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How does one cope with the weight of something borderline sacreligious being dropped on their shoulders?
A passing thought of said weight probably had visited once during a random breakfast, but sunk together with the rest of the food goo to the depths of the stomach, never to be brought up again. Because it stirred something wrong, something tipping the careless balance on a scale of existence. When it indeed landed, suddenly, harshly, with no time to think it through, the scale was shattered to pieces, and the weight was sitting atop of it– fresh, raw, and indescribable.
It simply left no choice.
One day, you’re leaning on the bed wall, so clinically buried in the trenches of your mind, that shirt fabric is scrunching up to the point of being uncomfortable, and in your decision to not move and do anything about it you earn yourself a prick of pain in the back and a consequent sleepless night. The next day, your decisions would affect the outcome of a fight with the team of five and the infamous Fate Of The Universe. And you couldn’t be neglectful about it the way you’re neglectful with your body – because people’s lives are at stake. Same people you’ve come to share a routine with: the ones that sing in the hallways, the ones that mutter obscenities under their breath, when a piece of tech refuses to collaborate, the ones that paint the kitchen in unknown alien foods just to ‘get it right’, the ones storing knowledge of dozens galaxies and sharing it during silent nights when you can’t get rest. And not long ago… people that ruffle your hair in lieu of comfort, whose shoes you desperately need to fill without spilling down, down, down into the liquid body with no substance. You don’t even remember, when putting those people to the front of your mind became a thing, the same way you don’t remember when you’ve stopped looking back. The realisation didn’t just float to the surface, it sprung up high like a geyser of gas and liquid, residue burning down your throat. That’s how you knew, really: fucking up is not an option. That’s when the weight became not just an image, but a permanent fixture looming inches away from crushing you to a pulp.
That’s why the weight is, in a way, sacred. That’s why sensing how it invades your body, pinpricks of stale nerve ends rooted in the system to support this new foreign structure and becoming one unstable cross you have to bear is excruciating. Agonizing. Wrong.
And Keith can’t even begin to unravel the concept of living with it now.
So, he’s fallen back on neglect. The semi-controllable familiar. The barely there thrum of the Castle’s walls may be that. Same with the low lights of the hangar during sleep mode, when, eyes closed shut, he can imagine lions’ silhouettes settling for a well-deserved slumber. It may be the way his limbs ache dully, where they’ve been locked in one position, jabbed by the firm surface of bare metallic floors. It might be the slightly cold stale air that climbs up his spine and sends shivers all over. He did these motions before: they contain sensations he labeled as ‘familiar’ like one does with dried-up marker on a scratched DVD, and tried replaying them from time to time, when the comfort was needed. It used to help a little.
Apparently, not anymore.
Because today he sits beneath Black, not Red. This fact alone spins Keith’s planet axis out of control, sending the civilization of feelings that inhabit the poor thing into an environmental frenzy. Black is Shiro’s lion. The big, reliable, enveloping presence at the back of their collective unconsciousness. With Shiro as its paladin it stands tall, reassuring with doubtless clarity that tomorrow will come, that stars’ light will continue travelling across galaxies, that their heartbeats will drum together as one, and they will keep seeing as many sunsets as they want for however long they wish to be.
When Keith is the one in the lead, there's none of that. It's a stagnant, shaky existence somewhere on the precipice of a constant storm and a back porch, pummeled by acid rain. If they dare take a step from under its roof, water will scald fragile skin, pulling each and all into a raging tornado. They won't know about tomorrow, won't chase the stars as far as they can reach, because it'll be the scariest, most reckless step anyone can take into the vast space without oxygen support. How can one trust an existence like that, if Keith sometimes can't even trust himself?
Tracing the lion’s metal indents and lingering on the approving intangible hums Black sends his way, Keith sits on that porch, knees soaking in hazardous rain and deteriorating fabric, nearing harsh second-degree burns. He finds that he doesn't care as much as he needs to.
He finds neglect rather grounding, if not useful.
