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In the immortal words of Dr. Ian Malcolm, “Life, uh...finds a way.”
Emphasis on the "uh.”
They've met aliens who birth live young like humans. Aliens who lay eggs and carry them around in throat pouches. Aliens with several phenotypes of wildly differing sizes and numbers of limbs, half of which have no role in reproduction. Aliens with half a dozen sexes who pass their larva along a chain of carrier parents like a hot potato. Aliens who are completely asexual and reproduce by budding. And an extremely memorable planet of aliens who reproduce by digging a hole in the ground, puking chunky green fluid into it, and then burying it for fifty of their planet’s years until their babies grow up out of the ground like weird fungal plants.
…There had been some very awkward misunderstandings on the fungal puke-baby planet.
Now that they’re being treated to an extremely graphic explanation of how life on this planet has found a way, Lance is wondering if Coran knew about it when he suggested Lance and Keith could handle this mission on their own (Lance because he’s missed the beach, and Keith because even though they’ve been keeping their relationship on the down-low, Coran clearly at least suspects and wink-nudge-wingmanned this mission into being). The local tradition sure doesn’t seem to be a closely guarded secret. Or at least, if they are usually more private about it, you wouldn’t know it from the way their main liaison is explaining it. The guy is waxing lyrical about makin’ babies.
Lance has been thinking of him as a guy, at least. But not in any kind of human way. So far the translators have called everyone they've met ‘he’ but Lance hasn’t gotten the sense they differentiate by sex or gender here.
The invitation – because it turns out that’s why they’re getting a crash course in Ouluean sex ed, they’re being invited to join in – kind of clears that up.
Kind of.
“On the highest nights of the moons, when the gates of the bay open and allow passage – “
(Translation: Oulua is a mostly water-covered world with three moons, and when the moons sync up every several months they have an extra high tide. High enough to connect the sheltered little bay here at the capitol, usually walled off by natural rock formations and reefs, to the ocean.)
“ – the Mother of All enters into Her sacred bower – “
(Translation: a giant aquatic tentacle monster. A massive quiznacking tentacle monster that lives at the bottom of the ocean comes slithering up into the bay.)
“ – blesses us with Her gift of life, so that we may share our life back to Her – “
(Translation: apparently all these guys are biologically-comparable-to-male in the sense that their reproductive role is fertilization of ova, and every community has its own ovum-producing sea monster. A kraken egg mom, if you will.)
“ – come together to partake in the Blessing Ceremony, sharing life and returning the Mother’s bounty to the sea – “
(Translation: and so whenever there’s a three-moon tide, anyone who wants to goes down to the beach for an all-day-and-night party while they wait for the Sea Momster to show up. And then when she does, they all get in the water to have eggs deposited up their alien sorta-hoo-hahs to keep warm – they can’t survive in the cool water until after fertilization, apparently – and have a giant orgy on the beach to fertilize each other’s eggs with their alien sorta-wangs before birthing them out into the bay as the tide goes back down.
It sounds like the eggs just…float around in the bay until they hatch, and shortly before the next three-moon tide there’s another party to welcome and collect all the larvae crawling up the beach like reverse turtles. Lance can’t let himself think too much about that.)
“It is not demanded of guests,” Luenaen is quick to add when he finishes explaining about the citywide tentacle egg orgy. “But we welcome all visitors, when we have them, to join us in the blessings of the Mother.”
Unlike some of the aliens they’ve run into on these diplomatic missions, he really doesn’t seem to be suggesting their alliance with Voltron depends on their…uh, attendance. He does have his barbels curled up shyly, though, like a wallflower asking them hopefully to junior prom.
Keith and Lance exchange a charged look.
“We appreciate your…hospitality,” Lance says delicately. “But you know we don’t have the same…ahhhh…our species have a different process of, um, so…do you know what a mammal—?”
“What he means is, we don’t want to waste your eggs if they’re gonna be duds,” Keith interrupts. Bless the man. Heck, even if they aren’t duds, Lance doesn’t want to accidentally be an absentee father to a half alien larva!
“Oh, that’s really not a problem. Our Mother is a generous giver and has plenty to spare,” Luenaen assures them blithely, his barbels wiggling with amusement. “But of course, we are sensitive to the, ah, different sensibilities and traditions other peoples may bring with them, and we would take no offense if you would prefer to retire to your chambers early.”
Damn, the people here have the hugest, most luminous eyes here. This alien salamander-fish man has the most heart-rending puppy eyes Lance ever seen. Complete with hopeful barbels. Unrelated but also relevant, Lance is a xenophile who likes to try new things, and Keith is just generally an adrenaline junkie freak in the streets and the sheets.
However, this seems like a lot, given that Keith won’t even hold his hand in front of other people.
He didn’t say no to this right away, though.
“Give us a moment to discuss this,” Lance says.
“We don’t have to join in if you don’t want to. No pressure at all. I mean he made it pretty clear that they won’t be offended or anything so it won’t affect the mission if we say no,” Lance rushes to reassure Keith the instant they’re out of earshot. “It sounds like they invite everyone. I don’t think he even thinks we’re together like that. …Actually I don’t know if they even have couple-y relationships here, if they reproduce by beach orgy—"
“I don’t think he cares if—” Keith starts, then blinks several times. “Whoa whoa, wait. Do you want to do the big tentacle-fucking party?”
“I mean let’s not play coy, babe, you know I’ll try anything once,” he says ruefully.
Come on, what kind of person explored the universe and met a bunch of hot aliens and wasn’t curious about what kinds of exotic sexy time bits they were rocking? Not that he was going to seriously entertain the idea of finding out in person without his boyfriend involved and willing. And alien sea monster eggs aside, he doubts Keith would ever be down for having sex in public. He doesn’t like PDA in general. Heck, they barely even acknowledge their relationship when they’re not alone, which…Lance is fine with. Mostly. It’s a work in progress, ok, because Keith is worth it. They haven’t even told the rest of Voltron they’re together (though he’s confided in Hunk (and he’s pretty sure Keith told Shiro (and the damn mice are impossible to avoid so Allura probably knows (and Coran winked like five times when he briefed them on the mission (honestly, probably everyone at least suspects))))).
“Tentacle fucking,” Keith repeats.
He’s…looking a little glazed, now that Lance is paying attention. “Keith. Do. Do you really want to do the tentacle fucking party?”
“…Uh.”
It’s maybe not that surprising that Keith is at least a little interested in taking a literal kraken up the butt. The first time they dropped trou together he took The Lance Cannon as a personal challenge. And not in a dick measuring way, in a “I will get that in me or die trying” way, and now that he’s got it down he still tries to get a finger in there to boot. What is surprising is that he seems so captured by the idea that he’s willing to consider it despite it being like. A whole. You know. Community event.
