Chapter Text
Matt Holt:
The argument started over coffee.
Which, Matt would later insist, was somehow Keith’s fault.
The observation deck of the Atlas was mostly empty this early in the morning, save for a few technicians drifting through with datapads in hand. Earth hung below the viewport in a wash of blue and white, sunlight cutting across the glass.
Keith leaned against the railing near the back wall, arms folded, half-listening while Hunk enthusiastically explained some modification to the cargo bay scanners.
Matt, however, wasn’t listening to Hunk at all.
He was watching Keith.
More specifically, he was watching the way Keith’s attention kept drifting toward the doorway every time footsteps approached.
And when his sister, Katie, finally entered the room, messy ponytail, goggles pushed up into her hair, muttering to herself while scrolling through a holographic screen, Keith straightened up and stepped away from the wall before he even realized he was doing it.
Matt narrowed his eyes. ‘Oh no…’
Katie walked right past everyone and stood next to Keith. “Good morning.”
Keith’s expression softened instantly as he smiled down at her. “Hey.”
And there it was.
Matt felt his soul leave his body.
Katie didn’t even notice. She shoved a mug into Keith’s hand without looking away from her screen. “You forgot your coffee again.”
Keith blinked surprised. “…Thanks.”
Then she kept walking.
Like that was normal.
Like she always remembered his coffee order.
Matt stared at the mug.
Then at Keith.
Then back at his sister disappearing down the hallway.
“Oh, absolutely not.”
Hunk looked up confused. “…What?”
Matt pointed accusingly at Keith. “You.”
Keith frowned immediately, pointing at himself with his thumb, with a raised eyebrow. “…Me?”
“You have feelings for my sister.”
The entire room went silent.
Hunk made a choking sound and quietly backed away, not wanting to get in the middle of… whatever was about to happen, and ran to tell a trusted adult.
Keith stared at Matt for a long moment.
Then muttered. “…What?”
“You heard me.”
Keith looked genuinely alarmed now. “No, I heard you. I’m trying to figure out why you said it like I committed a crime.”
Matt crossed his arms, jabbing his thumb in his chest. “Katie is my little sister.”
“And?”
“And you’re—” Matt gestured vaguely at him. “You.”
Keith’s eyebrows pulled together. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, come on. You’re emotionally constipated, reckless, feral, and your idea of conflict resolution is stabbing things with a sword.”
“That was one time.”
“It was MANY times.”
Keith looked offended now. “I don’t stab things that often.”
Matt ignored him. “And you disappear constantly. You nearly get yourself killed on the regular, don’t think I forgot the first time you tried that. You’re intense. You brood in corners. You literally growl at people.”
“I do not growl.”
“You growled at a diplomat last week.”
“He insulted Coran.”
“That is not helping your case!”
Keith rubbed a hand down his face. “I don’t even know why we’re having this conversation.”
“Because if you hurt her—”
Keith’s expression hardened immediately. “Stop.”
Matt blinked, confusion crossing his face.
Keith pushed away from the railing, eyes sharp now. “No, seriously. Stop talking like I’d ever do something to hurt Katie.”
The defensiveness in his voice, and use of her actual name, caught Matt off guard.
Keith rarely sounded offended.
Annoyed? Yes, almost always.
Angry? Definitely.
But this?
This sounded more personal.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did.” Keith’s jaw tightened. “You think I’m unstable or too messed up or too dangerous for her.”
Matt opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Because the worst part?
That wasn’t entirely wrong.
Keith laughed once, humorless.
“You think I don’t know what people say about me behind my back?”
“That’s not—”
“I care about your sister.” Keith’s voice dropped lower. Quieter. “More than I thought I would ever care about someone.”
Matt stilled.
“And the fact you think I’d treat her badly?” Keith shook his head once. “That actually hurts more.”
For a second, neither of them spoke.
Then Matt muttered, “…You really do like her.”
Keith immediately looked like he regretted every decision that led him here, turned around, and started to walk out of the lab. “…I’m leaving.”
“Oh my god, you admitted it.”
“I absolutely did not.”
“You basically wrote poetry just now.”
Keith whirled around to face him, pointing a finger at him. “Take that back.”
Matt grinned despite himself.
“Katie’s gonna lose her mind when I tell her—”
“I’d hope she already knows.”
Matt froze. “…What.”
Keith’s ears turned red instantly.
