was he even capable of talking about Lance? Did anyone know anything about how he felt? Keith prided himself on being mysterious, but judging from the looks some of the other Paladins had been giving him lately, he wasn’t so sure. Shiro knew he was gay, and the man was certainly smart enough to put two and two together. So was Pidge. And Hunk. Well, shit. So maybe Keith wasn’t as shadowy as he thought. Whatever.
Okay, well, there was no way in the galaxy he was going to talk to Pidge about this. She was 14 and he was not going to have a Garrison freshman giving him love advice. Plus, he could imagine her I-told-you-so smile when he admitted his crush to her, and he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.
So, Pidge was out. Hunk? No, he was Lance’s best friend. Although Keith didn’t think Hunk was the gossip-y type, he didn’t trust anyone with that much long-term Lance exposure. It changed a person.
What about Shiro? Ugh. Even the thought of having that conversation with him sent awkward goosebumps sprinting up Keith’s neck. Shiro was like...like...his older brother. He would probably ruffle Keith’s hair and tell him to get back on that horse and then punch him the arm while smiling warmly. He would totally make fun of Keith too, sliding some sneaky, brotherly jokes in now and again and wiggling his eyebrows at Keith every time Lance moved. Disgusting. No way.
Just go for a walk. That’s what Keith told himself he was doing.
Keith didn’t want to go to any of his fellow Paladins. He needed someone he didn’t know well and who didn’t know any of them. Someone who knew feelings and could talk enough for two people and carry a conversation by themselves, because lord knew Keith couldn’t.
Just go for a walk, because if he thought about the fact that he was voluntarily going to make conversation with someone, he might lose his nerve.
He needed a cool head but also someone to reaffirm his self pity. But who?
**
When her room bell rang, Allura was dreaming of a destroyed world.
She was in a field of flowers, but unlike her holograms, this one wasn’t empty. It was full of people, of Alteans, laughing and picking the plants, of children playing games and the elderly weaving crowns and baskets out of stems. All of their faces were familiar. Allura knew she recognized them, but they were less to her than the memory of a memory.
Bzzzzzzz.
The ghosts turned to look upward. There was a shape in the sky, one Allura knew well: a Galra ship.
Bzzzzzzz.
The dream dissolved just as the lasers struck the surface of the planet. Allura opened her eyes in her bed but didn’t move. Where a moment before had been her planet and people, there was now only her blankets. Even the mice were nowhere to be seen.
Bzzzzzzz.
“I’m coming!” She said it with more irritation in her voice than she’d meant. Groggily tying back her hair and throwing on a robe, Allura shuffled over to her room’s door to check the video feed.
What...in the world?
The door swooshed open, and there stood the last person Allura had ever thought to see at her room in the middle of the night. He was standing like he had done something wrong, his eyes cast to the floor, one hand scrubbing at the back of his head.
“Keith?” Allura couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. “What a...lovely surprise.”
Truth be told, she didn’t know what kind of surprise it was. She and Keith had never really been around each other much. Well, they had , but never alone. She had yelled orders at him and he had yelled back and they had taken down Galra fleets as part of the same team, but she had never before just been in the same space with him, the two of them. Allura wasn’t even sure she knew his favorite color.
“Sorry,” Keith said. “I just…” he trailed off, looking lost.
This was weird. Even by human standards, which Allura gave a lot of leeway to be weird. This Keith looked nothing like the quiet, composed Paladin she was used to. The person in front of her was just a human boy with bedhead in a t-shirt and boxers with the slightest shade of morning stubble on his chin. He looked lost. Unsure. Young.
Allura felt something within her soften.
She stood aside in the doorway. “Come in. I’ll get you something to drink.”
