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"I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
i.
Spring
“It’s March,” Pidge says one night, offhandedly. Her casual tone seems forced. The dinner table goes quiet.
“And?”
It’s Lance that asks it, his anxiousness thinly veiled in sarcasm.
“And,” Pidge mutters, setting down her spoon, “that means we’ve been gone for over a year now.”
The silence grows heavy.
Allura speaks up next. “Well, in that time we’ve made great progress in freeing the universe! Almost 50 planets have been liberated now, and millions of people-”
“Yeah,” Lance cuts her off, more bitter than satisfied. He pushes his chair back with enough force to nearly knock it backwards, and shoves his bowl across the table. “That’s great.” He throws his spoon in the direction of his bowl, not apologizing when it clamours across the table instead. “I’m done for tonight. Thanks for the food, Hunk.”
Keith watches him go before turning to Pidge. She’s staring at the table, eyes glossed over and limbs limp at her sides, her own food untouched. Keith stands, carefully reaching across the table to gather Lance’s bowl and spoon and stacking it on top of his own. He walks past Pidge’s chair on his way to the kitchen, dropping his palm onto the top of her head in reassurance.
“Thanks, Pidge,” he says quietly, with no hint of malice. “I was wondering if my calendar was up to date.”
She sniffs, nodding. He ruffles her hair a bit, and she half-heartedly laughs, weakly swatting at his hand.
“You know him,” he says, and she nods again.
He takes the bowls into the kitchen, dropping them off and heading through the castle to the observation deck. He finds Lance there, watching the stars pass by through the windows.
“You good?” He asks it quietly from the doorway, waiting for an invitation to come in.
“Yeah,” Lance says. Keith moves from the doorway to stand beside Lance, watching him instead of the stars.
“Are you sure?” He doesn’t touch him, doesn’t reach out in the physical sense. He doesn’t know exactly what Lance needs, but he knows to wait until contact is asked for.
It’s quiet, though the silence isn’t as heavy as it was in the dining room. It’s more comfortable. Grateful.
“No,” Lance whispers after a beat. He lets himself settle onto the floor, curling his knees to his chest. Keith joins him. “I’m not, really.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Lance shrugs. “It’s just a long time, is all. And I didn’t even realize. All that time, and I still haven’t contacted home at all-”
He takes a deep breath, shuddering and tired.
Keith takes one too, patient and comforting.
“I’m sorry,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. Doesn’t know what could possibly be done. Lance shrugs again.
“It’s not your fault,” he says softly, resting his cheek against his knee. He looks at Keith, the reflection of the stars shining in his tear-filled eyes. “Sorry for being dumb at dinner. I should apologize to Pidge.”
“She understands,” Keith says. “We all do.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s okay.”
“No,” Keith agrees. “You should still apologize. But that doesn’t mean that you’re wrong for feeling upset, either.”
Another silence settles in around them, this time one of relief and gratitude. Lance takes another breath; calm. Comfortable.
“Thank you,” he says, leaning slightly across the bridge of space between them. Keith meets him halfway, letting their shoulders press together.
They sit like that for hours, letting their weight support each other as they watch the stars stretch out in front of them in the quiet of space.
***
It starts after that night.
Brushes in the hallway, arms slung over each other’s shoulders while in the middle of a conversation, as if it were the most casual thing in the world. Glances shared from across the room or over the screens in their lions, understanding shared between them that hadn’t been there before.
Lance makes fun of him less, becomes less irritating and more interesting. They talk more, share more about each other than Keith can remember telling anyone besides Shiro in a long time.
Keith finds himself watching Lance’s mouth as he talks, watches the way his lips move with his words and the way they curve at the edges when he smiles in Keith’s direction. He finds himself wondering what it might be like to kiss Lance, to be the cause of his smiles.
He finds himself lying awake at night more often, staring at his ceiling and wondering if his bed had ever felt this empty before.
***
“I didn’t know you were a flower guy,” Lance says, and Keith shrugs.
“You never asked.”
Lance makes an offended noise, crossing his ankles in the air above the back of the couch. He’s laying upside down, head hanging off of the cushion, arms spread out on either side of him. Keith leans against the doorway of the common room, amused.
“How is that even supposed to come up in a conversation?” He asks. He lifts his right arm, holding it above his head like a sock puppet. He looks at it, frowning. “‘Hey, Keith, you see those flowers out on that asteroid the other day?’” His hand tilts curiously, and it responds. “‘Why no, Lance, I didn’t! Because the last time I checked, there were no roses in space!’”
Keith laughs, and Lance and the hand-puppet both turn to look at him.
“You’re ridiculous.”
The hand-puppet’s mouth falls open at the same time as Lance’s. “Keith! I am offended.”
“And I’m offended that you didn’t care to learn that I like flowers.”
Lance’s hand-puppet falls back onto the couch, and he lifts himself up to face Keith. “That is kind of random, though. Did you have a garden or something?”