Black is bigger than Red. Bigger than any other lion to that end, and it makes sense in retrospect: it's the torso, head and heart of Voltron. It holds together the weight of an interdimensional semi-sentient cosmic weapon, after all. Keith can logically build a picture in his head, recreate the mind version of the structure step by step, imagine himself sitting there: head, ribcage, heart and all, but can't even begin to fathom how it keeps itself together. Wouldn’t it be horrifying, if the brain didn’t understand how to operate the whole body? Holding by sheer will and presence this continuation of limbs that don't even belong to him? In that seat, Keith is succumbed to the dreadful sensation of control slipping away, the distorted beginnings of a hellish dysmorphia. Same as the weight he harbors on his shoulders now: the weight of the other lions in formation seeps into his core, prodding, connecting. Keith's not sure which weight is scarier. The metaphorical or the literal one. They suffocate him in his sleep all the same.
Giving commands in the body that isn’t his to the limbs that he can't accept as his own, but clings to them like a lifeline still.
He’s trying.
God knows, he’s trying.
Because Shiro is somewhere out there, looking at him with that stern knowing gaze, and asking him to stay in the Garrison. That Shiro brought him to where he is now, that Shiro saw to it that his life didn't turn into more of a jumbled mess. And one day, that Shiro said that Keith could be Black’s pilot. Voltron’s leader.
Black emits a wave, a strained low thrum that goes straight through the skull to his ribcage. Like it knows.
A quiet hiss of the door interrupts the silence, and with it comes a shuffle of footsteps, moving further into the hangar – careful, but determined. Keith doesn't feel the need to turn around to see who it is, he's content to continue existing in this little quadrant of mind space, melting in and out in a delirious gradient. Judging by purpose in the intruder's steps, gradually getting closer, they will reveal themselves soon, regardless of his choice.
A small, subdued, “Hey, man.”
“...Hey, ” he finds himself croaking into the hangar's high ceiling after a few moments.
And just like that, one long trail the size of two Milky Ways, separating Keith's inner mind space gets a shortcut into the present. He floats into a wormhole with the speed of a tailing comet, and comes out on this end, where Lance stands over his shoulder just a step away. Keith turns to him, blinking away stray stardust. “...Can’t sleep?”
“Isn’t that my question?” Lance fires back and tilts his head to the side to get a better vantage point. “And what’re you doing? Having a nice bonding moment with Black?’’
Admitting that he was here for any other reason would break Keith’s barely passable paper mache of pretence that he managed to scramble together last-minute. It would give the weight he had just finished naming a tangible sharp edge as well. So he went for the safer– “You could say that.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Dunno. Must've lost track of time,” Keith mumbles, knowing full well that he didn't even start keeping it.
The Blue-now-Red paladin (and this is another can of worms in itself) levels him with a four-yard stare and by the time he realises that all of this is indeed the consequence of Keith's actions, deflates with an exhale.
“Come on, seriously,” Lance grumbles, “Didn’t Allura already give us the whole ‘good rest is essential, something-something’ spiel? Especially in your position?”
The ‘leader’ shrugs. “Doing this usually helps. It counts as rest.”
“This,” Lance mimes at him exaggeratedly as if the concept is bothering him on a structural level. “Okay, you– You can keep doing ‘this’, I'll be right back.”
Lance turns, as suddenly as he appeared by Keith’s side, and starts in the direction of the door, eyes never leaving his. As if the moment he glances away, the lone figure under the Black lion would up and disappear from a mere lack of surveillance. As if prolonged eye contact would throw an anchor heavy enough to keep him tethered to the ground and stop venturing into deep space again. It just might, Keith thinks. That thought makes the corners of his mouth tickle a bit.
“Don't go anywhere!” Lance’s head peeking from the door ledge squeaks before disappearing out of sight.
“Wasn't planning to,” Keith huffs with a half-smile.
The door shuts again, re-sealing him alone, a loose tacky tape stuck on top, contributing nothing to the package integrity. And an additional inkling, prodding at the fraying edges of his jeans, climbing further and further up to his collar, making itself known in the form of an itch. Waiting to be given attention: Lance and Red. Red and Lance.