“Oh man. You do,” he says, delighted. “That one of your dirty fantasies, Keith? The ol’ classic tentacle trope? Wanna get fucked by something bigger and wigglier than my boring old Earth-style cock?”
“Your cock is awesome,” Keith says sharply, like he’s offended on Lance’s dick’s behalf.
“Oh, I’m aware. Extremely aware,” Lance teases. “This sounds like it’s more about your size queen booty, though. You wanna get wrecked by a tentacle monster, huh?”
Keith crosses his arms, flushing hot. That’s a big fat squirming ‘yes’, then. “I don’t see you saying no to tentacles.”
“I have no objections to tentacles,” he says, and Keith scoffs like he’s avoiding the point. “Look, I’m down. I just don’t want you to feel pressured to do something like – like go to an orgy together when we’re kind of, you know, keeping us on the down-low.”
“We’re not on the down-low,” Keith says immediately, then his brows furrow, eyes flicking between Lance’s. “…Are we?”
“I mean…kind of, yeah?” There’s an extremely interesting spot of something on his armor. Lance picks at it intently. “It’s not like we’re open with even our friends about our…you know. Us. Thing.”
Keith takes that in, eyes dropping. He looks angry at first glance, but Lance is coming to recognize this particular scowl (Number 7 out of Keith’s double-digit roster of scowls) as his thinking face. “Adam and Shiro were always professional at the Garrison,” he says, his squirrelly brain going off on a tangent that probably makes sense to him. “But…at home they were different. More open, I guess. Because they weren’t at work. But with Voltron…aren’t we kind of always at work?”
Huh. “I mean…yeah, I guess we’re kind of forever on call, but it’s our home too, right? We can’t be working all the time.” Lance fidgets. “…Does it embarrass you? Like, people seeing us together?”
“What? No,” Keith says, nonplussed. “I’m not embarrassed of us. Or of you. I’m embarrassed of me.” His hand splays across his chest, eyes darting down and to the side. “If I’m just…when it’s just you it’s fine, you, I dunno, you get me, I can just be chill. But with like…I dunno, other people, I don’t want them to think I’m not taking Voltron seriously, or…yeah.”
Welp.
Lance hugs him. Keith melts into him easily, and he feels a little silly. What a pair they are, always assuming they’re the problem instead of talking to the other. “I don’t think anyone would ever think you’re not taking things seriously. Especially not the Voltron crew,” he says. “And if they did I’d set them straight.”
Keith squeezes him a little, tipping their temples together. “I want you to be happy,” he says, low. “I don’t want you to feel like we’re hiding that we’re together.”
“I am happy with you,” Lance hurries to reassure him. “And I know it can’t always be about what we want.” Voltron is more important, they both know that.
Keith hums noncommittally. “You want to do this though. The beach sex party. And we were invited by an ally. It wouldn’t be skiving off our responsibilities,” he says, determination growing in his voice as he speaks. It’s the voice he gets when he has Identified a Problem, and has decided he’s going to Fix It, With Great Prejudice. “And when else are we going to get a chance to do this? You only live once, right?”
“…Did you just hashtag yolo me?” Lance says, slightly aghast despite the warm feeling. “What next, you’re gonna say we’ll chillax on the beach? Have a sick time, dog? Hopefully things don’t get awkward turtle?”
“What the hell are you talking about.”
“Hey, you’re the one who started with the Y2K slang like we’re in an old-timey movie—”
“Lance, shut up.” Keith shakes a little. He’s totally trying not to laugh. Lance buries a grin in his hair. “You make me happy too. You know that, right?”
His heart squishes happily in his chest. “I mean I do, but if you want to remind me again…”
They didn’t tell Luenaen how long they would need to discuss the invitation. Lance thinks they’re entitled to a few minutes to kiss it out.
Their hosts provided them with ceremonial garb to wear. The garb consists of a paneled kilt-skirt kind of affair made of lightweight white fabric that’s slit right up to the waistband on both sides and fastened with a bit of elaborate folding wizardry that Lance couldn’t hope to reproduce.
Apparently swimming in the Mother’s bay is a big no-no when she’s not around, but Lance doesn’t need to see it to know these skirts will leave nothing to the imagination once wet. Heck, they don’t even when dry. It’s ten minutes into the party and he has caught so many accidental glimpses of alien love muscle. At first it’s a little awkward free-balling it at what is technically a diplomatic function, but honestly it’s as hot and humid as any Cuban summer and so having a bit of a breeze down there is not unwelcome.
Also, the lack of coverage means he has to stay on top of keeping his boyfriend from frying to a crisp.
That part is awesome. Not the part where Keith is doing his level best to transmogrify into a lobster, the part where Lance gets to slather lotion all over Keith’s bare skin, leaving it glistening in the sweltering heat.
Keith is tense and hunched under his ministrations at first. His thumb rubs reflexively against the side of his hand when a few of the local leaders they met during the talks approach. They’re just curious, though, and he slowly relaxes when they ask interestedly what Lance is putting on him and Lance chatters to them about sunburn and the treatments they use locally to prevent UV radiation damage. It probably helps that there are people flirting and getting close all over the beach – heck, two of the Oulueans they’re talking to start tangling their barbels together in the middle of the conversation.
Eventually they wander off, waving cheerfully. Lance leans a little into Keith’s space from behind.
“C’n I kiss you?”
Keith’s fingers tighten in the beach blanket, cheeks pinking, but he jerks a nod.
Gently, Lance brushes away a few strands of hair and lays a chaste kiss where Keith’s shoulder slopes to his neck. He holds it for a moment, lips pressed to the hot soft skin, breathing in the beachy coconut smell of sunscreen and clean sweat. Keith releases a held breath. His head tips against Lance’s.
“Doing ok?” Lance asks, mouth still brushing at the crook of his neck.
Keith hums. “Yeah. It’s weird, not feeling like I need to be…I dunno, doing anything. But it’s nice. You?”
Lance laughs. “Baby, I’m awesome. On a summer beach party vacation with my gorgeous squeeze? I’m on cloud nine.”
It’s true. The only think that’d make it better would be if it were Varadero beach instead, but if he lets himself go down that path it’ll just bring down his mood.
Keith smiles at him, eyes crinkling. “Good.” He nods his head down the beach a ways, where they’re setting up some kind of net. “Wanna go see if that’s for sand volleyball?”
“Heck yes I do.”
The festivities go all afternoon. It’s enough fun on its own that Lance almost forgets the evening itinerary. There is, in fact, a local version of beach volleyball (they totally kick ass), little booths with games and light snacks, and music and skit performances that go completely over their heads. It’s almost like being at a carnival back on Earth.