“Once upon a time,” Keith shrugs. “There aren’t many flowers that do great in the desert, but there are others that do. It was something to focus on other than my search for Blue after I left the Garrison.”
“What kind of flowers were they?” Lance asks, crossing his legs under him. He holds his ankles, watching Keith with interest. Keith feels his cheeks heating up, and hopes that Lance doesn’t notice.
“Ah, African daisies, marigolds, poppies,” he ticks them off of his fingers, looking anywhere but Lance’s expectant eyes. “Some mariposa lilies too.”
“I’m not sure what half of those are, but they sound nice,” Lance says, and Keith laughs again.
“They were.”
Lance is quiet for a moment, and then he nods in what seems like a decision.
“When we get back to Earth, show me.”
Keith feels his cheeks erupt in blush, and he only nods as Lance stands, smiling.
“Great!” he says, stuffing his hands in his jacket pockets before nudging past Keith in the doorway. He spins on his heel halfway down the hallway, calling back to him. “I’m looking forward to it.”
Keith spends the rest of the night wondering how Lance would look with a flower crown of African daisies.
***
“Did you know that I used to swim?”
Keith looks at Lance out of the corner of his eye, bayard at the ready in front of him. Lance wasn’t even looking in his direction, his own blaster aimed at the area that they know the next training droid will drop down from.
“Is now really the time?” Keith asks, and Lance laughs as he shrugs.
“Why not? If we can’t communicate during combat then how will we be able to fight together?”
Keith’s stomach flips, and he feels the tips of his ears turn pink. The next training droid drops down from the ceiling, followed by a second. It charges Keith as he dances backward in step with Lance.
“So swimming lessons, huh?” He calls over the clash of his bayard and the sword of the droid. He can hear Lance’s smile as he answers.
“Not lessons. Competitive!”
Keith drops to his knees as the droid takes a swing, giving Lance an opening to blast a hole in its chest. He’s up in an instant, slicing at the second bot. “Why does that not surprise me?”
Lance laughs again, and Keith nearly gets hit in the face with the end of the spear the droid is holding. Keep it together-
“Because I’m wonderful and talented and handsome and won every race I was ever in?” Lance calls out to him, and Keith laughs back.
“Every race?”
Lance fires at the droid, giving Keith the opportunity to run his bayard through it. The simulation ends, and Lance turns to Keith, grinning.
“Every one. I was like the Michael Phelps of my home town.”
“Michael Phelps isn’t nearly as handsome.”
It’s out before he realizes it’s been said. Keith watches as Lance’s eyes grow wide, most likely a mirror of his own. He opens and closes his mouth once, twice, three times before stuttering out an “I mean!-” but Lance cuts him off.
“You think I’m handsome!”
Keith makes a noise that sounds a lot like “pshawf”, followed by a lot of hand waving and attempts to find an escape from the conversation. Lance is undeterred, the smile on his face growing by the second.
“Keith Kogane thinks I’m handsome.” He turns, seeming to nearly skip toward the door of the training room. “I’m gonna tell everyon-”
Keith tackles him.
They fall to the floor, a tangle of limbs and voices and panic, though eventually Keith wrestles Lance onto his back, settling on top of his hips and pinning his hands above his head.
“Don’t.”
Lance looks up at him with wide eyes, breathing heavily. Keith can feel their chests meet every time he breathes.
“Okay.”
They’re inches apart, noses nearly touching, and when Lance speaks, Keith swears he can feel their lips brush together. He can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t imagine anything but the fact that if Lance tilted his head in just the right direction, their lips would practically melt together perfectly-
He scrambles off of Lance, backing toward the door of the training room. Lance sits up, supporting his weight on his palms, watching Keith leave.
“Okay,” Keith says, feeling behind him for the keypad to open the door.
“Okay,” Lance repeats, unmoving as Keith flees into the hallway.
***
“How long did Coran say we’d be planet-side on this mission?”
Lance lets out a noise of frustration as he untangles one of his legs from a nearby vine, hopping on his free foot to regain his balance. He shrugs, dusting off the front of his suit and taking a deep breath, smiling up at Keith. “Dunno! He just said that we had to do this thing here and then we could go back to the ship.”
“Okay,” Keith says, raising an eyebrow. “What was the thing?”
Lance trips over another vine, and Keith snorts.
“That’s, uh...” He clears his throat, taking Keith’s outstretched hand and heaving himself upward. “That’s classified.”
Keith snorts. “And I can’t know?”
Pink dusts Lance’s cheeks as he turns away quickly, stomping through the jungle around them in the opposite direction. “Yeah it’s a secret.”
Keith frowns, stalking after him. “What the fuck, Lance?”
“Sorry, compadre, that information is for my ears only.”
“But I’m a part of this mission, too,” Keith says, ducking beneath a low-hanging branch. Lance shrugs.