The rotation change, just like everything else since Shiro’s disappearance, was another kick to the diaphragm, surgically aimed to leave Keith breathless. It meant parting with Red. And things were so much easier with her. Piloting Black was like walking down a glass road with no turning back, and a new impossibly large mantle to wear. A mantle so heart-wrenchingly suited for Shiro, it felt criminal to tailor it any other way. Piloting Red, in contrast, always came with a refreshing tug of clarity, unraveling the deep-rooted cluster somewhere in his gut. With every spin and aerial stunt, it came undone, expanding, expanding, expanding until the world around let him breathe easier. Though not a permanent fixture, it felt like enough. Red would say nothing, would not accuse him of anything, and would just thrum with the fire in Keith’s pulse.
The thought of that no longer being in the picture irks the empty feeling behind his ribs.
He wonders if it is the same for Lance with Blue: their connection so unconditional and sincere, you couldn’t not feel giddy by simply being close. One day Keith’ll probably ask him about it, when the throbbing near his temple doesn’t long for the fiery sonorous purr and grows numb. So numb, he won't be etching to brush knuckles against familiar red paint on instinct. At present, he couldn’t have been more relieved to know that Red chose Lance – when the gleaming red blur rushing to him in space at full-speed spoke with blue paladin’s voice, it felt liberating. Ecstatic, between all the panicked shouts and pent up nerves, shoved deep deep inside. They proceeded to spill into an incoherent tormenting mess anyway, when the whole team got cornered by Lotor. And even after that… Lance was there to help him pick up the pieces.
A quiet sound skids to a stop just a hair width away, and a tingle of static forces Keith to inhale sharply.
“...I'm back. Didn't you hear me?” A question hangs in the air between Lance’s hovering hand and Keith's absolutely stunned stare. No, he didn't hear. At all. There’s a sensation of something soft being thrown over his legs.
“Oh.” Keith’s eyes flick down to… a blanket. The image of the porch flickers to life – knees covered and no longer under acidic rain, joined by a figure at his side – then it's gone. He blinks back at Lance now sitting next to him, sporting another blanket and two mugs.
“Not gonna lie– first thing on my mind when I saw you was ‘how the hell are you not an icicle’, so… Yeah. Might as well.” The boy smiles, handing him a mug, and watching with undivided attention as Keith slowly regains feeling in his fingers to grab it. “Dude, it's not gonna bite you, just some herbal mix that me and Hunk tested the other day.”
Keith hopes that the flat stare will convey all his feelings about the last time he was handed a similar mug with these exact words, but accepts the offering anyway. He takes a careful sip. When liquid warmth coats the tongue, wraps around his insides, and strangely tastes like persimmons and stale tea, some part of Keith soundlessly thaws away. “Mm, it's nice.”
“I know, right? Doesn't taste even half as bad as the last attempt.” It’s the same warmth that greets the paladins, when they happen to meet the alien sunrise on a new planet, the same warmth that tightly hugs them back, when they return to the lion’s cockpit after a particularly risky mission, the same warmth that the team shares during breakfasts and downtime nights. It’s a fleeting curl in Keith’s throat and chest that goes away like a gleam of a shooting star, but one that connects him to this pocket of the universe. He wouldn’t give it up for the world.
They sit in comfortable silence, each passing minute gradually working miracles to clear the hefty nebula of unwelcome thoughts. Keith blinks, “So… wait, what were you doing down here?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” Deep blue stares as if it came from the depths of the ocean itself. “I thought we already figured that out.”
Despite being face to face with a force of nature, Keith felt tempted to stare back. “I mean… what were you going to do, if I wasn’t here?”
“Probably the same thing we’re doing now.”
Lance gestures vaguely at the hangar interior, hiding expression with a sip at his mug. His eyes linger on the spot, where Red rests not far from them.
“And what, forget about the ‘oh-so-essential’ rest? Especially in your position?” Keith teases.
“Oh, shush!” Lance flicks a hand, defensive, but there are beginnings of small crinkles under his eyes.
A lot can change in a few movements. Hell, a lot can change in just a few ticks. Change is the one thing that will always be there for them, creeping behind as they stumble along intergalactic war blindfolded, with arms and legs tied and forced to evade bottomless pits at the same time. It’s no secret that now, more than ever, change was affecting them: harsher on some, less noticeable on others, but noticeable all the same.