And before Matt could recover from that devastating revelation, an alarm blared through the deck.
Everyone snapped toward the nearest monitor as a harsh automated voice echoed overhead.
“WARNING. Security breach detected in Research Hangar Three.”
Katie’s voice crackled over comms a second later. “Matt! ROV-”
The panic in her voice hit both of them like a truck instantly.
They were running down the hall toward the hanger before the transmission even ended.
—
Hangar Three was chaos.
A group of off-world contractors had one of the research drones disassembled across the floor, sparks flying from exposed wiring. Several security officers stood nearby, shouting over one another.
And in the center of it all, Matt was arguing.
Of course he was arguing.
“This isn’t your tech!” Matt snapped. “You can’t just rip apart Altean circuitry because you’re too stupid to understand how it interfaces—”
One of the contractors shoved him hard.
Keith saw red.
Matt stumbled backward into a console, pain flashing across his face.
The contractor stepped toward him again.
“You people caused enough damage already. Half the universe is stuck cleaning up Voltron’s mess.”
Keith moved before thinking.
One second he was across the hangar.
The next, he had the man’s wrist locked in a grip brutal enough to make the guy gasp.
The entire room went still.
Keith’s voice was deadly quiet as he leaned toward the guy. “Don’t touch him again.”
The contractor sneered despite the obvious pain. “Or what?”
The whites of Keith’s eyes went from the normal white, to yellow, and his teeth looked a bit sharper than they did before. “Try me.”
Matt stared.
Because Keith looked furious.
Not annoyed.
Not irritated.
Furious.
One of the officers stepped forward carefully. “Commander Kogane, let’s de-escalate—”
“No,” Keith cut in sharply, never looking away from the contractor. “He put his hands on a civilian scientist during an authorized operation.”
Matt blinked.
Civilian scientist?
Keith was using official command language.
That meant he was angry enough to stop being emotional.
Which was somehow worse than if he was just a regular amount of angry.
The contractor scoffed. “This guy’s a problem. He’s aggressive, insubordinate, impossible to work with—”
“Yeah,” Keith interrupted flatly. “Matt’s annoying. Congratulations on discovering that.”
“Hey—” Matt started to defend himself, but was cut off by Keith.
“But he’s also one of the smartest people, second to Katie Holt, on this ship.” Keith finally released the man with a shove. “And he’s spent years saving lives while people like you take cheap shots from behind security teams.”
Silence.
Keith stepped between Matt and the group without hesitation.
Protective.
Instinctive?
“And if you ever put your hands on him again,” Keith said coldly, “you’ll answer to me.”
Nobody spoke.
Nobody moved.
Finally, the contractors backed off, muttering under their breath while security moved in.
The adrenaline slowly drained from the room.
Keith exhaled sharply and turned toward Matt. “You okay?”
Matt just stared at him. “…You threatened a guy for me.”
Keith frowned and shrugged his shoulders. “He shoved you.”
“Yeah, but five minutes ago we were arguing.”
“So?”
Matt looked genuinely confused by that answer.
Keith rolled his eyes. “Just because I argued with you, doesn’t mean I’m gonna let someone hurt you, Matt.”
Something about the genuine tone he had made the words land harder than Matt expected.
This wasn’t out of obligation or diplomacy. No, Keith did it for something Matt could understand. Family.
Matt looked at him for a long moment before groaning dramatically and dragging a hand down his face. “Oh, this is awful.”
Keith blinked. “…What is?”
“You’re in love with my sister and now I like you.”
Keith looked downright horrified. “Please don’t say that out loud.”
A sharp, broken sound cut through the hangar.
‘Katie!?’
Both of them turned instantly.
She was kneeling near the far worktable, hands shaking as she carefully gathered pieces of metal from the floor. Tiny wires dangled between her fingers, sparks occasionally flickering weakly from shattered components, triangle shaped pieces lay broken on the table.
For a second, Keith didn’t understand what he was looking at.
Then he saw the faded little paw-print sticker on one of the broken panels.
Rover 2.0.
Katie’s personal drone that followed her everywhere.
Matt’s expression fell immediately.
“Oh no…”
The contractors had completely dismantled it.
Not carefully.
Not respectfully.
They’d torn it apart like scrap metal.
Pieces of its shell were scattered across the floor. The optic lens had been crushed under someone’s boot.
Katie stared down at the remains silently.
