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“Come here,” Ryan finds himself saying, patting the space on the desk next to him.
Lance meets his eyes, bites his lip, then carefully makes his way over and slides his way onto the wood. The scuffle of Lance’s socked feet, the creak of the desk—it all seems a little muffled in the soft dark of the night. Ryan tells himself it’s enough to mask how he leans into Lance’s shoulder brushing against his own.
The simple press of their bodies speaks of the easy intimacy between them now, though they haven’t been doing this for long. If it can be called a ‘this’.
Ryan happened upon Lance drifting the Garrison hallways whilst trying to stave off his own insomnia, a week after their first mission. He’d been skimming a hand against the walls, peering at various memorabilia, and it was like meeting in a dream. Ryan had cautiously asked Lance if there was something bothering him. Lance had just nodded, and mumbled, “I guess it’s a long story.” Ryan replied, “We have time.”
They’d found an old classroom to sit and talk in until they couldn’t stifle their yawns, blinking blearily in the pale morning light. When Ryan wandered the hallways again the next night and found Lance doing the same, it only felt natural to return to that classroom.
A few weeks have passed since those first meetings. Now Ryan knows that Lance feels like a ghost when he’s in the Garrison, sometimes. Like time has suddenly skipped backwards and he’s a student again, except he has an intermittent twitch in his trigger finger and flinches whenever a door bangs too loudly. He knows that walking the corridors at night makes Lance feel like he’s getting reacquainted with everything in his own time.
Now Ryan knows Lance’s bedhead, the type of socks he wears. He knows the feeling of Lance lolling against him when he’s tired. How Lance sounds when he murmurs his name in that low, sleepy voice, how Ryan’s heart caves every time.
“Not tired?” Lance asks, turning to look at Ryan. The moonlight from the classroom window slants across Lance’s face, lighting up his eyes so that they’re impossible to look away from.
“I,” Ryan starts, then blinks. “Do you know how brown your eyes are?”
Lance blinks rapidly, and Ryan’s almost embarrassed by the blurted admission—but then a bright, uncertain grin flickers around the corners of Lance’s mouth.
“No? I mean—I,” Lance stutters, then chances a look at the other boy. “Do you?”
With a small flash of self-satisfaction, Ryan realises he’s flustered Lance.
And Lance is so tactile that it’s difficult for Ryan not to lean into him. Lance will push his shoulder when he laughs, bat a hand against Ryan’s knee to animate a point, and sometimes Ryan wonders how Lance would react if he took his hand and threaded their fingers together.
“Do I know how brown your eyes are? Or are you talking about my eyes?” Ryan replies, leaning forward and struggling not to laugh as Lance’s mouth open and closes.
“Well, I—" His eyes flicker around Ryan’s face. “Yours.” And Lance’s gaze touches upon his mouth.
Ryan swallows.
He knows people are perplexed by the sudden rapport between them in the daytime, how the other MFE pilots nudge each other whenever Lance calls Ryan by his first name. He’s seen the other Paladins cast curious looks at him when they find Lance transforming his bayard into a rifle for Ryan for the umpteenth time, as if they’re surprised . Like Ryan shouldn’t be completely fascinated by what Lance knows, what he’s seen, what he’s fought . In reality, when he’d first approached Lance to ask about his bayard rifle, it was like something had just clicked .
“… Like, at first I just brushed it off as some funky space magic, but then I realised how similarly it navigates to ocean mapping. One of my cousins goes on a lot of deep sea expeditions, so I thought—sonar radiation? Because of the low visibility, like our mission, it’s really useful for… for… um,” Lance broke off, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry. I have the tendency to ramble. Tell me when to shut up.”
Ryan blinked at him, rapt attention suddenly broken. “Lance,” he said, feeling a slow smile take hold on his face. “If you don’t continue that explanation, I might have to kill you.”
And now, ever since they started meeting at night, Ryan’s seen the more tender, raw parts of Lance, the ones that can’t brave the light of day. The parts that only rear their head for quick, sharp moments in their waking hours. Like whenever the new Black Paladin turns away from him.