Full picture with all its gritty and painfully grotesque details hit Keith only in recent quintants, realization as unforgiving as a laser beam blasting the central controls to smithereens:
The most evident sign of how much things changed is Lance himself.
The care that was put into observing the other paladin lately has caught his own thoughts off-guard. Maybe it was a desperate unconscious attempt to find at least a semblance of normalcy in the current whirlwind of realizations and suffocating weights. To thread the road known by heart at this point – the back and forth, the snide remarks, the snappy comebacks. There was a rhythm to it, a common ground, to Keith it was a force of habit. And then, a shift. A ripple in the time-space continuum. Subtle enough or perhaps not subtle at all, like a raw patch of skin tissue healing up not quite the same. They bickered less, letting the silence settle and do the talking for them instead: an invisible but everpresent tug of war with the rope that was dangerously reminiscent of a lifeline, pushing and pulling into each other’s orbit before a storm can leave them stranded. Maybe it was the side-effect of this new, unexplored dynamic: the leader and the right-hand man, the captain and the second in command, the decision-maker and the guiding light.
And while hoping to see a familiar spark that always knew how to ignite others and keep the mood up, instead Keith saw a myriad of instances that spark was close to slipping from the fuse. The way Lance's shoulders would go stiff the second he entered the bridge, or little moments when his head snapped attentively at lower points of discussion and brought those topics back to relevancy some time later, how his eyes would dim with uncertainty, when Keith fell back on his loner tendencies and unwillingly sabotaged missions. He watched as the dark circles under Lance’s eyes looked as defined as Moon’s deeper craters, noticed the new unexplainable nervous ticks the boy got during mission debriefs, and now – snuck looks as he sat with him in the hangar in the middle of the night, Lance staring somewhere far far beyond the outer reaches of their current galaxy.
In small ways Lance was adapting, being re-shaped into the epitome of reliable right arm of Voltron, and it was nothing short of unnerving, a dangerous territory for Keith to venture into.
They finished their herbal mixture some time ago, Lance leaning against Black's metal paw, not before patting it gently, as if asking for permission. “...How's Black treating you?” The curve of blue eyes softens towards Keith.
“She’s–” reliable, unwavering, steady, all the things he’s not– “reassuring.” The rumble that spreads through all the points of contact with dark metal says it all, really. It licks at the skin like searing white flame, blinding and sterile, seconds away from burning through the tissue. And he knows, all too well, that Black’s not doing this on purpose. Shiro did it too sometimes – so sure in Keith that it made him want to curl and lash out, afraid of shattering that proud confidence with one wrong step. “It’s just– I feel like all I do is betray her trust, over and over again.”
He feels rather than sees the jerk in his periphery. “Keith…”, the sound is airy, barely scratching the surface. “She chose you for a reason. The rest is a learning curve. I’m sure she has enough patience to wait a tiny bit more until you learn the ropes.”
“They waited ten thousand years for–”
“Exactly.” The glint in Lance's eyes warms its way into Keith’s chest, followed by a soothing wave from above, enveloping him in the wisdom of cosmos, affirmative and fond. “Now she has you by her side, and gets to watch you grow. I think that's the ultimate plan here.
Then, a pause, a small hesitant stutter, “I’ve been doing some bonding with Red, too, you know.”
“Oh?” Keith leans expectantly, trying not to look like he might jump out of his skin, fingers burying deeper into the soft fabric of a blanket.
“She’s a bit restless. That was taking a while to get used to– but then there's just… so much trust,” he looks at Keith, boundless, infinite, and in an instant, it connects, “It’s like she reads my mind, and immediately acts on it, no questions asked… Always rearing to go,” the corners of his mouth curl, “just like someone I know,” and every cell in Keith’s body sings with electricity.
Trust.
Readiness to travel at lightning speeds, swim across oceans of stars and clusters of space debris, energy to cross multiple galaxies on an instance of a thought he might have formed only halfway. That was Red.
That was Lance, too.
Lance is leaning into their little space, a precisely carved out crater containing his pure unfiltered essence, searching Keith’s face for something. Then, satisfied, glances at Red, “...She's really something.”
“...She is,” Keith is surprised to find his voice still working.
He wants to tell Lance.