And somehow that was worse than yelling.
Keith walked toward her slowly.
“Katie…”
She swallowed hard without looking up.
“I told them not to touch him.”
Him.
Not it.
Matt winced softly.
Katie carefully picked up Rover’s damaged head casing, thumb brushing over the cracked surface.
“That was Rover’s memory core,” she whispered shakily. “I transferred part of the original programming after we got back from space.”
Keith felt something ugly twist in his chest.
Because he remembered.
He remembered that triangular shaped drone that followed her around on the castle ship when they were on Arus.
The way Katie had talked about the first Rover.
How grateful, yet sad, she was that he died to help her.
How alone she’d been on that ship before finding her family again.
This wasn’t just a machine to Katie.
This was a piece of her home, and they’d destroyed it without a second thought.
One of the contractors scoffed from behind them. “It was junk anyway.”
The entire room went dead silent.
Matt’s head snapped up. “…Excuse me?”
The man shrugged carelessly. “We thought it was obsolete. Nobody told us a grown woman was so emotionally attached to a pile of scrap.”
Keith moved.
Fast.
One second he was beside Katie.
The next—
CRACK.
His fist slammed directly into the contractor’s jaw hard enough to send the man sprawling across the floor.
Everyone shouted at once.
“KEITH!
“Commander!”
“What the hell?!”
Keith barely heard them.
He stood over the guy breathing hard, hands clenched so tightly his knuckles had gone white. “You destroyed something she loved.”
The contractor groaned, clutching his face. “It was a damn drone!”
Keith took another step forward. “It mattered to her.”
The sheer rage in his voice made several people freeze.
Because Keith almost never lost control like this anymore.
And then Matt walked up beside him, looked down at the contractor, and punched him too.
The room erupted.
“MATTHEW!”
“Oh my god?!?”
Matt shook out his hand with a grimace.
“Okay, Ow! Keith, how do you do that without breaking your fingers?”
Keith blinked at him, stunned.
Matt pointed at the guy on the floor. “He called my sister’s robot son junk. I stand by my decision.”
Despite everything, despite the alarms,
the yelling, the security officers rushing over, Keith almost laughed.
Behind them, Katie made a small, disbelieving sound.
Both of them turned around to face her.
She was still clutching the broken pieces of Rover 2.0 against her chest, staring at them with watery eyes.
Matt immediately pointed at Keith wide-eyed. “He started it.”
Keith looked offended. “You punched him!”
“In solidarity.”
“That’s not a thing!”
Katie let out a weak snort-laugh despite herself.
The tension cracked instantly.
Keith’s anger disappeared the second he saw tears sliding down her face again.
He crossed the distance carefully this time, kneeling in front of her.
“Hey,” he said quietly.
Katie looked down and sniffed. “I know it’s stupid.”
“No,” Keith said immediately. “It’s not stupid.” Her eyes lifted to meet his, a look that he knew met she didn’t quite believe him. His voice softened further. “You built him when you were alone, looking for your family. Of course he mattered.”
That nearly broke her again.
Matt looked away awkwardly, suddenly very interested in the ceiling.
Katie laughed shakily through her tears.
“You punched somebody for my drone.”
Keith glanced back at the unconscious contractor and smirked. “…Yeah.”
“You weren’t supposed to do that.”
“He deserved it,” Matt muttered.
“Thank you, Matt.”
“You’re welcome.”
Keith carefully reached for one of the broken pieces in her hands. “We can fix him.”
Katie looked up at him with uncertainty in her eyes. “The memory core is cracked…”
Matt crouched beside them immediately, slipping into engineer mode. “Not completely. Look.” He pointed toward a partially intact chip. “The backup architecture might still be salvageable.”
Katie’s expression shifted instantly with hope.
Keith looked between them helplessly. “English please. I understood maybe three words of that.”
Matt grinned slightly. “It means there’s a chance.”
Katie looked at the remains in her lap for a long moment before nodding weakly. Then, very quietly she added, “You both really scared me just now.”
Keith frowned. “Why?”
“You got that look in your eyes.”
Matt immediately pointed at him again.
“YES. Thank you. See? It’s terrifying.”
Keith looked deeply betrayed. “I defended you twice today.”
“And I appreciate that,” Matt replied earnestly. “Its still scary.”
Katie laughed again, softer this time.
And hearing that sound after her crying?
Worth it.
Absolutely worth it.