“Coran and I are the only two that know what I’m looking for,” he says. Keith clicks his tongue, but doesn’t argue.
They walk in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds around them the rustling of the leaves and vines as they break their way through them. Finally Keith grows frustrated, tossing his arms into the air.
“Then why did you even bring me?” he asks, breaking the semi-silence and stepping over a small log. Lance shrugs.
“For the muscle, I guess?”
“Muscle?!”
Lance sighs. “Listen, Mullet, just stand here and look pretty.”
Keith frowns. “Lance, what are you talking abou-” He cuts off as he crashes into a clearing, stumbling directly into Lance’s back. He pushes himself backward, shaking his head and taking his surroundings.
Oh.
They’ve found a clearing, an entry into a meadow that stretches out for about a mile in front of them.
And the flowers.
Flowers stretch out, too, a multitude of colors and shapes and sizes that look like something straight out of a fantasy novel. He turns to look at Lance, who turns to look at him.
“I know there are no African daisies, but I thought maybe this might be a close second.”
Keith feels all of the air get sucked from his lungs, his heart leaping against his ribcage in a moment of pure bliss.
And then he laughs.
He laughs so hard that he cries, feeling lighter than he has in years. He looks from the meadow to Lance, beaming, and wipes at his eyes with the heels of his hands.
“Thank you,” he says, his voice wobbly. “This is... probably the nicest thing that anyone has ever done for me.”
Lance lets out a breath of relief, taking a step forward to close the distance between them. He grabs Keith’s shoulders, pulling him in for a hug. After a brief moment of shock Keith hugs him back, wrapping his arms around Lance’s waist and burying his face in his shoulder.
That afternoon Keith discovers what Lance looks like with a Bragarian lily flower crown, and decides it might be better than one made of African daisies.
ii.
Summer
Movie nights on the castle ship tend to be more battles for dominance than movie watching.
After Pidge had found a handful of classic Earth films on a trip to one of the outer Space Malls, it became a tradition for the Paladins, Allura, and Coran to spend one night a week gathered in the living room, fighting over which movie to watch before finally settling on one.
That one was usually Mall Rats.
It was Shiro’s favorite, surprisingly, from the small group that they had to choose from, and it was usually Shiro who won. Even when arm wrestling with his non-Galra arm (that had been a strict rule set by Lance after his first loss, though he lost his rematch immediately after), he tended to dominate the other Paladins in strength.
On nights he was feeling generous though, such as tonight, he would let someone else pick. Tonight it was Pidge. As she sifts through the pile of movies on the floor in front of the television screen, Lance makes his way in from the kitchen, bowl of not-real-popcorn in hand, and flops down onto the couch next to Keith. Their knees bump, and their arms press together from shoulder to elbow.
“What are we watching, then?” He asks, offering the not-popcorn to Keith, who shakes his head.
“Dunno yet,” he says. “How much do you want to bet it’s going to be Pacific Rim?”
“I’ll bet you a date on the next decent planet we land on,” Lance says, casually. Keith chokes, even though he isn’t the one eating space popcorn.
“What?”
“I’ll bet you she’s gonna choose You’ve Got Mail instead,” Lance shrugs. “So if I win, you go on a date with me.”
“And if you lose?”
“Then I go on a date with you ,” he says, and Keith snorts.
“The game is rigged.”
Lance hums thoughtfully. “The board has reviewed your accusations and ruled that the game is not, in fact, rigged. Just a pretty good bet.”
Keith pointedly avoids looking at Lance as he answers, attempting to stop the corners of his mouth from twitching upward. “Alright,” he says, “deal.”
Pidge turns around half a minute later, Pacific Rim held high in the air, and Lance groans dramatically as he sneaks an arm over Keith’s shoulder
***
Heimsvaas is a cold planet.
Keith can think of a million different places he would rather be as he trudges through the snow, his armor heavy and his fingers slightly numb. They’re here on an excavation mission, attempting to find some kind of crystals that Coran needs in a new series of experiments he and Pidge are working on. The others are spread out around him, a few hundred yards out in each direction.
“Don’t these things have like, internal heaters or something?” Lance asks, vocalizing what Keith is thinking. Coran’s voice cuts through their headsets.
“Sorry, boys! We could never really figure out how to incorporate internal heaters without the wiring becoming faulty and setting fire to the suits.”
Lance frowns. “Oh. Yeah, okay. No heaters, then.”
“I bet I could do it,” Pidge cuts in, her breathing labored as she tries to pull herself out of a snowdrift. Keith can hear Shiro call out to her in the distance, and her small “thanks, Shiro,” as he pulls her out. Her voice comes back into Keith’s coms. “It should be relatively simple. At the least I should be able to upgrade the spandex underneath our suits to act as a kind of under armor. Like back on Earth. It’d be better than the nothing we’re working with now.”
“Thanks, Pidge,” Keith says. “Because I think if I stay on this planet much longer I’ll freeze.”
