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✦☾✦☾✦☾✦☾ Then ✦☾✦☾✦☾✦☾
Lance could easily recall the day Hunk had called he and Keith magnets: polar opposites—one who drew everyone in, another who repelled—but both of whom could only be successfully shifted by the other. In many ways it infuriated Lance; even on their bad days, he could never seem to shake Keith. They were in all the same classes, played all the same sports, seemed to score within a fraction of each other on every assessment they were handed. It kept them side by unwilling side.
In other ways, Lance liked it. Most instructors needed to yell through a megaphone just to get Keith to tie his shoes. All Lance had to do was, well, provoke. Keith, in possession of the most notoriously stubborn feet in the galaxy, seemingly couldn’t help following that old magnetic pathway when Lance nagged him. Maybe that’s why Keith had agreed to join their game. Maybe that’s why everyone asked Lance to convince him: one magnet drawing out the other.
“That sounds stupid.”
Lance bit his cheek, shifting foot to foot before Keith’s door. “You...sound stupid.”
“Nice comeback,” Keith said dryly.
It was a little past one, Lance’s head a liiittle fuzzy from the six-pack one of the upperclassmen had snuck into the dorms. He’d been trying to befriend them—desperately, Hunk claimed—but his friend went along with it anyway. Well, it had all paid off, cause now he and Hunk had been included in their little late night, non-approved party. So, one ounce of their approval in hand, Lance was ready to do anything to win over the rest, including roping Keith into this game.
“Fine,” Keith said. “I’ll hide your stupid flag.”
Lance could punch the air. He reeled in his excitement, even as he presented Keith as a willing participant to the rest of their party—a bunch of slightly tipsy Garrison upperclassmen, hellbent on having a good time.
“Rules are this,” the leader of their troop began, as eleven of them gathered before the Garrison’s zero-G simulator. “Kogane hides and defends the flag; we find it. Whichever team’s holding it when gravity comes back on, wins.”
They all nodded solemnly, splitting into two teams of five and strapping magnetic bands around their knees, stomachs, and elbows, devices that would allow them to float within the Garrison’s training simulator, replicating the effects of zero-G.
Lance watched Keith disappear into the simulator first, a vast, three-dimensional metal maze that replicated the interior of a spacecraft. He counted down the minutes until they began. He caught his breath as the magnetic field activated with a hum, yanking them off their feet to float suspended in the air.
“Time starts now!”
As the rest of the players shoved past him, Lance struggled to move through the weightless environment. Not perfectly akin to zero-G, the magnetic field wobbled, making him shaky. He grabbed the nearest handle, affixed to a wall, and launched himself at the passage.
Players spread out all around, their voices and clumsy movements echoing through the maze. Lance followed his gut, working slowly and quietly through the maze. Keith would hear these idiots a mile off.
Lance moved upwards, drifting from one floor to the next, before reaching a quiet capsule on the upper story of the maze. True to his suspicions, in the dim light, someone was moving slowly and stealthily along the edge of the room.
“Gotcha.”
Keith froze. His eyes snapped to Lance, before a look of annoyance flooded his face. His eyes darted this way and that, but the only exit was the one Lance had come through.
“Of course it’s you. You cheated, didn’t you?”
“Cheated?” Lance held his palms up in defence. “Come on,” he said. “We’re playing against idiots.”
As if on cue, someone’s cry echoed through the maze as they struck a wall, likely struggling to control their body. Lance snorted, and a flicker of a smile lifted Keith’s lip. Even so, he grabbed the flag tight as Lance drifted closer, but the latter only swung his feet up, pretending to recline in zero-G.
“Chillax, Keith.”
“Don’t you want to win?” Keith asked tensely.
“Well, yeah. But the second this game’s over, I have to go back to hanging out with that lot.”
“I thought they were your friends.”
“They are,” Lance said defensively. “Uh, they are my friends. They’re just, also boring.”
Keith scoffed, but he’d relaxed a fraction, drifting freely. Unconsciously, it was bringing him closer to Lance.
“Why’re you friends with them, anyway?”
“Why aren’t you friends with anyone?” Lance shot back. Wrong thing to say; Keith’s expression darkened, moments before shedding confidence in torrents as he became withdrawn. “That’s—I didn’t mean that,” Lance amended. “I, uh, think you’re cool, actually.”
Keith narrowed his eyes, arms folded tightly. It didn’t have such a formidable effect while he was floating clumsily toward Lance. Keith was on a trajectory right for him, Lance realized. It was just like Hunk said: they were magnets.
“I think you’re cool too,” Keith said awkwardly.
Lance blinked, unsure how to take that admission. “Huh. You, uh, you know you’re gonna collide with me, right?”
“Thought you’d move.”
“I can’t, dude.”
Keith’s face turned pink at the realization that a) he couldn’t control his bearing and b) he was bearing right for Lance. “Move,” he hissed, futile.
“I can’t!”