Ten minutes later, Allura and Keith were sitting together on the edge of her bed, both holding steaming mugs of dy’angi . Up until this point, awkwardness had been avoided by Allura putting on a big show of making the drink while Keith found a spot to sit. But she still didn’t even know why he had come. Part of her burned with curiosity and nearly asked him outright, but Allura had to quash the urge down. She knew enough about Keith to realize that if she was too direct with him, he would close up. No, better to make small talk until he got there on his own. He had made it this far.
“I was having the weirdest dream,” Allura said while looking at the wall. Her legs were pulled up against her chest. She saw Keith’s head swivel towards her out of the corner of her eye. “I was on Altea, and everyone I knew was there. Only, I didn’t know them anymore. I had forgotten them. Their names, their families. They were calling me “princess”, but...I felt that I was apart from them.” She sipped the spicy dy’angi . Already she felt slightly bad about the next bit, which was a white lie, but something on her radar was flashing and Allura had a sneaking suspicion about what it was and how to find out.
“And then, this one man came. He gave me a flower. He put it in my hair and smiled and I had never seen anything more beautiful. I think I knew him, too. I half-remember some things. But I can’t put a name to them. Whenever I try, they just...float away.”
“I know how you feel.” This time, it was Allura’s turn to look at Keith. He was staring intently at his mug, chewing on his lip. “I...Allura, the reason I came--”
Keith stopped. Took a breath. Allura didn’t prod him. Strangely, the tiniest hint of a smile touched Keith’s lips, and he seemed to come to some sort of a decision.
“You liked him, didn’t you? I--I know how that feels.”
It took all of Allura’s willpower not to squeal and punch the air. A million million questions flooded her head and she wanted nothing more than to take Keith by the shoulders and interrogate him on everything about this, but she knew that was out of the question. Instead, she took a deep breath and contented herself with a simple question.
“You do?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, I never know what to do about La--...about Lance.”
Holy quiznak! Holy, sun-loving quiznak!
“Really?” It came out high, strained, like Allura had gone to kick a ball with all her might and pulled back at the last second. She took a drink to defuse the word and ended up choking slightly. She thumped her chest, hard.
Tell me everything oh dear lords of the stars above Keith please do not keep me in torturous darkness any longer tell me when this started and how much you like him and what your favorite things about him are and if anyone else knows and what you’re planning on doing about it and why Lance and what is the human custom about this and oh my stars you two would make the cutest couple, like, the CUTEST, holy black hole I wasn’t even sure this was acceptable in human culture, I mean, I hoped it was, but I never knew! You have to tell me EVERYTHING!
Instead: “That must be...confusing.”
Keith laughed, low, and met her eyes for the briefest of moments. “Yeah, you could say that.”
They sat in silence for a moment in the dark cabin, Allura brimming with energy and questions, Keith looking very aware of her, but also smiling somewhat. To Allura, he seemed almost relieved. His shoulders were less pinched than they had been a moment earlier.
“That’s actually why I came here. I wanted your advice. I mean--not advice, exactly, but--you know, I…” Keith trailed off, looked at the ceiling, sighed. The bone in his throat bobbed. Then his eyes, framed by a mess of dark hair and sharp jawlines, met Allura’s, and they were pleading.
He asked, in a childish voice: “Can I just talk to you...about him?”
And for the first time, Allura allowed herself to grin. She clapped her hands together and rested them under her chin. She rearranged her legs into a cross-legged pattern and turned to face him. They were in full-on sleepover mode now. No going back.
“Keith! Of course! Yes!”
He smiled self-consciously. Allura had seen that look before on some of her friends: shyness mixed with relief that you were finally getting to brag about your crush with someone. Hesitation, because you were not used to talking about it, mixed with happiness for the chance to do so. Talking about it made it real. It was scary, and she knew Keith knew this.
She still couldn’t believe she was the one who got to sit here, having this conversation with him. Amazing.
“I guess I just...today, with the--we both, when he grabbed me…” Keith fumbled for words, and Allura took pity on him.