“Makes sense,” Hunk’s voice comes in on his right. “You’re the guardian of Fire or whatever, right? Makes sense you wouldn’t like the cold.”
“Who does like the cold?” Keith asks.
“I do,” Lance says, his voice seeming to melt in Keith’s ears. “At least when I’m dressed right for it. Or at home, curled up in a blanket and comfortable.”
“That sounds nice,” Keith says.
“It would be,” Lance says back, and something in his voice implies that he wasn’t picturing this scenario happening alone.
Keith trips over a log, and falls into a snowdrift.
Lance is the one to pull him out, all flushed cheeks and laughter, and Keith can’t find it in him to push Lance off as he pulls him close to brush off the snow from Keith’s suit.
It would be , Keith thinks, watching Lance stomp through the snow back to the others.
***
“You know what I miss about Earth?” Lance asks from across the room, and Keith raises an eyebrow.
“What?”
“Well, I miss a lot of things,” Lance says, frowning. “But I mostly miss the music.”
“Oh man,” Hunk says from his corner of the room, setting down the tiny mock-mars rover he’s tinkering with. “That’s so true. I’ve had the same Beatles song stuck in my head for weeks now, but I can’t think of anything else to push it out of my head.”
“I love the Beatles,” Lance half-whines, going slack on the couch and sliding halfway to the floor. He turns his head, looking at Hunk. “What song is it?”
“I Want to Hold Your Hand,” Hunk says, and Lance lets out a cry of excitement.
“Yes! I love that one!” He sits up on the couch, swaying a bit to the tempo in his head.
“I’ve never heard it,” Keith mutters, and Lance freezes.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Well then I’m going to have to play it for you,” he decides. “Hunk, drop a beat.”
Hunk looks around skeptically before shrugging, and drumming out a beat on the back of his rover and humming. Lance stands, looking at Keith.
“Oh yeah, I’ll tell you something I think you’ll understand, when I say something,” he starts, and Keith begins to laugh, hiding half of his face behind his hand in order to avoid looking at a now dancing Lance. “I wanna hold your hand.”
Hunk is laughing now, too, through his attempts at vocalizing all of the instruments at once. Lance is still dancing, shimmying closer to Keith. He covers his face completely, falling into a fit of giggles.
“Oh please, say to me you'll let me be your man. And please, say to me you'll let me hold your hand,” Lance sings, reaching out and pulling one of Keith’s hands off of his face. He tugs him into a standing position, and begins swaying back and forth. “You let me hold your hand, I wanna hold your hand.”
Hunk harmonizes with Lance from his corner of the room, and as Lance spins Keith out into a twirl, he can see Hunk smiling.
“And when I touch you I feel happy inside, it's such a feeling that, my love, I can't hide. I can't hide, I can't hide.” Lance pulls Keith close, waltzing around the common room. “Yeah, you've got that something, I think you'll understand when I say that something, I wanna hold your hand. I wanna hold your hand, I wanna hold your hand.”
He finishes his song off key and grinning, pulling Keith close and braiding their fingers together.
“I wanna hold your hand,” he half whispers, and Keith can practically feel his ears turning pink.
“You are,” he says, and Lance’s smile grows before he pulls away, calling out to Hunk, vaulting over the couch to high-five him for a song well done.
***
Keith can count the number of dates he’s been on on one hand.
And he does count them, actually, as he and Lance make their way through an open market of the newest planet they’ve landed on. He’s halfway through recalling the last date he’d been a part of when Lance cuts off his thoughts.
“What do you think that is?” He asks, pointing at a large yellow orb sitting on a nearby table.
“I have no idea,” Keith says truthfully, and Lance grins.
“Let’s ask.”
The orb, as it turns out, is just decorative. Keith thinks it’s nice that other planets have useless garden trinkets just like Earth. It’s comforting.
“Maybe we can get some food here,” Lance is saying, and Keith is pulled back into the present at the suggestion. “Maybe then we can have real food instead of just space goo.”
“The goo’s not too bad,” Keith says, shrugging. “It’s better than the Garrison Mac and Cheese.”
“Dude, Shiro loves that stuff,” Lance laughs. “Honestly, I don’t know how.”
Keith snorts. “I think he’s just crazy.”
“Probably,” Lance says. “Don’t tell him I said that, though.”
“I wo-” Keith cuts himself off, distracted by a booth at the end of the line they’re currently headed down.
It’s filled with weapons. Knives, swords, shields, and even some spears, it seems to practically glow as the sun bounces off of the polished silver. Lance watches Keith watch the booth, an amused expression on his face.
“Would you like to go look?” He asks. Keith nods absentmindedly.
They spend the next half hour looking at knives. Keith tests the strength and weight of each one available, pulling out his own to compare. Lance watches, occasionally testing out swords himself, and a few shields.