Keith cursed silently, drifting closer, closer—
He bumped into Lance, and without thinking, Lance caught him, hands on Keith’s shoulders.
“Um,” he began.
Differing from his usual self, Keith had frozen, practically nose to nose with Lance while his cheeks burnt a bright pink. He should push away; Lance should push him away. Instead, they hung there, the flag forgotten between them. Keith’s eyes darted across his face before falling to his lips. Bad, bad idea. Lance should do something, change the polarity of those magnets or whatever the hell Hunk said. Instead, he kissed Keith.
Keith did not immediately tear his head off. Nor did he shove him away. If the lack of gravity had skewed Lance’s sense of direction, now he was truly lost, because Keith kissed him back. It was a soft kiss, Keith’s fingers pulling Lance closer by his shirt, his nose cold against Lance’s cheek—
“Oh my god.”
The voice had Lance pulling back immediately. Stationed by the door, three of his teammates gawked at them, sly smiles spreading across faces. Lance’s stomach sank. Here it was: the judgment and disownment he’d been fearing.
Panicking, he reached for his only way out: the flag. He snatched it from Keith, still shocked, and hoisted the thing up in victory. Immediately, change came over his teammates’ faces as mockery turned to victory.
“I got it!” Lance yelled.
In his peripheral, he saw Keith drifting away from him but refused to look at him. Someone hit the power, the magnetic field shut off, and they dropped to the ground with a dull thud. He caught Keith’s expression by accident—hurt, betrayal, humiliation—before his teammates embraced him. It didn’t matter how much they cheered him on; Lance kept sinking, lower and lower. Gravity had returned, and it continued to drag him down.
✦☾✦☾✦☾✦☾ Now ✦☾✦☾✦☾✦☾
The airlock to the abandoned Galra space station Delta-5E gave a disconcerting hiss as it sealed behind Keith. There was something awful about these gigantic stations; they reminded Keith of actual skeletons drifting endlessly through the void, or in Delta-5E’s case, into the maws of a volatile neutron star.
“Kinda feels familiar, doesn’t it?” At least there was one other person aboard this ghost ship; ahead, Lance drifted weightlessly through Delta-5E’s dark interior, his wrist light chasing shadows through empty doorways.
“What does?” Keith asked.
He kicked off a wall to float after Lance. This mission had to be a success; somewhere on this station was a vault that, if their sources were correct, held intel regarding Shiro’s whereabouts.
“It’s like that old Garrison simulator,” Lance replied. “The maze with those magnetic suits, zero-G.”
Keith froze. “You remember that?”
“Of course. We trained there all the time.”
They’d trained in many simulators all the time, but Lance had never brought up that one. Keith remembered it like it was yesterday, not three years ago: a late-night dorm party, followed by an unauthorized game of capture the flag in the Garrison’s zero-G simulator. He remembered because he was the one who’d hidden the flag, convinced to join the game by none other than Lance.
His companion was right: the empty station, the weightless environment—it mimicked the simulator’s maze where Keith had hidden and, subsequently, been found. Only now, they weren’t kids playing around in magnetic suits.
“This is it.”
A large vault door winked as Lance’s light struck its polished surface. Bingo. Keith drew a heavy magnetic decoder from his utility belt. The magnet was designed to open practically anything and impossible to dislodge once activated; arched like a handle, its two ends affixed tightly to the vault at the touch of a key card, and Keith held his breath as the door’s inner workings began to rearrange themselves.
Squinting through the vault’s small window, Lance abruptly touched his fingers to Keith’s shoulder. “Woah, hang on.”
“What—”
“Stop!”
Alarmed, Keith hastily touched the key to the magnet, and it detached from the door.
“That’s not the intel vault,” Lance explained. “I mean, the vault’s not there.”
“What do you mean?”
Keith pressed his eye to the glass but blinked rapidly as piercing light stung back. There was no intel vault beyond that door, only the encroaching neutron star.
“It detached,” he hissed.
“See that spec?” Lance asked. “I think that’s the vault. It’s...”
“Dangerously close to the star?” Keith completed. “Yeah. And look at that debris field, it’s gonna be hell to get to.”
“We’re going after it?”
Keith bit his tongue. The station was already toeing what was a safe distance from the star; any closer, and they’d be in range of the neutron’s unpredictable radiation bursts. “No,” he said. “I am.”
“What?” Lance scoffed. “Alone?”
Keith tucked the magnet into his utility belt, avoiding Lance’s eye. “There’s an escape pod in the hangar. I’ll pilot it over, grab the intel, be out before it gets any closer.”
“Sounds like a two-man job.”
Keith grit his teeth. Going after the intel was a risk they wouldn’t normally take, but if there was even a chance it would tell them Shiro’s whereabouts...
“I need to do this.”
“You’re thinking impulsively,” Lance insisted. He floated frantically after Keith as they made for the pods. “At least let me pilot; you’re too attached to this mission.”