It’s a weight off his shoulders he didn’t realize was sitting there. Lance never gets to just have fun with Keith without the hovering awareness in the back of his mind that the alarm might go off any second and summon them to their lions. Keith is gradually easing into it too. He hesitantly touches the small of Lance’s back when he points out a ball-tossing game booth, leans into it when Lance throws an arm around his shoulders, laughter going open and easy when Lance makes a face at him around a mouthful of fried dough on a stick the way it only ever does when they’re alone.
He even initiates a kiss, right in the middle of a conversation with the head of water infrastructure, darting in and pecking it to the corner of Lance’s mouth with furrowed brows and open eyes like he’s doing a tricky dive in a jet. It takes everything in Lance not to squeal in delight, instead grinning sunnily and paying it back to Keith’s reddening cheek.
It probably helps that PDA seems to be the theme of the day. The Oulueans have been friendly in their negotiations, earnest and polite and almost reserved. Here at this mating festival, the friendliness is still there, but the propriety is out the window. Everyone’s letting it all hang out. Literally and metaphorically. Luenaen passed along the paladins’ preference to not be groped (there have been some extremely curious questions about their “autonomous mating pair unit” that would have been awkward if they weren’t so very alien) and it’s been respected, but it’s becoming clear that exclusive relationships are not the norm here.
There are lots of arms brushing and heated looks, lots of tangling barbels, lots of apparently prehensile alien dongs curling under their skirts and occasionally questing shyly out their skirt-slits. Things only get more heated the lower the sun sets. As people start to pack up the game nets and snack booths, hands, barbels, and dongs are all getting a lot less shy.
“Seems like we’re getting close…?” Lance says, voice pitching up as three Oulueans start making out literally five feet away, one of them blatantly sticking a hand up the back of one of his partner’s skirts.
“We should probably get prepped before the…ceremony,” Keith says.
Lance looks around, humming agreement. The spirit may be willing but the body probably won’t have a great time getting dicked down by a tentacle monster if they don’t get some lube and prep in first.
There’s uh…there don’t look to be any tents or other privacy structures, though. All the festive little booths from the party are being taken down, and not much is going up in their place for ceremony-specific preparations.
Keith has come to the same realization. “…We’re gonna be fucking,” he says, like he’s trying to psych himself up. “A little fingering on the beach is no big deal, right?”
For all their extremely flimsy bravado, it’s not not a big deal. Not like Lance spent many of his horny pent-up youthful years fantasizing about actually having sex on the beach or anything! And with a hottie like Keith, no less!
And then there’s the whole “hey there’s people here” thing. There were significantly fewer salamander aliens in his fantasies. His forays into exhibitionistic thoughts had been more along the lines of imagining the distant specks of people too far away to notice what was happening, the naughty thrill of the suggestion of the possibility of getting almost-caught like, getting a blowjob or doing a bit of grinding. Not just openly doing the kit-kat shuffle ten feet away from what he’s pretty sure is several members of the committee he met two days ago to discuss intergalactic trade routes, now with their barbels practically braided together and groping under each other’s skirts.
They wind up finding a relatively quiet spot to re-roll out the traditional blanket they’ve been given (it’s very plush, very nice. Lance wonders if they get to keep it) and their bag full of beach things and sex things. There are still people well within Mammal Sex Ed 101 range, but, well.
Seems fair, under the circumstances. And the more he’s thinking about it the more Lance is getting pretty ok with that.
Keith smooths all the creases out of their borrowed beach blanket with ferocious intensity, then practically throws himself down in the middle. He straightens out the new creases he’s just made, and then, finally satisfied with the blanket-wrinkle situation, he holds out his arms for Lance. Lance is more than happy to sink into them.
It’s almost chaste, at first. Cuddling on the blanket, trading kisses that his abuela wouldn’t blink at. Little by little the kisses get deeper, wetter. Keith seems to be determinedly ignoring everyone on the beach and focusing on Lance, eyes closed or hiding against his neck while mouthing at the skin there. Lance is uh…kind of into it, though. There are people moving around in his peripheral, some having some makeouts of their own, others just walking around or chitchatting. All those people can see them. They see Keith arching against him when Lance’s hand rakes through his hair, Keith’s hand gripping possessively at his hip, the hungry movement of their mouths together. It makes the heat low in his belly build up faster, makes him want to roll his hips against Keith’s and show them all the incredible sounds his boyfriend makes when he’s feeling good.
Keith pulls away reluctantly to catch his breath, still close enough that their noses brush. “We should probably get going. Yeah?”
His stomach tightens with heat. “Yeah, lemme at you, baby.”
“Yeah. Right. Ok.” Face setting like he’s going into battle, Keith flops back on the blanket and hikes one knee up to his chest, giving Lance a flash of pale inner thigh.
It feels deliciously transgressive to be doing this out on a crowded beach, even with the flimsy cover of the skirts and everyone else getting hot and heavy all around them. Pouring lube out over his fingers, he smooths a hand up Keith’s inner thigh under his skirt. It makes Keith’s lashes flutter, but his eyes stay fixed on Lance’s. Quiznack, he’s so unbearably pretty. The idea of people seeing him take Keith apart is making the heat in his gut escalate quickly.
His fingers slide into that hot, humid cleft and rub the puckered furl of his hole. Keith flinches.
“Cold,” he says when Lance pauses.
“Sorry.”
“Nah, just surprised me, it’s nice. ‘S fuckin’ hot enough to scald a lizard out here.”
“Nothing like cold lube up your butt to cool down on a hot day,” Lance says sagely.
“Better than iced lemonade,” Keith says, trying to deadpan but cracking into a smile and then a little sigh and wiggle as Lance’s finger slips into him.
Going by feel, he massages his finger in and out of that tight heat, the thin white fabric of the skirt rumpling over the movement. A pair of Oulueans from the agriculture cooperative walk by, giving them a cheerful greeting as they pass. Lance just smiles and nods back, cheeks heating pleasantly. His hands are slightly occupied at the moment.
Keith bunts his head against Lance’s chest. “Lance.”
He looks back down, grinning fondly at Keith’s pout. “Hey baby. How’s it going?”
“Fine. Give me another,” he grunts. His face is pinched in a scowl, side-eyeing the passing people like he’s ready to challenge someone to a duel.
“Hey, don’t worry about them.” He pecks teasing kisses all over Keith’s scrunchy face and twists in a second finger. Pleased, Keith hums into his mouth and squirms down on his fingers. The instant Lance has to pull away again Keith makes a sound of protest. “I know baby, I’m just getting more lube. Wanna get you all ready for Mama Kraken.”