Forty-five minutes later and two knives richer, they make their way to the food stalls a few rows over. Keith holds one of his new knives, a karambit with jagged edges. He twirls it in his hand. Lance hums a song Keith doesn’t know beside him, hands in his pockets.
“Sorry,” Keith says, though he isn’t entirely sure what he’s apologizing for. The look on Lance’s face tells him that he doesn’t know, either.
“For what?”
Keith shrugs. “I’m sure you didn’t want to spend half of our date looking at knives,” he finds himself saying. “I’m sorry I made you.”
Lance raises an eyebrow, a small smile on his face. “Keith,” he says, “you didn’t make me do anything. You wanted to look at them, right? So we went to look at them. That’s what you do on dates. You do things that the both of you want to do. Plus it was nice seeing you get excited over something like that.”
Keith can feel his face flush. “Sorry. I’ve never really done... dates before.”
“Really?” Lance asks. “Not even one?”
“Well, I’ve been on a few,” he admits. “But they were like, group things mostly. Or to the local pizza place when I was like 15. I don’t think those really count.”
“That’s adorable,” Lance says, and Keith grows even redder.
Their date ends that night with full baskets of alien food, two knives, a yellow decorative orb and Lance’s arms wrapped around Keith’s waist as they ride a speeder back to the castle, the setting sun bathing the valley in the most beautiful shade of purple that Keith has ever seen.
***
“Penguins?”
"They're cute!" Keith says, his arms sticking straight up toward the ceiling. Lance pauses in running his fingers through his hair and raises an eyebrow. Keith clicks his tongue. "They waddle, and it's adorable. Plus they like the ice and cold and water. Like you."
His arms are still sticking up, as if reaching for the ceiling. Lance smirks. "Like me?"
"Mmhmm," Keith hums, pointing at Lance. "Cute," he says, before pointing to the other side of the room at an imaginary penguin. "Cute. I don't make the rules."
Lance snorts, picking up running his fingers through Keith's hair again. Keith smiles, settling his head into Lance's lap a bit more, content and comfortable.
“Keith,” Lance says after a moment of silence. Keith hums in acknowledgement. “I want to kiss you.”
Keith sits up immediately.
“What?”
Lance stares back at him, eyes slightly glazed over. He reaches out, and brushes a strand of hair off of Keith’s face.
“I want to kiss you,” he repeats, leaning a bit closer.
“Then do it,” Keith says, and closes the space between them.
***
“You should come over.”
Keith leans backward against the table, arms crossed. He doesn’t look at Lance as he speaks.
“You should come over,” he repeats, “later tonight.”
Lance pauses mid bite, his spoon halfway into his mouth. He pulls it out, looking around him questioningly.
“Me?” he asks, and he lets out a laugh as he puts down his spoon. “You’re telling me this?”
“Not telling,” Keith says, pushing himself off of the edge of the table. He makes it halfway to the door of the dining room before he turns on his heel, walking backward as he meets Lance’s eyes.
“Offering.”
iii.
Fall
“When we get back to Earth there’s this beach by my house that we need to go to. It’s beautiful and you can meet my entire family and we can have the best pizza ever and-”
“Do you think we’ll be together, still, by the time we make it home?”
Lance is quiet for a moment, thinking. Then he says, “That depends. Do you plan on going somewhere?”
Keith laughs, threading his fingers through Lance’s hair.
“No, I suppose I don’t.”
***
By September, there are two things that Keith is aware of.
One: he has never loved anyone the way he loves Lance.
Days spent lying together in the common room, nights spent watching stars on the observation deck, training together, sleeping together, the ability to open up to a person more than Keith has ever been able to open up to a person before; he loves Lance more than he could ever fathom.
Two: Forming Voltron has become harder, less stable with the forming of their relationship.
No one is sure, really, what it is.
“If anything,” Allura says one day at the dinner table, her eyebrows pulled together and spoon poised in her hand, “it should make the bond stronger . Make you all able to work together better than before, now that two of you know each other incredibly well both spiritually and carnally.”
Lance chokes on his goo. Pidge laughs. Allura continues.
“And yet here we are,” she says. “At a complete loss as to why it’s unstable. The only thing I can think of is that your relationship and personal feelings are affecting the others in a way that maybe they’re not comfortable with. I mean, being able to share thoughts and emotions is a heavy burden, and if the two of you ever think something inappropriate or heated in the middle of battle-”
“What! I would never,” Lance cries out, pointing his spoon at Allura. “And I doubt Keith would, either. That’s personal stuff there, Princess. And I know we don’t think it during battle.”
“Well, maybe not that kind of personal,” Hunk cuts in from across the table. “But you guys do think a lot about each other.”
“I-”
“Yeah,” Pidge speaks up over Lance before he can get a word in. “You worry a lot about each other, which makes sense, but it makes everything pretty heavily one-sided. Literally.”
“Oh, I get it,” Hunk says. “Because they’re both the right side of Voltron- HA! Good one Pidge.”