“When he danced with you today?” Something opened up in her mind. She had thought Lance was just being silly and Keith his normal introverted self, but viewing the dance from this new light opened up an entire world of meaning. She marveled at it. What must have Keith been feeling? Was that why he had been blushing so hard? And what about Lance? Did he have any clue what he was doing to the other boy?
“Yeah. I mean, I hate dancing, and that asshole knows it, and he did it anyway.” The words were sharp, but Allura saw right through Keith’s front.
“Keith, I saw you. You liked it. You were dancing with him.”
“Well, yeah!” Keith threw up his hands, finally turning to face her on the bed. He blew a chunk of hair out of his eyes. The boy really needed a trim. “But that’s not the point! I mean, he just wanted to make fun of me.”
She waggled an eyebrow. “Or he really wanted to dance with you.”
The effect on Keith was instantaneous. His face lit up like a glowing fire buckchari , and he coughed, shifting around slightly.
“I don’t think so. He just wanted to make me look stupid. Because he’s Lance, and he’s infuriating and needs all of our attention all the time, doesn’t matter what that makes other people feel like.”
“Are we...still talking about the guy you have a crush on?”
“I don’t--” The words died on Keith’s lips, an automatic defense that crumbled under the realization that, oops, he had already confessed.
“Ok, so besides being Lance, what do you like about him?”
“No, that’s not it. I wouldn’t--I mean, I like him because he’s Lance.” Keith had set down his mug and was playing around with the hem of his shirt. He had trouble making eye contact, Allura noticed, but that was alright.
“He’s annoying, but it’s like nice, white noise, you know? When he’s not there, I miss it. Even if that sounds crazy.”
Allura smiled to herself. “Not at all.”
“And I like that he’s so outgoing. He doesn’t...doesn’t care what other people think.” That little grin was back on Keith’s face, the grin that had at first seemed so foreign on him, but that Allura was coming to like. Smiling suited Keith even more than scowling.
She was about to ask something, but Keith was on a roll now, like he had forgotten she was there.
“And I like--I like seeing him smile. Because his smile is, uh, well, it’s cute, you know? God, it feels so weird to use that word.” Keith sucked in a breath, let it out long and slow. “You know how his smile is really crooked? It’s so goofy and great and I always want to see more of it. And his hair is so soft, have you ever touched his hair? He rubbed his head in my face one time and I almost lost it. He’s just...handsome. Cute. He’s cute. And, like, how he always is touching people. Like he’ll put his arm around your shoulders, or grab your hand, or tap your foot with his?”
“Keith,” Allura said gently, “I think that’s just you.”
His eyes widened. “What?”
She sipped her drink, watching him over the brim of the mug. Never in a million years had she thought this would happen. Allura brimmed with excitement for him; every part of her yearned to wrap Keith up in a big hug and squeeze him and tell him how happy she was for him.
“Keith, Lance never does that stuff with us. Or me, anyway.”
“But he flirts with you all the time!”
“Not since the first couple days.”
“No way.”
“Name one time Lance has flirted with me lately. At all. Ever.”
“I…” Silence fell over the two of them as Keith chewed his lip, searching his memory. He would come up empty because it was true; Lance had been a huge flirt with Allura for a while after they had arrived at the Castle of Lions, but strangely, his advances had slowly withered away. Not that Allura had minded, of course. But now she had an answer as to why.
Thinking back on it, maybe she had seen this coming a little. Lance was always all over Keith. And when the two of them weren’t bickering like an old married couple, Lance was the only one who could make Keith laugh. They always volunteered for chores together, always made everything a competition, but a fun one.
Hot quiznak. Allura was almost ashamed at herself; her romance radar should have been firing from a parsec away, and instead, she had formed only the shadow of a suspicion. Certainly not enough to start watching the two of them closer.
So the only question that remained was…
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Hm?”
Allura leaned closer to Keith over the bed. “What about Lance? How does he feel?”