Keith snorts, then sighs when he sticks them back in.
“Such a pretty picture you make,” Lance croons. “Love laying you out like this. I think we’re doing real good on this planet, letting these fine folk get a glimpse of how gorgeous you are when you’re horny.”
Keith flushes, hiding his face in Lance’s chest. Chuckling, Lance cranes down to drop a kiss on his tomato-red cheek.
“You’re taking four really well,” Lance tells him a lazy while later, thumb tucked against his taint and swiveling his fingers in a continuous figure eight into the clenching heat of him. “Think you’re good?”
“Mmmm, yeah.” The thorough fingering has melted Keith down into something languid and lazy, half hard under his skirt. “Your turn.”
“Should have brought a plug,” he mourns as he pulls his hand free of Keith’s loosened hole and wipes it on the blanket. “Should have brought two plugs.”
Keith huffs a laugh. “I don’t think we can be blamed for not knowing we’d need them when we packed for this mission.”
They switch places. It’s a little awkward, a little vulnerable, but hey, he’s hot shit! Most of their fellow participants seem busy with each other, but there are eyes looking over at them now and again. Curious about the aliens, maybe, or just appreciating what he and Keith have got going. He arches a little, tipping his head back on a pleasured sigh at Keith’s ministrations to sweeten the view.
“Show-off,” Keith says, amused.
“If we’ve got it, why shouldn’t we flaunt it?”
“Didn’t say you shouldn’t.” Keith licks his lips, eyes heated on him. “I didn’t know you were this much of an exhibitionist. Not that I’m surprised.”
“Can’t deny our fans tickets to the Voltron show.”
“If you really want to give them a show I could blow you.”
A scratchy moan escapes his throat—at the idea, and at the smirky way Keith says it. “Might freak ‘em out,” he says reluctantly. “With the needle teeth and the – I mean you’ve gotten a gander at what they’re working under the flappy skirts, pretty sure their mouths are smaller’n – I don’t know if oral is a thing here, don’t want them to get the wrong idea and think you’re trying to eat me in a literal, non-sexy way—”
Keith pouts his lip out, but his eyes are dancing with humor. “Hmmmmmm. Party poopers.” The quiznacking little cocktease slides down Lance’s body and props his chin on his thigh. Right by the half-chub Lance is sporting under his fancy alien orgy skirt. Keith smirks at the look on his face, tilting his head with mock innocence so his cheek brushes Lance’s dick through the fabric even as his slick fingers delve inside him.
“You’re so mean,” Lance moans, flopping back on the blanket and covering his eyes with both hands.
“You’re the one who turned me down. Offer’s still open.” And Keith nuzzles his nose against Lance’s now somewhat-more-than-half-chub.
Despite the teasing – or, ok, in all honesty, the teasing is doing for him too. Whatever! It’s nice, ok. He’s soaking in the sunlight and ocean smells and Keith’s open affection, cradled by the sun-heated sand and soft blanket with Keith’s fingers curling against his prostate. He’s horny and nicely toasty and people are looking at him, the interested and admiring and curious eyes of the Oulueans and the far more intense and hungry eyes of his boyfriend, less and less shy the more he takes Lance apart.
By the time they’re both ready, the sun is setting and the three full moons are hung swollen and rosy as ripe peaches. They’re much redder than Earth’s silvery-white moon. Their light casts the sky and water more purpley than on Earth, but the sand is as white as at Varadero, both alien and familiar and altogether lovely. Lance in his element, and Keith above him looks gorgeous and otherworldly, the light of the moons picking out the violet cast in his hair and eyes.
There’s some ceremony to it, just as loose and casual as the whole party has been. All the tents and game equipment are gone, leaving a little dais lit with torches near the water’s edge. A line seems to be forming at it.
Luenaen finds them as they’re wiping their hands and untangling from each other, looking delighted to see them and with some friends along of his own. He invites them to join the line with him and his…boyfriends? Mates? The translator isn’t much help, but Lance gets the definite sense that they’re his sex pals for the night. He chats cheerfully with them, Keith quiet but listening with interest and letting their clasped hands swing between them.
When they reach the dais, they’re greeted by the oldest Ouluean Lance has met so far. He’s hunched with bleach-pale barbels that nearly reach his knees and a white skirt that’s much more elaborately folded than everyone else’s. The elder dots some phosphorescent stuff from a bowl onto their bellies, murmuring what sounds like a traditional blessing in his creaky voice.
“We welcome this fellowship with Voltron,” he adds on, wrinkled face creasing further in a beaming smile before he waves them on.
Following the line, they end up standing hand in hand on the firm, damp sand at the very edge of the water. Waiting for the Mother, Luenaen tells them quietly, with a beatific smile. Back at the dais, a group of Ouluean elders have started up some kind of music, low and droning with throbbing drums. The sense of anticipation coils tight.
“How do we know when she’s here?” Keith whispers.
Lance squints out across the dark shimmering water. “Lue made it sound like it would be really ob—"
There’s a great surge of water swelling up at the mouth of the bay, and horns blare out as she makes her entrance.
No. As She makes Her entrance.
Her body breaks the surface like the back of a whale, and rising and rising, seawater raining down Her heaving sides. Comparing Her to a kraken was entirely the wrong scale of myth. She’s the entire isle of Atlantis, rising from the ocean floor. Another bulging shape the size of a bus emerges. It towers into an arch, and then a massive arcing tentacle that lifts out of the water, graceful and terrible and painted with shimmering lines of bioluminescence. More tentacle arms follow and loop into the bay, curling and pulling Her colossal bulk into the protected water. The surf drives up high, and in a few crashing waves they are abruptly not standing at the edge of the water but knee-deep in it, gripping each other’s hand with white knuckles.
“Oh god what,” Lance says, voice pitching up in momentary terror. “That can’t be the tentacles they mean, right? That definitely can’t be the butt tentacles, the tip is as big as a person—”
Keith squeezes his hand. “Nah, She’s got a sort of pocket of special tentacles that hold Her ovipositors. They should fit. And they’re soft.”
Good to know, but he doesn’t remember that part of the briefing.
“Keith. How do you know that? Did you ask someone for details about the tentacle fucking?”
“…So what if I did.”
Is it, by Earth standards, extremely kinky that they’re about to get their pipes cleaned by an alien creature the size of a town, along with all the townsfolk? Yes. Yes it is. But Lance is always down to get a little freaky, and it’s easy to get swept up in the energy of the moment. Some people are humming or chanting along with the drumming music, holding hands in pairs and clusters and swaying. In the dim light the phosphorescent marks on all their bellies make it look like they all have little candles. There’s an almost reverent mood in the air. He’s been thinking of it as dirty and transgressive to be involved in this giant kraken orgy, but now that he’s witnessing the reality of it, Lance feels weirdly honored to be invited.