That bursting, burning, settling, changing: he tries to notice the small tell-tale signs the boy shows, and savors each and every time he can recognise them. That Lance’s attentiveness and open-mindness, given out unconditionally to everyone around, balance out his recklessness and fervor. That just like Red, there’s boundless sincere trust he can rely on in times of need. That lately the only sound capable of catching up with Keith’s racing heart and mind at all is that distinct luminous tone of lightheartedness and blue that he could recognise everywhere: it reeled him back, swerved his instincts to freeze and listen, make a turn and think it through.
“You too.”
“Hm?” Lance lowers to meet Keith's eyes.
“You should give yourself more credit. You’ve been doing a lot.”
“...You think?” His tone is unsure, threading on thin ice. “Lately, all I do is keep stumbling and messing up. Like I'm in a paladin kindergarten and it's the ‘meet your first lion’ day. I've done nothi– Ow! Keith!”
Keith stops him with the slight jab to the knee and sighs, deep. It was hard to convince himself, and it was even harder to convince someone as stubborn as Lance. “You’re doing this again.”
“Doing this, doing that,” the boy puffs out, head falling between the knees, “Most of the time I don't know what I’m doing, okay?”
“Downplaying the facts.” Blinking at him dazedly, Lance slowly rises. Keith barrels on, “Your sleeping habits are getting worse, you constantly pick up my messes and keep the team spirits in check.” He fights himself for the most sincere smile he can muster. “That’s… a lot of work.”
He's met with contemplative silence, quiet waters stirring in the face of the grey sky promising a storm. His own soul burns, scalds, thrashes, and right in this moment, Keith internally curses the inability to find words that matter, words that resound on frequencies in tune with souls of those around him. One more thing Shiro left them without, one more thing Keith needs to carve, mold and forge through the hellfire for it to work.
He looks down, reaching for a tan hand resting on a blanket like one searches for the parachute ripcord on a deep dive against the gravity itself, and squeezes. Lance lets him.
“I don't know how I’d still be sane, if it wasn't for you, honestly,” Keith croaks, voice almost an indiscernible echo in the void.
Lance stares, speechless, lashes fluttering in slow blinks. The world is still spinning, the cosmos is still limitless, countless of atmospheres are breathing, existing, creating new lives right at this moment, and Keith is hopelessly irrevocably dependant on the depthless entirety of the boy in front of him: those are the facts, the undisputable foundations of his rigid existence. Squeezing Lance’s hand once, twice, squeezing it for every fleck of hope, every path cleared, every cheer heard, Keith prays that it reaches into the caveats of disbelief still unfilled.
And soon, hesitantly, wobbly, but so illuminating in the dim lighting of the dormant ship, a small smile blooms, like moonlight phasing in from behind the clouds. It contains countless condensed sunrises and innumerable starfalls and it’s so, so… Lance.
“Okay,” raspy, barely audible, “okay,” Lance whispers under his breath, the moment suspended in time. “That’s a big statement. Very big statement. I’m… honored?”
“You should be. You’re the reason Voltron is still functioning properly." Keith manages a tiny smirk.
There's warmth trailing along the back of the hand that grasps Lance's– feather-light circling motions answering the squeezes from before. It's borderline addicting.
Searching for words, meekly, Lance glances up, “You know… that time, when we were offering ourselves to Black, I realised something.” A smile, not without a bitter shade to it. “I guess I’ve been kinda unsure with my place on the team until then… and, well, I’m not exactly leader material.”
Words plunge a dagger, deep, force greater than any sacred weights. “… Neither am I, Lance.”
An all-pulling screeching void blooms in its wake, dark tendrils reaching for all the crevices that hide away the spillage of doubts and fears. It rattles the confines of his brain, it decimates the nerves raw, it scares him shitless. This is a mission bigger than all of them, and somehow he is at the front, making course-altering decisions like everything around him is not wailing about the impending vehicular collision.
Leader. Black paladin of Voltron is supposed to be a leader, a born natural. If anyone, Keith was the farthest from the definition. If anyone, Allura, with her unbending will and cruel fate holding her graceful frame in clutches, and even Lance, with how he managed to build upon himself in the mere quintants following the lion switch, were better candidates by a wide margin. Shiro made it look easy. And what he left behind feels larger than the world, shoes so impossible to fill, it creates a tearing black hole in place where he walked before. Keith was never supposed to take over, he simply cannot measure up.