Pidge smiles into her bowl, and Allura speaks up, rolling her eyes.
“The point is that it’s gotten harder to form Voltron since you two started your relationship,” Allura says. “Figure out how to keep your emotions in check soon, please. For the good of the universe.”
***
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just thinking about what the Princess said the other day.”
“Anything I can help with?”
“No, it’s fine. Everything is fine.”
***
Everything is not fine.
Keith can’t feel his legs as he stares at Lance, who refuses to look him in the eye as he speaks.
Or at least, he thinks he’s speaking. There are words coming from his mouth. His lips are moving. Keith can’t hear any of it through the roaring in his ears.
“You’re breaking up with me?”
Lance winces, his hands stuffed into his pockets, his eyes darting everywhere but in Keith’s direction.
“Yeah.”
“You’re breaking up with me,” Keith repeats, the words heavy on his tongue, like a stone at the bottom of a riverbed. “And you can’t even look at me while you do it.”
Lance frowns, steeling himself and looking Keith directly in the eye.
“Yeah,” he says, voice cracking. “I’m breaking up with you.”
All of the air is sucked from Keith’s lungs. He feels like he’s been punched in the stomach, and he feels his eyebrows pull together, his face twisting into a frown so hard that it hurts. The world becomes distorted, and he knows it’s the tears he can feel welling up, stinging his eyes and making him hate himself even more.
He should have known.
He should have known this wasn’t going to last more than a few months. Honestly, he’s shocked that it lasted nearly as long as it did. Almost 5 months was a good run, he thinks, from someone like Lance.
That doesn’t mean it hurts any less.
He can’t find any words to say, nothing that can convey the way he’s feeling right now. Everything hurts but nothing hurts at all, like all of the nerves in his body have gone entirely numb.
He thinks that if a battle droid were to kick him across the room, it would hurt a lot less than this moment.
Lance is back to staring at the floor, or the wall, or the ceiling, or anywhere that isn’t Keith.
“We can still be cool though, right?” He asks, soft and scared. As if the thought of losing Keith is something he can’t bear.
But Keith doesn’t think he could bear staying friends.
He isn’t sure how to respond; how to describe to Lance the exact feeling of his heart hitting the floor, the pain in his stomach and legs and the nausea working its way up his throat like hot lava.
So he says the first thing that comes to mind instead.
“Fuck off,” he says, and he turns on his heel to stride down the hallway.
***
Allura chides him for causing the team “so much emotional stress, that forming Voltron is near impossible.”
He doesn’t care, pushing his way past Lance when he tries to reach out a comforting hand.
***
He snaps during training.
They’re doing basic hand-to-hand, training with the droids in pairs scattered across the room. Keith sets his droid’s level one higher than normal, uncaring in the hits it lands.
It’s cathartic, he thinks, the ability to focus all of his energy into defeating a very real and tangible enemy in front of him, rather than focus on dealing with himself. Avoiding Lance has been hard, and avoiding dealing with the frustration and self-pity he feels has been hard, too.
He ducks beneath his training droid’s swing, kicking it in the back. The droid turns, retaliating with a kick of its own, sending Keith flying backwards to slam against the wall, his breath gone.
The others are on him in a second, crowded around and checking to make sure he’s okay. Shiro heaves him to his feet, dusting off his shoulder for him with a look of concern.
“Are you okay?”
Keith is not okay. He’s tired, and angry, and hurt, and frustrated beyond belief. Keith is ready to cry, ready to laugh, ready to lay on the floor and just sleep for the next hundred years.
Keith is ready to punch the next thing that touches him.
“I’m fine,” he says, pushing his way past everyone instead. “I’m going to bed. I’m not feeling well.”
He’s halfway to the door when Lance reaches him, grabbing him by the wrist and turning him to face him.
“Wait,” he says. “Keith, wait.”
Keith grits his teeth until his jaw practically locks, and he turns slowly to look at Lance. His face is cold, his hands curled into fists at his sides.
“What?”
“Please,” he says, eyes downcast, voice low. Even now he can’t look him in the eye. Keith can feel blood pooling in his mouth. He must have bitten his tongue.
“Please,” Lance says again. “I’m sorry, okay? Come back to training. I’m sor-”
Keith punches him.
He’s swinging before he even realizes that he’s doing it, putting the full force of his strength into his swing. His fist meets Lance’s jaw, and he can hear the crack before he registers that Lance is falling, knocked off balance by a fist to the face.
And then he’s on top of Lance, throwing punch after punch, focusing on how it was nice to make Lance feel how he had felt, to hurt instead of be hurt. Lance says nothing underneath him, makes no real effort to stop his punches. Keith is yelling something, he knows because he can hear his own voice, knows he’s crying and kicking and spitting with rage.
The others pull him off of Lance and he goes limp, tears rolling down his cheeks and hands stinging.