Also very glad he’s here with just Keith though, and not the rest of Voltron. Hunk would never let him hear the end of it.
As Keith predicted, a large veiny pouch bulges out from among Her massive arms. As the music and drumming come to a pounding crescendo, a long vertical seam in the pouch peels open like a gateway, and a writhing mass of smaller tentacles unfurls from within, curling and waving in the foaming surf created by Her massive body. Cheers ring out. The elder who smudged the glowy stuff on them raises his arms and shouts something indistinct, and people start forging deeper into the water.
“Whoo, alright!” Lance bounces up and down a bit, hyping himself up. “I guess we’re doing this.”
Keith grins, pulling at his hand. “Let’s go.”
Hand in clinging hand, the two of them venture closer. The water’s blessedly cool in the lingering heat of the evening. When they’re up to their waists they halt, taking in the view.
“Holy shit, here She comes.”
Laughter and chatter dapple around them over the bass thrum of the Mother. Holy shit, She is so impossibly big. Her body is several hundred feet away and yet. And yet. They’re still only just at the edge of the tangle of Her…sex tentacles? The tentacles are questing closer, striped with glowing marks and weaving in clusters through the water.
Copying the locals nearby, Lance reaches out to a tendril snaking through the water, hooking it gently with his free hand and guiding it to him. It’s not slimy like he expected, but a velvety-slippery sort of membranous texture, a little like the underside of a tongue. Grooves coil around the last several feet of it and meet in a star at the tip. It responds to his touch (She responds to his touch? He’s not too clear on how autonomous these are), bending toward him and bumping against his side.
“You want this?” he offers to Keith, voice going a little high as the tip of the tentacle wriggles at the cut of his hip.
Keith’s eyes are bright and he licks his lips. “Go ahead and keep it, I want a bigger one.”
“This thing’s the size of my leg but go off,” Lance laughs. “I support you, babe.”
With some careful prodding he guides the questing tendril down. It suddenly unfurls like a blooming flower, the spiraling grooves of the top opening into six sucker-lined arms with a pale, stamen-like frond in the center. Before he can react they’re coiling around his thighs and abdomen. Lance yelps, gripping Keith’s upper arms, water sloshing around his waist.
“Yeah, you got this,” Keith says. He seems to be unable to decide what he wants to look at more, the tentacle arms grabbing onto Lance or the water around them to find one of his own.
The frond seems to be less dexterous than the gripping tentacles, seeking clumsily across his inner thigh. That’s the bit that goes inside, he’s pretty sure. It’s soft and bulb-ended and a little gooey, and (to his relief) a size that wouldn’t be out of place in their secret toybox.
Sticking one hand awkwardly under his junk, he nudges it into place, gasping a little when it curls against his taint and hole. When he dips a fingertip into himself, it eagerly follows. Another gasp tears out of him as the bulb pops in, squishy and warmer than the water but definitely much cooler than the inside of a human. The tentacles clinging to his waist and thighs ripple and squeeze, rows of suckers kissing at his skin.
“How is it?” Keith asks raptly, steadying them both when Lance lurches against him.
“Good. Squishy. Weird. Very weird. Little cold,” he says, curling his toes in the sand and trying to acclimate to the literal alien intrusion. “Whoo! Ok. Okaaaaay. Thanks, Big Mama. Alright, let’s get you set up.”
There are still tangles of tentacles winding through the water and clusters of people getting coochie-fronded all around them. Keith, still holding Lance up, points one out eagerly.
“Holy quiznack. Yeah? That’s a big one.”
“Fuck yes,” says Keith fervently.
They reach out together and pull it to them, Keith eagerly bracing his legs wide. Lance struggles to stay attentive as She uncoils the tip of the tentacle and winds the suckered split arms of it around Keith’s legs and torso. Keith shivers and moans, fingers spasming against Lance’s arms as the suckers cling onto him, shifting under his skirt. It’s difficult trying to stay sane when Lance has got that sight in front of him and a spongy tonguelike kraken tentacle wriggling around his own asshole, cool and tingling.
“Lean—here, lean on me—”
“Yeah. Oh. Oh! Oh shit.”
Keith wraps his arms around his shoulders, stepping his feet apart and bending slightly. Half to make sure it’s going ok and half just for the view, Lance peeks over his boyfriend’s shoulder, pulls aside the wet drape of the back of Keith’s skirt. The water is crystal clear so Lance can easily easily see the bulbous frond head nudging between his asscheeks. This larger frond, too, is a size that wouldn’t be unthinkable among toys back on Earth, but it’s thicker than anything they’ve got in their toybox. Finding the entry it’s looking for, the pale shaft squirms like it’s excited and burrows in.
Keith stiffens against him, eyes flaring wide and then fluttering shut, and he lets out a loud, gritty moan. Lance hugs him tight, both for his own balance and to hold Keith up as he gets the tentacle fucking he wanted. On instinct he wants to say something, rile Keith up with a dirty comment about his kink, but he finds himself speechless, completely overwhelmed by it all.
Lance is used to thinking of Keith as powerful. Sturdy. And he is, his clinging arms are comforting and strong, muscle bunching under Lance’s hands, but right now they may as well be two fragile cards leaned together in a cardhouse. Even together the two paladins are teensy compared to Her, like fleas on an elephant. His lizard hindbrain (and ok yes also the monkey and even the human brain) are mildly terrified. Nobody around them seems afraid, though. The grip of Her suckered tentacle-tips holding them in place as She fucks them is inescapable as steel cuffs. But given Her sheer mountainous size, it’s astoundingly gentle, like She knows exactly how careful She has to be with their tiny bodies. And not just them, with everyone at once. The coiled muscle of the tentacles wrapping up his limbs, the suckers pulling at his skin, the frond writhing inside him, it’s all just one strand of something that’s reaching out to everyone on this beach.
A bloom of warmth starts gushing into him. The frond—no.
The ovipositor. It's an ovipositor.
It's depositing Her eggs in him.
Keith’s eyes are round and blown-out, staring into his own. All Lance can do is hang on, cling to Keith while the Mother holds them both in place. The cool tingle of the goo-coated ovipositor explodes into a bracing hot-cold sequin dazzle of sensation. Her jelly has aphrodisiac properties, Lue had warned them, and yeah. Yup, yeah, Lance can feel that, feels hot and cold and goosebumps prickling over his arms and the back of his neck like his body is working overtime to make sense of all the stimulation. The ovipositor throbs against his rim, pulsing and bulging then relaxing with each egg it deposits inside him, pumping him fuller than he thought was possible.