“I don’t...I don’t know?” Keith was scrubbing at the back of his head again. “I thought I knew. A minute ago. But now--”
“So, what are you going to do about it? ”
“Don’t smile at me like that! It’s creepy. I’m not going to do anything, ok? C’mon Allura, there’s no way Lance actually...actually likes me.”
This boy , Allura decided, needs some serious help.
She said, “nonsense. You came to me for advice, so here it is: Lance obviously has an interest in you. Far more than any of the other Paladins, and some were his best friends before arriving here! Keith, I am telling you, there is no way Lance’s behaviour regarding you is normal. It could be an outlier of peculiar data, but I don’t think so.”
“You really think he could like me?”
“Yes! Keith, oh my goodness, yes!”
He smiled and dipped his head. Allura thought about how nice it was, just the two of them, away from the craziness that was inherent in having so many guys and a wild Pidge in the room at once. Keith became a different person when he was brought out of the others’ shadow. And she was finding that she liked this version of him.
The room was awash with the soft blue glow of the Castle’s nightlights. They cast ocean shadows of both of their faces, turned their skin into opaque aquariums. It was easy to imagine that they were alone in the universe, or at the bottom of the sea where no hurt could touch them.
Slowly, Allura reached out and touched Keith’s hand. He flinched, but didn’t pull away.
“Keith, the Castle’s computer says the lifespan of a human is about ninety years. That’s not a lot of time. If you like Lance, and there’s a chance that he likes you, you should tell him.”
So, so softly, almost to be non-existent: “But what if I’m scared?”
This, coming from the kid who had dueled Emperor Zarkon one-on-one and lived to tell the story. Allura marveled at the phenomenon of it all.
“That’s just a sign that you care.”
“But what if...what if I mess things up?” Keith turned to face Allura, the lights of the Castle swimming across his face. “What if I tell him and he doesn’t feel the same way?” His breaths were coming faster now, panicked.
“Okay, okay.” Allura backpedaled a little. “Let’s do this. Lie on your back.”
“What?”
“Just trust me.”
Without more protest, Keith slowly lowered himself, and Allura climbed around on her knees until she was lying down on the huge bed as well, body pointing opposite Keith’s so that their heads were on the same level, but nothing else.
“Now look up.”
Allura had chosen this place as her room for a reason: the ceiling of her room could slide back to reveal a transparent glass side of the Castle, looking out into the stars. She pressed a button on the side of the bed, and the covering melted away. Keith’s intake of breath was audible.
Above them, the universe danced.
Billions of stars wheeled across the sky, so bright they almost hurt. They were scatterings of burning, glowing dust, each its own world, its own soul. There was nothing to obscure them. No light to drown out their brilliance. And even better, the Castle was near a nebula. It was in the shape of a twisting cloud, and radiated a soft golden-red light that washed across the stars like watercolor. It was the universe that they were all sworn to protect.
Okay, back to basics.
“What are your three favorite things about Lance?”
“His neck,” Keith said immediately. His voice was low, husky. “His hair kind of curls up in the back. It’s great.”
“That’s one.”
“His voice. I really, really like his voice. I kind of want to listen to it forever. Did you know he can sing?”
Allura grinned to herself and folded her hands over her stomach.
“And, I guess...that he’s so generous. He’s always offering his chair, or his coat, or whatever if anyone needs it. He cares a lot about other people.” Keith cleared his throat. “Okay, my turn. I say something Lance does with me. You say if it’s only with me, or with everyone else. Like, a normal thing he does.”
“Sounds fair.”
“Walks by my room every morning and checks to make sure I’m up in time for breakfast.”
“Just you.”
“Talks a lot about he found his Lion first.”
“Everyone. Unfortunately.”
“Holds my hand a lot.”
“Keith, he holds your hand? ” Allura propped herself up on an elbow. “Are you serious?”
Keith raised his head to frown at her. “Only when we watch scary movies! He gets super freaked out and needs, like, a stress ball.”