Shiro is yelling something at him, but Lance cuts him off.
“I deserve it” are the only words that register in Keith’s mind as he pulls himself off and storms out of the training room.
I deserve it.
I deserve it.
I deserve it.
He deserves it.
***
It’s a week before Lance works up the nerve to talk to Keith again.
He corners him in the kitchen late at night, the light from the refrigerator the only thing illuminating the large space. Keith is holding a glass of water and a bowl of goo, and he nearly overturns both of them onto Lance’s head.
“I’m sorry,” Lance says, and Keith grips the glass he’s holding so hard his knuckles turn white.
“Shut up.”
“I am,” Lance says, instead of shutting up.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Keith says, attempting to push past him.
Lance ducks after him, leaving the fridge door open behind him. “Well that’s too bad,” he says, “because I’m going to say it to you every day until you understand just how sorry I am.”
“You won’t live long enough,” Keith says simply. Lance winces.
“Okay, yeah, that’s fair.” He pushes in front of Keith, stopping him from continuing down the hallway. “But it’s true. I just... I am sorry, Keith. I love yo-”
“Don’t.”
This time Keith does overturn the glass of water, letting it pour over Lance’s head slowly. He’s calm, unshaking, and doesn’t raise his voice louder than a low murmur.
“I don’t want to hear that from you, Lance,” he says. “You don’t get to do that.”
“I’m sor-”
“And you don’t get to apologize anymore, either.” He pushes the glass into Lance’s hand and continues to his room. “You don’t get to dump me and then tell me you love me. And you don’t get to come back and try to apologize. You hurt me, Lance. And that’s not okay. I’ll work with you, and I’ll be able to form Voltron with you, and maybe some day we can be friends again. Eventually. But for right now, you hurt me, and I don’t want anything to do with you outside of what’s necessary.”
Lance doesn’t say anything as Keith opens the door to his bedroom, disappearing inside.
iv.
Winter
“I don’t know why Shiro let you pick the movie,” Hunk says, letting his head fall back onto the couch cushion as Lance sorts through the DVDs by the television.
“Because you got to pick two weeks ago, Hunk ,” Lance says back, pulling Army of Darkness from the pile. “Now it’s my turn.”
“But why don’t we watch something else?” Hunk whines. “Please? I don’t like this one.”
“I do.”
Keith speaks up from the end of the couch, taking a sip of his juice and crossing his legs under him. Lance’s eyes widen.
“Really? You want to watch this one?”
“Yeah,” Keith says. “Sure.”
Lance smiles like he’s won the lottery. The corners of Keith’s mouth twitch.
***
Forming Voltron becomes easier.
Communication is better, the bonds more solid, the relationships more stable than they’ve been in a while.
Lance smiles at Keith in the hallway.
Keith smiles back.
***
“You’re smiling.”
Keith feels his head loll to the side, resting on Lance’s thigh.
“Am I?”
He feels Lance’s fingers in his hair, distantly. Something wet lands on his forehead.
Rain?
He doesn’t remember it raining on Bragaria.
He remembers landing in the same meadow he had braided flower crowns for Lance in. He remembers the sky, dark orange with pink pulled-thin cotton clouds, a stark contrast to the white flowers that stretched out before them. They’d taken their speeders, traveling half an hour across the fields.
He remembers the ambush, Galran forces attacking from all angles, luring them to the planet with a distress signal from the Bragarian people.
He remembers getting separated from the others, the comms falling silent and the lions out of reach, unable to make it in time.
He remembers pushing Lance to the ground at the same moment a spear tore through his side, remembers the pain and the blood and white flowers bathed in red. He remembers Lance’s screams, the flashes from his bayard, sliding on his knees to Keith’s side, pulling his head onto his lap, putting pressure on his open wound.
He remembers a lot of things.
He doesn’t remember rain.
His eyelids are heavy, and he’s tired. But he doesn’t have the strength to move out of the rain. So he settles against Lance’s thigh instead, taking a shuddering breath. He falls quiet, his breathing labored, and Lance tugs on his ear.
“Hey,” he says. “Do you remember when I told you that I loved you for the first time?”
“I don’t think now is the time,” Keith says between breaths, “to reminisce.”
“We were in your bed,” Lance says, ignoring him. “Outside of the Cassifer System. It was right after we saved those deer people on that weird upside down planet.”
“Deer people,” Keith confirmed. “Weird.”
“They were,” Lance agrees. “That night we spent like 3 hours drinking with everyone, remember? That weird space wine that made you flush all red when you laughed.”
“Shut up,” Keith mumbles, and Lance lets out a choked laugh.
“You were beautiful,” he says, and Keith swears he can feel the rain again. “Laying there next to me, laughing and telling me stories about home. You told me that you wanted to take me out into the desert, to ride your hoverbike in a better setting than the one we met in.”
Lance’s fingers slow in his hair. “And you know, the entire time you were talking to me all that I could think was how lucky I was to be laying next to you, watching you laugh and bury your face in your pillow.