In a startling rush the ovipositor pulls out of him, the tentacles clinging to his legs squeezing slightly as the frond retracts. Lance gasps at the sudden relative emptiness, feeling almost bereft, and clings harder to Keith. His ovipositor is clearly still going – maybe the larger tentacles have a larger payload? It keeps gushing into Keith for several more seconds, until there’s a slight visible swell to his usually-flat belly.
Lance can’t help himself. He reaches around and down, through the slit of the skirt into Keith’s crease to feel where the ovipositor is stretching Keith’s rim. Under his fingertips he feels the cool jelly slip of the bulb pulling out, the furl of Keith’s hole spasming and clenching afterward as he shakes and moans in Lance’s arms.
Fuck, he loves to see Keith feeling good. The faces he makes do all kinds of things to Lance’s heart and his dick. “Yeah? That good?”
Keith’s brows furrow with effort. “Fuck, fuck fuck fuck. So good. Just gotta keep ‘em in.”
“Not sure I’m digging them for myself,” Lance admits, a little strained. The tentacle egg-creampie was undeniably hot (five stars, would do again), but the longer he holds it, the more he’s starting to crampy and bloaty like he ate something he shouldn’t have.
“Don’t gotta keep ‘em. Do what feels right for you,” Keith manages.
Lance…uh…releases the kraken. So to speak. Based on what they were told the eggs start out looking kind of like fish or frog spawn, with a dark firmer center and a thick, goopy coating that firms up and grows a protective outer membrane when incubated in body heat. He…does not have it in him to look for himself at what comes out and washes away. The relief is immediate, if accompanied by the flush of embarrassment.
“Doing ok?”
“Uh. Welp. I do feel weird about pooping out egg slime in their sacred baby pool,” Lance admits, giggling a little hysterically. “But I’ve had worse things come out of me after eating stale Altean food goo. So.”
“Gross,” Keith deadpans, as if he doesn’t have a butt literally full of alien frogspawn.
“Still good? How’re you feeling?”
“Good. Tingly.” He squirms a little, like he’s trying to hold himself together. “Fuckin’ stuffed.”
“Got room for a bit more?”
Keith moans, hugging tighter around Lance’s shoulders and pulling them closer together. With Her tentacles still wrapping up their thighs he can’t hump against Lance the way he seems to want to, but he smears his cheek against Lance’s, nuzzling his jaw. “Yeah. Fuck. Want your cock.”
That sounds like an incredible idea. If he can find a way to put it into action. Lance struggles a little against the tentacles, trying to pull against the one wrapped around his waist. They squeeze a little tighter, suctioning wetly, and then like She can understand them the tentacle arms She finally releases them, peeling away in long curling slides of wet bumpy salamander-slippery skin against lightly-haired human skin. Without Her holding them up they collapse against each other, weak-kneed.
“Wow. What a ride,” Keith slurs, giggling against his shoulder.
“You up for another?”
“Yeeeah, cowboy, take me home.” Keith, king of suaveness that he is, punctuates the request by squeezing Lance’s cock through his skirt.
“You got it.”
Already the beach is scattered with fucking aliens, in pairs and piles. The light of the moons has overtaken that of the nearly-vanished sun, so bright that a smattering of stars are only barely visible. It’s silvery-rose and sparkling on the sand and water, on the dark arches of Her tentacles and the ecstatic bodies of the Oulueans.
Lance can feel the aphrodisiac effect of the Mother’s sex jelly kicking in. It’s dripping down his inner thighs as he shepherds a waddling Keith back up the beach to their blanket, making his skin tingle. He still feels hyper-sensitive and fizzy inside where the ovipositor fucked into him, and the sensation is spreading through his veins like effervescent bubbles.
Everywhere their skin makes contact feels like fusion, plasma-hot and unbearably good. They crash onto their blanket together, the warmth of Keith’s hand in his bursting and exploding into points and planes of sensation, chest to chest and calves zipping together, the plush blanket a field of tickling dandelion fluff, the panels of their skirts plastered cool silk, Keith’s hair in his hand combing miles of tiny lines in the webs of his fingers – quiznack. There’s definitely more to Her jelly than a simple happy sex hormones. The thought feels like a revelation, a sharp instant of cosmic unwinding, but it tips along with all his other thoughts into the gravity well of how Keith looks and feels under him.
“Lance, Lance, Lancelancelancelance,” he’s saying, squirming against the blanket like he can’t hold still and practically grappling him, hands gripping and stroking anywhere they can reach with more instinct than focused intent. “Want you, want you, please, fuck fuck fuck…”
“Yeah. Yeah,” Lance pants, struggling to solve the incomprehensible puzzle of their limbs and the folded origami of their skirts. In the end through he just cuts through the problem, giving up on trying to unwind the complicated wraps. Shoves all the fabric up. Flips them both like cards until his cock matches to Keith’s ass.
His cleft is absolutely sloppy with that tingly translucent jelly. Lance hugs Keith tight from behind, unable to stop the rock of his hips, fucking his cock into the slippery mess between his cheeks and thighs and smearing a greedy hand up and down his entire front, neck and chest and thigh and belly and rock-hard cock, growling with frustration when it tangles in the bunch of the wet skirt around Keith’s waist and shoving underneath it.
“Fuck, baby, I can feel it. I can feel them inside you from outside,” he groans against Keith’s nape, fingers splayed wide against his bulging belly.
Keith moans, a throaty open-mouthed cry like he can’t hold anything else in while he’s so full, clasping a trembling hand over Lance’s on his belly.
“You love this, huh? Love being stuffed? Love having an assful of eggs and alien spunk? Love it, baby, love what a freaky slut you are,” Lance babbles, the arousal of it fractaling with dizzy iridescence. “Gonna churn that sloppy load in you like butter.”
Notching his cockhead into Keith’s loose hole, Lance grabs behind his knee and hikes up his leg to spread him wide, and then pushes in with one long, slow press. The lush jelly squelch of it is insane, the springy resistance and give of the soft eggs, the quivering tautness of Keith’s walls. The Mother’s slurry is electric and tingly on his cock. Lance buries his face in Keith’s hair, trying to catch his breath, and Keith’s hand reaches back to grip his flank. It’s grounding, the small bruising pain of the paladin’s callused fingers digging in. Lance breathes, adjusts his grasp on Keith’s thigh, and worms his bottom hand underneath his boyfriend to spread a bracing hand over his belly again.