Allura stared at him for a moment, dumbfounded. How was it possible for anyone to be that oblivious? She lay back down, rolling her eyes.
“Also, watching horror movies alone is a ‘just you’ one.”
“Hugs me when I get out of my lion after a mission.”
“Oh my stars, Keith. I can’t believe this.”
“Hey, I saw him hug Hunk once!”
“I think you’re thinking of when Lance passed out from a head wound and fell into Hunk.”
They were quiet after that, thinking. The Castle’s engine hummed many levels beneath them, a living, breathing leviathan of space.
“Do you really think I should tell him?”
“I do,” Allura said quietly. “I really, really do.” She gestured toward the freewheeling cosmos overhead. “This is what we’re fighting for, Keith. All of these stars, their freedom. And that includes the freedom to live your life. The freedom to love. That is something we must fight to protect from the Galra. It is something we must cherish above all else.”
“The Galra...sometimes I miss Lance. Like he’s already gone, like...like something terrible’s already happened to him.”
Father.
Allura turned her head on the mattress so that she was looking at Keith. His dark hair fell in waves on the blankets, his chin pointed like a compass towards the stars. He was an attractive boy, she thought. Maybe not as much as Shiro, but that was totally beside the point.
So she just said, “I understand.”
Maybe a little more hurt had seeped into her voice than she intended, because Keith turned his head to look at her, his eyebrows knitted together.
“I don’t think I’ve ever told you--told you that I’m sorry.”
“What do you have to be sorry for?”
“Nothing, I guess. Just that you’re in this situation.” Keith didn’t have to speak the next part for Allura to hear it: to have your planet destroyed, everyone you love dead, everything you’ve ever known ten thousand years gone. A loss that even the extinction of the Galra will not mend.
“Do you miss them?”
“All the time,” Allura whispered. When she was little, her father had told her that every star in the sky was the soul of the dead. It was just a story, but some part of Allura had always held onto that belief. Maybe that was why she had chosen this room.
“Maybe it was the afterlife.”
“What was?”
“Your dream,” Keith said. “Maybe it was the afterlife. Everyone you loved trying to tell you that they’re okay.”
Tears pricked at Allura’s eyes. She had recognized those faces, known them without knowing them. Everyone had been so kind to her, like family.
“Perhaps,” she said, emotion clogging her throat.
Keith turned back to look up, and his jaw clenched. “There’s a chance we might not win, isn’t there? Against the Galra.”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m going to tell him. I’m going to use the time I have.” The blankets rustled as Keith rolled over onto his side to face Allura. “You deserve that.”
She didn’t trust herself to speak, but she managed a nod as she wiped away the tears streaming down her cheeks. The faces of the dead, in the field of flowers, all smiling at her. Standing as one a little apart. Waving to her, playing in the grasses. They were okay. They were not lost.
Something passed between them as they studied the other’s eyes. And then, after a moment, they both let the artificial gravity of the Castle take hold and slid back to the blankets. There they stayed for a long time.
Looking up at the spinning galaxies, Allura thought, I’ll free you all. She would do it for everyone like Keith, everyone who had a spark of hope for their life. What it could become. Who it could become that with. She would fight the Galra until her dying breath if it meant giving Keith and Lance even one more second to be happy together than they would have had otherwise. That was a promise she could keep.
The blue ocean lights glowed, and the Castle continued moving through space, bearing them away to their next fight. Somehow, it seemed a little less scary to Allura. Let the Galra come. None of their mighty force had managed to keep Keith and Lance from developing feelings for each other. Not Haggar’s magic, nor Zarkon’s stolen Bayard, nor the dozens of fleets of warships or slavering generals thirsty for blood; none of it.
Allura had told herself she wouldn’t fall asleep. But the room was still, and warm, and Keith was already snoring softly beside her. Quiety, she slipped out of bed and draped a blanket over the boy, then took another and curled up on a nearby cushion.
When she dreamed, she dreamed of a world rebuilt.