Ryan doesn’t know everything, and probably never will. The Paladins have gone through so much together, and the dark, gaping abyss of space they’ve shared is too big for him to comprehend.
So he doesn’t try to pretend like he can.
“Mine,” Ryan repeats quietly. He can feel Lance’s knee where it makes contact with his own, watches where Lance’s chest rises with a slow breath, how his dark eyes drop to Ryan’s mouth once again, then meets his gaze.
“Yeah,” Lance murmurs.
Instead, Ryan just hopes he can distract Lance from all the pain that the stars funnelled into him. Lance crashed into his life—a quick-witted, rifle-slinging enigma, tipping Ryan’s life upside down with the rest of those giant mechanical lions. Sometimes, these night meetings make Ryan feel as if Lance is dipping into his sleeping subconscious, picking his way through Ryan’s skittered thoughts with his unfairly elegant fingers and wry smile, settling down and making himself a permanent fixture in Ryan’s head. It’s becoming increasingly hard to ignore how quickly he’s becoming drawn to Lance, how inevitable some kind of collision feels. Like now.
“Lance,” Ryan whispers, helpless to the pull of Lance’s eyes.
The moonlight glances off Lance’s hair, ruffled by interrupted sleep, and off his knee where it’s slanted into his. Ryan inches his hands towards Lance. Then he’s reaching out, fingers skimming Lance’s jaw. His soft intake of breath settles Ryan, and gives him the courage to ask.
“Can I kiss you?” is whispered between them, and Lance nods, leaning forward to meet Ryan’s lips.
Ryan moves against him slowly, carefully, his fingertips tracing the curve of Lance’s jaw. He can feel Lance’s eyelids flutter, his fringe of eyelashes glancing against his cheek, and at some point, Lance’s fingers slide over his. They're warm, just like the lips against his.
The wooden desk underneath them creaks a little as they come closer together, but Ryan's only aware of the smile forming on Lance’s mouth. When Lance slowly pulls away, and looks at him with bright eyes, Ryan feels breathless.
“D’you wanna, maybe, do this in the daytime?” Lance asks. “When we’re not sleep deprived?”
There’s something different in his voice. Lance still holds Ryan’s hand against his face, and he can’t help but lean again. He kisses the corner of his mouth, delighting in how Lance’s lips quirk up again.
“Sounds like a plan, sharpshooter,” Ryan murmurs.
Lance pushes him away with a laugh, cheeks flushed in the moonlight, and with a swoop of excitement, Ryan realises he can fluster Lance as much as he wants. He settles back onto the desk, and hides his smile behind his fist.
Lance huffs lightly as he pushes himself off the desk, and Ryan’s content to watch him pace about the room as he often does when he’s talking passionately. But then Lance turns and takes his hand, and Ryan realises that he’s far more tired than he’d thought, and that Lance is far better at noticing that than he is. Deep in his chest, something flutters.
The walk back to Ryan’s sleeping quarters are the same as ever except for the way they lace their fingers together. It doesn’t change as much as he thought he would—the easy intimacy in the way they bump shoulders and take up the same space is still there, still staving off insomnia’s chill. They talk the way they always do, picking up their earlier discussion of training routines with ease. The Garrison hallways are well-lit, but they’ve mastered the art of walking through them without bothering the guards, still whispering to each other.
When they reach Ryan’s door, Lance doesn’t hesitate in pulling him down for a soft kiss. Their hands are still joined, but Ryan rests his other on Lance’s waist, keeping him close. This kiss is shorter than their first, but gentler, and when they move apart Lance’s eyes are still closed.
“Goodnight,” he tells him, voice low.
“Sleep well,” Lance murmurs back. Ryan watches him walk to his own quarters, and grins when Lance turns back around to give him a salute, before disappearing around the corner of the hallway. He stays out there for a moment longer before entering his room.
Climbing into his bed, Ryan settles on his back to stare at the ceiling. He feels lighter than he's ever been. The moonlight streams in through his shutters and he can still see Lance’s face in his mind, eyes shut and lips slightly parted. Smiling, he turns into his pillow, and drifts off feeling at ease.
He’s looking forward to what tomorrow will bring.