“And then you looked up at me, and smiled, and it was like I couldn’t breathe,” Lance says, resuming running his fingers through Keith’s hair. “And I said it. I don’t really know why I did, but it seemed like I needed to tell you I loved you right then.”
“I loved you too,” Keith says softly. “More than anything, I loved you.”
“I’m sorry,” Lance whispers. “For all of this. I’m sorry.”
“‘S not your fault,” Keith says sleepily. “Couldn’t have been helped.”
“All of this could have been helped,” Lance says. “It all could have been avoided if we had talked instead, if I hadn’t have run away like I always do.”
“You’re here now,” Keith says. “That counts for something.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Lance says, and Keith smiles, bitter and sharp.
“It only took me dying for you to stay.”
Lance’s fingers freeze in Keith’s hair.
“You’re not going to die.”
Keith chokes on a laugh. Lance frowns.
“I mean it,” he says. “You’re not allowed to.”
“I don’t think I have much control over it,” Keith says.
They sit in silence for almost a full minute before Lance speaks, soft and tired.
“I did it because I was scared.”
Keith doesn’t open his eyes, but he tilts his chin to let Lance know that he’s listening.
“Breaking up,” Lance elaborates. “I did it because I was scared. Of being the reason we couldn’t form Voltron. I did it because I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You’re shit at communication,” Keith says, and Lance laughs softly.
“Yeah,” he says. “I guess so.”
“Lance?” Keith’s breathing is labored, now, his eyes refusing to open. “I want to sleep. Just... Let me sleep.”
“No,” Lance says, and he tugs on Keith’s ear again. “You have to stay up.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re coming home with me.” Lance says it as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “After this is over, I’m going to tell Allura that we need a vacation. And we’ll go home, just you and me, and we’ll go to the beach. And maybe to the boardwalk. You said that you’d never been, right?” Keith can feel Lance wiping at his eyes. “I’ll get you a stuffed penguin from one of those rigged carnie games.”
“How will you win if it’s rigged?”
“I’ll figure it out,” Lance says. “I’ll figure it out for you. And you can show me your garden, and all of your flowers back home.”
“Maybe someday,” Keith says, “you’ll find someone else to do that with. Shiro knows where my garden is. You can have him show you-”
“I don’t want Shiro to show me,” Lance says, angry. “I want you. You, Keith. I want to do these things with you. Because I love you, stupid.”
“You shouldn’t insult a dying person,” Keith says lightly. “It’s in bad taste.”
“ You’re not going to die ,” Lance repeats. “If you die, Keith, I’ll kick your ass.”
Keith smiles. “It’s okay, Lance. It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” Lance says. “Keith, it’s not. You can’t leave me, okay? You can’t- you can’t just die , Keith. You can be mad at me, and ignore me, and yell at me and punch me and even cut out my heart with one of your fancy knives if you wanted. Because then at least I would still be able to see you, and talk to you, even if you’re mad at me. Because then at least you would still be here, alive, with me.
“I’m selfish, Keith,” he says, choking. “You need to stay here with me. Please don’t leave me. Please.”
Keith reaches upward, arm like lead, cupping Lance’s cheek in his hand. He can feel tear stains on his skin, and realizes that it isn’t raining at all.
Lance is just crying.
“This sucks,” Keith half-whispers. His chest hurts, and his stomach hurts, and his limbs are going numb. He lets his hand fall, gripping Lance’s hand instead of his cheek. “But it hurts less than when you dumped me.”
Lance sputters out a laugh, and Keith grins softly.
“Shut up,” Lance says, and Keith coughs.
“It’s true,” he says. “That felt like a mallet to the kneecaps. That fucked me up, Lance. I loved you.”
“I fucked up,” Lance agrees. “But I still do love you, you know. I can’t do this without you.”
Keith takes a breath. His grip loosens on Lance’s hand, and he laces their fingers together instead.
“You can do it without me,” he says simply. “You’re going to have to. You’ll live, Lance. It’s not the end of the world.”
“It feels like it,” Lance chokes out, and Keith pulls their interlocked fingers to his lips, brushing them over Lance’s knuckles. He lets their hands drop, and after a moment he can feel Lance leaning forward, resting his forehead against Keith’s, his lips pressed to the spot just beneath his bangs.
“You’ll be okay,” Keith says it again as Lance pulls away for what feels like the hundredth time, though it holds no more meaning than the other 99. “You’ll be okay.”
“Keith,” Lance’s voice is distant now, like Keith is lying submerged in the water of a bathtub, holding his breath the way he did when he was little. “I love you.”
I love you, he thinks. I love you.
He isn’t sure if he was able to say it, his tongue heavy and his mind hazy, but he hopes so. God, he hopes so.
He lets himself slip away, the faint feeling of raindrops on his forehead the last sensation he can truly feel.