He searches, desperately, for answers in the pale freckles on the boy’s face.
“No, see,” Lance leans closer, a beacon of nothing but pure emotion radiating off the skin, “when you stepped out from Black after she finally lit up… it just… clicked for me, y’know.
Lance grins, and a new star bursts to life in the neuron link forming Keith's brain.
He knows.
Because it clicked the same way, somewhere between the missions and sleepless nights, in the planes weaving the awake and the unconscious: that stumbling through the spitfire of multitudes, one constant was always there, stumbling by his side. Because any fear of taking a leap and dragging others into the unknown retreats back to the comfortable obscurity when Lance looks at him like that.
“I think being the right-hand man is fine by me. We can make it work.” The ease with which Lance says those words sends Keith reeling. Thrown off-kilter by the electromagnetic currents, insides constricting, expanding, lungs struggling through the external pressure, feeling too small and too big all at once.
Earnestness, unmeasurable by any metrics in the universe, is beaming through, warm light spots from it searing trails directly on Black paladin’s heart.
‘We’.
It rolls off Lance’s tongue like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Like he didn’t have to let go of his big flashy goals and ambitions and part ways with Blue in the middle of all this. As if the boy with eyes full of wonder and vigor, who hums catchy songs when he thinks no one is listening and speaks of home with ache scorching through the bones, wasn’t changed piece by piece at Keith’s side, a necessity of keeping this role depriving him of things that were once held fond.
But here is Lance, past through the mess of neglect and rawness that is Keith, looking like he will write the continuation of the stars and convince the whole universe to join.
… Looking like he is ready to jump right into the storm with him.
Keith stares back, unblinking and desperate, “No, we… We will make it work, Lance.” He doesn’t realise his arms are trembling until a warm hand lands atop. Soothing.
The last string holding the entirety of Keith intact rips.
His body is slipping, webbing through the wormwholes, spaces and realities, every limb tingling for attention in the floatless state. Keith is no stranger to battling with gravity, but this time– this time he dips into the inviting comfort of having one’s feet planted firmly on the ground, stops resisting… and falls. Falls hard. Accelerating, diving into the air currents eagerly caressing his cheeks and hitting terminal velocity along the way, all but collapsing into a heap on Lance’s shoulder.
Lance is there to catch him, returning a hug, accepting the entire weight in full. “We sure as hell will.”
Somehow, it doesn't feel like the world is made of matches and cotton, threatening at any moment to erupt in flames and collapse. Somehow, the rain is no longer pure acid, gentle drops cooling the skin and evoking a tingly feeling when they slide down the slope of his neck. It's the first time in a while since everything around Keith’s felt this… steady since Shiro's disappearance. Secure in all the ways he’s never felt before.
Drinking in the contact with a thirst of someone deprived of water for days, Keith soaks in the tranquility, buries his head deeper and deeper in the soft crevice that welcomes him, an iridescent warmth engulfing wreckage of strained muscles and nerves. Ah. This is it, isn’t it. A newfound feeling finally taking form, something so fragile and precious, it restructures the entire anatomy of his solar system around it.
It manifests in Lance: the reassuring presence on the right, the gut-punching clarity in the whirlwind of uncertainty, the silver stitching on the jagged rips of worn fabric holding everything together, someone to catch him at the tail-end, when he inevitably slips and falls… oh, he's so gone.
Keith trusts, despairs and hopes with every fibre of his being for this essence to be by his side – wholeheartedly – and he feels like he has to say it, let it out into the world.
“I couldn’t ask the universe for a better right-hand man.” The corners of his mouth imprint a smile into Lance's shoulder, met with an unexpected spike of heat. Keith pointedly decides to attribute it to wishful thinking.
“W-welI, hope I won't disappoint…” Lance’s frame shakes with something like a nervous laughter, and, at last, Keith detaches himself, eyes shooting up to meet the blue ones. He's one step away from drowning in them completely, diving headfirst, fighting through the currents and waves to come back and never be the same again.