Lance rolls in deep and hard but slow, rolling with the rhythm of the waves washing up on the beach. It feels like the tide is moving him, or he’s moving it, maybe, with his thrusts, the sound of the surf pulling in and out with him. The slowly firming eggs squashing around the head of his cock in the already tight clutch of Keith’s body. The aphrodisiac jelly is still oozing out of his own ass, the sensation almost like having a vibe to his hole. All over the beach the sounds of smacking skin and cries of pleasure and gushy wet schlucking are strung together in a net of rosy moonlight with Keith’s sobs of pleasure, hoarse and low at the deep penetration as Lance fucks the eggs further into him, his hard-on bouncing hot against the back of Lance’s hand on every thrust.
“S’like a rave,” Keith moans out, grinding back on him. “S’all glittery.”
“More than Viagra in the jelly for sure.”
“Feels good.”
“Yeah? You want some more?”
He pulls out, rolls them halfway over and drops Keith’s knee to spraddle wide on the blanket. Keith whines in complaint, then gasps and squirms as Lance swipes his hand up his sloppy cleft. The jelly is thickening, going pearly-opaque and more gluey than slippery, coating his cock and stringing between his bobbing tip and Keith’s hole.
Lance follows it back in like a lifeline, bracing on his elbow and covering Keith with his body and sliding back home. Keith spasms, shouting, when Lance reaches underneath him to pin his cock to his own bulging belly with a jelly-coated hand. Hot fluid spurts over the back of his fingers – jizz, jelly, Lance doesn’t know. It’s all he can do to hold Keith to him, hold them up, and pound into the sparkling heat of him. It’s all too much, in the best way, and Keith’s loud fucked-out haah-haah-haah’s and his twitching dick in Lance’s hand and the Mother’s song and the tingling on his hole and taint and the eggs pushing around his dick all set him off, careening through a geyser of lightning sparks.
He peaks, he does, and he’s trembling and still keyed up and at the edge, cock buried in the sweet hot clench of Keith’s ass. He came, right? Lance is positive he just came but his dick is still at full mast and doesn’t feel like it plans to soften any time soon. He rocks in again, punching a whining gasp out of Keith. The song continues, people are still fucking all around them. What a great idea. Maybe they can just go again without stopping? Quiznack, Keith is so very very good. Lance licks his shoulder, which also feels like a good idea. He’s so…so good. He’s, he’s still moaning, still arching back against Lance, but Lance should check. Needs to check on him, needs to scrape up a braincell.
“You feel so good baby, how you feeling? Doing ok? Wanna keep…? Stop? Didja come? Whatcha need, sweetheart?” There. Whole sentences. He gives himself a mental pat on the back.
Keith shudders, rubbing his face into the damp blanket. “Feels…. A lot. Good. A lot. I—maybe? Feels so good, I don’t know if I – think I need – I can feel them firming up, it’s starting to – feels too much.”
Lance processes that slow and winding, still rocking lazily in and out, nuzzling the back of Keith’s shoulder. “Ok. Let’s…water. Go to the water. Return the blessing to big Mama.”
“Yeah let’s—yeah.”
Hanging onto each other like they’re drunk, they make their stumbling way back down to the waterline. They have to skirt around piles of people entwined and heaving everywhere. The Mother’s winding tentacles are still arcing above them under the moons, like She’s watching over them all. Protecting Her people, while they take Her blessing, limned in bioluminescence and adoration. She’s singing, he thinks, like whalesong but earthquake-rumbly and foreign, a language he can’t understand the words to but the feeling pierces right through him. He loves them all, loves Her, loves that he can experience this with Keith. The cool water pebbles lustrous around his calves. The slip of sand under his bare feet and the surf and Her song and the moonlight are all binding everyone together, and the euphoria of his has him higher than the jelly.
Ok it’s probably the jelly causing the feeling in the first place, but, still. It’s great. He feels great. Keith feels great against him, sliding down Lance’s arm to his knees in the shallow waves.
“Wanna watch you, baby, wanna see ‘em,” he says, dropping dizzily alongside Keith, grabbing his ass under the skirt, nuzzling hungrily into his sweat-damp hair.
“Fuck,” Keith groans, head tipping back. “Yeah, fella, yeah. Fuckin’ love what a damn perv you are.”
He drops to his hands and knees, back arching self-indulgently. Lance crawls around behind him and flips up his wet skirt to bare his bottom. The water swirls around them, washing away the frothed-up jelly and cum oozing down Keith’s inner thighs and leaving the winding trails of faint hickey-like rings on his legs and ass put there by Her suckers. He wants to bite every single one.
Lance spreads his cheeks open to get a prime view of Keith’s hard-working asshole, thumbing at it encouragingly. A gush of pearly fluid immediately splats out to coat his balls and drip into the water. And then, the smooth glistening surface of the first egg. That reddened hole winks closed again, then open, puffy rim stretching around the egg’s curve.
“C’mon baby. Gape that slutty hole,” Lance groans. “Let’s see what you let an alien tentacle stuff in your hungry ass.”
The first one pops free, splashing into the water. It’s the size of a large chicken egg but rounder, cloudy white with a faint shadow in the middle. The egg is followed by another sticky gout of fluids that web between Keith’s thighs and ooze down his nutsack. Keith moans, head dropping to hang between his shoulders.
“You got this sweetheart, you’re doing so great. Look so hot. I’m, haha, I’m egging you on, push ‘em out, babe, let me see you—"
One after another they blop out, some in a little rush, others with more effort, accompanied by spurts of thick pearly fluid. Lance rubs his thighs and lower back, thumbs his rim, spreads and squeezes his cheeks, the wet skin under his palms and fingerprints like, it’s like, it glides, it heats, his head spins. He can’t stop touching, can’t stop feeling and loving. It feels like he skates and flies with the movements of his hands, all while staying still, riveted to the sight of Keith’s asshole gulping and drooling around everything Lance and the Mother fucked into him.
“I think this is the last one,” Keith grits out after some type of while. Lance’s sense of time has spooled, twirling and falling like thread on a spindle. Under his hands Keith’s body is trembling all over, like the ripples of the moonlight on the water. He sparkles, Lance thinks, strung-out and lovely.
“I gotcha, sweetie,” Lance croons, sliding his fingers into Keith and rubbing circles just inside against the sensitized flesh. Keeping him spread open with two fingers, Lance reaches in with the index finger of his other hand, pressing down right where he knows to find his prostate. Keith jerks and cries out. “Quiznack. I can see it. Bear down, honey, you can do it. Gimme that last pearl from your sweet little oyster.”