Keith’s stomach clenched. Lance was right: he was attached to this mission. But that was even more reason to act alone. “Stay here,” he barked as the bay doors slid open.
“Keith, I– Wait! I need to tell you something!”
“It can wait,” Keith muttered, punching in the pod’s activation code.
“The Garrison!” Lance cried. Keith’s finger went rigid against the keypad.
“There’s a reason I brought up the Garrison.”
There was no good reason to delay, but Keith could feel his curiosity winning over. “Why?”
Lance wet his lips. “You know.”
Keith’s frown grew to a glare. “I don’t, actually.”
He did. His head swam with thoughts of that night. Lance was always beating him at games like that, always. Even after Keith had hidden the flag and himself in that maze in a place no one would find them, Lance had sought him out.
“I meant it,” Lance said softly.
Keith bit his cheek. “Didn’t think you remembered that.”
Lance striking up a conversation instead of taking the flag, Lance laughing with him, Lance tricking him—
“How could I forget?” Lance laughed, but fresh terror rose to his eyes as Keith punched in another number. “Wait,” he pleaded.
“Why? Why does it matter? I don’t care,” Keith lied.
“It wasn’t a joke,” Lance pleaded. “I swear, Keith, I swear on my life. I don’t want you going alone because I– Since then I, uh, I–”
Keith stepped toward the pod, and the words tumbled out.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you again!”
Half the station could blow apart right now, and Keith wouldn’t notice. It was how he’d felt the first time, floating clumsily beside Lance in the simulator, no one around to stop them drifting closer, nose to nose, Lance’s lips finding his.
First year of Garrison, Hunk declared Lance and Keith were magnets: polar opposites—one who drew everyone in, another who repelled—but always drawn to each other.
“You’re lying,” Keith said numbly.
“I’m not.”
“You pushed me away!”
It still hurt like it was yesterday: the others stumbling upon them, Lance’s panicked expression as he grabbed the flag from Keith and held it up to them, declaring it a ruse.
“I’m not– Ugh,” the Lance of today shoved his face into his hands. “I was an idiot. I wanted those people to like me, Keith. I was scared. But if you go out there and I never see you again... Can I kiss you?” he asked. “Please, before you go?”
Keith’s brows furrowed, though his heart was beating out of control. “That’s stupid.”
“Please,” Lance begged, his eyes softening. “Keith, I’m not lying, if you die–”
He was no more immune to Lance than he was back then. One genuine plea, and Keith would walk off the edge of the Earth for him. Lance was right: Keith didn’t want to die without kissing him again. So he turned to Lance’s waiting arms, grabbed his cheeks, and kissed him.
Now the entire station could tear apart, and Keith wouldn’t notice. Three years of wanting him made that kiss sweeter; the chill of space made it warmer; their abrasive words made it softer as he pressed his lips to Lance’s and kissed as though it was for the first time, perhaps for the last time too.
Lance pressed him to the wall, and Keith followed blindly. His hand moved from Keith’s waist to his back, pinned his hand to the wall and–
A cold, solid weight slammed around Keith’s wrist. He blinked, startled, as Lance broke the kiss and darted away.
“You’re a good kisser,” said Lance. Grinning, he held the key to the magnet, the one intended for opening the vault. “But not a good agent.”
Keith looked at his wrist, and the magnet that effectively had him cuffed to the wall. The zip on his utility belt was open; he’d been pick-pocketed. “Lance,” he growled. “Let me go.”
“Sure,” Lance replied. “Right after I grab that vault.”
“Lance!”
Lance whistled on his way to the pod, tucking the key safely into his suit. Keith growled, tugging at the tightly fixed magnet, but he couldn’t slide his wrist free.
“Lance, come back!”
“I will,” Lance assured. “I meant it, that kiss. And the first. I really did, Keith. Besides,” he drawled, one foot in the pod. “Who’s the better pilot?”
Keith’s expression darkened. If Lance survived, he was going to kill him.
“Yep,” said Lance, popping the p. “Me.”
✦☾✦☾✦☾✦☾
Lance wasn’t expecting Keith to do anything serious, like kill him, just for Keith to seriously maim him.
He looked hellbent on it when Lance drew the pod back into bay, intel in hand. Soon, they’d need to get the hell off this station, but first Lance had one very unhappy cat to un-bag.
A small blood stain showed through Keith’s suit where he’d violently tried to twist his wrist free of the cuff, and his hair was wildly disheveled.
“Don’t stab me,” Lance pleaded, approaching slowly.
Cold as stone, Keith waited as Lance withdrew the key and released him from the magnetic cuff. He rubbed his sore wrist, dark eyes flickering to Lance.
“I’m back,” the blue paladin huffed nervously. “Are you–”
The words vanished as Keith rushed him, anger and fear and multiple concealed weapons all colliding with Lance before Keith was kissing him.
Lance smiled into the kiss, wrapping his arms around Keith as he felt him do the same. No tricks, no distractions. They kissed for the first time, for the third time, with nothing to hide.