Things seemed like they could have gone wrong in thousands of different directions, branching paths elusive and unforgiving, but… they were here now. And Keith wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Thank you, Lance.”
He doesn’t notice when their hands get intertwined, entranced in the creases of a sincere smile that was probably mirroring his own. The contact feels like direct sunlight, the softest prickling heat disentangling countless knots constructing Keith’s form.
“A-anytime, buddy.”
And this– This is somehow bigger than the endless expanse of the universe, grander than the multi-faceted intergalactic war: it’s something entirely new he has to learn to live with. Fresh, bursting with flavor, so present in the air and coating the tongue with the tranquilizing sweetness, that it overwhelms the senses into an incoherent buzzing mess. These placements, these roles… these feelings. Keith will have to prod into them in their entirety sooner or later.
Yet, they bring nothing but a kindling of hope to get through this rough patch. First of many.
Ticks pass, and every beat Lance’s face seems to gain a new shade, his hands radiating furnace warmth, eyes darting everywhere but Keith’s general direction. The energetic headstrong sincerity filling the atmosphere moments before is nowhere to be found, fading into the background, now muted and deprived of its brashness. Replaced by foggy tugs of tiredness, clinging to the eyelashes like a dream – a not-so-gentle reminder of the strong desire to get smothered in the alien equivalent of cotton and catch at least some sleep.
From the looks of it, the same sensation envelops Lance as well, when he tries to stifle a yawn, finally breaking the hold that at this point felt like an extension of their limbs. Keith has a mind to chase the missing warmth before being caught in a yawn of his own. There’s shuffling from Lance’s side, breaths coming out in tired puffs, measured and sluggish, followed by a drowsy sigh that will tempt anyone into a nap or two. And gradually, this close attuned space between the two paladins is lulled into a wavering flutter of exhaustion, fizzling out into the thrum of the ship's systems. The temperature suddenly picks up in the cold department.
A regretful glance passes Lance’s features, reading like an apology. “S-say, Keith, my dude, my man, is the concept of sitting on a cold metal floor reaaaally your ideal form of rest?”
Scrunching his nose, Keith huffs, “...I didn’t come here to rest exactly, I came here to think.”
Lance side-eyes him with the signature 'oh really’ look, that loses its intensity, when the boy shivers. “Uh-huh, and I say you’ve had enough thinking for one night.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Puh-lease, I was right there.” Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Lance sighs again, “And I don’t know about you, but I think the floor is permanently imprinted on my butt.” Throwing the blanket off, he hops to stand and swerves on his heel. “Come on, up! Up-up-up!”
A hand darts out, an invitation to haul Keith up and back into the reality of forced responsibility and weighty decisions, away from this little unspoken moment that changed something within. Nevertheless, he meets the hand halfway, without thinking, without hesitation. Firm hold prevents Keith’s heart from skyrocketing straight into the upper atmosphere. Breathing comes a tad easier.
Lance's stern expression is better at bringing a smile rather than feeling threatening, when he chides, “If you suddenly pass out in the cockpit tomorrow, that’s going to be on me for not hauling your leader ass to bed sooner, isn't it?”
“Dunno, sounds like something that would more likely happen to you, not me,” Keith quips, quick to acknowledge an airy giddy pang in his chest from all the ‘hauling’ currently happening.
Offended, Lance gasps, swooping up the blanket and mugs and shoving a bundle of fabric at him with more force than necessary. This feels normal. Familiar, in more ways than one. Edges of everpresent looming tomorrow softened by a presence at his side, leading them away from the hangar.
Keith finds solace in the light-hearted banter, low steps echoing through the halls as they walk. Corners of the vision sluggish, smudged by exhaustion, but… content. The instance untouchable and calm, a rest-stop for the neverending train of thought running purely on overdrive these past few quintants.
It's dangerously comfortable how much Keith enjoys that. How much he will be missing it eventually. How much it just… works. The flow, the cadence, the rhythm – so mathematically measured to make his insides mushy and warm, warm, warm…
He finds that, in the grand scheme of things, he could go like this anywhere. Anywhere Lance’s beacon will take him.
The weight in his chest floats up, slightly, just enough to feel bearable.