Keith rocks back, sobbing out a moan as the motion fucks his fingers deeper in. His walls tighten maddenly on Lance’s pressing fingers and with a long, hoarse cry he pushes out the last egg, along with another thick gout of gooey white jelly and jizz, leaving a long drooling rope of it from his swollen hole to the water.
Lance thinks he was counting the eggs at some point, he meant to, but numbers got away from him, swirling off in the water. Some are still bobbing around them, others washing away on the waves. On some impulse he reaches out, baps one with his hand, making it splash and bounce in the water. Trippy.
“Wow. Wowowoww. I can’t believe you had all those in your greedy little hole,” Lance says, impressed. “How you feeling?”
“Empty,” groans Keith, “Fizzly and—I feel empty, fuck me again, Lance, can you get in me or can we get something—"
It’s the best thing, the most wonderful thing. He wants to, wants to melt onto Keith and slot inside and braid himself into his veins, cords of hungry tightening want. “Baby I’m good for it, I’m – yeah, lets—"
He so is, he’s so hard he could drill through diamond. Lance falls into Keith like the surf, merges and sinks. He puts his straining cock back into the mess of Keith’s hole and he fucks.
They fuck hard and dirty, doggy-style in the shallow surf, jelly and cum frothing out around his dick and streaming down Keith's thighs just to get washed away on the next wave. It’s incredible, the fresh heady air and the sea and sand, touching Keith without reservation and letting the sounds fall freely without a care for who might see or hear them.
Lance could happily do this all night.
Lance wakes up with a hellish hangover and sand in his everything, wrapped into a blanket burrito with Keith.
…It does not appear to be the same blanket they fucked on.
“Y’wake?” Keith mumbles hoarsely against his collarbone.
“Sadly, yes.”
The responding groan commiserates.
“You ok?” Lance asks, wincing as he extracts an arm from the burrito to fling over his aching eyes. The sun is back with a vengeance. There's no sign of the Mother - She's gone back to the bottom of the sea, Her job thoroughly done for the season, apparently. He vaguely notes the sleeping piles of Oulueans around them on the beach before finding a speck of mercy in the darkness of his own elbow crook.
“Coffee,” Keith mutters, which. Says it all. Lance heartily agrees.
Taking stock, he thinks it’s probably not as bad as he feels right now. His muscles are stiff and sore, and he would desperately like to shower before the sand and crusted fluids form a permanent cement, and his mouth is parched and his head pounding. But nothing that copious amounts of water in and on him and some breakfast won’t fix.
Keith sits up, blinking owlishly in the morning sunlight. His hair is sticking out in at least seven directions. He gives Lance’s arm an absent squeeze as he squints around. “Do they have anything caffeinated here?”
Keith, Lance notes with some interest (probably less interest than he’d have if his head wasn’t splitting open), is naked under the blanket. The fate of his ceremonial skirt: a total mystery. It will probably go unsolved, with the amount of brainpower Lance feels able to muster right now. With the burrito half fallen open Lance sees that he himself is wearing a poncho he doesn’t recognize. Another mystery that will not get solved.
“Dunno. I’d settle for water,” Lance gravels out. “Or that weird tea stuff they’ve been serving.”
There’s got to be some morning-after procedure, right? Lance is pretty sure Luenaen said something about it, but he doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember anything very clearly right now. He’s got scattered memories of lots of delirious fucking. Also crying over a weird shell they found. And he kind of remembers joining some kind of singing circle of Oulueans, trying to sing along with the unfamiliar music for a while, then at some point explaining human oral sex to them. Absolutely no recollection of how that came up. He does very clearly recall Keith cheerfully dropping down and swallowing his cock to demonstrate, though, and the scandalized and delighted shouts of their rapt alien audience.
Little Lance twitches with far more optimism than the rest of him feels right now. Though a repeat performance of ‘Human Blowjobs: the Live Show’ is definitely an idea to revisit sometime in the future when he doesn’t. You know. Feel like he’s been run over by a truck full of sand.
“Yeah. Coffee. Shower. Find out what time it is before the Castleship comes back,” Keith grunts. “And get an excavator for all this friggin’ sand, goddamn. It’s in my ears. Fuck.”
Ugggh. Lance wants to sleep more as much as he wants a shower, but Keith’s right. “Yeah, should probably get it together so when our ride gets here we don’t still look like we just went on the mother of all benders.” He pauses for a beat. “Get it? The Mother? Of all be—”
“Stop. No,” Keith grumbles, but he’s fighting a grin as he flaps a hand over Lance’s mouth, getting more sand anywhere. The ensuing slap fight ends as quickly as it begins. Too much moving. Too hot.
“Pretty sure Coran knew exactly what we’d be getting into here,” Lance says when they’ve settled down again.
Keith snorts a laugh. “Jesus. I don’t wanna know. But if anyone in Voltron would, it’d be—no. No, I don’t wanna know.”
“Man knows how to live.”
“Kill me.”
Lance shakes with laughter, sighs it out. “Really though. You doing ok?”
“Yeah, fella. I’m good. You?”
“Yeah. This was fun.” Keith smiles at him, haloed in early morning sunlight, and Lance can’t help but reach out to touch his dimpling cheek. At the touch Keith’s lashes flutter, his eyes automatically darting around to see if anyone’s watching. Lance can see the moment he sheepishly catches himself, shoulders hunching and grabbing Lance’s wrist to keep him from pulling back.
“Hey, it’s ok. Last night was…a lot,” Lance says carefully. “Don’t push yourself if you’re not comfortable.”
Keith’s brows crinkle. “I told you, I don’t want you to feel like we’re hiding.”
“No, I know, but I mean…this was a lot really fast, you know, and I just want you to know I don’t expect us to be hanging all over each other 24/7, you know? And I especially don’t want you to do anything you’re not ok with, or – like, I know you care and it’s not like I want to make out in front of our friends or something—"
The longer he talks, the more Keith’s expression flattens, until he abruptly reaches out and grabs Lance’s chin.
“Um?” Lance offers.
“Lance. I love you. Shut up.” And then Keith is kissing him.
It’s a little dry and more than a little morning breath-y but it’s still sweet as honey.
“Besides I’m pretty sure I sucked you off for a whole damn drum circle of dignitaries,” Keith says after pulling away with a smack. “Compared to that, making out in front of our friends is kind of not a big deal.”
“I mean, it might be,” Lance says lightly, heart bursting with happy sparks. “The dignitaries invited us to their kraken orgy. Pidge, on the other hand, can and will tase us if we start sucking face at Voltron movie night.”
“…True.”
Movie night make-outs? Probably a no-go. But later, after they’re showered and water and marginally less hungover, when they head up the Castleship boarding ramp to rejoin the rest of Voltron, Keith takes his hand.